Seeing red

[Angrboda]

What parts of a galaxy perform the roles given above in a representational system? (Feel free to ignore this; its sell-by-date has expired.)

[Silver]

In childhood, we are informed specifically that certain things are certain colors.

The fact that there are certain things in the world that cannot be categorized as one specific color indicates that we all have the same understanding of color.

If everyone was to view a house that an individual painted a particular color, I am certain everyone except those who are color blind, would agree on the color of that house.

[emjay]

@Jörmungandr

I just thought I needed to interject that this thread has always been about qualia... hence 'Seeing red'. And me, Benny, and Rhythm have certainly been talking about it for most of this thread. My position is that we may as well be philosophical zombies because every aspect of behaviour and mind is accomplished and represented in the brain, and therefore that mental phenomena is redundant and unnecessary, and only mirrors/represents the underlying neural network and the states, relationships, and abstractions it represents. But it's still a puzzle how all that translates into mental phenomena and what mental phenomena is. And that's what we've been discussing, each with our different viewpoints... Benny as (some sort of ) idealist/'ambiguist', Rhythm as comp mind, Chad as dualist, and me as NN/comp mind but tending much more towards neural networks in this thread because that's what I understand the most. And I started this thread specifically hoping to hear from Rhythm and Benny because we've enjoyed these sorts of discussions in the past. This thread's been the only thing on my mind for the last few weeks and I'm thoroughly enjoying the discussion and seeing the different viewpoints because it's really helping me deal with the hard questions that still crop up sometimes despite the NN doing everything in my view. As usual it feels like a goldmine of insight in this thread... and the more you talk (or write), the more you discuss, the more ideas you generate... it's all good and so I see my own theories evolving as the thread progresses. So for me this is not about defending my theories but evolving them. If all it is is defence then I won't learn anything new. And the ultimate aim is to put the hard questions to bed once and for all. Mental phenomena may be superfluous according to my viewpoint but it nevertheless exists in some sense... it still hurts like hell if I stub my toe. But this is just me... I started the thread but where it goes and what everyone else takes from it is up to them.

And I'd just like to say thank you for your input in this thread as well It's been very informative and has helped me clarify my own position a lot, which is quite similar but there were certain things I hadn't thought about until you brought them up and made them concrete in my mind. And I think my theories on perception are quite similar to yours and I suspect that they will tend towards yours even more as things progress

But I would just hope that we could keep this friendly and productive on all sides, because that was what it was meant to be, but again that's just me.

[Angrboda]

Okay, let's revise the word "cause" to "is."  Let's say that the brain, as a whole, coordinates input from various sources and collates them into an overall representation.  So when you say "isomorphic," you mean that the representation in the brain mirrors, at least approximately, the world as the organism (or robot or whatever) experiences it, constrained by the physical limits of the organism to collect information about the world. [In my view it models a reality that only 'partly' is real; things like thoughts, where the mind is, its ownership of the body, 'the self' are mere constructs, parts of a representation which don't represent external things but rather are simply themselves part of the furniture of this mental representation.]

My question is still about levels.  What states are representative, and which are just states?  It's hard to verbalize what I'm asking here, but let me try an analogy.  Let's say we are making a physical reprentation, i.e. a model, of the world.  We could start by building little trees, little cars, etc., each of those in turn composed of leaves or wheels, each of those composed of subparts.  We would know also that each subpart consisted of chemicals with specific structures, atoms with specific structures, etc.  Some of those (like the QM mechanics) we might be completely oblivious to.  At which level of organization do we start to accept that we are building part of a tree?  Only when we have the finished model?  Only when we have identifiable parts, like leaves and branches?  Right from the start, since we know the chemical compounds we are making are part of that final tree, despite having nothing of tree-ness in them?

I understand what you're asking and it's hard to verbalize an answer beyond that I don't think it works like that at all.   The states are representative if they participate in the feedback loop of the representational system in a significant way, meaning that they affect the outcome of output stages which then affect the content of input stages.  A lot of this is done by our mind subconsciously, by chunking input into symbolic entities.  Referring back to the robot on the road, states are figuratively said to refer; that's where you get the idea that I'm simply circularly referring to the representation as a representation because of its analog to human representation.   We think in terms of multiply embedded representations and some of those representations have the character of being maps or models of the external environment.  We recognize an analog in the robot's memory.  But forget that level of representation a moment.  There is a level of representation in which a sensor picks up the contours of a rock in the road, those contours are realized in some state, and, the state is such that it triggers a response to rock in the road-ness, which causes the vehicle to swerve, which destroys the state of rock in road (literally, the rock is no longer in front of the vehicle).  It is this feedback slice which constitutes representation.  So ultimately what matters is not any granularity of state, but granularity of feedback behaviors.   Whether that rock in the road is a rock, or an oil drum, or a person, all that is being represented is the trigger of a behavioral response.  It is holistic in two directions.  First, isolated states don't represent; the system represents, with some analogs to human processes that likewise feedback into the environment.  Second, what is actually represented is not a rock; that could be anything.  What is represented is a set of triggering conditions, and those are dependent upon what behavioral responses the robot has programmed into it.  Whether it represents at the 'tree' level or at the 'branch' level or at the 'leaf' level is not determined by the state by itself, but by what things each of those levels trigger.   I may 'see' at the tree level if I'm driving and trying to avoid obstacles; I may see at the branch level if I am trying to get up out of reach of a hungry tiger; I may see at the leaf level if I'm looking for fruit to eat.   The 'level' of the state is fixed by the behaviors.  In humans, because we have such complex representations, it may be hard to see the connection between perception and behavior, but I believe that is the ground floor at which all our models, maps, and representations operate.

Let me ask you this: would you say that our mental representation is composed of parts, and those of subparts?  If so, how many child nodes would you allow and still call an idea part of that representation?  At what scale of order would you say, "That's just stuff" ?

You'll have to be more specific about what kind of an idea you're talking about. The granularity of our perceptions is largely determined by the subconscious systems which perform that perception. My visual system tends to chunk things into images composed of objects, my linguistic system tends to chuck things into sentential 'images' (words and thoughts, propositional), my somatosensory systems tend to chunk things into sensations such as pain or touch, associated with a body location, and so on. It would help to give examples if you could be specific.

I think in terms of economies. If an input can form the coin desired by a representing/mapping operation, and that mapping can provide the coin recognized by an action system, then that action system can cash out that input in terms of behavior, leading to new input. What is accepted as coin by each stage of the representational loop is not determined globally by states of the mapping operation, but by what inputs/maps/actions/results can process the individual coin. It's all just 'stuff happening' but it is stuff happening in a certain, preordained, sustaining feedback loop. With humans we have loops within loops, but at the top level is a representation of a 'self', meaning the mind+body as a representation/map/model in a large feedback loop. Again, it's hard to put into words. I've resisted the urge to attempt to explain my model of mind because of this difficulty in the past, because I simply don't know how to explain it clearly.

[Angrboda]

@Jörmungandr

But I would just hope that we could keep this friendly and productive on all sides, because that was what it was meant to be, but again that's just me.

I'm sorry for being a downer to your thread with my earlier outburst at bennyboy. I'm not specifically accusing him here, but in conversations about these issues in the past with others, I've noticed that certain feints recur over and over again, and, it seems to me that when they do, it's usually people trying to retreat into comfortable talking points rather than engage the issues. That gets frustrating and in some sense I'm burned out on such discussions. I suppose if I bothered to respond substantially to those talking points instead of letting my frustration get the better of me it would be more profitable to the discussion. It's a difficult situation and I don't mean to excuse myself or justify the incriminations I've made against bennyboy. Just explaining my frustration.

[Angrboda]

Note that it doesn't really matter what form those internal states take, as an isomorphic map or as a condition of a neural network. What is important is that the same/similar input triggers the same input/intern-state/output triad in the system. (see below)

[Angrboda]

I feel like I'm repeating myself and not really making any headway. Is any of this helpful?

[emjay]

@Jörmungandr

But I would just hope that we could keep this friendly and productive on all sides, because that was what it was meant to be, but again that's just me.

I'm sorry for being a downer to your thread with my earlier outburst at bennyboy.  I'm not specifically accusing him here, but in conversations about these issues in the past with others, I've noticed that certain feints recur over and over again, and, it seems to me that when they do, it's usually people trying to retreat into comfortable talking points rather than engage the issues.  That gets frustrating and in some sense I'm burned out on such discussions.   I suppose if I bothered to respond substantially to those talking points instead of letting my frustration get the better of me it would be more profitable to the discussion.  It's a difficult situation and I don't mean to excuse myself or justify the incriminations I've made against bennyboy.  Just explaining my frustration.

That's okay   It's nice to meet you by the way 

I can't speak for Benny obviously, but I can say I've always admired him and Rhythm for their passion and what seems to me, quest for knowledge on these sorts of subjects. I don't usually get many takers if I write a post like the OP, but usually Benny or Rhythm are interested enough to respond. I kind of get what you mean, but where these guys are concerned I see guys willing to push the envelope. Lots of hypothetical's, lots of thought experiments, lots of logic, and lots of devil's advocate/accommodating other positions. I just don't get the impression of people who want to sit still but people who are driven by a need to answer these sorts of questions, like I am, and are willing to go outside their comfort zone to do it. Not too far out obviously... it's perfectly natural to be biased towards your own theories/world views, especially when they're hard-earned over a lifetime of learning, and therefore to sometimes fall into the trap of defending rather than expanding... but enough to be able to absorb things from other viewpoints and learn from them, even if only in baby steps. For instance, I got comp mind from Rhythm and now it's part of my world view, even if my understanding of it is nowhere near as refined as his is. In this particular thread though, I'm making a special effort to go and stay outside my comfort zone, because I really feel it's making a difference... I really feel like I'm making progress. It's taking me four or five hours just to respond to one post, so I can't really respond to more than one person a day, but it just feels like so much progress is being made with each one that it's so worth it. But it is really tiring me out so I don't know how long I can sustain it... I might have to have a break soon because at the moment I'm completely obsessed with this thread and like a zombie in real life

[bennyboy]

@Jörmungandr

But I would just hope that we could keep this friendly and productive on all sides, because that was what it was meant to be, but again that's just me.

I'm sorry for being a downer to your thread with my earlier outburst at bennyboy.  I'm not specifically accusing him here, but in conversations about these issues in the past with others, I've noticed that certain feints recur over and over again, and, it seems to me that when they do, it's usually people trying to retreat into comfortable talking points rather than engage the issues.  That gets frustrating and in some sense I'm burned out on such discussions.   I suppose if I bothered to respond substantially to those talking points instead of letting my frustration get the better of me it would be more profitable to the discussion.  It's a difficult situation and I don't mean to excuse myself or justify the incriminations I've made against bennyboy.  Just explaining my frustration.

Saying that shows a lot of class, but it's unnecessary.  I know my positions aren't that common here, and that they are sometimes seen as woo or whatever.  This thread is now very challenging for me, as well, because I'm trying to understand the materialist views more, but we seem to keep circling back to the imprecise (to me, at least) terms and views that we always do.  Rhythm often accuses me of using "borrowed" concepts, but maybe it's impossible to avoid some of that-- maybe the subject itself is always going to end up with conflations, equivocations, and ambiguities, just because the issue of mind is that difficult to frame.

[bennyboy]

I feel like I'm repeating myself and not really making any headway.  Is any of this helpful?

I think it's helpful in understanding your view, and I think you've done a good job of describing what KIND of systems you'd call mindful, and I believe it is mostly similar to Rhythm's unless I'm misunderstanding one of you.

I'm not convinced, though, that an intentional system meets my definition of mindfulness-- that is, the subjective experience of qualia.  But talking with you guys has given me an idea.  I wonder if it might at some point be able to develop an interface between minds to some degree, by attaching their physical mechanisms.  I wonder if a direct brain connection might enable me to actually EXPERIENCE someone else's qualia some day.