Hi Gentlemen,
Regarding Jack's partial brain paper, and Free will: Wrong entry:
The IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, one of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronic Engineers groups, publishes three
journals: the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, the IEEE
Transactions on Fuzzy Systems and the IEEE Transactions on
Evolutionary Computation. These seem relevant to the issues discussed
in these strings,
e.g.
Perlovsky, L. I
"Mechanisms of the Mind, Aristotle, Zadeh, and fMRI,"
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks,
Volume : PP , Issue:99
ISSN : 1045-922, Digital
Object Identifier : 10.1109/TNN.2010.2041250,
First Published: 01 March 2010
Sponsored by : IEEE Computational Intelligence Society
Abstract:
Processes in the mind: perception, cognition, concepts, instincts,
emotions, and higher cognitive abilities for abstract thinking,
beautiful music are considered here within a neural modeling fields
(NMFs) paradigm. Its fundamental mathematical mechanism is a process
“from vague-fuzzy to crisp,” called dynamic logic (DL). This paper
discusses why this paradigm is necessary mathematically, and relates
it to a psychological description of the mind. Surprisingly, the
process from “vague to crisp” corresponds to Aristotelian
understanding of mental functioning. Recent functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) measurements confirmed this process in neural
mechanisms of perception.
William
On Mar 16, 2010, at 12:09 PM, John Mikes wrote:
Stathis,
I feel we are riding the human restrictive imaging in a complex
nature.
While I DO feel completely comfortable to say that there is a neuron
through which connectivity is established to a "next" segment in our
mental complexity, and if that neuron dies, the connectivity to that
particular quale broke - on 2nd thought the diversity and
multiplicity we do experience in nature (knownw domains and presumed
for the still unknown ones) provides hope for more than one
connecting link to ALL reducing the exclusivity of that particular
neuron.
Nature's complexity, however, shows redundancy and 'multiple
emergency breaks' to the features, according to their 'importance' ,
that may be beyond our present grasp.
In human logic (engineering/physical thinking as well) we think in
"THE"
way how things occur. " O N E " is enough. (This is the basis of
our one-track causality-thinking as well: we find in our (known)
model ONE most valued initiating factor and satisfy ourselves with
that one, as "THE Cause" while from 'beyond our model' there may be
multiple factors contributing to the effect assigned to that ONE in-
model factor. This is the reason why our knowledge is "almost",
sometimes even paradoxical and ambiguous).
Stathis asked:
Are you prepared to say that it is possible
there is a single subatomic particle in your brain which makes the
difference between consciousness and zombiehood?
I am propared to say that we may do that, i.e. to assign such
differences to a figmentous 'particle' - in what we may be no more
right than in other 'presumed' mental explanations based on tissue/
energy/bio science of the brain.
Am I far out to compare a 'zombie' to a binary computer in 'basic'
while the more advanced (still!) 'partial zombie' variants come in
the advanced AI versions? It still does not commute with the
wholeness of mentality, but follows certain leads beyond the
strictly mechanistically prefabricated machine connectivities. We
still program within our known domains.
We still cannot exceed our limited (model-view) knowledge base.
John Mikes
On 3/16/10, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 16 March 2010 20:29, russell standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au>
wrote:
> I've been following the thread on Jack's partial brains paper,
> although I've been too busy to comment. I did get a moment to read
the
> paper this evening, and I was abruptly stopped by a comment on
page 2:
>
> "On the second hypothesis [Sudden Disappearing Qualia], the
> replacement of a single neuron could be responsible for the
vanishing
> of an entire field of conscious experience. This seems antecedently
> implausible, if not entirely bizarre."
>
> Why? Why isn't it like the straw that broke the camel's back? When
> pulling apart a network, link by link, there will be a link removed
> that causes the network to go from being almost fully connected to
> being disconnected. It need not be the same link each time, it will
> depend on the order in which the links are removed.
>
> I made a similar criticism against David Parfitt's Napoleon thought
> experiment a couple of years ago on this list - I understand that
> fading qualia is a popular intuition, but it just seems wrong to
> me. Can anyone give me a convincing reason why the suddenly
> disappearing qualia notion is absurd?
Fading qualia would result in a partial zombie, and that concept is
self-contradictory. It means I could be a partial zombie now,
completely blind since waking up this morning, but behaving normally
and unaware that anything unusual had happened. The implications of
this is that zombie vision is just as good as normal vision in every
objective and subjective way, so we may as well say that it is the
same as normal vision. In other words, the qualia can't fade and leave
the behaviour of the brain unchanged.
Chalmers thinks partial zombies are absurd but does not believe that
full zombies are prima facie absurd. Accepting this, it would seem to
be possible that one could suddenly transition from fully conscious to
fully zombified without going through an intermediate stage. For
example, this could happen with the swapping of one neuron. However,
it wouldn't be the neuron that causes the change, it would be an
infinitesimally small part of the neuron. This is because the neuron
itself, like the brain, could be replaced with functionally identical
components. For the same reason that qualia can't fade for the whole
brain, qualia can't fade for the neuron. So the qualia would have to
suddenly disappear with the swapping of one single indivisible
component of the neuron. Are you prepared to say that it is possible
there is a single subatomic particle in your brain which makes the
difference between consciousness and zombiehood?
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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