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Good read on consciousness
#31
RE: Good read on consciousness
(January 10, 2021 at 7:04 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote:
(January 10, 2021 at 7:36 am)Grandizer Wrote: Hypothesized, but how would you even demonstrate that, given the difficulty of doing so with other human beings?
Demonstrating existent and evolved control schemas in organisms (and human organisms) is trivially easy.  That part isn't hypothesis, it's an observed feature that drives well understood behaviors which we build into machines for commercial application.  We try all sorts of things to figure this stuff out.  Mind altering substances and stimuli, physical interruption (ie, snip snip until someone wholly loses the experience of x), mental interference (attention exhaustion tests).  As I mentioned before - this thing that you think makes no sense has observational data and experimental support.  ASTm specifically, is an evolutionary theory of the mechanics of the report - and it's maintained by some that if the mechanics can be described without ever finding or needing to refer to this phenomenological experience stuff...maybe it's not there, no matter how much we insist.  Assuming we did find that tomorrow and some other explanation became available - it would still be a valid and productive theory for how a non conscious machine could appear to observers and to the machine itself, to be conscious, as well as how lower organism™ without that thing we find manage to produce similar behaviors.

You seem to be talking about access consciousness, and thereby treating consciousness as something that does not involve qualia.

So let me try again. How can you demonstrate that what you call "illusion" (this pseudo-phenomenal thingy) is something that is experienced by other beings, human or not?

More importantly, how does the brain conjure up that what you call "illusion"?

Whatever other beings may or may not possess, from a first-person-perspective, some beings can know they have their own [phenomenal] consciousness because that is exactly what they are experiencing. It's not a matter of making false attributions here; if you directly experience, then your experience is real and any report about this experience by revealing this experience is accurate, no matter if the report is nevertheless not an accurate report of what's really happening physically in the CNS or in the world "out there".

Quote:Otoh, insisting that a description is wrong because it doesn't include some asserted thing, rather than for it being an inaccurate description of the process which generates the effect, is wrong headed.  The famous "I see you've left no place for god in your model" quote comes to mind.  The illusionists are suggesting that they don't need the ghost to explain why we think it exists, no more than a magician needs magic to explain pulling a rabbit from a hat.  Hence, illusionism.  That it is one thing with a very real set of properties a, inaccurately representing itself as another thing with an illusory set of properties b.

This is ridiculous. One's own consciousness (or at least in my case) isn't something I'm just simply asserting. It's what I'm directly experiencing, it's this first-person-perspective that I'm experiencing that I'm absolutely certain that I have, regardless of what its nature may be and regardless of what "I" exactly is. This is nothing like forcing god into the equation. It's something one should reasonably accept by default, not accept that it's not really real.

Quote:Then there's no problem, because it does make sense.  If it's not real in the sense that physical objects are real, then all forms of realism are false and illusionism is true by fiat.  First person perspetive, part of the illusion.  There's no person in there to posess a perspective, and feel what it;s like to have perspective - though there very much is a perspective apparatus in access cognition that swirls around the instantiation of the associated sense organs.  We see from "our eyes" the kinds of things our eyes would see (and things that aren't there, and sometimes we fail to see the kinds of things we normally would which are), not another persons eyes, for fairly obvious reasons.  

You're fucking with me, lol. "I" am the person who possesses this perspective. There's no person "in there", it's "me" who is experiencing it.

And speaking of seeing stuff, I can vividly right now see the words I'm typing on screen. How does this vividness come about? I've yet to see anyone have a satisfactory answer to questions like this.

Quote:The "you",  is the little man™, and you invoked it a few words after you said there wasn't one.  That, doesn't make sense.  Ultimately, though, this may boil down to problems with semantics and how talking about these things with words based on folklore in ignorance of the operation of the brain creates the appearance of issues where none exist.  There is nothing wrong with suggesting that our brains are unconscious machines from start to finish.  Illusionism doesn't change anything about you.  Knowing how the sausage is made doesn't change the sausage or stop us from eating it.  Rather than insisting that it doesn't make sense, or that it cannot possibly be true because reports of consciousness just  must be  [insert your anecdotal report of the operation of your own brain here]...can you explain why you think that even if  it did make sense and is possible..it isn't true?

Huh? I don't know how to answer such a question. If it somehow did make sense and is possible, then it can be true. But would I believe it true, I don't know.

None of that changes my position that this doesn't make sense. I don't know what it is that illusionists do exactly when arguing their position, but it comes off to me as if they don't like the idea of something that appears to be "non-physical" be real, so they've come up with this extreme reductionist view called illusionism that they can be satisfied with. If it's not physical, it's not real, let's scratch that away and say well, we're just confused about it, that's why we think it's real, but it's not! Problem solved!

Or maybe they really are p-zombies and genuinely don't possess [phenomenal] consciousness, so they think this must be the case with everyone else as well. Half-joking here, but you never know ...

Quote:Any assertion that leans on a you experiencing something would first need to provide the you - and it would be an additional step to show that whatever this you was were actually capable of the full list of phenomenological experiences it reports.

I'm the "you" (or, rather, "me") you're looking for, but the problem is you can't experience "me", so I can't provide you with "me". But just because you can't see "me" doesn't mean therefore, there is no "me" that experiences.

Quote:Let me ask you this, suppose that we fnd something even remotely close and..for the most part, things are real and do work as described - but we find a few reports of phenomenological experience that we have reason to believe the organism would be incapable of genuinely reporting?  Which is to say..sure, real us, with real experiences, but we physically -couldn't- be having this set of experiences that we, nevertheless, report.  What then?  Would we just say.."well..it's just the one, or two, or twenty, or profligate billions.  These others are still legit and we don't suspect them at all."

How can one get to the point of being able to find "a few reports of phenomenological experience that we have reason to believe the organism would be incapable of genuinely reporting"? Having a hard time following the line of thinking behind questions like this. If the organism is incapable of reporting some type of experience, then it wouldn't be able to do so, and any reports (physical?) that you find of such a contradiction would have be to false (if I'm getting your question right).

Quote:Between emergentism and pan-psychism, a much finer distinction than the above, I trend towards emergentism - I do believe that any organization of matter which is meaningfully and functionally equivalent to a brain should be able to do brain stuff, no matter what kind of stuff it is - but I note that not all arrangements of matter are equivalent in ability or potential function.  I don't think that it's possible for a dust cloud to be conscious, no matter how many gajillions of particles of dirt are arranged in a complex pattern (or incredibly useful arbitrary).  I would personally expect to find consciousness wherever it could exist - for it to be relatively common - if it's a natural phenomenon - but not ubiquitous.

Should be able to do "brain stuff" including the qualia we believe we experience, what illusionists call "illusion"?

The reason I find panpsychism interesting is that it addresses the hard problem by saying, well, the phenomenological experiences we have (while linked to our brains in some relational manner) are possible because, by nature, certain bodies of matter (if not all) possess at least some basic form of perspective. Somehow, something about the brain (or anything similar to it) just amps up this perspective and makes it into what we're used to calling consciousness.

So I like this idea, and if pushed, will opt for panpsychism as an answer. However, one of the problems with it is it's not really clear what panpsychists mean by such things as "element" or "building block" of the mind or whatever, since it's hard to find a good analogy among the physical stuff. And then there's the combination problem: how does "me" as a whole come to have my own "brand of consciousness"?

(January 10, 2021 at 10:22 am)Jehanne Wrote:
(January 8, 2021 at 10:22 pm)Grandizer Wrote: Perhaps so, but this view nevertheless does not deal with the hard problem very well, and so despite explanatory strengths that may come with the emergentist view, the fact that this view has no conceivable (atm) solution for the hard problem while other views regarding the mind do (apparently) suggests that perhaps we may need to reconsider the soundness of this view.

In my opinion, the hard problem is like a Cosmos that had no beginning.  It's a paradox, and one that may simply be unknown and unknowable, but, nevertheless, at the same time it's reality.  I cannot comprehend Broca's Aphasia, and yet, numerous examples of such are occurring each and every day.  One cannot experience the loss of language while at the same time articulate what it feels like not being able to speak or comprehend speech.

Well, depends on whether Broca's aphasia entails a complete loss of language or not (and whether it's really just one region or more regions in the brain in charge of all sorts of language production). I never thought that to be confusing when I was studying it back when I majored in psychology.
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#32
RE: Good read on consciousness
(January 11, 2021 at 12:47 am)Grandizer Wrote: You seem to be talking about access consciousness, and thereby treating consciousness as something that does not involve qualia.

So let me try again. How can you demonstrate that what you call "illusion" (this pseudo-phenomenal thingy) is something that is experienced by other beings, human or not?
Sure, I've discussed access consciousness a few times.  It may be possible to dissociate the two, they might..in fact..be the same thing, and they might be different but always correlated.  

At any rate, if illusionism is true, conscious -is- something that doesn't involve qualia.  

Quote:More importantly, how does the brain conjure up that what you call "illusion"?
In the manner that I think you've been asking - it very literally doesn't.  It doesn't do anything like the thing we report.

Quote:Whatever other beings may or may not possess, from a first-person-perspective, some beings can know they have their own [phenomenal] consciousness because that is exactly what they are experiencing. It's not a matter of making false attributions here; if you directly experience, then your experience is real and any report about this experience by revealing this experience is accurate, no matter if the report is nevertheless not an accurate report of what's really happening physically in the CNS or in the world "out there".
In illusionism, the assertion of phenomenological experience is, itself, a false attribution. We're asserting that we possess something that we do not. The assertion is a claim - not it's demonstration.

Quote:This is ridiculous. One's own consciousness (or at least in my case) isn't something I'm just simply asserting. It's what I'm directly experiencing, it's this first-person-perspective that I'm experiencing that I'm absolutely certain that I have, regardless of what its nature may be and regardless of what "I" exactly is. This is nothing like forcing god into the equation. It's something one should reasonably accept by default, not accept that it's not really real.
If a substance dualist demanded that his position be default because he just knew that consciousness was a different kind of stuff, how would you respond?

Quote:You're fucking with me, lol. "I" am the person who possesses this perspective. There's no person "in there", it's "me" who is experiencing it.

And speaking of seeing stuff, I can vividly right now see the words I'm typing on screen. How does this vividness come about? I've yet to see anyone have a satisfactory answer to questions like this.
I'm not fucking with you at all.  It makes sense, it's a very simple idea, and it has observational data and experimental support behind it.  It may be wrong, but there's nothing obviously wrong with the idea.

Quote:Huh? I don't know how to answer such a question. If it somehow did make sense and is possible, then it can be true. But would I believe it true, I don't know.
AST predicts that you would be absolutely incapable of acting as though you believed it.  Even if you knew better, knew it, you would proceed exactly as you do now.  We don't have another option.

Quote:None of that changes my position that this doesn't make sense. I don't know what it is that illusionists do exactly when arguing their position, but it comes off to me as if they don't like the idea of something that appears to be "non-physical" be real, so they've come up with this extreme reductionist view called illusionism that they can be satisfied with. If it's not physical, it's not real, let's scratch that away and say well, we're just confused about it, that's why we think it's real, but it's not! Problem solved!

Or maybe they really are p-zombies and genuinely don't possess [phenomenal] consciousness, so they think this must be the case with everyone else as well. Half-joking here, but you never know ...  
It's not about what appears to be non physical.  It's about what appears to be non present and non necessary to explain the reports.  Presumably, a pixie dust brain could be built out of non physical stuff but if it didn't have a pixie dust man in there somewhere pixiedust experiencing then the pixie-dustists might come to a pixie dust version of illusionism.  

Quote:I'm the "you" (or, rather, "me") you're looking for, but the problem is you can't experience "me", so I can't provide you with "me". But just because you can't see "me" doesn't mean therefore, there is no "me" that experiences.
Not with respect to illusionism.  You would be replaced by organism or machine, as there's nothing of a real person™ in there really feeling what it's like to be.  If you can't demonstrate yourself, I can't find you, and I don't need you to explain you...then, at some point, you really do have to start wondering just how effective you are, if you do exist.  

Quote:How can one get to the point of being able to find "a few reports of phenomenological experience that we have reason to believe the organism would be incapable of genuinely reporting"? Having a hard time following the line of thinking behind questions like this. If the organism is incapable of reporting some type of experience, then it wouldn't be able to do so, and any reports (physical?) that you find of such a contradiction would have be to false (if I'm getting your question right).
Can organisms genuinely report experiences they do not, or cannot, have?  Would you take a human report of bat qualia credibly? A substance dualist might say no because you need a bat soul for that - you don't find a bat soul in there.  A physical realist or emergentist would say no because you need the a- consciousness of a bat or equivalent bat structures - and you're stuck to human a con and human structures.

An illusionist thinks that we can and do genuinely report experiences that we do not and cannot have because we can't find the contents of the report or it's attendant structure in our brains, nor are either required to explain how our brains work, or to explain how the reports are generated.  All we have is the word of human beings, who can be genuinely convinced of any number of untrue things, even genuinely convinced that they have had an experience they most assuredly have not. If we're capable of producing false reports of conscious experience, might conscious experience also be a false report?

Quote:Should be able to do "brain stuff" including the qualia we believe we experience, what illusionists call "illusion"?

If that's what brain is doing, sure.  It's the skinned cat theory of consciousness.  However we arrive at it, our way probably isn't the only way, and whatever ours is built from probably isn't the only thing it can be built from.  You can make a broadhead arrow out of alot of things..but jello won't work.  For all of the broadhead arrows there may be out there in the world, i expect to find plenty of jello too.

The view that you're expressing seems more like emergentism, btw,  panpsychism is the view that all things have a mind or mind-alike.  If certain arrangements of matter or something about the arrangement of the brain gives rise to mind - then mind is emergent, not ubiquitous. A camera has a perspective, but no mind. Perspective itself (in humans) is a consciousness, not p consciousness. We don't think that a camera has a p experience of it's perspective, we do believe that we do. Who knows, though, right? Imagine how fucked up some cameras minds could be by now, with a conscious experience of their perspective - which is wholly under some terrible corpse fetish species control. War reporters iphones crying themselves to sleep at night wishing they got pointed at cupcakes instead.

I got a giggle from the wife -panpsychism is the view that consciousness is real and everywhere, and illusionism the view that consciousness everywhere is unreal.
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#33
RE: Good read on consciousness
(January 11, 2021 at 2:27 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote:
Quote:More importantly, how does the brain conjure up that what you call "illusion"?
In the manner that I think you've been asking - it very literally doesn't.  It doesn't do anything like the thing we report.

We report how? What is leading to these vivid "first-person-perspective" reports?

Quote:In illusionism, the assertion of phenomenological experience is, itself, a false attribution.  We're asserting that we possess something that we do not.  The assertion is a claim - not it's demonstration.

That's a problem with illusionism, not a problem with my position on how absurd illusionism is. The experience is real, it's not asserted. It may not be demonstrable to other beings, but it is experienced by the experiencer nevertheless. If illusionists nevertheless say this is all assertions, then I really don't know what else to say to them.

Quote:If a substance dualist demanded that his position be default because he just knew that consciousness was a different kind of stuff, how would you respond?

I'd ask how he would know that consciousness is a different kind of substance as opposed to, say, aspect/property or whatever else it may be? Saying that one knows the nature of what one experiences should not be seen at the same level as knowing what one experiences. The former is debatable at least.

Quote:I'm not fucking with you at all.  It makes sense, it's a very simple idea, and it has observational data and experimental support behind it.  It may be wrong, but there's nothing obviously wrong with the idea.

No one is saying "access consciousness" isn't possible or even actual. So of course if that's what you mean, then yes, of course there's going to be observational data and experimental support behind illusionism. But it nevertheless denies the existence of that which is clearly demonstrable to at least some beings in the first-person-perspective, even if it's not demonstrable to others in a non-first-person-perspective.

Quote:It's not about what appears to be non physical.  It's about what appears to be non present and non necessary to explain the reports.  Presumably, a pixie dust brain could be built out of non physical stuff but if it didn't have a pixie dust man in there somewhere pixiedust experiencing then the pixie-dustists might come to a pixie dust version of illusionism.

If there's no experiencer, then there's no experience being experienced by the non-existing experiencer. Obviously.

But since experiencers experiencing experiences exist, then their experiences exist [as experiences].

Quote:Not with respect to illusionism.  You would be replaced by organism or machine, as there's nothing of a real person™ in there really feeling what it's like to be.  If you can't demonstrate yourself, I can't find you, and I don't need you to explain you...then, at some point, you really do have to start wondering just how effective you are, if you do exist.

I still vividly see words on the screen. But apparently, according to illusionists, I am not.

I felt intense pain last week due to tooth cavity, but apparently, I didn't really experience that pain.

Amazing ...

Quote:Can organisms genuinely report experiences they do not, or cannot, have?  Would you take a human report of bat qualia credibly?  A substance dualist might say no because you need a bat soul for that - you don't find a bat soul in there.  A physical realist or emergentist would say no because you need the a- consciousness of a bat or equivalent bat structures - and you're stuck to human a con and human structures.

An illusionist thinks that we can and do genuinely report experiences that we do not and cannot have because we can't find the contents of the report or it's attendant structure in our brains, nor are either required to explain how our brains work, or to explain how the reports are generated.  All we have is the word of human beings, who can be genuinely convinced of any number of untrue things, even genuinely convinced that they have had an experience they most assuredly have not.  If we're capable of producing false reports of conscious experience, might conscious experience also be a false report?

In answer to your last question, the report of the experience and the experience itself are intertwined; they're one and the same.

And I don't know if this is very related to what you're saying here, but as Galen Strawson argued in the article I linked to previously, if you were hypnotized into experiencing pain (even though you suffered no body damage), you would still be experiencing pain.

Quote:The view that you're expressing seems more like emergentism, btw,  panpsychism is the view that all things have a mind or mind-alike.  If certain arrangements of matter or something about the arrangement of the brain gives rise to mind - then mind is emergent, not ubiquitous.  A camera has a perspective, but no mind.  Perspective itself (in humans) is a consciousness, not p consciousness.

No, I absolutely don't lean towards emergentism because I lean towards the idea that "the mind" in a very fundamental sense exists at the elemental level. Therefore, if some parts of the whole possess at the "elements" of the mind, then the whole having the mind means the mind isn't an emergent property. Anyhow, perhaps what I described is more aptly labeled panprotopsychism as opposed to panpsychism, but it's basically the same thing as far as I'm concerned. Also, keep in mind there's variants of panpsychism, and not all panpsychists say that all things have a mind or mind-alike (if not all, then the fundamental stuff at least, like electrons and quarks and such).

Quote:We don't think that a camera has a p experience of it's perspective, we do believe that we do.  Who knows, though, right?  Imagine how fucked up some cameras minds could be by now, with a conscious experience of their perspective - which is wholly under some terrible corpse fetish species control.  War reporters iphones crying themselves to sleep at night wishing they got pointed at cupcakes instead.

I don't know what you mean by "perspective" then? Cameras, as far as I know, don't have perspectives of their own (the way I understand perspective). Cameras do help in enhancing ours, however.

But yes, it would be interesting if they did.

Quote:I got a giggle from the wife -panpsychism is the view that consciousness is real and everywhere, and illusionism the view that consciousness everywhere is unreal.

Is it possible you and other illusionists are having the illusion of illusionism?
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#34
RE: Good read on consciousness
I don't have the time to get into every point in your arguments.

Gerald Edelman researched the operation of the brain, but he specifically stayed out of the consciousness debate. He regarded the metaphysical issues as unscientific.

However, his theories of the brain operation might shed some light on how consciousness is different than computer programs. He created brain-based computing systems and applied them to simple robots. These were literally tabula-rasa devices with sensory mechanisms and some ability for carrot/stick feedback. He then let the robots experience things. They learned. The brain would self-organize. He could watch the simulated neuronal groups and connections form.

The point is that we are experiential creatures. The mind is made to experience the combination of processed sensory input and high-level abstraction about the input as "qualia". We enjoy rich experience, where memories and emotions and connections are entwined. The experience trains the brain, and allows us to better process future experience.
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#35
RE: Good read on consciousness
(January 11, 2021 at 4:17 am)Grandizer Wrote:
(January 11, 2021 at 2:27 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: In the manner that I think you've been asking - it very literally doesn't.  It doesn't do anything like the thing we report.

We report how? What is leading to these vivid "first-person-perspective" reports?
Again, in the manner that I think you're asking, nothing.  That's not what they are any more than a memory of being terrified by a ghost is an accurate report of consciously experiencing what it's like to see a ghost.  

Quote:That's a problem with illusionism, not a problem with my position on how absurd illusionism is. The experience is real, it's not asserted. It may not be demonstrable to other beings, but it is experienced by the experiencer nevertheless. If illusionists nevertheless say this is all assertions, then I really don't know what else to say to them.
You're back to the meaningless sense of real again.  In illusionism, there is also a real thing going on, just not the thing that it reports itself as.  It says, "I have these qualities" - but does not.

Quote:I'd ask how he would know that consciousness is a different kind of substance as opposed to, say, aspect/property or whatever else it may be? Saying that one knows the nature of what one experiences should not be seen at the same level as knowing what one experiences. The former is debatable at least.

No one is saying "access consciousness" isn't possible or even actual. So of course if that's what you mean, then yes, of course there's going to be observational data and experimental support behind illusionism. But it nevertheless denies the existence of that which is clearly demonstrable to at least some beings in the first-person-perspective, even if it's not demonstrable to others in a non-first-person-perspective. 
What is clearly demonstrable, qualia?  That would  surprise the shit out of -everyone- in tom.  Well, okay, in what way is your first person experience different than a cameras first person experience?

Quote:If there's no experiencer, then there's no experience being experienced by the non-existing experiencer. Obviously.

But since experiencers experiencing experiences exist, then their experiences exist [as experiences].
You're being too hasty.  Even if first person experiencers did exist, that would not certify all of their assertions about first person experience.  They could still be reporting having first person experiences that they do not, in fact, possess.  In that completely non-hypothetical case, we find ourselves in the position of saying that even though the assertions can be and sometimes are false, we take them to be informative of some true state in other respects for reasons that we cannot articulate and in the absence of any demonstration to that effect.

Quote:I still vividly see words on the screen. But apparently, according to illusionists, I am not.

I felt intense pain last week due to tooth cavity, but apparently, I didn't really experience that pain.

Amazing ...
Not amazing, but correct, yes.  You really do possess a report of p-pain, but you really do not possess that quality.

Quote:In answer to your last question, the report of the experience and the experience itself are intertwined; they're one and the same.

And I don't know if this is very related to what you're saying here, but as Galen Strawson argued in the article I linked to previously, if you were hypnotized into experiencing pain (even though you suffered no body damage), you would still be experiencing pain.
If an organism were compelled to believe that it were in pain, it would believe that it was in pain. That's exactly what they think is happening.  

Quote:No, I absolutely don't lean towards emergentism because I lean towards the idea that "the mind" in a very fundamental sense exists at the elemental level. Therefore, if some parts of the whole possess at the "elements" of the mind, then the whole having the mind means the mind isn't an emergent property. Anyhow, perhaps what I described is more aptly labeled panprotopsychism as opposed to panpsychism, but it's basically the same thing as far as I'm concerned. Also, keep in mind there's variants of panpsychism, and not all panpsychists say that all things have a mind or mind-alike (if not all, then the fundamental stuff at least, like electrons and quarks and such).
We don'tt have to argue about everything.

Quote:Panpsychism is the view that all things have a mind or a mind-like quality. The word itself was coined by the Italian philosopher Francesco Patrizi in the sixteenth century, and derives from the two Greek words pan (all) and psyche (soul or mind).


Quote:I don't know what you mean by "perspective" then? Cameras, as far as I know, don't have perspectives of their own (the way I understand perspective). Cameras do help in enhancing ours, however.

But yes, it would be interesting if they did.
-and that's the rub.  A and P content appear to be dissociable, if any part of it is real then there's a real distinction between the two.  If you don't know what I mean by that, then how are -you- dissociating a from p content?  A camera has an a-perspective because the manner of it's instantiation (or substantiation in the world) leads to a specific and constrained field of view.  Some cameras even have attention schemas - mechanisms whereby, with no help from any mind, they attend to a particular portion of their field of view or  seek out identify and focus on specific patterns or qualities of objects in that field of view. There is no thought on the part of the camera (and would likely be no functional doubt if it did have thought) that the objects in it's field of view are false or that the patterns it's designed to seek are not real, not there - though they very often turn out to be. Is it possible that our construction or state leads to similar constraints with regards to what our presumed p-cognition is attending to? These cameras report something in their field of view. A set of data to which they are attending that they assert to be true and accurate. Less and less as we get better at it, but they still report false positives-as-true.

It sounds very familiar to us, the only difference being that we assert that we possess additional qualities or attributes.  A p-quality of perspective.  The ability to observe p-qualities.

Quote:Is it possible you and other illusionists are having the illusion of illusionism?
There seems to be no end to the number and type of untrue things that a brain can be convinced of or genuinely report regardless of their state-as-fact or truth evaluability as propositions, sure.  

For illusionists to be having the illusion of illusionism, there would have to be a little man in there, really doing stuff, and really doing the stuff it says.  That's a possibility, but it's not what anything we know about the process or anything we can find in the brain bears out, while what we do know and what we have found already tells a much different story.  

In the most amusing sense, illusionists -are- having the illusion of illusionism - just because they think that the report is false doesn't mean that they aren't connected to it's machinery and constrained by that, just as a camera is constrained in it's perspective, to accept that the product is true.  Recall, AST is not a theory of human mind, it's a theory of how a machine would come to report as much and be convinced by the report which accounts for and predicts that an control schema -like our-... if we had one, would be convinced of the things that we are convinced of, and unaware of the things that we are unaware of.  

It's vaguely aware that the brain is the seat of it's operation because it's attached to a body model - but beyond that it's reports are ambiguous and confused.  We're in here, behind the eyes, up and to the back a bit.  That's useful information if you don't want to get hit in the brain even if it's not useful information in the sense that what it is saying is true or truth evaluable as a proposition (rather than symbolic language or representation).   

It's useful for the report to be more compelling than a fact, as well.  Consider an organism that is capable of attending to pain, but doesn't accept or simply doesn't possess the p content of pain.  Would it react to pain the way that we do, or would it look down at the teeth on it;s arm and go "yeah, that's happening, and?".  What does it say about us that people are also capable of doing this, to a lesser or greater extent?   To drown out pain.  If p-pain is real, and we're products of the machinery which produce it, how is it that we can cause it to appear and disappear regardless of it's instigating conditions' presence?

Is that the very real thing of very real p-pain blipping in and out of existence, or could it be a control schema variously attending and not attending to a set of information about the environments effect on the organism meant to compel and direct action?

(January 11, 2021 at 11:27 am)HappySkeptic Wrote: The point is that we are experiential creatures.  The mind is made to experience the combination of processed sensory input and high-level abstraction about the input as "qualia".  We enjoy rich experience, where memories and emotions and connections are entwined.  The experience trains the brain, and allows us to better process future experience.

An illusionist would say that improved processing is the aim - and that the reports don't have to be true as propositions about p-qualities to lead to increased function or more beneficial outcomes. The story doesn't have to be true with respect to it's self to be useful....and, fwiw, that sort of stuff is well below the level of p cognition. The p-thing in the brain doesn't seem to know anything about all of that, completely and thoroughly unaware. None of us are going to be able to draw accurate brain maps by reference to p-content. We can't spit off an io by reference to redness.
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!
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#36
RE: Good read on consciousness
On panpsychism, from the same link you got that quote from:

Quote:Panpsychism is the view that all things have a mind or a mind-like quality. The word itself was coined by the Italian philosopher Francesco Patrizi in the sixteenth century, and derives from the two Greek words pan (all) and psyche (soul or mind). This definition is quite general, and raises two immediate questions: (1) What does one mean by “all things”? (2) What does one mean by “mind”? On the first question, some philosophers have argued that literally every object in the universe, every part of every object, and every system of objects possesses some mind-like quality. Other philosophers have been more restrictive, arguing that only certain broad classes of things possess mind (in which case one is perhaps not a true panpsychist), or that, at least, the smallest parts of things—such as atoms—possess mind. The second question—what is mind?—is more difficult and contentious. Here panpsychism is on neither better nor worse footing than any other approach to mind; it argues only that one’s notion of mind, however conceived, must apply in some degree to all things.
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#37
RE: Good read on consciousness
You can assume that whenever I refer to panpsychism I am not referring to any position which could be validly characterized as "not true panpsychism". It is useful to allow panpsychism to be itself, and something like but not true panspchism to be another thing - just as it would be useful to let consciousness be itself, and to let something like but not true consciousness to be another thing.

I would suggest, again, that with respect to your view of panpsychism not being true panpsychism, it is because you have included a large amount of emergentist content - some of which makes contradictory claims to true panpsychism.

Just as you can assume that when I'm discussing illusionism, I am discussing true illusionism, not illusionism where a trick produces the genuine article. A realist/illusionist synthesis.
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!
Reply
#38
RE: Good read on consciousness
(January 11, 2021 at 12:33 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: You can assume that whenever I refer to panpsychism I am not referring to any position which could be validly characterized as "not true panpsychism".  It is useful to allow panpsychism to be itself, and something like but not true panspchism to be another thing - just as it would be useful to let consciousness be itself, and to let something like but not true consciousness to be another thing.

I would suggest, again, that with respect to your view of panpsychism not being true panpsychism, it is because you have included a large amount of emergentist content - some of which makes contradictory claims to true panpsychism.

Just as you can assume that when I'm discussing illusionism, I am discussing true illusionism, not illusionism where a trick produces the genuine article.  A realist/illusionist synthesis.

We don't have to argue about everything.
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#39
RE: Good read on consciousness
We certainly don't - and probably don't disagree on many of the things it might seem at first. All positions on mind are pregnant with semantic landmines.

I wouldn't find it particularly surprising if every position we've discussed gets some things right, but enough wrong for an accurate description to be validly characterized as not true whateverism. I only bring it up because you've been indicating that you have trouble understanding the things I'm saying. It's for clarity, not for assertion of truth or content or truth-of-content. The bit about illusionism not being a trick that produces the real article seems particularly relevant to our discussion - as that's the form that many of your questions about the position have taken.

All questions that take the form -in the semantics of a given position - of "how does x do this thing y that doesn't exist" are interchangeable, and one answer applies to them all. It doesn't. The perceived insensibility of any answer which insists on the y and reduces to "here's how it does the thing that doesn't exist" are an artifact of the questions poor construction, not the inensibility of the description of what it is doing.
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!
Reply
#40
RE: Good read on consciousness
(January 11, 2021 at 11:27 am)HappySkeptic Wrote: He created brain-based computing systems and applied them to simple robots.  These were literally tabula-rasa devices with sensory mechanisms and some ability for carrot/stick feedback.  He then let the robots experience things. They learned.  The brain would self-organize.  He could watch the simulated neuronal groups and connections form.

Is there a paper on this or book?
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