On Sep 1, 7:52 pm, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 9/1/2011 3:45 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> >> without reference to a soul, then your analogy is wrong - it is not like a > >> shadow. If it is like a shadow then it's behavior must differ from that > >> predicted by > >> physics and chemistry and in spite of your denials are you assuming a > >> violation of know > >> physics by an immaterial mind or soul. > > Physics and chemistry have no predictions about the brain's behavior. > > Sure they do. Cool it off and it stops working. Stimulate a neuron and ion > channels open > on it's axon and a electro-chemical pulse is transmitted. Add a > cholinesterase inhibitor > and the synapse stops working - or the whole brain if you add very much. Those aren't predictions, they're observations. We would have no way of knowing that should be axons or ion channels based upon properties of molecules alone. The whole idea of a neuron or a cell is outside of the scope of what could be anticipated by mathematical chemical interactions alone. > > > There is no physical law which makes human brains an inevitable > > consequence of organic chemistry. > > No, but they are probable consequence of evolution. There isn't really a such thing as a probable consequence of 'evolution' in general. Evolution is a reverse engineering analysis of heredity. Organisms in specific evolutionary niches being selected for their fitness relative to their niche. A human brain is not a probable consequence of anything, it's not even a possible consequence of anything other than the precise historical events which lead to it's development. It's not as if human brains will just pop up if you don't vacuum the floor often enough. > > > We can only look at what has evolved > > biologically and understand what it is in physical-chemical terms, but > > those terms by no means explain what the brain is for. > > Sure they do. A brain is a bunch of interacting neurons. You can trace it's > evolutionary > development just like you can trace the development of legs or wings or > hearts or > kidneys. Do you pretend we don't know what those organs are for? Those organs are for the life of the organism as a whole. They cannot be explained in non-biological terms of groups of atoms and molecules, any more than a movie can be understood in terms of video compression algorithms. > > > > > What you are telling me is that either color television is magic or it > > has to show up on a black and white TV. I reject that false dichotomy. > > Physics and chemistry alone are not sufficient to understand the > > relation between the self and the brain. Any presumption that they > > could be represents a fanatical reductionism propped up by circular > > reasoning. > > Maybe, maybe not. It's not a presumption; it's a working hypothesis that > physics and > chemistry are sufficient to explain the physical and chemical processes of > the brain. > That no soul or spirit is needed to provide libertarian free will. Maybe > that's not true > - but to simply assert it's not true, as you do, seems more like fanaticism > to me. So what physical or chemical process specifically causes libertarian free will? Can it make a fire hydrant have free will? What is the minimum criteria to instantiate this physical process? I'm not just asserting that it's not true, I'm explaining over and over why it's not true and giving straightforward analogies to help make the point. > > > > >>> The problem is that the shadow is not what is determining the motion. > >>> It's the palm tree in it's environment of wind, rain, birds, etc. Same > >>> thing with the brain, although it's bi-directional. We are influenced > >>> by our brain and vice versa, so we are each other's shadow side. Our > >>> feelings and experiences alone determine how our brain will behave in > >>> part, and that's the part that cannot be emulated by computation > >>> without being able to live our life from our subjective point of view. > >>> The other functions that the brain is doing could maybe be deduced > >>> from the status of the rest of the body and emulated with greater > >>> success, but that too may be a naive reduction of the brain's > >>> relationship with the body. > >>> That's not to say you can't make a recording of the brain activity of > >>> someone and have some success playing it back on another - just as a > >>> computer playing an mp3 of a Mozart symphony doesn't need to know how > >>> to emulate the activity of a philharmonic orchestra, but they are two > >>> very different things. The computer is not it's own user. The brain > >>> is. > >>>>> You're not answering my questions though. > >>>>> I know we have different feelings about different things, I'm asking > >>>>> you why anything has any feelings at all, and is a feeling a physical > >>>>> thing or not? > >>>> There are different ways of answering a "why?" question. In this case, > >>>> one answer is that > >>>> feeling is a physiological response to the environment. We have such > >>>> responses because > >>>> they are, or were, advantageous in survival and reproduction and hence > >>>> selected in the > >>>> evolutionary process. This explains why we have lots of tacticle > >>>> sensors on our surface, > >>>> where we can react to things, and not so many in our digestive tract > >>>> where our responses > >>>> are limited. Feelings are physical, but they are not things (i.e. > >>>> objects) they are > >>>> changes in things, e.g. hormones released into the blood stream. > >>> That doesn't explain anything. > > It explained why we have lots of feeling on the outside as compared to the > inside. What > does your soul-theory have to say about it - skin cells have more > sensiormotive > topological morphology? I have no soul-theory. My hypothesis posits a primitive sensorimotive topology to physics with specific characteristics. We don't feel anything outside of our body directly, we feel our body tissues feelings through our nervous system's feelings, of which we are a part. We are the feelings of our nervous system. All of our feeling and sensation is on the inside of our nervous system, but the nature of sensation is such that what is doing the sensing imitates that which is being sensed. We have tactile feelings which correspond to our skin receptors, visual feelings which correspond to our retina, aural feelings from our inner ear, etc. We have lots of other senses as well, kinesthetic, vestibular, olfactory, gustatory, but also cognitive sense, emotional sense, moral sense, common sense, social senses, etc etc. It's all different kinds of pattern recognition drawing on different extractions of sensorimotive experience. > > >>> Again, our stomach digests things, our > >>> immune system handles much more complex and important tasks related to > >>> our survival and reproduction without our feeling anything. > > You switch back and forth. No, I don't but it's completely understandable that most people are going to think that I am, because it's a new concept entirely. > On the one hand you assert that brain cells feel things > because it's inherent in biological cells. Now you assert cells of the > immune system > don't feel anything. How do you know they don't? How do you know the brain > cells do? > It's magic. Whenever you mention magic, then I know you aren't understanding what I mean. I don't mind the accusation (because it's exactly the kind of sentimental and unscientific objection that my model predicts from substance monism), but it tells me that I might not be communicating the idea well. I intentionally avoid controversial areas of consciousness - near death experiences, psychic awareness, ESP, etc, because they are not necessary to my hypothesis. I only deal with ordinary human experience reproducible under typical conditions of human life. The concept is: Yes - brain cells feel things because it's inherent in biological cells. Cells that are not part of the brain feel things too, but we don't feel them because we aren't the feelings of those cells, we are the feelings of the cells of certain regions of our brain. The complicated part is that nervous system cells are specially engineered to de- emphasize their own sense so that it is translucent to the sense of the body and of the outside world through the sense organs of the body. Just like a computer is like a giant silicon molecule, the nervous system exploits the electrolytic aspects of biology to make the equivalent of a giant cell process of the entire organism. So yes, it is tricky, but it would be tricky to describe a system that you are in fact part of. You can't treat it like a voyeur studying it in an anatomy class. Our cells have private experiences, but our nervous system's private experiences (our lives) are only based upon amplifications of some kinds of feelings of some groups of cells. We feel our tongue, we taste what our taste buds taste, but we don't feel or taste our kidneys. Our kidneys do though. Not in our nervous system's qualia of flavors and tactile sensation probably, but in very precise physiological-biochemical qualia. > > Or it's easily explained by as a result of evolving a self-image to do the > feeling that's > relevant to action. Self-image? Is that another metaphysical abstraction that somehow lives inside of particle physics and chemistry? > > >>> There is > >>> no mechanical advantage, nor is there *any* possibility that feeling > >>> can arise from physical evolution. As you say, they are not objects, > >>> so they cannot evolve. 'Changes' in hormones in a blood stream don't > >>> just decide that they are a 'feeling'. There is no 'they'. A change > >>> isn't a thing that feels. It's only the cells themselves, or the > >>> tissues they make up that could possibly feel these changes. The > >>> appeal to 'changes' and 'responses' as sense agents is metaphysical. > >> The need for agents to sense feelings is metaphysical - it is spiritualism. > > And the idea of feelings without an agent to feel them is somehow less > > metaphysical? That's funny. Or, I guess I should say - there is > > funnyness...somewhere. Or nowhere? Anywhere? > > You're making stuff up again. I didn't say materialism was not metaphysics - > it is. But > so is your theory. If you admit it's metaphysics than I don't have a problem with it. Then it is truly a matter of taste. The only difference then is that I see my metaphysics as a direct antipode to physics in a precisely comprehensible symmetry, while you are okay with a more ad hoc metaphysics of information and models, connections, forces, etc. I'm cool with that, I'm just presenting another way to tie it all together so it makes sense as a whole without any loose ends. > > > > >>>> But you are presumably asking about feelings as emotions: thoughts of > >>>> joy or sadness or > >>>> satisfaction or anxiety. > >>> No, you had it right before. I'm asking about sensation and the > >>> interpretation of sensation (which I call feeling). Interpretations of > >>> what I call feelings are what I would call emotions, and the > >>> interpretation of emotions are what I call thoughts. > >>>> These are the same physiological changes sensed at the level of > >>>> consciousness in humans and put into an inner narrative. Evidence for > >>>> this is the fact > >>>> that various drugs can produce these feelings independent of other > >>>> changes in the environment. > >>> There is a physiological side of emotion and an experiential side, > >>> just like everything else. You can manipulate emotions > >>> physiologically, and you can manipulate physiology emotionally. It's > >>> bi-directional: bottom up AND top down. > >> Really? Can you will yourself to be sad, happy, satisfied? I don't think > >> so. > > Of course you can. If you imagine something terrible happening to > > someone you care about, you will yourself to be sad. Some people do it > > for a living, they are called actors. Sorry to be snide, I don't mean > > it to you personally, I'm just responding to the lameness of substance > > monism. > > But that's not just willing. That's recalling or imagining some interaction > with your > environment. Drugs can make you happy or sad without any reference to the > environment. But recalling or imagining environmental references can make you happy or sad without any drugs. It's symmetrical (non) supervenience. > > > > >>>> What are the implications of this for the robot/android whose artificial > >>>> neural network > >>>> brain produces human like behavior? Well it's obvious that a silicon > >>>> based brain won't > >>>> respond to LSD or oxycontin like a human one. And similarly the silicon > >>>> brain will > >>>> respond to an EMP that an real brain won't even notice. > >>> Right, which is why we know from the start that a silicon brain can > >>> never emulate ALL of the behaviors of a natural brain. > >>>> The question then is whether this > >>>> shows the artificial and human brains instantiate different qualia even > >>>> when their > >>>> behavior is the same or only when there are these different responses to > >>>> the environment. > >>> It's not that the inability to respond in the same way as a natural > >>> brain equals different qualia, but it certainly should be an indicator > >>> that it very well could, especially if we think that qualia is related > >>> to electrochemical processes. Mainly we have no reason to imagine that > >>> a silicon brain has any other qualia beyond that inherent in it's > >>> physical manufacture and operation. > >> We have an excellent reason to imagine that. Namely the same reason we > >> imagine other do; > >> as we did for millenia without knowing what was inside of them (or > >> ourselves). > > We imagine others do because they are walking around in the same > > bodies we are. > > But they are not all the same. Do you think dogs have qualia? Chimpanzees? > Irishmen? Sure, everything has qualia. They probably overlap and underlap: A=dogs, B= chimpanzees, C=chimpanzees who have been abused, etc. http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lozwzd3q7U1qzxfy9o1_500.png > > > We can have sex with them and make babies. What does a > > baby silicon brain look like? Not as cute probably. > > Not as cute as what? Have you seen a babies brain? How do you know babies > don't have > silicon brains? I'm comparing a silicon brain to a baby, not to a baby's brain (since a computer has no other body than it's silicon hardware). How do I know babies don't have silicon brains? Um, I guess because we would have heard that neurologists had noted that when they do surgery on babies they find computers in there instead of brains. > > > > >>> It doesn't learn to feel like a > >>> person, just as your computer doesn't learn how to see you through the > >>> monitor. It's not alive. It has as much qualia as a shoe. > >> Unsupported and unreasoned assertions. Dogma of spiritualism. > > So you think that your computer is looking at you through the monitor > > and will learn to recognize your face eventually? Somehow my pointing > > out the absurdity of that is spiritualism?? > > My computer can see me through a camera and it recognizes my face as a > security measure. No, your computer can't see anything. It wouldn't know the difference between your face and a flash drive with the right software plugged into the usb where the camera is supposed to be. > > Brent > The poor dog, in life the the firmest friend, > The first to welcome, foremost to defend, > Whose honest heart is still the master's own, > Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone, > Unhonour'd falls, unnoticed all his worth, > Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth, > While man, vain insect hopes to be forgiven, > And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven. > -- Lord Byron, Inscription on the monument of his > Newfoundland dog, 1808 cool. not much of a dog person personally, but I'm a seasoned misanthrope. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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