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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Who do you know in physics who is working on consciousness?
you know these people?
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WBraun
climber
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Another one would be Ed Hartouni who is working on consciousness.
He'll get it in one of his lifetimes eventually ....
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Jim Clipper
climber
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[Click to View YouTube Video]
I'm not hating. Thanks for the taco. Where else will you see a physics PhD (from Columbia right?), take some lumps from American climbing luminaries, (aka dirtbags), maybe trying to explain a common experience to eachother. I thought there was a detente somewhere around Thanksgiving... best!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Duck: He'll [Ed] get it in one of his lifetimes eventually ....
:-D
Anesthetics, psychedelics, evolution of consciousness, plant cognition, quantum approaches to consciousness, brains as connectors, placebo research, dual-aspect monism, first-person experiences, phantom limbs, consciousness in religious studies, bistable perception, embodiment, time and consciousness, etc. are all conceptualizations.
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WBraun
climber
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time and consciousness, etc. are all conceptualizations.
Time is very real and without consciousness itself, you wouldn't ever be able to see your own self nor even understand conceptualization .......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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all conceptualizations
And therefore...?
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Eric Beck
Sport climber
Bishop, California
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Ed H a few pages back:
when you're up against something difficult, it is easy to persuade yourself that something radically different is necessary to resolve it.
...Chalmers talks about 3 crazy ideas:
1) there is no conscious experience - Dennett - he doesn't pursue this one... obviously... but he also didn't refute it
2) consciousness is fundamental
"if you can't explain it in terms of existing fundamentals, then it's logical to propose that it is fundamental"
I actually don't see the logic in this at all, though it is a way to proceed and see where it takes you. It immediately runs into the problem that humans are not found in most of the universe for much of the time. It might be odd to expand a human characteristic to being something "fundamental" when the rest of the universe seems to go on quite nicely without humans being around.
Your observation that humans seem to be at best an anomaly seems accurate. If we extend this to other organisms though, the anomaly recedes a bit. Life on the earth is billions of years old and found in many often marginal environments. Hasn't science often made progress when we recognize the universal in what appears to be an anomaly. Galileo observed (with his early telescope) that points of light near Jupiter were in different positions on subsequent nights. This yielded the idea of objects orbiting something other than the earth and eventually yielded our current heliocentric view of the solar system. The strange result of the Michelson Morley experiment that the speed of light seemed constant gave us special relativity. You can probably think up better examples.
Here's an idea I would like to claim, but it is actually from Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard was a jesuit and a paleontologist. He suggested that consciousness is a universal phenomenon, a fundamental property of matter like mass and charge, but very weak, and manifesting itself only with very complex structures, of which our brains are a kind of culmination. That it is weak enough to have allowed a very successful completely physical description of most matter. In this view, evolution is the process of ever higher consciousnesses, or in the Buddhist view, of the universe becoming aware of itself.
This may be a scientific (testable) proposition. If this view is correct, life will be common in the universe. We will find fossils on Mars, protozoa in the ocean of Europa. Teilhard elaborated on this in his book, The Phenomenon of Man. Teilhard insisted that this be read as a scientific treatise.
If there is one aspect which bothers me a little here, it is that our sensation of self is a seamless unity. How do all the little conscious bits come together to generate this?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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If there is one aspect which bothers me a little here, it is that our sensation of self is a seamless unity. How do all the little conscious bits come together to generate this?
I think Dennett had a good example of this in the fact that our eyes have a blind spot on the retina, but our perception of the visual field is "a seamless unity."
When I was taught about this in 7th grade, my teacher said it was because the brain fills in the blind spot, but modern technology is able to measure brain activity, and that hypothesis can be tested, and it is found that the brain does nothing of the sort. Filling in would involve brain activity, and there is no such activity associated with the filling in.
Dennett proposed that the brain simply ignores that blind spot, the perception of the visual field is one of "seamless unity" but things happening in the blind spot are inferred.
When you go to the optometrist you are tested for the extent of your blind spot, you look at a visual field that is perceived to be a "seamless unity" but for the quick changes you may or may not notice that induces you to click (or not) your indication that you saw the change.
So we perceive a "seamless unity" where one does not exist... there are many other examples of this, and it is not a stretch to think that our perceived "seamless unity" of the stream of consciousness is exactly that, a perception, and not the "reality."
The Phenomenon of Man... Teilhard insisted that this be read as a scientific treatise.
I haven't read it since high school, but it might be an interesting exercise to honor de Chardin's request. When I first read it, I did it from the view point that it was a religious/philosophy treatise.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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I think our seamless sense of self only exists so long as we don't challenge it. The minute we do, the more fragmented it becomes. Psychedelic drugs do this powerfully, living in another culture with very different social mores, language and body language will do it as well. Being around someone who is mentally ill or developing various forms of dementia will cause us to question it. Meditation also does so. Just the process of growing older and remembering how differently we thought when we were young will also challenge our sense of a seamless self.
In spite of this, we retain our sense of self. I believe we do so as the Buddhist teach, because of our ego, our desire to be unique, something which very few completely overcome. Probably this sense of self is an evolutionary survival mechanism which can only be overcome in very special circumstances. So far it would seem that the desire for survival is a stronger evolutionary force than the weak force of universal consciousness ?
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WBraun
climber
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The light never ever has gone out and is impossible.
Only in ignorance and in delusion does it appear that way ......
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Don Paul
Social climber
Washington DC
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Hello folks - there is no evidence of a "weak force of consciousness" or evidence of consciousness existing outside of a brain. This is problem #1 with this quantum religiousity.
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Jim Clipper
climber
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Probably this sense of self is an evolutionary survival mechanism which can only be overcome in very special circumstances. So far it would seem that the desire for survival is a stronger evolutionary force than the weak force of universal consciousness ?
To me that seems a very interesting question. Maybe one that has been asked, with different languages and world views for at least a few centuries. Even before an understanding of evolution.
There may be an answer in group selection theory, or game theory. However, reconstructing the past leads to just so stories. Moreover, the tests necessary to "prove it", maybe excluding mathematical models, are often instinctively rejected, perhaps because of our sense of self, or what we hold on to as humanity.
I would ask weak force? humility? Empathy and altruism.
The question of self/other is very old, very human. Then again, I lose something by thinking that it's manifestation in the human species is very old. We're a blip.
I was wondering, are we the only sentient species because we were the first, and we "won". Human evolution has been found to be more complex than anticipated, by the "self examining" human scientists. Neanderthals.
I'm starting to ramble. I was thinking about SETI. Also, I think that some folks have the benefit of math. Is math real, a description, both? Some ideas are too abstract for my brain, but I can't complexly argue with the numbers.
edit: Don Paul, you may underestimate the power of "love"
edit edit: the unwavering Wernerness makes me smile
edit edit edit: It was probably something to see in full solo mode.
..
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WBraun
climber
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When the living entity comes into contact with the material plane its original consciousness becomes distorted due to the material energies illusionary non permanence of which are direct reflections of the absolute.
The gross material plane becomes a hall of mirrors due to the mind and its dualistic nature.
When the body and mind are purified and controlled by BONAFIDE meditative disciplines the absolute truth will then start to reveal itself as it is.
Everything will be seen as they are and NOT how we think they are,
just as an intoxicated person becomes sober once again .....
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Interesting talk by Dennett but to my way of thinking he was discussing vagaries of perception rather than consciousness. To me consciousness is what exists whether you're seeing optical illusions, nothing but black in a sensory deprivation tank or nothing but an internal white light during meditation. The senses can be fooled, the functions of the brain can be fooled, but still, for ordinary mortals, the sense of self remains.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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the sense of self remains.
What makes that sense more reliable than the other perceptions you mention?
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WBraun
climber
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What makes that sense more reliable than the other perceptions you mention?
Because that is the real YOU ....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Fast track to the neocortex: A memory engram in the posterior parietal cortex
S. Brodt, S. Gais, J. Beck, M. Erb, K. Scheffler, M. Schönauer
Science 30 Nov 2018:
Vol. 362, Issue 6418, pp. 1045-1048
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6418/1045
Abstract
Models of systems memory consolidation postulate a fast-learning hippocampal store and a slowly developing, stable neocortical store. Accordingly, early neocortical contributions to memory are deemed to reflect a hippocampus-driven online reinstatement of encoding activity. In contrast, we found that learning rapidly engenders an enduring memory engram in the human posterior parietal cortex [PPC]. We assessed microstructural plasticity via diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging as well as functional brain activity in an object–location learning task. We detected neocortical plasticity as early as 1 hour after learning and found that it was learning specific, enabled correct recall, and overlapped with memory-related functional activity. These microstructural changes persisted over 12 hours. Our results suggest that new traces can be rapidly encoded into the parietal cortex, challenging views of a slow-learning neocortex.
...A memory engram has four defining features: (i) it must relate to a specific experience; (ii) it must engender an enduring change in the neural substrate; (iii) it can lie dormant for extended periods; and (iv) it must enable memory recall, thus having an impact on behavior (10, 11). To elucidate where memory formation leads to lasting physical changes, the microstructural modifications, e.g., of synapse number and morphology, which can occur within minutes after learning must be assessed (12). Diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) is sensitive to the microstructure of brain tissue (13) and can image experience-driven structural plasticity in the human brain noninvasively and in vivo (14–16)...
Although there is still debate about the functions of the different subregions of the PPC and their roles in working memory, memory-related attention, or reinstatement of previous experience (3, 8), our study highlights the role of the medial PPC. Observing microstructural changes in the precuneus takes us from memory processing and reinstatement to the memory engram itself (17). The fast temporal dynamics that we observed challenge traditional models of slow systems consolidation (2) and suggest that new traces are encoded rapidly in the neocortex from the onset of learning. In addition, we detected learning-specific, persistent microstructural changes upstream along the dorsal and ventral visual pathways, which is in line with the notion of distributed neocortical memory traces (8, 11). Apart from their role in perception, visual areas process memory content, suggesting memory storage also at this level (30, 31). Indeed, many accounts regard perception and memory not as faculties of different systems but as being localized within the same distributed neural circuits (28). Combining functional imaging with diffusion imaging might help transform our view of how the brain translates perception into memory.
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capseeboy
Social climber
portland, oregon
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QuoteWhen the body and mind are purified and controlled by BONAFIDE meditative disciplines the absolute truth will then start to reveal itself as it is.
Here
I'm not sure that anyone person can define meditation in any way that fit's another person's experience because all of us has an active inference of our own experience. This inference is, perhaps, partly under the control of the gross matter.
What is often times thought of, by me, as a weakness in someone else, may in reality be a sign of their ability to problem solve e.g. a boy scooting down a flight of stairs on his behind because he is too frightened to walk down. My active inference(AI) had already made my mind up w/o me using my mind. AI, I suggest, may be at the root of Racism.
My recent experience, with what I shall describe as being meditative, came about without any trying on my part. It may be argued that this was not a meditative state; none the less, this was my experience: My brain was in a state of neither pushing or pulling----not wanting/wanting. I was not in a state of any intoxication. I was fully conscious of my surroundings. I was neither happy or sad----I was totally free from thought. In essence, my mind was dead.
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