The Hard Problem of Gravity

[westprog]

And I've won my bet.

The capacity to win bets with oneself doesn't necessarily add up to a sound argument. Try making bets with other people.

 

[westprog]

There are other people who can vouch for your unconsciousness during your period of 'missing time'. Not only that, but there is technology available to monitor one's brain active during waking and sleeping. The periods of time during which people [and some other species of animals] have dreams take place during a particular phase of the sleep cycle called REM sleep [e.g. Random Eye Movement]. There are very different physiological states, in the brain and body, during the different phases of waking and sleeping and there is abundant scientific evidence that during a person's missing time they are indeed unconscious.

The sense of time is also highly erratic when asleep. It's quite easy to think one has dreamed for hours while only asleep a few moments.

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

Consciousness is the property that indicates that living material has special properties. Only living material has produced consciousness, as far as we know. Otherwise life would just be some interesting chemical reactions.

Consciousness is a more basic property than life.

So your definition of "living material" is ==> that <== living material has "conscious properties"?

 

[Third Eye Open]

So your definition of "living material" is ==> that <== living material has "conscious properties"?

Yes, things are conscious if they are alive, and alive if they are conscious. What's so hard about that?

 

[Beth]

Yes, things are conscious if they are alive, and alive if they are conscious. What's so hard about that?

So you feel that bacteria are conscious?

 

[Third Eye Open]

So you feel that bacteria are conscious?

No. I was trying to pan westprogs circular definitions. I failed.

 

[westprog]

So your definition of "living material" is ==> that <== living material has "conscious properties"?

No, I didn't say that. I didn't define living material. I just said that only living material has so far produced consciousness.

One could just assume that consciousness could be produced by non-living material, but I don't know on what basis. We don't know how consciousness is produced, and it may well be that whatever produces it has to be alive.

 

[westprog]

Well, that would require a mathematical model of consciousness.

Which is what you seem to be asserting can't exist currently.

So which is it? Can we model consciousness mathematically, or can't we?

Clearly we can't. Maybe we will be able to do so at some stage. Maybe it's not possible.

 

[PixyMisa]

That's fairly typical for the big AI breakthroughs. I expect that back then they assumed that nearly forty years on they'd have intelligent robots in every house. Instead they've nearly mastered walking.

Exactly the point.

SHDLU is conscious. This was achieved 40 years ago.

And we discovered that consciousness is not all that complex or interesting - as a research subject - and moved on to the tasks that are.

As a practical software development tool, of course, consciousness is extremely useful. It's just that we did the research, it's a solved problem, and there are other kittens of the sea to fry.

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

No, I didn't say that. I didn't define living material. I just said that only living material has so far produced consciousness.

But at what level of investigation do you make the distinction between "living" and "non-living" material as such?

 

[westprog]

Yes, things are conscious if they are alive,

No, not necessarily.

and alive if they are conscious.

Yes, invariably.

What's so hard about that?

Not much.

 

[Robin]

Of course it does.

So when you says "exists" you basically include "happens".

The point of my example is that every object that we observe exists in the same sense as 'running'. Atoms are what their constituents do -- literally. We may assume their existence to be a given fact.

Again, by "exists" you include "happens".

Okay then, if you insist, one can rephrase to say that we know consciousness happens. That does not change the fact that its a given reality.

What I am getting at is that the words we use to describe something influence the conclusions we draw from them. If we say that "consciousness exists" we are forcing ourselves the card that consciousness is some sort of a substance

 

[Robin]

Well, that would require a mathematical model of consciousness.

Which is what you seem to be asserting can't exist currently.

So which is it? Can we model consciousness mathematically, or can't we?

Clearly we can't. Maybe we will be able to do so at some stage. Maybe it's not possible.

I am not sure that you are correct there. I would have thought that the test of whether we can model consciousness mathematically is if we can make testable predictions about purely subjective experience.

Clinicial trials for drug therapies to alleviate depression seem to suggest we can.

 

[Belz...]

There are other people who can vouch for your unconsciousness during your period of 'missing time'. Not only that, but there is technology available to monitor one's brain active during waking and sleeping. The periods of time during which people [and some other species of animals] have dreams take place during a particular phase of the sleep cycle called REM sleep [e.g. Random Eye Movement]. There are very different physiological states, in the brain and body, during the different phases of waking and sleeping and there is abundant scientific evidence that during a person's missing time they are indeed unconscious.

What I said before, assuming you read it, is that there is no missing time, as far as I'm concerned. Even a verifiable sleep time of only a minute or two can and will result in a dream of similar duration. Explain.

 

[Belz...]

Humans, and other critters, are analogous to the synthetic devices we call machines in that they utilize energy to perform functions. The difference is that the machines humans humans have developed, as of now, do not meet the criteria of being living biological entities.

I would like to know exactly how you distinguish "living" from "non-living", given that even scientists in the field of biology cannot agree on such a distinction. Machines and people are both things, and they operate in different ways for sure, but there is no fundamental difference that would make consciousness possible in one but not the other without evidence.

Machines are a class of technology, meaning that they are inanimate devices utilized by a living creature(s) to perform functions;

I smell a hint of dualism, here.

Perhaps one day we will actually have 'machines' that meet the criteria of being actual living entities. Until humans learn to create synthetic life machines will always just be inanimate tools.

Then tell me, what, exactly, would YOU consider "life" that were synthetic ? Where would you draw the line and how could you distinguish it from non-life ?

 

[Belz...]

Consciousness is the property that indicates that living material has special properties. Only living material has produced consciousness, as far as we know. Otherwise life would just be some interesting chemical reactions.

Consciousness is a more basic property than life.

This makes no sense, whatsoever.

Up to a certain point, only the Lumière Brothers and Edison had made movies. It didn't mean that the Lumières and Edison had special properties and that only they could produce movies, as far as people back then knew.

Also, there is no reason to believe that "life" or "conciousness" is a matter of composition, but rather of function.

 

[Belz...]

No, I didn't say that. I didn't define living material.

No but you claimed that living material is different from non-living material and I, for one, would like to know in what way.

 

[Mercutio]

I'll unapologetically move the goalpost and claim that I'm talking solely about the mapping on V1, which coincidentally, happens to be the most firmly defensible "image". I'll explain why I'm moving the goalpost shortly.

ok...

Then assume we disagree. That's fine. But we disagree about what exactly?

About what constitutes an image, apparently.

[snip]

The rest of the brain. The only qualification I need for a meaningful "homunculi" is listed above--I need a "little man" looking at, and gleaning information from, in large part, a "theater screen". That completes, for me, every fundamental aspect needed to make a metaphore. "Little man", formally, to me, means anything smaller than the whole theater. Given the qualifications above, which I deem devil's advocate like but certainly very fair to the analogy, there's a perfectly viable "Cartesian Theater", that actually happens to describe vision.

Should you mean something different by Cartesian Theater, I'd like to hear it. Specifically, though, I would like to note that CT, as far as I understand it, is an analogy invented by Dennett, and furthermore, he specifically claims that it's something people ascribe to without even knowing they're participating in dualistic thinking, and using "such a terrible idea". From a devil's advocate viewpoint, I'm going to claim that all of the accusations of dualism are nothing more than meaningless connotation, and that all that's really being done by proposing a Cartesian Theater is proposing that there's a partition with those pieces... i.e., if I try to find the raw meaning behind the CT removed from all of these reasons why I'm supposedly not supposed to have one, I wind up with a mere description of structure, not some grand dualistic metaphysics. Again, this is from a devil's advocate view, but I'm seriously flirting with the possibility that this isn't an inaccurate description of the situation.[snip]

The analogy is poor, though. What actually happens in the visual cortex is nothing like the blind man parable. What happens is more like this:

First off, the men aren't blind--they are just nearly blind. Second, they aren't standing at different parts of the elephant. They're gathered in a crowd, in somewhat of line talking to each other. The guy in the front is staring at the elephant--the entire elephant, mind you, but he is mostly blind. He notes: "Hmmm... there's something over here", waving his arms, "and over here, and here...", etc, simultaneously (sorry, it's a poor analogy) pointing to all of the places where there seem to be things. The second man in line takes a look at it and says, "hmmm... hearing everything you just said, it sounds like the stuff over here is sort of oriented this way, and the stuff over here, is sort of oriented that way", etc... simultaneously talking about rough qualities of the entire elephant. The next man hearing this says, "yeah, it's like it has this sort of shape" to the second man, who agrees since that fits what he said (though he, like many of us, changes his mind midway in the details, but it's mostly like he said, except for the shapeliness pointed out by the third guy), etc.

In other words, these are not blind men playing with what one thinks is a rope, what one thinks is a hose, what one thinks of as a tree, etc., standing at different parts of the elephant. The brain could work this way on the vision problem, it just doesn't. Each man is picking out certain kinds of things from the whole image--except when they don't, but even when they don't, and they're working with portions, it's still a specialized aspect of the image they work on. They just plain aren't splitting the elephant up and handing it to each other.

But there are images, and viewers. In spirit, it sounds pretty much like what the Cartesian Theater presumably is supposed to do in itself--only it seems there are multiple layers of it (with feedback signals). I'm not quite sure where the CT aspect actually falls on its face.
Right, but that much I can figure out before even bothering with a posteriori.
[snip]

Ok, I have cut quite a bit out, because it is a huge post and I don't want to get sidetracked. If you think I cut out anything you want addressed specifically, just let me know.

Anyway... Descartes, of course, named the pineal gland as the place where everything came together. The cartesian theatre has a show (conscious experience) and an audience (the self); your version, whether the blind men and the elephant or the neurological story, has the players as the audience, the audience as players, in an active interaction. I can't disagree with that; while you are calling "the rest of the brain" the audience [ok, I am assuming you did not mean that literally--is the cerebellum part of an audience?--but I take your meaning], you also recognize that this "audience" is composed of multiple independent pathways, which need not communicate with one another at all (I don't doubt that some do). This "audience" actively influences the "show"--enough so that it really is part of the show. You are calling it an observer, but of course the only real way to connect all these independent processes is to look at the person as a whole. Which, of course, I agree with. If I read you correctly, the only place to point to to answer "where is consciousness?", is the entire person. (I would add their history of interaction with their social environment--I would hope you would too, but that is not in your post.) This is not where consciousness is generated; it is what consciousness is. It is the behavior, public and private, of the individual.

What I rail against, in the form of the cartesian theatre, is the notion that consciousness is generated, that it is given rise to, that it is somehow a qualitatively different something (it is never certain exactly what, if you have followed this thread). Those phrases assume a different ontological status for consciousness (Dennett makes this his metaphorical "show" in the theatre, with conscious experience projected in the mind for the self to view), and any scientific attempt to to find this non-natural phenomenon is doomed to failure (faced with such a task, the moniker "hard problem" is an understatement).

 

[Mercutio]

Another really long post to answer... I will do this bit by bit as time allows...

That's the thing. One can never reach 'ultimate truth' because one's understanding of reality is always incomplete; one's relation to the truth can be refined indefinitely. The question is, what level of truth are you content with? To an individual who does not work in any field of science the geocentric view might be perfectly practical; of course they would be doing themselves a disservice by not learning what they can about what we currently know about the solar system and the universe at large.

Wow... you really don't get it. Of course I want to understand as much as I possibly can. And I want to be as right as I possibly can. What I do not want to do is make **** up. I would love to know "the truth", but I recognize that the only criteria I have is usefulness. It is the only one you have, too.

Personally, I find that kind of incurious attitude baffling. Going thru school, I've often been stunned by comments by classmates who complained that learning such-n-such is "such a waste of time" because it would have no practical use for what they would be doing after completing school. How could one not want to learn about and understand as much as they could?

Incurious? Incurious? Wow. You may have latched onto "usefulness" or "pragmatic" incorrectly. As I said, usefulness includes the ability to explain. It does not have to fix my plumbing, or put money in my pocket. I want to know as much as I can, as accurately as I can. I am not interested in certainty; look at Iacchus's posts to find someone who was absolutely certain and absolutely wrong. I have rejected your view not because I don't want to explore it, but because I have explored it, and much more, for years, and it does not explain what needs to be explained.

I remember hearing an anecdote [I don't remember who told it or if the parties in the story were real persons] in which a physicist requests government funding for a particle accelerator. When asked if it would advance the interest of national defense the physicist replied to the effect of, "It would make the nation more worth defending." I can relate to such a statement. I strongly feel that there is great value to gaining truth and knowledge for their own sakes; application merely follows from their natural value.

Again, you are completely misunderstanding what pragmatic utility is. The ability to better explain something, even if that something is purely abstract knowledge, is pragmatic. There is no "mere application" about it.

It seems that your temperament is of a more strictly pragmatic nature so you may not value 'truth' to the same degree or in the same sense that I do. While I suppose I can respect such a difference, I find it extremely difficult to relate to. /shrug

Not understanding has that effect sometimes.

My rejection of your view has nothing to do with any personality limitations I might have. Look at my posting history if you want to know whether I can experience wonder. Sorry, there is another possibility; you may simply be wrong.

 

[AkuManiMani]

What I am getting at is that the words we use to describe something influence the conclusions we draw from them. If we say that "consciousness exists" we are forcing ourselves the card that consciousness is some sort of a substance

Ack! I didn't intend to give the impression that I believed consciousness is some kinda substance, or what have you. If I led you to believe that that is what I meant I apologize