RE: 2C Mary
Bruno Marchal At 23:35 03/06/03 +1000, Colin Hales wrote: Dear Folks, Once again I find myself fossicking at the boundaries and need to ask one of those questions. My first experience with an asker of such a question was in the last couple of years at high school. I'll tell you about it because, well, the list could use a little activity and I hope the 'fabric' list doesn't mind the rather voluminous joining post. The story: Your post is not very clear to me. If you can link me (us) to a place where you elaborate a little bit, that could help ... Bruno Hi Bruno, I've enjoyed the list dialog but I'm on a mission and the dialog is off it. Selfish, but I have a timescale. I'll likely resume here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MindBrain/ I am trying to delineate and explain to myself, in way convincing enough for general consumption, what may be the only 'fundamental' aspect of a very deep physicalist model of qualia. This fundamental aspect may be related to the nature of the deep structure of spacetime that causes EPR style apparent non-locality. Things are proximal deep down that don't appear proximal to us at the macro-3-space scale we inhabit. That proximity is inherited because it makes the matter we are constructed of. What it means is that inverse phenomenology, which you experience as 'appearance' when matter is acting like it is interacting with exotic matter that doesn't even exist, may inherit nonlocality. Split a single brain apart and you still have one entity having one set of qualia. At least that's what I'm trying to work out. My clumsy first pass at this is 2C Mary. I hope I get better at it! cheers, Colin
Re: 2C Mary - How minds perceive things and not things
Hi Been lurking a few weeks, feeling a little overwhelmed by how much more everyone seems educated on the topic than I've managed to absorb through my own casual readings. Internet geek, psychonaut from South Africa, no formal education. :-) (Apologies for length - so much I want to cover) R Hlywka wrote: Think of a brain more than just an intake valve, reacting to similar stuff, and not so similar stuff. Yes it may be more than an input valve in the sense that it's an information processing organ, but it's still largely just an automation organ governed by rules, filters and prior knowledge (genetic or learned through bumps on the head as we stumble). A key factor here is the automation element. I don't have the references at hand (but it's available online) in which some researchers (well one in particular whose name escapes me) theorises that as humans we are 99.999% automation, with the only real stream of conscious thought being the 0.001% clean slate we start off with if you take away the predisposed starting conditions of genetics and nurture. My point may not be directly relevant to the thread, but it's useful to remember in the context of the simulation argument. It's much easier to code an automated system (even a self-learning one) than it is to code conscious thought. Given enough processing power and computational cycles, it's possible to accept that the output may so closely resemble conscious thought that it can be defined as such, even if it's only a self-evident to the program itself (i.e. as a starting condition, when X = Y, consider self as Z(en) :-) But that is merely predisposed grow pattern. There is an interesting paradox here though. While we could write off everything we think/do/feel as merely iterations of an existing predisposed grow pattern, and that all external input in addition to the predisposed grow pattern as the same process occuring to external things, we are still faced with the perception (illusion?) that we are conscious and that we can influence the direction in which our lives move forward (or consciously adjust our pattern matching techniques to better suit survival) Then there is the added element of randomness or perhaps entropy ... even in a 100% controlled simulation experiment, with every possible starting condition being accounted for, something new can still enter the equation. In turn this leads to more knowledge about starting conditions, which affects the next simulation, which in turn gives rise to a new random element. What is this random element exactly? I don't know (besides unlearned knowledge). Seems like the more we learn about the universe, the more questions we don't have answers for. In this sense, an infinite number of simulation programs only serve as a filter for discovering a more complete set of starting conditions for each iteration. (Assuming you have an existing 'reality' to compare the simulations to). Anyway, my point is that any predisposed grow pattern is just a filter technique for finding out what has been missed from the initial starting conditions, even if the predisposed grow pattern is an entirely random biological process. (life continues even if the organisms don't) but this is where you get a smart galaxy. it can learn to filter out what it feels it does not need to PAY ATTENTION TO. It's much harder to consiously learn filteration patterns than it is to unconciously learn them. Just observe any child growing up - they take on more of their parents behavioral patterns through unconcious behavioral duplication than anything else. (Kinda in direct opposite to Do as I say, not as I do) The fact that an organ can replicate the filtration processes of other organs in it's sphere of influence does not mean it's smart. Parrots can fool people into thinking they're conscious of the meaning of the words they replicate, but they're not much smarter than any animal that realises it can have an easy ride to food and protection. I'd say that's more instinct than 'smart'. Ditto for humans. Instinctively we replicate the behavioral patterns and learnings of the other humans within our sphere of influence because if we don't - we get rejected (or in some cases killed) because we don't resemble our family/tribe/community closely enough. (You want cultural diversity - come to South Africa - no matter how PC you may feel you are, integration is a massively difficult task for any species, even within the species itself. Even a conscious attempt demonstrates just how preconcieved our thinking patterns really are) We code our memory by the continious rearangement of pathways. This is an entirely unconscious process, born of millions of years of accidental combinations of chemicals and environment. Working just on a sort of game theory principle, even the most simple of single celled organisms would find it beneficial to colocate as a multicellular organism for the simple purpose of reducing the number of functions each
Re: 2C Mary - How minds perceive things and not things
Just a note. Think of a brain more than just an intake valve, reacting to similar stuff, and not so similar stuff. There are so many things we need to take into consideration. Genetics. We are born with a specific preprogramed set of organization and hardware. the way the neurons are preorganized, and the way they go about utilizing and organizing and transfering specific information. We are predisposed if you will. However, there's also nurture. Even from starting in the womb, we recieve biorythms of our mother, which our whole body sets to. What she ingests, the anxieties she feels. We feel. Not that it's a good or bad thing. BEcause I would seriously wonder what would happen to a child born in the matrix with no combination of Biorythms to build on, it would be like being born empty. that would be your clean slate, aside from the genes aspect. Next you have the BIO aspect of our hardware. It ain't plastic and metal. It moves and changes and grows. Continuously. There are specific pieces that are formed in seperate parts of the brain... But that is merely predisposed grow pattern. meaning, our whole brain can actually do every tasks that our parts do for us, but through evolution, we have managaed to pick up certain precoded hardware forms, if you will, that are wired and organized to preform certain ways. Then you get the whole consciousness/unconsiousness, combined with your intact of outside stimuli, including ingested foods/toxins. That all combines to decide what will go on with your brain You brain is so much more than a computer.. think of it like a galaxy or even it's own universe. It's predisposed to be a certain way. and even if you take out all outside stimuli, it is still on... and it will still process and continue changing and revolving without anything. each of it's pieces will change , and work around each of them... kinda like the conservation of angular momentum, and the way galaxies get all squished... but it's SO MUCH MORE. then you add in ONE factor, and everything is changed. EVERYTHING. but this is where you get a smart galaxy. it can learn to filter out what it feels it does not need to PAY ATTENTION TO. It can forget it. It will all get in on some level mind you. It will process subliminal messages ect. But it still has the capacity to realize what to listen to and what not to. If it has already realized that performing X is imorral and wrong, you send it x subliminally, it will not suddenly prefrom X... unless you bypass all the wiring, switch to rightbrain processing, tell it to either run on auto pilot, or put in some information to reorganize the way the mind percieves X as being Okay to preform or not. The point? I don't know, just giving you guys some info on brains.. To actually copy one would be NEAR TO IMPOSSIBLE. unless you could copy the position of everysingle neuron and chemical within the brain and send it. One wrong positioned neuron, one lost connection... you have a different person. ... Mind you, one may not make THAT big of a difference... may be as light as having a beer or not. But if you repostion a pathway by mistake. Who knows what could happen This all brings up more questions. What about memory transfer. We code our memory by the continious rearangement of pathways. Unless you could copy the coding and rearrangement, decode it by that persons CODING... then figure out the next persons coding. and recoded the information, then force their brain the ralign... it seems impossible. We are each different. to put in someones else thought into me, for example. I may just remember my childhood in a different light. because it would be reacting to my chemicals, my preexisting knowledge, and my makeup of my nuerons, and how they preform. you would have to develop a way for the brain to learn to accept and digest incoming brain knowlegde. Not that it's not possible. We just have to learn it. and to learn something we are not predisposed for, takes a long time. it's like takeing a CD, and continuingly puting it in your microwave and hoping that when you push the microwave buttons, that instead of Frying the CD and catching the mircowave on fire, it will somehoe recognize that a CD is there and mutate to learn how to digest it. Mind you the microwave is made of mental.. the brain is not. Not saying it's impossible. the brain would just have to learn some new ways of coding. Which brings to mention... how many other ways of CODING are there? I mean, our brain has evolved to the point to where it is now, and it has learned to coded certain things certain ways now BY INSTINCT but what if we could use our actual processing ability, to realize the next step in eveolution, and train our brains to make the change itself?... The only reason why were aren't doing it, is because we aren't forced to. If we can find it. then offer the brain a route to form around it, who knows what could
Re: 2C Mary
I think your idea makes sense. Just like the distance between two particles is not 'nothing' but a real property of the universe at that time (therefore there are 3 things in mary's brain), also the specific configuration of neurotransmitters and electrical impulses in the brain is something not less real than the individual constituent parts of the brain itself. So it could very well be that we are this something (this configuration). Maybe there is something it feels like for the distance between two particles to increase. Another possibility is that subjective sensations and qualia are the only things that exist, the very structure of the universe, and the existence of the physical, and even the way it seems to all make sense, these maybe only details of the experiences that we happen to have. I imagine an infinite dimensional space in which every possible quale has one dimension, with intensity ranging from 0 to infinity. Within such a framework, every stream of consciousness could be defined as a multidimensional curve. At Point A you have pain in your neck of intensity X, see a red blob with intensity Y and so forth. Then your point at that time would be (x,y) in a 2dimensional space (for simplicity). This solves copy paradoxes and teleportation arguments, if it's not clear how it does so feel free to mail me. I have an additional thought about qualia that I haven't found in the literature. For us to talk about qualia the brain needs to represent them. If the brain represents them, then they are not qualia anymore. When we say the redness of red, the brain is representing this, so in the end it IS all a matter of data structures and representation. This in my opinion invalidates all dualistic theories, since it eliminates the need for any kind of soul and for a connection between soul and hardware. Any thoughts on this? mirai++ - Original Message - ??? : Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED] ?? : 'everything' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] : 2003?6?3? 22:35 ?? : 2C Mary Dear Folks, Once again I find myself fossicking at the boundaries and need to ask one of those questions. My first experience with an asker of such a question was in the last couple of years at high school. I'll tell you about it because, well, the list could use a little activity and I hope the 'fabric' list doesn't mind the rather voluminous joining post. The story: Person X raises his hand in class and the question is asked. The most insanely stupid question. At least that's what it appeared to be to most of the class. Snicker. Guffaw. Snicker. Rhubarb. Rhubarb. A mexican wave of derision filters through the pubescent ranks. That wave didn't get past me. I looked at person X across the room. Yes, on the face of it that question was the pathetic pleading of the apparently brain dead. Yet I knew it could not be. For person X was one of those kids that got scarily high marks. I knew that the question had answered something far deeper for person X than the shallow meanderings of the distinterested that formed the rest of the class sitting in judgement. And none of them would ever realise that. That's the stupid question story. Now for the apparently stupid question, which I'll pose in 2 parts. The first part is a little background. For those of you who subscribe to the PSYCHE lists, you will have seen my recent question Exploded Brain Mary on PSYCHE-D. This question is in pursuit of understanding of a topic not apparent in the question and I'm afraid I can't go into detail. It's about resolving the bottom layer of a speculative model for qualia. Now this model is around 11 layers deep. It's a very detailed model and I'm going to do my best to bring it into the public eye for scrutiny in due course. Somehow. Suggestions anyone? There is no way I can possibly bring you all up to speed on the whole thing but I can say that I have hit a final wall of mystery which appears to suggest something that may be true about consciousness that may be the 'fundamental' bedrock. Something that is breathtakingly simple yet so odd I am here to ask you folks to see what I see. To see where it leads. I really don't know if it's well trodden ground or not. The second part is 2C Mary. This is a small thought experiment designed to illustrate as simply as I can the possibility for a mechanism for access to apparently physics-violating phenomena. Those interested in philosophy of mind will recognise that poor neuroscientist Mary has been the subject of many a thought experiment and she has acquiesced to appalling things in the name of science. This one is no different! Let's get rid of Mary's brain completely. A radical brainectomy. We are going to replace it with two particles. Each particle is travelling at the speed of light, C, but in perfectly opposing directions. The distance between them is growing at a speed of 2C. Now nothing is actually moving at 2C and all is well for
RE: 2C Mary
Hi, From: Mirai Shounen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] I think your idea makes sense. Just like the distance between two particles is not 'nothing' but a real property of the universe at that time (therefore there are 3 things in mary's brain), also the specific configuration of neurotransmitters and electrical impulses in the brain is something not less real than the individual constituent parts of the brain itself. So it could very well be that we are this something (this configuration). Maybe there is something it feels like for the distance between two particles to increase. Another possibility is that subjective sensations and qualia are the only things that exist, the very structure of the universe, and the existence of the physical, and even the way it seems to all make sense, these maybe only details of the experiences that we happen to have. I imagine an infinite dimensional space in which every possible quale has one dimension, with intensity ranging from 0 to infinity. Within such a framework, every stream of consciousness could be defined as a multidimensional curve. At Point A you have pain in your neck of intensity X, see a red blob with intensity Y and so forth. Then your point at that time would be (x,y) in a 2dimensional space (for simplicity). This solves copy paradoxes and teleportation arguments, if it's not clear how it does so feel free to mail me. I have an additional thought about qualia that I haven't found in the literature. For us to talk about qualia the brain needs to represent them. If the brain represents them, then they are not qualia anymore. When we say the redness of red, the brain is representing this, so in the end it IS all a matter of data structures and representation. This in my opinion invalidates all dualistic theories, since it eliminates the need for any kind of soul and for a connection between soul and hardware. Any thoughts on this? mirai++ Re the latter thought: Can I suggest reading a pile of Daniel Dennett? The 'representationalist' or its extremum: the eliminativist end of consciousness is, as are all other philosophical positions as far as I can tell, both right and wrong. (The exception: the projectivist, this seems to match the model). I have said elsewhere: If representation is all these is to consciousness then a mediocre poet could make paper hurt. Yes there is representation. However, the representation is in matter, literally. Not just a bunch matter pointing at a thing, but the thing. Re the former thought: I am at the end of a very long formulation of a theory and it is sourced entirely through the multi-disciplinary study of brain matter over 2 years of 'lockup'. I already know where and how and why the effects I describe are carried out with anatomical clues in neurons and glia (astrocytes). That side of it is all in the bag. I don't need a solution to that end of the detail to qualia. Job's done. It's the fundamental nature of the _visibility_ of the phenomena used to generate that is what my question is all about. -- An observation: 1) There is a spectacular lack of posts with links to papers and other supporting material. 2) Nobody has come out with a silver bullet to refute it to death. I conclude that I am out on a novel but breezy little speculative ismuth at the frontier of knowledge. I'm starting to get used to that. :-) It seems to be the lot of the guy holding this kind of proposal. It's a dirty job but Oh well, I tried. Cheers, Colin Hales
Re: 2C Mary
On Tuesday, June 3, 2003, at 03:17 PM, Colin Hales wrote: Re the latter thought: Can I suggest reading a pile of Daniel Dennett? The 'representationalist' or its extremum: the eliminativist end of consciousness is, as are all other philosophical positions as far as I can tell, both right and wrong. Hmm.. I've read a few piles of Dennett myself, so I wonder what your take is on the essays Instead of Qualia and Quining Qualia.. I believe Dennett makes a good case that before you seek confirmation for your favorite theory behind qualia, you first ought to argue that the very idea of qualia is something worth taking seriously. Also.. you say that there are 3 things in 2C Mary's brain..the two points and their distance..well, why not every subdivision of that distance too? Or every set of subdivisions? You ask: What argument removes that third 'thing' from Mary as an (cognitive) entity occupying our universe? I find I can no longer dismiss this third thing. I have an argument: no 'things' in this sense can be cited as playing any informative, explanatory roles in Mary's behavior. In any case one ought to have arguments for including entities in theories, not against. (..sorry to occupy everything-list with this, but I'd be interested in continuing somewhere else. One day I'd like to have the time to discuss how consciousness relates to the computationalist TOE views presented here (especially Bruno's and Juergen's) though..)
Re: 2C Mary - Check your concepts at the door
My physics is decades-old first-year U level (I'm a computer science type). But if I'm not mistaken, there's no such thing as a 2C speed, or a 2C closing of separation between two objects. All speeds can only be measured from some reference frame that is travelling with one of the objects (say A) or another, and no other object (say B) can be observed to be closing at faster than C. Similarly, if we're measuring the approach speed of A from our reference frame that is travelling with B, we can never observe A approaching at greater than C. I'm not really sure how this relativistic stuff impinges on the rest of your argument. I've always held out the weirdness of what happens to the concept of speed at high speeds to be an example of the limited domain of applicability of every concept idea. i.e. speed only makes sense at low speeds, paradoxically enough. Similarly, color wouldn't make sense below the size of wavelengths of light, etc. What this tells us is that words (terms) e.g. speed, color, right-wing zealot make sense only within delineated contexts. (e.g. the latter term probably is hard to apply to slugs, but then again... ok it is really hard to apply to rocks sensibly..) Words are descriptions which arguably only make sense within a (theory - in the formal-logic sense) or at most within a closely related cluster of similar theories. Theories just being possibly large but finite self-consistent logical descriptions of lots of things and relationships between those things. Every theory has a domain of discourse that it can be said to be about. It may be a very broad domain of discourse, but there will always be perfectly valid and coherent other concepts and theories whose domains of discourse bear no relationship (or no essential relationship) whatsoever to the domain of discourse of the first theory. -- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. - Oscar Wilde
Re: 2C Mary - How minds perceive things and not things
Colin Hales wrote: The real question is the ontological status of the 'nothing' in that last sentence. I am starting to believe that the true nature of the 'fundamental' beneath qualia is not only about the 'stuff', but is actually about all of it. That is, the 'stuff' and the 'not stuff'. So. Anyone care to comment on the ontological status of 'not thing'? I believe our brains and minds are difference engines. What they do is respond in a feedback loop with perceptual signals in such a way as to continually sort things, by the single rule of this is more different from that than it is from that, so I'll represent that comparative level of difference (in a compact way that can be stored and retrieved quickly). In other words, it organizes its internal representation of what's out there so that the more different, less different relations between representational symbols in the brain are as close as possible to mirroring the more different, less different relations among chunks of reality. Objects in the world, for example, are individuated (their boundaries from other objects determined, and thus the extent that their identity applies to) on the basis of a rigorously mathematical, and simple, algorithm of these are the best clusters of all kinds of similarities and their boundaries are where the most differences (of many kinds) occur. This individuation by difference-measurement applies equally well when turned inward on itself to create abstract theories of abstract domains (e.g. higher math and logic, language about thoughts). I would contend that notions like abstraction into generalization-specialization hierarchies of noun and verb (thing and relationship) concepts emerge spontaneously if you simply mix a represent the differences principle with an achieve most compact representation principle. So what does all this musing about conceptualization of the world have to do with the world (universe) itself, or what that universe really is ? That's a hard one. The best I could come up with is that the multiverse or plenitude is the capacity for all differences and configurations of differences to manifest themselves. Most parts of that will be ungrokable by brains like ours because only those parts which have organized configurations of differences exhibiting space-time-like locality, energy, matter etc which behave within limits that allow formation of emergent systems of bigger, observable, simple configurations of differences will be observable universes (to difference-engine brains like ours that were lucky enough to emerge as one of those emergent systems in a hospitable energy regime. Or Whatever. -- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. - Oscar Wilde
Re: 2C Mary
At 23:35 03/06/03 +1000, Colin Hales wrote: Dear Folks, Once again I find myself fossicking at the boundaries and need to ask one of those questions. My first experience with an asker of such a question was in the last couple of years at high school. I'll tell you about it because, well, the list could use a little activity and I hope the 'fabric' list doesn't mind the rather voluminous joining post. The story: Your post is not very clear to me. If you can link me (us) to a place where you elaborate a little bit, that could help ... Bruno
