On 10/23/2012 4:53 PM, John Mikes wrote:
Hi, Stephen,
you wrote some points in accordance with my thinking (whatever that is
worth) with one point I disagree with:
if you want to argue a point, do not accept it as a base for your
argument (even negatively not). You do that all the time. (SPK? etc.) -
Hi John,
My English is pathetic and my rhetoric is even worse, I know
this... I don't have an internal narrative in English, its all
proprioceptive sensations that I have to translate into English as best
I can... Dyslexia sucks! What I try to do is lay down a claim and then
argue for its validity; my language often is muddled... but the point
gets across sometimes. I have to accept that limitation...
My fundamental question: what do you (all) call *_'mind_*'?
Actually, mind - for me- is a concept, an abstraction, it isn't a
thing at all...
(Sub: does the *_brain_* do/learn mind functions? HOW?)
The same way that we learn to communicate with each other. How
exactly? /hypothesis non fingo///.
(('experimentally observed' is restricted to our present level of
understanding/technology(instrumentation)/theories.
Besides: "miraculous" is subject to oncoming explanatory novel info,
when it changes into merely 'functonal'.))
I agree.
To fish out some of my agreeing statements:
/*"Well, I don't follow the crowd...."*/
Science is no voting matter. 90+% believed the Flat Earth.
I wish more ppl understood that fact!
*//*
/*"...* Alter 1 neuron and you might not have the same mind..."
/(Meaning: the 'invasion(?)' called 'altering a neuron' MAY change the
functionalist's complexity /IN THE MIND!-/ which is certainly beyond
our knowable domain. That makes the 'hard' hard. We 'like' to explain
DOWN everything in today's knowable terms. (Beware my agnostic views!)
Agnostisism is a good stance to take. I am a bit too bold and lean
into my beliefs. Sometimes too far...
"Computation" of course I consider a lot more than that (Platonistic?)
algorithmic calculation on our existing (and so knowable?) embryonic
device. I go for the Latin orig.: to THINK together - mathematically,
or beyond. That mat be a deficiency from my (Non-Indo-European) mother
tongue where the (improper?) translatable equivalent closes to the
term "expectable". "I am counting on your visit tomorrow".
That is similar to my notion of "faith" as "expectation of future
truth"...
/"I strongly believe that computational complexity plays a huge role
in many aspects of the hard problem of consciousness and that the
Platonic approach to computer science is obscuring solutions as it is
blind to questions of resource availability and distribution."/
(and a lot more, do we 'know' about them, or not (yet).
yep, unknown unknowns!
/"Is the brain strictly a classical system? - No,..."
/The *"BRAIN"* may be - as a 'Physical-World' figment of our
bio-physio conventional science image, but its mind-related
function(?) (especially the hard one) is much more than a 'system':
ALL 'parts' inventoried in explained functionality).
And: I keep away from the beloved "thought-experiments" invented to
make uncanny ideas practically(?) feasible.
Ah, I love thought experiments, the are the laboratory of
philosophy. ;-)
/"...As I see it, there is no brain change without a mind change and
vice versa. The mind and brain are dual,..." /
Thanks, Stephen, originally I thought there may be some
(tissue-related) minor brain-changes not affecting the mind of which
the 'brains' serves as a (material) tool in our "sci"? explanations.
Reading your post(s) I realized that it is a complexity and ANY change
in one part has consequences in the others.
Right. I have to account for the degradation effects.
Psycho-physical parallelism is either exact or not at all.
So whatever 'part' we landscape as the /'neuronal brain'/ it is
still part of the wider complexity unknowable.
Indeed!
Have a good trip onward
Thanks. ;-)
John M
On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 8:43 PM, Stephen P. King
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 10/21/2012 7:14 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 1:55 AM, Stephen P. King
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
If there is a top-down effect of the mind on the atoms
then there we
would expect some scientific evidence of this.
Evidence would
constitute, for example, neurons firing when
measurements of
transmembrane potentials, ion concentrations etc.
suggest that they
should not. You claim that such anomalous behaviour of
neurons and
other cells due to consciousness is widespread, yet it
has never been
experimentally observed. Why?
Hi Stathis,
How would you set up the experiment? How do you
control for an effect
that may well be ubiquitous? Did you somehow miss the
point that
consciousness can only be observed in 1p? Why are you so
insistent on a 3p
of it?
A top-down effect of consciousness on matter could be inferred if
miraculous events were observed in neurophysiology research. The
consciousness itself cannot be directly observed.
Hi Stathis,
This would be true only if consciousness is separate from
matter, such as in Descartes failed theory of substance dualism.
In the dual aspect theory that I am arguing for, there would never
be any "miracles" that would contradict physical law. At most
there would be statistical deviations from classical predictions.
Check out http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf for details.
My support for this theory and not materialism follows from
materialism demonstrated inability to account for 1p. Dual aspect
monism has 1p built in from first principles. BTW, I don't use the
term "dualism" any more as what I am advocating seems to be too
easily confused with the failed version.
I don't mean putting an extra module into the brain, I
mean putting
the brain directly into the same configuration it is
put into by
learning the language in the normal way.
How might we do that? Alter 1 neuron and you might
not have the same
mind.
When you learn something, your brain physically changes. After
a year
studying Chinese it goes from configuration SPK-E to configuration
SPK-E+C. If your brain were put directly into configuration
SPK-E+C
then you would know Chinese and have a false memory of the year of
learning it.
Ah, but is that change, from SPK-E to SPK-E+C, one that is
numerable strictly in terms of a number of neurons changed? No. I
would conjecture that it is a computational problem that is at
least NP-hard. My reasoning is that if the change where emulable
by a computation X *and* that X could also could be used to solve
a P-hard problem, then there should exist an algorithm that could
easily translate any statement in one language into another *and*
finding that algorithm should require only some polynomial
quantity of resources (relative to the number of possible
algorithms). It should be easy to show that this is not the case.
I strongly believe that computational complexity plays a huge
role in many aspects of the hard problem of consciousness and that
the Platonic approach to computer science is obscuring solutions
as it is blind to questions of resource availability and distribution.
In a thought experiment we can say that the imitation
stimulates the
surrounding neurons in the same way as the original.
We can even say
that it does this miraculously. Would such a device
*necessarily*
replicate the consciousness along with the neural
impulses, or could
the two be separated?
Is the brain strictly a classical system?
No, although the consensus appears to be that quantum effects
are not
significant in its functioning. In any case, this does not
invalidate
functionalism.
Well, I don't follow the crowd. I agree that functionalist is
not dependent on the type of physics of the system, but there is
an issue of functional closure that must be met in my conjecture;
there has to be some way for the system (that supports the
conscious capacity) to be closed under the transformation involved.
As I said, technical problems with computers are not
relevant to the
argument. The implant is just a device that has the
correct timing of
neural impulses. Would it necessarily preserve
consciousness?
Let's see. If I ingest psychoactive substances, there
is a 1p observable
effect.... Is this a circumstance that is different in
kind from that
device?
The psychoactive substances cause a physical change in your
brain and
thereby also a psychological change.
Of course. As I see it, there is no brain change without a
mind change and vice versa. The mind and brain are dual, as
Boolean algebras and topological spaces are dual, the relation is
an isomorphism between structures that have oppositely directed
arrows of transformation. The math is very straight forward...
People just have a hard time understanding the idea that all of
"matter" is some form of topological space and there is no known
calculus of variations for Boolean algebras (no one is looking for
it, except for me, that I know of). Care to help me? The idea of
SPK-E -> SPK-E+C, that you mentioned, is an example of a variation
of Boolean algebra!
--
--
Onward!
Stephen
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