Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Wednesday, March 5, 2014 2:20:01 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 04 Mar 2014, at 19:14, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, March 4, 2014 3:27:58 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Mar 2014, at 21:17, Craig Weinberg wrote: Why don't we see such a (meta) link in our own languages? Because we duplicate too slowly, unlike amoeba, which have not the cognitive abilities to exploit this. This entails that in natural language we use the same indexical term I for both the 3-I and the 1-I. We say I lost a tooth (3- I) , and I feel pain in my mouth (1-I). Only teleportation and duplication, or deep reflexion on belief and knowledge, makes clear the difference. It appears clearly in Theaetetus, and in other fundamental texts. When we say I lost a tooth what we mean is In my experience it seems like I lost a tooth. It is still 1-I. We may wake up and find that experience was a dream, in which case we say I didn't lose a tooth but mean In my experience it seems like my previous experience of losing a tooth was a dream, Funny but irrelevant. Like Clark can always avoid a question on the 1-views, by jumping out of his body and adding a 3 (passing from some 1-1-1 view to a 3-1-1-1 view for example), you can always add a 1 on any view, like you do here. But in the argument we were assuming the 3p view at the start. I'm not adding a 1 view, I'm giving a literal description of the phenomenon. There is no expectation of 3p unless that expectation is provided by the 1p. that is what I meant by adding the 1-p view. What other view are you saying I am 'adding' the 1-p to? We were not assuming the 3p view at the start though, That is why your position is akin to solipsism. Not solipsism, distributed holipsism. Solipsism removes the distance between here/now and there/then. Holipsism proposes that 'there and then' is the distance-diffracted presence of 'here and now' since I think that the 3p view is only realized as a (Bp-x/Bp)(x/Bp +x/Bp), never as a stand-alone perspective. So what does stand alone? What you call Bp: Sense, or aesthetic encounter/presence/re-acquaintance. Instead of seeing it in terms of Bp p, I see it as something like Bp Bp^e (where e is Euler's number). ??? Yes. My view is that there is no p other than as a representation within some Bp. That is a form of solipsism. No, I'm not saying that truth is an ad hoc fantasy of a single being, I'm saying that truth qualities relate to the function and organizational aspects of sense. Truth is about the tension between eternity, history, and now, not a sterile plaque on the wall which dictates the universe mechanically. UDA is a form of nilipsism. Truth is a measure of the length of the trail of experiences leading back closer and closer to the capacity for sense itself. Short trails present the truth of superficial, disconnected sensations. Long trails present profoundly unifying states of consciousness. To do science, we have to bet on something on which we can agree, and which is supposed to be independent on us. It is independent of us, but not of independent of sense. That should be something on which we can agree, except that because sense is participatory, we are free to invert the local and the absolute (and indeed we need to do that to survive within our body's environment). As long as we only use science for engineering purposes, the we should stick with the empirical, nilipsistic view. When we want to understand deeply, however, and use science to discover consciousness and qualities of life, then we should augment the local view and incorporate the pansensitive perspective as well. Keep in mind that I have no problem with your theory, especially that it is consistent with the machine's 1-view. I have a problem only with you using your theory to refute computationalism. It is non valid, if only because your theory is, basically, equivalent to the machine's 1- view. This is the weird part that we've been over before already many times. If we are both machines, and we have opposite theories of computationalism, how can you claim that my view and not yours is the machine's 1- view? Aren't you being racist, stereotyping the machine in a paternalistic way while you yourself remain omniscient and meta-mechanical? I agree that my conjecture cannot refute compatibilism within the frame of logic, but part of my conjecture is that logic cannot capture sense at all, since it is the effort to rigidly automate sense that is already there. Logic is a contraction of sense, not a generator of it. You have to know that what I am saying is true on some level...unless some people do identify completely with the intellect rather than their experience?
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 03 Mar 2014, at 21:17, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, March 3, 2014 1:16:49 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 02 Mar 2014, at 17:42, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, March 2, 2014 3:50:07 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Mar 2014, at 12:24, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, March 1, 2014 1:52:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Feb 2014, at 03:22, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. Maybe it isn't always obvious that it's my hand... I believe the brain has an internal model of the body. I guess without one it wouldn't find it so easy to control it? A body's quite complicated, after all... Why should the model include its own non-functional presence though? Because the model, the machine is not just confronted with its own self-representation, but also with truth, as far as we are. Put differently, because the machine can't conflate []p and []p p. Only God can do that. I don't see why self-representation would or could go beyond a simple inventory of functions. []p is self representation only. But []p p is not. We can prove that the machine cannot associate anything 3p-describable for []p p. It is not a representation, but a (meta) link between representation and truth. Why don't we see such a (meta) link in our own languages? Because we duplicate too slowly, unlike amoeba, which have not the cognitive abilities to exploit this. This entails that in natural language we use the same indexical term I for both the 3-I and the 1-I. We say I lost a tooth (3-I) , and I feel pain in my mouth (1-I). Only teleportation and duplication, or deep reflexion on belief and knowledge, makes clear the difference. It appears clearly in Theaetetus, and in other fundamental texts. When we say I lost a tooth what we mean is In my experience it seems like I lost a tooth. It is still 1-I. We may wake up and find that experience was a dream, in which case we say I didn't lose a tooth but mean In my experience it seems like my previous experience of losing a tooth was a dream, Funny but irrelevant. Like Clark can always avoid a question on the 1- views, by jumping out of his body and adding a 3 (passing from some 1-1-1 view to a 3-1-1-1 view for example), you can always add a 1 on any view, like you do here. But in the argument we were assuming the 3p view at the start. Instead of seeing it in terms of Bp p, I see it as something like Bp Bp^e (where e is Euler's number). ??? There is no p, only a tendency toward stability across nested histories of experience as the accumulate. If there is no p, there is no truth, and we waste our time when doing research. I begin to think I waste my time trying to get you back to research instead of your hopelessly negative and destructive quasi- racist personal reification. Bruno Craig Bruno PS for reason of scheduling, I will comment only paragraph that I understand. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Tuesday, March 4, 2014 3:27:58 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Mar 2014, at 21:17, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, March 3, 2014 1:16:49 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 02 Mar 2014, at 17:42, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, March 2, 2014 3:50:07 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Mar 2014, at 12:24, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, March 1, 2014 1:52:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Feb 2014, at 03:22, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. Maybe it isn't always obvious that it's my hand... I believe the brain has an internal model of the body. I guess without one it wouldn't find it so easy to control it? A body's quite complicated, after all... Why should the model include its own non-functional presence though? Because the model, the machine is not just confronted with its own self-representation, but also with truth, as far as we are. Put differently, because the machine can't conflate []p and []p p. Only God can do that. I don't see why self-representation would or could go beyond a simple inventory of functions. []p is self representation only. But []p p is not. We can prove that the machine cannot associate anything 3p-describable for []p p. It is not a representation, but a (meta) link between representation and truth. Why don't we see such a (meta) link in our own languages? Because we duplicate too slowly, unlike amoeba, which have not the cognitive abilities to exploit this. This entails that in natural language we use the same indexical term I for both the 3-I and the 1-I. We say I lost a tooth (3-I) , and I feel pain in my mouth (1-I). Only teleportation and duplication, or deep reflexion on belief and knowledge, makes clear the difference. It appears clearly in Theaetetus, and in other fundamental texts. When we say I lost a tooth what we mean is In my experience it seems like I lost a tooth. It is still 1-I. We may wake up and find that experience was a dream, in which case we say I didn't lose a tooth but mean In my experience it seems like my previous experience of losing a tooth was a dream, Funny but irrelevant. Like Clark can always avoid a question on the 1-views, by jumping out of his body and adding a 3 (passing from some 1-1-1 view to a 3-1-1-1 view for example), you can always add a 1 on any view, like you do here. But in the argument we were assuming the 3p view at the start. I'm not adding a 1 view, I'm giving a literal description of the phenomenon. There is no expectation of 3p unless that expectation is provided by the 1p. We were not assuming the 3p view at the start though, since I think that the 3p view is only realized as a (Bp-x/Bp)(x/Bp+x/Bp), never as a stand-alone perspective. Instead of seeing it in terms of Bp p, I see it as something like Bp Bp^e (where e is Euler's number). ??? Yes. My view is that there is no p other than as a representation within some Bp. Truth is a measure of the length of the trail of experiences leading back closer and closer to the capacity for sense itself. Short trails present the truth of superficial, disconnected sensations. Long trails present profoundly unifying states of consciousness. There is no p, only a tendency toward stability across nested histories of experience as the accumulate. If there is no p, there is no truth, and we waste our time when doing research. No, there is truth, but it is not a separate perfect thing, it's more like the mass of experience. Truth is a measure of how much sense is made of what makes sense already. I begin to think I waste my time trying to get you back to research instead of your hopelessly negative and destructive quasi-racist personal reification. I can see your research as hopelessly naive and potentially destructive as well, as to me, it conflates the personal with a reified impersonal and presents a quasi-racist arithmetic supremacy. I wouldn't hold that against you though. You could still be right, I just happen to think that my view makes more sense in defining the basic points. Craig Bruno Craig Bruno PS for reason of scheduling, I will comment only paragraph that I understand. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 04 Mar 2014, at 19:14, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, March 4, 2014 3:27:58 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Mar 2014, at 21:17, Craig Weinberg wrote: Why don't we see such a (meta) link in our own languages? Because we duplicate too slowly, unlike amoeba, which have not the cognitive abilities to exploit this. This entails that in natural language we use the same indexical term I for both the 3-I and the 1-I. We say I lost a tooth (3- I) , and I feel pain in my mouth (1-I). Only teleportation and duplication, or deep reflexion on belief and knowledge, makes clear the difference. It appears clearly in Theaetetus, and in other fundamental texts. When we say I lost a tooth what we mean is In my experience it seems like I lost a tooth. It is still 1-I. We may wake up and find that experience was a dream, in which case we say I didn't lose a tooth but mean In my experience it seems like my previous experience of losing a tooth was a dream, Funny but irrelevant. Like Clark can always avoid a question on the 1-views, by jumping out of his body and adding a 3 (passing from some 1-1-1 view to a 3-1-1-1 view for example), you can always add a 1 on any view, like you do here. But in the argument we were assuming the 3p view at the start. I'm not adding a 1 view, I'm giving a literal description of the phenomenon. There is no expectation of 3p unless that expectation is provided by the 1p. that is what I meant by adding the 1-p view. We were not assuming the 3p view at the start though, That is why your position is akin to solipsism. since I think that the 3p view is only realized as a (Bp-x/Bp)(x/Bp +x/Bp), never as a stand-alone perspective. So what does stand alone? Instead of seeing it in terms of Bp p, I see it as something like Bp Bp^e (where e is Euler's number). ??? Yes. My view is that there is no p other than as a representation within some Bp. That is a form of solipsism. Truth is a measure of the length of the trail of experiences leading back closer and closer to the capacity for sense itself. Short trails present the truth of superficial, disconnected sensations. Long trails present profoundly unifying states of consciousness. To do science, we have to bet on something on which we can agree, and which is supposed to be independent on us. Keep in mind that I have no problem with your theory, especially that it is consistent with the machine's 1-view. I have a problem only with you using your theory to refute computationalism. It is non valid, if only because your theory is, basically, equivalent to the machine's 1- view. There is no p, only a tendency toward stability across nested histories of experience as the accumulate. If there is no p, there is no truth, and we waste our time when doing research. No, there is truth, but it is not a separate perfect thing, it's more like the mass of experience. Truth is a measure of how much sense is made of what makes sense already. This is a solipsistic vision of truth. You really talk like the machines universal soul (S4Grz). I begin to think I waste my time trying to get you back to research instead of your hopelessly negative and destructive quasi-racist personal reification. I can see your research as hopelessly naive and potentially destructive as well, as to me, it conflates the personal with a reified impersonal and presents a quasi-racist arithmetic supremacy. I wouldn't hold that against you though. You could still be right, I just happen to think that my view makes more sense in defining the basic points. I have yet to see a theory. You assume sense, you assume some physicalness (at least your refer to it a lot without explaining what is when you assume only sense), so you assume what I estimate (and argue) that we have to explain. You are not trying to make a scientific theory. You just seem to defend a personal opinion, which is negative on a class of entities, without us ever being able to get a reason why, except your opinion. Edgar, In this list we are open minded and basically agnostic, we don't a priori assume god, matter, universe, numbers, or whatever, and then try theories by making clear the assumptions. The a priori assumption is that you can have a sensible strategy to deflate your assumptions by making a priori explicit sense of them. That is accepted at the meta-level for *any* scientific theory. You do the same with the term sense. The difference is that many people actually agree on the assumptions, in the case of comp, and they are clear enough to learn from them. In all cases, the first implicit assumption is sense itself. Sense of arithmetic, sense of machines, sense of sense, sense of self...all of that comes later. Sense is not an assumption. That does not make sense. If you complain about toothache to your dentist,
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Monday, March 3, 2014 1:16:49 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 02 Mar 2014, at 17:42, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, March 2, 2014 3:50:07 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Mar 2014, at 12:24, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, March 1, 2014 1:52:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Feb 2014, at 03:22, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. Maybe it isn't always obvious that it's my hand... I believe the brain has an internal model of the body. I guess without one it wouldn't find it so easy to control it? A body's quite complicated, after all... Why should the model include its own non-functional presence though? Because the model, the machine is not just confronted with its own self-representation, but also with truth, as far as we are. Put differently, because the machine can't conflate []p and []p p. Only God can do that. I don't see why self-representation would or could go beyond a simple inventory of functions. []p is self representation only. But []p p is not. We can prove that the machine cannot associate anything 3p-describable for []p p. It is not a representation, but a (meta) link between representation and truth. Why don't we see such a (meta) link in our own languages? Because we duplicate too slowly, unlike amoeba, which have not the cognitive abilities to exploit this. This entails that in natural language we use the same indexical term I for both the 3-I and the 1-I. We say I lost a tooth (3-I) , and I feel pain in my mouth (1-I). Only teleportation and duplication, or deep reflexion on belief and knowledge, makes clear the difference. It appears clearly in Theaetetus, and in other fundamental texts. When we say I lost a tooth what we mean is In my experience it seems like I lost a tooth. It is still 1-I. We may wake up and find that experience was a dream, in which case we say I didn't lose a tooth but mean In my experience it seems like my previous experience of losing a tooth was a dream, Instead of seeing it in terms of Bp p, I see it as something like Bp Bp^e (where e is Euler's number). There is no p, only a tendency toward stability across nested histories of experience as the accumulate. Craig Bruno PS for reason of scheduling, I will comment only paragraph that I understand. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 01 Mar 2014, at 12:24, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, March 1, 2014 1:52:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Feb 2014, at 03:22, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. Maybe it isn't always obvious that it's my hand... I believe the brain has an internal model of the body. I guess without one it wouldn't find it so easy to control it? A body's quite complicated, after all... Why should the model include its own non-functional presence though? Because the model, the machine is not just confronted with its own self-representation, but also with truth, as far as we are. Put differently, because the machine can't conflate []p and []p p. Only God can do that. I don't see why self-representation would or could go beyond a simple inventory of functions. []p is self representation only. But []p p is not. We can prove that the machine cannot associate anything 3p-describable for []p p. It is not a representation, but a (meta) link between representation and truth. It seems a clear double standard to suggest on one hand that once a substitution level is met there can be no difference between your sun in law and a natural person, but on the other hand you are saying that of course machines can tell a difference between two identical functions just because one of them feels alien. It is justified in all details. Follow the math thread, perhaps. It is certainly a subtle point. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 01 Mar 2014, at 13:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014 3:31:25 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 7:54:53 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 28 February 2014 01:05, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:13:22 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 26 February 2014 23:58, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/ subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. This example shows that if there is a lesion in the neural circuitry it affects consciousness. If you fix the lesion such that the circuitry works properly but the consciousness is affected (keeping the environmental input constant) then that implies that consciousness is generated by something other than the brain. Paying attention to the circuitry is a red herring. What I'm bringing up is how dissociation of functions identified with the self does not make sense for the functionalist view of consciousness. How do you give a program 'alien subroutine syndrome'? Why does the program make a distinction between the pure function of the subroutine and some feeling of belonging that is generated by something other than the program? I don't know why you distinguish between a function such as moving the hand and identifying the hand as your own. Because there is nothing that functionalism could allow 'your own' to mean other than 'it is available to be used by the system'. The alien hand is available to be used, but that is perceived to be irrelevant. That is consistent with consciousness being a set of aesthetic qualities and direct participation, but not consistent with consciousness being a complex set of generic skills. There must be some difference in the input from the hand or its subsequent neural processing for it to be identified as foreign, and this is consistent with the fact that there is a brain lesion in alien hand syndrome. I'm sure there is some difference, but it doesn't affect the functionality of the hand. Under functionalism, since we can observe no difference between the function of the body with or without AHS, we should assume no such thing as AHS. If consciousness is like AHS, and the hand is like the brain or body, then we should not be able to see a difference between a conscious brain and simulation of brain activity that is unconscious. Both of these depend on correctly working brain circuitry, which is why a brain lesion can cause paralysis but can also cause alien hand syndrome. The fact that the
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 02 Mar 2014, at 06:55, Craig Weinberg wrote: consciousness is deflated to the sum of a set of functions. That does not happen in the computationalist theory. No 1p things are ever representable into a 3p thing. There are no 3p description of []p p; That simply cannot exist, except, perhaps, in God's eye. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 2 March 2014 16:49, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: You have too simplistic a view of what function means in the context of an intelligent being. I think that you have too naive a view of what function means. That is actually your whole problem: you look at machine, imagine that you can see how it works, then look at a human, can't figure out how it works, so conclude there must be something non-machine like in the human. It has nothing to do with not being able to figure out how humans work. Nothing to do with human consciousness or biology at all. I'm *always* only talking about the bare metal basics of awareness itself. Sensation. Detection. Signal. You take them for granted, but I don't. If you take them for granted, then it is no great surprise that you can imagine consciousness coming from function. Yet the very examples you use demonstrate that even mysterious-seeming behaviours such as those displayed in ALH are generated by neural circuitry which can be easily disrupted. It doesn't matter where they are generated, all that matters is whether possession of one's own function can be defined as a computable object under functionalism. I think that it is a clear double standard to say that the 'mine-ness' of a hand can of course be detected, but the 'mine-ness' of a human experience would require zombies to justify. You're looking at the wrong thing. I don't care about the details of any particular machine or organism, I care about the properties of awareness being incompatible in every way to the properties of function unless awareness comes first. The mine-ness of a hand cannot be directly detected but the behaviour can be detected. The behaviour is generated by the underlying processes, as is the consciousness. Although not immediately obvious, it turns out that if you can replicate the function you will also replicate the consciouness, even if you do it using a different mechanism. The use of the words behaviour and function can be confusing. Essentially, replicating the function of an entity involves replicating its behaviour under all circumstances, or to put it differently ensuring the outputs are the same for all inputs. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Sunday, March 2, 2014 3:50:07 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Mar 2014, at 12:24, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, March 1, 2014 1:52:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Feb 2014, at 03:22, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. Maybe it isn't always obvious that it's my hand... I believe the brain has an internal model of the body. I guess without one it wouldn't find it so easy to control it? A body's quite complicated, after all... Why should the model include its own non-functional presence though? Because the model, the machine is not just confronted with its own self-representation, but also with truth, as far as we are. Put differently, because the machine can't conflate []p and []p p. Only God can do that. I don't see why self-representation would or could go beyond a simple inventory of functions. []p is self representation only. But []p p is not. We can prove that the machine cannot associate anything 3p-describable for []p p. It is not a representation, but a (meta) link between representation and truth. Why don't we see such a (meta) link in our own languages? Which language's word for rain represents the most truth of rain? Why would we need, for example, one set of functions to calculate the time and another set of functions plus different hardware to display the result of that calculation graphically? If the machine had a link between the display of time and the truth of time, then there would be no additional parts necessary and our representation of time would simply match any machine's representation of time. This would ostensibly occur telepathically, just as all number relations must occur within comp. It seems a clear double standard to suggest on one hand that once a substitution level is met there can be no difference between your sun in law and a natural person, but on the other hand you are saying that of course machines can tell a difference between two identical functions just because one of them feels alien. It is justified in all details. Follow the math thread, perhaps. It is certainly a subtle point. If it's not translatable into a non-math understanding then I'm not interested. Craig Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 02 Mar 2014, at 17:42, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, March 2, 2014 3:50:07 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Mar 2014, at 12:24, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, March 1, 2014 1:52:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Feb 2014, at 03:22, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. Maybe it isn't always obvious that it's my hand... I believe the brain has an internal model of the body. I guess without one it wouldn't find it so easy to control it? A body's quite complicated, after all... Why should the model include its own non-functional presence though? Because the model, the machine is not just confronted with its own self-representation, but also with truth, as far as we are. Put differently, because the machine can't conflate []p and []p p. Only God can do that. I don't see why self-representation would or could go beyond a simple inventory of functions. []p is self representation only. But []p p is not. We can prove that the machine cannot associate anything 3p-describable for []p p. It is not a representation, but a (meta) link between representation and truth. Why don't we see such a (meta) link in our own languages? Because we duplicate too slowly, unlike amoeba, which have not the cognitive abilities to exploit this. This entails that in natural language we use the same indexical term I for both the 3-I and the 1-I. We say I lost a tooth (3-I) , and I feel pain in my mouth (1-I). Only teleportation and duplication, or deep reflexion on belief and knowledge, makes clear the difference. It appears clearly in Theaetetus, and in other fundamental texts. Bruno PS for reason of scheduling, I will comment only paragraph that I understand. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Saturday, March 1, 2014 1:52:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Feb 2014, at 03:22, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. Maybe it isn't always obvious that it's my hand... I believe the brain has an internal model of the body. I guess without one it wouldn't find it so easy to control it? A body's quite complicated, after all... Why should the model include its own non-functional presence though? Because the model, the machine is not just confronted with its own self-representation, but also with truth, as far as we are. Put differently, because the machine can't conflate []p and []p p. Only God can do that. I don't see why self-representation would or could go beyond a simple inventory of functions. It seems a clear double standard to suggest on one hand that once a substitution level is met there can be no difference between your sun in law and a natural person, but on the other hand you are saying that of course machines can tell a difference between two identical functions just because one of them feels alien. Craig Bruno Craig -- 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-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Saturday, March 1, 2014 1:57:45 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 15:22, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. It's important for an animal to be able to distinguish self from non-self, as can be seen if two animals are locked in combat - one that can't tell its own limb from its opponent's is just as likely to bite itself as its prey. Repeat that often enough and you have a strong evolutionary pressure to distinguish self from non-self. I would imagine alien hand syndrome is a breakdown of this system. Sure, but I don't see that functionalism provides a basis to distinguish self from non-self other than function. As long as the functionality of the hand is there, and other people cannot tell any difference in what the hand can do, there should be no basis for any particular distress. We could make up a different evolutionary story too - that being physically close to your family or social group is important to survival and reproduction, so that there is a strong evolutionary pressure to suppress the difference between self and not-self. If it were the case that AHS were a breakdown in a global system like that, I would expect that victims might identify their family as strangers, etc. The particulars aren't the important thing though. I use AHS to add to blindsight and synesthesia as examples where the function-feeling equivalence which functionalism depends on appears to be violated. -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Friday, February 28, 2014 3:31:25 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 7:54:53 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 28 February 2014 01:05, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:13:22 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 26 February 2014 23:58, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. This example shows that if there is a lesion in the neural circuitry it affects consciousness. If you fix the lesion such that the circuitry works properly but the consciousness is affected (keeping the environmental input constant) then that implies that consciousness is generated by something other than the brain. Paying attention to the circuitry is a red herring. What I'm bringing up is how dissociation of functions identified with the self does not make sense for the functionalist view of consciousness. How do you give a program 'alien subroutine syndrome'? Why does the program make a distinction between the pure function of the subroutine and some feeling of belonging that is generated by something other than the program? I don't know why you distinguish between a function such as moving the hand and identifying the hand as your own. Because there is nothing that functionalism could allow 'your own' to mean other than 'it is available to be used by the system'. The alien hand is available to be used, but that is perceived to be irrelevant. That is consistent with consciousness being a set of aesthetic qualities and direct participation, but not consistent with consciousness being a complex set of generic skills. There must be some difference in the input from the hand or its subsequent neural processing for it to be identified as foreign, and this is consistent with the fact that there is a brain lesion in alien hand syndrome. I'm sure there is some difference, but it doesn't affect the functionality of the hand. Under functionalism, since we can observe no difference between the function of the body with or without AHS, we should assume no such thing as AHS. If consciousness is like AHS, and the hand is like the brain or body, then we should not be able to see a difference between a conscious brain and simulation of brain activity that is unconscious. Both of these depend on correctly working brain circuitry, which is why
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Saturday, March 1, 2014, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Saturday, March 1, 2014 1:57:45 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 15:22, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. It's important for an animal to be able to distinguish self from non-self, as can be seen if two animals are locked in combat - one that can't tell its own limb from its opponent's is just as likely to bite itself as its prey. Repeat that often enough and you have a strong evolutionary pressure to distinguish self from non-self. I would imagine alien hand syndrome is a breakdown of this system. Sure, but I don't see that functionalism provides a basis to distinguish self from non-self other than function. As long as the functionality of the hand is there, and other people cannot tell any difference in what the hand can do, there should be no basis for any particular distress. We could make up a different evolutionary story too - that being physically close to your family or social group is important to survival and reproduction, so that there is a strong evolutionary pressure to suppress the difference between self and not-self. If it were the case that AHS were a breakdown in a global system like that, I would expect that victims might identify their family as strangers, etc. The particulars aren't the important thing though. I use AHS to add to blindsight and synesthesia as examples where the function-feeling equivalence which functionalism depends on appears to be violated. You have too simplistic a view of what function means in the context of an intelligent being. That is actually your whole problem: you look at machine, imagine that you can see how it works, then look at a human, can't figure out how it works, so conclude there must be something non-machine like in the human. Yet the very examples you use demonstrate that even mysterious-seeming behaviours such as those displayed in ALH are generated by neural circuitry which can be easily disrupted. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Saturday, March 1, 2014, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014 3:31:25 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 7:54:53 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 28 February 2014 01:05, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:13:22 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 26 February 2014 23:58, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. This example shows that if there is a lesion in the neural circuitry it affects consciousness. If you fix the lesion such that the circuitry works properly but the consciousness is affected (keeping the environmental input constant) then that implies that consciousness is generated by something other than the brain. Paying attention to the circuitry is a red herring. What I'm bringing up is how dissociation of functions identified with the self does not make sense for the functionalist view of consciousness. How do you give a program 'alien subroutine syndrome'? Why does the program make a distinction between the pure function of the subroutine and some feeling of belonging that is generated by something other than the progr I'm sure there is some difference, but it doesn't affect the functionality of the hand. Under functionalism, since we can observe no difference between the function of the body with or without AHS, we should assume no such thing as AHS. If consciousness is like AHS, and the hand is like the brain or body, then we should not be able to see a difference between a conscious brain and simulation of brain activity that is unconscious. There is an observable difference in the body with AHS: the subject says that it doesn't feel like his hand. This happens because the neural circuits between the hand and the language centres are disrupted. If they were not disrupted the language centres would get normal input and the subject would say everything was normal. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
Excuse my ignorance, but what is this functionalism that is supposedly disproved by AHS? -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Saturday, March 1, 2014 7:42:13 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Saturday, March 1, 2014, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Saturday, March 1, 2014 1:57:45 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 15:22, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. It's important for an animal to be able to distinguish self from non-self, as can be seen if two animals are locked in combat - one that can't tell its own limb from its opponent's is just as likely to bite itself as its prey. Repeat that often enough and you have a strong evolutionary pressure to distinguish self from non-self. I would imagine alien hand syndrome is a breakdown of this system. Sure, but I don't see that functionalism provides a basis to distinguish self from non-self other than function. As long as the functionality of the hand is there, and other people cannot tell any difference in what the hand can do, there should be no basis for any particular distress. We could make up a different evolutionary story too - that being physically close to your family or social group is important to survival and reproduction, so that there is a strong evolutionary pressure to suppress the difference between self and not-self. If it were the case that AHS were a breakdown in a global system like that, I would expect that victims might identify their family as strangers, etc. The particulars aren't the important thing though. I use AHS to add to blindsight and synesthesia as examples where the function-feeling equivalence which functionalism depends on appears to be violated. You have too simplistic a view of what function means in the context of an intelligent being. I think that you have too naive a view of what function means. That is actually your whole problem: you look at machine, imagine that you can see how it works, then look at a human, can't figure out how it works, so conclude there must be something non-machine like in the human. It has nothing to do with not being able to figure out how humans work.Nothing to do with human consciousness or biology at all. I'm *always* only talking about the bare metal basics of awareness itself. Sensation. Detection. Signal. You take them for granted, but I don't. If you take them for granted, then it is no great surprise that you can imagine consciousness coming from function. Yet the very examples you use demonstrate that even mysterious-seeming behaviours such as those displayed in ALH are generated by neural circuitry which can be easily disrupted. It doesn't matter where they are generated, all that matters is whether possession of one's own function can be defined as a computable object under functionalism. I think that it is a clear double standard to say that the 'mine-ness' of a hand can of course be detected, but the 'mine-ness' of a human experience would require zombies to justify. You're looking at the wrong thing. I don't care about the details of any particular machine or organism, I care about the properties of awareness being incompatible in every way to the properties of function unless awareness comes first. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Saturday, March 1, 2014 7:48:42 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Saturday, March 1, 2014, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014 3:31:25 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 7:54:53 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 28 February 2014 01:05, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:13:22 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 26 February 2014 23:58, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. This example shows that if there is a lesion in the neural circuitry it affects consciousness. If you fix the lesion such that the circuitry works properly but the consciousness is affected (keeping the environmental input constant) then that implies that consciousness is generated by something other than the brain. Paying attention to the circuitry is a red herring. What I'm bringing up is how dissociation of functions identified with the self does not make sense for the functionalist view of consciousness. How do you give a program 'alien subroutine syndrome'? Why does the program make a distinction between the pure function of the subroutine and some feeling of belonging that is generated by something other than the progr I'm sure there is some difference, but it doesn't affect the functionality of the hand. Under functionalism, since we can observe no difference between the function of the body with or without AHS, we should assume no such thing as AHS. If consciousness is like AHS, and the hand is like the brain or body, then we should not be able to see a difference between a conscious brain and simulation of brain activity that is unconscious. There is an observable difference in the body with AHS: the subject says that it doesn't feel like his hand. They don't have to say anything. They can keep their symptoms to themselves if they want. This happens because the neural circuits between the hand and the language centres are disrupted. If they were not disrupted the language centres would get normal input and the subject would say everything was normal. It doesn't matter why it happens, it matters that it cannot happen under functionalism in the first place. By definition, consciousness is deflated to the sum of a set of functions. The quality of inclusion or exclusion from that set is simply a matter of fact,
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Saturday, March 1, 2014 7:56:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: Excuse my ignorance, but what is this functionalism that is supposedly disproved by AHS? Functionalism, as I see it, is the philosophy that consciousness is purely a byproduct of specific functions, either physical or mathematical generally. Bruno originally defined computationalism for me as synonymous with digital functionalism. This means that there is no extra stuff that makes consciousness conscious, it is just the working of the mechanism itself which feels conscious. -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 2 March 2014 16:55, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: There is an observable difference in the body with AHS: the subject says that it doesn't feel like his hand. They don't have to say anything. They can keep their symptoms to themselves if they want. So can a blind person pretending to be able to see. The point is there is a *functional* difference because the behaviour is different. If there is no behavioural difference whatsoever then there is no disorder. This happens because the neural circuits between the hand and the language centres are disrupted. If they were not disrupted the language centres would get normal input and the subject would say everything was normal. It doesn't matter why it happens, it matters that it cannot happen under functionalism in the first place. By definition, consciousness is deflated to the sum of a set of functions. The quality of inclusion or exclusion from that set is simply a matter of fact, not a separate consideration. A program can't decide that part of itself has a quality of not being itself. That has no meaning to the function of the program. If the code works, then it is part of the program, period. If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work, but there is no language under functionalism to make that dysfunction related to what amounts to the loss of soul. You can write a program that considers the right hand self and the left hand non-self, with the consequence that the right hand will be favoured if both hands are at risk of being lost, or whatever else you want to make non-self mean. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 27 February 2014 16:43, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 9:47:33 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? When you start by assuming that I'm always wrong, then it becomes very easy to justify that with ad hoc straw man accusations. I do not in fact start with that assumption and, if you believe that I do, I suggest you should question it. I do find however that I am unable to draw the same conclusion as you from the examples you give. They simply seem like false inferences to me (and to Stathis, based on his comment). You are unable to draw the same conclusion because you aren't considering any part of what I have laid out. I'm looking at CTM as if it were true, and then proceeding from there to question whether what we observe (AHS, blindsight, etc) would be consistent with the idea of consciousness as a function. Yes, but functionalism doesn't necessarily force the claim that consciousness *just is* a function: that is the eliminativist version. More usually it is understood as the claim that consciousness *supervenes on* (or co-varies with) function (i.e. the epiphenomenalist or crypto-dualist versions). But, if we take this latter view, the conundrum is more peculiar even than you seem to imply by these piecemeal pot-shots. Rather, the *entire story* of awareness / intention now figures only as a causally-irrelevant inside interpretation of a complete and self-sufficient functional history that neither knows nor cares about it. You remember my analogy of the dramatis personae instantiated by the pixels of the LCD screen? However it would be self-defeating if our response to such bafflement resulted in our misrepresenting its patent successes because it cannot explain everything. We should rather seek a resolution of the dichotomy between apparently disparate accounts in a more powerful explanatory framework; one that could, for example, explain how *just this kind of infrastructure* might emerge as the mise-en-scène for *just these kinds of dramatis personae*. Comp is a candidate for that framework if one accepts at the outset that there is some functional level of substitution for the brain. If one doesn't, there is certainly space for alternatives, but it is fair to demand a similar reconciliatory account in all cases, rather than a distortion of particular facts to suit one's preference. What I conclude is that since the function of the limb is not interrupted, there is no plausible basis for the program which models the limb to add in any extra alarm for a condition of 'functional but not 'my' function'. AHS is the same as a philosophical zombie, except that it is at the level where physiological behavior is exhibited rather than psychological behavior. If you have a compelling argument to the contrary, I wish you would find a way to give it in a clearer form. See above. Hopefully that is clearer. I can't see that what you say above fits the bill. I don't see that criticism without any details or rebuttals fit the bill either. Whenever the criticism is It seems to me that your argument fails', it only makes me more suspicious that there is no legitimate objection. I can't relate to it, since as far as I know, my objections are always in the form of an explanation - what specifically seems wrong to me, and how to see it differently so that what I'm objecting to is not overlooked. You seem to regard rhetorical questions beginning why would we need..? as compelling arguments against a functional account, but they seem to me to be beside the point. That's because you are only considering the modus ponens view where since functionalism implies that a malfunctioning brain would produce anomalies in conscious experience, it would make sense that AHS affirms functionalism being true. I'm looking at the modus tollens view where since functionalism implies that brain function requires no additional ingredient to make the function of conscious machines seem conscious, some extra, non-functional ingredient is required to explain why AHS is alarming to those who suffer from it. Since the distress of AHS is observed to be real, and that is logically inconsistent with the expectations of functionalism, I conclude that the AHS example adds to the list of counterfactuals to CTM/Functionalism. It should not matter whether a limb feels like it's 'yours',* functionalism implies that the fact of being able to use a limb makes it feel like 'yours' by definition*. This is the entire premise of computationalist accounts of qualia; that the mathematical relations simply taste like raspberries or feel like pain because that is the implicit expression of those relations. I think if you consider my comments
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Friday, February 28, 2014 8:29:52 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 16:43, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 9:47:33 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien?When you start by assuming that I'm always wrong, then it becomes very easy to justify that with ad hoc straw man accusations. I do not in fact start with that assumption and, if you believe that I do, I suggest you should question it. I do find however that I am unable to draw the same conclusion as you from the examples you give. They simply seem like false inferences to me (and to Stathis, based on his comment). You are unable to draw the same conclusion because you aren't considering any part of what I have laid out. I'm looking at CTM as if it were true, and then proceeding from there to question whether what we observe (AHS, blindsight, etc) would be consistent with the idea of consciousness as a function. Yes, but functionalism doesn't necessarily force the claim that consciousness *just is* a function: that is the eliminativist version. More usually it is understood as the claim that consciousness *supervenes on* (or co-varies with) function (i.e. the epiphenomenalist or crypto-dualist versions). That's even more eliminativist IMO. To say that consciousness is identical to the function of a machine at least acknowledges that phenomenology is causally efficacious. To add in supervenience to non-computational epiphenomena is not really functionalism or digital functionalism or computationalism. What is overlooked is that supervenience and emergence both depend themselves on consciousness to provide a perspective in which some phenomena appear to 'emerge' from the supervening substrate. From the point of view of computation, surely computationalism cannot allow that consciousness comes as a surprise. From any comp perspective, we humans can define consciousness as emergent or supervenient, but surely arithmetic itself would not define its own conscious functionality as non-computational. But, if we take this latter view, the conundrum is more peculiar even than you seem to imply by these piecemeal pot-shots. Rather, the *entire story* of awareness / intention now figures only as a causally-irrelevant inside interpretation of a complete and self-sufficient functional history that neither knows nor cares about it. What self-sufficient functional history do you mean? When I use history I'm generally talking about a collection of aesthetic resources which have been accumulated through direct experience and remain present implicitly locally and explicitly in the absolute sense. You remember my analogy of the dramatis personae instantiated by the pixels of the LCD screen? Semi remember. However it would be self-defeating if our response to such bafflement resulted in our misrepresenting its patent successes because it cannot explain everything. We should rather seek a resolution of the dichotomy between apparently disparate accounts in a more powerful explanatory framework; one that could, for example, explain how *just this kind of infrastructure* might emerge as the mise-en-scène for *just these kinds of dramatis personae*. Comp is a candidate for that framework if one accepts at the outset that there is some functional level of substitution for the brain. If one doesn't, there is certainly space for alternatives, but it is fair to demand a similar reconciliatory account in all cases, rather than a distortion of particular facts to suit one's preference. I agree. Who is calling for facts to be distorted? Once you have pansensitivity as the primordial identity, then computation becomes explainable as the skeletal reflection of sense through insensitivity (pan-entropy (pan-negentropy)). This replaces UDA and places a limit on computation to the context of public facing communication/encapsulation and leaves some aspect of privacy trans-measurable and locally omnipotent. What I conclude is that since the function of the limb is not interrupted, there is no plausible basis for the program which models the limb to add in any extra alarm for a condition of 'functional but not 'my' function'. AHS is the same as a philosophical zombie, except that it is at the level where physiological behavior is exhibited rather than psychological behavior. If you have a compelling argument to the contrary, I wish you would find a way to give it in a clearer form. See above. Hopefully that is clearer. I can't see that what you say above fits the bill. I don't see that criticism without any details or rebuttals fit the bill either. Whenever the criticism is It
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 28 February 2014 16:44, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014 8:29:52 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 16:43, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 9:47:33 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien?When you start by assuming that I'm always wrong, then it becomes very easy to justify that with ad hoc straw man accusations. I do not in fact start with that assumption and, if you believe that I do, I suggest you should question it. I do find however that I am unable to draw the same conclusion as you from the examples you give. They simply seem like false inferences to me (and to Stathis, based on his comment). You are unable to draw the same conclusion because you aren't considering any part of what I have laid out. I'm looking at CTM as if it were true, and then proceeding from there to question whether what we observe (AHS, blindsight, etc) would be consistent with the idea of consciousness as a function. Yes, but functionalism doesn't necessarily force the claim that consciousness *just is* a function: that is the eliminativist version. More usually it is understood as the claim that consciousness *supervenes on* (or co-varies with) function (i.e. the epiphenomenalist or crypto-dualist versions). That's even more eliminativist IMO. I wouldn't disagree. You should have read on a bit further. To say that consciousness is identical to the function of a machine at least acknowledges that phenomenology is causally efficacious. Not really. Only in a crypto-eliminativist sense, which is to say no sense at all. To add in supervenience to non-computational epiphenomena is not really functionalism or digital functionalism or computationalism. What is overlooked is that supervenience and emergence both depend themselves on consciousness to provide a perspective in which some phenomena appear to 'emerge' from the supervening substrate. From the point of view of computation, surely computationalism cannot allow that consciousness comes as a surprise. From any comp perspective, we humans can define consciousness as emergent or supervenient, but surely arithmetic itself would not define its own conscious functionality as non-computational. Slipping surely into a sentence doesn't make a contention any the more plausible. It is certainly not obvious how one can begin from arithmetic and arrive at consciousness. I have already argued that the assumption of a first-personal reality, transcending any third-personal description of it, is necessitated from the outset in any theory that purports to take consciousness seriously (and that includes comp, by definition). The theory must then show how this reality comes to be discoverable under the appropriate conditions, but it doesn't thereby pull it out of a hat by magic. I think it would be foolish to expect that the consequences of any theory dealing with such fundamental questions would be obvious and therefore criticisms on the grounds of its failure to meet uninformed expectation are beside the point. . But, if we take this latter view, the conundrum is more peculiar even than you seem to imply by these piecemeal pot-shots. Rather, the *entire story* of awareness / intention now figures only as a causally-irrelevant inside interpretation of a complete and self-sufficient functional history that neither knows nor cares about it. What self-sufficient functional history do you mean? The physical history of the systems in question, for example. When I use history I'm generally talking about a collection of aesthetic resources which have been accumulated through direct experience and remain present implicitly locally and explicitly in the absolute sense. You could hardly call that a functional history though. You remember my analogy of the dramatis personae instantiated by the pixels of the LCD screen? Semi remember. Well, the analogy was that fact that the pixels are an adequate infrastructure for the portrayal of any possible drama that will fit within their confines doesn't mean that this provides a sufficient account of those dramas. Analogously, the fact that we can give a functional account of the brain doesn't mean that this provides a sufficient account of consciousness. Since we can't appeal to an external source of interpretation as we can in the analogy, we must look for a schema that can make sense of internal interpretation. If comp is correct, that interpretation requires us to cast our net pretty wide. However it would be self-defeating if our response to such bafflement resulted in our misrepresenting its patent successes because it cannot explain everything. We should rather seek a
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Friday, February 28, 2014, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 7:54:53 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 28 February 2014 01:05, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:13:22 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 26 February 2014 23:58, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. This example shows that if there is a lesion in the neural circuitry it affects consciousness. If you fix the lesion such that the circuitry works properly but the consciousness is affected (keeping the environmental input constant) then that implies that consciousness is generated by something other than the brain. Paying attention to the circuitry is a red herring. What I'm bringing up is how dissociation of functions identified with the self does not make sense for the functionalist view of consciousness. How do you give a program 'alien subroutine syndrome'? Why does the program make a distinction between the pure function of the subroutine and some feeling of belonging that is generated by something other than the program? I don't know why you distinguish between a function such as moving the hand and identifying the hand as your own. Because there is nothing that functionalism could allow 'your own' to mean other than 'it is available to be used by the system'. The alien hand is available to be used, but that is perceived to be irrelevant. That is consistent with consciousness being a set of aesthetic qualities and direct participation, but not consistent with consciousness being a complex set of generic skills. There must be some difference in the input from the hand or its subsequent neural processing for it to be identified as foreign, and this is consistent with the fact that there is a brain lesion in alien hand syndrome. Both of these depend on correctly working brain circuitry, which is why a brain lesion can cause paralysis but can also cause alien hand syndrome. The fact that the circuitry is damaged is irrelevant. The point is that functionalism could never allow consciousness to become separated from the functions of something else. Dis-ownership of yourself or parts of yourself doesn't make sense if the function is still there. How can you say that the fact that the circuitry is damaged is irrelevant? It shows that what you consider mysterious consciousness stuff is actually dependent on well defined physical processes. The alternative which would have made your point would be if the consciousness changed but the
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 28 Feb 2014, at 03:22, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. Maybe it isn't always obvious that it's my hand... I believe the brain has an internal model of the body. I guess without one it wouldn't find it so easy to control it? A body's quite complicated, after all... Why should the model include its own non-functional presence though? Because the model, the machine is not just confronted with its own self-representation, but also with truth, as far as we are. Put differently, because the machine can't conflate []p and []p p. Only God can do that. Bruno Craig -- 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/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 28 February 2014 15:22, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. It's important for an animal to be able to distinguish self from non-self, as can be seen if two animals are locked in combat - one that can't tell its own limb from its opponent's is just as likely to bite itself as its prey. Repeat that often enough and you have a strong evolutionary pressure to distinguish self from non-self. I would imagine alien hand syndrome is a breakdown of this system. -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 26 February 2014 23:58, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. This example shows that if there is a lesion in the neural circuitry it affects consciousness. If you fix the lesion such that the circuitry works properly but the consciousness is affected (keeping the environmental input constant) then that implies that consciousness is generated by something other than the brain. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Wednesday, February 26, 2014 11:17:31 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 26 February 2014 12:58, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. ? AFAICS it wouldn't even *seem* to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. I think it is generally understood that the relevant disruption to function is that of brain tissue, not that of the limb; hence the references in the passage to lesions in the corpus callosum and other areas of the *brain*. If the function of brain tissue is disrupted, then it would be consistent to expect some concomitant disruption of consciousness, per functionalism. Of course, but how is the particular disruption - that the hand appears to function normally as far as outside observers are concerned, yet there is some extra ingredient from that function which is now missing that makes it seem 'alien'. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. It's clear that's what you would expect, but to infer this much, purely on the basis of the passage you quoted, is grasping at straws. Actually it's not even that - it's a completely unsupported inference. You're paying attention to a part of the example that isn't relevant. If we did not know about the brain, and we sought a substitution level which only emulated the activity of the body, then something like alien hand syndrome would not be detectable from the outside (as long as the emulation chose to keep their knowledge of their condition to themselves). At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. I don't see how starting from an unsupported inference helps your case. In fact, if you are proposing this as an example of the strength of your position in general, it can only serve to weaken it. Right, you don't see it. The underlying thesis of functionalism and mind-brain identity theory is that the proprietary sense of self is nothing other than function itself. To me, what AHS does is call that into question as it potentially implicates self-familiarity as a superfluous feeling which has no function. The assumption from the functionalist side has been that if we identify the correct level of substitution, we can reproduce human consciousness on any substrate, but here we see that at least the physiological (rather than neurological) level of substitution, it is possible to have a disidentification without a change in function. AHS, while not proof of neurological zombies is, like blindsight, proof of the possibility of non-functional qualia. In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? When you start by assuming that I'm always wrong, then it becomes very easy to justify that with ad hoc straw man accusations.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:13:22 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 26 February 2014 23:58, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. This example shows that if there is a lesion in the neural circuitry it affects consciousness. If you fix the lesion such that the circuitry works properly but the consciousness is affected (keeping the environmental input constant) then that implies that consciousness is generated by something other than the brain. Paying attention to the circuitry is a red herring. What I'm bringing up is how dissociation of functions identified with the self does not make sense for the functionalist view of consciousness. How do you give a program 'alien subroutine syndrome'? Why does the program make a distinction between the pure function of the subroutine and some feeling of belonging that is generated by something other than the program? Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 27 February 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? When you start by assuming that I'm always wrong, then it becomes very easy to justify that with ad hoc straw man accusations. I do not in fact start with that assumption and, if you believe that I do, I suggest you should question it. I do find however that I am unable to draw the same conclusion as you from the examples you give. They simply seem like false inferences to me (and to Stathis, based on his comment). If you have a compelling argument to the contrary, I wish you would find a way to give it in a clearer form. I can't see that what you say above fits the bill. You seem to regard rhetorical questions beginning why would we need..? as compelling arguments against a functional account, but they seem to me to be beside the point. They invite the obvious rejoinder that AHS doesn't seem in principle to present any special difficulties to functionalism in explaining the facts in its own terms. You recently proposed the example of tissue rejection which invited a similar response. None of this is to say that I don't regard functional / material accounts as problematic, but this is for a different reason; I think they obfuscate the categorical distinctions between two orthogonal versions of the facts: at the reduced level of function and at the integrated level of sensory awareness / intention. Comp, for example, seeks to remedy this obfuscation by elucidating principled correlations between formal notions of reduction and integration via computational theory. Hence, per comp, the principle of digital substitution is not the terminus of an explanation but the starting point for a deeper theory. ISTM that alternative theories cannot avoid a similar burden of explanation. David -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Thursday, February 27, 2014 9:47:33 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? When you start by assuming that I'm always wrong, then it becomes very easy to justify that with ad hoc straw man accusations. I do not in fact start with that assumption and, if you believe that I do, I suggest you should question it. I do find however that I am unable to draw the same conclusion as you from the examples you give. They simply seem like false inferences to me (and to Stathis, based on his comment). You are unable to draw the same conclusion because you aren't considering any part of what I have laid out. I'm looking at CTM as if it were true, and then proceeding from there to question whether what we observe (AHS, blindsight, etc) would be consistent with the idea of consciousness as a function. What I conclude is that since the function of the limb is not interrupted, there is no plausible basis for the program which models the limb to add in any extra alarm for a condition of 'functional but not 'my' function'. AHS is the same as a philosophical zombie, except that it is at the level where physiological behavior is exhibited rather than psychological behavior. If you have a compelling argument to the contrary, I wish you would find a way to give it in a clearer form. See above. Hopefully that is clearer. I can't see that what you say above fits the bill. I don't see that criticism without any details or rebuttals fit the bill either. Whenever the criticism is It seems to me that your argument fails', it only makes me more suspicious that there is no legitimate objection. I can't relate to it, since as far as I know, my objections are always in the form of an explanation - what specifically seems wrong to me, and how to see it differently so that what I'm objecting to is not overlooked. You seem to regard rhetorical questions beginning why would we need..? as compelling arguments against a functional account, but they seem to me to be beside the point. That's because you are only considering the modus ponens view where since functionalism implies that a malfunctioning brain would produce anomalies in conscious experience, it would make sense that AHS affirms functionalism being true. I'm looking at the modus tollens view where since functionalism implies that brain function requires no additional ingredient to make the function of conscious machines seem conscious, some extra, non-functional ingredient is required to explain why AHS is alarming to those who suffer from it. Since the distress of AHS is observed to be real, and that is logically inconsistent with the expectations of functionalism, I conclude that the AHS example adds to the list of counterfactuals to CTM/Functionalism. It should not matter whether a limb feels like it's 'yours',* functionalism implies that the fact of being able to use a limb makes it feel like 'yours' by definition*. This is the entire premise of computationalist accounts of qualia; that the mathematical relations simply taste like raspberries or feel like pain because that is the implicit expression of those relations. They invite the obvious rejoinder that AHS doesn't seem in principle to present any special difficulties to functionalism in explaining the facts in its own terms. It does present special difficulties though (see above). AHS doesn't make much sense for functionalism, particularly combined with blindsight, and all of the problems with qualia and the hard problem/explanatory gap. You recently proposed the example of tissue rejection which invited a similar response. None of this is to say that I don't regard functional / material accounts as problematic, but this is for a different reason; I think they obfuscate the categorical distinctions between two orthogonal versions of the facts: at the reduced level of function and at the integrated level of sensory awareness / intention. Comp, for example, seeks to remedy this obfuscation by elucidating principled correlations between formal notions of reduction and integration via computational theory. Hence, per comp, the principle of digital substitution is not the terminus of an explanation but the starting point for a deeper theory. ISTM that alternative theories cannot avoid a similar burden of explanation. They can if they begin by accepting that what we cannot explain about consciousness is unexplainable for a good reason, namely that consciousness cannot be made any more or less plain than it is. Consciousness is what makes all things plain, so it is circular to expect that it could be subject to its own subjugation. Craig David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 28 February 2014 01:05, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:13:22 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 26 February 2014 23:58, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. This example shows that if there is a lesion in the neural circuitry it affects consciousness. If you fix the lesion such that the circuitry works properly but the consciousness is affected (keeping the environmental input constant) then that implies that consciousness is generated by something other than the brain. Paying attention to the circuitry is a red herring. What I'm bringing up is how dissociation of functions identified with the self does not make sense for the functionalist view of consciousness. How do you give a program 'alien subroutine syndrome'? Why does the program make a distinction between the pure function of the subroutine and some feeling of belonging that is generated by something other than the program? I don't know why you distinguish between a function such as moving the hand and identifying the hand as your own. Both of these depend on correctly working brain circuitry, which is why a brain lesion can cause paralysis but can also cause alien hand syndrome. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Maybe it isn't always obvious that it's my hand... I believe the brain has an internal model of the body. I guess without one it wouldn't find it so easy to control it? A body's quite complicated, after all... -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. Maybe it isn't always obvious that it's my hand... I believe the brain has an internal model of the body. I guess without one it wouldn't find it so easy to control it? A body's quite complicated, after all... Why should the model include its own non-functional presence though? Craig -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Thursday, February 27, 2014 7:54:53 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 28 February 2014 01:05, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:13:22 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 26 February 2014 23:58, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. This example shows that if there is a lesion in the neural circuitry it affects consciousness. If you fix the lesion such that the circuitry works properly but the consciousness is affected (keeping the environmental input constant) then that implies that consciousness is generated by something other than the brain. Paying attention to the circuitry is a red herring. What I'm bringing up is how dissociation of functions identified with the self does not make sense for the functionalist view of consciousness. How do you give a program 'alien subroutine syndrome'? Why does the program make a distinction between the pure function of the subroutine and some feeling of belonging that is generated by something other than the program? I don't know why you distinguish between a function such as moving the hand and identifying the hand as your own. Because there is nothing that functionalism could allow 'your own' to mean other than 'it is available to be used by the system'. The alien hand is available to be used, but that is perceived to be irrelevant. That is consistent with consciousness being a set of aesthetic qualities and direct participation, but not consistent with consciousness being a complex set of generic skills. Both of these depend on correctly working brain circuitry, which is why a brain lesion can cause paralysis but can also cause alien hand syndrome. The fact that the circuitry is damaged is irrelevant. The point is that functionalism could never allow consciousness to become separated from the functions of something else. Dis-ownership of yourself or parts of yourself doesn't make sense if the function is still there. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 26 February 2014 12:58, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. ? AFAICS it wouldn't even *seem* to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. I think it is generally understood that the relevant disruption to function is that of brain tissue, not that of the limb; hence the references in the passage to lesions in the corpus callosum and other areas of the *brain*. If the function of brain tissue is disrupted, then it would be consistent to expect some concomitant disruption of consciousness, per functionalism. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. It's clear that's what you would expect, but to infer this much, purely on the basis of the passage you quoted, is grasping at straws. Actually it's not even that - it's a completely unsupported inference. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. I don't see how starting from an unsupported inference helps your case. In fact, if you are proposing this as an example of the strength of your position in general, it can only serve to weaken it. David -- 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/groups/opt_out. -- 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/groups/opt_out.
