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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Nov 23, 2015 - 04:14pm PT
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Interesting idea about neanderthals and visual adaptation vs the social adaptation of sapiens. When I was in China about four years ago for a conference, we viewed slides of Chinese fossils dated after H. erectus and before H. sapiens which had large square shaped eye sockets and a small neanderthal looking bun. That was before H. denisova, a cousin of neanderthals from Siberia was found.
It would seem then that there was a whole group of northerly living homonins descended from H. erectus with common characteristics who were replaced by H. sapiens who specialized in social and communication skills. That seems like a pretty good case for consciousness versus neurons to me.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Nov 23, 2015 - 05:39pm PT
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Looking at those skulls, if I was a football coach, I'd want one or two of those Neanderthals on my team (6 or 7 would be better).
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Nov 23, 2015 - 05:59pm PT
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"That seems like a pretty good case for consciousness versus neurons to me."
Consciousness vs neurons? What am I missing there?
Or else: how about the simple, straightforward, run of the mill evolution of critical neural structures (as mentioned here before probably more than once)? There are at least 100 different varieties of neuron, each capable of evolving and adapting to changing matrices esp over long timelines. Oh but details, details, details... sometimes they just get in the way.
And yet, seems to me that would be a pretty good candidate for differences between neanderthal consciousness vis a vis H. sapiens consciousness. Or if you prefer for differences between neanderthal brain size and Homo brain size.
Seems to me there's a good analog here in regard to size and power (capability) with the evolution of processor architecture, e.g., intel 286 vis a vis intel Pentium.
Paul, Jan, do you guys think about that much? the architecture of the intel 286? the architecture of the intel pentium? how they compare in a side by side study? Size-wise. Capability-wise. how they have evolved over just a couple decades?
But of course that's just processor architecture. Not brain architecture.
Paul, Jan, have you guys ever built a microprocessor control board using an Intel 286 or higher? If not you should, it's a pretty neat deal. It is amazing what all that micro-structure working together in just the right way can do. Makes you think.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Nov 23, 2015 - 06:19pm PT
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Here we go...
How is brain architecture different?
Maybe it is simpler?
It looks simpler. To the naked eye.
It looks like jello.
Or perhaps better, drywall mud?
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
From Panorama City, CA
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Nov 23, 2015 - 06:54pm PT
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The architecture is much like that of a prison. Ideas are put into cells and then are tortured to get the truth out of them.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Nov 23, 2015 - 07:24pm PT
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Prison? oh that's ghastly.
So it looks like Ed, Moose and I are really the only ones out of the entire ST community who have openly and forthrightly accepted/acknowledged our mechanistic nature, in other words, our material/physical basis, and are willing and able, even enjoyed if not enthralled (pun intended), to live our lives through to the end in those terms.
A little sad, frankly, the number so few. It can be. But cultural evolution is on the march, let us not forget, more robustly now than ever, so perhaps the general public understanding of these things will be different 100 years from now.
Hope springs.
.....
A new podcast from Sam Harris just uploaded. It's with the great Douglas Murray...
"On the Maintenance of Civilization"
http://www.samharris.org/podcast
fwiw, I thought it was really good.
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
From Panorama City, CA
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Nov 23, 2015 - 07:44pm PT
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Of course there's a mechanical basis. Basis as in base meaning there is something above it. I don't mean an 'above' in a religious sense, but in the way that consciousness and mind are greater than the sum of the parts that make them/it possible: Synergy
http://www.isss.org/primer/tangs2.html
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Nov 23, 2015 - 08:25pm PT
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"Of course there's a mechanical basis. Basis as in base meaning there is something above it."
Point taken.
Thus, I'll revise...
our mechanistic nature, in other words, our material/physical nature
and regarding synergy, life is synergy, an expression of it, of course.
I love synergy!
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
From Panorama City, CA
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Nov 23, 2015 - 08:42pm PT
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I love sugar! Ok, my work here is done. Just wanted to make sure we stayed on the right path. Stay out of prison! Not you, just in general. Ideas should be free.
Just kidding about my work being done. I'll hang and lurk till we get this figured out.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 23, 2015 - 09:23pm PT
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Paul, Jan, do you guys think about that much? the architecture of the intel 286? the architecture of the intel pentium? how they compare in a side by side study? Size-wise. Capability-wise. how they have evolved over just a couple decades?
And you think that's what, the implication of progress toward utopian stasis?
The myopic nature of the scientific/materialist mind never ceases to amaze: the problem of consciousness and experience are so far beyond any scientific/materialist explication it's plainly ridiculous and yet we are assured, so wonderfully/ironically that through faith, science will get there and explain what is so staggeringly inexplicable.
Thought and experience retain the nature of an immateriality that must be mediated by an experiencer least we be zombies and evolution could have easily and quite advantageously limited or even displaced the experiencer in favor of a more survival oriented zombie like psyche competing directly within its environment. But it didn't and instead we became Greeks.
And thank God for that.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 23, 2015 - 09:37pm PT
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what is so staggeringly inexplicable
It is revealed and explained by consciousness itself.
No conditioned soul can do it for they are defective and conditioned.
But pure unadulterated consciousness can do it and is the only source of real knowledge.
Consciousness is ultimately not impersonal either .....
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 23, 2015 - 10:13pm PT
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All by pure chance.
Chance? In an infinite universe of infinite time and with infinite material what can possibly be left to chance? All probabilities are inevitable if they are possible and consciousness is possible because it exists.
Why do you think we are unable to do the same using our knowledge?
Because I'm not inclined to faith.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 23, 2015 - 10:15pm PT
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The total clueless will always use chance and simultaneously say "No one knows".......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 23, 2015 - 10:17pm PT
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science will get there and explain what is so staggeringly inexplicable.
It has has a good track record though it may not be able to explain it to you.
I don't understand General Relativity but am staggered by the ability of cosmologists to follow the evolution of the Universe back to the first 3 minutes.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 23, 2015 - 10:30pm PT
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And written in to those initial moments of beginning was your ability to understand, realize and contemplate those events in your/a "mind." Written in to that beginning was a self awareness, an unfathomable mystery of knowledge and experience.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 23, 2015 - 10:41pm PT
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written in was the possibility...
not the inevitability.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Nov 24, 2015 - 01:43am PT
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A lot of people here are talking about consciousness as though it were the product of a one off physical object.
Yeah, a lot do and that's why I've repeatedly pointed out you can see the evolution of mind in the behaviors of the full taxonomy of species on display all around you. That's because that's what mind and consciousness is: an advanced behavioral adaptation to the world around us. That part Noë gets right. But where I think he and others of that camp are really coming from is a victorian intellectual disdain for any suggestion at all that their lofty ideals are anchored in the squalid mud of mere animal meat. Why, the very thought of it is repugnant.
But take a walk in the woods, watch the birds, the squirrels, turn over a rock or look over your shoulder for that cougar which may be stalking you. From viruses on up to you and the cougar the evolution of increasingly more sophisticated behavior is on display and easily observable. The challenge for dualists really boils down to where along that taxonomy does this separate and external consciousness take flight from its biological host; and really, how does this binding happen in the first place.
I also find it very curious that out of all the dualists here, only Werner seems willing to own his belief that mind / consciousness is both universal and eternal.
One must have a brain and nervous system to develop it, but when we send impulses into space, looking for other life with language, aren't we extending our consciousness outside the body? And when we broadcast mathematical formulas, hoping they will be recognized, are we broadcasting our own consciousness only or a deeper truth that permeates the universe of which we are one part?
I don't know, I find the whole artifacts-as-external-consciousness argument hopelessly romantic - love it aesthetically, but it's hard to take is as more than stretching a point as a serious proposition.
Also, and as I've said in the past, I think the subconscious mind is vastly under considered in discussions, thought and research on the topic of mind/consciousness. I also chalk that up to a kind of intellectual dismissal on the basis of an unwillingness to accept any role for supervenience in the equation. That fact it gets little shrift even when people talk about neural precognition time in free will discussions somewhat amazing as well. As much as we are in love with our conscious selves, I personally suspect and have some personal evidence that consciousness is the very small tip of a very large and hardworking iceberg.
And written in to those initial moments of beginning was your ability to understand, realize and contemplate those events in your/a "mind." Written in to that beginning was a self awareness, an unfathomable mystery of knowledge and experience.
I don't share your beliefs, but don't for a minute think I don't appreciate and love just how emotionally and dramatically wedded you are to beauty.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Nov 24, 2015 - 02:12am PT
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The challenge for dualists really boils down to where along that taxonomy does this separate and external consciousness take flight from its biological host; and really, how does this binding happen in the first place.
As I understand them, the Eastern traditions never maintain that there is a separate and external consciousness taking flight from its biological host but rather, all biological organisms partake of this external consciousness to the extent that their physical equipment allows. The Eastern traditions also say that contact with this consciousness takes place in the unconscious mind and only later gets translated into the discursive.
Is this true? I don't know, but until proven otherwise, I think it is worth considering. I like the idea that we could be a part of something larger than ourselves, that our ape brains will continue to evolve and we will have a clearer idea of what is out there in a philosophic and artistic sense as well as a purely physical one. Part of human cultural evolution has been the ever broader view of our planet and its inhabitants and ourselves. To think in terms of a universal consciousness or a holographic consciousness in the universe seems to me to be the natural extension of that.
We are at a major turning point in human history when old institutions are crumbling and people are searching for new paradigms, not just better widgets. Is this romanticism, mental weakness, or something noble? Alternatively, perhaps in a few more years of resource depletion and planetary violence, new paradigms and inspirations will be survival necessities.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Nov 24, 2015 - 02:34am PT
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I like the idea that we could be a part of something larger than ourselves, that our ape brains will continue to evolve and we will have a clearer idea of what is out there in a philosophic and artistic sense as well as a purely physical one. Part of human cultural evolution has been the ever broader view of our planet and its inhabitants and ourselves. To think in terms of a universal consciousness or a holographic consciousness in the universe seems to me to be the natural extension of that.
I get that romantic appeal as well. But the use of language like 'ape brains' and the explicit idea that the philosophic, artistic and cultural aspects of our lives must necessarily be something other than our behavior in order to evolve or as something which evolves on another track from the meat is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about.
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