Consciousness

[fromderinside]

Good post, but why then do you say consciousness doesn't exist or isn't generated by the brain? Even if the conclusions we draw from our subjective states aren't necessarily accurate, there's still the phenomenon of firsthand experience. Illusions aren't what they seem to be, but they are something rather than nothing.

Good point. My take is that they are similar to the availability of process state status at a readout point of a system performing the process. If that point is continuously monitored you have a portal to consciousness of on going process states. Now if that point is logically connected into other processes I see no reason to make a big deal of it unless that process readout is telling us something important about the functionality of the machine doing the processing which is why that readout has an available continuous readout. Self referencing indeed. Not enough to demand thingness for a readout though.

BTW Shannon modeled information after statistical thermodynamics.  Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory

Another thought. matter is neither created nor destroyed, but, humans live and die making and using information during their interval of life. Kind of like the distinction between information and matter. I say leave thingness to matter.

Why, after all, would we equate measure to physical existence?

 

[PyramidHead]

Good post, but why then do you say consciousness doesn't exist or isn't generated by the brain? Even if the conclusions we draw from our subjective states aren't necessarily accurate, there's still the phenomenon of firsthand experience. Illusions aren't what they seem to be, but they are something rather than nothing.

Good point. My take is that they are similar to the availability of process state status at a readout point of a system performing the process. If that point is continuously monitored you have a portal to consciousness of on going process states. Now if that point is logically connected into other processes I see no reason to make a big deal of it unless that process readout is telling us something important about the functionality of the machine doing the processing which is why that readout has an available continuous readout. Self referencing indeed. Not enough to demand thingness for a readout though.

BTW Shannon modeled information after statistical thermodynamics.  Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory

Another thought. matter is neither created nor destroyed, but, humans live and die making and using information during their interval of life. Kind of like the distinction between information and matter. I say leave thingness to matter.

Why, after all, would we equate measure to physical existence?

Thingness is a muddled concept anyway, as I've come to understand by discussing this topic. Maybe the phenomenologists had it right: let's just talk about the impressions that hit our senses in orderly ways, including the ones that hit our senses indirectly after going through some measurement tools, and come up with models that predict how they will hit our senses in the future. It doesn't matter what we call the "thing" that causes these impressions, or if we even consider it to be a thing at all. The models either predict or they don't. A lot of models can explain other, older models in a simpler way that lets us replace the old with the new. We have some reason to think all models are replaceable by simpler models, but there may be some that are mutually irreducible. Sense data are fodder for hypothesis testing, but we can't gather sense data about sensation itself, only specific objects of sense data. We can detect predictable patterns in our impressions, but impression per se is not something we can access through the senses. This kind of approach gets you most of science without ever worrying about thingness.

 

[untermensche]

Listen to Lewis Black. "It's an ill-llusioonn"

The only thing o may have hit upon in that sweet little screed is "care about anything". Ask yourself "What is motivation" What is Emotion", What is drive" 'What is Desire" Psychologists and neuroscientists go all arms and shoulders up when the rubber needs to hit the road. Yet we eat, have sex, want money, and all that other stuff that goers with having the good life.

All of these are place holders for what actually makes us go which is, at first blush, something to do with the nervous system and endocrine and hormone systems working with other systems to make it though life.

Mantas are conscious of food, seek out food, avoid threats. We basically know how they differentiate between food and other, between other and threats, but we call them instinct driven. When you come up with a way to call what mantas do and what humans do the same thing for the same reasons I may begin to listen.

Do you think I'll have to do that?

Of course not.

Humans do have a reflexive feeding mechanism.

Young children reflexive put things into their mouths.

But human consciousness is the ability to override these kinds of reflexes.

Consciousness is the ability to say no to anything. Even to the point of death.

 

[fromderinside]

Listen to Lewis Black. "It's an ill-llusioonn"

The only thing o may have hit upon in that sweet little screed is "care about anything". Ask yourself "What is motivation" What is Emotion", What is drive" 'What is Desire" Psychologists and neuroscientists go all arms and shoulders up when the rubber needs to hit the road. Yet we eat, have sex, want money, and all that other stuff that goers with having the good life.

All of these are place holders for what actually makes us go which is, at first blush, something to do with the nervous system and endocrine and hormone systems working with other systems to make it though life.

Mantas are conscious of food, seek out food, avoid threats. We basically know how they differentiate between food and other, between other and threats, but we call them instinct driven. When you come up with a way to call what mantas do and what humans do the same thing for the same reasons I may begin to listen.

Do you think I'll have to do that?

Of course not.

Humans do have a reflexive feeding mechanism.

Young children reflexive put things into their mouths.

But human consciousness is the ability to override these kinds of reflexes.

Consciousness is the ability to say no to anything. Even to the point of death.

That was an answer to something I wrote?

To your last claim: Most of us are like the picket sage grouse Wynne-Edwards misused as an example of group selection. Mostly when threatened people do exactly the wrong thing, are driven to the outskirts of the group, become easy food for predators or anything else that causes the group harm. Hell, most of us lift our heads when attacked by a knife wielder showing our kill spot. Yes some are stubborn. That's is not a characteristic one can point to for demonstrating evolutionary success though is it.

 

[untermensche]

That was an answer to something I wrote?

To your last claim: Most of us are like the picket sage grouse Wynne-Edwards misused as an example of group selection. Mostly when threatened people do exactly the wrong thing, are driven to the outskirts of the group, become easy food for predators or anything else that causes the group harm. Hell, most of us lift our heads when attacked by a knife wielder showing our kill spot. Yes some are stubborn. That's is not a characteristic one can point to for demonstrating evolutionary success though is it.

There is a period of human growth, like the growth of a dog, where the animal can be "tamed".

Once tamed the human is something based on experience not merely based on genes.

So humans if similar are what they are based on similar experiences.

With different experiences you can have very different people.

Humans that had to hunt and kill and did it daily would react very differently to a threat than a modern human that has never killed anything larger than a fly.

 

[fromderinside]

...<snip> ... we can't gather sense data about sensation itself, only specific objects of sense data. We can detect predictable patterns in our impressions, but impression per se is not something we can access through the senses. ....

Ouch you hit my wheel house with that.

Sensation was my original game. Discovering the one-third octave organization imposed by the organ of corti made sense of human sensing consonance and dissonance for me.

Understanding the relationship of visual motion detection to action in frogs to a person stopped at an intersection stomping on the brakes when a bus pulls up on her right put sense stuff into evolutionary perspective. If you are interested you can read up on the critical band in hearing.

So yes we do you and measure the quality of sensing and of the sensing. In fact possibly our greatest accomplishemts are with making instruments that bring thing down or up to human size as with monstet telescopes and Haldron Colliders. An author and team lead of that project leading to the discovery of Higgs boson particle said it really well. He said something to the effect that humans are the masters of the telescope, masters of of bringing the very distant and very small into our perceptive window.

We do measure sense quality. We relegate sense to the capacity of our receptors to code fundamental material activity in measuring displacement to an angstrom to hear and detection as little as four photons to see and we find this works very well when modelling sensory function which we do when we build operator simulators and simulations. Any book on Human Factors and ergonomics will give you a basis for understanding how we do measure sense by measuring effectiveness of sensors.

 

[fromderinside]

.... a modern human that has never killed anything larger than a fly.

How about the palmetto bug (cock roach Florida style) or the ant lion that looks like, and is about the size of, a bumble bee without wings. I understand there are mosquitoes in Alaska that can carry tanks.

One of the problems we have with this all volunteer military is their re-integration back into genteel society by them and by us.

Now that's a very real consciousness issue.

 

[untermensche]

.... a modern human that has never killed anything larger than a fly.

How about the palmetto bug (cock roach Florida style) or the ant lion that looks like, and is about the size of, a bumble bee without wings. I understand there are mosquitoes in Alaska that can carry tanks.

One of the problems we have with this all volunteer military is their re-integration back into genteel society by them and by us.

Now that's a very real consciousness issue.

The problem is worse with a drafted military.

But the point is that human behavior is not universal, it is something learned, or not learned.

Consciousness is just the ability to be conscious of things. And I say it can move the arm at will as well.

Behavior is something entirely different. A whole different topic.

Some of it can be controlled, but not all of it. And control can be increased with practice.

With enough practice a human can train themselves to not expose their neck when threatened.

Few humans are motivated to practice this.

 

[DBT]

Thalamocortical, Reticular, and Limbic systems.

''Limbic or emotional networks simultaneously coordinate behavioral, autonomic, and endocrine adjustments are required to maintain cellular homeostasis. Bonding, feeding, reproductive, fightor-flight behaviors are accompanied by specific change in neurohormonal output and autonomic discharge rates to the heart, immune system, and other viscera.

There are two triggering stimuli, which I mentioned earlier, that trigger emotional and visceral reactions. One is social environmental cues. Social environmental cues induce emotional and visceral reactions. And physiological stress, for example, asphyxia triggers visceral and emotional reactions. So in essence, the entire network serves as a large memory bank, learning from memory of previous experiences, and then reacting appropriately or inappropriately.


The insular cortex, orbital frontal, and mesocortex are activated by transient asphyxiation, by hypoglycemia, by hypothermic stress, and by electrolyte volume imbalances; and also by changes in arterial blood pressure. The mesocortex receives its information from the viscera down below the board by way of the thalamus. The thalamus projects information to the mesocortex, which influences development of the cognitive neocortex by virtue of its reciprocity, its reciprocal interconnections. These structures form a closed reciprocally interconnected neurohumerally modulated loop involved in learning, memory, and conditioning''


The mesocortex is the perceptual and coding mechanism. It perceives information, especially information from the internal milieu, by way of connections with the visceral associational areas. The activator of adaptive or maladaptive behaviors.''

DBT finds recitation of magical, mystical, my brain tour. Lots of stuff going on, probably all meaningful in the end, but little insight into why we are deluded by the mind set of me seen as controlling and deciding what and how I do.

I don't see how your remark relates to the article I quoted, which has nothing to do with mystical or magical explanations ( that being the domain of our friend untermensche) but is merely a brief tour of the functions of the Thalamocortical, Reticular, and Limbic systems, some of which is understood. But obviously the precise way that the brain represents this information in conscious form is not yet understood.

 

[ryan]

DBT finds recitation of magical, mystical, my brain tour. Lots of stuff going on, probably all meaningful in the end, but little insight into why we are deluded by the mind set of me seen as controlling and deciding what and how I do.

I don't see how your remark relates to the article I quoted, which has nothing to do with mystical or magical explanations ( that being the domain of our friend untermensche) but is merely a brief tour of the functions of the Thalamocortical, Reticular, and Limbic systems, some of which is understood. But obviously the precise way that the brain represents this information in conscious form is not yet understood.

How do you even know what the hell he is talking about? I have read his post 5 times, and each time it means something different to me.

 

[DBT]

I don't see how your remark relates to the article I quoted, which has nothing to do with mystical or magical explanations ( that being the domain of our friend untermensche) but is merely a brief tour of the functions of the Thalamocortical, Reticular, and Limbic systems, some of which is understood. But obviously the precise way that the brain represents this information in conscious form is not yet understood.

How do you even know what the hell he is talking about? I have read his post 5 times, and each time it means something different to me.

I have no idea.

 

[PyramidHead]

...<snip> ... we can't gather sense data about sensation itself, only specific objects of sense data. We can detect predictable patterns in our impressions, but impression per se is not something we can access through the senses. ....

Ouch you hit my wheel house with that.

Sensation was my original game. Discovering the one-third octave organization imposed by the organ of corti made sense of human sensing consonance and dissonance for me.

Understanding the relationship of visual motion detection to action in frogs to a person stopped at an intersection stomping on the brakes when a bus pulls up on her right put sense stuff into evolutionary perspective. If you are interested you can read up on the critical band in hearing.

So yes we do you and measure the quality of sensing and of the sensing. In fact possibly our greatest accomplishemts are with making instruments that bring thing down or up to human size as with monstet telescopes and Haldron Colliders. An author and team lead of that project leading to the discovery of Higgs boson particle said it really well. He said something to the effect that humans are the masters of the telescope, masters of of bringing the very distant and very small into our perceptive window.

We do measure sense quality. We relegate sense to the capacity of our receptors to code fundamental material activity in measuring displacement to an angstrom to hear and detection as little as four photons to see and we find this works very well when modelling sensory function which we do when we build operator simulators and simulations. Any book on Human Factors and ergonomics will give you a basis for understanding how we do measure sense by measuring effectiveness of sensors.

You're right, that was poorly phrased on my part. What I'm trying to convey is that the perspective you're describing constitutes the external aspect of sensing, i.e., what sensing looks like from the outside. Sensing looks different from the perspective of the one doing the sensing. That doesn't make it a new thing, with its own thingness (whatever that may mean), just a different angle that isn't captured by the outside view.

The philosophical question, which you may or may not have any interest in, is whether one of these perspectives can be fully described in terms of the other, or whether they are mutually irreducible. For example. There are multiple ways to look at a digital image. One way is to analyze the components and map each pixel. Another way is to view it as a whole, and see it's a picture of a dog. In this case, the second perspective is reducible to the first. If you have all the pixels and know where they go and what color they are, you can reconstruct the dog in the picture.

But is there a way, even in principle, to reconstruct the experience of something visceral and unmistakable--let's say the feeling of nausea--with only an external description of what is happening? Given all the 'pixels' of physiology that satisfy the functional requirements of feeling nauseated, as well as their exact roles and input/output states, the peculiar discomfort of nausea would nonetheless remain absent from this model. That's what I mean when I say the internal aspect isn't explicable by way of the external aspect.

Do you agree, or do you think that a complete explanatory model of nausea would be able to convey how it feels to someone who has never been nauseated?

 

[fromderinside]

Do you agree, or do you think that a complete explanatory model of nausea would be able to convey how it feels to someone who has never been nauseated?

Well to the degree that humans can project things that will be sense or felt by others (mirror systems?) which can convey how nausea feels. I'm prepared to accept that some of (mirror cell?) activity is wired to reflect significant external demonstrations of feeling like certain kinds of fear, terror, imminent doom, joy, arousal, etc. when constituent elements are demonstrated in and by others. We are very social. Conveying the pleasure of a good symphonic sequence probably would be much more limited in achieving another's buy in although I believe I've experienced that particular emotive congruence with others.

 

[PyramidHead]

Do you agree, or do you think that a complete explanatory model of nausea would be able to convey how it feels to someone who has never been nauseated?

Well to the degree that humans can project things that will be sense or felt by others (mirror systems?) which can convey how nausea feels. I'm prepared to accept that some of (mirror cell?) activity is wired to reflect significant external demonstrations of feeling like certain kinds of fear, terror, imminent doom, joy, arousal, etc. when constituent elements are demonstrated in and by others. We are very social. Conveying the pleasure of a good symphonic sequence probably would be much more limited in achieving another's buy in although I believe I've experienced that particular emotive congruence with others.

What you're talking about is different from what I'm asking. I get that the feeling of nausea (to stick with this pleasant example) can be INDUCED through social cues, mirroring, and so on. But if reductionism about mental states is true, the feeling of nausea should be decipherable from a complete description of the physiology behind it, in exactly the same way that a picture of a dog is decipherable from the location and color of all the pixels that constitute it. I very much doubt this can be achieved, because the two types of information are irreconcilably distinct from each other. Hence, dual aspect theory (a form of neutral monism). A little diagram from Wikipedia:



An interesting note from the article (emphasis mine):

From the work of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl G. Jung results a philosophical approach, which Harald Atmanspacher titles the Pauli-Jung conjecture, of dual-aspect monism which has a very specific further feature, namely that different aspects may show a complementarity in a quantum physical sense. That is, the Pauli-Jung conjecture implies that with regard to mental and physical states there may be incompatible descriptions of different parts that emerge from the whole.[5] This stands in close analogy to quantum physics,[5] where complementary properties cannot be determined jointly with accuracy.

Atmanspacher further refers to Paul Bernays' views on complementarity in physics and in philosophy when he states that "Two descriptions are complementary if they mutually exclude each other, yet are both necessary to describe a situation exhaustively."[6]

The bolded part may be an accurate description of a complete physical/functional account of an experience vs. the subjective sensation of that experience.

 

[ryan]

Do you agree, or do you think that a complete explanatory model of nausea would be able to convey how it feels to someone who has never been nauseated?

Well to the degree that humans can project things that will be sense or felt by others (mirror systems?) which can convey how nausea feels. I'm prepared to accept that some of (mirror cell?) activity is wired to reflect significant external demonstrations of feeling like certain kinds of fear, terror, imminent doom, joy, arousal, etc. when constituent elements are demonstrated in and by others. We are very social. Conveying the pleasure of a good symphonic sequence probably would be much more limited in achieving another's buy in although I believe I've experienced that particular emotive congruence with others.

But that's not really conveying the information ("sense data") like how PyramidHead means. If one system mimics another, that is just another system generating a similar experience. You can't convey the sensation of the color red to people by showing them a red picture. The photons are conveyed, but the redness is generated from within.

 

[Juma]

Well to the degree that humans can project things that will be sense or felt by others (mirror systems?) which can convey how nausea feels. I'm prepared to accept that some of (mirror cell?) activity is wired to reflect significant external demonstrations of feeling like certain kinds of fear, terror, imminent doom, joy, arousal, etc. when constituent elements are demonstrated in and by others. We are very social. Conveying the pleasure of a good symphonic sequence probably would be much more limited in achieving another's buy in although I believe I've experienced that particular emotive congruence with others.

But that's not really conveying the information ("sense data") like how PyramidHead means. If one system mimics another, that is just another system generating a similar experience. You can't convey the sensation of the color red to people by showing them a red picture. The photons are conveyed, but the redness is generated from within.

You have no idea what qualia is and yet you feel comfortable saying that dis and dat is not possible?
Go fuck yourself.

 

[PyramidHead]

But that's not really conveying the information ("sense data") like how PyramidHead means. If one system mimics another, that is just another system generating a similar experience. You can't convey the sensation of the color red to people by showing them a red picture. The photons are conveyed, but the redness is generated from within.

You have no idea what qualia is and yet you feel comfortable saying that dis and dat is not possible?
Go fuck yourself.

Tone it down, man. We're on the internet talking about the mind-body problem in philosophy. Not really a discussion that warrants bringing the heat and spitting f-bombs at people you disagree with, okay?

 

[ryan]

You have no idea what qualia is and yet you feel comfortable saying that dis and dat is not possible?
Go fuck yourself.

Tone it down, man. We're on the internet talking about the mind-body problem in philosophy. Not really a discussion that warrants bringing the heat and spitting f-bombs at people you disagree with, okay?

LOL! Ya gotta love the passion though.

 

[PyramidHead]

It's the internet tough guy syndrome. Put Juma in a cafe sitting across from you with two cups of tea and I guarantee you'll have a polite, productive conversation about qualia.

 

[Elixir]

You have no idea what qualia is

Bullshit!