Welcome to Atheist Discussion, a new community created by former members of The Thinking Atheist forum.

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Consciousness

Consciousness
(12-03-2019, 03:14 AM)airportkid Wrote:
(12-03-2019, 01:00 AM)Alan V Wrote: ... material causes are not the same things as reasons which motivate our behaviors.  There is an ontological difference between the material world and the selected and processed virtual world in our brain which we respond to ...

Therein is the heart of disagreement between myself and my friend, and apparently yourself:  the invocation of some immaterial aspect of existence that has no material component.  I cannot see any rational basis for invoking non-materiality.  To do so means the non-materialist can confidently point to some phenomenon as having no possibility of material explanation - and wherefore that degree of absolute knowledge?  I certainly have insufficient knowledge myself to deny immateriality, but that in no way justifies speculating what does constitute immateriality, or to invoke even the concept.  None of the many mysteries I personally still grapple with lead me to presume they cannot be material.

What types of your observations compel you to deny material explanation for them - recognizing that in order to do so you have to have fully catalogued the limits that materiality can never breach, now and into the infinite future?

I think you may have misunderstood what I intended to convey.  Televisions create virtual representations of the real world, and have entirely material explanations. It's just that those explanations don't reduce to chemical reactions. We invented and watch TV for psychological and sociological reasons.

So what I was trying to convey was that I don't think the human brain works by a sum of causes, at least for many of its operations.  I think the materialistic explanation for some things have to be at their own level of complexity.  For instance, you can't understand human decisions by biochemistry alone, because that works the same no matter what the decisions are.  But you can understand human decisions by their psychology and sociology.  (Although some materialists dislike the "soft sciences," I do not.)

So for me, there is symbolic processing of information at a systems level of understanding which doesn't reduce to chemistry.  I do things for reasons, not strictly for causes.  Causes by themselves could send me in all sorts of directions which I still have to decide between.
Reply

Consciousness
(12-03-2019, 10:24 AM)Cavebear Wrote: We are a collection of slowly accumulating chemical reactions, parasitic microbes, and bacteria who have become group-adaptive and mutually=beneficial and who have, through trial-and-error, achieved self-awareness at least to the point as we currently define it.

None of this requires any miracle, deity, or alien intervention.  I don't know whether this happens rather inevitably, ocassionally, or rarely even in the most supportive of environmental conditions.  

I think that there are only 2 possibilities.  It happens only by the greatest of unlikely happenstance or it happens nearly everywhere that is possible.  The only thing I am certain of is that it can't happen "only twice".  We are either alone or among multitudes...

I wish @Mathilda would contribute to this discussion.  She had an interesting theory of why thermodynamics made consciousness inevitable in favorable places in the universe.  Basically, consciousness provides shortcuts for entropy (if I remember correctly).  That would make your multitudes more likely.
The following 1 user Likes Alan V's post:
  • Cavebear
Reply

Consciousness
(12-03-2019, 10:42 AM)Alan V Wrote:
(12-03-2019, 10:24 AM)Cavebear Wrote: We are a collection of slowly accumulating chemical reactions, parasitic microbes, and bacteria who have become group-adaptive and mutually=beneficial and who have, through trial-and-error, achieved self-awareness at least to the point as we currently define it.

None of this requires any miracle, deity, or alien intervention.  I don't know whether this happens rather inevitably, ocassionally, or rarely even in the most supportive of environmental conditions.  

I think that there are only 2 possibilities.  It happens only by the greatest of unlikely happenstance or it happens nearly everywhere that is possible.  The only thing I am certain of is that it can't happen "only twice".  We are either alone or among multitudes...

I wish @Mathilda would contribute to this discussion.  She had an interesting theory of why thermodynamics made consciousness inevitable in favorable places in the universe.  Basically, consciousness provides shortcuts for entropy (if I remember correctly).  That would make your multitudes more likely.

I would be glad to see any discussion of intelligence and the likelihood of it elsewhere. If by "thermodynamics", you mean create an environment that I think of as potentially allowing life, I'm good with that. Consciousness providing shortcuts doesn't make much sense to me without more explanation, though.
Never try to catch a dropped kitchen knife!
Reply

Consciousness
(12-03-2019, 10:42 AM)Alan V Wrote: ...
I wish @Mathilda would contribute to this discussion.  She had an interesting theory of why thermodynamics made consciousness inevitable in favorable places in the universe.  Basically, consciousness provides shortcuts for entropy (if I remember correctly).  That would make your multitudes more likely.

Sounds like the hypothesis put forward by Jeremy England
The following 1 user Likes DLJ's post:
  • Alan V
Reply

Consciousness
This is my summary of important points from Sizing Up Consciousness: Toward an Objective Measure of the Capacity for Experience by neuroscientists Marcello Massimini and Giulio Tononi, published by Oxford University Press, 2013.

The authors organized their chapters in a rather unusual way. Chapters 1 through 4 asked questions. Chapter 5 introduced organizing principles. And Chapters 6 through 9 answered the questions from the first four chapters in reverse order.

Chapter 1: What makes the brain so special that it can create subjective experiences?

Chapter 2: “The existence of zombie systems [the majority of which are in the cerebellum and the basal ganglia] raises two questions. First, why aren’t we just big bundles of unconscious fast zombie agents? Why bother with consciousness, which takes almost half a second to set in? Second, what is the difference between the neuronal circuits that make up zombie agents and those that support conscious experience?”

Chapter 3: It used to be that people with certain varieties of brain injuries died. Now with modern life-support systems, it’s difficult to tell when certain patients are still conscious, especially those experiencing vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS) or complete locked-in syndrome (LIS) when they can’t even move their eyes. Special tests were devised to establish patients’ states, but input/output tests only work when patients can respond verbally or through other signals. It’s also possible to tell patients to imagine certain actions, like moving through their house, and to measure their responses completely independent of motor behavior. But even that approach has problems.

“Scientifically, the challenge boils down to identifying the neural mechanisms that are necessary and sufficient for being conscious in a broad sense.” Several methods are considered. 1) We can measure overall levels of brain activity by fMRI or Pet scans. 2) We can measure activity in some privileged brain regions which are crucial to consciousness. 3) We can measure the synchronization of brain activity associated with consciousness. 4) We can measure the shape of brain waves, since low-voltage, fast waves are associated with consciousness. But all of these methods have too many exceptions to be reliable. Such exceptions include the kinds of brain activity we see with zombie systems, NREM sleep, and epileptic seizures. So our methods and instruments are “not yet equal to the task.”

Chapter 4: “Why does the cortex support consciousness, but not the cerebellum, which has four times more neurons? Why does consciousness vanish during deep sleep, even though neurons remain active? How can the vivid experience of a dream be generated without interactions with the environment? Why does consciousness split if the corpus callosum is cut?”

Chapter 5: Integrated Information Theory (IIT) “starts from the essential phenomenal properties of experience, and infers postulates about the characteristics that are required of its physical substrate.” For instance, since conscious experience is informative, “the physical substrate of consciousness must be highly differentiated – that it, it must be able to generate a vast repertoire of states.” Also, since conscious experience is integrated, “the physical substrate of consciousness must constitute a single, integrated entity.” The authors build their answers to the above questions on these two postulates.

Chapter 6: Looking at the organs in the body, the liver lacks overall integration while the heart lacks differentiation, which means neither could be conscious. To answer the question about zombie systems: both the cerebellum and the thalamocortical system are highly differentiated, but the cerebellum lacks integration. “A microscopic examination shows that the cerebellar cortex is composed of myriads of segragated feed-forward circuits that do not form an integrated entity.” It sacrifices the integrated information of conscious experiences for speed, per its specialization of habituating motor responses. To answer the question about consciousness vanishing during deep sleep: “All it takes may be a simple change in potassium conductance” to turn off “the entire thalamocortical system ... upon falling asleep.” In other words, by changing the brain’s chemical state, you can shut down communication between its modules, and so consciousness disappears. To answer the question about dream experiences: “The hard core of the thalamocortical system, with its vast repertoire of causal relations, can be influenced in what it sees and hears via the sense organs, but it can also see and hear without them. For this reason, we can imagine and dream with our eyes shut. And to answer the question about a split-brain’s split consciousness: this is “exactly as one would expect if consciousness requires information integration.” The split consciousness is largely an artifact of redundancy in information capacity.

Chapter 7: “It is now obvious that measuring levels of neural activity will not be sufficient to obtain even the roughest estimate of phi.” (“Phi” is what the authors call a measure of both information and integration.) “Empirical indices that are sensitive to integration have low sensitivity to information,” and visa versa. Synchronicity doesn’t mean integration, since circuits may be driven by the same input.

The authors then propose a new method of measuring both information and integration objectively: magnetic brain stimulation by means of a transcranial magnetic stimulator (TMS) combined with the usual electro-encephalogram (EEG) to measure the brain’s response. “The EEG response to TMS will be widespread and complex in a conscious brain and will be local (loss of integration), and/or less complex (loss of information) whenever consciousness fades.” They went on to test such a device on 150 people, during waking, NREM sleep, REM sleep, and general anestheia of various types. When they compared their results with verbal reports of conscious experiences or the lack thereof, they were encouraged by the results. They then tested their device on UV/UWS patients and found that “by knocking on the brain with TMS we found three distinct modes of brain reactivity, all hiding behind the same clinical label.” These were 1) complete unresponsiveness, indicating “the cerebral cortex was largely and irreversibly damaged,” 2) a low-complexity cortical response ... that was, in all respects, similar to the one observed during dreamless NREM sleep, and 3) “in about 20% of VS/UWS patients we found high-complexity responses.” This led the authors to conclude, “we might have detected a capacity for consciousness ... which could not be expressed in behavior.”

Chapter 8: To answer the question of why we are not just big bundles of unconscious fast zombie agents, the authors point out that purely feed-forward processing requires more circuits and more energy expenditure than recurrent processing. “Evolutionary pressure may have naturally selected systems that carry on the same behaviors feats with less elements and more recurrent connections, due to space and energy constraint.” “It is not so much what a system does, but how it does it, that determines whether it is conscious.” To answer the question of how we recognize the signs of consciousness in other beings, the authors give a more involved answer. Cognitive complexity isn’t the answer, since smartphones perform very complex functions. Brain size isn’t the right measure, or sperm whales should be many times smarter than humans. Using IIT-style measurements instead can provide the right answers, and may be able to differentiate the gradations between baby and adult, drowsy and alert, intoxicated and sober, and human and animal.

Chapter 9: The authors finally address the question posed in the first chapter: what makes the brain so special that it can create subjective experiences? “Withing each brain there is a major thalamocortical complex – a maximally irreducible cause-effect struture with a high value of phi.” “By selecting and pruning, the brain constructs an internal model of the external world; a model that may soon become so solid, general, and independent that the world can be dreamed from within. So, through dreaming, imagining, and creating, the internal repertoire continues to expand, even beyond the possibilities offered by the environment.”

My comment: Perhaps I didn’t understand the authors’ conclusions, which depended on some rather technical ideas, but this last bit doesn’t yet seem wholly satisfying. I think they only addressed some of the various problems surrounding subjective experiences.
The following 1 user Likes Alan V's post:
  • DLJ
Reply

Consciousness
(12-03-2019, 10:38 AM)Alan V Wrote:
(12-03-2019, 03:14 AM)airportkid Wrote:
(12-03-2019, 01:00 AM)Alan V Wrote: ... material causes are not the same things as reasons which motivate our behaviors.  There is an ontological difference between the material world and the selected and processed virtual world in our brain which we respond to ...

Therein is the heart of disagreement between myself and my friend, and apparently yourself:  the invocation of some immaterial aspect of existence that has no material component.  I cannot see any rational basis for invoking non-materiality.  To do so means the non-materialist can confidently point to some phenomenon as having no possibility of material explanation - and wherefore that degree of absolute knowledge?  I certainly have insufficient knowledge myself to deny immateriality, but that in no way justifies speculating what does constitute immateriality, or to invoke even the concept.  None of the many mysteries I personally still grapple with lead me to presume they cannot be material.

What types of your observations compel you to deny material explanation for them - recognizing that in order to do so you have to have fully catalogued the limits that materiality can never breach, now and into the infinite future?

I think you may have misunderstood what I intended to convey.  Televisions create virtual representations of the real world, and have entirely material explanations.  It's just that those explanations don't reduce to chemical reactions.  We invented and watch TV for psychological and sociological reasons.

So what I was trying to convey was that I don't think the human brain works by a sum of causes, at least for many of its operations.  I think the materialistic explanation for some things have to be at their own level of complexity.  For instance, you can't understand human decisions by biochemistry alone, because that works the same no matter what the decisions are.  But you can understand human decisions by their psychology and sociology.  (Although some materialists dislike the "soft sciences," I do not.)

So for me, there is symbolic processing of information at a systems level of understanding which doesn't reduce to chemistry.  I do things for reasons, not strictly for causes.  Causes by themselves could send me in all sorts of directions which I still have to decide between.

It appears that you are simply begging the question. These things don't reduce to material explanations, therefore these things don't reduce to material explanations. If these things do reduce to material explanations, then there is no ontological distinction of a relevant kind (yes representations aren't things, but consciousness is not these representations, consciousness is the sum total system that is representing things). So it seems you've simply followed a confused and likely unjustified assertion with a question begging argument based on that.
Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Mâyâ.
Fear not — it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies.


Vivekananda
The following 1 user Likes Dānu's post:
  • Alan V
Reply

Consciousness
(12-07-2019, 08:59 PM)Dānu Wrote: It appears that you are simply begging the question.  These things don't reduce to material explanations, therefore these things don't reduce to material explanations.  If these things do reduce to material explanations, then there is no ontological distinction of a relevant kind (yes representations aren't things, but consciousness is not these representations, consciousness is the sum total system that is representing things).  So it seems you've simply followed a confused and likely unjustified assertion with a question begging argument based on that.

Again, what I was trying to convey is that materialistic explanations are not all reductionistic.  So the ontological distinction is not between the material and the "non-material," but between the reduction and the emergent.  I consider reasons to be emergent. 

I recently bought a book titled Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy, which I hope to read soon, so perhaps it will help me clarify this distinction.  But I will say this: if consciousness is the irreducible sum total of anything, it is emergent.  Not everything is emergent in that way.  Perhaps most things can be explained adequately reductionistically.
Reply

Consciousness
(12-07-2019, 10:45 PM)Alan V Wrote:
(12-07-2019, 08:59 PM)Dānu Wrote: It appears that you are simply begging the question.  These things don't reduce to material explanations, therefore these things don't reduce to material explanations.  If these things do reduce to material explanations, then there is no ontological distinction of a relevant kind (yes representations aren't things, but consciousness is not these representations, consciousness is the sum total system that is representing things).  So it seems you've simply followed a confused and likely unjustified assertion with a question begging argument based on that.

Again, what I was trying to convey is that materialistic explanations are not all reductionistic.  So the ontological distinction is not between the material and the "non-material," but between the reduction and the emergent.  I consider reasons to be emergent. 

I recently bought a book titled Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy, which I hope to read soon, so perhaps it will help me clarify this distinction.  But I will say this: if consciousness is the irreducible sum total of anything, it is emergent.  Not everything is emergent in that way.  Perhaps most things can be explained adequately reductionistically.

I gathered you feel that consciousness is emergent (presuming that's a mistype there). What I don't see is that you've given adequate reason for your conjecture.
Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Mâyâ.
Fear not — it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies.


Vivekananda
Reply

Consciousness
(12-08-2019, 02:30 AM)Dānu Wrote: I gathered you feel that consciousness is emergent.  What I don't see is that you've given adequate reason for your conjecture.

No doubt.
Reply

Consciousness
(12-08-2019, 11:15 AM)Alan V Wrote:
(12-08-2019, 02:30 AM)Dānu Wrote: I gathered you feel that consciousness is emergent.  What I don't see is that you've given adequate reason for your conjecture.

No doubt.

That was your cue to point out where you've provided adequate reasons or provide them. Otherwise this is just an arbitrary assertion.
Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Mâyâ.
Fear not — it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies.


Vivekananda
Reply

Consciousness
(12-08-2019, 12:04 PM)Dānu Wrote:
(12-08-2019, 11:15 AM)Alan V Wrote:
(12-08-2019, 02:30 AM)Dānu Wrote: I gathered you feel that consciousness is emergent.  What I don't see is that you've given adequate reason for your conjecture.

No doubt.

That was your cue to point out where you've provided adequate reasons or provide them.  Otherwise this is just an arbitrary assertion.

To clarify, I do think consciousness is emergent, but there is no doubt I have not yet provided adequate reasons.  In fact, I admitted as much when I mentioned the book I will be reading.  I've mainly been trying to hold the door open to the possibility against reductionists and determinists, who seem to think their position is either the default or is already proven -- neither of which is true according to the experts whose books I've already read.

When I have worked out my reasons, perhaps they will not convince anyone even if they are adequate.

I look forward to your own contributions to this discussions.
Reply

Consciousness
(12-07-2019, 08:30 PM)Alan V Wrote: This is my summary of important points from Sizing Up Consciousness: Toward an Objective Measure of the Capacity for Experience by neuroscientists Marcello Massimini and Giulio Tononi, published by Oxford University Press, 2013.

The authors organized their chapters in a rather unusual way.  Chapters 1 through 4 asked questions.  Chapter 5 introduced organizing principles.  And Chapters 6 through 9 answered the questions from the first four chapters in reverse order.

Chapter 1: What makes the brain so special that it can create subjective experiences?

Chapter 2: “The existence of zombie systems [the majority of which are in the cerebellum and the basal ganglia] raises two questions.  First, why aren’t we just big bundles of unconscious fast zombie agents?  Why bother with consciousness, which takes almost half a second to set in?  Second, what is the difference between the neuronal circuits that make up zombie agents and those that support conscious experience?”

Chapter 3: It used to be that people with certain varieties of brain injuries died.  Now with modern life-support systems, it’s difficult to tell when certain patients are still conscious, especially those experiencing vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS) or complete locked-in syndrome (LIS) when they can’t even move their eyes.  Special tests were devised to establish patients’ states, but input/output tests only work when patients can respond verbally or through other signals.  It’s also possible to tell patients to imagine certain actions, like moving through their house, and to measure their responses completely independent of motor behavior.  But even that approach has problems.  

“Scientifically, the challenge boils down to identifying the neural mechanisms that are necessary and sufficient for being conscious in a broad sense.”  Several methods are considered.  1) We can measure overall levels of brain activity by fMRI or Pet scans. 2) We can measure activity in some privileged brain regions which are crucial to consciousness.   3) We can measure the synchronization of brain activity associated with consciousness.  4) We can measure the shape of brain waves, since low-voltage, fast waves are associated with consciousness.  But all of these methods have too many exceptions to be reliable.  Such exceptions include the kinds of brain activity we see with zombie systems, NREM sleep, and epileptic seizures.  So our methods and instruments are “not yet equal to the task.”

Chapter 4: “Why does the cortex support consciousness, but not the cerebellum, which has four times more neurons?  Why does consciousness vanish during deep sleep, even though neurons remain active?  How can the vivid experience of a dream be generated without interactions with the environment?  Why does consciousness split if the corpus callosum is cut?”

Chapter 5: Integrated Information Theory (IIT) “starts from the essential phenomenal properties of experience, and infers postulates about the characteristics that are required of its physical substrate.”  For instance, since conscious experience is informative, “the physical substrate of consciousness must be highly differentiated – that it, it must be able to generate a vast repertoire of states.”  Also, since conscious experience is integrated, “the physical substrate of consciousness must constitute a single, integrated entity.”  The authors build their answers to the above questions on these two postulates.

Chapter 6: Looking at the organs in the body, the liver lacks overall integration while the heart lacks differentiation, which means neither could be conscious.  To answer the question about zombie systems: both the cerebellum and the thalamocortical system are highly differentiated, but the cerebellum lacks integration.  “A microscopic examination shows that the cerebellar cortex is composed of myriads of segragated feed-forward circuits that do not form an integrated entity.”  It sacrifices the integrated information of conscious experiences for speed, per its specialization of habituating motor responses.  To answer the question about consciousness vanishing during deep sleep: “All it takes may be a simple change in potassium conductance” to turn off “the entire thalamocortical system ... upon falling asleep.”  In other words, by changing the brain’s chemical state, you can shut down communication between its modules, and so consciousness disappears.  To answer the question about dream experiences: “The hard core of the thalamocortical system, with its vast repertoire of causal relations, can be influenced in what it sees and hears via the sense organs, but it can also see and hear without them.  For this reason, we can imagine and dream with our eyes shut.  And to answer the question about a split-brain’s split consciousness: this is “exactly as one would expect if consciousness requires information integration.”  The split consciousness is largely an artifact of redundancy in information capacity.

Chapter 7: “It is now obvious that measuring levels of neural activity will not be sufficient to obtain even the roughest estimate of phi.”  (“Phi” is what the authors call a measure of both information and integration.)  “Empirical indices that are sensitive to integration have low sensitivity to information,” and visa versa.  Synchronicity doesn’t mean integration, since circuits may be driven by the same input.

The authors then propose a new method of measuring both information and integration objectively: magnetic brain stimulation by means of a transcranial magnetic stimulator (TMS) combined with the usual electro-encephalogram (EEG) to measure the brain’s response. “The EEG response to TMS will be widespread and complex in a conscious brain and will be local (loss of integration), and/or less complex (loss of information) whenever consciousness fades.”  They went on to test such a device on 150 people, during waking, NREM sleep, REM sleep, and general anestheia of various types. When they compared their results with verbal reports of conscious experiences or the lack thereof, they were encouraged by the results.  They then tested their device on UV/UWS patients and found that “by knocking on the brain with TMS we found three distinct modes of brain reactivity, all hiding behind the same clinical label.”  These were 1) complete unresponsiveness, indicating “the cerebral cortex was largely and irreversibly damaged,” 2) a low-complexity cortical response ... that was, in all respects, similar to the one observed during dreamless NREM sleep, and 3) “in about 20% of VS/UWS patients we found high-complexity responses.”  This led the authors to conclude, “we might have detected a capacity for consciousness ... which could not be expressed in behavior.”

Chapter 8: To answer the question of why we are not just big bundles of unconscious fast zombie agents, the authors point out that purely feed-forward processing requires more circuits and more energy expenditure than recurrent processing.  “Evolutionary pressure may have naturally selected systems that carry on the same behaviors feats with less elements and more recurrent connections, due to space and energy constraint.”  “It is not so much what a system does, but how it does it, that determines whether it is conscious.”  To answer the question of how we recognize the signs of consciousness in other beings, the authors give a more involved answer.  Cognitive complexity isn’t the answer, since smartphones perform very complex functions.  Brain size isn’t the right measure, or sperm whales should be many times smarter than humans.  Using IIT-style measurements instead can provide the right answers, and may be able to differentiate the gradations between baby and adult, drowsy and alert, intoxicated and sober, and human and animal.

Chapter 9: The authors finally address the question posed in the first chapter: what makes the brain so special that it can create subjective experiences?  “Withing each brain there is a major thalamocortical complex – a maximally irreducible cause-effect struture with a high value of phi.”  “By selecting and pruning, the brain constructs an internal model of the external world; a model that may soon become so solid, general, and independent that the world can be dreamed from within.  So, through dreaming, imagining, and creating, the internal repertoire continues to expand, even beyond the possibilities offered by the environment.”

My comment: Perhaps I didn’t understand the authors’ conclusions, which depended on some rather technical ideas, but this last bit doesn’t yet seem wholly satisfying.  I think they only addressed some of the various problems surrounding subjective experiences.

Thanks for the write-up.  

I'm a little confused regarding "differentiated", "integrated" etc. and what they meant by 'information'.  But I think I kinda, sorta get it. 

Cheers.
The following 1 user Likes DLJ's post:
  • Alan V
Reply

Consciousness
(12-09-2019, 09:08 AM)DLJ Wrote: I'm a little confused regarding "differentiated", "integrated" etc. and what they meant by 'information'.  But I think I kinda, sorta get it. 

According to the authors, "differentiated" means the capacity to process any information at all though a repertoire of states.  The more possible states, the more possible information processed.  So for instance, a simple sensor might be able to detect light or dark, whereas the brain is sensitive to a whole range of highly differentiated colors and shades.  The brain also has many specialized modules to process different kinds of information.

"Integrated" means interconnected to such an extent that the differentiated information creates a whole simulation or map of interrelated information.  The many different modules of the cerebellum do not have those connections, and therefore lack the capacity for consciousness, whereas the cerebral cortex has such connections in spades.

Of course the authors discuss the science supporting such ideas in some detail, far beyond what I could summarize or in some cases even follow.  Plus there are other properties a brain must possess to be conscious even according to IIT, but the authors focused on those two to answer the specific questions they raised.

This Wikipedia article goes into more detail about the over-all theory:

Quote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated...ion_theory

IIT moves from phenomenology to mechanism by attempting to identify the essential properties of conscious experience (dubbed "axioms") and, from there, the essential properties of conscious physical systems (dubbed "postulates").
The following 1 user Likes Alan V's post:
  • DLJ
Reply

Consciousness
(12-09-2019, 11:13 AM)Alan V Wrote:
(12-09-2019, 09:08 AM)DLJ Wrote: I'm a little confused regarding "differentiated", "integrated" etc. and what they meant by 'information'.  But I think I kinda, sorta get it. 

According to the authors, "differentiated" means the capacity to process any information at all though a repertoire of states.  The more possible states, the more possible information processed.  So for instance, a simple sensor might be able to detect light or dark, whereas the brain is sensitive to a whole range of highly differentiated colors and shades.  The brain also has many specialized modules to process different kinds of information.

"Integrated" means interconnected to such an extent that the differentiated information creates a whole simulation or map of interrelated information.  The many different modules of the cerebellum do not have those connections, and therefore lack the capacity for consciousness, whereas the cerebral cortex has such connections in spades.

Of course the authors discuss the science supporting such ideas in some detail, far beyond what I could summarize or in some cases even follow.  Plus there are other properties a brain must possess to be conscious even according to IIT, but the authors focused on those two to answer the specific questions they raised.

This Wikipedia article goes into more detail about the over-all theory:

Quote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated...ion_theory

IIT moves from phenomenology to mechanism by attempting to identify the essential properties of conscious experience (dubbed "axioms") and, from there, the essential properties of conscious physical systems (dubbed "postulates").

Thanks for that.  I was hoping for something along those lines as it fits with what I was writing about before (in, maybe, the Free Will thread, or somewhere).

The 'differentiated' part is aligned to what I was referring to as 'availability' and 'capacity' (or digital (on/off) and analogue (continuum))... or transistors/switches and capacitors, if you prefer.

The "integrated" part aligns to the DIKW model I've posted before, thus facilitating a high level Governance Dashboard (consciousness).  

They also seem to be advocating what I mentioned before which is an intermediate layer between the language of philosophy and biochemistry (or phenomenology and mechanism; or Dennett's Intentional World and Physical World; or essentialism and nihilism) which is where I advocate the IT best practice models.

All good. 

Thumbs Up
The following 1 user Likes DLJ's post:
  • Alan V
Reply

Consciousness
(12-11-2019, 02:34 PM)Alan V Wrote:
Quote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own. These properties or behaviors emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole. For example, smooth forward motion emerges when a bicycle and its rider interoperate, but neither part can produce the behavior on their own.

Emergence plays a central role in theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. For instance, the phenomenon of life as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry, and psychological phenomena emerge from the neurobiological phenomena of living things.

In philosophy, theories that emphasize emergent properties have been called emergentism. Almost all accounts of emergentism include a form of epistemic or ontological irreducibility to the lower levels.

I'll have to get back to you after I've had time to read and digest this, but off the top, I note that Wikipedia says that, "Almost all accounts of emergentism include a form of epistemic or ontological irreducibility to the lower levels." My prior understanding was that emergentism, at least in the case of consciousness, implies that consciousness is not epistemically reducible. I'm not sure about ontologically. And Wikipedia seems to be saying that there are some kinds of emergentism for which epistemic or ontological irreducibility are not required (some of Rupert Sheldrake's writings spring to mind here). Anyway, my prior working assumption was that a claim that consciousness is emergent necessarily requires that consciousness not be capable of being reduced to an explanation in terms of physics, material, and cause & effect. Are you asserting that when you label something emergent? Patricia Churchland has a goodly bit to say about the relationship between reducibility and emergence and such in her book, "Neurophilosophy." I'll see if I can locate those passages and share them. Perhaps we should fork this off to your consciousness thread at this point, as it's not clear that everybody is into this here. If you want to respond to me there, that would be fine.
Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Mâyâ.
Fear not — it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies.


Vivekananda
The following 1 user Likes Dānu's post:
  • Alan V
Reply

Consciousness
Oops
"Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I'll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. 
F. D.
Reply

Consciousness
This was the reply I made on the other thread. 

(12-10-2019, 03:30 PM)Dānu Wrote:
A "soul" isn't the only alternative, nor is what you envision a soul to be necessarily the only form a soul can take.  But I think we understand each other.  I think many people have a tendency to imply that their assumptions or beliefs about consciousness are fact, or more certain than they are.  This seems particularly true of those who subscribe to certain physicalist interpretations.  To go from an assumption about what consciousness is to a conclusion about what happens in death goes way beyond what one can reasonably defend.  One's conclusions then become a matter of dogmatic faith not substantially different from religious beliefs, which includes the soul.  What's good for the goose is good for the gander.  If one can take precepts about the physicality of consciousness based upon a leap of faith, it would seem hypocritical to then not allow the same move from a theist or non-physicalist.

I certainly agree that a soul is not the only alternative.  It is obvious that all sorts of cognitive processing goes on in our brains all the time which does not require our conscious efforts.  The portion of our consciousness with which we deliberate and make intentional choices is what contributes to what we think of as our identity.  If the portion of consciousness we call our conscious minds can give rise to an autonomous nexus, how can we be sure there are not (or could not be) others?  Or perhaps the entirety of ones consciousness acquires a sense of identity replete with the capacity for intentionality, albeit very different from our own?  Very little about our functional psychology is well understood.
"Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I'll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. 
F. D.
The following 1 user Likes Mark's post:
  • Dom
Reply

Consciousness
(12-11-2019, 03:08 PM)Dānu Wrote: Anyway, my prior working assumption was that a claim that consciousness is emergent necessarily requires that consciousness not be capable of being reduced to an explanation in terms of physics, material, and cause & effect.  Are you asserting that when you label something emergent?

There are many aspects of neurophysiology which can be reduced to physics and chemistry, but the overall workings of consciousness itself seems to defy such approaches.  A complete understanding of consciousness seems to require a systems-level analysis.

This is a rather cliched analogy, but you can dissect a bird to study different aspects of its physiology.  But if you want to observe it flying, mating, and doing all the other normal things a bird does, you have to leave it intact and relatively undisturbed.  You have to study it at its own level of complexity in its own environment.

So yes, that's what I mean when I call something emergent.  An emergent property doesn't reduce to its components, although the components obviously make it possible.  The whole is different than the sum of the parts.  I see both life and consciousness as emergent properties, which disappear when the systems and interactions of the constituent parts are disrupted or destroyed in some way.
The following 1 user Likes Alan V's post:
  • Mark
Reply

Consciousness
(12-11-2019, 03:29 PM)Mark Wrote: I certainly agree that a soul is not the only alternative.  It is obvious that all sorts of cognitive processing goes on in our brains all the time which does not require our conscious efforts.  The portion of our consciousness with which we deliberate and make intentional choices is what contributes to what we think of as our identity.  If the portion of consciousness we call our conscious minds can give rise to an autonomous nexus, how can we be sure there are not (or could not be) others?  Or perhaps the entirety of ones consciousness acquires a sense of identity replete with the capacity for intentionality, albeit very different from our own?  Very little about our functional psychology is well understood.

Consciousness or awareness is our interface with external realities, and its purpose is largely to create and operate those more autonomous modules in our brains which we depend on day-to-day.  The brain is a habit-making machine.  We pay attention and habituate to new information and behaviors, or improve on old ones, all the time.  And consciousness is how we choose between existing habits to make sure we are applying the correct automatic responses in the right contexts.  We monitor their execution and correct them in real time.  It's like being a plate spinner, where we keep a number of plates in the air simultaneously through abbreviated interactions, by focusing from one to another.
The following 1 user Likes Alan V's post:
  • Mark
Reply

Consciousness
(12-11-2019, 03:36 PM)Alan V Wrote:
(12-11-2019, 03:08 PM)Dānu Wrote: Anyway, my prior working assumption was that a claim that consciousness is emergent necessarily requires that consciousness not be capable of being reduced to an explanation in terms of physics, material, and cause & effect.  Are you asserting that when you label something emergent?

There are many aspects of neurophysiology which can be reduced to physics and chemistry, but the overall workings of consciousness itself seems to defy such approaches.  A complete understanding of consciousness seems to require a systems-level analysis.

This is a rather cliched analogy, but you can dissect a bird to study different aspects of its physiology.  But if you want to observe it flying, mating, and doing all the other normal things a bird does, you have to leave it intact and relatively undisturbed.  You have to study it at its own level of complexity in its own environment.

So yes, that's what I mean when I call something emergent.  An emergent property doesn't reduce to its components, although the components obviously make it possible.  The whole is different than the sum of the parts.  I see both life and consciousness as emergent properties, which disappear when the systems and interactions of the constituent parts are disrupted or destroyed in some way.

Okay, then for the time being, let's focus on this one aspect of emergentism. What makes you sufficiently confident that consciousness cannot be reduced to an understanding of its components and their properties such that you think it's reasonable to say that we "know" that consciousness is emergent in that sense. (I presume I haven't misunderstood the import or content of your prior statements on this; if so, please straighten me out.)

Oh, and disruption or destruction of a system's parts causing the disappearance of a phenomena does not, to my eye, necessitate that the whole is emergent. If I remove the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine, it ceases to function as an internal combustion engine, but not because internal combustion and internal combustion engines cannot be reduced to the properties of their parts. I guess I don't see where it follows here.
Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Mâyâ.
Fear not — it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies.


Vivekananda
The following 1 user Likes Dānu's post:
  • Alan V
Reply

Consciousness
(12-11-2019, 03:50 PM)Dānu Wrote: Okay, then for the time being, let's focus on this one aspect of emergentism.  What makes you sufficiently confident that consciousness cannot be reduced to an understanding of its components and their properties such that you think it's reasonable to say that we "know" that consciousness is emergent in that sense.  (I presume I haven't misunderstood the import or content of your prior statements on this; if so, please straighten me out.)

Oh, and disruption or destruction of a system's parts causing the disappearance of a phenomena does not, to my eye, necessitate that the whole is emergent.  If I remove the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine, it ceases to function as an internal combustion engine, but not because internal combustion and internal combustion engines cannot be reduced to the properties of their parts.  I guess I don't see where it follows here.

Looking at the long picture, it seems unlikely that either life or consciousness existed at the level of the simple physics that drove the early universe.  The conditions for either had not yet materialized.  That means they appeared along the way, and probably very gradually.  They were new properties of material objects, if their components are considered to be atoms obeying the laws of physics.

So you seem to be missing the essential point of emergentism when you said, "What makes you sufficiently confident that consciousness cannot be reduced to an understanding of its components and their properties..."  The whole point of emergentism is that new combinations produce new properties.  If the properties are the same before and after new combinations of materials, nothing is emergent at all.

I would like to emphasize that it's not me alone making these claims.  Emergentism is just what makes sense to me from my reading.  For instance, back in post #22 I wrote these points from The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind by Michael Gazzaniga:

Quote:4) The discovery that epileptics who had their corpus callosum cut, severing the connections between the brain’s hemispheres to prevent seizures, clearly demonstrated they had two independent minds subsequently, but sharing the same emotions and motivations from the mid-brain.  These minds did not share information as before, however, and therefore were distinctly different than they were in combination.

Gazzaniga and Roger Sperry studied such split-brain patients together.  From such studies, Sperry concluded that conscious experience is a property of brain activity which is:
1) nonreductive (it can’t be broken down into its parts),
2) dynamic (it changes in response to neural activity),
3) and emergent (it is more than the sum of the processes that produce it).
He also concluded “it could not exist apart from the brain.”
Reply

Consciousness
(12-11-2019, 10:50 PM)Alan V Wrote:
(12-11-2019, 03:50 PM)Dānu Wrote: Okay, then for the time being, let's focus on this one aspect of emergentism.  What makes you sufficiently confident that consciousness cannot be reduced to an understanding of its components and their properties such that you think it's reasonable to say that we "know" that consciousness is emergent in that sense.  (I presume I haven't misunderstood the import or content of your prior statements on this; if so, please straighten me out.)

Oh, and disruption or destruction of a system's parts causing the disappearance of a phenomena does not, to my eye, necessitate that the whole is emergent.  If I remove the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine, it ceases to function as an internal combustion engine, but not because internal combustion and internal combustion engines cannot be reduced to the properties of their parts.  I guess I don't see where it follows here.

Looking at the long picture, it seems unlikely that either life or consciousness existed at the level of the simple physics that drove the early universe.  The conditions for either had not yet materialized.  That means they appeared along the way, and probably very gradually.  They were new properties of material objects, if their components are considered to be atoms obeying the laws of physics.

So you seem to be missing the essential point of emergentism when you said, "What makes you sufficiently confident that consciousness cannot be reduced to an understanding of its components and their properties..."  The whole point of emergentism is that new combinations produce new properties.  If the properties are the same before and after new combinations of materials, nothing is emergent at all.

You're missing my point, and you've misunderstood what I wrote. It is not enough that a whole has properties that the parts do not. If a whole's properties can be reduced to the properties of the parts along with their combination, then it is not emergent under most forms of emergentism. A cake has properties that flour, water, eggs, and sugar do not. That doesn't mean the properties that are unique to the cake are emergent unless those properties cannot be derived from the properties of the ingredients, and the properties that the ingredients have when combined or interacting with other things. Water has properties that hydrogen and oxygen molecules do not have. Those properties of water are only emergent if they cannot be reduced to the properties that hydrogen and oxygen have independently, along with the properties which they have regarding what happens to them when certain things in their environment are true, ie. them being a part of a whole. The existence of novel properties alone is not what makes something emergent. The impossibility of reduction of these properties is. Thus your Gazzaniga example misses the point.

And with all due respect, while I've not read the same things from Gazzaniga and Sperry that you have, and maybe I've missed something, in their writings or your own, but as far as I have seen, Sperry's conclusion is not, or at least has not been justified here. I'm going from memory, so if I'm simply forgetting or missed something you've posted on it, my apologies. I'll try to find time to refresh my memory of what you've posted sometime soon. I certainly respect Gazzaniga and Sperry, Gazzaniga more than Sperry due to greater familiarity, but I do not hold either of them as an absolute authority. Yes, their opinions have value given their expertise and experience. However, authority derives from one's opinions being backed by something, and, if Sperry's opinion is backed by something, then I'm ignorant as to what it is. Just as a personal note, I've read stuff by Gazzaniga that I wholeheartedly disagree with. That doesn't mean he's necessarily wrong, but the truth of any opinion stands or falls based on the merits of the rational arguments behind that opinion, not simply that the opinion holder is considered an authority or even is more likely to be right than I am. "more likely right" also implies "still possibly wrong." Only the facts and the arguments can decide which is which.

Quote:I don’t need a seconder. My own opinion is enough for me and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Tongue

Show ContentSpoiler:
Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Mâyâ.
Fear not — it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies.


Vivekananda
Reply

Consciousness
Perhaps I should have mentioned that most accounts of emergentism include downward causation from the whole to the parts.  I will learn more about the arguments and definitions as I read the book I mentioned.

But be that as it may, I don't understand your impatience.  Even the experts have different opinions concerning these issues, which are still being contested and so have not yet been resolved.  The philosopher I am presently reading thinks they ultimately can be resolved empirically.

Hopefully I'll have more to say on the subject in another month or so. The book is quite technical and difficult.
Reply

Consciousness
What impatience are you referring to here? You've raised the issue. I've responded to what you've provided.
Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Mâyâ.
Fear not — it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies.


Vivekananda
Reply

Consciousness
Oh, and rereading your post, I note that you said the author you're going to read believes that questions such as irreducibility can ultimately be resolved empirically. I'm relatively confident from my own thinking that resolving it empirically is an impossibility. I certainly am not going to fault the author for not having access to my thoughts on the matter, but it bodes ill for the supposed strength of the author's thinking if what I think about it is true.
Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Mâyâ.
Fear not — it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies.


Vivekananda
Reply




Users browsing this thread: 2 Guest(s)