Downward Causation: Useful or Misguided Idea?

[ruby sparks]

.... 'epiphenomenalism', like 'supervene' and 'emergence', is just another word for 'not causal'

Surely not. That would be the equivalent of saying that the activity of the steam engine did not cause the whistle.

Iow, just because something (something that emerges from or supervenes on something else) has no causal powers itself, it does not follow that it itself was not caused.

Not that I'm asserting epiphenomenalism is true, you understand.

 

[ruby sparks]

Science is really a sort of quantification of our observation of the physical world. We are free to assume that such a quantification could be carried out all the way to include in one consistent picture the whole world in all its details. If so, then the world could just as well be something equivalent to information.

Yes. I'm thinking, at this point, that it's at least an interesting and somewhat unusual model. Not my idea, obviously. 'Information Philosophy' I think it's called.

The picture still leaves qualia and subjective experience unexplained. So, I guess that would be where the sleight of hand is.
EB

I'll take that shortcoming on the chin. Yes. It might be a route to explain a possible role for those things (in information terms) but does not explain why they 'feel like something', subjectively. Fair point. In its defence, it wasn't intended to address that. I don't mind if you consider my avoidance a sleight of hand of a sort.

 

[Speakpigeon]

.... 'epiphenomenalism', like 'supervene' and 'emergence', is just another word for 'not causal'

Surely not. That would be the equivalent of saying that the activity of the steam engine did not cause the whistle.

Remember? The whistle, you said yourself, was just an analogy, and an inappropriate one. The whistle is not an epiphenomenon of the steam engine. I'm minded to blow it now.

Iow, just because something (something that emerges from or supervenes on something else) has no causal powers itself, it does not follow that it itself was not caused.

It's not the point.

Let me try an analogy. Think of a building with many rooms and corridors. Each room is therefore just a part of the building. Each room's existence is therefore related to the existence of the main building. It's an ontological relation. Choose one room. Would you say that the building caused this room to exist?

Same thing.
EB

 

[DBT]

Nice story from your imagination.

You can't prove a word of it.

Disrupting function randomly tells you nothing about normal function.

It just tells you a way to disrupt normal function.

You fail to understand the nature of the experiments, and consequently, their implications.

It is not a matter of 'disrupting normal function' but exposing the mechanisms by which the brain generates the perception of an action, and carrying out the action itself. Different regions, functions, signals sent and received, processed and presented in conscious form.


Abstract
''To successfully interact with objects in the environment, sensory evidence must be continuously acquired, interpreted, and used to guide appropriate motor responses. For example, when driving, a red light should motivate a motor command to depress the brake pedal. Single-unit recording studies have established that simple sensorimotor transformations are mediated by the same neurons that ultimately guide the behavioral response. However, it is also possible that these sensorimotor regions are the recipients of a modality-independent decision signal that is computed elsewhere. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and human observers to show that the time course of activation in a subregion of the right insula is consistent with a role in accumulating sensory evidence independently from the required motor response modality (saccade vs manual). Furthermore, a combination of computational modeling and simulations of the blood oxygenation level-dependent response suggests that this region is not simply recruited by general arousal or by the tonic maintenance of attention during the decision process. Our data thus raise the possibility that a modality-independent representation of sensory evidence may guide activity in effector-specific cortical areas before the initiation of a behavioral response.''

And if that ‘must’ on line one is wrong, and the example could be achieved in several other ways, for example as error correction or subsumptively ? Even if they were not starting off assuming that the only possibility they can imagine is the only possibility, the fact that they are measuring blood flow rather than neural function gives them a distressingly blunt tool for dealing with a system that stores and processes information superpositionally and as a mixture of type and token.

It doesn’t matter how cleverly you observe, start with a misunderstanding and ask the wrong questions and reality will deliver the wrong answers.

The inclusion of 'must' in line one is correct. How else is response to be determined in relation to the objects and events of the external world if the necessary information is not acquired by the brain?

That is not to say that the acquisition of information is flawless, or that response is rational...this is not necessarily the case.

 

[DBT]

In other words. The brain creates an image for consciousness. And there are levels of consciousness that act upon it.

And there is a final decision maker that says whether the brake is pushed or not.

None of these studies understand what a thought is or could find one in a brain.

Wrong, it is not consciousness that acts upon the brain as if it was something autonomous, but the brain that generates consciousness. This of course includes multiple sources of information, senses, lobes, regions and feedback loops....which is all a matter of brain function and activity and not something separate that acts upon the brain like a 'ghost in the machine,' if you can see the distinction, which I doubt.

It is acquisition of information that is constantly acting upon the brain, altering chemistry and connectivity, generating related feelings, thoughts and actions.

 

[Subsymbolic]

And if that ‘must’ on line one is wrong, and the example could be achieved in several other ways, for example as error correction or subsumptively ? Even if they were not starting off assuming that the only possibility they can imagine is the only possibility, the fact that they are measuring blood flow rather than neural function gives them a distressingly blunt tool for dealing with a system that stores and processes information superpositionally and as a mixture of type and token.

It doesn’t matter how cleverly you observe, start with a misunderstanding and ask the wrong questions and reality will deliver the wrong answers.

The inclusion of 'must' in line one is correct. How else is response to be determined in relation to the objects and events of the external world if the necessary information is not acquired by the brain?

That is not to say that the acquisition of information is flawless, or that response is rational...this is not necessarily the case.

Like I said:

Even if they were not starting off assuming that the only possibility they can imagine is the only possibility...

The clever kids are currently all about diversion from prediction in multidirectional cascades. As you'll no doubt know from your studies of neurobiology and neurocomputation, It's just not really very helpful to think about afferent or efferent in massively parallel and recursive stochastic sensory neural networks. The method of processing starts with expectation before perception, not just at the traditional top down 'prompting' level but at the cohorts of neurons level and indeed, at the level of neurons increasing the sensitivity to stochastic 'temperature' in response to nothing surprising: expectation of what is likely is the background throughout the whole damned system at and in between levels (as we see them) and it's only variation from that that needs passing on. No that the brain itself is doing anything like that, it's just tending towards a lowest energy state. It's the organisation of the brain that makes that tendency an ability to infer its own prior assumptions and bootstrap into increasingly tidy reciprocal prediction and error handling. How do you notice that organisation from bloodflow?

Of course this is all complicated and requires a multidisciplinary knowledge of the brain that these yahoos clearly lack. As a result they are focusing on blood because that's what their non invasive scan can let them look at. The problem is that in the brain, just as in music, it's the space between the notes does as much work as the notes themselves. Like the dog that didn't bark, it's the silences that are doing most of the work in a system that only needs to process novelty, because it already knows about the rest.

So when they say:

Our data thus raise the possibility that a modality-independent representation of sensory evidence may guide activity in effector-specific cortical areas before the initiation of a behavioral response.

It's almost funny. Perhaps you can explain why?

 

[DBT]

Like I said:

Even if they were not starting off assuming that the only possibility they can imagine is the only possibility...

The clever kids are currently all about diversion from prediction in multidirectional cascades. As you'll no doubt know from your studies of neurobiology and neurocomputation, It's just not really very helpful to think about afferent or efferent in massively parallel and recursive stochastic sensory neural networks. The method of processing starts with expectation before perception, not just at the traditional top down 'prompting' level but at the cohorts of neurons level and indeed, at the level of neurons increasing the sensitivity to stochastic 'temperature' in response to nothing surprising: expectation of what is likely is the background throughout the whole damned system at and in between levels (as we see them) and it's only variation from that that needs passing on. No that the brain itself is doing anything like that, it's just tending towards a lowest energy state. It's the organisation of the brain that makes that tendency an ability to infer its own prior assumptions and bootstrap into increasingly tidy reciprocal prediction and error handling. How do you notice that organisation from bloodflow?

Of course this is all complicated and requires a multidisciplinary knowledge of the brain that these yahoos clearly lack. As a result they are focusing on blood because that's what their non invasive scan can let them look at. The problem is that in the brain, just as in music, it's the space between the notes does as much work as the notes themselves. Like the dog that didn't bark, it's the silences that are doing most of the work in a system that only needs to process novelty, because it already knows about the rest.

So when they say:

Our data thus raise the possibility that a modality-independent representation of sensory evidence may guide activity in effector-specific cortical areas before the initiation of a behavioral response.

It's almost funny. Perhaps you can explain why?

I don't see how any of this alters the basics, that it is the brain that acquires information via its senses and processes, stores and acts upon this information in in order to build a mental representation of the external world and self in order to respond and interact.

The complexity by which this is achieved does not negate the basics. The details provide a more comprehensive picture of mechanisms and their roles and functions.

 

[Subsymbolic]

I don't see how any of this alters the basics, that it is the brain that acquires information via its senses and processes, stores and acts upon this information in in order to build a mental representation of the external world and self in order to respond and interact.

The complexity by which this is achieved does not negate the basics. The details provide a more comprehensive picture of mechanisms and their roles and functions.

Actually, I was responding to this:

To successfully interact with objects in the environment, sensory evidence must be continuously acquired, interpreted, and used to guide appropriate motor responses.

I'm not denying that "it is the brain that acquires information via its senses and processes, stores and acts upon this information in in order to build a mental representation of the external world and self in order to respond and interact". Because when it's phrased that way it allows that this process is an ongoing one from whenever there was a brain (even if it doesn't seem to allow for the processes acting on the development of the brain before and during its existence). That's very different from the target quote with the 'must' I was objecting to.

Rather than arguing straight past me, can you perhaps explain what my point was and why you object to it?

 

[untermensche]

In other words. The brain creates an image for consciousness. And there are levels of consciousness that act upon it.

And there is a final decision maker that says whether the brake is pushed or not.

None of these studies understand what a thought is or could find one in a brain.

Wrong, it is not consciousness that acts upon the brain as if it was something autonomous, but the brain that generates consciousness. This of course includes multiple sources of information, senses, lobes, regions and feedback loops....which is all a matter of brain function and activity and not something separate that acts upon the brain like a 'ghost in the machine,' if you can see the distinction, which I doubt.

It is acquisition of information that is constantly acting upon the brain, altering chemistry and connectivity, generating related feelings, thoughts and actions.

How are ideas put together into a coherent presentation if autonomy is not possible?

What besides the mind experiences ideas? And show me your objective evidence of an idea.

 

[Subsymbolic]

In other words. The brain creates an image for consciousness. And there are levels of consciousness that act upon it.

And there is a final decision maker that says whether the brake is pushed or not.

None of these studies understand what a thought is or could find one in a brain.

Wrong, it is not consciousness that acts upon the brain as if it was something autonomous, but the brain that generates consciousness. This of course includes multiple sources of information, senses, lobes, regions and feedback loops....which is all a matter of brain function and activity and not something separate that acts upon the brain like a 'ghost in the machine,' if you can see the distinction, which I doubt.

It is acquisition of information that is constantly acting upon the brain, altering chemistry and connectivity, generating related feelings, thoughts and actions.

How are ideas put together into a coherent presentation if autonomy is not possible?

What besides the mind experiences ideas? And show me your objective evidence of an idea.

Simple, brains are autonomous information processors - and there’s plenty of objective evidence for that. You want to claim that minds experience ideas then you better be ready to give objective evidence of that if you want to remain consistent. As such all the claims you are making about presentation (who to anyway?) and experiencing ideas, stand in need of objective evidence that is unavailable to you.

Now, this is just a reductio of your ‘objective evidence’ argument. If your own ideas don’t satisfy that constraint then either you need to stop using that blunt tool or give up your ideas.

Or admit you are not rational.

Your choice...

 

[untermensche]

Brains existed before ideas did.

Something more was needed before an idea could exist.

Something aware of ideas. A consciousness.

There is no evidence the brain understands what the consciousness does.

The brain does the stuff the consciousness cannot.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Brains existed before ideas did.

Something more was needed before an idea could exist.

Something aware of ideas. A consciousness.

There is no evidence the brain understands what the consciousness does.

The brain does the stuff the consciousness cannot.

But again, you have given no objective support for your claim that brains experience ideas. Hell, you have no objective support for the claim that we are conscious. I'm not even disagreeing with you here, I'm just rubbing your nose in your inconsistency.

You want to claim that consciousness exists and/or is aware of ideas then you better be ready to give objective evidence of that if you want to remain consistent. As such all the claims you are making about presentation (who to anyway?) and experiencing ideas, stand in need of objective evidence that is unavailable to you.

Now, this is just a reductio ad absurdum (that is, a reduction to absurdity - I'm taking your premises and showing how they lead to a conclusion that you don't want) of your ‘objective evidence’ argument. If your own ideas don’t satisfy that constraint then either you need to stop using that blunt tool to beat others with or give up your ideas.

Or admit you are not rational.

Your choice...

 

[untermensche]

Brains existed before ideas did.

Something more was needed before an idea could exist.

Something aware of ideas. A consciousness.

There is no evidence the brain understands what the consciousness does.

The brain does the stuff the consciousness cannot.

But again, you have given no objective support for your claim that brains experience ideas. Hell, you have no objective support for the claim that we are conscious. I'm not even disagreeing with you here, I'm just rubbing your nose in your inconsistency.

I'm not claiming brains experience ideas. I'm claiming brains create ideas for minds to experience. And there is no evidence anything besides a mind experiences an idea.

We cannot dispute that if there are ideas there is that which experiences them.

I know for certain I experience ideas with my mind. Just as I know for certain I experience pain, hunger and fatigue.

You want to claim that consciousness exists and/or is aware of ideas then you better be ready to give objective evidence of that if you want to remain consistent. As such all the claims you are making about presentation (who to anyway?) and experiencing ideas, stand in need of objective evidence that is unavailable to you.

I know for certain I experience what I experience.

All else is uncertain.

 

[Subsymbolic]

I'm not claiming brains experience ideas. I'm claiming brains create ideas for minds to experience. And there is no evidence anything besides a mind experiences an idea.

Oh, look, you have dropped the word 'objective' because there is no objective evidence that minds experience anything. That's the standard you keep on insisting on for everyone else so I'm merely insisting that you are consistent in your rejection of all but objective evidence.

We cannot dispute that if there are ideas there is that which experiences them.

Of course we can. it's called linguistic behaviourism. You can claim, from your own subjective case that you have an experience of ideas, but that's a subjective claim. Me. I'm a zombie I talk about ideas all the time, but I don't actually have any, I just behave as if I have. As you don't have any objective evidence that you have any experiences, Subsy doesn't believe you do...

I know for certain I experience ideas with my mind. Just as I know for certain I experience pain, hunger and fatigue.

That's a fine subjective opinion you have there, however, as you insist that everyone else has to give objective evidence to do with consciousness I insist that you apply the same standard to your own confabulations.

You want to claim that consciousness exists and/or is aware of ideas then you better be ready to give objective evidence of that if you want to remain consistent. As such all the claims you are making about presentation (who to anyway?) and experiencing ideas, stand in need of objective evidence that is unavailable to you.

I know for certain I experience what I experience.

All else is uncertain.

That's a lovely subjective, even solipsistic point of view, but you have no objective evidence that you experience anything and it's quite possible that you are mistaken and merely listen to yourself claim that and unwisely believe it (all from the third person, of course).

I'll say it again, you want to hold everyone else to the faux scientific standard of only accepting objective evidence, then you better be fucking scrupulous about holding yourself to the same standard.

 

[DBT]

I'm not denying that "it is the brain that acquires information via its senses and processes, stores and acts upon this information in in order to build a mental representation of the external world and self in order to respond and interact". Because when it's phrased that way it allows that this process is an ongoing one from whenever there was a brain (even if it doesn't seem to allow for the processes acting on the development of the brain before and during its existence). That's very different from the target quote with the 'must' I was objecting to.

Rather than arguing straight past me, can you perhaps explain what my point was and why you object to it?

The problem is that I don't see what your point is. Your remark - for example - ''it doesn't seem to allow for the processes acting on the development of the brain before and during its existence'' - doesn't appear to be correct because the process of ongoing brain development is not at odds with the necessity of information input via the senses. In fact the brain requires information input in order to develop. Example of sensory deprivation prove that.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'before its existence' unless this refers to genetic information in relation to brain architecture, etc, but that is not a point of contention, nor does it contradict the wording of the article.

 

[untermensche]

Of course we can. it's called linguistic behaviourism.

"Linguistic behaviorism" is not a magic incantation that somehow changes facts.

If there is experience there must be both something that experiences and something that is experienced.

It cannot happen any other way. There must be something experiencing for any experience to occur. It is embedded in the concept "to experience". The concept always contains the two elements of something that can experience and something experienced.

So we know for certain if we have experiences that we are something that experiences. A mind. A person. Whatever label that doesn't do the concept justice you choose.

hat's a lovely subjective, even solipsistic point of view...

It is the world we exist in.

All we know for certain are we experience what we experience. And we know what our experiences are.

All else is tentative.

 

[DBT]

In other words. The brain creates an image for consciousness. And there are levels of consciousness that act upon it.

And there is a final decision maker that says whether the brake is pushed or not.

None of these studies understand what a thought is or could find one in a brain.

Wrong, it is not consciousness that acts upon the brain as if it was something autonomous, but the brain that generates consciousness. This of course includes multiple sources of information, senses, lobes, regions and feedback loops....which is all a matter of brain function and activity and not something separate that acts upon the brain like a 'ghost in the machine,' if you can see the distinction, which I doubt.

It is acquisition of information that is constantly acting upon the brain, altering chemistry and connectivity, generating related feelings, thoughts and actions.

How are ideas put together into a coherent presentation if autonomy is not possible?

How exactly do you think consciousness achieves autonomy from the brain?

What besides the mind experiences ideas?

How does 'mind' form? How does mind think? How does mind form ideas?

 

[Subsymbolic]

"Linguistic behaviorism" is not a magic incantation that somehow changes facts.

No, it's a perfectly legitimate and reputable philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific position that, while I Personally disagree with it is certainly a strong enough contender to drive a truck through this assertion:

We cannot dispute that if there are ideas there is that which experiences them.

We certainly can. Dennett does in Consciousness explained, Ryle does in The Concept of Mind and so on. It's a position that certainly can, and recently has been disputed.

If there is experience there must be both something that experiences and something that is experienced.

You don't get it do you. You can make that claim as many times as you like but that's not objective evidence of the sort that you insist people give when arguing with you. I'm accusing you of rank inconsistency to the point of hypocrisy.

It cannot happen any other way.

Yes it certainly can. Dennett for example tells a compelling story of precisely how it can happen. That I don't buy it is irrelevant. At the current state of play, he could be right that we observe our own behaviour and linguistic behaviour from a position of privileged, but not conscious access and mistake our beliefs about conscious experience for conscious experience. The limit of your imagination is not the limit of the possible. Indeed your constant assertion that how it seems to you must be how it is is hilariously subjective and profoundly ironic given the objective standard you insist upon from people who are not you.

There must be something experiencing for any experience to occur.

Sure, but as Dennett argues so persuasively, it doesn't have to be a conscious something. An intentional something telling and believing a story about its own heterophenomenology will do. However, that's not the point. The point is that this isn't objective evidence, and so doesn't meet your own standard for acceptance.

It is embedded in the concept "to experience". The concept always contains the two elements of something that can experience and something experienced.

As Wittgenstein put it 'If I talk of a fiction, it is a grammatical fiction'. Are you really trying to tell me that the grammar of a concept is any guide to objective science. That actually argues straight into Dennett's trap - it is the language that leads us astray here, he'd say. And he'd be right. More to the point this is a rank misunderstanding of Hume's point that experiences are always about something.

So we know for certain if we have experiences that we are something that experiences. A mind. A person. Whatever label that doesn't do the concept justice you choose.

I'm afraid we don't. Even if we did, that would be a subjective thing and not the sort of thing that could be included in an objective scientific ontology of the sort that you have insisted on. As it happens there are several other options that you seem utterly unaware of but which drive a truck through your false dilemma. Ive given you Dennett's but there are others, there are others suggested by Descartes FFS.

Mind you, I'm enjoying watching you try to use ordinary language philosophy to try to define what is scientifically possible. This from the man who insist that all evidence must be objective.

 

[Subsymbolic]

I'm not denying that "it is the brain that acquires information via its senses and processes, stores and acts upon this information in in order to build a mental representation of the external world and self in order to respond and interact". Because when it's phrased that way it allows that this process is an ongoing one from whenever there was a brain (even if it doesn't seem to allow for the processes acting on the development of the brain before and during its existence). That's very different from the target quote with the 'must' I was objecting to.

Rather than arguing straight past me, can you perhaps explain what my point was and why you object to it?

The problem is that I don't see what your point is. Your remark - for example - ''it doesn't seem to allow for the processes acting on the development of the brain before and during its existence'' - doesn't appear to be correct because the process of ongoing brain development is not at odds with the necessity of information input via the senses. In fact the brain requires information input in order to develop. Example of sensory deprivation prove that.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'before its existence' unless this refers to genetic information in relation to brain architecture, etc, but that is not a point of contention, nor does it contradict the wording of the article.

Yeah genetic structure.

My point is that while there is a kinda Piagettian dialectic going on, the sort of information your source assumes is passing through the brain just isn't. All that has to be passed on is the error correction. While the error correction will inform the model this is a long way from the model your sources are working from.

Try this if you want to:

http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/Whatever next.pdf

 

[untermensche]

"Linguistic behaviorism" is not a magic incantation that somehow changes facts.

No, it's a perfectly legitimate and reputable philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific position that, while I Personally disagree with it is certainly a strong enough contender to drive a truck through this assertion:

Argument by empty assertion.

There is nothing here but your opinion.

We cannot dispute that if there are ideas there is that which experiences them.

We certainly can. Dennett does in Consciousness explained, Ryle does in The Concept of Mind and so on. It's a position that certainly can, and recently has been disputed.

Argument by magic name dropping.

Again nothing but empty unsupported opinion.

You cannot dispute this. It is the understanding of "experience". It is what the word is founded upon.

A thing that can experience having an experience. You can't have an experience without something experiencing it.

Dennett for example tells a compelling story of precisely how it can happen.

Dennett is a worthless bag of wind in this area. He explains nothing about experience beyond what we know from having experiences.

An intentional something telling and believing a story about its own heterophenomenology will do.

If something is believing something else then it is separated from what it is believing.

You have not overturn the truism that to have an experience requires that which experiences and the things it can experience.

You can't wave this away. It is not going anywhere.