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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

#71

Post by mcswell »

skissane wrote: post #61

Articles like this annoy me: it seems to want to comment on philosophy of mind, but shows zero awareness of the classic debates in that discipline - materialism vs idealism vs dualism vs neutral monism, and the competing versions of each of those, e.g. substance dualism vs hylemorphic dualism, eliminativist vs reductionist/emergentist materialism, property dualism, epiphenomenalism, panpsychism, Chalmers’ distinction…

As a linguist, article like this also annoy me by the claims that "X [whales, dolphins, parrots, crows...] uses language." We have known since 1957 that there is a hierarchy of "grammars", with finite state "languages" being near the bottom, and transformational grammars at the top. Human languages are certainly at a minimum at the context free phrase structure grammar level. My point is that by using the word "language" loosely, almost anything (DNA codons, for example) can be considered to be a language. But few if any other animals can get past the finite state level--and perhaps none gets even that far.

And an article or book that uses the word "communicate" is even more annoying, since "communicate" seems to mean virtually anything.

End of my rant...

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#72

Post by chasd00 »

ryandvm wrote: post #32
heyjamesknight wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's the same as giving up and saying "we don't understand." What is mind emerging into ? When a video game experience emerges from the combination of processing, display, sound, and controller input, it emerges into a level of organization that a mind can participate in. It emerges into a system of organization emanating downward from the mind experiencing it. It can't just "emerge" into existence on its o…

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…

You’re modded down for some reason but I haven’t thought of consciousness as a model that eventually becomes sophisticated enough to model itself. That could be an explanation for self awareness. …haven’t thought of that.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#73

Post by marcus_holmes »

I found it fascinating how this discussion dovetails with the discussion around free will.

In both cases, defining the actual thing under discussion is hard. If you can accurately predict a decision in advance, is that "free will"? If an organism reacts to a stimulus in an appropriate manner, is that "intelligence"?

In both cases, we're complex chemical organisms doing all of this with complex chemistry. If we rule out souls and spirits and similar, then it's just chemistry.

If we're following a predefined set of chemical rules in response to a set of stimuli, then how is that "free willed" or "intelligent"? The arbitrary line between tropism and intelligence seems very arbitrary.

But on the other had, we are made of meat. We experience free will and intelligence. We think, and make decisions, seemingly unrestricted by the method we use to do that. We are clearly intelligent, and clearly make decisions that we are apparently free to make.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#74

Post by felizuno »

protocolture wrote: post #65
skissane wrote: post #61

Articles like this annoy me: it seems to want to comment on philosophy of mind, but shows zero awareness of the classic debates in that discipline - materialism vs idealism vs dualism vs neutral monism, and the competing versions of each of those, e.g. substance dualism vs hylemorphic dualism, eliminativist vs reductionist/emergentist materialism, property dualism, epiphenomenalism, panpsychism, Chalmers’ distinction…

I bailed 10 words in and came to the comments to see if the article was worth reading. Thanks for confirming its a skip.

So many adjectives... and "radical" in the title is a doozy considering this article is essentially a stoner summary of LeDoux's "Deep History of Ourselves" with the science replaced with thesaurus suggestions.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#75

Post by [deleted] »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #6
card_zero wrote: post #3

I read it all, for a certain value of "read". It's very long, and heavy on examples and fascinating facts, but skimps on getting to the point. I enjoyed the line about plant biologists suffering from brain envy. The article gets better from about halfway through as skeptical views begin to be introduced, but eventually it lets go of that and turns back into lot of hand-wavy awe about mycorrhizal networks, and I misse…

'Get to the point' is my primary response to the article..

[deleted]

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#76

Post by notfed »

ryandvm wrote: post #32
heyjamesknight wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's the same as giving up and saying "we don't understand." What is mind emerging into ? When a video game experience emerges from the combination of processing, display, sound, and controller input, it emerges into a level of organization that a mind can participate in. It emerges into a system of organization emanating downward from the mind experiencing it. It can't just "emerge" into existence on its o…

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…

See Scott Aaronson's rebuttal to IIT: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1799

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#77

Post by anon291 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #73

I found it fascinating how this discussion dovetails with the discussion around free will. In both cases, defining the actual thing under discussion is hard. If you can accurately predict a decision in advance, is that "free will"? If an organism reacts to a stimulus in an appropriate manner, is that "intelligence"? In both cases, we're complex chemical organisms doing all of this with complex chemistry. If we rule o…

One's observations of one's own agency is really the only thing one can be assured of. And this is where these arguments that seek to reduce intelligence to purely mechanistic processes breaks down. For sure, everything the article is saying is true, and indeed, the system could be classified as intelligent, but this is a wholly different question from 'agency' or 'free will'. Even exceptionally dumb people have free will, and exceptionally intelligent computers (ChatGPT, DeepSeek, et al) have no free agency.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#78

Post by energy123 »

xg15 wrote: post #24

Maybe the definition of what "intelligence" is could be sharpened by having a look at LLMs and "traditional" computer programs and asking what exactly the difference between the two is. Almost all the traditional criteria of intelligence - reasoning, planning, decisionmaking, memory etc - are exhibited pretty trivially by standard computer programs. Nevertheless no one would think of them as "intelligent" in the sens…

But the discussion is not about intelligence, human or otherwise.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#79

Post by red75prime »

lubujackson wrote: post #63

Just read an interesting sci-fi novel grappling with this question very directly - Blindsight by Peter Watts, if anyone is interested.

The problem with sci-fi and this matter is that the author can portray anything that suits his/her ideas. Can Rorschach exist as described? Who knows.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#80

Post by red75prime »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #49

The interesting thing about mind (as far as I'm concerned) isn't intelligence, but consciousness. Intelligence isn't well defined. According to our current understanding of physics, everything is cause and effect, which throws free will out the window, so what do we even mean by intelligence? Is it just when chains of cause and effect become so complex we can't understand them any more? And if so, why does consciousn…

I'm happy with "Consciousness is a platonic form of self-reflective information processing thanks to all simplifications this processing has to do to reflect the messy physical processes underlying the information processing."
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