Split Thread Science cannot explain consciousness, therefore....

[Belz...]

Your mistake: Your description is not different from the solipsist’s description: There are impressions that appear in the mind with regularity—what you call “consistence”. You call them “real” and the solipsist calls them otherwise —“wakefulness”, for example. Other impressions are not regular or have other rules. You call them “dream” and the solipsist too. Your descriptions are exactly the same. A sequence of impressions produce an idea; another sequence produces a different idea.
If your description is consistent, the solipsist’s would be too because it is the same. But you add an additional idea: the impressions you call “real” are produced by an external thing. And the solipsist replies: “I don’t know any impression of what you call real. You and I only have a set of regulated impressions. This is what you have said. Your idea is not a logical deduction for previous impressions neither. Therefore you have not any evidence of this external world. You are speaking of something that you don’t know. Your idea of external world is not a true idea, but a mere belief. An irrational belief".

I don't really care what solipsists say, because they don't believe a word of it. All that matters is that I can provide a reasonable standard for determining reality. I don't need them to accept that standard.

If it is obvious, you ought to answer my previous questions or explain why you cannot do it.

Why the confrontational tone? I've answered all your questions to the best of my ability, and now you pretend like I didn't? I'll remind you that the part of your post I was answering was AFTER the bit that I DID answer! And you even replied to the answer, so why pretend that I didn't?

 

[Cheetah]

I have no idea what you are now talking about

I must agree, that has been clear since the start of our conversation. You were here discussing solipsism, right? Yet from your comments it is was crystal clear you have no idea what a solipsist even is. I was trying to help you out and explain it to you.

The so-called "BIV" argument of philosophy, is a word-argument; an argument about, and from, a construction in the selective use of language.

It will be hard to find anyone to agree with you on that, good luck. Just the fact that you write things like this is frankly incomprehensible to me.

If you want to believe that claims such as “BIV” or Solipsism might be true

Count the times I have explicitly explained to you why this is not true and what my goals are in this discussion. Yet you persist, over and over and over again with this nonsense. You are not reading my posts, but you comment on them, even quote them. It baffles me.

I find it implausible to the point of impossibility that you comprehend Putnam's arguments, as you claim, but are unable to understand my posts, which have been exceedingly straightforward, consistent and unambiguous. I also honestly don't understand how you still cannot grasp the concept of a thought experiment.

Have you read my posts #1259, the subsequent posts? Do you understand the last few between Belz..., LarryS and me?
Note, I'm not asking if you agree, I'm asking if you understand. If there is anything you do not understand, I can attempt to clarify.

I actually see no point in continuing to try and explain a very interesting subject to someone who apparently refuses to learn anything and who's primary goal appears to be to argue and disagree. I cannot even make a simple statement and get you to say whether you agree or not. How can we have a meaningful discussion like that?
That is my impression from your conduct, I apologize if it is wrong.

I have not stated anything in the least bit controversial in any of my posts in this thread, it is all part of any introductory course on philosophy, logic and deductive reasoning.
But DON'T take my word for it, there are many free resources and courses available online that you can check out to get up to speed on the subject, that is if I am wrong and you do want to learn.

 

[Myriad]

This is something I've wondered about before, can you create a "toilet mind", a mind thinking with a brain made of toilets?
IOW can you make a BIV, but with lots of toilets instead of a brain?
Will it have a mind?
Might YOU be one and not even know it?



Intellectually I have to say YES, but it feels so wrong.

I just googled "toilet mind brain analogy" and there does not seem to be anything specifically discussing this particular thought experiment.

I'm with Darat in believing the mind is a process. It should not matter what hardware the process is implemented on, only that the process is equivalent. An equivalent process must have an equivalent experience.

An automatic toilet that flushes when it's tank is full is perfect for this, since it is equivalent to a neuron. Toilets, like neurons have a threshold, a refractory period, an action potential and a resting potential.
In theory you should be able to exactly duplicate the wiring network of a brain with pipes and all the neurons with toilets. Your supercomputer would monitor all the "motor" pipes coming from the toilet brain and have "sensory" pumps feeding it water.

The first question is whether a configuration of toilets can be computationally universal. As you point out, an automatically flushing toilet does appear to make a pretty effective switch.

One problem you have modeling a neural network with toilets is that toilets are gravity fed. The flushed water can't flow any higher than it started. So, unlike with neurons, you can't have closed loops where toilet A inputs to toilet B to toilet C, D, etc. and back to A. You can get around that by adding additional reservoirs and pumps in the pipes connecting the toilets, or by keeping the whole works under pressure. In the latter case all the "tanks" and "bowls" would be sealed, so they would no longer function as usable toilets, but thats no great loss. You wouldn't want anyone coming along and pooping in your brain anyhow. (You get enough of that here already!)

Another way around that is to use a configuration that doesn't need any closed loops. For instance, if you had an astronomical number of toilets lined up in a row, connected (in a uniform and relatively simple way) to another astronomical number of toilets in an adjacent row slightly downhill, and so forth for an astronomical number of rows, you could easily mimic the system shown here. Just prime the first row in a manner than encodes the starting configuration of a brain (or, as in the illustration, an entire toilet universe) and start them flushing.

Your thought experiment has equivalents in others that have been used to argue that AI consciousness (or in some cases even actual intelligence) is impossible, by virtue of computational universality. Any digital AI could be reproduced by an equivalent (if extremely large and slow) system of: ropes and pulleys; pipes and valves; ball bearings rolling down channels; an enormous office building filled with secretaries each moving pieces of colored paper between trays following a trivially simple set of rules (or the equivalent using trained animals); or even a single electric toy locomotive running through a suitably complex pattern of tracks and switches. The argument then points to one single element (such as the locomotive) and says, "but obviously that cannot be conscious (or intelligent, etc.) So one or more of the premises must be wrong." It's an argument from incredulity. But the conclusion that the whole system can indeed be conscious (or intelligent, etc.) might feel less wrong when one considers that the toilet construct or train track layout or whatever would have to be the size of the whole planet if not the whole solar system, and would take thousands of years to complete the equivalent computation of a single "thought."

 

[Dancing David]

This is something I've wondered about before, can you create a "toilet mind", a mind thinking with a brain made of toilets?
IOW can you make a BIV, but with lots of toilets instead of a brain?
Will it have a mind?
Might YOU be one and not even know it?



Intellectually I have to say YES, but it feels so wrong.

I just googled "toilet mind brain analogy" and there does not seem to be anything specifically discussing this particular thought experiment.

I'm with Darat in believing the mind is a process. It should not matter what hardware the process is implemented on, only that the process is equivalent. An equivalent process must have an equivalent experience.

An automatic toilet that flushes when it's tank is full is perfect for this, since it is equivalent to a neuron. Toilets, like neurons have a threshold, a refractory period, an action potential and a resting potential.
In theory you should be able to exactly duplicate the wiring network of a brain with pipes and all the neurons with toilets. Your supercomputer would monitor all the "motor" pipes coming from the toilet brain and have "sensory" pumps feeding it water.

Hi,
This sounds a like the 'paper tube and ping pong ball' computer suggested in the past on the forum, wherein a series of paper tubes, ping pong balls, springs and lifters are used to simulate a brain and produce a mind.

Your is more elegant

 

[Fudbucker]

Hi,
This sounds a like the 'paper tube and ping pong ball' computer suggested in the past on the forum, wherein a series of paper tubes, ping pong balls, springs and lifters are used to simulate a brain and produce a mind.

Your is more elegant

And here we see the absurdity that materialism entails: a system of conscious toilets, culminating in the possibility that reality is a simulation produced by one person endlessly pushing rocks around: https://xkcd.com/505/

Theists often paint themselves into some strange corners, but nothing can beat a hardcore materialist trying to explain (and in some cases deny) their own consciousness.

 

[Cheetah]

One problem you have modeling a neural network with toilets is that toilets are gravity fed. The flushed water can't flow any higher than it started. So, unlike with neurons, you can't have closed loops where toilet A inputs to toilet B to toilet C, D, etc. and back to A.

Yes thanks, I also thought each one would need a pump.

The argument then points to one single element (such as the locomotive) and says, "but obviously that cannot be conscious (or intelligent, etc.) So one or more of the premises must be wrong." It's an argument from incredulity.

It does make it very hard to accept however logical it is.

At least with the toilets, they work like neurons, filling and flushing, filling and flushing.
You should really have space proof toilets. Build it out in space, you can arrange them in their "real" positions in relation to each other and from a distance it would look like a brain. It might be easier to swallow.
You could even chat to it while traveling around at relativistic speeds.

Hi,
This sounds a like the 'paper tube and ping pong ball' computer suggested in the past on the forum, wherein a series of paper tubes, ping pong balls, springs and lifters are used to simulate a brain and produce a mind.

I tried to search for it but could not find anything.

And here we see the absurdity that materialism entails: a system of conscious toilets, culminating in the possibility that reality is a simulation produced by one person endlessly pushing rocks around: https://xkcd.com/505/

Do you have a logical reason for your skepticism, or is the idea that 100,000,000,000 mechanical things can have a minds eye, see things and think etc. just too silly to possibly be true?

 

[Fudbucker]

Yes thanks, I also thought each one would need a pump.





It does make it very hard to accept however logical it is.

At least with the toilets, they work like neurons, filling and flushing, filling and flushing.
You should really have space proof toilets. Build it out in space, you can arrange them in their "real" positions in relation to each other and from a distance it would look like a brain. It might be easier to swallow.
You could even chat to it while traveling around at relativistic speeds.




I tried to search for it but could not find anything.





Do you have a logical reason for your skepticism, or is the idea that 100,000,000,000 mechanical things can have a minds eye, see things and think etc. just too silly to possibly be true?

It is as silly as suggesting that 2+2 doesn't equal four in some part of the universe. Axioms cannot be proven, they are assumed to be true because we intuitively know they are true. They are self-evidently true.

Do you believe, for one second, that it's possible you are being simulated by someone endlessly pushing rocks around? You are a rational person, so I know you don't consider that a "live" possibility. It's as absurd as believing you might go to Hell for not believing in some guy named Jesus.

If that's what materialism entails, which seems to be the case, then materialism is wrong. Death by reductio ad absurdum.

 

[Cheetah]

It is as silly as suggesting that 2+2 doesn't equal four in some part of the universe. Axioms cannot be proven, they are assumed to be true because we intuitively know they are true. They are self-evidently true.

Do you believe, for one second, that it's possible you are being simulated by someone endlessly pushing rocks around? You are a rational person, so I know you don't consider that a "live" possibility.

As I said, I find it weird and seemingly impossible, but since I am a rational person I have to accept it.
I don't understand the highlighted bit, what do you mean? From my point of view it looks like it is you who are claiming that "2+2 doesn't equal four in some part of the universe".
Your answer seems like a claim that the same process on different hardware will not have the same result? I'm not sure, you did not actually say anything except you think it's illogical.

 

[David Mo]

I don't really care what solipsists say, because they don't believe a word of it.

It is a strange statement in a forum that deals with solipsism. If you have said this before we would not have wasted our time talking about a subject that you are not interested in.

Why the confrontational tone? I've answered all your questions to the best of my ability, and now you pretend like I didn't?

Confrontational tone? Have you answered my questions? Truly?

If you take a view of the Great Pyramid with your video camera, where is the impression of this perfectly consistent view, in your camera or outside the camera?

Let us use a neutral word: "head". You are seeing a perfectly consistent view of your computer at work. Where is the impression of your view, in your head or outside your head?

I'm sure you think they are clever, but I assure you neither of these questions even make sense.

Strange way to answer questions.

 

[Tassman]

Again: Have you read the bibliography that I put in my previous comments? Yes or not? Be honest, please.

I would be grateful if you could bring us a biology article published in a biology journal on consciousness. I'm interested.

I’m saying is that material phenomena such as consciousness are studied by the physical, natural sciences, such as biology and NOT the social sciences such as psychology. You seem to be arguing that ‘consciousness’ is more than the functioning of the living organism that is the brain. I am saying that there is no good reason for supposing consciousness cannot be investigated by the methods of physical science just as other phenomena of supposed immaterial mysteriousness have succumbed to an uncontroversial natural explanation over the centuries.

And what you think that consciousness is? A mental state.

Consciousness arises from the neurological functioning of the brain and nervous system. If you want to say it is more than the material brain then you are yet again flirting with dualism.

Idolatry is to make a god of a thing. Idolatry is to believe that science has an answer to every question and knows everything.

Recognising the proper role of science is not idolatry. Science is “The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment”. Oxford Dictionary.

Science has its limits as every human knowledge and there are many questions that science cannot answer. O.K.?

The limits of science are the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world. Our disagreement seems to be based on your assumption that ‘consciousness’ is somehow beyond the limits of the natural world and therefore beyond the scope of the physical sciences.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Hi Tassman

A natural AND(logical) physical world.

A point of note. If the world is natural, it doesn't follow with logic that the world is physical. Further if natural world means without supernatural influence, it still doesn't mean that the world is physical. The words "natural" and "physical" are not the same and it is possible to hold that the world is natural, but not physical.

In technical terms there is a difference between philosophical physicalism and methodological naturalism or if you like a physical monism and a neutral monism.
Or in other words that the world is physical can be a philosophical claim and is connected to what you believe science is.

 

[Cheetah]

I don't think they really disagree about anything.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

I don't think they really disagree about anything.

Well, I do think that.

If the world is physical (ALL of the world in all aspects); i.e. reducible to only strict physical scientific terms then all questions can be answered using scientific physics.
If that is not the case, it could be that the world is natural, but not physical.

 

[Cheetah]

I just got the feeling they are largely arguing past each other. Hopefully your comment:

If the world is natural, it doesn't follow with logic that the world is physical. Further if natural world means without supernatural influence, it still doesn't mean that the world is physical. The words "natural" and "physical" are not the same and it is possible to hold that the world is natural, but not physical.

...will clear things up.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

I just got the feeling they are largely arguing past each other. Hopefully your comment:...will clear things up.

Yes, I hope so.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Context:
We are now within a natural world, so no supernatural claim, woo-woo, CT and what not.

So you can ask the following question: Within this world is there at least one question which science can't answer?
And the answer is yes! Using science you can't answer if killing another human is wrong or not.
Moral answers are not magical, supernatural, woo-woo, CT and what not but such all the answers are subjective and a case of bias, where as science is objective and without bias.

So as a result of how a scientist uses her/his cognition, she/he can't do science and morality about what behaviors are right or wrong, except when it comes to what behavior is scientific or not.
In other words moral subjectivity is natural and can be observed by scientists, but not replicated as behavior when do scientific behavior.

The same is the case for the word "physical", "physical" is a limited human behavior in regards to the natural world. All behavior is natural, but no all behavior is physical.

 

[IanS]

I'd have happily paid a dollar - to have been in the room when Einstein introduced the train/lightening thought experiment - - - and someone yells out "that impossible"

So you and Larry are now comparing yourselves to Einstein? And giving yourselves a big thumbs up. Suggesting that Einstein was misunderstood and ridiculed in conferences for his explanation of relativity, and saying that you two are so equally brilliant that you are misunderstood geniuses for explaining why the world may be the unreality of solipsism & claiming we really might all be just a brain in an aliens vat … and you think that makes you comparable to Einstein!?

And by the way, people did not ridicule Einstein at research conferences. And his theory was immediately accepted for publication in real physics research journals. And that was because it was solid science with a rigorous mathematical foundation. Whereas in this whole thread you have spent the entire time producing precisely nothing … no evidence at all, and not even a hand-waving word-explanation to show how solipsist un-reality could be true. And the same goes for the silly BIV claims too – no evidence and no explanation. Nothing at all, zero.

 

[Pixel42]

So you can ask the following question: Within this world is there at least one question which science can't answer?
And the answer is yes! Using science you can't answer if killing another human is wrong or not.

You can if you first define 'wrong'. For example if you define 'wrong' as anything that causes a net increase in human suffering and 'right' as anything which causes a net decrease in human suffering then you can determine that killing a doctor who is saving lives is wrong and killing someone who is in the middle of a killing spree is right.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

So you and Larry are now comparing yourselves to Einstein? And giving yourselves a big thumbs up. Suggesting that Einstein was misunderstood and ridiculed in conferences for his explanation of relativity, and saying that you two are so equally brilliant that you are misunderstood geniuses for explaining why the world may be the unreality of solipsism & claiming we really might all be just a brain in an aliens vat … and you think that makes you comparable to Einstein!?

And by the way, people did not ridicule Einstein at research conferences. And his theory was immediately accepted for publication in real physics research journals. And that was because it was solid science with a rigorous mathematical foundation. Whereas in this whole thread you have spent the entire time producing precisely nothing … no evidence at all, and not even a hand-waving word-explanation to show how solipsist un-reality could be true. And the same goes for the silly BIV claims too – no evidence and no explanation. Nothing at all, zero.

True and evidence are not the same. Truth is the domain of philosophy, logic and mathematics, where as evidence is the domain of the natural sciences. So to ask for the truth of solipsism is not the same as to ask for evidence for solipsism. Further we go down the rabbit hole of what the unknown is, because we are debating the limits of epistemology.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

You can if you first define 'wrong'. For example if you define 'wrong' as anything that causes a net increase in human suffering and 'right' as anything which causes a net decrease in human suffering then you can determine that killing a doctor who is saving lives is wrong and killing someone who is in the middle of a killing spree is right.

You haven't used science. The operative word "define" is subjective and not objective, because it is done by someone with bias and without scientific observation. You can't observe moral right and wrong in the sense of scientific observation.

I can't explain this to you, unless you understand that what you describe is a case of subjective behavior and not natural science behavior. It is human behavior all right, but not science.