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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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That this apparently conflicts with your worldview is your problem.
So you're proposing that chemicals in and of themselves are thoughts? Good luck with that. Likewise you propose the brain itself is thoughts? Preposterous. Intuition alone declares otherwise.
The structure of the brain is just that. It produces thoughts but those thoughts enjoy both a close relationship to, and a separateness from, the structure that produced them. A brain may have no thoughts if it suffers trauma yet it can remain an intact structure both as structure and chemically.
Education? Training? You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Preposterous...
You severely underestimate the roles of emergence and functionality in your posts and presumably your thoughts.
Is (a) the electrical resonance phenomenon (in an LC circuit) or (b) tornado phenomenon (in atmospherics) a single individual component? or else output of a single individual component.
Beta: Take some systems engineering courses that over months to years emphasize and illustrate (the magic of) emergence and (the power, competence and wonder of) functionality and then.. post up.
The circumstantial evidence for brain as a complex, exquisite perception system (giving rise to all the terms used in this thread- subjective experience, qualia, consciousness, mind, etc) is simply overwhelming.
Of course if you did have a lifetime of experience in bio-engineering labs - esp those dealing with nervous and control systems particularly w regard to perception - then the stances you have taken in this thread would bring with them a great deal more credence.
It produces thoughts but those thoughts enjoy both a close relationship to, and a separateness from, the structure that produced them. -Paul
You tell me, does the high circulating current in an LC (inductance capacitance) circuit at its resonance frequency "enjoy both a close relationship to, and a separateness from, the structure that produces" it?
"Preposterous. Intuition alone declares otherwise." -Paul
Your naivete (otherwise narrow-mindedness) in systems, emergence and functionality is showing, imo.
...
Here, take a thumbnail tour of systems re an electrical resonance circuit...
http://www.play-hookey.com/ac_theory/randr/ac_lc_parallel.html
The question to ask about this circuit, then, is, "Where does the extra current in both L and C come from, and where does it go?"
It's only Electrical Systems 101. Enjoy.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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You tell me, does the high circulating current in an LC (inductance capacitance) circuit at its resonance frequency "enjoy both a close relationship to, and a separateness from, the structure that produces" it?
Yes. The current is not the structure that carries it. Pretty simple idea. The structure may manipulate the current but that current remains a separate entity.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Yes. The current is not the structure that carries it. Pretty simple idea. The structure may manipulate the current but that current remains a separate entity
(1) And of course the circuit is the basis (100%) for the current and the amazing, astonishing "high circulating" phenom. Wow.
(2a) "The current is not the structure..."
(2b) "The perception is not the structure..." (neuroscience models, hfcs)
Hmm.
(1) No LC circuitry, no resonance (no resonance current).
(2) No brain circuitry, no perception.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 6, 2016 - 06:20pm PT
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Paul, Fruity is using a certain angle to try and explain consciousness, abetting you to get down with the science that bolsters that angle, THEN you will get it.
What you get, of course, is his angle, which Fruity universalizes as THE angle. But note that what Fruity is talking about is limited to WHAT is perceived, and is trying to posit perception itself in strictly functional terms. Basically behaviorialsm as ordained by neuroscience, with a side order of electrical engineering and attitude. Because this is yet another attempt to conflate 1st and 3rd person perspectives, the work arounds require robust woo.
This whole house of cards falls down once you start contrasting machine registration/processing with human sentience, which folks from Fruity's camp posit as either emergent functions of neuro substrates, or in the case of Uncle Dennett's Folly, as illusory: "We only think we are conscious."
The machine model or gross functionalism, again, unravels when you start plowing deeply into AI, of all things. The best that Fruity's model can conjure up is what Chalmers calls a psychological zombie, capable of amazing feats of processing and stimulus responses, but altogether dead inside - save for the steam rising off those processors.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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[dopamine]in and of itself it is not experience
I don't mean to tell you what experience is. I would say, tentatively, that what you experience is generated by the chemicals and circuits you refer to. The way in which this happens is a subject of study. It is not necessary or important for you to make a study of the details of brain function.
Saying that such-and-such is not the experience itself is only a truism.
You set up a straw man when you imply that a student of the nervous system would say that dopamine is experience. Dopamine is one piece in a large puzzle.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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I would say, tentatively, that what you experience is generated by the chemicals and circuits you refer to. The way in which this happens is a subject of study.
In the same way light is produced by a light bulb through a structure and electricity to produce light. The light is not the bulb and mind/experience is not the brain.
The straw man is yours.
(2) No brain circuitry, no perception.
This is not the issue. No filament in the light bulb and no light, but the filament and the bulb are not the light.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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In the same way light is produced by a light bulb through a structure and electricity to produce light. The light is not the bulb and mind/experience is not the brain.
Not only an authority on brain function, but knows how light works, too.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Not only an authority on brain function, but knows how light works, too. Yeah, all that and no education... remarkable eh?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 6, 2016 - 08:04pm PT
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tru·ism
[ˈtro͞oˌizəm]
NOUN
a statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting:
--
Actually, saying that mechanical functioning (dopamine or fill-in-the-blank) and 1st person experience are virtually the same, or are so closely and causally linked to basically amount to the same thing, is almost the party line here. So in a sense it IS new and interesting, because it does not merely parrot fundamentalist physicalism.
What's amazing here is that even staunch materialistic neuroscientists no longer posit consciousness as a site-specific phenomenon, but now talk about global activity, citing various connectivity and complexity theories to foist a kind of brute mechanicalism onto unwitting folk like Fruity.
Again, when this mechanicalism is played out in the AI scenario - and mechanical sentience is axiomatic to physicalism - the impossibilities pop up like Jack in the Boxes.
We'll see if anyone can figure out how and why.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Karl Popper: The reason we think is so that we can let our thoughts die instead of us."
The reason we think is because we can’t help ourselves. Blame evolution. This is where it’s brought most of us to.
Jan: If you call on her [Kali], she will be a powerful advocate to help you cast out those unlovely parts of yourself.
She is a part of all of us. Visualization and tantra and depth psychology and shamanism all mean to tap or at least observe those “complexes” in us. Every god that you see is you, in that particular personality or being. You are all of those things, some in prominence and some in the unconscious or in the shadows. Some of them look or appear to be evil or malevolent or wrathful. They really aren't. All that you can be is called on, now and then.
Be like the animals. Be yourself, that which you cannot help but be.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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brain-pops
Not a frozen snack, but an uninvited thought/word/phrase from the unconscious.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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John, you have been dissing a mechanistic description of the mind for years.
What you have not done is thoroughly explain your alternative viewpoint, or another viewpoint. We know what Werner thinks. He believes that we have a magical soul, which survives the death of the brain. A majority of the planet shares his belief. If it is indeed "magic," then it can't be examined. From there it leaves the realm of investigation.
We've certainly heard Werner shout about materialists several hundred times now. He also doesn't explain his position.
It would simplify this conversation, and set a marker for discussion.
I would say: "The mind is located in the brain, and its function is altered by hormones from certain organs." I have absolutely no idea where the mind might lie if not there. Huge sciences are built on this premise.
If it doesn't lie in the brain, then where does the mind exist?
A simple question. PLEASE answer it. Thoughtfully.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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all that and no education... remarkable eh?
Education would only be a hindrance to your certainty.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 7, 2016 - 12:02pm PT
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I would say: "The mind is located in the brain, and its function is altered by hormones from certain organs." I have absolutely no idea where the mind might lie if not there. Huge sciences are built on this premise.
If it doesn't lie in the brain, then where does the mind exist?
A simple question. PLEASE answer it. Thoughtfully.
-----
Problem is I'm jammed with work just now and have to go to Europe on Sunday. But a few thoughts.
The first thing I would point out is the assumption that the mind is some thing that resides someplace, like a pea lives in a pod. And that if the pea ain't in the pod, where is it? It has to physically BE located SOMEWHERE, right?
From my experience, the paradigm you present above is probable and is certainly a workable hypothesis per mechanical brain function. But the 1st person realm is not the same THING as mechanical brain functioning, and not simply because experience itself is not observable as a 3rd person phenomenon, unless you start wholesale conflating. That is NOT to say that consciousness is separate from brain, or that brain is separate from mind. Note that our discursive minds have no problem with the first proposal, but balks hard at the second, which challenges the notion of an objective, mind-independent physical reality. At least mine does.
The problem with wrangling this down is that to my knowledge, I can't approach the problem exclusively from either a material or experiential angle. Each one involves substantial work-arounds whenever I try. It seems that the worm hole in involves toggling between the two vantages, and this is accomplished by way of contrasting and looking at the differences and seeing how either the pure mind or the pure physical model both fall apart or become hugely muddled and incomprehensible when trying to cling exclusively to one or the other positions.
For instance, look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyV98zjjzLU
I'm not so much interested in what the speaker is talking about, but rather how divided the people are who are making comments below. This happens because a view from either 1st or 3rd person perspectives is incomplete. The question is: how to resolve the differences?
Scientist Gary Metcalf, in Systems and Design, put it this way:
"When a scientist in any system makes an observation, that observations is subject to peer review within that science - yet the observation is not typically submitted for review by scientists in other fields. Why not? The reason is sciences evolve to advance their discipline's consensual domain, and the language (symbols, numbers, schemas, etc.) used tends to converge upon the beliefs, tools, methods and prior understandings accumulated into that specific scientific discipline. Science becomes silos - they become specialized in viewing the world in accordance with the language with which they view the world. What happens when a subject transcends disciplinary silos?"
When we try and look at experience from scientific silos, we are asking science to explain what it normally tries to stay clear of, striving as it does after what it feels exists separate from subjectivity. And so 1st person experience gets translated into 3rd person modes, effectively excising experience once more. And when purely subjective modes are sought to probe the phenomenon, the physical world we live in goes missing. So the challenges are not simple, though there is every desire to dumb them down, from most anyone in either camp.
Anyhow, I started working up some thoughts about all of this and I'll post an installment later. I'll have to do this in phases because I don't have time to binge on it just now, but I can peck away at it as time allows.
And happy holidays to all.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Any living being can never be unconscious
Oh oh, swamp fumes syndrome.
The problem with wrangling this down is that to my knowledge, I can't approach the problem exclusively from either a material or experiential angle
A good summary of your position, JL. Happy Holidays in Europe.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 8, 2016 - 08:01am PT
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Any living being can never be unconscious
Oh oh, swamp fumes syndrome.
John, this is a perspective offered from subjective silos, so to speak - from a 1st person point of view. It is interesting to contemplate.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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interesting quote:
"When a scientist in any system makes an observation, that observations is subject to peer review within that science - yet the observation is not typically submitted for review by scientists in other fields. Why not? The reason is sciences evolve to advance their discipline's consensual domain, and the language (symbols, numbers, schemas, etc.) used tends to converge upon the beliefs, tools, methods and prior understandings accumulated into that specific scientific discipline. Science becomes silos - they become specialized in viewing the world in accordance with the language with which they view the world. What happens when a subject transcends disciplinary silos?"
basically a typical criticism of someone outside the particular "discipline," that is, the people in the "discipline" cannot make decisions outside of their "self interest."
This way of thinking has a large number of people believing that climate scientists, for instance, can't be trusted in conducting climate science, they are self interested.
In terms of personal incentive, there is no larger incentive in any field of science than showing the consensus view is "incorrect." There is an equally large disincentive of being shown to be wrong, and the bigger the wrong, the more consequential the reaction. The balance of these drives a lot of science.
Disciplinary "silos" exist because the time to master a particular discipline can be long... there are no short cuts... it is interesting that Largo uses this very same argument in stating that you cannot "know" what he is talking about in his meditation without having "put the time in." It is the very same thing as Gary Metcalf is complaining about in scientific specialization.
Science strives to eliminate the subjective element of the object being studied. That's what it does. The "scientific" object we identify with "mind" is not the same thing that Largo is referring to when discussing "mind."
Largo's "mind" is not subject to scientific study, by construction (a construction that is largely literary).
One doesn't seek to "study" the science of some imagined phenomenon, for instance, how are the fighting armies in the Lord of the Rings sustained? Reading about the history of ancient warfare paints a very different narrative of what that is like. In my opinion LotR would have been a lot more interesting bringing that in... but then I'm a geek, not a writer of romantic fiction.
Largo's main complaint about the science of "mind" is that it has no place for those things he believes are most important about what he defines as "mind." His philosophical arguments are chosen to be supportive of his point of view, and he selects the science he feels is "right."
It is often the case that one moves from one discipline to another because of a feeling that you know what must be "right" in the other... and if you honestly engage in the process of understanding that other discipline, your righteousness will often dwindle to a grinding respect for having to "put the work" into understanding the issues there.
This spears the romantic notion of the single, brilliant investigator with the golden idea...
sorry.
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