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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 22, 2015 - 01:23pm PT
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Are we back to some sort of eternal universal mind, a philosophical dead end, or simply the notion that sentient creatures will posses a mind? And if sentient creatures vanish, will mind continue, as would gravity? On the other hand, will artificial "minds" be capable of recognizing their existence, of self-reflection - to me, a critical characteristic of mind?
No, I don't think so but the issue isn't between science and magic. The potential reality of mind is part of the fabric of what is and in that sense mind enjoys a kind of immortality beyond issues of eternal spirit. The issue is far more complicated than the sort of here is science and then here is magic. Can't you say that gravity exists as a potential? Doesn't mind continue to exist as a potential and isn't that potential as eternal as the universe in which we find it (mind)? Is it possible to imagine an entropic universe in which gravity no longer exists? If mind can be transferred to a circuit board then doesn't mind become a "thing" outside the function and structure of brain?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Nov 22, 2015 - 02:03pm PT
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If mind can be transferred to a circuit board then doesn't mind become a "thing" outside the function and structure of brain?
Very interesting question for those who are sure that robots will soon be similar to humans. The Dalai Lama was once asked if a person's mind could reincarnate into a robot and he said why not? Though why would anyone want to?
Speaking of which, here is an interview from Richard Gere about mind in which he uses the word as Tibetans do, of space instead of nothingness. Perhaps it will clarify.
" space is space wherever it is. I think the analytical approach—kind of finding the non-boundaries of that space—is important. In a way, one gets stability from being able to order the rational mind. When space is not there for you, the intellectual work will still keep you buoyed up. I still find myself in situations where my emotions are out of control and the anger comes up, and it’s very difficult to enter pure white space at that point. So the analytical approach to working with the mind is enormously helpful. It’s something very clear to fall back on and very stabilizing.
I can say that whatever forms of meditation I’ve taken on, they still involve the basic forms of refuge, generation of bodhicitta [awakened mind and heart] and dedication of merit to others. Whatever level of the teachings that my teachers allow me to hear, they still involve these basic forms.
Overall, tantra has become less romantic to me. It seems more familiar. That’s an interesting stage in the process, when that particular version of reality becomes more normal. I’m not saying it’s normal, in the sense of ordinary or mundane, but I can sense it being as normal as what I took to be reality before. I can trust that."
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Nov 22, 2015 - 02:18pm PT
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A tragic and ironic paradox of sentience is the probability that humans might be responsible for their own extinction. Such an event would have the potential to negate any idea of a universal consciousness if such consciousness were contingent on the existence of a collective human consciousness. This assumption is arrogant on the face of it but at any rate should not deter the development of an artificial intelligence to take our place in the event we are unable to develop the ability to physically travel to other stars and solar systems before life is no longer supportable on earth and in this Solar system.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Nov 22, 2015 - 03:20pm PT
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Feynman wrote a great little book for us dumbards, QED. Anyone can understand it if you take your time.
His path integral is an amazing concept. I highly recommend the book. The notion that photons follow every possible path is strange. We think of light as traveling in a straight line.
It refers to Stochastic processes, although he doesn't use that word.
Stochastic processes are all around us in nature, not just at the quantum level. This is one of my arguments that we do have free will. We are not, as Harris argues, "biochemical puppets." I don't buy that notion based on natural processes that are stochastic in nature. If we vary at all from a physical deterministic path, then the whole idea gets shot down. If you read Sam Harris's bio on wiki, it explains his philosophy. He is HFCS's favorite, so I read it, along with watching various lectures on youtube. No lack of material there.
The path integral is one way that I see us as NOT being Harris's biochemical puppets. Chaos. Turbulence. Diffusion. Random Walk. Amplitudes rather than precision. Brownian movement. That kind of stuff. It is all around us. It is IN us. I think that a certain amount of thought is random.
The Feynman book mainly discusses light, and how weird it is. After you read it, it is weirder than you would imagine.
edit: Bushman, we have a long time to live before the Earth makes us leave. The sun will eventually swell nearly to our orbit, cooking the planet to probable sterilization. What will change is the planet's carrying capacity. How many humans can live here without adversely impacting it...too much. We already impact it negatively.
I just don't see humans as a species making it a billion years. We have really just begun to impact the planet. People starve to death in droves every day. When we run out of oil, it will be a lot more expensive to move food around from places of abundance to places of scarcity. Oil is such a good fuel from a density standpoint. It will be mostly gone in another 100 years.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Nov 22, 2015 - 03:28pm PT
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Bird in a tuba
Two bits
Random
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 22, 2015 - 05:18pm PT
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BASE104 -- "I just don't see humans as a species making it a billion years."
Humans will be here much longer then that even.
And you'll keep coming back being all part of it ......
The Feynman book mainly discusses light, and how weird it is
Not weird at all but a sign of good intelligence.
You should study sound vibrations too.
You will be blown away .....
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 22, 2015 - 06:39pm PT
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Replies on Physics Stack Exchange to the question: Are information conservation and energy conservation related?
Energy is a conserved quantity because of Noether's theorem: wherever it holds, energy is conserved. In extreme General Relativity scenaria energy itself loses its meaning, whereas phase space and unitarity may hold and if Hawking is correct, information is conserved.
So energy conservation and possible conservation of information are two unconnected effects.
Conservation of mass-energy is an extremely well-defined and exhaustively proven concept.
However, as was aptly noted in the earlier answer to your question, "conservation of information" has a far less solid status.
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/21681/are-information-conservation-and-energy-conservation-related
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Nov 22, 2015 - 08:37pm PT
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The potential reality of mind is part of the fabric of what is and in that sense mind enjoys a kind of immortality beyond issues of eternal spirit
A very graceful and philosophical sentence.
(Not quite sure what it means)
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Nov 22, 2015 - 09:14pm PT
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Wordplay still seems to be dominating the conversation. We even have Werner now differentiating between mind and consciousness and Ed waxing on the potential similarities and difference between algorithms, mind, information and knowledge. But the AI and NLP algorithms mentioned aren't 'thinking' or minds, information and 'knowledge' passed between individuals and generations of individuals or from google to you do not represent an external mind any more than the local library does. It's more like the difference between active and passive pro - maybe even 'smart pro' - but that's the extent of it.
Further, minds aren't going to be replicated outside the brain because in sum we know more about Pluto and its moons than we do about how brains and minds work and we just got to Pluto. So any downloading of 'minds' to anywhere will still be scifi long into the future.
And the genericizing away of identity from mind in the wordplay involving gravity as a property versus construction or instantiation of the universe basically amounts to obfuscation and a dodge by other means. The question wasn't that hard: are you as you, your self-identity, going survive the death of your body? I'm missing how that isn't a yes or no question other than by the fact this is ST.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 22, 2015 - 10:14pm PT
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And the genericizing away of identity from mind in the wordplay involving gravity as a property versus construction or instantiation of the universe basically amounts to obfuscation and a dodge by other means. The question wasn't that hard: are you as you, your self-identity, going survive the death of your body? I'm missing how that isn't a yes or no question other than by the fact this is ST.
What BS. The question is harder than you can know and you simply ignore it. Mind is there, it is real, it is an aspect of the universe and in its own way remains eternal. Individual, eternal nature aside, mind is there as an inevitable aspect of the universe. Like gravity or light: what is its source and why is it written in to the fabric of what is? Wordplay? Get real.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Nov 22, 2015 - 10:34pm PT
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...in its own way remains eternal.
There is the BS.
Individual, eternal nature aside...
And there is the dodge.
The question isn't about the instantiation of mind with the body and whether that is an inevitable property of the universe, but rather what was explicitly dodged: "Individual, eternal nature" - yea or nay?
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allapah
climber
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Nov 22, 2015 - 10:42pm PT
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resonance effect between self-replicating relationships in morphegenetic field of life-boundary time/space of an individual versus self-replicating relationships in morphegenetic outside of life-boundary of individual = "apparent self identity surviving the death of the body" syndrome
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Nov 22, 2015 - 10:44pm PT
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Who can say yes or no for sure?
Everyone can have an opinion, but no one knows until the moment of death if then.
Meanwhile we are all just hairless apes, beating our chests like gorillas and proclaiming that with our 1300 cc. of brain, we've got our vast universe figured out.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Nov 22, 2015 - 10:55pm PT
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What people believe is all I'm asking and I would posit that it's the religious who think they have it all figured out and all the answers, Science by definition is all about the pursuit of questions that we don't have figured out.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 22, 2015 - 11:33pm PT
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what do you mean by eternity?
in some limited sense, all of the conversations I've had with other people are shared aspects of my mind... through a spoken narrative.
My papers and other writings, written narrative, are there for people to read after I'm dead.
To some extent, those things do live on, and those things are a creation of my mind, created for the express purpose of providing my thoughts to others.
So there is a social aspect of mind, which probably doesn't exist without that context.
There is another aspect which has to do with genetics. Predisposition to ideas may be genetic. Some research in experimental philosophy points to this possibility. It is interesting to contemplate for sure, and expands the searching for a theory-of-mind. In some sense, my daughter may have inherited certain aspects of my mind. It's not how we usually think about it, but then, if this thread is any indication, there is little new thinking here at all (and a lot of reference to old thinking).
However, if you will dictate that mind is only a biological concept and can only exist as such, then there isn't much of a discussion to be had. But you'd be wrong to reject generalizations of those biological phenomena, it is precisely those sorts of generalizations that allow progress to be made.
One interesting example is considering cell metabolic pathways as networks. This has some limitations in terms of the precise biological function, but as a theoretical tool it allows an amazing amount of information to be extracted from the cell's genetic material directly, read off of the genes if you will. And the predictions of the network approach are testable (presuming the various proteins can be measured accurately).
A cell is not a network... but the application of network theory provides a very powerful tool for studying cells.
Theories-of-mind exist, and as I stated above, the eventual theory provides for technologies, and those technologies need not be limited to biologically functioning material. A theory that fails to provide that information would not be much of a theory. Stating that mind is a biological function is hardly a theory.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Nov 22, 2015 - 11:37pm PT
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There is also a vast range of people and opinions between science and religion. One doesn't have to definitively choose one or the other or either one. As for science having questions rather than answers, that's the ideal but not always practiced just as compassion and mercy are religious ideals not always practiced.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Nov 22, 2015 - 11:47pm PT
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However, if you will dictate that mind is only a biological concept...
I'm not dictating anything; just observing minds - not the artifacts of minds - are seldom seen without a brain being co-resident. Look, you guys can keep dodging and obfusticating the question, but no matter, it's a pretty simple question: do you believe you will you survive your body as you?
Theories-of-mind exist, and as I stated above, the eventual theory provides for technologies, and those technologies need not be limited to biologically functioning material. A theory that fails to provide that information would not be much of a theory. Stating that mind is a biological function is hardly a theory.
Sure, there are a bunch computational and non-computational theories of mind - none of them vaguely close to anything you could call an "eventual theory." I am stating mind is behavior and behavior is a biological function - a higher order function, but a function nonetheless. Again, no one I know in AI is working on consciousness, sentience or mind - they're all working on various forms of machine learning and machine learning is just that.
From where I sit there'll be a $1200, microwave-size fusion reactor in every basement before significant progress is made towards any 'eventual theory'.
As for science having questions rather than answers, that's the ideal but not always practiced just as compassion and mercy are religious ideals not always practiced.
But the 'practice' of science really is just about the questions. What we do with the knowledge gained - the application of answers to society and life, i.e. 'applied science' / engineering / medicine / weapons / etc. - is altogether another affair.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Nov 23, 2015 - 06:07am PT
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The question wasn't that hard: are you as you, your self-identity, going survive the death of your body?
Death of 'mind'
My answer to that is that I although I don't really know, I believe no, my self identity will not survive the death of my body.
Although there might be evidence to support there being a transcendence of the mind from the body through meditation or other rare or traumatic occurrences, I believe that after death of the brain the mind stops and cannot transcend the body and mind beyond death.
My only evidence to support this is my personal experience and testament that I have never spoken to or seen an animate person after their death.
I have had vivid dreams and hallucinations of people after their death or of otherworldly beings but they were just that, visions and alterations of the conscious mind. I have never seen aliens or ghosts in a sober state, when not under the influence of a mind altering psychoactive drug or not affected by the stress and duress of extreme physical exertion and or dehydration.
So to reiterate;
I do not believe that I as I am, my self-identity, is going survive the death of my body.
-bushman
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 23, 2015 - 07:14am PT
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if this thread is any indication, there is little new thinking here at all (and a lot of reference to old thinking).
True. Old ideas are transmitted somehow.
from 1912
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Nov 23, 2015 - 08:15am PT
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Moose, sorry. I missed you recommending that book earlier. I will buy it. I have a zillion frequent flyer miles that I spend at Amazon. My wife and I are big readers. The Feynman book is terrific, yes? Gill would like it, I am sure.
As per Paul's notion of mind being a part of the fabric of the universe, I think he needs to back off a little from the mind part. He is talking about human minds. All animals have minds. Many also have emotions and are to some degree intelligent. I assume that Werner believes that animals have souls, which oddly, I find consistent. I always wondered why only humans had souls when going to church as a kid. We take the cake when it comes to applied intelligence, or technology, on this planet. That is where we are unique....to this planet, and only by degree.
This brings us to the Drake Equation: How likely is it that other intelligent beings inhabit the Universe? It is such a big place that it seems to be a given. That equation tries to guess how frequent intelligence is in the universe, which I will show, is a f*#king huge place.
Our human minds, or our intelligence, is merely a result of evolution. If the dinosaurs hadn't been whacked by an asteroid, mammals such as us would have certainly had a difficult time arising in the first place. We would probably still have a reptilian world.
The notion that human intelligence is an inevitable consequence of the universe, like it is some fabric built into the universe, is a fairy tale.
We have only been here for roughly 2 million years. Our technology consisted mainly of stone tools for most of our history. We have only been transmitting for a hundred years or so, out of the 4.6 million million year history of the Earth, and the 13.6 million million year history of the universe. How can we be central to the universe when our existence has been so brief?
We live on a small planet only 7900 miles in diameter, orbiting an ordinary dwarf star, one of 300 million stars in our galaxy. There are 170 million million other galaxies in the visible universe, each with millions to trillions of stars, depending on their size. There are an estimated 300 sextillion (3 × 1023) stars in the known universe.
When we start talking about the fabric of the universe, nobody here is taking into account the size or age of the universe, or how many stars there are, or how many earth-like planets there are. Some people here are so Earth-centric in their vision that they think we are a unique gem in the whole universe. Well, we are probably not. Time is so deep, and the universe is so vast, that what occurred on Earth probably happened in other places as well. The universe is that big. Still, it honestly is a guess. We have a sample size of one, which we have studied deeply.
In short, we don't even know if we are special. The only highly intelligent critters in the whole universe. It seems probable that there are other intelligent critters in the universe, merely due to its size, but the Drake equation is just a guess.
So far, SETI hasn't found anything. Does this mean that we are unique, rare, or common? We just don't know. All we can do is assume, but to assume that the entire universe belongs to us is just stellar bigotry.
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