Re: Criticisms to Functionalism : Quantum Fallacies

[guitarfarmer]

Despite the damn noice in the background, this was great thougts Mr, thank you a lot, I agree a lot with you :-) But maybe all the universe is conscious in a way :-) Like panteism :-)

[teched246]

The brain and body are just a machines- they have autopilot features, therefore, they are machines. With that being said, the question "how do we move from dead insentient matter that interacts just based on the laws of physics and forces-how do we transition from that to conscious awareness?" is rectified to "What pilots the machines when they aren't running on autopilot?". The insentient always remains so or do they?...

[teched246]

What about artificial intelligence - is artificial intelligence sentient? If so, when does it become sentient, but even before that query is addressed, one must question the grounds on which something is deemed sentient- self-awareness? A.I. is algorithmic computation - does "logic" itself manifest as an entity under induced circumstances.

[teched246]

Collective Conciousness- like the squids in the matrix who collectively formed a single conciousness- not the other way around

[gerontodon]

I agree that it's not at all clear how insentient matter can become sentient, but could you clarify something please? At the end you say that you believe that all self-organising systems have some kind of awareness of their existence. So, why don't you think that an ant-colony does?

[ythb123]

Nice work by both videos.

I agree with yamaha893 below however and here's why.

Humans exploit everything around them just to make the propagation of our species a little more bearable. Ants do the same and this emerges as more complex in colonies.

Are we really that much more aware of our individual roles?

Haven't we just reached a level of efficiency in small key areas of the world where starving and extinction are less a concern than philosophy, sports, war, and swimsuit pageants, etc.

[yamaha893]

maybe the anthill does think of itself as an individual?

[TBucker]

I think that's a fine idea. Why not? Why do people find it so easy to say "This isn't conscious, but that is"? Using what criteria can we do that? Now, I'm not making the claim that everything is conscious, but there does seem to be illogical to say "That isn't conscious" because it can't communicate to you that it is self aware. Are sleepwalkers conscious? How do we know? How could we tell if Stephen Hawkin was conscious if he didn't have a computer? Just some ideas. :-)

[specialjr11]

Good Point.

[ferrisbueller9000]

Nice work

[meli920]

Thanks for agreeing with me there vyaschady.

[vyaschady]

and you othouartthat0 you are lost somewhere.. in your own system... and you can't get out of it.. too bad.

[meli920]

I dont know if you ever tried salvia divinorum..but what i experiance and hear others experiance was that everything is the same..me..you..a rock. so we are all one consiousness experiancing ourselfs. and our consiousness travels and could go into anything including the rock. but like he said there is no way to tell if you are real or for you to tell if i am real or the rock to tell if we are real or for us to tell if the rock is real. by real i mean consious..so i dont know.

[vyaschady]

meli920 you are absolutely right, and salvia and the right mind though.. will deffinitely close you eyes for a few minutes and after a few trial you would be able to understand so much about how conciousness works..

[otonanoC]

I need to make a video on this topic, pronto, but for now a text response will suffice.

[otonanoC]

Hofstadter, Hammeroff, Penrose are all operating on a philosophical premise that is pure bullshit.

This premise is something called a "Physical Symbol System." These guys are pretending as if they are real, and then forming all these bogus arguments on top of this premise. They are pretending that Godel's Theorem applies to objects in the real world. This is wrong on several levels.

[otonanoC]

Penrose thinks that the human brain is a "Physical Symbol System" because he is an old man who doesn't get out much. He thinks AI is still stuck in its Symbolic Era. GOFAI (symbol-manipulation) (Newell and Simon's symbol system hypothesis) (etc) died a long time ago.

Goddammit I need to make a fucking video on this.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Make it! I do believe I agree with you wholeheartedly.

[JohananRaatz]

@otonanoC But they aren't applying Godel's theorem to material objects, they are applying it to Platonic states. Granted you might think this would imply a substance duality, but this isn't necessary once you realize matter breaks down to protophenomenal states.

[robotaholic]

you should read Paul or Patricia Churchland - eliminative materialism is pretty much the opposite of what you say - lol

[robotaholic]

you said "how do we move from dead insentient matter that interacts just based on the laws of physics and forces-how do we transition from that to conscious awareness"

I say you in your mind think mind is not a product of materiality-

the whole goal of materialism is to explain consciousness in terms of science- your whole goal in this video it seems... is to say that consciousness is not material

"consciousness is in the world itself" - you're a property dualist just like chalmers -

[robotaholic]

I am sick of "the hard problem" there is no such thing - as hard as you try to explain that there is such a thing as qualia, you can neither say that i have qualia nor can you say we're even the same - you have in effect left science by claiming a "problem" simply because YOU experience it [sic] - now what really makes me laugh is that people who beleive in qualia ditch science and still try to act ""scientific"" - you have 2 choices, be objective or rely on your own 'supposed' report-

[TheDevilsAdvocate55]

I picked up "I Am a Strange Loop" by Hofstadter and am still kicking it around a bit and haven't gotten to any juicy stuff yet, but i've heard that Hofstadter attempted to explain how consciousness came from dead inanimate matter from it in there- just in case your still looking.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I've read strange loop and a small bit of GEB. Good stuff, but the hard problem still stands. I'd love to discuss Hofstader with you when you're done reading.

[LothairApoclyane]

nevermind you clarified at the end

[LothairApoclyane]

you don't think ants feel pain if i burn them?

[LimpLoser]

Penrose is a fucking Mysterian

[plenipotentiarius]

If ordered systems are conscious to some degree, what do you call or what is the degree at which self-consciousness is formally denoted?

It seems you want to identify consciousness with order. Law and order, perhaps including the laws of quantum physics. But you could say that formal science reaches its limit in quantum physics so instead of putting it as another form of consciousness you could leave it as a vacant failure of formal science and the ways in which it analyses the world.

[0ThouArtThat0]

We would need to agree on the language of course, but lets say "irritability" is present in single cells, "sensation" is present in multicellular organisms, "perception" in vertebrates, "impulse" and "emotion" in reptiles and mammals, and then symbolical-, conceptual-, and self-consciousness in homo genus. This human stage of consciousness probably depends upon language. (these associations between organisms and states of awareness comes from Wilber's AQAL).

[plenipotentiarius]

Ok good. Now irritability is obviously not your base-line since atoms are also conscious for you, so order is the basic (order as defined by us naturally). The question I have is why you can't just leave irritability as itself why must you consider irritability to be also a form of consciousness. After all one would normally put consciousness in this scale just before self-consciousness. Why does something that emerges later get retrospectively plastered onto these more basic stages.

[plenipotentiarius]

The scale is simply a matter of natural history categorization, the real mystery is what and how did it go from "perception in vertebrates, impulse and emotion" to "symbolical-, conceptual-, and self-consciousness"

Now if you consider self-consciousness to be awareness also that others are conscious and that one's own dignity, self-image, as self-conscious cannot enslave other self-consciousnesses without self-immolation you have gotten to about the 19th century.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Irritability and consciousness should not be conflated, but I think I have been using the word as a very general category to mean sentient. Maybe I will just use sentient from now on. The point is that matter as we normally think of it cannot "respond" to stimuli, it can only react based on external forces. So whatever it is that emerges later has got to get its start somewhere, and I think to find the start we need to go back to the big bang. Maybe the LHC will give us some insight on this.

[plenipotentiarius]

Good idea since the words science and consciousness both share the same latin root, 'to know' so it would sound funny to say an atom knows something.

Sentient is also going to give you trouble since the word is used mainly in order to distinguish sentient life from non-sentient life.

I think your search for ultimate origins may be a wild goose chase, remember the phrase from that theorist 150 years ago: "the key to the anatomy of the ape is in the anatomy of man"

[timxcampbell]

"... matter as we normally think of it cannot 'respond' to stimuli, it can only react based on external forces"

Hmm. If I drop a rubber ball, it "responds" by bouncing off the ground, as a unit, though none of the atoms "knows" it is part of a thing we call a ball.

If a general anesthetic knocks me unconscious, I respond far less, though I still breathe.

In both cases, that which "emerges later" evolves from the system as a whole.

Is is possible that "external" is a confusing distinction?

[reficul1729]

Turn off that fucking noise asshole!

[StevenErnest]

I think it's the fan in his laptop; yes, it's a bit irritating, but even worse is your stupid remark.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Haha, I got my video camera back, so I won't be using my laptop anymore to make videos.

[StevenErnest]

Your ant colony example, as has already been pointed out, is meaningless: Because a human level of consciousness didn't develop in an ant colony, there can't be emergence? Come on.

Your only argument against emergence is because YOU can't account for the emergence of an interior awareness in a biological system. Why does the brain have to be the same as an algorithmic system? Not everyone holds to the computer model for the brain. There are some parallels, but that's about it.

[StevenErnest]

I've been reading over some Wilber, and you seem to be getting the interior element from him. Yes, we have an interior awareness, memory, sensory perception. If you haven't already, read a bit about about the brain. You're very smart, I'm sure you have some idea of how f-ing COMPLEX the human brain is. We're learning more about it every day.

If you want matter to be conscious, look at what Ken Wilber's take on it is; I've been again going over "The Essential Ken Wilber" (Ctd...)

[StevenErnest]

(Ctd...) Wilber holds the view of the mystics: "...in the very core of your being, you are God." A more palatable name for it is the Perennial Philosophy: "So, it is true that reality is one, but equally true that it is many, it is transcendent, but also immanent..." "...the perennial wisdom that the universe is a play of the Divine, and you (and all sentient beings as such) ARE the Divine." "There is only spirit in all directions..." (Ct'd...)

[StevenErnest]

(Ct'd:) "The essence of mysticism is that in the deepest part of your own being, in the very center of your own pure awareness, you are fundamentally one with Spirit, one with Godhead, one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and unchanging fashion."

You can call this Panpsychism, or Panexperientialism if that is more comfortable.

I can accept both this view AND Emergence.

Science and the Spiritual need to -- and will -- meet, and see they are reflections of each other. 'Nuff said.

[Mork5]

steven, is all spirit or is only life spirit or is only self-consciousness spirit ?

in the mystical union everything is included, *unconscious* matter too.

that's why there is no emergence of consciousness which equals spirit, but emergence of mind including the separate-self-awareness.

the mystical state reveals the interaction of everything, forming the oneness (god).

matter, life and mind are illusions from the mystical view or stages of evolving complexity from scientific view. (ctd)

[Mork5]

(ctg) the problem is about how we define consciousness.

the *i*-awareness is an emergent property of brain activity but could never happen if there was not the interconnectedness of everything via quantum field or whatever science will discover and this interconnectedness means everything knows about everything (as shown by everything following the same laws, creating one coherent space etc.).

so the limited human awareness in our brains is a part of the one awareness of all.

[StevenErnest]

Mork, I do think that everything is interconnected. And I agree with you, that "awareness is an emergent property of brain activity..." But, I disagree with, "... but could never happen if there was not the interconnectedness of everything via quantum field or whatever..."

I think the complexity of the brain, neurons, synapses, etc., are more that enough without requiring a "quantum field." It is tricky bringing in quantum physics. But I do hope science will discover this interconnectedness.

[StevenErnest]

Mysticism and the Perennial Philosophy hold that ALL is Spirit. Everything.

Here's Aldous Huxley on the Perennial Philosophy: "the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds;"

However, there is something special or unique in consciousness, in that the Divine can look at itself. Huxley again: "the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality;"

Everything is Spirit, but is it conscious?

[0ThouArtThat0]

Steven, the criticism that an ant colony is not like a human brain is one I'd have to agree with. How about another example: mycelial mats. Scientists have found mats the size of 1,600 football fields, and new research suggests there are action-potential like activities found in mycelium when stimulated (I'll send you the journal article if you want). Now, if panpsychism is true, then of course the mats are "conscious" in some way.

[0ThouArtThat0]

But if panpsychism is false, and we need emergence based on complexity to explain how interiority arises, then are these mats conscious? I would say either way, they must be.

But my point, whether I use ant colonies or mycelia networks as an example, is that I don't see how the motion of particles, no matter how many and how complex, could become the emotion of consciousness (or whatever interior experiential state).

[0ThouArtThat0]

It's not only that I can't account for how this happens, it's that no one can. I've read most of the emergentist accounts for consciousness and I am not convinced. Just saying "...and then consciousness emerged" is no better than saying "God did it." But like I said, I'm perfectly willing to listen to accounts of how this emergence might occur.

[StevenErnest]

I will admit that "technically" or "ultimately" consciouness is a mystery. That's why I don't debate this like Gary, as though I have THE TRUTH. ;)

To me, Emergence Theory is like the Big Bang model of the beginning of the universe. There's a consensus that the core idea is true -- but its exact nature is constantly being tweaked and amended, ex. cosmic inflation. Emergence is an essentially satisfactory explanation for consciousness, but is not final, I'm sure there is much to elaborate on.

[StevenErnest]

Like I've said, the emergence of consciousness begins with the primordial sense data of the lower organisms, with increasing complexity as the brain develops. Your "consciouness gap" seems to be with our interior experiential state. We know some animals dream, dogs' paws moving, etc., so the ability to dream shows the existence of an inner awareness, thought while unconscious.

In humans, psychology has shown the

complexity of the subconscious, where we repress thought from our own awareness.

[StevenErnest]

Sure, Matt send me the article. If it's too long for YT mssg, email or send link. As I said, I'm open to various evidence. It sounds like fungus reacting to stimulation; even if it's in a complex way, I don't see how that is "consciousness."

I remember reading about a kind of insect, that when sensing a predator, all group together to form a pattern imitating the flower they are on. How do they "know" how to arrange themselves? An amazing instinct, but I wouldn't say they're conscious.

[JohananRaatz]

@StevenErnest "Because a human level of consciousness didn't develop in an ant colony, there can't be emergence? Come on."

That's not the issue. The issue is not that structures can emerge, but that you can't use that to jump between empirical and phenomenal. The phenomenal doesn't emerge from the empirical.

[StevenErnest]

@JohananRaatz You'll have to explicate, please; from your brief comment I don't know how you are using phenomenal and empirical regarding the emergence of consciousness. I know what the terms mean, I'm not clear on how our are applying them here.

[JohananRaatz]

@StevenErnest Well empirical would be the "out there" physical aspect, while phenomenal would be the internal "in here" aspect. The mental states like pain, love, truth, red, or "I" that we don't experience in an "out there" sort of way.

[StevenErnest]

@JohananRaatz I don't think I'm "jumping between empirical and phenomenal." We are aware of, and interact with, the exterior world -- and also we are aware of our self, our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. If we bang our knee, and experience pain, the world "out there" is having an effect on our "in here." So the phenomenal and the empirical are casually linked.

My case with Matt is that I do think consciousness emerges from the brain. There is no insurmountable body-mind problem.

[JohananRaatz]

@StevenErnest Right and I'd agree, it's just the way around it to explain how the two can interact is to reduce both to something else -like with protophenomenalism.

[StevenErnest]

@JohananRaatz To be honest, I don't think I'm really following your point. I think you are too hung up on the specific definition of these two terms. Sometimes new concepts are required. Brain science, neurology, is complex, and cannot be reduced to two philosophical concepts, in my opinion. :)

[JohananRaatz]

@StevenErnest Oh definitely, I was just using these two concepts to explain what is called the "hard problem" though. That is why we have no idea how to get an internal phenomenal mind to emerge from an empirical brain.

[StevenErnest]

@JohananRaatz Right, but it is my opinion that the so-called Hard Problem does not really exist.. Without consciousness residing in the brain, there would be no internal or external perception. Abstract thoughts have a physical source. There is no dilemma.

[JohananRaatz]

@StevenErnest Right well I've solved it as well in that kind of way, but I've taken a slightly different panexperientialist route. The brain is able to do this because it's made of protophenomenal stuff -essentially it's all reducible to something that seems more abstract than more physical -even the physical stuff.

Wait you study Kabbalah, but you're sounding a tad like an eliminativist here.Do you reduce "physical" to protophenomenal or did I miss something. How do you compatibilize these 2?

[ran266]

are you familiar with peter russell? i think his video "the prominence of consciousnous" is a must for anyone intrested in the subject.

[jogayot]

yay, how did you know that i also clicked on this video...

i agree with you. but it still does not preclude us from creating artificial, silicon consciousness. it only means we need to invent brain equivalent of gas engine to get off the ground and fly with full control.

[0ThouArtThat0]

fair enough.

[cardellacole1]

i also believe you have B Russell a history of western philosophy, read the last chapter,the philosophy of logical analysis p862,,,,,if there is anything that is to be called perception it must be in some degree an effect of the object perceived, read pages 860 to 863

[0ThouArtThat0]

I'll take a look. Haven't touched that book for years : )

[cardellacole1]

mat read wickipedias atom and go to 2.3 electron cloud

[simonodell]

which video are you responding to?

[0ThouArtThat0]

watch?v=InV0cVH6KZc

[HaleyMary]

Why move from dead matter that interacts based on the laws of physics and forces to make a transition to conscious awareness at all? On an atomic level, wouldn't all matter really be alike?

[EvoLIEtion]

How is it that you can point to an ant colony and conclude that because consciousness isn't among the emergent properties observed, emergence therefore cannot account for consciousness as an emergent property of brains? We're dealing with two completely different sets of interactions (for instance, pheromone signaling in ant colonies vs the propagation of action potentials in neuronal assemblages), and thus we can hardly expect both systems to meet similar thresholds.

[EvoLIEtion]

There are so many factors involved in terms of interaction (speed, distance, frequency, etc). An ant can hardly be put on par with a neuron. It's just a false analogy.

[EvoLIEtion]

If emergence turns out to be a viable hypothesis, there seems to be no valid reason to conclude that there is some single Emergent Property common to all systems which are likely to exhibit it. There are, rather, myriad emergent properties, each demanding that some threshold be met. Particular system are more likely to meet particular thresholds for particular emergent properties, and some systems are less likely to do so.

[EvoLIEtion]

It goes without saying, I think, that an ant colony shouldn't be expected to meet the same sorts of thresholds that a brain is capable of meeting.

It seems to me you're think of a system as something that happens to emergence, rather than emergence as something that happens to a system.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Emergence is something that happens to a system, and it describes how the complexity of that system could arise from very simple components. I do think ant colonies are similar to neuronal assemblages because both actually do communicate using mostly chemical signals.

I think emergence explains how complex behaviors emerge from simple components, not how interiority becomes a feature of purely insentient material processes.

[0ThouArtThat0]

If we had no conscious experience, emergence could easily account for the complexity of our behavior. But a behaviorist description of consciousness (even if it is the more nuanced kind of neo-behaviorism that admits the brain is not a black box, but that neurons are a computational medium) is not an explanation of consciousness. It just turns neurons into black boxes. We still need to account for the content of formal structures and the sense of free will (even if it is just an illusion).

[EvoLIEtion]

"I do think ant colonies are similar to neuronal assemblages because both actually do communicate using mostly chemical signals."

And that, for your, is the only criterion necessary to conclude that because conscious experience isn't observed in ant colonies, emergence is wholly incapable of accounting for conscious experience as a product of brains?

[0ThouArtThat0]

No, it isn't the only reason. The real reason is that I don't see how a bunch of objects banging into each other, no matter the complexity of their collisions, could give rise to interior experience.

[EvoLIEtion]

Nor do I. I want to be clear on that. I just think it's poor logic to point to an ant colony as being analogous to a brain, and I figure it's somewhat obvious why that's the case.

On another note, are you familiar with Thomas Metzinger's strain of representationalism?

[0ThouArtThat0]

yeah somewhat, I agree with his conclusion that there is no self in phenomenological experience, but I think he discounts the way our consciousness is embedded in the body and the world. We cannot expect to reduce it to neural correlates in a neat one-to-one fashion. Or at least I don't think so.

correct me if I am remembering his position wrong...

[patternsinchaos]

Interior experience. Yeah, how exactly. It has to do with that inside-outside duality-illusion. There are unseen physical connections through the apparent solidity. Hard problem, eh? Seeing how these unseen connections are also made through time helps. ;-)

[patternsinchaos]

Wanted to offer: What if individual ants somehow experience the emergent behavior of the collective?

Thinking Antennas? ;-)

[0ThouArtThat0]

That is an interesting possibility. Would that mean that our human-type consciousness is really individual neurons experiencing themselves in a tightly knit society? Could be... but we still need to explain the binding problem: how to multiple neural circuits produce a single, unified experience? For instance, how do neurons in the visual cortex that process color, vertical lines, horizontal lines, motion, etc. all come together to give us the visual experience of, say, the Sunset?

[patternsinchaos]

Nice. Now take the neuron idea and plug in that below the neuron there are particles that resonate with a frequency that connects them to other similarly resonating forms basically a built-in radio, aka time-space infolding. Does that provide the loop for self-referential experience?

Also, Maybe we'll be like the ants someday think cell phones and wifi.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Haha, well about the neurons resonating with the frequency of outside forms, that sounds a lot like what Hameroff is actually proposing. Have you watched any of his videos?

[patternsinchaos]

Saw Hameroff in What the Bleep. But not much more. Sounds like we're on the same page. Also saw Lord's critique. A bit weak.

[patternsinchaos]

The perceptual processing comes from training the visual representation to the corporeal manifestation. And in the case of the Sun, we estimate the distance based the fact that it seems farther than everything else.