Mark:
Accepting broadly your summary up to this point...............
MP: But I have to *challenge you to clarify* whether what I write
next really ties in completely with what you are thinking.
DN: My seconds will call on you!
MP: Consciousness is something we know personally, and through
discussion with others we come to believe that their experience
is very similar.
DN: OK, but If you push me, I would say that we 'emerge' into a personal
world, and through behavioural exchange with it, come to act consistently as
if this constitutes an 'external' environment including a community of
similar worlds. For a nascent individual, such a personal world is initially
'bootstrapped' out of the environment, and incrementally comes to
incorporate communally-established recognition and explanatory consistencies
that can also be extrapolated to a embrace a wider context beyond merely
'personal' worlds.
MP: This can be summarised as 'The mind is
what the brain does', at least insofar as 'consciousness' is
concerned, and the brain does it all in order to make the body's
muscles move in the right way.
DN: I would say that 'minds' and 'brains' are - in some as yet
not-fully-explicated way - parallel accounts of a seamless causal network
embracing individuals and their environment. Depending on how this is
schematised, it may or may not be possible to fully correlate
top-down-personal and bottom-up-physical accounts. Nonetheless, ISTM more
natural to ascribe intentionality to the individual in terms of the
environment, rather than 'the brain getting the body's muscles to move' -
i.e. "I move my hand" runs in parallel with a physical account involving the
biology and physics of brain and body, but both ultimately supervene on a
common 'primitive' explanatory base.
MP: The answer is that the brain is structured so that behaviours -
potentially a million or more human behaviours of all sorts - can be
*stored* within the brain. This storage, using the word in a wide sense, is
actually changes to the fine structures within the brain [synapses, dendrite
location, tags on DNA, etc] which result in [relatively] discrete,
repeatable patterns of neuronal network activity occurring which function as
sequences of muscle activation
...........<snip>.........
Behaviours, once learned, become habitual i.e. they are evoked by
appropriate circumstances and proceed in the manner learned unless varied by
on-going review and adjustment. Where the habitual behavioural response is
completely appropriate, we are barely conscious of the activity; we only pay
attention to novelties and challenges - be they in the distant environment,
our close surroundings, or internal to our own bodies and minds.
DN: Your account reads quite cogently, and we may well agree to discuss the
issues in this way, but crucially ISTM that our accounts are always oriented
towards particular explanatory outcomes - which is why one size doesn't fit
all. So let's see if this shoe fits............
MP: I have put this description in terms of 'behaviours' because I
am practising how to deal with the jibes and stonewalling of
someone who countenance only 'behavioural analysis'
descriptions
DN: Ahah.... I confess I've had a little peek at your dialogues with a
certain individual on another forum, and I think I discern your purpose and
your problem. All I can say is that we conduct the dialogue a little less
fractiously on this list. For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't expend
much more effort on someone with so entrenched a position and so vitriolic a
vocabulary. If you set your mind to it, you can describe anything in
'behavioural' or alternatively in 'structural' terms - A series or B series
- 'block' or 'dynamic' - but the form by itself doesn't necessarily explain
more one way or the other. And as far as 'stimulus-response' goes, I
suppose I could say that when I 'stimulate' the gas pedal, my car 'responds'
by accelerating, but that doesn't by itself provide a very productive theory
of automotive behaviour. But, if you have fresh energy for the
fray.........
Best of luck
David
> David,
> We have reached some
> understanding in the 'asifism' thread, and I would summarise
> that, tilted towards the context of this line of this thread,
> more or less as
> follows.
>
> Existence -
> * The irreducible primitive is existence per se;
> * that we can know about this implies differentiation in and of
> that which exists;
> * that we can recognise both invariance and changes and
> participate in what goes on implies _connection_.
>
> I am sure there must be mathematical/logical formalism which
> could render that with exquisite clarity, but I don't know how
> to do it. Plain-English is what I have to settle for [and aspire
> to :-]
>
> There are a couple of issues that won't go away though: our
> experience is always paradoxical, and we will always have to
> struggle to communicate about it.
>
> Paradox or illusion -
> I think people use the word 'illusion' about our subjective
> experience of being here now because they don't want to see it
> as paradoxical. However AFAICS, the recursive self-referencing
> entailed in being aware of being here now guarantees that what
> we are aware of at any given moment, i.e. what we can attend to,
> can never be the totality of what is going on in our brains. In
> terms of mind, some of it - indeed probably the majority - is
> unconscious. We normally are not aware of this. [Duh, that is
> what unconscious means Mark!] But sometimes we can become aware
> [acutely!]
> of having _just been_ operating unconsciously and this is
> salutary, once the sickening embarrassment subsides anyway :-0
>
> For those of us who have become familiar with this issue it is
> no hardship but there are many who resist the idea. The least
> mortifying example that is _easy to see in oneself_ is what
> happens when we look for something and then find it: before we
> find it the thing is 'not there' for us, except that we might
> believe that it is really. Then we find it; the thing just pops
> into view! As mundane as mould on cheese, but bloody marvellous
> as soon as you start thinking about how it all works!
>
> But I have to *challenge you to clarify* whether what I write
> next really ties in completely with what you are thinking.
> I'll try it in point form for brevity's sake.
>
> Behaviour and consciousness -
> * Consciousness is something we know personally, and through
> discussion with others we come to believe that their experience
> is very similar.
> * Good scientific evidence and moderately sceptical common sense
> tell us is this experience is _intimately and exclusively_ bound
> up with the activity of our brains. Ie the experience - the
> conscious awareness of the moment as well as the simultaneous or
> preliminary non-conscious activity - is basically what the brain
> does, give or take a whole range of hormonal controls of the
> rest of the organism. This can be summarised as 'The mind is
> what the brain does', at least insofar as 'consciousness' is
> concerned, and the brain does it all in order to make the body's
> muscles move in the right way.
> * People's misunderstanding about how we are conscious seems to
> centre around how mere meat could 'have' this experience.
> * The answer is that the brain is structured so that behaviours
> - potentially a million or more human behaviours of all sorts -
> can be *stored* within the brain. This storage, using the word
> in a wide sense, is actually changes to the fine structures
> within the brain [synapses, dendrite location, tags on DNA, etc]
> which result in [relatively] discrete, repeatable patterns of
> neuronal network activity occurring which function as sequences
> of muscle activation
> * For practical purposes behaviours usually involve muscles
> moving body parts appropriately. [If muscles don't move, nobody
> else can be sure if anything is going on]. However, within the
> human brain, learning also entails the formation of neuronal
> network activity patterns which become surrogates for or
> alternatives to overtly visible behaviours. Likewise the
> completely internal detection of such surrogate activities
> becomes a kind of surrogate for perception of one's own overt
> behaviours or for perception of external world activities which
> would result from one's own actions.
> * Useful and effective response and adaptation to the world
> requires the review of appropriateness of one's overt behaviour
> and to be able to adjust or completely change one's behaviours
> both at very short notice and over arbitrarily long periods
> depending on the duration of the effects of one's actions. This
> entails responding to one's own behaviours over whatever time
> scale is necessary.
> * Behaviours, once learned, become habitual i.e. they are evoked
> by appropriate circumstances and proceed in the manner learned
> unless varied by on-going review and adjustment. Where the
> habitual behavioural response is completely appropriate, we are
> barely conscious of the activity; we only pay attention to
> novelties and challenges - be they in the distant environment,
> our close surroundings, or internal to our own bodies and minds.
>
> Who? -
> * The concept of responding to one's own responses being the
> basis of consciousness causes some to complain that this implies
> some kind of infinite regress of observers. What actually
> happens is that internal brain behaviours [discrete network
> activations] occur as surrogates for all the relevant
> environmental features of interest, including one's own body and
> the storyline we are following. Where surrogates for
> environmental features are linked in with surrogates for 'self'
> [body and storyline] and with network activations that stand for
> relationships between those features of environment and self,
> THAT, moment by moment, is something which exists. So there is
> 'something it is LIKE something to be' and that is what it is.
> The registration of novelty and the responses to it, reviewed in
> ceaseless recursive cycles, gives us the basis of subjective time.
>
> I have put this description in terms of 'behaviours' because I
> am practising how to deal with the jibes and stonewalling of
> someone who countenance only 'behavioural analysis'
> descriptions. I am happier recognising that most internal
> behaviours can be called 'representations' - it is much more
> succinct.
>
> Regards
>
> Mark Peaty CDES
>
> mpeaty.domain.name.hidden
>
> http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/
>
>
>
>
>
> David Nyman wrote:
> > On Jun 20, 3:35 am, Colin Hales <c.ha....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> >
> >> Methinks you 'get it'. You are far more eloquent than I am, but we talk
> of
> >> the same thing..
> >
> > Thank you Colin. 'Eloquence' or 'gibberish'? Hmm...but let us
> > proceed...
> >
> >> where I identify <<<???>>> as a "necessary primitive" and comment that
> >> 'computation' or 'information' or 'complexity' have only the vaguest of
> an
> >> arm waving grip on any claim to such a specific role. Such is the
> 'magical
> >> emergence' genre.
> >
> > Just so. My own 'meta-analysis' is also a (foolhardy?) attempt to
> > identify the relevant 'necessity' as *logical*. The (awesome) power
> > of this would be to render 'pure' 3-person accounts (i.e. so-called
> > 'physical') radically causally incomplete. Some primitive like yours
> > would be a *logically necessary* foundation of *any* coherent account
> > of 'what-is'.
> >
> > Strawson, and Chalmers, as I've understood them, make the (IMO)
> > fundamental mis-step of proposing a superadded 'fundamental property'
> > to the 'physical' substrate ('e.g. 'information'). This has the fatal
> > effect of rendering such a 'property' *optional* - i.e. it appears
> > that everything could proceed just as happily without it in the 3-
> > person account, and hence 'consciousness' can (by some) still airily
> > be dismissed as an 'illusion'. The first move here, I think, is to
> > stop using the term 'consciousness' to denote any 'property'.
> >
> > My own meta-analysis attempts to pump the intuition that all
> > processes, whether 0, 1, or 3-person, must from *logical necessity* be
> > identified with 'participative encounters', which are unintelligible
> > in the absence of *any* component: namely 'participation', 'sense',
> > and 'action'. So, to 'exist' or 'behave', one must be:
> >
> > 1) a participant (i.e. the prerequisite for 'existence')
> > 2) sensible (i.e. differentiating some 'other' in relationship)
> > 3) active (i.e. the exchange of 'motivation' with the related 'other')
> >
> > and all manifestations of 'participative existence' must be 'fractal'
> > to these characteristics in both directions (i.e. 'emergence' and
> > 'supervention'). So, to negate these components one-by-one:
> >
> > 1) if not a participant, you don't get to play
> > 2) if not sensible, you can't relate
> > 3) if not active in relationship, you have no 'motivation'
> >
> > These logical or semantic characteristics are agnostic to the
> > 'primitive base'. For example, if we are to assume AR as that base,
> > then the 'realism' part must denote that we 'participate' in AR, that
> > 'numbers' are 'mutually sensible', and that arithmetical relationship
> > is 'motivational'. If I've understood Bruno, 'computationalism'
> > generates 'somethings' at the 1-person plural level. My arguments
> > against 'software uploading' then apply at the level of these
> > 'emergent somethings', not to the axiomatic base. This is the nub of
> > the 'level of substitution' dilemma in the 'yes doctor' puzzle.
> >
> > In 'somethingist' accounts, 'players' participate in sensory-
> > motivational encounters between 'fundamental somethings' (e.g.
> > conceived as vibrational emergents of a modulated continuum).
> >
> > The critical move in the above argument is that by making the relation
> > between 0,1, and 3-person accounts and the primitives *self-relation*
> > or identity, we jettison the logical possibility of 'de-composing'
> > participative sensory-motivational relationship. 0,1, and 3-person
> > are then just different povs on this:
> >
> > 0 - the participatory 'arena' itself
> > 1 - the 'world' of a differentiated 'participant'
> > 3 - a 'proxy', parasitising a 1-person world
> >
> > 'Zombies' and 'software' are revealed as being category 3: they
> > 'parasitise' 1-person worlds, sometimes as 'proxies' for distal
> > participants, sometimes 'stand-alone'. The imputation of 'soft
> > behaviour' to a computer, for example, is just such a 'proxy', and has
> > no relevance whatsoever to the 1-person pov of the distal
> > 'participatory player'. Such a pov can emerge only fractally from its
> > *participative* constitution.
> >
> >> A
> >> principle of the kind X must exist or we wouldn't be having this
> >> discussion. There is no way to characterise explanation through magical
> >> emergence that enables empirical testing. Not even in principle. They
> are
> >> impotent at all prediction. You adopt the position and the whole job is
> >> done and is a matter of belief = NOT SCIENCE.
> >
> > Well, I'm happy on the above basis to make the empirical prediction:
> >
> > No 'computer' will ever spontaneously adopt a 1-person pov in virtue
> > of any 'computation' imputed to it.
> >
> > You, of course, are working directly on this project. My breath is
> > bated!
> >
> > For me, one of the most important consequences of the foregoing
> > relates to our intuitions about ourselves. We hear from various
> > directions that our 1-person worlds are 'epiphenomenal' or 'illusory'
> > or simply that they don't 'exist'. But this can now be seen to be
> > vacuous, deriving from a narrative fixation on the 'proxy', or
> > 'parasite', rather than the participant. In fact, it is the tacit
> > assumption of sense-action to the parasite (e.g. the 'external world')
> > that is illusory, epiphenomenal and non-existent. Real players -
> > participators - inherit the precursors of *all* their characteristics
> > from the primitives on which they supervene: hence the fundamental
> > 'spontaneity' (i.e. 'given-ness') of the primitives must also emerge,
> > mutatis mutandis, at the 1-person level. This is crucial, because we
> > can now stop gibbering about 'illusion' (which of course isn't to say
> > that we can never be mistaken). Our personal worlds really are
> > 'something like' - sensorily, motivationally - the explanatory
> > primitives on which they supervene. After all, sans magic, how else
> > could it be?
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > David
> >
>
> >
>
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Received on Mon Jun 25 2007 - 18:58:52 PDT