How has physics challenged the traditional idea of materialism?

[Pythagorean]

Yes and no. Yes, mathematically Newtonian physics is a special case of quantum theory, but there is another difference. Newtonian physics leads us to think that the material world as it is independently of us is pretty much the same as the material world we directly experience.

Only if you pretend you're a 17th century naturalist, ignorant of the last couple centuries of scientific breakthroughs. I don't.

I don't agree. I can only see quantum mechanics as a probabilistic tool. It is for predicting what we will observe at a future point. Now...you could say that that is all any science does, but the metaphysical problem still remains. Classical mechanics does not require any bizarre mental gymnastics to get from the theory to the material world we actually experience. Post-QM, "material" seems to refer only to the world we experience. It is when you try to apply the concept "material" to the entities referred to by QM that all the problems start. Material objects simply do not take every possible path at the same time. They have to be in just one place.

It appears to me that you're confusing macro-materials with micro-materials. In QM, the materials are the particles and small ensembles of particles in a small range of states. Once you start modeling atoms, many approximations enter in and the system becomes too complex to model without giving up aspects of your model. Newtonian physics deals with large ensembles of particles where we study the dynamics of the group as a whole, more so than each little particle. It's a lot like people. It's much easier to make predictions about a larger group of people than it is to make predictions about one person.

You are in effect claiming that noumena are material. This is the specific metaphysical claim that quantum mechanics undermines.

How exactly does QM undermine it? I actually believe the Angular Gyrus has a lot to do with noumena.

What does Bell's theorem mean to you? To me, it means that any local, material, metaphysical theory must be wrong. It means that a local, material, metaphysical theory is either (a) impossible (reality is non-local) or (b) necessarily incomplete (materialism fails because something else is needed to "glue" reality together.)

I'm not very familiar with metaphysics, but I'm willing to work at it. Make an argument for why Bell's theorem implies that materialism must be wrong.

 

[apeiron]

What does Bell's theorem mean to you? To me, it means that any local, material, metaphysical theory must be wrong. It means that a local, material, metaphysical theory is either (a) impossible (reality is non-local) or (b) necessarily incomplete (materialism fails because something else is needed to "glue" reality together.)

Sigh. Or (c) - locality and non-locality are both complementary aspects of being, and thus of reality modelling, in the same way that substance and form are both aspects of being, and its models.

So yes indeedy, materialism is only half the story. The local/substantial half in fact. And it must be complemented by a global/formal model of causation. A systems approach in other words.

 

[Erwins_mat]

It appears to me that you're confusing macro-materials with micro-materials.

I don't believe there is a micro/macro split in physics any more than there is a valid distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution.

The following experiment, posted by Arjen in the thread on QM would appear to support this:

http://www.physorg.com/news78650511.html

The droplet, which is about 1mm (10 million times larger than an atom), is also one million times larger than the second largest object--a 2-nm molecule called a buckyball--whose wave-particle duality was observed in 2003.

“The interest of our result comes from the fact that we observe single particle diffraction and interference with a classical system,” Couder told PhysOrg.com. “This phenomenon was thought to be reserved to the quantum scale.”

How exactly does QM undermine it? I actually believe the Angular Gyrus has a lot to do with noumena.

The Angular Gyrus is just a part of a material brain. What does this have to do with the unobservable world-as-it-is-in-itself?

QM undermines the idea that noumena are material because it suggests that unobserved "objects" do not conform to our normal ideas about what "objects" are and what sort of properties they have.

I'm not very familiar with metaphysics, but I'm willing to work at it. Make an argument for why Bell's theorem implies that materialism must be wrong.

Bell's theorem demonstrates that reality is non-local or the local intepretations of QM are necessarily incomplete. If the first is true then materialism is wrong because the the universe is non-local (it is not really "there" at all, but "somewhere else" and not in material form. If it is incomplete then you have to start inventing additional entities on top of the material world in order to account for how various bits of the universe "know" what all of the other bits are doing.

"Material" is the concept science works with, and does so very well. It just isn't a big enough concept to work when we are doing metaphysics. It fails for at least two reasons. The first is that it cannot coherently explain consciousness and the second is that it has been undermined by QM. These twin failures are, according to various people, two aspects of the same problem. I am tempted to agree, but I am unaware of any proven scientific link.

 

[Pythagorean]

I don't believe there is a micro/macro split in physics any more than there is a valid distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution.

The following experiment, posted by Arjen in the thread on QM would appear to support this:

http://www.physorg.com/news78650511.html

That doesn't really support such a claim. The divide exists in many ways. Gravity vs. QED is another example in addition to what I provided already. A particle can be a QM particle, or we can also call a larger object a particle when we treat it classically, (and we really have no choice with things like planets or even golf-balls. Just try modeling them with QM, it's impossible.

The Angular Gyrus is just a part of a material brain. What does this have to do with the unobservable world-as-it-is-in-itself?

Note that there's no certainty that it's the angular gyrus alone, but the angular gyrus is involved in our world-model building. We interpolate and extrapolate from our sensory input to create a world model (for instance, we don't experience every pixel at once, our consciousness experiences a general idea of the ensemble of pixels and fills in the blanks. I can provide you examples of exercises that will lead your brain to do so when there's nothing really there.) This is a visual example, but the angular gyrus integrates many senses. It is involved in cross-sensory metaphors, as well ("her sweet face").

QM undermines the idea that noumena are material because it suggests that unobserved "objects" do not conform to our normal ideas about what "objects" are and what sort of properties they have.

This is very arbitrary though. You're basing your argument off of "Our normal ideas about what "objects" are". I don't have the same reservations about materials that you do. You're putting limits on materials and admitting that it's a false assumption in the first place.

Bell's theorem demonstrates that reality is non-local or the local intepretations of QM are necessarily incomplete. If the first is true then materialism is wrong because the the universe is non-local (it is not really "there" at all, but "somewhere else" and not in material form.

There's a lot of people that think QM is incomplete. Especially since it's incompatible with gravity. You follow from that with:

If it is incomplete then you have to start inventing additional entities on top of the material world in order to account for how various bits of the universe "know" what all of the other bits are doing.

This is simply not true. All I have to do is show how the materials give rise to the phenomena. After I can show that, it appears as magic and duality only to the willfully ignorant. This is the ground science has conquered over mysticism for centuries.

"Material" is the concept science works with, and does so very well. It just isn't a big enough concept to work when we are doing metaphysics. It fails for at least two reasons. The first is that it cannot coherently explain consciousness and the second is that it has been undermined by QM. These twin failures are, according to various people, two aspects of the same problem. I am tempted to agree, but I am unaware of any proven scientific link.

I fiercely disagree that QM undermines materialism. Materialism is "all phenomena arises from material interactions". QM, especially QFT, completely supports that. Look at the wiki on the Standard Model. That table of particles are the materials.

As for consciousness, the question is being tackled scientifically. See VS Ramachandran or Christoph Koch, for starters. Theoretical Neuroscience is making ground. If you watch Christoph Koch's lecture, he provides his experimental methodology and proposes that he has found a consciousness neuron.

The biggest problem though, explaining the concept of consciousness to laymen, is that you have a preconception of what consciousness is and it will be difficult for you to accept how simple it is. It's very possible that you've added some imagination and ideals to your idea of consciousness (as we all have) and you have to do a little mental exercise to escape such a pitfall.

 

[Erwins_mat]

The biggest problem though, explaining the concept of consciousness to laymen, is that you have a preconception of what consciousness is and it will be difficult for you to accept how simple it is. It's very possible that you've added some imagination and ideals to your idea of consciousness (as we all have) and you have to do a little mental exercise to escape such a pitfall.

The biggest problem is defining consciousness at all, be it to a layman or an expert. The bottom line is that the only way you can define it is subjectively, and that leads to it being incompatible with the concept of "material".

I do not have any preconceptions about "what consciousness is". I do have a-priori knowledge about what certain words or concepts refer to. There is no "consciousness" anywhere in the material world and this can be demonstrated very easily.

Materialists have three choices:

(1) Claim consciousness doesn't exist. (eliminative materialism).

(2) Claim "consciousness is [material object/process X]" where X generally refers to brain activity or information-processing or behaviour, etc... The problem with this option is that when you subsequently ask questions about "consciousness" you get answers about brain activity, information-processing or behaviour instead of what anybody (including the person offering the explanation), actually means by "consciousness."

When Richard Dawkins said that "consciousness is the biggest unknown in science" he did not mean that it is hard to define or explain the evolution of brain activity.

(3) Claim "consciousness is produced by [material object/process X]", at which point consciousness is being described as something that "comes from" brains like milk from a mammary gland. It ends up being dualism-by-accident, and this sort of epiphenomenal consciousness is inexplicable by evolutionary processes because it is held to be non-causal over matter.

The problem is not that the experts can't explain consciousness to laymen. The problem is that the experts (if they are materialists) don't even understand their own position on consciousness. (1) denies consciousness exists even though you know damned well it exists, (2) is an attempt to escape from a logical problem by using one word to mean different things at different times and (3) is logically incompatible with materialism, and therefore incoherent when uttered by a materialist.

 

[apeiron]

If you watch Christoph Koch's lecture, he provides his experimental methodology and proposes that he has found a consciousness neuron.

Which neuron is that? Can you supply the name or a reference please.

 

[Pythagorean]

Which neuron is that? Can you supply the name or a reference please.

His talk:

One of his papers:
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/refweb/paper/148.pdf

By name, you mean the neuron itself? I suppose you would call it a consciousness neuron. Different neural networks have different functionality, and generally, each neuron only has one function (i.e. we have pain neurons, mirror neurons, motor neurons, etc)

The biggest problem is defining consciousness at all, be it to a layman or an expert. The bottom line is that the only way you can define it is subjectively, and that leads to it being incompatible with the concept of "material".

You've assumed your conclusion by stating a bottom line. If you apply your bottom line to anything, it can't be very scientific, so you're not even allowing it to be scientific in the first place.

Koch doesn't differentiate consciousness from awareness. If your conscious of something, you're aware of it. This is important to understand, because their are processes that our brain undergoes (even cognitive processes) that we are not conscious of.

Others specify that consciousness is self-awareness, which is a subset of awareness itself. This is where world-model building becomes important. In creating a world model, we essentially create a boundary between us and the rest of the world. We define self by what is not the world model.

As an aside, and as Koch says in his talk, a most of science has actually progressed void of a definition. The definition is part of the discovery.

For an interactive definition of Koch's definition of consciousness, go here:
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/
click 'quest for consciousness', then click "consciousness" (it's the first word in the first paragraph, it's not in a menu)

 

[Erwins_mat]

You've assumed your conclusion by stating a bottom line.

I assumed nothing.

If you apply your bottom line to anything, it can't be very scientific, so you're not even allowing it to be scientific in the first place.

Eh?

Koch...

I don't care what Koch says.

Consciousness: At this point in the scientific exploration of this phenomena, it cannot be defined rigorously.

It cannot be defined at all, not now, not ever, by anything calling itself "science."

Here was my argument. What is wrong with it?

Materialists have three choices:

(1) Claim consciousness doesn't exist. (eliminative materialism).

(2) Claim "consciousness is [material object/process X]" where X generally refers to brain activity or information-processing or behaviour, etc... The problem with this option is that when you subsequently ask questions about "consciousness" you get answers about brain activity, information-processing or behaviour instead of what anybody (including the person offering the explanation), actually means by "consciousness."

When Richard Dawkins said that "consciousness is the biggest unknown in science" he did not mean that it is hard to define or explain the evolution of brain activity.

(3) Claim "consciousness is produced by [material object/process X]", at which point consciousness is being described as something that "comes from" brains like milk from a mammary gland. It ends up being dualism-by-accident, and this sort of epiphenomenal consciousness is inexplicable by evolutionary processes because it is held to be non-causal over matter.

 

[JoeDawg]

this sort of epiphenomenal consciousness is inexplicable by evolutionary processes because it is held to be non-causal over matter.

It wouldn't really matter, evolutionarily speaking, if consciousness was epiphenomenal, since its the process creating consciousness that would be selected for, and it might be selected, for a different reason. And most animals don't have our level of consciousness, so if its an aberration, its extremely rare, which would make sense if consciousness itself doesn't give a great advantage.

Which isn't to say I'm advocating that consciousness is epi, I just don't think the evolution argument holds water.

 

[apeiron]

By name, you mean the neuron itself? I suppose you would call it a consciousness neuron.

You of course picked up Kock's inconsistency in proposing feed-forward pyramidal cells in cortex layer 5 as putative "consciousness neurons", then citing the finding of single cell Jennifer Aniston and Bill Clinton recognition responses in the three layer archicortex structure of the hippocampus. And amygdala even.

So evidence has hardly been "found".

But again that's irrelevant as consciousness is best understood as a global function of a system, not a local property of a material.

 

[Erwins_mat]

It wouldn't really matter, evolutionarily speaking, if consciousness was epiphenomenal, since its the process creating consciousness that would be selected for, and it might be selected, for a different reason.

I don't understand. Why would the process for creating consciousness be selected for if consciousness does not improve reproductive fitness?

And most animals don't have our level of consciousness

I don't agree. My cat doesn't have our level of intelligence, but he is every bit as conscious as we are. Consciousness and intelligence are continually conflated by materialists. They are NOT the same thing.

Deep Blue: highly intelligent, not conscious.
Cats: Not particularly intelligent, totally conscious.
Humans: intelligent, conscious and self-conscious (which is what you get when you have both high levels of intelligence and consciousness).

This is a serious problem for scientists. Stephen Jay Gould has written that "the dinosaurs were not evolving towards any form of consciousness." I have a lot of respect for Gould, but this is a load of old nonsense. The dinosaurs were not evolving towards high levels of intelligence, but they were almost certainly as conscious as modern birds or turtles. They didn't need to be evolving towards any form of consciousness, because they were already conscious. I personally suspect that consciousness first appeared at the end of the ediacaran era and was the cause of the cambrian explosion, a very long time before evolution got around to producing dinosaurs.

 

[JoeDawg]

I don't understand. Why would the process for creating consciousness be selected for if consciousness does not improve reproductive fitness?

There is more to evolution than reproductive fitness. Take homosexuals for instance, they reproduce far less often given their inclinations, and yet their continued existence shows that its not so simple as reproductive fitness. The point is, you are characterizing it as 'the process for creating conscioussness', when that could just be a side effect of another more important process.

Malaria resistance, for instance, occurs genetically in certain populations, but it also carries with it the danger of sickle cell anemia. In populations close to the equator, where malaria is present, the malaria resistent genes survive quite well, even though they carry with them something that would otherwise be entirely detrimental.

Evolution is complex, and our brains are too. It may simply be that the way our brains process information begets an advantage, and the way our brains process information ALSO creates the epiphenomena of consciousness.

As far as your cat goes, I don't think anyone can lay claim to the level of distinction that you are claiming. We're only scratching the surface of neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Its an open question what consciousness is... and intelligence spawns just as many arguments.

 

[Pythagorean]

You of course picked up Kock's inconsistency in proposing feed-forward pyramidal cells in cortex layer 5 as putative "consciousness neurons", then citing the finding of single cell Jennifer Aniston and Bill Clinton recognition responses in the three layer archicortex structure of the hippocampus. And amygdala even.

So evidence has hardly been "found".

But again that's irrelevant as consciousness is best understood as a global function of a system, not a local property of a material.

What inconsistency? You seem to misunderstand. Koch is not claiming that consciousness takes place in one location in the brain. It actually seems to be a systems approach.

For instance, consider the motor neural network. A sub-network of this is mirror neurons (this is how newborns can mimic your facial expression right out of the womb, we're hardwired to connect visual percepts to muscle outputs.)

The Visual consciousness network would be a subset of the visual network (This is what Koch is working on). The way he tests it is pretty straight forward. If you do the test where the dot disappears from your visual consciousness, you may understand how the distinction can be made. Your brain is still totally aware of the dot, but you are not consciously aware of it. Koch measured neural activity during this experiment and found neurons that only fired when the person was aware of the dot. Of course, this is only one example of many similar tests. This is the important distinction of consciousness from awareness: our brain is aware of many different stimuli at once, it passes very few requests to the higher-level newtowrks where conscious decisions are made.

Koch proposes there are several kinds of consciousness. For instance, your language network would have a sub-network for when consciousness enters the signaling process pertaining to language computing (as Koch describes in his presentation, we have a vague idea of what we're going to say, we don't plan out noun-adverb-adjective-etc, we just think of the general idea and the words come out. At one time, this was a conscious process (when we were learning basic language) and we can still consciously reflect on it. The former would be a case of a conscious network utilizing the hippocampus to create an unconscious, more automated network, the latter would be a case of the sub-network, "language consciousness", for instance.

In the same way we have a pain network that consists of pain neurons. (We call them pain neurons because they're part of the network that sends the signal of pain to the brain, not because the pain neuron itself holds and special properties over the whole brain).

 

[Erwins_mat]

There is more to evolution than reproductive fitness. Take homosexuals for instance, they reproduce far less often given their inclinations, and yet their continued existence shows that its not so simple as reproductive fitness.

That is just a form of "malfunction" as far as evolution is concerned. I do not believe the same can be said of consciousness. What could consciousness be a malfunction of?

The point is, you are characterizing it as 'the process for creating conscioussness', when that could just be a side effect of another more important process.

What could be more important than actually being conscious? Can you imagine doing all the things you consciously do without being conscious?

Malaria resistance, for instance, occurs genetically in certain populations, but it also carries with it the danger of sickle cell anemia.

And that is a side-effect of having two copies of a gene which is useful when you only have one. Yes, evolution works in many wonderful ways, but you are trying to tell me that consciousness, which appears to us to be needed for almost everything we do, is an accident or a side-effect or a malfunction. I don't see why anyone should actually believe such an explanation. It doesn't make any sense.

Evolution is complex, and our brains are too. It may simply be that the way our brains process information begets an advantage, and the way our brains process information ALSO creates the epiphenomena of consciousness.

Consciousness is an accidental side effect of intelligence? Again, I simply don't buy it. I need both my consciousness and my intelligence. Both are indispendible for me as a conscious animal.

 

[Pythagorean]

That is just a form of "malfunction" as far as evolution is concerned. I do not believe the same can be said of consciousness. What could consciousness be a malfunction of?

Malfunction implies intention. Evolution doesn't think. It "rolls the dice". Here's an explanation on how our thinking processes could be "malfunctions":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABfXj0-v8tc&feature=player_embedded

 

[Pythagorean]

(1) Claim consciousness doesn't exist. (eliminative materialism).

That depends on how you define consciousness. I don't have as much trouble defining it as you do.

The longer you avoid using a definition, the more wiggle room you have. Koch avoids this idea of all encompassing consciousness that you must be thinking of. He defines the visual consciousness he's working on and proposes that there's probably more than one kind of consciousness. It necessarily exists, it's just not what you thought it was.

(2) Claim "consciousness is [material object/process X]" where X generally refers to brain activity or information-processing or behaviour, etc... The problem with this option is that when you subsequently ask questions about "consciousness" you get answers about brain activity, information-processing or behaviour instead of what anybody (including the person offering the explanation), actually means by "consciousness."

Don't you think it's interesting that the response you get from the people actually studying it is dull in comparison to what you expected, so you think it's wrong? Maybe your reaction is emotional. Maybe your version of consciousness, 1) doesn't exist. Maybe you have a very active imagination (thanks to your angular gyrus "malfunctioning").

(3) Claim "consciousness is produced by [material object/process X]", at which point consciousness is being described as something that "comes from" brains like milk from a mammary gland. It ends up being dualism-by-accident, and this sort of epiphenomenal consciousness is inexplicable by evolutionary processes because it is held to be non-causal over matter.

I don't get it... so energy and velocity and acceleration... you think these are all dualist ideas just because they're events and not materials? The argument is that the events arise from interactions between materials, not that events don't exist... or even that events must be materials too (so, no milk).

 

[Erwins_mat]

That depends on how you define consciousness. I don't have as much trouble defining it as you do.

How do you define it?

The longer you avoid using a definition, the more wiggle room you have.

I haven't "avoided using a definition." I have explicitly stated that no non-subjective definition is possible in principle.

Don't you think it's interesting that the response you get from the people actually studying...

Are you suggesting I haven't done any research into scientific attempts to explain consciousness?

At this point I am considering walking away from the discussion on the grounds that, as usual, the materialists are arguing from authority, questioning my emotional stability and suggesting I am insufficiently educated on the subject.

I don't get it... so energy and velocity and acceleration... you think these are all dualist ideas just because they're events and not materials?

I have no idea what you are talking about. Those things are properties of material objects. No problem there... Consciousness is not a property of a material, regardless of how desperately the materialists try to bash the square peg into the round hole.

The argument is that the events arise from interactions between materials, not that events don't exist... or even that events must be materials too (so, no milk).

Consciousness is not "a material event." What you are saying only makes sense to materialists who have decided a priori that there must be some sort of materialistic explanation of consciousness. It's not unlike young Earth creationism, which makes perfect sense to the YECs but looks like unintelligible nonsense to anyone who is not a YEC.

Subjective experience belongs nowhere *IN* any concept of a material world. It is the whole of phenomenal-material reality. It is nowhere is any "noumenal material reality".

I am a scientific realist and a rationalist. I do not have any agenda to defend religion, paranormalism or anything related to it. I am, however, increasingly embarrassed by the nonsense spewed from my own side of the science/religion debate when it comes to trying to explain consciousness in terms of matter. Sometimes you just have to admit that you got it wrong, and when it comes to consciousness, the materialists have got it wrong. The longer they resist admitting so, the more embarrassing it gets and the more the credibility of genuine science and genuine skepticism are compromised.

 

[apeiron]

What inconsistency? You seem to misunderstand. Koch is not claiming that consciousness takes place in one location in the brain. It actually seems to be a systems approach.

Koch does talk about complex adaptive systems too, but that just adds to the inconsistency of his approach.

For instance, consider the motor neural network. A sub-network of this is mirror neurons (this is how newborns can mimic your facial expression right out of the womb, we're hardwired to connect visual percepts to muscle outputs.)

OK, now check your primer on baby brain development and tell me how those mirror neurons do their job when they are not functionally connected at birth.

It would be the superior colliculus that is the seat of this reflex in the newborn.

The whole mirror neuron saga is another sad example of lost in the woods people are.

The Visual consciousness network would be a subset of the visual network (This is what Koch is working on). The way he tests it is pretty straight forward. If you do the test where the dot disappears from your visual consciousness, you may understand how the distinction can be made. Your brain is still totally aware of the dot, but you are not consciously aware of it.

More idiot dualism. Retinal ganglion cells firing is not "the brain being still totally aware".

And you will also have noted that the story on the coloured dot example was different from the face recognition one.

Downward inhibition is a systems story of course. And neurally it is straightforward. Plenty of examples like the placebo pain story of how the anterior cingulate gates activity in the periaqueductal grey.

Koch proposes there are several kinds of consciousness. For instance, your language network would have a sub-network for when consciousness enters the signaling process pertaining to language computing (as Koch describes in his presentation, we have a vague idea of what we're going to say, we don't plan out noun-adverb-adjective-etc, we just think of the general idea and the words come out. At one time, this was a conscious process (when we were learning basic language) and we can still consciously reflect on it. The former would be a case of a conscious network utilizing the hippocampus to create an unconscious, more automated network, the latter would be a case of the sub-network, "language consciousness", for instance.

In the same way we have a pain network that consists of pain neurons. (We call them pain neurons because they're part of the network that sends the signal of pain to the brain, not because the pain neuron itself holds and special properties over the whole brain).

Koch calls habits and automaticisms his zombie mechanisms. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way things are. Consciousness is the combination of what is novel and what is learnt. Or more correctly, attentive processing and habitual processing make up the hierarchy of anticipatory awareness.

 

[Ferris_bg]

Materialists have three choices:

(1) Claim consciousness doesn't exist. (eliminative materialism).

(2) Claim "consciousness is [material object/process X]" where X generally refers to brain activity or information-processing or behaviour, etc... The problem with this option is that when you subsequently ask questions about "consciousness" you get answers about brain activity, information-processing or behaviour instead of what anybody (including the person offering the explanation), actually means by "consciousness."

When Richard Dawkins said that "consciousness is the biggest unknown in science" he did not mean that it is hard to define or explain the evolution of brain activity.

(3) Claim "consciousness is produced by [material object/process X]", at which point consciousness is being described as something that "comes from" brains like milk from a mammary gland. It ends up being dualism-by-accident, and this sort of epiphenomenal consciousness is inexplicable by evolutionary processes because it is held to be non-causal over matter.

The only possible scenario for the materialistic view for me is (2).

If you read http://books.google.com/books?id=XuVzeSTFq-0C&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39" or this:

Consciousness is a higher-level or emergent property of the brain in the utterly harmless sense of 'higher-level' or 'emergent' in which solidity is a higher-level emergent property of H2O molecules when they are in a lattice structure (ice), and liquidity is similarly a higher-level emergent property of H2O molecules when they are, roughly speaking, rolling around on each other (water). Consciousness is a mental, and therefore physical, property of the brain in the sense in which liquidity is a property of systems of molecules

and if we accept that emergence is a psychological property as shown here, (3) is not possible.

Because consciousness is a supervenient part of a human, it can initiate changes in him, as evidenced by studies of neural plasticity (processes of reorganization).

This eliminates (1).

So the only materialistic picture left (2) is to view conscious experience as integration of neural activities and information-processing. But again you must find a way to explain how information could originate in matter.

 

[apeiron]

So the only materialistic picture left (2) is to view conscious experience as integration of neural activities and information-processing. But again you must find a way to explain how information could originate in matter.

While you are thankfully taking the commonsense approach, where this breaks down is thinking that consciousness is "just" a higher level emergent property like liquidity.

What this fails to do is do justice to downwards causation. So in the systems approach, there is something else going on. What emerges is connected to what it emerged from in what Hoftstadler once popularised as a "strange loop". This is also sort of the thinking behind cybernetics and quite explicitly with anticipatory neural network models of guys like Grossberg.

Which is why earlier in the thread I said materialism - an ontology of substance - must be paired with a complementary ontology of form.

Which is where information theoretic approaches come in as information is the modern atomisation of what people mean by form, pattern, global organisation. Meaning even.

So materialism is not up to the task of modelling complex adaptive systems in general (and conscious brains are an example of a complex adaptive system). But materialism is still going to be part of the complexity story, as the source of bottom-up constructive action. However complexity also recognises top-down constraint. The ontology of form in other words.

To describe mind, or complexity of any kind, as properties that simply emerge leads to epiphenomenal conclusions. The revolution is to be able to see how the materials emerge as a result of the constraining forms (even as synergistically, the form emerges out of the free constructive action of the materials).

Self-organisation is also what they call it.

 

[JoeDawg]

That is just a form of "malfunction" as far as evolution is concerned. I do not believe the same can be said of consciousness. What could consciousness be a malfunction of?

You're trying to fit facts to your theory. There are all sorts of possible advantages to homosexuality, not the least of which is reducing violent competition for mates within small tribal family groups. And I never said homosexuality is a malfunction. I said your theory about sexual fitness was oversimplified, and therefore did not take into account the reason homosexuality survives.

What could be more important than actually being conscious?

In terms of survival? Ants and bees do a better job at survival than we do.

but you are trying to tell me that consciousness, which appears to us to be needed for almost everything we do, is an accident or a side-effect.

Actually, there are fMRI studies that have been done recently that show that decision making, at least under certain conditions, is pre-conconsious, that is, first the decision gets made by the brain, and then later we become aware of making a decision.

I need both my consciousness and my intelligence.

Or you think you do.

 

[Pythagorean]

Koch does talk about complex adaptive systems too, but that just adds to the inconsistency of his approach.

I ask again for you to point out the inconsistency. You said yourself in your last post:
"materialism is still going to be part of the complexity story"

But your arguments generally seem to be hostile towards the bottom-up side. I'm not so hostile towards the top-down side because I see the potential for complementary interaction between the two disciplines. They appear to be mutually inclusive.

Unfortunately, you haven't provided any specific scientific approach. I've actually been interested to hear a specific experimental example of your approach of top-down approaches.

I've written SOC programs before (I 've written basic sandpile and forest fire percolation programs) as SOC systems are heavily studied (in terms of turbulence and fluids) at my university, so feel free to draw on my experience.

OK, now check your primer on baby brain development and tell me how those mirror neurons do their job when they are not functionally connected at birth.

It would be the superior colliculus that is the seat of this reflex in the newborn.

The whole mirror neuron saga is another sad example of lost in the woods people are.

As I stressed before, mirror neurons need not be in a location in the brain, they are throughout the brain. They are defined by their functionality, not their geography.

The functionality is the same, but we don't know whether the neural operations (in terms of information transfer) are exactly the same.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118545484/abstract
(Developmental Science)

And you will also have noted that the story on the coloured dot example was different from the face recognition one.

Yes, I never commented on the face recognition experiment (at least, not intentionally). I don't remember him explaining the details of that experiment and I can't imagine any way you'd be able to control for all the different types of computations the brain could be making.

The coloured dot examples is simple and straight-forward (though it's limited only to visual consciousness).

Downward inhibition is a systems story of course. And neurally it is straightforward. Plenty of examples like the placebo pain story of how the anterior cingulate gates activity in the periaqueductal grey.

Yes, I made a post about the placebo effect in the medical sciences forum:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=346339

I can't disagree with you, but it's still bizarre to me.

Koch calls habits and automaticisms his zombie mechanisms. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way things are. Consciousness is the combination of what is novel and what is learnt. Or more correctly, attentive processing and habitual processing make up the hierarchy of anticipatory awareness.

Ignoring your offensive statements, this is definitely not dualism. If you are understanding this in a dualist way, you're probably misunderstanding it.

You'll have to be more explicit than "learnt" and "novel". There are several types of memory, and "novel" is subjective. "anticipatory awareness" is linked to mental illness. You're going to have to be more rigorous in your definitions if you want to have a productive discussion.

I know that I'm not conscious of all my memories at once. Memories appear more for my consciousness to access. That's not to say that events (i.e. memories) don't influence the state of consciousness.

 

[apeiron]

As I stressed before, mirror neurons need not be in a location in the brain, they are throughout the brain. They are defined by their functionality, not their geography.

This may be your "expert" opinion, but actual experts feel the whole mirror neuron thing to be way over-blown.

http://www.cns.nyu.edu/heegerlab/content/publications/Dinstein-CurrBiol2008.pdf

Mirror neuron research in humans
The relatively clear description
of a monkey ‘mirror system’
composed of two cortical areas
that contain mirror neurons has,
unfortunately, morphed into
a rather vague concept in the
search for an equivalent human
‘mirror system’...

Conclusions
Mirror neurons are exceptionally
interesting neurons, which
may underlie certain social
capabilities in both animals and
humans. However, the study of
mirror neurons and the ‘human
mirror system’ in particular has
been characterized by much
speculation and relatively little
hard evidence...

 

[apeiron]

But your arguments generally seem to be hostile towards the bottom-up side. I'm not so hostile towards the top-down side because I see the potential for complementary interaction between the two disciplines. They appear to be mutually inclusive.

Unfortunately, you haven't provided any specific scientific approach. I've actually been interested to hear a specific experimental example of your approach of top-down approaches.

This is simply your lack of comprehension.

I have never said anything other than my position is dichotomistic. The causality of a system involves BOTH the bottom-up and the top-down component.

This is the standard view of the neuroscientist. Check out the publications of a good lab and every paper is discussing the balance of the two.

http://www.cns.nyu.edu/heegerlab/?page=publications

Where I would go further is first in stressing that the top-down causality in a system is more than simply emergent. It is actually causal. And so it deserves equal status in modelling.

And then I tie this back to metaphysics. The same debate was had by Aristotle, Plato, etc, over substance vs form. And the same mistake is made by "materialists" who want to root reality in its substances. No, we need substance and form as complementary poles of modelling. We need both bottom-up constructive action (substantial action) and top-down constraint (the constraint provided by form - self-organisation, resonances, habits).

Going even further than this, hierarchy theory provides a concrete model of how bottom-up and top-down interact to create systems. So it is the route to a general mathematics of any kind of system. It becomes the definition of "a system".

Materialism is not wrong. It is just half right. Or less than half, because we need substance, form, and the third thing of their interaction. So materialism is a third right.

Theories of consciousness based on materialism rather than systems will also get something right, and quite a lot wrong.

Crick was definitely a hardcore materialist. I quized him closely and he really did believe that some collection of componentry (claustrum, pyramidal neurons, 40 hertz rhythm) would "magically" generate a state of consciousness. He did think of consciousness as a thing (so a substance ontology) and not as a general systems property.

He didn't actually seem that hopeful (as the neuroscience wasn't going his way) but he said it was an approach worth pursuing "just in case it really did turn out to be that simple".

Koch was harder to work out. He knew enough neuroscience to understand the systems case. But he was tucked in tight under Crick's wing and toed the party line.

Given you seem to base so much of your own position on Koch, perhaps you share his confusions?

http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/religion-06.pdf

God could adjust synaptic release probabilities here and ionic channel openings over there, enough to aect the actions of the organism, yet without leaving an overt material trace, carrying out the hidden work of the Spirit

Koch's essay does show why there is tension over a systems approach. As he says, Crick was an arch-materialist in order to be anti-religion.

And systems science/holism has often been hijacked by those who see in it an anti-materialist discourse.

So the world divides neatly for some. You are either materialist (substance ontology) or you are woo-woo. In physics, you can also say you are either a believer in locality or you are woo-woo.

The systems approach is based on synergy and complementarity. Two things are needed in interaction. So you need the material but also the formal. You need the local, but also the global.

Let's then spell out what this means for a student of consciousness. You have to spend equal time studying both the local and the global levels - both the neuroscience and the sociology. That was why Luria, for example, was such a great brain theorist.

In this modern age, you also need the right maths with which to model. Computational models, and information theoretic approaches generally, are rooted in materialism, so share its intellectual short-comings.

Systems science uses hierarchy theory, and today is finding a foundation in thermodynamics - dissipative structure, self-organised criticality, scalefree networks and other such models.

I've written SOC programs before (I 've written basic sandpile and forest fire percolation programs) as SOC systems are heavily studied (in terms of turbulence and fluids) at my university, so feel free to draw on my experience.

You are too kind.

 

[Pythagorean]

This may be your "expert" opinion, but actual experts feel the whole mirror neuron thing to be way over-blown.

http://www.cns.nyu.edu/heegerlab/content/publications/Dinstein-CurrBiol2008.pdf

1) We are both appealing to authority. I do not appeal to my own authority. I'm not sure if you are now, but you have in the past. I don't claim expertise in neuroscience; I am here to learn about it. I am a student of neuroscience.

2) Did you conduct a bias search? The article you posted doesn't refute mirror neurons in humans. It refutes the current experimental approach to understanding them and suggests better approaches. From your own cited paper:

The critical challenge in
studying the human mirror system
is to devise new experimental
protocols that can assess response
selectivity to movements in the
human brain.

Furthermore, my neuroscience textbook, "Neuroscience" (5th e, 2008), p. 446 present a non-bias picture of mirror neurons, stating simply that there's much controversy surrounding it.

But this is all besides the point and wandering off-topic.

I have never said anything other than my position is dichotomistic. The causality of a system involves BOTH the bottom-up and the top-down component.

But you seem to assume that people on the bottom-up side are calling you a woo-woo for being top-down. Is this a defense mechanism? Because I've never attacked the top-side approach at all. It's your argument style that crackpottery seems to emerge from, not your general stance. I'm actually still interested in the applied organic approach, but you leave me wanting; your statements are often vague and ambiguous.

Koch and Crick

Koch is the first neuroscientist I came across working on consciousness. I do not take his words as gospel, but I am currently trying them out. You still haven't explicitly pointed out his inconsistency. I will listen to a meaningful, informative argument.

In fact, I appreciate that you posted abstracts from the Computational Neuroimaging Laboratory. Are there any such papers on consciousness?

Materialism is not wrong. It is just half right. Or less than half, because we need substance, form, and the third thing of their interaction. So materialism is a third right.

Yes, and the claim I refuted in this thread is "materialism is dead" which you seem to agree with. My approach is materialistic. It is how I understand things and it has always been a useful approach for me. This is why I went into physics in the first place.

This doesn't mean I completely ignore the top-down approach, just that it's not natural to me and I have to spend more time understanding it.

I do, however believe (and it's a working belief, not something I'm fixed to) that you can't have top-down causation without an initial material influence. That is, I see the top-down effects much like a spring, where the initial "force" was applied by the material, and the spring exerts a "force" back on the material. So in this case, our neurons came first, then the emergent properties that influence causation back down to the neurons.

 

[apeiron]

I do, however believe (and it's a working belief, not something I'm fixed to) that you can't have top-down causation without an initial material influence. That is, I see the top-down effects much like a spring, where the initial "force" was applied by the material, and the spring exerts a "force" back on the material. So in this case, our neurons came first, then the emergent properties that influence causation back down to the neurons.

Yep, that would be the standard intuition. And it would be the radical step to abandon the idea that what you have initially is the local material.

This is why it is a meta-physical discussion. And why I cite a tradition of thought going back through the likes of Peirce and Anaximander.

For the organic view, the initial condition is an act of separation. You begin with a state of vagueness (neither substance, nor form, just a symmetry of potential). Then both the event and the context, the figure and the ground, arise jointly as a separation.

This thinking can be applied to neurology. For example, the evolution of neurons themselves. Once there were cells that released hormone signals that diffused. Then came neurons that were local nodes in global networks. Vague communication became crisp information.

1) We are both appealing to authority. I do not appeal to my own authority. I'm not sure if you are now, but you have in the past. I don't claim expertise in neuroscience; I am here to learn about it. I am a student of neuroscience.

Erm, it frequently sounds as though you do claim expertise.

Anyway, I definitely do claim expertise here.

Koch is the first neuroscientist I came across working on consciousness. I do not take his words as gospel, but I am currently trying them out. You still haven't explicitly pointed out his inconsistency. I will listen to a meaningful, informative argument.

I did indeed point out the inconsistencies.

It might be worth you checking out his most recent writings. He is now in partnership with Tononi, which is interesting as he was to Edelman what Koch was to Crick.

Tononi actually has an approach that I can agree with, though it could pay more homage to those who said the same thing in earlier decades (like Ashby).

http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/koch-tononi-08.pdf

This is a good pop intro. I don't agree with the reductionist attempt to slice away stuff that is "unneccessary" to consciousness. This is repeating the Crick-Koch mistake. But on the other hand, the integrated information theory of consciousness (a re-badging of the Edelman-Tononi dynamic core hypothesis) is about bottom-up~top-down integration and the development of organised mental/neural states.

This also is a useful resource as a decent summary of "models of consciousness".

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Models_of_consciousness

I'll pick out a few of the ones I like.

Wallace has advocated a network-theoretic modelling perspective on global workspace theory (Wallace 2005). In this view, transient links among specialized processing modules comprise dynamically formed networks. The ignition of a global workspace corresponds to the formation of a ‘giant component’ whereby previously disconnected sub-networks coalesce into a single network encompassing the majority of modules. The emergence of giant components in dynamic networks can be considered as a phase transition.

The information integration theory of consciousness (IITC; Tononi 2004, 2008) claims that consciousness corresponds to the capacity of a system to integrate information. A system is deemed capable of information integration to the extent that it has available a large repertoire of states and that the states of each element are causally dependent on the states of other elements. Like the dynamic core hypothesis, the IITC is based on the notion that the occurrence of any conscious scene simultaneously rules out the occurrence of a vast number of alternatives and therefore constitutes a highly informative discrimination. Also like the dynamic core hypothesis, the IITC proposes that the thalamocortical system provides the neuroanatomical substrate for the neural processes that underlie consciousness.

In contrast to their earlier position that 40 Hz oscillations were sufficient for consciousness (Crick and Koch 1990), Crick and Koch (2003) suggested instead that consciousness may require competition among “coalitions” of neurons, in which winning coalitions determine the contents of consciousness at a given time. They pointed out that the notion of neuronal coalitions bears similarities both to the older Hebbian concept of a cell assembly, as well as to the more recent concept of a dynamic core.

(Even Crick-Koch were forced to toy with a systems approach, although they offered nothing actually new.)

The page is of course very incomplete as it does not get into the non-linear dynamics crowd (Freeman and Kelso in particular), nor the anticipatory systems crowd (Grossberg, Neisser, McKay, etc).

Anticipation is the key to consciousness theorising, or even just neuroscience, as the brain is a prediction machine.

The standard reductionist computer model is bottom-up in being input-output. Data arrives, then it can get processed. The systems approach is anticipatory as global top-down constraints set the ground in advance of local bottom-up activity. Data is anticipated and then responded to mostly in terms of its absence.

See this paper for an example of how this fact is still a "surprise".

http://zadorlab.cshl.edu/PDF/otazu-etal2009.pdf

2) Did you conduct a bias search? The article you posted doesn't refute mirror neurons in humans. It refutes the current experimental approach to understanding them and suggests better approaches. From your own cited paper:

Did I dispute that "mirror neurons" exist?

My point was that they were one of those bandwagons in consciousness studies where a straightforward and unsurprising (to a systems thinker) experimental fact was being seized upon as the holy grail. It was part of the whole Theory of Mind module and autism farago. Just another example of the reductionist camp going off the rails.

 

[Pythagorean]

you are too kind

This is the kind of hostility I'm talking about. When I said "draw on my experience", I meant in your explanations of applied organic logic, feel free to use technical SOC language and examples. I meant that they were an avenue of communication between us that might help you better communicate your ideas to me. I did not mean that I had any advice for you or had superior ground.

I don't know what you're personal history is with reductionists, but your arguments really do have a flavor of bitterness in them that you keep exacting on me. You, of all people, should realize your interpretations of my posts are anticipatory. I'm not a bitter old reductionist, I'm a young student of science. I happen to have been trained as a reductionist, but academics doesn't define me. As an improv musician, I'm very top-down oriented (of course, I couldn't help but be drawn the reductionist view, and so learned musical theory... but that only enriched my top-down view).

I thought of something today. We talk about top-down and bottom-up, but it appears to me that as a society physics was middle-out. That is, we started somewhere in the middle (Newtonian physics) where our intuition was comfortable and we expanded in both direction... reduction (QM) and integration (GR).

I'm curious what do you think of modern psychology? I had previously seen it as top down, but it appears to be the middle, where sociology is the top-down. Unfortunately, social sciences aren't very well respected, even the most rigorous ones like economics (and especially economics, I suppose).

Erm, it frequently sounds as though you do claim expertise.

Anyway, I definitely do claim expertise here.

I claim a basic expertise in physics and in general science, but not as specialized in neuroscience... not yet. I appeal to authorities and muse on them from my understanding of their experiments and its implications.

I did indeed point out the inconsistencies.

You pedantically stated a couple facts and stated there was an inconsistency, but you didn't really say what you were thinking.

This is a good pop intro. I don't agree with the reductionist attempt to slice away stuff that is "unneccessary" to consciousness.

This is how Koch defines consciousness. He's stated before that he equates it to awareness. So, for instance, you didn't notice the chair pushing up on your bottom until I mentioned it. What are the difference in firing configuration between when the chair's pushing up on your bottom and when you notice it's pushing up on your bottom? That's the question Koch wants to answer.

The key idea here is the first person acknowledgment. Who is it that just noticed the chair was pushing up on your bottom? You. Why aren't you aware of all the things your brain is doing? Breathing and heart-beat for instance. You can directly override your natural breathing (to a point), but not your heartbeat.

This isn't, of course, the same as saying that these things don't have an affect on your consciousness. Short breath can cause the experience of panic, for instance. But the system that is operating when you are aware of something pertains you, the first person that's having the experience, so it appears important to me. It need not be the seat of consciousness to provide insight about consciousness.

The page is of course very incomplete as it does not get into the non-linear dynamics crowd (Freeman and Kelso in particular), nor the anticipatory systems crowd (Grossberg, Neisser, McKay, etc).

Nonlinear dynamics will be important to my approach. I have an adviser on my committee just for that purpose. I understand (and generally accept) the idea of anticipatory systems, but have no technical training in it.

Did I dispute that "mirror neurons" exist?

My point was that they were one of those bandwagons in consciousness studies where a straightforward and unsurprising (to a systems thinker) experimental fact was being seized upon as the holy grail. It was part of the whole Theory of Mind module and autism farago. Just another example of the reductionist camp going off the rails.

If this is the case, then your tangent was irrelevant. I am not claiming that mirror neurons have anything to do with consciousness (whether it's the case, or not, or somewhere in between). I was illustrating the concept of sub-networks/systems.

 

[apeiron]

So, for instance, you didn't notice the chair pushing up on your bottom until I mentioned it. What are the difference in firing configuration between when the chair's pushing up on your bottom and when you notice it's pushing up on your bottom? That's the question Koch wants to answer.

This is what anticipation based approaches to consciousness explain.

If you are serious, I would throw out Koch and start by reading Stephen Grossberg and his ART approach.

ART proposes how learned bottom-up categories and learned top-down expectations interact to create these coherent representations. Learned top-down expectations can be activated in a data-driven manner by bottom-up processes from the external world, or by intentional top-down processes when they prime the brain to anticipate events that may or may not occur. In this way, ART clarifies one sense, but not the only one, in which the brain carries out predictive computation.

http://cns-web.bu.edu/~steve/GroConsClearsNN2007.pdf

http://www.cns.bu.edu/Profiles/Grossberg/groASAttBra1995.pdf

 

[apeiron]

I thought of something today. We talk about top-down and bottom-up, but it appears to me that as a society physics was middle-out. That is, we started somewhere in the middle (Newtonian physics) where our intuition was comfortable and we expanded in both direction... reduction (QM) and integration (GR).

Sigh. Another example I have often mentioned. Why is it that physics ended up with a dichotomy framing a hierarchy? Because that is the way all things work.

QM is our model of local events, GR is our model of global constraints. The classical middle realm then arises out of the mixing of the substances with the forms.

And see how QM enshrines my point that the small grain local stuff is not there ab initio. There is only a potential (whose outline is described by the wavefunction) and then this has to be collapsed into concrete reality by top-down "observation". Or thermal decoherence rather.

So the systems is manufacturing its own materials. That is what QM tells us. The universe dissipates possibility into actuality.

It is not your usual way of thinking of course. But then who studies systems much these days?

Materialism is the ontology of classical physics (you said yourself that you were still basically Newtonian!). QM should have been the final blow that ushered in a full blown systems approach to physics. But people keep wanting to patch up materialism with hidden variables or many worlds.

QM is about how events are context dependent. Yes there is still that famous degree of freedom, that randomness or uncertainty about what actually happens. But that is the nature of constraint (vs mechanistic control).

Top-down constraint can narrow possibility down, force something to happen, but it cannot determine all aspects of what happens. The local grain has irreducible symmetries and a symmetry can flop either way.

So whether we are talking physics or neurology, the systems logic is the same.

 

[Pythagorean]

http://cns-web.bu.edu/~steve/GroConsClearsNN2007.pdf

This is actually exactly the kind of thing I've been looking for. You must realize that there is no top-down approach to neuroscience being utilized at my school. I am on my own in designing my degree. The neuroscience program here is mostly bottom-up fashioned. I really don't have the resources and have had difficulty hunting credible sources down on the web to see the top-down approach.

You seriously probably don't realize how much time that link has saved me on finding a basis for my upcoming research paper.

This is what anticipation based approaches to consciousness explain.

If you are serious, I would throw out Koch and start by reading Stephen Grossberg and his ART approach.

I am definitely serious about this approach. However, I won't throw out Koch so quickly. It is my goal to be the middle man between the bottom-up and top-down. I won't throw any professional scientists out until I have a better general understanding of neuroscience.