One of those consciousness threads

[octelcogopod]

It was extremely insightful to say the least, and actually changed some of my fundamental thinking on the issue.

I just have one more question..
I will read metzingers paper after I have posted this question, so if I come back with my question answered I will edit my post.

So on to the question;
You use the words "virtual qualia" and "virtual self", so I'm interested in what exactly this virtual "thing" is..
The brain "engine" gives arise to the virtual self and qualia, right?
So how do we define this virtual qualia, how can we make a model for it, explain it, understand it, within the limits of the physical world?

Or can't we? (Within the limits of the physical world I mean)

I mean surely, if the universe is just one big amazing "blob" of energy, then where in this energy can we explore this virtual qualia?
Can we only explore it from within the virtual self?

 

[Doctordick]

Hi Paul,

I enjoy talking to you too. However, we do have some differences. The first seems to be the idea that "the only thing we know for sure, is that we know nothing for sure". Against this you make the comment, "We can know some things for sure, but we can't explain them." Actually, I don't think we are that far apart. Please note that the opening of my paper, http://home.jam.rr.com/dicksfiles/Explain/Explain.htm , I define C as, "What is known about A: i.e., our given known information." So I also begin with the assumption that something is "known" although, if you follow the deduction, you will discover that the results deduced are still valid even when C vanishes. But that is really immaterial here; I think the real issue is the definition of "knowing".

Moving finger has defined knowledge as “justified true belief” and I think I can live with that definition; however, even using that definition, there exist some issues which I don't think anyone here has approached. There are several things which can be done with a "justified true belief". First, one can attach a name to a "justified true belief". Does that imply it is not a "justified true belief" before the name was attached? Secondly, a "justified true belief" can be interpreted. Does that imply it is not a "justified true belief" before it has been interpreted? Or one could say, a "justified true belief" can be understood. Does that imply it is not a "justified true belief" before it has been understood? Moving finger, perhaps you can understand where I am going with this since a lot of your comments seem to show an interest in exact meaning. From my perspective, the only "justified true beliefs" consist of the fundamental data which needs to be explained. Without an explanation, the information, data or knowledge is completely meaningless! That is exactly why I treat it as an unknown and deal with it via the simple reference C. As soon as you presume you know something about it, you are lying to yourself.

Paul, you say you "start with knowing without being able to explain". Don't you think that the first step here is to decide what an explanation is going to be?

If you agree with me so far, then it seems clear that "we" must know or believe something "we" can't necessarily explain in order to have mathematics at all.

Yes, I agree with you one hundred percent; but you are mixing up a central issue here. All of us operate daily on millions upon millions of presumed facts that are, in fact, the tools of our thoughts. Out of these facts we build mental structures intended to explain our experiences. In particular, I have done so: i.e., "established a mental structure which explains our experiences". English (or any other human language) is a rather vague and sloppy structure when it comes to exact expression of ideas as there never has been any great effort to remove the interpretive inconsistencies from common language expressions. Mathematics, on the other hand, is a language developed by those who are intently interested in removing possibility of misinterpretation.

Saviormachine and I had somewhat of an extended discussion of why it is advantageous for human languages to be vague and imprecise. Some of you might find my opening post to saviormachine worth reading. It certainly bears on the value of expressing ideas in mathematics. Paul, what I am getting at here is the fact that you should criticize my approach for its dependence on mathematics is rather unjustified in view of the almost totally vague and imprecise representation of concepts in English. As I said, I am using it to communicate concepts and relationships from the perspective that I can depend upon misunderstanding (by a decent mathematician) to be almost nonexistent.

For conscious awareness appearing in humans I would agree. But for that consciousness which is necessary in order to have the mathematics necessary for your starting point, it does not logically follow.

Ah, but it does. A can be absolutely anything as no constraints whatsoever were placed on A, the elements of which provide the information which is known: i.e., C.

But what you have glossed over are the foundations of mathematics. I think Foundations play heavily in what we are discussing.

And you think the foundations of English are better understood than the foundations of mathematics? Besides, I am using it as a means of communication of relationships. I start with a single concept: the concept of an explanation. From there I show in detail how to deduce a universal constraint on any explanation. You keep calling it a proof; if that is the position you wish to take then you must understand that it is a proof that my fundamental equation is contained in the definition of an explanation. I agree with Feynman that mathematics is the distilled essence of logic and, if you want to throw out logic as a basis for these discussions, then we really have nothing to discuss.

Conscious experience has not been explained by known physics and quite possibly could exist outside of physical reality. (Of course you know that I think it does.)

So what? If it can be explained, that explanation can be interpreted in such a way that the fundamental elements of the explanation obey my equation. Since I have already shown that these fundamental elements obey the rules of "physical reality", it follows that the fundamental elements of your explanation obey the rules of "physical reality". "Quod erat demonstrandum!"

But if the Buddhists are right, and there is no self in that body, then my view of reality makes more sense and is more complete. Just my humble opinions.

The Buddhists seem incapable of explaining much; rather they seem to throw doubt on explanation itself. So I would not hold my breath waiting for the Buddhists to acquire dominance in the academies of rational thought. I note further that moving finger appears to ask for an explanation as the primary element of any proposition.

With respect, I think you should not be surprised that few people take your ideas seriously, unless and until such time as you can work out a rational, coherent and “explanatorily adequate” model based on these ideas. It seems that you’re a long way from this.

With regard to awareness and consciousness, there was an http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7567 published in "Science News" which talked about a rather strange phenomena observed in brain activity. What they discovered was that a picture of some recognized actress apparently caused a single cell in the brain to activate. The picture did not need be the same picture at all but the results rather seemed to indicate that it was the recognition of a particular person which was causing the activity. Perhaps there is a single cell up there which becomes active whenever you are conscious to let you know that whatever you are doing is a conscious activity. Could it be that simple?

Have fun – Dick

 

[Rade]

"the only thing we know for sure, is that we know nothing for sure"[/color][/b]. Can any of you give me a starting point consistent with that perspective?

Why ? It is a gibberish pronouncement--no need to give a starting point to gibberish since it has no point. The second part of the statement contradicts the first. If you know "no-thing", then it is impossible to "know one thing". Now, it seems you have provided a logical falsification of your "equation", since above you claim that your "equation" provides a starting point for this gibberish pronouncement, that is, your equation was derived to provide an explanation of gibberish. Not trying to be critical, just logical.

 

[octelcogopod]

Rade I think he meant that we can't know anything 100%, not that we can't know anything at all.

 

[moving finger]

You use the words "virtual qualia" and "virtual self", so I'm interested in what exactly this virtual "thing" is.

What is any “virtual” thing? A virtual entity is information only, it is not a physical object, but it may be interpreted from one perspective (from within the system that is creating the virtual object) as representing an object. But to the external world, it is information pure and simple.

The brain "engine" gives arise to the virtual self and qualia, right?

Correct. In the same way that a program running on a computer can generate virtual worlds populated by virtual objects within itself.

So how do we define this virtual qualia, how can we make a model for it, explain it, understand it, within the limits of the physical world?

Or can't we? (Within the limits of the physical world I mean)

I mean surely, if the universe is just one big amazing "blob" of energy, then where in this energy can we explore this virtual qualia?
Can we only explore it from within the virtual self?

If you mean "how can we explain or model qualia based on physical objects?" - in general we cannot, for the simple reason that qualia are virtual objects existing within an information processing system, they are not physical objects. The only direct access we have to them as "qualia" is from "within the system", because from outside of the system they don't look like anything at all (they look just like information).

Imagine we create a robot with visual colour receptors, linked to an image processing unit, a memory where it can store information about images it has previously processed, a developed sense of “conscious self” within it’s processing routines (so that it thinks it is an agent which is actually “looking” at images via it’s visual colour receptors), an ability to form subjective impressions based on the quality of images, and the ability to interpret and report on the images that it is processing. All of this is purely physical.

Now we ask the robot : “Please describe what your subjective perception of seeing the colour red “feels like” to you, please describe to us how we can explain or model these subjective perceptions of yours, using terms that we can relate to in the physical world.”

What do you think it would say?

Why should its answers be any different to a human answering the same questions?

Best Regards

MF

 

[moving finger]

Moving finger has defined knowledge as “justified true belief” and I think I can live with that definition; however, even using that definition, there exist some issues which I don't think anyone here has approached. There are several things which can be done with a "justified true belief". First, one can attach a name to a "justified true belief". Does that imply it is not a "justified true belief" before the name was attached? Secondly, a "justified true belief" can be interpreted. Does that imply it is not a "justified true belief" before it has been interpreted? Or one could say, a "justified true belief" can be understood. Does that imply it is not a "justified true belief" before it has been understood? Moving finger, perhaps you can understand where I am going with this since a lot of your comments seem to show an interest in exact meaning. From my perspective, the only "justified true beliefs" consist of the fundamental data which needs to be explained. Without an explanation, the information, data or knowledge is completely meaningless! That is exactly why I treat it as an unknown and deal with it via the simple reference C. As soon as you presume you know something about it, you are lying to yourself.

Interesting.

I think the argument hinges on propositions which may be interpreted as justified true beliefs (JTBs), whether this property “JTB” of the proposition is ontic or epistemic.

An expression or a proposition may be advanced, which one claims to be an example of a “justified true belief” (JTB). Whether we agree it is a JTB or not requires some prior interpretation and understanding of that proposition, before we can agree whether it is a JTB or not. After the interpretation and understanding, we may come to agree that it is a JTB. But if we agree that it is a JTB, then I would suggest that the proposition did not suddenly “become a JTB” at the moment of our individual interpretation or understanding, it was a JTB even prior to the interpretation we placed upon it or the understanding we made of it, in other words we discovered that it was a JTB rather than we created a JTB at the moment of our interpretation.

What, then, is it which creates a JTB? The background syntax/semantic system of language. A proposition cannot exist in absence of a language. Once that language exists, propositions can exist, and such propositions then either represent or do not represent JTB propositions according to the accepted rules of that language. An agent may not recognise a given proposition as a JTB until that agent has interpreted or understood that proposition from it’s own perspective, but the mere fact that an agent has not recognised that a particular proposition is a JTB does not imply that it is not a JTB.

Paul, you say you "start with knowing without being able to explain". Don't you think that the first step here is to decide what an explanation is going to be?

I think it depends on what one means here by “being able to explain”.
If we accept the JTB definition, it is not enough to simply believe something in order to claim knowledge, one must also have a justifiable belief. In other words, there need to be rational reasons to support that belief. I agree it need not be a fully-fledged explanation in terms of detailing all the underlying mechanisms etc, but it does need to be some kind of explanatory justification for holding the belief.

Conscious experience has not been explained by known physics

I do not agree with this. I think Metzinger’s paper is a very good explanation for conscious experience. What is it exactly that you think Metzinger’s approach leaves out?.

and quite possibly could exist outside of physical reality.

It is also quite possible that the planets are pushed around the sky by angels (nobody can prove this is not the case), but there is a perfectly rational alternative mechanistic explanation which makes the “angels” theory redundant. My point here is that if we have a mechanistic explanation which fits the facts, why posit additional unnecessary metaphysical entities or possibilities?

With regard to awareness and consciousness, there was an interesting article published in "Science News" which talked about a rather strange phenomena observed in brain activity. What they discovered was that a picture of some recognized actress apparently caused a single cell in the brain to activate. The picture did not need be the same picture at all but the results rather seemed to indicate that it was the recognition of a particular person which was causing the activity. Perhaps there is a single cell up there which becomes active whenever you are conscious to let you know that whatever you are doing is a conscious activity. Could it be that simple?

Descartes also postulated that there was a “centre of consciousness” in the brain, but I doubt that this would be evolutionarily advantageous. Nature seems to build in redundancy wherever it can, especially in the brain. Severe brain damage may impair many functions of the brain, but does not always result in loss of consciousness. If there were a single cell upon which all consciousness depended then it should be possible to destroy consciousness by destroying that one cell, leaving the rest of the brain intact. I’m not saying such a thing is impossible, I just think it unlikely in the extreme.

My money is on the idea that consciousness is a highly diffuse, distributed process which takes place over large regions of the brain simultaneously. This would fit with the observation that large parts of the brain can be lesioned but leave the individual still able to regain consciousness.

But the hypothesis that one single cell is responsible should be easily testable.

Best Regards

 

[Rade]

Originally Posted by Doctordick--"the only thing we know for sure, is that we know nothing for sure". Can any of you give me a starting point consistent with that perspective?

Rade I think he meant that we can't know anything 100%, not that we can't know anything at all.

OK, then the first part of the statement is a contradiction, for if we know "for sure" (e.g., 100 %) any "thing", then it is illogical to conclude that we know no "thing" for sure, since for sure a thing is known. Either way, the statement is gibberish, IMO.

 

[octelcogopod]

lol, yep, pretty much.

This statement is better imo:

The only thing we do not know for certain, is if we know anything for certain.

 

[Doctordick]

Why ? It is a gibberish pronouncement--no need to give a starting point to gibberish since it has no point. The second part of the statement contradicts the first. If you know "no-thing", then it is impossible to "know one thing".

You are missing the point that to "know" is a somewhat vague English term.

Or one could say, a "justified true belief" can be understood. Does that imply it is not a "justified true belief" before it has been understood?

Before it is understood it is gibberish isn't it? So it indeed does follow that my equation provides a starting point to explain gibberish doesn't it? If you hold one cannot start from gibberish, how did we get where we are? I know, God delivered the answer in the beginning; but, gee, how did god manage to understand what he was doing?

An expression or a proposition may be advanced, which one claims to be an example of a “justified true belief” (JTB). Whether we agree it is a JTB or not requires some prior interpretation and understanding of that proposition, before we can agree whether it is a JTB or not.

That is exactly why I treat it as an unknown. By handling (it in my logic) as an unknown, I place no constraints on it and thus avoid that very critical issue of agreement which is clearly impossible anyway. That is to say, actual specific agreement as to what is and what is not a JBT is not required to insure that my equation is valid. You might think about the equation for black body radiation as an example of how one can obtain constraints on relationships without actually knowing the details of the relationships. Internal consistency is a very unforgiving taskmaster.

What, then, is it which creates a JTB? The background syntax/semantic system of language. A proposition cannot exist in absence of a language.

As Rade pointed out above, the JTB is gibberish until it is understood so we had better figure out how to deal with it without knowing what it is.

Once that language exists, propositions can exist, and such propositions then either represent or do not represent JTB propositions according to the accepted rules of that language. An agent may not recognize a given proposition as a JTB until that agent has interpreted or understood that proposition from it’s own perspective, but the mere fact that an agent has not recognized that a particular proposition is a JTB does not imply that it is not a JTB.

Exactly! In the final analysis, nothing can be proved to be a JTB. That is exactly why my equation is the only way to attack the problem; the actual JTB (represented by my unknown set C) need never be recognized for my equation to be valid.

I think it depends on what one means here by “being able to explain”.
If we accept the JTB definition, it is not enough to simply believe something in order to claim knowledge, one must also have a justifiable belief. In other words, there need to be rational reasons to support that belief. I agree it need not be a fully-fledged explanation in terms of detailing all the underlying mechanisms etc, but it does need to be some kind of explanatory justification for holding the belief.

I think your attention is being deflected from the central point by an issue which simply cannot be solved as stated. You need, instead, to look directly at the "rational reasons to support that belief" and that is exactly what I lay out in my definition of "an explanation": the past events (as seen from the perspective of your explanation) must be consistent with what that explanation yielded as your expectations. If that constraint is satisfied, then you have rational reasons to support the belief that your explanation is correct[/color]: i.e., there are utterly no conflicts with what you think you know and you can do no better than that. That does not mean you won't change your mind in the future but it certainly supports your current beliefs.

I think Metzinger’s paper is a very good explanation for conscious experience.

I agree with moving finger; Metzinger's paper is the best analysis of the situation I have seen and it makes a lot of sense to me.

It is also quite possible that the planets are pushed around the sky by angels (nobody can prove this is not the case), but there is a perfectly rational alternative mechanistic explanation which makes the “angels” theory redundant. My point here is that if we have a mechanistic explanation which fits the facts, why posit additional unnecessary metaphysical entities or possibilities?

I think there is a bit more to be said here having to do with how one choses the best explanation. With which explanation are past events more consistent with what the explanations yield as your expectations? If "planets are pushed around the sky by angels" doesn't that yield some expectations we have never seen? Why couldn't the angels take a day off now and then? Essentially, you still have to explain why the angels choose the paths they do. It's essentially a pretty rotten and useless explanation.

I’m not saying such a thing is impossible, I just think it unlikely in the extreme.

Now you know I am not going to disagree with that (by the way, I have read a lot of your posts and find almost nothing to disagree with); however, I need to point out something which I noticed many many years ago. Control of the body seems to be very much organized around implementing body reactions originally designed (by evolution) for other purposes. For example control of voluntary muscles is not accomplished by direct signaling of the muscle cells themselves by the brain but is rather accomplished by signaling a small set whose contractions set up stresses in the main muscle which the muscle itself tries to eliminate. Looked at closer, these signals do not seem to arise directly in the brain but are instead reactive signals arising in the spine. The brain seems to trigger reactive effects normally dedicated to normal reflexes. What I am getting at is that the whole system seems to be one which essentially operates on it's own and is only tickled into doing what we want by otherwise meaningless signals. What I am getting at is the idea that conscious itself, the central node of conscious behavior, might be no more than a single cell reacting to the distributed memories and senses available in the brain.

This would fit with the observation that large parts of the brain can be lesioned but leave the individual still able to regain consciousness.

Isn't "regain" the critical issue there? Is it not possible for a second cell to take over the duties of the original "consciousness cell" with loss of the original? Why is it that, though our ability to think and reason often takes time when recovering from loss of consciousness, the actual feeling of being conscious or aware is always quite a definite abrupt occurrence with no seeming time lag.

But the hypothesis that one single cell is responsible should be easily testable.

Now that I don't see at all. It would involve finding the cell and talk about a needle in a hay stack! By the way, you ought to read an interesting article on the necessity of a brain.

Have fun -- Dick

 

[moving finger]

Is it not possible for a second cell to take over the duties of the original "consciousness cell" with loss of the original?

What “duties” are you suggesting here?
Are you suggesting that a single cell somehow contains something like the consciousness-equivalent of “élan vital”, such that the rest of the brain is just slavishly following instructions that are dreamed up and issued centrally by this single cell?

Why should it be necessary to have a single cell which is the ultimate origin of consciousness, if at the same time you are suggesting that this cell could easily be replaced by some other cell in the event that it is destroyed?

If consciousness is basically just a form of information processing, then such information processing will be distributed across large numbers of cells (you cannot process information with one single cell), and given this then I see no logical reason, either from an empirical or theoretical perspective, why we need posit that there is some central cell “in charge”.

It just doesn’t make sense to me, sorry.

Why is it that, though our ability to think and reason often takes time when recovering from loss of consciousness, the actual feeling of being conscious or aware is always quite a definite abrupt occurrence with no seeming time lag.

Is it? I’m not so sure.
There are times when I am just drifting off to sleep, or when I have a restless night (not too often fortunately) when I seem to slowly “drift in and out” of consciousness, when my awareness of my surroundings seems to be incomplete or patchy. Consciousness does not always (at least not with me) instantly switch on and off. The same is true for patients recovering from anesthesia, it can take some time before they are fully in grasp of their surroundings and faculties, before they are fully aware.

Explaining why our conscious reasoning faculties sometimes take longer to “get up to speed” than does consciousness is fairly easy. Conscious reasoning is a higher level function of brain activity than is consciousness; conscious reasoning is not possible in absence of consciousness but consciousness does not entail reasoning.

The “creation” of consciousness within the brain is an automatic, unconscious activity, consciousness is kick-started by the unconscious. But conscious reasoning is a consciously-driven activity which can be thought of as an emergent property of the conscious mind. Conscious reasoning is a particular form of directed consciousness; the process of conscious reasoning is a “meta-level” information process which overlays the more basic information processing of consciousness. The brain needs to get “consciousness” in place first before it can start on the more complex task of getting conscious reasoning working.

In addition, there may be very few “levels of consciousness” (either one is conscious or one is not, there is not much room for an “in-between” state), whereas the same is probably not true of conscious reasoning. Complex conscious reasoning can take place on many levels, the brain may be able to initiate very simple conscious reasoning processes fairly quickly on regaining consciousness, and it then builds up the channels of conscious reasoning to higher and higher levels of complexity over a period of tme. Thus conscious reasoning may be possible in “many shades of grey”, whereas consciousness is almost (but not quite) “black and white”.

Best Regards