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Thanks for the cheerful and its been a busy day. Good analogy , the experiment with time and the double slit I viewed a year or so ago has some leverage in the thinking. Things to do with the nature of measure , time, distance, gravity, all that , including consciousness and the here & now , which would be a standing measure, how could a here and now be , where the clock does nothing but click , the here and now qualia doesn't seem to be the same page as time itself, although once gathered the clock must be ticking because of the mechanical process measuring in time. Its a pleasure for sure to compliment all the approach's and the super explaining, it gets me in a classroom for once. Anyway don't mind my ramblings and I often delete them after re reading because sometimes they look ridiculous, its great reading, in a great mood today and thanks for sure.
Last edited by Sophronius; 01-09-2015 at 12:20 PM..
So it is entirely possible that proto-qualitative is just normal objective-type physics at work in a particular way? If so, why all the calls for a fundamental change in the way science works to account for this particular process?
I say no - not "just normal objective-type physics." As I've said, qualia have objective aspects, but they also have subjective aspects, and (according to my proposal) the properties that are only observable via the subjective aspects will ultimately need to play an important role inthe causal explanations of animal behavior because animal behavior reflects "agent causation" and agent causation is dependent on the subjective "feel" of being an agent. If I'm right, then the activities of micro-elements in the brains of living creatures cannot be reductively explained in terms of the currently known elements and forces of fundamental physics. Again, I'm not saying that physics can never do it, I'm just saying that some fundamental tweaks will be needed before future physics can do it.[/quote]
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And if it is a placeholder for the unknown, why the loaded term for it? Seems like lots of mysticism hiding in that alleged "whatever".
Qualia are not unknown. A hot area of research in neuroscience is the search for "neural correlates" of qualitative experience. The only way to know that you've found a "neural correlate" is to ask the subject for a qualitative report, or to interpret the behavior of the subject in some qualitative way (e.g., "the animal appears to be in pain", etc.) And, I'd say, that just because some aspect of a quale can only be known subjectively, it does not follow that the quale is "unknown." I see no reason to think that subjective knowledge is not knowledge. So qualia are known in human life, and they are known in higher-level sciences. It is physics that has not yet incorporated qualitative concepts into formal theory, and this is worrisome because fundamental physics is supposed to provide the theoretical foundations for all of the higher-level phenomena - including qualia. What's unknown is not qualia; what's unknown is how to account for qualia in the theoretical terms of physics.
There never has been a question that consciousness is "a physically -engineered product of our brain.". The question is about what form of energy the "product" is in and where it resides within the universe. Consciousness is central to experience, to the creation of the "experiencer" and to the creation of all models that attempt to define and explain it. Therefore the experiential models cannot be the "experiencer" that creates them no matter how sophisticated. Consciousness is produced by the neurology of the brain, but what is produced is not resident there. Consciousness is an aggregate composite or summary of all the neural states across the entire brain at any point in time. As E. Roy John describes it, consciousness is the composite awareness that arises within a resonant neural field across all participating neurons. Consciousness summarizes into a composite awareness the neural states across the entire brain at any point in time. This means that the brain itself cannot simultaneously contain the summary of the states without losing the states to be summarized. This tends to validate B.Libet's and E. Roy John's field conceptions of consciousness.The brain is a state machine with the neural activity producing the inputs to an abstraction in the unified field . . . consciousness. I have tried frujitlessly to use another abstraction . . . melody . . . to illustrate the different loci.
To try again, a melody is an abstract composite of a sequence of notes that only exists within a consciousness field. The notes exist separately and phenomenologically as individual sound waves. But the composite melody does not reside in the individual activity of the sound waves. Melody needs an "experiencer" to experience it. The melody only interacts with reality as individual sound wave activity . . . NOT as a composite. That is why it is ONLY an abstraction. The problem with true abstractions like melody is that they ARE illusions. They are just content within a consciousness and do not interact with reality as a composite. But our conscious Self IS an "experiencer" and it does interact with reality as an identifiable composite.
As a field phenomenon, consciousness becomes a composite abstraction. This is what leads to the misconception that it and the Self are illusory. Our consciousness is an abstract composite of the individual neural activity that comprises it . . . but unlike melody it does interact with reality as an identifiable composite . . . as here in the forum. The cognitive products in this forum evidence that unique and identifiable interaction . . . as they carry the unique output of each of its named contributors. The combination of its existence as a field phenomenon and its abstract but interactive status as a composite require that consciousness be a unique form of energy. Only forms of energy can interact with reality in identifiable ways.
The existence of an "experiencer" (or Self) as the embodiment of the ubiquitous pronouns we use is what removes consciousness from the machine that produces it. It is important to distinguish any specific memorial content of the Self from the Self. Since our only access to the memorial content in this physical form is through the content recorded in the brain . . . any interference with that content can alter the Self that is played back. But the essential sense of "being and experiencing" remains. It is that essential sense of "being and experiencing" that is the core of our composite consciousness produced by the brain. You and I (the "consciousnesses-in-process" that are communicating in this forum . . . NOT our physical beings) actually exist as composite resonant neural field phenomena within the universal field. It is produced in a field form of energy (a separate level of being) from this physical one. In short, we are NOT our physical body at all. We are the "experiencer" produced by it. Since a sense of Self is integral to what is produced (as we experience it) is a field energy form.of some kind . . . it is hard to imagine why or how that would ever cease to be.
Of course we can only experience this sense of Self . . . not currently measure the "experiencer" . . . so it is speculative. But we cannot measure what comprises 95+% of our reality so that hardly seems a compelling basis to reject what we cannot measure. While the composite consciousness field is speculative . . . there is nothing speculative about fields, per se. They provide the very attributes of our reality that the SM USES to investigate our hypotheses. Even the newly found Higgs Boson is a "particle event" verifying the existence of the Higgs field in the Standard Model. Currently we have identified separate "sub-fields" to account for the "forces" used in our physical models to explain macro processes and events. It is our current ignorance that is unable to model the unified field that subsumes and integrates all of the current ones into a TOE . . . but field phenomena are ALL that exist in their myriad manifestations that we call reality and life. But I still see no way to instantiate an "experiencer" into a mere machine of any kind.
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Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
Obviously you're metaphysics is different than most of the others in this group. But what I don't yet understand is exactly how your metaphysics implies that machines cannot be conscious. Apparently a human being is a "resonant neural field phenomena within the universal field," but on what basis do you say that only neural field phenomena can resonate with the universal field? What, specifically, is it about neurons that allows them to resonate with the universal field, whereas, presumably, other types of information processing systems would not? I'm going to make some guesses, and speculate for the fun of it, although I will probably go off track from your perspective.
I expect you will say that neurons are alive, and only living cells can be in resonance with the universal field. So then my question would be: What are the essential criteria that make neurons count as "alive"? E.g., is carbon essential, or could a living thing be made of something else? In other words, is it the material itself that contributes to the aliveness, or does it have more to do with functional capacities?
For my next question I'm going to need a distinction between organic life created by humans, and synthetic life. By "organic life" I mean living organisms that are chemically the same as - or extremely similar to - natural living organisms, but, in this case, created in a lab by processes meant to reproduce types of processes that could explain abiogenesis on earth. By "synthetic life" I mean organisms that are chemically very different from natural organisms (perhaps engineered though nanotechnology?), but are capable of self-maintenance, reproduction, metabolism, etc.
Could synthetic living cells potentially constitute a brain that could resonate with the universal field?
Personally, I don't think that algorithmically-driven electrical circuitry - no matter how complex - will ever be conscious (even though I will grant that, with really clever programming, such circuitry might someday be able to roughly simulate (i.e., model) human brain processes.). I say this because I think that qualia are indexical perspective-based (i.e., subjective because they are self-referencing) phenomena that emerge via spontaneously self-organizing physical processes, where the concept of "physical" depends on an advanced from of physics in which qualitative (or proto-qualitative) properties are logically "built in" to the elements and principles of fundamental physics (probably in the form of modifications to current quantum models needed to explain quantum behavior within living systems). A model of a quale is not a quale, thus the ability to model a quale does not imply that there is anything it is like to be the machine that models the quale.
If by the word "machine" you mean something that is "algorithmically-driven" then I would say that "machines" will never be conscious. If the word 'machine' includes nano-engineered self-organizing systems composed of elements that are capable of self-maintaining, self-reproducing, self-referencing functions, then I would say that machines can be conscious.
I have not adequately justified how/why the subjective perspective (as defined above) should "feel like" anything (I have not fully solved the hard problem). I've simply posited what I see as some minimal requirements for the type of system capable of sentient experience. My own form of accepting a "promissory note" is to suggest that a future physics that somehow manages to incorporate qualitative properties will somehow help us understand this. I suspect that something more or less like a "primordial proto-qualitative field" (what I've called a "primordial qualitative chaos") might have to be accepted as a fundamental premise if we are ever to solve the hard problem. I suppose that something along the lines of resonance with this field could serve as a basis for explanation of qualitative "raw feels" of experience, although, at the moment, I'm not sure what that even means.
You always drive to the heart of the problem, Gaylen and I tend to agree with your guesses. This IS the central question that I believe renders moot your efforts "to reduce" qualitative experience. The "experiencer" is a unique form of energy NOT currently measurable (hence NOT "modelable") by science (as in "Dark energy/Dark matter") . . . except by its impacts on what CAN be measured (self-reports, etc.). I believe this will be the stumbling block for the abiogenesis efforts as well. That is why I said if you ever are successful . . . you will have solved the abiogenesis problem.
That said . . . you know my feelings about all the euphemisms that populate these efforts to reduce subjective experience . . . i.e., "emergence," "self-whatever," etc. Even if we can eventually mimic all the "self-whatevers" we will not have an "experiencer" in any non-living material. Pretending that we are explaining and therefore confirming the existence of an "experiencer" by mimicking the outputs in non-living material will never qualify as evidence or explanation in MY metaphysics.
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 MysticPhD
You always drive to the heart of the problem, Gaylen and I tend to agree with your guesses. This IS the central question that I believe renders moot your efforts "to reduce" qualitative experience. The "experiencer" is a unique form of energy NOT currently measurable (hence NOT "modelable") by science (as in "Dark energy/Dark matter") . . . except by its impacts on what CAN be measured (self-reports, etc.). I believe this will be the stumbling block for the abiogenesis efforts as well. That is why I said if you ever are successful . . . you will have solved the abiogenesis problem.
That said . . . you know my feelings about all the euphemisms that populate these efforts to reduce subjective experience . . . i.e., "emergence," "self-whatever," etc. Even if we can eventually mimic all the "self-whatevers" we will not have an "experiencer" in any non-living material. Pretending that we are explaining and therefore confirming the existence of an "experiencer" by mimicking the outputs in non-living material will never qualify as evidence or explanation in MY metaphysics.
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Originally Posted by monumentus
Then perhaps you can stop dodging the direct questions put to you and inform us why a machine constructed to perform all the same functions as another machine - the biological brain - is any less capable of this experience of "I" than you or I am?
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Originally Posted by monumentus
That is quite the claim - any evidence for it? At all? Of any kind?
Frankly I am bemused by the fact that you can read my detailed posts and NOT understand them . . . or pretend you do not. Your continued pretense that you do not know or understand what the difference is between living and non-living matter is specious. Non-living material can NOT in any way experience what living matter can. Any arguments or pretense to not know why there is a difference borders on trolling. It is a transparent attempt to place the burden of explaining what life IS on your opponents. When you can tell me what is missing from a rock that makes it not be alive . . . I will entertain your pretended ignorance, taunts and sophistry.
Frankly I am bemused by the fact that you can read my detailed posts and NOT understand them
And I am equally bemused that having been corrected on it multiple times in the past - you still equate a failure to agree with you as a failure in understanding you. Equally bemused am I that you always get so personal about it too.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Your continued pretense that you do not know or understand what the difference is between living and non-living matter is specious.
What is speciious is your claim that I said any such thing - as I never have. I am fully aware of the differences - though they are not as special as you want to pretend - and I see nothing in those differences that supports what you are pretending to claim on the thread - which is that a machine could never be constructed that is concious.
You seem to think that simply pointing out that there are differences between living matter and non-living matter closes the argument for you. It does not. At the end of the day it is all matter. And that matter is constructed in the form of a machine.
In our case it is a biological machine - the question you refuse to answer is why a non-biological machine constructed to perform the same function would not be conscious or alive. You simply assume this - and assert it as truth for no reason.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Non-living material can NOT in any way experience what living matter can.
Says you. But on what basis? Imagination? For you have not supported this at all. It is all just matter. "Living" matter is not special or magical. It is just matter constructed in a particular form and configuration. So why should any matter also constructed in a particular form or configuration not be just as capable of performing all the same things.
You seem to think calling it "living matter" turns it into something special. It does not. Matter is matter is matter. There is nothing special about living matter. What confers the "special" to it is the HOW it is put together. And if the biological machine that is our brain is just matter in a certain configuration - then on what basis do you presume to claim that any other matter constructed to achieve the same functions would not be JUST as conscious? No basis at all that I can see.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Any arguments or pretense to not know why there is a difference borders on trolling.
Then report it to the mods of which you are not one. The fact is my point is valid and not trolling at all - so I do expect them to support your claims. The differences are clear - are not as special as you are pretending - and they in no way preclude what you are pretending they preclude.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
When you can tell me what is missing from a rock that makes it not be alive . . .
Which I just did. Nothing is "missing" from a rock. It is matter. You are matter. The only difference is how that matter is put together - and in what form and configuration. There is nothing different about "living" matter than rock matter - except in how that matter is structured. It is you - not I - using pretended ignorance as evidence for claims.
Note also how in your diatribe here you have not actually answered the question I asked - and you quoted in your response. You very directly claimed the existence of a unique - as yet unmeasured - energy here. What is your evidence for this - I ask again!
I say no - not "just normal objective-type physics." As I've said, qualia have objective aspects, but they also have subjective aspects, and (according to my proposal) the properties that are only observable via the subjective aspects will ultimately need to play an important role inthe causal explanations of animal behavior because animal behavior reflects "agent causation" and agent causation is dependent on the subjective "feel" of being an agent. If I'm right, then the activities of micro-elements in the brains of living creatures cannot be reductively explained in terms of the currently known elements and forces of fundamental physics. Again, I'm not saying that physics can never do it, I'm just saying that some fundamental tweaks will be needed before future physics can do it.
I'm still not seeing a connection here. Sure, some data about certain has to be collected through observation of self-reported mental states. What does that have to do with fundamental changes to the way physics works?
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Qualia are not unknown.
I wasn't talking about qualia. I was pointing out that your whatever unknown placeholder thing has a peculiarly loaded name if you really believe it is unknown.
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So qualia are known in human life, and they are known in higher-level sciences. It is physics that has not yet incorporated qualitative concepts into formal theory, and this is worrisome because fundamental physics is supposed to provide the theoretical foundations for all of the higher-level phenomena - including qualia.
So wait a sec. If current science as we know it has no problem dealing with the fact that subjective beings exist, what's the problem again? Certainly this proves that physics as-is is compatible with higher-level descriptions of things which report subjective experiences. So what needs to change, exactly?
That is quite the claim - any evidence for it? At all? Of any kind?
Seems kind of self-defeating to make specific claims about something one is simultaneously asserting is currently unobservable. Maybe there's some sort of sophisticated philosophy I'm missing which gives one superpowers to know the unknown. That's why those approaches have put men on the moon and cured cancer, while those of us stuck using science to learn about the world are stuck trying to figure out if there's magic that makes our brains work.
Or maybe I have that backwards?
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