Causing the 2nd revolution of scientific structure
Hi Liz, Mike, et.al. It's time for the nature/descriptions of it/math relationship to undergo some formal attention by science. Discussions of the options we have in how we humans behave when describing the universe, in any other human social context, would be the job of a *governing body* and is called self governance. Variable levels of social formality attract varying levels of formality in the self governance. We have self governance for tennis, rugby, legal system, trade etc. etc. etc. We have _zero_ self governance for science. Scientists are unaware there is even an option. Scientific behaviour is universally assumed complete, finished, fixed. It is learned by imitation of mentors, not by being handed the rules on a single sheet of paper on day 1. Self-governance at least writes down the 'rules' e.g. tennis. In the book I write down the rules of scientific behaviour (as practiced for 350 years) for the first time. It is not written down anywhere else. If there is a fundamental limit in the behaviour, and you never ever review the behaviour isn't it obvious what goes wrong? Please do not confuse the behaviour that produces science outcomes with the outcomes of the behaviour. This is about the former, not the latter. This list's decade++ of unresolved endless debate devoid of any sort of progress is a symptom of the lack of self governance in science. Nothing will ever get resolved until we document what we actually do as scientists, look formally at its weakness/limits and then propose changes, to what scientific behaviour is, to deal with it. We must change scientific behaviour itself. We can't 'discover' our way to progress in this. We have to 'govern' our way to progress. Self-governance is not self-regulation. Science brilliantly ensures the ‘assumed, undocumented rules’ are followed. Science never ever reviews the rules. It’s assumed complete. My book reveals this strange, unique position in science for what it is. Science’s governance is not and never was the job of philosophy. Until we have at least one serious attempt at self governance, and a willingness to change science itself, we will be stuck with a 350 year old fossil social behaviour operating in an anomalous undocumented way, full of presupposition and endless debates and no resolution on the relationship between computing and scientific description, the scientific account of the observer, the scientific account of what is observed, and the natural world itself. In the conduct of science, none of us have a right to an opinion: Assume X, Take exception to Y, I Believe Z, any sort of philosophical XYZ-ism, Tegmark is right etc etc etc. We only have the right to what we can argue for with evidence. That's what I do in the book. About science behaviour itself, not its outputs. Dual aspect science is an empirical proposition. It has a relationship between the underlying world and computation. It has a relationship between the natural world and the observer. It has a self-established and doubtable account of the limits of knowledge of the natural world acquired from within. It does not assume uniqueness or arbitrary fixedness in any description of nature. It lets a computer’s account of nature and the human cognitive account of nature differ in structured, known ways. All of it is directly testable. The framework upgrade is a testable hypothesis. Someone on this list might have another proposal. Great! Let's organise a governing body to examine all options and actually _do something_ about it. I am going to have a go at establishing a forum for the first act of science self-governance in the modern era. An ASSC consciousness conference, where physics and neuroscientists are well enough informed, would do nicely. Meanwhile, if the folk on this list could raise their awareness of self governance and what it might mean for science, then something might actually come of all the endless debates. Nothing is ever going to happen if we don't do this. Cheers Colin Hales -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Book: Revolutions of Scientific Structure
Hi , My book is finally out. Hales CG. 2014. “The Revolutions of Scientific Structure” Press release here http://www.worldscientific.com/page/pressroom/2014-07-11-01 The book is here: http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/9211 The Front-Matter (preface) and preamble (Chapter 1) are already accessible free from the publisher. The deeply impoverished (like me!) might want a preprint PDF. If so... just let me know. Enjoy. Colin Hales, PhD Researcher NeuroEngineering Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering University of Melbourne, Australia -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
New consciousness paper
Dear Folk,
I thought you might be interested in the following paper, which is
essentially my PhD outcome packaged into a journal paper (49 pages!),
contextualised with respect to consciousness, and now finally published in
a special journal issue on the ‘Hard problem of Consciousness’.
Online-ready only at this point. Came out yesterday.
Hales, Colin G. 2014: 'The origins of the brain’s endogenous
electromagnetic field and its relationship to provision of consciousness'.
*Journal
of Integrative Neuroscience*, Vol 13 Issue 2, pp. 1-49.
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219635214400056?queryID=%24{resultBean.queryID}
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219635214400056?queryID=%24%7bresultBean.queryID%7d
*ABSTRACT*
As a potential source of consciousness, the brain's endogenous
electromagnetic (EM) field has much to commend it. Difficulties connecting
EM phenomena and consciousness have been exacerbated by the lack of a
specific conclusive biophysically realistic mechanism originating the EM
field, its form and dynamics. This work explores a potential mechanism: the
spatial and temporal coherent action of transmembrane ion channel currents
which simultaneously produce electric and magnetic fields that dominate all
other field sources. Ion channels, as tiny current filaments, express, at a
distance, the electric and magnetic fields akin to those of a short
(transmembrane) copper wire. Following assembly of appropriate formalisms
from EM field theory, the paper computationally explores the scalar
electric potential produced by the current filaments responsible for an
action potential (AP) in a realistic hippocampus CA1 pyramidal neuron. It
reveals that AP signaling can impress a highly structured, focused and
directed sweeping-lighthouse beam that illuminates neighbors at mm
scales. Ion channel currents thereby provide a possible explanation for
both EEG/MEG origins and recently confirmed functional EM coupling effects.
Finally, a physically plausible EM field decomposition is posited. It
reveals objective and subjective perspectives intrinsic to the
membrane-centric field dynamics. Perceptual fields can be seen to operate
as the collective action of virtual EM-boson composites (called qualeons)
visible only by being the fields, yet objectively appear as the familiar
EM field activity. This explains the problematic evidence presentation and
offers a physically plausible route to a solution to the hard problem.
For those impoverished and for those without institutional access I do have
the preprint. Just email me.
Cheers
Colin Hales
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Maudlin How many times does COMP have to be false before its false?
Hi folk, Our belief system state in relation to the the truth/falsehood of COMP is a truly bizarre corner of science. The concept is simple, yet as an empirical proposition, it has eluded the kind of definitive testing that, for example, basic physics would accept as conclusive. If X is a potential scientific belief, then empirical examination of the consequences of X adds weight to a body of evidence suggesting that adopting the belief is of predictive utility. Fine Fine Fine. If it works, then X is restated in some usable form ... say 'law of nature X' or X_lon. In the formulation of a testable version of belief X, however, is a process of critical argument that helps us define what X means and what evidence might be critically dependent on the truth of X. During the critical argument, you find and weigh up the feasibility of X as a law of nature and what easily accessible consequences might facilitate an early decision on X. During this pre 'law of nature' phase, X might be discarded because it is easy to find sets of conditions which are inconsistent with X... so we then, sensibly, adopt the position that X is untenable as a truth of the natural world. And we move on ... all the while keeping X as a possibility ... albeit improbable. In the greater environment of the claim X = 'computationalism', when you look at the way science is behaving, one can empirically measure psychologically bizarre belief systems. That is, critical examination revealing low likelihood fails to become evidence consistent with COMP's falsehood. The truth of COMP has never been proven in any logical or empirical way. Yet legions of 'Artificial General Intelligence' (AGI) workers spend tens and hundreds of $millions on projects whose outcomes are critically dependent on COMP being true. and the investors are _never_ told about the fundamental act of faith they are embarked upon. a level of faith that would never be acceptable elsewhere. We have multiple instances of people who have elevated the level of doubt surrounding COMP way beyond the levels normally accepted as making a proposition highly suspect yet here are the legions of AGI workers ... all plodding along on faith, continuing to believe for reasons that I cannot fathom. I can cite many arguments that, despite attempts to confirm it, find good reasons supporting COMP's falsehood. Anywhere else, where truths are entertained despite good reasoning, acting as if COMP was true makes it a religious proposition, not science. Now, I am not a psychologist. But I have read a lot on the history of science and have lived within it all my adult life. I am trying to understand what broken logic underpins blind faith in COMP that is also consistent with a more general belief_malfunction in science. After several years of analysis I think I have a proposition that is predictive of this strange state in science: There seems to be a profound, institutionalized failure within scientists that results, for whatever reason, in an inability to distinguish between the actual natural world and a (mathematical) model of its behaviour, as apparent to a scientist. For reasons I cannot fathom, the idea that these two things can be different is like a massive blind-spot. If you raise the possibility, very bizarre objections arise that are indistinguishable from the objections that a believer has in their religion. I will continue to battle this blind spot as best I can. Thanks for the Maudlin. I'll add it to the pile of COMP = FALSE evidence. By the way, I have a pile of zero height for COMP = TRUE. I do however, have evidence of believers that number in the millions. Weird, huh? Cheers Colin Hales -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Maudlin How many times does COMP have to be false before its false?
BM I don't think AGI workers have ever promised consciousness - just intelligence. In fact for many purposes consciousness would be regarded as an unacceptable attribute (c.f. John McCarthy http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/consciousness/consciousness.html ). CH The AGI movement has been promising human level intellect for decades. The link to the necessity for consciousness is easy to see ... That COMP clerics like McCarthy must adopt a presupposition that _general_ intellect (human kind) can operate without consciousness, when the only example of general intellect we have, humans, has exactly that, seems rather odd. (Scientific) observation is _literally_ (mostly visual) P-consciousness. Take it away and you have no (scientific) observation, no learning, no adaptation = No general intelligence. Seems rather straightforward to me. Like everyone else in this religion, there's a presupposition that COMP is true. Now say humans are conscious? Prove it. To which I say COMP is true? Prove it Been around this loop many times. :-) If McCarthy says consciousness is not a necessary condition for general intelligence, when you can empirically prove, in the only example we have, humans, that interfering with it (eg TMS or TES) kills/degrades it is surely an act of blind faith in COMP. As usual. I told you I'd be going after this faith-based nonsense! My next volley is in June?ish when my paper comes out On the status of computationalism as a law of nature. It ends up siding with Maudlin but by a very different route that has nothing to do with Turing machines. Interestingly, my paper does confirm that COMP is trivially true, but only in the sense that if you already know everything (for your program on the tape to be created), you can COMP the lot. It's COMPing the _unknown_ that is the problem. In Maudlins paper the 'unknowns' are the 'counterfactual water-troughs' of the uber/mega Olympia. Same thing. cheers colin -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
PSYCHE 16(1) ... essay results
Recently there was a student essay contest run by the ASSC (Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness) The five winners are published in the ASSC journal PSYCHE. One of them was mine. They have finally got around to publishing them. Hales C. 2010. The scientific evidence of qualia meets the qualia that are scientific evidence. PSYCHE 16(1):24-29. (http://www.theassc.org/journal_psyche/archive/vol_16_no_1_2010) I am trying hard to get my ideas about science into the awareness of as many folks as I can. I thought some of you may be interested.The essays are mercifully short (1500 words!) Enjoy. Colin Hales -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
