Consciousness

[untermensche]

Sure it is. A kind of emergence.

An arm is the emergence of muscles and ligaments and bones all acting together to form a functional entity.

Emergence is a dynamic effect. The arm as a combination lf its parts or the combination of legs to firm a walking person is in essence a static combination. (Even though the legs are moving)
Read this:http://atransdisciplinaryapproach.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/de-wolf-emergence.pdf

Throwing is an emergent property of arms attached to bodies.

 

[bilby]

Nor necessary.

QFT is complete at human scales. It is fundamental to the theory that forces have particles that carry them; and that those particles have predictable masses; and that sufficient energy will generate all particles below a given mass.

The LHC has demonstrated that the only possible unknown forces must either be too short-range to allow separation of the hypothetical soul from the body (by many orders of magnitude) or too long range to have measurable effects on scales smaller than that of Solar Systems.

There's plenty we don't know. But the things we DO know are sufficient to rule out a lot of hypothetical ideas - the whole point of scientific research is to start from 'anything is possible', and then eliminate impossible hypotheses until we are left with useful knowledge.

Amongst those things now known to be impossible are perpetual motion machines; homeopathic medicines; and dualism.

Lots of people still believe that these things are possible, and the technical term for such people is 'mistaken', 'uneducated' or simply 'wrong'. These things are NOT possible, and there's no unknown extra information that could arise to suddenly change that assessment, that would not also require the total abandonment of huge chunks of well established experimental evidence.

Big scientific revolutions don't do that. When relativity superseded Newton's theory of gravity, objects continued to fall when dropped; pendula continued to swing at predictable rates; and tides continued to ebb and flow.

We may well show that QFT is 'wrong', just as Einstein showed that universal gravitation was 'wrong'. But we can be sure that it's not wrong enough for any future discoveries to enable the existence of disembodied minds or souls. Just as we can be sure that any future correction to Relativity will not cause objects to fall up.

Yep, and just like 120 years ago when they warned people not to get into physics research because it was practically complete, here we go again. There were just a few small tiny issues like light that they needed to explain first. Oh what a nasty little Pandora box that was.

Did things start falling up? I must have missed that bit.

 

[untermensche]

You think badly labeling things amounts to an argument. It is not better than posting bad conclusions you can't defend.

How many times does it need pointing out that brain agency is not my conclusion but a universally accepted view held by researchers?

No such universal view exists in any field.

If it did the field would go nowhere. Wait a minute.....maybe you're right.

Of course there is a religious minority who hold to ideas such as quantum consciousness, universal consciousness/mind, etc. But it is these beliefs that are neither supported by evidence or accepted by the majority of researchers.

The majority of researchers have often been wrong. And no researcher can explain which specific activity of the brain is resulting in consciousness.

Nothing is settled as far as it's production. NOTHING.

And monkeying around with the brain tells us nothing beyond normal brain function is necessary for the expression of consciousness. It tells us normal brain function is one thing involved. It CAN'T tell us everything that is involved. Only fully understanding how it arises can do that.

You do not understand the limits of what current research can demonstrate. You do not understand logic.

And you are unable to defend anything.

My opinion: The reason neuroscience has not been able to explain one thing about the process that produces consciousness is because they are not looking at the right things.

It is as simple as that.

The answer is not in the macroscopic workings of the brain, but much deeper, much smaller.

There is the possibility it is beyond our abilities to observe.

 

[Juma]

Emergence is a dynamic effect. The arm as a combination lf its parts or the combination of legs to firm a walking person is in essence a static combination. (Even though the legs are moving)
Read this:http://atransdisciplinaryapproach.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/de-wolf-emergence.pdf

Throwing is an emergent property of arms attached to bodies.

Read the article.

 

[untermensche]

Throwing is an emergent property of arms attached to bodies.

Read the article.

I actually did.

It is one man's opinion.

And it is not a biological reference.

Can you see that throwing is an emergent property of an animal with a certain configuration and ability?

It is a skill that can have a survival advantage. But no gene is coding for it. No gene knows about it. It is something that emerges from the animal as a side consequence. And it is something that only exists in the complete animal.

 

[DBT]

How many times does it need pointing out that brain agency is not my conclusion but a universally accepted view held by researchers?

No such universal view exists in any field.

If it did the field would go nowhere. Wait a minute.....maybe you're right.

Of course there is a religious minority who hold to ideas such as quantum consciousness, universal consciousness/mind, etc. But it is these beliefs that are neither supported by evidence or accepted by the majority of researchers.

The majority of researchers have often been wrong. And no researcher can explain which specific activity of the brain is resulting in consciousness.

Nothing is settled as far as it's production. NOTHING.

And monkeying around with the brain tells us nothing beyond normal brain function is necessary for the expression of consciousness. It tells us normal brain function is one thing involved. It CAN'T tell us everything that is involved. Only fully understanding how it arises can do that.

You do not understand the limits of what current research can demonstrate. You do not understand logic.

And you are unable to defend anything.

My opinion: The reason neuroscience has not been able to explain one thing about the process that produces consciousness is because they are not looking at the right things.

It is as simple as that.

The answer is not in the macroscopic workings of the brain, but much deeper, much smaller.

There is the possibility it is beyond our abilities to observe.

There you go again, I provide you with quotes and articles related to what researches themselves think and do in in regard to their experiments, observations and what they themselves think the evidence signifies, but Mr untermensche knows better, so he simply dismisses decades of research and the educated views of researchers themselves, who overwhelmingly do not accept substance dualism, and just asserts and reasserts his own beliefs, beliefs that have no evidence, that are unfounded beliefs based on fallacious logic, a variant of the god of the gaps.

What you have Mr untermensche is an article of faith; we don't yet understand x therefore y is a possibility even when y has insufficient evidence to even warrant serious speculation yet alone a viable possibility.....there being not a single example of disembodied consciousness to study or to refer to.

 

[Juma]

Read the article.

I actually did.

It is one man's opinion.

And it is not a biological reference.

Can you see that throwing is an emergent property of an animal with a certain configuration and ability?

It is a skill that can have a survival advantage. But no gene is coding for it. No gene knows about it. It is something that emerges from the animal as a side consequence. And it is something that only exists in the complete animal.

Its not emergence. Emergence is not that emerges as a side consequence, and it is not emegence because it exists in only in the complete animal.

Read the article again.. (it is actually an article published by Springer, not just one mans opionion)...

 

[untermensche]

Its not emergence. Emergence is not that emerges as a side consequence, and it is not emegence because it exists in only in the complete animal.

Read the article again.. (it is actually an article published by Springer, not just one mans opionion)...

It's an engineering paper, not a paper about the use of the word in evolution.

I don't know the difference between a "side consequence" and a consequence.

Gould's definition of emergence is: "origin by non-additive interaction among lower-level constituents."

So you start with four limbs and then you have a differentiation of the upper and lower limbs.

And then eventually you arrive at a configuration where throwing is possible.

Throwing emerges. It is not a "side consequence" of this configuration of body and limbs. It is a consequence.

 

[untermensche]

There you go again, I provide you with quotes and articles related to what researches themselves think and do in in regard to their experiments, observations and what they themselves think the evidence signifies, but Mr untermensche knows better, so he simply dismisses decades of research and the educated views of researchers themselves, who overwhelmingly do not accept substance dualism, and just asserts and reasserts his own beliefs, beliefs that have no evidence, that are unfounded beliefs based on fallacious logic, a variant of the god of the gaps.

What you have Mr untermensche is an article of faith; we don't yet understand x therefore y is a possibility even when y has insufficient evidence to even warrant serious speculation yet alone a viable possibility.....there being not a single example of disembodied consciousness to study or to refer to.

You present your articles of faith as if they are stone tablets carved by the gods.

And you can defend them in no way.

You just throw out labels, "substance dualism" as if just saying labels is an argument.

If you don't know what consciousness even is, if you can't point to some specific process and show how it is producing consciousness, you can't say what is necessary for it's production.

No matter how many times you claim you can.

You are the one making positive claims about what is and isn't possible.

And you have no evidence to support them in the least.

No study says anything about the mechanism of consciousness unless it explains what that mechanism is.

All any study can show is how subjective reporting is related in time to activity in the brain. None can explain what any bit of that brain activity means in terms of consciousness.

 

[Speakpigeon]

All I see in your explanation is more objective quantities and it works to some extent but it certainly doesn't work for explaining the subjectivity of the qualitative experience I at least have.

Thanks for that. I always try to take an objective approach to things. That's sometimes a problem for me. But I'm not just saying that the model of the self includes the qualitative experiences you have, but also the subjectivity of those things. In other words I treat subjectivity as a concept. We assign it to our selves as well as to the selves of others, but we withhold it from most animals. Why? I don't know, but it probably indicates that subjectivity is a basic cultural meme.

I'm all for science but I'm also not dogmatic and when I see a failure to explain I report a failure to explain.
EB

I'm counting on that.

So let me report a failure to explain...

In other words I treat subjectivity as a concept

So all things would be concepts so no matter or energy or electromagnetic field whatever. Just concepts?

Personally, I call subjective experience the thing that I know because I experience it. So everything else I don't know. I may believe. I may believe I hurt my toe against the fucking table leg or that Trump is in something called the White House. But these are all but beliefs. I accept that there may be something real that's sort of the cause of my subjectively experiencing impressions of these things but the point is I don't know. And so I fail to see how any linguistic description of these things could possibly explain my subjective experience.

Suppose all you can do is look at a photograph of the Eiffel Tower and nothing else. So that's all you know, the photograph. You may believe there's an actual Eiffel Tower. You may even believe the photograph is the actual Eiffel Tower. But the difference remains that you would know the photograph but you could only believe in the actual Eiffel Tower. And here you are, suggesting the photograph is in fact a concept while the Eiffel Tower is the real thing. Ok, I grant you that the Eiffel Tower may well be something real. But the photograph is definitely not some kind of concept and it just happens that it's all you know. The photograph is a photograph and you know that because that's all you actually know.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

Actually that describes the idea that genes can have agency. Mere bookkeeping oblivious to all interaction as an active process of change.

Genes persist because whole animals succeed. No other way. They are as passive as an entity can be. They stay or go based on overall actions of the whole animal, not because they want to or can control anything.

You mistake effect; genes surviving, with cause; animal succeeding.

Whole animals succeed? How is that different from whole species succeed? etc. Nonesense. FOXP2 exists in rats, some birds, apes, and humans. Seems genes exist despite dead humans, dead apes, dead bird species, dead rodent species, etc. Where is the agency in being in one of two states. Processes are! full stop! States are! etc.

Dear One Gould pointing finger laced with gold in sunlight does not a fact make. The only way to get agency is in a model that includes purpose. That's the case with evolution. Rather life exists as a process in the physical world which seems to be 'guided' by happenstance and some observed rules of physical combination.

So chuck reference to purpose and agency. Deal with state and process in dynamic physical system. After the fact one can look at such as gravity and see it's properties work in conjunction with matter and energy. So does anyone think gravity has a purpose?

I think not.

Emergent fitness is nonsensical given fixed species definition is required as a prerequisite for forming the emergent fitness construct.

Since Gould espouses the Hierarchical Theory of Selection where selection occurs at many levels, demes, species, clades and others, that is not true at all.

Retreating to some human generated organization to support cause is just about like some humans generating organization to support cause and purpose for God.

 

[untermensche]

Whole animals succeed? How is that different from whole species succeed?

It is the individual animal that finds another individual animal and successfully reproduces. Does this even have to be said?

If a species has expressed features present in members of it's population that give the animal a reproductive advantage the species as a whole has a reproductive advantage while every individual may not.

Nonesense. FOXP2 exists in rats, some birds, apes, and humans.

Common ancestor and countless contingencies.

The gene may grant a reproductive advantage, WHEN EXPRESSED, in those species, so the gene remains through reproductive advantage of expression. Or it may have remained by sheer chance.

This is not evidence the gene is doing anything but going for a ride.

Seems genes exist despite dead humans, dead apes, dead bird species, dead rodent species, etc.

They are a necessary condition for natural selection to occur. And actually all your genes die when you die. Copies of those genes might possibly exist elsewhere. Bad copies can exist too.

But genes are not drivers of anything. What drives natural selection is interaction, interaction with the environment with differential reproductive success, not replication. Replication in itself can produce change, if it is faulty, but not natural selection.

Where is the agency in being in one of two states.

The agency of natural selection is differential reproductive success via interaction with the environment with differential genetic expression.

The agency is in interaction.

Not replication.

 

[DBT]

There you go again, I provide you with quotes and articles related to what researches themselves think and do in in regard to their experiments, observations and what they themselves think the evidence signifies, but Mr untermensche knows better, so he simply dismisses decades of research and the educated views of researchers themselves, who overwhelmingly do not accept substance dualism, and just asserts and reasserts his own beliefs, beliefs that have no evidence, that are unfounded beliefs based on fallacious logic, a variant of the god of the gaps.

What you have Mr untermensche is an article of faith; we don't yet understand x therefore y is a possibility even when y has insufficient evidence to even warrant serious speculation yet alone a viable possibility.....there being not a single example of disembodied consciousness to study or to refer to.

You present your articles of faith as if they are stone tablets carved by the gods.

And you can defend them in no way.

You just throw out labels, "substance dualism" as if just saying labels is an argument.

If you don't know what consciousness even is, if you can't point to some specific process and show how it is producing consciousness, you can't say what is necessary for it's production.

No matter how many times you claim you can.

You are the one making positive claims about what is and isn't possible.

And you have no evidence to support them in the least.

No study says anything about the mechanism of consciousness unless it explains what that mechanism is.

All any study can show is how subjective reporting is related in time to activity in the brain. None can explain what any bit of that brain activity means in terms of consciousness.

The evidence I provide speaks for itself. As do the the researchers, saying what they say based on the experiments they have done and the evidence for brain agency that is available to them....and to any reader without a bias for magical explanations, magical explanations that cannot be tested, that have no evidence and have been rejected long ago.

This has nothing to do with me personally. It is not my belief, but how things are.

So on the contrary, all of your accusations apply to you, yourself and your unfounded beliefs, beliefs that were discredited long ago

What can be said is, you are in good company with your new age gurus.

 

[untermensche]

The evidence I provide speaks for itself.

Never ever is that the case.

To even think it is possible shows a lack of understanding.

All data needs interpretation.

And all interpretation is subjective.

 

[Treedbear]

Thanks for that. I always try to take an objective approach to things. That's sometimes a problem for me. But I'm not just saying that the model of the self includes the qualitative experiences you have, but also the subjectivity of those things. In other words I treat subjectivity as a concept. We assign it to our selves as well as to the selves of others, but we withhold it from most animals. Why? I don't know, but it probably indicates that subjectivity is a basic cultural meme.
...

So let me report a failure to explain...

In other words I treat subjectivity as a concept

So all things would be concepts so no matter or energy or electromagnetic field whatever. Just concepts?

As I said earlier (and my basic premise) is that brains create models of their environment. As it happens the brain also detects and responds to internal influences, such as those produced by the endocrine system. It's not simply some sensory apparatus and neural logic. There's something more akin to an ecosystem of interactions that enter into how we define the self. Again, the self, as with every model the brain creates, is used for predicting future interactions. And, as with everything we know about the world around us, it is all conceptual. But we cannot know everything about our own faults, strengths, and mannerisms any more than we can experience everything about what it's like to be a tree or a bat. They are abstractions, rather than merely illusions. So why would you assume that the nature of the subjectivity of the experience of self is essentially any different? It's all a construct.

Personally, I call subjective experience the thing that I know because I experience it. So everything else I don't know. I may believe. I may believe I hurt my toe against the fucking table leg or that Trump is in something called the White House. But these are all but beliefs. I accept that there may be something real that's sort of the cause of my subjectively experiencing impressions of these things but the point is I don't know. And so I fail to see how any linguistic description of these things could possibly explain my subjective experience.

Suppose all you can do is look at a photograph of the Eiffel Tower and nothing else. So that's all you know, the photograph. You may believe there's an actual Eiffel Tower. You may even believe the photograph is the actual Eiffel Tower. But the difference remains that you would know the photograph but you could only believe in the actual Eiffel Tower. And here you are, suggesting the photograph is in fact a concept while the Eiffel Tower is the real thing. Ok, I grant you that the Eiffel Tower may well be something real. But the photograph is definitely not some kind of concept and it just happens that it's all you know. The photograph is a photograph and you know that because that's all you actually know.
EB

I think that a painting of the Eiffel Tower is a better analogy than a photograph. A painting that you continually update and use as a reference. The painting doesn't have agency. Nothing emerges from the canvas as if it was there waiting to be expressed. But it does have an effect on many of the processes in the brain, just as any of the other models can. They have no agency. Why, not how, would the self be any different? We need to ask how brains create models in the first place. That's the key (in my opinion, of course ).

 

[DBT]

The evidence I provide speaks for itself.

Never ever is that the case.

You saying that means absolutely nothing. Given your bias for myth and magic, things that were rejected long ago, substance dualism, homunculus, soul or goodness knows what strange ideas you may have, you are no judge of evidence, these experiments or their significance.

You are on the side of new age gurus and faith based beliefs. You could probably start a religion and get tax breaks.

To even think it is possible shows a lack of understanding.

All data needs interpretation.

And all interpretation is subjective.

You are not in a position to talk about interpretation. It's like getting the Pope to comment on the nature of the physical world according to the scientific models....he is sure to weave his bible god into the picture as the agent of creation, just like you weave your non material, autonomous mind/brain as a receiver faith into research that does not include these beliefs....having no evidence, things that are neither needed for explanation or even being considered viable possibilities.

You just need to face the fact that your faith is unfounded, has no place in current research and consequently you have nothing to argue with. You have no case.

Of course that absence of a sound foundation for your beliefs doesn't stop you trying to pitch them.

 

[untermensche]

Never ever is that the case.

You saying that means absolutely nothing. Given your bias for myth and magic, things that were rejected long ago, substance dualism, homunculus, soul or goodness knows what strange ideas you may have, you are no judge of evidence, these experiments or their significance.

You are on the side of new age gurus and faith based beliefs. You could probably start a religion and get tax breaks.

To even think it is possible shows a lack of understanding.

All data needs interpretation.

And all interpretation is subjective.

You are not in a position to talk about interpretation. It's like getting the Pope to comment on the nature of the physical world according to the scientific models....he is sure to weave his bible god into the picture as the agent of creation, just like you weave your non material, autonomous mind/brain as a receiver faith into research that does not include these beliefs....having no evidence, things that are neither needed for explanation or even being considered viable possibilities.

You just need to face the fact that your faith is unfounded, has no place in current research and consequently you have nothing to argue with. You have no case.

Of course that absence of a sound foundation for your beliefs doesn't stop you trying to pitch them.

This is bizarre.

It is a huge dodge.

No data speaks for itself.

To claim so is to be incredibly ignorant.

 

[Juma]

What you see IS agency. Your brain has constructed what you see for a purpose.
You dont see vapiur in the sky, you are aware of symbols created to reference the structures found in the current visual imput and cross referenced by your knowkedge about sky phenomena.
Its a symbol actively saying "here is a cloud"

 

[untermensche]

What you see IS agency. Your brain has constructed what you see for a purpose.
You dont see vapiur in the sky, you are aware of symbols created to reference the structures found in the current visual imput and cross referenced by your knowkedge about sky phenomena.
Its a symbol actively saying "here is a cloud"

If you are talking about labels and categories you are talking about language, a subset of cognition.

In terms of vision.



A cube like this can be looked at two ways. A cube tilted slightly upward to the right and another tilted slightly downward to the left.

A person can make themselves see the cube one way, then the other.

A person can use their "will" to change what they see.

 

[Juma]

What you see IS agency. Your brain has constructed what you see for a purpose.
You dont see vapiur in the sky, you are aware of symbols created to reference the structures found in the current visual imput and cross referenced by your knowkedge about sky phenomena.
Its a symbol actively saying "here is a cloud"

If you are talking about labels and categories you are talking about language, a subset of cognition.

In terms of vision.

View attachment 10101

A cube like this can be looked at two ways. A cube tilted slightly upward to the right and another tilted slightly downward to the left.

A person can make themselves see the cube one way, then the other.

A person can use their "will" to change what they see.

Yes. And the cube we experience is a symbol. Not photons, not neuronic signals but a symbol.