Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> The point is, whatever you are thinking during t1t2, you are thinking *something*,
> and you are thinking the same something in (a), (b) and (c). Whatever complex
> brain processes are occurring during t1t2 in (a) are also occurring in (b) and (c), and
> therefore whatever conscious processes are occurring during that interval in (a) will
> also occur in (b) and (c), and you will not lose your place in the sentence or your sense
> of continuity of consciousness. The OM t1t2 is exactly the same in each case, and falls
> perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone.
>
I think we're in agreement, Stathis, but I'm trying to focus on a
problem, and what I think is a non-trivial aspect of evolved brain
functionality that would be required to overcome it. Of course, I agree
with you that each aspect of the experience '.....falls perfectly into
position in each case by virtue of its content alone' - it's precisely
what I've been arguing. But there's a subtler point here also, I think,
that leads to the problem. Let's take the 'cat sat on the mat': now
'cat' starts at t1 and 'mat' ends at t2. Let's subdivide t1t2 into
occasions o1-o1000, and let teleportation occur between each. Each
occasion o1-o1000 is as informationally closed as OMt1t2 (the
'teleportation' is of course inserted precisely to make this point),
but now it has become implausible to believe that any individual
occasion, say o492, is of sufficient extent to recover any coherent
component whatsoever of the conscious thought 'the cat sat on the mat'.
And yet, we know that we *are* in fact able to routinely recover such
components, corresponding loosely to a 'specious present' of some 1.5
seconds extent.
Now comes the problem: how do we account for our manifest ability to do
this without invoking some form of illicit 'continuity' between
informationally separated occasions of arbitrarily fine granularity? No
individual occasion apparently contains all the necessary information,
and it seems that we almost can't stop ourselves imaginatively invoking
some sort of continuity over multiple occasions, in order that coherent
experiences can somehow be recovered by summing over the sequence.
I think, if true, this would be a real problem in reconciling our
experience with the facts, and I think therefore that it requires a
real solution (actually an aspect of Barbour's time capsule theory
which I'm extrapolating a bit further). Simply, if what I'm arguing is
valid, it must follow that my assumption about individual occasions
'not containing the necessary information' *must be wrong*.
Consequently, sufficient information to recover 'speciously present'
dynamic experiences *must* in fact be *simultaneously* represented by
the brain - be present on one occasion - and that this simultaneous
'dynamic' presentation must be the engine that renders both the
duration and the dynamism of the experience. And, to complete the
(evolutionary) circularity, this would be precisely *why* the brain
would possess this capability - because without it, extended, dynamic
environmental presentations would simply be *unavailable* to the
organism.
Does this make sense?
David
> David,
>
> Consider these three examples:
>
> (a) You utter sentence S, "the cat sat on the mat". The word "on"
> starts at time t1 and finishes at time t2.
>
> (b) At time t1 while uttering S you are intantaneously teleported to a
> distant location.
>
> (c) You have no actual past but materialise de novo at time t1 as if in (b),
> uttering "... on the mat".
>
> We are interested in your phenomenal consciousness between t1 and t2 in
> each case (ignoring the change of scenery due to the teleportation). It is no
> doubt quite complex, involving not only saying the word "on" but also a sense
> of self, a sense of the whole sentence and your place in it, an idea that this is
> part of an experiment, and so on. There may even be a lag between action and
> awareness, so that you are actually conscious of saying "sat" in the interval
> t1t2 rather than when you actually said it, and there will probably be at least some
> sense of continuity between "sat" and "on" during t1t2.
>
> The point is, whatever you are thinking during t1t2, you are thinking *something*,
> and you are thinking the same something in (a), (b) and (c). Whatever complex
> brain processes are occurring during t1t2 in (a) are also occurring in (b) and (c), and
> therefore whatever conscious processes are occurring during that interval in (a) will
> also occur in (b) and (c), and you will not lose your place in the sentence or your sense
> of continuity of consciousness. The OM t1t2 is exactly the same in each case, and falls
> perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
> > From: david.nyman.domain.name.hidden
> > To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
> > Subject: Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
> > Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 05:14:03 -0700
> >
> >
> > Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> >
> > > My brain must
> > > at some subconscious level have the structure of the whole sentence spanning a 2 second interval
> > > t1-t2 or else the sentence could not be generated.
> >
> > It's still unclear to me from the above whether we're in agreement or
> > not. I'm concerned that you may be assuming what is to be explained,
> > owing to an illegitimate sleight of intuition. That is, it's so normal
> > for us to think in terms of the overall 'sequence of moments' that it's
> > easy to forget that the posit for OMs is that they are *informationally
> > closed* with respect to other OMs (this is the point I've been debating
> > with Peter, with which I thought you agreed). If OMs are thus closed,
> > then it must follow that whatever information is required to generate
> > the experience of 'a given moment' (under-defined, but see below)
> > *must* be contained in its entirety within *some* (but of course not
> > every) OM.
> >
> > Were that not the case, *no* individual OM would contain all the
> > elements of a coherent conscious experience, and by the same token
> > *any* coherent conscious experience would necessarily have to span
> > *multiple* OMs. But any such assumption - i.e. meta-assembly of data
> > over multiple OMs - is precisely what we wish to rule out of our
> > account. A 'successor' OM - and any conscious state dependent on it -
> > must simply 'forget' anything about 'prior' OMs that is not re-encoded
> > within it - beyond such encoding, everything else is simply radically
> > absent. A metaphor here might be a cine-film. An OM is then a frame. If
> > all you have is a single frame, then your 'experience' must be strictly
> > limited to whatever is contained in that frame, unless you can somehow
> > surreptitiously sneak a glance at - or recall at will - other frames.
> >
> > > we rely on the machinery of the brain keeping track of everything to generate successive
> > > moments of consciousness which pull everything back into coherence.
> >
> > Is what you say above consistent with the constraints on OMs in my
> > account? I think perhaps we may intend the same thing here.
> >
> > This consideration, at least, strongly suggests (IMO entails) something
> > entirely non-trivial about what the brain is actually doing (your
> > 'engineering problem'), beyond representing simple 'snapshots' from
> > external input. To overcome the 'OM constraint', it needs to assemble,
> > from these 'instants', 'rolling constructs', each of which encodes an
> > updated version of the 'specious present', *simultaneously*
> > representing multiple snapshots and their relations. It may be entirely
> > owing to such 'time capsules' (as Barbour, taking this issue seriously,
> > implies) that we are able to assemble and implement a dynamic
> > experience of 'time'. In fact, we can be pretty sure that there is a
> > brain mechanism doing something like this, because as Colin recently
> > reminded us, there are syndromes that interfere with it, changing the
> > 'dynamic granularity' (refresh rate). So our dynamic experience - the
> > 'A-series' - may depend critically on such 'time-synthesising'
> > mechanisms within brain structure and function, rather than mapping in
> > a simple sequential way to external 'B-series' events. And this of
> > course would then make sense of why such biological time-mechanisms
> > would have evolved. That is, because successive improvement in the
> > ability to represent, and consequently discriminate and respond to, an
> > environment perceived as dynamic events and processes at variable
> > levels of granularity, confers obvious survival advantage.
> >
> > David
> >
> > > David Nyman writes:
> > >
> > > > > As for memory being encoded in or accessible to an OM, that is an unnecessary complication.
> > > > > As you said previously, the OM's are related solely by their information content. If the seconds
> > > > > of your life were sliced up, shuffled and thrown to the wind, (t1) 3:10:02 PM of 10/10/06 would
> > > > > still subjectively follow (t2) 3:10:01 PM of 10/10/06 even though there is no connection or "flow"
> > > > > of information between them. If you look at how t1 and t2 are generated, then yes, there is a
> > > > > connection - they both come out of your head - but once generated, they form a natural sequence
> > > > > which cannot be disrupted.
> > > >
> > > > But my point about the 'coherence' of consciousness is that it seems
> > > > (especially from what occurs, or fails to occur, when it deteriorates)
> > > > that complex representation and processing of *temporally extended*
> > > > information sequences (e.g. grasp of the entirety of the content and
> > > > meaning of a sentence or proposition) is necessary for one to
> > > > experience and act as a fully-functioning conscious individual.
> > > > Consequently, it seems to me that such processes must converge on OMs
> > > > in which all the necessary information is fully encoded and expressed
> > > > (which is essentially what Barbour seems to be claiming for his 'time
> > > > capsules' - e.g. his 'flight of the kingfisher' example). Without this,
> > > > the alternative seems to be that the individual random, wind-blown
> > > > seconds of your metaphor would need to be totalised in some additional
> > > > non-information-based manner in order to coordinate an ensemble of
> > > > informationally incomplete, discrete elements into coherent
> > > > experiences. AFAICS they only 'form a natural sequence' from the
> > > > quasi-objective perspective of our philosophical stance. And such
> > > > coordination is in any case what we were assuring Peter was both
> > > > unnecessary and impossible.
> > >
> > > We have to distinguish between what actually happens to create the moments of a stream of
> > > consciousness and what is the minimum logically necessary that needs to happen. My brain must
> > > at some subconscious level have the structure of the whole sentence spanning a 2 second interval
> > > t1-t2 or else the sentence could not be generated. But that's just an engineering problem: if the
> > > moments t1 and t2 come about with exactly the right sort of phenomenal content, magically, or
> > > by random processes, then I will experience a coherent 2 second span of consciousness in which I
> > > utter the full sentence. The only way I might not experience this is if there is something wrong with
> > > the actual phenomenal content of t1 and t2: if whatever vague sense I have of the whole sentence
> > > during t1 and t2 is missing during either or both intervals, then I would forget what I was saying.
> > > The vague sense of the whole sentence has two parts, in t1 and t2, just as the sentence itself has
> > > two parts. If we had a longer sentence through further nitervals t3, t4 and t5, it could be, for example,
> > > that during t4 the sense of the whole sentence is completely absent, and only in retrospect from t5 is
> > > it seen that t4 was part of the whole. This sort of thing happens all the time during absent-minded
> > > moments, and we rely on the machinery of the brain keeping track of everything to generate successive
> > > moments of consciousness which pull everything back into coherence.
> > >
> > > Stathis Papaioannou
> > > _________________________________________________________________
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> >
> >
> > >
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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Received on Sat Oct 28 2006 - 08:36:31 PDT