Is dualism the key to understanding human culture and consciousness?

[TheStatutoryApe]

And to TheStatutoryApe. I don't think the analogy is quite the same. The computer screen is just a set of pixels firing out photons, so you are simply linking two different complex physical phenomena. The brain/mind problem links completely different phenomena.

I don't believe it to be the same only similar. The computer takes input, processes it, and creates a representation of it. The manner in which a computer does this is quite different from the manner in which a nervous system does it. What about this, aside from the fact that you are the only "observer", makes the representation of information "in your head" such a different phenomenon?

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I'm not sure. I can't even imagine a world in which body = qualia as you put it. I definitely couldn't believe that this was true in our world.

Then what of the fact that manipulation of the brain induces experiences of different "qualia"?

 

[Sorry!]

I'm not sure. I can't even imagine a world in which body = qualia as you put it. I definitely couldn't believe that this was true in our world.

Aside from what StatApe pointed out your mistakenly taking 'body' to mean 'human' body. Body just means physical form. Everything has a body. For qualia I would say their body is more the brain. I'm sure experiencing qualia is not a HUMAN experience, other creatures can experience the same things we can even make robots know when it is experiencing certain colours etc... So for me to say it is the human body is completely rediculous which is why I never said that.

 

[JoeDawg]

I'm not sure. I can't even imagine a world in which body = qualia as you put it. I definitely couldn't believe that this was true in our world.

Have you ever seen one of those paint-by-numbers kits you can buy?

It gives you the outline of a picture with numbers all over it, a set of different colored paints, and a chart that tells you which paint color corresponds to which number.

Even television, or a computer monitor, builds the picture one pixel at a time, in this paint by numbers fashion. Although much faster obviously.

So, red is just representation, no different from 1 or 5, or 'bird'. Its the pattern that we arrange the numbers in that gives the picture its meaning. So its not just about one neuron firing, its about what happens when certain ones fire together and in what order that gives us our picture.

 

[wittgenstein]

What about the below pattern?* Is it a pattern of a young girl or a pattern of an old lady? Perhaps, information is more than just a pattern.
* physics forum did not let me change my site to a better one and I lost the site.

 

[wittgenstein]

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/YoungGirl-OldWomanIllusion.html"

 

[wittgenstein]

If I understand the process in Godel's brain while he thinks of his incompleteness theorm, do I understand his incompleteness theorm? Is the math superfluous? Is there a difference between a computer understanding an equation and a conscious person understanding the same equation?

 

[wittgenstein]

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Rabbit-DuckIllusion.html"

 

[wittgenstein]

Or are you saying that information is when one pattern ( the pattern of our neurons firing) is superimposed on another pattern )? If so, then there is no difference between a current computer and a conscious understanding. Are you saying that computers are conscious or that people are not conscious?

 

[Moridin]

* The nature of subjective experience, or 'qualia'- our 'inner life' (Chalmers' "hard problem");
* Binding of spatially distributed brain activities into unitary objects in vision, and a coherent sense of self, or 'oneness';
* Transition from pre-conscious processes to consciousness itself;
* Non-computability, or the notion that consciousness involves a factor which is neither random, nor algorithmic, and that consciousness cannot be simulated (Penrose, 1989, 1994, 1997);
* Free will; and,
* Subjective time flow.

There are, arguable, perfectly tenable non dual explanations for all of those points. For instance, Dennett denies qualia, rejects any notion of a Cartesian theater (leads to an infinite regress), holds that cognition is an emergent property, does not agree that cognition is non-computational, that compatibilist freedom is fully compatible with determinism. The last point is too vague for me to address.

I will ask my general purpose questions for the dualist perspective and see if anyone care to discuss these from a dualist stand point. I would be very interesting how a dualist would respond to these.

If the mind is not the brain, then

- Why is there a correlation between brain damage and impaired cognitive functions?
- Why is there a correlation between chemical imbalances and impaired cognitive functions?
- Why is there a correlation between drug use and impaired cognitive functions?
- Why is there a correlation between complexity of the brain and complexity of the mind in the animal kingdom?
- How does the immaterial part of cognition interact with the material part? Anything that can interact with something material must surely be material by definition.
- Why did human evolution select for large, messy, and vulnerable brains? If that which we really do is determined by a Cartesian style ghost in the machine, then there is no evolutionary rationale for these sort of brains.
- Why does the brain appear to be modular?
- When and how in the evolutionary history of the human brain did it become dual? Most dualists do not hold that the other great apes or, say, amniotes, are dual in this way. Why?

etc.

It seems to me that these questions are very difficult to answer from the dualist perspective. It also seems that dualism is a minority position among cognitive scientists and that a lot of scientists who are uncomfortable with a non-dual explanation is really looking for a skyhook (An explanation of design complexity in the universe that does not build on lower, simpler layers). Obviously, this last part is an heavily biased interpretation in favor of some sort of mind-brain identity explanation.

 

[Moridin]

Or are you saying that information is when one pattern ( the pattern of our neurons firing) is superimposed on another pattern )? If so, then there is no difference between a current computer and a conscious understanding. Are you saying that computers are conscious or that people are not conscious?

Maybe if you think of cognition as gradual, rather than an all-or-nothing property, these sorts of reasoning might become clearer.

 

[wittgenstein]

"Maybe if you think of cognition as gradual, rather than an all-or-nothing property, these sorts of reasoning might become clearer."
Moriden
My posts in this thread deal only with JoeDawg's contention that information is a pattern and only a pattern. Perhaps a good analogy is that if one sees understanding as a pattern in our brain superimposed on outside reality, then the pattern in one's brain can be thought of as a grid. Grids must be taken "all or nothing"*.Note that i do not take this position, I only offer it as a possible defense of JoeDawgs position. If one rejects the double pattern idea then one is left with the single pattern explanation of information, which I hope I have shown to be absurd.
* I am not saying that a grid must streach to infinity.

 

[JoeDawg]

Or are you saying that information is when one pattern ( the pattern of our neurons firing) is superimposed on another pattern )? If so, then there is no difference between a current computer and a conscious understanding. Are you saying that computers are conscious or that people are not conscious?

My impression is that computers are not conscious, at least, in the same way we are, but neither are dogs or mice, or whales or paramecium. I don't know what consciousness is, that's just what seems to be the case. I do think one can get a good analogy from databases, which put data into a certain context. All our knowledge is context specific, but we can also do a statistical analysis and make predictions.

 

[Moridin]

This statement will obviously be filled by my prejudices and biases, but it seems to me that viewing consciousness or cognition as an all-or-nothing proposition that applies to only to humans is terribly anthropocentric and extra-natural. It also seems reasonable to hold that other organisms can use contextual clues to make predictions about the world. There is at least a clear evolutionary rationale for ability for (crude) prediction, just like there is a clear evolutionary rationale for (crude) eyes for locomotive organisms that live in a transparent medium.

 

[Coldcall]

There must be different levels of conciousness. The idea that human's suddenly developed consciousness as an emergent property seems pretty unlikely. More like that consciousness emerged slowly, layer upon layer, and no doubt there were important bifurcations along the way, but it did not happen overnight.

I would imagine even microbes have some level of consiciousness. Perhaps the ability to reproduce is a twin requisite for consciousness to emerge in its most primitive configuration and we happen to be at the other end of the scale.

If microbes and animals don't have any consciousness then it would appear that they are some sort of zombie type cut-outs used as stepping stones for us and consciousness to evolve. Unlikely.

 

[wittgenstein]

I'm confused. Why do you think that I said that only humans can be conscious? True, I did say that current computers are not conscious but that was the extent of my eliminations for possible consciousness.