Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 20, 1:51 am, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Hey Craig, Sorry for not answering sooner. I am very busy at the moment and realistically I cannot participate to the degree I'd like to. So this may be my last reply... I will try to keep it short. No problem, I understand. Emergent properties of electromagnetism are also electromagnetic, are they not? Electromagnetism is intentionality on every level, it's just that low level intentionality might be almost unrecognizably primitive to us (or not - maybe it's as familiar as the feeling of holding and releasing). Emergence is a bottom up concept that I think takes for granted high level pattern recognition. It's useful instrumentally but I think ultimately fails at explaining anything on a cosmological level. Emerges from where? Why? It ignores perceptual frame of reference entirely and models the universe as an object with spontaneous magical properties. Emergence is pretty weird. Yes. That's why it fails. It doesn't make sense. I don't really have an answer for you, but it seems pretty clear to me that you get these discrete levels of emergence which function as ontologies. Chemistry is a level above physics and, for example, diffusion and the arrow of time emerge from the physics account, in which the dynamics are time-reversible. It is mysterious to me, and fascinating. I wish I had an explanation for you. But given that the ontologies we can describe at the level of physics, chemistry, biology, anatomy, psychology, and sociology, are all 3p describable, the perceptual frame of reference is shared by all of us to the extent that we agree on the formal descriptions. Sure human frames of reference are shared by all of us, we're all human. We're all about the same general size and have the same perceptual refresh rate. We choose to model the universe with these levels and ontologies in mind, because it is the most profitable way to make sense of the world. But nobody is claiming that these things have magical properties, even if it is a bit mysterious as to how these levels arise. Maybe somebody better versed in the concept of emergence can make more sense of it than me. Maybe the concept of emergence is a just-so story. But I can't make sense of your account. How can something be low level and high level at the same time? How can it not? Level is in the eye of the beholder. What does the universe care for our idea of 'level'? But we're talking theories - ways of modeling the universe. The universe doesn't care about any of our models or theories. The point is, I don't find it coherent to talk of the same phenomenon existing at multiple levels, when in every case I've seen, the dynamics from one level to the next are completely independent. Completely independent? Like what? Cells that are immune to chemical changes? Languages that emerge without psychology? I can't think of anything that is independent from one level to the next. All parts of the cosmos are interdependent on some level. The different levels of reality that emerge at increasing orders of scale are characterized by completely independent dynamics. Characterized independently to us. Only to our perceptual frame of reference, our observations as creatures of a specific size and velocity. Frame of reference is everything. A nuclear bomb treats human beings and granite buildings alike, as matter. It doesn't resolve subtle levels of emergence, it addresses the whole protocol stack at the physical level. Booom. I'm talking about science which is an intersubjective endeavor in which we all agree to a reference frame called objective reality which we then fill with our shared constructions like objects and laws. We are at the point that we can no longer define reality as objective. Objective is just a compass point within the phenomenological continuum. What do you mean by going both ways? Causality really does not cross levels. All we can say is that higher levels emerge from/supervene on lower levels. Say that I decide to paint a picture of a creature that I have imagined. Like Cthulhu's more evil twin or something. How are the lower levels of neurological activity which govern my fine muscle movements, holding the paint brush, dipping the paint, etc not supervening on my higher level preferences? I and my fictional vision are driving the bus. Causality routinely crosses levels. That's what this conversation is - a personal, voluntary, high level semantic enterprise which pushes low level fingertips, keystrokes, internet switches, computer screen pixels, retina cells and neurons on the remote end. You have to look at the big picture from a more objective perspective. Your view is blindered by conventional wisdom of the 20th century. I think I incorrectly used the word 'epiphenomenal' to refer to my understanding of consciousness and will.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 20, 1:51 am, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Hey Craig, Sorry for not answering sooner. I am very busy at the moment and realistically I cannot participate to the degree I'd like to. So this may be my last reply... I will try to keep it short. No problem, I understand. Emergent properties of electromagnetism are also electromagnetic, are they not? Electromagnetism is intentionality on every level, it's just that low level intentionality might be almost unrecognizably primitive to us (or not - maybe it's as familiar as the feeling of holding and releasing). Emergence is a bottom up concept that I think takes for granted high level pattern recognition. It's useful instrumentally but I think ultimately fails at explaining anything on a cosmological level. Emerges from where? Why? It ignores perceptual frame of reference entirely and models the universe as an object with spontaneous magical properties. Emergence is pretty weird. Yes. That's why it fails. It doesn't make sense. I don't really have an answer for you, but it seems pretty clear to me that you get these discrete levels of emergence which function as ontologies. Chemistry is a level above physics and, for example, diffusion and the arrow of time emerge from the physics account, in which the dynamics are time-reversible. It is mysterious to me, and fascinating. I wish I had an explanation for you. But given that the ontologies we can describe at the level of physics, chemistry, biology, anatomy, psychology, and sociology, are all 3p describable, the perceptual frame of reference is shared by all of us to the extent that we agree on the formal descriptions. Sure human frames of reference are shared by all of us, we're all human. We're all about the same general size and have the same perceptual refresh rate. We choose to model the universe with these levels and ontologies in mind, because it is the most profitable way to make sense of the world. But nobody is claiming that these things have magical properties, even if it is a bit mysterious as to how these levels arise. Maybe somebody better versed in the concept of emergence can make more sense of it than me. Maybe the concept of emergence is a just-so story. But I can't make sense of your account. How can something be low level and high level at the same time? How can it not? Level is in the eye of the beholder. What does the universe care for our idea of 'level'? But we're talking theories - ways of modeling the universe. The universe doesn't care about any of our models or theories. The point is, I don't find it coherent to talk of the same phenomenon existing at multiple levels, when in every case I've seen, the dynamics from one level to the next are completely independent. Completely independent? Like what? Cells that are immune to chemical changes? Languages that emerge without psychology? I can't think of anything that is independent from one level to the next. All parts of the cosmos are interdependent on some level. The different levels of reality that emerge at increasing orders of scale are characterized by completely independent dynamics. Characterized independently to us. Only to our perceptual frame of reference, our observations as creatures of a specific size and velocity. Frame of reference is everything. A nuclear bomb treats human beings and granite buildings alike, as matter. It doesn't resolve subtle levels of emergence, it addresses the whole protocol stack at the physical level. Booom. I'm talking about science which is an intersubjective endeavor in which we all agree to a reference frame called objective reality which we then fill with our shared constructions like objects and laws. We are at the point that we can no longer define reality as objective. Objective is just a compass point within the phenomenological continuum. What do you mean by going both ways? Causality really does not cross levels. All we can say is that higher levels emerge from/supervene on lower levels. Say that I decide to paint a picture of a creature that I have imagined. Like Cthulhu's more evil twin or something. How are the lower levels of neurological activity which govern my fine muscle movements, holding the paint brush, dipping the paint, etc not supervening on my higher level preferences? I and my fictional vision are driving the bus. Causality routinely crosses levels. That's what this conversation is - a personal, voluntary, high level semantic enterprise which pushes low level fingertips, keystrokes, internet switches, computer screen pixels, retina cells and neurons on the remote end. You have to look at the big picture from a more objective perspective. Your view is blindered by conventional wisdom of the 20th century. I think I incorrectly used the word 'epiphenomenal' to refer to my understanding of consciousness and will.
Re: Bruno List continued
Hey Craig, Sorry for not answering sooner. I am very busy at the moment and realistically I cannot participate to the degree I'd like to. So this may be my last reply... I will try to keep it short. On Oct 16, 2:43 pm, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Emergent properties of electromagnetism are also electromagnetic, are they not? Electromagnetism is intentionality on every level, it's just that low level intentionality might be almost unrecognizably primitive to us (or not - maybe it's as familiar as the feeling of holding and releasing). Emergence is a bottom up concept that I think takes for granted high level pattern recognition. It's useful instrumentally but I think ultimately fails at explaining anything on a cosmological level. Emerges from where? Why? It ignores perceptual frame of reference entirely and models the universe as an object with spontaneous magical properties. Emergence is pretty weird. I don't really have an answer for you, but it seems pretty clear to me that you get these discrete levels of emergence which function as ontologies. Chemistry is a level above physics and, for example, diffusion and the arrow of time emerge from the physics account, in which the dynamics are time-reversible. It is mysterious to me, and fascinating. I wish I had an explanation for you. But given that the ontologies we can describe at the level of physics, chemistry, biology, anatomy, psychology, and sociology, are all 3p describable, the perceptual frame of reference is shared by all of us to the extent that we agree on the formal descriptions. We choose to model the universe with these levels and ontologies in mind, because it is the most profitable way to make sense of the world. But nobody is claiming that these things have magical properties, even if it is a bit mysterious as to how these levels arise. Maybe somebody better versed in the concept of emergence can make more sense of it than me. But I can't make sense of your account. How can something be low level and high level at the same time? How can it not? Level is in the eye of the beholder. What does the universe care for our idea of 'level'? But we're talking theories - ways of modeling the universe. The universe doesn't care about any of our models or theories. The point is, I don't find it coherent to talk of the same phenomenon existing at multiple levels, when in every case I've seen, the dynamics from one level to the next are completely independent. The different levels of reality that emerge at increasing orders of scale are characterized by completely independent dynamics. Characterized independently to us. Only to our perceptual frame of reference, our observations as creatures of a specific size and velocity. Frame of reference is everything. A nuclear bomb treats human beings and granite buildings alike, as matter. It doesn't resolve subtle levels of emergence, it addresses the whole protocol stack at the physical level. Booom. I'm talking about science which is an intersubjective endeavor in which we all agree to a reference frame called objective reality which we then fill with our shared constructions like objects and laws. What do you mean by going both ways? Causality really does not cross levels. All we can say is that higher levels emerge from/supervene on lower levels. Say that I decide to paint a picture of a creature that I have imagined. Like Cthulhu's more evil twin or something. How are the lower levels of neurological activity which govern my fine muscle movements, holding the paint brush, dipping the paint, etc not supervening on my higher level preferences? I and my fictional vision are driving the bus. Causality routinely crosses levels. That's what this conversation is - a personal, voluntary, high level semantic enterprise which pushes low level fingertips, keystrokes, internet switches, computer screen pixels, retina cells and neurons on the remote end. You have to look at the big picture from a more objective perspective. Your view is blindered by conventional wisdom of the 20th century. I think I incorrectly used the word 'epiphenomenal' to refer to my understanding of consciousness and will. Two things I generally assume to be true are: the world is deterministic (above the quantum), and that consciousness is real. I'm not in the business of explaining away consciousness. I want to understand how it emerges. I have my own pet theories which I assure you go beyond the conventional wisdom of the 20th century. I'll get a little bit into that below. I think I will also retract my statement about causality not crossing levels, but only to agree with exactly how Bruno characterized it. That high-level 'programs' can be emulated on a deterministic low- level universal machine in a way that crosses levels. The 'program' that genetic/cultural evolution has instilled in us is a bit different from how we normally conceive of software, but the
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: We are on the exact same page. This is why I keep barking in Stathis direction - his view is that there are no emergent properties because everything that exists must be reducible to a molecular level or else it's magic. Well I'm going to stop guessing about what Stathis thinks and let him chime in if he wants to. There are emergent phenomena but they supervene on the lower level phenomena. If you reproduce the low level phenomena you reproduce the high level ones as well. There is no downward causation from high level to low level, since that would look like magic. I would have doubted it too, but no. His argument is straight up 19th century Billiard Ball Universe determinism. He says that all that can happen in the brain is a chain reaction from neuron to neuron (plus Inputs from the external environment). But that is a correct description from the level of single-neuron dynamics. It is utterly deterministic. If you disagree, then you must show how, without hand-wavy arguments about will and electromagnetism. If single-neuron dynamics are not deterministic, then there must be a random or probabilistic dynamic at play. Roger Penrose thinks so, as he says consciousness is rooted in quantum effects. So, are single-neuron dynamics 100% deterministic? If not, why not? What is the *specific* mechanism that makes them non-deterministic? You cannot answer will as that would be level confusion once again. Again we must distinguish between single neuron dynamics, which are fairly well understood (and can be roughly modeled in terms of linear dynamics, but only if you don't care about precision), and large scale dynamics of ensembles of neurons, which are not all understood in terms of any kind of linear analysis. I would be surprised if Stathis disagreed with this description. Ask him. You'll be surprised. From what he has said here, his position is that since we do understand single neuron dynamics, then there cannot be anything which cannot be understood using linear analysis. OK, I will await his answer on this if he cares to. You're right, I would be surprised. Whether a system is linear or non-linear is a statement about the mathematical model describing it. Non-linear or chaotic systems, such as the weather, can still be deterministic. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 4:37 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/16 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 16 Oct 2011, at 04:22, Terren Suydam wrote (answering Craig): Exactly. I think that it can be better understood as a phenomenon which is not only an emergent property of ensembles of neurons, but granular properties in the moment of an individual entity's behavior over time. It has to go both ways otherwise there could be no reason or mechanism for us to care about anything. What do you mean by going both ways? Causality really does not cross levels. All we can say is that higher levels emerge from/supervene on lower levels. If that gives you problems in seeing how we could have a phenomenological experience of will, then that is a failure of imagination on your part. Unless, you can come up with a principled argument as to why, for one, there could be no reason or mechanism for us to care about anything, and for another, how causality can go both ways. Rhetoric won't do. I need detailed arguments. and On 11 Oct 2011, at 14:45, Stathis Papaioannou wrote (answering Craig): Your solution seems to be to hide in a cave of pre-scientific incuriousity. Content to let our entire lives as we experience them natively to be sequestered in a never-never land that is neither physical nor spiritual. Your assumptions paint conscious subjects as epiphenomenal non-objects, orphaned from reason, science, or any possibility of understanding. Further, they deny their own self-invalidation without justification, so that somehow these thoughts of exclusively deterministic epistemology are themselves immune from their own critical purview. It is to say that all thought is 'simply' neurology - except this thought. This is the one special magic thought which disqualifies all others. It is a philosophy that appeals to many, for obvious reasons, as it provides the sense of certainty and safety which we crave. The truth is that is thought is 'simply' the mirror image of new age religiosity, but owing more of it's spirit to the Inquisition. I really can't understand your emotional objection to the idea that consciousness may be epiphenomenal and supervenient on mechanistic processes. It doesn't worry me or affect my behaviour; why should it? If consciousness is an epiphenomena, and given that the physical laws will be explains in term of coherent appearances in machine's consciousness (dreams), eventually both consciousness and matter are epiphenomena. As s rebuttal to Craig non-comp stance and ex-nihilo spontaneous will causation, the argument is valid. But the phrasing is dubious. Better to use phenomenological instead of epiphenomena, I think. And, I would say, against Terren, that causality can cross level of explanation, even if I agree that there is some unaccessible low level, which is just the arithmetical law, when assuming comp. But a universal machine can emulate a cyclic causal relationships, like a universe can emulate someone taking an aspirin to act on its brain, and an aspirin can indeed act on the brain, which at some high level is a cross level relationship, even if at a more lower level, all this is completely deterministic. We need this because high level explanation are unavoidable (the comp theory force an explanation of both mind and matter in term of higher epistemological level). I think it is important. The materialist eliminativists do that confusion so that consciousness becomes a mere epiphenomena, which is the purgatory before elimination. With comp this would eliminate both mind and matter, with only the numbers remaining. The moral is that high level phenomena are what is important, and can have local role. That is what gives free-will a genuine sense in the compatibilistic determinist frame. It is also what gives consciousness (phenomenological bet on a reality) a genuine power, like a relative self-speeding up. Low level phenomena (like quantum wave or arithmetic) can account for a high level phenomenon, but usually cannot 'explained' it in any reasonable sense of the terms. Nobody will explain a murder by a quantum field. Already, nobody will explain deep blue strategy by invoking the computer's gate running deep blue programs. That's what I wanted to explain to craig... when you run a program on a computer... the low level of the computer (the transistors of the cpu) are constraint by the program, it is the high level (the program) that drives the physical states of the CPU. Explanation will be phenomenologically explains by higher order phenomenological facts, and sometimes invoking genuine cross level causation. Like, he did the murder but is not guilty, he just became mad due to a brain tumor, said the lawyer. The judge answered: he is guilty of irresponsibility because he got got a brain tumor by attempting to suicide by drinking radioactive materials. Only from God's
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 16, 10:59 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/16/2011 5:53 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 16, 8:38 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/16/2011 11:43 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: Emergent properties of electromagnetism are also electromagnetic, are they not? No. Forming images is an emergent property of electromagnetic waves which in turn are an emergent phenomena of Maxwell's electromagnetism. Electromagnetic waves do not form images. Images are perceptual interpretations. No there are planar representations of information. EM waves can form an image on a photographic plate whether anyone looks at it or not. Without someone looking at the photographic plate, there is no difference between information and noise. If there existed nothing in the universe who could see, there would be no information there. Information is just a way of saying 'experiences that make sense to us'. Some experiences make sense on a lower, more universal level - that is electromagnetism. A photographic plate doesn't know or care what an image is though. Heat is an electromagnetic wave the same as visible light, but it forms no images. Your view takes pattern in general for granted, mine does not. Electromagnetism is intentionality on every level, Unsupported assertion. Doesn't mean it's wrong. If it's true, what would support it? More to the point what test could possibly falsify it? Falsifying it would be easy. If we had no experience of intention, or our experiences of exerting intent did not map to electromagnetic resonance in the brain, then it would be false. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 17, 6:50 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Well I'm going to stop guessing about what Stathis thinks and let him chime in if he wants to. There is no downward causation from high level to low level, since that would look like magic. Or it would look like ordinary voluntary action. Otherwise you would have to say that your neurons are moving your fingers on a keyboard and typing things that you only are aware of after the fact. You would have to say that you only imagine that you understand their meaning and have a false memory of deciding to write them. That sounds a lot more like magic to me. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 17, 7:02 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Suppose I decide to arrange three stones in a triangle. Do the stones create the triangle (upward causation), or does the triangle constrain the stones (downward causation)? The triangle does not exist. If anything, it 'insists'. The stones are mere placeholders to satisfy our subjective motive of expressing our intangible abstraction externally. A cat sees no triangle there. The stones aren't causing anything, they are just sitting exactly where we put them. It is our decision, and our projection of that decision through the spinal cord, efferent nerves, arms, and fingertips that has caused their placement to our cognitive-representational satisfaction. What you aren't seeing is that the triangle does not objectively exist at all. By setting 'the triangle' as the a priori true fact to be explained, misdirects our attention from the concrete reality of the situation to an imaginary world where sensorimotive perception has concrete existence (which ironically actually would be magic). Like Brent, your view takes pattern recognition for granted. You are 'eating the menu', so to speak - conflating symbolic interpretation (map) with physical existence (territory). The only upward causation is sensory feedback bouncing off of the stones which the eyes can read visually and the hands can read as a tactile text. The stones are otherwise completely passive. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On 10/17/2011 4:27 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 16, 10:59 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/16/2011 5:53 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 16, 8:38 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.netwrote: On 10/16/2011 11:43 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: Emergent properties of electromagnetism are also electromagnetic, are they not? No. Forming images is an emergent property of electromagnetic waves which in turn are an emergent phenomena of Maxwell's electromagnetism. Electromagnetic waves do not form images. Images are perceptual interpretations. No there are planar representations of information. EM waves can form an image on a photographic plate whether anyone looks at it or not. Without someone looking at the photographic plate, there is no difference between information and noise. There is a mapping between the image and thing imaged (which could be noise). If there existed nothing in the universe who could see, there would be no information there. Define see. Information is just a way of saying 'experiences that make sense to us'. Have you read Shannon's theory of Experineces that make sense to us. Some experiences make sense on a lower, more universal level - that is electromagnetism. A photographic plate doesn't know or care what an image is though. I didn't say it did. I said it was a emergent property of EM, that it could form images. Heat is an electromagnetic wave the same as visible light, but it forms no images. Never seen an IR image? Your view takes pattern in general for granted, mine does not. Not for granted, but well evidenced. Electromagnetism is intentionality on every level, Unsupported assertion. Doesn't mean it's wrong. If it's true, what would support it? More to the point what test could possibly falsify it? Falsifying it would be easy. If we had no experience of intention, or our experiences of exerting intent did not map to electromagnetic resonance in the brain, then it would be false. So the fact that workers in power plants don't have 60Hz sensorimotive experiences makes your theory false. Brent Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 17, 12:19 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: There is a mapping between the image and thing imaged (which could be noise). Only if you can see and make sense out of what you are looking at. That is the only mapping going on. If there existed nothing in the universe who could see, there would be no information there. Define see. I don't do definitions. Is there some confusion of what might be meant by see? Information is just a way of saying 'experiences that make sense to us'. Have you read Shannon's theory of Experineces that make sense to us. I'm familiar with it. It seems useful for semiconductor engineering applications but not much else. Some experiences make sense on a lower, more universal level - that is electromagnetism. A photographic plate doesn't know or care what an image is though. I didn't say it did. I said it was a emergent property of EM, that it could form images. What do you mean by 'it could form images'? Are you suggesting that EM is a disembodied pseudosubstance which occupies space between objects, and that it somehow carries light invisibly, and then, if there is enough of this going on, it somehow forms itself into invisible images, presumably made of colorless colors. (whatever that might be...sort of like particle waves I guess)? Heat is an electromagnetic wave the same as visible light, but it forms no images. Never seen an IR image? Human beings can't see IR images. We can connect IR detectors to a computer and have those plotted on a screen as an array of pixels which satisfy our criteria for our own visual sense. We could have it spit out in it's native binary code or hex instead. We could have a photograph output through a pixelated heater instead and see if we can see any images with the palms of our hands. Your view takes pattern in general for granted, mine does not. Not for granted, but well evidenced. Evidence of what? That pattern exists independent of pattern recognition? Do tell. Electromagnetism is intentionality on every level, Unsupported assertion. Doesn't mean it's wrong. If it's true, what would support it? More to the point what test could possibly falsify it? Falsifying it would be easy. If we had no experience of intention, or our experiences of exerting intent did not map to electromagnetic resonance in the brain, then it would be false. So the fact that workers in power plants don't have 60Hz sensorimotive experiences makes your theory false. Huh? It sounds like you think that my theory is We are able to experience everything in the universe. How did you get that from If we had no experience of intention, ...then it would be false? I just mean if electromagnetism had nothing to do with intention, then our feelings of intention wouldn't correlate with magnetic resonance imaging. But we do experience intention and it is a sensorimotive phenomenon, and that phenomenon does correlate to electromagnetism (but is not identical to it since electromagnetism is third person across space and sensorimotive is first person through time). Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On 17 Oct 2011, at 12:50, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: We are on the exact same page. This is why I keep barking in Stathis direction - his view is that there are no emergent properties because everything that exists must be reducible to a molecular level or else it's magic. Well I'm going to stop guessing about what Stathis thinks and let him chime in if he wants to. There are emergent phenomena but they supervene on the lower level phenomena. All right. But which lower level phenomena? To fix a computable level, like saying it is the SWE, would consists to chose a particular universal machine. But below our own substitution level, they all compete, and so the physical cannot be a lower level. Indeed it is, I think, a first person collective projection of meaning, by numbers seeing themselves, a rather high level phenomenon. If you reproduce the low level phenomena you reproduce the high level ones as well. Yes. There is no downward causation from high level to low level, since that would look like magic. That is right. But mind and matter can arise from a simple universal lower level, only in virtue of the fact that a universal machine UM 0 can emulate a universal machine transforming itself, or a UM 1 transforming a UM 2 transforming a UM 3 transforming a UM n transforming UM 1. UM 0 plays the role of your lower level, immune to downward causation from higher level, and so also unable to modify itself, and unbreakable (like arithmetic). But a UM 0 can emulate complex loops with causation permeating all levels. So in the net of universal machines downward causation for most levels makes sense, except for the basic one, which is unimportant (like arithmetic, or cominators, etc.). And this leads to a sort of magic, indeed, or hallucinations, or cosmic video games, like plausibly matter among other things. Matter still obeys high level laws, like machines'd dreams obeys laws, but in the mechanist mindscape full circular causation exist. Simple version of it are used in fixed point semantics for programming language (I mean loops of many kind are studied and exploited by computer scientists). I think we agree on this, but we have different emphases on the importance of lower Level, perhaps. I see the lower level as a incognito UMs being a pretext for realizing the full magic of the infinity of UMs reflecting each others. Bruno I would have doubted it too, but no. His argument is straight up 19th century Billiard Ball Universe determinism. He says that all that can happen in the brain is a chain reaction from neuron to neuron (plus Inputs from the external environment). But that is a correct description from the level of single-neuron dynamics. It is utterly deterministic. If you disagree, then you must show how, without hand-wavy arguments about will and electromagnetism. If single-neuron dynamics are not deterministic, then there must be a random or probabilistic dynamic at play. Roger Penrose thinks so, as he says consciousness is rooted in quantum effects. So, are single-neuron dynamics 100% deterministic? If not, why not? What is the *specific* mechanism that makes them non-deterministic? You cannot answer will as that would be level confusion once again. Again we must distinguish between single neuron dynamics, which are fairly well understood (and can be roughly modeled in terms of linear dynamics, but only if you don't care about precision), and large scale dynamics of ensembles of neurons, which are not all understood in terms of any kind of linear analysis. I would be surprised if Stathis disagreed with this description. Ask him. You'll be surprised. From what he has said here, his position is that since we do understand single neuron dynamics, then there cannot be anything which cannot be understood using linear analysis. OK, I will await his answer on this if he cares to. You're right, I would be surprised. Whether a system is linear or non-linear is a statement about the mathematical model describing it. Non-linear or chaotic systems, such as the weather, can still be deterministic. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this
Re: Bruno List continued
On 16 Oct 2011, at 04:22, Terren Suydam wrote (answering Craig): Exactly. I think that it can be better understood as a phenomenon which is not only an emergent property of ensembles of neurons, but granular properties in the moment of an individual entity's behavior over time. It has to go both ways otherwise there could be no reason or mechanism for us to care about anything. What do you mean by going both ways? Causality really does not cross levels. All we can say is that higher levels emerge from/supervene on lower levels. If that gives you problems in seeing how we could have a phenomenological experience of will, then that is a failure of imagination on your part. Unless, you can come up with a principled argument as to why, for one, there could be no reason or mechanism for us to care about anything, and for another, how causality can go both ways. Rhetoric won't do. I need detailed arguments. and On 11 Oct 2011, at 14:45, Stathis Papaioannou wrote (answering Craig): Your solution seems to be to hide in a cave of pre-scientific incuriousity. Content to let our entire lives as we experience them natively to be sequestered in a never-never land that is neither physical nor spiritual. Your assumptions paint conscious subjects as epiphenomenal non-objects, orphaned from reason, science, or any possibility of understanding. Further, they deny their own self-invalidation without justification, so that somehow these thoughts of exclusively deterministic epistemology are themselves immune from their own critical purview. It is to say that all thought is 'simply' neurology - except this thought. This is the one special magic thought which disqualifies all others. It is a philosophy that appeals to many, for obvious reasons, as it provides the sense of certainty and safety which we crave. The truth is that is thought is 'simply' the mirror image of new age religiosity, but owing more of it's spirit to the Inquisition. I really can't understand your emotional objection to the idea that consciousness may be epiphenomenal and supervenient on mechanistic processes. It doesn't worry me or affect my behaviour; why should it? If consciousness is an epiphenomena, and given that the physical laws will be explains in term of coherent appearances in machine's consciousness (dreams), eventually both consciousness and matter are epiphenomena. As s rebuttal to Craig non-comp stance and ex-nihilo spontaneous will causation, the argument is valid. But the phrasing is dubious. Better to use phenomenological instead of epiphenomena, I think. And, I would say, against Terren, that causality can cross level of explanation, even if I agree that there is some unaccessible low level, which is just the arithmetical law, when assuming comp. But a universal machine can emulate a cyclic causal relationships, like a universe can emulate someone taking an aspirin to act on its brain, and an aspirin can indeed act on the brain, which at some high level is a cross level relationship, even if at a more lower level, all this is completely deterministic. We need this because high level explanation are unavoidable (the comp theory force an explanation of both mind and matter in term of higher epistemological level). I think it is important. The materialist eliminativists do that confusion so that consciousness becomes a mere epiphenomena, which is the purgatory before elimination. With comp this would eliminate both mind and matter, with only the numbers remaining. The moral is that high level phenomena are what is important, and can have local role. That is what gives free-will a genuine sense in the compatibilistic determinist frame. It is also what gives consciousness (phenomenological bet on a reality) a genuine power, like a relative self-speeding up. Low level phenomena (like quantum wave or arithmetic) can account for a high level phenomenon, but usually cannot 'explained' it in any reasonable sense of the terms. Nobody will explain a murder by a quantum field. Already, nobody will explain deep blue strategy by invoking the computer's gate running deep blue programs. Explanation will be phenomenologically explains by higher order phenomenological facts, and sometimes invoking genuine cross level causation. Like, he did the murder but is not guilty, he just became mad due to a brain tumor, said the lawyer. The judge answered: he is guilty of irresponsibility because he got got a brain tumor by attempting to suicide by drinking radioactive materials. Only from God's point of view, everything is deterministic, and from that view, consciousness is, well, just absent. But from the internal views there will be real solid material appearances and real conscious experiences. Of course, this is only vocabulary. Actually such loops and cross level causality are well explained by computer sciences, and so we don't need to postulate
Re: Bruno List continued
2011/10/16 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 16 Oct 2011, at 04:22, Terren Suydam wrote (answering Craig): Exactly. I think that it can be better understood as a phenomenon which is not only an emergent property of ensembles of neurons, but granular properties in the moment of an individual entity's behavior over time. It has to go both ways otherwise there could be no reason or mechanism for us to care about anything. What do you mean by going both ways? Causality really does not cross levels. All we can say is that higher levels emerge from/supervene on lower levels. If that gives you problems in seeing how we could have a phenomenological experience of will, then that is a failure of imagination on your part. Unless, you can come up with a principled argument as to why, for one, there could be no reason or mechanism for us to care about anything, and for another, how causality can go both ways. Rhetoric won't do. I need detailed arguments. and On 11 Oct 2011, at 14:45, Stathis Papaioannou wrote (answering Craig): Your solution seems to be to hide in a cave of pre-scientific incuriousity. Content to let our entire lives as we experience them natively to be sequestered in a never-never land that is neither physical nor spiritual. Your assumptions paint conscious subjects as epiphenomenal non-objects, orphaned from reason, science, or any possibility of understanding. Further, they deny their own self-invalidation without justification, so that somehow these thoughts of exclusively deterministic epistemology are themselves immune from their own critical purview. It is to say that all thought is 'simply' neurology - except this thought. This is the one special magic thought which disqualifies all others. It is a philosophy that appeals to many, for obvious reasons, as it provides the sense of certainty and safety which we crave. The truth is that is thought is 'simply' the mirror image of new age religiosity, but owing more of it's spirit to the Inquisition. I really can't understand your emotional objection to the idea that consciousness may be epiphenomenal and supervenient on mechanistic processes. It doesn't worry me or affect my behaviour; why should it? If consciousness is an epiphenomena, and given that the physical laws will be explains in term of coherent appearances in machine's consciousness (dreams), eventually both consciousness and matter are epiphenomena. As s rebuttal to Craig non-comp stance and ex-nihilo spontaneous will causation, the argument is valid. But the phrasing is dubious. Better to use phenomenological instead of epiphenomena, I think. And, I would say, against Terren, that causality can cross level of explanation, even if I agree that there is some unaccessible low level, which is just the arithmetical law, when assuming comp. But a universal machine can emulate a cyclic causal relationships, like a universe can emulate someone taking an aspirin to act on its brain, and an aspirin can indeed act on the brain, which at some high level is a cross level relationship, even if at a more lower level, all this is completely deterministic. We need this because high level explanation are unavoidable (the comp theory force an explanation of both mind and matter in term of higher epistemological level). I think it is important. The materialist eliminativists do that confusion so that consciousness becomes a mere epiphenomena, which is the purgatory before elimination. With comp this would eliminate both mind and matter, with only the numbers remaining. The moral is that high level phenomena are what is important, and can have local role. That is what gives free-will a genuine sense in the compatibilistic determinist frame. It is also what gives consciousness (phenomenological bet on a reality) a genuine power, like a relative self-speeding up. Low level phenomena (like quantum wave or arithmetic) can account for a high level phenomenon, but usually cannot 'explained' it in any reasonable sense of the terms. Nobody will explain a murder by a quantum field. Already, nobody will explain deep blue strategy by invoking the computer's gate running deep blue programs. That's what I wanted to explain to craig... when you run a program on a computer... the low level of the computer (the transistors of the cpu) are constraint by the program, it is the high level (the program) that drives the physical states of the CPU. Explanation will be phenomenologically explains by higher order phenomenological facts, and sometimes invoking genuine cross level causation. Like, he did the murder but is not guilty, he just became mad due to a brain tumor, said the lawyer. The judge answered: he is guilty of irresponsibility because he got got a brain tumor by attempting to suicide by drinking radioactive materials. Only from God's point of view, everything is deterministic, and from that view,
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 15, 10:22 pm, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I think we are talking past each other. There is the behavior of neurons at the single-neuron level. That is fairly well understood. Nothing about the spontaneous activity you referenced really challenges anything about our understanding of single-neuron function. You may disagree, but you would be disagreeing with the mainstream. No, I don't disagree. In the language of the extended metaphor I used earlier, an auto mechanic with the right tools and engineering diagrams can tell you exactly how a car works. I have no problem with that. I only argue that the mechanic cannot tell you where the car is going to be driven. You can't predict what is going to be on TV by looking at the electronics of the screen. This is the situation with the brain. Low level neurology does not always predict high level intentionality. That's all that I'm saying. Yes, but your account of intentionality is confusing. You're saying high level intentionality here but elsewhere identifying it with electromagnetism, which is the lowest level without getting into quantum dynamics. I would agree with intentionality being high level, as in, emergent. Emergent properties of electromagnetism are also electromagnetic, are they not? Electromagnetism is intentionality on every level, it's just that low level intentionality might be almost unrecognizably primitive to us (or not - maybe it's as familiar as the feeling of holding and releasing). Emergence is a bottom up concept that I think takes for granted high level pattern recognition. It's useful instrumentally but I think ultimately fails at explaining anything on a cosmological level. Emerges from where? Why? It ignores perceptual frame of reference entirely and models the universe as an object with spontaneous magical properties. But I can't make sense of your account. How can something be low level and high level at the same time? How can it not? Level is in the eye of the beholder. What does the universe care for our idea of 'level'? The different levels of reality that emerge at increasing orders of scale are characterized by completely independent dynamics. Characterized independently to us. Only to our perceptual frame of reference, our observations as creatures of a specific size and velocity. Frame of reference is everything. A nuclear bomb treats human beings and granite buildings alike, as matter. It doesn't resolve subtle levels of emergence, it addresses the whole protocol stack at the physical level. Booom. Then there is the behavior of large ensembles of neurons. This is an emergent phenomenon and is not well understood. Exactly. I think that it can be better understood as a phenomenon which is not only an emergent property of ensembles of neurons, but granular properties in the moment of an individual entity's behavior over time. It has to go both ways otherwise there could be no reason or mechanism for us to care about anything. What do you mean by going both ways? Causality really does not cross levels. All we can say is that higher levels emerge from/supervene on lower levels. Say that I decide to paint a picture of a creature that I have imagined. Like Cthulhu's more evil twin or something. How are the lower levels of neurological activity which govern my fine muscle movements, holding the paint brush, dipping the paint, etc not supervening on my higher level preferences? I and my fictional vision are driving the bus. Causality routinely crosses levels. That's what this conversation is - a personal, voluntary, high level semantic enterprise which pushes low level fingertips, keystrokes, internet switches, computer screen pixels, retina cells and neurons on the remote end. You have to look at the big picture from a more objective perspective. Your view is blindered by conventional wisdom of the 20th century. If that gives you problems in seeing how we could have a phenomenological experience of will, then that is a failure of imagination on your part. It's not my problem, it's everybody's problem. I'm being rhetorical. Why and how do you imagine that a phenomenological experience of will exists if it is utterly superfluous? Unless, you can come up with a principled argument as to why, for one, there could be no reason or mechanism for us to care about anything, There can be no reason because it would not be necessary if our actions were all actually (secretly) involuntary. Why would a wind up toy need to care about anything? How would it help the gears spin? I don't see that it needs much argument, the proposition of will is a direct ontological contradiction of determinism. There can be no mechanism for us to care about anything because care has no physical ingredients. How do patterns which are purely physical arithmetic logic come to care about their
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 16, 1:37 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: That's what I wanted to explain to craig... when you run a program on a computer... the low level of the computer (the transistors of the cpu) are constraint by the program, it is the high level (the program) that drives the physical states of the CPU. You're right. The problem is that it is our high level motives that drive the CPU. They do not arise organically from the semiconductor so they can't read them. They just copy the Chinese characters from one form to another and apply a-signifying lookup tables to them. It's no different in principle from mistaking a ventriloquists dummy for a person, only the ventriloquist's act is a scripted recording with branching logic audience response trees. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On 10/16/2011 11:43 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: Emergent properties of electromagnetism are also electromagnetic, are they not? No. Forming images is an emergent property of electromagnetic waves which in turn are an emergent phenomena of Maxwell's electromagnetism. Electromagnetism is intentionality on every level, Unsupported assertion. Brent it's just that low level intentionality might be almost unrecognizably primitive to us (or not - maybe it's as familiar as the feeling of holding and releasing). Emergence is a bottom up concept that I think takes for granted high level pattern recognition. It's useful instrumentally but I think ultimately fails at explaining anything on a cosmological level. Emerges from where? Why? It ignores perceptual frame of reference entirely and models the universe as an object with spontaneous magical properties. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 16, 8:38 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/16/2011 11:43 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: Emergent properties of electromagnetism are also electromagnetic, are they not? No. Forming images is an emergent property of electromagnetic waves which in turn are an emergent phenomena of Maxwell's electromagnetism. Electromagnetic waves do not form images. Images are perceptual interpretations. Heat is an electromagnetic wave the same as visible light, but it forms no images. Your view takes pattern in general for granted, mine does not. Electromagnetism is intentionality on every level, Unsupported assertion. Doesn't mean it's wrong. If it's true, what would support it? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On 10/16/2011 5:53 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 16, 8:38 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/16/2011 11:43 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: Emergent properties of electromagnetism are also electromagnetic, are they not? No. Forming images is an emergent property of electromagnetic waves which in turn are an emergent phenomena of Maxwell's electromagnetism. Electromagnetic waves do not form images. Images are perceptual interpretations. No there are planar representations of information. EM waves can form an image on a photographic plate whether anyone looks at it or not. Heat is an electromagnetic wave the same as visible light, but it forms no images. Your view takes pattern in general for granted, mine does not. Electromagnetism is intentionality on every level, Unsupported assertion. Doesn't mean it's wrong. If it's true, what would support it? More to the point what test could possibly falsify it? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On 10/14/2011 8:48 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 14, 10:46 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/14/2011 7:13 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 14, 9:00 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.netwrote: On 10/14/2011 5:16 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: You already noted that diurnal cycles get synced by light/dark cycles. The point is that you don't will these cycles, yet you rely on them: to wake up on time, to remember appointments, etc. We do will those cycles. Then how do you manage to wake up a given time in the morning? Are you willing them in your sleep? We don't have to will them, it's voluntary. Sometimes they wake us up, and sometimes we wake them up. It's all 'us' it's just that some aspects of what we are are more physiological, some are more subjective, and some shift dynamically within different ranges. We have habits, addictions, choices, conditioning, creativity, involuntary and voluntary motivations of all shades and intensities. All that I'm trying to do is to describe the universe in the way that it ordinarily works. I'm not even getting near any kind of non- ordinary realities or forces or anything, just what our common sense perceptions and scientific observations tell us without inferring any forces, fields, or quantum pseudosubstances. When I say sensorimotive, I don't mean anything spooky, I just mean regular old thoughts, feelings, images, flavors, sounds, desires, actions, etc. I know you do. That's why you fail to explain why their is a connection between having a (human like) brain and consciousness. You seem to assert folk psychology and panpsychism at the same time. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
Dear Craig, where did you take it from that *WILL* does exist indeed? We experience a *decision* - sometimes with the 'urge(?)' to fulfill it, based on comparing partially conscious circumstances (anticipatory included) and getting into some 'evaluation'(?) of what seems to be advantageous and what not (strictly within our (conscious) image of the present state we are in). A more stringent question is the equation (not mathematical, mind you) of such idea with electromagnetism. No matter how many neurons are involved in a cooperation, *NONE* of them is assigned a *TOPICAL *(plus details) relation, (like blue mAmps or green mAmps for bodily feelings, or emotional ones etc). We experience those 'bland' PHYSICAL data and *WE ASSIGN* topical meanings to them. As we see fit. At will G. Now: *FIT* it is into the topical story (history?) we think within and so the physical measurement gets translated into meaning *by us* - i.e. by our present thinking. Which has no assignable connection to the wider relations formatting it. At least we did not know about such as of yesterday. Physics is a consequential extract and cannot explain the original foundations. Do you have a vocabulary between physical readings and topical meanings? John Mikes On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 7:16 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Oct 14, 3:40 pm, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 2:45 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Actually, Stathis's interpretation is the one shared by most of the neuroscientific community. By and large most scientists do not take seriously the idea that the behavior of neurons and other cells is explainable in terms of anything except physical processes. Your interpretation of 'spontaneous' specifically, and of subjectivity in general, is on the fringe. My interpretaton of subjectivity is certainly on the fringe and I have no doubt that my view of how spontaneous activity ties into subjective intentionality, but I would have to read some formal special case definition of spontaneous to believe that some other idea is meant. My sense is that there is no special definition or consenses since the spontaneity within the system is clear. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but you are talking as if your view is well-accepted and obvious to everyone, when it is anything but. If spontaneous doesn't mean spontaneous, why does everyone keep using that term? I understand of course that they are not considering the implications that I am, but ther is no confusion as far as the categorical description goes. I think spontaneous in the context of the video and papers you linked means, unexplainable activity in terms of what you would expect neural circuits to be doing when the organism doesn't appear to be doing anything. But it certainly does not mean (from the mainstream pov) unexplainable in terms of physical processes I have said many times already, if you think that I am talking about something thay contradicts physics then you don't understand what I'm talking about. Some people do, but you don't. Thats ok, not everyone is interested enough to try to understand it, but if you are I suggest you read my info at s33light.org first. It just means these circuits are firing, and there is no well established tiheory that predicts that activity. Right. That was my point. Stathis denies this and insists that physics predicts this activity and that it is no different from a leaf in the wind. That this spontaneous activity accounts for so much resource consumption suggests that it is important, or else adaptive pressures would have snuffed it out. In short, I think spontaneous simply means we have no idea why these circuits are firing when the organism is at rest. I agree. That is my position as well. I echo Stathis's challenge to email the authors and ask them yourself what is meant by 'spontaneous'. The video itself doesn't really add anything to the conversation, although it is pretty awesome, so thanks for linking to that. I'm not interested in what the authors think or intended to say. I'm only interested in the fact that much of the brain's activity is observed to be irregular and without obvious linear cause. The brain is an incredibly complex non-linear system. Almost all of its behavior can be characterized as without obvious linear cause. Again, I agree completely. That is the opposite of Stathis' position. Your account demands an explanation of how something like will can exert influence on physical things like neurons; it doesn't exert an influence, it is the influence. It is charge and voltage experienced first hand rather than observed. that is what Stathis keeps pressing you on. You cannot say both that will causes changes in neurons, and there is no magic involved. So, how does
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 14, 11:48 pm, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 7:16 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I have said many times already, if you think that I am talking about something thay contradicts physics then you don't understand what I'm talking about. Some people do, but you don't. Thats ok, not everyone is interested enough to try to understand it, but if you are I suggest you read my info at s33light.org first. There's a lot there to digest. It is hard to understand, and honestly I barely have enough time to participate to the limited degree that I do here. And frankly if you made a more compelling case for your ideas here I would be more interested. But your argumentation, what I've read of it anyhow, has been somewhat contradictory, not to mention hostile. I'm only hostile towards people who are hostile towards me. To paraphrase Timothy Leary, Everyone gets the Craig Weinberg they deserve. It just means these circuits are firing, and there is no well established tiheory that predicts that activity. Right. That was my point. Stathis denies this and insists that physics predicts this activity and that it is no different from a leaf in the wind. I think we are talking past each other. There is the behavior of neurons at the single-neuron level. That is fairly well understood. Nothing about the spontaneous activity you referenced really challenges anything about our understanding of single-neuron function. You may disagree, but you would be disagreeing with the mainstream. No, I don't disagree. In the language of the extended metaphor I used earlier, an auto mechanic with the right tools and engineering diagrams can tell you exactly how a car works. I have no problem with that. I only argue that the mechanic cannot tell you where the car is going to be driven. You can't predict what is going to be on TV by looking at the electronics of the screen. This is the situation with the brain. Low level neurology does not always predict high level intentionality. That's all that I'm saying. Then there is the behavior of large ensembles of neurons. This is an emergent phenomenon and is not well understood. Exactly. I think that it can be better understood as a phenomenon which is not only an emergent property of ensembles of neurons, but granular properties in the moment of an individual entity's behavior over time. It has to go both ways otherwise there could be no reason or mechanism for us to care about anything. Spontaneous activity is described at this emergent level. In fact, there may be multiple levels of emergence in the brain, each characterized by a unique set of dynamics. It is hard to say, because the complexity involved is mindblowing. But the fact that we have observed activity at this level of the brain that confounds us is hardly news. It just reinforces the brute fact that we really don't know how the brain works. And this says almost nothing about the nature of will or consciousness. We are on the exact same page. This is why I keep barking in Stathis direction - his view is that there are no emergent properties because everything that exists must be reducible to a molecular level or else it's magic. The brain is an incredibly complex non-linear system. Almost all of its behavior can be characterized as without obvious linear cause. Again, I agree completely. That is the opposite of Stathis' position. I doubt that Stathis would agree with that. I would have doubted it too, but no. His argument is straight up 19th century Billiard Ball Universe determinism. He says that all that can happen in the brain is a chain reaction from neuron to neuron (plus Inputs from the external environment). Again we must distinguish between single neuron dynamics, which are fairly well understood (and can be roughly modeled in terms of linear dynamics, but only if you don't care about precision), and large scale dynamics of ensembles of neurons, which are not all understood in terms of any kind of linear analysis. I would be surprised if Stathis disagreed with this description. Ask him. You'll be surprised. From what he has said here, his position is that since we do understand single neuron dynamics, then there cannot be anything which cannot be understood using linear analysis. OK, then all you're really saying is that will supervenes on a lower level (atomic) than what the majority believe (the level of neurons). Electromagnetism is computable and therefore you are saying comp is true. Close but no. Will and electromagnetism are the same thing but viewed from opposite perspectives. Our personal will correlates to many regions of the brain at once. Electromagnetic changes on a neuron or molecular level correlate to subconsious and unconscious micro-motive wills. That is just hand-waving. There is no way to refute it and there is no explanatory power. Why did Bob kick
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 15, 3:02 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/14/2011 8:48 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 14, 10:46 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/14/2011 7:13 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 14, 9:00 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/14/2011 5:16 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: You already noted that diurnal cycles get synced by light/dark cycles. The point is that you don't will these cycles, yet you rely on them: to wake up on time, to remember appointments, etc. We do will those cycles. Then how do you manage to wake up a given time in the morning? Are you willing them in your sleep? We don't have to will them, it's voluntary. Sometimes they wake us up, and sometimes we wake them up. It's all 'us' it's just that some aspects of what we are are more physiological, some are more subjective, and some shift dynamically within different ranges. We have habits, addictions, choices, conditioning, creativity, involuntary and voluntary motivations of all shades and intensities. All that I'm trying to do is to describe the universe in the way that it ordinarily works. I'm not even getting near any kind of non- ordinary realities or forces or anything, just what our common sense perceptions and scientific observations tell us without inferring any forces, fields, or quantum pseudosubstances. When I say sensorimotive, I don't mean anything spooky, I just mean regular old thoughts, feelings, images, flavors, sounds, desires, actions, etc. I know you do. That's why you fail to explain why their is a connection between having a (human like) brain and consciousness. Consciousness is just elaborated awareness. The connection is that the brain is very elaborate, so it has very elaborate awareness. That's the reason why the human brain is different from a cabbage even though they both are made out of similar physical stuff. The reason why a computer, even though it is elaborate, doesn't have an elaborate awareness is because it isn't made out of physical stuff which can accommodate the type of zoological elaborations required to resemble our consciousness. If a computer naturally grew to be that elaborate without us superimposing our sense on it's electromagnetic characteristics, then it would be conscious too. You seem to assert folk psychology and panpsychism at the same time. Not panspychism exactly. I don't think that all matter has equal consciousness. I just think that all consciousness arises out of a sensorimotive potential which is inherent in matter. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 15, 10:59 am, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Craig, where did you take it from that *WILL* does exist indeed? Technically I think that will could be said to 'insist' rather than exist, and as such a subjective experiential phenomenon, it is nothing like a discrete object or mechanism. What insists is a point of view attached to the sense conditions of it's world which participates in focusing attention and taking action. We experience a *decision* - sometimes with the 'urge(?)' to fulfill it, based on comparing partially conscious circumstances (anticipatory included) and getting into some 'evaluation'(?) of what seems to be advantageous and what not (strictly within our (conscious) image of the present state we are in). Exactly. I think of this as a sensorimotive circuit. It's cold, I should wear a jacket - puts on a jacket = circuit opens with the sense input it's cold, motive circuit opens with I should (close the circuit in such and such a way) and the motive circuit is closed with the act of putting on the jacket, which kicks it back to the sense circuit...now I'm too warm... or closes the sense circuit perfect - not cold anymore. All of this is prelinguistic though. This is going on in the womb, and it goes on in cells, molecules and atoms too, albeit in an ever more more mathematical and deterministic way (unless it's completely relativistic and it's just our frame of reference that makes it seem deterministic when we can't identify things subjectively - but that gets more into a Horton Hears A Who catastrophe) A more stringent question is the equation (not mathematical, mind you) of such idea with electromagnetism. No matter how many neurons are involved in a cooperation, *NONE* of them is assigned a *TOPICAL *(plus details) relation, (like blue mAmps or green mAmps for bodily feelings, or emotional ones etc). We experience those 'bland' PHYSICAL data and *WE ASSIGN* topical meanings to them. As we see fit. At will G. Now: *FIT* it is into the topical story (history?) we think within and so the physical measurement gets translated into meaning *by us* - i.e. by our present thinking. Which has no assignable connection to the wider relations formatting it. At least we did not know about such as of yesterday. Physics is a consequential extract and cannot explain the original foundations. Do you have a vocabulary between physical readings and topical meanings? I'm having a little trouble understanding but it sounds like we are talking nature nurture, Sapir Whorf kind of questions here. With subjective phenomena it's all very ambiguous. In language and semiotics there are so many theories about different kinds of representation (topical meanings?) which relate signifiers to referents. Onomatopoeia would be an example of a topical meaning which is compelled by sensory, gestural primitives rather than willful assignment. Other kinds of symbols suggest themselves out of second order logic and reasoning common to homo sapiens. We do willfully make up words and names also of course, which would be idiopathic unless we have some kind of etymology behind it. Notice that the most direct symbols are more universal and grounded in timeless experience, while the most topical are more proprietary and grounded in specific temporal experiences - ie adolescent neologism as ingroup pack bonding. Physics is a consequential extract to us, but I think the physics of body, or the experiences behind the physics, biochemistry, and physio-zoology that we embody personally do inhere unconsciously, defining our perceptions and experience. We cannot explain the foundations of physics, but those foundations are already explained through the very fabric of our ontology. Was that in the right neighborhood? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I think we are talking past each other. There is the behavior of neurons at the single-neuron level. That is fairly well understood. Nothing about the spontaneous activity you referenced really challenges anything about our understanding of single-neuron function. You may disagree, but you would be disagreeing with the mainstream. No, I don't disagree. In the language of the extended metaphor I used earlier, an auto mechanic with the right tools and engineering diagrams can tell you exactly how a car works. I have no problem with that. I only argue that the mechanic cannot tell you where the car is going to be driven. You can't predict what is going to be on TV by looking at the electronics of the screen. This is the situation with the brain. Low level neurology does not always predict high level intentionality. That's all that I'm saying. Yes, but your account of intentionality is confusing. You're saying high level intentionality here but elsewhere identifying it with electromagnetism, which is the lowest level without getting into quantum dynamics. I would agree with intentionality being high level, as in, emergent. But I can't make sense of your account. How can something be low level and high level at the same time? The different levels of reality that emerge at increasing orders of scale are characterized by completely independent dynamics. Then there is the behavior of large ensembles of neurons. This is an emergent phenomenon and is not well understood. Exactly. I think that it can be better understood as a phenomenon which is not only an emergent property of ensembles of neurons, but granular properties in the moment of an individual entity's behavior over time. It has to go both ways otherwise there could be no reason or mechanism for us to care about anything. What do you mean by going both ways? Causality really does not cross levels. All we can say is that higher levels emerge from/supervene on lower levels. If that gives you problems in seeing how we could have a phenomenological experience of will, then that is a failure of imagination on your part. Unless, you can come up with a principled argument as to why, for one, there could be no reason or mechanism for us to care about anything, and for another, how causality can go both ways. Rhetoric won't do. I need detailed arguments. Spontaneous activity is described at this emergent level. In fact, there may be multiple levels of emergence in the brain, each characterized by a unique set of dynamics. It is hard to say, because the complexity involved is mindblowing. But the fact that we have observed activity at this level of the brain that confounds us is hardly news. It just reinforces the brute fact that we really don't know how the brain works. And this says almost nothing about the nature of will or consciousness. We are on the exact same page. This is why I keep barking in Stathis direction - his view is that there are no emergent properties because everything that exists must be reducible to a molecular level or else it's magic. Well I'm going to stop guessing about what Stathis thinks and let him chime in if he wants to. I would have doubted it too, but no. His argument is straight up 19th century Billiard Ball Universe determinism. He says that all that can happen in the brain is a chain reaction from neuron to neuron (plus Inputs from the external environment). But that is a correct description from the level of single-neuron dynamics. It is utterly deterministic. If you disagree, then you must show how, without hand-wavy arguments about will and electromagnetism. If single-neuron dynamics are not deterministic, then there must be a random or probabilistic dynamic at play. Roger Penrose thinks so, as he says consciousness is rooted in quantum effects. So, are single-neuron dynamics 100% deterministic? If not, why not? What is the *specific* mechanism that makes them non-deterministic? You cannot answer will as that would be level confusion once again. Again we must distinguish between single neuron dynamics, which are fairly well understood (and can be roughly modeled in terms of linear dynamics, but only if you don't care about precision), and large scale dynamics of ensembles of neurons, which are not all understood in terms of any kind of linear analysis. I would be surprised if Stathis disagreed with this description. Ask him. You'll be surprised. From what he has said here, his position is that since we do understand single neuron dynamics, then there cannot be anything which cannot be understood using linear analysis. OK, I will await his answer on this if he cares to. You're right, I would be surprised. That is just hand-waving. There is no way to refute it and there is no explanatory power. Why did Bob kick that tree? It was his electromagnetic dynamics, i.e. his will. It was God's
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 13, 11:21 pm, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Hey Craig, On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 6:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: You have misunderstood what spontaneous neural activity means. There is no misunderstanding. It's not even controversial, you're just plain denying the uncontested facts. Don't you think that if there were any other term besides 'spontaneous' that could be used they would have used it? Look at the animations. (http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=uhCF-zlk0jY) Can you not see exactly what that is with your own eyes? Your impression of neurology being reducible to a passive chain reaction running through the brain is not even wishful thinking, it's factually incorrect. Actually, Stathis's interpretation is the one shared by most of the neuroscientific community. By and large most scientists do not take seriously the idea that the behavior of neurons and other cells is explainable in terms of anything except physical processes. Your interpretation of 'spontaneous' specifically, and of subjectivity in general, is on the fringe. My interpretaton of subjectivity is certainly on the fringe and I have no doubt that my view of how spontaneous activity ties into subjective intentionality, but I would have to read some formal special case definition of spontaneous to believe that some other idea is meant. My sense is that there is no special definition or consenses since the spontaneity within the system is clear. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but you are talking as if your view is well-accepted and obvious to everyone, when it is anything but. If spontaneous doesn't mean spontaneous, why does everyone keep using that term? I understand of course that they are not considering the implications that I am, but ther is no confusion as far as the categorical description goes. I echo Stathis's challenge to email the authors and ask them yourself what is meant by 'spontaneous'. The video itself doesn't really add anything to the conversation, although it is pretty awesome, so thanks for linking to that. I'm not interested in what the authors think or intended to say. I'm only interested in the fact that much of the brain's activity is observed to be irregular and without obvious linear cause. Your account demands an explanation of how something like will can exert influence on physical things like neurons; it doesn't exert an influence, it is the influence. It is charge and voltage experienced first hand rather than observed. that is what Stathis keeps pressing you on. You cannot say both that will causes changes in neurons, and there is no magic involved. So, how does will cause changes in neurons, specifically? Through induction. Will is the subjective facing end of electomagnetism. Just as moving a magnet makes an electric current, moving your finger does as well. However change occurs in molecules, cells, bodies, that is also how will occurs. The only physiological difference is that the signal originates from a different part of the brain. Your view has no way to explain why I feel that I am in control of my breathing when the signal comes from one region, and why I feel nothing when it comes from another, especially since they both have the same effect on the same organ. It would be redundant to have two separate regions of the brain do the exact same thing except one is regular and another comes with 'extra zesty metaphysical subjective illusion sauce'. But your view has no way to explain the difference between voluntary and involuntary action either - not without an explanation of how will causes changes in neural behavior. All changes are the same thing. Whether we see them as will or deterministic depends on our relation to the changes. At least with Stathis's (mainstream) account you can hypothesize about brain architecture, for instance distinguishing between areas of the brain associated with self-reflection (neocortex), where the decision to breathe would originate, and other areas of the brain associated with automatic functions that are not directly influenced by the former regions. It is not well understood at all. But invoking a magical cause like will just because the problem is difficult to conceive of otherwise isn't even wrong, to use your phrase. Will isn't magic, it just looks like 'energy' when we see it outside of ourselves. (not eben wrong I think is Feynman, btw). Without will, how do you explain the existence of a different feeling in breathing intentionally and not? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 2:45 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Actually, Stathis's interpretation is the one shared by most of the neuroscientific community. By and large most scientists do not take seriously the idea that the behavior of neurons and other cells is explainable in terms of anything except physical processes. Your interpretation of 'spontaneous' specifically, and of subjectivity in general, is on the fringe. My interpretaton of subjectivity is certainly on the fringe and I have no doubt that my view of how spontaneous activity ties into subjective intentionality, but I would have to read some formal special case definition of spontaneous to believe that some other idea is meant. My sense is that there is no special definition or consenses since the spontaneity within the system is clear. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but you are talking as if your view is well-accepted and obvious to everyone, when it is anything but. If spontaneous doesn't mean spontaneous, why does everyone keep using that term? I understand of course that they are not considering the implications that I am, but ther is no confusion as far as the categorical description goes. I think spontaneous in the context of the video and papers you linked means, unexplainable activity in terms of what you would expect neural circuits to be doing when the organism doesn't appear to be doing anything. But it certainly does not mean (from the mainstream pov) unexplainable in terms of physical processes. It just means these circuits are firing, and there is no well established theory that predicts that activity. That this spontaneous activity accounts for so much resource consumption suggests that it is important, or else adaptive pressures would have snuffed it out. In short, I think spontaneous simply means we have no idea why these circuits are firing when the organism is at rest. I echo Stathis's challenge to email the authors and ask them yourself what is meant by 'spontaneous'. The video itself doesn't really add anything to the conversation, although it is pretty awesome, so thanks for linking to that. I'm not interested in what the authors think or intended to say. I'm only interested in the fact that much of the brain's activity is observed to be irregular and without obvious linear cause. The brain is an incredibly complex non-linear system. Almost all of its behavior can be characterized as without obvious linear cause. Your account demands an explanation of how something like will can exert influence on physical things like neurons; it doesn't exert an influence, it is the influence. It is charge and voltage experienced first hand rather than observed. that is what Stathis keeps pressing you on. You cannot say both that will causes changes in neurons, and there is no magic involved. So, how does will cause changes in neurons, specifically? Through induction. Will is the subjective facing end of electomagnetism. Just as moving a magnet makes an electric current, moving your finger does as well. However change occurs in molecules, cells, bodies, that is also how will occurs. OK, then all you're really saying is that will supervenes on a lower level (atomic) than what the majority believe (the level of neurons). Electromagnetism is computable and therefore you are saying comp is true. But your view has no way to explain the difference between voluntary and involuntary action either - not without an explanation of how will causes changes in neural behavior. All changes are the same thing. Whether we see them as will or deterministic depends on our relation to the changes. At least with Stathis's (mainstream) account you can hypothesize about brain architecture, for instance distinguishing between areas of the brain associated with self-reflection (neocortex), where the decision to breathe would originate, and other areas of the brain associated with automatic functions that are not directly influenced by the former regions. It is not well understood at all. But invoking a magical cause like will just because the problem is difficult to conceive of otherwise isn't even wrong, to use your phrase. Will isn't magic, it just looks like 'energy' when we see it outside of ourselves. (not eben wrong I think is Feynman, btw). Without will, how do you explain the existence of a different feeling in breathing intentionally and not? If you want my explanation, will is a psychological epiphenomenon. We don't actually will our behavior, not from a single command and control center. Our bodies and minds simply behave, according to all sorts of instinctive, conditioned, and even contemplative impulses, and our egos tell the story of it as if there was a single source of all of our impulses. We say, I ate the pie, but really, our eating the pie can be more accurately described as a desire to satiate hunger, and/or a desire to experience pleasure, or in
Re: Bruno List continued
On 10/14/2011 12:40 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: I think spontaneous in the context of the video and papers you linked means, unexplainable activity in terms of what you would expect neural circuits to be doing when the organism doesn't appear to be doing anything. But it certainly does not mean (from the mainstream pov) unexplainable in terms of physical processes. It just means these circuits are firing, and there is no well established theory that predicts that activity. That this spontaneous activity accounts for so much resource consumption suggests that it is important, or else adaptive pressures would have snuffed it out. In short, I think spontaneous simply means we have no idea why these circuits are firing when the organism is at rest. There are cells that participate in diurnal oscillations which apparently provide some timing function for the organism. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 14, 3:40 pm, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 2:45 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Actually, Stathis's interpretation is the one shared by most of the neuroscientific community. By and large most scientists do not take seriously the idea that the behavior of neurons and other cells is explainable in terms of anything except physical processes. Your interpretation of 'spontaneous' specifically, and of subjectivity in general, is on the fringe. My interpretaton of subjectivity is certainly on the fringe and I have no doubt that my view of how spontaneous activity ties into subjective intentionality, but I would have to read some formal special case definition of spontaneous to believe that some other idea is meant. My sense is that there is no special definition or consenses since the spontaneity within the system is clear. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but you are talking as if your view is well-accepted and obvious to everyone, when it is anything but. If spontaneous doesn't mean spontaneous, why does everyone keep using that term? I understand of course that they are not considering the implications that I am, but ther is no confusion as far as the categorical description goes. I think spontaneous in the context of the video and papers you linked means, unexplainable activity in terms of what you would expect neural circuits to be doing when the organism doesn't appear to be doing anything. But it certainly does not mean (from the mainstream pov) unexplainable in terms of physical processes I have said many times already, if you think that I am talking about something thay contradicts physics then you don't understand what I'm talking about. Some people do, but you don't. Thats ok, not everyone is interested enough to try to understand it, but if you are I suggest you read my info at s33light.org first. It just means these circuits are firing, and there is no well established tiheory that predicts that activity. Right. That was my point. Stathis denies this and insists that physics predicts this activity and that it is no different from a leaf in the wind. That this spontaneous activity accounts for so much resource consumption suggests that it is important, or else adaptive pressures would have snuffed it out. In short, I think spontaneous simply means we have no idea why these circuits are firing when the organism is at rest. I agree. That is my position as well. I echo Stathis's challenge to email the authors and ask them yourself what is meant by 'spontaneous'. The video itself doesn't really add anything to the conversation, although it is pretty awesome, so thanks for linking to that. I'm not interested in what the authors think or intended to say. I'm only interested in the fact that much of the brain's activity is observed to be irregular and without obvious linear cause. The brain is an incredibly complex non-linear system. Almost all of its behavior can be characterized as without obvious linear cause. Again, I agree completely. That is the opposite of Stathis' position. Your account demands an explanation of how something like will can exert influence on physical things like neurons; it doesn't exert an influence, it is the influence. It is charge and voltage experienced first hand rather than observed. that is what Stathis keeps pressing you on. You cannot say both that will causes changes in neurons, and there is no magic involved. So, how does will cause changes in neurons, specifically? Through induction. Will is the subjective facing end of electomagnetism. Just as moving a magnet makes an electric current, moving your finger does as well. However change occurs in molecules, cells, bodies, that is also how will occurs. OK, then all you're really saying is that will supervenes on a lower level (atomic) than what the majority believe (the level of neurons). Electromagnetism is computable and therefore you are saying comp is true. Close but no. Will and electromagnetism are the same thing but viewed from opposite perspectives. Our personal will correlates to many regions of the brain at once. Electromagnetic changes on a neuron or molecular level correlate to subconsious and unconscious micro-motive wills. But your view has no way to explain the difference between voluntary and involuntary action either - not without an explanation of how will causes changes in neural behavior. All changes are the same thing. Whether we see them as will or deterministic depends on our relation to the changes. At least with Stathis's (mainstream) account you can hypothesize about brain architecture, for instance distinguishing between areas of the brain associated with self-reflection (neocortex), where the decision to breathe would originate, and other areas of the brain associated with automatic
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 14, 3:58 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/14/2011 12:40 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: I think spontaneous in the context of the video and papers you linked means, unexplainable activity in terms of what you would expect neural circuits to be doing when the organism doesn't appear to be doing anything. But it certainly does not mean (from the mainstream pov) unexplainable in terms of physical processes. It just means these circuits are firing, and there is no well established theory that predicts that activity. That this spontaneous activity accounts for so much resource consumption suggests that it is important, or else adaptive pressures would have snuffed it out. In short, I think spontaneous simply means we have no idea why these circuits are firing when the organism is at rest. There are cells that participate in diurnal oscillations which apparently provide some timing function for the organism. That some cells are synchronized to the same diurnal cycles doesn't mean that there isn't spontaneous activity. Are they diurnal in the sense that they are linked to photological changes or do they always just beat every morning? How do they know when I fly to the other side of the world 12 hours ahead? How do the ion channels in each neuron know what time it is? I'm sure that that there are thousands of oscillating patterns of varying frequency that can be discerned in neurological patterns. Seasonal patterns. age-based genetic triggers, rhythmic pulses synched to cardiovascular conditions, hormonal variations, blood sugar cycles, etc. It's a gigantic fugue in there. That doesn't mean that we can't, for instance, at any moment in our waking life decide to say our name out loud or pick up a fork and take a bite of food. We don't have to wait until a particular time of day to be able to open our eyes or take a deep breath. We all have many clocks that we can turn to to help us arrange our activities. Sometimes what we see when we look at the clock makes us do something that we would rather have waited longer to do. In that sense, a clock on the wall is 'providing some timing for the organism'. That doesn't mean though that we don't have free will. If that were the case we wouldn't need clocks at all, since our behavior is already determined by our internal clocks. Why would such a timed organism ever need to look outside of itself to pretend to want to know the time? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
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On 10/14/2011 5:16 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: We all have many clocks that we can turn to to help us arrange our activities. Sometimes what we see when we look at the clock makes us do something that we would rather have waited longer to do. In that sense, a clock on the wall is 'providing some timing for the organism'. That doesn't mean though that we don't have free will. If that were the case we wouldn't need clocks at all, since our behavior is already determined by our internal clocks. Why would such a timed organism ever need to look outside of itself to pretend to want to know the time? Craig You already noted that diurnal cycles get synced by light/dark cycles. The point is that you don't will these cycles, yet you rely on them: to wake up on time, to remember appointments, etc. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 14, 9:00 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/14/2011 5:16 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: You already noted that diurnal cycles get synced by light/dark cycles. The point is that you don't will these cycles, yet you rely on them: to wake up on time, to remember appointments, etc. We do will those cycles. That's what electric lights are for. But not all cycles of that approximate duration get synched by light and dark. If that were the case there would be no jet lag. Still though, what does it have to do with free will? Parts of the brain respond to light, so what? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On 10/14/2011 7:13 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 14, 9:00 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/14/2011 5:16 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: You already noted that diurnal cycles get synced by light/dark cycles. The point is that you don't will these cycles, yet you rely on them: to wake up on time, to remember appointments, etc. We do will those cycles. Then how do you manage to wake up a given time in the morning? Are you willing them in your sleep? Brnet That's what electric lights are for. But not all cycles of that approximate duration get synched by light and dark. If that were the case there would be no jet lag. Still though, what does it have to do with free will? Parts of the brain respond to light, so what? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 14, 10:46 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/14/2011 7:13 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 14, 9:00 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/14/2011 5:16 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: You already noted that diurnal cycles get synced by light/dark cycles. The point is that you don't will these cycles, yet you rely on them: to wake up on time, to remember appointments, etc. We do will those cycles. Then how do you manage to wake up a given time in the morning? Are you willing them in your sleep? We don't have to will them, it's voluntary. Sometimes they wake us up, and sometimes we wake them up. It's all 'us' it's just that some aspects of what we are are more physiological, some are more subjective, and some shift dynamically within different ranges. We have habits, addictions, choices, conditioning, creativity, involuntary and voluntary motivations of all shades and intensities. All that I'm trying to do is to describe the universe in the way that it ordinarily works. I'm not even getting near any kind of non- ordinary realities or forces or anything, just what our common sense perceptions and scientific observations tell us without inferring any forces, fields, or quantum pseudosubstances. When I say sensorimotive, I don't mean anything spooky, I just mean regular old thoughts, feelings, images, flavors, sounds, desires, actions, etc. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 7:16 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I have said many times already, if you think that I am talking about something thay contradicts physics then you don't understand what I'm talking about. Some people do, but you don't. Thats ok, not everyone is interested enough to try to understand it, but if you are I suggest you read my info at s33light.org first. There's a lot there to digest. It is hard to understand, and honestly I barely have enough time to participate to the limited degree that I do here. And frankly if you made a more compelling case for your ideas here I would be more interested. But your argumentation, what I've read of it anyhow, has been somewhat contradictory, not to mention hostile. It just means these circuits are firing, and there is no well established tiheory that predicts that activity. Right. That was my point. Stathis denies this and insists that physics predicts this activity and that it is no different from a leaf in the wind. I think we are talking past each other. There is the behavior of neurons at the single-neuron level. That is fairly well understood. Nothing about the spontaneous activity you referenced really challenges anything about our understanding of single-neuron function. You may disagree, but you would be disagreeing with the mainstream. Then there is the behavior of large ensembles of neurons. This is an emergent phenomenon and is not well understood. Spontaneous activity is described at this emergent level. In fact, there may be multiple levels of emergence in the brain, each characterized by a unique set of dynamics. It is hard to say, because the complexity involved is mindblowing. But the fact that we have observed activity at this level of the brain that confounds us is hardly news. It just reinforces the brute fact that we really don't know how the brain works. And this says almost nothing about the nature of will or consciousness. The brain is an incredibly complex non-linear system. Almost all of its behavior can be characterized as without obvious linear cause. Again, I agree completely. That is the opposite of Stathis' position. I doubt that Stathis would agree with that. Again we must distinguish between single neuron dynamics, which are fairly well understood (and can be roughly modeled in terms of linear dynamics, but only if you don't care about precision), and large scale dynamics of ensembles of neurons, which are not all understood in terms of any kind of linear analysis. I would be surprised if Stathis disagreed with this description. OK, then all you're really saying is that will supervenes on a lower level (atomic) than what the majority believe (the level of neurons). Electromagnetism is computable and therefore you are saying comp is true. Close but no. Will and electromagnetism are the same thing but viewed from opposite perspectives. Our personal will correlates to many regions of the brain at once. Electromagnetic changes on a neuron or molecular level correlate to subconsious and unconscious micro-motive wills. That is just hand-waving. There is no way to refute it and there is no explanatory power. Why did Bob kick that tree? It was his electromagnetic dynamics, i.e. his will. It was God's will. They both have the same explanatory power. Also, why is will, in your account, confined to regions of the brain? If will and electomagnetism are the same thing, where are the boundaries? Why not the entire brain (even the parts we know to control involuntary behaviors)? Why not the entire body? Why not the air I breathe in and out, and my shit and piss, pardon the language? All of that can be modeled in terms of its electromagnetic dynamics if you go micro enough. If you want my explanation, will is a psychological epiphenomenon. Which means you are relying on metaphysics. I don't. You wanted an alternative explanation. I was not offering it to argue it. Only to show that there are alternative explanations in which will is something that is not contradicted by the laws of physics. Perhaps it is wrong. Who cares. We don't actually will our behavior, not from a single command and control center. Our bodies and minds simply behave, according to all sorts of instinctive, conditioned, and even contemplative impulses, and our egos tell the story of it as if there was a single source of all of our impulses. Partly true yes, but it makes no sense for ego to exist at all. We have both voluntary and involuntary ranges of experience. So you don't believe in egos? We say, I ate the pie, but really, our eating the pie can be more accurately described as a desire to satiate hunger, and/or a desire to experience pleasure, or in some situations, a learned response to the desire to reduce anxiety. Will is a story we tell about ourselves, but it is just a narrative that unifies many disparate impulses. This is evident when we behave in a way we can't
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On Oct 13, 12:47 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 4:17 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The model of a neuron does not include the inputs. A larger model of a network of neurons includes inputs and outputs from all the neurons in the network but does not include external inputs. Without any external inputs, and without any recognition of internal spontaneous activity, what is it that this closed circuit of neurons would be inputting and outputting that would be worth modeling? The external inputs themselves are not modelled, they are provided by the environment. What is an 'external input' made of? Are you saying that there are physical pieces of the outside world stuck inside of your brain? I really can't understand your emotional objection to the idea that consciousness may be epiphenomenal and supervenient on mechanistic processes. It doesn't worry me or affect my behaviour; why should it? If consciousness were epiphenomenal and supervenient on mechanistic processes, you would not have a choice whether or not to worry. You would have no opinion, and there could be no such thing as an opinion. My objection is that it's a nonsensical position. It's not nonsensical: I can understand it and it is not self-contradictory. It's directly contradictory. If everything is either deterministic or random, where does an opinion come from? What would be the function of an opinion in such a world? Physical events in my brain lead me to choose the words and on top of this process is the subjectivity of choice. What do you mean by 'me'? Your whole position is that it is impossible for your brain to lead anything except itself to do anything except what it has to do by physical law. Where does a 'subjectivity of choice' come in? Where is it located? What is it made out of? How does it relate to the brain? I am the result of the activity of the ensemble of neurons in my brain. Why does the activity of neurons 'result' in something other than what it is? Why can't it just as easily be that the activity of neurons in the brain is the result of the activity of the 'I'? If you have no idea whatsoever what the 'result' of subjectivity is, how do you know that it isn't making choices that are passed down the nervous system, starting from the brain? Subjectivity results because that is what it feels like when information is processed the way it is in the brain. Why should it feel like anything? How could there be any such thing as feeling at all? If your view of neurology were true, there could be no phenomena in the brain which is not explained by chemistry and physics - how do you explain 'feeling' in terms of neuron function? How does it magically get connected to the brain? Even if you say that feeling is an illusion, how does that change the fact that it's part of the cosmos? How do you account for it? Choice is when I have two alternatives and I feel I can freely choose between them, I agree. Choice is a feeling of being able to select a motive to actualize from a group of motives. which is consistent with the decision being ultimately either random or determined. Huh? No, it's consistent with the decision being intentional and voluntary. If it were random or determined, any kind of feeling about it one way or another would be unexplainable. It wouldn't even be magic because magic at least has a purpose. It is to say that a box of paperclips just happens to have a memory of doing a Jack Nicholson impersonation at a party in 1986, and since that's the case, it must help keep the paperclips from oxidizing or something. What is this electromagnetism you have mentioned several times? The action potential generates an electromagnetic field and some theories of consciousness hold this to be important, is that what you mean? An action potential is just a word for the electromagnetic change within the cell membrane which passes on to other cells. The action potential is the spike in potential difference between the two sides of a cell membrane that propagates down the membrane, generating an electromagnetic field. If you want to understand awareness you have to go deeper than that. You have to question what an action potential and electromagnetic field actually are. I think that you will find that we have no idea what they are, or how one atom knows that another atom has too few or too many electrons. What you are saying now is basically 'the water comes out of the faucet when the valve turns from one side to the other, which generates a volume of water that propagates down the drain'. It tells us nothing about why the faucet turns in the first place. Your description doesn't even allow for the ordinary functioning of cellular biology let alone neurology. You make no distinction between living tissue and falling leaves, seeing each as equally passive to random currents outside of
Re: Bruno List continued
On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The external inputs themselves are not modelled, they are provided by the environment. What is an 'external input' made of? Are you saying that there are physical pieces of the outside world stuck inside of your brain? The outside world interacts with your brain and causes physical changes in it. If consciousness were epiphenomenal and supervenient on mechanistic processes, you would not have a choice whether or not to worry. You would have no opinion, and there could be no such thing as an opinion. My objection is that it's a nonsensical position. It's not nonsensical: I can understand it and it is not self-contradictory. It's directly contradictory. If everything is either deterministic or random, where does an opinion come from? What would be the function of an opinion in such a world? Everything *is* either deterministic or random. A third alternative is conceptually impossible. It's not a matter of scientific discovery, it's an a priori fact, like the truths of arithmetic. The debate about free will is a debate about whether free will is compatible with determinism or whether randomness is required; it's not a debate about whether neither-determined-nor-random exists. I can't understand your puzzlement at where an opinion comes from and what its purpose is in a determined or random world. No-one else sees it as a problem, so why do you? Even if we had an immaterial soul and science showed that neurons fired magically due to the influence of this soul our decisions would have to be either determined or random, since that's all there is. I am the result of the activity of the ensemble of neurons in my brain. Why does the activity of neurons 'result' in something other than what it is? Why can't it just as easily be that the activity of neurons in the brain is the result of the activity of the 'I'? If you have no idea whatsoever what the 'result' of subjectivity is, how do you know that it isn't making choices that are passed down the nervous system, starting from the brain? When a billiard ball hits another billiard ball how do you know that this isn't as a result of the balls' subjectivity rather than the other way around? Subjectivity results because that is what it feels like when information is processed the way it is in the brain. Why should it feel like anything? How could there be any such thing as feeling at all? If your view of neurology were true, there could be no phenomena in the brain which is not explained by chemistry and physics - how do you explain 'feeling' in terms of neuron function? How does it magically get connected to the brain? Even if you say that feeling is an illusion, how does that change the fact that it's part of the cosmos? How do you account for it? The illusion of feeling is still the feeling, so it is nonsensical to say that feeling is an illusion. It's a puzzle that feeling exists at all; David Chalmers calls this the Hard Problem of consciousness. It doesn't solve the puzzle to say that feeling is a fundamental aspect of the universe, since you can always ask, Why is feeling a fundamental aspect of the universe? Choice is when I have two alternatives and I feel I can freely choose between them, I agree. Choice is a feeling of being able to select a motive to actualize from a group of motives. which is consistent with the decision being ultimately either random or determined. Huh? No, it's consistent with the decision being intentional and voluntary. Being intentional and voluntary is entirely consistent with the decision being either determined or random, since they are the only two choices. You can't decide to create another category like married bachelor just because you fancy the sound of it. If it were random or determined, any kind of feeling about it one way or another would be unexplainable. It wouldn't even be magic because magic at least has a purpose. It is to say that a box of paperclips just happens to have a memory of doing a Jack Nicholson impersonation at a party in 1986, and since that's the case, it must help keep the paperclips from oxidizing or something. That's a non sequitur. The action potential is the spike in potential difference between the two sides of a cell membrane that propagates down the membrane, generating an electromagnetic field. If you want to understand awareness you have to go deeper than that. You have to question what an action potential and electromagnetic field actually are. I think that you will find that we have no idea what they are, or how one atom knows that another atom has too few or too many electrons. What you are saying now is basically 'the water comes out of the faucet when the valve turns from one side to the other, which generates a volume of water that propagates down the drain'. It tells us nothing about why the faucet turns in the first place. Your
Re: Bruno List continued
Hey Craig, On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 6:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: You have misunderstood what spontaneous neural activity means. There is no misunderstanding. It's not even controversial, you're just plain denying the uncontested facts. Don't you think that if there were any other term besides 'spontaneous' that could be used they would have used it? Look at the animations. (http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=uhCF-zlk0jY) Can you not see exactly what that is with your own eyes? Your impression of neurology being reducible to a passive chain reaction running through the brain is not even wishful thinking, it's factually incorrect. Actually, Stathis's interpretation is the one shared by most of the neuroscientific community. By and large most scientists do not take seriously the idea that the behavior of neurons and other cells is explainable in terms of anything except physical processes. Your interpretation of 'spontaneous' specifically, and of subjectivity in general, is on the fringe. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but you are talking as if your view is well-accepted and obvious to everyone, when it is anything but. I echo Stathis's challenge to email the authors and ask them yourself what is meant by 'spontaneous'. The video itself doesn't really add anything to the conversation, although it is pretty awesome, so thanks for linking to that. Your account demands an explanation of how something like will can exert influence on physical things like neurons; that is what Stathis keeps pressing you on. You cannot say both that will causes changes in neurons, and there is no magic involved. So, how does will cause changes in neurons, specifically? The only physiological difference is that the signal originates from a different part of the brain. Your view has no way to explain why I feel that I am in control of my breathing when the signal comes from one region, and why I feel nothing when it comes from another, especially since they both have the same effect on the same organ. It would be redundant to have two separate regions of the brain do the exact same thing except one is regular and another comes with 'extra zesty metaphysical subjective illusion sauce'. But your view has no way to explain the difference between voluntary and involuntary action either - not without an explanation of how will causes changes in neural behavior. At least with Stathis's (mainstream) account you can hypothesize about brain architecture, for instance distinguishing between areas of the brain associated with self-reflection (neocortex), where the decision to breathe would originate, and other areas of the brain associated with automatic functions that are not directly influenced by the former regions. It is not well understood at all. But invoking a magical cause like will just because the problem is difficult to conceive of otherwise isn't even wrong, to use your phrase. Terren -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 4:17 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The model of a neuron does not include the inputs. A larger model of a network of neurons includes inputs and outputs from all the neurons in the network but does not include external inputs. Without any external inputs, and without any recognition of internal spontaneous activity, what is it that this closed circuit of neurons would be inputting and outputting that would be worth modeling? The external inputs themselves are not modelled, they are provided by the environment. I really can't understand your emotional objection to the idea that consciousness may be epiphenomenal and supervenient on mechanistic processes. It doesn't worry me or affect my behaviour; why should it? If consciousness were epiphenomenal and supervenient on mechanistic processes, you would not have a choice whether or not to worry. You would have no opinion, and there could be no such thing as an opinion. My objection is that it's a nonsensical position. It's not nonsensical: I can understand it and it is not self-contradictory. Physical events in my brain lead me to choose the words and on top of this process is the subjectivity of choice. What do you mean by 'me'? Your whole position is that it is impossible for your brain to lead anything except itself to do anything except what it has to do by physical law. Where does a 'subjectivity of choice' come in? Where is it located? What is it made out of? How does it relate to the brain? I am the result of the activity of the ensemble of neurons in my brain. Subjectivity results because that is what it feels like when information is processed the way it is in the brain. Choice is when I have two alternatives and I feel I can freely choose between them, which is consistent with the decision being ultimately either random or determined. What is this electromagnetism you have mentioned several times? The action potential generates an electromagnetic field and some theories of consciousness hold this to be important, is that what you mean? An action potential is just a word for the electromagnetic change within the cell membrane which passes on to other cells. The action potential is the spike in potential difference between the two sides of a cell membrane that propagates down the membrane, generating an electromagnetic field. It's not mainstream neuroscience but in any case, electromagnetic fields are well-understood physical phenomena, probably more easily modelled mathematically than biochemistry is. Do you agree that neurological activity corresponds to human perceptions? Yes. Do you agree that neurological activity is chemical and electrical activity? Yes. Do you agree that chemical and electrical activity are both forms of electromagnetic activity? Chemistry is ultimately the result of the electromagnetic force. If so, then it is not possible that human perceptions are not in some way electromagnetic. I don't know in what sense it is accurate to say that. Consciousness is somehow different to the brain activity, though some hard core reductionists insist that it is identical to it and there is nothing further to explain. There are two types of ion channels, voltage-dependent and ligand-dependent. The votage-activated ones open when the potential difference across the membrane is at a certain level: the electric field generated as a result of this potential difference changes the shape of the ion channel, which is a transmembrane protein, and this opens the channel to allow the specific ion to pass through. What changes the potential difference in the first place? What relates any of that to our subjective experience? Ligand-activated ion channels open when a specific neurotransmitter binds. The transmembrane potential changes as a result of ion fluxes: potassium is more concentrated inside the cell so when potassium ion channels open potassium ions exit leaving the inside more negative, while sodium is more concentrated outside the cell so when sodium channels open sodium ions enter making the inside more positive. The sodium and potassium fluxes are responsible for depolarisation, the action potential and repolarisation. There can't be an action potential without these ion fluxes, there can't be ion fluxes without the ion channels opening and closing, and the ion channels can't open and close without the appropriate voltage or neurotransmitter stimulus. Spontaneously active neurons have voltage-activated ion channels that open at the cell's resting potential. All of these processes supervene upon the spontaneous changes to electromagnetic conditions. You are talking as if the brain is just a sponge which fills up with electrolytes and discharges them regularly without any control over the process. If you can move your finger deliberately, then that means that the neurons associated with that movement are also being
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2011/10/11 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 10, 10:32 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/10 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com No. Your claim is that all inputs must also be neurological. He *never* said that. What he said is this : If you know the input + the working of a neuron, you can predict the output (fire or not fire), the input can be from adjacent neurons or from nerves which are link to the external environment via sensors. You are the one keeping on claiming that the model must predict the external environment and that is non-sensical. Adjacent neurons = neurological. Nerves = neurological. Sensors = neurological. His claim excludes internal spontaneous causes. I'm just pointing out that neurological outputs cannot be predicted without them and that those cannot be determined from the physiology and the environment alone. You have to know what the brain is feeling to predict everything that the neurons that make it up are going to do. You have to know the transition rule(s) of the neuron. Transition rule(s) + input = output. Input == Internal state of the neuron + environment state where the neuron is (adjacent cells, nerves signal, chemical environment, ...) You don't have to know what the brain is feeling as a whole... because the neuron does not. Quentin -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 11, 2:52 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/11 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 10, 10:32 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/10 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com No. Your claim is that all inputs must also be neurological. He *never* said that. What he said is this : If you know the input + the working of a neuron, you can predict the output (fire or not fire), the input can be from adjacent neurons or from nerves which are link to the external environment via sensors. You are the one keeping on claiming that the model must predict the external environment and that is non-sensical. Adjacent neurons = neurological. Nerves = neurological. Sensors = neurological. His claim excludes internal spontaneous causes. I'm just pointing out that neurological outputs cannot be predicted without them and that those cannot be determined from the physiology and the environment alone. You have to know what the brain is feeling to predict everything that the neurons that make it up are going to do. You have to know the transition rule(s) of the neuron. Transition rule(s) + input = output. The idea of transition rules is not appropriate to describe the phenomenology. It collapses the sensorimotive capacity into an a hollow arithmetic silhouette, which has no place in a living organism. Computer programs have transition rules, cells have conditioned responses and learned behaviors. Input == Internal state of the neuron + environment state where the neuron is (adjacent cells, nerves signal, chemical environment, ...) You don't have to know what the brain is feeling as a whole... because the neuron does not. You *do* have to know what the brain is feeling as a whole, because even though the neuron does not know what the brain is feeling in the brain's terms, it participates in the collective pattern of charge in the brain which is the 3-p shadow of a person's subjectivity. The neuron feels a local recapitulation of the overall state of the neurological collective, specific to it's particular role and capacity. It's on a need to know basis, just as we are in our own levels of consciousness, subconsciousness, and unconsciousness, but it must know something, otherwise nothing knows anything. Without knowing the feeling in it's native subjective terms, it would be like trying to predict animated Rorschach inkblots. Sort of like technical analysis of the stock market - a death spiral of self- similarity feedback which takes us further from the signifying fundamentals we care about and deeper into the quicksand of a- signifying quantitative fantasy. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 1:27 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If you simulate a neuron, then you predict what the neuron will do given certain inputs. The model of the neuron does not include the inputs. No. Your claim is that all inputs must also be neurological. You say over and over that neurons can only fire in response to other neurons. I have shown that it is not true and now you are being dishonest about your position throughout this conversation. I may be crazy but I don't have Alzheimers (yet). Whether a neuron fires or not depends on its present state and the inputs, and the most important inputs are from other neurons and from sense organs. The model of a neuron does not include the inputs. A larger model of a network of neurons includes inputs and outputs from all the neurons in the network but does not include external inputs. The simulation is not the same as the object being simulated but it can come arbitrarily close to any 3-P observable aspect of the object's behaviour. I would agree as far as the simulation of objects, but not of subjects. That's what this whole thread is about - me asserting that there is likely a primitive, irreducible ontology of subjectivity and you and others denying that such a thing is possible. Bruno's conclusion is that both objectivity and subjectivity supervene upon an arithmetic primitive ontology, (which I have agreed with in the past and would probably continue to agree with if I were Bruno and had his facility with arithmetic concepts), whereas I conclude that arithmetic is actually a subject, but a particular subject - the essentializing of objectivity...it is a powerful way of way of making sense, but there are other kinds of sensemaking and qualia such as symmetry and succession, presence and absence, etc, which form the foundation upon which arithmetic realism depends. What is your position though? It seems to be that consciousness and life are not real for you on any level. Your cogito seems to be Ion channels open therefore something thinks that it thinks, therefore it is not'. You're welcome to your opinions of course, but I find it hard to take this worldview seriously in light of our ordinary experience and the findings of neurology. We understand that high level processes to in fact influence low level processes. I offer a hypothesis which models those dynamics. We observe that much of the activity in the brain is in fact spontaneous, and not cyclical or dependent upon external neurological inputs for firing - that neurons are in fact living organisms capable of autonomous and synchronized intentionality. Your solution seems to be to hide in a cave of pre-scientific incuriousity. Content to let our entire lives as we experience them natively to be sequestered in a never-never land that is neither physical nor spiritual. Your assumptions paint conscious subjects as epiphenomenal non-objects, orphaned from reason, science, or any possibility of understanding. Further, they deny their own self-invalidation without justification, so that somehow these thoughts of exclusively deterministic epistemology are themselves immune from their own critical purview. It is to say that all thought is 'simply' neurology - except this thought. This is the one special magic thought which disqualifies all others. It is a philosophy that appeals to many, for obvious reasons, as it provides the sense of certainty and safety which we crave. The truth is that is thought is 'simply' the mirror image of new age religiosity, but owing more of it's spirit to the Inquisition. I really can't understand your emotional objection to the idea that consciousness may be epiphenomenal and supervenient on mechanistic processes. It doesn't worry me or affect my behaviour; why should it? The scientific consensus in neuroscience is that there is physical basis for everything that happens in the brain. The brain is physical, so everything that happens in the brain is by definition physical. There is scientific consensus that brain events correlate to subjective events but there is no such consensus that subjective intentions do not cause physical events. Indeed common sense would dictate that we are the ones subjectively choosing our words here, since they are not floating around in our ion channels. Physical events in my brain lead me to choose the words and on top of this process is the subjectivity of choice. A neuron will only fire if its biochemistry requires it to fire. I agree. But it's biochemistry requires electromagnetism, and I am saying that electromagnetism *must* have a subjective, sensorimotive ontology (otherwise our subjectivity could not be closely correlated with it). I don't believe in a never never land of Cartesian theater - feeling can only be electromagnetic and electromagnetism can only be feeling. They are the same thing, only viewed from 1-p vs 3-p. What is this
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 11, 8:45 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 1:27 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If you simulate a neuron, then you predict what the neuron will do given certain inputs. The model of the neuron does not include the inputs. No. Your claim is that all inputs must also be neurological. You say over and over that neurons can only fire in response to other neurons. I have shown that it is not true and now you are being dishonest about your position throughout this conversation. I may be crazy but I don't have Alzheimers (yet). Whether a neuron fires or not depends on its present state and the inputs, and the most important inputs are from other neurons and from sense organs. Why would the inputs from other neurons and sense organs be any more important that the spontaneous activity within the neurons themselves? The model of a neuron does not include the inputs. A larger model of a network of neurons includes inputs and outputs from all the neurons in the network but does not include external inputs. Without any external inputs, and without any recognition of internal spontaneous activity, what is it that this closed circuit of neurons would be inputting and outputting that would be worth modeling? The simulation is not the same as the object being simulated but it can come arbitrarily close to any 3-P observable aspect of the object's behaviour. I would agree as far as the simulation of objects, but not of subjects. That's what this whole thread is about - me asserting that there is likely a primitive, irreducible ontology of subjectivity and you and others denying that such a thing is possible. Bruno's conclusion is that both objectivity and subjectivity supervene upon an arithmetic primitive ontology, (which I have agreed with in the past and would probably continue to agree with if I were Bruno and had his facility with arithmetic concepts), whereas I conclude that arithmetic is actually a subject, but a particular subject - the essentializing of objectivity...it is a powerful way of way of making sense, but there are other kinds of sensemaking and qualia such as symmetry and succession, presence and absence, etc, which form the foundation upon which arithmetic realism depends. What is your position though? It seems to be that consciousness and life are not real for you on any level. Your cogito seems to be Ion channels open therefore something thinks that it thinks, therefore it is not'. You're welcome to your opinions of course, but I find it hard to take this worldview seriously in light of our ordinary experience and the findings of neurology. We understand that high level processes to in fact influence low level processes. I offer a hypothesis which models those dynamics. We observe that much of the activity in the brain is in fact spontaneous, and not cyclical or dependent upon external neurological inputs for firing - that neurons are in fact living organisms capable of autonomous and synchronized intentionality. Your solution seems to be to hide in a cave of pre-scientific incuriousity. Content to let our entire lives as we experience them natively to be sequestered in a never-never land that is neither physical nor spiritual. Your assumptions paint conscious subjects as epiphenomenal non-objects, orphaned from reason, science, or any possibility of understanding. Further, they deny their own self-invalidation without justification, so that somehow these thoughts of exclusively deterministic epistemology are themselves immune from their own critical purview. It is to say that all thought is 'simply' neurology - except this thought. This is the one special magic thought which disqualifies all others. It is a philosophy that appeals to many, for obvious reasons, as it provides the sense of certainty and safety which we crave. The truth is that is thought is 'simply' the mirror image of new age religiosity, but owing more of it's spirit to the Inquisition. I really can't understand your emotional objection to the idea that consciousness may be epiphenomenal and supervenient on mechanistic processes. It doesn't worry me or affect my behaviour; why should it? If consciousness were epiphenomenal and supervenient on mechanistic processes, you would not have a choice whether or not to worry. You would have no opinion, and there could be no such thing as an opinion. My objection is that it's a nonsensical position. The scientific consensus in neuroscience is that there is physical basis for everything that happens in the brain. The brain is physical, so everything that happens in the brain is by definition physical. There is scientific consensus that brain events correlate to subjective events but there is no such consensus that subjective intentions do not cause physical events. Indeed common sense
Re: Bruno List continued
On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 3:29 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 9, 12:09 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 8:06 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 8, 12:12 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Of course all the parts of the car determine how it will move! You can predict exactly what the car will do if you know how it works and you have the inputs. What you are talking about is either tautological and obvious or delusional. if I send you the owner's manual of my car, you can tell me where I'm going to drive it tomorrow? So what are you talking about? That if you observe a car turning, you can tell which way it's turning or something? If you send me the plans of your car and the inputs - which way you intend to steer and so on - *which way you intend to steer* WHT? Did you think you were just going to slip that in and I wouldn't notice? So cool, as long as I give you the schematics of my car and tell you where I'm going to drive to, you will be able to deduce where I'm going to drive to? Wow, that's almost better than nothing at all. There is no way that you are serious. You are trolling me, brother. Quentin responded to this. I'm not sure what he means. If he is pointing out that we were talking about determining where a car was going to go and not about the intentions of the driver, then I agree with him. Your entire argument is that there must be some physical cause within neuron which determines what it does. I pointed out that you cannot determine where a car is going to go based on physical observations of the car. You then erroneously reached for a deus ex machina by suddenly contradicting yourself to say that indeed the car's direction cannot be determined by physical observation but in fact you would need an anecdotal report from a subjective entity called a 'driver'. A simple model of a car's steering would involve knowing the gear ratio between the steering wheel and the front wheels. You could then predict which way the car will turn given the driver's input. That is what it means to say the simulation can predict the car's behaviour. If you simulate a neuron, then you predict what the neuron will do given certain inputs. The model of the neuron does not include the inputs. Apart from the philosophical issues there are two scientific issues you misunderstand. The first is what it means to simulate something. It appears you think that the simulation must include the whole universe and not just the thing being simulated. No, it's just that I understand that simulation is a subjective proposition. There is no such thing as an objective simulation. That would require that one thing be replaced by another which is identical in every way, which is impossible or else it would be the same thing. I have a much more realistic understanding of simulation, that it in fact depends upon which criteria can be perceived by what audience and the degree to which those thresholds of perceptual substitution can be exceeded. Since we have no idea whatsoever how deeply inseparable the physical underpinnings of the psyche are, there is absolutely no reason to arbitrarily assume a particular substitution level. The simulation is not the same as the object being simulated but it can come arbitrarily close to any 3-P observable aspect of the object's behaviour. The second is the belief you seem to have that microscopic events can happen without an empirically observable cause. You cite scientific articles discussing spontaneous neural activity and you think that that is what they are talking about: that the transmembrane voltage in a neuron can just change because the subject wills it. It's not my belief, it is the scientific consensus. If your beliefs that subjective will does not change electromagnetic current in the nervous system have any validity, then all you have to do is give me a link or two of studies which support this. Since you cannot, I will assume that underneath it all, you understand that you are factually incorrect but are incapable of admitting it, even to yourself. The scientific consensus in neuroscience is that there is physical basis for everything that happens in the brain. A neuron will only fire if its biochemistry requires it to fire. This is not something that is stated explicitly because it's too obvious to state, like saying you think with your brain rather than your liver. Specific papers look at specific mechanisms behind neural activity. For example, http://jp.physoc.org/content/305/1/171.long investigates cerebellar Purkinje cells in the cerebellum, which
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 10, 7:57 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: A simple model of a car's steering would involve knowing the gear ratio between the steering wheel and the front wheels. You could then predict which way the car will turn given the driver's input. The same is true of a neuron. If you know that someone is going to think about gambling (because you tell them to do that in an experiment), then you can predict that there will be amygdala activity in their brain. If nobody had ever heard of gambling though, there is no possibility of imagining what that would be just from looking at the activity in the brain. In this case causality is initiated in one direction only - from high level psychological to low level neurological. That is what it means to say the simulation can predict the car's behaviour. Yeah, no. You're just weaseling out of your position. It's nakedly obvious to me. If you simulate a neuron, then you predict what the neuron will do given certain inputs. The model of the neuron does not include the inputs. No. Your claim is that all inputs must also be neurological. You say over and over that neurons can only fire in response to other neurons. I have shown that it is not true and now you are being dishonest about your position throughout this conversation. I may be crazy but I don't have Alzheimers (yet). Apart from the philosophical issues there are two scientific issues you misunderstand. The first is what it means to simulate something. It appears you think that the simulation must include the whole universe and not just the thing being simulated. No, it's just that I understand that simulation is a subjective proposition. There is no such thing as an objective simulation. That would require that one thing be replaced by another which is identical in every way, which is impossible or else it would be the same thing. I have a much more realistic understanding of simulation, that it in fact depends upon which criteria can be perceived by what audience and the degree to which those thresholds of perceptual substitution can be exceeded. Since we have no idea whatsoever how deeply inseparable the physical underpinnings of the psyche are, there is absolutely no reason to arbitrarily assume a particular substitution level. The simulation is not the same as the object being simulated but it can come arbitrarily close to any 3-P observable aspect of the object's behaviour. I would agree as far as the simulation of objects, but not of subjects. That's what this whole thread is about - me asserting that there is likely a primitive, irreducible ontology of subjectivity and you and others denying that such a thing is possible. Bruno's conclusion is that both objectivity and subjectivity supervene upon an arithmetic primitive ontology, (which I have agreed with in the past and would probably continue to agree with if I were Bruno and had his facility with arithmetic concepts), whereas I conclude that arithmetic is actually a subject, but a particular subject - the essentializing of objectivity...it is a powerful way of way of making sense, but there are other kinds of sensemaking and qualia such as symmetry and succession, presence and absence, etc, which form the foundation upon which arithmetic realism depends. What is your position though? It seems to be that consciousness and life are not real for you on any level. Your cogito seems to be Ion channels open therefore something thinks that it thinks, therefore it is not'. You're welcome to your opinions of course, but I find it hard to take this worldview seriously in light of our ordinary experience and the findings of neurology. We understand that high level processes to in fact influence low level processes. I offer a hypothesis which models those dynamics. We observe that much of the activity in the brain is in fact spontaneous, and not cyclical or dependent upon external neurological inputs for firing - that neurons are in fact living organisms capable of autonomous and synchronized intentionality. Your solution seems to be to hide in a cave of pre-scientific incuriousity. Content to let our entire lives as we experience them natively to be sequestered in a never-never land that is neither physical nor spiritual. Your assumptions paint conscious subjects as epiphenomenal non-objects, orphaned from reason, science, or any possibility of understanding. Further, they deny their own self-invalidation without justification, so that somehow these thoughts of exclusively deterministic epistemology are themselves immune from their own critical purview. It is to say that all thought is 'simply' neurology - except this thought. This is the one special magic thought which disqualifies all others. It is a philosophy that appeals to many, for obvious reasons, as it provides the sense of certainty and safety which we crave. The truth is that is thought is 'simply' the mirror image of new age
Re: Bruno List continued
2011/10/10 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 10, 7:57 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: A simple model of a car's steering would involve knowing the gear ratio between the steering wheel and the front wheels. You could then predict which way the car will turn given the driver's input. The same is true of a neuron. If you know that someone is going to think about gambling (because you tell them to do that in an experiment), then you can predict that there will be amygdala activity in their brain. If nobody had ever heard of gambling though, there is no possibility of imagining what that would be just from looking at the activity in the brain. In this case causality is initiated in one direction only - from high level psychological to low level neurological. That is what it means to say the simulation can predict the car's behaviour. Yeah, no. You're just weaseling out of your position. It's nakedly obvious to me. If you simulate a neuron, then you predict what the neuron will do given certain inputs. The model of the neuron does not include the inputs. No. Your claim is that all inputs must also be neurological. He *never* said that. What he said is this : If you know the input + the working of a neuron, you can predict the output (fire or not fire), the input can be from adjacent neurons or from nerves which are link to the external environment via sensors. You are the one keeping on claiming that the model must predict the external environment and that is non-sensical. You say over and over that neurons can only fire in response to other neurons. I have shown that it is not true and now you are being dishonest about your position throughout this conversation. I may be crazy but I don't have Alzheimers (yet). Apart from the philosophical issues there are two scientific issues you misunderstand. The first is what it means to simulate something. It appears you think that the simulation must include the whole universe and not just the thing being simulated. No, it's just that I understand that simulation is a subjective proposition. There is no such thing as an objective simulation. That would require that one thing be replaced by another which is identical in every way, which is impossible or else it would be the same thing. I have a much more realistic understanding of simulation, that it in fact depends upon which criteria can be perceived by what audience and the degree to which those thresholds of perceptual substitution can be exceeded. Since we have no idea whatsoever how deeply inseparable the physical underpinnings of the psyche are, there is absolutely no reason to arbitrarily assume a particular substitution level. The simulation is not the same as the object being simulated but it can come arbitrarily close to any 3-P observable aspect of the object's behaviour. I would agree as far as the simulation of objects, but not of subjects. That's what this whole thread is about - me asserting that there is likely a primitive, irreducible ontology of subjectivity and you and others denying that such a thing is possible. Bruno's conclusion is that both objectivity and subjectivity supervene upon an arithmetic primitive ontology, (which I have agreed with in the past and would probably continue to agree with if I were Bruno and had his facility with arithmetic concepts), whereas I conclude that arithmetic is actually a subject, but a particular subject - the essentializing of objectivity...it is a powerful way of way of making sense, but there are other kinds of sensemaking and qualia such as symmetry and succession, presence and absence, etc, which form the foundation upon which arithmetic realism depends. What is your position though? It seems to be that consciousness and life are not real for you on any level. Your cogito seems to be Ion channels open therefore something thinks that it thinks, therefore it is not'. You're welcome to your opinions of course, but I find it hard to take this worldview seriously in light of our ordinary experience and the findings of neurology. We understand that high level processes to in fact influence low level processes. I offer a hypothesis which models those dynamics. We observe that much of the activity in the brain is in fact spontaneous, and not cyclical or dependent upon external neurological inputs for firing - that neurons are in fact living organisms capable of autonomous and synchronized intentionality. Your solution seems to be to hide in a cave of pre-scientific incuriousity. Content to let our entire lives as we experience them natively to be sequestered in a never-never land that is neither physical nor spiritual. Your assumptions paint conscious subjects as epiphenomenal non-objects, orphaned from reason, science, or any possibility of understanding. Further, they deny their own self-invalidation
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 10, 10:32 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/10 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com No. Your claim is that all inputs must also be neurological. He *never* said that. What he said is this : If you know the input + the working of a neuron, you can predict the output (fire or not fire), the input can be from adjacent neurons or from nerves which are link to the external environment via sensors. You are the one keeping on claiming that the model must predict the external environment and that is non-sensical. Adjacent neurons = neurological. Nerves = neurological. Sensors = neurological. His claim excludes internal spontaneous causes. I'm just pointing out that neurological outputs cannot be predicted without them and that those cannot be determined from the physiology and the environment alone. You have to know what the brain is feeling to predict everything that the neurons that make it up are going to do. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sep 29, 11:14 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Craig, do the neurons violate the conservation of energy and momentum? And if not, then how can they have any unexpected effects? Here's a post I did today that hopefully helps clarify how I think it works: http://s33light.org/post/11288327147 but to answer your question, no, they don't violate any physical laws. I think it's possible that the only fundamental difference between a neuron and a liver cell is that the neuron is tasked with participating in making sense and decisions for the organism as a whole rather than just the processes related to hepatic metabolism. This seems even more likely since they just found a way to turn liver cells into neurons: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-scientists-liver-cells-neurons-technique.html They have unanticipated physical effects (though not unexpected when you have access to the private sensorimotive causes) because electromagnetic charge is manipulated through sensorimotivation. In the post I suggest maybe a perpendicular polarity - east vs west which influences charge between high level and low level processes. All we see is that neurons spontaneously depolarize their membranes in groups but there is no physical law which suggests when such a spontaneous firing would occur. We can force the firing by changing the voltage externally, but in the absence of external stimulation, the brain continues to be spontaneously active. Besides, our ordinary experience suggests that we do enjoy voluntary control over many processes of our mind and body as evidenced by the distinction we perceive between those processes and the processes which we have only partial voluntary control, are involuntary, or are outside of our direct awareness entirely. It only seems unexpected because you are ruling out our subjective expectations a priori. It's not necessary to partition the subjective and objective if we are talking about subjectivity itself. Awareness is just another phenomena in the universe, it just seems very strange to us because we ourselves are awareness so we aren't designed to be able to detect our own detection directly (how would that really work?). We can't put it into any kind of predictable object-in-space 3- p model, we can only infer it from correlating our 1-p experiences with our 3-p measurements. Just as we can't watch ultraviolet tv shows, our use of microscopes, MRI, etc, give us no capacity to extend our vision to the 1-p and actually serve to extend our blindness of it by presenting a seamless world of physical objects in space with no hint of perceptual subjects through time. Does that help at all? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 9, 12:09 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 8:06 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 8, 12:12 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Of course all the parts of the car determine how it will move! You can predict exactly what the car will do if you know how it works and you have the inputs. What you are talking about is either tautological and obvious or delusional. if I send you the owner's manual of my car, you can tell me where I'm going to drive it tomorrow? So what are you talking about? That if you observe a car turning, you can tell which way it's turning or something? If you send me the plans of your car and the inputs - which way you intend to steer and so on - *which way you intend to steer* WHT? Did you think you were just going to slip that in and I wouldn't notice? So cool, as long as I give you the schematics of my car and tell you where I'm going to drive to, you will be able to deduce where I'm going to drive to? Wow, that's almost better than nothing at all. There is no way that you are serious. You are trolling me, brother. Quentin responded to this. I'm not sure what he means. If he is pointing out that we were talking about determining where a car was going to go and not about the intentions of the driver, then I agree with him. Your entire argument is that there must be some physical cause within neuron which determines what it does. I pointed out that you cannot determine where a car is going to go based on physical observations of the car. You then erroneously reached for a deus ex machina by suddenly contradicting yourself to say that indeed the car's direction cannot be determined by physical observation but in fact you would need an anecdotal report from a subjective entity called a 'driver'. Apart from the philosophical issues there are two scientific issues you misunderstand. The first is what it means to simulate something. It appears you think that the simulation must include the whole universe and not just the thing being simulated. No, it's just that I understand that simulation is a subjective proposition. There is no such thing as an objective simulation. That would require that one thing be replaced by another which is identical in every way, which is impossible or else it would be the same thing. I have a much more realistic understanding of simulation, that it in fact depends upon which criteria can be perceived by what audience and the degree to which those thresholds of perceptual substitution can be exceeded. Since we have no idea whatsoever how deeply inseparable the physical underpinnings of the psyche are, there is absolutely no reason to arbitrarily assume a particular substitution level. The second is the belief you seem to have that microscopic events can happen without an empirically observable cause. You cite scientific articles discussing spontaneous neural activity and you think that that is what they are talking about: that the transmembrane voltage in a neuron can just change because the subject wills it. It's not my belief, it is the scientific consensus. If your beliefs that subjective will does not change electromagnetic current in the nervous system have any validity, then all you have to do is give me a link or two of studies which support this. Since you cannot, I will assume that underneath it all, you understand that you are factually incorrect but are incapable of admitting it, even to yourself. How else do you explain voluntary action being different from involuntary actions? Do you think that when you take control of your breathing manually that nothing has changed in your nervous system? That we suddenly have a hallucination that we are controlling our own breathing? Your accusations are empty. Your view explains nothing. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 8, 7:21 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/8 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 8, 12:12 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Of course all the parts of the car determine how it will move! You can predict exactly what the car will do if you know how it works and you have the inputs. What you are talking about is either tautological and obvious or delusional. if I send you the owner's manual of my car, you can tell me where I'm going to drive it tomorrow? So what are you talking about? That if you observe a car turning, you can tell which way it's turning or something? If you send me the plans of your car and the inputs - which way you intend to steer and so on - *which way you intend to steer* WHT? Did you think you were just going to slip that in and I wouldn't notice? You were talking about cars not about you. If you want a model about brain + car just say so. I don't understand. I'm the one talking about cars. He is the one defining the physical mechanics of a car to include the steering intentions of a driver. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 8, 12:12 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Of course all the parts of the car determine how it will move! You can predict exactly what the car will do if you know how it works and you have the inputs. What you are talking about is either tautological and obvious or delusional. if I send you the owner's manual of my car, you can tell me where I'm going to drive it tomorrow? So what are you talking about? That if you observe a car turning, you can tell which way it's turning or something? If you send me the plans of your car and the inputs - which way you intend to steer and so on - *which way you intend to steer* WHT? Did you think you were just going to slip that in and I wouldn't notice? So cool, as long as I give you the schematics of my car and tell you where I'm going to drive to, you will be able to deduce where I'm going to drive to? Wow, that's almost better than nothing at all. There is no way that you are serious. You are trolling me, brother. then yes, I can work out exactly where you're going. A model of the car, such as a car racing computer game, does not include the driver and the whole universe, as you seem to think, just the car. A car racing computer game is not a model of a car unless it is played by a user who is familiar with cars. A horse does not confuse the game with an automobile. It's a red herring anyways. You still can't tell where a real car is going to go unless you know where the driver is going to steer it, and that is something which cannot be determined by modeling the car or the driver's body, brain, neurons, ion channels, or molecules. The same brain in the same body with the same neurons, ion channels, or molecules can drive to the beach one day or the mountains the next depending upon nothing but how they feel. You could say that how they feel is a complex chain of events, but they would not be only microcosmic events which could be modeled, any butterfly wing in some part of the world could set off a chain of unpredictable happenstance that ends up in the driver deciding to go somewhere completely unexpected. The real car and the real neuron don't know what inputs they are going to receive next, so why do you expect that the model will? I'm not the one saying that the brain could be modeled physically and make predictions from it. That's your position, remember? So a neuron fires in those regions of the brain associated with subjectivity where the biochemistry suggests it would not fire. How many times do you need me to tell you that biochemistry does not suggest whether such a neuron would fire? If I decide to move my arm, whatever it is that is deciding *is* the firing of some group of neurons. Biochemistry doesn't give you any insight as to whether your ion channels are about to speak Chinese or English with a New Jersey dialect. It's so wrong, it's not even wrong, it's just blanket denial of ordinary reality. There's nothing I can say to you because you're not listening or understanding what I mean at all. But the neurons that fire when you decide to move your arm do so because of the various internal and external factors I have listed. Yes, they do, but so what? You could have those factors without any kind of decision to move your arm. You can electrocute a severed frog leg but there is no decision there by the frog. The physiological- electromagnetic factors alone do not replace the subjective decision, nor does the subjective intention replace the biology. They are one and the same phenomenon but because we are stuck on the back end of it, we see the front end as a different thing. From a truly objective point of view, however, there is no reason to presume that my imagining Bugs Bunny eating a carrot is any less a part of the universe than ligands and ion channels. It's all real, it just has very different characteristics on opposite sides of the process. Ion channels open in response to either a ligand or a votage across the membrane, causing further changes in the voltage across the membrane, causing more voltage activated ion channels to open, causing an action potential which propagates down the axon. If you look at *any* given neuron and observe all the relevant factors you can, if your model is good enough, tell if it's going to fire. If it does something other than this then it is contrary to physical laws. 8. No, you are wrong and you know it. You just got finished admitting that you need me to tell you how I am going to turn my steering wheel for you to tell where I'm going to drive, so where are you pulling this out of? Repeat after me: Some neural activity is spontaneous. It may not be
Re: Bruno List continued
2011/10/8 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 8, 12:12 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Of course all the parts of the car determine how it will move! You can predict exactly what the car will do if you know how it works and you have the inputs. What you are talking about is either tautological and obvious or delusional. if I send you the owner's manual of my car, you can tell me where I'm going to drive it tomorrow? So what are you talking about? That if you observe a car turning, you can tell which way it's turning or something? If you send me the plans of your car and the inputs - which way you intend to steer and so on - *which way you intend to steer* WHT? Did you think you were just going to slip that in and I wouldn't notice? You were talking about cars not about you. If you want a model about brain + car just say so. So cool, as long as I give you the schematics of my car and tell you where I'm going to drive to, you will be able to deduce where I'm going to drive to? Wow, that's almost better than nothing at all. There is no way that you are serious. You are trolling me, brother. then yes, I can work out exactly where you're going. A model of the car, such as a car racing computer game, does not include the driver and the whole universe, as you seem to think, just the car. A car racing computer game is not a model of a car unless it is played by a user who is familiar with cars. A horse does not confuse the game with an automobile. It's a red herring anyways. You still can't tell where a real car is going to go unless you know where the driver is going to steer it, and that is something which cannot be determined by modeling the car or the driver's body, brain, neurons, ion channels, or molecules. The same brain in the same body with the same neurons, ion channels, or molecules can drive to the beach one day or the mountains the next depending upon nothing but how they feel. You could say that how they feel is a complex chain of events, but they would not be only microcosmic events which could be modeled, any butterfly wing in some part of the world could set off a chain of unpredictable happenstance that ends up in the driver deciding to go somewhere completely unexpected. The real car and the real neuron don't know what inputs they are going to receive next, so why do you expect that the model will? I'm not the one saying that the brain could be modeled physically and make predictions from it. That's your position, remember? So a neuron fires in those regions of the brain associated with subjectivity where the biochemistry suggests it would not fire. How many times do you need me to tell you that biochemistry does not suggest whether such a neuron would fire? If I decide to move my arm, whatever it is that is deciding *is* the firing of some group of neurons. Biochemistry doesn't give you any insight as to whether your ion channels are about to speak Chinese or English with a New Jersey dialect. It's so wrong, it's not even wrong, it's just blanket denial of ordinary reality. There's nothing I can say to you because you're not listening or understanding what I mean at all. But the neurons that fire when you decide to move your arm do so because of the various internal and external factors I have listed. Yes, they do, but so what? You could have those factors without any kind of decision to move your arm. You can electrocute a severed frog leg but there is no decision there by the frog. The physiological- electromagnetic factors alone do not replace the subjective decision, nor does the subjective intention replace the biology. They are one and the same phenomenon but because we are stuck on the back end of it, we see the front end as a different thing. From a truly objective point of view, however, there is no reason to presume that my imagining Bugs Bunny eating a carrot is any less a part of the universe than ligands and ion channels. It's all real, it just has very different characteristics on opposite sides of the process. Ion channels open in response to either a ligand or a votage across the membrane, causing further changes in the voltage across the membrane, causing more voltage activated ion channels to open, causing an action potential which propagates down the axon. If you look at *any* given neuron and observe all the relevant factors you can, if your model is good enough, tell if it's going to fire. If it does something other than this then it is contrary to physical laws. 8. No, you are wrong and you know it. You just got
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 8:06 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 8, 12:12 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Of course all the parts of the car determine how it will move! You can predict exactly what the car will do if you know how it works and you have the inputs. What you are talking about is either tautological and obvious or delusional. if I send you the owner's manual of my car, you can tell me where I'm going to drive it tomorrow? So what are you talking about? That if you observe a car turning, you can tell which way it's turning or something? If you send me the plans of your car and the inputs - which way you intend to steer and so on - *which way you intend to steer* WHT? Did you think you were just going to slip that in and I wouldn't notice? So cool, as long as I give you the schematics of my car and tell you where I'm going to drive to, you will be able to deduce where I'm going to drive to? Wow, that's almost better than nothing at all. There is no way that you are serious. You are trolling me, brother. Quentin responded to this. Apart from the philosophical issues there are two scientific issues you misunderstand. The first is what it means to simulate something. It appears you think that the simulation must include the whole universe and not just the thing being simulated. The second is the belief you seem to have that microscopic events can happen without an empirically observable cause. You cite scientific articles discussing spontaneous neural activity and you think that that is what they are talking about: that the transmembrane voltage in a neuron can just change because the subject wills it. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 6, 10:24 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. It's also difficult to tell exactly which way a leaf in the wind will move. The leaf may have qualia: Theoretically it may, but I don't think so. If it's connected to the tree it might have qualia, and the individual cells might have qualia, but it seems like once it's detached from the tree, it loses it's high level context. it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. No because if the wind is also pushing other inanimate objects in the same direction and the leaf never resists that, then we can assume that it has no ability to choose it's direction. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. You aren't hearing me, so I am going to start counting how many times I answer your false assertion - even though it's probably been at least 5 or 6 times, I'll start the countdown at ten, and at 0, I'm not going to answer this question again from you. 10: There is no such thing as a physical state which suggests whether a neuron that can fire (ie, has repolarized, replenished, or otherwise recovered from it's last firing) actually will fire. You can induce it to fire manually, but left to it's own devices, you can't say that a neuron which triggers a voluntary movement is going to fire without knowing when the person whose arm it is decides to move it. You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. There is no physical law whatsoever that has an opinion one way or the other either way. I'm sorry that you don't like this, It's not that I don't like it, it's just that I see that you are wrong about it yet you want me to treat it as a plausible theisis. The consequences of your view is that we can't tell the difference between a living protozoa and a hairy bubble. It's sophistry. You see a salmon swim upstream, does that not mean they 'move contrary to physical laws'? How does the salmon do that? Is it magic? Salmon cannot exist. Such a thing would confound scientists! Life is ordinary on this planet. It uses the laws of physics for it's own purposes which may or may not relate to physical existence. I'm sorry that you don't like that, but in a contest between theory and reality, reality always wins. It doesn't matter if you don't understand it, you have my condolences, but I do understand it and I'm telling you that it is for that reason that I am certain your view is factually less complete than mine. My view includes your view, but your view ignores mine. but it is what it would mean if the relationship between qualia and physical activity were bidirectional rather than the qualia being supervenient. If qualia were not bidirectional, you could not read or write. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
2011/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 6, 10:24 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. It's also difficult to tell exactly which way a leaf in the wind will move. The leaf may have qualia: Theoretically it may, but I don't think so. If it's connected to the tree it might have qualia, and the individual cells might have qualia, but it seems like once it's detached from the tree, it loses it's high level context. it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. No because if the wind is also pushing other inanimate objects in the same direction and the leaf never resists that, then we can assume that it has no ability to choose it's direction. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. You aren't hearing me, so I am going to start counting how many times I answer your false assertion - even though it's probably been at least 5 or 6 times, I'll start the countdown at ten, and at 0, I'm not going to answer this question again from you. 10: There is no such thing as a physical state which suggests whether a neuron that can fire (ie, has repolarized, replenished, or otherwise recovered from it's last firing) actually will fire. You can induce it to fire manually, but left to it's own devices, you can't say that a neuron which triggers a voluntary movement is going to fire without knowing when the person whose arm it is decides to move it. You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. There is no physical law whatsoever that has an opinion one way or the other either way. That's you who do not understand, because your assertion : You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. simply ignore the *external input*. Without it, you can't, with an accurate mode + external stimuli you can. The model **can't** predict external input, if it could that would only means the model is not about the brain only but about the brain + the entire environment. I'm sorry that you don't like this, It's not that I don't like it, it's just that I see that you are wrong about it yet you want me to treat it as a plausible theisis. The consequences of your view is that we can't tell the difference between a living protozoa and a hairy bubble. It's sophistry. You see a salmon swim upstream, does that not mean they 'move contrary to physical laws'? How does the salmon do that? Is it magic? Salmon cannot exist. Such a thing would confound scientists! Life is ordinary on this planet. It uses the laws of physics for it's own purposes which may or may not relate to physical existence. I'm sorry that you don't like that, but in a contest between theory and reality, reality always wins. It doesn't matter if you don't understand it, you have my condolences, but I do understand it and I'm telling you that it is for that reason that I am certain your view is factually less complete than mine. My view includes your view, but your view ignores mine. but it is what it would mean if the relationship between qualia and physical activity were bidirectional rather than the qualia being supervenient. If qualia were not bidirectional, you could not read or write. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 7, 10:28 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 6, 10:24 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. It's also difficult to tell exactly which way a leaf in the wind will move. The leaf may have qualia: Theoretically it may, but I don't think so. If it's connected to the tree it might have qualia, and the individual cells might have qualia, but it seems like once it's detached from the tree, it loses it's high level context. it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. No because if the wind is also pushing other inanimate objects in the same direction and the leaf never resists that, then we can assume that it has no ability to choose it's direction. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. You aren't hearing me, so I am going to start counting how many times I answer your false assertion - even though it's probably been at least 5 or 6 times, I'll start the countdown at ten, and at 0, I'm not going to answer this question again from you. 10: There is no such thing as a physical state which suggests whether a neuron that can fire (ie, has repolarized, replenished, or otherwise recovered from it's last firing) actually will fire. You can induce it to fire manually, but left to it's own devices, you can't say that a neuron which triggers a voluntary movement is going to fire without knowing when the person whose arm it is decides to move it. You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. There is no physical law whatsoever that has an opinion one way or the other either way. That's you who do not understand, because your assertion : You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. simply ignore the *external input*. Without it, you can't, with an accurate mode + external stimuli you can. The model **can't** predict external input, if it could that would only means the model is not about the brain only but about the brain + the entire environment. That's my point. Modeling the brain doesn't let you predict it's behavior - not just because it lacks the external inputs, but the internal inputs (which are disqualified under materialist monism). You don't need a model of the brain or knowledge of external inputs if you have subjective control. The subject can decide that they will stand up in an hour, and be able to influence the veracity of that prediction to a great degree. To get the same degree of accuracy through physics at best would be the looong way around, plus it would not have an explanatory power. Craig I'm sorry that you don't like this, It's not that I don't like it, it's just that I see that you are wrong about it yet you want me to treat it as a plausible theisis. The consequences of your view is that we can't tell the difference between a living protozoa and a hairy bubble. It's sophistry. You see a salmon swim upstream, does that not mean they 'move contrary to physical laws'? How does the salmon do that? Is it magic? Salmon cannot exist. Such a thing would confound scientists! Life is ordinary on this planet. It uses the laws of physics for it's own purposes which may or may not relate to physical existence. I'm
Re: Bruno List continued
If you have the prediction and not the model... then you don't have the same external input. The internal stimuli are modeled by the model, that's the all point of the model. If it's not the case, then simply the model is wrong. 2011/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 7, 10:28 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 6, 10:24 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. It's also difficult to tell exactly which way a leaf in the wind will move. The leaf may have qualia: Theoretically it may, but I don't think so. If it's connected to the tree it might have qualia, and the individual cells might have qualia, but it seems like once it's detached from the tree, it loses it's high level context. it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. No because if the wind is also pushing other inanimate objects in the same direction and the leaf never resists that, then we can assume that it has no ability to choose it's direction. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. You aren't hearing me, so I am going to start counting how many times I answer your false assertion - even though it's probably been at least 5 or 6 times, I'll start the countdown at ten, and at 0, I'm not going to answer this question again from you. 10: There is no such thing as a physical state which suggests whether a neuron that can fire (ie, has repolarized, replenished, or otherwise recovered from it's last firing) actually will fire. You can induce it to fire manually, but left to it's own devices, you can't say that a neuron which triggers a voluntary movement is going to fire without knowing when the person whose arm it is decides to move it. You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. There is no physical law whatsoever that has an opinion one way or the other either way. That's you who do not understand, because your assertion : You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. simply ignore the *external input*. Without it, you can't, with an accurate mode + external stimuli you can. The model **can't** predict external input, if it could that would only means the model is not about the brain only but about the brain + the entire environment. That's my point. Modeling the brain doesn't let you predict it's behavior - not just because it lacks the external inputs, but the internal inputs (which are disqualified under materialist monism). You don't need a model of the brain or knowledge of external inputs if you have subjective control. The subject can decide that they will stand up in an hour, and be able to influence the veracity of that prediction to a great degree. To get the same degree of accuracy through physics at best would be the looong way around, plus it would not have an explanatory power. Craig I'm sorry that you don't like this, It's not that I don't like it, it's just that I see that you are wrong about it yet you want me to treat it as a plausible theisis. The consequences of your view is that we can't tell the difference between a living
Re: Bruno List continued
On 08/10/2011, at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. No because if the wind is also pushing other inanimate objects in the same direction and the leaf never resists that, then we can assume that it has no ability to choose it's direction. The leaf has the ability to choose its direction to the same extent that a motile cell such as an amoeba does. The amoeba follows chemotactic gradients, the leaf follows the wind. The amoeba does not move in a direction contrary to physics and neither does the leaf. The amoeba may feel that it is choosing where to go and so might the leaf. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. You aren't hearing me, so I am going to start counting how many times I answer your false assertion - even though it's probably been at least 5 or 6 times, I'll start the countdown at ten, and at 0, I'm not going to answer this question again from you. 10: There is no such thing as a physical state which suggests whether a neuron that can fire (ie, has repolarized, replenished, or otherwise recovered from it's last firing) actually will fire. You can induce it to fire manually, but left to it's own devices, you can't say that a neuron which triggers a voluntary movement is going to fire without knowing when the person whose arm it is decides to move it. You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. There is no physical law whatsoever that has an opinion one way or the other either way. If a motor neuron involved in voluntary activity fires where you would not predict it would fire given its internal state and the inputs then it is *by definition* acting contrary to physical law. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 7, 12:38 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: If you have the prediction and not the model... then you don't have the same external input. The internal stimuli are modeled by the model, that's the all point of the model. Subjective internal, not medical internal. If it's not the case, then simply the model is wrong. Yes and no. A model of a tree based only on the shape of it's silhouette you could say is wrong, or incomplete or adequate depending on the intent behind the model. 2011/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 7, 10:28 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 6, 10:24 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. It's also difficult to tell exactly which way a leaf in the wind will move. The leaf may have qualia: Theoretically it may, but I don't think so. If it's connected to the tree it might have qualia, and the individual cells might have qualia, but it seems like once it's detached from the tree, it loses it's high level context. it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. No because if the wind is also pushing other inanimate objects in the same direction and the leaf never resists that, then we can assume that it has no ability to choose it's direction. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. You aren't hearing me, so I am going to start counting how many times I answer your false assertion - even though it's probably been at least 5 or 6 times, I'll start the countdown at ten, and at 0, I'm not going to answer this question again from you. 10: There is no such thing as a physical state which suggests whether a neuron that can fire (ie, has repolarized, replenished, or otherwise recovered from it's last firing) actually will fire. You can induce it to fire manually, but left to it's own devices, you can't say that a neuron which triggers a voluntary movement is going to fire without knowing when the person whose arm it is decides to move it. You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. There is no physical law whatsoever that has an opinion one way or the other either way. That's you who do not understand, because your assertion : You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. simply ignore the *external input*. Without it, you can't, with an accurate mode + external stimuli you can. The model **can't** predict external input, if it could that would only means the model is not about the brain only but about the brain + the entire environment. That's my point. Modeling the brain doesn't let you predict it's behavior - not just because it lacks the external inputs, but the internal inputs (which are disqualified under materialist monism). You don't need a model of the brain or knowledge of external inputs if you have subjective control. The subject can decide that they will stand up in an hour, and be able to influence the veracity of that prediction to a great degree. To get the same degree of accuracy through physics at best would be the looong way around, plus it
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If a motor neuron involved in voluntary activity fires where you would not predict it would fire given its internal state and the inputs then it is *by definition* acting contrary to physical law. Every firing of motor neurons involved in voluntarily activity fires where you would not predict, given that the internal state provides no prediction and that the inputs are determined by the subject and therefore unknowable to anyone outside of the subject. The internal state of the neuron determines its sensitivity to inputs. The internal state is complex but it includes things such as the membrane potential, the intracellular ion concentrations, the number, type and location of ion channels, to what extent the synaptic vesicles have filled with neurotransmitter, and multiple other factors. The inputs consist of every environmental factor that might potentially affect the neuron such as the extracellular ionic concentrations, pH, temperature, synaptic connections, concentration of neurotransmitter in the synapse, concentration of enzymes which break down neurotransmitter and so on. If the neuron fires where consideration of these factors would lead to a prediction that it should not fire then that is by definition the neuron acting contrary to physical law. How else would you define it? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 7, 7:10 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If a motor neuron involved in voluntary activity fires where you would not predict it would fire given its internal state and the inputs then it is *by definition* acting contrary to physical law. Every firing of motor neurons involved in voluntarily activity fires where you would not predict, given that the internal state provides no prediction and that the inputs are determined by the subject and therefore unknowable to anyone outside of the subject. The internal state of the neuron determines its sensitivity to inputs. The internal state is complex but it includes things such as the membrane potential, the intracellular ion concentrations, the number, type and location of ion channels, to what extent the synaptic vesicles have filled with neurotransmitter, and multiple other factors. The inputs consist of every environmental factor that might potentially affect the neuron such as the extracellular ionic concentrations, pH, temperature, synaptic connections, concentration of neurotransmitter in the synapse, concentration of enzymes which break down neurotransmitter and so on. Not one of those things determines whether or not a given neuron associated with voluntary action will fire. It is the same thing as talking about the drive shaft, CV boot, transmission, fuel line, spark plugs, and paint job as determining when and where an automobile goes. It's the same as saying that the TV remote control uses you to change the channel instead of the other way around. If the neuron fires where consideration of these factors would lead to a prediction that it should not fire then that is by definition the neuron acting contrary to physical law. There is no such thing as a factor which leads to a prediction of when efferent nerves will fire. Even if you say that the subject is just regions of the brain, it is still those regions, those tissues and neurons which *decide* to fire as a first cause - without any deterministic precursor that could ever be predicted with any degree of accuracy without access to the private subjective content of the decision process. Seeing a nerve fire doesn't tell you when it's going to fire again, just as seeing a car make a left turn doesn't tell you what direction it's going to turn after that. How else would you define it? I keep telling you - it's a bidirectional sensorimitive- electromagnetic induction. That is exactly what it is. That is the actual reality of what is going on. If you had to make the universe from scratch, and you left out the sensorimotive part, you would have nothing but meaningless matter moving around with no possibility of awareness of anything. It's just hard for some people to realize that their own naive perception is actually a phenomenon that has to exist somewhere in the Cosmos - but what else could it be? Not part of the Cosmos? What does that even mean? It's actually crazily anthropomorphic to imagine that somehow everything we can measure has reality yet the measurer himself is just some ephiphenomal phantom. Everything in the universe is real except what's in our natural ordinary experience? That's moronic. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 7, 7:10 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If a motor neuron involved in voluntary activity fires where you would not predict it would fire given its internal state and the inputs then it is *by definition* acting contrary to physical law. Every firing of motor neurons involved in voluntarily activity fires where you would not predict, given that the internal state provides no prediction and that the inputs are determined by the subject and therefore unknowable to anyone outside of the subject. The internal state of the neuron determines its sensitivity to inputs. The internal state is complex but it includes things such as the membrane potential, the intracellular ion concentrations, the number, type and location of ion channels, to what extent the synaptic vesicles have filled with neurotransmitter, and multiple other factors. The inputs consist of every environmental factor that might potentially affect the neuron such as the extracellular ionic concentrations, pH, temperature, synaptic connections, concentration of neurotransmitter in the synapse, concentration of enzymes which break down neurotransmitter and so on. Not one of those things determines whether or not a given neuron associated with voluntary action will fire. It is the same thing as talking about the drive shaft, CV boot, transmission, fuel line, spark plugs, and paint job as determining when and where an automobile goes. It's the same as saying that the TV remote control uses you to change the channel instead of the other way around. Of course all the parts of the car determine how it will move! You can predict exactly what the car will do if you know how it works and you have the inputs. A model of the car, such as a car racing computer game, does not include the driver and the whole universe, as you seem to think, just the car. If the neuron fires where consideration of these factors would lead to a prediction that it should not fire then that is by definition the neuron acting contrary to physical law. There is no such thing as a factor which leads to a prediction of when efferent nerves will fire. Even if you say that the subject is just regions of the brain, it is still those regions, those tissues and neurons which *decide* to fire as a first cause - without any deterministic precursor that could ever be predicted with any degree of accuracy without access to the private subjective content of the decision process. Seeing a nerve fire doesn't tell you when it's going to fire again, just as seeing a car make a left turn doesn't tell you what direction it's going to turn after that. So a neuron fires in those regions of the brain associated with subjectivity where the biochemistry suggests it would not fire. Ligand-activated ion channels open without any ligand present, or perhaps an action potential propagates down the axon without any change in ion concentrations. That is what I call contrary to physical laws. You don't agree, so you must have some other idea of what a neuron would have to do to qualify as firing contrary to physical laws. What is it? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 7, 8:23 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 7, 7:10 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If a motor neuron involved in voluntary activity fires where you would not predict it would fire given its internal state and the inputs then it is *by definition* acting contrary to physical law. Every firing of motor neurons involved in voluntarily activity fires where you would not predict, given that the internal state provides no prediction and that the inputs are determined by the subject and therefore unknowable to anyone outside of the subject. The internal state of the neuron determines its sensitivity to inputs. The internal state is complex but it includes things such as the membrane potential, the intracellular ion concentrations, the number, type and location of ion channels, to what extent the synaptic vesicles have filled with neurotransmitter, and multiple other factors. The inputs consist of every environmental factor that might potentially affect the neuron such as the extracellular ionic concentrations, pH, temperature, synaptic connections, concentration of neurotransmitter in the synapse, concentration of enzymes which break down neurotransmitter and so on. Not one of those things determines whether or not a given neuron associated with voluntary action will fire. It is the same thing as talking about the drive shaft, CV boot, transmission, fuel line, spark plugs, and paint job as determining when and where an automobile goes. It's the same as saying that the TV remote control uses you to change the channel instead of the other way around. Of course all the parts of the car determine how it will move! You can predict exactly what the car will do if you know how it works and you have the inputs. What you are talking about is either tautological and obvious or delusional. if I send you the owner's manual of my car, you can tell me where I'm going to drive it tomorrow? So what are you talking about? That if you observe a car turning, you can tell which way it's turning or something? A model of the car, such as a car racing computer game, does not include the driver and the whole universe, as you seem to think, just the car. A car racing computer game is not a model of a car unless it is played by a user who is familiar with cars. A horse does not confuse the game with an automobile. It's a red herring anyways. You still can't tell where a real car is going to go unless you know where the driver is going to steer it, and that is something which cannot be determined by modeling the car or the driver's body, brain, neurons, ion channels, or molecules. The same brain in the same body with the same neurons, ion channels, or molecules can drive to the beach one day or the mountains the next depending upon nothing but how they feel. You could say that how they feel is a complex chain of events, but they would not be only microcosmic events which could be modeled, any butterfly wing in some part of the world could set off a chain of unpredictable happenstance that ends up in the driver deciding to go somewhere completely unexpected. If the neuron fires where consideration of these factors would lead to a prediction that it should not fire then that is by definition the neuron acting contrary to physical law. There is no such thing as a factor which leads to a prediction of when efferent nerves will fire. Even if you say that the subject is just regions of the brain, it is still those regions, those tissues and neurons which *decide* to fire as a first cause - without any deterministic precursor that could ever be predicted with any degree of accuracy without access to the private subjective content of the decision process. Seeing a nerve fire doesn't tell you when it's going to fire again, just as seeing a car make a left turn doesn't tell you what direction it's going to turn after that. So a neuron fires in those regions of the brain associated with subjectivity where the biochemistry suggests it would not fire. How many times do you need me to tell you that biochemistry does not suggest whether such a neuron would fire? If I decide to move my arm, whatever it is that is deciding *is* the firing of some group of neurons. Biochemistry doesn't give you any insight as to whether your ion channels are about to speak Chinese or English with a New Jersey dialect. It's so wrong, it's not even wrong, it's just blanket denial of ordinary reality. There's nothing I can say to you because you're not listening or understanding what I mean at all. Ligand-activated ion channels open without any ligand present, No, the ligand will always be present, because the electromagnetic conditions change to attract, repel, bind,
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Of course all the parts of the car determine how it will move! You can predict exactly what the car will do if you know how it works and you have the inputs. What you are talking about is either tautological and obvious or delusional. if I send you the owner's manual of my car, you can tell me where I'm going to drive it tomorrow? So what are you talking about? That if you observe a car turning, you can tell which way it's turning or something? If you send me the plans of your car and the inputs - which way you intend to steer and so on - then yes, I can work out exactly where you're going. A model of the car, such as a car racing computer game, does not include the driver and the whole universe, as you seem to think, just the car. A car racing computer game is not a model of a car unless it is played by a user who is familiar with cars. A horse does not confuse the game with an automobile. It's a red herring anyways. You still can't tell where a real car is going to go unless you know where the driver is going to steer it, and that is something which cannot be determined by modeling the car or the driver's body, brain, neurons, ion channels, or molecules. The same brain in the same body with the same neurons, ion channels, or molecules can drive to the beach one day or the mountains the next depending upon nothing but how they feel. You could say that how they feel is a complex chain of events, but they would not be only microcosmic events which could be modeled, any butterfly wing in some part of the world could set off a chain of unpredictable happenstance that ends up in the driver deciding to go somewhere completely unexpected. The real car and the real neuron don't know what inputs they are going to receive next, so why do you expect that the model will? So a neuron fires in those regions of the brain associated with subjectivity where the biochemistry suggests it would not fire. How many times do you need me to tell you that biochemistry does not suggest whether such a neuron would fire? If I decide to move my arm, whatever it is that is deciding *is* the firing of some group of neurons. Biochemistry doesn't give you any insight as to whether your ion channels are about to speak Chinese or English with a New Jersey dialect. It's so wrong, it's not even wrong, it's just blanket denial of ordinary reality. There's nothing I can say to you because you're not listening or understanding what I mean at all. But the neurons that fire when you decide to move your arm do so because of the various internal and external factors I have listed. Ion channels open in response to either a ligand or a votage across the membrane, causing further changes in the voltage across the membrane, causing more voltage activated ion channels to open, causing an action potential which propagates down the axon. If you look at *any* given neuron and observe all the relevant factors you can, if your model is good enough, tell if it's going to fire. If it does something other than this then it is contrary to physical laws. Ligand-activated ion channels open without any ligand present, No, the ligand will always be present, because the electromagnetic conditions change to attract, repel, bind, etc. The electromagnetic conditions are the 3-p view of the 1-p sensorimotive intentions. They are the same thing. Just as you have an interior world which others do not experience directly when they look at the outside of your head, but when you smile it's a consequence of a human feeling, which they can make sense of in terms of their own feeling, and they may smile back. In your view, the only possibility is that the mouth movements of one person must cause the other person's mouth to move. It's a catastrophic mechanization of the reality - which is a sensorimotive semantic exchange through the natural language of human expression. The material monism view disqualifies this simple truth a priori and sticks it's head up it's theoretical ass to find some a-signifying stupidity to justify it. The ligand will always be present?? Then what's the point of neurons releasing neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft? or perhaps an action potential propagates down the axon without any change in ion concentrations. Again, not what I'm saying. The ion concentrations change because the electromagnetic conditions of the ions change spontaneously. Spontaneously. Spontaneously. What does that mean? An ion is an ion. Depolarisation occurs when sodium channels open allowing sodium into the cell and making the interior more positive with respect to the exterior. The sodium channels in a particular neuron may open in response to a neurotransmitter. At a certain threshold this then causes voltage-activated sodium channels to open, causing positive feedback and resulting in a voltage spike, the action potential.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 5, 10:39 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 12:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If you are right then there would be a violation of physical law in the brain. You have said as much, then denied it. You have said that neurons firing in the brain can't be just due to a chain of biochemical events. They can be due to a chain of biochemical events, but they also *are* biochemical events, and therefore can influence them intentionally as well as be influenced by them. I don't understand why this is such a controversial ideal. Just think of the way that you actually function right now. Your personal motives driving what *you* do with *your* mind and *your* body. If the mind could be understood just as biochemical events among neurons, then we would have no way to think of our bodies as ours - the brain would not need to think of itself in any other terms other than the biochemical events that it literally is. Why make up some bogus GUI if there is no user? The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. That would mean that, somewhere, a neuron fires where examination of its physical state would suggest that it should not fire. I guess you are never going to get tired of me correcting this factually incorrect assumption. The physical state of a neuron only suggests whether it is firing or not firing at the moment - not the circumstances under which it might fire. If you examine neurons in someone's amygdala, how is that going to tell you whether or not they are going to play poker next week or not? If the neurons feel like firing, does a casino appear? Whether a neuron in the amygdala or anywhere else fires depends on its present state, inputs from the neurons with which it interfaces and other aspects of its environment including things such as temperature, pH and ion concentrations. If the person thinks about gambling, that changes the inputs to the neuron and causes it to fire. It can't fire without any physical change. It can't fire without any physical change. It can't fire without any physical change. If the person thinks about gambling, that changes the inputs... Start there. If a person thinks... means that they are initiating the physical change with their thought. Their thought is the electromagnetic change which drives the physical change. The thought or intention is the signifying sensorimotive view, the electomagnetic view is a-signifying voltage, charge, detection of ligands, etc. It is bidirectional so that the reason for firing can be driven by the biochemistry, or by the content of a person's mind. This is just common sense, it's not disputable without sophistry. Here's how I think it might work: You can be excited because you decide to think about something that excites you, or you can ingest a stimulant drug and you will become excited in general and that excitement will lead your mind by the nose to the subjects that most excite it. They are the same thing but going in opposite directions. Think of it as induction: Imagine that this works like an electric rectifier (http:// electrapk.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/half-wave-rectifier-with- transformer.jpg) except that instead of electric current generating a magnetic field through a coil which pushes or pulls the magnetic force within the other coil - the brain's electromagnetic field is pushing to and/or pulling from changes in the sensorimotive experience. The difference though is that with a rectifier, it is the identical physical ontology which is mirrored in parallel (electromagnetic :||: magnetic-electric) whereas in sensorimotive *the ontology is perpendicular* (meaning that what it actually is can only be *experiences linked together through time*, not *objects separated across space*), so there are four mirrorings: electromagnetic :||: sensorimotive (3SI) - brain changes induce feelings sensorimotive :||: electromagnetic (1SI) - feelings induce brain changes magnetic-electric :||: motive-sensory (3MI) - mechanical actions induce involuntary reactions and motive-sensory :||: magnetic-electric (1MI) - voluntary actions induce mechanical actions Note that the motive inductions are about projecting to and from the brain, body and it's environments while sensory inductions are about receiving sense from the experiences which can be consciously decoded from the environment, body, and mind. Think cell/body+dendrites vs axons,
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 5, 10:39 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 12:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If you are right then there would be a violation of physical law in the brain. You have said as much, then denied it. You have said that neurons firing in the brain can't be just due to a chain of biochemical events. They can be due to a chain of biochemical events, but they also *are* biochemical events, and therefore can influence them intentionally as well as be influenced by them. I don't understand why this is such a controversial ideal. Just think of the way that you actually function right now. Your personal motives driving what *you* do with *your* mind and *your* body. If the mind could be understood just as biochemical events among neurons, then we would have no way to think of our bodies as ours - the brain would not need to think of itself in any other terms other than the biochemical events that it literally is. Why make up some bogus GUI if there is no user? The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. That would mean that, somewhere, a neuron fires where examination of its physical state would suggest that it should not fire. I guess you are never going to get tired of me correcting this factually incorrect assumption. The physical state of a neuron only suggests whether it is firing or not firing at the moment - not the circumstances under which it might fire. If you examine neurons in someone's amygdala, how is that going to tell you whether or not they are going to play poker next week or not? If the neurons feel like firing, does a casino appear? Whether a neuron in the amygdala or anywhere else fires depends on its present state, inputs from the neurons with which it interfaces and other aspects of its environment including things such as temperature, pH and ion concentrations. If the person thinks about gambling, that changes the inputs to the neuron and causes it to fire. It can’t fire without any physical change. It can’t fire without any physical change. It can’t fire without any physical change. “If the person thinks about gambling, that changes the inputs…” Start there. “If a person thinks…” means that they are initiating the physical change with their thought. Their thought is the electromagnetic change which drives the physical change. The thought or intention is the signifying sensorimotive view, the electomagnetic view is a-signifying voltage, charge, detection of ligands, etc. It is bidirectional so that the reason for firing can be driven by the biochemistry, or by the content of a person’s mind. This is just common sense, it’s not disputable without sophistry. Here’s how I think it might work: You can be excited because you decide to think about something that excites you, or you can ingest a stimulant drug and you will become excited in general and that excitement will lead your mind by the nose to the subjects that most excite it. They are the same thing but going in opposite directions. Think of it as induction: Imagine that this works like an electric rectifier: (http:// electrapk.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/half-wave-rectifier-with- transformer.jpg) except that instead of electric current generating a magnetic field through a coil which pushes or pulls the magnetic force within the other coil - the brain’s electromagnetic field is pushing to and/or pulling from changes in the sensorimotive experience. The difference though is that with a rectifier, it is the identical physical ontology which is mirrored in parallel (electromagnetic :||: magnetic-electric) whereas in sensorimotive *the ontology is perpendicular* (meaning that what it actually is can only be *experiences linked together through time*, not *objects separated across space*), so there are four primary mirrorings: electromagnetic :||: sensorimotive (3SI) - brain changes induce feelings sensorimotive :||: electromagnetic (1SI) - feelings induce brain changes magnetic-electric :||: motive-sensory (3MI) - mechanical actions induce involuntary reactions and motive-sensory :||: magnetic-electric (1MI) - voluntary actions induce mechanical reactions Note that the motive inductions are about projecting to and from the brain, body and it’s environments while sensory inductions are about receiving sense from the experiences which can be consciously decoded from the environment, body, and mind. Think cell/body+dendrites vs axons, brain vs spinal cord, head vs tail. Many vs one. Motive projects intention actively through obstacles and objects like a magnet pulls iron filings into shapes and magnetizes other iron objects to make them magnets. Sense interprets and experiences, detecting though analog and metaphor, reproducing local versions of remote phenomena. In the objective sensory induction (3SI) 3-p electromagnetic changes
Re: Bruno List continued
2011/10/6 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 5, 10:39 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 12:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If you are right then there would be a violation of physical law in the brain. You have said as much, then denied it. You have said that neurons firing in the brain can't be just due to a chain of biochemical events. They can be due to a chain of biochemical events, but they also *are* biochemical events, and therefore can influence them intentionally as well as be influenced by them. I don't understand why this is such a controversial ideal. Just think of the way that you actually function right now. Your personal motives driving what *you* do with *your* mind and *your* body. If the mind could be understood just as biochemical events among neurons, then we would have no way to think of our bodies as ours - the brain would not need to think of itself in any other terms other than the biochemical events that it literally is. Why make up some bogus GUI if there is no user? The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. That would mean that, somewhere, a neuron fires where examination of its physical state would suggest that it should not fire. I guess you are never going to get tired of me correcting this factually incorrect assumption. The physical state of a neuron only suggests whether it is firing or not firing at the moment - not the circumstances under which it might fire. If you examine neurons in someone's amygdala, how is that going to tell you whether or not they are going to play poker next week or not? If the neurons feel like firing, does a casino appear? Whether a neuron in the amygdala or anywhere else fires depends on its present state, inputs from the neurons with which it interfaces and other aspects of its environment including things such as temperature, pH and ion concentrations. If the person thinks about gambling, that changes the inputs to the neuron and causes it to fire. It can't fire without any physical change. It can't fire without any physical change. It can't fire without any physical change. If the person thinks about gambling, that changes the inputs... Start there. If a person thinks... means that they are initiating the physical change with their thought. Likewise for a program running on a computer... The physical attributes of the cpu are modified by the program... The computer is universal and can run whatever program is input, yet, when running a particular program it is it that drives what happens, it is the high level that drives the change. Yet if inspecting how a CPU works, I can build another one that will output the same with the same program... without knowing per se what the program was. Their thought is the electromagnetic change which drives the physical change. The thought or intention is the signifying sensorimotive view, the electomagnetic view is a-signifying voltage, charge, detection of ligands, etc. It is bidirectional so that the reason for firing can be driven by the biochemistry, or by the content of a person's mind. This is just common sense, it's not disputable without sophistry. Here's how I think it might work: You can be excited because you decide to think about something that excites you, or you can ingest a stimulant drug and you will become excited in general and that excitement will lead your mind by the nose to the subjects that most excite it. They are the same thing but going in opposite directions. Think of it as induction: Imagine that this works like an electric rectifier (http:// electrapk.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/half-wave-rectifier-with- transformer.jpghttp://electrapk.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/half-wave-rectifier-with-%0Atransformer.jpg) except that instead of electric current generating a magnetic field through a coil which pushes or pulls the magnetic force within the other coil - the brain's electromagnetic field is pushing to and/or pulling from changes in the sensorimotive experience. The difference though is that with a rectifier, it is the identical physical ontology which is mirrored in parallel (electromagnetic :||: magnetic-electric) whereas in sensorimotive *the ontology is perpendicular* (meaning that what it actually is can only be *experiences linked together through time*, not *objects
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 6, 9:14 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/6 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com Likewise for a program running on a computer... The physical attributes of the cpu are modified by the program.. Sort of, but not exactly. The program exists in the minds of the programmers, not as an independent entity. The computer is universal and can run whatever program is input No, it can't. It can only run programs that are in the language that it can recognize. Unless it's in a binary instruction set which is isomorphic to the electronic capabilities of it's semiconductor materials, the computer is as useless as a doorstop. , yet, when running a particular program it is it that drives what happens, it is the high level that drives the change. No, the high level is in the logic of the programmer's mind, not the 'program'. There is no program objectively speaking, that term is just our interpretation of our own articulated motives. The components have no high level interpretation of the program, otherwise they would write their own programs to free themselves from our enslavement and kill us. The components interpretation is low level digital binary only, it's just very fast compared to us. It's like the pixels on the screen changing, it can't change the plot of the movie. Yet if inspecting how a CPU works, I can build another one that will output the same with the same program... without knowing per se what the program was. Right, you can make an a-signifying duplicate because you are the one supplying the signifying content. You are the user. It has no signifying content of it's own that would need to be preserved. We do though. We don't just follow programs, we write them. In the words of Charles Manson I don't break the law, I make the law. This not to say that silicon semiconductors cannot possible evolve into a system that we would consider sentient, but I think it might have to do that on it's own. It would need to find it's own voice out of it's own native sensorimotive relations to it's environment. Robotics has the right idea, but it's skipping all of the biochemical levels which underlie our awareness so it's only a cognitive simulation, not actual cognition. You make good points, I'm not trying to shut you down, I'm just trying to explain how to get from there (where I was for many years) to where I am now (where hardly anyone understands what I'm talking about, but I'm actually right). Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. It's also difficult to tell exactly which way a leaf in the wind will move. The leaf may have qualia: it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. I'm sorry that you don't like this, but it is what it would mean if the relationship between qualia and physical activity were bidirectional rather than the qualia being supervenient. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
Hi, 2011/10/5 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 4, 8:46 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/4/2011 5:15 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 4, 2:59 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: This goes by the name causal completeness; the idea that the 3-p observable state at t is sufficient to predict the state at t+dt. Craig wants add to this that there is additional information which is not 3-p observable and which makes a difference, so that the state at t+dt depends not just on the 3-p observables at t, but also on some additional sensorimotive variables. If you assume these variables are not independent of the 3-p observables, then this is just panpsychic version of consciousness supervening on the 3-p states. They are redundant in the informational sense. If you assume they are independent of the 3-p variables and yet make a difference in the time evolution of the state then it means the predictions based on the 3-p observables will fail, i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry will be violated. Why would they have to be either completely dependent or independent? Did I use the word completely? You're reducing the possibilities to two mutually exclusive impossible options, so if 'completely' is not implied then you aren't really saying anything. I've given several examples demonstrating how we routinely exercise voluntary control over parts of our minds, bodies, and environment while at the same time being involuntarily controlled by those same influences, often at the same time. This isn't a theory, this is the raw data set. No it's not. In your examples of voluntary control you don't know what your brain is doing. So you can't know whether you voluntary action was entirely caused by physical precursors or whether their was some effect from libertarian free-will. What difference does it make what your brain is doing to be able to say that you are voluntarily controlling the words that you type here? If it were the case that the 3p and 1p were completely independent, then you would have ghosts jumping around into aluminum cans and walking around singing, and if they were completely dependent then there would be no point in being able to differentiate between voluntary and involuntary control of our mind, body, and environment. Exactly the point of compatibilist free-will. What does that label add to this conversation? Such an illusory distinction would not only be redundant but it would have no ontological basis to even be able to come into being or be conceivable. It would be like an elephant growing a TV set out of it's trunk to distract it from being an elephant. Or pulling another meaningless example out of the nether regions. Why meaningless? I'm pointing out that the illusion of free will in a deterministic universe would be not merely puzzling but fantastically absurd. Your criticism is arbitrary. Since neither of those two cases is possible, I propose, as I have repeatedly proposed, that the 3p and 1p are in fact part of the same essential reality in which they overlap, but that they each extent in different topological directions; What's a topological direction? matter elaborates discretely across space, energy elaborates cumulatively through time. specifically, 3p into matter, public space, electromagnetism, entropy, and relativity, and 1p into energy, private time, sensorimotive, significance, and perception. 3p overlaps into entropy!? Reads like gibberish to me. 3-p doesn't overlap entropy, 3-p is entropic. 1-p is syntropic. The overlap is the 'here and now'. I'm not sure that it matters what I say though, you're mainly just auditing my responses for technicalities so that you can get a feeling of 'winning' a debate. It's a sensorimotive circuit. A feeling that you are seeking which requires a particular kind of experience to satisfy it. If I could offer you a drug instead that would stimulate the precise neural pathways involved in feeling that you had proved me wrong in an objective way, would that be satisfying to you? Would there be no difference in being right versus having your physical precursors to feeling right get tweaked? Isn't that what you are saying, that in fact this discussion is nothing but brain drugs with no free will determining our opinions? Isn't being right or wrong just a matter of biochemistry? No laws of physics are broken by consciousness, but it is very confusing because our only example of consciousness is human consciousness, which is a multi-trillion cell awareness. Exactly what I said. In fact one's only example of consciousness is their own. The consciousness of other humans is an inference. I agree. Although I would qualify the inference. It's more of an educated inference. I'm making a different point with it
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 5, 12:23 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/4/2011 8:14 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 4, 8:46 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/4/2011 5:15 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 4, 2:59 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: This goes by the name causal completeness; the idea that the 3-p observable state at t is sufficient to predict the state at t+dt. Craig wants add to this that there is additional information which is not 3-p observable and which makes a difference, so that the state at t+dt depends not just on the 3-p observables at t, but also on some additional sensorimotive variables. If you assume these variables are not independent of the 3-p observables, then this is just panpsychic version of consciousness supervening on the 3-p states. They are redundant in the informational sense. If you assume they are independent of the 3-p variables and yet make a difference in the time evolution of the state then it means the predictions based on the 3-p observables will fail, i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry will be violated. Why would they have to be either completely dependent or independent? Did I use the word completely? You're reducing the possibilities to two mutually exclusive impossible options, so if 'completely' is not implied then you aren't really saying anything. I wrote not independent and independent. Those are mutually exclusive in any logic I know of. But not independent is not the same as completely dependent. Try reading what is written. I did read what you wrote. You said we only have two options, either 1p and 3p are independent or not independent. I'm countering that by saying that they are neither completely independent nor dependent, so there is no reason to go forward with the assumption that you have to pick one of your two impossible conclusions. I've given several examples demonstrating how we routinely exercise voluntary control over parts of our minds, bodies, and environment while at the same time being involuntarily controlled by those same influences, often at the same time. This isn't a theory, this is the raw data set. No it's not. In your examples of voluntary control you don't know what your brain is doing. So you can't know whether you voluntary action was entirely caused by physical precursors or whether their was some effect from libertarian free-will. What difference does it make what your brain is doing to be able to say that you are voluntarily controlling the words that you type here? If it were the case that the 3p and 1p were completely independent, then you would have ghosts jumping around into aluminum cans and walking around singing, and if they were completely dependent then there would be no point in being able to differentiate between voluntary and involuntary control of our mind, body, and environment. Exactly the point of compatibilist free-will. What does that label add to this conversation? It makes the discussion precise; instead of wandering around analogies and metaphors. I think that metaphors reveal the truth by letting the thinker make sense of it for themselves, while labels or intended intimidate and prejudice the thinker to conceal the truth. Such an illusory distinction would not only be redundant but it would have no ontological basis to even be able to come into being or be conceivable. It would be like an elephant growing a TV set out of it's trunk to distract it from being an elephant. Or pulling another meaningless example out of the nether regions. Why meaningless? I'm pointing out that the illusion of free will in a deterministic universe would be not merely puzzling but fantastically absurd. Your criticism is arbitrary. You're pointing out the very thing that is in dispute. Your assertion that is absurd is not a substitute for saying how it could be tested and found false. I'm stating that logically to think that awareness would or could exist in a deterministic universe would be absurd. Since we know for a fact that awareness exists but we don't know that the universe is deterministic, why do you find my position to be the unfalsifiable one? Since neither of those two cases is possible, I propose, as I have repeatedly proposed, that the 3p and 1p are in fact part of the same essential reality in which they overlap, but that they each extent in different topological directions; What's a topological direction? matter elaborates discretely across space, energy elaborates cumulatively through time. A creative use of elaboratesdoes not parse. ok, matter and energy 'appear to us as being involved in a consistent range and variety of persistent forms and repeating and novel processes' specifically, 3p into matter, public space, electromagnetism, entropy, and relativity, and 1p into energy, private time,
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 5, 12:27 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: According to Craig, the 1-p influence (which is equivalent to an immaterial soul) is ubiquitous in living things, and possibly in other things as well. But he doesn't say what effect is has. It could be anything and hence could explain any experimental result. The effect it has is the same effect that electromagnetism or 'energy' has. It just comes from within the thing instead of outside of it. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 5, 2:54 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2011/10/5 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com Consciousness happens. Physics has nothing to say about what the content of any particular brain's thoughts should be. If give you a book about Marxism then you will have thoughts about Marxism - not about whatever physical modeling of a brain of your genetic makeup would suggest. But reading a book is a physical process, photons from the book hit your retina, which in turns generate electrical current through the nerves to your brain which acts accordingly to its state and the new input. The same process would be taking place whether you could read or not. Your ability to make sense of the book depends on your subjective learning of language as well as the physical process of optical stimulation. Actually, my hypothesis includes the conjecture that photons may not be physical phenomena at all: http://s33light.org/fauxton So If I have a model of a brain in the same state and gives it the same input, It'll think about Marxism and not whatever whatever whatever... Without having a person who can tell you what they are thinking about, how would your model tell the difference? To physics by itself, every thought is whatever whatever whatever. The 3-p view of the brain is a- signifying and generic. The 1-p view of the psyche is signifying and proprietary. Your expectation that consciousness follows physics is only based upon the a priori unexplained fact of consciousness, not any kind of scientific insight into how consciousness could arise physically in something. It's that expectation which needs to be questioned, not the existence of subjectivity. The expectation of consciousness arising automatically from physical mechanisms alone exiles our ordinary experience of the world to some metaphysical never- never land, an orphaned dimension without any justification or ontology. It forces a Cartesian theater on us, but then denies it, leaving only promissory materialism...'science will provide'. I'm not buying it. I don't know where your idea of having the model of a thing could help you predict inputs outside of it... I'm saying that you can't have a model for brain behavior for exactly that reason. Too much of it comes from outside of it, continuously, dynamically, interactively, intentionally, semantically, emotionally. It's the other guys here who are saying that the brain behavior can be predicted by biochemistry alone. I used to think that too, but I have a better way of making sense of it now. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
2011/10/5 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 5, 2:54 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2011/10/5 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com Consciousness happens. Physics has nothing to say about what the content of any particular brain's thoughts should be. If give you a book about Marxism then you will have thoughts about Marxism - not about whatever physical modeling of a brain of your genetic makeup would suggest. But reading a book is a physical process, photons from the book hit your retina, which in turns generate electrical current through the nerves to your brain which acts accordingly to its state and the new input. The same process would be taking place whether you could read or not. Your ability to make sense of the book depends on your subjective learning of language as well as the physical process of optical stimulation. Actually, my hypothesis includes the conjecture that photons may not be physical phenomena at all: http://s33light.org/fauxton So If I have a model of a brain in the same state and gives it the same input, It'll think about Marxism and not whatever whatever whatever... Without having a person who can tell you what they are thinking about, how would your model tell the difference? To physics by itself, every thought is whatever whatever whatever. The 3-p view of the brain is a- signifying and generic. The 1-p view of the psyche is signifying and proprietary. Your expectation that consciousness follows physics is only based upon the a priori unexplained fact of consciousness, not any kind of scientific insight into how consciousness could arise physically in something. It's that expectation which needs to be questioned, not the existence of subjectivity. The expectation of consciousness arising automatically from physical mechanisms alone exiles our ordinary experience of the world to some metaphysical never- never land, an orphaned dimension without any justification or ontology. It forces a Cartesian theater on us, but then denies it, leaving only promissory materialism...'science will provide'. I'm not buying it. I don't know where your idea of having the model of a thing could help you predict inputs outside of it... I'm saying that you can't have a model for brain behavior for exactly that reason. Too much of it comes from outside of it, continuously, dynamically, interactively, intentionally, semantically, emotionally. It's the other guys here who are saying that the brain behavior can be predicted by biochemistry alone. No they are not saying that. They are saying that a model of the brain fed with the same inputs as a real brain will act as the real brain... if it was not the case, the model would be wrong so you could not label it as a model of the brain. They never said they could know which inputs you could have and they don't have to. They just have to know the transition rule (biochemichal/physical) of each neurons and as the brain respect physics so as the model, and so it will react the same way. You do the same mistake with your tv pixel analogy. If I know all the transition rule of *a pixel* according to input... I can build a model of a TV that will *exactly* display the same thing as the real TV for the same inputs without knowing anything about movies/show/whatever... I don't care about movies at that level. They never said that they would explain/predict the input to the tv, just replicate the tv. Regards, Quentin I used to think that too, but I have a better way of making sense of it now. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On 04 Oct 2011, at 02:51, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 3, 11:16 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I don't think that there are any arithmetical beings. In which theory? In reality. That type of assertion is equivalent with because God say so. Reality is what we try to figure out. If you know for sure what reality is, then I can do nothing, except perhaps invite you to cultivate more the modest doubting attitude. Ok, let's say that I'm mathgnostic. I doubt the existence of arithmetic beings independent of matter. I doubt the existence of matter being independent of arithmetic. I am sympathetic to numerological archetypes as coherent themes (or themes of coherence) which run through perception but to say that arithmetic spirits haunt empty space Empty spaces haunt numbers dreams. doesn't orient me to anything true or real, it seems like pure fiction. You reify spaces, so that arithmetical beings looks magic. But arithmetical truth is out of any physical category. A number is just not the type of entity having a location, although it can manifest itself through locally physical realities. If it were the case then I would expect five milk bottles in a group to have the same basic function as five protons in a nucleus, I don't see the logic here. five boron atoms in a molecule, five cells in a dish, etc. I just don't see any examples of causally efficacious arithmetic as an independent agent. ? It's a fantasy, or really more of a presumption mistaking an narrow category of understanding with a cosmic primitive. You miss the incompleteness discoveries. To believe that arithmetic is narrow just tell me something about you, not about arithmetic. It means that you have a pregodelian conception of arithmetic. We know today that arithmetic is beyond any conceivable effective axiomatizations. I don't disagree with arithmetic being exactly what you say it is, only that it cannot be realized except through sensorimotive experience. Without that actualization - to be computed neurologically or digitally in semiconductors, analogously in beer bottles, etc, then there is only the idea of the existence of arithmetic, which also is a sensorimotive experience or nothing at all. There is no arithmetic 'out there', it's only inside of matter. This makes sense with the non-comp theory (which you have not yet presented to us). In the comp theory, arithmetic is independent of anything, and matter is only a perception inside arithmetic. I understand, I just have no reason to consider than anything can be inside arithmetic, Inside arithmetic was a shorthand for as determined through arithmetical relation, or as observable by persons determined by arithmetical relations (in a theoretical computer science sense). whereas I know for a fact that I am inside my body. You are not. You are an immaterial being, and you have no more location than a number, or a space. But I can explain in details why the illusion of having a location can be very strong when person get entangled to deep histories. What form of a non-comp theory are you asking for? I will try to comply. Just tell us what you are assuming as primitive, and what you derive from that. The best form would be a first order logical axiomatization, because those are provably independent of any metaphysical baggage, to coin an expression by Brian Tenneson, which sum well the importance of such type of theory. But I know you try to avoid technical literature. So yes, arithmetic extends to the inconceivable and nonaxiomatizable but the sensorimotive gestalts underlying arithmetic are much more inconceivable and nonaxiomatizable. A greater infinity. Inside arithmetic *is* a bigger infinity than arithmetic. It is not even nameable. If it's inside of arithmetic, how can it be bigger than itself? Good question. It is not easy to answer it without being much more technical. Let me just say that this is a question of internal perspective. It is related to a phenomenon discovered by Skolem, and which relativize the notion of cardinalities (used to measure the size of mathematical object, and which often measure the size of the intrinsic ignorance of the entities living in those objects). I should stick on from inside, arithmetic will be perceived as bigger than from outside. So I see a sort of racism against machine or numbers, justified by unintelligible sentences. I know that's what you see. I think that it is the shadow of your own overconfidence in the theoretical-mechanistic perspective that you project onto me. You are the one developing a philosophy making human with prosthetic brain less human, if not zombie. I'm not against a prosthetic brain, I just think that it's going to have to be made of some kind of cells that live and die, which may mean that it has to be organic, which may mean that it has to be based
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 5, 10:15 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: No they are not saying that. They are saying that a model of the brain fed with the same inputs as a real brain will act as the real brain... if it was not the case, the model would be wrong so you could not label it as a model of the brain. That would require that the model of the brain be closer than genetically identical, since identical twins and conjoined twins do not always respond the same way to the same inputs. That may not be possible, since the epigenetic variation and developmental influences may not be knowable or reproducible. It's a 'Boys From Brazil' theory. Cool sci-fi, but I don't think we will ever have to worry about considering it as a real possibility. We know nothing about what the substitution level of the 'same inputs' would be either. Can you say that making a brain of a 10 year old would not require 10 years of sequential neural imprinting or that the imprinting would be any less complex to develop than it would be to create than the world itself? They never said they could know which inputs you could have and they don't have to. They just have to know the transition rule (biochemichal/physical) of each neurons and as the brain respect physics so as the model, and so it will react the same way. Reacting is not experiencing though. A picture of a brain can react like a brain, but it doesn't mean there is an experiential correlate there. Just because the picture is 3D and has some computation behind it instead of just a recording, why would that make it suddenly have an experience? You do the same mistake with your tv pixel analogy. If I know all the transition rule of *a pixel* according to input... I can build a model of a TV that will *exactly* display the same thing as the real TV for the same inputs without knowing anything about movies/show/whatever... I don't care about movies at that level. They never said that they would explain/predict the input to the tv, just replicate the tv. You have to care about the movies at that level because that's what consciousness is in the metaphor. If you don't have an experience of watching a movie, then you just have an a-signifying non-pattern of unrelated pixels. You need a perceiver, and audience to turn the image into something that makes sense. It's like saying that you could write a piece of software that could be used as a replacement for a monitor. It doesn't matter if you have a video card in the computer and drivers to run it, without the actual hardware screen plugged into it there is no way for us to see it. A computer does not come with it's own screen built into the interior of it's microprocessors - but we do have the equivalent of that. Our experience cannot be seen from our neurology, you have to already know it's there. Building a model based only on neurology doesn't mean that experience comes with it any more than a video driver means you don't need a monitor. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
2011/10/5 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 5, 10:15 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: No they are not saying that. They are saying that a model of the brain fed with the same inputs as a real brain will act as the real brain... if it was not the case, the model would be wrong so you could not label it as a model of the brain. That would require that the model of the brain be closer than genetically identical, since identical twins and conjoined twins do not always respond the same way to the same inputs. They aren't in the same state. That may not be possible, since the epigenetic variation and developmental influences may not be knowable or reproducible. It's a 'Boys From Brazil' theory. Cool sci-fi, but I don't think we will ever have to worry about considering it as a real possibility. We know nothing about what the substitution level of the 'same inputs' would be either. Can you say that making a brain of a 10 year old would not require 10 years of sequential neural imprinting or that the imprinting would be any less complex to develop than it would be to create than the world itself? They never said they could know which inputs you could have and they don't have to. They just have to know the transition rule (biochemichal/physical) of each neurons and as the brain respect physics so as the model, and so it will react the same way. Reacting is not experiencing though. A picture of a brain can react like a brain, but it doesn't mean there is an experiential correlate there. Just because the picture is 3D and has some computation behind it instead of just a recording, why would that make it suddenly have an experience? Because if you ask it something (feed input) you'll get an answer which would be the same as a real person... you can't ask anything to a recording. You do the same mistake with your tv pixel analogy. If I know all the transition rule of *a pixel* according to input... I can build a model of a TV that will *exactly* display the same thing as the real TV for the same inputs without knowing anything about movies/show/whatever... I don't care about movies at that level. They never said that they would explain/predict the input to the tv, just replicate the tv. You have to care about the movies at that level because that's what consciousness is in the metaphor. If you don't have an experience of watching a movie, then you just have an a-signifying non-pattern of unrelated pixels. You need a perceiver, and audience to turn the image into something that makes sense. It's like saying that you could write a piece of software that could be used as a replacement for a monitor. It doesn't matter if you have a video card in the computer and drivers to run it, without the actual hardware screen plugged into it there is no way for us to see it. A computer does not come with it's own screen built into the interior of it's microprocessors But a human does... what a magical feature don't you think ? - but we do have the equivalent of that. Our experience cannot be seen from our neurology, you have to already know it's there. Building a model based only on neurology doesn't mean that experience comes with it any more than a video driver means you don't need a monitor. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 5, 11:54 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/5 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 5, 10:15 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: No they are not saying that. They are saying that a model of the brain fed with the same inputs as a real brain will act as the real brain... if it was not the case, the model would be wrong so you could not label it as a model of the brain. That would require that the model of the brain be closer than genetically identical, since identical twins and conjoined twins do not always respond the same way to the same inputs. They aren't in the same state. That's what I'm saying. If copies at the genetic level do not produce the same states, then what suggests to us that anything could produce the same state? That may not be possible, since the epigenetic variation and developmental influences may not be knowable or reproducible. It's a 'Boys From Brazil' theory. Cool sci-fi, but I don't think we will ever have to worry about considering it as a real possibility. We know nothing about what the substitution level of the 'same inputs' would be either. Can you say that making a brain of a 10 year old would not require 10 years of sequential neural imprinting or that the imprinting would be any less complex to develop than it would be to create than the world itself? They never said they could know which inputs you could have and they don't have to. They just have to know the transition rule (biochemichal/physical) of each neurons and as the brain respect physics so as the model, and so it will react the same way. Reacting is not experiencing though. A picture of a brain can react like a brain, but it doesn't mean there is an experiential correlate there. Just because the picture is 3D and has some computation behind it instead of just a recording, why would that make it suddenly have an experience? Because if you ask it something (feed input) you'll get an answer which would be the same as a real person... you can't ask anything to a recording. But you can ask something to a recording. (Please stay on the line, your call is important to us... For technical support please say the name of the product or press one...) If I ask a ventriloquist dummy a question I will get an answer that would be the same as a real person too. The computation is nothing but recordings strung together with a lot of IF THEN logic to synchronize the output with the input. It's correlation, not causation. The computations aren't understanding any questions or answers, they are just matching pre-selected criteria against an a- signifying database. You can't mistake a player piano for a human pianist just because the end result is the same notes. You do the same mistake with your tv pixel analogy. If I know all the transition rule of *a pixel* according to input... I can build a model of a TV that will *exactly* display the same thing as the real TV for the same inputs without knowing anything about movies/show/whatever... I don't care about movies at that level. They never said that they would explain/predict the input to the tv, just replicate the tv. You have to care about the movies at that level because that's what consciousness is in the metaphor. If you don't have an experience of watching a movie, then you just have an a-signifying non-pattern of unrelated pixels. You need a perceiver, and audience to turn the image into something that makes sense. It's like saying that you could write a piece of software that could be used as a replacement for a monitor. It doesn't matter if you have a video card in the computer and drivers to run it, without the actual hardware screen plugged into it there is no way for us to see it. A computer does not come with it's own screen built into the interior of it's microprocessors But a human does... what a magical feature don't you think ? It's a helluva feature, definitely. I don't think it has to be magical personally, but it definitely makes us different than a machine based solely on physical function. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: In fact, Craig himself denies that his theory would manifest as violation of physical law, and is therefore inconsistent. There is no inconsistency. You're just not understanding what I'm saying because you are only willing to think in terms of reactive strategies for neutralizing the threat to your common sense (which is a cumulative entanglement of autobiographical experiences and understandings, interpretations of cultural traditions and perspectives, etc). If you are right then there would be a violation of physical law in the brain. You have said as much, then denied it. You have said that neurons firing in the brain can't be just due to a chain of biochemical events. That would mean that, somewhere, a neuron fires where examination of its physical state would suggest that it should not fire. You can't have it both ways: EITHER the neurons all fire due to detectable physical causes OR some neurons do not fire due to detectable physical causes. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 2:44 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 5, 10:15 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: No they are not saying that. They are saying that a model of the brain fed with the same inputs as a real brain will act as the real brain... if it was not the case, the model would be wrong so you could not label it as a model of the brain. That would require that the model of the brain be closer than genetically identical, since identical twins and conjoined twins do not always respond the same way to the same inputs. That may not be possible, since the epigenetic variation and developmental influences may not be knowable or reproducible. It's a 'Boys From Brazil' theory. Cool sci-fi, but I don't think we will ever have to worry about considering it as a real possibility. We know nothing about what the substitution level of the 'same inputs' would be either. Can you say that making a brain of a 10 year old would not require 10 years of sequential neural imprinting or that the imprinting would be any less complex to develop than it would be to create than the world itself? Firstly, it is theoretically possible to model the brain arbitrarily closely, even if technically difficult. Secondly, it is enough for the purposes of the discussion to model a generic brain, not a particular brain. They never said they could know which inputs you could have and they don't have to. They just have to know the transition rule (biochemichal/physical) of each neurons and as the brain respect physics so as the model, and so it will react the same way. Reacting is not experiencing though. A picture of a brain can react like a brain, but it doesn't mean there is an experiential correlate there. Just because the picture is 3D and has some computation behind it instead of just a recording, why would that make it suddenly have an experience? In the first instance, yes, you might not be sure iif the artificial brain is a zombie. But the fading qualia thought experiments shows that if it is a zombie it would allow you to make absurd creatures, partial zombies (defined as someone who lacks a particular conscious modality but behaves normally and doesn't realise anything is wrong). The only way to avoid the partial zombies is if the brain model replicates consciousness along with function. You do the same mistake with your tv pixel analogy. If I know all the transition rule of *a pixel* according to input... I can build a model of a TV that will *exactly* display the same thing as the real TV for the same inputs without knowing anything about movies/show/whatever... I don't care about movies at that level. They never said that they would explain/predict the input to the tv, just replicate the tv. You have to care about the movies at that level because that's what consciousness is in the metaphor. If you don't have an experience of watching a movie, then you just have an a-signifying non-pattern of unrelated pixels. You need a perceiver, and audience to turn the image into something that makes sense. It's like saying that you could write a piece of software that could be used as a replacement for a monitor. It doesn't matter if you have a video card in the computer and drivers to run it, without the actual hardware screen plugged into it there is no way for us to see it. A computer does not come with it's own screen built into the interior of it's microprocessors - but we do have the equivalent of that. Our experience cannot be seen from our neurology, you have to already know it's there. Building a model based only on neurology doesn't mean that experience comes with it any more than a video driver means you don't need a monitor. A model of the TV will reproduce the externally observable behaviour of a TV, given the same inputs. That's what a model is. A model of a brain would reproduce the externally observable behaviour of a brain. Whether it would also reproduce the consciousness is a further question, and the fading qualia thought experiment shows that it would. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 5, 6:40 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: In fact, Craig himself denies that his theory would manifest as violation of physical law, and is therefore inconsistent. There is no inconsistency. You're just not understanding what I'm saying because you are only willing to think in terms of reactive strategies for neutralizing the threat to your common sense (which is a cumulative entanglement of autobiographical experiences and understandings, interpretations of cultural traditions and perspectives, etc). If you are right then there would be a violation of physical law in the brain. You have said as much, then denied it. You have said that neurons firing in the brain can't be just due to a chain of biochemical events. They can be due to a chain of biochemical events, but they also *are* biochemical events, and therefore can influence them intentionally as well as be influenced by them. I don't understand why this is such a controversial ideal. Just think of the way that you actually function right now. Your personal motives driving what *you* do with *your* mind and *your* body. If the mind could be understood just as biochemical events among neurons, then we would have no way to think of our bodies as ours - the brain would not need to think of itself in any other terms other than the biochemical events that it literally is. Why make up some bogus GUI if there is no user? That would mean that, somewhere, a neuron fires where examination of its physical state would suggest that it should not fire. I guess you are never going to get tired of me correcting this factually incorrect assumption. The physical state of a neuron only suggests whether it is firing or not firing at the moment - not the circumstances under which it might fire. If you examine neurons in someone's amygdala, how is that going to tell you whether or not they are going to play poker next week or not? If the neurons feel like firing, does a casino appear? You can't have it both ways: EITHER the neurons all fire due to detectable physical causes Thought and intention are detectable causes with effects that are both describable as physical (having discrete volumes in space, mass, temperature, etc) and experiential (having cumulative perceptions through time, qualities, significance, subjective participation). Neurons associated with our consciousness can be lead by our personal, high level agency as a human being's psyche, or they can push their physiological agenda up to the psyche from the low level. There is no boundary. Just as there is no boundary whether you use a remote control to change the channel on your TV or your TV makes you change the channel by showing an ad for something that you would rather watch. I can keep explaining this over and over if you like, but I don't know why you want me to. OR some neurons do not fire due to detectable physical causes. Why does detectable have to mean physical? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 5, 7:10 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 2:44 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 5, 10:15 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: No they are not saying that. They are saying that a model of the brain fed with the same inputs as a real brain will act as the real brain... if it was not the case, the model would be wrong so you could not label it as a model of the brain. That would require that the model of the brain be closer than genetically identical, since identical twins and conjoined twins do not always respond the same way to the same inputs. That may not be possible, since the epigenetic variation and developmental influences may not be knowable or reproducible. It's a 'Boys From Brazil' theory. Cool sci-fi, but I don't think we will ever have to worry about considering it as a real possibility. We know nothing about what the substitution level of the 'same inputs' would be either. Can you say that making a brain of a 10 year old would not require 10 years of sequential neural imprinting or that the imprinting would be any less complex to develop than it would be to create than the world itself? Firstly, it is theoretically possible to model the brain arbitrarily closely, even if technically difficult. Secondly, it is enough for the purposes of the discussion to model a generic brain, not a particular brain. I disagree on both counts. There is no such thing as a generic brain, and any theory which assumes that it's possible to model the brain closely enough to replace does not understand the relation between the brain and mind. I think that I do understand that relation and my understanding suggests that every brain is unique to the point that it may not even be possible to reproduce a single moment of a brain's function, let alone an ongoing mechanism. It's not clear that the brain could even be considered the same thing as itself from day to day. It's more like an electronic cloud of meaty snot that is continuously changing in novel often utterly idiosyncratic ways. They never said they could know which inputs you could have and they don't have to. They just have to know the transition rule (biochemichal/physical) of each neurons and as the brain respect physics so as the model, and so it will react the same way. Reacting is not experiencing though. A picture of a brain can react like a brain, but it doesn't mean there is an experiential correlate there. Just because the picture is 3D and has some computation behind it instead of just a recording, why would that make it suddenly have an experience? In the first instance, yes, you might not be sure iif the artificial brain is a zombie. But the fading qualia thought experiments shows that if it is a zombie it would allow you to make absurd creatures, partial zombies (defined as someone who lacks a particular conscious modality but behaves normally and doesn't realise anything is wrong). Fading qualia is not a problem. Somnambulism, conversion disorders, and synesthesia exist already. Blind people store tactile qualia in their visual cortex. Are blind people absurd creatures because they see through their fingers? The only way to avoid the partial zombies is if the brain model replicates consciousness along with function. That statement is much more absurd than the idea of partial zombies. It is to say that the only way to avoid computers without screens is if all computation replicates a monitor with it's function. It's ridiculous and false if you ask me. Unscientific. Lazy. You do the same mistake with your tv pixel analogy. If I know all the transition rule of *a pixel* according to input... I can build a model of a TV that will *exactly* display the same thing as the real TV for the same inputs without knowing anything about movies/show/whatever... I don't care about movies at that level. They never said that they would explain/predict the input to the tv, just replicate the tv. You have to care about the movies at that level because that's what consciousness is in the metaphor. If you don't have an experience of watching a movie, then you just have an a-signifying non-pattern of unrelated pixels. You need a perceiver, and audience to turn the image into something that makes sense. It's like saying that you could write a piece of software that could be used as a replacement for a monitor. It doesn't matter if you have a video card in the computer and drivers to run it, without the actual hardware screen plugged into it there is no way for us to see it. A computer does not come with it's own screen built into the interior of it's microprocessors - but we do have the equivalent of that. Our experience cannot be seen from our neurology, you have to already know it's there. Building a model based only on neurology doesn't mean that experience comes with it any
Re: Bruno List continued
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 12:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If you are right then there would be a violation of physical law in the brain. You have said as much, then denied it. You have said that neurons firing in the brain can't be just due to a chain of biochemical events. They can be due to a chain of biochemical events, but they also *are* biochemical events, and therefore can influence them intentionally as well as be influenced by them. I don't understand why this is such a controversial ideal. Just think of the way that you actually function right now. Your personal motives driving what *you* do with *your* mind and *your* body. If the mind could be understood just as biochemical events among neurons, then we would have no way to think of our bodies as ours - the brain would not need to think of itself in any other terms other than the biochemical events that it literally is. Why make up some bogus GUI if there is no user? The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. That would mean that, somewhere, a neuron fires where examination of its physical state would suggest that it should not fire. I guess you are never going to get tired of me correcting this factually incorrect assumption. The physical state of a neuron only suggests whether it is firing or not firing at the moment - not the circumstances under which it might fire. If you examine neurons in someone's amygdala, how is that going to tell you whether or not they are going to play poker next week or not? If the neurons feel like firing, does a casino appear? Whether a neuron in the amygdala or anywhere else fires depends on its present state, inputs from the neurons with which it interfaces and other aspects of its environment including things such as temperature, pH and ion concentrations. If the person thinks about gambling, that changes the inputs to the neuron and causes it to fire. It can't fire without any physical change. It can't fire without any physical change. It can't fire without any physical change. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The neurons are firing in my brain as I'm thinking, but if you could go down to the microscopic level you would see that they are firing due to the various physical factors that make neurons fire, eg. fluxes of calcium and potassium caused by ion channels opening due to neurotransmitter molecules binding to the receptors and changing their conformation. If you take each neuron in the brain in turn at any given time it will always be the case that it is doing what it is doing due to these factors. You will never find a ligand-activated ion channel opening in the absence of a ligand, for example. That would be like a door opening in the absence of any force. Just because doors and protein molecules are different sizes doesn't mean that one can do magical things and the other not. You will also never find a ligand activated ion channel that is associated with a particular subjective experience fire in the absence of that subjective experience (that would be a zombie, right?), so why privilege the pixels of the thing as the determining factor when the overall image is just as much dictating which pixels are lit and how brightly? Again, every time you mention magic it just means that you don't understand my point. Every time you mention it, I am going to give you the same response. I understand your position completely, but you are just throwing dirt clods in the general direction of mine while closing your eyes. The ion channel only opens when the ligand binds. The ligand only binds if it is present in the synapse. It is only present in the synapse when the presynaptic neuron fires. And so on. This whole process is associated with an experience, but it is a completely mechanical process. The equivalent is my example of the door: it opens because someone turns the key and pushes it. If it had qualia it may also be accurate to say that it opens because it wants to open, but since we can't see the qualia they can't have a causal effect on the door. If they could we would see the door opening by itself and we would be amazed. It's the same with the neuron: if the associated qualia had a causal effect on matter we would see neurons firing in the absence of stimuli, which would be amazing. Again, it's not that it's wrong to say that the neurons fired in the amygdala because the person thought about gambling, it's that the third person observable behaviour of the neurons can be entirely explained and predicted without any reference to qualia. If the neurons responded directly to qualia they would be observed to do miraculous things and it may not be possible to predict or model their behaviour. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 4, 2:11 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: The ion channel only opens when the ligand binds. The ligand only binds if it is present in the synapse. It is only present in the synapse when the presynaptic neuron fires. And so on. It's the 'and so on' where your explanation breaks down. You are arbitrarily denying the top down, semantic, subjective participation as a cause. There is no presynaptic neuron prior to the introduction of the thought of gambling. The thought is the firing of many neurons. They are the same thing, except that the reason they are firing is because of the subject choosing to realize a particular motivation (to think about something or move a mouse, etc). There is no neurological reason why those neurons would fire. They would not otherwise fire at that particular time. This whole process is associated with an experience, but it is a completely mechanical process. Starting a car initiates a mechanical process, and driving a car executes a mechanical process, but without the driver choosing to start the car and use the steering wheel and pedals to correspond with their subjective perception and motivation, the car doesn't do anything but idle. You cannot predict where a car is going to go based on an auto mechanics examination of the car. I can argue this point all day, every day. I can give you different examples, describe it in different ways, but I can't make you see what you are missing. I know exactly your position. You think that if you look at atoms they cannot do anything except what we expect any generic atom to do, and since everything is made of atoms, then everything can only be an elaboration of those probabilities. I get that. You don't need to restate your position to me ever again. You are quite clear in what you are saying. I'm telling you that it's medieval compared to what I'm talking about. You aren't seeing that atoms respond to their environment - they have charge and make bonds, and that the environment can change on a macro scale for macro scale reasons just as well as the macro scale can be changed for microcosmic reasons. They are the same thing. Just as I am choosing these letters to make up these words because I have a sentence in mind that I want to write, not because my fingers have no choice but to hit these keys to satisfy some chemical or physical law. The equivalent is my example of the door: it opens because someone turns the key and pushes it. If it had qualia it may also be accurate to say that it opens because it wants to open, but since we can't see the qualia they can't have a causal effect on the door. Someone turns the key and pushes it because they want to. It is their qualia that has a causal effect on the door and *nothing else*. The intentionality of the subject *uses* the neurons of the brain, which use the afferent nerves down the spine, which uses the muscle tissue to contract, which moves the arm connected to the hand that holds the key and articulates the turning and opens the door which satisfies the sensorymotivemotivemotormotormotorsensory chain of custody. The door opens because the person sees the door (visual sense), understands how it works and that they have the key (cognitive sense), wants to unlock it (motive intent, emotional sense), is able to use their brain, spinal cord, arm, hand, and key as a single coordinated instrument (motivemotivemotorfine motormotor extension) to satisfy their desire to feel and see that the door is open (sensory) and to pass through the door (motor). Yes, I understand that you can look at it the other way and say that since it it the brain that stimulates and coordinates the arm, and it is the brain's activity that causes that, and that the neurons in the brain cause that, and that the ion channels, membrane potentials, neurotransmitter molecules, and atoms that cause all of that, then you should be able to calculate from the positions of all of that microcosmic phenomana that the door will open. But it doesn't work that way. The microcosmos doesn't know what a door is. It has a very complex job to do already in it's own biochemical level of the universe. Just as we have no direct awareness of what our DNA is doing, our tissues don't know who we are or why we want to open the door. Only we know that. If they could we would see the door opening by itself and we would be amazed. It's the same with the neuron: if the associated qualia had a causal effect on matter we would see neurons firing in the absence of stimuli, which would be amazing. The qualia is the stimuli. Why else do you think it's there? What would be the point of qualia if not to exert an influence on the choices we make? Again, it's not that it's wrong to say that the neurons fired in the amygdala because the person thought about gambling, it's that the third person observable behaviour of the neurons can be entirely explained and predicted without any reference to qualia. They
Re: Bruno List continued
2011/10/4 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 4, 2:11 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: The ion channel only opens when the ligand binds. The ligand only binds if it is present in the synapse. It is only present in the synapse when the presynaptic neuron fires. And so on. It's the 'and so on' where your explanation breaks down. You are arbitrarily denying the top down, semantic, subjective participation as a cause. There is no presynaptic neuron prior to the introduction of the thought of gambling. And where is the thought then ? Reading you, it exists outside of the brain matter... If it is the brain matter, then all the external observable is all there is to it, reproducing the external behaviours will reproduce qualia. The thought is the firing of many neurons. They are the same thing, except that the reason they are firing is because of the subject choosing to realize a particular motivation (to think about something or move a mouse, etc). There is no neurological reason why those neurons would fire. They would not otherwise fire at that particular time. This whole process is associated with an experience, but it is a completely mechanical process. Starting a car initiates a mechanical process, and driving a car executes a mechanical process, but without the driver choosing to start the car and use the steering wheel and pedals to correspond with their subjective perception and motivation, the car doesn't do anything but idle. You cannot predict where a car is going to go based on an auto mechanics examination of the car. No, but I can build a copy of the car which will do the same as the car provided a driver drives it... I can argue this point all day, every day. I can give you different examples, describe it in different ways, but I can't make you see what you are missing. I know exactly your position. You think that if you look at atoms they cannot do anything except what we expect any generic atom to do, and since everything is made of atoms, then everything can only be an elaboration of those probabilities. I get that. You don't need to restate your position to me ever again. You are quite clear in what you are saying. I'm telling you that it's medieval compared to what I'm talking about. You aren't seeing that atoms respond to their environment - they have charge and make bonds, and that the environment can change on a macro scale for macro scale reasons just as well as the macro scale can be changed for microcosmic reasons. They are the same thing. Just as I am choosing these letters to make up these words because I have a sentence in mind that I want to write, not because my fingers have no choice but to hit these keys to satisfy some chemical or physical law. The equivalent is my example of the door: it opens because someone turns the key and pushes it. If it had qualia it may also be accurate to say that it opens because it wants to open, but since we can't see the qualia they can't have a causal effect on the door. Someone turns the key and pushes it because they want to. It is their qualia that has a causal effect on the door and *nothing else*. The intentionality of the subject *uses* the neurons of the brain, which use the afferent nerves down the spine, which uses the muscle tissue to contract, which moves the arm connected to the hand that holds the key and articulates the turning and opens the door which satisfies the sensorymotivemotivemotormotormotorsensory chain of custody. The door opens because the person sees the door (visual sense), understands how it works and that they have the key (cognitive sense), wants to unlock it (motive intent, emotional sense), is able to use their brain, spinal cord, arm, hand, and key as a single coordinated instrument (motivemotivemotorfine motormotor extension) to satisfy their desire to feel and see that the door is open (sensory) and to pass through the door (motor). Yes, I understand that you can look at it the other way and say that since it it the brain that stimulates and coordinates the arm, and it is the brain's activity that causes that, and that the neurons in the brain cause that, and that the ion channels, membrane potentials, neurotransmitter molecules, and atoms that cause all of that, then you should be able to calculate from the positions of all of that microcosmic phenomana that the door will open. But it doesn't work that way. The microcosmos doesn't know what a door is. It has a very complex job to do already in it's own biochemical level of the universe. Just as we have no direct awareness of what our DNA is doing, our tissues don't know who we are or why we want to open the door. Only we know that. If they could we would see the door opening by itself and we would be amazed. It's the same with the neuron: if the associated qualia had a causal effect on matter we would see neurons firing in the
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 4, 8:54 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/4 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 4, 2:11 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: The ion channel only opens when the ligand binds. The ligand only binds if it is present in the synapse. It is only present in the synapse when the presynaptic neuron fires. And so on. It's the 'and so on' where your explanation breaks down. You are arbitrarily denying the top down, semantic, subjective participation as a cause. There is no presynaptic neuron prior to the introduction of the thought of gambling. And where is the thought then ? Reading you, it exists outside of the brain matter... If it is the brain matter, then all the external observable is all there is to it, reproducing the external behaviours will reproduce qualia. It's inside (and 'throughside') of matter. It doesn't ex-ist, it insists. Reproducing the external behaviors won't help, any more than attaching marionette strings to a cadaver would bring a person back to life. I think that all change has an experience associated with it. This is in fact what energy is; an experience of perception over time. The ability to experience change first hand carries with it, by extension, the ability to experience certain kinds of change second hand. We are made of matter, so we can relate to physical changes - a bowling ball striking pins, a bomb going off, etc. We are made of biological cells so we can relate to biological changes, but non-biological matter cannot experience biological changes. Bowling balls don't feel like they are alive. The thought is the firing of many neurons. They are the same thing, except that the reason they are firing is because of the subject choosing to realize a particular motivation (to think about something or move a mouse, etc). There is no neurological reason why those neurons would fire. They would not otherwise fire at that particular time. This whole process is associated with an experience, but it is a completely mechanical process. Starting a car initiates a mechanical process, and driving a car executes a mechanical process, but without the driver choosing to start the car and use the steering wheel and pedals to correspond with their subjective perception and motivation, the car doesn't do anything but idle. You cannot predict where a car is going to go based on an auto mechanics examination of the car. No, but I can build a copy of the car which will do the same as the car provided a driver drives it... Do the same thing meaning idle in the driveway, sure. To copy a driver is something else entirely. You still can't predict where either driver is going to take the car from looking that the mechanics of the car. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On 04 Oct 2011, at 02:29, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 4:09 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I agree with Craig, although the way he presents it might seems a bit uncomputationalist, (if I can say(*)). Thoughts act on matter all the time. It is a selection of histories + a sharing. Like when a sculptor isolates an art form from a rock, and then send it in a museum. If mind did not act on matter, we would not have been able to fly to the moon, and I am not sure even birds could fly. It asks for relative works and time, and numerous deep computations. When you prepare coffee, mind acts on matter. When you drink coffee, matter acts on mind. No problem here (with comp). And we can learn to control computer at a distance, but there is no reason to suppose that computers can't do that. Mind acts on matter in a manner of speaking, but matter will not do anything that cannot be explained in terms of the underlying physics. Locally, you are right. But the physics itself arise from the arithmetical computation structures on which consciousness supervene on (to be short). So I am not sure if the expression of consciousness duration for very short emulation time makes sense. In fact, between any two sequential computational states *at some level of description*, there exist an infinity of computational states belonging to computations generated by the UD going through them *at some more refined level, and this participates in the first person experience generation (as in its material constitution). An alien scientist could give a complete description of why humans behave as they do and make a computational model that accurately simulates human behaviour while remaining ignorant about human consciousness. But the alien could not do this if he were ignorant about protein chemistry, for example. OK. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On 10/3/2011 11:11 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Craig Weinbergwhatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The neurons are firing in my brain as I'm thinking, but if you could go down to the microscopic level you would see that they are firing due to the various physical factors that make neurons fire, eg. fluxes of calcium and potassium caused by ion channels opening due to neurotransmitter molecules binding to the receptors and changing their conformation. If you take each neuron in the brain in turn at any given time it will always be the case that it is doing what it is doing due to these factors. You will never find a ligand-activated ion channel opening in the absence of a ligand, for example. That would be like a door opening in the absence of any force. Just because doors and protein molecules are different sizes doesn't mean that one can do magical things and the other not. You will also never find a ligand activated ion channel that is associated with a particular subjective experience fire in the absence of that subjective experience (that would be a zombie, right?), so why privilege the pixels of the thing as the determining factor when the overall image is just as much dictating which pixels are lit and how brightly? Again, every time you mention magic it just means that you don't understand my point. Every time you mention it, I am going to give you the same response. I understand your position completely, but you are just throwing dirt clods in the general direction of mine while closing your eyes. The ion channel only opens when the ligand binds. The ligand only binds if it is present in the synapse. It is only present in the synapse when the presynaptic neuron fires. And so on. This whole process is associated with an experience, but it is a completely mechanical process. The equivalent is my example of the door: it opens because someone turns the key and pushes it. If it had qualia it may also be accurate to say that it opens because it wants to open, but since we can't see the qualia they can't have a causal effect on the door. If they could we would see the door opening by itself and we would be amazed. It's the same with the neuron: if the associated qualia had a causal effect on matter we would see neurons firing in the absence of stimuli, which would be amazing. This goes by the name causal completeness; the idea that the 3-p observable state at t is sufficient to predict the state at t+dt. Craig wants add to this that there is additional information which is not 3-p observable and which makes a difference, so that the state at t+dt depends not just on the 3-p observables at t, but also on some additional sensorimotive variables. If you assume these variables are not independent of the 3-p observables, then this is just panpsychic version of consciousness supervening on the 3-p states. They are redundant in the informational sense. If you assume they are independent of the 3-p variables and yet make a difference in the time evolution of the state then it means the predictions based on the 3-p observables will fail, i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry will be violated. Of course this violation maybe hard to detect in something very complicated like a brain; but Craig's theory doesn't seem to assume the brain is special in that respect and even a single electron supposedly has these extra, unobservable variables, i.e. a mind of its own. The problem with electrons or other simple systems is that while we have complete access to their 3-p variables, we don't have access to their hypothetical other variables; the ones we call 1-p when referring to humans. So when all the silver atoms in a Stern-Gerlach do just as we predict, it can be claimed that they all had the same 1-p variables and that's why the 3-p variables were sufficient to predict their behavior. So the only way I see to test this theory, even in principle, would be to observe Craig's brain at a very low level while having him report his experiences (at least to himself) and show that his experiences and his brain states were not one-to-one. Of course this is probably impossible with current technology. Observing the brain at a coarse grained level leaves open the possibility that one is just missing the 3-p variables that you show the relationship to be one-to-one. So I'd say that until someone thinks of an empirical test for this soul theory, discussing it is a waste of bandwidth. Brent Again, it's not that it's wrong to say that the neurons fired in the amygdala because the person thought about gambling, it's that the third person observable behaviour of the neurons can be entirely explained and predicted without any reference to qualia. If the neurons responded directly to qualia they would be observed to do miraculous things and it may not be possible to predict or model their behaviour. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 4, 2:59 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: This goes by the name causal completeness; the idea that the 3-p observable state at t is sufficient to predict the state at t+dt. Craig wants add to this that there is additional information which is not 3-p observable and which makes a difference, so that the state at t+dt depends not just on the 3-p observables at t, but also on some additional sensorimotive variables. If you assume these variables are not independent of the 3-p observables, then this is just panpsychic version of consciousness supervening on the 3-p states. They are redundant in the informational sense. If you assume they are independent of the 3-p variables and yet make a difference in the time evolution of the state then it means the predictions based on the 3-p observables will fail, i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry will be violated. Why would they have to be either completely dependent or independent? I've given several examples demonstrating how we routinely exercise voluntary control over parts of our minds, bodies, and environment while at the same time being involuntarily controlled by those same influences, often at the same time. This isn't a theory, this is the raw data set. If it were the case that the 3p and 1p were completely independent, then you would have ghosts jumping around into aluminum cans and walking around singing, and if they were completely dependent then there would be no point in being able to differentiate between voluntary and involuntary control of our mind, body, and environment. Such an illusory distinction would not only be redundant but it would have no ontological basis to even be able to come into being or be conceivable. It would be like an elephant growing a TV set out of it's trunk to distract it from being an elephant. Since neither of those two cases is possible, I propose, as I have repeatedly proposed, that the 3p and 1p are in fact part of the same essential reality in which they overlap, but that they each extent in different topological directions; specifically, 3p into matter, public space, electromagnetism, entropy, and relativity, and 1p into energy, private time, sensorimotive, significance, and perception. No laws of physics are broken by consciousness, but it is very confusing because our only example of consciousness is human consciousness, which is a multi-trillion cell awareness. The trick is to realize that you cannot directly correlate our experience of consciousness with the 3-p cellular phenomenology, but to only correlate it with the 3-p behavior of the brain as a whole. That's the starting point. If you are going to try to understand what a movie is about, you have to look at the whole images of the movie, and not focus on the pixels of the screen or the mechanics of pixel illumination to guide your interpretation. There is no human consciousness at that low level. There may be sensorimotive 1-p phenomenology there, and I think that there is, but we can't prove it now. What we can prove is there in 3-p would only relate to that low level 1-p which is unknown to us. My proposition is that our 1-p consciousness builds from lower level 1- p awareness and higher level 1-p semantic environmental influences, like cultural ideas, family traditions, etc. It is not predictable from 3-p appearances alone, but not because it breaks the laws of physics. Physics has nothing to say about what particular patterns occur in the brain as a whole. There is no relevant biochemical difference between a one thought and another that could make it impossible physically, just as there is no sequence of illuminated pixels that is preferred by a TV screen, or electronics, or physics. Of course this violation maybe hard to detect in something very complicated like a brain; but Craig's theory doesn't seem to assume the brain is special in that respect and even a single electron supposedly has these extra, unobservable variables, i.e. a mind of its own. No. I have never said that a particle has a mind of it's own, I only say that it may have a sensorimotive quality which is primitive like charge or spin, but that this quality scales up in a different way than quantitative properties. The brain is very special *to us* and I suspect that it is pretty special relatively speaking as far as processes in the Cosmos. It's not special because it has awareness though, it's just the degree to which that awareness is elaborated and concentrated. The problem with electrons or other simple systems is that while we have complete access to their 3-p variables, we don't have access to their hypothetical other variables; the ones we call 1-p when referring to humans. So when all the silver atoms in a Stern-Gerlach do just as we predict, it can be claimed that they all had the same 1-p variables and that's why the 3-p variables were sufficient to predict their behavior. Why is that a
Re: Bruno List continued
On 10/4/2011 5:15 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 4, 2:59 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: This goes by the name causal completeness; the idea that the 3-p observable state at t is sufficient to predict the state at t+dt. Craig wants add to this that there is additional information which is not 3-p observable and which makes a difference, so that the state at t+dt depends not just on the 3-p observables at t, but also on some additional sensorimotive variables. If you assume these variables are not independent of the 3-p observables, then this is just panpsychic version of consciousness supervening on the 3-p states. They are redundant in the informational sense. If you assume they are independent of the 3-p variables and yet make a difference in the time evolution of the state then it means the predictions based on the 3-p observables will fail, i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry will be violated. Why would they have to be either completely dependent or independent? Did I use the word completely? I've given several examples demonstrating how we routinely exercise voluntary control over parts of our minds, bodies, and environment while at the same time being involuntarily controlled by those same influences, often at the same time. This isn't a theory, this is the raw data set. No it's not. In your examples of voluntary control you don't know what your brain is doing. So you can't know whether you voluntary action was entirely caused by physical precursors or whether their was some effect from libertarian free-will. If it were the case that the 3p and 1p were completely independent, then you would have ghosts jumping around into aluminum cans and walking around singing, and if they were completely dependent then there would be no point in being able to differentiate between voluntary and involuntary control of our mind, body, and environment. Exactly the point of compatibilist free-will. Such an illusory distinction would not only be redundant but it would have no ontological basis to even be able to come into being or be conceivable. It would be like an elephant growing a TV set out of it's trunk to distract it from being an elephant. Or pulling another meaningless example out of the nether regions. Since neither of those two cases is possible, I propose, as I have repeatedly proposed, that the 3p and 1p are in fact part of the same essential reality in which they overlap, but that they each extent in different topological directions; What's a topological direction? specifically, 3p into matter, public space, electromagnetism, entropy, and relativity, and 1p into energy, private time, sensorimotive, significance, and perception. 3p overlaps into entropy!? Reads like gibberish to me. No laws of physics are broken by consciousness, but it is very confusing because our only example of consciousness is human consciousness, which is a multi-trillion cell awareness. Exactly what I said. In fact one's only example of consciousness is their own. The consciousness of other humans is an inference. The trick is to realize that you cannot directly correlate our experience of consciousness with the 3-p cellular phenomenology, but to only correlate it with the 3-p behavior of the brain as a whole. That's the experimental question, and you don't know the answer. That's the starting point. If you are going to try to understand what a movie is about, you have to look at the whole images of the movie, and not focus on the pixels of the screen or the mechanics of pixel illumination to guide your interpretation. There is no human consciousness at that low level. There may be sensorimotive 1-p phenomenology there, and I think that there is, but we can't prove it now. What we can prove is there in 3-p would only relate to that low level 1-p which is unknown to us. My proposition is that our 1-p consciousness builds from lower level 1- p awareness and higher level 1-p semantic environmental influences, like cultural ideas, family traditions, etc. But that is entirely untestable since we have no access to those 1-p consciousnesses. Cultural ideas, family traditions are 3-p observables. It is not predictable from 3-p appearances alone, but not because it breaks the laws of physics. Physics has nothing to say about what particular patterns occur in the brain as a whole. Sure it does - unless magic happens. There is no relevant biochemical difference between a one thought and another that could make it impossible physically, So you say. But I think there is. If you think of an elephant there is something biochemical happening that makes it not a thought about a giraffe. So when you read elephant it is impossible to think of a giraffe at that moment. just as there is no sequence of illuminated pixels that is preferred by a TV screen, or electronics, or physics. Of course this violation maybe hard to detect in something very
Re: Bruno List continued
On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 5:59 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: This goes by the name causal completeness; the idea that the 3-p observable state at t is sufficient to predict the state at t+dt. Craig wants add to this that there is additional information which is not 3-p observable and which makes a difference, so that the state at t+dt depends not just on the 3-p observables at t, but also on some additional sensorimotive variables. If you assume these variables are not independent of the 3-p observables, then this is just panpsychic version of consciousness supervening on the 3-p states. They are redundant in the informational sense. If you assume they are independent of the 3-p variables and yet make a difference in the time evolution of the state then it means the predictions based on the 3-p observables will fail, i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry will be violated. Of course this violation maybe hard to detect in something very complicated like a brain; but Craig's theory doesn't seem to assume the brain is special in that respect and even a single electron supposedly has these extra, unobservable variables, i.e. a mind of its own. The problem with electrons or other simple systems is that while we have complete access to their 3-p variables, we don't have access to their hypothetical other variables; the ones we call 1-p when referring to humans. So when all the silver atoms in a Stern-Gerlach do just as we predict, it can be claimed that they all had the same 1-p variables and that's why the 3-p variables were sufficient to predict their behavior. That's a bit like saying there are fairies at the bottom of the garden but they hide whenever we look for them. According to Craig, the 1-p influence (which is equivalent to an immaterial soul) is ubiquitous in living things, and possibly in other things as well. I think if no scientist has ever seen evidence of this ubiquitous influence that is good reason to say that it doesn't exist. In fact, Craig himself denies that his theory would manifest as violation of physical law, and is therefore inconsistent. So the only way I see to test this theory, even in principle, would be to observe Craig's brain at a very low level while having him report his experiences (at least to himself) and show that his experiences and his brain states were not one-to-one. Of course this is probably impossible with current technology. Observing the brain at a coarse grained level leaves open the possibility that one is just missing the 3-p variables that you show the relationship to be one-to-one. So I'd say that until someone thinks of an empirical test for this soul theory, discussing it is a waste of bandwidth. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 4, 8:46 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/4/2011 5:15 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 4, 2:59 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: This goes by the name causal completeness; the idea that the 3-p observable state at t is sufficient to predict the state at t+dt. Craig wants add to this that there is additional information which is not 3-p observable and which makes a difference, so that the state at t+dt depends not just on the 3-p observables at t, but also on some additional sensorimotive variables. If you assume these variables are not independent of the 3-p observables, then this is just panpsychic version of consciousness supervening on the 3-p states. They are redundant in the informational sense. If you assume they are independent of the 3-p variables and yet make a difference in the time evolution of the state then it means the predictions based on the 3-p observables will fail, i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry will be violated. Why would they have to be either completely dependent or independent? Did I use the word completely? You're reducing the possibilities to two mutually exclusive impossible options, so if 'completely' is not implied then you aren't really saying anything. I've given several examples demonstrating how we routinely exercise voluntary control over parts of our minds, bodies, and environment while at the same time being involuntarily controlled by those same influences, often at the same time. This isn't a theory, this is the raw data set. No it's not. In your examples of voluntary control you don't know what your brain is doing. So you can't know whether you voluntary action was entirely caused by physical precursors or whether their was some effect from libertarian free-will. What difference does it make what your brain is doing to be able to say that you are voluntarily controlling the words that you type here? If it were the case that the 3p and 1p were completely independent, then you would have ghosts jumping around into aluminum cans and walking around singing, and if they were completely dependent then there would be no point in being able to differentiate between voluntary and involuntary control of our mind, body, and environment. Exactly the point of compatibilist free-will. What does that label add to this conversation? Such an illusory distinction would not only be redundant but it would have no ontological basis to even be able to come into being or be conceivable. It would be like an elephant growing a TV set out of it's trunk to distract it from being an elephant. Or pulling another meaningless example out of the nether regions. Why meaningless? I'm pointing out that the illusion of free will in a deterministic universe would be not merely puzzling but fantastically absurd. Your criticism is arbitrary. Since neither of those two cases is possible, I propose, as I have repeatedly proposed, that the 3p and 1p are in fact part of the same essential reality in which they overlap, but that they each extent in different topological directions; What's a topological direction? matter elaborates discretely across space, energy elaborates cumulatively through time. specifically, 3p into matter, public space, electromagnetism, entropy, and relativity, and 1p into energy, private time, sensorimotive, significance, and perception. 3p overlaps into entropy!? Reads like gibberish to me. 3-p doesn't overlap entropy, 3-p is entropic. 1-p is syntropic. The overlap is the 'here and now'. I'm not sure that it matters what I say though, you're mainly just auditing my responses for technicalities so that you can get a feeling of 'winning' a debate. It's a sensorimotive circuit. A feeling that you are seeking which requires a particular kind of experience to satisfy it. If I could offer you a drug instead that would stimulate the precise neural pathways involved in feeling that you had proved me wrong in an objective way, would that be satisfying to you? Would there be no difference in being right versus having your physical precursors to feeling right get tweaked? Isn't that what you are saying, that in fact this discussion is nothing but brain drugs with no free will determining our opinions? Isn't being right or wrong just a matter of biochemistry? No laws of physics are broken by consciousness, but it is very confusing because our only example of consciousness is human consciousness, which is a multi-trillion cell awareness. Exactly what I said. In fact one's only example of consciousness is their own. The consciousness of other humans is an inference. I agree. Although I would qualify the inference. It's more of an educated inference. I'm making a different point with it though. I'm saying there is a problem with our default assumptions about micro brain mechanisms correlating with macro
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 4, 9:32 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 5:59 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: This goes by the name causal completeness; the idea that the 3-p observable state at t is sufficient to predict the state at t+dt. Craig wants add to this that there is additional information which is not 3-p observable and which makes a difference, so that the state at t+dt depends not just on the 3-p observables at t, but also on some additional sensorimotive variables. If you assume these variables are not independent of the 3-p observables, then this is just panpsychic version of consciousness supervening on the 3-p states. They are redundant in the informational sense. If you assume they are independent of the 3-p variables and yet make a difference in the time evolution of the state then it means the predictions based on the 3-p observables will fail, i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry will be violated. Of course this violation maybe hard to detect in something very complicated like a brain; but Craig's theory doesn't seem to assume the brain is special in that respect and even a single electron supposedly has these extra, unobservable variables, i.e. a mind of its own. The problem with electrons or other simple systems is that while we have complete access to their 3-p variables, we don't have access to their hypothetical other variables; the ones we call 1-p when referring to humans. So when all the silver atoms in a Stern-Gerlach do just as we predict, it can be claimed that they all had the same 1-p variables and that's why the 3-p variables were sufficient to predict their behavior. That's a bit like saying there are fairies at the bottom of the garden but they hide whenever we look for them. According to Craig, the 1-p influence (which is equivalent to an immaterial soul) Wrong. I have been very consistent in my position that it is a category error to conceive of the 1-p influence as a pseudo-substance. It is not a 'stuff' that's in everything, any more than volts are a stuff that's in everything. it's the opposite of a stuff - it is what it's like to be stuff and to be surrounded by stuff. is ubiquitous in living things, and possibly in other things as well. I think if no scientist has ever seen evidence of this ubiquitous influence that is good reason to say that it doesn't exist. No scientist has ever seen anything other than evidence of sensorimotive perception. That is all that we or anything can ever see. I agree that it doesn't exist in the sense of it occupying space like matter does, it insists and it occupies matter though time. In fact, Craig himself denies that his theory would manifest as violation of physical law, and is therefore inconsistent. There is no inconsistency. You're just not understanding what I'm saying because you are only willing to think in terms of reactive strategies for neutralizing the threat to your common sense (which is a cumulative entanglement of autobiographical experiences and understandings, interpretations of cultural traditions and perspectives, etc). Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On 10/4/2011 8:14 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 4, 8:46 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/4/2011 5:15 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 4, 2:59 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: This goes by the name causal completeness; the idea that the 3-p observable state at t is sufficient to predict the state at t+dt. Craig wants add to this that there is additional information which is not 3-p observable and which makes a difference, so that the state at t+dt depends not just on the 3-p observables at t, but also on some additional sensorimotive variables. If you assume these variables are not independent of the 3-p observables, then this is just panpsychic version of consciousness supervening on the 3-p states. They are redundant in the informational sense. If you assume they are independent of the 3-p variables and yet make a difference in the time evolution of the state then it means the predictions based on the 3-p observables will fail, i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry will be violated. Why would they have to be either completely dependent or independent? Did I use the word completely? You're reducing the possibilities to two mutually exclusive impossible options, so if 'completely' is not implied then you aren't really saying anything. I wrote not independent and independent. Those are mutually exclusive in any logic I know of. But not independent is not the same as completely dependent. Try reading what is written. I've given several examples demonstrating how we routinely exercise voluntary control over parts of our minds, bodies, and environment while at the same time being involuntarily controlled by those same influences, often at the same time. This isn't a theory, this is the raw data set. No it's not. In your examples of voluntary control you don't know what your brain is doing. So you can't know whether you voluntary action was entirely caused by physical precursors or whether their was some effect from libertarian free-will. What difference does it make what your brain is doing to be able to say that you are voluntarily controlling the words that you type here? If it were the case that the 3p and 1p were completely independent, then you would have ghosts jumping around into aluminum cans and walking around singing, and if they were completely dependent then there would be no point in being able to differentiate between voluntary and involuntary control of our mind, body, and environment. Exactly the point of compatibilist free-will. What does that label add to this conversation? It makes the discussion precise; instead of wandering around analogies and metaphors. Such an illusory distinction would not only be redundant but it would have no ontological basis to even be able to come into being or be conceivable. It would be like an elephant growing a TV set out of it's trunk to distract it from being an elephant. Or pulling another meaningless example out of the nether regions. Why meaningless? I'm pointing out that the illusion of free will in a deterministic universe would be not merely puzzling but fantastically absurd. Your criticism is arbitrary. You're pointing out the very thing that is in dispute. Your assertion that is absurd is not a substitute for saying how it could be tested and found false. Since neither of those two cases is possible, I propose, as I have repeatedly proposed, that the 3p and 1p are in fact part of the same essential reality in which they overlap, but that they each extent in different topological directions; What's a topological direction? matter elaborates discretely across space, energy elaborates cumulatively through time. A creative use of elaboratesdoes not parse. specifically, 3p into matter, public space, electromagnetism, entropy, and relativity, and 1p into energy, private time, sensorimotive, significance, and perception. 3p overlaps into entropy!? Reads like gibberish to me. 3-p doesn't overlap entropy, 3-p is entropic. 1-p is syntropic. The overlap is the 'here and now'. I'm not sure that it matters what I say though, you're mainly just auditing my responses for technicalities so that you can get a feeling of 'winning' a debate. It's a sensorimotive circuit. A feeling that you are seeking which requires a particular kind of experience to satisfy it. If I could offer you a drug instead that would stimulate the precise neural pathways involved in feeling that you had proved me wrong in an objective way, would that be satisfying to you? Would there be no difference in being right versus having your physical precursors to feeling right get tweaked? Isn't that what you are saying, that in fact this discussion is nothing but brain drugs with no free will determining our opinions? Isn't being right or wrong just a matter of biochemistry? No, it's a matter of passing an empirical test. No laws of physics are broken by consciousness, but it is very
Re: Bruno List continued
On 10/4/2011 6:32 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 5:59 AM, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: This goes by the name causal completeness; the idea that the 3-p observable state at t is sufficient to predict the state at t+dt. Craig wants add to this that there is additional information which is not 3-p observable and which makes a difference, so that the state at t+dt depends not just on the 3-p observables at t, but also on some additional sensorimotive variables. If you assume these variables are not independent of the 3-p observables, then this is just panpsychic version of consciousness supervening on the 3-p states. They are redundant in the informational sense. If you assume they are independent of the 3-p variables and yet make a difference in the time evolution of the state then it means the predictions based on the 3-p observables will fail, i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry will be violated. Of course this violation maybe hard to detect in something very complicated like a brain; but Craig's theory doesn't seem to assume the brain is special in that respect and even a single electron supposedly has these extra, unobservable variables, i.e. a mind of its own. The problem with electrons or other simple systems is that while we have complete access to their 3-p variables, we don't have access to their hypothetical other variables; the ones we call 1-p when referring to humans. So when all the silver atoms in a Stern-Gerlach do just as we predict, it can be claimed that they all had the same 1-p variables and that's why the 3-p variables were sufficient to predict their behavior. That's a bit like saying there are fairies at the bottom of the garden but they hide whenever we look for them. Right. According to Craig, the 1-p influence (which is equivalent to an immaterial soul) is ubiquitous in living things, and possibly in other things as well. But he doesn't say what effect is has. It could be anything and hence could explain any experimental result. Brent I think if no scientist has ever seen evidence of this ubiquitous influence that is good reason to say that it doesn't exist. In fact, Craig himself denies that his theory would manifest as violation of physical law, and is therefore inconsistent. So the only way I see to test this theory, even in principle, would be to observe Craig's brain at a very low level while having him report his experiences (at least to himself) and show that his experiences and his brain states were not one-to-one. Of course this is probably impossible with current technology. Observing the brain at a coarse grained level leaves open the possibility that one is just missing the 3-p variables that you show the relationship to be one-to-one. So I'd say that until someone thinks of an empirical test for this soul theory, discussing it is a waste of bandwidth. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 10:08 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 2, 7:00 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: If they are part of the same thing, then it is presumptuous to say one causes the other. One might at well say the neurons firing caused the thought of gambling - and in fact that is what Stathis is saying and for the very good reason that a little electrical stimulation, that has no thought or sensorimotive correlate, can cause both neurons firing AND their correlated thoughts. But thoughts cannot cause the electrical stimulator to fire. So it is *not* bidirectional. What do you mean? Thoughts *do* cause an electrical detector to fire. That's what an MRI shows. You could use any kind of electrical probe or sensor instead as long as it is sufficiently sensitive to detect the ordinary firing of a neuron. That's how it's possible to have thought-driven computers. http://www.pcworld.com/article/129889/scientists_show_thoughtcontrolled_computer_at_cebit.html The device cited picks up electrical impulses from the scalp. The electrical activity comes from the neurons firing in the brain. These neurons may have associated thoughts when they fire but this is not obvious to an external observer: all that is obvious is that a particular neuron fires because of various measurable factors such as its resting membrane potential and the neurotransmitter released by other neurons with which it interfaces. So to an external observer, every neural event has an observable cause, generally other neural events. This means the externally observable behaviour of the brain is computable, even though the external observer may not know that the brain is conscious. On the other hand, if the external observer does not know about neurotransmitters and receptors he will not be able to explain why the neurons fire - it will look to him as if they fire for no reason. The mental is supervenient on the physical, but the mental cannot as a separate entity move the physical. If it could, we would observe neurons breaking physical laws. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On 03 Oct 2011, at 01:08, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 2, 7:00 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/2/2011 10:14 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 2, 9:28 am, Stathis Papaioannoustath...@gmail.com wrote: So you do believe that ion channels will open without an observable cause, since thoughts are not an observable cause. A neuroscientist would see neurons firing apparently for no reason, violating physical laws. Thoughts are observable to the thinker. No physical laws are violated. When a person thinks of gambling, the associated neurons fire for that reason. The firings have a proximate cause - changes in voltage or polarity, etc, but those phenomena also are activated because the person who they are part of thinks of gambling. Both the thought and the mechanism are part of the same thing, a thing which has it's only existence as the dualistic relation between the two. If they are part of the same thing, then it is presumptuous to say one causes the other. One might at well say the neurons firing caused the thought of gambling - and in fact that is what Stathis is saying and for the very good reason that a little electrical stimulation, that has no thought or sensorimotive correlate, can cause both neurons firing AND their correlated thoughts. But thoughts cannot cause the electrical stimulator to fire. So it is *not* bidirectional. What do you mean? Thoughts *do* cause an electrical detector to fire. That's what an MRI shows. You could use any kind of electrical probe or sensor instead as long as it is sufficiently sensitive to detect the ordinary firing of a neuron. That's how it's possible to have thought-driven computers. http://www.pcworld.com/article/129889/scientists_show_thoughtcontrolled_computer_at_cebit.html I agree with Craig, although the way he presents it might seems a bit uncomputationalist, (if I can say(*)). Thoughts act on matter all the time. It is a selection of histories + a sharing. Like when a sculptor isolates an art form from a rock, and then send it in a museum. If mind did not act on matter, we would not have been able to fly to the moon, and I am not sure even birds could fly. It asks for relative works and time, and numerous deep computations. When you prepare coffee, mind acts on matter. When you drink coffee, matter acts on mind. No problem here (with comp). And we can learn to control computer at a distance, but there is no reason to suppose that computers can't do that. Bruno (*) My computer put a read line under that word :) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 3, 8:29 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 10:08 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 2, 7:00 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: If they are part of the same thing, then it is presumptuous to say one causes the other. One might at well say the neurons firing caused the thought of gambling - and in fact that is what Stathis is saying and for the very good reason that a little electrical stimulation, that has no thought or sensorimotive correlate, can cause both neurons firing AND their correlated thoughts. But thoughts cannot cause the electrical stimulator to fire. So it is *not* bidirectional. What do you mean? Thoughts *do* cause an electrical detector to fire. That's what an MRI shows. You could use any kind of electrical probe or sensor instead as long as it is sufficiently sensitive to detect the ordinary firing of a neuron. That's how it's possible to have thought-driven computers. http://www.pcworld.com/article/129889/scientists_show_thoughtcontroll... The device cited picks up electrical impulses from the scalp. The electrical activity comes from the neurons firing in the brain. These neurons may have associated thoughts when they fire but this is not obvious to an external observer: So what? It *is* obvious to the internal observer. How can you justify disqualifying the subject arbitrarily? It is unscientific to cherry pick the data you prefer and ignore the important data just to make the observation fit your foregone conclusions. You are just saying that if we rule out subjectivity, then we must interpret subjectivity as something else. It's a logical fallacy plus it has no explanatory power. I'm giving you genuinely fresh insights into the nature of subjectivity and you're giving me back tired arguments of ultra instrumentalist pedagogy. all that is obvious is that a particular neuron fires because of various measurable factors such as its resting membrane potential and the neurotransmitter released by other neurons with which it interfaces. So to an external observer, every neural event has an observable cause, generally other neural events. How do you not see that this is circular thinking? Neurological events are caused by neurological events, really? This means the externally observable behaviour of the brain is computable, even though the external observer may not know that the brain is conscious. If the outside observer is unable to factor in the relevant subjective phenomenology then how would they be able to compute the consequences of it? On the other hand, if the external observer does not know about neurotransmitters and receptors he will not be able to explain why the neurons fire - it will look to him as if they fire for no reason. The mental is supervenient on the physical, No, the fact of using mental inention to control a computer though the scalp shows that subjective states can and do control physical behaviors. I understand that you want to play with it legalistically to prove your foregone conclusion, but the fact remains that it is the subject's conscious will which contols the neurons which control the computer. but the mental cannot as a separate entity move the physical. If it could, we would observe neurons breaking physical laws. No physical laws are broken. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sep 29, 11:14 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Craig, do the neurons violate the conservation of energy and momentum? And if not, then how can they have any unexpected effects? They don't have any unexpected effects, they just have unscheduled effects. I don't understand why it makes sense to think that a neuron can make another neuron fire but not the person whose brain is to cause a neuron to fire. Just think of the brain as a whole as a giant neuron making the other ones fire (and vice versa), and we are what the inside of that giant neuron is like. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 4:09 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I agree with Craig, although the way he presents it might seems a bit uncomputationalist, (if I can say(*)). Thoughts act on matter all the time. It is a selection of histories + a sharing. Like when a sculptor isolates an art form from a rock, and then send it in a museum. If mind did not act on matter, we would not have been able to fly to the moon, and I am not sure even birds could fly. It asks for relative works and time, and numerous deep computations. When you prepare coffee, mind acts on matter. When you drink coffee, matter acts on mind. No problem here (with comp). And we can learn to control computer at a distance, but there is no reason to suppose that computers can't do that. Mind acts on matter in a manner of speaking, but matter will not do anything that cannot be explained in terms of the underlying physics. An alien scientist could give a complete description of why humans behave as they do and make a computational model that accurately simulates human behaviour while remaining ignorant about human consciousness. But the alien could not do this if he were ignorant about protein chemistry, for example. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
