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(March 16, 2016 at 9:52 am)little_monkey Wrote: Regardless, it doesn't change the argument.
It totally changes it, because you end up with (3) brain activities = assumed to be mindful. This is not a very satisfying conclusion.
Quote:Qualia is not part of my vocabulary, as it is subjective, and many philosophers have different definitions. You'll end up in one of those perpetual semantic war. I'm talking science, I'll leave the philosophy to those who like to indulge in speculation that are never verifiable.
Mind includes qualia. If you want to leave it out, then why are you studying mind at all?
That correlation does not depend on someone defining "qualia". My point is that the mind IS brain activities. I'm taken that you are saying that there is more to mind than just brain activities, or am I mistaken about your position?
Quote:Are those androids capable of self reflection? Can they dream? Can they create new thoughts not stored in their programs? These are "mindful" stuff, and when humans perform them in their mind- one can see observable results and correlation in brain activities.
Quote:Do androids dream of electric sheep? I don't know the answer. However, I don't think there's any reason to believe that they would.
So your point about android doesn't hold. You said, "But what happens when androids smile and breath? Now (1) is out the window."
If android don't dream, let alone they are incapable of creating new ideas, which was another thing I mentioned, then (1) proves my point, androids don't have a mind, even though they can mimic certain human activities.
March 17, 2016 at 9:09 am (This post was last modified: March 17, 2016 at 9:59 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(March 16, 2016 at 11:46 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Composition is an important part of function. You might think that mind is just input, processing and output. But the way things are processed is very important. Obviously, brains and computers process differently in very many ways.
The importance of composition to function is only that the composition be -capable- of function. All adders are adders and equate to each other as adders no matter what they are made of. Your "just" is diminutive and defensive, whereas I see nothing diminishing about input, processing, and output. Regardless of how mind is accomplished, it's still mind - and all of the wonderful things I love about mind. The way things are processed is -not- important to any conversation where we are considering whether or not mind is processing. Two different computational architectures process things the -same- way using different materials and arrangement to achieve function, this difference is unimportant to any discussion of whether or not the two systems are comp systems. A comp made of silicon, a comp made of vac tubes, and a comp made of biota would be different in many ways, but the one way they -wouldn't- be different, is in being comp systems. The same would hold for minds made of x, y, or z, if mind were comp. This is -why- your objections have consistently fallen to a relevance fallacy in responding to me.
It's not as though I think that a machine mind and a biota mind wouldn't be different. The composition of a system tells you what each will be better or worse at than another, by whatever metrics you choose, and why. I've expressed as much in this thread and every thread we've had the conversation in, I'm suggesting that for all their differences, the one thing that wouldn't be different, is that they are minds. If mind is comp, the suggestion ceases to be suggestion and becomes a statement of computational principle. Frankly, the differences between brains and modern pcs are fascinating..and I (and most computer scientists and engineers) are looking to the brain to make a better pc. It's working. One of my favorite examples is the chemical portion of the electro-chemical process in our brains. Any resistence based computer (modern pc) made at the scale of architecture of the brain would melt itself. A chemical computer could run colder, and thus the "board" could be made more dense. On the flipside, chemical gates suffer from signal isolation problems, making their process "dirtier" and also ever so slightly slower. A choice is made between accuracy and speed, or density and thus computational ability 1 for 1. Obviously if the difference in density is great enough, and parrallel processing is ongoing, the denser board will provide a more robust function despite it's limitations at the level of gate construction. It will still have strange problems with accuracy, with signal mixing, with memory. Mull that over, and consider your mind in that context...and perhaps you'll see why I find comp to be such a useful way to consider mind, and yes..even qualia. It would be useful even if mind were the special sauce, "in there" somewhere, somehow..and not the input, processing, and output.
Quote:Mind is not all the brain, for sure. Therefore, if there's mind and it is brain function, it's in the brain.
Your premise appears to be false by all available evidence, and your therefore is a complete non-sequitur regardless.
Quote:You keep telling me that a unified agency isn't a thing. Then I watch a movie, and realize that something is bringing together sound and light into an interesting experience. It's that unity that you have no answer for.
I keep telling you it doesn't happen in one place. Your experience appears to be parallel processing rather than serial processing. Don't like it? Take it up with the brain, but don't pretend no ones answered your question.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
(March 16, 2016 at 7:00 pm)mh.brewer Wrote: Where in this article does is say that they are aware? They mention "reducing awareness".
During some procedures the physician wants the patient to have the ability to respond (speak, move, blink, ....). The anesthesia used is specific (in type and dose) to that purpose. If the anesthesiologist is not a dick they will most often include an amnestic medication (during or immediately after).
For most other procedures the general anesthesia used "reduces" awareness to near nothing. If you are not aware of painful stimulus (as stated in your post) you will not be aware of almost any stimulus (tactile, auditory, visual, temp. .....). Your respiratory center is not "aware" that you are suffocating, therefore ventilation support. Respiration is one of the brain functions that continues when other awareness functions have ceased.
Don't get me wrong, there are cases of procedures being performed where the patient has been aware. Most often these are cases of inadequate anesthesia delivery or monitoring. In some cases there is no explanation. The trauma often damages the patients for life.
EEG = awareness. Unconscious persons have an EEG. No EEG = no awareness and probably dead. Levels of awareness? Different story.
Only pointing out that general anesthesia was not a particularly good position to take for unconscious awareness. Got no issues with unconscious awareness, only the degree.
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem.
March 17, 2016 at 10:05 am (This post was last modified: March 17, 2016 at 10:12 am by Kiekeben.)
(March 17, 2016 at 1:22 am)bennyboy Wrote:
(March 16, 2016 at 1:41 pm)Kiekeben Wrote: You appear to be ignoring two things. First, that you could perform this test on yourself. You may not strictly speaking know that other people have qualia, but you know that you do.
This is an excellent point, and I kind of suggested a cyborg experiment along those lines a couple pages ago, in which you could start to break out of philosophical solipsism by transferring parts of experience among people (hypothetically at least). But it's only fairly recently that subjectivism and science have been so at odds with each other, especially in the study of the mind.
Quote:Both the materailists who are mysterians and the dualists go beyond merely saying that qualia are unique to arguing that this somehow makes consciousness problematic for materialism. I don't think so at all, because the uniqueness of qualia is something we should expect whatever is true about the makeup of the mind. It all has to do with the simple fact that qualia simply ARE the experiences each individual has, and are therefore private to each individual. So of course you can't experience someone else's qualia! And that's why there is a "problem" of zombies, and all that.
Fair enough. To me the problem isn't so much with humans, who I just kind of "feel" have minds and accept that feeling. It's with any other physical structure. How do we know whether anything else experiences qualia, even if it seems to? How do we know that all electrochemical or electromagnetic interchanges aren't actually little sparks of awareness all through the universe?
It's hard, not having found what about the brain is actually responsible for qualia, to turn whatever we learn out into the physical universe in general, which I think is very much the aim of science: to take specific cases and succeed in establishing general rules.
Good post, by the way. I like the way you think.
(March 17, 2016 at 1:22 am)bennyboy Wrote:
(March 16, 2016 at 1:41 pm)Kiekeben Wrote: You appear to be ignoring two things. First, that you could perform this test on yourself. You may not strictly speaking know that other people have qualia, but you know that you do.
This is an excellent point, and I kind of suggested a cyborg experiment along those lines a couple pages ago, in which you could start to break out of philosophical solipsism by transferring parts of experience among people (hypothetically at least). But it's only fairly recently that subjectivism and science have been so at odds with each other, especially in the study of the mind.
Quote:Both the materailists who are mysterians and the dualists go beyond merely saying that qualia are unique to arguing that this somehow makes consciousness problematic for materialism. I don't think so at all, because the uniqueness of qualia is something we should expect whatever is true about the makeup of the mind. It all has to do with the simple fact that qualia simply ARE the experiences each individual has, and are therefore private to each individual. So of course you can't experience someone else's qualia! And that's why there is a "problem" of zombies, and all that.
Fair enough. To me the problem isn't so much with humans, who I just kind of "feel" have minds and accept that feeling. It's with any other physical structure. How do we know whether anything else experiences qualia, even if it seems to? How do we know that all electrochemical or electromagnetic interchanges aren't actually little sparks of awareness all through the universe?
It's hard, not having found what about the brain is actually responsible for qualia, to turn whatever we learn out into the physical universe in general, which I think is very much the aim of science: to take specific cases and succeed in establishing general rules.
(2nd attempt - sometimes these messages don't go through for some reason):
I think you're right about this. I don't see a way to determine whether, say, a computer (like HAL in 2001) is conscious. And it's not just that we haven't learned how the brain manages to be conscious - it's that even if we do, we might not be able to apply what we learn to anything that's sufficiently different. This is where I agree with the mysterians - consciousness presents a unique problem for science.
That correlation does not depend on someone defining "qualia". My point is that the mind IS brain activities. I'm taken that you are saying that there is more to mind than just brain activities, or am I mistaken about your position?
I still don't really understand your point (1). Are you defining mindfulness as something that smiles or breathes, or saying that if something smiles or breathes, it must be mindful?
Yes, if you do not defind mind in terms of qualia, your (3) holds true. However, in this case equating mind with brain function isn't really an observation, but a begging of the question, IMO (I mean that in logical terms, not an insulting one). If mind is not defined in subjective terms, then you're just talking about brain function, and you can drop the term "mind" altogether. Why don't behaviorists do this? Because the elephant in the room is that we have minds, and whether the reality of mind is that it supervenes on the brain, or IS the brain, or is of or part of the brain, or something else, attempting to treat something so purely subjective as an objective fact is terrible semantics. Rhythm, for example, is trying to say, "Mind is data processing, therefore data processing is mind," which to me is epic in its disregard for what the word means to almost anybody alive.
March 17, 2016 at 11:30 am (This post was last modified: March 17, 2016 at 11:43 am by The Grand Nudger.)
That;s an argument from consequence....again, I don't see -why- or -how- it would be any sort of disregard, but it's not as though it would matter if it were.
Perhaps, if you could isolate why and how -you- would feel diminished that could be a productive conversation? It won;t change an iota with regards to the accuracy of any given explanation, but it would at least explain your resistence to explanations in ways that constant reference to fallacies cannot (and doesn't that diminish you....you're a smart guy after all?).
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
(March 16, 2016 at 11:46 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Composition is an important part of function. You might think that mind is just input, processing and output. But the way things are processed is very important. Obviously, brains and computers process differently in very many ways.
The importance of composition to function is only that the composition be -capable- of function. All adders are adders and equate to each other as adders no matter what they are made of. Your "just" is diminutive and defensive, whereas I see nothing diminishing about input, processing, and output. Regardless of how mind is accomplished, it's still mind - and all of the wonderful things I love about mind. The way things are processed is -not- important to any conversation where we are considering whether or not mind is processing. Two different computational architectures process things the -same- way using different materials and arrangement to achieve function, this difference is unimportant to any discussion of whether or not the two systems are comp systems. A comp made of silicon, a comp made of vac tubes, and a comp made of biota would be different in many ways, but the one way they -wouldn't- be different, is in being comp systems. The same would hold for minds made of x, y, or z, if mind were comp. This is -why- your objections have consistently fallen to a relevance fallacy in responding to me.
It's not as though I think that a machine mind and a biota mind wouldn't be different. The composition of a system tells you what each will be better or worse at than another, by whatever metrics you choose, and why. I've expressed as much in this thread and every thread we've had the conversation in, I'm suggesting that for all their differences, the one thing that wouldn't be different, is that they are minds. If mind is comp, the suggestion ceases to be suggestion and becomes a statement of computational principle. Frankly, the differences between brains and modern pcs are fascinating..and I (and most computer scientists and engineers) are looking to the brain to make a better pc. It's working. One of my favorite examples is the chemical portion of the electro-chemical process in our brains. Any resistence based computer (modern pc) made at the scale of architecture of the brain would melt itself. A chemical computer could run colder, and thus the "board" could be made more dense. On the flipside, chemical gates suffer from signal isolation problems, making their process "dirtier" and also ever so slightly slower. A choice is made between accuracy and speed, or density and thus computational ability 1 for 1. Obviously if the difference in density is great enough, and parrallel processing is ongoing, the denser board will provide a more robust function despite it's limitations at the level of gate construction. It will still have strange problems with accuracy, with signal mixing, with memory. Mull that over, and consider your mind in that context...and perhaps you'll see why I find comp to be such a useful way to consider mind, and yes..even qualia. It would be useful even if mind were the special sauce, "in there" somewhere, somehow..and not the input, processing, and output.
Here's the thing. In a purely parallel system, which the mind apparently is since you claim there's no unifying factor or mechanism, there's no defined input, processing and output. A neuron is a mini computer in itself, so if processing is mind, then a neuron would perhaps have a mind. In fact, I think you could argue that the energetic states of electrons as they interact with others is a kind of comp-- but you wouldn't want to say comp "mind." The thing is that the term "processing" is applied to a system of state from the outside. The reality is that processing is just another word for changes in state over time, and that is happening literally everywhere, all the time.
Is it not arbitrary exactly which systems you call comp minds, and which you just think are shit happening?
March 17, 2016 at 11:52 am (This post was last modified: March 17, 2016 at 12:06 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(March 17, 2016 at 11:37 am)bennyboy Wrote: Here's the thing. In a purely parallel system, which the mind apparently is since you claim there's no unifying factor or mechanism, there's no defined input, processing and output. A neuron is a mini computer in itself, so if processing is mind, then a neuron would perhaps have a mind.
Not unless you're satisfied with a definition of mind which is far - far less than the "whole mind" you experience. We're making subtle equivocations now. Compelling, but misleading.
Quote:In fact, I think you could argue that the energetic states of electrons as they interact with others is a kind of comp-- but you wouldn't want to say comp "mind."
Even less of a "mind" than a nueron's "mind"...and now the equivocation is not so subtle at all.
Quote:The thing is that the term "processing" is applied to a system of state from the outside. The reality is that processing is just another word for changes in state over time, and that is happening literally everywhere, all the time.
No, that;s not what processing is at all. Many things change state over time, that doesn't make them processors. To be able to process data a system must be able to possess a state, and the state must be changeable, but this is only one (and the most basic) requirement even for processing..let alone computation. Another not-so-subtle equivocation.
Quote:Is it not arbitrary exactly which systems you call comp minds, and which you just think are shit happening?
Is the distinction between a rock and a pc as regards which is a computer arbitrary? Ever tried to run linux on a pile of river pebbles? I don;t think that "stuff" in the general has a mind. I don't think that calculators have a mind. I do think that a -computer- might, and I also think that we may be computers....but I don;t think that all minds would be the same. After all, ours seem to be different from each other. Hark back to the electro-chemical bit. We know that emotion is strongly tied to chemical properties. We know that emotional response varies between even two human beings. I don't expect a resistance mind to share our experience there. It may be able to understand what we mean, it may be able to predict our behaviors, but it wouldn't be any more similar to a human mind in that regard than human minds are to each other....and I would suspect a great deal less. All bets are off, imo, if the machine mind is electro-chemical rather than resistance based...but even then....whatever chemical experiences it has would be determined by the ways that those chemicals act on it's structure, and if it were made of metal rather than cells..that could be vastly different.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
March 17, 2016 at 1:18 pm (This post was last modified: March 17, 2016 at 1:20 pm by bennyboy.)
(March 17, 2016 at 11:52 am)Rhythm Wrote: No, that;s not what processing is at all. Many things change state over time, that doesn't make them processors. To be able to process data a system must be able to possess a state, and the state must be changeable, but this is only one (and the most basic) requirement even for processing..let alone computation. Another not-so-subtle equivocation.
The state of an electron in its orbit IS changeable, and on multiple but discrete levels. And a galaxy is also processing, since the events that transpire in it affect what light leaves it: its intensity, its direction, etc.
But you are going to special plead, I'm sure, and argue that only those changes in state and resultant behaviors that YOU consider meaningful are actually computation.
Quote:
Quote:Is it not arbitrary exactly which systems you call comp minds, and which you just think are shit happening?
Is the distinction between a rock and a pc as regards which is a computer arbitrary? Ever tried to run linux on a pile of river pebbles? I don;t think that "stuff" in the general has a mind. I don't think that calculators have a mind. I do think that a -computer- might, and I also think that we may be computers....but I don;t think that all minds would be the same. After all, ours seem to be different from each other. Hark back to the electro-chemical bit. We know that emotion is strongly tied to chemical properties. We know that emotional response varies between even two human beings. I don't expect a resistance mind to share our experience there. It may be able to understand what we mean, it may be able to predict our behaviors, but it wouldn't be any more similar to a human mind in that regard than human minds are to each other....and I would suspect a great deal less. All bets are off, imo, if the machine mind is electro-chemical rather than resistance based...but even then....whatever chemical experiences it has would be determined by the ways that those chemicals act on it's structure, and if it were made of metal rather than cells..that could be vastly different.
Even the distinction between a rock and a PC is one of degree. A rock inputs light and outputs heat. It exactly calculates (by which I mean takes an input, processes through chemistry or physics, and ouputs something related but different) the right amount of heat to put out precisely. A PC processes in a much more complex way, but in the end, it's all just physics and chemistry, and the meaning you imbue in one system over the other is arbitrary. In fact, since all things in the universe are related by gravity, you could say that motion is itself a kind of processing.
You wouldn't. But I don't think you will provide a non-arbitrary definition for what IS to be called processing, either.
That correlation does not depend on someone defining "qualia". My point is that the mind IS brain activities. I'm taken that you are saying that there is more to mind than just brain activities, or am I mistaken about your position?
I still don't really understand your point (1). Are you defining mindfulness as something that smiles or breathes, or saying that if something smiles or breathes, it must be mindful?
Because these are activities of the mind. You smile, you think about smiling, you breath, you think about breathing. All the activities that you do passes by your brain, even when you're not conscious of it. And that's why in (2), you also see points in your brain registering when you do these mindful activities. Through MRI, we can detect exactly where in your brain these activities are associated with.
If you believe that MIND = BRAIN ACTIVITIES + something else, then it's upon you to show that you can perform a mindful activity without any activity in the brain. Otherwise, you are grasping at straws.
