A more personal reflection on consciousness...

[realveive]

Thought is what the hardware does. You can regard it all as wondrous and fantastic but the results of thought are pretty easy to evaluate as right or wrong.

[trevnral1]

Consciousness is an axiom. It cannot be proved as it is the foundation of proof. The concept of proof presupposes a consciousness capable of reason.

Any argument against consciousness collapses because even invalid arguments presuppose it's existence. This is not proof that consciousness exists -- it is proof that consciousness is an axiom.

[AlexKhav]

I see that human explanation about conciseness is foolish and has no foundation. Unless human being is connected with spiritual world, which is more real than our physical, the explanation o conciseness would be very simple.

[JAYDUBYAH29]

i wanna know what your views are viz that electric guitar behind you - looks like a marshall combo and maybe a PRS?

re: why? hmmmm might be braking up the wrong tree - does there need to be a why, and if so is evolutionary biology not enough?

[jimbobboyorganist]

Emotions are based on memory combined with an ever-changing viewpoint. There is only one consciousness...On earth,

humans are the first "life-form" to be conscious of it. Unfortunately, Consciousness must evolve like everything else. And stop trying to make me respond!

[OutdoorsBlackMan]

A baby has few memories, yet it is full of emotion.

Emotion has no reason to exist.

[yuothineyesasian]

Emotions are the product of chemical reactions that change the reception of electrical impulses. The 'reason' or 'pupose' of emotions is to control or influence the decisions made by the electro-chemical processes of the brain. Memories also influence this, which is why a baby acts more rationally over time, acting on emotions alone less and less.

The mood or emotion a person is feeling have an effect on decisions, the outcomes of those decisions have an effect on how the chemicals are used.

[OutdoorsBlackMan]

Why would we need emotions to influence our behavior? Why would we need "reasoning"?

Why act on emotion? Why act on reason?

What is emotion and what is reason?

[yuothineyesasian]

Rather, natural selection caused us (and other animals) to evolve hypersensitivities within the virtual world of our minds to things that would provide better survival and reproductive advantages to our ancestors.

Emotions are one of these advantages. We (because of emotions) are better suited to decide what is an unwanted outcome and what is a wanted one.

Reason takes this process one step higher by using rationality over emotions to make and educated decision rather than a brash one.

[OutdoorsBlackMan]

How has it provided better survival and reproductive advantages?

Women are having abortions and people in government are taking advantage of their power to wage war and conquer other people.

Emotion and reason by themselves can go in a negative or positive direction based on the one who is controlling (or not) them. People can act beyond reason and emotion.

[nahnkari]

I would really want to know why rationalism really bothers you.

The places in your brain where the concept 'electrical thoughts' is represented is not connected to your 'spiritual' areas. That is why you feel it as an alien concept.

[puppyslayer69]

kid, you need to learn how to pronounce Gödel. You sound like an ignorant american pseudopunk and look like a pretentious Parisian Überbitch. Expect a video response.

[MaBu888]

Gööööööööööööööööödel!!! LULz get yer act tagethorrrrr.

[horsie111]

Disappointing (but unsurprising) that Marvin Minsky is hostile to the idea of anything within his area of inquiry being outside his expertise. Sadly that's often the nature of scientists being expert only in one field. Extended to science as a whole, science fundamentalists want all answers to be found within science. This is where science turns into faith, and scientists misuse science to write books, outside their area of expertise, that attack *other* faiths to promote their own.

[maxhodges]

Have you read The Emotion Machine?

[redliterocket4]

Not all of it. The talk I attended was Minsky explaining what he wrote in the book, though.

[patternsinchaos]

Nice "thinker" pose there at the beginning, unintentional I'm sure... nice clear thinking and analysis, Matt.

[elgaed42]

Thus, Being/Sein is irreducible, while form/Form is reducible but dependent upon perception and construction from being/Sein. Form thus, being a part of reality, always 'contains', internally and externally, an irreducible semantic 'Sein'. Also note that many simple forms extrapolate to unpredictability when they are computed, e.g. Wolfram's cellular automata.

[elgaed42]

Perhaps you should take note that not a single word in my post was meaningless--every bit has intention and connection (Bedeutung und Zusammenhang). Since these aren't immediately obvious to you, I'll make them more explicit:

[elgaed42]

Since you seem familiar with Cantor: Since the internal and external state of this universal form (Sein) can be seen as a constructive relationship between forms as well as a deconstructive formation of forms, their existence is isomorphic to the interrelationship between them, which is, because of the infinitude of all countable forms, uncountable. Take the infinite subsets of a countable infinity of forms, e.g., an note that this is an uncountable set.

[elgaed42]

You misleadingly attempt to label absolute and necesary truths as 'rationalisations' or 'assumptions'--when indeed you must make the same 'assumptions' even to accept that you're perceiving the keyboard and computer screen in front of you. What on Earth do you mean 'what would Cantor think'? He was religiously paranoid and his brilliant discoveries about countability have few implications about whether the universe has a form or not. This will require another post to explain.

[itinerantly]

I like that you're talking about this stuff--I have put off watching this video.

As a linguist who studies quantum theory, I have to disagree with you completely. The woman who asked 'what is alive' and received a terse reply from Dr Minsky is a useless bimbo who needs to read more. She should be thankful Minsky wasted his time answering her question.

Humans are rationalizing creatures, but we exist because of reason. Not despite it.

[elgaed42]

Come now. Although the universe tautologically must be self-consistent, and thus possesses, holistically, a rationalisable form, this form also tautologically contains an irreducibly complex internal and external state, which never allows itself to be fully simplified, and requires simply that it be experienced, to fulfill its existence. This is the very basis of empiricism, which seems, as you demonstrate, to have been mangled into something wholly different. What would Goethe think?

[itinerantly]

You've made some interesting assumptions about the nature of the universe (one might almost call them rationalizations). Who cares what Goethe thinks. What would _Cantor_ think? The nigh-sexual pleasure you seem to achieve from using meaningless philosophical buzzwords reduces your point (not irreducibly, a concept incompatible with reality) to meaninglessness. Look at the fractal nature of resolution and the therefore near-infinitely complex and impossible nature of reality; empiricists weep.

[societyofmind]

Science is useful because of its ability to predict natural phenomenon. Sure atoms and molecules, electrons and probability clouds are just constructs created by humans to explain measurements, but these constructs when combined with logic allow use to predict future patterns in nature. If the concept of an atom did nothing but act as a label for a phenomenon, then science would be of no use to us.

[redliterocket4]

I agree with what you've said. I think the method of science is great. It's the metaphysics of scientism that I find lacking.

[elgaed42]

And therein lies the boon and the danger of science. Analogy: Religion has brought morality to many parts of the world, and yet the effectiveness of these moralities have been used by some to reinforce blind belief in these religions, turning them into cults. Sadly, nothing better can be said of those so-called 'philosophers' who transform the usefulness and philosophy of science into foolish dogmas. The scientific method becomes a meaningless ritual, and the results, but 'miracles'.

[societyofmind]

Science gives use a "virtual world" of constructs, ideas, mathematical symbols and equations. This "virtual world" is useful BECAUSE of its ability to predict unforeseen phenomenon in the "real world". It allows us to "simulate" a mathematical world that just so happens to mimic our own, which is why we associate "meaning" to these concepts.

[societyofmind]

This simulated world of ideas allows us to build things like ships, rockets, and computers which we can then translate into the "real world" perfectly. Our ability to translate between the world of ideas and the world of the real is what makes us believe that these constructs are in fact "real" - that atoms are real for example.

[jeroenvlutters]

nice vid. Materialism is a big hoax. Denying experiences, is denying the basis of all data. Equating humans to dead matter is either sucking the spirit out of humans or opening the door to panpsychism

[tyrbolo]

You need to look around a bit. There are photographs

of atomic particles (waves) here on you tube.

Godel cut the last connection to reams of ancient

speculations (philosophy). Rod Brooks Genghis put

the nail into the coffin of an enormous range of

Pseudo-scientific clap-trap. Why means nothing if

your explanation doesn't have some answers to how.

[redliterocket4]

I wouldn't doubt we could see waves. I just dispute that there is such a THING as an atom that I could bounce around and shoot baskets with were I the right size. We cannot say what an atom is, what we call "atom" is a pattern of behavior as recorded by our measuring devices modeled by mathematics.

[redliterocket4]

I'm not as skeptical of embodied robotics as I am of classical AI as far as who can find a way to make a life-like machine. It is the symbol-processing computationalist that I think are kidding themselves (Minksy!).

[redliterocket4]

But of course, before we start trying to replicate the human brain with microchips, we should consider WHO we are creating.

[redliterocket4]

I just don't think you can reduce the why to the how. The two are related, so I try to find views that satisfy both.

[redliterocket4]

Physicists since the turn of the 20th century no longer talk about finding the ultimate stuff or substance of reality. They talk about figuring out the best way to model the various forms of nature using human language and mathematics. The search for what reality itself is made of is now seen as philosophically naive. Saying everything is made of atoms amounts to saying my hand is made of inches.

[marrs487]

I don't agree with that. An atom is tangible, and inch is not. Atoms react in reality, combining in fusion reaction, dividing in fission reactions, vibrating more rapidly to produce temperature. I think I understand the point you are trying to make, but it seems very philosophical to me, and not very valid. I think we just see things in a different light.

[marrs487]

There are two different types of research; experimental and theoretical. theoretical research has to do more with the stuff you are talking about, but experimental research has to do with manipulating and getting data in reality. It is not just language and matematics, because we exoerience and measure these things, whether atoms, subatomic particles, light, or what ever.

[redliterocket4]

i am not disputing the experimental evidence, i am disputing its interpretation.

[redliterocket4]

if you can find a physicist that disagrees with what i am saying and why i may be swayed, i have just not yet found any.

[redliterocket4]

it is a philosophical position that most if not all quantum physicists that I've read were forced by the own scientific findings to adopt. Science can and has informed philosophy of much of its assumptions, but it goes both ways.

[marrs487]

If the biochemistry, quantum states, neural configurations, and what ever else is physically necessary, even that which we do not completely understand yet, was copied to be like those characteristics of a human, then I do not see what would stop consciousness form existing in this artificial being.

[marrs487]

Useful things arise from reductionism, and it is a tool for arriving at new knowledge that can be validated. Do not be frustrated with it.

[marrs487]

Useful things arise from reductionism, and it is a tool for arriving at new knowledge that can be validated. Do not be frustrated with it.

[redliterocket4]

I am only frustrated with those who mistake the results of the method of reductionism for the factual and objective truth. Reductionism is a TOOL, I agree. It is not a source of perfect knowledge, though. It is only as good as the application and the "answers" it provides us with are not nature's laws but rather nature's consistant reaction to our own poking and proding.

[redliterocket4]

Reductionism interferes ontologically with what it wishes to know objectively by assuming the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. Any system that partitions the world is always a human construct, and while it is doubtlessly useful, it can also become quite destructive when we mistake it for nature itself.

[marrs487]

I believe we should consider these systems to be an accurate description of nature itself, at least until proven otherwise. A description of nature is not nature itself, of course, but it allows us to understand this reality. We can now actually "see" atoms and molecules by using scanning tunneling microscopes, electron microscopes, and atomic force microscopes, which can actually manipulate single atoms.

[marrs487]

These atoms are no longer just theories or measurements, but physical objects that are quite tangible. Right now, we are in the process of developing a superlens that will allow us to see atoms and molecules with visible light. The lens is made out of what is know as metamaterials or negative index materials.

[redliterocket4]

Certainly we can devise all kinds of highly sophisticated methods for manipulated "matter," but my point is that the word "matter" itself means measurement, and the measurement is all we've got. If we are really attached to the idea that an atom is an object, then we must see it as a very special kind of object, one that is never itself, that never exists in one place in time and space, that is more like an ongoing process, a verb, than like a thing.

[redliterocket4]

Atoms exist as clouds of possibility that we can predict quite accurately using our technological skill, but nonetheless, to say "everything is made of atoms" is no different from saying "everything is made of measurement." There are no atoms until man invents them.

[marrs487]

Larger scale versions of these materials have already been developed for longer wavelengths of EM radiation like microwaves, and we almost have a smaller scale version for visible light, which has a shorter wavelength.  So these human constructs describe things that are very real to our human senses, and are not just mathematical conveniences or models.

[marrs487]

ps: my comments appear to have been posted consecutively on top of one another, so read from the bottom to top.

I am curious if you really believe that atoms are not actually physical objects, because it seems to me and many others that we have proven the existence of these atoms, and they behave exactly as we have predicted in out models time after time.

[redliterocket4]

"It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature."

"When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images."

-Niels Bohr

[redliterocket4]

In other words, as Bohr is trying to say, atoms are mathematical/linguistic constructs that we project onto the behavior of nature so as to predict its behavior, much like we might use a ruler to measure our hand and conclude that it is 5 inches long. But what is five inches? The hand itself doesn't care the least bit about our measurements. Our system of measurement is what allows us to understand nature, but we cannot mistake measurements for what is being measured.

[redliterocket4]

The hand can be measured in many ways, and its various parts can be assigned many names... but these measurements and names are not the hand itself. We simply cannot say what the hand itself is, as saying is always merely labeling or symboling about something, pointing at something, but never really defining it once and for all.

[redliterocket4]

"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

Werner Heisenberg

[redliterocket4]

"We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own."

-Sir Arthur Eddington

[redliterocket4]

"What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen(appearances)." -Erwin Schroedinger

[redliterocket4]

I hope all this makes sense... I'm not so much saying that atoms don't exist, I'm just saying they don't exist as physical objects like mini basketballs. You cannot take a photograph of an atom. You cannot hold an atom in your hand, you can only hold one in your mind. Atoms are theoretical constructs that allow physicists to better understand the data they are dealing with, much like devising an alphabet helps us better form, learn, and understand a complex language.

[trin1721]

. I believe that conscious experience is the only case where reductionism fails to bring us close to the truth. This may go some way to explaining why Dennett etc seem to leave us with rather hollow explanations - what chance did they possibly have? It also begs the question of where consciousness may hope to be explained, if it is not within the scientific sphere.

Matt (UK med student)

[redliterocket4]

It would be nice if nature itself was rational, or if we could devise some way to test whether it was or not. I think what naturalistic science does is create a grid of internally coherent and logical symbols/numbers and lays it over the ambiguity of the world in order to discover how nature's behavior seems to obey certain patterns.

[redliterocket4]

Descartes was fully aware of this layer of language between the scientist and the world, but he felt it was necessary to maintain this distance because, as he saw it, nature itself had no order but that order which man imposed upon it. Descartes also assumed that consciousness was a lot simpler than we now know. He believed everyone had a stable, one dimensional egoic consciousness with a clear and objective view of the outside world.

[redliterocket4]

20th century psychology has shown that consciousness is a lot more complex, not to mention that it is kept in check by a much more powerful unconscious which Descartes had no inkling of. So it seems that from the start, modern science has misunderstood the nature of consciousness, which just so happens to be the very faculty used by science to understannd the world.

[redliterocket4]

I think saying reductionism explains anything stems from this same misunderstanding. Naturalist science has failed to recognize that the various types of units it reduces nature's behavior to (whether atoms, species, or organs etc.) are all products of its own human imagination and linguistic ability. Science reduces the behavior or nature to some kind of symbolic system which itself becomes the new object of investigation.

[redliterocket4]

This has become most obvious in the field of quantum physics, where scientists no longer talk about finding the smallest bits matter (because they realize what we call "matter" thinking it is some kind of substance is really only a form of measurement) but instead discuss how best to mathematically model the outcomes of their very sophisticated experiments with energy.

[redliterocket4]

So nature is not necessarily rational (which is not necessarily to say it is irrational) and does not necessarily obey the grammar of our various languages. So to assume we could really understand the objective qualities of the natural world seems a bit naive to me, especially considering that science hasn't the slightest idea what to say about how conscious experience happens.

[redliterocket4]

Until we understand how we come to experience the world, how can we claim to have any objective knowledge of it? Now of course the whole idea of explaining consciousness in a reductive way is, like you said, a bit silly. So if anything, the mystery of consciousness forces the classical version of naturalism to reevaluate its ontological/epistemological assumptions.

[marrs487]

Science has explained many things. Reductionism is a tool to understand these things. If you accept that reality exists, and that we are not simply dreaming up the existence of the things we experience, than reductionism is a valid and valuable tool. It is a way of explaining things like a theory.

[marrs487]

We are not likely to completely understand something in the first attempt. Many models, theories, simulations, etc. must be developed and tested. Our knowledge of all that exists is constantly improving. People used to think that the world is flat, then they discovered that it is round

[marrs487]

This was an improvement and is not a reason to reject science, simply because a theory was wrong. Over time, our understanding becomes more accurate. We do not yet understand consciousness in its entirety, and perhaps we never will. It is not a sure thing that we will never completely understand consciousness, as we are discovering more and more of the mechanisms for its function.

[marrs487]

There may even be a way to test for consciousness in the future. Perhaps it will involve experiencing another persons consciousness. It is hard to picture, I know.

[marrs487]

The main idea here is that by reducing things to models or theories that we can understand, we often arise at useful discoveries. For example, the model of the atom led to the development of the nuclear bomb, and you cannot deny the reality of the nuclear bomb if you admit to the existence of reality itself.

[marrs487]

You cannot be so sure that human beings are more complex than "machines". I am not suggesting that we are no more intricate than a contemporary computer, but i do agree that given enough time, resources, knowledge, etc, we could build a "machine" just as conscious as a human.

[marrs487]

We humans are built from atoms. We are certainly more complex than a contemporary computer, but that does not mean that a future computer or machine, made of atoms just as we are, could not experience consciousness.

[marrs487]

Simply because we do not understand exactly how or why something works does not mean that we will never understand it.

[marrs487]

We humans are conceived, develop from cells made of atoms, and form neural networks that produce consciousness. There is no reason why a computer could not have similar is not identical neural networks and perform the same sorts of consciousness.

[redliterocket4]

I don't really disagree with anything you have said. My only point was that science works with models and symbols and doesn't tell us much about nature or reality on its own. Science has great technical use and can be used pragmatically for many tasks. "Objective knowledge" is a figment of Descartes' imagination, though... not something science could ever acheive.

[redliterocket4]

the atoms you mentioned are not physical objects, they are mathematical constructs. so reducing the human brain to particles doesn't explain any more than the conceptual scheme laid atop it. We stock the pond full of fish and then pretend we've caught something...

[trin1721]

I suppose the problem comes when one tries to reduce consciousness. The essence of consciousness seems to be subjective at its very heart. 'The objective aspect of conscious experience' seems like a ludicrous statement. When we therefore reduce consciousness, stripping it of its subjective character, what are we left with? We're left with an explanation which is FURTHER from the essence of what consciousness really is.

[trin1721]

Just a point on reductionism and naturalism: Seems to me that reductionism is necessary for successful scientific explanation. When you reduce something you strip it of it's subjective qualities - anything which may hinder an accurate explanation of it's true objective nature. What you are left with should be an objective, testable account of a phenomenon which you can work with and build on.

[DarwinsHamster]

I agree that we decide things based on feelings and rules of thumb, and then go back and rationalize them; perhaps reasonably. The shortcuts are necessary to keep us from considering infinite possibilites.

[DarwinsHamster]

I am of the opinion that all feelings are physical; they can be identified in one's body, although most of the time we don't do it consciously. With no body, there can't be feelings.

[redliterocket4]

video response to this point coming up...

[DarwinsHamster]

What took so long? Just kidding!

[kytosht]

That's a good and interesting point, and one that's elaborated well by Damasio in "Descartes' Error." He observed that patients with prefrontal damage who lost their capacity to experience emotion (negative emotion, in particular) had trouble making rational decisions. Emotion is there in large part to help us prune the decision tree and go with a gut feeling that says, for example, "this path ended badly before."

[redliterocket4]

So basically Minsky is taking the classical stance, that science cannot be restricted by any ethical guidlines or progress and new discoveries will be prevented. Seems reasonable until you consider the atomic bomb.