Explain consciousness to the layman.

[Leumas]

It's true that the brain is capable of performing computations. That doesn't, of course, imply that the brain is a computer[snip]

The fact that the brain computers doesn't imply it's a computer ?

I must congratulate you on your dexterous use of a Contextomy fallacy to pave the way for a subtle Equivocation fallacy...... my my.... what astonishing shenanigans.

 

[annnnoid]

Anyway, why is a finely-engineered machine of wire and silicon less likely to be conscious than two pounds of warm meat?

"The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe ... complexity makes simple models impractical and accurate models impossible to comprehend," ….Scott Huettel …the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University

…but not anymore folks. Here at JREF, the eternal mystery, the fathomless dilemma of the human brain has finally been resolved. The simple model has triumphed!

TWO POUNDS OF MEAT (…ooops, sorry….’warm’ meat!)

….sayeth the Pixy!...the ontological equivalent of the proverbial ‘finely-engineered machine of wire and silicon’ (…’two pounds of warm meat’…’ finely-engineered machine of wire and silicon’…I guess it’s fairly obvious where Pixy’s bias lies). By the way Pixy…you forgot that inconsequential bit about the numerous pounds of warm meat that created those finely engineered etc. etc. etc. Incidental I know.

So…in one corner, we have Scott Huettel, director of the Human Neuroeconomics Laboratory and associate director of the Brain Imaging Analysis Center at Duke University….claiming that ‘the brain is the most complex object in the known universe’.

…and in the opposite corner we have that which is known as PixyMisa (who may, in fact, be nothing more than the aforementioned ‘finely-engineered machine of wire and silicon’ ….how are we to know?) who insists the brain is comparable to a couple of Big Macs.

Shall we take a poll or shall we assume that one of these two parties requires an education?

 

[westprog]

The fact that the brain computers doesn't imply it's a computer ?

My computer heats the house, that doesn't make it a stove. The implication that Pixy is making is that because human brains perform computation, they are computers and only computers. That's one of a long list of logical fallacies that Pixy is especially good at. Not only is the brain a computer, but it's a particular type of computer - and this involves excluding much of the functionality that most actual computers have.

The word "computer" initially meant a person who performed calculations - a clerk in an office. The word was specifically chosen to isolate a tiny subset of what human beings do, and certainly didn't imply that people who worked as computers could do nothing else but compute. The word was borrowed when machines were invented that could perform the drudgery in an automated fashion.

We don't know exactly how human beings perform computation. We can be reasonably certain that whatever way it is, it's not by binary registers.

 

[!Kaggen]

"The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe ... complexity makes simple models impractical and accurate models impossible to comprehend," ….Scott Huettel …the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University

…but not anymore folks. Here at JREF, the eternal mystery, the fathomless dilemma of the human brain has finally been resolved. The simple model has triumphed!

TWO POUNDS OF MEAT (…ooops, sorry….’warm’ meat!)

….sayeth the Pixy!...the ontological equivalent of the proverbial ‘finely-engineered machine of wire and silicon’ (…’two pounds of warm meat’…’ finely-engineered machine of wire and silicon’…I guess it’s fairly obvious where Pixy’s bias lies). By the way Pixy…you forgot that inconsequential bit about the numerous pounds of warm meat that created those finely engineered etc. etc. etc. Incidental I know.

So…in one corner, we have Scott Huettel, director of the Human Neuroeconomics Laboratory and associate director of the Brain Imaging Analysis Center at Duke University….claiming that ‘the brain is the most complex object in the known universe’.

…and in the opposite corner we have that which is known as PixyMisa (who may, in fact, be nothing more than the aforementioned ‘finely-engineered machine of wire and silicon’ ….how are we to know?) who insists the brain is comparable to a couple of Big Macs.

Shall we take a poll or shall we assume that one of these two parties requires an education?

LOL

To be fair at least Pixy Misa is showing some feelings.

Even though it's for some wires and some silica.

But it's a start.

 

[Belz...]

Do you accept the principle that of necessity there must be quantities which we use to define words which are not themselves defined in words? Or would you rather not think about that today?

You do know that those cute little pictures aren't actually arguments?

Pictures ? What the hell are you talking about ?

Why are you so cryptic and nonsensical ?

 

[Belz...]

I must congratulate you on your dexterous use of a Contextomy fallacy to pave the way for a subtle Equivocation fallacy...... my my.... what astonishing shenanigans.

That's what he SAID. Leumas. I'm asking for clarification. If you'd take the time to read rather than just post stuff to pick a fight it might actually help the thread.

 

[Belz...]

My computer heats the house, that doesn't make it a stove. The implication that Pixy is making is that because human brains perform computation, they are computers and only computers. That's one of a long list of logical fallacies that Pixy is especially good at. Not only is the brain a computer, but it's a particular type of computer - and this involves excluding much of the functionality that most actual computers have.

The word "computer" initially meant a person who performed calculations - a clerk in an office. The word was specifically chosen to isolate a tiny subset of what human beings do, and certainly didn't imply that people who worked as computers could do nothing else but compute. The word was borrowed when machines were invented that could perform the drudgery in an automated fashion.

We don't know exactly how human beings perform computation. We can be reasonably certain that whatever way it is, it's not by binary registers.

Thanks. Now I understand what you meant.

See, when you're not cryptic we can get places.

 

[Limbo]

There is no evidence that the heart is a "second brain" or has "cellular memory" as the story implies.

I just came across this and thought you might find it interesting.

Hearts Have Their Own Brain and Consciousness

 

[calebprime]

I just came across this and thought you might find it interesting.

Hearts Have Their Own Brain and Consciousness

from your link:

Experiments conducted at the Institute of HeartMath have found remarkable evidence that the heart’s electromagnetic field can transmit information between people. We have been able to measure an exchange of heart energy between individuals up to 5 feet apart. We have also found that one person’s brain waves can actually synchronize to another person’s heart.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

That's what he SAID. Leumas. I'm asking for clarification. If you'd take the time to read rather than just post stuff to pick a fight it might actually help the thread.

No one takes the time to read in these threads. The important thing is to respond to each and every point anyone makes as quickly as you can. By the time anyone spots any self-contradictory elements or non-sequiters, the thread'll already be three pages down the road and still picking up steam.

 

[Leumas]

That's what he SAID. Leumas. I'm asking for clarification.

No.... that is NOT what he said..... you CONTEXTOMIZED his post to say

It's true that the brain is capable of performing computations. That doesn't, of course, imply that the brain is a computer, [snip]

When in fact the post actually said

It's true that the brain is capable of performing computations. That doesn't, of course, imply that the brain is a computer, or a digital computer, or a Turing machine. Human beings can identify coins but that doesn't make a person a slot machine.

You then proceeded to Equivocate using his now out of context quote by saying

The fact that the brain computers doesn't imply it's a computer ?

Where the equivocation is to use the second occurrence of the word “computer” to mean a thing that computes and thus make a mockery of his statement which according to the contextomized part appears to be self-contradictory.

But if you considered the whole context of the post and remembered that the word computer also means the OBJECT that we use everyday called a computer by the evidence that he also mentions other machines that compute then you would have realized that the post is not self-contradictory at all and that what Westprog was saying is that even though the brain performs calculations it is not like the object we use everyday and is called a computer or any other commonly known computing machine.

Can you see how you contextomized the post in order to make your subtle equivocation work.

I think you did this DELIBERATELY as a tactic and thus I salute your guile.


However, if you did all this inadvertently and only out of illogical thinking then I suggest that you follow your own advice of

If you'd take the time to read rather than just post stuff to pick a fight it might actually help the thread.

 

[Belz...]

No.... that is NOT what he said..... you CONTEXTOMIZED his post to say

When in fact the post actually said

You then proceeded to Equivocate using his now out of context quote by saying

Instead of highlighting all these complicated words, you should have stopped here:

It's true that the brain is capable of performing computations. That doesn't, of course, imply that the brain is a computer, or a digital computer, or a Turing machine. Human beings can identify coins but that doesn't make a person a slot machine.

I made sure I read the paragraph properly before I asked my question. You, of course, didn't.

I think you did this DELIBERATELY as a tactic and thus I salute your guile.

I think you're a very BAD mind reader.

If you'd take the time to read rather than just post stuff to pick a fight it might actually help the thread.

 

[Frank Newgent]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_(formal)

"Symbols of a formal language need not be symbols of anything."​

Assuming consciousness has content where/when/how do the formal symbols generate representational content?

 

[westprog]

Assuming consciousness has content where/when/how do the formal symbols generate representational content?

One could say its the relationships between the symbols - but the relations between the symbols are themselves symbols.

 

[Wowbagger]

Well, I have some reservations about that scenario, so let's make it simpler.

A replica of my truck is a physical object that acts exactly like my truck.

A simulation of my truck is created by causing an object that does not act like my truck to operate in such a way that I can read the output and deduce from that what my truck should act like.

Which are you talking about?

If one's goals is to build a conscious robot, I guess the simple answer would be "replica".

But, scenarios like the one I posted demonstrate that it might not matter. If consciousness is can emerge from an algorithm, then it doesn't matter if that algorithm is replicated or simulated or whatever.

And, this would be in spite of whether or not our own consciousness can be reduced to an algorithm. Even if ours can't, for some reason, that doesn't mean no form of consciousness ever could.

A simulation of a swarm is still a swarm of something. A simulation of a natural selection process is still a selection process (though, I would hesitate to add the word "natural" to it).

 

[AlBell]

...

Anyway, why is a finely-engineered machine of wire and silicon less likely to be conscious than two pounds of warm meat?

Not-alive (at least no one has yet pretended that a simulation of life on a silicon computer -- or pebbles in the sand -- are alive) vs a lifeform.

And no one has explained why lifeform consciousness is wholly computational; it certainly has been and is being asserted as fact by you and a few others.

 

[Piggy]

My computer heats the house, that doesn't make it a stove. The implication that Pixy is making is that because human brains perform computation, they are computers and only computers. That's one of a long list of logical fallacies that Pixy is especially good at. Not only is the brain a computer, but it's a particular type of computer - and this involves excluding much of the functionality that most actual computers have.

The word "computer" initially meant a person who performed calculations - a clerk in an office. The word was specifically chosen to isolate a tiny subset of what human beings do, and certainly didn't imply that people who worked as computers could do nothing else but compute. The word was borrowed when machines were invented that could perform the drudgery in an automated fashion.

We don't know exactly how human beings perform computation. We can be reasonably certain that whatever way it is, it's not by binary registers.

I'm drafting 2 posts, one simply laying out the reasons why you can't replace your brain with a sim machine running a sim of the brain, and another on why your brain isn't "a computer" (in the sense most people think).

Got half way through the first one yesterday and scrapped it b/c it wasn't clear enough.

Once that's out of the way, then we can get on to the really interesting question, which is how your conscious mind uses your non-conscious brain as a kind of information processor.

To me, that's the really interesting question about consciousness and the brain.

But we can't get there until we dispense with these 2 misperceptions that keep folks from looking at the brain with clear eyes.

I doubt those posts will change the minds of any of the computational literalists, but at least the rest of us can get on with contemplating real questions.

Hopefully I'll have them up sometime tomorrow and Friday... but I'm in a horrible bout of insomnia that's screwing up my blood sugar, which makes me not want to eat, which screws up the blood sugar even more, which makes the insomnia worse, and so on... I've lost 8 pounds in the last 5 days and my brain isn't as sharp as it should be at the moment.

 

[PixyMisa]

My computer heats the house, that doesn't make it a stove. The implication that Pixy is making is that because human brains perform computation, they are computers and only computers. That's one of a long list of logical fallacies that Pixy is especially good at. Not only is the brain a computer, but it's a particular type of computer - and this involves excluding much of the functionality that most actual computers have.

I'll ignore the multiple logical fallacies you just presented and simply say: Name one.

We don't know exactly how human beings perform computation. We can be reasonably certain that whatever way it is, it's not by binary registers.

So? That you even think this is a significant point simply highlights the fact that you don't understand the subject.

 

[Piggy]

Your red herrings and equivocations of claiming that we are dualists and magic bean holders is very reminiscent of the Christian tactics of claiming that Atheism is a religion.

I'm beginning to agree with you on some of the "faith" aspects of computational literalism.

I mean, it doesn't seem to bother the comp.lits that science has moved on and nobody studying the brain is working in that framework.

Or that their claims require violations of the laws of physics.

Or that their claims inevitably lead to a host of absurd conclusions (e.g. a brain made of rope could be conscious, or consciousness could be created by writing out the equations describing the brain's operations).

Or that their claims contradict direct observation.

Or that many of their views are based on philosophy which hasn't been verified against reality... and apparently, in their opinion, need not be.

 

[Piggy]

Absolutely, unapologetically, yes. The sorting machine is a symbol manipulation machine. Adenine on DNA is a symbol.

I'm sorry, but if you're going to insist on using common words in a highly specialized and metaphorical way which you can almost guarantee will be misunderstood by most folks, especially when there are common terms you could be using which describe the situation directly and concretely, I cannot have a conversation with you.

You can call DNA a "symbol" if you like, but if you do so, it makes communication with you a truly tortuous exercise.