Sic et Non self deconstructs

[_Equality]

Saw this morning that Philo Sofee has not been back to post on this thread since my post questioning whether he considers himself a substance dualist. I have been following Philo's expressed growing appreciation of science and the scientific method with great interest on this board and was a bit taken aback by what I saw as questioning of the mainstream science interpretation of the available data in favor of religion.

In re-reading the my last post, I realized that it probably came across as more confrontational than I intended, and am writing here to apologize to Philo Sofee.

I hope that Philo will download the free PDF of Pollan's book and at least have a look inside.

It's a great book. I've read it twice, and credit Pollan with igniting my desire to try magic mushrooms.

[_Gadianton]

The gang at a certain blog would probably be happy to hear you say that. But really, the terms of the game have changed, and the gang seems oblivious. Because the contemporary phil mind discussions have little to no relevance to religion / atheism per se, and especially irrelevant to Mormonism, it's not materialists / non-materialists but naturalists / non-naturalist. I believe even Sean Carroll is telling people that too. The usual example, David Chalmers, is a property dualist (I'm pretty sure there are no longer any substance dualists who (1) claim to be substance dualists and (2) actually know what it is), who wrote a popular book about it, is as much of a naturalist as anybody.

But you don't have to go all the way to substance dualism to make the point about science. For those interested, I already outlined Churchlands vs. Dennett. Churchlands call themselves neuro-philosophers, and go with the science route Dr. W. described -- neurology explains everything that neurology conceivably explains, and flushes everything else. But if you stop short of that, and find yourself in new-atheist territory, and you believe A.I. can one day be as conscious as people, then you've already implied that science -- natural science at least -- doesn't explain consciousness. To the point: it's not "atoms in motion". It may supervene on "atoms in motion" but it doesn't reduce to "atoms in motion".

So in some respects, the anti-science view has kind of won a round, depending on what you want to define as science. In strict phil mind terms, Gemli and "the gang" are on the same page, since they both believe consciousness is realizable and even transferable between hardware (Gemli assumes one day we'll upload ourselves to mac-books, which is a pretty common view held among futurist a-religious types I think). If the gang could update their education past C. S. Lewis, then they have an opportunity to corner Gemli and win a point, if they are sneaky about it. Obviously, it's not going to happen.

[_Arc]

It still bugs me though to hear anyone sound triumphal about knocking down substance dualism in the name of science. The fact that we don't understand consciousness really at all doesn't mean that substance dualism is right, but to me it does mean that we have no business crowing about the power of science in any connection with consciousness. We might be a little better than folk psychology, but we're not enough better to boast. I think of science as having higher standards than that.

Please don't interpret the statement that 'we don't fully understand consciousness' as equivalent to 'we know nothing about consciousness', or that 'consciousness is somehow beyond human understanding'. And please don't characterize a preference for the scientific method over religion as boasting about science.

Now, in order to respond to your comment, please allow me to ask you the following: at what point along the photogenic scale would you consider consciousness to have emerged?

Is consciousness a property unique to humans?
Is consciousness only found in hominids including the great apes?
Should we consider consciousness to be restricted to animals that clearly demonstrate self-recognition?
What about any sentient being under the law?
What is your view?

Once you provide a benchmark as to your view of consciousness, perhaps I can direct you to literature in the neurosciences that would be of interest and of value.

I would be interested in anyone's answer to the above question who would care to respond.

[_DrW]

To the point: it's not "atoms in motion". It may supervene on "atoms in motion" but it doesn't reduce to "atoms in motion".

Dean Robbers,

Having read your latest post several times, I now find myself in agreement with the underlined portion of your statement. And I think it's an important point.

More than 'blind atoms in motion', brain function is a near unimaginably complex interaction among some hundred billion neurons of various types by means of 100 trillion or so synaptic connections driven by biologically generated voltage potentials (electromagnetic fields).

The brain operates on the release and re-uptake of neurotransmitters driven by voltage potentials. Brain function can be affected in reproducible ways by neuronal inputs from sensory systems as well as by chemicals, and by targeted electrical and magnetic field stimulation.

We now understand enough about the electrical activity in the brain that we can train computers to detect brain wave patterns corresponding to the brain thinking about specific letters, numbers and even words. The properly trained computer can "read the human mind" (using electrocorticography) and write down its thoughts on a screen.

Using modern instrumentation, including EEG, PET, and fMRI, we can watch the brain at work. We can see from brain wave patterns which stimuli are registered at the subconscious level and what it takes to get them promoted to consciousness. We can see when they arrive in working memory, and how they are stored in long term memory. We know how memories are trimmed or potentiated during sleep.

We understand the circuits and cognitive centers for visual processing, time keeping, auditory, taste and olfactory input processing, and what regions process mechanical and pain stimuli from what areas of the body. We see how sensory input interpreted as a threat takes priority to consciousness and much more. We have even identified a small area of the brain that seems to be a simple on-off switch for consciousness.

For me, thinking about consciousness is akin to thinking about quantum mechanics or quantum field theory. As John Wheeler observed, we can arrive at an understanding (some might say our reality) by a process of "it from bit"

"It from bit symbolises the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe."

[Guest]

One claim is that sentient beings exhibit some form of consciousness. Here are various definitions of a sentient being under the law.

A sentient being is a being that, by virtue of its characteristics, has the capability of experiencing suffering, both at physical and psychological levels, regardless of the species to which it belongs.

"Only the members of the animal kingdom can be sentient, although not every animal species possesses the characteristics that would make their members be considered sentient beings.

"Sentient animals are beings that have a physical and psychological sensibility, which allows them - in the same way as humans - to experience pain and pleasure. And it is certain that they naturally seek, by all means available to them, to avoid painful experiences.

[_Physics Guy]

I have no opinion on any of Arc's questions about consciousness because I don't know what consciousness is. My working assumption is that consciousness is a physical process, kind of in the same category as combustion or nuclear fusion tbough of course not much like them. I just don't know what the process is in the case of consciousness.

Last time I followed the field, no-one did. A couple of people maybe thought they did but they convinced no-one else. The fact that Arc can ask for my opinion about what kinds of organisms might exhibit consciousness is a sign to me that we're not much farther yet. Nobody asks for anyone's view on whether only red giant stars have fusion or whether gas giant planets do, too.

The last time I followed neuroscience at all was 25 years ago, but I've been assuming that if in the meantime we had discovered the physical mechanism of consciousness then I would have heard of it anyway because it would have been huge news. Did I miss it? If so, what's the scoop?

[_Physics Guy]

Maybe I do have a bit of an opinion about animal consciousness, actually. I think that films about most kinds of wild animals are profoundly misleading, even serious documentary films, because they all tend to show animals looking their most human-like. Disney films just do it by fiction to the point of giving Bambi huge eyes and a childlike voice, but even documentaries do it, perhaps unintentionally, by selecting what clips to show in the film. They show the most interesting clips, and the film clips about animals that look most interesting to humans are the ones in which the animals appear to be acting in human-like ways.

But most times when I've watched wild animals in the wild they have looked a lot less interesting than they do in films. They usually look kind of robotic to me. A deer walks along bending down to nibble, looking up, bending down, looking up. It's very repetitive. It doesn't look very conscious. I'm really reminded of Umberto Eco's suggestion, I think in The Island of the Day Before, that "stones think". They think, "Stone. Stone. Stone. Stone. Stone. ...".

Of course humans also act kind of robotically sometimes, so this doesn't prove anything. Maybe those deer are thinking all kinds of deep thoughts in their golf-ball-sized brains. It certainly doesn't rule out the possibility that deer have some kind of dim or partial or limited self-awareness.

But real wild animals do seem to me to have a much higher boredom threshold than you would guess from watching even good nature films.

[_Arc]

Moving on from sentient beings to the criteria of self awareness as a requirement for animal consciousness, the list becomes considerably shorter. Animals that pass the mirror recognition test for self awareness include apes, monkeys, elephants, bottle nose dolphins and magpies. (Physics Guy, please note that all are wild.)

According to the literature, animals that pass the mirror test for self awareness exhibit the following behaviors:

- social response,
- physical mirror inspection,
- repetitive mirror testing behavior, and
- the mark test, which involves the animals (except for dolphins. elephants and magpies) spontaneously touching a mark on their body which would have been difficult to see without the mirror.

The magpie certainly seems to be an outlier. Many bird species exhibit planning and the ability to solve new problems, especially related to release from captivity or obtaining food. Crows and parrots are a good examples. Why is it that magpies are the only ones (to date) to pass the mirror test for self awareness?

Why do dogs, some breeds of which are clearly quite intelligent, and who we humans anthropomorphize to a great extent, fail to pass the mirror test?

[_Physics Guy]

Do we know what consciousness is yet, though?

If there are even any promising-looking guesses I'd really like to know. I followed a lot of mind-brain research for a few years in grad school, as part of a sort of grad student club, but that was a long time ago now. The most ambitious theory that I recall from back then was by Gerald Edelman, but our club's consensus after reading his books was that his theory was essentially just "reentrant mapping mumble mumble". He was all excited but it was hard to see what he was actually trying to say. And we were a pretty interdisciplinary group; it seemed unlikely that all of us had somehow missed his point through ignorance of some technicality.

Has there been any major progress since then?

[Guest]

Dr. W,

I think we might be talking past each other, or rather, you might be talking past philosophers of mind, and knowing you, you'll smile at that and say, "so what?" But indulge me.

The word "supervene" is from a really smart but super odd guy, David Lewis, who has some way out there ideas, but was great at clarifying problems. Saying that everything depends on physics, and everything reduces to physics are two different claims. Even within the extremity of substance dualism, to the extent anyone is a substance dualism and understands what substance dualism actually is, these few persons are most likely to be epiphenomenologists, meaning, the ghost in the machine has no powers of agency. The mind, for a lack of a better description, is the raw experiences of the machine.

Perhaps you scratch your head and think, if the ghost isn't explaining anything the machine is doing, then what's the point? My suspicion of that head-scratching is due to sentences you write like this one:

We now understand enough about the electrical activity in the brain that we can train computers to detect brain wave patterns corresponding to the brain thinking about specific letters, numbers and even words. The properly trained computer can "read the human mind" (using electrocorticography) and write down its thoughts on a screen.

To me you're saying, look, neurology is on the verge of predicting everything...?

What philosophers of mind are most often (not entirely) debating is whether or not our raw experiences as a human being are reducible to atoms (or something; hold that thought). A pretty famous thought experience, which shows up in the movie ex Machina (in a really dumb way) called "Mary's Room" says, Mary is a color scientist but can only see in black and white, yet, she learns everything about color there is to know (cue in a complete set of neurological explanations of the kind you've given above). A new procedure becomes available and cures her condition, and she can now see color. Does she know something about color she didn't know before?

Is the actual taste of something different from the exhaustive physics of taste? Is it possible for a mechanical simulation of Dr. W, to bite into a steak and anticipate Dr. W's reaction perfectly, but not actually experience the taste of the steak like Dr. W does?

There are a number of ways to respond, but a particularly compelling one is that in the future, we will understand new things about neurology such that it's much easier to bridge the intuitive gap of what experience is to us who have experiences, and the neurology that explains the experiences. It seems like a big leap now, but perhaps a smaller leap that it did a hundred years ago? And then what of 500 years in the future?

My rebuttal: Fine, but the implication is that strong A.I. is off the table. To be more specific, reducing consciousness to neurons is a "type identity" theory, meaning, consciousness = neuron firing (a usual example is "pain" = c-fibers firing). If consciousness can only be understood within the deep chemistry and physics of neurons, then obviously transistor-based computational devices can never be conscious.

Many people might agree. However, many of those same people who think 500 years in the future and neurology will explain experience intuitively might have just as well said 500 years in the future and we'll have "skin job" Silons. But if a Dr. W silon that enjoys the taste of steak is possible, then type identity theory is wrong. The atoms in motion can take two very different pathways to come up with the same Dr. W.

you mentioned neural nodes, and so perhaps a neural net is a sufficient artifice to explain the functional role of neurons producing the experiences of Dr. W.

And so if you accept multiple realizibility in the intuition that computations life forms are possible, then you reject reductive physicalism, and become at minimum, a non-reductive physicalist.

Some people reject the possibility of Strong A.I., and think consciousness comes down to the physics of neurons. Fine, but, coming full circle to the point of this thread, atheist culture today, influenced as it is by new atheists and futuristic ideas, will probably go with Strong A.I., and thus, functionalism rather than physicalism..

(I don't have an opinion one way or another)