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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 23, 2019 - 11:19am PT
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"You're conflating the two modes of "knowing," attempting to use one mode, which works per quantifying seemingly external objects and phenomenon, on the second mode, which is direct experience."
Who would think a simple cheeseburger could elicit such profundity?
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Mar 23, 2019 - 11:28am PT
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I will suggest that the perspective is turned from minds and cheeseburgers in general to the concrete initiator of the thread, Largo. The new question: What's inside Largo?
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capseeboy
Social climber
portland, oregon
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Mar 23, 2019 - 11:42am PT
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I will suggest that some people hold absolute truths.
Edit: add that, swap have with hold.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 23, 2019 - 12:50pm PT
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There is no successful vocabulary that doesn't include believing aka wanting (citation needed)
Everything we use to pass information on is an abstract ie it is not the
thing itself.
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Not sure what you mean by the first line. Perhaps that the map is not the territory? My point was that if you, say, do a boulder problem, the experience itself has nothing to do with beliefs, though believing in your chances might have helped you heave-ho.
Once you start attempting to "pass on information" the path gets tricky. For example, John S. started with an experience of eating a cheeseburger, then immediately went to brain function, looking there for information (measurements) that he could possibly contrast with the information rendered through experience. Why, because he can't pull a measurement directly OFF experience, and so he goes to the physical/linear/causal agent he believes "creates" the experience. That's known as the "medical model," and has given us some crucial information per the brain, but little per mind because the brain data is "not the thing itself (experience)." Add to this that experience is not a thing (observable external object) and we start to see the challenges.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Mar 23, 2019 - 01:49pm PT
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My new list; On the road to Mind.
* Nervous systems with self-reflective declarative memory (Mind)
* Nervous systems with declarative memory (consciousness)
* Nervous systems with non-declarative memory
* Organisms with nervous systems
* Communities of cells (organisms)
* Cells (life; self-sustainable and replicating)
* Organic molecules (building blocks for life)
* Molecules (composite design pattern)
* Chemical bonds (first defense against entropy)
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* Entropy
Been influenced a lot lately by reading about memory in books that include Eric Kandel as an author. Non-declarative memory is memory that is retrieved unconsciously and is stored in the original pathways in which the memory trace traveled. Declarative memory, on the other hand, requires that the original trace also go through some higher, specialized brain areas that can include spatial maps and other, higher-level algorithms that allow the organism to use inference in its decisions. Somehow, consciousness is involved in the playing out of these specialized brain areas.
Mind, I believe, is the Interpreter as suggested by Michael Gazzaniga. It's an add-on structure to the brain devoted to making up stories about experience and sits on top of consciousness.
The composite design pattern represented by the molecule is the secret sauce to life, IMO. The composite design pattern allows new things to be built from original building blocks as well as previously-built things (composites) using the building blocks. I've been using this pattern in my work for the last 15 years. In life, the building blocks are atoms and previously-built molecules.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 23, 2019 - 04:14pm PT
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"Mind, I believe, is the 'Interpreter' as suggested by Michael Gazzaniga"
Kant's Synthesizer? Largo can explain the differences, perhaps.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 23, 2019 - 04:27pm PT
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It's an add-on structure to the brain devoted to making up stories about experience and sits on top of consciousness.
Such horsesh!t you make up.
You really are clueless even more than ever.
You should be ashamed .....
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 23, 2019 - 06:35pm PT
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the brain data is "not the thing itself (experience)." Add to this that experience is not a thing (observable external object) and we start to see the challenges.
What is the challenge?
You state that brain data is not experience. I challenge you to show how experience could happen without brain data, remembering that not all brain data is conscious and available to your observation.
Your philosophizing needs more scrutiny. An observable external object implies an observer. In most cases the observer is not the thing observed. More or less by definition if you insist that the thing observed must be external.
Tighten up your reasoning.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 23, 2019 - 09:30pm PT
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I have this thing called an "idea". Oops, not an external object!
Back to the philosophy department faculty lounge.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 24, 2019 - 10:07am PT
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You state that brain data is not experience.
What exactly is "brain data?" What's the difference, in your opinion/experience, between brain data (whatever that is) and data stored in a computer? What's more, what do you imagine the difference to be between the computer, and you, absent a task to complete?
Trying to link "mind" to Gazzaniga's Interpreter (neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux did much of the heavy lifting here but Gazzaniga gets most of the credit) is IMO vastly after the fact. The Interpreter as posited by Gazzaniga is basically an unconscious cognitive function that seeks to "explain" reality, filling in factual gaps with what seems statistically most probable, liberally just making stuff up (from stored information) if need be.
Mind functions on a much more profound level, actually creating the world we perceive. The way we normally perceive reality (time, space, location, movement, linear, causal, with features like colors, shapes etc) is already in place (see Kant) before any interpreting comes down.
What the "interpreter" underscores is the brain's auto function to explain reality as it is constructed by mind or consciousness. Conflating the interpreter with sentience or awareness, for example, will get you nowhere, and is, IMO, as misguided and fruitless as basing a model of consciousness on qualia, or trying to answer Chalmers' Hard Problem by way of physical/linear/causal criteria.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 24, 2019 - 05:02pm PT
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Fun read, John.
It's interesting to see the non-reaction to a paper like this. Or if people do take it up, most would look to try deny the results, the experiment being another example of "misinterpreting the data."
How hard do we cling to a seemingly stand-alone, objective world existing independent of an observer. Our rational minds are built to give us that iteration of "reality" and so we go with it. Till experiments like this one say, Not so fast. Then we scramble to refute it.
My sense of it is that physicalism had a great run, but it runs out of road once we reach the "threshold" issues like the imagined "creation" of the universe, the virtually impossible odds of DNA self organizing, of apparently objective matter "becoming" conscious, and so forth, to which no progress has been made whatsoever. Ergo the new models like Information Theory, Biocentrism, etc.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 24, 2019 - 05:32pm PT
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What exactly is "brain data?"
It's a phrase you used in the post I responded to. What did you mean by it?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 24, 2019 - 05:48pm PT
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It's interesting to see the non-reaction to a paper like this.
it's a physics paper, it's in the mix,... perhaps it is not so revolutionary as you presume, after all, Wigner was talking about this some time ago (1961) with references dating from 1952 to the present.
perhaps you are too quick to judge "those physicalists'
perhaps you don't understand "those physicalists"
after all, it is a physics paper, it is about measurements on a physical system, with quantitative outcomes (perhaps you missed their discussion of what constitutes an "observer").
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 25, 2019 - 08:13am PT
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Accordingly, we define as observer any physical system that can extract information from another system by means of some interaction, and store that information in a physical memory. Our definition covers human observers, as well as more commonly used nonconscious observers such as (classical or quantum) computers and other measurement devices—even the simplest possible ones, as long as they satisfy the above requirements.
No, Ed, I didn't miss it. There is an interesting discussion on this going around. The key aspect, it seems, to "nonconscious observers" is that what these really are, in every case, is consciously fabricated monitoring devices. That is, man-made machines that Nature does not provide. Interesting to ponder the implications.
My sense of this, Ed, is that your principal concern is to defend your belief in observer-independent facts of the world. The paper seems to suggest otherwise. I don't consider the implications to be revolutionary in the least, since wisdom traditions have been saying for 3500 years that there is no such thing as any stand-alone feature of reality that is independent of anything else.
But maybe you are saying that the paper has misrepresented the "data," or that there is some other conclusion to be drawn that would safeguard the belief in observer-independent facts. Specifically, in regards to the paper, what would you refute, and on what grounds? As I mentioned, it's axiomatic you would refute it - or that we may be sure.
And I'm curious about what conceptual aspect of physicalism that you feel I don't understand. Specifically.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 25, 2019 - 08:34am PT
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My sense of this, Ed, is that your principal concern is to defend your belief in observer-independent facts of the world.
well you can personalize it, Largo, as part of your story line, but you would be wrong. I'm not defending any point of view here...
And I'm curious about what conceptual aspect of physicalism that you feel I don't understand. Specifically.
the result is physical, and the analysis is physical, so it would seem to fit squarely in the physical domain.
You don't seem to consider quantum mechanics to be physical.
You certainly do not understand quantum mechanics.
You haven't read the paper in the detail required to actually conclude whether or not the results and the analysis are correct, neither have I, it takes a lot of effort to do that, but someone who is interested will, and perhaps will continue the experimental campaign to understand this aspect of quantum mechanics. It's part of the way we discuss things in physics.
"you have to put the work in"
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 25, 2019 - 08:56am PT
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the result is physical, and the analysis is physical, so it would seem to fit squarely in the physical domain.
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You left out the observer, Ed. The conscious observer who built the measuring device, and which analyzed the result. The way you have it phrased, the experiment could have happened in Nature without anyone consciously building a measuring device, or watching, before, during or after, and the "result" would have been selfsame. That position is indefensible - we can easily see why.
If you ever do get a chance to review that paper, I'd be interested in hearing if you thought that the authors flubbed the data, and if so, how - specifically.
There's a lot I don't understand, Ed.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 25, 2019 - 09:13am PT
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Yes the observer itself is NOT physical nor ever physical.
That is where modern science went astray into the illusion .....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 25, 2019 - 09:36am PT
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The way you have it phrased, the experiment could have happened in Nature without anyone consciously building a measuring device, or watching, before, during or after, and the "result" would have been selfsame. That position is indefensible - we can easily see why.
you need to do the work.
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