Mind from Matter

Brad,I did my best to understand what you wrote. I've re-written parts of it, to reflect my own understanding. I'm providing this so that you know my assumptions about your writing, and so that you can correct me where I got it wrong. Based on this, I would say...1. It's a good point, that experience is much more static than I've described so far. For example, if you wear "mirror" glasses (i.e. glasses that flip the image that is normally projected to your eyes), your conscious experience will actually change after about a week (or was it two?) of doing so. When you finally take the glasses off, it takes much less time (an hour?) to re-adapt. (this was done in a scientific study) In other words, there is something static, or some bias, to conscious experience.I think Dr. Ramachandran's experiments with one's sense of bodily limit, of sensation, and playing with the bounds of what is perceived to be our own body (as well as his "phantom limb" research) is related to what you are bringing up. And I think that's very important.2. If my reading of your proposed analyses is right (and that's a HUGE IF), then I would say the following:a. I can understand why you'd think the consciousness of other sentient beings matters, but, in the way that I'm explaining things, it doesn't. The variability of another's "consciousness" has absolutely no effect on how my brain models the world and thus constructs a "mental experience."b. As for your proposal of analyses that can be done to show that, no matter variability in conscousness across the species, you can affect the world...I don't think there's any experiment you can do that would, in principle distinguish between an internally modelled world and an externally existing world. The concern with other conscious beings, and the fact that an analysis would be consistently in need of representation by ALL such beings doesn't matter, because in the view that all we can know is our own "internal" world, these other conscious beings would simply be part of that internal world.I would say, look at a dream. Can the same thing, in principle, happen in a dream? It's an interesting question--but I think the answer is yes. Can the same thing happen when we choose to daydream or visually imagine such a situation? I believe so. So, I don't think the concern of other conscious beings, or the fact that you can affect something that affects the consciousness of all beings, can distinguish between an internal and an external world.It is not the variability of consciousness across the species that is what brings us to this point. It is just the analysis of an individual. Everything that an individual experiences is literally generated by the brain. The relationship between the "external world" and the internal mental experience of a person are different. Very different. The mind is not a passive portal into the world. It is an active, predictive machine that represents data with internal simulations and experiences that are truly divorced from the outside world.Well... I feel I've been less than convincing. More data would be useful, I believe. The overall point is that there are two ways to model the mind. One is to postulate an ACTUALLY EXISTING external reality and an "internal reality". The other is just to postulate the "internal reality". And I am trying to explain that, by simply postulating the internal reality, I've come to realize there's no extra explanatory power in also postulating the ACTUAL EXISTENCE of an external reality. It's useful to talk about an external reality, insofar as it's a description and abstraction from the experience within the "internal reality", but no value in postulating it's ACTUAL EXISTENCE.Throw me a bone here .

Ben,Quick check: How does this differ from solipsism or does it? lfen

I would deny the usefulness of the words "know" and "verify" here. I think the conceptions of "pure knowledge" and "absolute truth" are not useful.But my view certainly takes the failure of "know" and "verify" as basic, for sure.Ben

If you try to describe a monistic world with dualistic language you will always find problems; these problems tell you nothing about the world but much about your frame of reference. In essence, by using the terms you're 'physicality' and 'mentality' as if they were different 'stuffs' you have assumed a dualist concept of the world.Currently, we have nothing that even vaguely approaches a description of how subjective experiences emerge but dualism does not offer us anything more - like creationism it is the ultimate non-explanation. Instead of having a problem we don't understand, we move to a problem that under no circumstances can be understood; while it could be true it would tell us nothing if it were.I say 'could' but ever since it's formal conception¹ by Descarte, Dualism has suffered from philosophical problems: most noteably The Ghost In The Machine and The Problem Of Others. While modern neuroscience increasingly identifies closer and closer links between the brain and mental experiences: (in particular) damage can cause change in the mental experience; chemical processes effect mental experience; and mental experience can be tracked by monitoring brain activity.From a personal point of view I see the strongest argument against a Monistic viewpoint as the Argument From Evolution: if mind is a seperate substance from body how is it that the two became linked through an entirely physical process (evolution)? At what point did this occur? And so on. ¹ There were most certainly Dualists before Descartes, but Descartes was the first to put the concept onto a formal philosophical setting.

I agree with what you say. yet, there is nothing IN PRINCIPLE that tells us what sequence or activation gives us mental experience as it is. We cannot predict, for example, what the experience of an artificial mind might be, or what experience other animals with different hardware might have.In other words, we ... assume, through lots of correlative data, that we have causation between the brain and the mind. However, we don't have a mechanism that explains all the facets of the mind. One of those is the qualitative experience behind the mind.Of course, we don't have explanatory mechanisms for lots of things. Another big one is our language ability. We don't even know why our brains are highly lateralized. There's lots and lots of things we don't know. The origin of mental experience is just one of them.Ben

Ben,It was the second definition of solipsism that I was thinking of. I just pasted the entire dictionary entry. If you see no value in ACTUAL EXISTENCE of external reality aren't you getting very close to solipsism? I'm just not understanding the distinctions you are making here.lfen

This seems to be an accurate statement of the state of knowledge of the brain function. We can trace the nerve pathway after a photon strikes a retinal receptor. Or we can alter the brain chemistry with drugs and observe the effects externally or internally.The question for me is whence the interiority? If it's something about electrical activities then do toasters have experience? televisions? computers? Do they suffer, experience awareness? Do amoeba's? jellyfish? shrimp? How would we know?lfen

The only reason I'm using the term "mentality" is that I have a private experience that seems to be non-physical. So I call it "mental." My only evidence is my private experience and the plausible assumption that everybody else has this same private experience. We have no private experience (at least I don't) that tells me anything about the validity or invalidity of creationism. So the belief in "mentality" is on a different level altogether.For mentality, we have the 'proof' of our private experience. It's not scientific but it's certainly obvious to any and all that we are conscious, that we are self-conscious, that we have thoughts, and that we can and do imagine physical scenes.

Ifen This is not yet known,[give it time]however,since electrical activity in the mind is a result of moving electrical charges that in turn,as they are half of the electromagnetic force, produce magnetic charges within the brain that are also likely to produce a range of effects,there are many other manifestations of activity within the substance of the brain.Now imagine the complexity of a great number of electrical potentials loading and unloading across synapses and the pathways crossing being changed by an ongoing onslaught of chemicals that each alter or enhance the flow of all this activity and it is not out of possibility that it could produce these phenomena that we experience.Regardless,if the "interiority",as you label it,were a seperate thing altogether from the physical processes then we need to focus our investigations on how it can be altered by physical forces.

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A centipede was happy quite, until a toad in fun
Said, "Pray, which leg comes after which?'
This raised his doubts to such a pitch
He fell distracted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run.

From my reading of this, it seems to me that you think the electrical nature of the brain matters. I don't have any evidence against that in my mind, but I also don't know of anybody in cognitive science / neuroscience who believes that the hardware actually matters. Every working model out there that I've ever run across assumes that changing the hardware (even making it non-electrical) would not change the system.In his book "Godel, Escher, Bach", Hofstadter investigates the problem of hardware a bit. He basically winds up asking, if you replaced all neurons with a complex set of interconnecting irrigation tubes (yes it would be huge!), would that have a mind? My personal answer would be yes... although their sensory experience would be vastly different (due to the much slower timing of the system).Just a thought that seemed related to the OP.Ben

#2 definition is the same to me as #1 definition. The "only reality" ... it's just not in the direction I'm interested.In some way the way I think is close to solipsism, and in some way it's different. The base argument is the same--that nothing outside of our own perception can be known to be "absolutely true."From there, I take a different path. Instead of simply concluding that the "self" is known as absolutely true, I am just saying that what is known about anything--the reality of self, the reality of external worlds, anything--is just practical, inductive modelling. To talk about anything deductive from "absolute knowledge" is nonsense.The purpose for making this distinction is to eliminate a lot of confusion based on what corresponds to the "real world" and the "internal world", to eliminate the duality between "perception" and "reality." Let's just focus on the data, and model that. Postulations of the "true" existence of "mind" or "reality" are, in my experience, unanswerable. The closest you can get to that is to explain data. Whatever model does the best at explaining the available data is anointed the "true" one.Ben

Ben, are you saying that all that matters is that the set up is an algorithm? Irrigation tubes? You've got to be kidding.

My underlying belief is that it is the timing and algorithms of the system that matter. Time, in an absolute sense, doesn't matter at all. Time is nothing but change; it doesn't exist in an absolute sense.I think anybody committed to belief that it's the timing and algorithmic properties of the brain that matter to mind is pretty much committed to this position, whether they admit it or not.What is it that bothers you about this position? BESIDES the fact that it might "seem ridiculous" ?Ben

Well, Ben, let's take a bunch of people out into a field. This is a lot of people and a big field. Each of these people is going to have some boxes that can be either full or empty. That's all they can be.We issue a set of instructions in which if box-a is full then box b has to be empty, unless box c is empty, in which case . . . etc., etc. It will be a detailed set of instructions of that nature. Then we run our program. It would take a while of course but if we keep doing this we will produce "consciousness."This message has been edited by robinrohan, 12-20-2004 05:00 PM

Ben,Okay, but what data are you talking about? Do you mean we just look at the brain talking to itself? Or are you going to shine a light of a specific frequency on the retina, at which point you have external data and internal data, no?The brain is so hugely complex is anyone trying to model the human brain at this point, or just parts of it? Are data spike potentials, neurotransmitters, brain waves?Sorry, I'm realize I'm in waaaay over my head here.lfen