On Consciousness

[Belz...]

For someone so masterful as yourself, you are leaving yourself vulnerable by wrongly describing my motives.

Reality! Look at my avatar, what you see is just a random arrangement of twigs and moss?

I have no idea what I'm looking at. PM me a bigger picture. Don't expect me to agree with your interpretation, mind you. On with the thread.

 

[Piggy]

I wish you would, because I didn't expect only quotes.

Huh?

Pixy claims that it is widely accepted that SRIP is the known mechanism for consciousness. I cite leaders in the field saying that the mechanism is unkown.

What the hell else do you expect?

I mean, seriously, this has gotten ridiculous.

Unless Pixy wants to pony up with some serious citations of leading neurobiologists to the contrary, those quote demonstrate clearly and definitively that Pixy is 100% wrong.

And by now he has no excuse not to know it.

Okay, I'll bite. How is the brain _not_ like a computer ?

I have to lead by pointing out that the claim must be substantiated by the people making it! You know this, so don't play dumb.

(Sorry if I'm losing my patience, but intellectual dishonesty gets under my collar.)

Brains and computers are not the same thing, so if you or anyone else wants to claim "the brain is a computer" then that claim has to be substantiated... you can't refuse to support the argument and then tell everyone else they have to disprove it.

And here's the catch....

Not too far upthread Pixy posted a link to an article listing 10 ways that a brain isn't a computer.

Pixy then pointed out that this list is irrelevant, because the comp.lits aren't saying that the brain is similar to computers which actually exist.

Now that might sound weird, but it's actually a fair point on Pixy's part, and here's why....

I could easy give you lists of 10 ways in which falcons are different from hummingbirds, or penguins from condors, or emus from buzzards. Yet this does not mean that these animals are not all birds.

So simply listing 10 ways (or any number of ways) in which the brain differs from a PC does not necessarily mean that they are not both computers.

The problem with Pixy's argument, however, is this....

In addition to listing differences, it's also easy to describe why all these animals are birds. (You can point to their evolutionary history, genetic relationships, and biology.)

But neither PixyMisa nor any of the other comp.lit apologists on this forum have ever been able to do the same for computers and brains.

In fact, I asked Pixy yet again to do just that, and got crickets.

So far, despite repeated requests from me and Westprog, there has been no definition of "computer" provided which would include both my brain and my PC, and yet which excludes cows, stars, and oceans.

Once that's done, then there will be something to discuss.

Until then, the claim itself is empty.

 

[Piggy]

Um, I respect you and all but, no.

Hallucinations are false perceptions that are not related to sensation.

Please keep in mind that when I refer to all conscious experience as "hallucination", I'm using somewhat metaphorical language to demonstrate something which is true, but not intuitive.

Kindof like you sometimes have to do when explaining other weird scientific truths such as universal expansion, particle-wave duality, and so forth.

But in truth, indeed, all of your conscious experiences are "false", in that they exist only in your experience, and nowhere outside of it.

Also, it is not true that hallucinations are "not related to sensation"... they can be distortions of sensations.

So it really is accurate to say that everything we experience is a hallucination -- as was demonstrated in the thought experiment out heat, poison, and the drug.

If we were to take a drug that made us feel nauseated by fire, or that made us feel like we were being burned when we approached a toxin, we would consider that a hallucination.

And yet our actual experience is absolutely no different, because our experience of burning when we get to close to heat, or nausea when exposed to the smell of rotting meat, is an arbitrary one determined by evolution.

If evolution had taken a different turn, had solved the problem a different way, we wouldn't think twice about the fact that, of course, getting near a fire makes you violently ill, and rotting food produces a burning sensation.

The feeling you get that you open your eyes and are somehow looking out at a world that's distant from you... that's all illusion. That's not how vision happens at all.

Light bounces against your eyeballs, which causes patterns of neural firing, which (in part) cause your body to produce colors and sensations of brightness and so forth... none of which exists anywhere in the world outside your body.

Your regular experience is 100% hallucination... it's just that it is a functional hallucination, not a dysfunctional one.

 

[Piggy]

Are you claiming that what happens in the brain is not a reflection of reality?

What happens in the brain is part of a cause-effect chain which often involves causes outside the brain.

This does not make it a "reflection of reality".

If you drop a rock in a pond, are the ripples a "reflection of the stone"?

If you say no, then you have no grounds to say that what happens in the brain is a "reflection" of what happens outside of it.

 

[Piggy]

Consciousness is self-referential information processing.

As you can't help but know by now, this idea is demonstrably false because there is self-referential activity all over the brain, but not all of it is involved in consciousness. If this were true, we'd be aware of the activity of our cerebellum, but we're not.

You also cannot help but know by now that researchers agree hands-down that the mechanism is not known. (I've cited several, you've cited none.)

You also should know quite well by now why this idea is useless in any real research -- no experiment can be devised with it to study consciousness because of the first problem above.

What you are saying here is completely false, and you have no excuse to continue making the claim.

First, the definition:

• Consciousness is informational: It's about the processing and interpretation of information, and decision making. It's not about bulk physical properties.
• Consciousness is a process. Not an event. Not a thing.
• Consciousness is self-referential. It's about introspective (technically, reflective) analysis of the processing going on in the brain (not all of it, of course, it's not all accessible to conscious awareness), including itself.

What (if anything) do you mean when you say "consciousness is informational". As far as I can tell, that's an empty phrase.

Consciousness is indeed an event, not a thing -- one of the few correct statements you have made on the topic.

Consciousness does not need to be self-referential at all. Again, this is agreed upon hands-down in the field of cognitive neuroscience. But you would not know that, because you don't actually read any research on consciousness.

So, what we mean when we say consciousness is self-referential information processing. That's how the word is used. We might also imply other things, like natural language or intentionality; I have no problem with that; I'm just defining the core concept that distinguishes a conscious system from a non-conscious one.

As pointed out above, you're doing no such thing. All but one of the ideas you've expressed so far are wrong, and I've got the research on my side here.

Now, why is this reasonable?

• The brain is a computer, a pulse-coded switched network.
• The brain is structured such that self-referential loops are clearly possible.
• Sensory perception is known to be structured as a series of progressively abstract, representational filters. Consciousness need be nothing more than a filter that feeds back into itself.
• Requires no new biology.
• Doesn't contradict known biology.
• Requires no new physics.
• Doesn't contradict known physics.
• Accounts for all observed behaviours.
• Doesn't predict behaviours not observed.
• Is logically consistent.

Is it a fully detailed operational theory of how the human brain gives rise to human consciousness?

No.

Is it clearly the right place to start?

Yes.

Wrong again.

The "place to start" is observing the brain.

You know how we figured out what was going on in the interior of the sun?

By observing the sun.

Same will be true of consciousness. The strategy of the neurobiological approach, as expressed by Christof Koch in an earlier post of mine, is to investigate the neural correlates of consciousness, and from there it is hoped we will develop an explanatory theory.

When you say that "consciousness need be nothing more than a filter that feeds back into itself" you are again exposing your ignorance of what the science actually reveals, because there are any number of such "filters" in the brain (and in other non-conscious systems) and they do not all result in conscious experience.

And finally, why do you imagine that computer = pulse-coded switch network?

What exactly do you mean by that, and how does it help us understand consciousness?

 

[dlorde]

But in truth, indeed, all of your conscious experiences are "false", in that they exist only in your experience, and nowhere outside of it.

Experiences exist only in your experience? sounds tautologous.

I get what you're saying, but it comes across a little garbled.

 

[dlorde]

Consciousness is indeed an event, not a thing -- one of the few correct statements you have made on the topic.

No, he said: "Consciousness is a process. Not an event. Not a thing."

Consciousness does not need to be self-referential at all. Again, this is agreed upon hands-down in the field of cognitive neuroscience.

Interesting - got any links?

I've got the research on my side here.

Example(s)?

 

[Piggy]

Piggy was angrily incoherent, yes.

So in your opinion, citing Gazzaniga, Block, Carter, Koch, Baar, Pinker, and Ramachandran directly contradicting your claims amounts to being "angrily incoherent"?

And this somehow absolves you from having to deal with the fact that your ideas are clearly NOT being used in the field, and the fact that your claims that your ideas are mainstream are demonstrably false?

Let's call a shovel a shovel here, Pixy.

You say that the mechanism of consciousness is known and it is SRIP.

In saying this, you disagree with the actual scientists doing the research.

When confronted with this, you say well, in that case, they must be "wrong".

There's a word for this... it's called being a crank.

You also say that "the brain is a computer", yet you only cite yourself as an attempt to back up that statement. You cannot cite anyone doing research in the field today who uses that paradigm, and you couldn't have avoided seeing the video on another recent thread in which Pinker -- who uses the computational model in his books -- explains that the "brain as computer" notion is every bit as metaphorical as the "brain as plumbing" metaphor.

The biological model is making progress. That's why it is the standard in texts such as "The Cognitive Neurosciences", and why the authors of that volume argue against computational literalism (see Block's quote upthread).

For you to continue to claim that your ideas are mainstream and are in agreement with the current state of the field... well, it's just beyond the pale, Pixy.

These are crank ideas.

 

[Piggy]

No, he said: "Consciousness is a process. Not an event. Not a thing."

Name a process which is not an event.

Interesting - got any links?

Not links -- for most of my reading on this topic I use books and print articles -- but I do have some citations I can post later (I'm on lunch right now and don't have a lot of time).

But yeah, consciousness does not have to be introspective at all.

Just out of curiosity, why would you think that it would have to be?

 

[Piggy]

comp.lit == 'a complex of ideas' - as far as you can tell. Right...

Computational literalism (or opportunistic minimalism, to use Dennett's term) is the notion that your brain literally is a computer, and that consciousness may be reproduced in machines by reproducing only the syntax but not the semantics of the process... in other words, timing doesn't matter, the shape of the brain doesn't matter, you can make a conscious brain out of rope, etc.

Even Dennett admits now that this has been proven wrong by research on the brain.

 

[Piggy]

If you are comp.lit you probably do not even understand what the word consciousness means, as you have either defined it away or listened to Dennett use magic trick analogies filled with category errors to make you think there is nothing there.

I have found this to be consistently true of the comp.lits.

 

[Piggy]

I just wish people could, you know, discuss it. Piggy and you and me and Pixy, rather than just nay-say each other.

Wouldn't that be awesome ?

Yeah, it would.

I would love to get past all these phony problems and move on to the real ones.

But as long as threads on consciousness are clogged up by irrelevant discussions of AI (intelligence is not the same thing as consciousness) and non-existent conscious machines, then we're left with what we've got.

Before we can have a discussion of the neuroscience, we have to make clear why comp.lit is incorrect, because as long as folks are thinking that it might be accurate, we can't move on to making real points and talking about the science.

What I really should do, tho, is abandon these hijacked threads and get back to my thread exclusively on the contributions of brain research to our understanding of consciousness.

I just keep getting sucked back in because I can't stand it that folks are getting fleeced by bogus claims like "consciousness is self-referential information processing" and so on.

But you're right, I do need to get over it and focus on what we do know rather than fighting an endless battle with the comp.lit true believers.

 

[Piggy]

Yes. It would be great. But one side of the argument - the computational side - is monist, and the other side is dualist.

There is no dualism in the neurobiological approach.

None.

Neuroscience is going about the laborious process of exploring the neural correlates of consciousness in order to work toward an explanatory theory.

They are making great strides -- I know of no advances on your side, if such a side exists in the lab or the field -- but have not yet cracked the problem by a long shot.

There is as much "dualism" in saying that consciousness is a direct result of physical activity in the brain as there is in saying that your pulse is the direct result of physical activity in the heart.

One of the many problems with comp.lit is that it attempt to introduce the equivalent of the cosmic ether into the picutre -- non-physical computation.

For biologists, it's brain activity --> consciousness.

For y'all, it's brain activity --> logical/symbolic computation --> consciousness.

Unfortunately for y'all, science has found that this middle step, like the cosmic ether, can simply be dispensed with.

Your claims that biologists are "dualists" or are proposing solutions involving "magic" are every bit as false as your claims about SRIP.

 

[quarky]

That's easy. Because for Pixy etal nothing exists except computations. In this case in a brain.

No one has yet discussed the potential effects of dark matter and/or dark energy, 90% of the composition of the universe, on consciousness.

True. There's lots we don't know.

Its hard to keep up with this thread.
One thing that slightly disturbs me in it, is the willingness or desire of various posters to define themselves as various ".....ists".
Pragmatist; dualist; materialist, communist; etc.

(I forget which one was the commie.)

My own bizarre hunches about consciousness come from a combo of scientific study, and the ingestion of remarkable molecules...which is also sort-of sciency. I never did it in a church or a court-house, and I did take notes and measure doses and such.

Can I be excused?

 

[Piggy]

- The functioning of animal visual processing circuits
- The functioning of animal neurons
- The functioning of animal neural networks
- The functioning of animal memory
- A number of anomalies in human auditory and visual processing
- The role of language in human conscious processing
- The functioning of specific pathways in animal brains

I guess that isn't really "brain science," but then again who knows what anything is when people just make up their own meanings...

So, you're saying that you and your cohorts frequently make points about these topics and clearly demonstrate how they support your ideas?

Well, I must have missed that, because it seems to me y'all mostly spend your time discussing robots, p-zombies, rope brains, Church-Turing, and the like.

But I haven't read every post of every thread by a long shot, so let's say that you have indeed spilled a lot of ink on these topics.

Then it shouldn't be difficult for you to elaborate on how research in these fields supports computational literalism over the neurobiological approach. After all, noun phrases aren't very helpful.

Just an overview would be nice.

 

[Piggy]

Experiences exist only in your experience? sounds tautologous.

I get what you're saying, but it comes across a little garbled.

Actually, it's not a tautology, because in our everyday lives we have the impression that our conscious experience is not only in our experience... we have the sensation of looking out at the world which is out there, for example... when we look at a tree, it seems to us that we are somehow opening our eyes and experiencing something outside of us... but we're not.

 

[quarky]

I should be in a padded cell.

Nom-worthy.
A padded cell sounds somewhat soothing.

Its the damn straight-jackets I hate.

(Btw, digging your writing, Piggy.)

 

[rocketdodger]

As you can't help but know by now, this idea is demonstrably false because there is self-referential activity all over the brain, but not all of it is involved in consciousness.

"A square is a rectangle."

Piggy: " As you can't help but know, this idea is demonstrably false because there are rectangles that are not squares."

*sigh*

 

[rocketdodger]

Then it shouldn't be difficult for you to elaborate on how research in these fields supports computational literalism over the neurobiological approach.

This statement is meaningless, because there isn't a real distinction between "computational literalism" and the "neurobiological approach."

In fact I don't even know what "computational literalism" means. I just googled it and I don't see anything that looks relevant. Google doesn't lie, at least not these days.

Furthermore I don't even know what you mean to mean, because even after years of reading your rants I still honestly don't understand what your overall point is. People doing research in neurobiology and people doing research in computing deal with the same fundamental concepts of causation as every other scientist.

EDIT -- just so you can't say otherwise, here is a link: http://www.aist-pain.it/en/files/CONSCIOUSNESS/Consciousness,_Emotion_and_Imagination.pdf

That is about a robot some researchers got to move itself based on "imagining" the state that the resulting movement would lead to, using nothing but neural networks wired up somewhat similar to a known pathway in the mammalian brain. If you want me to explain in more detail I can, but suffice to say the research is 7 years old and yet it pretty much invalidates every single point you have ever tried to make in these discussions. In particular, it is 1) neurons that exist only in code controlling a real robot and 2) doing it in a manner that is similar to how our neurons might control us, at least on a very limited and simple scale.

 

[tensordyne]

Experiences exist only in your experience? sounds tautologous.

When one of the aspects of waking existence that helps to define everything else is attempted to be defined, you will often encounter similar types of statements. Sensation, for whatever reason, is fundamental to how we go about figuring things out. Sensation as a part of our models in terms of it's ontological status, need not be as fundamental (although there is nothing precluding it either).