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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 09:53pm PT
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"What is your experience with unformulated subjective flow. It is true that the unconscious mind mechanically formulates reality into digestible bits, but you get the idea."
What I propose is that the "flow" has a lot to do with the space-time mapping MH2 was talking about in his cortical studies... when there is nothing raised to a level of alert nothing has to go on... the "subject" here is the center of that map, and the "object" the terrain of that map, the map changes as a function of both space and time. The "center" is also loosely defined, as the map itself is a representation that can be quite a bit more abstract...
"it has never been shown or even theorized how our experience of a childhood memory or of our thoughts of transcendence or even the experience of smell is itself a material thing - not the mechanism you believe materially "creates" experience, but rather experience itself."
I'll make this as simple as possible: humans are animals which share an evolutionary inheritance with ancestral life. The evolutionary process is the result of purely physical phenomena. Therefore, humans are the result of purely physical phenomena.
How this happens in detail is a wonderful thing to investigate. It is much more interesting and much more complicated than the simple minded explanations that we were "created" by some other intelligence... which just kicks the problem down the road in any case.... i.e. where did that intelligence come from ("it's turtles all the way down") and how did it do the creating.
If you don't believe that humans are the result of a purely physical process, evolution, than I can see how you would object to the supposition that all of what we are are the results of physical phenomena.
As far as the "usual attributes of matter" for that matter that you see the "Standard Model" does quite a good job in explaining what those attributes are. We are still trying to understand what the attributes of what we don't see are, but the answer is sought in physical properties.
For us now, the physics of valence electrons is probably enough to explain everything pertinent to human origins, good old living through chemistry...
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Nov 14, 2011 - 10:13pm PT
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It ain't body, or is it?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 14, 2011 - 10:15pm PT
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If you don't believe that humans are the result of a purely physical process, evolution, than I can see how you would object to the supposition that all of what we are are the results of physical phenomena.
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I've tried to stay out of what I believe and don't believe and remain focused on what is, so far as I can tell, and ask questions accordingly. The "results" of physical phenomenon goes back to the idea that matter "creates" experience, which still begs the question - still unanswered - that experience itself does not seem to be another material thing. The relationship between experience and evolved meat brain seems not the same as a TV show (sense data) running on your TV and the TV (hardware) itself.
Experience is subjective, and the subjective is not objective. This "hard question" seems to fluther materialists who simply explain experience away as an "extension" of matter, ergo matter remaining king. I think this notion springs from the belief in matter, not from looking at experience itself.
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What I propose is that the "flow" has a lot to do with the space-time mapping MH2 was talking about in his cortical studies... when there is nothing raised to a level of alert nothing has to go on... the "subject" here is the center of that map, and the "object" the terrain of that map, the map changes as a function of both space and time. The "center" is also loosely defined, as the map itself is a representation that can be quite a bit more abstract...
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To me, all of the above concerns the stuff, the mechanism, the content and the context of experience, but it is not the subjective stuff itself. That is a subtle but huge difference. The hard question is not a "how," or an explication, IMO.
I'll make this as simple as possible: humans are animals which share an evolutionary inheritance with ancestral life. The evolutionary process is the result of purely physical phenomena. Therefore, humans are the result of purely physical phenomena.
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But Ed, this is kicking the problem back up the material causal chain. No one is arguing that experience has a material fingerprint. The hard question is that experience is itself material in any normal sense of the word. The idea that some future bioengineer might reverse engineer subjective experience to matter doesn't explain the ephemeral nature of subjectivity. This is not a question of antecedents - that's the sticking point for materialists, it would seem.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 10:36pm PT
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It ain't body, or is it?
maybe we can talk about it at the festival...
The idea that some future bioengineer might reverse engineer subjective experience to matter doesn't explain the ephemeral nature of subjectivity. This is not a question of antecedents - that's the sticking point for materialists, it would seem.
It's not a sticking point, my main theme in this part of the discussion is that even people cannot actually decide on what "subjective experience" is, or if anyone else actually has it... so to claim it has an "ephemeral nature" seems premature, as we haven't even described it's nature.
If you are saying that it is not possible to "play back" your life reconstructed from the bits of you brain, no matter how detailed a set of measurements can be made, I could agree with you, but saying that in no way eliminates the physical nature of the phenomena... think NP-hard... such problems exist in the real physical world...
...even in non-computational systems, such as non-linear classical dynamics, systems which are completely deterministic might not be predictable because the initial condition sensitivity is so great that you can show that no level of precision in specifying those conditions is sufficient.
These systems are physical.
There are a set of problems for which an infinite number of solutions exist... the so called "inverse problem" has such examples, all the systems considered are physical.
The ability to reconstruct your "1st person experiential flow" is not necessary for a physical model of mind, consciousness and all that.
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 10:43pm PT
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(I just don't understand why subjectivity is worth any effort for physicalists. Why does it matter to them? They can easily do without it.)
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MH2
climber
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Nov 14, 2011 - 10:59pm PT
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donini drops by:
"It ain't body, or is it?"
Most of it is. A way to move a body without tripping over its own feet.
As for the remainder, perhaps the "subjective" is best seen as a figment of the imagination of the "objective."
Thanks Ed! And that should be close enough to nonphysical for Largo's purposes.
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Nov 14, 2011 - 11:54pm PT
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Ft. Mental,
I'm amazed you recognized the equation. What do you do? It is way beyond me, far far out of my grasp.
I never really heard about anti-matter, so I did a quick search. The insight that E=mc^2 applied to anti-matter seemed interesting. I imagined another simple equation, with an easily evident elegance. But nooooo.
Einstein was smart to grab the equation that everyone can remember. Chicks dig science. It boggles my mind that those folks were coming up with ideas that were proven decades later.
I suspect something similar will happen with consciousness.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 12:14am PT
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sorry MikeL
you wrote: "Would that kind of approach be good for you?
If that would work for you, then we have finally found our resting place. Subjectivity would be irrelevant for purposes of physical investigations. (Well, not for everybody--but that's ok, too.) "
which might be ok, doing away with any considerations of the subjective... but for the fact that we don't yet know what is important and what is not important, at least from where I sit...
but what you have been seeing is my criticism of the idea of "subjectivism" at least the way that I think Largo has been using it, in the end we are all behaviorists, including the "discursive mind" which I suggested might be just as out of it as we are with regards to others... the behaviors are a bit more complex, involve communications (including language) but in the end we depend on our ability to parse behavior to understand intention.
that is why I don't think artificial intelligence is such a stretch, we don't really need to reproduce all the aspects of biological mind to make something behave as if it had mind, and we wouldn't be able to tell whether or not that device was truly thinking or just faking it, because "just faking it" is a huge accomplishment in itself.
It seemed funny to me that the Jeopardy contestants were complaining about Watson's reflex response on the answer button... that was unfair, they thought, but for Watson to actually do the things it was doing was amazing to me, no one thought it "cheating."
Why is that?
In the end, we really don't know if someone else is "conscious" or just a "zombie" except by their behavior... but if that is true, wouldn't you conclude that everyone is a "zombie" whether they think so or not?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 12:17am PT
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w-N-d
perhaps you might like to read The Strangest Man, The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom
I thought it quite good, and the discussion of the development of relativistic quantum mechanics not bad...
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 15, 2011 - 12:40am PT
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All the material conditioned souls are zombies.
They are walking corpses because they believe they are the body.
Walking zombie corpses .....
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Nov 15, 2011 - 12:52am PT
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I can only imagine what it was like to be discussing new concepts that were so foreign to our everyday being, but the proofs were there.
I don't know physics, but I wonder if the waiting discoveries are described by equations that are just a bit too complicated for our brains. I've heard that we can only keep about 7 or so competing thoughts going at once. It would seem unusual if the undiscovered phenomena don't follow the same rules as the others.
With increasing complexity, the descriptions seem to become more complex. At least, it is true for mathematical models of biological phenomena. I suspect brain function follows the same rules too.
Finally, I don't know if you saw it earlier. Sorry if it seemed snarky. I was just reacting poorly to the "debate".
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/meditation/
It seems that neuro-medicine, modern and ancient, will benefit from recent technological developments. The "black box" of the brain is being revealed.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 01:59am PT
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yeah, even me!
but I try not to show it...
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Nov 15, 2011 - 08:16am PT
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(I just don't understand why subjectivity is worth any effort for physicalists. Why does it matter to them? They can easily do without it.)
This is a strawman.
If you ever want to understand the brain, you have to understand subjective experience. Most of the information that the brain processes is subjective in some sense.
As for JL's opinion that the mind will never be understood in a scientific way is a reach.
I would agree that it is probably not possible to quantify everything going on in the mind, but that isn't the point. Lots of physical systems are like that. Toss a feather into the wind and try to guess its path. Not possible, although some seem to think that scientists try to understand the nature of every single molecule in a model of a physical and easily measurable process. Hey, it won't work. Just understand the weight and drag of the feather, as well as the density or viscosity of the fluid or gas blowing it along and you will get a rough idea of the path. Not exact, but close.
To understand the mind is like that. Just try to learn how it works. Predicting everything that will happen in the universe by defining the initial conditions of every particle not only isn't possible, it is a wrong approach. There are infinite possible outcomes.
Kind of like the path of a photon. It can go anywhere, and does, if I read "QED" right. That isn't intuitive, as we think that light travels in a straight line, but it is well described in quantum electrodynamics.
Feynman's path integral is a wild idea. That is a fascinating book for non physicists.
I will throw this out. Matter, energy, and what else are you talking about, JL? Matter and energy sound like two simple words, but it is mind boggling.
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Nov 15, 2011 - 11:48am PT
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I really don't have a lot to add at this point, but maybe those equations are a little like Largo's machine that was being discussed earlier. Take them apart, look inside, and they're just a bunch of numbers and variables. Still, they seem to encompass some interesting phenomena (like the brain?)
Also, is it just me, but wtf is up with the taco? The diversity of the experience here (mine would be towards the 4th class end of the spectrum) seems, um, variable. math, physics, eastern and western religion, relatively larger mountains, jumping of buildings, etc.
All the material conditioned souls are zombies.
They are walking corpses because they believe they are the body.
Walking zombie corpses .....
It seems that we all use material things. You can get rid of the rope and the rack, but a decent pair of shoes, hand made? broken in, re-soled with the "right" rubber, and maybe some chalk would be useful. Maybe the idea is to not become beholden to those material things, even the material brain that "shows" us our world.
IMHO: The ascetics who you see have found happiness in their way are invaluable. I am sure that people for many generations have seen the destruction that is sometimes a byproduct of human material wealth.
"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 15, 2011 - 12:40pm PT
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Obviously you don't completely understand the difference between material and spiritual.
There's no difference in the absolute sense.
It's how you use them and not by false renunciation.
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Nov 15, 2011 - 01:25pm PT
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The people I have met, sikhs, Jain's, maybe some Hindu's, I was "surprised" in a way by their happiness (playfulness). I think it would be foolish to trifle or entirely dismiss their ways, especially the sikhs. It seems like they could be some heavy dudes, but happy.
Anyway, I was thinking that it is simple to say nuclear bombs are bad. Maybe the real work begins when we try to separate the good, nuclear medicine, imaging, radiation curies, from the more destructive uses of the technology. It takes a lot of collective work to effect change, but then again, maybe it does begin with the individual.
edit: I also liked what I heard a woman say. Something like: the way is there for you to find it.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 15, 2011 - 02:03pm PT
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Says Ed:
My main theme in this part of the discussion is that even people cannot actually decide on what "subjective experience" is, or if anyone else actually has it... so to claim it has an "ephemeral nature" seems premature, as we haven't even described it's nature.
This is entirely correct, IMO. The reason we cannot say what subjective experience is, as I've brayed on and on about here, is that "it" is NOT an "it," or a "thing," or a material reality with a measurable essence ergo we cannot measure it. The implication here, I believe, is that only if we can measure it can we say anything worthwhile, meaning only numerical evaluations are worthwhile, which I feel is hogwash. However the concern is a real one. Look at all the silly bosh that's written about wine, and the epicurian experience of drinking it, with all the silly metaphors and so on. But I do agree with Ed that we cannot prove that anyone else actually has subjective experience because, once again, subjectivty is not a material thing and cannot found or deduced from the atomic stirring physicalists claim produces same.
Ed also says: These systems are physical.
I take it you are referring to the evolved meat brain being a physical system. We've gone over many times that experience and objective functioning (physical systems) are not the same thing. What do you see the differences being between a physical system like the brain, and 1st person subjective experience - not as an extension or product, but as stand-alone phenomenon.
JL
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 15, 2011 - 02:06pm PT
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What do you mean by "stand alone phenomenon"?
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 02:33pm PT
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Ed:
Thanks for responding--and remembering to respond. I think I understand where you're coming from. You have an inventive / imaginative mind, and those ideas are familiar to me.
Base, not a straw man. Materialism is enough to provide rigorous explanations about external behaviors and objects. If you want to know even more, than either you're incurably curious, or you want science to explain everything.
Conventionally, what the map of the universe really is doesn't matter to most of us living in it. What most of us are concerned with are meanings, values, and how to be happy.
When I talk to the humanists on the other side of campus, they tell me that atoms, balance sheets, and tectonic plates don't matter to them. They're concerned about the human condition. Me, too. I'm concerned with MY human condition. What does it mean to be a good man? How can I deal with old age, death, sickness, and pain? What makes me happy?
Whether physicalists tell me (i) I'm a sub-routine in a larger program in a complicated system, (ii) I'm dreaming or making all of this up with a highly creative and energetic mind, or (iii) I'm simply a cog in a giant machine, I still face the same questions: how should I live, what is important in this life, and where can I get another pizza and beer?
Ultimately, however, it's another problem and another set of issues. Those start and finish with an individual investigator, and it honors different standards of practice. Here, subjective experience is very important, and an investigator digs down into it. People usually undertake these investigations because they're disillusioned with conventional explanations.
Nice sentiments WND.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 04:01pm PT
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I take it you are referring to the evolved meat brain
no, everything...
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