(2023-06-17, 01:19 PM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]Granted: it's at least roughly in the ballpark (groan), albeit that on dualism, some of that which you attribute merely to (physical) neurons is better attributed to the mind.
"Roughly in the ballpark (groan)" doesn't do a lot to help me understand your views.
I know how these discussion can suck a person in to a lot of time commitment, so I don't mean to demand that you respond. However, if somebody out there has time to answer, I would appreciate if they would markup my original paragraphs as shown below to match what you think happens.
- At the lowest level, signals from senses like the eye and the sense of balance in the ear send signals to the brain. The brain organizes these signals into models, which are patterns of neuron firings based on these inputs from the senses. The brain compares these with previously saved models of these inputs. The brain can then identify what it sees based on what it had seen previously. It can also link these visual models to models of words that it hears and speaks, thus tying in words to match images. Thus, a person can see a tennis ball coming toward his racquet and think "that's the ball".
- These patterns of neuron firings associated with the sensing of the position of the ball and tennis racquet link to patterns of neuron firings that control motions. If one is playing tennis, for instance, and upper levels of the mind have decided to hit the ball, then the brain looks at these models of the ball's and racquet's positions and movements, and builds a model of the future movement of the arm and racquet needed to cleanly hit that ball. Deciding to execute on this plan, the brain's neural models direct other neurons which have models on how to move arm and body muscles such that they cause the racquet to hit the ball.
- Hitting that tennis ball cleanly and making it go where you want it to go is a very complex task. But if you have done it many times, your brain has saved models of what it means to hit a ball cleanly and calls on these models from its memory. Combining the inputs from the senses and its model of good strokes, the brain calculates the unique muscle movements needed to perform the stroke in this new situation. As the arm starts to move, there is constant feedback on the position of the racquet and ball, all of which are fed back into the models to make corrections to the stroke as needed. This basically all happens outside of the realm of consciousness. If you are a skilled tennis player, you might consciously decide to lob the ball into the far right corner of the court, for instance, and the brain takes over from there.
As I said in the quoted poste, even on dualism, the basic mechanics of the control of a tennis stroke must be similar to what I just described.
One problem that I have with dualism is that it is notoriously undefined. We keep hearing that somehow soul and mind are intertwined, but the exact nature of this intertwinement are undefined. What does what? The result is that the dualist answers to questions can apparently quickly change on the spot to match the immediate question, but then switch to another, contradictory view when asked another question. Arguing with that is like trying to nail jello to the wall. Does somebody care to rewrite the above paragraph to give me a solid argument I can address, rather than addressing jello?
(2023-06-17, 01:39 PM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]A little better elaboration on what exactly is wrong with your terminology seems worth adding:
A model doesn't feel; a model doesn't experience; it is merely abstract and conceptual and thus cannot even in principle feel or experience - but these are precisely what define consciousness.
I think the model of consciousness includes the modeled concept that these things feel a certain way. Why can that not be part of the model?
Do non-physical entities feel and experience? How can a non-physical entity even do anything? Isn't "non-physical entity" an oxymoron? If you think non-physical entities exist, how do they do things that physical things can't do? Is it magic? If not, how is it different to say "a non-physical entity did this physically impossible thing" instead of "magic did this physically impossible thing"?
(2023-06-17, 01:19 PM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]And yet plenty of evidence is regularly discussed on this board for which dualism is a much, much better fit, and which has at least in part been shared in this thread (near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences in general, shared-death experiences, telepathy, psychokinesis, etc etc). I don't remember you having responded to it in any meaningful way yet.
True, I haven't addressed things like near-death experiences. I find this evidence weak, but I certainly am not an expert on this. I do want to learn more about it.
My main point is that mental functioning is more consistent with the brain being the seat of mental activity, rather than some "non-physical entity" such as a soul. Nobody can even seem to define this brain - soul working relationship, yet alone show how it fits the known facts of neurology.
(2023-06-17, 01:19 AM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]I don't think consciousness is simply a phenomenon.
Can you describe something that is not simply a phenomenon? If you can't that sentence doesn't make sense.
Quote:It is a key part of the life of intelligent creatures.
OK - I'll buy that!
Quote:Without it, the neurons would not have a unified purpose.
So do the neurons make the consciousness or is the consciousness something else that gives them a 'unified purpose'?
Quote:But consciousness, as I see it, is a construct of the brain that builds the highlights of all our mental activities, and builds the model such that the self is in charge of all this. That constructed self feeds back into the rest of the brain as a conscious self, and influences future decisions, which then become part of the modeled self. Thus, the consciousness is aware of its own reported consciousness.
I simply can't unravel that lot - did you invent it yourself, or can you give us a reference?
I hope that perhaps you are beginning to realise just why consciousness is such a big problem for science - it is incredibly hard to figure out how it relates to the physical brain - if indeed that is where it is produced.
David
(2023-06-17, 12:23 PM)Brian Wrote: [ -> ]How does the brain, a physical thing (i.e. made out of non-conscious atoms, ) build consciousness out of non-conscious electricity?
Yeah I was wonder[ing] this as well.
If I run electricity through a nail, does the nail become conscious? I would presume not.
But what about something like a modern video game console, my laptop, or a server farm? Lot of non-conscious information processing going on, but nobody seems to seriously believe any of these are conscious. Even a driverless car is not thought to be conscious by most.
The reasoning seems to be for the same reason the nail with electricity running through it [is] not conscious.
Contrast to "mere" cells,
where the Nobel biologist George Wald isn't sure if these are conscious or not.
Quote:I have come to the end of my scientific life facing two great problems. Both are rooted in science; and I approach them as only a scientist would. Yet both I believe to be in essence unassimilable as science. That is scarcely to be wondered at, since one involves cosmology, the other consciousness...
...I used to show students a film made by the French zoologist Faure‑Fremiet on the feeding behavior of protozoa. Many of our sturdiest concepts of the apparatus required for animal behavior are mocked by these animalcules, particularly by the ciliates; for in one cell they do everything: move about, react to stimuli, feed, digest, excrete, on occasion copulate and reproduce. In this film one saw them encountering problems and solving them, much as would a mammal. I remember best a carnivorous protozoon tackling a microscopic bit of muscle. It took hold of the end of a fibril, and backed off at an angle, as though to tear it loose. When the fibril would not give, the protozoon came in again, then backed away at a new angle, worrying the fibril loose, much as a dog might have done, worrying loose a chunk of meat. It was hard, watching that single cell at work, not to anthropomorphize. Did it know what it was doing?
But then, ciliate protozoa are the most complex cells we know. How about a cell highly specialized to perform a single function in a higher organism, a nerve cell for example, that can only transmit an impulse? Once, years ago, I was visiting the invertebrate physiologist, Ladd Prosser, at the University of Illinois in Urbana. He took me into his laboratory, where he was recording the electrical responses from a single nerve cell in the ventral nerve cord (which takes the place of our spinal cord) of a cockroach. It was set up to display the electrical potentials on an oscilloscope screen, and simultaneously to let them sound through a loudspeaker. I was hearing a slow, rhythmic reverberation, coming to a peak, then falling off to silence, then starting again, each cycle a few seconds, like a breathing rhythm. Prosser remarked, “That kind of response is typical of a dying nerve cell.”
“My God!” I said, “It’s groaning! You’ve given it a voice, and it’s groaning!”
Was that nerve cell expressing a conscious distress? Is something like that the source of a person’s groaning? There is no way whatever of knowing.
So that is the problem of mind -- consciousness -- a vast, unchartable domain that includes all science, yet that science cannot deal with, has no way of approaching; not even to identify its presence or absence; that offers nothing to measure, and nothing to locate, since it has no location.
(2023-06-17, 03:54 PM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]So do the neurons make the consciousness or is the consciousness something else that gives them a 'unified purpose'?
I didn't understand this either - consciousness doesn't decide anything but somehow is organizing inputs?
Seems like if there is some need to organize the inputs you'd use something akin to a router program that server applications utilize.
Does anyone think even a massive server farm has consciousness?
(2023-06-17, 01:19 PM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]And yet plenty of evidence is regularly discussed on this board for which dualism is a much, much better fit, and which has at least in part been shared in this thread (near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences in general, shared-death experiences, telepathy, psychokinesis, etc etc). I don't remember you having responded to it in any meaningful way yet.
Is this really an argument for dualism, or rather just further demonstration physicalism is false? Though I guess this also depends on what someone means by "physical". If Information is included I'm not sure Psi or Survival is beyond the bounds of some future physics.
I guess Survival stuff could arguably be a functional dualism between the body at present and the consciousness that continues without it.
Quote:(Huh, Sci, it turns out that I have a bit more stamina for this than I expected. Don't let my contributions inhibit you from your own line of inquiry though).
I'm happy to yield the floor, there are some questions I've not gotten a response to yet anyway...though maybe they've been answered in these exchanges...[I have more questions I might throw into the mix though...]
(2023-06-16, 11:04 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Swim classes, reunions and consciousness all really exist even though none is an actual object.
Aren't swim classes and reunions just collections of objects? There are people, a swimming pool, a location for the reunion...
What is it about swim classes and reunions that would not be captured by the mathematical descriptions of physics?
Deleted my last post on why consciousness feels real.
Figured it's too early to go there, still gotta discuss atoms.
(2023-06-17, 02:06 PM)Merl Wrote: [ -> ]Do non-physical entities feel and experience? How can a non-physical entity even do anything? Isn't "non-physical entity" an oxymoron? If you think non-physical entities exist, how do they do things that physical things can't do? Is it magic? If not, how is it different to say "a non-physical entity did this physically impossible thing" instead of "magic did this physically impossible thing"?
'Non-physical' here just means something that is not producible by the fundamental constituents of physics - matter/energy, forces, fields, etc - that are presumed to lack consciousness but also be that which makes up the universe.
It would only be an oxymoron if "physical" means "all things in reality". So something is "physically impossible" if it cannot be obtained by some arrangement/accumulation/addition of the non-conscious physical constituents.
Whether this means there are additional properties to "physical" that need to be added (Panpsychism) or there are genuinely non-physical entities (Substance Dualism) or there are *only* mental entities (Idealism)...or some other option would be a further line of inquiry...
For myself, I generally lean against the idea of purely non-physical or physical entities. I think everything consists of some constituents that provide the aspects of reality [that are] knowable [only] through consciousness. Does this mean the brain could just be made of these constituents and produce *my* consciousness, and that with the death of the brain my body also dies?
Yes, it is a possibility. Why I said I think the denial of the afterlife is [a] reasonable position, though I also hold belief in an afterlife is also reasonable.