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WBraun
climber
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Oct 29, 2011 - 11:12am PT
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A computer is created by someone and is an inferior extension of ourselves.
The data is put into it by someone.
The first is the firmware to start it up.
Stupid people speculate all the parts assembled themselves by themselves just as they think the universe did.
I laid all the parts to my new computer on the table waiting for them to go together.
I waited for days and nothing happened until I touched .....
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Oct 29, 2011 - 12:16pm PT
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I wonder if the Buddha had a real near death experience. Not a transcendental experience, well maybe figuratively, but a real meat and bones functional change that gave him a different perspective on his consciousness. I maybe understand the figurative death of the prince he was.
I can see how relinquishing his wealth to live like an ascetic allowed him to remove himself from the "rat race". I wouldn't be surprised if he saw that his family's wealth (relative "lack" of hardship), and the disparities between groups of people in his society were inextricably bound. Maybe his renunciation of material things was what he saw as just. Maybe his thought was that it was something that other people could also do and free themselves from the economy of the time.
Quite a while ago, my brother said that maybe Christ was a guy who looked around and said, people shouldn't be so poor. It isn't reasonable that those people are keeping you down. It seems strange that people are generally so polarized about Christ. He is either the son of God or dismissed. Thinking about him, as a person, in historical context was a bit of an eye opener to me.
I can only "know" things from my limited perspective. Still, it is important to me to hold the thought that my experience is simply human. That experience came before me, will continue after, and is occurring all around, often without my knowing. Still, my experience and the experience of others is dependent on my decisions and actions.
Maybe it is a misunderstanding, but eastern thought appeals to me because it seems to propose that we are all god, or a part of god. Also, we are interdependent. Certainly, we seem to share a consciousness (directed by evolution), and an interest in understanding why.
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MH2
climber
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Oct 29, 2011 - 12:57pm PT
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Ed says:
Given that all we know about our first person experience is that experience itself, we use the description of what others are experience, which is decidedly third person to confirm our inference that they are likely experiencing what we are. Without that third person confirmation, our conclusion would have to be that we are the only ones having experience.
I dunno. If I see someone hit his thumb with a hammer, I get a sense that I know what they are feeling without them telling me. Just from observing their reaction. And it makes me wince, too. On more subtle matters, I think there are many other clues to the experience of others that don't rely on a third person confirmation. I've lived places where not much English is spoken but still been able to understand the feelings and intentions of people around me. Going back before language, would our ancestors really have had to conclude that they were the only ones having experience?
Or maybe gesture and laugh and moan are third person confirmation?
Or is it a question of trying to distinguish deceit from honesty?
I am not too sure what is meant by first person versus third person. Perhaps that is not really a question for biology. Neuroscience can proceed without having to worry about that.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 29, 2011 - 01:31pm PT
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communication is broader than language
however, as has been noted in this thread, our consciousness is often dominated by the discursive state...
my speculation is that people, pre-language, had quite a different experience of "consciousness" then we do, though we still share with them all the ways we can be conscious. It is also likely that pre-language the size of human groups were much smaller. Our group, even participating on this particular thread, spans the globe and is accessible to a large fraction of humans.
In our modern "consciousness" a lot is going on, mostly because of the ability to communicate. If you just stripped your existence down to your local group, what would you do all day long? compared to what you do now. Our consciousness is linked to the groups, it is a part of our social organization, and the idea of a "first person narrative" is misleading as any "narrative" necessarily involves a teller and a listener... the narrative is "written" with an audience in mind, thus is not simply an individual experience, it is an experience which is put in the context of the group.
This writer's "model" of consciousness fails if there is no "readership." That is a powerful metaphor illustrating that our consciousness is not some individual, personal phenomena, but a behavior that allows us to be social at a very large scale.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 29, 2011 - 03:17pm PT
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we need to recognize than when we occupy a large part of our conscious thought with words and symbols and images on a screen;
we are also severely limiting our awareness in other ways;
and there are many other ways of being aware besides words and symbols and images on a screen
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 29, 2011 - 06:07pm PT
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Marlow said:
I think science will get closer and closer to knowing what happens during experiencing, but obviously even the perfect scientific description of what happens in my body and brain when I experience will not be the same thing as my subjective experience.
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IMO, this is half right and half completely crazy. The second half is the plain and simple fact of it: a quantitative description "will not be the same thing" as subjective experience. A Rule of Mind issues from this simple, empirical fact: The map (measurements) is NOT the territory (experience). No exceptions. But the first sentence tries to smuggle the idea in sideways - that is, measurements will eventually get closer and closer to "knowing what happens during experiencing." What makes this crazy is that measurements are about measurements and descriptions and atoms and motions, they are NOT about experience. That's the paradox. The Rule of Mind states clearly that the measurements are NOT experience. Even Marlow - and avowed reductionist - says so. Measurements are just data about matter, not about experience. And we already know that loopy statements like "matter IS conscious" are simply daft and meaningless swindles.
Ed's contention that without 3rd person objectifying and evaluating, we cannot really "know" anything, and that "qualia" is entirely a social construct, implies that "truth" and evaluating are basically the same things. This, IMO, is entirely incorrect.
Ed is simply mistaking mechanical accuracy with truth, and what's true for us humans will always be a 1st person reality. Everything else is merely data, ranging in accuracy from spot on to totally false.
The reason 3rd person data cannot render any "truth" about subjective human life - which is all we can ever know in terms of our lives - is that data, however accurate, is not subjective; so while it can be accurate, it can be "true" only in a quantitative way.
And flipping the Libniz experiment around is the silliest method of trying to wrangle thing thing back to terms you can manage with your old thinking.
The experiment was simply to illustrate the fatuous task of searching for experienced in matter, and the inviolate nature of the Rule of Mind stating that subjective and objective, matter and experience are, by any and all empirical evidence, NOT the same things.
JL
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MikeL
Trad climber
SANTA CLARA
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Oct 29, 2011 - 08:17pm PT
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Many posters don't seem to care about describing what they think subjective experience is. Most everyone only wants to say how it happens.
What IS experience? What are people talking about or referring to?
1. Base awareness (with nothing else--pure consciousness but with a blank field).
2. Sensations (taste, touch, etc.); raw data without any interpretation.
3. Categorized or labeled sensations: ("oh, . . . cold," "oh, . . . pain," etc.)
3a. categorized groups of sensations: ("oh . . . chair," "oh, . . . crow")
4. Assessment of categorization: ("That's not a good person," "that's not what I want")
5. Theories, concepts, ideas, and other complex cognitions: ("Metaphysically, that's not what Sartre said about being and nothingness")
One of these? More than one? All of them?
Some of these cognitions can be modelled somewhat decently.
Others not at all. For example, what is consciousness (without any of the add-ons)?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 29, 2011 - 08:25pm PT
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Ed's contention that without 3rd person objectifying and evaluating, we cannot really "know" anything, and that "qualia" is entirely a social construct, implies that "truth" and evaluating are basically the same things. This, IMO, is entirely incorrect.
I think you have misunderstood me... those things we experience aren't "qualia" but are rendered into "qualia" solely for the purpose of communicating to others. We see "red" with all its implicate meaning... but we needn't call it "red" unless we want to communicate it to others.
Chimpanzees watch the sunset, and seem to derive something akin to our experience of it, they have no "qualia" identifiable with "red," they just experience it.
Those experiences are not a part of the discursive mind, for they have no such thing... but our discursive mind, or at least the part of our mind that is discursive, is that way in order to communicate. And the "qualia" you speak of is a product of that part of the mind. The parts of the mind you cannot communicate are exactly that... uncommunicative, though they too are a part of "mind." As you have argued all along.
The dominant modern feature of mind is the discursive mind... and it is dominant because of our high level of social interaction. Your writer's model of mind is just that, "first person," "third person," what ever, those voices exist to tell a story, and one doesn't tell a story without an audience. Your construct of mind requires the social setting.
If you are looking for "truth" than you're on your own, dude...
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 29, 2011 - 08:51pm PT
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I raised this problem above. Communication must be very good to adequately share any "objective" experience. Hence the specific symbology in many disciplines.
One of the problems that I have had with this thread is definitions.
Subjective
Objective
Quantitative
Qualitative
I would appreciate it if JL would clarify exactly what he means by these words.
Rule(s) of Mind could also be described.
Thanks.
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MH2
climber
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Oct 29, 2011 - 09:45pm PT
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And flipping the Libniz experiment around is the silliest method of trying to wrangle thing thing back to terms you can manage with your old thinking.
My thinking is old? The Leibniz metaphor dates from 1698, you say.
I am quite sure that the only way you experience anything is through the activity of your nervous system. It is strange that you dismiss something like the cortical simulation experiments as having nothing to say about issues you claim to have an interest in.
Just because a vast machine doesn't look to you or Leibniz like experience doesn't mean that it isn't. Do you know what to look for?
The experiment was simply to illustrate the fatuous task of searching for experienced in matter, and the inviolate nature of the Rule of Mind stating that subjective and objective, matter and experience are, by any and all empirical evidence, NOT the same things.
In his day Leibniz could easily have said the same about looking for life in matter. Such a point of view is no longer tenable.
Whose Rule of Mind? What empirical evidence?
You may be trapped by a focus on "subjective" versus "objective". Is there some other way you can state the case you are trying to make?
No living thing is static. We are open dissipative systems exchanging energy, information, and matter with our environment. There is constant input, processing, and output in a nervous system. Calling part of it "subjective" and another part "objective" doesn't say anything useful about it, as far as I can tell.
I agree with Ed. We have evolved as social animals. We have language and we tell stories. That is the right level for talk about subjective and objective.
If you go back and review David Chalmers' "easy" problems of consciousness, you may reconsider your own statements.
from Chalmers
[among the easy problems of consciousness are included:]
the reportability of mental states;
the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
the focus of attention;
There is no real issue about whether these phenomena can be explained scientifically.
What makes experience different than a mental state?
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MH2
climber
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Oct 29, 2011 - 09:50pm PT
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"What makes experience different than a mental state?
MH2 C is a state language such as what state is the socket at
or likewise am I inside a word or outside of a word.
At least your simulator runs fast.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 29, 2011 - 09:56pm PT
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Kant -- "Spirit expresses itself through the object."
But object as it is, it is spirit.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 29, 2011 - 11:15pm PT
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Says Ed:
The dominant modern feature of mind is the discursive mind... and it is dominant because of our high level of social interaction.
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Not exactly, Ed. At least not in my experience.
Because the discursive Left Brain so loves to grind, and because most people's awareness is fused to the grinding, the constant inner babble, we believe the agency doing said babbling is the dominant feature of our mind. Our neo-cortex is the the newest evolved part of the meat brain, but the dominant feature of mind is empty space, or nothingness.
Plus, your are confusing qualia for a certain kind of discursive content, when in fact ALL that passes into the emptiness of raw awareness is experience or qualia, including what our meat brain does with undifferentiated data. (read below what Mike L. wrote, and you’ll understand that 1-5 are all qualia because they all pass into base awareness as the stuff or content of experience). Trying to quantify qualia is very tricky - psychological testing is all about this and it's notoriously wrong at the outset and gets dialed in slowly.
Now to MH2:
He done wrote:
He has already supposed that the machine has experience, so it is really his inability to find it that is unexplained, not the existence of and implementation of the experience.
DON’T BE SILLY HERE. THE MACHINE LIBNIZ IS TALKING ABOUT IS A GIANT VERSION OF OURSELVES, AND YES, HIS INABILITY TO FIND IT IS THE KEY. WHY CAN’T HE FIND IT IN THE MACHINE, MH2? THAT’S THE QUESTION. KINDLY ANSWER IT DIRECTLY.
Yes, he has envisioned a simulation of thinking, feeling, and experience.
NO. HE HAS NOT ENVISIONED A SIMULATION OF THINKING. HE HAS ENVISIONED A MACHINE PURPORTED TO CREATE OR MECHANICALLY MANUFACTURE EXPERIENCE BY WAY OF BOTTOM UP CAUSATION – MEANING ATOMIC LEVEL STIRRING RATTLE UPWARDS INTO INCREASING LEVELS OF COMPLEXITY TILL A “THING” WE CALL SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE SWIRLS THROUGH THE MEAT BRAIN LIKE A SUBJECTIVE TORNADO.
Why does he not accept the implication that these properties, or functions, could be implemented in mechanical form?
HE’S NOT ASKING THAT QUESTION. HE’S SIMPLY SAYING, FOR ALL OF THOSE OUT THERE claiming THAT EXPERIENCE IS A THING, A NOUN IN THE NORMAL SENSE OF THE WORD, PROVE IT BY WAY OF EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE. THE EVIDENCE HE DEMANDS IS NOT A MECHANICAL COMPONENT, NOT AN EEG GRAPH OR A Qeeg OF THE BRAIN, BUT EXPERIENCE ITSELF. AND IF IT IS NOWERE TO BE FOUND IN THE MACHINE OR THE MEAT BRAIN (NEVER IS), THE DEFAULT, VIRTUALLY WITHOUT FAIL, IS TO SWINDLE THE QUESTION AND SIMPLY INSIST THAT EXPERIENCE AND MATTER ARE THE SAME THING. THIS NOT ONLY VIOLATES A RULE OF MIND, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EMPIRICAL/MATERIAL EVIDENCE THAT EXPERIENCE ITSELF EVEN EXISTS. IN OTHER WORDS, THE MACHINE IS “EMPTY.” COMPLETELY.
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Mike L wrote:
Many posters don't seem to care about describing what they think subjective experience is. Most everyone only wants to say how it happens.
MOST PEOPLE HAVE NO TRUST IN THEIR ABILITY TO PEG WHAT THEY ARE ACTUALLY EXPERIENCING, SO THEY DEFAULT OUT TO MEANINGS OR REASONS AND CAUSES, NEVER SETTLING INTO THE STUFF ITSELF.
tHE DESCRIPTIONS ARE EXCELLENT, imo.
What IS experience? What are people talking about or referring to?
1. Base awareness (with nothing else--pure consciousness but with a blank field).
I WOULD SAY AN “EMPTY” AND INFINITE FIELD. “AWARENESS” IS ALSO MISLEADING IN A SENSE BECAUSE IT OFTEN IMPLIES A KIND OF FUNCTION, OR DIGITAL SCANNER AT WORK, WHEN IN FACT THIS BASE AWARENESS IS EXPERIENTIALLY MORE OF AN OMNICIENT PRESENCE (NON-VISUAL, RATHER A FELT SENSE) WITH THE CONTENT/QUALIA THAT WELLS UP, AS SO CLEARLY DESCRIBED BELOW.
2. Sensations (taste, touch, etc.); raw data without any interpretation.
PEOPLE WOULD HAVE TO DO SOME VAPASSANA RETREATS TO FULLY GRASP THAT THE PRIMORTIAL CONTENT OF AWARENESS IS BODY SENSATIONS, THE LANGUAGE OF THE BRAIN STEM. YOU HAVE TO GET VERY QUIET AND FOCUS ON SENSATION SANS DISCURSIVE INTRUSIONS TO EVER REALLY GRAPS THIS IS THE PLAIN FACT OF IT.
3. Categorized or labeled sensations: ("oh, . . . cold," "oh, . . . pain," etc.)
3a. categorized groups of sensations: ("oh . . . chair," "oh, . . . crow")
4. Assessment of categorization: ("That's not a good person," "that's not what I want")
THERE ARE A LOT OF BRAIN FUNCTINS GOING ON AT THIS LEVEL WITH MASSIVE AND SPONTANEOUS LINK-UPS AND ASSOCIATION AND SO FORTH, THE VAST AMOUNT OF THEM UNCONSCIOUS. PLUS THE LIMBIC SYSTEM (FEELINGS ARE THE LAUGUAGE OF THE LIMBIC BRAIN) IS KICKING IN MASSIVE CONTENT HERE AS WELL.
5. Theories, concepts, ideas, and other complex cognitions: ("Metaphysically, that's not what Sartre said about being and nothingness")
One of these? More than one? All of them?
Some of these cognitions can be modeled somewhat decently.
Others not at all. For example, what is consciousness (without any of the add-ons)?
THE LAST POINT IS THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION, IMO. AND PERFECTLY STATED.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 30, 2011 - 12:48am PT
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"For example, what is consciousness... "
Have you made up your minds yet ......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 30, 2011 - 12:49am PT
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ok, I'm totally confused... Largo done totally baffled me... but as I said way up thread earlier, Largo knows what isn't, he has no idea what is... I don't got no more time for the discussion...
where's Gill when you need him?
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Oct 30, 2011 - 12:51am PT
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from a 3ps perspective, it would seem that a lot is being made up.
sorry, my bad. going back to working on my owm.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 30, 2011 - 01:03am PT
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HOH MAN! WHY IS LARGO SHOUTING?
Can someone show him how to use the bold, italic, underline and quote functions, so he can easily distinguish things that he says from quotes from others?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 30, 2011 - 01:04am PT
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he's not shouting, he's just being Largo...
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Oct 30, 2011 - 02:34am PT
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I'm not sure why Largo's description of the levels of experience is baffling Ed as it is very standard Buddhist philosophy. Perhaps it is self evident only to those who have meditated long enough to have shut off their discursive social brains and seen some of what else is in there.
Regarding the quote that Largo knows what isn't but has no idea what is, this is also typical of eastern thought. For example, the West tells us categorically God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, infinite, eternal. Buddhism tells us that Ultimate Reality is unborn, uncreated, undying, unchanging. We're looking at ying and yang in my opinion, or the Jungian conscious and unconscious mind.
The two main problems with the scientific material point of view as applied to consciousness IMO, were already mentioned by MikeL, and are not issues of theory or brain structure but of social effect. In as much as consciousness is primarily expressed through language, and was evolved to support social interaction, they would seem important even to those whose main interest is brain structure.
1) "Science, ethics, and the arts (the True, the Good, and the Beautiful) ....got separated with the French Enlightenment and our world has been chaotic ever since".
2) ".......concern about where science would take us.
Science would end up serving the bourgeois and utilitarian commercialism, and it would kill off the ideals of the artist and hero. It would make humanity bland and uninteresting".
The more science has asserted itself without providing a sense of unity, individual uniqueness, and beauty, the greater the reaction. Too much frontal lobe thinking encourages limbic responses like religious fundamentalism and and anti vaccine rants to give two examples.
Perhaps the next big breakthrough in human evolution, equivalent to the invention of language and coming about for the same purpose - to share consciousness, will be some kind of global grand theory of everything for humans. Such an understanding would combine both eastern and western sources of knowledge and the reunification of science and the humanities.
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