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WBraun
climber
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Jul 28, 2014 - 05:20pm PT
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HFSC ... You sound exactly as a "god" imitator ....
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jul 28, 2014 - 05:34pm PT
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Seems to me that Graziani's model, in principle, is well-represented in evolutionary biology in the sense of evolution co-opting a whole system that was originally optimized for one thing but, as it turns out, is 90% of what you need for doing another. The thing that was already well-honed is the creating and reading of mental maps to better anticipate a (say) potential predator's intentions. The thing that co-opted it is this thing that we experience as sentience.
There are several examples of co-opting whole systems or sub-systems in nature. It's one way in which big "jumps" in evolution can occur. As a software developer I totally get it. After all, modern software is largely based on re-useable components. Software developers always try to abstract the general from the particular (the re-useable components come from the general parts) and we deal with tree structures just like the tree of life.
So, Graziani's model, to me, is a very viable hypothesis, worthy of throwing up there to the scientific community because is make sense on so many levels.
And I just conferred with my cat who did not disagree.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jul 28, 2014 - 05:41pm PT
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"Genetic programming" implies no choice in the matter...my eyes are hazel, from my genetic programming, I am half-bald from my genetic programming...I am agnostic because...wait a minute, my gentic programming according to Jan and Ed Wilson says I can't be agnostic.
Assuming elcapinyoazz was not just being cynical and sarcastic, I think the answer is that nature provides a wide range of variation thanks to random mating, and thus not every example of a particular species will reflect the general characteristics of the group. Remember the example of the peppered moths from Manchester who went from 99% light to 99% dark in the span of 50 years thanks to natural variation that was already there when the environment changed?
Using that model, the interesting question is whether the number of religious people to agnostics and atheists will change likewise in the future or if religion will become even more prevalent as hard times increase with growing populations and corresponding ecological pressures, , and if so, what new forms will develop?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 28, 2014 - 06:00pm PT
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Also, it's like Steven Pinker often points out... Growing numbers of the public are comfortable with the evolution of eye color and height, just not the evolution of feelings or mental faculties like intention or volition (will).
So that's part of the problem here also. I mean besides language failure, science illiteracy, gross inexperience in engineering type physics, material engineering and chemistry and chemistry labs, fear, etc..
"I'm an evolutionist but only so far. Eye color, sure. Height, sure. Certain instincts like hunger (btw, it's a feeling) and thirst (another one, a feeling, lol) sure. Lust, sure (definitely a feeling!) But not feelings, not compassion, not empathy, they are the province of the soul. To think they evolved is 'just wrong'." Right, Jan? Right BASE?
.....
I'd be eager to hear from anyone how it is (possible mechanisms of action) that our material bodies have what it takes to generate feelings of lust, hunger and thirst while at the same time APPARENTLY DO NOT have what it takes to generate those more "noble" feelings of love and compassion (provinces of a ghost, spirit, and/or universal consciousness, so it's claimed).
Nonetheless, for the "science types" here, as biology confirms, we are evolved biotic machines. It's not a theory but a fact (as the saying goes). Plain to anyone who's followed along. However, as Jan hints, indeed as she's pointed out many many times now and as the rest of us know all too painfully well, some folks don't have the means because of life circumstances (living in Syria or Sudan, eg) to ever come around to this realization. So how all this sorts out in the end to yield a common understanding that's any way unifying is really going to be something esp with all the world going global and cyber. I only wish I could be around to witness it and to be a part of it. Interesting times ahead.
.....
BASE104,
Come to think of it, I'd really like to hear from BASE104 on this one: How does the material body generate the feeling of hunger? Let's focus here on just one feeling - the feeling of hunger. How does that work? Feeling from material, a material body? The "spiritists" say this is poppycock, that it's impossible! to get feeling, any kind of feeling, from matter (after all, it's just atoms and molecules) but what say you?
Go-B, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's your view all feelings, from love to hate, joy and happiness, hunger to lust are all the province and providence of the soul or spirit, isn't that right? and the body is just the vehicle or receptacle. Isn't that your view?
.....
You say you're an evolutionist, not a creationist. Good, good!
So with that established then, please elaborate further: Just what kind of an evolutionist are you? Is your acceptance of evolution limited to physical traits or does it include feelings (sentience) too? That seems to be the growing $64M question worth asking here as well. At this site and in this century.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 28, 2014 - 06:39pm PT
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How does the material body generate the feeling of hunger? Let's focus here on just one feeling - the feeling of hunger. How does that work? Feeling from material, a material body?
Your about to paint urself into a corner
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 28, 2014 - 06:46pm PT
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Truth is, solve the problem of hunger (as a material based feeling) and you'll solve the problem of volition (as a material based faculty) and the problem of love and hate (as material-based feelings). At the level of the nervous system, they're somehow all bound together.
Good night, blu. :)
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 28, 2014 - 07:32pm PT
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Ed said,
Graziani's model, which is based on a particularly astute observation that we use the same internal programming components to figure out what others are going to do, or what we might do given a particular situation.
The "program" recognizes the difference between stimulus coming from our "senses" and stimulus generated by the behavior of "thinking." So it's third person all the time... in that sense.
This is not how I was interpreting "programming", "programs".
I thought when we are programming ourselves, i mike, am consciously agreeing that my "subconscious model" and your "subconscious model" can agree on what is required to climb Ahab. And when Ahab is brought up, we can both quickly agree its a good climb!
These meetings of models, would provide the programming.
My program, which ill call "Ahab" will get added to from the outcome of our conversation.
If I'm taking a poll of who likes Ahab. You say yes, I'll store you in my positive column. If you didn't like it, I'd put you in the negative column.
Isn't "programming" what's taking place between the conscious down to the subconscious?
And the "program" is separate yea, but not quite a third person?
Could you show me where you referenced your meaning please?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 28, 2014 - 07:48pm PT
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Truth is, solve the problem of hunger
There is a difference in neurons between Senses and Emotions I will say that for now.
I don't believe feeling hungry is an emotion?
Even you I bet could conjure up some tears for your dearly departed Greatgrandmother.
But I bet you couldn't drop one tear re imagining the pain you induerd with snowblindness or a compound fractured femur.
Senses can bring Emotions. But emotions are the Landmark...
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 28, 2014 - 08:14pm PT
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The "program" recognizes the difference between stimulus coming from our "senses" and stimulus generated by the behavior of "thinking." So it's third person all the time... in that sense.
Who do you talk to when your discursive mind is going off?
Ed said: "So in a software sense, there is a "homunculus," and it is the actual brain parts that lead to action... except that our adaptation of it is to use it to test ideas, so there is a way to "propose" a problem, and to use the result as a predictor. Once again, this is all a part of our perception, which is the collective of our "hardware" and the memory of experiences."
Can you tickle this apart to make sense of it? First, there is a "homunculus," but only in a provisional ‘software’ sense of the word. The homunculus is quite naturally a thing, in this case, a brain part in charge of action. If the homunculus and the brain pert are the same, what, exactly IS the homunculus and what purpose does it serve? It can’t make any decisions or effect anything because a determined machine is all or nothing determined, not partially determined. Is Ed's homunculus determined by the brain part? Entirely? And who, exactly, is proposing a problem or anything whatsoever which is used as a predicator? What is this “who.” If you wiped the game clean of all vestiages of self, “I,” homonculous, etc., how would our actions vary, and why?
The fatal error here, IMO, is the attempt to absolutely anchor and conflate sentience to content/objective processing - i.e., memories and "hardware." This, of course is nothing new - it is simply a recasting of the old saw that "sentience is what the brain does," and that once the data is in, the subjective is actually the objective.
Going on: "An elaboration, probably an important one, is that with language we can transmit our experience to others, it is no longer solely our own. Our experiences, transmitted through language, become a part of others experiences, to be used in this predictive manner."
Of course we never transmit our actual experience to anyone because experience exists only as a first person subjective phenomenon. What we transmit is symbolic information about the content of experience. Experience itself is always one-and-done. Data and info are content, not experience itself.
Going on: "The discursive behavior has also adapted and allows us to not only communicate our intentions, but to "talk to ourselves" and propose these sorts of problems, submitted to the same sets of mechanisms that we use in that "awareness schema" our perceptions of our attention."
Million dollar question: Who is listening? In fact while there is listening, there is no self receiving that data stream. Nor is the brain talking so it can listening to itself – an absurd nothing withal. "We" listen, but we are not a thing, nor yet a homunculus nor yet an aggregate of brain parts and recollected experiences.
But the crux of this all is a very simple question: What happens to this "awareness schema" when we are NOT thinking or predicting or talking to ourselves? According to the awareness schema, awareness itself is the blowback of paying attention. That is, awareness is entirely created by paying attention or perceiving an objective and definable thing, while simultaneously holding a holographic sense of past perceptions. If this were entirely true, then awareness would vanish the moment the brain was not focused on and paying attention (was “aware of” or was perceiving) to a discrete thing or article of attention. But any student of the experiential arts can say with certainty that the exact opposite is true. In fact, raw awareness (NOT slaved to an object) is the wild card in the entire shebang.
What we are looking at here is people giving lip service to sentience and choice (Fruitcake “deciding” what cereal to eat – “I decide” – to Ed’s homonculous , which isn’t really real, but is at bottom a “brain part,” to BASE, who’s mysterious “I” weighs options presented by a brain, and so forth.
The reason this feels right to some is that it fits their existing belief per the way things are.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 28, 2014 - 08:18pm PT
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The reason this feels right to some is that it fits their existing belief per the way things are.
that is usually the case...
the "homunculus" is the sense we have of a "little person" in our brain... sort of like the Men In Black scene someone put a picture of up above...
but if you take Graziani seriously, the same way we form our actions from external stimuli is the way we make a prediction of someone else's intent.
The social attention is important, and we all have it, looking at how someone is moving and inferring what they are up to. It is imitative and a part of the way we do things, but we use the same brain parts to build a model of the intent as we do to animate our own intent.
It would be a typical simplification as eeyonkee observed above, the reason being that in evolutionary development, the brain has to "pay its keep," which is to say, if it uses up more energy than it provides it's not going to make the evolutionary cut. But the evolution of the human brain is still very speculative... and it might be simply a sexual selection attribute, our peacock feathers. Time will tell.
It is relatively straight forward to see how slight modifications to the general plan gets us to the discursive mind. It is very often a 'third person' talking to us, that is the definite experience. In some ways, it perfectly illustrates the point, we are listening to an internal dialog, and thinking about what that dialog is saying, responding to it internally, just as we would to external dialog. No need to have two totally separate mechanisms to deal with the distinction between "internal" and "external" stimuli. The only thing required is to recognize when the "voice" is internal, and when it is external.
Obviously, when this get screwed up all sorts of strange behavior can occur (and does in various brain disorders).
The act of learning by imitating what you see is also a consequence of this, and this is a relatively wide spread behavior among animals and thus we could conclude that it most likely predates humans. Note that learning like this frees up "processing power," the brain doesn't have to be wired completely for every behavior, so learning becomes a way to reduce the energy used by the brain. And learning this way is also necessarily social, there is a teacher (parent) and there is the student (offspring). What is learned becomes a part of culture for that society.
As for "the raw experience" we never experience it... if for no other reason that the way we sense things are limited by those sensory organs, the raw signal of the experience is not accessible to us, we cannot sense all of what is there.
On top of that, the information from those senses are heavily processed by the nervous system even before they get to the brain. Once they hit the brain, there is even more processing, which results in our perception. It is the perception that is remembered, and so we can hear or read or view something about someone else's experience and have that become accessible to our decision making as if we had experienced it ourselves. It is trite to claim this isn't the "same thing" as the experience, we are all "third person" removed when we become conscious of all of those experiences.
What is unique is that we possess a very large set of memories of the perception of the events of our life, the collection of these events define "us" as well as the specific hardware we have under our hoods.
I don't think there is anything special when you turn off the dialog... random things happen, ideas float in and out, you still respond to external stimuli. It might be possible to so totally control your awareness that you do shutdown response to external stimuli, there are certainly acts of political protest by people who practice advanced meditation that indicate it is possible.
Learning how your brain works through meditation, or at least aspects of the brain, is a very likely outcome of the practice. I don't see that anything there requires a non-physical explanation.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 28, 2014 - 09:44pm PT
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I don't see that anything there requires a non-physical explanation.
Don't get to complacent yet! I'm gonna drive this load of pineapples all the way to Hawaii.
We atleast have something to work from with that Aeon link. But I'm sure the mechanics aren't quite right? And we sure haven't introduced all the physical properties yet. You have yet to meet my "ghost in the water" and my "bags of water" theory. Fruity almost touched on it yesterday.
Oh yea,
Good night to you too Fruity!
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 28, 2014 - 11:23pm PT
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JL that was a great post!
But the crux of this all is a very simple question: What happens to this "awareness schema" when we are NOT thinking or predicting or talking to ourselves? According to the awareness schema, awareness itself is the blowback of paying attention. That is, awareness is entirely created by paying attention or perceiving an objective and definable thing, while simultaneously holding a holographic sense of past perceptions.
And those are a blowback of consciousness.
Do you think in your meditative state of raw-awareness, you could be possibly dropping attention/awareness and experiencing Raw-Consciousness?
Same horse different color
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jul 29, 2014 - 08:03am PT
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Here's what the Graziano's AEON Magazine article said at different points:
Explanation of brain functions (e.g., consciousness) are grounded in evolutionary theory. (And if materialists' evolutionary theory does not explain everything about life. . . ?)
To find out how or why the brain is this or that, we must go back in time 65 million years. (Archeology notwithstanding, this is shaky ground to argue why the brain developed in one way as opposed to an unlimited number of possibilities.)
Brains generate consciousness. (An assumption. Many cognitive scientists have argued that consciousness is distributed, at least through various systems in the body; a few argue that consciousness must include that which lies outside the body.)
The brain is a computer. (This is a tired metaphor, but a facile one; see "grounded or embodied cognition.")
Theories need not be satisfying to be true. (This seems a bit internally contradictory, to me, or at least poorly articulated. A full understanding of truth must be satisfying. I think Graziano really means that theories need not be intuitive.)
Theories are models, and they are simplified and in some ways inaccurate. (Yes, and this should say much to people about what theories or models really are.)
Models inform intuitions. (A remarkable statement. I would have thought that it would work the other way around.)
Superstitions come out of simplification by the brain. (Theories are simplifications.)
Successful accounts of consciousness--via theories--will turn out to be correct formulations if they tell us how brains become aware. (A circular or tautological argument: consciousness is awareness, if it is anything at all.)
The article appears to be gross speculation.
BTW, making reference to what undergraduates think or believe is hardly a solid basis for what works or what happens or what a thing is.
Aligned to that point, I'd say that references to what a person learned in a course as an undergraduate would constitute (in my experience) at best novice understanding . . . more usually, naiveté.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jul 29, 2014 - 08:15am PT
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But the evolution of the human brain is still very speculative... and it might be simply a sexual selection attribute, our peacock feathers. Time will tell.
Definitely one of the best quotes of this thread. I can well imagine sitting in one of those interminably boring abstract seminars of grad school and thinking to myself, "don't take it seriously, they're just strutting their peacock feathers".
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jul 29, 2014 - 08:43am PT
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problem of hunger (as a material based feeling)
What is the definition of "feeling"? Can't you describe it in less sloppy terms? I agree that it is material based, but not some nebulous feeling.
Animals seem to have a "BIOS," for lack of a better word. A particular spider species spins an elaborate web without being taught how. Humans begin to walk in about a year, and talk in a little less than two. A butterfly knows how to fly instantly after it emerges from its chrysalis. A bird learns to fly in only a couple of months. These behaviors are not taught. They are innate, and somehow genetically pre-programmed in each particular species.
Clearly, some behavior is strictly genetic. We see it throughout the animal kingdom, a genetic BIOS.
Hunger is an involuntary response to being hungry. If you are on a diet, you can override this reflex or instinct. Calling it a feeling is a poor choice of words. The word does not imply a reflex or instinct. It doesn't imply causation.
As for complicated systems, I doubt you studied the complexity of the human brain. I doubt you studied the brain of an ant. We know that the human brain has roughly 20 billion neurons, and each neuron is connected to thousands of other neurons. That is some serious complexity.
The human brain is the most complicated thing that we know of in the entire universe. Modeling it is not as simple as modeling the life cycle of a star. Behavior is not just controlled in the brain. It is also controlled by the endocrine system. Adrenaline, for example. Not to mention the billions of synapses and the effect of hundreds of neurotransmitter and hormonal influences.
If you define behavior as simply as a response to a stimulus, that begs the question of what behavior is genetically predetermined in our BIOS, (innate behavior), and what behavior is learned. Clearly we can see examples of both types of behavior.
Innate behavior can be thought of as objective behavior, and learned behavior can be thought of as subjective behavior.
That subjective behavior can be studied in not only humans, but other animals. We know that it exists. We are at the other end of a spectrum from the spider who spins its particular type of web without being taught. We still have innate behaviors, though.
Control theory is cool, though. Have any of you seen the TED talk on programmed drone quadcopters?
http://www.ted.com/talks/raffaello_d_andrea_the_astounding_athletic_power_of_quadcopters
I would wager that a primitive civilization would think that these suckers are alive.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jul 29, 2014 - 09:09am PT
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FYI a brain has over a trillion connections.
What makes us feel one way or the other? One part the state of our entire fully integrated neural/body system - the health of nearly every part of our body - one part the state of our emotions (did we just fall in love or get dumped?) - and one part choice.
Emotions are autonomic reactions - specific physiological reactions to stimuli (internal - thoughts, or external).
Feelings, in contrast, are not autonomic. They are a combination of the state of health and well being of our entire fully integrated neural/body system - the state of our emotions (did we just fall in love or get dumped?), and how we choose to feel. Our awareness schema experiences these incoming signals (which are the final result of a very two way conversation between the schema and all the rest) as an overall sense of well being, or not. When its all said and done, how do you feel about your relationships, health, life, breakfast, etc?
We don't choose emotions, although, over time, emotional responses can certainly be trained, just as other autonomic processes can be as well.
We have a lot of choice over our feelings, however. One event, two people, two completely different reactions.
Feelings inform our conscious actions, but even so, our conscious actions are also choices. They are broad brush - they are a summary of a whole lot of stuff, but in the end, you usually know how you feel about something.
Thus, hunger is not actually a feeling, nor is it an emotion, but a more basic autonomic response to stimuli, like pain or heat. We might 'feel' hunger (basic autonomic response), then get grouchy (autonomic emotional response), then choose to feel like our day isn't going well (feeling), then choose to go to Dick's and get a Deluxe, fries, and strawberry shake (action).
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jul 29, 2014 - 09:26am PT
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It's helpful to remember that Graziano's is a schema of our awareness, not a true homunculus. It's doesn't call all the shots, or even a majority of the shots - it sits atop a mountain of subconscious processes and partially or fully delegates decision making to that mountain.
Largo's critique of a fully deterministic biomachine might be, in essence, accurate if it weren't for the role chaos plays in systems as complicated as a brain/body system. We can't predict the weather - a much simpler system than the brain in terms of its structures and relationships, but one with a whole lot of moving parts, all nudged by chaos.
If I have one criterion for making a decision - that's pretty deterministic.
If I have 10,000 criteria, many of which hail from a dynamic environment, and each feedback loop involved has even a small chaotic component - good luck predicting what that system's gonna do with any lead time.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 29, 2014 - 09:34am PT
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hunger is an interesting response, and our understanding changes as we learn more...
recent work on the importance of the human body as an ecosystem, where there are human cells and there are other bacteria living on that body, and all of it interacting not just as an organism but as a synergistic (in the actual meaning of the word) system of organisms.
to wit, the largest serotonin production occurs in the gut... makes you wonder how that biota is affecting our behavior. So a conjecture might be that if you are trying to understand our dietary habits, you have to include the non-human biological components too, the behavior of the flora/fauna living on us (with us).
this isn't some act of a freeloading bacterial world, it is a co-evolved relationship, a mother's breast milk contains bacteria that are essential for the development of babies... and the milk also contains nutrient elements specifically for those bacteria.
so to understand "hunger" one now has to understand a much more complex system, not just the human, but the human along with all of these other biological factors.
Interestingly, these other factors have an effect on the "mind" too, this effect utilizing the hormonal "reward" system inducing behavior that benefits the bacteria as well as the human...
here is an interesting twist to the "free will" narrative, maybe you have less then you think when you are dieting... you have to convince an ecosystem, not just your own "will. "
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