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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Largo
Also, my bet is that Ed sees not difference between mechanical registration and conscious process. That is, the processes that go on in a moon probe are fundamentally the same as those that go on during a conscious creative process. That is, all of the subjective world is really physical output, we "only think" that it is otherwise.
Largo, You are stuck in a rut! The mechanical registration/processes you talk of do have classical derivatives and are therefore are quite predictable. Such easy predictability is not the case with neural nets as the classical derivative applied to them is not very useful for prediction as it really does not exist.
You quite wrongly think the science of brain works is proceeding to give its explanation of brain working by the likes of some old fashioned machine. Can you get your lame f*#king mind up to date on neural nets? They are the meat of the brain mechanism but do not behave machine like. And of course we cannot give you a mechanism explanation for neural nets.
Conscious processes do arise out of neural nets. But alas the lame Zen mind sticks to old interpretations again. Let it go dude, you are clearly off track. Can you learn anything new? As this old request of your shows your ignorance of what is going on in present brain studies and yours are not those of current science.
And with that neuroscience/Zen mind of yours do you have any idea what a derivative is?
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Yes, and the same could be said of math even if one has no idea of or assumptions about its foundations.
I suppose I was responding to the optimism of Ed's assumption (I'm not sure I agree with that optimism). It seemed to me that science could still be a meaningful activity even if it so happened that "everything that exists" was not "explainable" in "physical terms to its absolute limit" (I use quotes to indicate the key concepts in the Ed's assumption). One philosophical trick might be to define "everything that exists" to mean "stuff that can be explained in physical terms" (I think that would be a very bad idea). Even then Ed's assumption becomes "Stuff that can be explained in physical terms can be explained in physical terms to the absolute limit" which still may be overly optimistic, depending on what we mean by the "absolute limit". We could continue with philosophical tricks and redefine "everything that exists" to mean "stuff that can be explained in physical terms to the absolute limit". Then of course the assumption is undeniably true, but I'm forced to deny the existence of most of what's interesting in my life.
Here's my take on this: I would definitely agree that a fundamental purpose (if not "the" fundamental purpose) of science is to try and understand the world in "physical terms". So in order for science to be meaningful we have to believe that this is possible, at least to some (although perhaps limited) extent. I suppose it's natural for humans to want to take this to the "absolute limit", wherever that might be. Pushing the envelope, and all that. From what I can see, there seems to be overwhelming evidence to suggest that consciousness is a kind of physical process. So I suppose (unlike Largo, apparently) that it may be possible to understand consciousness in physical terms. In a very limited sense, modern science is already doing this. The "absolute limit" seems very far away and even if we ever get there, I'm not sure consciousness will be "fully explained".
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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What Ed is really driving at is the search for fundamentals by way of investigating physical processes.
I think I said that science is all in on the idea that everything is describable in terms of physical processes, that that is all there need be for an explanation.
Now you often make specific mention of "material" but certainly all this is physical need not be "material" in the manner you seem to suggest.
When Faraday cooked up the concept of "field" he did so from a very physical point of view, even though the fields, he was concerned about electric and magnetic fields, seemed to occupy space without a material presence, their effect on charges and magnetized particles were readily seen in a large number of demonstrations.
Faraday used the field concept to be explain (predict) the electric and magnetic forces, and their properties. And it also explained this concept of "action at a distance" which Newton had famously punted on, "hypothesis non fingo."
The idea of fields could be extended to gravity too to answer at least one aspect of Newton's question.
Maxwell got hold of the Faraday's idea and wedded with the much more mathematical treatment of electricity and magnetism, the physical insights of fields and their mathematical treatment lead to the famous theory of electrodynamics, a unification of the two "forces." Further, the dynamical aspects of the theory could be treated for the first time and lead to the conclusion that light itself was electromagnetic.
That conclusion was tested by Hertz in a number of experiments that showed electromagnetic radiation acted like light, it refracted, reflected, diffracted and moved with the same speed.
Einstein later investigated aspects of Maxwell's theory and concluded that the invariance of that theory under various transformations provided a different formulation of relativity, different from those of Newton and Galileo. And its generalization, in turn, lead to a gravitation field theory.
These fields are physical, but not classically material, though they posses energy and momentum, can act with force, and all the things we normally attribute to material objects, the way the fields couple to material objects is at least described, and in as many ways as you wish can be used to calculate the outcome of various situations, observations and experiments.
But above all, the fields are physical.
One might then argue the role of these immaterial but physical objects could be extended by analogy to other phenomenon, but in so doing, one would have to describe all the physical aspects of the proposed fields, and how they are measured. That is what Maxwell did and Hertz observed.
So much has come from this line of thinking that scientists in general willingly abandon supernatural, unphysical explanations of our experience. There is no "then a miracle occurs" step allowed in an explanation.
Largo seems to find this an outrageous stance.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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No brain, no consciousness
No brain, no subjective experience
Impaired brain, altered consciousness
Impaired brain, altered subjective experience
Consciousness may prove to have some material quality, but the "no brain no consciousness" certainty has no basis in our current understanding. Science does not have a viable theory of what a thought is, what the conscious mind is. At what point does consciousness begin? That is, since one aspect of it, intelligence, seems to come in degrees what is its minimum degree? A plant (without a brain) follows the sun across the sky, is that a form of consciousness?
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WBraun
climber
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A tree, for example, has no brain but consciousness.
Thus the gross materialists foolish assertion that no brain equals no consciousness is completely false and very poor fund of knowledge.
Thus it continues to show how the gross materialists fully remain clueless to the science of consciousness itself ......
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Maybe start with demonstrating how matter becomes conscious by way of a mechanism
Ok. My wife tells a story (I've had the same experience, as have many of you, I suppose, but she tells a good story). Anyways, last summer (southern hemisphere), she decided to have a few tests and the neurologist found a brain tumor (don't worry, she's fine). It was huge (64 cubic centimeters, and my wife is tiny!) but it was benign (a meningioma). Fortunately it was located in one of the most easily operable areas: over the frontal lobe (it turns out it started growing in the nerves of her nose). Because of its size it was causing edema and needed to come out right away. Well, to make a long story short, we found a good doctor and he got rid of it. She was 12 hours in the operating room. All that she remembers of that time is the doctor coming up and the mask being placed and then instantaneously, in her way of telling it, the mask being removed and the doctor, smiling, and telling her "we've successfully removed the whole tumor". My experience of passing those 12 hours in the waiting room was somewhat different. Anyways, that's my "demonstration": the mask is removed, anesthesia is stopped (the mechanism) and voila! my wife (a material being) becomes conscious.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Tom, welcome back.
Actually the army's remote viewing program wasn't as secret as the head of it supposes. I first heard about it in an Officer's Club Bar in Japan. I was told it existed because the Russians had turned off one of our satellites without us being able to detect any physical form of radiation or chemicals used to do so (they later turned it back on). At the same time we discovered that the Russian military had a psychic unit so we decided we better get one too.
The people recruited for training included friends and students of mine, all of whom worked in army intelligence. They were preselected for intelligence and non traditional thinking and they already had very high security clearances. They were trained in a number of things, including yes, the spoon bending I saw with my own eyes.
I learned about the existence of the SR-71 the same way, ten years before Carter got in trouble for acknowledging its existence.
One of the reasons I don't believe in most conspiracy theories by the way, is that I've observed, that even trained people with high clearances can't keep their mouths shut, especially when drinking around young girls! Those old alpha male mating rituals evolved over hundreds of thousands of years aren't so easy to get rid of.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Consciousness may prove to have some material quality.
Wishful thinking.
but the "no brain no consciousness" certainty has no basis in our current understanding.
It actually does. Consciousness has never been observed absent a brain.
At what point does consciousness begin? That is, since one aspect of it, intelligence, seems to come in degrees what is its minimum degree? A plant (without a brain) follows the sun across the sky, is that a form of consciousness?
Wait. What the f*#k!?!? Literally tens of thousands of posts after I posed this exact question (the first of many times) you're now going to try to roll that sh#t out here? Seriously?
Yes, exactly - where on the taxonomy of extant species can consciousness first be identified and observed? And where on the tree of the evolution of life can consciousness first be identified and observed?
I've gone on more or less ad nauseum about the evolution of sense / response being driven by an ever spiralling war of predation. That at some point along that continuum it became essential to both sides of that equation to locate others relative to self - i.e. the ability to self-locate relative to others and later to self-locate within the environment. In short, living organisms all exhibit behavior each to their capabilities. The question then becomes at what point does that behavior become 'conscious' behavior.
Virii, bacteria, fungi, and plants all exhibit sense and respond, some of them quite sophisticated in the case of parasites, but conscious? Behavior, yes, but it's stretch of epic proportion to assert genetically-programmed behavior and consciousness are one in the same. Conscious behavior has never been observed absent a brain.
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WBraun
climber
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A plant (without a brain) follows the sun across the sky, is that a form of consciousness?
Yes, this is conscious intelligence although compare to a human being very crude and low and that is all the living entity is given when entering that material body of a plant.
Consciousness has never been observed absent a brain.
Then you are totally clueless to what consciousness is and are completely stone dead and blind .......
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Or, conversely, you're a panpsychic hindu who confuses dogma, belief, religion and wishful thinking with reality.
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WBraun
climber
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Panpsychism is your mental specualtion, guessing and projection to what consciousness is.
I have nothing to do with your crazy panpsychism ideas and projections.
Panpsychism is what you gross materialists dream up because you are clueless ......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Good story, yanqui.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Werner, dictionary dude. Panpsychism is entirely yours and Largo’s domain (and now apparently Paul’s As well).
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Paul: . . . but the "no brain no consciousness" certainty has no basis in our current understanding
Depends on who "our" is.
It's a shame that JL feels he has to attempt to explain in detail remarks made by Ed. I find Ed's comments very clear and to the point.
A time-dependent force or vector field 0<t<1 showing the path line of a particle from green dot to red dot. Dark vectors at t=0 and lite green vectors at t=1:
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WBraun
climber
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Joe, you are insane .....
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Or, conversely, you’re delusional.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Yes, exactly - where on the taxonomy of extant species can consciousness first be identified and observed? And where on the tree of the evolution of life can consciousness first be identified and observed?
Well, if consciousness can be observed in organic systems like plants then that consciousness exists without a brain. If you create consciousness through AI then you create it without a brain as its source. I mentioned this same question ages ago somewhere on one of these threads. Panpsychism? No. I don't imagine rocks are conscious entities but in life
forms isn't that question open?
Paul: . . . but the "no brain no consciousness" certainty has no basis in our current understanding
Depends on who "our" is.
Is there anyone who has posited a testable theory as to what consciousness is or what a
thought is?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Well, if consciousness can be observed in organic systems like plants then that consciousness exists without a brain.
You confuse genetically programmed behavior with consciousness.
If you create consciousness through AI then you create it without a brain as its source.
AI is not going to be conscious and even if it were possible, it would still be with an artificial brain. In general, and even if good marketing, coining the phrase "artificial intelligence" was in many way quite unfortunate.
Panpsychism? No. I don't imagine rocks are conscious entities but in life forms isn't that question open?
More in the usual definition of consciousness as a fundamental property of nature like gravity. Again, exhibiting behavior is a fundamental property of life, but the question here is at what point does behavior become conscious behavior. That's entirely germane to the question of "What is Mind?" in that behavior can be traced to physical roots in DNA and I would posit so can advanced / complex / evolved behavior like consciousness.
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No brain, no consciousness
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