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A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

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Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#51

Post by heyjamesknight »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #42
heyjamesknight wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because our entire perception system functions as a mediation between the teleological affordances an object presents at a given level of organization/analysis and how those affordances relate to our motivational system's current objective and directed action. The emergence only "is" at a certain level of analysis and its emergence at that level is dependent entirely on the perception of an observer. If a car is hurt…

I completely agree with you, I’m just being more reductive when I say it’s a practical categorization rather than essential reality. Certainly it’s also reasonable to say there’s no essential reality, just subjective levels of analysis, so everything is practical categorization. The issue is that we’ve gotten nowhere in explaining why we seem to exist. A video game is relatively easy, at least seemingly, to reduce do…

I don't think its a question of whether there is an essential reality or not, but rather whether we have access to essential reality. Donald Hoffman makes a strong game theoretical argument for how natural selection chooses effective presentations of reality rather than necessarily accurate ones [1]. Based on your level of interest in this conversation I'd expect you would really enjoy that book!

The game is certainly easier than the mind—I like it as an example because most of us have a hands-on knowledge of what the qualitative experience of "playing a game" is like. But the game still only emerges because the game developer, computer manufacturer, and player jointly give it a emanating system into which it can emerge. On its own, the raw game data doesn't really mean anything at all—if the bitstream of Diablo IV washed up on the beach, there's nowhere in that data encoding the experience of killing Diablo for the first time. One wouldn't even recognize it as something that could be decoded into such an experience [2].

I agree with you that the "why" is tough. Why have a conscious experience? Why have a sense of self at all? Why experience emotions rather than have them be—like you described—a purpose-driven internal signal? And then you get into theories like Internal Family Systems, which has empirical support at least within a prescriptive context if not necessarily a descriptive one [3].

The whole thing is a mess. A great, big, beautiful mess.

[1: https://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Reality-Evolution-Truth/...] [2: https://benjamincongdon.me/blog/2021/02/21/Three-Layers-of-I...]

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#52

Post by heyjamesknight »

wat10000 wrote: post #48
ryandvm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with GP. Consciousness isn't so hard to explain if you don't enshroud it with mysticism. Consciousness is the emergent, graduated phenomenon of an information processing system when that information processing system has achieved significant complexity to model itself with relation to the various systemic inputs. It's not binary, it's a gradient. I have more developed consciousness than my dog, which has more…

It's a nice idea but there's no evidence for it. Not only is there no evidence, but nobody has any idea what such evidence would even look like. We can't even conceptualize an experiment that would support or refute this theory.

That's not true, the authors of IIT [1] propose a number of experiments that would support or deny the underlying theory. To my knowledge, those experiments haven't shown much support. But there are aspects of it that are absolutely empirically falsifiable.

[1: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.44]

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#53

Post by heyjamesknight »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #25
heyjamesknight wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can measure "pencilness" a number of ways depending on how you operationalize the term. It could be a measure of how well it achieves the function of a pencil, how well it matches the collective understanding of the form of a pencil, how closely it materially relates to an existing reference pencil. These are all proxy measures, but all of science is done by proxy.

Well sure, but you’re putting “pencilness” onto the collection of heterogeneous matter, same with any other level of analysis. Consciousness isn’t debatable by the thing doing it, it’s an irrepressible fact of existence to the conscious thing. Science needs a falsifiable hypothesis for the “why” of the material->consciousness transition, and constructing such a hypothesis is difficult for a lot of reasons. Saying “it…

Agreed, I was just commenting that one can measure "penciliness". I see a lot of pedantic arguments against measurement by proxy, as if every single measurement we do wasn't by proxy.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#54

Post by wat10000 »

heyjamesknight wrote: post #52
wat10000 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a nice idea but there's no evidence for it. Not only is there no evidence, but nobody has any idea what such evidence would even look like. We can't even conceptualize an experiment that would support or refute this theory.

That's not true, the authors of IIT [1] propose a number of experiments that would support or deny the underlying theory. To my knowledge, those experiments haven't shown much support. But there are aspects of it that are absolutely empirically falsifiable. [1: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.44 ]

I don't buy it. It might support the part of the theory that talks about how brains work. But the statement that this is qualia is different, and can't be proven or disproven. Let's say I believe that some person is actually a P-zombie, someone with no conscious experience but who behaves exactly like a normal person. Would these experiments be able to tell me if my belief is correct? I don't see how.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#55

Post by heyjamesknight »

wat10000 wrote: post #54
heyjamesknight wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true, the authors of IIT [1] propose a number of experiments that would support or deny the underlying theory. To my knowledge, those experiments haven't shown much support. But there are aspects of it that are absolutely empirically falsifiable. [1: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.44 ]

I don't buy it. It might support the part of the theory that talks about how brains work. But the statement that this is qualia is different, and can't be proven or disproven. Let's say I believe that some person is actually a P-zombie, someone with no conscious experience but who behaves exactly like a normal person. Would these experiments be able to tell me if my belief is correct? I don't see how.

You're welcome to read the paper. Tonini's work is well-known within CogSci and its not quackery by any stretch.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#56

Post by wat10000 »

heyjamesknight wrote: post #55
wat10000 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy it. It might support the part of the theory that talks about how brains work. But the statement that this is qualia is different, and can't be proven or disproven. Let's say I believe that some person is actually a P-zombie, someone with no conscious experience but who behaves exactly like a normal person. Would these experiments be able to tell me if my belief is correct? I don't see how.

You're welcome to read the paper. Tonini's work is well-known within CogSci and its not quackery by any stretch.

I skimmed it. There's one mention of "qualia" and I didn't spot anything to connect their theory with the actual experience of consciousness besides them saying they think so.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#58

Post by andoando »

ben_w wrote: post #39
andoando wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that's true at all for traditional computer programs. They're doing explicitly what they are designed to do, there is no adaptation/learning.

Code vs. data. The code needed create, train, and perform inference on a Transformer is quite short. How short depends on how you count the `import` statements in https://github.com/openai/gpt-2/blob/master/src/model.py and https://github.com/openai/gpt-2/blob/master/src/sample.py etc. Spreadsheets performing linear regression etc., — Do they learn? Sure! If you accept that Transformers adapt and learn then you must…

I am confused, a spreadsheet running the code for what a neural network does, sure. But a traditional computer program isn't just excel.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#59

Post by truculent »

giorgioz wrote: post #35

I've been thinking as well that from some perspective a human being isn't actually a single life but rather itself a multitude of separate tiny-life forms that cooperate to survive (the cells). The voice in our head is the emerging consciouness that act as a captain, it's useful for the captain to think of itself as one being. Now this said, I feel the article is jumping a bit too much on the Animism hippie bandwagon…

While it shares some similarities with animism, it’s a fundamentally materialist viewpoint, which puts it at odds with animism. Materialism is so rooted within our culture that I think it can be hard to fully grok alternative viewpoints.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#60

Post by dimal »

giorgioz wrote: post #35

I've been thinking as well that from some perspective a human being isn't actually a single life but rather itself a multitude of separate tiny-life forms that cooperate to survive (the cells). The voice in our head is the emerging consciouness that act as a captain, it's useful for the captain to think of itself as one being. Now this said, I feel the article is jumping a bit too much on the Animism hippie bandwagon…

The term I’ve seen used the most is “basal cognition”. It’s used to describe agentic problem solving behavior seen at lower scales and in different problem spaces where we normally have trouble imagining intelligence. Michael Levin’s paper, “Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds”[0] is a good, readable explanation of the concept. He does a ton of YouTube talks explaining it as well.[1] Very watchable, and pretty mind-blowing. It’s not wishy washy animism. He and his lab are doing rigorous experiments and finding some very unusual things.

[0] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/systems-neuroscience/ar...

[1] https://youtu.be/StqX-LH0IN8?si=NhwMdWxBLZrghUom

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