I challenge you: your best argument for materialism

[tsig]

So, again, please show me the physics or chemistry which demonstrates that this must result in a sensation of pain. It is a simple question.

No, I am looking for an answer to my question. Getting lots of evasion and question begging in response.

Or, avoid the question altogether and claim victory - that will work too.

I don't have to declare victory because in my ideal world created by my consciousness I always win.

 

[Robin]

I don't have to declare victory because in my ideal world created by my consciousness I always win.

You don't have to declare victory because your modus operandi is to make vague, meaningless, irrelevant statements in the fond belief that they make you appear intelligent.

 

[Robin]

What else is there? It's a computer. It's computing. It's doing computation. Part of that is the sensation of nausea.

Yes, I know you are claiming it is a computation, you don't have to keep repeating it. Lowpro, on the other hand, does not seem to think that it is a computation because he seems to think that there can be no equivalent computation of a register machine. I will let you guys fight that one out.

Because it's not computing the feeling of nausea.

Again, this is not complicated.

No, my question is not complicated - I wonder why no-one can answer it.

 

[Robin]

Looking just at the static data is like reducing a human being to ash and then sifting through it searching for their personality. Like wandering onto an empty football field and wondering what the score is.

I am at step four of the algorithm and am having a cup of tea, waiting to press the "Next" button on my register machine emulator to execute step 5.

This particular mind has not been reduced to ashes, it is in mid thought.

The game is not over, it has only just begun.

Your analogies are completely useless.

As I click that "Next" button it loads a number to the indirection register. All other numbers are sitting on the storage device.

As I said before, this step would work exactly the same if I had simply hand entered the prior values rather than having run step 4.

It would work the same whether or not I decided afterwards to proceed to step 6 or give up.

There is nothing in nature, apart from my own mind, that knows that the set of physical actions which ensued when I pressed the "Next" button was related to the set of physical processes which ensued when I pressed it last time.

But somehow there is a sensation which is, in some way, associated with these physical actions.

What exactly is the sensation, in the computation? Is it the output? Or is it the processing itself?

 

[Robin]

This is like trying to understand the philosophical details of a religion by examining the ink pigments of the holy book molecule by molecule.

Again, not a good analogy because nobody suggests that those details depend on nothing more than the ink molecules, they also depend on a mind writing and reading the words.

If nausea is a computation then the sensation of nausea in my example will consist of nothing more than a long sequence of the type of steps I described there.

 

[tsig]

You don't have to declare victory because your modus operandi is to make vague, meaningless, irrelevant statements in the fond belief that they make you appear intelligent.

Your idealism appears to be fraying at the edge.

I hate it when figments of my imagination get uppity.

 

[tsig]

Yes, I know you are claiming it is a computation, you don't have to keep repeating it. Lowpro, on the other hand, does not seem to think that it is a computation because he seems to think that there can be no equivalent computation of a register machine. I will let you guys fight that one out.

No, my question is not complicated - I wonder why no-one can answer it.

Because you're not listening.

 

[Lowpro]

Yes, I know you are claiming it is a computation, you don't have to keep repeating it. Lowpro, on the other hand, does not seem to think that it is a computation because he seems to think that there can be no equivalent computation of a register machine. I will let you guys fight that one out.

No, my question is not complicated - I wonder why no-one can answer it.

First let me say that I had a larger post addressing previous posts but it was mostly an admission of "Shoot what were we talking about again"? I'll try to get the momentum back.

Anyways to the highlighted: I haven't said that the computation cannot be run on a register machine. I said that whatever you were trying to talk about with respect to nausea doesn't describe the physiology. I'm trying to describe how the brain responds to the interactions and why you feel pain from those interactions. It isn't hard but as Pixy said the brain is processing it. We can see that in imaging; in our heads, in animal models, and even during surgeries.

But you have to step back from an idea of pain as an output. You're dealing with physiological feedback right from the very beginning of the pain response which is why I suggest that a better model of most any sensation involving neurons would be a stochastic one and instead of pain as an output it would be within a space (probably spaces, and spaces within spaces with regards to epicritic and protopathic sensations of pain). When the brain processes the interactions within that space you'll feel pain. When it's out of that space you won't feel pain (ignoring that pain is dynamic and in degrees).

That's the model. The physics and chemistry is in the physiology which is shorthand way of me saying it's the stuff in your body interacting. Getting to specifics would be better off with more material than I can remember. For what it's worth the transduction to the spinothalamic and trigeminal nerve routes for pain is well documented. These innervate Rexed layers and transduce up towards the thalamus through the medulla and pons. Fun fact: you can have sensations of pain here without the peripheral stimuli in patients who develop Dejerine-Roussy. Naming all the chemicals involved would be difficult but dollars to donuts it's chemicals all the same.

I think most all of the physiology I remember is accurate enough and it's well documented. The question of why we have sensations of pain from this (and why we may experience pain as a dysesthesia, or experience no pain) is better described by taking the processing in the brain as a stochastic process with regards to pain being within the space. How the brain processes this is more important to the outcome and the physiological feedback is a major player.

 

[Robin]

Because you're not listening.

True. I am reading. Have not read an answer. Feel free to point out one that is not plain assertion or question begging.

 

[Robin]

Anyways to the highlighted: I haven't said that the computation cannot be run on a register machine. I said that whatever you were trying to talk about with respect to nausea doesn't describe the physiology.

But if it is a computation then the physiology is irrelevant. The register machine version should do exactly what the physiology based version does.

If you accept that the feeling of nausea is a computation and that if so then it can run on a register machine then do you accept that the register machine should have just exactly the same feeling of nausea that the brain does?

 

[Robin]

Your idealism appears to be fraying at the edge.

I hate it when figments of my imagination get uppity.

I have no idea why you keep calling me an Idealist.

 

[Robin]

Lowpro, for the rest of what you say, you don't really answer my question. I can see no contradiction to all of that happening and there being no sensation of pain.

 

[RussDill]

Again, not a good analogy because nobody suggests that those details depend on nothing more than the ink molecules, they also depend on a mind writing and reading the words.

Do the ideas not exist before they are written down? Do they cease to exist after the book is destroyed? After anyone who remembers the book is dead?

 

[Robin]

Do the ideas not exist before they are written down? Do they cease to exist after the book is destroyed? After anyone who remembers the book is dead?

You are only demonstrating why the analogy is not apt.

In my example it does not matter what happened before or will happen after or who remembers it.

If nausea is a computation then there should be a sensation of nausea produced by nothing else than a series of steps such as I described.

 

[Lowpro]

But if it is a computation then the physiology is irrelevant. The register machine version should do exactly what the physiology based version does.

If you accept that the feeling of nausea is a computation and that if so then it can run on a register machine then do you accept that the register machine should have just exactly the same feeling of nausea that the brain does?

Doesn't seem like a fair comparison

Did the register machine participate in natural selection? Seriously, the brain does compute but it does so using physics; it's a Rube Goldberg device.

Fun thought though. If the register machine participated in natural selection maybe it could eventually feel nausea. Huh, never thought about that...they do need to use energy and they produce heat to compute...Did Turing consider that ever?

 

[Lowpro]

Lowpro, for the rest of what you say, you don't really answer my question. I can see no contradiction to all of that happening and there being no sensation of pain.

Are you saying that the brain could process into the space of pain and still elicit no sensation?

 

[Robin]

Are you saying that the brain could process into the space of pain and still elicit no sensation?

I have no idea where the space of pain is, but I can see no reason why the brain could not do exactly as it does and elicit no sensation.

You have to tell me why it can't.

 

[Robin]

Doesn't seem like a fair comparison

Did the register machine participate in natural selection? Seriously, the brain does compute but it does so using physics; it's a Rube Goldberg device.

Fun thought though. If the register machine participated in natural selection maybe it could eventually feel nausea. Huh, never thought about that...they do need to use energy and they produce heat to compute...Did Turing consider that ever?

Any physical computer uses physics to compute. But natural selection has nothing to do with the case, nor heat.

It can be a register machine emulator which I am running on my PC (although if it was a long computation it might have to be moved to other PC's or upgraded as required). If it really is a computation then the substrate is quite beside the point as long as the substate is something that can do a computation.

How it got there is quite beside the point.

If nausea is a computation then there will be an equivalent algorithm that can run in just the set up that I describe and it should feel nausea just exactlly the way the brain does.

If, on the other hand, the set up I describe - where one simple instruction is executed, then the next, then the next - cannot fee nausea then nausea is not a computation, full stop.

 

[Lowpro]

I have no idea where the space of pain is, but I can see no reason why the brain could not do exactly as it does and elicit no sensation.

You have to tell me why it can't.

You're going to have to tell me why you see no reason that the brain can undergo the same physiology basically and yet no pain sensation is felt. What I am saying is that the brain is processing and integrating at all times and is participating in negative and positive physiological feedback. The same peripheral innervation may not elicit pain because the feedback altered the brain's processing of the signal. That happens all the time; if it didn't then analgesics wouldn't work.

One question: If you design a Rube Goldberg device that eventually draws a smiley face and compute that into your register machine, does it also draw a smiley face?

 

[Robin]

You're going to have to tell me why you see no reason that the brain can undergo the same physiology basically and yet no pain sensation is felt.

Possibly because there isn't one.

Or if there is then neither you nor I seem to be able to think of it.