Seeing red

[Angrboda]

When we think of color it is always as 'something' colored.  That's a composite perception.  If you want to call that an idea, I won't argue with it.  Are you going anyplace in particular with this?

I'm trying to understand your position.  That's all.  I can draw inferences or make arguments later, but for now, you and Rhythm have the floor and I just want to ask questions.

And I've been yielding to common usage, so I don't know how informative this would be.

As for redness.  I'm not sure about you, but I constantly see colored "static," for example in the dark.  I suppose if I consciously consider the very fine dots, I might think "That's a red dot," but I think I'm still perceiving all these little flashes of color even when I'm not conscious of them.

I don't see colored static, but I did have a similar experience. After I OD'ed on lithium, for several weeks afterward, whenever I would close my eyes, I would be overwhelmed by 'the perception' of colored static. In my case, it seemed connected to the way my brain was processing things, and not 'in the eyes' as it were, but I can't be sure. Regardless, as blind-sight cases show, we can perceive things without being conscious of them. However, as a matter of definition, I'd say that unless some part of the mind is aware of the phenomena (consciously or subconsciously), then you aren't actually perceiving it. I have a similar thing with the pain in my hands where my fingers were amputated. If I'm not paying attention to it, the sensation of pain disappears. Am I still perceiving it? I'd say no.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm not talking about eyes.  I'm talking about the brain.

You're asking why you can't see, with your brain, colors that your eyes can't see........because in this case..they don't exist.  It's the same answer for those colors that -do- exist which you can't see anyway.  The answer is, to me..obvious.  Your color qualia is based upon your sensory systems ability to perceive wavelengths of lights...it uses your eyes to do this, and so it's range for color is naturally defined by the range of operation of the eye - this is the list of variables which are valid operants for further work.

Too much ad-hom or metacommentary.

An ad hom is when I tell you that you;re wrong because of some insult I sling about you.  I've done no such thing, so learn what the term means or just avoid using it.

I think you haven't realized yet that I shifted gears about three days ago and I'm trying to establish in purely material terms what systems or functions of systems constitute "idea" and more importanly what systems don't and why.  This is why I'm talking about DNA-- it seems to me that DNA represents an idea of a person, and Jorm disagrees.  What say you?

I say that you haven't shifted gears at all.  I think, and we've already discussed this, that to determine what is and what isn't an idea, first, you're going to need a definition that can distinguish between an idea and a rock and dna.   If you aren't working with that, at the least, you don't have a chance to find what you're looking for.

I also want to know what, physically, represents an idea: what is it, how does it work, how do you identify one?

I think that ideas are logical statements (more properly -many- logical statements) generally associated with biological computational systems, in my opinion, reducible to states.  I can tell you how this is achieved in principle, I can show you how it's achieved in practice, but I cannot demonstrate to you that this is how we do it, and no one has that explanation. We're still debating the ethics of the sorts of experiments that might really give us insight into the workings of our minds.

[emjay]

Do you two comp minders, Rhythm and Jorm, think I'm barking up the wrong tree with my understanding of neural representations? Where neuron as detector represents what it detects and the relationships between those aspects that are active help 'build' more vivid perceptions? Do you think I'm being too simplistic and not giving due attention to the whole circuit and/or system?

[Angrboda]

Do you two comp minders, Rhythm and Jorm, think I'm barking up the wrong tree with my understanding of neural representations? Where neuron as detector represents what it detects and the relationships between those aspects that are active help 'build' more vivid perceptions? Do you think I'm being too simplistic and not giving due attention to the whole circuit and/or system?

I think it leaves untouched the question of what it is that's experiencing these heightened connections as heightened connections.

[emjay]

Do you two comp minders, Rhythm and Jorm, think I'm barking up the wrong tree with my understanding of neural representations? Where neuron as detector represents what it detects and the relationships between those aspects that are active help 'build' more vivid perceptions? Do you think I'm being too simplistic and not giving due attention to the whole circuit and/or system?

I think it leaves untouched the question of what it is that's experiencing these heightened connections as heightened connections.

Yeah. Basically getting caught up in the generality of that idea one thing I forgot is that ultimately neurons are only useful in as much as they can complete a circuit... they're like billions of little switches. So if you have say one input layer, two hidden layers, and an output layer then even if you have a very rich self-sustaining neural representation that makes it to say layer three, if it doesn't make it to the output layer... if nothing gets triggered there then I'd guess it doesn't contribute to the whole system? It's like a dead end? Or did you mean something else?

[The Grand Nudger]

I wouldn't throw jorm in the comp camp.  Id let jorm pitch jorms own tent.  Jorm can give you some harsh criticism on the concept of comp mind, though.   I'll toss some in here as I respond to your question.

I don't think you're barking up the wrong tree, but I appreciate how difficult it would be to demonstrate that this is how mind works.  This description of yours is, after all, how the gates in a cpu represent their inputs, and very literally those gates which are active, on, true, build by relationships the vivid perception we would call a CGI movie masterwork on-screen.  Is it overly simplistic, sure.  We're a bunch of mugs on the internet trying to discuss our preferred explanations of mind though, so that's okay.

Jorms already dropped what I would have offered as the best comment on the troubles of comp mind..while I was wasting time trying to think of something smart to say. I would also add that it's easy to say "it can be done this way" but this is not at all equivalent to "it is done this way". The one only suggests what we might find it prudent to look for, or where, in search of the other, not the ultimate status of fact regarding the other. Proving that comp mind is possible does not prove that we are comp minds.

[emjay]

I wouldn't throw jorm in the comp camp.  Id let jorm pitch jorms own tent.  Jorm can give you some harsh criticism on the concept of comp mind, though.   I'll toss some in here as I respond to your question.

I don't think you're barking up the wrong tree, but I appreciate how difficult it would be to demonstrate that this is how mind works.  This description of yours is, after all, how the gates in a cpu represent their inputs, and very literally those gates which are active, on, true, build by relationships the vivid perception we would call a CGI movie masterwork on-screen.  Is it overly simplistic, sure.  We're a bunch of mugs on the internet trying to discuss our preferred explanations of mind though, so that's okay.

Jorms already dropped what I would have offered as the best comment on the troubles of comp mind..while I was wasting time trying to think of something smart to say.  I would also add that it's easy to say "it can be done this way" but this is not at all equivalent to "it is done this way".  The one only suggests what we might find it prudent to look for, or where, in search of the other, not the ultimate status of fact regarding the other. Proving that comp mind is possible does not prove that we are comp minds.

I was just basing that on the fact that she said earlier that her position was similar to yours but apologies to her if I've misrepresented it.

I didn't know that about CPUs, so cool   But yeah, it still lacks a mechanism to get from a to b so yeah I understand what you're saying. It just has a simplistic beauty for me and all my psychology theories are based on that as an axiom, and they seem to work, so it is very convincing for me. But yeah, we're just a bunch of mugs  That's what I keep trying to tell people - there are no experts in this... everyone's opinion is equally valid because no-one knows but everyone is struggling with the same questions. So we're all experts and non-experts at the same time

Maybe not, and perhaps nothing can prove what we are one way or the other for sure, but just finding something that could do it would be a very convincing argument in its favour.

Anyway, gotta go to bed now so I'll say night night And catch up with you another day

[The Grand Nudger]

Nand2tetris bro, it'll change your life.  Building computers used to be my whole life, now it's just my obsession, my hobby.  If you hope to understand mind by reference to ANNs, for example, you might find it illuminating to know the specifics of how the hardware is manufactured and why it works the way it does that those ANNs run on.  What is true of a single nand gate is not true of a computational system as a whole, even though -any- comp system can be made leveraging nothin but nand. If you see nuerons as the components of a system in the way that gates are the components of a cpu, focusing on the components alone might not tell you what you want to know about the system in it's entirety.

Personally, I think this is how I would answer to jorg. What is experiencing? The system is experiencing, not any specific part in isolation. A description of the systems operation is a description of experience. We certainly haven't found any "command center" of the brain that's pulling all the levers. We wouldn't expect to, though, that's a feature of top down intentional architecture, and our brains are, as we understand them, no such thing.

[Angrboda]

I think it leaves untouched the question of what it is that's experiencing these heightened connections as heightened connections.

Yeah. Basically getting caught up in the generality of that idea one thing I forgot is that ultimately neurons are only useful in as much as they can complete a circuit... they're like billions of little switches. So if you have say one input layer, two hidden layers, and an output layer then even if you have a very rich self-sustaining neural representation that makes it to say layer three, if it doesn't make it to the output layer... if nothing gets triggered there then I'd guess it doesn't contribute to the whole system? It's like a dead end? Or did you mean something else?

I'd say the more basic question is why are these output stages experienced as consciousness. I think it takes more than just neural nets to give rise to consciousness. Neural nets of a specific configuration, perhaps, but something more.

[emjay]

Nand2tetris bro, it'll change your life.  Building computers used to be my whole life, now it's just my obsession, my hobby.  If you hope to understand mind by reference to ANNs, for example, you might find it illuminating to know the specifics of how the hardware is manufactured and why it works the way it does that those ANNs run on.  What is true of a single nand gate is not true of a computational system as a whole, even though -any- comp system can be made leveraging nothin but nand.  If you see nuerons as the components of a system in the way that gates are the components of a cpu, focusing on the components alone might not tell you what you want to know about the system in it's entirety.  

Personally, I think this is how I would answer to jorg.  What is experiencing?  The system is experiencing, not any specific part in isolation.  A description of the systems operation is a description of experience.  We certainly haven't found any "command center" of the brain that's pulling all the levers.  We wouldn't expect to, though, that's a feature of top down intentional architecture, and our brains are, as we understand them, no such thing.

Thanks for that... I'll look at that   I can build computers in the sense of hard drive, motherboard, graphics card etc but that's as far as it goes. I don't know much, if anything, about circuitboards. ANN... artificial neural network? I didn't think of them as requiring specific hardware... just software... like Emergent. You're talking about neural networks built of chips? Well I didn't see it as that until you just explained it   But yeah if there is a parallel between a CPU and a neural network then that's definitely something of interest. I'm not interested in neurons alone, just the neural network level... but I generalised it and concentrated more on the representations and less on ultimately where that data ends up. And it was you and Jorm's talk about system's in their entirely that reminded me about this circuit business. So yeah, that's the way I see it, but it's inspired by you and Jorm.

Yeah, I agree with that... the whole system is experiencing, not any specific part in isolation. I would've said before that it was the whole network, but 'system' takes it that step further as Jorm defined it so as to include the environment and the body. And no, I'm not looking for a command centre either

Anyway, really got to go to bed now, so night night again