What is "Mind?"

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High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 4, 2018 - 10:00am PT
A passion for science ties in right nicely with that "radical truthfulness" Brett Stephens spoke of regarding Honnold and his free solo. Is it a bias? Sure. But it's a good kind of bias to have.

...

Nature's the culprit, science only the messenger...

[Click to View YouTube Video]

https://youtu.be/s2D7ycjAKv4

Little automata in action. :)
MikeL

Social climber
Southern Arizona
Nov 4, 2018 - 10:11am PT
Ed: that is a confused statement [viz., “How a thing supposedly works is not an understanding of what it is.”]

What are you confused about?

I might say, for example, that the sun parades from east to west because someone is flying a chariot across the sky pulling a really bright light. So is that explanation saying what the sun is? How things (might) work is never a statement of what things are. The two notions are different, qualitatively.

There’s always theories, conceptualizations, models, reductions, abstractions. That’s all that anyone can come up about reality, because reality seems fundamentally ungraspable. There’s far far too much of it at any one time to say what it is. Every “thing” is indivisible with other things (context or environment), and definitionally fleeting. When we talk about things, we are largely “bracketing” the rest of reality out of the conversation.

Yanqui and Ward,

Thx. I read the article. As I did, I wondered what provided the most interest to readers. Was it the push and pull of the theories (volcanism vs. Big Rock Hits Earth), or was it the “story” (ala DMT’s comments) of the push and pull of human foibles?

I may be ignorant, but how is the demise of dinosaurs a worthy allocation of scarce resources in the face of great suffering of people on the planet today? Is the answer to that question salient, and in what way to today’s lives?

The issue of dinosaur extinction is as interesting as anything else is. It’s all interesting; everything is interesting. But none of it may be important. I go to the movies because they are interesting, but nothing that I see in that seat is anything more than a display. I get involved in it, it’s fun and all, and I may even talk deeply about what I thought the movie meant with another scholar, but what is the movie? I can list and describe the medium, the story, the production, the actors’ portrayal, etc., but at its core, the movie is just another ride in the amusement park, which is fine. There’s no reason not to jump into it feet first. You should.

Healyje: it [consciousness] can't be immutable like gravity on one hand and mutable/evolving/changing as individual consciousnesses are on the other. 

What do you think of the following articulation?

Consciousness is another term for attention or awareness, whereas a seeming mutability or evolution of consciousness refers to content *in* awareness. Some of us say that there is no mutability, that there can be no evolution in consciousness. (That conceptualization of evolution of consciousness is just a way of speaking.)

Would you say that evolution would describe cleaning-up your kid with soap and water after playing in the mud? The cleaning might constitute a process, I suppose, but the object of the clean-up is still the same kid. Nothing’s really changed.

Anything that you think affects consciousness, I’d say is really just a shift in content. “I used to be sad, but now I see that sadness is just a passing emotion.” Change in consciousness or change in content?

Wha'da'ya'think?

(Be well.)
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Nov 4, 2018 - 10:16am PT
ya sure MikeL, whatever...

healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 4, 2018 - 11:16am PT
MikeL wrote: Consciousness is another term for attention or awareness, whereas a seeming mutability or evolution of consciousness refers to content *in* awareness. Some of us say that there is no mutability, that there can be no evolution in consciousness. (That conceptualization of evolution of consciousness is just a way of speaking.)

Consciousness is way more than that and its evolution isn't about content, but rather capability. Again, consciousness is active and changing, not static as every other fundamental aspect of the universe. Static = no awareness.
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - Nov 4, 2018 - 11:25am PT
Again, Largo is positing the existence of a fundamental/universal consciousness which is dualistically co-resident with our brains and from which individual consciousness arises. My assertion is you can't have it both ways - it can't be immutable like gravity on one hand and mutable/evolving/changing as individual consciousnesses are on the other. Mass and gravity have an immutable, fundamental, and unchanging relationship; brains and consciousness have a mutable, evolving, and changing relationship.

And that's the problem with the very notion of a 'fundamental consciousness', it would be static if it were fundamental and by definition unconscious and unaware. And if it were mutable, conscious, and aware it endlessly begs the still unanswered question of why on earth (or anywhere else) would it need meat. Hell, why would it require a universe? And really, if I were an aware fundamental consciousness I can tell you it wouldn't be very damn long before suicide was at the very top of my bucket list.

A better metaphor would be a consumer relationship like between plants and photons, but then you'd be back to the antenna problem.
--


There are problems with this analysis, which naturally occur when we try and view consciousness from a 3rd person perspective. First, physical metaphors are lacking because consciousness is not "like" any know or measured objective phenomenon. Second, consciousness does not "exist" like gravity or other physical forces lest we could pull a measurement off of it.

Also, "static" as used above posits consciousness as a thing different and separate from that which is dynamic, which is not the case. Consciousness is not something that "happens" to matter. But that's a different discussion.

All of these speculations derive from a misunderstanding of Nagel's notion that experience can be reckoned separate from experience itself. Better go back and watch the Mary's Room vids.

If you really wanna know about this stuff, dig into the 6th Jhana. This will make clear some of this, just as Colorblind Mary learned about blue by finally seeing it. The Jhana give you an insight impossible by thinking ABOUT consciousness. It also skits the trap of "only thinking this is the case," since the 6th Jhana is not a cognitive exercise.




Ward Trotter

Trad climber
Nov 4, 2018 - 01:00pm PT
I may be ignorant, but how is the demise of dinosaurs a worthy allocation of scarce resources in the face of great suffering of people on the planet today? Is the answer to that question salient, and in what way to today’s lives?

MikeL , your posture in the above might be indicative of low dopamine production in your eye and brain. Huge guess on my part. Don't worry, if true you're doing pretty damn good considering.

Only a crazy mitochondriac such as myself would ever say such a thing.

BTW by confirming your are ignorant is disappointingly anticlimactic since everyone is ignorant.

Hey Yanqui: The sun is coming your way!

yanqui

climber
Balcarce, Argentina
Nov 4, 2018 - 04:51pm PT
I may be ignorant, but how is the demise of dinosaurs a worthy allocation of scarce resources in the face of great suffering of people on the planet today? Is the answer to that question salient, and in what way to today’s lives?

Mike L: I'm almost tempted to buy Ward's hypothesis on this comment. You do realize that you live in a country where people spend time and money to do stuff like "Keep up with the Kardashians", and yet you single out trying to understand the story behind one of the biggest mass extinctions in the history of the planet as "unworthy"? I find this so bizarre that I think maybe Ward is on to something.
WBraun

climber
Nov 4, 2018 - 05:05pm PT
Ward Trotter says -- "everyone is ignorant"

You definitely are the ignorant one saying horsesh!t like this.

Saying st00pid sh!t like this is definitely the trademark of a gross materialist.

You don't know everyone in this whole cosmic manifestation.

You don't even know your own self yet it, to begin with .....
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 4, 2018 - 06:35pm PT
since the 6th Jhana is not a cognitive exercise.


I need MikeL to agree here.

Cognitive is very close in meaning to consciousness.

Tail-chasing advisory.

Finding the true meaning of consciousness by leaving cognition behind is too zen-like. And an escape.

Also, the Wizard who denies religious inclination is borrowing a lot from Buddhism.
yanqui

climber
Balcarce, Argentina
Nov 5, 2018 - 05:28am PT
Colorblind Mary learned about blue by finally seeing it

Does a dog "learn" about blue when it sees it? A newborn infant? The argument seems to say that having knowledge about the physics of seeing blue is not the same thing as seeing blue (duh) and conclude from this that seeing blue is not "physical". How does that follow? It seems pretty clear that having direct experiences and having abstract knowledge about those direct experiences are not equivalent, although I suppose that just learning how to label colors is a step from one realm to the other. I guess this "thought experiment" says something (rather trivial, IMO) about how we relate to the world, but how does it imply something independent about the structure of the world (e.g. when a dog or an infant sees blue, its "awareness" cannot possibly be "physical")? My wife had a sense of smell, a brain tumor grew in her olfactory nerve, the tumor was removed and she lost her sense of smell. She no longer has "awareness" of smells. If her "awareness" of the smell of burning toast was not physical, where did it go when her olfactory nerve was destroyed by the tumor and removed? Into the spirit world of lost awareness? Maybe I'm misinterpreting this thought experiment, but I really don't get it.

I have another question: could Colorblind Mary paint beautiful color paintings, even if we could take some of her knowledge of the physics of seeing color away? Why spend time speculating about the imaginary colorblind person, when you can look at the real world for some kind of answer:


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/23/books/a-colorblind-artist-illustrator-childrens-books.html

Personally, I liked the Chinese Room thought experiment much better. At least it made the valid (IMO) point that "being able to follow formal rules to produce an output" is not equivalent to "being able to understand the meaning of the output you produce". Something that I think should be clear enough to anyone who has ever tried to teach math, but apparently had escaped the attention of many academics.



MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 5, 2018 - 06:37am PT
All of these speculations derive from a misunderstanding of Nagel's notion that experience can be reckoned separate from experience itself. Better go back and watch the Mary's Room vids.


I agree that knowing how the color blue affects activity in a brain is not the same as seeing the color blue yourself. They are different. I don't need help from the hypothetical blind neuroscientist or any of Mary's other incarnations to see that.

You also don't need Nagel or Chalmers or the Liebniz Mill Argument or Scientism or any dubious argument that consciousness is unknowable in a scientific sense. Once your attainments are immaterial you are beyond all that. Science would have enough trouble with the sixth jhāna, let alone those after it.


yanqui,

Are there really academics who thought that our understanding the meaning of something could be accomplished by following a set of formal rules? A modest acquaintance with neurophysiology or math should cure that. Does this go back to the fling with perceptrons?
yanqui

climber
Balcarce, Argentina
Nov 5, 2018 - 06:57am PT
Does this go back to the fling with perceptrons?

I don't know what you mean, again, MH2, even if you misspelled the word "perceptions".

In terms of your first question: Probably, but I'm not really interested in this sufficiently to make a search. The more interesting question might be (in terms of the equivalence I mention): if it's false that P implies Q (which you seem to think no academic ever thought was true?), as Searle's argument "shows", is some version of Q implies P true (even if the "rules" you follow are largely "subconscious")?


Edit to add: Now that I think of it, going back to your first question, if it is possible to build a computer, certainly based on the principles we are using now (e.g. machine learning) that understands natural language, then in fact "understanding the meaning of something could be accomplished by following a set of formal rules", no matter what academics might or might not think. In fact, it is hard for me to imagine the possibility that a machine could ever understand natural language, unless "understanding the meaning of something could be accomplished by following a set of formal rules". But who knows what the "machines" of the future might entail?

MH2: do you have a "bot" that responds on some of your posts?
Don Paul

Social climber
Washington DC
Nov 5, 2018 - 08:27am PT
MH2 good point on cognition. I would say there is a range, from basic awareness that even ant brains have, to cognition (comparable to when a pet learns how to open a door) to language based symbolic processing.

Trying to build a computer that can process language isn't trying to replicate a brain, and IMO is the wrong place to start. Brains are analog, not digital, and always live-wired to sensory input. If you start with the idea that even insect brains have some level of awareness, then you have a good starting point to study AI.

[Click to View YouTube Video]
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 5, 2018 - 11:06am PT
if it's false that P implies Q (which you seem to think no academic ever thought was true?)

It was an honest question. It was about names of particular academics, not about logic. We are human, after all.

Perceptrons were an early instance of "machine learning." Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert proved that there were things people can do that perceptrons could not.



Does a bot do some of my posts? The more interesting question might be; can you predict a response of mine? This came up earlier in the thread when Largo was calling my posts 'predictable.' I offered to send my next post to a third party who could be trusted. Largo would send his prediction and if he was close to right, he was also right to call me predictable. Of course, Largo may have meant, "predictable in tone," or some such, not predictable in substance, but he was not clear on what he meant. There are other problems with the proposed test but they could be worked out.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 5, 2018 - 11:19am PT
Largo wrote: Also, "static" as used above posits consciousness as a thing different and separate from that which is dynamic, which is not the case.


Well, aside from that being so much complete gobbledygook, I assure you it is the case - you can't have it both ways, it's either fundamental and static or local and dynamic.

Again, the whole notion of a fundamental/universal consciousness is absurd. And, of course, you are clearly intent on not answering the question of why a [very bored] fundamental consciousness would need meat or even a universe let alone answer the question of how transference/transition from a fundamental to individual consciousness would occur. Barely rates a "seriously?"
Ward Trotter

Trad climber
Nov 5, 2018 - 01:12pm PT
Saying st00pid sh!t like this is definitely the trademark of a gross materialist.

NOOOO0000000000oooooooooooo Verner


I shall visit you soon.

At least 10 minutes in cold River
Then afterwards

You shall spend at least 30 minutes daily with sun on skin and in eyes.

yanqui

climber
Balcarce, Argentina
Nov 5, 2018 - 01:19pm PT
The more interesting question might be; can you predict a response of mine? This came up earlier in the thread when Largo was calling my posts 'predictable.'

I doubt I could predict what a bot would post, let alone what an MH2 would post. I have a hard time "predicting" what I'm going to say. At least until I'm close to done saying it. And even then I'm often not too happy about what comes out (so I'll go and change it some more). I see this as a learning process. I did like your post about trying to understand the action of the jewel wasp venom. My comment about the bot was referring to the "style" of engagement with my recent posts, which struck as, well, bot-like. It probably didn't help that I had no idea what that comment about perceptrons was about (I guess I should have googled it).

Anyways, of all the arguments I learned by following up Largo's posts, the main one that seemed interesting to me was Searle's. Some of the leads I followed up on (e.g. "Mary's room") made me feel frustrated (I felt like I was getting a low-value return to time-investment). But that's all part of trying to see where other people are "coming from". My comment at the end: "but apparently had escaped the attention of many academics" was not pivotal to anything else I said, and I doubt there'd be much value in trying to make a list of academics who made claims that could arguably be seen as contradictory to what Searle's argument applies to. Strike the comment, if you like. Getting back to Searle's argument: because I found it interesting doesn't mean I'm convinced the argument gives any meaningful limits to whether or when machines can understand natural language. At least not in the same sense that Galois theory gives specific limits to whether or when a computer can write the solutions to fifth-degree polynomials. The argument does seem to imply that machines need something more than "plain-old" formal processing rules in order to understand natural language, but there is no attempt to spell this out in any precise way (and I imagine it's not even worthwhile to try, until computer science, understanding of the brain, and/or robotics make advances).
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 5, 2018 - 07:20pm PT
trying to see where other people are "coming from"


That is a goal. I have in the past on this thread characterized my own writing as having mannerisms, being glib, cryptic, and prone to cliché.

The funny thing is, with only a little effort, anyone could predict the particular post I would make for the test of whether my post was predictable. Anyone who had a good grasp of my pattern. It's like a math puzzle described in Martin Gardner's aha! Insight. The solution to the puzzle seems hard to find until you are told that there is a solution. Knowing that there is a solution is the key to finding the solution.

But yes. This has nothing important to do with mind and whether machines could acquire one.

I spent the day out climbing. For the last couple days, I've been trying to remember something Patrick Billingsley once told me while I was at the University of Chicago. If I remember, he was friends with Bill Tait who was a professor in mathematical logic who took up climbing for a while. We probably met in the pub called Jimmy's. Billingsley was in probability and statistics, and also an actor. He said something that seemed to go to the roots of his field. I was trying for the last 2 days to reproduce the phrase I had heard from him back in around 1976. It would appear as a sense that I did know it, but could not quite remember. On the way down the trail today, it finally came to me. It was something like, "measure space." Or metric space, and being faced with choosing an appropriate one, or something like that. He may have said, "First you choose your metric space."

So I did a search for 'metric space' and immediately found:

https://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/%7Evangaans/jancol1.pdf

and saw reference #1



edit:

To see "where people are coming from" it may be helpful to nudge them. That may be Largo's method. There is an interesting thread on Supertopo with a title like 'write like Largo.' I believe that Russ Walling was the runaway winner.
yanqui

climber
Balcarce, Argentina
Nov 6, 2018 - 02:54am PT
^^^^^^^^^^^

I'll take the bait (nudge) this time. I would bet dollars to doughnuts the professor said "measure space". Had he said, "metric space" it would be reasonable for another mathematician to ask: "What do you mean by that? A Borel measure?" just to avoid any possible ambiguity. Have you ever heard Steve Martin's "Plumbers Joke"?.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 6, 2018 - 08:59am PT
Thank you, yanqui. I do find certain things important on a personal level. I have been a user of math but never a creator of it.

I've had quite a few climbing partners who were/are mathematicians. One of them had wider interests, including Isaac Newton's theology and Albert Einstein's relativity (which was well outside my friend's specialty). He also wrote on this thread's topic, if some latitude is allowed. Here we live with ambiguity.


http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1593650&tn=8764


What's funny about the plumbers joke? For me, today, it's that the former owner of the house we now live in is coming over to show me how to clear the water out of the sprinkler system before the first freeze.
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