The Hard Problem of Gravity

[Dancing David]

I'm dealing with experience in the most general sense. I'm not insisting on an implied Cartesian self - just the very fact of the perception itself.

Okay, but it seems to be localized to the organic structure of brains, at least so far. And so you are just lumping a lot of different things into one large category? And that is qualia?

I don't object to anyone doubting the reality of the perception, except if they then decide to assign certain objective reality to the things perceived, which seems clearly backwards to me.

Well the only thing we know is that reality appears to exist and that we appear to be in 'it'. But what about the consistency of controlled replication?

That seems to imply the consistency of 'it'. Whatever it may be.

The experience is entirely subjective. Experience can't be objective. And there's no physical theory that deals with subjective experience.

That last statement is a blanket statement and seems to be a categorization of apriori.

If 'objective' is translated to 'capable of being modeled and predicted in a controlled setting', does that make sense?

You can alter the 'experience' through the intervention of the biological mechanism (in appearance, not an actual description), by pressing on nerves you can produce paid (yonkyo in aikido), by pressing on eyeballs you can produce patterns and images, through electrical stimulation you can produce all sorts of experience, through the unethical and ethical cutting of nerves you can stop experience.

So regardless of the substrate of 'it', it would appear that you model the production of experience , and the model of appearance 'biological mechanism', seems to offer a way of explaining the 'experience' at a level of a model of appearances.

(Please note, I have avoided any ontological references, as an objective pragmatist, I do not think it matters what the ultimate origin is, it can be mind or energy and it makes no difference.)

 

[Dancing David]

Hi DD,

I'm using the terms "genetic drives" and "genetic needs" to distinguish those drives and needs that are expressed genetically from those expressed through memes.

The human organism has needs - surviving and procreating - and to help it fulfil those needs it experiences being driven towards those things that will fulfil them. Yet, in the mind of the organism, the need may be understood both genetically and memetically. For fulfilling a need for sex, for example...a example of the need being expressed genetically would be that the organism seeks a sexual partner; of it being expressed memetically it seeks pornography.

Nick

(Please note the use of terminology assumes an appearance of reality and convention of idiom. We could just be godthought or energy/matter. Biology means the mechanical construction of creatures from 'whatever it is'.)

I think you mean 'biological', not genetic. (And there is no sex drive in humans, there are conditioned resposnses to biological states.)

And why introduce the meme language. Behaviors might suffice. Memes are higher level comminication constructs are they not?

(I don't know, which is why I ask.)

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I don't agree. For me your statement "a given situation has been evaluated as demanding a certain response" implies that the subconscious mind is working out what needs to happen. I'm saying that the emotion is an autonomous response. Yours, or J-L's interpretation, for me is trying to understand the subconscious mind in the terms of the conscious mind. I don't see the point in doing this. For me the emotional responses of the subconscious are automatic, not thought out.

Nick

I'm not following this conversation closely any more, but an emotional response being automatic is precisely what James theorized, and that is where he has been most criticized. There must clearly be some sort of cognitive appraisal prior to the emotional response; and he did not provide for the sort of clear emotional responses that can occur after more nauanced social appraisals (Sartre's example of a woman in a social situation fainting as one was supposed to do in Victorian times).

ETA: Or, more succinctly, James theorized that emotions precede feelings (feelings being later reflections based in emotions), but Sartre (among others) postulated that feelings can precede emotions.

I personally think a way to reconcile these viewpoints that makes sense neurologically is that they depend on parallel systems that can interact. It is not correct to view them as simple linear processes, one preceding or following the other in lock-step fashion.

James' famous example is the response to a bear (with apologies to Stephen Colbert). Walking along, you happen on a bear and run away in fear long before you can actually consciously appraise the situation (this is why I gave the previous example of seeing something "flying nearby" and subconsiously assuming it could be a wasp). The fear consists in the uncoscious appraisal of danger and the body response to that appraisal -- bear, bad. In modern parlance, this is the role of the amygdala, which appraises the danger and worth of situations and communicates with the hypothalamus to begin the all-or-none fight or flight response.

This is to be contrasted with "feelings" which constitute more nuanced appraisals once the emotion is set in motion (and which constitute a large part of what we mean by "conscious").

There is a huge psychological literature about this with many dissenting opinions.

For a modern update of James-Lange, see Antonio Damasio's work.

While James was probably a dualist, you can't see it in this theory which is wholly mechanical. His dualism was more apparent in his flirtation with spiritualism.

 

[rocketdodger]

It all depends on how you break experience up. Ideally it should be neurologically, which we can't currently achieve. The other two obvious options are - functionally, from AI and related models; and experientially - introspection on the process.

The latter for me yields experience as being just -

a) sensory perception
b) inner speech

Nick

That is exactly what I said. I just further decomposed "inner speech" into facts/inferences about the world and a cartesian self.

 

[rocketdodger]

The problem with the computational model is that it appears to be purely a matter of engineering. It's not been demonstrated that any fundamental process occurs in either the brain or a computer that doesn't happen at random. There is no physical definition of computation which is a precise fit for computers and brains.

You just don't care about this subject, do you? Why are you even on this thread? Just trolling?

If you bothered to read what has been said here -- if you just bothered -- you would have seen where I explicitly told you that the physical definition of computation has to do with statistical probabilities.

Computation does not happen at "random" because by definition it is the opposite of random.

You can make a case that individual molecules or atoms might compute something. That is fine. You cannot make a case that random aggregations of molecules or atoms can compute anything, because they can't. Not according to any accepted definition. Because random is random and computation is not random.

Your next response is going to be "why is non-random so special? who decided that? that is an entirely human perspective waaaah waaah waaah."

It isn't special. It isn't a human perspective. It is just non-random. Deterministic. And determinism is what allows for the mechanisms of natural selection and by extenstion life itself. The existence or non-existence of humans, or even life, doesn't change the fact that the statistical likelihoods/probabilities of different classes of events occuring are vastly different between physical systems

 

[rocketdodger]

Simply stating that experience reduces to a list of three things doesn't demonstrate that it is in fact the case.

ORLY?

What demonstrates that it is in fact the case is that any coherently defined addition can be reduced to components that fall within those three categories.

Really, what else do you think there is? By all means, try to suggest another possibility.

 

[westprog]

You just don't care about this subject, do you? Why are you even on this thread? Just trolling?

If you bothered to read what has been said here -- if you just bothered -- you would have seen where I explicitly told you that the physical definition of computation has to do with statistical probabilities.

Computation does not happen at "random" because by definition it is the opposite of random.

You can make a case that individual molecules or atoms might compute something. That is fine. You cannot make a case that random aggregations of molecules or atoms can compute anything, because they can't. Not according to any accepted definition. Because random is random and computation is not random.

Your next response is going to be "why is non-random so special? who decided that? that is an entirely human perspective waaaah waaah waaah."

It isn't special. It isn't a human perspective. It is just non-random. Deterministic. And determinism is what allows for the mechanisms of natural selection and by extenstion life itself. The existence or non-existence of humans, or even life, doesn't change the fact that the statistical likelihoods/probabilities of different classes of events occuring are vastly different between physical systems

I would have hoped that a computer professional would at least know the difference between random and pseudo random.

That we live in a deterministic universe, aside from quantum fluctuations, is really physics 101. And everything that happens "has to do with" statistical probabilities. Most of physics is about statistical probabilities.

 

[Dancing David]

IMO, Pixy's definition of consciousness is relatively meaningless and largely mis-applied in the context of a discussion on the HPC. When scientists say they're looking for the "neural basis" or "neural correlates" of "consciousness," by consciousness they mean conscious access. It's completely clear. They're not scouring the brain for self-referencing loops. They're trying to understand how conscious access comes about.

yeah sure, any research papers that say that?

Any sources?

They're trying to understand why one bit of processing is conscious and another unconscious. Self-reference is relatively meaningless here because it is not the presence or absence of self-reference that makes a difference here. The brain is riddled with self-referencing loops. In some ways it is a giant self-referencing loop. So what?

This is not to say that Pixy's definition is invalid in all frames of reference, just to point out that it doesn't really have much meaning here.

Nick

You said these people say tehse thing, who are they and where did they say them?

 

[Dancing David]

Just as a side bar, 'emotions' require an active cognitive fra,e for them to have meaning. there is no preconscious process other than sensation and perception. To have an emotion requires an number of processes, association with memory, association with social cues and then the verbal cognitive framing and associative network.

Emotions are not inate they are learned description applied to perceptions of physiological states. Fear is arousal, arousal is anger, anxiety, sexual arousal and excitement. The physical response is the same , it is the associative framework, conditioning and the cognitive frame-ing that provides 'what/which' emotion that the person feels.

 

[AkuManiMani]

The thing is, if you reduce experience as far as you can, you end up with only three things:

1) Percepts of the world.
2) Facts related to those percepts.
3) Cartesian self.

1) and 2) are easily explained by models that have been around for 20+ years.

So yes, actually, if you contend that experience isn't explainable yet, you are insisting on an implied Cartesian self.

Recently, I've been reading up on an interdisciplinary field called biosemiotics. It basically applies semiotics more broadly to all biological systems rather than just human language.

Interestingly enough, a semiotic system is defined by a triad relation that seems to parallel the one you've listed; signs, objects [i.e. meanings], and interpretants [or a coded 'adapter' that links signs to meanings]. For instance, in the case of genetics, mRNA is a sign, it's corresponding amino acid chain is the object/meaning, and ribosomes are the coded adapters that link the two.

The basic idea of biosemiotics is that such a triadic scheme can be applies to every level of organization in biology and that human cognition is just one example of this. It seems the triadic theme you've invoked is pretty accurate; 'Percepts of the world' are signs, 'Facts related to those percepts' are the meanings, and the 'Cartesian self' is what links the two. Though, I would personally like to add that the mind or 'self' isn't Cartesian in the sense of being completely non-physical.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Really ?

Rly, Rly

 

[rocketdodger]

I would have hoped that a computer professional would at least know the difference between random and pseudo random.

That we live in a deterministic universe, aside from quantum fluctuations, is really physics 101. And everything that happens "has to do with" statistical probabilities. Most of physics is about statistical probabilities.

So you are saying that the statistical probability of a given behavior occuring in a working computer is the same as the statistical probability of the same behavior occuring in a pile of electronic components on the floor?

Are you saying that the existence of life nothing to do with the order relies upon?

Are you saying that the probability of finding a certain configuration of molecules in a crystal is identical to the probability of finding a certain configuration in a random aggregation of molecules?

Are you really suggesting such things?

I will just let you come up with your own term for whatever this is, then, westprog, because you seem to be unwilling to use any language created by anyone other than yourself.

So what do you call it? What is the difference between the behavior of a drop of water and the behavior of a snowflake?

 

[rocketdodger]

Recently, I've been reading up on an interdisciplinary field called biosemiotics. It basically applies semiotics more broadly to all biological systems rather than just human language.

Interestingly enough, a semiotic system is defined by a triad relation that seems to parallel the one you've listed; signs, objects [i.e. meanings], and interpretants [or a coded 'adapter' that links signs to meanings]. For instance, in the case of genetics, mRNA is a sign, it's corresponding amino acid chain is the object/meaning, and ribosomes are the coded adapters that link the two.

The basic idea of biosemiotics is that such a triadic scheme can be applies to every level of organization in biology and that human cognition is just one example of this. It seems the triadic theme you've invoked is pretty accurate; 'Percepts of the world' are signs, 'Facts related to those percepts' are the meanings, and the 'Cartesian self' is what links the two. Though, I would personally like to add that the mind or 'self' isn't Cartesian in the sense of being completely non-physical.

That is an interesting proposition, thank you for sharing.

I think "Cartesian" doesn't mean non-physical, just "seemingly" non-physical. I am pretty sure my mind is physical, but it seems non-physical because I am it.

 

[PixyMisa]

Yes, they're working on the level above. So you repeatedly stating that consciousness is self-reference is relatively meaningless in this context.

Nope. Wrong again.

Now you're contradicting your statement above.

Nope. Wrong again.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Consciousness, subjectivity, quale, etc. are terms that refer to actual empirical phenomena; the fact that they don't figure into the narrow framework of S-AI doesn't invalidate them -- it just illustates that the S-AI model is useless and should be revised or descarded.

The concept of qualia is not logically coherent.

I'm fine with consciousness and subjectivity, though.

That you could even seriously make that statement just illustrates that you don't understand what the term qualia means. A quale is just a basic element of subjective experience and such experiences are what we collectively refer to as consciousness. The term and definition are perfectly coherent.

But thats just the problem. Strong AI [as presented by PixyMisa] necessarily implies that the unconscious processes of biology that give rise to awareness ARE aware. If you remember, he specifically states that any feedback system is 'aware'and any self-referential feedback system is 'conscious'.

Fallacy of composition [...] I never said that [...] Indeed, both of those statements are the precise reverse of what I said.

I quite clearly recall you stating that by your definition, a simple feedback a device like a thermostat is 'aware' and devices/systems that have higher level regulating loops [i.e. reflexive programs] qualify as being 'conscious'.

If you feel that this is inaccurate you're free to quote your exact words or shall I be forced again to dig up your past quotes myself?

This definition encompasses not only every biological system, by default, but potentially any other physical system

Sure. But that definition is something you made up, unrelated to anything I have said.

That so? Judging from the discussion so far it seems that every poster whose been closely following this discussion is under the impression that the above is very much your definition of 'aware' & 'conscious'.

By such a definition, even when an individual is unequivocally unconscious the S-AI model says that they are.

Define "unconscious".

Oh, great. So you wanna play this game again, huh...?

un⋅con⋅scious
  /ʌnˈkɒnʃəs/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [uhn-kon-shuhs] -adjective
1. not conscious; without awareness, sensation, or cognition.
2. temporarily devoid of consciousness.
3. not perceived at the level of awareness; occurring below the level of conscious thought: an unconscious impulse.
4. not consciously realized, planned, or done; without conscious volition or intent: an unconscious social slight.
5. not endowed with mental faculties: the unconscious stones.
–noun
6. the unconscious, Psychoanalysis. the part of the mind containing psychic material that is only rarely accessible to awareness but that has a pronounced influence on behavior.

What is indefensible is your insistence on swapping definitions of words in the middle of a sentence.

It would be if thats what I were actually doing.

Since you have completely failed to understand the argument, nothing you assert regarding the argument has any bearing on anything.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

 

[rocketdodger]

A quale is just a basic element of subjective experience and such experiences are what we collectively refer to as consciousness. The term and definition are perfectly coherent.

Well, that there is fine.

But what pixy is referring to is what happens when, for example, a strong A.I. proponent tries to further define "basic element of subjective experience" in a formal way so it can be used scientifically.

In those cases, HPC proponents invariably complain that something is missed although they can't specify what it is.

If you want to accept a quale as just "a basic element of subjective experience" then you have to be willing to step aside when someone else takes over and tries to refine and formalize that definition.

 

[PixyMisa]

That you could even seriously make that statement just illustrates that you don't understand what the term qualia means. A quale is just a basic element of subjective experience and such experiences are what we collectively refer to as consciousness. The term and definition are perfectly coherent.

That you could even seriously make that statement just illustrates that you don't understand what the term qualia means.

The term was invented specifically to mean whatever is left over after the physical processes are explained. In other words, it is only a coherent concept under incoherent metaphysics.

I quite clearly recall you stating that by your definition, a simple feedback a device like a thermostat is 'aware' and devices/systems that have higher level regulating loops [i.e. reflexive programs] qualify as being 'conscious'.

The first part is correct, the second part is not accurate. Neither bears no relation to what you just claimed I said.

The two statements

All cats are mammals.
All mammals are cats.

Are NOT equivalent.

If you feel that this is inaccurate you're free to quote your exact words or shall I be forced again to dig up your past quotes myself?

Feel free to quote me. Just don't incorrectly paraphrase me.

That so? Judging from the discussion so far it seems that every poster whose been closely following this discussion is under the impression that the above is very much your definition of 'aware' & 'conscious'.

Nope. Completely wrong.

Oh, great. So you wanna play this game again, huh...?

Six definitions. You think this is somehow supposed to help your argument?

It would be if thats what I were actually doing.

That is indeed what you are doing.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Fail.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Well, that there is fine.

But what pixy is referring to is what happens when, for example, a strong A.I. proponent tries to further define "basic element of subjective experience" in a formal way so it can be used scientifically.

In those cases, HPC proponents invariably complain that something is missed although they can't specify what it is.

If you want to accept a quale as just "a basic element of subjective experience" then you have to be willing to step aside when someone else takes over and tries to refine and formalize that definition.

I think I understand how frustrating it can be to work hard on a solution to a problem only to have people who don't seem to get what you're doing tell you you're missing something

Its not my intention to downplay what you and others are doing or to be a wet blanket. Like I mentioned before, qualia have the same epistemic status that genes did a century and a half ago; not only have they not had their Watson & Crick but they are still waiting on their Mendel. It would be really cool if those most basic elements [qualia] where technically defined and discovered in our lifetimes. Such knowledge would not only greatly advance the field of AI but also revolutionize numerous other fields.

What frustrates me is that there are prominent thinkers like Dennet that go to such great lengths to rationalize away a very real problem. It just seems like they are rolling over in defeat and giving up the pursuit of a greater mystery in favor of simple puzzles already solved. I think the sooner more thinkers and researchers take the problem of qualia seriously the sooner there will be more conclusive answers to the HPC.

 

[PixyMisa]

We already have a conclusive answer to HPC: It is not logically coherent.

 

[rocketdodger]

I think the sooner more thinkers and researchers took the problem of qualia more seriously the sooner there will be more conclusive answers to the HPC.

yeah but don't forget, you are thinking of the aku-pc, not the HPC as the dualists define it.

It seems like the aku-pc is more along the lines of "what is the mechanism of consciousness?"

That isn't the dualist HPC.