On Consciousness

[PixyMisa]

Well it depends if we define the guy operating the punched cards as an OS.

But when you first turned on the system, it didn't even know how to talk to the card reader.

Typically you'd toggle in a boot sequence (in binary) that would let it feed from paper tape and load the rest of the way, after which it could do complex stuff like read punched cards and print.

 

[rocketdodger]

How is that even remotely the right chase to cut to?

No, no, you know what, I'll humor you. Here are the first papers I found on the two subjects that were at all relevant (i.e. didn't deal with ADHD or emotion in schizophrenia):

Emotion

Attention

Ah I see that I have been thinking of "cortex" when you really meant only the neocortex. My bad. I don't disagree that emotion can be present without a neocortex. I was disagreeing with the notion that you could have emotion without a cortex at all. Looking back that is absurd and I don't know why I thought you meant that, since parts of the limbic system itself are in the cortex.

My argument has been that you can't have emotion without attention. I don't mean the higher order attention of humans and primates. I mean the basic notion of what is in working memory at any given instant. That isn't restricted to the neocortex, because if it were then animals and people who have had their neocortex removed wouldn't be able to do anything at all.

Some sort of attention mechanism is required to exhibit anything besides repeated unconscious behaviors. That's why it is listed so low on the scale -- you can't really be a mammal without it.

Give me some time and I will dig up papers dealing with this more abstract notion of attention that the consscale is speaking of.

It's the scale you're arguing for.

Not really.

Think about how a car is constructed. Couldn't you develop an arbitrary scale for how much "car-ness" something has? That would be pretty stupid, I admit.

Yet, in such a scale, the individual descriptions of each level would definitely offer insight into what exactly goes into a car. Do you disagree?

 

[tensordyne]

This is rubbish.

Science does no such thing, it is all about approximate models. This is the SMT forum, not the R&P forum, so who else defines science this way? Philosophers?

Even approximate models (which is a good point that in science one should consider pretty much all models as approximate) are objective. These models objectively state the range of applicability of their predictions and how to test them.

There really is no problem here Dancing David.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Hey, have you guys seen the TED Talk with Jeff Hawkins. I bet you might get a kick out of it?

I did!

Great lines:

"Some people have fallen into the pit of metaphysical dualism, but we can reject all that." (audience laughs, and Hawkins continues without a pause).

"If you don't build it [an intelligent machine], you don't even understand it."

What impressive me about the brain's predictive power is the speed with which it memorizes input. I can read a random sentence in a new book, then start reading the book from the front cover, and notice instantly when I hit the sentence I'd already read. I'd like to know if we have a biological theory of how instant memory and retrieval works.

Another thing I'd like to know more about is what's going on when the brain is trying to remember something, when I have no sense of its effort. Say someone mentions a movie in which this and that happens, and you know you've seen the movie, but can't remember its name. You move on to other conversation unrelated to the movie, and ten minutes later, the name of the movie pops into your head. I ask, what was the brain doing during those ten minutes? I have nary a quale of it while it's working until the title appears, as a sentence rolling out of the void like a musical phrase calling from the deep recesses of a dark cave.

 

[tensordyne]

The entire reason we use abstractions is that they are simpler than the thing they are abstracting.

Wow, then you should have no problem with qualia (aside from your metaphysical complaints of it being related to dualism) because it is merely an abstract idea that tries to capture a very visceral idea of how things feel. Categorizing how things feel leads to other abstractions through thought and experience.

 

[Belz...]

Wow, then you should have no problem with qualia (aside from your metaphysical complaints of it being related to dualism) because it is merely an abstract idea that tries to capture a very visceral idea of how things feel. Categorizing how things feel leads to other abstractions through thought and experience.

If that's all they were I think we'd all be fine with the term.

 

[PixyMisa]

Wow, then you should have no problem with qualia (aside from your metaphysical complaints of it being related to dualism) because it is merely an abstract idea that tries to capture a very visceral idea of how things feel. Categorizing how things feel leads to other abstractions through thought and experience.

The concept of qualia is not an abstraction, it's an excuse.

 

[tensordyne]

I think we are getting somewhere now in the below.

There's no such thing as an opposite to objective in reality.

This is a bizarre statement. The words subjective and objective are defined as opposites. You can not like it but that does not change a thing, they are opposites in our reality. If it is not objective, it is subjective, as well as vice versa.

Or perhaps you are speaking of Reality with a big R, where nothing that exists in some form of objective sense must ever be a matter of opinion. OK, sure, why not? That is not the same as subjective versus objective though. An analogy might be how in SR different observers will disagree as to certain results but agree on other results called invariants. To have a full theory you need to explain both.

That's the point: We do not live in a dualistic Universe. It's all the same sort of stuff, with a single, universal set of interactions.

The above is a metaphysical statement. How could one falsify the above for instance? Or is it some form of religious tenet you wish to promulgate? No thanks, I am more interested in epistemology than in ridiculous and insensible ontologies.

Why do you have to complain about 'stuff'? You have not defined stuff with anything like rigor, let alone the fact that stuff as that word is used in the sense above is of a qualitatively different character than sensory percepts. Stuff is a concept, related to a complex set of rules for predicting outcomes of various experiments.

To say there is nothing but the objective is to say that there is no subjective. This assertion is ridiculous on its face.

The entire difference between the subjective and the objective is one of perspective, and the subjective is merely a subset of the objective.

More metaphysical nonsense. Premature theorizing on the ultimate nature of reality as well. Tell me how the above could be falsified and I will change my mind and think you are the next messiah, as it is, the above is just one category error and presumptuous boast on understanding of "ultimate nature of reality" after another.

Your focus on abstract models as ontology is borderland crazy. When you have a percept, it is necessarily associated with a perception. Percepts lead to concepts, and how this is done is through the abstract mind. The only ontology any of us can honestly lay claim to is abstract mind and perception bundle.

That is it, nothing more and nothing less, but you Hard-AI types get rid of perception bundle (consciousness) as if you can throw it out at will, without even having to think about it because it somehow oddly reminds you of spirits, or some such nonsense. You have haunted yourself, the disinfectant is Searle. Dennett is the cancerous growth.

Sorry, they both exist; stop lying.

 

[tensordyne]

The concept of qualia is not an abstraction, it's an excuse.

That is not an argument, it's a slur.

 

[Dancing David]

I think we are getting somewhere now in the below.



This is a bizarre statement. The words subjective and objective are defined as opposites.

Just because something is defined does not mean that it is not a false dichotomy.

 

[Dancing David]

That is not an argument, it is a slur.

That is not an argument, it is sophistry.

 

[PixyMisa]

This is a bizarre statement.

No.

The words subjective and objective are defined as opposites.

Then, since objective reality exists, the subjective clearly does not.

You haven't really thought this through, have you?

The above is a metaphysical statement.

Correct.

How could one falsify the above for instance?

Demonstrate that laws of the Universe are not logically consistent: That something can both happen and not happen.

To say there is nothing but the objective is to say that there is no subjective.

No. Merely that your definition is incorrect.

More metaphysical nonsense. Premature theorizing on the ultimate nature of reality as well. Tell me how the above could be falsified and I will change my mind and think you are the next messiah, as it is, the above is just one category error and presumptuous boast on understanding of "ultimate nature of reality" after another.

Garbage. Utter garbage.

We know how the Universe works. We know that there's only one sort of stuff, and it follows a consistent set of laws. We know that mind arises as a process in matter, and not any other way.

We know this. It's not the subject for any rational dispute.

My position is supported by every scientific experiment ever, and you say that I'm presumptuous?

No. No, I don't think so.

That is it, nothing more and nothing less, but you Hard-AI types get rid of perception bundle (consciousness) as if you can throw it out at will, without even having to think about it because it somehow oddly reminds you of spirits, or some such nonsense. You have haunted yourself, the disinfectant is Searle. Dennett is the cancerous growth.

Seriously, get a grip. Searle's position is useful only as a teaching tool for undergraduates on how to spot logical fallacies. Dennett has his faults, but he punches through the nonsense very effectively.

 

[PixyMisa]

That is not an argument, it's a slur.

It may be a slur, but it's still true.

 

[Belz...]

More metaphysical nonsense.

Metaphysical ? It's a question of definitions. How is the subjective not a subset of the objective ?

 

[Mr. Scott]

What's the functional/material/metaphysical difference between what the brain does that is conscious, and what the brain does that is unconscious?

you are completely unaware of 90 percent of what really goes on in your brain (Ramachandran)

 

[!Kaggen]

What's the functional/material/metaphysical difference between what the brain does that is conscious, and what the brain does that is unconscious?

So what stops us as a species becoming aware of the rest?

 

[PixyMisa]

So what stops us as a species becoming aware of the rest?

Um, what?

We're not aware of anything as a species (except metaphorically). We're aware of things as individuals.

 

[Belz...]

So what stops us as a species becoming aware of the rest?

Bad command or file name.

 

[!Kaggen]

Um, what?

We're not aware of anything as a species (except metaphorically). We're aware of things as individuals.

So consciousness is not a biological adaptive trait of homo sapiens?

 

[PixyMisa]

So consciousness is not a biological adaptive trait of homo sapiens?

Of complex animal life in general. But your previous question still makes no sense.