Materialists......

[Belz...]

Why should anyone else conform to it? Why should all questions be reformulated so they make sense to science even if they know longer serve the purpose they were originally intended to.

Because wishes are not horses and it doesn't matter how much you want to be a beign of light. If we're meat, we're meat.

 

[Belz...]

The meaning of life, if there is one, is associated with a search for the correct answers to those questions and for undoubtable confirmation that the answers are the correct ones.

Not sure THAT has any meaning, no offense.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Because wishes are not horses and it doesn't matter how much you want to be a beign of light. If we're meat, we're meat.

Yes, but we're not.

As I said, it's philosophically naive. And it only works if you're scientistic so it is rejected both by the man on the street as well as a philosopher in his ivory tower. Fortunately, most of use aren't scientistic - despite the best efforts of people like you.

You wonder why people look beyond science for answers to these questions? Perhaps it is because they know perfectly well that their minds are not pieces of meat.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Yes you are, Geoff. As are we all.

Boy am I glad I don't believe that nonsense any more. 30-odd years I believed it. As if....

I'm not much interested in philosophical drivel, because it ceased to be useful quite a long time ago. Yes, you ARE a piece of meat, and you're MERELY the sum of your parts. To assume otherwise assumes the existence of an immaterial soul and, as you said, begs the question.

I do not have to assume that my mind is not my brain. It is perfectly obvious that this is the case.

So says you.

? Is that an answer?

Easy, even within your restrictions. Subjective experience is based on interpreting incomplete data from the objective world. It is subjective specifically BECAUSE it has only bits and pieces of the objective information available.

Claiming that subjective experience is based on data from an (assumed) objective world is not the same as claiming that subjective experience is therefore objective.

You don't form subjective experiences ex nihilo. I don't think you can name a single human emotion, memory or process that isn't directly linked to a known physical process. And that remains true whether or not thought is seated entirely in the brain.

"is linked to" an objective process doesn't make subjectivity any more objective either.

How do you know that ?

Because I've just spent a year studying the philosophical foundations of cognitive science and computationalism is as dead as the dodo. It is history. It went the same way as behaviourism, it's just some remnants of the computationalist rump (the slow ones) haven't yet cottoned on to the fact that it is in indeed dead. Connectionism delivered the first blow. Searle, Jackson and the "emobodied cognition" crew finished off the job. Computationism is dead. Let it rest in peace.

Also, as mentioned in that example, we can TRANSMIT that very thought into someone else's brain, making that person experience the very same thing.

No......I just gave a long explanation of why it is impossible.

Well, since neurology still has a long way to go, I don't see how you can make that claim.

Because the claim is based upon A.I. research. Most A.I. research is useless for answering claims about minds, because computationalism turned out to be wrong. But since this particular claim assumes computationalism is true and A.I. has already demonstrated certain limitations on A.I. neural networks, we can answer this question. Even if computationalism had been true, your machine would still have been impossible.

We can't do it with a computer ? That's new.

Not with a neural network you can't, no. Neural networks have to learn.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

The former. How are they different ? How would you know and how could you tell the difference ??

So you are claiming that "subjective experience" IS IDENTICAL TO "physical brain processes". The problem with this is it is, well, completely impossible to defend.

Things which are identical are so because they are indistinguishable. They must share all of the same properties. But subjective experiences and brain processes don't share any properties at all. Therefore your claim is just prima facie false. These terms are not synonymous, not interchangable, defined differently and used differently. So if your argument depends on claiming that they are identical and dishonestly claiming you've no idea what is different about them then it is a pretty lame argument.

 

[nescafe]

Because I've just spent a year studying the philosophical foundations of cognitive science and computationalism is as dead as the dodo. It is history. It went the same way as behaviourism, it's just some remnants of the computationalist rump (the slow ones) haven't yet cottoned on to the fact that it is in indeed dead. Connectionism delivered the first blow. Searle, Jackson and the "emobodied cognition" crew finished off the job. Computationism is dead. Let it rest in peace.

Computationalism is dead, eh? There seems to be alot of life left in that corpse.

Because the claim is based upon A.I. research. Most A.I. research is useless for answering claims about minds, because computationalism turned out to be wrong. But since this particular claim assumes computationalism is true and A.I. has already demonstrated certain limitations on A.I. neural networks, we can answer this question.

Please explain how computationalism is dead. Please do it without implying that anyone here who happens to believe that there are good reasons for considering a computationalist viewpoint (such as myself) is a frickin' moron for beliving something different than you.

Even if computationalism had been true, your machine would still have been impossible.

Why? Is there some reason that the set of all thinkable thoughts (and by extension the set of all subjective experiences and the set of all selves) maps onto the set of all real numbers instead of the set of all rational numbers?

Just because we do not understand how to do it now does not mean we will not understand it ever or that we will never understand the processes by which subjective experiences rises well enough to emulate them on a computer.

 

[Z]

In other words, for the confused reader, JustGeoff is presuming the immaterial nature of soul, mind, and experience right off the bat; thereby nullifying any scientistic or materialist perspective automatically. He's presuming that AI research has reached a dead end (it hasn't); that proof exists that minds merely supervene on brains rather than being created by them (it doesn't); and that humans are more than meat (they are - there's bones, neurons, fat, etc... ).

So, basically, he's assuming his conclusions automatically.

This is the key problem with philosophy majors: they come up with all sorts of strange ideas and weird conclusions that, ultimately, turn out to be pretty absurd. Then they spend half of their lives trying to justify their absurd beliefs. Eventually, they either come around and make money selling books on topics they don't believe in, they come around and find real jobs, or they fade into utter obscurity, labelled as fools and madmen. Only rarely are they hailed - by other philosophers, usually - as a success (and, usually, they are the first type described).

Geoff is demonstrating quite clearly that he's assuming several things which, IF THEY WERE PROVEN TRUE, would dissolve belief in materialism or scientism; but which haven't been proven true at all.

IF Geoff is capable of making his points WITHOUT assuming certain things true, he might get somewhere; as it is, though, he's no better than the average religious woo who rolls through here babbling about hellfire!

Oh well - lifegazer is back. Time to resume more interesting debates.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Nescafe,

Perhaps it would be easier if you first tell me if you know anything about the debate between computationalists and connectionists in cognitive science. If the answer is "not much", this is going to have to be a long reply....

I have explained the problem. You didn't understand the explanation, but that isn't my fault.

Geoff

 

[Z]

Computationalism is dead, eh? There seems to be alot of life left in that corpse.

Yeah - he claims that at Sussex, computationalism is a long dead horse. Too bad Sussex is at about the community-college level of academic prowess...

Still, he has that whole Alma Mater pride thing going. Me, I prefer a nice Paneer Matar thing...

 

[nescafe]

Nescafe,

Perhaps it would be easier if you first tell me if you know anything about the debate between computationalists and connectionists in cognitive science. If the answer is "not much", this is going to have to be a long reply....

I have explained the problem. You didn't understand the explanation, but that isn't my fault.

Geoff

Assume I know nothing about the connectionist stance beyond it it involving neuron analogs connecting to eachother and wicked pattern-matching capability.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Assume I know nothing about the connectionist stance beyond it it involving neuron analogs connecting to eachother and wicked pattern-matching capability.

There is a fundamental difference between the way normal software stores information and the way neural networks store information. Normal software stores it in discrete parcels in discrete places. We can say exactly where each piece of information is stored, and how. Only because we know this are we capable of reading and writing individual chunks of information independently of the whole of the information stored in the computer. We cannot do any such thing with neural networks, even artificial ones, because the information is stored in a distributed fashion. You cannot say that any particular piece of information is stored in any particular place by any particular set of neurons. Instead, everything is "smeared out" over the whole system and, crucially, none of it makes any sense (none of it can be decoded or encoded) without being situated in the totality of the network. This is what is meant by "content addressable" instead of "location addressable". You can't look up the location of a piece of data in a neural network, because it doesn't have one. Because of this it is simply impossible to copy parts of information from one brain to another in order to replicate subjective experience. Brains are even more complicated than the model I described because they consist of multiple localised neural networks. In other words, you can take out a particular part of the brain and destroy a particular type of memory or ability, but even within those sub-sections of the brain there are distibuted neural networks.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

This is the key problem with philosophy majors: they come up with all sorts of strange ideas and weird conclusions that, ultimately, turn out to be pretty absurd. Then they spend half of their lives trying to justify their absurd beliefs. Eventually, they either come around and make money selling books on topics they don't believe in, they come around and find real jobs, or they fade into utter obscurity, labelled as fools and madmen. Only rarely are they hailed - by other philosophers, usually - as a success (and, usually, they are the first type described).

Meanie! Some philosophers tackle real and important issues, and teach useful critical thinking skills.

Geoff is a card-carrying fruitcake who is doing second-year philosophy to try to find rationalisations for the dumb ideas he started with. Don't blame the tools if the workman is no good.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

In other words, for the confused reader, JustGeoff is presuming the immaterial nature of soul, mind, and experience right off the bat; thereby nullifying any scientistic or materialist perspective automatically. He's presuming that AI research has reached a dead end (it hasn't); that proof exists that minds merely supervene on brains rather than being created by them (it doesn't); and that humans are more than meat (they are - there's bones, neurons, fat, etc... ).

So, basically, he's assuming his conclusions automatically.

This is the key problem with philosophy majors: they come up with all sorts of strange ideas and weird conclusions that, ultimately, turn out to be pretty absurd. Then they spend half of their lives trying to justify their absurd beliefs. Eventually, they either come around and make money selling books on topics they don't believe in, they come around and find real jobs, or they fade into utter obscurity, labelled as fools and madmen. Only rarely are they hailed - by other philosophers, usually - as a success (and, usually, they are the first type described).

Geoff is demonstrating quite clearly that he's assuming several things which, IF THEY WERE PROVEN TRUE, would dissolve belief in materialism or scientism; but which haven't been proven true at all.

IF Geoff is capable of making his points WITHOUT assuming certain things true, he might get somewhere; as it is, though, he's no better than the average religious woo who rolls through here babbling about hellfire!

Oh well - lifegazer is back. Time to resume more interesting debates.

Having been following this thread, I'd have to concur. JustGeoff's position sounds no different from those that argue (from a religious/spiritual standpoint) about a "soul"; and rather than discuss the base issue of the soul "yeas" and soul "nays" he is saying that anyone in the "nay" category is wrong and until they move to the "yea" category there is nothing to discuss.

 

[nescafe]

There is a fundamental difference between the way normal software stores information and the way neural networks store information. Normal software stores it in discrete parcels in discrete places. We can say exactly where each piece of information is stored, and how. Only because we know this are we capable of reading and writing individual chunks of information independently of the whole of the information stored in the computer. We cannot do any such thing with neural networks, even artificial ones, because the information is stored in a distributed fashion. You cannot say that any particular piece of information is stored in any particular place by any particular set of neurons. Instead, everything is "smeared out" over the whole system and, crucially, none of it makes any sense (none of it can be decoded or encoded) without being situated in the totality of the network. This is what is meant by "content addressable" instead of "location addressable". You can't look up the location of a piece of data in a neural network, because it doesn't have one. Because of this it is simply impossible to copy parts of information from one brain to another in order to replicate subjective experience. Brains are even more complicated than the model I described because they consist of multiple localised neural networks. In other words, you can take out a particular part of the brain and destroy a particular type of memory or ability, but even within those sub-sections of the brain there are distibuted neural networks.

<pedant>
In point of fact, a normal computer can work with content addressable memory just fine. It makes an excellent cache (among other uses).
</pedant>

Your point about not being able to extract a given memory from a neural network as easily as from a standard computer memory is well-taken. However, if you accept that the stored information in a neural network is entirely a result of:

• How the network is layed out.
• The weights of the interneural connections.

then copying a neural network wholesale is certianly feasible, and that copy of the neural network would still encode the same thing.

Granted, brains are a whole lot more complicated than this, but science seems to be well-equipped to map and understand those complications.

So, we might not initially be able to extract individual memories, but copying them wholesale would not be a problem.

Also, given that a process of arbitrary complexity can be emulated on a universal turing machine, there is no theoretical bar to running a neural network equivalent or greater than a brain in complexity on anything that has the same capabilities a UTM does.

 

[Belz...]

As I said, it's philosophically naive. And it only works if you're scientistic so it is rejected both by the man on the street as well as a philosopher in his ivory tower. Fortunately, most of use aren't scientistic - despite the best efforts of people like you.

I'm just trying to keep my emotions out of the way when discussing these things.

This said, do you have any solid indication that, indeed, we're not just the sum of our parts ?

 

[Belz...]

I do not have to assume that my mind is not my brain. It is perfectly obvious that this is the case.

If it's that obvious then you should have no problem presenting proof.

Claiming that subjective experience is based on data from an (assumed) objective world is not the same as claiming that subjective experience is therefore objective.

Because the claim is based upon A.I. research. Most A.I. research is useless for answering claims about minds, because computationalism turned out to be wrong. But since this particular claim assumes computationalism is true and A.I. has already demonstrated certain limitations on A.I. neural networks, we can answer this question. Even if computationalism had been true, your machine would still have been impossible.

[...]Not with a neural network you can't, no. Neural networks have to learn.

I do believe this makes my point. Subjectivity and objectivity cannot be actual opposites, because one requires the other, while the reverse isn't true. Subjective thoughts are based upon gathering objective data and interpreting it using already gathered objective data. That's the only way to learn, and the fact that we can BEGIN to learn is that there's already an objective means of interpreting new data, which a computer lacks.

In order for subjectivity to be opposite to objectivity, it would have to have no points in common. You could say that north is opposite to south, because they never intersect, for example. But subjective thoughts and objective facts intersect all the time.

 

[Belz...]

So you are claiming that "subjective experience" IS IDENTICAL TO "physical brain processes". The problem with this is it is, well, completely impossible to defend.

Again, so says you. You keep claiming but I don't see any evidence.

Things which are identical are so because they are indistinguishable. They must share all of the same properties. But subjective experiences and brain processes don't share any properties at all. Therefore your claim is just prima facie false.

They don't ? This is akin to someone in the days of yore claiming that since Hephaestos and lava don't share the same properties, they can't be one and the same. Who's Hephaestos ? What's this "mind" of which you speak ?

Note that I'm not claiming that minds don't exist, as Hammy claims I should. I'm simply operating under an obviously different definition of mind than you, and I'd like to know what your definition is, and how it is incompatible with mind-brain dependency.

So if your argument depends on claiming that they are identical and dishonestly claiming you've no idea what is different about them then it is a pretty lame argument.

If you persist in calling me a liar, sir, we'll have nothing more to discuss. Insults to not advance your argument.

There is a fundamental difference between the way normal software stores information and the way neural networks store information. Normal software stores it in discrete parcels in discrete places. We can say exactly where each piece of information is stored, and how. [...] We cannot do any such thing with neural networks, even artificial ones, because the information is stored in a distributed fashion. You cannot say that any particular piece of information is stored in any particular place by any particular set of neurons. Instead, everything is "smeared out" over the whole system and, crucially, none of it makes any sense (none of it can be decoded or encoded) without being situated in the totality of the network.

Well, hard drives are submitted to what is known as fragmentation. But a good FAT or NTFS will tell you where you file is anyway, no matter how many pieces of it are lying about.

HOW the information is stored doesn't change anything about the facts: information IS stored in the brain.

 

[nescafe]

Well, hard drives are submitted to what is known as fragmentation. But a good FAT or NTFS will tell you where you file is anyway, no matter how many pieces of it are lying about.

Technically, that metaphor is flawed. Neural networks store data in a holographic fashion, so there is no set of addresses that the data is stored at. It is not much like a fragmented hard drive where you always know the addresses your data is stored at (unless your file system is corrupt, but that is a different ball of wax).

HOW the information is stored doesn't change anything about the facts: information IS stored in the brain.

That, however, is spot on.

 

[Belz...]

Technically, that metaphor is flawed. Neural networks store data in a holographic fashion, so there is no set of addresses that the data is stored at. It is not much like a fragmented hard drive where you always know the addresses your data is stored at (unless your file system is corrupt, but that is a different ball of wax).

How exactly is the data retrieved, then ? (an answer beside "not very well" would be appreciated )

 

[SuperCoolGuy]

Then answer the million dollar question: How do they differ? What is the defining difference?

The difference between subjective experience and objective process.

Subjective experience is based on human emotion, bias, feelings, etc. Objective processes are free of human emotion, bias, feelings.

Man: So, name an objective process.
Woman: Rock falls off cliff.
Man: How do you know that process took place.
Woman: I saw it.
Man: Doesn't your vision and perception depend on your feelings and bias?
Woman: Sure

Man:So you use a subjective experience to validate the existence of an objective process? You are a deceiver!

Woman: Well, I got some other people with me, and they saw the same thing.
Man: More experiences that are nevertheless subjective.

Woman: I video recorded the event.
Man: But people built the camera, operated it, and watched the video. Nothing but subjective experiences.
Woman: Multiple angles.
Man: So, discerning your footage requires the subjective experiences of people watching video, no different.

Woman: I can recreate the event for you.
Man: It'll be my subjective experience. Look, you cannot name a single objective process without requiring subjective experiences. Your thoughts exist, we can agree, but whether or not what you are thinking about actually exists requires you to assume that there are in fact objective processes since you are a physicalist. And you have not shown me how you can in fact prove that objective processes actually do exist outside of subjective experience.

How am I doing so far?