On Consciousness

[dlorde]

Who is that person being aware of being unaware?

It's you, silly!

You become consciously aware that your perceptual processing is generating a misleading representation of the world, because it conflicts with a more reliable source of information.

 

[lenny]

Eddies form in a fluid simulation that uses the Navier Stokes equations, you can not predict the formation of an eddy current from the initial conditions, maths or equations or algorithms.

In fact, given that you say this is a simulation you CAN predict the formation. (given the same computer, code, and compiler). Indeed this fact was central to Lorenz's decision to study the equations that now carry his name.

The river just creates them randomly with enough time added to the equations, they are chaotic events.

So are you saying the equations govern the river? Or that the river can create random things?

Chaos, in the sense of navior-stokes is not random, no?

 

[quarky]

It's you, silly!

You become consciously aware that your perceptual processing is generating a misleading representation of the world, because it conflicts with a more reliable source of information.

Yes,
But armed with such awareness, couldn't one train his brain to create other versions of missing data, and fill in alternate blanks in those optical delusions?

I trained my eyes to see the 3d figure in the stereo-pictures that initially look like random blobs of color. It requires focusing in the distance, right through the picture, and its a thing we don't normally do.
(hopefully, you know of these stereo art works i speak of)

Once you get your gaze right on one of those pictures, you can hold it like that and go outside and perceive a whole new world.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Yes,
But armed with such awareness, couldn't one train his brain to create other versions of missing data, and fill in alternate blanks in those optical delusions?

Yes. When you do it with your sensory cortices we call it "illusion." When you do it with your prefrontal cortex we call it "delusion."

 

[Zeuzzz]

I'll agree they can make it SEEM LIKE these barriers have dissolved, but that does not mean they actually did dissolve. You need to get better at seeing the difference between reality and the impression of reality.


I did not mean physically dissolve neurons, I am talking about dissolving barriers in your mind. Big difference, the brain, mind and consciousness are three different beasts, with the mind and brain lying somewhere on a spectrum of conscious experience. The brain is a very neuroplastic thing, you can rewire it as you choose effectively if you really put a lot of effort into it. Even if shortly after using a psychedelic your brain returns to as it was before you still have a choice of whether to re-enforce what you learnt on the psychedelic to retain that perspective and vivify it into your everyday perspective or to shrug it off as all a hallucination and return to lazy cultural ways of thinking. Which ever you decide to do the key is that it's this choice of free will that determines what people learn or don't learn.

This is inherently evident with people who have suffered most of their lives with post traumatic stress disorder. They seem shut off to the world emotionally and distant, and sometimes all it takes is one dose of MDMA to enable them to relive and remember locked away memories and surround the distressing memories with a sort of empathic glow, making them easier to come to terms with. People have been cured after one dose where years of prescription medications and counselling has failed them. Because they are so relieved that the MDMA has lifted their symptoms they are able to continue with this mindset indefinitely and rewire their brain from this positive state they were not able to achieve before. It's currently in phase two clinical trials with a truly remarkable cure rate.

Psychedelics cause brain failures

Define brain failure. Also any case studies where a responsible dose of a psychedelic (a true psychedelic that effects consciousness mainly but not so much the mind, enabling clear thinking throughout the experience) causes brain failure.

making it SEEM LIKE you are one with your washing machine. Brain failures give us clues about how our mental machinery works, and that's terrific, but they are not evidence of a non-computational basis.

They are not evidence for a non computational basis. But yet again the converse of what you say makes more sense to me. The biggest brain failures are those that think with cultural or social blinders on, even some scientists are susceptible to it, sometimes people fall into lazy habits of thinking without recognising that everything they learn was at once a brand new idea written down on paper that had never been thought before; every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Feel free to try to program meaning or creativity into a machine. I would very much like to know how this programming will turn out any different than previous programs in terms of consciousness. Randomness, feedbacks, artificial selection or indeterminability is not creativity or consciousness.

Oh, cool, Dennett's TED Talk "The Illusion of Consciousness" is online,and it's only 22 minutes.

I have watched many of Denetts talks, and commented on his work here before when Pixy linked to a thesis. I generally like his talks, but it doesn't hide the fact that Dennet generally appears to just be a bit dumb. He's a materialist and a strong Neural Neodarwinist, still believes that our lives are predetermined by laws of physics and free will is an illusion. A view of which there is little support for nowadays.

Was there a point in general from that talk you want to discuss here?

I hope the highlighting isn't bothering people. I'm trying to help Zuezzz pick up the salient points.

Thanks for making what I have to directly reply to so clear. Italicizing will do just fine if you feel I am dodging points of contention.

 

[quarky]

Suppose we trace a thought backwards in the brain.
Imagine that the thought was one that became the seed for something much larger, for good or evil.
Retracing the fractal branching, there comes a point wherein something gives a command, of sorts, to instigate the activity.
Next thing you know, there's pyramids and stuff.

meditation offers an examination of such process.

I'm going to start a new thread on what meditation is and does.

 

[blobru]

The urge to act (to test theory against reality, improve, work towards a goal; fear of stasis, boredom) overcoming the urge not to act (idleness, rest, relaxation; fear of change, consequences, disorientation) makes sense to me; and is how i experience it, occasionally at least, i think, though i've never meditated on it (afaik; wouldn't know meditation if i stepped in it).

 

[quarky]

cool, blobru.

does that mean you'll check out my new thread about meditation?

It will, hopefully, be not very obnoxious.

I don't do it anymore, but not proud about that either.
I don't jog anymore either.

But I feel as though my descriptions of experiences might lend a hand in the argument about consciousness. Not that I have a horse in that race...I mostly have notes to share.

 

[blobru]

Cool, q.

As far as experiences and consciousness go, the one that seems most relevant to me is quite common and non-psychedelic: hitting one's thumb with a hammer. It makes the frequency that pain throbs at most obvious, and the probable connection between it and the frequency of chains of neurons pulsing in the thalamus and cortex: i.e., the gamma wave (25-100 Hz) frequency associated with awareness (roughly a half to two throbs per second - ouch!). While it's not clear what it is about the synchronous firing of large groups of certain neurons that might lead to consciousness, whenever I hit my thumb with a hammer and feel that gamma wave throbbing away, the implication it's basic to consciousness is hard to deny.

Studies have shown meditation affects gamma wave synchronization and propagation in the brain, so it figures the experience, your notes, might lend a hand; even if not, still worth sharing (as I say, I've never meditated that I know of - is it something you can do accidentally? - so new ground for me).

 

[PixyMisa]

It is not so much a question of the stuff, as a question of flexibility.

Digital computers [snip] only map one big integer into another big integer.

That's true of everything in the Universe, and indeed, of the Universe as a whole.

In short: they fall short well before normal "stuff" falls short.

In short, you have to actually demonstrate this, not simply assert it.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Define brain failure.

It's when the brain makes an incorrect conclusion about reality from its inputs. Brain failures are exposed by optical illusions. They show how poorly our brains sometimes work. The reason why brains fail is because they're made of modules that serve useful purposes that only on balance (51% advantageous vs. 49% disadvantageous) become copied to the next generation.

The agency detection module is a great example. It tends to register false positives, which are less harmful than false negatives. E.g. it's safer to think there's a tiger in the brush when there isn't, than to think there's no tiger hiding when there is. The first time I was on acid, I saw a friendly face smiling back at me (conscious of me) in the wood grain pattern of a door. That's a brain failure, because there was no conscious being actually there. Psychedelics cause brain failures, which are interesting because they sometimes expose how the brain works, but don't expose much direct truth to the mind experiencing them about the nature of the mind, especially if you take the impressions at face value.

Was there a point in general from that talk you want to discuss here?

Yes. He expounds on how our brains create illusions to us about what they are really doing, and how self-introspection can give you a false picture of how your brain (consciousness) works. You seem to be immune to this message. I think your ego won't let you see what a mess your brain is. Everyone's brain is a mess. That's just the way brains evolved.

The impression that our brains are more than data processing is due to brain failure. So, to successfully build a conscious machine, we would have to program it to be vulnerable to that failure.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Cool, q.

As far as experiences and consciousness go, the one that seems most relevant to me is quite common and non-psychedelic: hitting one's thumb with a hammer. It makes the frequency that pain throbs at most obvious, and the probable connection between it and the frequency of chains of neurons pulsing in the thalamus and cortex: i.e., the gamma wave (25-100 Hz) frequency associated with awareness (roughly a half to two throbs per second - ouch!). While it's not clear what it is about the synchronous firing of large groups of certain neurons that might lead to consciousness, whenever I hit my thumb with a hammer and feel that gamma wave throbbing away, the implication it's basic to consciousness is hard to deny.

Studies have shown meditation affects gamma wave synchronization and propagation in the brain, so it figures the experience, your notes, might lend a hand; even if not, still worth sharing (as I say, I've never meditated that I know of - is it something you can do accidentally? - so new ground for me).

Hertz is cycles per second, not per minute.

Your throbbing thumb is feeling your pulse.

 

[blobru]

Yes it is; good catch. Thanks. ('scuse me, i have a theory of consciousness to dispose of...)

 

[Zeuzzz]

Yes. He expounds on how our brains create illusions to us about what they are really doing, and how self-introspection can give you a false picture of how your brain (consciousness) works. You seem to be immune to this message. I think your ego won't let you see what a mess your brain is. Everyone's brain is a mess. That's just the way brains evolved.

Brains don't play tricks on us any more than a computer plays tricks on us. A brain does what it's designed to do, like a computer. I would say it's the mind that interprets the data from the brain incorrectly, and gets the wrong meaning from the data. And then you can become conscious of the mistake retrospectively by testing your minds interpretation in many situations. Three steps, three separate things. Brain, mind consciousness.

The impression that our brains are more than data processing is due to brain failure.

It's due to empirical evidence; no computer has ever attained a level that anyone would regard as near complete human consciousness in it's scope.

What I seem to find is missing from all this is how you are modelling our senses with a computer algorithm. Lets take our ear for example. The sound wave comes in and ends up in the basila membrane which responds in a wave-like manner creating a travelling wave. Travelling waves along the basila membrane move the fluid and push the hair cells causing them to fire nerve impulses which travel along the auditory nerve towards the brain.

Where in this process can you program music appreciation for a machine since even neuroscientists have not worked out exactly where in the process we hear the music? Also we do not know how the auditory nerve encodes the data and where it is read and interpreted as music.

Can machines compose masterpieces yet?

 

[Mr. Scott]

Brains don't play tricks on us any more than a computer plays tricks on us.

It's a figure of speech. You were fooled by your brain, though your brain obviously never intended to fool you. It's a side effect of how it does what it does.

Can machines compose masterpieces yet?

That's what I call epic-level moving the goalposts^WP.

Have you composed a masterpiece yet? No? Does that mean you are not conscious? I think dogs are conscious, even though they have not composed masterpieces. This thread is about any consciousness, not just human.

The brain has had a billion years to evolve in a lab the size of the planet. We've been working on AI for only some 60 years.

Before Deep Blue, experts really did say computers would never master chess. All this goal post movement serves only to protect our egos.
We're working on it. Never say never.

Here's an assignment for you, Zeuzzz. What animal has the most minimal form of consciousness that you can think of? Do you assert we'd never duplicate its behavior in a machine, even if we worked on it for a million years?

 

[dlorde]

He ... still believes that our lives are predetermined by laws of physics and free will is an illusion. A view of which there is little support for nowadays.

Little support from whom?

Are you suggesting there is little support for the view that our lives are determined by the laws of physics?

Or did you mean there's little support for the view that free will is an illusion?

If the latter, you'll need to clarify what kind of free will you mean. I would expect Dennet to be happy with compatibilist free will but not metaphysical libertarian free will.

 

[dlorde]

Brains don't play tricks on us any more than a computer plays tricks on us. A brain does what it's designed to do, like a computer. I would say it's the mind that interprets the data from the brain incorrectly, and gets the wrong meaning from the data.

The data comes from the sensory nerves, not the brain. The brain processes (interprets?) that data into perceptions (information), some of which become available to conscious awareness. The bulk of the failures to correctly represent external reality come from limitations of the senses and particularly, the early algorithmic stages of processing that produce perceptions. Here the failures are generally artefacts of the processing techniques or algorithms applied to the data. Whether these algorithmic processing stages are part of the 'mind' depends on how you define the mind... ultimately it's all brain processing.

... we do not know how the auditory nerve encodes the data and where it is read and interpreted as music.

Er, yes, we do. It is frequency encoded directly, so the frequencies of the music are directly represented in the neural signal frequencies. It is the only sense to directly represent its input this way.

Musical appreciation involves nearly every region and subsystem of the brain, using functional segregation for aspects such as pitch, tempo, timbre, etc. Processing starts subcortical, in the cochlear nuclei, brain stem, & cerebellum, then moves up to the auditory cortices on either side, before involving the hippocampus, inferior frontal cortex, and, for lyrics, the language centres. Emotional responses are mediated by the deeper structures, the cerebellar vermis and amygdala. These pathways for music processing are quite well researched. I recommend 'This Is Your Brain On Music' by Daniel J. Levitin as a good popular introduction.

Can machines compose masterpieces yet?

Probably not - it depends how you define 'masterpiece'. They can imitate the great composers, and they can be musically creative in their own right, and they can learn from example. Some 'in the style of' CG compositions have impressed the experts.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Er, yes, we do. It is frequency encoded directly, so the frequencies of the music are directly represented in the neural signal frequencies. It is the only sense to directly represent its input this way.

Musical appreciation involves nearly every region and subsystem of the brain, using functional segregation for aspects such as pitch, tempo, timbre, etc. Processing starts subcortical, in the cochlear nuclei, brain stem, & cerebellum, then moves up to the auditory cortices on either side, before involving the hippocampus, inferior frontal cortex, and, for lyrics, the language centres. Emotional responses are mediated by the deeper structures, the cerebellar vermis and amygdala. These pathways for music processing are quite well researched. I recommend 'This Is Your Brain On Music' by Daniel J. Levitin as a good popular introduction.

Already read it. It was a great book, got it for Christmas last year.

I think your view is a bit of a dated one, it was over a century ago that William Rutherford first introduced this idea by proposing that the frequency information of a pure-tone acoustic waveform might simply be conveyed along the auditory nerve by a neuron firing at a rate equal to the frequency of the sinusoidal stimulus, ie, The Temporal Theory of Pitch Discrimination. This was later shown to be unfeasible for representing the frequency of stimuli above 1KHz, a maximum action potential transmission rate (limited by the refractory period of the nerve cell) for the faster firing neurons in the nervous system being only about 1000 times a second (Langner G. (1992) Periodicity Coding in the Auditory System. Hearing Research, Vol. 60: pp 115-142)

From what I remember you can go even more in depth about the music in the brain, but there is no consensus as to how the music is encoded or where any such data ends up. Ascending auditory pathways and nuclei in the human brain have a parallel organisation and the sound arriving at the cochlear is first converted to nerve impulses and transmitted along the 8th cranial nerve to the cochlear nucleus. Most of the axons of cells in this nucleus then lead to the first site of contralateral integration in the auditory system: the superior olivary complex. From here, neurons stem towards the primary auditory cortex (located in the temporal lobe) via the lateral lemniscus, inferior colliculus and medial geniculate nucleus.

Another theory, know as the 'Volley Principle' has also been proposed. It explains how higher audible frequencies could be encoded using the impulses from several collaborative neurons. Wever suggests that if two or more excitable cells were to alternate the transmission of their impulses corresponding to every oscillatory stimulus fluctuation, then the sum of the activity could capture the periodicity of higher-frequency (>1KHz) acoustic sounds.

Since then phase-locked firing of neurons has been demonstrated, comprising the 8th cranial nerve in response to pure-tone stimuli with frequencies considerably faster than 1KHz. A further investigation confirmed this [Rose et al, 1968], noting that single fibres of the auditory nerve would discharge at intervals grouped around integral multiples of the period of the stimulus tone for frequencies below 5KHz. This implies collaborative neural efforts, appropriate to Wever’s Volley Principle, in conveying the necessary frequency information towards the superior olivary complex and instantaneous phase-locked firing of neurons.

Probably not - it depends how you define 'masterpiece'. They can imitate the great composers, and they can be musically creative in their own right, and they can learn from example. Some 'in the style of' CG compositions have impressed the experts.

Evidence?

Would love to see how creative the music they make is.

 

[quarky]

A point I've mentioned several times, which is where the fun is, imho, when discussing consciousness, is the instigation of the mostly mechanical process.

This is the part, that so far, can't be explained with a mechanical model.
Or does the machine decide to turn itself on?

I plan to delve further into it in the meditation thread, so as to not water down this one.

 

[dlorde]

I think your view is a bit of a dated one

Possibly - although I was going by University of Washington course notes from 2006, at least 8 years more recent than the dated sources you quoted:

20.4.3.Sources of information about pitch

The range of frequencies to which auditory neurons respond varies as a function of sound intensity. However, the same number (or rate) of spikes can be evoked by a low-intensity sound at best frequency or a high intensity sound at a lower frequency. Therefore, there is not an unambiguous labeled line code for pitch. The information on which we base pitch judgements takes the form of a spatially -distributed population code as well as a temporal code.​

The place code for pitch.

For any given sound frequency, auditory nerve fibers from a specific part of the cochlea are active. Information about pitch can be derived from knowing which fibers are active, especially the relative amounts of activity in different fibers across the population.​

The temporal code for pitch.

For any given sound frequency up to about 5000 Hz, auditory nerve fibers fires action potentials that are phaselocked to the waveform of the sound. By examining the distribution of action potentials over time, it is possible to derive a good estimate of the pitch of the sound. Information about pitch can also be derived from patterns of amplitude modulation of a high-frequency sound because auditory nerve fibers phaselock to the modulation cycle.
​

Probably not - it depends how you define 'masterpiece'. They can imitate the great composers, and they can be musically creative in their own right, and they can learn from example. Some 'in the style of' CG compositions have impressed the experts.

Evidence?

Would love to see how creative the music they make is.

It was in a TV documentary I saw some years ago. If you're really that keen, I'm sure a brief google should find plenty of similar stuff.