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brain operation as science...

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casey...

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 2:24 am

Guest

On Oct 5, 4:02 pm, "J.A. Legris" <jaleg... at (no spam) sympatico.ca> wrote:

Quote:

On Oct 5, 1:54 pm, casey <jgkjca... at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:

Q's states effect P's states.

p.s. John, from my dictionary:

EASILY CONFUSED WORDS affect, effect

Affect means 'to produce an effect upon'
Effect means 'to bring about'

Ok. I will try and remember that.

JC

casey...

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 2:26 am

Guest

On Oct 5, 6:02 pm, c... at (no spam) kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:

Quote:

casey <jgkjca... at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:

Should strong AI be possible in a machine it is they
who will provide us with the means to build them.

To even SUGGEST that the human body is not a machine
shows how confused you are.

My statement avoided being dogmatic as to the possibility
of AI in a *man made* machine but it was not meant to
suggest that we are not biological machines and you well
know that or at least you should.

As you well know my views or approach was very much
influenced by the first book I read on the subject,
"an introduction to cybernetics" by W. Ross Ashby.

Cybernetics is about machines but the emphasis is not
on particular machines or what they are made of rather
it is about ways of behaving.

JC

Don Stockbauer...

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 2:37 am

Guest

On Oct 5, 6:02 pm, "J.A. Legris" <jaleg... at (no spam) sympatico.ca> wrote:

Quote:

On Oct 5, 1:54 pm, casey <jgkjca... at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:

On Oct 5, 6:36 am, Don Stockbauer <don.stockba... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:

On Oct 4, 10:47 pm, casey <jgkjca... at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:

On Oct 4, 6:46 pm, Don Stockbauer <don.stockba... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:

...
If the mind is the brain operating (a definition I agree with)
then any process, even subconscious, is mind, as it is the
brain operating.

It is clearly not simply the "brain operating", it is a particular
type of brain operation.

Then we're debating definitions. Whatever floats your boat.

I see it as much deeper than that, more a case of discovering the
algorithms that enables higher level systems to coordinate and
control lower level systems.

And lower level systems creating the emergent higher level systems
bottom up, which is the metasystem transition, about which some is
known, but not all, and yes, further research is needed.

Agreed.

JC

As usual, you guys are confusing models with things modeled. One of
the virtues of science is keeping the respective realms separate. Give
it a try.

Is "the operation of the brain" a good definition of "mind".

That is the question.

What does modeling have to do with resolving that? The definition
stands whether one is doing modeling or not.

Curt Welch...

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 5:02 am

Guest

casey <jgkjcasey at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:

Quote:

On Oct 4, 7:59=A0pm, c... at (no spam) kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:
casey <jgkjca... at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:
The word mind as most people understand it is being conscious.

Now if you want to be serious about getting an understanding
of that you have to do experiments as at this point in time
we have no idea how to frame the problem.

Never say "we" to a topic that many of us do know how to frame.
Just go ahead and say "I don't know how to frame it".

Those who think they have framed the problem are just living in
a state of denial. Fortunately there are intellects who know
better and are tackling the problem with experimentally testable
theories. Should strong AI be possible in a machine it is they

To even SUGGEST that the human body is not a machine shows how confused you
are.

Quote:

who will provide us with the means to build them.

JC

--
Curt Welch http://AyrHillForge.Com/
curt at (no spam) kcwc.com http://NewsReader.Com/

Curt Welch...

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 5:15 am

Guest

casey <jgkjcasey at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:

Quote:

On Oct 5, 6:02=A0pm, c... at (no spam) kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:
casey <jgkjca... at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:

Should strong AI be possible in a machine it is they
who will provide us with the means to build them.

To even SUGGEST that the human body is not a machine
shows how confused you are.

My statement avoided being dogmatic as to the possibility
of AI in a *man made* machine but it was not meant to
suggest that we are not biological machines and you well
know that or at least you should.

As you well know my views or approach was very much
influenced by the first book I read on the subject,
"an introduction to cybernetics" by W. Ross Ashby.

Cybernetics is about machines but the emphasis is not
on particular machines or what they are made of rather
it is about ways of behaving.

JC

Then what is there to be confused about? If the actions of the material
that makes up physical matter is all there is to understand, then why do
you get so confused that you say silly things like "we don't know how to
frame it"? There is nothing else to frame. All there is to study, is the
action of matter. There is nothing else there. Whether that action is the
movement of elections in wires (which we sometimes call "software" even
though there is absolutely nothing soft about it), or the movement of
molecules though the human body, that is all there is to study - nothing
hard about framing the study of the movement of matter. So why are you so
confused?

Is there more research needed to understand the brain and human body?
Sure. But when it's all done, all it will tell us, is how the parts of the
body move in response to other matter in the universe. There is nothing
else that can be explained. What's so hard to frame about studying the
motion of matter?

--
Curt Welch http://AyrHillForge.Com/
curt at (no spam) kcwc.com http://NewsReader.Com/

casey...

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 5:18 am

Guest

On Oct 5, 9:01 pm, c... at (no spam) kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:

Quote:

...

Then what is there to be confused about? If the actions
of the material that makes up physical matter is all there
is to understand, then why do you get so confused that you
say silly things like "we don't know how to frame it"?

There is nothing we know about the motions of physical matter
that would enable us to conclude that onions would taste a
particular way or that a certain area in the visual field
would be assigned a particular color value. We don't know
how to frame this viewpoint in terms of the motion of matter.

JC

Curt Welch...

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 5:15 pm

Guest

casey <jgkjcasey at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:

Quote:

On Oct 5, 9:01=A0pm, c... at (no spam) kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:
...

Then what is there to be confused about? If the actions
of the material that makes up physical matter is all there
is to understand, then why do you get so confused that you
say silly things like "we don't know how to frame it"?

There is nothing we know about the motions of physical matter
that would enable us to conclude that onions would taste a
particular way or that a certain area in the visual field
would be assigned a particular color value. We don't know
how to frame this viewpoint in terms of the motion of matter.

JC

The error in that question John is that it includes an inherent assumption
on your part that taste and color have a property other than motion which
we can use to describe what the color of blue is, and the taste of onion
is. The question as you have asked it, is nonsensical, unless, again, you
believe in dualism. Only in the framework of dualism does your question
have any validity. Otherwise, the real question simply translates to "what
motion of brain parts is the color blue". That is a valid question, and
the research question to be answered, and one which has no problem of
frame. It's what that paper you posted the link to describes as the easy
problem of consciousness.

The point here John, is that if you understand the logic, you understand
that either there is no hard problem, or, if you want to believe there is a
hard problem, then you have to accept the reality that in believing that,
you become a dualist. Which just simply means, you believe there is
something else to the taste of onions other than the motion of human body
parts. Whether you call that "something else" a soul, or qualia, or
subjective experience, it's all the same thing. You are still making an
assumption that the "something else" exists, and that it is created by the
motion, but is not just the motion.

There is, however, ZERO evidence to suggest there is something else. So to
believe in the "something else" is to believe in something you want to
believe exists, but have not evidence to support. It's a faith based
decision on your part to believe that there is something else to the taste
of onions other than the motion of your brain parts.

All this sort of believe is just fall out from the old believe in the soul.
Believe in the soul has not been eliminated in modern society. It's name
was just changed from "soul" to "subjective experience". It's an age old
illusion created by how the brain works - by how your brain allows you to
react one way to onions, and react another way to blue.

I've explained why this illusion exists (and how it works) - in mechanical
terms of motion - here many times. But you don't grasp the answer, because
you haven't yet grasped that it is an illusion. You still believer in the
soul, even though you have given it a new name, and made the minor and
insignificant modification to the concept by claiming the soul you believe
in doesn't exist after your death.

You are certainly not alone in this confusion. Most the world, including
the stuff written by the people you posted those links to, are confused by
the illusion. Daniel Dennet however is not confused by the illusion and
has written thousands of words to try and show people the error in their
belief.

All these concepts you just recently talked about are tied into this same
web of confusion. You believe there is "something else" there in the taste
of onions other than the firing of a neuron (and other similar brain
activity), so then you think it's valid to call the existence of all this
"other stuff" the mind. And you say it's _created_ _by_ the activity of
the brain. But you say not just any activity creates it, but some special
active that must exist in the brain that somehow manages to create it. And
you assign the word "conscious" to the state of the brain when it's
operating in a way to create all this "other stuff" and you assign the word
"unconscious" to when the brain is not operating in a way to create the
"other stuff".

This all nicely parallels other physical effects, so it all sounds very
logical. Like a light bulb, when operating correctly, creates light. The
light seems to be "other stuff" that doesn't exist normally in the material
of the light bulb. So it seems the light is something other than just the
motion of the light bulb, and is created only by the correct motions of the
light bulb. But in fact, that's not true. All matter (with a temperature
greater than absolute zero) is constantly giving off light. The only thing
that changes when we make the bulb work, is that we ramp up the frequency
and intensity of the motion so as to allow our high frequency motion
sensors (our eyes) to detect it. The bulb didn't magically change from no
light, to light, by being put into just exactly the right configuration.
It simply changed from us not being able to see it, to us being able to see
it, by shifting it's behavior into a range where we had sensors to detect
it.

Consciousness is nothing more than the correct operation of the psychical
brain. It's neurons firing and chemicals flowing (much of which we
understand, but some of which more research is still needed). It's the
easy problem. There is no hard problem. The existence of the hard problem
is an illusion. There is no hard problem. Or, said another way, the hard
problem, is getting people to understand that the hard problem is an
illusion. There simply is nothing else there, to be explained.

--
Curt Welch http://AyrHillForge.Com/
curt at (no spam) kcwc.com http://NewsReader.Com/

casey...

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 9:19 pm

Guest

On Oct 6, 6:15 am, c... at (no spam) kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:

Quote:

casey <jgkjca... at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:

There is nothing we know about the motions of physical matter
that would enable us to conclude that onions would taste a
particular way or that a certain area in the visual field
would be assigned a particular color value. We don't know
how to frame this viewpoint in terms of the motion of matter.

The error in that question John is that it includes an
inherent assumption on your part that taste and color have
a property other than motion which we can use to describe
what the color of blue is, and the taste of onion is.

Well clearly they are emergent properties not found in the
parts that make them.

Quote:

Some feel that answering the easy question will make it clear
what the hard question really amounts to. Either way there
is a question to be answered.

Quote:

Believe in the soul has not been eliminated in modern society.
It's name was just changed from "soul" to "subjective experience".

The soul was given as an explanation for the subjective experience
not as the subjective experience itself. The subjective experience
is real, the old explanation of a soul was not. Thunder is real
the explanation, god of thunder, is not.

Quote:

Daniel Dennet however is not confused by the illusion and
has written thousands of words to try and show people the
error in their belief.

Many will argue that Daniel Dennett has done no such thing.

Quote:

... you say it's _created_ _by_ the activity of the brain.
But you say not just any activity creates it, but some
special active that must exist in the brain that somehow
manages to create it.

The special activity is like activity in Conway's cellular
world we call gliders and oscillators. They are different
to other kinds of activities we would not call gliders or
oscillators. Another set of laws will not give you the same
results. Those activities we call taste and color are
special activities in that sense.

Quote:

I assign the word "conscious" to a dynamic (or if you like
temporal) pattern in which the Self, itself a brain construct,
has access to, (can "think about", can "hold in its short term
memory"), what has happened along with predictions as to what
will happen next. It is a temporal window view of a continuos
change.

Quote:

Like a light bulb, when operating correctly, creates light.
The light seems to be "other stuff" that doesn't exist
normally in the material of the light bulb. So it seems
the light is something other than just the motion of the
light bulb, and is created only by the correct motions of
the light bulb. But in fact, that's not true.

All matter (with a temperature greater than absolute zero)
is constantly giving off light. The only thing that changes
when we make the bulb work, is that we ramp up the frequency
and intensity of the motion so as to allow our high frequency
motion sensors (our eyes) to detect it. The bulb didn't
magically change from no light, to light, by being put into
just exactly the right configuration. It simply changed from
us not being able to see it, to us being able to see it, by
shifting it's behavior into a range where we had sensors to
detect it.

You are coming very close to suggesting I imagine "consciousness"
as some kind of substance that is separate to the activity that
produces it and I haven't suggested that. A slowly moving boat
may produce waves which become visible as the boat increases its
velocity but I am thinking more about the boat's activity not
any side effects.

It seems to me that high level "consciousness" involves continual
access. If you suffered pain for a microsecond would that
worry you and could you "think about" the pain? If P affects
Q for a microsecond what kind of consciousness of P would Q
actually have? It would not be retained in order to be
spoken about by Q without some kind of short term memory.

Consciousness may also involve a point of view. I am conscious
of something which you are not conscious of because I am
connected to different things. If P affects Q which affects R
then Q is conscious of P and R is conscious of Q but R is not
conscious of (able to talk about) P. So R can say it is
conscious of Q but not know Q is also conscious. However I
would say most of our unconscious activities do not retain
any the kind of memory representation to "think about" what
happened as they are now reacting to something else for the
next microsecond.

Quote:

Consciousness is nothing more than the correct operation of
the psychical brain. It's neurons firing and chemicals flowing
(much of which we understand, but some of which more research
is still needed). It's the easy problem. There is no hard
problem. The existence of the hard problem is an illusion.
There is no hard problem. Or, said another way, the hard
problem, is getting people to understand that the hard problem
is an illusion. There simply is nothing else there, to be
explained.

Even illusions have to be explained. Your explanation of it
being the result of past conditioning doesn't trigger the Aha!
reaction in me so until then, for me, it is unexplained.

JC

Curt Welch...

Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 5:15 am

Guest

casey <jgkjcasey at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:

Quote:

On Oct 6, 6:15=A0am, c... at (no spam) kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:
casey <jgkjca... at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:

There is nothing we know about the motions of physical matter
that would enable us to conclude that onions would taste a
particular way or that a certain area in the visual field
would be assigned a particular color value. We don't know
how to frame this viewpoint in terms of the motion of matter.

The error in that question John is that it includes an
inherent assumption on your part that taste and color have
a property other than motion which we can use to describe
what the color of blue is, and the taste of onion is.

Well clearly they are emergent properties not found in the
parts that make them.

No clearly that is NOT true. It's again, the type of thing those of you
confused by this cling to as a truth, when in fact it's just more BS made
up to justify your confusion. The concept of emergence is not invalid, but
the way it becomes stretched to justify more than what it is to try and
cover your delusions about consciousness goes too far.

A clock for example can do things none of it's parts alone can do - track
the time. But yet, none of the parts in a clock are doing anything
different, just because they are now part of the clock. They behave, and
ARE exactly the same whether they are part of the clock, or just sitting on
a table. You push one side of the gear, it moves the entire gear. That is
how gears work. They work that way when they are sitting on the table just
as they work that way when they are part of the clock.

The only thing that in fact "emerges" from the clock, is the 100 parts
doing all their behavior AT THE SAME TIME. Nothing any of the parts is
doing is different when they are part of the clock.

If one person stands on a field and waves his hand, we have a simple
behavior.

If 100 people stand on the field and wave their hand, we have the combined
behavior of 100 people. Nothing "new" has emerged from any of them. But
yet, if you stand back at a distance and watch, you might see a "wave"
moving across the people because their hand waving was synchronized.

We say the effect "emerged" from the crowd because it was a pattern we
could not recognize in a single individual. But yet, there is in fact,
nothing "new" there at all. It's our PERCEPTION of the people that we are
in fact talking about when we talk about emergent. Our PERCEPTION system
detects a type of pattern in the crowd which it would not detect in a
single individual. But yet, what we are perceiving is in fact, just the
many individuals.

When one large body is alone in space, it moves only in a (mostly) straight
line. When two are near to each other, they can or orbit each other. The
two work together to move in a way they could not move alone. But yet,
nothing new has emerged from the bodies. They are doing exactly what they
did when they were alone. Their mass is the same, their configuration is
the same, the way gravity works on them is the same. Nothing "new" emerged
in the universe simply because two bodies in space moved closer together.

The same is true for the human body and consciousness. All the parts of
the body are doing what they have always done in this universe - move in
respond to the fundamental forces of the universe. They start to move
according to different laws of physics just become the body has become
"conscious". And the ONLY thing that IS THERE, are body parts moving
according to the fundamental forces of nature. Nothing else is there -
EXCEPT patterns which we, as large and complex pattern recognizes, see in
the body parts, which we don't see at other times.

The only thing that emerges is new patterns of motion. There is nothing
else there that emerges. Redness, and the taste of onions, is a pattern of
the motion of body parts. It can't be anything else. Again - unless you
want to admit you are dualist (or at least accept the possibility of
duality - or said from the other direction, don't reject the possibility of
duality as I do).

Quote:

... the real question simply translates to "what motion of
brain parts is the color blue". That is a valid question,
and the research question to be answered, and one which has
no problem of frame. It's what that paper you posted the
link to describes as the easy problem of consciousness.

Some feel that answering the easy question will make it clear
what the hard question really amounts to. Either way there
is a question to be answered.

Right. But the only question, is why do people think there's a hard
problem. And I agree, answering the easy problem does make it clear.
However, I've already answered it, but yet, the answer makes nothing clear
to people like you. It's simply beyond your ability to understand the
answer currently.

Quote:

Believe in the soul has not been eliminated in modern society.
It's name was just changed from "soul" to "subjective experience".

The soul was given as an explanation for the subjective experience
not as the subjective experience itself.

I don't agree. It was given as the name of the subjective experience. You
have simply given it a new name.

Quote:

The subjective experience
is real, the old explanation of a soul was not. Thunder is real
the explanation, god of thunder, is not.

No, subjective experience (as you use the word) is NOT REAL. That's the
part you seem unable to grasp. It's AN ILLUSION. The STICK IS NOT BENT.
You only perceive it as being bent. The bent stick is NOT REAL. Your form
of subjective experience IS NOT REAL. Your belief that the stick is bent,
is what is real. Your belief that subjective experience (as you understand
it) is what is REAL.

There is not one reality in the world (something you seem unable to grasp).
There is two realities. The one reality, is what's really out there in the
universe. The second reality, is the model of the universe our brain has
built. The model it builds of reality, is NOT THE REALITY. It's just a
model. But many people get these two realities confused when the use the
word and concept of "real".

Quote:

Daniel Dennet however is not confused by the illusion and
has written thousands of words to try and show people the
error in their belief.

Many will argue that Daniel Dennett has done no such thing.

... you say it's _created_ _by_ the activity of the brain.
But you say not just any activity creates it, but some
special active that must exist in the brain that somehow
manages to create it.

The special activity is like activity in Conway's cellular
world we call gliders and oscillators. They are different
to other kinds of activities we would not call gliders or
oscillators.

They are patterns of the motion of physical objectives we have the power to
recognize.

Quote:

Another set of laws will not give you the same
results. Those activities we call taste and color are
special activities in that sense.

Yes, just like the patterns of behavior in the parts of a robot that can
sense light, or sense chemicals, is different. We would say the robot can
see color, or taste salt (if we built a robot with sensors that could in
fact sense those properties).

However, you guys would argue that the robot is not "conscious" of color or
taste like we are - which is where you goes go off the track. There is
nothing in us, that is any different in that regard, than what's already in
our robots. Which is why it drives me so insane when you say you don't
even know how to frame the problem of making a machine "taste" or "see
color". There's nothing to frame, we have already made our machines
conscious of color and taste.

Quote:

And you assign the word "conscious" to the state of the
brain when it's operating in a way to create all this
"other stuff" and you assign the word "unconscious" to
when the brain is not operating in a way to create the
"other stuff".

I assign the word "conscious" to a dynamic (or if you like
temporal) pattern in which the Self, itself a brain construct,
has access to, (can "think about", can "hold in its short term
memory"), what has happened along with predictions as to what
will happen next. It is a temporal window view of a continuos
change.

Our AI robots already do that. They have for decades. So are they
conscious to you? Or do you want to hold out for some missing "magic
powder" they are missing which you can't define, can't test for, can't even
explain what it is, but yet you "know" is missing?

Quote:

Yes, because even though you quickly hide behind the "I never calmed that"
argument, you are in fact implying that only a highly special type of
behavior justifies as "conscious behavior". But when asked what the
behavior is, or how you know it doesn't exist in a rock, you produce
NOTHING in the way of real data to justify what you are talking about.

The bottom line is that you believe there is something in you (even though
you have no clue what that "something" is), that doesn't exist in things
like our current AI robots. But since you have no clue what that
"something is" you can't have an intelligent debate about what's missing
from the robot. And since you can't have that debate, you should be (but
for some reason are not) asking yourself what it is you are in fact talking
about. If you can't define what you are talking about (making up works
like sentience and conscious are not definitions BTW), then you aren't in
fact talking about anything but some dream you had.

Quote:

It seems to me that high level "consciousness" involves continual
access. If you suffered pain for a microsecond would that
worry you and could you "think about" the pain? If P affects
Q for a microsecond what kind of consciousness of P would Q
actually have? It would not be retained in order to be
spoken about by Q without some kind of short term memory.

Ok, but the only way P and effect Q is though the laws of physics. So
there's nothing in question here. We understand the laws of physics. An
we know how to build machines with short term memory of past events. So
what's here that we don't already fully understand to talk about?

Quote:

Consciousness may also involve a point of view. I am conscious
of something which you are not conscious of because I am
connected to different things.

Digital cameras (and all machines with sensors) already have a point of
view. None of this is new different or hard to understand.

Quote:

If P affects Q which affects R
then Q is conscious of P and R is conscious of Q but R is not
conscious of (able to talk about) P. So R can say it is
conscious of Q but not know Q is also conscious. However I
would say most of our unconscious activities do not retain
any the kind of memory representation to "think about" what
happened as they are now reacting to something else for the
next microsecond.

There is nothing about what the human body does (in relation to memory, and
the consciousness examples you give), that is not already fully understood
and fully paralleled in all our AI machines.

There is no example of consciousness, vs unconscious, activity in a human,
that I can't easily point to parts of PC and show you the exact same
effects.

Quote:

Sure, I've tried to explain it many different ways to you, and it's never
once triggered any understanding in you. That can easily be argued as my
failure to explain it.

Let me try one more quick angle here.

If we build a robot, it's perception of reality will be a function of the
hardware and software we build in to it. It's total understanding of the
universe it lives in, will be a function not of what the universe is really
like, but what it's sensors tell it about the universe, and what we have
pre-built into it - what beliefs (if you like) we have built into it.

If we can make a robot that watches you put a key in a drawer, and forms
the belief that you think the key is in the drawer, we have built a robot
that understand theory of mind (as people like to call it). Such a simple
AI program would be easy to build for a very limited domain. Right? But
if the AI program can believe things like that, could we not just change
the code a little, and it would believe something else? Like it would
believe you think a pink elephant is in the drawer?

We can make the AI program believe ANYTHING WE WANT. It would "know for
sure" it was right, even if it was dead wrong.

What you "know for sure" is what your brain is configured to "know for
sure". It's not what is true, it's just what your believe is true because
that's the way your brain is configured. It's model of reality is what it
believes to be true.

If you know for sure that there is "something special about yourself", it's
because your brain is configured to make you believe that. Right? You get
that?

If you believe you have a very special property of "consciousness", it's
because your brain is configured to believe that. But what is it, that you
are actually believing in? You have given it a name (we have many names
for it), but what is IT?

The options can be split into two choices. Either 1) it's just the physics
and biology we already understand, which means it's nothing more that the
movement of atoms you are talking about in response to the known and well
understood forces of nature, or 2) it's something no one in science has
every seen any evidence of.

To believe 2 makes you a dualist - you believe in something we have ZERO
evidence for which is simply stuck in your brain as a truth, but yet there
is no evidence to explain why such a non-truth is stuck in your brain.

To believe in 1, means there is nothing odd here to explain. We are just a
complex physical machine which we will in time, figure out how to
duplicate.

If you believe in 2, then you must ask yourself, why do you believe in
something there is no evidence to support.

We ask this same question for anyone that believes in God. The intelligent
answer is that they simply like believing in God and don't care whether
there is any proof. The stupid answer is to stick your head in the ground
and pretend it's not important that you believe in something there is no
evidence to support - which means it's a behavior stuck in your brain for
reasons that have nothing to do with the truth of reality, but everything
to do with how behaviors form in the brains of humans.

The reason you think consciousness and sentience is something special and
odd, has nothing to do with the truth of reality - with the facts of the
matter. It has everything to do with why behaviors form in brains. And
once a given behavior is there, it's as if it were a truth to that brain
(to the person that has that believe stuck in their brain).

There are many people who can't grasp the possibility that God isn't real -
that it's just something humans made up. They have been so well
indoctrinated into some set of religious beliefs, that they just can't
grasp how it could be possible that God is just a fairy tale.

The belief that the hard problem of consciousness is a real problem, is the
same problem. You have been so thoroughly indoctrinated into thinking that
consciousness is a special property, that you can't think of it any other
way. And the end result, is that the way you think about, becomes your
view of reality. Even if that view of reality, has nothing to do with true
reality - with the true nature of the universe we are part of.

Another way to sum all this up. Just because something seems real to you -
doesn't mean it IS real. What seems real to you, is what your brain has
determined on it's own, is real. And though a brain which is working
correctly doesn't in general make large errors about that, it does,
normally, and and for well understood reasons (by me at least) make a huge
error on this subject of self perception - which is the error that creates
all this confusion over conclusiveness and all related issues.

Another way to say this is that the brain's perception of itself, is
grossly in error. It fails miserably to build a correct model of itself in
most normal humans.

You are trusting the model of reality the brain has built, and in doing so,
have left yourself the hard problem of consciousness. You are accepting
this invalid model some hunk of low level biological machinery built as the
truth of reality, and finding it creates a hard problem when you see the
model doesn't fit with the hard scientific facts of reality. The solution
is easy. The model your own brain builds is WRONG. The facts of science
(developed and tested and re-verified over hundreds of years by millions of
brains) is correct. What you think you see, is simply not what it seems to
be. It's an illusion. It's an error your brain made in how it models
reality.

And that error is very simple. The error is that the model our brains
build, is a model of reality where brain behavior, is not physical. Where
"redness" and "the taste of onions" is not a physical action of brain
molecules. But that's the error. Even though redness doesn't _seem_ to
most of us to be physical brain behavior, it is. And it's NOTHING MORE than
that. It's not something CREATED BY the brain behavior. It simply IS the
brain behavior. The desire to try and label it as something created by the
brain behavior, is just a hold over from the error the brain made in the
first place - the error of classifying as a "different type of stuff" than
physical motion.

In the other post, you write:

Quote:

There is no scientific explanation for
sentience or any reason for it to exist but I am certain
of being sentient as I am certain of anything.

Yes there is a scientific explanation. And I just gave it above. But you
fail to understand it. You saying there is no answer is not proof there is
no answer. It just means you don't understand the answer.

The fact that "you are certain" means your brain is wired to make you say
that (and to make you have all the associated "feelings" about that). But
why are you wired to act that way? It's because your brain has built for
you, a model of reality, which tells you that your brain activity is
SEPARATE FROM, your other body activity. Not just separate as in foot
activity is separate from hand activity, but separate in the sense it's a
totally different type of thing - like sound is different from vision. You
believe redness is not just another body part moving like a foot moving.
But that's just what you believe. The facts prove you wrong. To fix your
brain, you have to 1) understand the facts, 2) understand that what you are
dead sure is "real" doesn't have to be real or true in any sense, and 3)
allow the facts to override (recondition) what you have been thoroughly
conditioned to believe is "real" by allowing your lower level brain
hardware to make decisions for you instead of using the facts to make your
decisions.

This illusion of brain behavior being separate from physical behavior, is
the foundation of all confusion in this area. It's why the concept and
name "soul" was created. It's because the illusion of separation leaves one
feeling that there is a part of them, which is separate from, their
physical body. It's the illusion that this separate part of them, is the
part doing all the deciding, and the part controlling most of the major
actions of the body. That's because it is the part doing all the deciding
(it's the brain after all and that's what it does). But the illusion is
that the brain is separate from the body. Which is why we don't call this
separate brain the brain, we all it the mind. But our mind is no more
separate from us, than the computer controlling the robot is separate from
the robot. And it's no more separate from us than the software is separate
from the hardware in a computer.

To understand why the hard problem of consciousness is not hard, and has
already been solved, you have to stop trusting what you brain "knows" to be
true, and start trusting what the facts tell us. If you can't do that, you
will never be able to understand this problem. There are many people (you
have named a few recently) who clearly can't do this. They not only are
unable to understand the answer for themselves, they can't even understand
what those of us who understand the answer, are talking about.

--
Curt Welch http://AyrHillForge.Com/
curt at (no spam) kcwc.com http://NewsReader.Com/

Curt Welch...

Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 11:27 pm

Guest

I've got some more time to waste so I thought I'd pick up where I stopped
in this message....

curt at (no spam) kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:

Quote:

casey <jgkjcasey at (no spam) yahoo.com.au> wrote:
On Oct 7, 9:03=A0pm, c... at (no spam) kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:

When you say we have no access, it just makes me wonder what you think we
don't have access to?

This is
all "unconscious" means. The same is true of a computer
program. It can compute something without having any access
to the logic states of the logic gates that are doing the
computing.

So what's here that we don't already fully understand
to talk about?

I'd like to talk more to this idea of "access", but I've spent way too
much time on this today as it is. I've got other shit I have to get busy
with. I'll be back when I can find some more time....

Later...

So, access to me means we have sensors that can sense something. Which in
turn means we have the ability to learn how to produce a special reaction
to the sensory state.

When you talk about a computer not having access to it's logic gates,
that's somewhat true, but I suspect it's not as true as you are thinking.
When _we_ use a computer, we have access to what's happening on the screen.
And that is access to some of the machines "logic states". When we see a
red pixel, we know something about the state of the logic gates in the
video card for example - we have access to those logic states. We don't
have access to most internal states of the machine without the help of
better sensors to sense those states.

But the computer itself has access to most its own logic states. That is,
most those logic states can and are, sensed by the computer, and the
computer then produces different reactions in response to those states.
The state of the Ethernet card changes a bit, and the computers reaction
(what it shows on the screen for example) changes in response to that
state. The computer is "conscious of" most of it's own internal states.

There are states of the computer which are hidden from it. For example, my
computer has no access to the color of its case (my computer doesn't have a
video cam on it). As such, it's got no sensor to make it act differently
if the color of it's case changed. Likewise, a great deal of the of the
internal state, and configuration, of the computer, is hidden from it, but
only because the computer doesn't have sensors to sense it.

Your position, seems to be, that only a special type of signal processing
is worth of being called "conscious" processing. And that no one really
even knows what type of processing that is. And you seem to argue at times
that there is processing going on in the brain that we should call
"unconscious" processing. Well, in our informal talk about human behavior,
we certainly are trained to talk like that. But when we look closer at
what we are really talking about, it strikes me as absurd to assume it has
much in the way of real value in understanding the brain. I don't really
believe the concept of consciousness even has any valid place in these
discussions because it's far too informal and poorly defined to be useful.
Not because I don't believe in "consciousness" per se, but because I don't
agree with the way most people (including you) talk about it. I believe
what you are in fact talking about, is the illusion of separation of body
and mind, and not some special, or interesting, type of processing
happening in humans.

I believe the brain is simply a sensory reaction device which produces our
behaviors in response to sensory conditions. It's configured to make it
easy to train by reinforcement - which just means it's "reaction program"
is constantly being adjusted by internal reward signals. The details of
how to make this work still need to be worked out - and the details of how
the brain itself implements such a machine needs to be fully resolved. But
there is no "special type of processing" in there worthy of all this
chatter about a "hard problem of consciousness".

What such a machine "has access to" is simply its sensory data. And
because it's typically implemented as a multilayer hierarchy of processing
systems, each layer in turn has "access to" the outputs of the circuits
that come before it in the chain. Such a system is "conscious of" all the
signals that flow in it. There is nothing in it that it is not conscious
of. Any signal that has the power to change the systems behavior, is a
signal the system is conscious of. It's as simple as that. And this is as
much true of all our electronics and computers as it is of humans. They
are already just as conscious as we are.

We do informally use the concept of "being conscious of" to mean we have
produced some internal langauge-like behavior in response to a sensory
condition. And that is a special type of processing that currently only
humans do (the parallels that currently exist in our computers and AI
systems are too weak in my view to be called a true parallel to what humans
are doing).

So, for example, I can see a sign on the side of the road, and respond to
it by "reading" it. That is, I produce a string of private verbal
responses to the lines (letters and words) on the sign. I can also see a
sign, and be conscious of the fact it's a sign with words on, while not
going a step further and doing the mental activity required to translate
the writing into private verbal thoughts. That is, I can see the sign and
not read it, which typically means I can't later recall what the sign said.
We say things like "I was not conscious of what the sign said". But that
simply means we didn't activate our "word pattern detectors" in response to
that stimulus input.

I think of the entire learning brain as nothing more than a large
collection of pattern recognizers trained by reinforcement. What we are
"conscious of" is the activity of those pattern recognizers. When our
"dog" pattern recognizer activates, we become conscious of "dog" for
example.

We have recognizers for words like "chicken". If the word chicken is on a
sign, our "chicken" recognizer will activate when we read the sign. But if
we look at the sign, but don't "read it", then that means that some amount
of recognizers have activated (enough to trigger the "sign with words on
it" pattern detectors), but not enough to trigger the "chicken" pattern
detector. In which case, we say we were "conscious of" the sign, but not
"conscious of" what it said.

A lot of human behavior works by triggering internal word recognizers.
That is, we talk to ourselves about what we are sensing. That is, we are
so configured (aka conditioned) to produce verbal responses to our
environment. And that internal verbal behavior (word based "thoughts")
then triggers external actions. Like we drive down the street, see a sign
for the gas station, which produces some internal words like "that's a good
deal, lets stop and fill up"). Even if the words and sentence is not fully
formed, it's the same low level langauge generation circuits that are being
activated in response to that gas price sign. And if someone in the car
then asks, why are you stopping, we instantly respond with "I'm getting gas
because the price is lower than any I've seen". Much of human behavior
gets produced by the activation, and control of, our langauge centers.

But there is also a good deal of behavior that are reactions that don't
include the langauge center. The language center can be busy talking on
the phone while we are driving while other parts of the brain are reacting
to (being conscious of) what is happening on the road and allowing us
produce the correct driving behaviors.

When reactions happen without including the langauge processing centers, we
often informally refer to them as "unconscious" or "subconscious"
behaviors. That just means they didn't activate our language detectors -
they worked without the help of our langauge detectors. But such reactions
are in my view, technically no different (at the hardware implementation
level) than the ones which include some detectors from our set of language
detectors. It's just a folk psychology description of brain behavior. In
my view, we really are forced to say that all reactions, whether they
included the language centers or not, are "conscious" reactions.

Our brains have a major (but parallel) signal path from our sensors to our
muscles. It's the signal path that is responsible for all our "conscious"
behaviors. There are lots of signal paths in the brain which are not part
of this major "conscious" signal path - like the signal paths that regulate
our blood pressure and heart rate. Those are the paths which "we" don't
have "access to". But the "we" in that statement, is really a reference to
that part of the hardware which makes up that main reaction signal path in
our brain. That main reaction signal path is the "me" that is writing this
a article for example. But it extends from my eyes, though the brain, down
to the fingers. Events that happen, that do not create signals in that
main signal path, are events that we are justified saying we are
"unconscious" of. How conscious of an event we are, is a question of how
many detectors in the signal path have been activated in response to the
event. The more which activate, the more awareness of the event we are
having, and the better our memory of the event will be.

None of this type of "consciousness" I've been talking about however is
mystical, or hard to frame. It's all simple engineering concepts and it's
a type of consciousness that already exists in all our signal processing
systems and computers and AI systems. It doesn't differ in kind from what
we have already built in AI, it only differs in degree.

There is nothing about this type of consciousness that should cause any AI
researcher problem. It's the "easy" problem of consciousness. I claim
it's the only problem of consciousness.

The hard problem of consciousness is the illusion. It's the illusion of
the image of self, the brain naturally forms.

Brain's work by building a set of pattern detectors to match the types of
patterns the brain normally sees in its input data. They are detectors
which get cross wired based on correlations. This cross wiring allows the
detectors to more accurately detect the patterns they are built to detect
based on statistical correlations with other patterns. Such a system,
builds a model of statistical correlations between patterns and in turn
"understands" the sensory world it has access to in terms of those
correlations. A "dog tail" detector has close correlations to a "dog nose"
detectors because the two sensory patterns have high temporal correlations
in the sensory streams. That is, they can be expected to show up close in
time. We expect to see a dog tail when we see a dog nose. Our
"Understanding" of our sensory reality, is in terms of these correlations.
They are what tells us what to expect next, which allows us know what to do
next.

The brain, forms the same sorts of correlations about itself. That is, the
behavior it produces internally, which we have access to because it's part
of the major behavior signal path, gets classified just like all other
data. By analyzing the signals in this data path for correlations, the
brain ends up analyzing not only what is happening outside the brain
(learning that dogs have noses and tails), but also what's happening inside
the brain (learning that the brain produces behaviors on it's own which is
not correlated to a dog nose signal). The dog tail detector is correlated
to the dog nose, which also has correlations to the ground the dog is
sitting on, which has correlations to the bone which also sits on the
ground, which is correlated to the owner of the dog, on and on tying all
the physical objects of the world together though a large mesh of temporal
correlations.

But there are lots of events happening in the brain, which are have little
to know temporal correlations to that large mesh of correlation from the
external world. Our private thoughts, have very little correlation to
events happening externally. As a natural result, the brain builds a model
of these events in it's sensory data stream, as being disconnected from the
dog noses and dog tails of the model.

That is the foundation of why our perception of all these things ends up
having such a substantial divide between the events of our private mental
world, and the events of the external physical world. We end up perceiving
our private mental world as being disconnected from the physical world.
But it's not of course. Our private mental thoughts are as much physical
events as the dog nose is a physical event. But our brain has never formed
the statistical correlation, and as such, our perception indicates a
separation.

We have access to our own mental activity. And the brain ends up
classifying (clustering) those events into a different segment of it's
model. We then end up identifying that universe of private events as being
the "us" inside the other "us" (aka the body). It forms a natural illusion
of the the mind being separate from the body. We say the mind is active,
only when we are sensing these private mental events of the mind. And when
these pattern detectors of our prime sensory path are not functioning, we
say we are unconscious. But that's all "unconscious" really means - that
the pattern detectors that produce all our behavior, are not active (turned
off for some reason).

It's this model the brain builds that creates the illusion that the mind
(our private thoughts) are not physical - that they are separate from all
the items for the physical world, including our physical body. And it's
that illusion, which creates the confusion in the people that believe there
is a hard problem of consciousness. The take their feelings of being a
"non physical mind inside a body" as being their personal indication that
they are "conscious". They see their own personal consciousness as being
more than just a physical body, because for them it includes this
non-physical "mind" as well. And that's exactly what I see you (and so
many others) doing in the way you talk about the hard problem of
consciousness. You, and they, say things like you are sure that you are
conscious. To me, this just means you sense the illusion in yourself. You
sense a version of "self" that includes both the physical body, and the
non-physical mind working together to create this odd (but not simply
physical) whole.

But them you make up all this silly stuff (in my view) as rationalizations
to explain what is happening. You justify the split as being a split of
what the body is, vs what the body does. That's just now what the split is,
or where it comes from. The hand can be a hand, and can wave, but yet we
don't get any odd sense of the wave being separate from the hand. It's
just a hand waving. It's just a property of the hand that shows up at
times, and is absent at other times. It's impossible to have a "hand wave"
without having the "hand" there at the same time for example.

The mind however seems far more separate from the body than that. We sense
no connection between the two - which is why it's so easy for people to
believe in the soul living on after death. When we sense thoughts, we
don't have any idea where they are coming form. The "wave" is obviously
coming from the hand. There is nothing to tell us where the thoughts are
coming from - so we just label the unknown source as "or mind".

How the brain becomes wired though conditioning is how we perceive the
world. It's our understanding of reality. For the most part, the brain is
wired to correctly reflect the reality of our universe (that dogs have
tails and noses for example). But the split between brain events, and
external events, is just invalid in the model. Our brain wiring is the
virtual reality, that normally (when the brain is working correctly() to
reflect the truth about the universe.

But in this one area, it's way off base. And people that are confused
about the hard problem, or the ones that aren't getting the distinction
between the virtual reality, and real reality straight. They are sure the
virtual reality is real, and as such, are thinking they need to explain why
there's the mind body split exists in reality. It doesn't exist in
reality. It exists only in the virtual reality created by the way the
brain becomes wired though conditioning. It only seems to us like there is
a split because our brains are wired incorrectly.

To solution to the hard problem of consciousness is very straight forward.
You simply have to build a pattern recognizing network that has its cross
correlations adjusted by the correlations (constraints as you like to call
them) which exist in the data. If you build such a system that creates a
model with one big cluster for private mental events, and another big
cluster for external events, then you have created the machine that
explains the illusion of conscious that exists in humans and have solved
the hard problem of consciousness at the same time. Of course, this same
task, is the task in front of us to solve the easy problem of consciousness
- so solving the first solves the second at the same time.

Quote:

You may fully understand how a computer works at the
hardware level without understanding how a particular
piece of software works. Indeed in the case of the
software being in the form of weights in a network
of nodes you declare you can never know how it works
in detail.

We can make the AI program believe ANYTHING WE WANT.
It would "know for sure" it was right, even if it
was dead wrong.

It depends what you mean by "belief".

By "belief" I mean, behavior.

Quote:

You may believe
this square is orange and the other square is yellow
based on what color they appear to be. However you also
have beliefs based on experiments which may show that
both squares have the same rgb value and thus if you
define color in those terms you will have the belief
they are the same color.

Right that would be one verbal behavior that makes us say "two pixels with
the same RGB value make the monitor produce the same light frequency
output", and a second, non-verbal behavior, that would cause our detector
network to activate different color pattern detectors for the two squares
(because of the context created by the light patterns near them in the 2D
visual field). That is what creates the "they look different, but I know
they are really the same" type of behavior in us.

Quote:

Even though redness doesn't _seem_ to most of us to be
physical brain behavior, it is.

I have no issue with that. Where we part is why it seems
to be different. For you it is "conditioning" for me it
has to do with how the belief is formed.

Well, to me, as I explained, yet again, above, it's how our pattern
detectors are cross wired. They are cross wired based on the statistical
correlations. They are wired like that because it makes them work better.
Having the detectors cross wired allows them to use "hints" based on what
what other detectors are currently active. When we see a dog nose, we aer
likely to see a dog tail at the same time. So the cross wiring of the dog
nose detector to the dog tail detector causes the dog tail detector to be
"primed to fire" based on the fact we just saw a dog nose and that dog
tails are likely to show up when we see a dog nose. This is why when
looking at the dalmatian in the tree shadow illusion that you you suddenly
start to see all the parts of the dog once you see one part of the dog
(like the ears or face). The cross wiring of the detectors helps each of
the other to fire once one fires. It's why the brain does all that cross
wiring based on past known correlations of these patterns. It creates a
far more accurate, and faster, pattern detector network.

"conditioning" to me is just the process of how these pattern detectors get
configured over time. The brain has to use two major systems to make that
work. One is an unsupervised system, which wires them based on statical
correlations (constraints) that exist in the data. The dog nose patterns
shows up a lot with the dog tail, so they get cross wired with a weight
that represents the statistical odds of that correlation. Second, these
must all be adjusted by reinforcement learning as well so that the end
result of the detectors is to trigger not just recognition (which is only a
side effect of the true problem) but ultimately, the external arm and leg
motions of our behavior. All of that is what I think of when I say
"conditioning".

Our "beliefs" are nothing more than our behavior. If you say "I believe
the sky is blue" that verbal behavior is a conditioned responses. We have
been conditioned by our environment to say those things.

We do use the word "belief" to more accurately label only a subset of all
our behaviors, but that's not relevant in my view. They are all still just
behaviors that exist in us because of the two prime forces at work which
wired our brains they way they have become wired.

Quote:

I don't use
reason to determine what color an object is. I just look
and experience the answer. It is not a different kind of
stuff it is a different way of knowing.

Well, that knowing is just the foundation of all our knowing. That is
nothing more than a pattern detector in your head activating - aka nothing
much more than a neuron firing. What color you see it as is nothing more
than what pattern detector fires in your head in response to the light
stimulating.

We already know exactly why it "looks" like two colors are different when
they are not. It's because two different pattern detectors are firing in
response to the to sensory inputs. And they do that, because they are
wired to do what is effectively the same sort of thing our automatic white
balance algorithms do in our digital cameras. Which would likewise make
the digital camera form the same opinion about the two colors - that they
encode to different RGB values because of the context of other colors they
are paired with.

There's nothing to any of this that we don't already have most the answers
to and which we don't, at the same time, have working hardware duplicating
all the major functions in our man made machines. Human perception is not
hard to understand because it's basically the same as the perception
abilities we have built into our machines already. All the differences are
simply difference of degree and not differences of kind.

Quote:

They not only are unable to understand the answer for
themselves, they can't even understand what those of
us who understand the answer, are talking about.

I believe it is the other way around.

Quote:

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt at (no spam) kcwc.com http://NewsReader.Com/

casey...

Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 2:34 am

Guest

On Oct 13, 6:27 am, c... at (no spam) kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:

Quote:

...

When you talk about a computer not having access to it's
logic gates, that's somewhat true, but I suspect it's not
as true as you are thinking.

I can see from all your posts you have no idea what I am
thinking.

Quote:

...

I believe what you are in fact talking about, is the
illusion of separation of body and mind, and not some
special, or interesting, type of processing happening
in humans.

And this belief you have about what you think I am really
talking about is perhaps one of the main reasons you just
don't get it.

When I read your posts I have the Huh? reaction instead
of the Aha! reaction I have to the current book I am reading:
"In Search of Memory" by Eric Kandel who won a Nobel prize
for his work on learning and memory in Aplysia, a giant
marine snail.

JC

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