On naturalism and consciousness

[Surgenator]

Also, I don't buy their reasoning of avoiding bias. Directionality isn't independent from a positive claim; hense, why are they using it. Nor is directionality biased free. If your getting a set of biased data, your results will be biased as well.

[dissily mordentroge]

Rhythm ( I think) wrote :- "In ctm, you'd be looking for parallel architecture with direct bussing to the cpu registers (possibly, depending upon what you'd want the system to monitor and to what end that data would be used). An output of each gate that abstracts to "is this gate doing work?" or "to what group does this gate belong - what functions are possible on this input from this component?".
Are you suggesting an analogy with simple iteration as operating within the human mind?

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. If your getting a set of biased data, your results will be biased as well.

I'm tempted to say here 'so what?" but I desist.
I'll lower the tone and bring into the discussion ideas put forward by a lady often described by the academics as 'Not a real philosopher" Although I find most of Ayn Rand's politics odious I suggest her epistemology worthy of consideration in this context.
Take for instance this passage from Ronald E Merrill's "The Ideas of Ayn Rand" (Publ' Open Court1991)
" . . . . . .This nominalist/conceptualist or Humpty-Dumpty school of thought holds that definitions need only be consistently maintained during a particular discussion. Just as Americans drive on the right of the road, and the British on the left, a concept such as 'bird' may be defined as a feathered animal, or as an egg laying animal As long as everyone who is using the definition (or road) agrees to accept a particular procedure, the exact proceedure is of no importance.
Opposed to this is the 'realist' school of thought, in it's pure Platonic or diluted Aristotelian variants, which hold that there is only one correct definition of a given concept. What, though could give this 'essence' of he concept its specula validity? The 'essence' is real in this view - it actually exists, as a Platonic form or some such entity,
Rand rejects both these approaches. As she describes it, the nominalist regards definitions as arbitrary; there is no 'essence' of a concept. The realist postulates the actual existence of the essence; the essence is metaphysical. For Rand, definitions are not arbitrary - there is an essence- but the essence in not metaphysical but epistemological. Though concepts are in the mind, they are not arbitrary because they reflect reality, which is objective.
Now why should anyone bother with all this? Rand's answer would be that philosophy is practical. The nominalist view assumes that thinking is a matter of detached, abstract debate. It is a game, and the only requirement for the rules is that they be self-consistent and agreed by all the players.
But for Rand, thinking is man's means of survival, and it's rules are absolutely critical. If you pick the wrong way to define a concept, it may not just be "Well, that's an interesting way to look at the subject', it could kill you.

[The Grand Nudger]

LOL, I wish. Maybe then we'd clock faster and wouldn't need our PC's anymore? Direct bussing is a top down design. The simplest way to implement the function on a printed circuit board - but our brains are neither top down designs nor printed boards. I suspect that a similar architecture is present at the very bottom, yes, but with a whole shitload of inefficient and unnecessary (with regards to that specific function) obstructions along the way - which segues into an interesting bit about -why- our "experience" has such breadth and depth to it, btw. At the moment, connectionists and NN guys are finding that their model has the best analog in structure regarding neurons, brain, mind...ect.

My gate explanations are intentionally simple for the purposes of conversation and explanation. A "so you want to build mind?" sort of thing - not necessarily a human mind. As soon as we found out how many traces that neurons have any analogy to simple gates became one of principle, not specific design or construction. The architecture of a processor is directly tied to the behavior of it's components. The reason that an electronic circuit has to do things this and thus - is because that's the way that the materials involved interact. We aren't made of the same stuff, so we wouldn't expect our architecture to be a direct analogy. Under ctm, however, we -do- expect the principle to hold, and that if we were to isolate the chipset involved in the experience of mind that it would be ultimately reducible to an algorithm which -could be- translated between material architectures (both a string gate and a silicon processor implement boolean functions, CTM posits that our brains could be added to that list as well). The brain, for example, may have 10k gates (made of entirely different stuff) in the same chipset that a modern computer only uses 4 gates for. The flipside to this, is that my explanations regarding gates fall apart at some point regarding the mind because they -all- imply intent. NN guys say "okay, that's a good idea.....so, what if the brain implements these functions (leverages the principle) in a different way than electronics do? What would that look like?" Amusingly, it looks alot like the (limited) maps we have regarding neuron connectivity. The idea that with enough redundancy (also from principle...any function can be implemented with a single universal gate repeated ad naus) you don't -need- a specific gate or chipset or group to achieve the function. All chipsets could conceivably perform any function, provided that they make the "right" connections to the relevant inputs (sensory, for example). This has incredible implications for computing (imagine a system that can devote every bit (or at least a much larger ratio of bits) to a task indiscriminantly, or, to put it a different way...what if all your gigs or t's of memory were interchangeable with your processing resources......when your pc encountered a beefy problem it could leverage all of those gates to perform the task, rather than bottlenecking at a set limit of design or construction) and also for mind -if- our minds are the product of the principles of computing.

Modern computers have a leg up in design efficiency as they have a sentient designer behind them, whereas our brains do not and did not. Our brains strong point is the scale of it's construction (a brain is much smaller than a supercomputer but could contain more "gates" - by orders of magnitude.....if neurons are being leveraged as gates-ofc, each gate having much more than a single output or input from the ground floor up), which muddies the water and makes any direct comparison to a computer (as we currently build them) difficult to maintain beyond a certain point- which is probably the harshest criticism of CTM - as it applies to human minds, specifically...... and one that CTM is currently (and may always be) unable to overcome. A nueron, to argue against my position - could by virtue of it's structure act more like a chipset than a gate - and yet it's construction is - at one level- simpler and smaller. So we may be centuries away from AI, for example (because then my numbers on the processing power required to create the only "mind" we're aware of would be obscenely low)..or a convincing explanation of -human minds coming from the CTM corner (if ever.....those NN guys are pretty good..lol, they may be able to explain the functions without ever needing to map one out specifically).

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Hey, just to plug this, in case anyone's interested (got me thinking about it). I'm addicted to this game....and it's actually productive....probably spent about 100hrs in total tooling around with it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EyeWire
http://www.eyewire.org/

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[Surgenator]

. If your getting a set of biased data, your results will be biased as well.

I'm tempted to say here 'so what?"

Because it will (most likely) give you the WRONG answer.

I'll lower the tone and bring into the discussion ideas put forward by a lady often described by the academics as 'Not a real philosopher" Although I find most of Ayn Rand's politics odious I suggest her epistemology worthy of consideration in this context.
Take for instance this passage from Ronald E Merrill's "The Ideas of Ayn Rand" (Publ' Open Court1991)
" . . . . . .This nominalist/conceptualist or Humpty-Dumpty school of thought holds that definitions need only be consistently maintained during a particular discussion. Just as Americans drive on the right of the road, and the British on the left, a concept such as 'bird' may be defined as a feathered animal, or as an egg laying animal As long as everyone who is using the definition (or road) agrees to accept a particular procedure, the exact proceedure is of no importance.
Opposed to this is the 'realist' school of thought, in it's pure Platonic or diluted Aristotelian variants, which hold that there is only one correct definition of a given concept. What, though could give this 'essence' of he concept its specula validity? The 'essence' is real in this view - it actually exists, as a Platonic form or some such entity,
Rand rejects both these approaches. As she describes it, the nominalist regards definitions as arbitrary; there is no 'essence' of a concept. The realist postulates the actual existence of the essence; the essence is metaphysical. For Rand, definitions are not arbitrary - there is an essence- but the essence in not metaphysical but epistemological. Though concepts are in the mind, they are not arbitrary because they reflect reality, which is objective.
Now why should anyone bother with all this? Rand's answer would be that philosophy is practical. The nominalist view assumes that thinking is a matter of detached, abstract debate. It is a game, and the only requirement for the rules is that they be self-consistent and agreed by all the players.
But for Rand, thinking is man's means of survival, and it's rules are absolutely critical. If you pick the wrong way to define a concept, it may not just be "Well, that's an interesting way to look at the subject', it could kill you.

I'm not sure how the rest follows, but ok. I wouldn't completely agree with Ayn Rand on the last paragraph. It seems unnecessarily extreme.

[dissily mordentroge]

I'm not sure how the rest follows, but ok. I wouldn't completely agree with Ayn Rand on the last paragraph. It seems unnecessarily extreme.

Notice the word 'could'.

[Chas]

You ignore, or are unaware of, all of the data from neuroscience. The data clearly show that the mind is brain-based.

Besides, where resides your sentient observer?

Part of my answer is now the OP of a recent thread I made: the idea of the transcendence of supervenient properties.

Setting that aside for now, I think you can safely assume everyone here knows about brain experiments, the function of various brain parts, maybe a little about the cognitive effects of selective brain damage, etc.

But that's not what we've been talking about. What is it in the brain that causes the existence of mind? Is it the specific organic nature of neurons? Is it the complexity of data being processed? Is it something intrinsic to some kinds of chemistry, or to all electrical bonding, or to events at the subatomic level? What's the most fundamental "thing" upon which the human mind supervenes?

Sure, it seems to be somewhere in the brain, in the case of humans. But here's the important part-- some of the properties of the human brain are specific only to the human brain, some are common to all systems capable of data processing, and some are common to all matter in the universe. Since the brain consists of layers of supervenience: atoms on subatomic particles, molecules on atoms, proteins on molecules, neurons on proteins, neuronal networks on neurons, brain parts on neuronal networks, human experience on brain parts, the important question is on what level does that "spark" occur?

Does a single firing neuron have a primitive "mind"? Do 10 neurons? Is the simple act of neurotransmitters stimulating an axon minimally sufficient? Is it any time an electron's orbit is affected by the assimilation of a photon, or that two atoms come into contact, causing them to share an electron?

It's obvious that the human mind is rooted IN the brain, but in order to say that mind is primarily OF the brain, you have to show that it does not originate in the sub-structures upon which the brain supervenes. And that has not been shown. And since the brain is processing massive data, you also have to show that it isn't the processing itself, INDEPENDENT OF THE SPECIFIC MECHANISM DOING THE PROCESSING, that is mind.

And scientists are working on it. You can believe whatever you wish, I await actual evidence.

The evidence so far indicate mind as an emergent property of brain, that complexity is intimately part of that. Simpler brains exhibit simpler minds.

[bennyboy]

And scientists are working on it. You can believe whatever you wish, I await actual evidence.

The evidence so far indicate mind as an emergent property of brain, that complexity is intimately part of that. Simpler brains exhibit simpler minds.

When you are quoting something, it's generally good to actually respond to the ideas contained in that quote. We've already established that you can wave your hand toward a brain and claim, "Evidence says it's in there somewhere." But that's as useful as saying, "wetness is in water." That's not really much of a discovery.

Let's say you go to a pie context, and Mrs. smith's delicious pumpkin pie wins it. People start debating what it is that makes it so delicious. Your response would (by anology) be: "The great taste is in the pie."

There are many parts of the brain which do a lot of complex processing but are not part of the conscious stream, so saying the brain as a whole is conscious is like saying a car as a whole generates a lot of torque. "It's in there somewhere" is at the same time obvious, and also a demonstration of disinterest in the subject. What exactly is special about the brain that allows the supervenience of consciousness? You need to identify what systems are both sufficient and necessary, or you're just saying, "the sky-blue color comes from the sky."

[Angrboda]

Okay, link again. But I'd really like to see an article by a skeptical group, hopefully at a university, which managed to reproduce some experimental results.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/1...00390/full

For a take on some of Jessica Utts' other work, by Ray Hyman:

The Evidence for Psychic Functioning: Claims vs. Reality

[dissily mordentroge]

Possibly part of the problem here is the long standing mistake of assuming mind and brain to be seperate processes and/or totally seperate entities.
A fear their identity might be reduced to a purely mechanistic (electronic?) function and the value of their conscious experience somehow degraded appears to fuel untenable positions held by many such as the desperate and almost universal wish for personal immortality.
I'm interested in why such an idea, over the centuries since we commenced thinking about such things, instilled fear in so many.
Like others here I await the findings of neuropsycholgy et al with little patience for the speculations of the Central State Materialists, Logical Behaviorists, Phenominalists, Materialists, non- reductive-Materialists etc and thier brave but essentially dead end speculations.

[Surgenator]

Possibly part of the problem here is the long standing mistake of assuming mind and brain to be seperate processes and/or totally seperate entities.
A fear their identity might be reduced to a purely mechanistic (electronic?) function and the value of their conscious experience somehow degraded appears to fuel untenable positions held by many such as the desperate and almost universal wish for personal immortality.
I'm interested in why such an idea, over the centuries since we commenced thinking about such things, instilled fear in so many.
Like others here I await the findings of neuropsycholgy et al with little patience for the speculations of the Central State Materialists, Logical Behaviorists, Phenominalists, Materialists, non- reductive-Materialists etc and thier brave but essentially dead end speculations.

I make the distinction between the brain and mind. In my view, the brain is the hardware, and the mind is the software. This distinction has nothing to do with "desperate [..] wish for personal immortality." It's a praticle distinction.