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What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

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Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#141

Post by oifjsidjf »

thenext10years wrote: post #134

If I am God, I will be bored because I am all knowing, all powerful, all present. Is like playing a RPG game with all the cheat codes. So I created a world that I will not remember who I am, when I reborn, I randomly spawn in a family. This way, I can play the game, without getting bored, forever and ever. Deep down knowing that if the game eventually ends, I am still omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent

Assuming that "boredom" exists for such a being as God is a human projection that might have zero relevance in the domain of the absolute.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#142

Post by namero999 »

zasdffaa wrote: post #49
namero999 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panpsychism is untenable because it trades the hard problem of consciousness for the composition problem. The only consistent and coherent game in town is analytical idealism.

It might be a piss-poor explanation, because it doesn't explain anything, it presumes its conclusion, but that doesn't make it wrong. And if you throw in phrases like "composition problem" and "analytical idealism" the fer fuck's sake provide some simple explanation or something.

Something that assumes its conclusion and doesn't explain anything is not even wrong...

At any rate, given the context of the thread I didn't feel the need to clarify what the composition problem nor idealism are. But since you ask:

The composition (aka combination) problem refers to the need to explain how multiple bits of consciousness combine together to form a united and cohesive experience such as yours or mine. The hard problem focuses instead on how quantities (matter) give rise to qualities (experience).

Analytic Idealism is the view that experience is the ontological primitive. Both problems sublimate away. Yes, you can derive physics from it. In fact you don't even bother physics in any way: all we know about it remains valid under analytic idealism. If anything, many counterintuitive findings of QM fall into place under AI. If this pique your interest, here's a good intro https://www.essentiafoundation.org/analytic-idealism-course/.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#143

Post by namero999 »

goodthenandnow wrote: post #85
namero999 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panpsychism is untenable because it trades the hard problem of consciousness for the composition problem. The only consistent and coherent game in town is analytical idealism.

> the composition problem Would these be like the “easy problems” then? Besides, wouldn't that be exactly like our current physics? (Where we reduce until we find something fundamental like “electric charge just is and has this properties”, similarly for Quantum fields and the like -- and then how that composes and interacts with other fundamentals is the whole business.)

The composition problem is considered the hard problem of panpsychism. But as your intuition correctly points out, it is definitely easier than the original hard problem of materialism, which is a category jump from quantities to qualities.

The main difference is that physics is quantifiable, so we can come up with in-principle explanations of really complex stuff (weather forecasts, life itself, etc). With qualities it's a different ballgame, because we are talking about different subjects combining into one. Not saying that it's a dead end, but we haven't even yet started to define the problem, let alone solving it.

There are other more compelling roads. Rather than a combination mechanism, we can look at the problem from a decomposition perspective. This is easier because it's a really well understood phenomenon that we can actually study: the compartmentalization of one unified mind into separate minds, also known as multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder. Here, we have a clear in-principle path to walk.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#144

Post by mungoman2 »

thenext10years wrote: post #134

If I am God, I will be bored because I am all knowing, all powerful, all present. Is like playing a RPG game with all the cheat codes. So I created a world that I will not remember who I am, when I reborn, I randomly spawn in a family. This way, I can play the game, without getting bored, forever and ever. Deep down knowing that if the game eventually ends, I am still omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent

Interesting short story The Egg explores an similar idea: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#145

Post by zasdffaa »

namero999 wrote: post #142
zasdffaa wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a piss-poor explanation, because it doesn't explain anything, it presumes its conclusion, but that doesn't make it wrong. And if you throw in phrases like "composition problem" and "analytical idealism" the fer fuck's sake provide some simple explanation or something.

Something that assumes its conclusion and doesn't explain anything is not even wrong... At any rate, given the context of the thread I didn't feel the need to clarify what the composition problem nor idealism are. But since you ask: The composition (aka combination) problem refers to the need to explain how multiple bits of consciousness combine together to form a united and cohesive experience such as yours or mine.…

> Something that assumes its conclusion and doesn't explain anything is not even wrong...

No. It can be entirely right. It just isn't useful in any way.

From your link "Analytic Idealism is a theory of the nature of reality that maintains that the universe is experiential in essence"

Maintain all you like. It might even - per my prior statement on pan-psychism - be true. I want quantifiable evidence before we accept it as true. Cough up.

Anyway, thanks for the descriptions of the tech terms.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#146

Post by namero999 »

zasdffaa wrote: post #145
namero999 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that assumes its conclusion and doesn't explain anything is not even wrong... At any rate, given the context of the thread I didn't feel the need to clarify what the composition problem nor idealism are. But since you ask: The composition (aka combination) problem refers to the need to explain how multiple bits of consciousness combine together to form a united and cohesive experience such as yours or mine.…

> Something that assumes its conclusion and doesn't explain anything is not even wrong... No. It can be entirely right. It just isn't useful in any way. From your link "Analytic Idealism is a theory of the nature of reality that maintains that the universe is experiential in essence" Maintain all you like. It might even - per my prior statement on pan-psychism - be true. I want quantifiable evidence before we accept…

Can you argument your desire for a quantifiable evidence without begging the question? There is research compatible with these claims. It's mentioned and linked in the link I've previously provided.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#147

Post by zasdffaa »

namero999 wrote: post #146
zasdffaa wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something that assumes its conclusion and doesn't explain anything is not even wrong... No. It can be entirely right. It just isn't useful in any way. From your link "Analytic Idealism is a theory of the nature of reality that maintains that the universe is experiential in essence" Maintain all you like. It might even - per my prior statement on pan-psychism - be true. I want quantifiable evidence before we accept…

Can you argument your desire for a quantifiable evidence without begging the question? There is research compatible with these claims. It's mentioned and linked in the link I've previously provided.

> Can you argument your desire for a quantifiable evidence without begging the question?

Don't fall back to sophistry. Is there evidence? yes or no, if yes then show me.

> There is research compatible with these claims. It's mentioned and linked in the link I've previously provided.

I'm downloading the single video which mentions the word evidence. If there is any more evidence links, please show me them, especially written evidence, and especially especially, empirical evidence.

Edit: right, they're saying that experience is essential to reality. They provide evidence in the form of quantum experiments. I can provisionally accept that, very provisionally. Does it say anything about what consciousness actually is, which is what you (seemed to) claim? Haven't found any sign of that yet.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#148

Post by qudat »

zone411 wrote: post #136
qudat wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is consciousness possible? Here's my naive answer with just a bachelors in neuroscience. There are some "business requirements" as far as I know. We need: - space and time - memory - inputs - decision making models - attention You need space and time because thinking is a verb. Action is required which needs the passage of time. You need memory in order to link past events with current ones. I'm not strictly talk…

This doesn't really address the hard problem of consciousness. https://consc.net/papers/facing.html

> The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect.

Subjective experience is just the system I described happening extremely fast. What I describe seems simple and doesn’t explain experience, but when you acknowledge the scale of our computation, what emerges is the self.

Continuity, recursive loop between inputs, cortex responding to those inputs, and being fed through our prefrontal cortical decision making models. Then that feeds back into the system again with even more inputs in the next stack frame. It’s happening millions of times, causing bursts of brain activity. All at the same time our brains are also being molded by all this brain activity. Changing constantly.

It is absolute chaos.

It’s this recursive reduce function that gives rise to what we describe as the self and subjective experience.

We as humans are hopelessly biased here, we put consciousness on a pedestal, but I don’t think there’s a hard problem.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#149

Post by qudat »

spoonfeeder006 wrote: post #130
qudat wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is consciousness possible? Here's my naive answer with just a bachelors in neuroscience. There are some "business requirements" as far as I know. We need: - space and time - memory - inputs - decision making models - attention You need space and time because thinking is a verb. Action is required which needs the passage of time. You need memory in order to link past events with current ones. I'm not strictly talk…

What you are describing regarding inputs, brain activity on data stream, and how its just a recursive ETL function and such, is describing behavior and computation though You have some input that goes into the brain, and produces neural firings that trigger actuators to respond to that stimulus What I don't understand is why are we conscious beings instead of extremely complex bio-computation machines exhibiting memo…

> What I don't understand is why are we conscious beings instead of extremely complex bio-computation machines exhibiting memory, inputs, and complex behaviors such as attention and decision making models, all with behavioral actuators, and all this simulating thought and intelligence but really have no entity whatsoever thats actually experiencing stuff?

Subjective experience and the "self" are just emergent properties of the system I described, on a scale that's difficult to comprehend.

> I've always wondered what ultimately makes neurons and all so special that they produce conciousness. Does a rock that undergoes vibrations have some sort of consciousness associated with it, if not much less than what is seen in a human?

There's nothing special about neurons, they are biological systems to encode information from the external world and produce action potentials that trigger other neurons. It's also a misconception that neurons are the only thing firing in the brain. Glial cells also play an important function here. Further, it doesn't make sense to talk about consciousness at the neuronal level. Consciousness is an emergent property of the nervous system.

You can't point to any molecule and call it wet, but a bunch of h2o molecules clumped together have an emergent property of wetness.

Likewise, a rock is hard and if you use it to crack open a walnut, it has physics that relates to the entire object. However, we could explain the entire system at the molecular level but it doesn't really explain the hardness and physical forces that emerge from the rock that allow us to crack a walnut.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#150

Post by nicoburns »

otikik wrote: post #133
nicoburns wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point. A brain could encode "pleasure", and respond appropriately to that and other complex stimuli without there being anyone actually feeling that pleasure. But there is, and that's unexplained. That's not just a defect in our understanding of brains, it's something which we don't understand on the level of physics.

I thought I covered that. Subjective perception is a mental process. There’s nothing there besides an intricate bunch of signals and processing. The signal that says “you Exist” is just hardwired to look Extremely Important to us, so we put it on different category than “you need to pee”, for example. It’s up there with “Intense pain”, and we feel it all the time while we are awake. What I am saying is that we are al…

The "hard problem" is how it is possible for anything to "look like" or "feel like" anything in the first place. Not only do we not know how to simulate that, we don't even know how to sense that it is taking place in anything other than our own minds.
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