What is "Mind?"

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Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 22, 2018 - 02:28pm PT

Judging by your "No God" title I sense you are projecting your own beliefs onto me. Never made mention of God (as something I'm seeking) in any of my oft silly ramblings here over the years. No cigar on that one.

Say, I was only inquiring about this thought of yours:

"Largo is looking for something beyond the material mind."

No one in all of mind studies has been able to say what anyone means by the words, "material mind."

The original question pertained to mind itself, not the philosophical beliefs of some who look at brain and postulate that the whole story per mind lies therein. It's an argument even I am sick of. If you're saying brain IS mind, that's Identity Theory and it's a bust for many reasons.

Otherwise you're just harking back a causal/creation model - and in all of these years on this thread it hasn't told us anything profound about mind itself. This lack of progress is in my mind the inability or refusal to look at the issue with different eyes.

One thought experiment that might rekindle thought is the notion that the brain is not only unaware (as in 1st person aware, with experience) of what it is doing, but it has no awareness or knowledge of "us" as well. It is entirely blind functioning, and if there's any clue of 1st person sentience anywhere, no one has detected it. Machine registration sometimes gets postulated as 3rd person sentience of a sort.

jogill

climber

Colorado

Feb 22, 2018 - 03:45pm PT

Otherwise you're just harking back a causal or creation model - and in all of these years on this thread it hasn't told us anything profound about mind itself

Sadly, neither has any other approach. Whether the Art of Dreaming or Zen meditation have lifted the veil is debatable as these practices may show only the versatility of mind. But if you believe what you have experienced, than that lifts the veil a bit. For you.

jstan

climber

Feb 22, 2018 - 03:49pm PT

The original premise of this thread is where is goes off the rails in my mind. Mind, by definition, is awareness of the world and experience. that's it. processing information and a brain developed enough to understand a sense of place in the world. Largo is looking for something beyond the material mind, but that does not exist. You are looking for god in the brain and you will not find him. just neurons and thoughts arising from them.

Very succinctly sums up some 40,000 posts.

Since there is no need of using a word requiring additional definition ( i.e. thought) I would suggest:

just neurons and the many patterns of action potentials arising in them

WBraun

climber

Feb 22, 2018 - 03:54pm PT

Neurons can't create consciousness as they are material.

Thoughts are are the product of consciousness.

Consciousness is NOT ever material.

Thus the modern neanderthal cave man scientific view of the brain and what is mind is completely defective at its very root.

eeyonkee

Trad climber

Golden, CO

Feb 22, 2018 - 03:56pm PT

Like it, MH2! Not subtle, but funny. Funny first is my motto.

Largo, let's turn the question around. We know that science has been very successful in explaining the world around us. Science tells us that the Earth is on the order of 4.5 billion years old; that life started on the order of 4 billion years ago; that multi-cellular life started on the order of a billion years ago; that mammals started on the order of 210 million years ago; that primates started on the order of 50 million years ago; that the human family started on the order of 6 million years ago; and that homo sapiens started on the order of a quarter of million years ago with some big cognitive jump at about 70 thousand years ago.

At least since mammals (and clearly well-before) brains have been evolving across a number of different evolutionary lineages. We know this. This is common scientific knowledge. Thousands of people study this stuff and nobody has come up with a credible reason not to believe in the overall model that has been developed based on the accumulated body of knowledge. We have models that can explain and be consistent with essentially every physical piece of evidence that has been discovered. That's what scientists do; they update their models based on new findings. I do it all of the time.

Now, you postulate that human awareness is something special -- something that "obviously" can't be explained within this framework. You, my friend, are the one who needs to explain yourself. Whereas the current science still hasn't come to a consensus about the exact evolutionary history and even need for consciousness, there is no compelling reason to believe that it won't get there. Over the course of the history of this thread, lot's of new science that has bearing on the subject of this thread has occurred.

WBraun

climber

Feb 22, 2018 - 04:00pm PT

This is common scientific knowledge.

It's not absolute only theoretical.

Stop making absolutes as you have NONE .....

We have models that can explain and be consistent with essentially every physical piece of evidence that has been discovered.

Only theoretical wild guesses full of massive black holes you can't even explain yet all that is masqueraded as absolute.

When you dig in deep into this you'll see that modern interpretation does not really know at all and is just inconclusive linguistic analysis and pseudoscientific speculations and hypotheses
masqueraded as knowledge.

jstan

climber

Feb 22, 2018 - 05:07pm PT

Neurons can't create consciousness as they are material.

Thoughts are are (Ibid) the product of consciousness.

A question:

Field effect transistors are manufactured from materials. But if you put a lot of them together they can defeat a chess master even in the face of an unexpected move. How can we say the master has consciousness but the transistor does not?

Maybe we have no idea what we mean when we say "consciousness"? If so, statements about consciousness are ill supported.

I insert myself here only because I am avoiding a more difficult task. Figuring my Alternative Minimum Tax.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Feb 22, 2018 - 05:23pm PT

Thanks, again, to jstan.

The Alternative Minimum Tax pursued us into Canada. As US citizens and landed immigrants we were required by the IRS to file returns for both Canada and the U.S. and to pay whichever we owed more to.

It was no contest. Canadian taxes are higher.

The first year or two everything went fine.

Then we got a letter from the IRS telling us that we owed them tax because we owed them no tax.

And here I had applauded the alternative minimum as a way to get money out of wealthy Americans who ended up owing no income taxes, like Ronald Reagan.

edit:

and good to see that a tax-avoiding fat-cat like jstan is getting the treatment, too

eeyonkee

Trad climber

Golden, CO

Feb 22, 2018 - 05:28pm PT

Here's my current take on What is Mind?

First of all, let's be clear on what we mean, we should be specific that we are talking about human mind, not bat mind or dolphin mind. Human mind consists of two parts; the unconscious and the conscious. Freud unnecessarily introduced a third part.

The unconscious mind is responsible for all of our decisions. Our conscious mind consists of after-the-fact stories that we concoct and experience as a feeling or awareness. The after-the-factness is essential to understanding it from an evolutionary perspective. It is an add-on. At some point in the past, our ancestors did not have this functionality. Humans now have it, and it has been called the interpreter. Although it is after-the-fact, it turns out that the processing that goes on in the interpreter can affect our very next thoughts. Although the interpreter is always a step behind, it is extremely important to our very next thoughts because it allow us to incorporate our history (long-term memories). The interpreter preserves the arrow of time for us.

Also, I believe that intelligence is this thing that is clearly separate from consciousness. Evolution hit on intelligence well before hitting on consciousness. Consciousness, on the other hand, exploited intelligence.

On a more fundamental level, I think that consciousness has an evolutionary lineage back to the original replicators. These would be essentially genes before cells. Intelligence, on the other hand, was a product of evolution of the replicators. Intelligence is used by replicators to help them replicate. The end.

WBraun

climber

Feb 22, 2018 - 05:52pm PT

Without consciousness first, there would be zero intelligence.

Intelligence is a direct product of consciousness.

When there is consciousness there is life.

When there is life (consciousness) there is intelligence even in a single blade of grass .....

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 22, 2018 - 06:50pm PT

Field effect transistors are manufactured from materials. But if you put a lot of them together they can defeat a chess master even in the face of an unexpected move. How can we say the master has consciousness but the transistor does not?

This is a pretty clear cut case of what Wineberg called "mindblind."

The chess computer has no awareness of being a machine, of playing a game, or defeating an opponent, nor yet has a 1st person perspective or experience of same. The computer is nothing more than a complex bucket of figurative bolts. When you're mind blind, you look at the brain and say, "That's all there is." To the mindblind dude, we're a souped up Turing machine.

And this:

Our conscious mind consists of after-the-fact stories that we concoct and experience as a feeling or awareness.
---

This would take some heavy unpacking, which I did once before but Eyonkee still didn't get it. For those wondering, this is derived from Michael Gazzaniga, who developed his theory (and speculations about an "Interpretor") during his study of people with surgically split brains.

For starters, consciousness is not a "story." A story is content, and if that's all there was to consciousness, if the story stopped, so would consciousness. Not even so. Objectless contemplation makes this perfectly clear. Your consciousness does not stop in the gap between any content - ideas, feelings, sensations, etc.

Another miscue is the belief (not remotely science) that content (stories) creates awareness, and that experience is limited or beholden to said stories. Not so again.

The last mistake is that awareness is itself tied to limbic activity (emotional/feeling). You whiffed on that one as well.

Once again, conflation, which is why we have to be very specific about terms and what you mean by them.

We have to understand that words and concepts like "The Interpretor" are in no way scientific, the language of which is quantifications. By way of induction Graziano started postulated on things based on observation of patients, but a scientific explanation would have to directly bridge the gap between neuronal activity which we can measure, to an ephemeral Interpretor which in and of itself is nowhere to be found in either the brain or in any measurement.

Have to go to Boston tomorrow so I can't offer more.

jstan

climber

Feb 22, 2018 - 07:07pm PT

And here I had applauded the alternative minimum as a way to get money out of wealthy Americans who ended up owing no income taxes, like Ronald Reagan.

Hate to tell you, Andy, the AMTI is catching fire now, not because Warren Buffet is affected but because the middle class is targeted. Warren can afford lawyers that get his tax below that paid by his secretary. As he himself has complained.

That makes you a fairly fat cat Canadien. Congrats!

WBraun

climber

Feb 22, 2018 - 07:09pm PT

The chess computer has no awareness of being a machine, of playing a game, or defeating an opponent, nor yet has a 1st person perspective or experience of same.
The computer is nothing more than a complex bucket of figurative bolts.
When you're mind blind, you look at the brain and say, "That's all there is." To the mindblind dude, we're a souped up Turing machine.

100% correct.

And ..... gawd damn are you gross materialists ever st000pid ......

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Feb 22, 2018 - 07:18pm PT

Objectless contemplation makes this perfectly clear.

Due to the principle of explosion, the existence of a contradiction (inconsistency) in a formal axiomatic system is disastrous; since any statement can be proved true it trivializes the concepts of truth and falsity.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion

jstan

climber

Feb 22, 2018 - 07:20pm PT

The computer is nothing more than a complex bucket of figurative bolts.

Werner:
My question points out that "a complex bucket of figurative bolts" can achieve equal or better performance than an entity who benefits from the comfy feeling they have some weird undefined advantage of being human.

When the bolts outperform the weird entity to which you feel such kinship, your question should instead be

How did evolution mess up? If you address that question we can have a useful discussion.

WBraun

climber

Feb 22, 2018 - 07:41pm PT

When the bolts outperform the weird entity to which you feel such kinship,

It's never ever happened nor will it ever happen.

Outperformed some devolved mundane chess players is nothing.

You have not yet even understood yourself and what to speak of God yet at all .......

But !!!!

You can ... remain an atheist, if you want.

it's your free independent will ......

jstan

climber

Feb 22, 2018 - 07:56pm PT

Ah. Now we see the assumptions not admitted heretofore.

No God

Mountain climber

Feb 23, 2018 - 08:08am PT

@largo, perhaps I was projecting a bit, but when you said in the original post, beyond the material footprint, my mind goes to the spiritual, religious, connected consciousness thing that other people have been talking about. I disagree with many of you suppositions on the previous page, so we probably won't see eye to eye on this.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 26, 2018 - 03:45pm PT

I disagree with many of you suppositions on the previous page...

How about if I provided you with a way in which you could see for yourself that they are not "suppositions."

List the ones you find suspect and I'll try and answer. No woo involved. It's pretty easy stuff to see once you get past the rule-governed tasking that John S. is talking about, to which computers have the edge by a million miles.