On 05 Dec 2017, at 02:36, David Nyman wrote:
On 5 December 2017 at 01:11, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 12/4/2017 4:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 December 2017 at 01:57, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 12/1/2017 5:21 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 December 2017 at 00:58, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 12/1/2017 4:46 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 December 2017 at 00:06, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 12/1/2017 3:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:
Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you
progressively reduce the duration of your effective short term
memory, at some point you will intuit that you have become
effectively 'unconscious', or at least un-self-conscious, as you
will be unable to imagine formulating an articulate thought or
possibly even assembling a coherent series of sense impressions
or intuitions.
Including the coherent thought that you have become effectively
'unconscious'.
Yes indeed. Of course you realised that I meant "at some point
you will intuit" only with reference to the relevant point in the
thought experiment, not to the imagined situation itself. In
the latter case my contention was that "at some (i.e. the
corresponding) point" you would in effect have become incapable
of coherently intuiting even the thought of your 'lost
consciousness', as you suggest.
Jeff Hawkins discusses this in his book "On Intelligence". He
calls his model of intelligence memory+prediction and it is based
more on brain neurophysiology and research than on computation
(although he's a computer guy, inventor the Palm Pilot).
Yes, that's interesting. From the evolutionary standpoint,
leaving aside distinctions of phenomenal versus 'access'
consciousness, one might speculate that the primary utility of
conscious deliberation is that of more accurate prediction of the
future and consequently improved individual and species
survivability.
In Hawkins model the lower layers of the neocortex are continually
predicting what they will receive from the perceptive organs. If a
layer's prediction fails, the input is passed up to the next layer
and each layer has more extensive lateral connections than the
layer below it. So consciousness is emergent engagement of the top
layer; although Hawkins doesn't speculate much about this as he is
more interested in intelligence than consciousness.
This seems consistent with Jaynes's model, I think. It does seem
plausible that the predictive calculus would work its way up
through the levels as and when necessary in something like the way
Hawkins suggests and only 'emerge' fully at the neocortical level
when 'all else has failed', as it were. Then, in Jaynes's bicameral
model, the demand for a 'plan of action' would hopefully be
satisfied with respect to something like a pre-existing template
that would be communicated (principally in language) for reception
and action by the 'non-self-conscious' actor.
This is very powerfully illustrated in the early scenes in the
Iliad when Achilles is only prevented from slaughtering Agamemnon
by the last minute intervention of Athena, who has to grab him by
the hair to restrain him (in this case we apparently have full
visual, auditory and tactile hallucination). Here we have the
classically un-self-conscious actor in the full tide of his right-
brained bravura, but with the fortunate intervention at the
critical moment of his 'common-sense' hemisphere just in time to
forestall mayhem. With the later breakdown of bicamerality in
certain individuals (presumably as a consequence of relatively more
efficient inter-hemispherical neurological integration) the
'speaking' and 'listening' faculties located in the separate
hemispheres would have begun to coalesce, in tandem with greater
integration of planning and execution functions. Odysseus,
especially as portrayed in the Odyssey, might be the Homeric
exemplar of the newly 'integrated man', coping creatively and
constructively with one unexpected and novel catastrophe after
another.
Yes, as Jaynes speculates the bicameral mind breaks down when there
is trade between different tribes and it becomes advantageous to be
able to lie, like the Wily Odysseus.
Funnily enough, I've often entertained the question, in moments of
reflection, of who is 'speaking' and who 'listening' with respect
to my inner dialogue. It may not be completely fanciful to link the
origin of these two aspects to separate though substantially
integrated hemispheres. After all, in sum they're both 'me'. I
wonder if there might be an experimental protocol that could settle
the question?
Careful or you will find yourself agreeing with Dennett and his
modular mind, which borders on heresy in this list.
Well it isn't heretical in my book. If we "can't know which
machine" (i.e. program or computation) we are at any given point,
this would seem to me consistent with a multiple draft schema,
given that every draft is presumably conceived as being integrated
with something akin to common 'memory' and 'executive' functions and
hence is equally implicated with 'me'. And of course the very
modularity of neurological architecture argues in a similar
direction, which is presumably one of the things Dennett finds in
its favour.
By the way, the more I consider what Dennett actually says (modulo
his sometimes rather overbearing style) the less I find of substance
to disagree with, as far as it goes. If you simply accept his dogma-
driven weaselling about 'seeming' as semantically equivalent to
'experiencing' then he isn't really eliminating consciousness, he
only 'seems' to be doing so. Then what he says in effect is that
consonant with certain sorts of brain activity we seem to have
experiences or, in my semantically collapsed version, we experience
having experiences; in short, we have experiences.
Of course he doesn't really provide a thoroughgoing account of how
brain function and experience (or properly, the experiencer) might
be explanatorily linked, or in other words a convincing theory of
mental agency that is able to bridge the conceptual gap between
brain and mind. The multiple drafts model isn't really such an
account, as it remains at the third-person functional level, and
designedly so given Dennett's prior intellectual and methodological
commitments.
I agree. Fodor or Dennett's modular mind is not an heresy, but a
welcome idea for a mechanist.
The heresy would lie only in dismissing the conscious subject by
misusing the modularity like it would explain it all. But as you
illustrate here, Dennett could just try to be more cautious. Now, we
have still to explain where the physical laws "seem" to be selected,
to get the complete account, but that is what is offred by the theory
of the greek when using the provability predicate for believability,
as enforced by incompleteness for the rational agent.
Bruno
David
Brent
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