What is "Mind?"

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MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Feb 21, 2017 - 03:44pm PT

Ed: we live in a pretty strange world, . . . .

Amen, brother.

Marlow: One of the many many many expressions of mind...

Many. I’d say that mind, itself, is an expression. If one follows things to their causes, I think one find something that can’t be said or defined. It’s been said by the Greeks that the most important thing in a life is to “know thyself.” I found that guiding for decades. Now I see it differently. Now it’s: “express thyself.”

Paul presenting Rodolfo’s ideas: . . . [the] goal is achieved we feel pleasure and knowing is a positive evolutionary device and that that pleasure is an evolutionary carrot of sorts . . . .

I’m assuming that most readers here are or have been somewhat dedicated climbers. I’m sorry, I don’t get the idea that this group believes that normal pleasure is the goal. That’s not been my experience of climbing. I certainly got into character development, and a bit into the rejection of grades and classes. I can’t believe I’m unusual, at least among this crowd. Climbing was almost magical for the pinnacle it presented to me. 10d was truly my working / aspiring limit. It doesn’t matter. What mattered was the rarified air of the experience. One could hear the earth breath. Yet, there was nothing special, nothing earth-shaking, nothing transcendental . . . but it helped to open that door because it showed how the simple, plain, and concrete could be sublime.

Pleasure alone cannot show anything new. Pleasure only reinforces what’s been done before. To see new and different things, it seems one must enter the realm of pain. Ha-ha.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 21, 2017 - 04:14pm PT

Per Fruity's link...

To Rodolfo R. Llinás, to think that consciousness is more than the brain is to malign matter. This old caballero doesn't need no stinking God, but he very much needs a creator of a kind, just not the creator God of religious doctrine.

Though Rodolfo would no doubt point to experiments and predictions to bolster his hold on a creator, we can be certain there are unconscious psychological drivers underpinning this fixation on creators and creations. It's just that in Rodolfo' case, the creator is matter, and to that end he waxes, with religious unction, "How precious matter is." Blow me down ... Of course all of this pertains to the brain "creating" consciousness.

In my opinion, Rodolfo is missing the point. We can and do understand how the brain generates feelings and thoughts and sensations etc. in a "material way," but that isn't the question, nor yet does it remotely explain why we are AWARE of being conscious of same.

There is no neurological evidence that objective processing is in any way related to subjective experiencing. If complexity were the "reason," then Vulcan, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, would be telling us all about its day. And it ain't.

I do agree that we are one with everything, but not in the way Rodolfo is saying.

Consciousness, Rodolfo believes, A) has a "particular geomoetry," and B) is a "functional event."

He knows this because (using his example) we can remove specific chemicals from our system and consciousness disappears. How else can this be answered but by the fact that the brain generates the whole thing, right? This, in Rodolfo' model, proves that "this is what the whole thing is made out of."

This last line also betrays another of Rodolfo's deep beliefs: That "it" must be made out of something, i.e., consciousness itself had to be an observable external object or measurable phenomenon, or, our only other option is to default into some wo wo ether or non-thing that we cannot see or measure that exerts a magical power or fairy dust over the brain by which we become sentient.

"Other options," or other ways of looking at reality were adopted in fashioning many counterintuitive phenomenon, from relativity to QM. But these hapless Type A materialists keep kicking the wrong horse, thinking it will some day wake up.

Of course there are many other perspectives that offer more hope, even from physics. One is found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgSnZ2Il84U

While I don't agree with all that Wolfe says, it does show there are at least a few people out there grappling along novel and creative lines. A glance at the comments section shows how quickly people get turned around on the whole thing, and how first assumptions, especially staunch physicalism, get defended like a religion.

Science buffs might find these interesting as well, also from physicist Wolfe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGNBHhbzMcc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ7rMR7KtfE

One of my buddies said that whatever Wolfe took, "it must have been strong." A kook? Probably, though he was very lucid on his Discovery Channel show. But I still think he might have been the guy who drank the bong water ...

For an example of another novel thinker who definitely did NOT drink the bong water, check out this one from Roger Penrose, a math buff from Oxford and about as sober an old chap as one can imagine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuHORQoauWo#t=28.132841

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Feb 21, 2017 - 04:36pm PT

To add to Largo’s musings and analysis, we need to look at consciousness as somewhat of an education or training process. The most that one looks at anything, the more one sees. I’ll argue that it’s not about learning stuff; if’s much more about seeing things differently—in an infinite number of ways. Every theory or model, alone, presents a different world. Not one of them is wrong. What the back-hills country bumpkin or the New York effete intellectual sees all contributes to a more complete description of What This Is. There’s this, and then there’s that. (Emptiness is right around the corner.)

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Feb 21, 2017 - 05:02pm PT

The Wolfe stuff is pretty darn fascinating. TFPU.

eeyonkee

Trad climber

Golden, CO

Feb 21, 2017 - 05:57pm PT

The most that one looks at anything, the more one sees. I’ll argue that it’s not about learning stuff; if’s much more about seeing things differently—in an infinite number of ways. Every theory or model, alone, presents a different world. Not one of them is wrong.

So, I got a problem with that last sentence, in particular. I surely would not want to know that you were the mechanic servicing my plane.

Why? Because a good mechanic has a relatively accurate model of both problem and solution -- not just any old model (and I want to live).

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Feb 21, 2017 - 06:43pm PT

This last line also betrays another of Rodolfo's deep beliefs: That "it" must be made out of something, i.e., consciousness itself had to be an observable external object or measurable phenomenon, or, our only other option is to default into some wo wo ether or non-thing that we cannot see or measure that exerts a magical power or fairy dust over the brain by which we become sentient.

Largo does a good job of making fun of his own beliefs.

We could wake up and say that "it" is not made of something. At the end of the day, the sun goes down. The next day it comes up.

eeyonkee

Trad climber

Golden, CO

Feb 21, 2017 - 07:57pm PT

There is no neurological evidence that objective processing is in any way related to subjective experiencing.

Really?

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Feb 21, 2017 - 08:13pm PT

A look at (which is a listen to) some traditional Chinese ideas about compassion, and when you realize that everything is emptiness:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/programs/northbynorthwest/i-m-not-a-professional-77-year-old-makes-stage-dancing-debut-beside-his-daughter-1.3990660

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Feb 21, 2017 - 09:23pm PT

"...IF materiality was fundamental then I would agree that neurophysiology would explain everything...

BUT IF we, as we understand the world today, materiality is not a fundamental but there's this underlying, there's this basement, this invisible dream, if you want to call it, that's more fundamental then why should we assume that anything as subtle consciousness should be based on anything material?..."

If-

jgill

Boulder climber

The high prairie of southern Colorado

Feb 21, 2017 - 09:36pm PT

We're moving into some pretty sophisticated territory here: Quantum Zeno Effect or Turing Paradox.

"It is easy to show using standard theory that if a system starts in an eigenstate of some observable, and measurements are made of that observable N times a second, then, even if the state is not a stationary one, the probability that the system will be in the same state after, say, one second, tends to one as N tends to infinity; that is, that continual observations will prevent motion …"
— Alan Turing as quoted by A. Hodges in Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker p. 54

Broad opportunities for the Wizard to spin up his metaphysics. I see something vaguely like this when one looks at the Riemann integral of F(x) over [0,1] say. As the partition becomes finer and finer - for example, let the points of the partition be k/n, k between 0 and n - at the far left of the interval the function is being evaluated more and more in the neighborhood of x=0 as n gets larger and larger, so that eventually there will be virtually an infinite number of evaluations in which the function doesn't appear to change. Remember, I said vaguely.

Just yesterday I was playing with a sequence of functions of the form g(k/n,z) =(1/2)(z+k/n) in the composition
G(n,z)=g(n/n,z)og((n-1)/n,z)o…og(1/n,z). Each of these functions has a unique fixed point a(k,n)=k/n and both a(k,n) and |a(k,n)-a(k+1,n)| tend to zero as n becomes infinite for each value of k. Yet, for all values of n, a(n,n)=1. This number is an attracting fixed point and G(n,z) goes to 1 for most z’s in the complex plane. So in the expansion of G(n,z) what’s ultimately important is that single fixed point. The other fixed points fritter away into no-thingness.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Feb 22, 2017 - 07:24am PT

If you are clear about a brainstem, you are doing well.

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Feb 22, 2017 - 08:45am PT

eeyonkee: I got a problem with that last sentence, in particular. [“Not one of them {a model} is wrong.] I surely would not want to know that you were the mechanic servicing my plane.

Yeah, sure. Something like this has been said so many times in this thread (and answered) that the topic has gotten old, tired, and boring. You’re a little new around here.

Look, when you can stipulate all variables and all interactions to any event or define any thing fully, completely, and finally, then we could get somewhere in this conversation. Instead, what you’ll find are approximations, rules of thumb, and one model or another that shows partial effectiveness of an outcome that you want. This is an intellectual insight, not necessarily a practical one. If you want purely practical conversations, then you shouldn’t be arguing this or that about philosophy or science. You’ll find engineering, medicine, and basic mechanics more appropriate for your use.

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Feb 22, 2017 - 08:49am PT

Lovesgas posting Pepper: . . . which we might call floating signifiers, from collapsing under the weight of their own meaninglessness.

This is pretty funny. A great use of terms: floating signifiers, weightiness, and meaninglessness. Look what imagination has wrought. :-) Love it.

eeyonkee

Trad climber

Golden, CO

Feb 22, 2017 - 09:01am PT

I give up. I'll go back to just not reading your posts. At least Largo's are amusing and Paul's are sort of fun.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 22, 2017 - 10:12am PT

yeonkee noted:

I said: There is no neurological evidence that objective processing is in any way related to subjective experiencing.

Eyeonkee said: Really?

Good catch, amigo. Used the wrong word.

So called "neurocorrelates" to consciousness are dead obvious. So is the electrochemical stirrings I used to dance with during my years working with EEGs and qEEGS and other brain mapping rigs. What I meant to say is that these don't explain, nor yet support a reason for believing that such activity "creates" consciousness. Showing this is so is Chalmers' "Hard Problem."

On a related note, I recently came across this while researching something on cryopreservation for a story I'm working on.

(From the MIT Technical Review)

The False Science of Cryonics: A View from Michael Hendricks

What the nervous system of the roundworm tells us about freezing brains and reanimating human minds.

I woke up on Saturday to a heartbreaking front-page article in the New York Times about a terminally ill young woman who chooses to freeze her brain. She is drawn into a cottage industry spurred by “transhumanist” principles that offers to preserve people in liquid nitrogen immediately after death and store their bodies (or at least their heads) in hopes that they can be reanimated or digitally replicated in a technologically advanced future. (First Asumption: "They" = Their Brain. Entirely).

Proponents have added a patina of scientific plausibility to this idea by citing the promise of new technologies in neuroscience, particularly recent work in “connectomics”—a field that maps the connections between neurons. The suggestion is that a detailed map of neural connections could be enough to restore a person’s mind, memories, and personality by uploading it into a computer simulation.

Science tells us that a map of connections is not remotely sufficient to simulate, let alone replicate, a nervous system, and that there are enormous barriers to achieving immortality in silico (conducted or produced by means of computer modeling or computer simulation).

First, what information is required to replicate a human mind? Second, do current or foreseeable freezing methods preserve the necessary information, and how will this information be recovered? Third, and most confounding to our intuition, would a simulation really be “you?”

I study a small roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans, which is by far the best-described animal in all of biology. We know all of its genes and all of its cells (a little over 1,000). We know the identity and complete synaptic connectivity of its 302 neurons, and we have known it for 30 years.

If we could “upload” or roughly simulate any brain, it should be that of C. elegans. Yet even with the full connectome in hand, a static model of this network of connections lacks most of the information necessary to simulate the mind of the worm. In short, brain activity cannot be inferred from synaptic neuroanatomy. The critical thing to acknowledge here is that this is not an opinion nor an evaluation certain to be revised by future science - or conquered by nanotechnology - any more than the speed of light will be adjusted once we have better instrumentation.

Synapses are the physical contacts between neurons where a special form of chemoelectric signaling—neurotransmission—occurs, and they come in many varieties. They are complex molecular machines made of thousands of proteins and specialized lipid structures. It is the precise molecular composition of synapses and the membranes they are embedded in that confers their properties. The presence or absence of a synapse, which is all that current connectomics methods tell us, suggests that a possible functional relationship between two neurons exists, but little or nothing about the nature of this relationship—precisely what you need to know to simulate it.

Additionally, neurons and other cells in the brain are in constant communication through signaling pathways that do not act through synapses. Many of the signals that regulate fundamental behaviors such as eating, sleeping, mood, mating, and social bonding are mediated by chemical cues acting through networks that are invisible to us anatomically. We know that the same set of synaptic connections can function very differently depending on what mix of these signals is present at a given time. These issues highlight an important distinction: the colossally hard problem of simulating any brain as opposed to the stupendously more difficult task of replicating a particular brain, which is required for the promised personal immortality of uploading.

The features of your neurons (and other cells) and synapses that make you “you” are not generic. The vast array of subtle chemical modifications, states of gene regulation, and subcellular distributions of molecular complexes are all part of the dynamic flux of a living brain. These things are not details that average out in a large nervous system; rather, they are the very things that engrams (the physical constituents of memories) are made of.

While it might be theoretically possible to preserve these features in dead tissue, that certainly is not happening now. The technology to do so, let alone the ability to read this information back out of such a specimen, does not yet exist even in principle. It is this purposeful conflation of what is theoretically conceivable with what is ever practically possible that exploits people’s vulnerability.

Finally, would an upload really be you? This is unanswerable, but we can dip our toes in. Whatever our subjective sense of self is, let’s assume it arises from the operation of the physical matter of the brain. We might tentatively conclude that awareness itself is substrate-neutral: if brains can be conscious, a computer program that does everything a brain does should be conscious, too. There is no observable brain process to suggest that this is or is not the case; but if one is also willing to imagine arbitrarily complex technology, then we can also think about simulating a brain down to the synaptic or molecular or (why not?) atomic or quantum level.

But what is this replica? Is it subjectively “you” or is it a new, separate being? And what if we download "you" while you were still healthy and alive? The idea that you can be conscious in two places at the same time defies our intuition. Parsimony suggests that replication will result in two different conscious entities. Simulation, if it were to occur, would result in a new person who is like you but whose conscious experience you don’t have access to. Whatever else we can say about subjectivity itself, no one is suggesting that it is anything but a private, first-person phenomenon, epistemicaly and ontologically accessible only to the host subject. The notion that through simulation, subjectivity would morph into a public phenomenon, directly accessible to third-party observers, is strictly the stuff of science fiction.

That means that any suggestion that you can come back to life is simply snake oil. Transhumanists have responses to these issues. In my experience, they consist of alternating demands that we trust our intuition about nonexistent technology (uploading could work) but deny our intuition about consciousness (it would not be me).

No one who has experienced the disbelief of losing a loved one can help but sympathize with someone who pays $80,000 to freeze their brain. But reanimation or simulation is an abjectly false hope that is beyond the promise of technology and is certainly impossible with the frozen, dead tissue offered by the “cryonics” industry. Those who profit from this hope deserve our anger and contempt.

Michael Hendricks is a neuroscientist and assistant professor of biology at McGill University.

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Feb 22, 2017 - 10:28am PT

Don Dilillo's new book "Zero K" deals with the issue of cryonics in fascinating/disturbing way. Snake oil writ large.

Lockean Empiricism and the Invention of Consciousness and Self

I don't quite get the notion that Locke came up with the idea of consciousness and self. I'd say these ideas go back to the first burials with grave gear many thousands of years ago. That something exists beyond the forms of sensibility may be one of the earliest human ideas. The idea of the individual soul and the judgement of that soul, such ideas are not only ancient but universal as well.

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Feb 22, 2017 - 10:32am PT

eeyonkee, hang in there!

"reason is an evolved trait, like bipedalism or three-color vision. It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to be understood in that context."

"Living in small bands of hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were primarily concerned with their social standing... there was little advantage in reasoning clearly, while much was to be gained from winning arguments."

"People believe that they know way more than they actually do. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people. ... So well do we collaborate... that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and others’ begins."

"As people invented new tools for new ways of living, they simultaneously created new realms of ignorance; if everyone had insisted on, say, mastering the principles of metalworking before picking up a knife, the Bronze Age wouldn’t have amounted to much. When it comes to new technologies, incomplete understanding is empowering."

...people experience genuine pleasure—a rush of dopamine—when processing information that supports their beliefs. “It feels good to ‘stick to our guns’ even if we are wrong,”...

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Feb 22, 2017 - 10:42am PT

"reason is an evolved trait, like bipedalism or three-color vision. It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to be understood in that context."

"Living in small bands of hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were primarily concerned with their social standing... there was little advantage in reasoning clearly, while much was to be gained from winning arguments."

With regard to winning and losing arguments: please, If there was little advantage to reasoning then why would it be favored by evolutionary processes? Without favor how has it become paramount?