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. . . without fully acknowledging WHO is doing the investigating and understanding.
For the "WHO" question, I tend to favor a somewhat more Buddhist approach, although I've also been heavily influenced by Douglas Hofstadter's three books: "Gödel, Escher, Bach" (aka: GEB), "The Mind's I" (which he co-wrote with Dan Dennett), and "I Am A Strange Loop" (where I think he focuses most successfully on the central point that I'm going to try to explain here). Anyone who is familiar with Hofstadter knows that his central theme is self-reference. But the real core of his idea is not just self-reference it's...um...hard to explain, but I'll try. (He tried to get at this idea in GEB, but he found that most people didn't understand it, so he tried again a couple of decades later in "I Am A Strange Loop". If I can successfully explain it here in a few short paragraphs, it will be a miracle.)
Think of a vast, complicated system of standing dominoes (let's call it S) that is designed to calculate answers to math questions. Now let's focus on a particular domino, X, that will fall if-and-only-if 349 is a prime number. What causes X to fall (or not fall)? At one level of thinking, the immediate cause is the neighboring domino that is upstream from X. But there is another level of thinking to be considered. This is the level of meaning that is built into the system as a whole. There is a brute-fact, let's call it F1, which is the fact that 349 is a prime number (given the meaning of "349" and "prime number" is a necessary fact that any logically consistent calculation that answers the question "Is 349 prime" must answer "yes". There is also a contingent (i.e., not-necessary) fact, let's call it F2, to consider, namely, that fact that the system of dominos is designed to answer the question about the prime-ness of 349.
There is a sense in which the real cause of the falling of X is the combination of F1 and F2. In other words, the combination of a necessary fact (F1) and a contingent fact (F2) is, in some very real sense, an important cause of the falling of X. This was the relatively easy part of the explanation of what Hofstadter is getting at. The remaining steps get more mind-bending, but for brevity I'm going to skip over everything and go straight to the punch line, which is this: There is a deeply important sense in which our high-levels of abstract thinking cause vast arrays of micro-events to occur. In philosophical jargon, this is one variety of the concept of "downward causation." Very roughly: A important and genuinely real cause of X falling goes beyond the physical banging of one domino into another. The holistic set-up of X in the context of system S (including the abstract brute fact that 349 is a prime number) is a major aspect of the cause of X falling. In effect, systems of meanings are causally significant.
BTW: This is not an argument against physicalism, and it is not an argument against atheism. It could be argued that, given what we already know about physics (just current physics - no fancy paradigm shifts required) we seemingly already have all of the basic conceptual tools necessary to explain, in principle, how vast systems of "meaning" can emerge from the void of physics without any need for an Intelligent Designer upfront. We cannot yet fill in all of the details, but from the standpoint of logic, there are no obvious metaphysically baffling "explanatory gaps" staring us in the face - although I put "meaning" in scare quotes because things do get confusing - depending on what we mean by "meaning." Personally, I think that the explanatory gap due to qualia does eventually come around to bite us in the backside, but that's a long story. Anyway, even given the weirdness of qualia, it is still not an argument against atheism, nor is it an argument against physicalism, so long as you have an appropriately powerful form of future physics.
Now, finally, what does all this have to do with the "WHO" that Mystic wants to discuss? There is no way to say this quickly, but I'm going to say it quickly anyway. A human body is a physical system that is part of an unimaginably vast holistic set-up that is, in a sense "rigged" to self-organize and engage in self-referential processing. As I said earlier, there are limits to how many nested levels of "why" questions we can ask before hitting some sort of logical bedrocks of reality. Somewhere down in the bedrocks is the brute fact that Reality is the sort of thing wherein there is a potential for self-referential "why" questions to be asked. The feeling that there is a "who" who does the asking could be an illusion. I'm not saying that it necessarily is an illusion; I'm just saying that it could be (and I think that it is an illusion, to a great extent). But, to whatever extent the feeling of there being a necessary "who" who asks the questions is an illusion, I would argue that it is not just an illusion. To whatever the feeling of necessary who-ness is an illusion, it is an astoundingly profound sort of illusion that is grounded in an equally astounding brute fact of Reality. This is the fact that "experience happens." Not only is there something rather than nothing; there is experience of things, and a seemingly intrinsic aspect of experience is the potential for self-reference - the potential for experience to turn the "of" (i.e., the intentionality, or "about-ness") toward itself.
You could try to argue that the appearance of self-reference is, itself, an illusion. Maybe experience just seems to turn toward itself, but maybe in reality there is no "self" to turn to. I think that, to some extent, this is true. Experience essentially is physical reality, and the feeling that there is a "self" that is in some sense "beyond" or "above" physical reality is probably an illusion. But on what basis would you argue that physical Reality itself is "not really" self-referential? Gödel has already proven that math can be self-referential. I find it hard to see why anyone would want to insist that physical Reality is not self-referential (in fact, I can't think of anyone who does insist on that). So what does experiential physical Reality reference when it references itself? That question, in some ultimate sense, might be too abstruse and/or ill-defined for any sort of rational answer, but I think one partial answer to the question is fully rational: Whatever the truth of what Reality ultimately is - and what it "ought" to see if it were to truly turn its experiential nature around upon itself - the feeling of the self-referential turn is the feeling of being a self - the feeling of being the one who is looking. Maybe the "who" is to some extent an illusion - perhaps it's just a random feeling that pops up to plug the gap of some logical blindspot - but we have good rational grounds for believing that the self-referential turn as such is not an illusion. If Reality takes an experiential self-referential turn and finds the feeling of being a "self", then who are we to argue with this feeling? True, as David Hume points out, there is never a "self" to be found as an actual object of self-perception, but the feeling of being a self is nonetheless real, and it is rooted in a deeply real and utterly astounding process - the process of physical reality engaging in self-referential experience.
Personally, I believe that there is no rational basis for numerically distinguishing between particular individual selves, even though there is a feeling of being a particular self individuated from other selves. My take on it is this: At the core of the "feeling of being a self" is an Aristotelian universal. Each moment is a unique instantiation embodied as innumerable particular memories, desires, etc., but at the core of each and every moment of experience - whether self-referential or otherwise - is the holistic Unity of Reality.
Short answer: The "WHO" in each and every case is, in some deep sense, just Self-referential Reality Itself.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 12-08-2014 at 09:34 AM..
We have indeed been around the mulberry bush over these issues many times, Gaylen. But the actual issue is clear and always has been grounded in the experience of "I." We acknowledge that the classical Idealism is deficient in the light of current neuroscience . . . but reductionism as you have repeatedly tried to explain is similarly deficient because of the issues implicit in the experience of "I." The experience of "I" happens to be the apex manifestation of the underlying phenomenon of consciousness that epitomizes qualia. What we consider inert matter is actually the lowest form of life . . . imbued only with processes (physical and chemical "laws") that establish order out of chaos.
Various advanced processes involving varying stages of competition, cooperation and survival are the manifestations of consciousness we typically recognize as life . . . with those attributes (competition, survival, etc.) as the signature characteristics of that level of consciousness. Sentience and various degrees of self-awareness are more advanced manifestations of the underlying consciousness field . . . up to our apex manifestation of conscious awareness embodied in the experience of "I." This state of affairs conflates and confuses us because that "apex form of consciousness that manifests as 'I'" is what we are using to investigate, discern and understand the phenomenon . . . without fully acknowledging WHO is doing the investigating and understanding. We use the pronouns ("I," "you," "we," "they," etc.) willy-nilly in our speech and written deliberations as something "given in the inner consciousness" that remains in the penumbra of our deliberations . . . never the focus. We implicitly deny our very existence as we seek to "objectively investigate our very existence . . . the experience of "I" and other manifestations of our awareness of life.
I enjoy your efforts to discover ways to measure the lower manifestations of consciousness as qualia (or proto-qualia . . . what you call the physical and chemical laws that govern our reality) because they are in many ways consistent with my views of our reality as a consciousness field. Consciousness as a field as the basis of our reality simply manifests in differing ways . . . from what you refer to as the fundamental physical and chemical processes to the apex manifestation of our conscious awareness. What you consider physical and chemical "laws" that underlie everything are simply the lowest manifestations of the fundamental consciousness field establishing order out of chaos. I applaud your efforts to find the "quantum leap measurement and mathematical paradigm shift" that will be necessary to capture this reality.
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Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
For the "WHO" question, I tend to favor a somewhat more Buddhist approach, although I've also been heavily influenced by Douglas Hofstadter's three books: "Gödel, Escher, Bach" (aka: GEB), "The Mind's I" (which he co-wrote with Dan Dennett), and "I Am A Strange Loop" (where I think he focuses most successfully on the central point that I'm going to try to explain here). Anyone who is familiar with Hofstadter knows that his central theme is self-reference. But the real core of his idea is not just self-reference it's...um...hard to explain, but I'll try. (He tried to get at this idea in GEB, but he found that most people didn't understand it, so he tried again a couple of decades later in "I Am A Strange Loop". If I can successfully explain it here in a few short paragraphs, it will be a miracle.)
Think of a vast, complicated system of standing dominoes (let's call it S) that is designed to calculate answers to math questions. Now let's focus on a particular domino, X, that will fall if-and-only-if 349 is a prime number. What causes X to fall (or not fall)? At one level of thinking, the immediate cause is the neighboring domino that is upstream from X. But there is another level of thinking to be considered. This is the level of meaning that is built into the system as a whole. There is a brute-fact, let's call it F1, which is the fact that 349 is a prime number (given the meaning of "349" and "prime number" is a necessary fact that any logically consistent calculation that answers the question "Is 349 prime" must answer "yes". There is also a contingent (i.e., not-necessary) fact, let's call it F2, to consider, namely, that fact that the system of dominos is designed to answer the question about the prime-ness of 349.
There is a sense in which the real cause of the falling of X is the combination of F1 and F2. In other words, the combination of a necessary fact (F1) and a contingent fact (F2) is, in some very real sense, an important cause of the falling of X. This was the relatively easy part of the explanation of what Hofstadter is getting at. The remaining steps get more mind-bending, but for brevity I'm going to skip over everything and go straight to the punch line, which is this: There is a deeply important sense in which our high-levels of abstract thinking cause vast arrays of micro-events to occur. In philosophical jargon, this is one variety of the concept of "downward causation." Very roughly: A important and genuinely real cause of X falling goes beyond the physical banging of one domino into another. The holistic set-up of X in the context of system S (including the abstract brute fact that 349 is a prime number) is a major aspect of the cause of X falling. In effect, systems of meanings are causally significant.
BTW: This is not an argument against physicalism, and it is not an argument against atheism. It could be argued that, given what we already know about physics (just current physics - no fancy paradigm shifts required) we seemingly already have all of the basic conceptual tools necessary to explain, in principle, how vast systems of "meaning" can emerge from the void of physics without any need for an Intelligent Designer upfront. We cannot yet fill in all of the details, but from the standpoint of logic, there are no obvious metaphysically baffling "explanatory gaps" staring us in the face - although I put "meaning" in scare quotes because things do get confusing - depending on what we mean by "meaning." Personally, I think that the explanatory gap due to qualia does eventually come around to bite us in the backside, but that's a long story. Anyway, even given the weirdness of qualia, it is still not an argument against atheism, nor is it an argument against physicalism, so long as you have an appropriately powerful form of future physics.
Now, finally, what does all this have to do with the "WHO" that Mystic wants to discuss? There is no way to say this quickly, but I'm going to say it quickly anyway. A human body is a physical system that is part of an unimaginably vast holistic set-up that is, in a sense "rigged" to self-organize and engage in self-referential processing. As I said earlier, there are limits to how many nested levels of "why" questions we can ask before hitting some sort of logical bedrocks of reality. Somewhere down in the bedrocks is the brute fact that Reality is the sort of thing wherein there is a potential for self-referential "why" questions to be asked. The feeling that there is a "who" who does the asking could be an illusion. I'm not saying that it necessarily is an illusion; I'm just saying that it could be (and I think that it is an illusion, to a great extent). But, to whatever extent the feeling of there being a necessary "who" who asks the questions is an illusion, I would argue that it is not just an illusion. To whatever the feeling of necessary who-ness is an illusion, it is an astoundingly profound sort of illusion that is grounded in an equally astounding brute fact of Reality. This is the fact that "experience happens." Not only is there something rather than nothing; there is experience of things, and a seemingly intrinsic aspect of experience is the potential for self-reference - the potential for experience to turn the "of" (i.e., the intentionality, or "about-ness") toward itself.
This is what I have unsuccessfully tried to convey about the self-referential dilemma. IF we demand that our consciousness reside within the brain state itself . . . we encounter a logical impossibility. We know that whatever our consciousness IS . . . it is a function of the entire brain. Therefore it is the entire brain state that produces our consciousness. However, for it to be self-referential what is produced must reside outside of the brain state to be referenced . . . or else the brain state to be referenced would be altered to the self-referencing state. Catch 22. You want to say it is all of reality itself in a body/brain/reality "System" that is self-referential. I say it is the consciousness field that comprises our entire reality and that field is the locus of our consciousness doing the self-referencing. Do you see any real difference . . . other than word choice, Gaylen?
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You could try to argue that the appearance of self-reference is, itself, an illusion. Maybe experience just seems to turn toward itself, but maybe in reality there is no "self" to turn to. I think that, to some extent, this is true. Experience essentially is physical reality, and the feeling that there is a "self" that is in some sense "beyond" or "above" physical reality is probably an illusion. But on what basis would you argue that physical Reality itself is "not really" self-referential? Gödel has already proven that math can be self-referential. I find it hard to see why anyone would want to insist that physical Reality is not self-referential (in fact, I can't think of anyone who does insist on that). So what does experiential physical Reality reference when it references itself? That question, in some ultimate sense, might be too abstruse and/or ill-defined for any sort of rational answer, but I think one partial answer to the question is fully rational: Whatever the truth of what Reality ultimately is - and what it "ought" to see if it were to truly turn its experiential nature around upon itself - the feeling of the self-referential turn is the feeling of being a self - the feeling of being the one who is looking. Maybe the "who" is to some extent an illusion - perhaps it's just a random feeling that pops up to plug the gap of some logical blindspot - but we have good rational grounds for believing that the self-referential turn as such is not an illusion. If Reality takes an experiential self-referential turn and finds the feeling of being a "self", then who are we to argue with this feeling? True, as David Hume points out, there is never a "self" to be found as an actual object of self-perception, but the feeling of being a self is nonetheless real, and it is rooted in a deeply real and utterly astounding process - the process of physical reality engaging in self-referential experience.
This argument from illusion is legion . . . and specious. Everything is real . . . as some aspect of reality. What distinguishes what we typically call illusion is a failure to actively interact with other aspects of reality . . . independently AS the illusion. Nevertheless, it does interact with the part of reality we are discussing . . . the part that experiences the illusion . . . the elusive "I" (or whatever other pronoun might be appropriate). What distinguishes what you want to call the illusion of Self from all other true illusions is the fact that the Self interacts independently with reality . . . AS the Self. No other illusion does this. They are all limited to interacting with the "experiencer" of the illusion.
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Personally, I believe that there is no rational basis for numerically distinguishing between particular individual selves, even though there is a feeling of being a particular self individuated from other selves. My take on it is this: At the core of the "feeling of being a self" is an Aristotelian universal. Each moment is a unique instantiation embodied as innumerable particular memories, desires, etc., but at the core of each and every moment of experience - whether self-referential or otherwise - is the holistic Unity of Reality. Short answer: The "WHO" in each and every case is, in some deep sense, just Self-referential Reality Itself.
The anti-God bias here is profound. I see no difference between a "Self-referential Reality" . . . i.e., a conscious reality . . . and God. This is consistent with my view that we are cellular consciousness reproducing God's consciousness. My experience retaining my sense of Self while experiencing Oneness contradicts most of the Eastern traditions' beliefs . . . so it is in that way anomalous.
Last edited by MysticPhD; 12-08-2014 at 01:52 PM..
I say it is the consciousness field that comprises our entire reality and that field is the locus of our consciousness doing the self-referencing. Do you see any real difference . . . other than word choice, Gaylen?
I think we've concluded in other threads that you and I are very close to being on the same page. I use the word "God" to refer to the general idea of "Intelligent Designer" and/or "Universal Mind" that is conscious prior to the existence of the complex types of embodied physical states we call "organisms" (or, possibly, machines - if we can build them right).
The difference between us is the difference between a "primordial qualitative chaos" and "consciousness field," or, more specifically, the difference between "primordial chaos" and "primordial consciousness." If I were to use something closer to your terminology, I would have to say something like "primordial unconscious field." If I were to use the term "God", I would have to say a fundamentally "sleeping" or "unconscious" God who, under the right circumstances "wakes up" in various finite and often unintelligent forms. In "chicken vs. egg" terminology, I vote for the "egg" - i.e., an unconscious physical system that has the intrinsic potential to be conscious but is not full-fledged conscious in a fundamental way. On my view, consciousness and intelligence are contingent facts about Reality, not necessary or fundamental aspects of Reality. And, finally, I would say that EVERY instance of a conscious/intelligent being is a process that has emerged from fundamentally unconscious/non-intelligent fundamentals.
BTW: This doesn't mean that consciousness and intelligence couldn't be infinitely old. It could be that there is no such thing as a "first" moment of conscious experience, but, nevertheless, every conscious experience emerges from an unconscious substrate. (In a prior post I used the analogy in which conscious experiences are infinite in the sense that integers are infinite, but the primordial unconscious substrate is "infinitely more infinite" - like real numbers are infinitely more infinite that integers.)
If you think that machines can't be conscious, then there must be some other differences between us, because there is nothing in my way of thinking to prevent machines from being conscious (so long as they instantiate the right types of physical processes).
However, for it to be self-referential what is produced must reside outside of the brain state to be referenced . . . or else the brain state to be referenced would be altered to the self-referencing state. Catch 22.
There's internal feedback in lots of physical systems. No reason to think they aren't part of brain function as well. This seems to be another area where philosophy has "logically" determined something to be impossible even thought it actually happens in reality. Guess which one I'm going to view as authoritative?
This is what I have unsuccessfully tried to convey about the self-referential dilemma. IF we demand that our consciousness reside within the brain state itself . . . we encounter a logical impossibility. We know that whatever our consciousness IS . . . it is a function of the entire brain. Therefore it is the entire brain state that produces our consciousness. However, for it to be self-referential what is produced must reside outside of the brain state to be referenced . . . or else the brain state to be referenced would be altered to the self-referencing state.
you guy might want to anchor your ideas in something other philosophy or "pure logic". One is incomplete (like quick sand) and the other implies that we know more than we know,
But I agree with your post to a degree. But I put it in terms of "connections" or "isolated". The brain is not isolated from the rest of the universe. And no one here says or claims that. The brain was formed from and interacts with the surrounding system by design. It is also interacting with many fields around it that we are and we are not aware of. However, to have a claim rooted in or anchored in the unknown leads to wishy washy idea's. Like literal religion or there is "no me".
We know that whatever our consciousness IS . . . it is a function of the entire brain. Therefore it is the entire brain state that produces our consciousness. However, for it to be self-referential what is produced must reside outside of the brain state to be referenced . . . or else the brain state to be referenced would be altered to the self-referencing state. Catch 22.
Since at least the 1960s we have had computer systems with one "brain" that are self-referential. It is done with processing "interrupts". Processing stops periodically, and any background task, including collecting information on its internal state, can be pursued for a time period. The gathered data can then be used by the mainline processing as desired. While it is true that interrupt processing, or any similar activity such its modern counterpart, multithreading, creates the potential for corrupting the state of the main processing, and there must be safeguards in place, corruption does not follow from such techniques. The latest functional programming techniques, followed purely, work entirely with immutable data structures, and at the expense of some conceptual obtuseness for the programmer, render such corruption impossible.
Besides, since when is any brain process perfect? It doesn't have to be perfect, only good enough to get the job done. Our evolutionary tendencies -- emotional responses, agency inference, confirmation bias -- are crude optimizations for raw survival and ill serve us in many ways, leading us into errors of perception and irrational responses all the time. Yet we as a species continue to thrive, because our societies and cultures are complex systems, and complex systems tend to self-heal.
However, for it to be self-referential what is produced must reside outside of the brain state to be referenced . . . or else the brain state to be referenced would be altered to the self-referencing state. Catch 22.
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Originally Posted by KCfromNC
There's internal feedback in lots of physical systems. No reason to think they aren't part of brain function as well. This seems to be another area where philosophy has "logically" determined something to be impossible even thought it actually happens in reality. Guess which one I'm going to view as authoritative?
Let's be clear about a few things: "Philosophy" is not speaking in this post - it's MysticPhD who is speaking. If it's wrong, it's not the fault of philosophy or logic; it's a flaw in Mystic's use of logic.
In this particular case, Mystic would have to clarify several things before I would agree that "logic determines" something about this. For example, I'd have to know what exactly he thinks is "produced" in a self-referential process. Once we know what that is, then we could weight the strength of arguments for and against the idea that this product "must reside outside of the brain."
Nobody - not even the most prestigious philosopher - speaks for "philosophy". Virtually all philosophical positions are open to attack. Every philosophical statement is generally assumed to be a "buyer beware" commodity. Insofar as thinking "philosophically" is concerned, each individual has to weight the arguments for both sides of an issue and come to their own conclusion. From what I can tell, actual philosophical thinking is almost completely absent from most internet forums - at least insofar as highly controversial topics involving religion, politics, and morality are addressed. Most people, it seems to me, come into these forums with an axe to grind. I rarely come across anyone who has any genuine interest in studying and understanding the claims of those who hold opposing viewpoints.
In a philosophical discussion, one of the very first things you should want to do is demonstrate that you have extensively studied the viewpoint that you are attacking. In most philosophy articles, the author generally starts by summarizing, in their own words, the very best arguments and evidence they could find, in order to prove that they understand what their philosophical opponents are saying. Of course I don't expect that level of effort in these forums, but I'm always grateful when I find someone who demonstrates some ability to read and think beyond the confines of their own group of cronies.
I have the impression that Arequipa has his heart in the right place. He seems genuinely interested striving to understand other viewpoints. I don't expect him (or anyone else here) to ever agree with me, but that's ok. My goal is to understand, to the greatest extent possible, why you don't agree with me. I have this feeling that you might be seeing something that I'm missing, and I really want to know what the heck that is. Once I get it, I can reach a new synthesis of understanding ("thesis-->antithesis-->synthesis") and that's what I want.
At the other end of the spectrum, Mystic has had experiences that he interprets as revelation/enlightenment. I often don't agree with his arguments and conclusions, but I am interested in his viewpoints because, frankly, I think he could be right - or, at least his experience could have helped him to see things that I just can't seem to understand at the moment. To put it another way: At this point I don't believe that Mystic is right about some of the central issues we've been discussing, but this doesn't mean that his views can't still spark moments of insight for me.
This is what I have unsuccessfully tried to convey about the self-referential dilemma. IF we demand that our consciousness reside within the brain state itself . . . we encounter a logical impossibility. We know that whatever our consciousness IS . . . it is a function of the entire brain. Therefore it is the entire brain state that produces our consciousness. However, for it to be self-referential what is produced must reside outside of the brain state to be referenced . . . or else the brain state to be referenced would be altered to the self-referencing state. Catch 22. You want to say it is all of reality itself in a body/brain/reality "System" that is self-referential. I say it is the consciousness field that comprises our entire reality and that field is the locus of our consciousness doing the self-referencing. Do you see any real difference . . . other than word choice, Gaylen? This argument from illusion is legion . . . and specious. Everything is real . . . as some aspect of reality. What distinguishes what we typically call illusion is a failure to actively interact with other aspects of reality . . . independently AS the illusion. Nevertheless, it does interact with the part of reality we are discussing . . . the part that experiences the illusion . . . the elusive "I" (or whatever other pronoun might be appropriate). What distinguishes what you want to call the illusion of Self from all other true illusions is the fact that the Self interacts independently with reality . . . AS the Self. No other illusion does this. They are all limited to interacting with the "experiencer" of the illusion. The anti-God bias here is profound. I see no difference between a "Self-referential Reality" . . . i.e., a conscious reality . . . and God. This is consistent with my view that we are cellular consciousness reproducing God's consciousness. My experience retaining my sense of Self while experiencing Oneness contradicts most of the Eastern traditions' beliefs . . . so it is in that way anomalous.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
Since at least the 1960s we have had computer systems with one "brain" that are self-referential. It is done with processing "interrupts". Processing stops periodically, and any background task, including collecting information on its internal state, can be pursued for a time period. The gathered data can then be used by the mainline processing as desired. While it is true that interrupt processing, or any similar activity such its modern counterpart, multithreading, creates the potential for corrupting the state of the main processing, and there must be safeguards in place, corruption does not follow from such techniques. The latest functional programming techniques, followed purely, work entirely with immutable data structures, and at the expense of some conceptual obtuseness for the programmer, render such corruption impossible.
It is the imprecise use of language that makes communication in these internet fora so difficult. Gaylen has done a remarkable job of presenting his explanations striving for some commonality in the use of referents. My approach has been to use analogy and readily understood mundane concepts as a bridge to the more nuanced and jargon-bound concepts. Neither approach has been very successful in elucidating the philosophical issues . . . but I suspect his efforts and the responses to them have aided Gaylen in solidifying his approach to the stickier issues. In this case the term self-referential is what produces the experience of "I" and the essence of qualia. The self-referencing you are describing in computer systems is not the same. It is simply unaware action-reaction . . . the essence of what you are trying to pretend can become conscious awareness. But the computer "experiences" nothing . . . and that is the central issue we are addressing. It is what differentiates the individual tonal vibrations within a mechanical sound system from the "experiencing" of melody from a sequence of those individual tones.
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Besides, since when is any brain process perfect? It doesn't have to be perfect, only good enough to get the job done. Our evolutionary tendencies -- emotional responses, agency inference, confirmation bias -- are crude optimizations for raw survival and ill serve us in many ways, leading us into errors of perception and irrational responses all the time. Yet we as a species continue to thrive, because our societies and cultures are complex systems, and complex systems tend to self-heal.
.Your use of the pronouns reflects (but ignores) the true perceptual locus for the processes you mistakenly believe are objectively determined mechanistically. They are not. Our brain produces a composite resonant neural field that comprises what we experience as our awareness. Because it is within the unified field it can reflect on the neuronal states that produce it and experience the sense of "I."
Let's be clear about a few things: "Philosophy" is not speaking in this post - it's MysticPhD who is speaking. If it's wrong, it's not the fault of philosophy or logic; it's a flaw in Mystic's use of logic.
In this particular case, Mystic would have to clarify several things before I would agree that "logic determines" something about this. For example, I'd have to know what exactly he thinks is "produced" in a self-referential process. Once we know what that is, then we could weight the strength of arguments for and against the idea that this product "must reside outside of the brain."
Nobody - not even the most prestigious philosopher - speaks for "philosophy". Virtually all philosophical positions are open to attack. Every philosophical statement is generally assumed to be a "buyer beware" commodity. Insofar as thinking "philosophically" is concerned, each individual has to weight the arguments for both sides of an issue and come to their own conclusion. From what I can tell, actual philosophical thinking is almost completely absent from most internet forums - at least insofar as highly controversial topics involving religion, politics, and morality are addressed. Most people, it seems to me, come into these forums with an axe to grind. I rarely come across anyone who has any genuine interest in studying and understanding the claims of those who hold opposing viewpoints.
In a philosophical discussion, one of the very first things you should want to do is demonstrate that you have extensively studied the viewpoint that you are attacking. In most philosophy articles, the author generally starts by summarizing, in their own words, the very best arguments and evidence they could find, in order to prove that they understand what their philosophical opponents are saying. Of course I don't expect that level of effort in these forums, but I'm always grateful when I find someone who demonstrates some ability to read and think beyond the confines of their own group of cronies.
I have the impression that Arequipa has his heart in the right place. He seems genuinely interested striving to understand other viewpoints. I don't expect him (or anyone else here) to ever agree with me, but that's ok. My goal is to understand, to the greatest extent possible, why you don't agree with me. I have this feeling that you might be seeing something that I'm missing, and I really want to know what the heck that is. Once I get it, I can reach a new synthesis of understanding ("thesis-->antithesis-->synthesis") and that's what I want.
At the other end of the spectrum, Mystic has had experiences that he interprets as revelation/enlightenment. I often don't agree with his arguments and conclusions, but I am interested in his viewpoints because, frankly, I think he could be right - or, at least his experience could have helped him to see things that I just can't seem to understand at the moment. To put it another way: At this point I don't believe that Mystic is right about some of the central issues we've been discussing, but this doesn't mean that his views can't still spark moments of insight for me.
you are missing evidence. Consciousness has no evidence of being fundamental yet. But if you approached from the other angle, ours, you may just hit something.
BTW, the first thing we do in "philosophy" is order the drinks.
Neither approach has been very successful in elucidating the philosophical issues
Correct. Making up hypotheticals isn't a particularly convincing way of discussing reality.
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The self-referencing you are describing in computer systems is not the same.
It was an analogy. You concrete thinker types need to get past the literal interpretation and understand the philosophical implications of what is being discussed. Or at least that's what you've been insisting all along.
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Your use of the pronouns reflects (but ignores) the true perceptual locus for the processes you mistakenly believe are objectively determined mechanistically. They are not. Our brain produces a composite resonant neural field that comprises what we experience as our awareness. Because it is within the unified field it can reflect on the neuronal states that produce it and experience the sense of "I."
Get back to us when you have the first shred of evidence for this.
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