The Hard Problem of Gravity

[rlr]

I do not believe we currently can explain the behavior of objects being affected by gravity. There are a number of qualities exhibited by such objects, such as "falling," that defy a full mathematical description.

What does mathematics have to do with physical reality?

I'll leave it at that unless someone can bridge the gap between aprioristic consistency and empirical measurement.

And whoever does that should call Stockholm to claim their Nobel Prize in Everything At Once.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Wasp, by "feelings" do you mean: vague or mixed emotions, as in "I feel sort of anxious, sort of detached", or "this just doesn't feel right"; embodied / "kinesthetic" feeling (general sense of your own body, sense of balance, muscle fatigue); feelings from touch (coarse, smooth, etal); pain and pleasure (which some propose as a basis for the rest); classic 70's love ballad by Morris Albert [scratch that, sorry]; or all / some / none of / + other than the above?

There is a still relatively small literature about the distinctions between emotion and feeling - dating back at least to William James. Basically, in the neurological literature at least, an emotion is considered to refer to a body state with all the attendant physical sensations (heart pounding with fear, heart pounding with love) and a feeling is a conscious sensation. Feeling, therefore, refers more to a higher order cognitive issue than emotion, which is organized and probably mediated primarily by the hypothalamus and amygdala.

Feelings, therefore, include all sorts of sensations, not just emotional ones -- including the feeling of seeing blue, etc.

I may be completely wrong, but the way I conceptualize it, feelings like the feeling of seeing blue are low level valuations (placing value on a particular perception) that can be used to direct behavior and feelings of emotional states like fear that allow us to respond in different ways to what we initially perceive unconsciously as danger (if we only had the unconscious evaluation we'd be stuck with simple responses like flight or flight; consciousness provides a means to elaborate behavioral responses). It's probably wrong to have only one word cover all of this (and this might be one of the problems) because we generally use the word 'feeling' to cover not only higher order processing of intense emotions, but also valuation of perception, and motivational inputs.

We probably need a whole new vocabulary.

 

[Belz...]

For the same reason why we use terms like 'genes', 'chromosomes', or 'alleles' instead of just saying 'hereditary elements'. Why quail at the term as if its taboo?

Nice attempt at equivocating. Genes and chromosomes are NOT equivalent. You implied that qualia and experiences are.

And what in blue blazes is a 'soul-like thing' anyway???

It's the ineffable thing that makes the mind more than the sum of its parts which, of course, is a ridiculous concept. People are so enamoured to the idea that their mind is "special" that they will argue anything to maintain belief in it.

To qualitatively experience is qualia; to introspect is to directly observe qualia.

So you have qualia about qualia ?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Maybe an example will illustrate -- and also illustrate the limitations and problems with the words?


I happen to hate wasps, having been stung several times as a child. As a result I flinch whenever one gets near me.

So, say I'm out mowing the lawn and I see soemthing small and dark flying near my right arm. I flinch and run a few feet away to avoid that coming sting. That action depends upon my unconscious perception of something flying near my right arm and an unconscious decision to run. It happens to be accompanied by an increase in heart rate and overall hightening of arousal not under my conscious control (this physical unconscious change is considered an emotion by many).

After I have run away I turn back to see a leaf falling to the ground and in my heightened state of arousal I realize consciously that the fear I am feeling (it is now a conscious perception of fast beating heart, etc.) is totally inappropriate.

So, there is the unconscious perception of something flying, the unconscious behavioral response of flight, and then the conscious feeling of fear (which is a behavioral tendency to either fight or flee more if needed) and also the conscious appraisal that the fear was unfounded. That conscious feeling of fear allows greater flexibility in my responses than the unconscious emotion which is linked to a set behavior.

I suppose it is correct in a way to view feeling as less intense than emotion, but the real difference is that one -- emotion -- is not part of conscious evaluation. Feeling is part of the conscious evaluation, for want of a better way of expressing it.

Different folks have different stories about what all of this means -- James thought that emotion caused the feeling, that feeling was a conscouis incorporation of the behavioral response caused by the emotion -- so we feel sorry because we cry; we feel fear because we run. Antonio Damasio has an updated version that has the feeling being a story that the brain creates for the behavior.

I prefer the idea that we have parallel systems ongoing with the unconscious perception being linked with the later conscious appraisal and parallel with the emotional output -- fight or flight, etc. -- rather than what looks to me like a series (emotion causes behavior, relay loop of info getting to consciousness causes feeling) in the James-Lange theory.

A key to all of this, though, is the way our nervous system is organized. What animals do is constantly update information from inside and outside through big information loops -- spinal cord to brainstem to thalamus to cortex, with each step including a loop back to the earlier level and all higher levels looping back to all earlier levels. Information is constantly looping and updating; we appraise a situation unconsciously and then update it based on what has changed or what we change. I view consciousness as the means by which we vary behavioral repsonses based on what might and might not work in any given situation, so it is tied to uncsonscious appraisals and recursive loops.

 

[gargamel]

It's probably wrong to have only one word cover all of this (and this might be one of the problems) because we generally use the word 'feeling' to cover not only higher order processing of intense emotions, but also valuation of perception, and motivational inputs.

We probably need a whole new vocabulary.

Are you sure? I mean, couldn't it be because they are all part of the hard problem of consciousness that they all fall under the same category? I would also believe that experience is more appropriate than feeling to describe that category.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Are you sure? I mean, couldn't it be because they are all part of the hard problem of consciousness that they all fall under the same category? I would also believe that experience is more appropriate than feeling to describe that category.

What do you mean by 'experience'? Generally most people mean that something happens and they feel something along with the occurrence (perception of blue and the feeling of perceiving blue). Do you mean something else by it? It's generally considered that the perception part, while hard, is not unsolvable. It is the feeling part that is supposed to be so hard.

Is it such a hard problem because we don't have proper definitions? That certainly seems to be the case. Anything is hard if you can't talk about it properly.

 

[gargamel]

What do you mean by 'experience'? Generally most people mean that something happens and they feel something along with the occurrence (perception of blue and the feeling of perceiving blue). Do you mean something else by it? It's generally considered that the perception part, while hard, is not unsolvable. It is the feeling part that is supposed to be so hard.

Is it such a hard problem because we don't have proper definitions? That certainly seems to be the case. Anything is hard if you can't talk about it properly.

You are actually correct, this is what I mean: experiencing colours, forms, feeling (as in touch), taste, sound but also meaning of numbers, words, expressions etc. I think that qualifies the ingredients of the problem pretty well. You could pick any you like and work around it and see what you can make of it before moving to another. That would be the "divide to conquer" approach.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

You are actually correct, this is what I mean: experiencing colours, forms, feeling (as in touch), taste, sound but also meaning of numbers, words, expressions etc. I think that qualifies the ingredients of the problem pretty well. You could pick any you like and work around it and see what you can make of it before moving to another. That would be the "divide to conquer" approach.

Oh, I see you are new -- welcome.

I think I see the issue -- and, yes, I think the problem is largely in the words we use.

I am not using 'feeling' to refer to somatosensation but rather to refer to what has been called "the feeling of what happens". Experience is fine as a word, but it seems to me that it is the 'feeling' -- that higher order process that accompanies an occurrence (like seeing, somatosensation, smells, any perceptions) to be the difficult 'thing' to explain.

I've been trying to think in terms of what it is or rather what it might be. The best I've been able to come up with is a behavioral tendency, a push in a particular direction, an orientation toward a percept or emotional response rather than a frank behavior (depending on how behavior is defined). It seems to include, as far as I can piece out (and I welcome any contributions because there is no way that I have anywhere close to a complete idea of what is going on) emotion, motivation, and valuation -- with the 'feeling' being some sort of higher-order cognitive appraisal of those components and what to do with them.

ETA:

So, for instance, if we want to talk about the feeling (or experience) of seeing blue, the feeling would be the value placed on blue, the emotions that blue engenders from previous experiences, and some sense of blue being either positive or negative (part of valuation). What I am wondering is how one would go about re-creating that in a computer? It seems like if we piece out all the components that it should be possible.

I imagine consciousness not only to be those value/emotion/motivation processes along with perception but also meta-attention -- the process of focusing attention on that 'experience', so that it becomes an experience rather than simply unconscious processing of perception.

Does that make any sense?

 

[rocketdodger]

What does mathematics have to do with physical reality?

I'll leave it at that unless someone can bridge the gap between aprioristic consistency and empirical measurement.

And whoever does that should call Stockholm to claim their Nobel Prize in Everything At Once.

Dude... this is a satire thread. The OP is a joke.

 

[gargamel]

I imagine consciousness not only to be those value/emotion/motivation processes along with perception but also meta-attention -- the process of focusing attention on that 'experience', so that it becomes an experience rather than simply unconscious processing of perception.

Does that make any sense?

I understand what you mean. So here you say that reflecting on the experience itself as a process is an activity of consciousness and in itself also an experience (or maybe THE experience). My only concern here is that we might be confusing the experience with the process. After all, how would processing of information guarentee the experience? Adding more processing parts doesn't seem to cut it. I would be more comfortable to think that processing arises and that the experience is just the awareness of that process but not a process in itself.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I understand what you mean. So here you say that reflecting on the experience itself as a process is an activity of consciousness and in itself also an experience (or maybe THE experience). My only concern here is that we might be confusing the experience with the process. After all, how would processing of information guarentee the experience? Adding more processing parts doesn't seem to cut it. I would be more comfortable to think that processing arises and that the experience is just the awareness of that process but not a process in itself.

If that is the case, and it might very well be, then how do we define awareness? My conceptualization of awareness is meta-attention co-expressed with feeling.

It might very well be, under that guise, that more processing is exactly what is going on, only the processing is a little different.

 

[gargamel]

If that is the case, and it might very well be, then how do we define awareness? My conceptualization of awareness is meta-attention co-expressed with feeling.

It might very well be, under that guise, that more processing is exactly what is going on, only the processing is a little different.

If we want to be honest, all I could tell about what I think awareness is would be at best speculative. To me it seems that it is just as elusive as space. It just is but why, I don't know... However, to say that processing information is the cause of awareness is also highly speculative. So far, I believe no one has ever written a piece of algorithm and pointed out that this was awareness. I very much doubt this will ever happen since a machine however complex will always remain a machine: data in, data out.

However, awareness to me seems to emanate from a superset of the universe. It makes the universe understandable whithout making sense of itself. A bit like fractional numbers are out of reach as long as you stay within the realm of natural numbers. However, as soon as you extract yourself from it and start using fractional numbers, you are able to solve those equations you could not previously.

If I am right then we could very well be stuck!

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

If we want to be honest, all I could tell about what I think awareness is would be at best speculative. To me it seems that it is just as elusive as space. It just is but why, I don't know... However, to say that processing information is the cause of awareness is also highly speculative. So far, I believe no one has ever written a piece of algorithm and pointed out that this was awareness. I very much doubt this will ever happen since a machine however complex will always remain a machine: data in, data out.

However, awareness to me seems to emanate from a superset of the universe. It makes the universe understandable whithout making sense of itself. A bit like fractional numbers are out of reach as long as you stay within the realm of natural numbers. However, as soon as you extract yourself from it and start using fractional numbers, you are able to solve those equations you could not previously.

If I am right then we could very well be stuck!

Yes, we may be stuck. It may be a hard problem because it is insoluble. Could it be that something greater is responsible? Well, sure.

If we are to make any headway, though, we first must try to understand what concepts like 'feeling', 'experience', and 'awareness' mean. If the problem is sovable, then we should be able to break down the components and realize them in another system.

Correct that no one has yet figured out how to put this into a computer system, but before we can do that we must have some direction to take in order to know how to re-create it in cyberspace.

I know that I can stop awareness by turning off someone's brain -- we do it with general anesthesia all the time -- so neurons seem to be responsible. Theoretically we should be able to do the same in silicon.

No problem is solvable as long as we believe we can't possibly solve it.

 

[PixyMisa]

If we want to be honest, all I could tell about what I think awareness is would be at best speculative. To me it seems that it is just as elusive as space. It just is but why, I don't know... However, to say that processing information is the cause of awareness is also highly speculative. So far, I believe no one has ever written a piece of algorithm and pointed out that this was awareness.

Lots of people have done this. I have done this.

And the question remains unanswered: What is there to consciousness that isn't explained by self-referential information processing?

However, awareness to me seems to emanate from a superset of the universe.

That makes no sense whatsoever.

Awareness is a function of systems that think, whether they are living creatures or machines. And both living creatures and machines are very much subsets of the Universe.

It makes the universe understandable whithout making sense of itself.

No. No it doesn't.

 

[Belz...]

However, awareness to me seems to emanate from a superset of the universe.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons why science doesn't start with conclusions based on how things "feel".

 

[gargamel]

Lots of people have done this. I have done this.

And the question remains unanswered: What is there to consciousness that isn't explained by self-referential information processing?

Duh! In short: Experience. But if you can show me a piece of code that experiences something, bring it on! I want to see it!

That makes no sense whatsoever.

Use your imagination...

Awareness is a function of systems that think, whether they are living creatures or machines. And both living creatures and machines are very much subsets of the Universe.

Nope! What you describe is only processing which is all machine can do. Using awareness for processing in the case of machines is abusive. But then again, bring me that piece of code so I can have a laugh!

No. No it doesn't.

Well I guess without it you'd be pretty much dumb... a bit like a machine. But you might disagree and bring me that piece of code!

 

[Belz...]

Duh! In short: Experience. But if you can show me a piece of code that experiences something, bring it on! I want to see it!

You'd do well to at least read the highlights of the thread before you re-hash old arguments.

Use your imagination...

Imagination <> Reality.

Nope! What you describe is only processing which is all machine can do. Using awareness for processing in the case of machines is abusive. But then again, bring me that piece of code so I can have a laugh!

You seem to have already come to a conclusion without seeing the evidence. What a fine scientist you'd make!

 

[gargamel]

You'd do well to at least read the highlights of the thread before you re-hash old arguments.

Well, if the argument had been resolved I guess you would have given me the solution.

Imagination <> Reality.

Yeah! But it is pretty useful when it comes to understand it.

You seem to have already come to a conclusion without seeing the evidence. What a fine scientist you'd make!

Not at all! I said I was only speculating on what awareness was. However, you seem pretty contempt with the way you see it.

 

[PixyMisa]

Duh! In short: Experience. But if you can show me a piece of code that experiences something, bring it on! I want to see it!

What is experience, other than information processing? What does it actually do, that you claim information processing does not do?

Use your imagination...

Why? What will that gain us? I'd rather use facts and logic.

Nope! What you describe is only processing which is all machine can do.

Yes. Precisely. Which is all that we do ourselves.

Using awareness for processing in the case of machines is abusive.

Why?

But then again, bring me that piece of code so I can have a laugh!

What is awareness? A stimulus; a conditional response; a memory. Easily expressed in a half dozen lines of code.

Well I guess without it you'd be pretty much dumb... a bit like a machine. But you might disagree and bring me that piece of code!

Awareness does not make the Universe understandable. Awareness merely allows us to respond to the Universe. Platypuses, planarians, and parameciums are aware. And computers, of course. And you and me.

 

[gargamel]

What is experience, other than information processing? What does it actually do, that you claim information processing does not do?

It feels! In the same way that I can sing "lady in red" and know what it means because I know what it feels to see the red colour. Now could a computer feels like that? Can an algorithm convey the knowledge of that feeling. You did not show me that piece of code yet.

Why? What will that gain us? I'd rather use facts and logic.

So you believe imagination has no place in science. Revise Einstein quotes!

Yes. Precisely. Which is all that we do ourselves.

You are right. Apart from experiencing of course!

Why?

Until you prove me that awareness is the same as processing then I should be the one asking why!

What is awareness? A stimulus; a conditional response; a memory. Easily expressed in a half dozen lines of code.

Well, if all you have to propose if self-referential code, a self-referential pointer can be defined in even less lines than that. It still does not convey experience or show me how?

Awareness does not make the Universe understandable. Awareness merely allows us to respond to the Universe. Platypuses, planarians, and parameciums are aware. And computers, of course. And you and me.

And still I argue that "lady in green" is the same as "lady in red" for the machine but not to me, and you know I mean!