Downward Causation: Useful or Misguided Idea?

[DBT]

There cannot be something alive without many many things.

Something doesn't just have "life" as a quality.

It has many things that add up to "life".

Sure. But an entity's 'life' is not understood as a separate 'thing' to the entity, that's my point.

The mind is not a separate entity.

It is a part.

The part that experiences and acts in ways on those experiences.

The part that experiences is an activity of a brain. It is the brain that forms both the conscious experience and the actions that are related to the experience.

 

[Subsymbolic]

The thing is, we do know how brains, that is just brains, can process information and act on it.

Really?

How is the experience of "red" created?

You pretend to know how the brain is creating "red" but you don't have the slightest clue.

If you did you would just show me your model that explains how some brain activity results in experience.

You have no model.

You have talk about grammar and the timing of human guesses about inklings.

I suggest you return to what I read before wheeling out this double standard straw man for the mockery it deserves.

But you could offer your model of how mind activity results in experience. At least I have a physical information processing system to work with. You have, what? A soul? A fiction? Our explanation of, for example, how the eye processes a visual image is good enough to use the same parallel processing strategies to make an image. You want to know how we did it, I suggest David Marr’s seminal book ‘Vision’.

That’s the easy question solved, solved so well it’s in the camera on your phone. Why that feels like something across the retinotopic neurons is the hard problem, how it happens is solved, understood and has been used in digital cameras for decades. The elves in the magic box were fired, technology is causing mass unemployment in the fairy world. So sad. Your extra isn’t needed to solve the processing problem and once that’s solved, your shit model is just an epiphenomena for the sake of it. The only two choices left are that this processing feels like something at certain points in the brain, or that we are fooling ourselves. An extra level for a computationally redundant lightnshow just isn’t needed. That’s souls fucked and whatever you also think happens if it isn’t a covert or confused appeal to souls.

 

[ruby sparks]

Sorry, one more. [and...now for something completely different]

Insofar as it remains to be seen there has still been, despite assiduous efforts from erudite persons across all academic disciplines, nothing which could be described as agreement or at least a nonconfrontational lessening of active hostility, in the realm of intellection or mentation, which is to say within the confines of that which might be called consciousness, or the arena of purely mental activity and operation, howsoever it could be remarked, should one wish to evoke yet another reason or issue about which to cavil and interlocute seemingly inexhaustible permutations of verbal ordnance for the mere sake of maintaining or defending, against common sense and sound judgment, a thesis or hypothesis which under normal circumstances and about which there would be no controversy, it seems prudent at this point to at least, and for the benefit of all parties, to come to terms and to asseverate collectively that there are, at the very least, certain items of general knowledge, which is not to say available only to those with experience in the higher institutions of learning or - lacking formal acquaintance or intercourse with edifices especially manufactured for the intersubjective continuance, analysis, and maintenance of data pertaining to the human species - solely to the industrious autodidact, which ought to be considered axiomatic and incontrovertible, without which any subsequent discourse would by necessity entail the common and perpetually frustrating occurrence of virtually universal confusion and instability of linguistic compatibility and mutually prosperous cooperation among sentient individuals and organizations or affilliations of persons among whom there is at least a general inclination towards providing for themselves and all potentially involved descendents a medium of communication which is not succeptible to the hazardous implementation of ambiguous terminology or dubious parlance.

- Wilbert Morley Handsock, from Navigations of the Meridian Indent, 1879

Poor old Billy Handsock. He never got the hang of using the full stop.

 

[WAB]

Wilbert had been reading Henry James, and became fond of really long sentences.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Wilbert had been reading Henry James, and became fond of really long sentences.

The astonishing thing is that hidden in that verbiage there’s actually a point. Astonishingly, I’ve read worse this week. It’s about Mallory on Everest, hang on, I’ll find it...

 

[Subsymbolic]

Wilbert had been reading Henry James, and became fond of really long sentences.

The astonishing thing is that hidden in that verbiage there’s actually a point. Astonishingly, I’ve read worse this week. It’s about Mallory on Everest, hang on, I’ll find it...

Or perhaps it’s lost... like Irvine...

 

[untermensche]

The thing is, we do know how brains, that is just brains, can process information and act on it.

Really?

How is the experience of "red" created?

You pretend to know how the brain is creating "red" but you don't have the slightest clue.

If you did you would just show me your model that explains how some brain activity results in experience.

You have no model.

You have talk about grammar and the timing of human guesses about inklings.

I suggest you return to what I read before wheeling out this double standard straw man for the mockery it deserves.

But you could offer your model of how mind activity results in experience. At least I have a physical information processing system to work with. You have, what? A soul? A fiction? Our explanation of, for example, how the eye processes a visual image is good enough to use the same parallel processing strategies to make an image. You want to know how we did it, I suggest David Marr’s seminal book ‘Vision’.

That’s the easy question solved, solved so well it’s in the camera on your phone. Why that feels like something across the retinotopic neurons is the hard problem, how it happens is solved, understood and has been used in digital cameras for decades. The elves in the magic box were fired, technology is causing mass unemployment in the fairy world. So sad. Your extra isn’t needed to solve the processing problem and once that’s solved, your shit model is just an epiphenomena for the sake of it. The only two choices left are that this processing feels like something at certain points in the brain, or that we are fooling ourselves. An extra level for a computationally redundant lightnshow just isn’t needed. That’s souls fucked and whatever you also think happens if it isn’t a covert or confused appeal to souls.

Just what I thought.

You have a lot of hot air and no models.

In science natural phenomena is described within models.

You have no objective understanding of anything the brain is doing. You see things happening and make up stories. All of it based around subjective reporting. None of it based on an understanding of activity.

You have a bunch of agreed upon fables. Fables based on absurd prejudices. Really crazy prejudices like : The mind does not exist. A crazy thing for a mind to come up with. But when you have no models you become desperate.

No science.

Science requires models that can be tested. Come back when you have some models. Come back when you have some science and not the timing of guesses about incredibly subtle inklings.

 

[ruby sparks]

Now that Um has gone off the end of the pier, can we get back to the topic of downward causation?

 

[untermensche]

Now that Um has gone off the end of the pier, can we get back to the topic of downward causation?

I see you equate asking for something scientific with going over a pier.

You and your religious delusions.

You use your mind to pretend the mind does not exist.

You use your mind to stomp your foot and insist the mind does not exist.

And when people question these things that come from your mind you have no answer.

As we see above.

Yes move one. Move on very quickly. You are in the dark and afraid.

 

[ruby sparks]

So, unless I'm mistaken, there's general agreement here that 'downward' (mental) causation happens, and affects the brain.

Can anyone think of a way this could be tested empirically, to reduce the possibility that it's merely a case of it 'just feels like it'?

My offering was placebo effects. Any flaws with this?

One possible flaw might be if the 'placebo suggestion' was perceived subliminally, 'below' consciousness.

 

[untermensche]

You test data within models.

You need a model to explain the phenomena of consciousness first.

Then you can test data.

Until then you do what a lot of people are doing. You collect data.

Until some great mind or minds can make a model from the data.

You're putting the cart before the horse.

 

[Subsymbolic]

So, unless I'm mistaken, there's general agreement here that 'downward' (mental) causation happens, and affects the brain.

Can anyone think of a way this could be tested empirically, to reduce the possibility that it's merely a case of it 'just feels like it'?

My offering was placebo effects. Any flaws with this?

One possible flaw might be if the 'placebo suggestion' was perceived subliminally, 'below' consciousness.

I just don’t think consciousness is something that can be tested empirically, for precisely the reasons that I keep battering UM with. What we do have is intersubjective agreement across the board. Now, it’s possible that Dennett’s right and we are all mistaking our intentional and conative states for phenomenal ones, but it all feels a bit meaty to me for that to be true. That’s why I hold the bicameral model - Dennett’s substantially right about the conceptualised side, but not the biology. Selves are at centres of narrative gravity, not centres of narrative gravity in their own right. You don’t need many lights on but none is just a few too few.

 

[ruby sparks]

So, unless I'm mistaken, there's general agreement here that 'downward' (mental) causation happens, and affects the brain.

Can anyone think of a way this could be tested empirically, to reduce the possibility that it's merely a case of it 'just feels like it'?

My offering was placebo effects. Any flaws with this?

One possible flaw might be if the 'placebo suggestion' was perceived subliminally, 'below' consciousness.

I just don’t think consciousness is something that can be tested empirically, for precisely the reasons that I keep battering UM with. What we do have is intersubjective agreement across the board. Now, it’s possible that Dennett’s right and we are all mistaking our intentional and conative states for phenomenal ones, but it all feels a bit meaty to me for that to be true. That’s why I hold the bicameral model - Dennett’s substantially right about the conceptualised side, but not the biology. Selves are at centres of narrative gravity, not centres of narrative gravity in their own right. You don’t need many lights on but none is just a few too few.

Maybe intersubjective agreement across the board is as good as it is ever or can ever get. But from a pragmatic point of view, I don't think consciousness is beyond science, even if we are left with unanswered questions about certain aspects of it.

For an obvious pragmatic example, we anaesthetise subjects with at least a very high degree of confidence that the anaesthetic renders them non-conscious, and the subjects seem to agree. Similarly, I don't feel like binning the various neuroscience experiments just because they may have flaws.

 

[Subsymbolic]

I suggest you return to what I read before wheeling out this double standard straw man for the mockery it deserves.

But you could offer your model of how mind activity results in experience. At least I have a physical information processing system to work with. You have, what? A soul? A fiction? Our explanation of, for example, how the eye processes a visual image is good enough to use the same parallel processing strategies to make an image. You want to know how we did it, I suggest David Marr’s seminal book ‘Vision’.

That’s the easy question solved, solved so well it’s in the camera on your phone. Why that feels like something across the retinotopic neurons is the hard problem, how it happens is solved, understood and has been used in digital cameras for decades. The elves in the magic box were fired, technology is causing mass unemployment in the fairy world. So sad. Your extra isn’t needed to solve the processing problem and once that’s solved, your shit model is just an epiphenomena for the sake of it. The only two choices left are that this processing feels like something at certain points in the brain, or that we are fooling ourselves. An extra level for a computationally redundant lightnshow just isn’t needed. That’s souls fucked and whatever you also think happens if it isn’t a covert or confused appeal to souls.

Just what I thought.

You have a lot of hot air and no models.

In science natural phenomena is described within models.

You have no objective understanding of anything the brain is doing. You see things happening and make up stories. All of it based around subjective reporting. None of it based on an understanding of activity.

You have a bunch of agreed upon fables. Fables based on absurd prejudices. Really crazy prejudices like : The mind does not exist. A crazy thing for a mind to come up with. But when you have no models you become desperate.

No science.

Science requires models that can be tested. Come back when you have some models. Come back when you have some science and not the timing of guesses about incredibly subtle inklings.

The stuff on vision is entirely objective, so objective it’s now used by all digital cameras. You don’t get much more substantive proof of truth than a scientific theory being adopted as an engineering solution which is commercially adopted and used everywhere by everyone.

 

[Subsymbolic]

So, unless I'm mistaken, there's general agreement here that 'downward' (mental) causation happens, and affects the brain.

Can anyone think of a way this could be tested empirically, to reduce the possibility that it's merely a case of it 'just feels like it'?

My offering was placebo effects. Any flaws with this?

One possible flaw might be if the 'placebo suggestion' was perceived subliminally, 'below' consciousness.

I just don’t think consciousness is something that can be tested empirically, for precisely the reasons that I keep battering UM with. What we do have is intersubjective agreement across the board. Now, it’s possible that Dennett’s right and we are all mistaking our intentional and conative states for phenomenal ones, but it all feels a bit meaty to me for that to be true. That’s why I hold the bicameral model - Dennett’s substantially right about the conceptualised side, but not the biology. Selves are at centres of narrative gravity, not centres of narrative gravity in their own right. You don’t need many lights on but none is just a few too few.

Maybe intersubjective agreement across the board is as good as it is ever or can ever get. But from a pragmatic point of view, I don't think consciousness is beyond science, even if we are left with unanswered questions about certain aspects of it.

For an obvious pragmatic example, we anaesthetise subjects with at least a very high degree of confidence that the anaesthetic renders them non-conscious, and the subjects seem to agree. Similarly, I don't feel like binning the various neuroscience experiments just because they may have flaws.

Don’t ever, for your own sanity, look into the history, or indeed present of anaesthesia. It was one of my MA projects. Suffice to say I’ve never had a general anaesthetic and it’s go local or don’t go at all. Last year I had a lung biopsy through the nose with no anaesthetic, painful but facinating.

 

[untermensche]

I suggest you return to what I read before wheeling out this double standard straw man for the mockery it deserves.

But you could offer your model of how mind activity results in experience. At least I have a physical information processing system to work with. You have, what? A soul? A fiction? Our explanation of, for example, how the eye processes a visual image is good enough to use the same parallel processing strategies to make an image. You want to know how we did it, I suggest David Marr’s seminal book ‘Vision’.

That’s the easy question solved, solved so well it’s in the camera on your phone. Why that feels like something across the retinotopic neurons is the hard problem, how it happens is solved, understood and has been used in digital cameras for decades. The elves in the magic box were fired, technology is causing mass unemployment in the fairy world. So sad. Your extra isn’t needed to solve the processing problem and once that’s solved, your shit model is just an epiphenomena for the sake of it. The only two choices left are that this processing feels like something at certain points in the brain, or that we are fooling ourselves. An extra level for a computationally redundant lightnshow just isn’t needed. That’s souls fucked and whatever you also think happens if it isn’t a covert or confused appeal to souls.

Just what I thought.

You have a lot of hot air and no models.

In science natural phenomena is described within models.

You have no objective understanding of anything the brain is doing. You see things happening and make up stories. All of it based around subjective reporting. None of it based on an understanding of activity.

You have a bunch of agreed upon fables. Fables based on absurd prejudices. Really crazy prejudices like : The mind does not exist. A crazy thing for a mind to come up with. But when you have no models you become desperate.

No science.

Science requires models that can be tested. Come back when you have some models. Come back when you have some science and not the timing of guesses about incredibly subtle inklings.

The stuff on vision is entirely objective, so objective it’s now used by all digital cameras. You don’t get much more substantive proof of truth than a scientific theory being adopted as an engineering solution which is commercially adopted and used everywhere by everyone.

The "stuff" on vision?

There is a lot of data on how the brain gains visual information at the eye. But the second that information is contained in nerves there is very little known about it. There is a little data about where in the brain certain aspects of the visual experience are processed.

But there is nothing known about how the brain creates the sensation of vision, how it creates that which is experienced. What is actually called vision. Vision is a final product. It is not the processes that create vision.

 

[ruby sparks]

Question. Can you be conscious without knowing that you are?

 

[Subsymbolic]

The stuff on vision is entirely objective, so objective it’s now used by all digital cameras. You don’t get much more substantive proof of truth than a scientific theory being adopted as an engineering solution which is commercially adopted and used everywhere by everyone.

The "stuff" on vision?

There is a lot of data on how the brain gains visual information at the eye. But the second that information is contained in nerves there is very little known about it. There is a little data about where in the brain certain aspects of the visual experience are processed.

But there is nothing known about how the brain creates the sensation of vision, how it creates that which is experienced. What is actually called vision. Vision is a final product. It is not the processes that create vision.

You are, of course, spouting nonsense. Just because you are shamefully ignorant of the state of the art in the mid eighties, let alone today, doesn't mean that there is very little known. You really do have to stop extrapolating from your own case.


Next, the final product is behaviour. Evolution doesn't select for inner process, it selects what works in the world. You'd be well advised to remember this fact. Do you understand the distinction between the hard and the easy problem or do yo need more schooling on this?

 

[WAB]

The easy answer is, yes.

When I had a psychotic break in 2011, which wound me up in the ER for 48 hours, I was conscious, but it couldn't be said that I knew I was conscious. I have clear memories of it, at least in patches, though I do not remember most of it.

Unfortunately, the question lends itself to the obvious boring and distracting question: How can you really know anything?

I promised myself I wouldn't seriously rejoin this argument, since I exhausted myself and drove myself crazy over it for a long time on these boards several years ago, but I will at least say one thing:

I do agree with uber that the idea of the brain creating the illusion of consciousness in order to trick itself that it's an autonomous, causative agent, is perhaps on par with the idea that God created Jesus in order to sacrifice Himself to Himself.

 

[Subsymbolic]

In the case of anaesthesia the better question is can you be conscious without remembering you are? Most anaesthetics today contain a paralyzing agent because flesh really does go out of its way to avoid damage as well as wibbling a bit too much. Then there's something that really knocks out the laying down of memories. Forget the rest. There's a distinct philosophical problem here: You are absolutely paralyzed with a fully working sensory nervous system. Meanwhile, your ability to lay down memories is systematically undermined. Think about this quite hard, because, unbelievably, the medical profession didn't...