Consciousness

[DBT]

You are funny, Mr Untermensche....understanding the brain and consciousness is a work in progress, but nobody except fringe eccentrics cling to the idea of autonomous consciousness, or brain as a receiver. There is more than sufficient evidence to show that brain state relates to state of consciousness. That evidence is your downfall. Only in a manner of speaking, because you never had a position to fall from.

Your ignorant objection to an "autonomous consciousness", when you have no understanding of consciousness is amusing.

My position doesn't matter. I simply describe the current state of the research and back what I say with links and quotes to research and researchers....you on the other hand are the one arguing for autonomous consciousness in the face of all evidence to the contrary, dismissing what the researchers are saying and what the evidence is supporting. That is your tragedy.

 

[untermensche]

Your ignorant objection to an "autonomous consciousness", when you have no understanding of consciousness is amusing.

My position doesn't matter. I simply describe the current state of the research and back what I say with links and quotes to research and researchers....you on the other hand are the one arguing for autonomous consciousness in the face of all evidence to the contrary, dismissing what the researchers are saying and what the evidence is supporting. That is your tragedy.

You wouldn't be able to pass any test I gave you.

I could show you brain activity all day and you would not be able to make one comment about it.

Because you don't have the slightest clue what any of it means.

 

[untermensche]

The brain does the work of moving the arm. The brain does the work of putting together the information anticipatory of any action at all. Conscious is just a convenient term naive humans use as an excuse for claiming they are actually in charge of the machine. Originally the ability to distinguish food from other was considered what conscious meant. It was only after man developed language that he was able to attribute, quite erroneously, what he wanted as the stuff of being conscious. Conscious is a label for a process the human brain, primarily, carries out in doing things. It is not a thing inherent in man, it is code for what man does when he thinks, another code word, he's intending, yet another code word.

You use and demands are so far off the mark it is remarkable that anyone even tries to inform you of your obvious lack of understanding of the subject.

Unfalsifiable. With today's understandings.

Therefore not science.

Also meaningless.

Claiming the brain is doing something but not being able to demonstrate it in the least is an empty claim.

 

[Kharakov]

sky is falling is a reference to the claims of metaphysics, gibberish is the reference

I see.

I don't.

 

[fromderinside]

Conscious is a label for a process the human brain, primarily, carries out in doing things.

Yada

yada

yada

Claiming the brain is doing something but not being able to demonstrate it in the least is an empty claim.

Input any stimulus into the awake human brain. If the human owning the brain responds appropriately to the stimulus he's conscious.

Feed a stimulus into the brain and record an appropriate number of ms later if the part is in the pathway of the stimulus path the stimulus is in the stimulus path.

Record a minimum number of ms later and a muscle responds the stimulus is linked to the muscle through the brain.

If the response isn't a reflex it will take longer to occur than will a reflex.

If the response does take longer it can be said to be mediated.

You find a way to demonstrate these verifiable and repeatable claims are empty.

 

[untermensche]

Blah.

Blah.

Blah.

Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah.

I couldn't pass one test given, but I can pretend to understand something about brain activity.

Knowing the timing of activity you don't understand does not give you understanding of the activity.

 

[bilby]

You really aren't reading anything I say, or it is being filtered by your beliefs to the point where your interpretation of what I say bears no resemblance to what I actually write.

Of course this is to be expected....how else can you maintain an untenable set of beliefs that have no merit.

This is a complete dodge.

The fact is when looking at brain activity nobody understands which of it is related to consciousness and which is not.

Nothing about the activity is understood.

Stimulating one part of the brain and getting a subjective report in no way implies all the activity involved in the report occurred at that location.

Your claims are absurd, that's why you can't defend them. Your Emperor has no clothes.

Saying "I don't understand" is a laudable and virtuous position to take about any topic where you are clueless; It invites an attempt to understand that which is currently obscure.

Saying "nobody understands" is a childish and absurd position to take about any topic where you are clueless; It declares your determination not to learn, and is by definition a statement that you cannot possibly be qualified to make.

You need to stop saying 'nobody understands', and to realize that the only part of that claim that can possibly be within your ability to confirm, is your own lack of understanding.

If you claim that nobody understands, then you imply that you do not understand. And if you do not understand, then you imply that you are unqualified to know whether or not anyone else understands. Your position is self refuting.



Note that the above applies to ANY field of study, and is not specific to the current topic in any way.

 

[DBT]

My position doesn't matter. I simply describe the current state of the research and back what I say with links and quotes to research and researchers....you on the other hand are the one arguing for autonomous consciousness in the face of all evidence to the contrary, dismissing what the researchers are saying and what the evidence is supporting. That is your tragedy.

You wouldn't be able to pass any test I gave you.

Given the brand of 'logic' you have displayed on these threads, nobody could pass. You have your own unique rules, sort of like Trump with his 'alternative facts'

I could show you brain activity all day and you would not be able to make one comment about it.

I could make any number of comments, and have done just that. Another example of your 'logic'

Because you don't have the slightest clue what any of it means.

Which still ignores the fact that successful predictions of decisions (readiness potential/unconscious information processing) before they are consciously made by a subject - based on fMRI imaging - has already been achieved...this being a comment that according to you I cannot make.

 

[untermensche]

Saying "I don't understand" is a laudable and virtuous position to take about any topic where you are clueless; It invites an attempt to understand that which is currently obscure.

Saying "nobody understands" is a childish and absurd position to take about any topic where you are clueless; It declares your determination not to learn, and is by definition a statement that you cannot possibly be qualified to make.

You need to stop saying 'nobody understands', and to realize that the only part of that claim that can possibly be within your ability to confirm, is your own lack of understanding.

If you claim that nobody understands, then you imply that you do not understand. And if you do not understand, then you imply that you are unqualified to know whether or not anyone else understands. Your position is self refuting.



Note that the above applies to ANY field of study, and is not specific to the current topic in any way.

Pretending to understand things you don't is ignorance.

When a thing is not understood, like brain activity in regards to consciousness, and that fact is acknowledged, we call that honesty.

And this only has to be said to children but claiming one thing, how brain activity results in conscious experience, is not understood does not in any way imply any other thing is not understood.

It's a shame I have to deal with people who do not even understand simple things. When one has no logical foundation everything they build is absurd.

 

[untermensche]

I could show you brain activity all day and you would not be able to make one comment about it.

I could make any number of comments, and have done just that. Another example of your 'logic'

I presented images of brain activity. PET scans to be specific.

You were not able to make one comment about them.

You lie.

Which still ignores the fact that successful predictions of decisions (readiness potential/unconscious information processing) before they are consciously made by a subject - based on fMRI imaging - has already been achieved...this being a comment that according to you I cannot make.

You ignore what is actually being done and what very specific hoops people must jump through to get any kind of results.

Using a computer to make associations of large areas of some kind of "activity" to subjective reports or a choice between right and left hand is not understanding any of the activity. It is just a trick. Really a worthless trick that provides no information about the nature of the underlying activity.

 

[fromderinside]

Since I can demonstrate the stimulus, create a model for the activity based on observation and physical principles, and I can successfully predict future activity in that system, I contend I do understand the activity.

Your criticism goes in the dust pile.

The challenge to you I presented remains.

 

[untermensche]

Since I can demonstrate the stimulus, create a model for the activity based on observation and physical principles, and I can successfully predict future activity in that system, I contend I do understand the activity.

Your criticism goes in the dust pile.

The challenge to you I presented remains.

You can perhaps follow the stimulus to the brain, but once there all you can do is observe a general cloud of generally increased activity you do not understand, somehow arise, in some specific location but that is not evidence it is all the activity involved nor is it an understanding of the activity or how it arose in that location.

You have to understand the specific nature of ALL the activity which results in conscious experience to make claims about how some stimulus affects it.

That is no greater a prediction than saying if I step on your toe you will feel pain somehow. A prediction made but the underlying mechanisms not understood in the least.

Predict what a person will do in ten minutes. That is an understanding of a behaviorist brain, which I don't believe exists.

 

[fromderinside]

You can perhaps follow the stimulus to the brain, but once there all you can do is observe a general cloud of generally increased activity you do not understand, somehow arise, in some specific location but that is not evidence it is all the activity involved nor is it an understanding of the activity or how it arose in that location.

I can read EEG and MRI as you suggest, except we can nail down particular areas of particular nucleus's AND AT THE SAME TIME we can read from multiple neuron recordings, multiple single cell recordings, single cell recordings in the presence of chemical secretions in the vicinity of the recorded neuron, and we can track neuronal chemical flow. All at the same time.

Not only can we time recordings relative to input we can monitor adjacent cell activity at the same time. Have you any understanding of how research actually works. We eliminate what can and cannot be caused by activity, we account for random or uncontrolled activity, and we examine activity of the same sort several time in each observer and in several observers. We collect data on where we recorded, verify pathway correlations, either with pre and post scans or from the histology of model systems similar to the ones we examined. We examine responses up and down the NS and finally we build models of what we have done just to validate what we think happens. So we understand concerns. We take into account those concerns and we go many steps beyond what you criticize.

Is it any wonder your glib proclamations provoke prompt and sometimes angry responses. We encourage you to examine data beyond your pharmacy background and your care taker background so we can have a productive discussion. As things are going right now you just piss us off.

You have to understand the specific nature of ALL the activity which results in conscious experience to make claims about how some stimulus affects it.

That is no greater a prediction than saying if I step on your toe you will feel pain somehow. A prediction made but the underlying mechanisms not understood in the least.

Yeah, sure that's why we had a new pain theory recently, oh wait, that was in from Melzack and Wall (1965) Pain Mechanism: A new Theory http://104.236.164.122/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/melzackandwallgatecontroltheory.pdf now called gate control theory where we know that by stimulating somewhere else we can control effects of a noxious stimulus (pain), that we know the hierarchy of pain, ... Oh and a mate of mine at FSU mappped cortical sites for pain input and putput in the early 70s.

Predict what a person will do in ten minutes. That is an understanding of a behaviorist brain, which I don't believe exists.

Yet we are able to predict specific actions a person will perform in 10 minutes after she has analyzed a threat in a training scenario because we predicted her response when she first got the scenario.

You are throwing up so many lead balloons that you need to stop and think. Maybe people do know something about what you might call the conscious.

Maybe integrative studies like the one I presented on psychotropic drugs produced in the  Claustrum a brain structure that sends and receives almost all its information to the cortex, the site Crick proposed as important to the conscious. It is strongly inhabited by k-opioid receptors which  salvia divinorum act to reduce activity producing psychotropic effects when S. divinorum is introduced. Other heavy in k-opioid receptors concentrations in structures often spoken of as being long associated with decision making and conscious activity. This combination of findings and effects provide more evidence that Claustrum is indeed associated with conscious beyond those anatomical, genetic and evolutionary considerations of Crick and others.

At some point an aha responses is going to take place and a new theoretical framework of mind is going to arise and it certain to be coming from the scientific track of study.

 

[DBT]

I could make any number of comments, and have done just that. Another example of your 'logic'

I presented images of brain activity. PET scans to be specific.

You were not able to make one comment about them.

You lie.

The lie is yours. I have in fact commented by pointing out that fMRI imaging has been used to relate thoughts and feelings to brain activity and that successful predictions of impending decisions have been made using imaging of pre-readiness activity. That is a comment. That was my comment.

Another of my comments being that static fMRI pictures of the brain, as you present, cannot be related to anything because we the readers do not have access to the context, the lab, the subject, the experiment being performed....which is the lie, as well you know, you use in a vain attempt at maintaining your untenable beliefs and assertions.

Snide remarks and strawman presentations being your stock in trade.

 

[untermensche]

I can read EEG and MRI as you suggest, except we can nail down particular areas of particular nucleus's AND AT THE SAME TIME we can read from multiple neuron recordings, multiple single cell recordings, single cell recordings in the presence of chemical secretions in the vicinity of the recorded neuron, and we can track neuronal chemical flow. All at the same time.

Not only can we time recordings relative to input we can monitor adjacent cell activity at the same time. Have you any understanding of how research actually works. We eliminate what can and cannot be caused by activity, we account for random or uncontrolled activity, and we examine activity of the same sort several time in each observer and in several observers. We collect data on where we recorded, verify pathway correlations, either with pre and post scans or from the histology of model systems similar to the ones we examined. We examine responses up and down the NS and finally we build models of what we have done just to validate what we think happens. So we understand concerns. We take into account those concerns and we go many steps beyond what you criticize.

Is it any wonder your glib proclamations provoke prompt and sometimes angry responses. We encourage you to examine data beyond your pharmacy background and your care taker background so we can have a productive discussion. As things are going right now you just piss us off.

Where to begin?

Do you understand what an EEG or an MRI looks at?

EEG:

The electric potential generated by an individual neuron is far too small to be picked up by EEG or MEG. EEG activity therefore always reflects the summation of the synchronous activity of thousands or millions of neurons that have similar spatial orientation. If the cells do not have similar spatial orientation, their ions do not line up and create waves to be detected. Pyramidal neurons of the cortex are thought to produce the most EEG signal because they are well-aligned and fire together. Because voltage field gradients fall off with the square of distance, activity from deep sources is more difficult to detect than currents near the skull.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography

EEG is an incredibly crude way to look at brain activity. It basically averages the activity of thousands or millions of cells, but only the cells aligned in a specific orientation. It does not look at all activity. But even this crude peak at activity does have clinical uses because normal activity has a stereotypical rhythm. It is wave-like. The waves change during sleep and sometimes with dysfunction.

And MRI does not look at activity at all. It visualizes anatomy. PET scans and functional MRI (fMRI) look at activity, but again very crudely.

What you are talking about is how people are trying to reach an understanding. You are not demonstrating that actual understanding exists.

They are trying to make correlations between subjective reporting (our only understanding of consciousness) and LOCATION of crude visualizations of activity. Not type of activity. All activity is considered the exact same thing at this point because we do not understand it. All we know is crudely where some activity takes place on subjective reports. We know nothing about the activity or how it arose.

Yeah, sure that's why we had a new pain theory recently, oh wait, that was in from Melzack and Wall (1965) Pain Mechanism: A new Theory http://104.236.164.122/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/melzackandwallgatecontroltheory.pdf now called gate control theory where we know that by stimulating somewhere else we can control effects of a noxious stimulus (pain), that we know the hierarchy of pain, ... Oh and a mate of mine at FSU mappped cortical sites for pain input and putput in the early 70s.

New? Pain theory?

Every physical therapist is fully aware of the Gate Control Theory. It is what the pain reduction modality TENS is based on.

This is a theory based solely on the speed of neural fibers in the spinal cord, not the brain. It is not an understanding of pain, which is a subjective experience.

This is a theory of pain modulation, not a theory about pain.

Yet we are able to predict specific actions a person will perform in 10 minutes after she has analyzed a threat in a training scenario because we predicted her response when she first got the scenario.

You were looking at reflexive decision making, decision making under duress, which can be changed with training and practice, and as I've said many times is also part of the picture.

But you could not predict what a person calmly sitting at their desk at home would do in the next ten minutes. Even if you had all the scans you wanted before the ten minutes begins.

 

[untermensche]

I presented images of brain activity. PET scans to be specific.

You were not able to make one comment about them.

You lie.

The lie is yours. I have in fact commented by pointing out that fMRI imaging has been used to relate thoughts and feelings to brain activity and that successful predictions of impending decisions have been made using imaging of pre-readiness activity. That is a comment. That was my comment.

Another of my comments being that static fMRI pictures of the brain, as you present, cannot be related to anything because we the readers do not have access to the context, the lab, the subject, the experiment being performed....which is the lie, as well you know, you use in a vain attempt at maintaining your untenable beliefs and assertions.

Snide remarks and strawman presentations being your stock in trade.

OK. Let's see who the liar is.



What is this person experiencing? You claim to have some understanding of brain activity.

A claim that is ridiculous as we will see right here.

 

[fromderinside]

Where to begin?

Do you understand what an EEG or an MRI looks at?

EEG:

The electric potential generated by an individual neuron is far too small to be picked up by EEG or MEG. EEG activity therefore always reflects the summation of the synchronous activity of thousands or millions of neurons that have similar spatial orientation. If the cells do not have similar spatial orientation, their ions do not line up and create waves to be detected. Pyramidal neurons of the cortex are thought to produce the most EEG signal because they are well-aligned and fire together. Because voltage field gradients fall off with the square of distance, activity from deep sources is more difficult to detect than currents near the skull.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography

EEG is an incredibly crude way to look at brain activity. It basically averages the activity of thousands or millions of cells, but only the cells aligned in a specific orientation. It does not look at all activity. But even this crude peak at activity does have clinical uses because normal activity has a stereotypical rhythm. It is wave-like. The waves change during sleep and sometimes with dysfunction.

And MRI does not look at activity at all. It visualizes anatomy. PET scans and functional MRI (fMRI) look at activity, but again very crudely.

What you are talking about is how people are trying to reach an understanding. You are not demonstrating that actual understanding exists.

They are trying to make correlations between subjective reporting (our only understanding of consciousness) and LOCATION of crude visualizations of activity. Not type of activity. All activity is considered the exact same thing at this point because we do not understand it. All we know is crudely where some activity takes place on subjective reports. We know nothing about the activity or how it arose.

Yeah, sure that's why we had a new pain theory recently, oh wait, that was in from Melzack and Wall (1965) Pain Mechanism: A new Theory http://104.236.164.122/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/melzackandwallgatecontroltheory.pdf now called gate control theory where we know that by stimulating somewhere else we can control effects of a noxious stimulus (pain), that we know the hierarchy of pain, ... Oh and a mate of mine at FSU mappped cortical sites for pain input and putput in the early 70s.

New? Pain theory?

Every physical therapist is fully aware of the Gate Control Theory. It is what the pain reduction modality TENS is based on.

This is a theory based solely on the speed of neural fibers in the spinal cord, not the brain. It is not an understanding of pain, which is a subjective experience.

This is a theory of pain modulation, not a theory about pain.

Yet we are able to predict specific actions a person will perform in 10 minutes after she has analyzed a threat in a training scenario because we predicted her response when she first got the scenario.

You were looking at reflexive decision making, decision making under duress, which can be changed with training and practice, and as I've said many times is also part of the picture.

But you could not predict what a person calmly sitting at their desk at home would do in the next ten minutes. Even if you had all the scans you wanted before the ten minutes begins.

So you produce a set of gotchas instead of engaging in an actual discussion. Who'da thunk.

I admit if didn't use fMRI when I should have, I admit gate theory is 50 years old, as I meant to ridicule your assertion about nothing, whilst you avoided work that was done only 40 years ago localizing pain centers and activity in the cortex. I think I pointed out the limitations of EEG, fMRI, multiple cell recordings, single cell recordings, within modality multiple single cell recording, chemical stimulation, chemical tracking,s in my presentation aimed at showing we do multiple attacks many times within the same individual at the same time in our search for the how, what, and why of or sense of conscious which thousands have been doing for decades.

I suggest you complain here , complain there, but. never give up the discussion for a putdown conclusion 'no one knows anything'.

In your post you demonstrate a capability to analyze, but, you abandon it when you assert your mantra 'no one knows anything'.

Science, scientists have localized conscious to a regions in the brain that communicate partly for establishing such as verticality, relations among senses in time and space, various coordination activities the human performs and a sense of self vis a vis the environment. Some or all are involved in the construct you call and I use with you conscious. Saying we know nothing is far off target.

If I or, as did Crick, point to Calustrum and others find collaborating evidence that consciousness is affected by such as psychotropic chemicals in ways the are consistent with chemical reception in target consciousness complexes there is justification to suggest these structures are, indeed, either the seat of, or coordinating structures for a conscious function in various species.

Please keep to analysis and discussion rather than bombast and down putting.

Finally let me just say that study of attention tells us that we give up much of to what we attend in forming a self centered consciousness. Our conscious is a very limited aware window into our extant world based on much selection and arbitration before the setting of our aware conscious state. Others see the same things differently based on very similar information. So in no sense can you recklessly assert our conscious is a complete accurate anything known to only you. In the end conscious is a social attribute.

 

[untermensche]

So you produce a set of gotchas instead of engaging in an actual discussion. Who'da thunk.

I asked a few questions and gave some factual information and gave my analysis of what we are actually doing.

No gotchas. No caring about egos.

To me you are just making the same logical error again and again.

You are saying that because there are reflexive survival mechanisms that means all behavior is reflexive.

It simply is not true. All behavior may be reflexive but merely showing that some behavior is reflexive does not prove it.

We can't make leaps like that.

 

[fromderinside]

All behavior may be reflexive but merely showing that some behavior is reflexive does not prove it.

We can't make leaps like that.

OK some rational stuff back at you.

First I didn't make a leap.

You just did. Implicit in your statement is that some behavior is due to free will.

All empirical evidence goes toward showing "If this happens then that happens". That's true even for QM.

There is no proof or even empirical evidence of free will. In fact current philosophy has no anchor for the notion of free will.

I agree humans can show intent. Since they exist in a material world whatever they surmise is made up of information in the past. What they plan to do may be in the future, but, it is both incomplete and colored with legacy, consequently error.

So if there is something that is of person, if it is of person in the past with models for conduct in the future which usually don't align with the future in which it is executed. If there is a conscious it is because there is benefit to the living for having such a mechanism, that conscious and modeling and injecting the models into the future are better that pure reaction for the the being.

 

[untermensche]

All behavior may be reflexive but merely showing that some behavior is reflexive does not prove it.

We can't make leaps like that.

OK some rational stuff back at you.

First I didn't make a leap.

You just did. Implicit in your statement is that some behavior is due to free will.

It is either that or a lot of conscious experience is some elaborate insane trick.

Totally unneeded for anything.

A brain may need to experience if it is just an elaborate reflex. But it has no need of this thing called consciousness experiencing as well.

All empirical evidence goes toward showing "If this happens then that happens". That's true even for QM.

When you cause you arm to move by your will don't you feel as if you are doing something with your mind?

What you are doing with your mind moves the arm.

This happens and then that happens.

I agree humans can show intent. Since they exist in a material world whatever they surmise is made up of information in the past. What they plan to do may be in the future, but, it is both incomplete and colored with legacy, consequently error.

If this were true no progress could exist.

If all you could do is react to the past you could not create anything new that didn't exist in the past.