Karma

[Walt Zingmatilder]

  This feeling of unity of being masks clever preconscious processing going on under the hood, for instance to synchronise variable speed sensory data streams in a way analogous to that in which your PC is 'clocked'.

Yes...it's a real nuisance isn't it Torri?

[torridon]

#535
You say that Something from nothing is hard; but something from something more complex defies observed ubiquitous principles. Sriram in his response (#536) to you gave an analogy with robots, where the arguments used against the idea of life being created are applied to robots. That, in my opinion illustrates the problem neatly. However, it was illustrated even more strongly by this in SusanDoris’ #538:

Which, in my opinion falsifies the argument that “something from something more complex defies observed ubiquitous principles.”

It is true that robots were invented and made by humans. That truth is not affected by whether or not the origin of human beings is known. To go with Sriram’s analogy, if robots had the ability to question their origin, then the types of arguments currently used against claims for life being created would also have to apply to the creator of robots, i.e. human beings! Because we know that human beings invent and make robots, all of these arguments would be false, as his post illustrated. This must surely indicate that similar arguments being used against claims that life may have been designed and created cannot be correct ones!

For some reason, this post puts me in mind of old creationist arguments that life contradicts the second law of thermodynamics.  Clearly the growth of complexity in this cosmos is not a simple straightforward linear curve, there are many variations along that path, for instance we have something complex (termites) building something less complex (termite castles).  So far so good.  But because there are instances of high complexity creating lower order complexity, we cannot from that extrapolate a complete invalidation of the underlying principle that generally and ultimately, higher order complexity derives from lower order complexity.  Termites and termite mounds are but an instance of one variation creating a lower order variation but ultimately both termites and their mounds obey the underlying principle of emergence. 

And to hop on over to Sriram's robot analogy, yes the robots could have been made by a superior biological species, and yes, they wouldn't have known that; and yes the higher order biological species might have been made in turn by a yet higher order of conscious silicon synths that the biologicals were unaware of.  But the take home lesson from this, is that this cannot go on forever, we cannot go on climbing an upwards complexity ladder to explain things that we find hard to understand because as an explanatory strategy it is doomed to fail.  At some point, we just need to look down at where we have come from to understand things.

[Sebastian Toe]

But what if we discover that the emergence of complex conscious life forms, or perhaps any life forms, does not occur anywhere else in the universe?

Given the size of the universe and the number of stars/planets within it, the chances of finding that out are exactly what?

[Alan Burns]

Given the size of the universe and the number of stars/planets within it, the chances of finding that out are exactly what?

The true probabilities involved in it happening by chance are mind blowing.  It depends entirely on whether God wants life to exist elsewhere in the universe.

[wigginhall]

I agree consciousness is way more complex than fluidity, say.  Insect colonies do take us some of the way though. An ant colony may not be conscious, but clearly ant colonies make decisions which exhibit emergent intelligence at the colony level.  So we have justification for anticipating that consciousness will be a similarly emergent phenomenon and we have simpler models from nature to help guide us.

You missed out the word 'yet' there.  Understanding these things will take time, this is one of the challenges of our age. 

We would expect consciousness to rationalise itself into a single point of awareness and agency would we not ? That is not surprising. Consciousness relates to a single individual so an organism with multiple disparate consciousnesses would be at a competitive disadvantage compared to a rival organism who enjoyed a unified synthesised stream of experience and therefore more efficient decision making.  This feeling of unity of being masks clever preconscious processing going on under the hood, for instance to synchronise variable speed sensory data streams in a way analogous to that in which your PC is 'clocked'.

Interesting stuff.  I don't understand why the apparent 'single-mindedness' of mental life is suppose to be such a defeater for neuroscience research.   As you say, it is likely that different currents of data processing have to be coordinated in the brain, in order to avoid a chaotic representation.   We can see this with multi-tasking, and that's ignoring unconscious and preconscious stuff going on.   In fact, in psychotherapy, you get used to seeing individuals as crowds, but that's rather a different angle.  But again, I don't see why this is not amenable to neural processing.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

The true probabilities involved in it happening by chance are mind blowing.

Only if you ignore the number of opportunities for it to happen. If the chances of consciousness happening "by chance" (and remember, all that would be necessary if consciousness is an adaptive emergent system of the brain is that prior systems that were emergence apt would have had to have come about) are, say, one in a million but there were a trillion events that could have led to it the odds aren't so great at all. 

This is a bit like the creationists' claim that single cell life was so unlikely that it must have been divinely caused. By some calculations though the vast number of events that could have led to it suggest that it was likely to have happened in less than a year. 

It depends entirely on whether God wants life to exist elsewhere in the universe.

Only if you are able to demonstrate the existence of this god at all, and that you happen to know what He can do. Good luck with that.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Interesting stuff.  I don't understand why the apparent 'single-mindedness' of mental life is suppose to be such a defeater for neuroscience research.   As you say, it is likely that different currents of data processing have to be coordinated in the brain, in order to avoid a chaotic representation.   We can see this with multi-tasking, and that's ignoring unconscious and preconscious stuff going on.   In fact, in psychotherapy, you get used to seeing people as crowds, but that's rather a different angle.  But again, I don't see why this is not amenable to neural processing.

I wonder why you are so defensive of neuroscience. Does it need it? How do you know that it is not imputed claims which go beyond what science is capable of that neuroscience needs defending from?
At the moment the angle you and your ilk seem to have is that neuroscience is there to prove that intelligence or processing capability equals consciousness.

I think neuroscience like multiverse is prone to having it's terms bent on a new atheist agenda although, having said that Sam Harris, a neuroscientist, has apparently acknowledged that there just might be some things we will not get.

By all means investigate all avenues but do so in the name of science rather than Dennetian philosophy.

[Sebastian Toe]

The true probabilities involved in it happening by chance are mind blowing.  It depends entirely on whether God wants life to exist elsewhere in the universe.

Given the mind blowing size of the universe and the mind blowing number of stars and planets in it, the chances if it happening are more likely than your mind can cope with.
However that was not the point.  I was saying that the chances of us finding out whether or not life exists elsewhere is lets say, mind blowingly tiny.
Ps God wasn't mentioned in the discourse so I will ignore your mind blowing additional statement.

[wigginhall]

I wonder why are so defensive of neuroscience. Does it need it? How do you know that it is not imputed claims which go beyond what science is capable of that neuroscience needs defending off.
At the moment the angle you and your ilk seem to have is that neuroscience is there to prove that intelligence or processing capability equals consciousness.

I think neuroscience like multiverse is prone to having it's terms bent on a new atheist agenda although, having said that Sam Harris, a neuroscientist, has apparently acknowledged that there just might be some things we will not get.

By all means investigate all avenues but do so in the name of science rather than Dennetian philosophy.

Bloody hell, you write some crap.   'A new atheist agenda' - what is that supposed to mean? 

No, neuroscience is not aiming to 'prove' anything. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

No, neuroscience is not aiming to 'prove' anything.

That just leaves you then.

[bluehillside Retd.]

JK,

Emergence is a technical term which means that a system has an inherent potentiality within it which is activated when a threshold is reached; usually when additional energy is inputted and sometimes when certain conditions are present. This means that whatever happens it can not go beyond the nature of the system and morph into something totally different.

Not really, no. Here’s Steven Johnson on what it actually means with reference to cities:

"[Cities] are patterns of human movement and decision-making that have been etched into the texture of city blocks, patterns that are then fed back to the residents themselves, altering their subsequent decisions. ... A city is a kind of pattern-amplifying machine: its neighbourhoods are a way of measuring and expressing the repeated behavior of larger collectives — capturing information about group behavior, and sharing that information with the group.  Because those patterns are fed back to the community, small shifts in behavior can quickly escalate into larger movements: upscale shops dominate the main boulevards, while the working class remains clustered invisibly in the alleys and side streets; the artists live on the Left Bank, the investment bankers in the Eighth Arrondissement. You don't need regulations and city planners deliberately creating these structures. All you need are thousands of individuals and a few simple rules of interaction."  (Emergence, pp. 40-41)

The fact of artists’ quarters and banking districts isn’t an “inherent potentiality” in people that’s been “activated” – rather it’s a new pattern and level of complexity that has emerged from the behaviours of citizens who didn’t start out to create these phenomena at all.

Read the book!

Unless these scientists are going to say that all matter has consciousness potentially within it and may exhibit it 'within' the system even though its presence may not be observed then they have a problem. What they have done is redefined consciousness to mean robot or just some machine like computer...

   

Why is that a “re-“definition, other than that it happens to conflict with your personal opinion on the matter? 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

JK,

Not really, no. Here’s Steven Johnson on what it actually means with reference to cities:

"[Cities] are patterns of human movement and decision-making that have been etched into the texture of city blocks, patterns that are then fed back to the residents themselves, altering their subsequent decisions. ... A city is a kind of pattern-amplifying machine: its neighbourhoods are a way of measuring and expressing the repeated behavior of larger collectives — capturing information about group behavior, and sharing that information with the group.  Because those patterns are fed back to the community, small shifts in behavior can quickly escalate into larger movements: upscale shops dominate the main boulevards, while the working class remains clustered invisibly in the alleys and side streets; the artists live on the Left Bank, the investment bankers in the Eighth Arrondissement. You don't need regulations and city planners deliberately creating these structures. All you need are thousands of individuals and a few simple rules of interaction."  (Emergence, pp. 40-41)

The fact of artists’ quarters and banking districts isn’t an “inherent potentiality” in people that’s been “activated” – rather it’s a new pattern and level of complexity that has emerged from the behaviours of citizens who didn’t start out to create these phenomena at all.

Read the book!
   

Why is that a “re-“definition, other than that it happens to conflict with your personal opinion on the matter?

If it is the actual definition then the word consciousness is effectively redundant since it can effectively be described as a property of a lower level, processing power and intelligence.

We have to ask what it is that has emerged?

Johnson, or yourself, has effectively redefined the meaning of emergent or at least has a different one from that understood by scientists etc who think the term anything but redundant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence:_The_Connected_Lives_of_Ants,_Brains,_Cities,_and_Software
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Johnson_(author)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Bad_Is_Good_for_You

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

If it is the actual definition then the word consciousness is effectively redundant since it can effectively be described as a property of a lower level, processing power and intelligence.

Nope. Consciousness is just one type of adaptive emergent system, but there are countless others that differ from it in their various ways.

The rest of your post is redundant.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Nope. Consciousness is just one type of adaptive emergent system, but there are countless others that differ from it in their various ways.

The rest of your post is redundant.

So it is emergent and the definition of consciousness is not as you suggest three posts back ''Robot'' or ''a machine like computer'' then (see end of post 710).

So my reference to the encyclopedic definition of emergence is redundant then and so we have to take it all from Steve Johnson then............?

You can read about him here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Johnson_(author)

and some of his works here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Bad_Is_Good_for_You
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence:_The_Connected_Lives_of_Ants,_Brains,_Cities,_and_Software

I have to say I have no immediate beef with the guys views save an ominous reference to bottom up thinking in a book about emergence.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

So it is emergent and the definition of consciousness is not as you suggest three posts back ''Robot'' or ''a machine like computer'' then (see end of post 710).

That's a non sequitur. The evidence points to consciousness as an adaptive emergent system, so that's the working hypothesis. We know that "machine like computers" can already exhibit adaptive emergent properties - Amazon's recommendations software for example does that.

These two position are congruent, not contradictory.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

That's a non sequitur. The evidence points to consciousness as an adaptive emergent system, so that's the working hypothesis. We know that "machine like computers" can already exhibit adaptive emergent properties - Amazon's recommendations software for example does that.

These two position are congruent, not contradictory.

You seem to be saying that all adaptive emergent systems are the same thing.

Consciousness is an adaptive emergent property
machine like computers vis amazons software is an adaptive emergent property
Therefore amazon software is conscious.......

Really? Isn't it just ''intelligent''?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spoof,

You seem to be saying that all adaptive emergent systems are the same thing.

Of course I'm not - the same general class of phenomenon perhaps, but certainly not the same "thing" at all. Cities and ant colonies for example have many different characteristics. 

Consciousness is an adaptive emergent property
machine like computers vis amazons software is an adaptive emergent property
Therefore amazon software is conscious.......

Really? Isn't it just ''intelligent''?

No. It's just your bad logic: the lion is a cat/tiddles is a cat/therefore tiddles is a lion.

Doesn't work.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Spoof,

Of course I'm not - the same general class of phenomenon perhaps, but certainly not the same "thing" at all. Cities and ant colonies for example have many different characteristics. 

We're in synch then....have a great evening.

[Alan Burns]

  I don't understand why the apparent 'single-mindedness' of mental life is suppose to be such a defeater for neuroscience research. 

Neuroscience does not contradict the idea of a single entity of perception - it complements it.  You can compare neuroscience with the physical mechanisms needed to transfer image data from within a computer processor to a screen.  Just as the sensory data in the human brain gets transferred to the cells in specific areas of the brain.  The data is thus represented as pixels of light on a screen, or as a pattern of specific states of numerous cells within the brain.  In both cases a single entity of perception is needed to see and translate the data into a meaningful picture.

[wigginhall]

Neuroscience does not contradict the idea of a single entity of perception - it complements it.  You can compare neuroscience with the physical mechanisms needed to transfer image data from within a computer processor to a screen.  Just as the sensory data in the human brain gets transferred to the cells in specific areas of the brain.  The data is thus represented as pixels of light on a screen, or as a pattern of specific states of numerous cells within the brain.  In both cases a single entity of perception is needed to see and translate the data into a meaningful picture.

It's unfortunate, but predictable, that you chopped off the rest of my post.   The brain is capable of coordinating incoming data, and converting them into different kinds of representation.   Thus an acoustic input (phonetic) can be recognized as phonemes,  and as speech, if speech is incoming.  The single point of view doesn't seem a problem either, as torridon explained. 

 http://neurosciencenews.com/speech-sound-meaning-neuroscience-2740/

[Alan Burns]

I agree consciousness is way more complex than fluidity, say.  Insect colonies do take us some of the way though. An ant colony may not be conscious, but clearly ant colonies make decisions which exhibit emergent intelligence at the colony level.  So we have justification for anticipating that consciousness will be a similarly emergent phenomenon and we have simpler models from nature to help guide us.

Conscious awareness can only emerge in this way if there is a physical process which defines conscious awareness.  You keep on assuming that such a physical process will eventually be discovered.  But I put it to you that there can be no physical process capable of generating conscious awareness because sub atomic particles react - they do not perceive.  Perception can never be defined solely by the reactions of sub atomic particles, no matter how fast or complex these reactions are.  Perception is a state of awareness, not a reaction.  You will need to look outside the realms of physics to discover what perception is. 

[torridon]

Neuroscience does not contradict the idea of a single entity of perception - it complements it.  You can compare neuroscience with the physical mechanisms needed to transfer image data from within a computer processor to a screen.  Just as the sensory data in the human brain gets transferred to the cells in specific areas of the brain.  The data is thus represented as pixels of light on a screen, or as a pattern of specific states of numerous cells within the brain.  In both cases a single entity of perception is needed to see and translate the data into a meaningful picture.

It's tempting to think of vision being a matter of image projection which can be 'seen' by an internal viewer; the problem with that being that is recursive.  An internal see-er that 'sees' the internal image would require it's own internal see-er.  It is intuitive to conceptualise it that way but it must be wrong.

When a penguin looks for its partner on the beach, is there an internal single entity of perception viewing its internal image in the brain  ?

[wigginhall]

Conscious awareness can only emerge in this way if there is a physical process which defines conscious awareness.  You keep on assuming that such a physical process will eventually be discovered.  But I put it to you that there can be no physical process capable of generating conscious awareness because sub atomic particles react - they do not perceive.  Perception can never be defined solely by the reactions of sub atomic particles, no matter how fast or complex these reactions are.  Perception is a state of awareness, not a reaction.  You will need to look outside the realms of physics to discover what perception is.

That seems to ignore the whole discussion about emergence.   It's true that an individual particle or neuron cannot create the taste of chocolate, but then to argue that the brain can't, is a huge extrapolation.   

[torridon]

Conscious awareness can only emerge in this way if there is a physical process which defines conscious awareness.  You keep on assuming that such a physical process will eventually be discovered.  But I put it to you that there can be no physical process capable of generating conscious awareness because sub atomic particles react - they do not perceive.  Perception can never be defined solely by the reactions of sub atomic particles, no matter how fast or complex these reactions are.  Perception is a state of awareness, not a reaction.  You will need to look outside the realms of physics to discover what perception is.

It might be a state of awareness, yes, but what is a state of awareness made of if you look inside ?  It is about information flow via biochemical reactions at a cellular level.  A brain is an outgrowth of a nervous system and the earliest forms of consciousness probably evolved as a service of interoception providing a monitoring of an creature's overall internal state from information procured by the nervous system.  Through the Cambrian, vertebrates developed external sensing organs allowing for greater perception of threat and food opportunities and these novel sense streams were incorporated into the base interoception service.  That speaks to the base purpose of consciousness - it is awareness of internal state and immediate external environment and all the contents of consciousness are derived from original physical internal and external sensing.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

That seems to ignore the whole discussion about emergence.   It's true that an individual particle or neuron cannot create the taste of chocolate, but then to argue that the brain can't, is a huge extrapolation.

I think he is pointing out that the taste of chocolate is not neuronal, it might not even be ''brainal'' but might be ''organisational''.