Re: consciousness

Joe Durnavich <joejd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Don Geddis writes:

So of course you talk about software and text and English "words" and
"running a spelling checker". But you aren't confused in this case that
there is something going on which is _distinct_ from voltages and
transistors. It's merely convenient to describe and discuss behavior at
a higher level of abstraction.

Don, isn't this just Cartesianism in materialist clothing?

Cartesian dualism dichotomizes a human being into two entities: a visible
body and a hidden mind that drives it. You appear to be creating a
similar dichotomy here.

I think that in fact there is a valid dualism here to be talked about.

There are two clearly distinct objects in this example. There is the
computer, and all it's associated hardware (including the paper that comes
out of the printer). And their is the human and their brain, which is
interacting with that hardware. This is the real source of the dualism.

If you look at it from this perspective, there is no confusion over some of
it being physical, and some of it being non-physical. The human is just as
physical as the computer is.

The reason everyone gets confused about the physical nature of the abstract
is that we are taught to believe that the abstract words we use are are
making reference to some "ghost" in the machine. We are not. We are in
fact talking about the physical brain of the observer and not the machine
at all.

In regards to MS Word, we interact with a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and
documents that roll of the printer. For us, MS Word is constituted by
what we have direct contact with and the role it plays in our lives. You
suggest, it seems, that what we have direct contact with and talk about
is just a convenient abstraction and that the real reality of MS Word is
the hidden electrical states. That is, in effect, the same "mind/body"
dualism that plagues traditional Cartesianism.

We have direct contact with more than meets the eye. Some parts of our
brain have direct contact with other parts of the brain. Some parts of the
brain have direct contact with the eyes. With all this direct contact in
the causality chains, it can get very confusing as to which object we are
talking about when we talk about MS word for example.

You can take the computer apart, atom by atom, but yet, you can't find a
single atom in there that you would call MS-Word. You can't sort all the
atoms that make up the computer into the MS-Word atoms, and the non MS-Word
atoms. Maybe you could do it to some extent by taking the atoms that make
up the memory storage cells that hold the MS-word program and label them as
being part of the MS-word machine inside the computer, but many parts are
shared by different programs and could not be labeled as MS-word.

But yet, even though MS-word doesn't exist as a clear and obvious distinct
part of the computer, it does seem to be very real to us. It seems to be a
"thing" that exists.

The reason for this is because existence for us is defined by the operation
of pattern detectors in our brain operating on the sensory data streams
that flow into it. A neuron, acts as a pattern detector. It's in direct
contact not with the computer, but instead, with the other neurons that
form synapses with it. Neurons are in direct contact with other neurons,
and they respond to the behavior of the other neurons they are in contact
with. The behavior they produce, can be described in terms of the patterns
of behaviors that exist in the neurons they have direct contact with. Each
neuron is acting as a pattern detector when it fires in response to the
spatial-temporal patterns of behavior they detect in other neurons.

How is it that when we have a stream of complex sensory sensory signals
flowing in us that we "see" a computer sitting on a desk instead of just
"seeing" flashing lights? It's because we have pattern detectors which
activate whenever they "see" the right patterns of flashing lights to
indicate that there is a computer on the desk creating those patterns of
light. It takes many neurons in order to detect a computer in all that
complex data, but yet each neuron is detecting it's own pattern in the
signals it has access to. So we can look at the network of many neurons at
the computer detector, or we can look at each neuron as detecting some
pattern in the data.

When we look at a desk and see a computer, we don't think about what is
going on to make that possible. We just think of the computer as
"existing". It has properties that persist over time. So we talk about
the computer as existing. But in fact, this is only possible because we
have neurons in our brain that define what a computer is for us. Their
physical structure and interconnections with other neurons and sensors
define what patterns of light we will "see" as being a computer.

Whey I watch a movie, and in the move there is a computer, I "see" the
computer as being just as real as if I were seeing a computer directly.

In other words, what we see, is not the physical computer, as much as we
see sensory data patterns. Everything that "exists" for us only exists as
sensory data patterns.

This is where the dualism comes from. There is the physical computer which
is the root cause of the light patterns, and there are the physical neurons
which activate in response to those patterns. Everything we think about,
everything we can sense, only exists for us because we have physical
neurons that activate in response to the pattern.

When we are exposed to something new - like sound patterns of a language we
have never heard before, we don't correctly sense the patterns. If asked
to repeat what we just heard, most people can't do it - they can't even get
close. Not until we learn the language, by a long history of exposure to
the words and exposure to the events that happen in conjunction with the
words, is the brain able to form all the correct pattern detectors. And
not until the pattern detectors are formed, can they be used to train the
behavior generation systems to reproduce those sounds when we do something
like speak.

If we learn a new word for food, the brain has to first form the correct
pattern detectors to recognize the word, and second, modify the pattern
detectors for "food" to respond to this alternate form of the "food"
concept (pattern), and third, train the behavior producing parts of the
brain to generate the correct set of physical motions to make the sound.

The abstract concept of this word doesn't exist for us until the pattern
detectors get formed in our brain.

When we look at a computer, we see lots of different patterns in its
behavior other than just the ones we think of as the computer. When the
correct patterns of behavior show up on the screen, we think of it as
MS-Word.

We think of the computer as being more real than MS-Word because the
patterns the computer produces are more persistent than the patterns we
call MS-Word. But yet, they all exist to us only as sensory data patterns.
We can make the MS-word patterns stop simply by turning the computer off,
or by closing the MS-Word windows. But we can also make the computer
patterns go away by putting the computer in a crusher - or by burning it
and turning it into a lot of heat and other by products like CO2 and H2O.

When we talk about the MS-Word patterns, we talk as if MS-Word exists in
the computer, but yet is some "abstract" concept that doesn't have normal
physical existence. But yet, when you look at what is happening, nothing
odd or non-physical is going on at all. We have the physical computer, and
we have the physical pattern detectors in our head detecting MS-Word
patterns in the computer.

What is never valid, is to pretend that something non-physical is happening
here. When we talk about abstract concepts, we are in all causes talking
about the behavior (aka motion and change) of physical objects in the
universe. We are talking both about the physical objects that gave rise to
the sensory patterns, and we are talking about behavior of all the
different pattern detecting devices in our head which produce unique
behavior in response to each of those different patterns.

In fact, I believe it to be more valid to understand that when we talk
about existence, we are talking more about the physical behavior of our
brain, than we are talking about the objects in the universe that gave rise
to the sensory data streams.

Many of these types of debates look to me as people fighting to replace
one form of Cartesianism with another.

I think that's perfectly valid to see it like that.

The unquestioned assumption seems
to be that Cartesianism must be fundamentally right, and that the debate
is over the ghostliness of the homunculus.

Right. I see no ghosts anywhere. I just see a universe full of atoms in
motion. That's all that is important at our level of existence. I see
people that believe in non-physical ghosts because they have thought enough
to understand that these patterns exist separate from the things which
generate them, so they pretend the patterns have an existence beyond the
physical objects that create them. They believe in the ghost of the circle
- circles exist as an abstract concept that has an existence but yet is not
physical. They however are just choosing to ignore the physical behavior
of the brain which is the real place "circles" exist. Circles only exist
for us because we have circle pattern detectors in our brain. So when we
talk about the abstract concept of circles, we are talking about circle
pattern detector circuits in our brain. If we did not have those pattern
detectors in our brain, we would have nothing to talk about - circles
wouldn't exist for us and we couldn't talk about them because we would have
no clue what a circle was.

The patterns would still exist in nature, but we won't "see" them as
circles in any sense.

To only way for people to believe that abstract concepts like circles exist
as ghosts with no physical form is to ignore what the brain is doing. And
that's exactly the error that we are taught to make, and which millions of
people make every day when they start to think about these ideas. We
pretend all this consciousness just happens on it's own. But there's no
indication that there is any magic here at all. Abstract concepts are
nothing more than physical brain behavior - we were just never taught to
think about them that way. We were instead taught to think of them as
existing separate from the brain. So even when trying to understand what
the brain is doing, we still have the desire to make thought (aka qualia)
exist as something non-physical.

This is where all the errors are made - to believe that thought has a
non-physical component. There's just no indication that there is something
non-physical about it.

I don't find much merit in the views of the "brain state" folks that talk
as if Curt, say, is not conscious; neurons in his brain are. Has any
member of this group ever seen a live human brain?

I haven't.

I doubt many, if any,
have. Yet there is no question that Curt is conscious.

We need to move beyond the view that what we see and deal with in our
lives is not real or relevant, that the reality must be some
behind-the-scenes replica of what we see.

But it is. The real computer is one thing, but the pattern detectors that
allow me to detect the computer patterns in the light are very much
behind-the-scenes replica of what we are seeing (the real computer that
created the patterns). I like to call the physical behavior of the neurons
signals. Signals are another abstract concept about the behavior of the
physical neurons in my brain, but still, when I talk about brain signals,
or brain states. I don't like the use of the concept of brain states
however because states are frozen in time and state-based ideas tend to
ignore the temporal aspect of how things change over time - and how things
change over time is where all the information is stored. The concept of
signals is broader than the concept of states because it implies timing is
more important.

It is true that when we see a
bulldozer engaged in purposeful activity that we rightfully expect to
find a person inside operating it. We need to resist the urge to look at
a fellow human being likewise engaged in purposeful activity and expect
to find an operator inside, be it ghost or mechanism. Let's grant that
Curt himself is an operator of the first class.

Right. There is dualism, but the dualism doesn't recurse. The ghost in
the computer we call MS-word isn't really in the computer at all. It's in
the behavior of our brain. When we talk about NS-word, we are really
talking about MS-word patterns detected in the behavior of the computer by
the behavior of the pattern detectors in our brain.

When we talk about what the brain does, we can see patterns in its behavior
which we label with abstract words like "signals", and "processes", and
"pattern detectors". But to think that these things exists as "ghosts" in
the brain, is as wrong as to think that MS-word exists as a ghost in the
computer. Pattern detectors are never "ghosts". They are physical
devices.

Because we are taught to see ideas and thought, and concepts as
non-physical ghosts, we can't help but think the brain has non-physical
ghosts in it we try to both understand what it does, and describe it. But
it doesn't. If you undo the damage of your education, and see the truth,
you can see that there are no ghosts here. The only thing that exists here
is the physical behavior of atoms.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

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