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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Sep 25, 2018 - 05:19pm PT
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Jan, I kinda agree with that insight. Mathematics and certain software patterns (I would include systems engineering here) seem to be more fundamental than life's particular implementations. The Composite software pattern appears to be one of the most fundamental. That new things can be built from existing things.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 25, 2018 - 05:27pm PT
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If you look at most of these arguments and analogies, they are based largely if not entirely on processing/programming models, particularly those seeking to "explain' consciousness by way of algorithms ("a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations"). Remember that a programming algorithm is a computer procedure that is a lot like a recipe (called a procedure) that tells your computer what steps to take to solve a problem or reach a goal. The ingredients are called inputs; the results are called the outputs.
Up until about 2005, this was the default method of considering mind, which was a holdover from the old behaviorialist model based on describable behavior. This led to a fixation on mental content or output (thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, etc.) and attempts to explain or at any rate define sentience by way of content. That led to all the qualia arguments - some of the most convoluted and tortured writing in the history of letters - to prove or disprove this or that angle on what consciousness was.
Somewhere in there people started wondering if WHAT we are conscious of was perhaps less key then the fact that we are consciousness of ANYTHING. This didn't break the fixation with content, as many attempted to "explain" awareness by way of content processing. That is, WHAT we are aware of. Problem is there is no language to describe much of this seeming that language is anchored in the what and the where, not our awareness of same. To many, awareness itself is a meaningless term.
This, for my money, is where the conversation starts getting both modern AND interesting. Most of us recognize that losing awareness is what we most dread about the prospect of dying. Not that we won't be able to do this or see that, but that we won't be aware of anything at all.
But more on this later, when I have time to write up a few notes on where I think the mind conversation might be headed. For sure, we live in interesting times.
BTW, if you wanna look at someone who knows a ton about processing, but for whom awareness is tied to content, give this short vid a shot (on Ray K.). Makes perfect sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3f4pQOHKPA
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Sep 25, 2018 - 07:53pm PT
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Largo does a passable job of illustrating an awarenes manqué content.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Sep 25, 2018 - 08:36pm PT
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Even after looking up manque
? ...
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Sep 25, 2018 - 08:37pm PT
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"Somewhere in there people started wondering if WHAT we are conscious of was perhaps less key then the fact that we are consciousness of ANYTHING."
This must have been one of those great epiphanies in the Philosophy of Mind.
Look how far we have progressed since!
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Sep 25, 2018 - 09:32pm PT
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I can now see for miles ...
Just like clockwerk
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Sep 26, 2018 - 12:53am PT
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"Somewhere in there people started wondering if WHAT we are conscious of was perhaps less key then the fact that we are consciousness of ANYTHING."
I've recognized that today the people who claim to be conscious of NOTHING are the most proud ones...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Sep 26, 2018 - 07:02am PT
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HFCS: . . . I know my will is free in numerous respects . . . .
How would one know such things if will is the result of organic yet mechanical processing? This sounds like quantum-mechanical analogizing, imo: (i) there is a physical process of A leading to B leading to C, but (ii) outcomes are equifinal and statistical—that is, there are many pathways to C, and a result of C is only statistically predictive. At the end of the day, just what is being claimed? Where is “will” or what is “will?”
The more careful and specific one seems to get about anything, the less certain and definitive one can lay claim to these days—so-called computers, modules, neuron nets, inputs, outputs, signals, data, communication, algorithms, information processing, chemistry, systems engineering, biology, physics, mathematics notwithstanding.
Speculations. Just speculations.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 26, 2018 - 07:59am PT
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"How would one know such things...
My will was free just this morning to think about a couple of eggs for breakfast. Yesterday it wasn't so free since I didn't have any around. Hadn't gone to the grocery store yet. Indeed, my will acted on this freedom. I just consumed them, and they were great!!
Just a thought: it seems to me several here would be well served to read up on just what a frame of reference is. Or what context is. Or what a category of thought is. Often it matters in discussions such as these.
What is your aim here? Is it just to post (whatever) or to actually further more deeply comprehend something? Mine is the latter.
How would one know such things...
If read carefully, my previous post not only addressed lower frames of reference (re: atoms, particles, eg) but higher frames of reference (re: system options, choices, decision making points) where it is perfectly acceptable/reasonable to talk about constraints and freedoms of these higher order emergent functions (capabilities, powers).
I'm going to go have a second cup of coffee now. Because this automaton, that is, this 100 percent fully caused creature, is thank goodness FREE to do so.
...
"My will was free just this morning to think about a couple of eggs for breakfast."
Lucky me, also, because I’m human. Due to a different makeup (a different nervous system of different programming, innate option set, computational abilities, etc.) the volitions (wills) of our cats are NOT so free. Free that is to consider a couple of eggs for breakfast.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 26, 2018 - 10:05am PT
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Some time check out the system agency built into a snow leopard that gives it the freedom - the power of capability - to chase down fast moving ibex. Even over rocky cliffs.
Me: I don't have that option. I'm not free to do that.
Snow Leopard: I do. I am. Hold my beer.
You can find it on youtube.
...
The reason behind the Fermi Paradox: My best guess...
"just announced Oculus Quest, our first all-in-one 6DoF** VR headset w positional tracking and Touch controllers, 50+ titles available at launch. Oculus Quest represents a new class of VR experience and will ship in Spring 2019 for US$399."
You know the saying, Be careful what you wish for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G91GU1XJnnY
**6DoF: Six Degrees of Freedom
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 26, 2018 - 12:15pm PT
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Free will has nothing to do with the material body.
As usual, you have zero clue what free will actually is ......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Sep 26, 2018 - 12:30pm PT
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The more careful and specific one seems to get about anything, the less certain and definitive one can lay claim to these days—so-called computers, modules, neuron nets, inputs, outputs, signals, data, communication, algorithms, information processing, chemistry, systems engineering, biology, physics, mathematics notwithstanding.
Speculations. Just speculations.
One has bit off more than one can chew.
Can spiders see colors?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 26, 2018 - 01:36pm PT
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Incidentally, http://www.informationphilosopher.com/ is an invaluable source for most of the topics and people discussed on this thread. It is generally even handed and succinct, so you can get some handle on subjects that normally require exhaustive study and wading through hours of quicksand.
The guy who runs the site is an interesting dood:
Bob Doyle is the Information Philosopher. He has likely read more works of philosophers and scientists than any other modern thinker, and has critically analyzed and written about the ideas of hundreds of them on these I-Phi web pages, as seen in the left navigation.
Bob earned a Ph.D in Astrophysics from Harvard in 1968 and is now an Associate in the Harvard Astronomy Department.
He holds several patents and is the inventor of a number of computer games, including Parker Brothers Merlin (1978).
Bob wrote the first desktop publishing program, MacPublisher,
in 1984 for the then new Macintosh computer.
He helped Christopher Lydon and Dave Winer create the first Podcasts in 2003.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Sep 26, 2018 - 03:16pm PT
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" . . . subjects that normally require exhaustive study and wading through hours of quicksand."
If you are not a professional philosopher, to what end? To learn that the existence of awareness is more fundamental than the objects thereof? Better to spend your time in Zen, seeking no-thingness.
Or, indulge in science.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Sep 26, 2018 - 06:58pm PT
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HFCS: My will was free just this morning to think about a couple of eggs for breakfast.
You could have chosen a much better claim to make. One thing people who watch their minds will tell you is that they have looked closely, and they can’t tell where thoughts come from. It could be programming, and I don’t mean that in a science fiction sense. Those people will tell you thoughts appear to come in from no where, they establish themselves no where that anyone can be certain about, and “whoosh,” they leave when they are damned well ready and not a moment before. You’re a little pilot in an infinite mechanism without any controls. But you have this really complicated screen to watch, and it is so interactive, you think you’re driving.
If you would have said that you chose to have eggs yesterday morning, and did, then that would be another questionable claim. How would you know, for example, whether anything else really could have happened than what did happen? Who’s gone beyond time and space?
A person is always in the past when he or she talks about free will or volition, as they point to what seemingly occurred . . . in the past. (I’d say in memory.) To be fair, how does one go beyond or outside of that? Be-here-now and try to break what could seem like programming . . . or get outside what’s all going on in consciousness. It’s all the same thing.
You know, I think I have free will all the time—and it appears to make no difference whatsoever from “letting go.” (How could that work?)
It’s all mind, dude.
Be well.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Sep 27, 2018 - 09:36am PT
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You’re a little pilot in an infinite mechanism without any controls.
A pilot by definition operates controls.
He must mean this kind of pilot:
2.
a television program made to test audience reaction with a view to the production of a series.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 27, 2018 - 10:21am PT
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Until Philosophy incorporates Biology its just bullsh#t.
Philosophy, by definition, is ... the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.
Generally speaking, philosophy is the attempt to cut through the bullshit and clarify what someone is actually saying, so far as the drift can be articulated.
IME, a riff like the quote about is usually the result of someone reading something that threatened their first assumptions, perhaps in this case, the philosophical belief that biology is the royal road to understanding "the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence."
Another point worth making is that to most academic philosophers these days, many are well steeped in biology, and the basic tenets are not lost on the others. A more fruitful question might be: What do you believe, biologically speaking, is not getting attention in the mind discussion, and what, specifically, do you believe is lost on philosophers?
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Sep 27, 2018 - 10:43am PT
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What did René Descartes say?
I was too lazy to search Newton's work. A quick online search of Descartes' manuscripts found references to clocks, used as an analogy for the "clocklike" nature of the physical world, in the Meditations, The Discourse on Method and the Principles. Of course, Descartes didn't think the (human) mind was anything like a clock, as he made quite clear with his last reference to clocks in the Discourse:
"It is another remarkable fact that although many animals show more skill than we do in some of their actions, yet the same animals show no skill at all in plenty of others; so what they do better doesn’t prove that they have minds, for if it did, they would have better minds than any of us and would out-perform us in everything. It shows rather that they don’t have minds at all, and that it is nature that acts in them according to the disposition of their organs. Similarly, we, with all our skill can’t count the hours and measure time as accurately as a clock consisting only of wheels and springs! I went on to describe the rational soul, and showed that, unlike the other things of which I had spoken, it can’t be derived from the powers of matter, but must be specially created ·as a sheer addition to the human body·"
A little historical perspective, straight from the horse's mouth (Yes, I referred to Descartes as "the horse").
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