untermensche
Contributor
No. You have to propose how a robot could have an inner life.
What specifically is giving it one?
I know I have one.
If you knew what a mind was you might be able to give a robot an inner life though.
-
Features
The Science and Mechanics of Free Will
- Thread starter ryan
- Start date
No. You have to propose how a robot could have an inner life.
What specifically is giving it one?
I know I have one.
If you knew what a mind was you might be able to give a robot an inner life though.
You yet not defined "know".
untermensche
Contributor
That's like asking "What is a thought?"
To know is to know in your "thoughts". The inner dialogue.
A computer does not have thoughts.
Thoughts is just accentuented propositions.
What is so special about them?
You have to realize that nothing in your mind is so special that a computer/robot can have it too, maybe except for one thing: the "living experience" of it.
DBT
Contributor
A remark that completely ignores the role of the brain in forming and generating mind.
Same again...this time the distinction between regions of the brain that generate conscious awareness/mind and regions of the brain that are responsible for motor actions, such as typing. Something that with practice doesn't require a lot of conscious attention, or even looking at the key board.
If you can't grasp the role of the brain in relation to conscious awareness/mind and motor actions by now, there is nothing I can do to help you understand.
Which has nothing to do with what I'm saying. You still conflate the fact that we don't know how the brain forms our conscious experience and that, according to the evidence, it does just that. You are equivocating
untermensche
Contributor
Humans can dismiss anything. The more dull the human the more easily they can dismiss the fascinating.
It is not evidence of anything.
The mind and thinking are incredible phenomena and we are nowhere near understanding them.
The mind invents this concept called "tomorrow" even though it is a thing never seen in any way.
untermensche
Contributor
Your experience generated your mind.
Your brain just allowed you to have experience.
You keep making the same logical error over and over.
The fact that the concert pianist does not have to think to hit the right keys does not negate purposeful movement.
There is more than purposeful movement, yes. There is this other movement tied to rehearsal and memory. Like walking, an incredibly complex activity we rarely think about beyond directing where we want to go.
The mind is more amazing the more your look at it.
But there is also the simple phenomena of me lifting my arm at "will".
Drugs and sleep and rehearsed movement and electrical stimulation and strokes do not negate the phenomena of purposeful movement.
I don't know how you think any other phenomena can negate the phenomena of a person lifting their arm at "will"?
If we don't know how the brain creates "consciousness" we don't know what consciousness is.
We don't know what the mind is.
And don't understand how it clearly appears to be a mechanism.
DBT
Contributor
Really, Mr untermensche, nobody agrees with your ideas, except maybe a few religious people.
Minds are simply what brains do.
''I don't mean to say that brains or minds are simple; brains are immensely complex machines-and so are what they do. I merely mean to say that the nature of their relationship is simple. Whenever we speak about a mind, we're referring to the processes that move our brains from state to state. Naturally, we cannot expect to find any compact description to cover every detail of all the processes in a human brain, because that would involve the details of the architectures of perhaps a hundred different sorts of computers, interconnected by thousands of specialized bundles of connections. It is an immensely complex matter of engineering. Nevertheless, when the mind is regarded, in principle, in terms of what the brain may do, many questions that are usually considered to be philosophical can now be recognized as merely psychological-because the long-sought connections between mind and brain do not involve two separate worlds, but merely relate two points of view.''
Memory and Change
What do brains do? Doing means changing. Whenever we learn or 'change our minds', our brains are engaged in changing their states. To comprehend the relationship between mind and brain, we must understand the relationship between what things do and what things are; what something does is simply an aspect of that thing considered over some span of time. When we see a ball roll down a hill, we appreciate that the rolling is neither the ball itself, nor something apart in some other world - but merely an aspect of the ball's extension in space-time; it is a description of the ball, over time, seen from the viewpoint of physical laws. Why is it so much harder to appreciate that thinking is an aspect of the brain, that also could be described, in principle, in terms of the self-same physical laws? The answer is that minds do not seem physical to us because we know so little of the processes inside brains.
''We can only describe how something changes by contrast with what remains the same. Consider how we use expressions like "I remember X." Memories must be involved with a record of changes in our brains, but such changes must be rather small because to undergo too large a change is to lose any sense of identity. This intrusion of a sense of self makes the subject of memory difficult; we like to think of ourselves as remaining unchanged - no matter how much we change what we think. For example, we tend to talk about remembering events (or learning facts, or acquiring skills) as though there were a clear separation between what we call the Self and what we regard as like data that are separate from but accessible to the self. However, it is hard to draw the boundary between a mind and what that mind may think about and this is another aspect of brains that makes them seem different to us from machines. We are used to thinking about machines in terms of how they affect other materials. But it makes little sense to think of brains as though they manufacture thoughts the way that factories makes cars because brains, like computers, are largely engaged in processes that change themselves . Whenever a brain makes a memory, this alters what that brain may later do.''
Minds are simply what brains do.
''I don't mean to say that brains or minds are simple; brains are immensely complex machines-and so are what they do. I merely mean to say that the nature of their relationship is simple. Whenever we speak about a mind, we're referring to the processes that move our brains from state to state. Naturally, we cannot expect to find any compact description to cover every detail of all the processes in a human brain, because that would involve the details of the architectures of perhaps a hundred different sorts of computers, interconnected by thousands of specialized bundles of connections. It is an immensely complex matter of engineering. Nevertheless, when the mind is regarded, in principle, in terms of what the brain may do, many questions that are usually considered to be philosophical can now be recognized as merely psychological-because the long-sought connections between mind and brain do not involve two separate worlds, but merely relate two points of view.''
Memory and Change
What do brains do? Doing means changing. Whenever we learn or 'change our minds', our brains are engaged in changing their states. To comprehend the relationship between mind and brain, we must understand the relationship between what things do and what things are; what something does is simply an aspect of that thing considered over some span of time. When we see a ball roll down a hill, we appreciate that the rolling is neither the ball itself, nor something apart in some other world - but merely an aspect of the ball's extension in space-time; it is a description of the ball, over time, seen from the viewpoint of physical laws. Why is it so much harder to appreciate that thinking is an aspect of the brain, that also could be described, in principle, in terms of the self-same physical laws? The answer is that minds do not seem physical to us because we know so little of the processes inside brains.
''We can only describe how something changes by contrast with what remains the same. Consider how we use expressions like "I remember X." Memories must be involved with a record of changes in our brains, but such changes must be rather small because to undergo too large a change is to lose any sense of identity. This intrusion of a sense of self makes the subject of memory difficult; we like to think of ourselves as remaining unchanged - no matter how much we change what we think. For example, we tend to talk about remembering events (or learning facts, or acquiring skills) as though there were a clear separation between what we call the Self and what we regard as like data that are separate from but accessible to the self. However, it is hard to draw the boundary between a mind and what that mind may think about and this is another aspect of brains that makes them seem different to us from machines. We are used to thinking about machines in terms of how they affect other materials. But it makes little sense to think of brains as though they manufacture thoughts the way that factories makes cars because brains, like computers, are largely engaged in processes that change themselves . Whenever a brain makes a memory, this alters what that brain may later do.''
untermensche
Contributor
It is not my idea that a human can move their arm with their mind.
It is clear phenomena.
And what science needs to explain is how a person moves their arm with their mind.
It is a waste of time to pretend they can't.
Minds are "simply" that which directs the brain in some ways.
I find if you add the word "simply" you can pretend you have knowledge you don't.
DBT
Contributor
So, you still ignore the role of the brain in relation to the very existence of the mind;
''Neurologists and neurosurgeons see patients with injured or diseased brains. Neurosurgeons attempt restoration of the internal structure of the brain to normalcy or correct disordered function in select areas by such modes as deep brain stimulation or ablation. Some operations are performed on patients who are awake. Observations on patients provided clues to the functions of the mind in relation to the structure of the brain. ‘When a surgeon sends an electrical current into the brain, the person can have a vivid, lifelike experience. When chemicals seep into the brain, they can alter the person’s perception, mood, personality, and reasoning. When a patch of brain tissue dies, a part of the mind can disappear: a neurological patient may lose the ability to name tools, recognize faces, anticipate the outcome of his behaviour, empathize with others, or keep in mind a region of space or of his own body… Every emotion and thought gives off physical signals, and the new technologies for detecting them are so accurate that they can literally read a person’s mind and tell a cognitive neuroscientist whether the person is imagining a face or a place. Neuroscientists can knock a gene out of a mouse (a gene also found in humans) and prevent the mouse from learning, or insert extra copies and make the mouse learn faster. Under the microscope, brain tissue shows a staggering complexity—a hundred billion neurons connected by a hundred trillion synapses—that is commensurate with the staggering complexity of human thought and experience… And when the brain dies, the person goes out of existence'' (Pinker, 2003).
''To sum up, whilst the brain is ‘a physical mechanism, an arrangement of matter that converts inputs to outputs in particular ways’ (Pinker, 2003) the manner in which its hundred billion neurones are deployed, the infinite variations in their connections that result in very complex neural networks, the multitude of chemical and electrical reactions within it and the consequent almost unimaginable complexity of structure and function enable it to contain the mind just as it does the sources of all the other activities attributed to sentient life.''
Here is the source of mind, mr untermensche, the source of you, your feelings, beliefs, decisions and actions such as the will or prompt to lift your arm;
untermensche
Contributor
fromderinside
Mazzie Daius
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2008
- Messages
- 15,945
- Basic Beliefs
- optimist
Fair enough. My robot operates by taking sunlight converting it to 'lectricity using a mechanism presumed to run about fifty years. There are measures that can extend it's life, processes that can enhance it's performance, and aspects of where routine maintenance is required. It is designed to use information gained about the world around itself adaptively including being able to produce replicates given proper equipment exists.
Bet yours can't do what mine can do.
untermensche
Contributor
It is a glorified thermostat.
It does not make decisions, many times bad decisions, with a mind.
DBT
Contributor
That's where you go wrong. I don't dismiss the phenomena, I refer to the source of the phenomena.
On the contrary, it is you who dismiss the source of the phenomena, instead of acknowledging its source as the function of a brain as demonstrated by numerous studies and experiments, you latch onto the phenomena as if it has no source....which becomes you magical mind.
It being the brain that moves its body, both by means of the mind it forms, and unconscious motor actions.
Yes, that is why you need to examine your own position more carefully than you have so far.
untermensche
Contributor
The source of me moving my arm at "will" is my mind. The source of the mind is something else.
And when we understand what a mind is we may understand how it does it.
But with no understanding of what a mind is it is absurd to make claims about what it can and cannot do.
The brain may "form" the mind, but the mind it forms can also direct the brain in certain ways, like in "willful" movement and expression.
Just saying the brain "forms" the mind does not prevent the brain from "forming" something that can also control other parts of the brain in a "conscious" manner.
You haven't blocked the mind from controlling the brain by saying it is "formed" by the brain.
You've merely stated, over and over, you don't understand how it could do it.
Nobody understands how it does it.
What I want you to do is lift your arm, but only use your mind.
That is the clear phenomena that needs explaining.
DBT
Contributor
You don't see the irony of your remark?
untermensche
Contributor
ronburgundy
Contributor
The clear evidence is that everything you refer to as "your mind" is you brain, and every variation in your experienced state of mind (e.g., your will) is produced by a change in your brain. The reverse is not true, because there are constant variations in your brain that do not manifest as changes in your conscious mind. This strongly supports the brain as the causal agent and "your mind" as merely an epiphenomena of particular brain states. IOW, the feeling that want to move your arm is caused by a brain state, and that brain state is also what actually causes changes in other parts of the brain that then move your arm. You wrongly infer that "your will" alone caused your arm to move from the fact that it is correlated with your arm moving, due to being caused by the same brain states that caused your arm to move. It is analogous to a person who can only see the trunk and tail of an elephant but the rest of the elephant is invisible to the person. What they experience is that whenever the trunk moves, the tail follows. So the person infers that as evidence that the trunk is causing the tail to move, when in fact the cause of both is movement of the unseen middle. Separate them and the tail and trunk will never move again, but the middle still can because it is the true cause (upsetting as the notion of a trunkless elephant might be).
Granted, exactly how the brain gives rise to the epiphenomena of the mind is still unknown (though we've gained in our knowledge of where it happens). But we don't need to know that to have mountains of evidence (which we do) that conscious experience is a consequence of the brain and not the other way around, and that even when that conscious experience doesn't occur, those brain states still cause the changes in other parts of the brain and move parts of the body. The evidence overwhelmingly favors the mind as an epiphenomena that does not actually play a causal role.
Understanding the precise mechanism behind a causal relation is not neccessary to scientific knowledge of what is cause and what is effect. Is precise knowledge of the mechanisms that give rise to lung cancer required for scientific knowledge that the relation between tobacco smoking and lung cancer is that smoking causes cancer and not the other way around?
untermensche
Contributor
Can you lift your arm with your mind? With nothing but your desire?
If so your mind is a mechanism that can make the brain do certain things.
And one day possibly we will understand how.
ronburgundy
Contributor
No, you cannot lift your arm with your mind. Your physical brain generates a signal that you (only sometimes experience as a desire to lift your arm). That brain state set off a chain of physical reactions that lead to the muscles contracting and flexing in a way that lifts your arm. Your "mind" isn't causing anything. It is an effect of some of the brain states involved in causing your arm to move.