On 08 Mar 2015, at 21:34, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:

Ah! But I never claimed that neurobiology, also know as materialism, is the single, best, explanation for consciousness.

Nurobiology is not known as materialism. ture, it is plausible that most neurobiologist are materialist (in the weak sense I use), but their approach is computationalism: they reason in local cause and effect, some relation can be analog, but usually not supposed to be non-Turing emulable.

And they ignore that mechanism is incompatible (epistemologically) with that weak materialism.




It might be the best working theory in our case though.

It is the best local current implementation we have, no doubt.



I tend to refer to our passions as from the amygdala, and our reasoning from the neocortex/cerebrum. Am I correct?

I agree there is a part of the truth, but if you push that idea and admit the amygdala and the neocortex are Turing emulable, the details of the histories are sum on infinity of computations. Physics assures us empirically that we share (thanks Everett notably) a long and deep sheaf of common histories.


I think so, but is there room for a more complex process? Yes. The brain could be both a computer and a transceiver. But we'd have to detect or infer more evidence or plausibility for this.

It is OK. the "material" brain is consciousness filtred from true, or consistent, points of view, defined relatievly in arithmetic.



Could different things in the universe be conscious?

"the universe" ?

Elementary arithmetic is full of life and dreams, there is a physical reality, but it is unclear if that physical reality defines a universe, or a cloud of partially gluable machine dreams.

And, yes, in the apparent universe, many things appears to be turing universal, so other type of conscious beings cannot be excluded.

I was impress by a paper speculating on some quark star, who stability was garantie by those compressed quark playing a "error correction" sort of quantum game.



Well, i did weakly refer to Hoyle's The Black Cloud and boltzmann brains. I don't hold that dirt, and clouds, and stones, are conscious, as some have asserted.

There is a difference between saying that a pebble is conscious, and that a pebble supports consciousness.

I don't think pebbles are conscious, nor that they support consciousness, in any genuine sense. But a quasi cristal, or a Penrose pavage can already constitute a universal dovetailing, and that supports all consciousness digitally possible (and thus us, by comp).




I am also a bit doubtful of the Beckenstein Bound which asserts that the maximum calculating power of the universe is 1x10^123. I think its an estimation, without calculating the solids, liquids, and gases, and plasma, that comprise the cosmos. It's not that I am saying I am smarter then a big physicist, but that I think I sometimes see logical flaws in what they say.

OK. Interesting numbers, but we have to take them with grain of salt, as they borrow a lot of assumptions.


This doesn't mean I am smarter, just a bit more observant.

But you do seem assume a primary physical reality, in this post. I gave arguments that this does not make sense if the brain function like some sort of natural machine, like the neurobiologist assumes. You might need to (re?)-read the UDA argument. The mind-body problem is reduced to justify the beliefs (by "numbers") in a physical reality. The self-reference logics provides the communicable and the non communicable part of that number introspection process (arithmetical process).

Bruno




-----Original Message-----
From: Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
To: everything-list <[email protected]>
Sent: Sun, Mar 8, 2015 12:51 pm
Subject: Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness


On 08 Mar 2015, at 12:12, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:

Well, here's a thought. Intelligence/Consciousness as humans experience needs lots and lots of spindle cells, or something manufactured that imitates it. This is neurobiology, and thus, materialism.

Not at all. This is neurobiology and thus *mechanism*.

But then, looking at the detail, (see UDA) mechanism is incompatible with materialism.

Neurobiologist detect functions, or number relations. They don't detect matter. Even the Hadron collider does not detect "matter".



Could there be other things that do what spindle cells do? Yes. I mean, there could be gas clouds or boltzmann brains doing thinking way above our pay grade. But back down to earth, we need spindle cells.

We need what they seem able to do, perhaps.

Bruno




-----Original Message-----
From: John Clark < [email protected]>
To: everything-list < [email protected]>
Sent: Sat, Mar 7, 2015 10:25 pm
Subject: Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness



On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 5:33 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:

> I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.

He says consciousness is just another name for attention, but computers have been paying attention to some things and not others form almost as long as they've existed. For example the LHC produces nearly a billion particle collisions per second and each collision produces about one megabyte of data, so you'd need 200,000 DVDs each second the LHC is in operation to store that much information, and it's designed to be in operation 20 hours a day 300 days a year. Even a computer can't remember all that, Instead the computers looks at each collision and quickly decides if there is anything that *might* be worthy of its attention and remembers only them.

So out of the billion collisions each second the computer only remembers and pays attention to what happened in about 200 collisions, all the other data is just thrown away. Even so that's still a HUGE amount of information to store. There is always the possibility you're throwing away something important but there is no alternative, you just can't keep it all.

> under Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving intelligence within constraints of limited computational resources.

Is so then it would be easier to make a intelligent conscious computer than a intelligent non-conscious computer.

  John K Clark






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