Re: consciousness

Traveler <traveler@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 29 Apr 2007 02:24:32 GMT, curt@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:

Traveler <traveler@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 28 Apr 2007 17:04:48 GMT, curt@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:

Then you guys are just choosing to define "awareness" as something
magic that only humans have even though there's no evidence to
suggest our awareness of events in our environment is any different
than a computer being aware of events in its environment.

This is nonsense, IMO. We have evidence that the neurons in the visual
cortex that encode for blue are biologically, chemically and
electrically identical to the neurons that encode for red or green.
The only difference is their cortical location. There is nothing
coming from the visual environment that tells the brain that it should
see red or blue because those neurons can be excited artificially
using a micro-electrode with the same result of color sensation that
would occur if they were excited naturally.

In other words, the environment has absolutely nothing to do with it.
What we sense is not *out there* but *in there*.

In other words, when I sense a dog, the thing I'm sensing is not "out
there"? Don't be silly.

That's exactly correct. What you are sensing is not out there. It's in
your sensory cortex. That's the reason that a micro-electrode inserted
in your visual cortex can make you see color when there is no color.

Our awareness is of course totally a function of the circuits in the
brain, but the thing we are sensing normally starts "out there".

Pure semantics. I was using the word "sense" in the same way that you
use it over and over: conscious sensing.

Sure that's fine.

I did it to make a point. You
equate all signal detection with consciousness. My point is that the
brain does not need the senses to be aware of phenomena. The source of
the signals is irrelevant to our conscious awareness. In fact, some
people see words in color due to some genetically miswired pathways in
their brain.

Sure, I agree with the idea you are trying to communicate here, but if
spend enough time to think about it, you will realize that the concept of
"sensing" and "signal" are one and the same. You can't separate the two.

If you have two electrons in a wire, and one moves, it can cause the one
next it to move. Is this not a clear example of the second electron
"sensing" the motion of the first electron? Isn't each electron in a wire
acting as an electron motion detector of all the electrons around it?

There's no physical action you can call "signal" which I can't describe as
"sensing". The difference is not in the physical substrate, it's purely
semantic - it's in the eye of the beholder.

Only our
awareness is "in there". However, none of this conflicts with anything
I said so why you started off with "this is nonsense" seems like
nonsense to me.

But it does conflict with your stance. According to you, detection is
the same as awareness. I showed that the source of a signal has
nothing to do with it.

No, you didn't show that. You showed that you don't need eyes to see red
because "red" is not light, but rather a signal in the brain.

But you haven't explained what happens if you take that neuron out of the
head, and activate it. Does the person still sense "redness" when the
neuron is not connected to the rest of the brain? I'm quite sure the
person won't report sensing "redness" when you do that. So the redness
must not exist in the single neuron alone. How much of the brain might you
be able to cut out (or somehow deactivate), and still have the person
report a sensation of redness when you stimulate that neuron? I don't know
the answer to that, but I can be sure that a lot of brain will still be
left.

If you stimulate the redness neuron, and a second neuron then senses the
activity of the redness neuron, and in response to that, fires - did the
second neuron sense the activity of the first? And in this case, isn't
every neuron in your head acting as a sensor of neuron activity in other
neurons?

And if you cut out all these other "sensors" (all the other neurons) the
person isn't able to report a sensation of redness. So where in all this
does the "redness" exist? In the first neuron? In the neurons that sense
the first neuron? In the 100,000,000 other neurons that activate before
the person ends up reporting seeing redness?

I don't think you have even begin to grasp the concept that "in here" and
"out there" and "sensing" vs "processing" are all very arbitrary ideas that
don't on their own tell us much of anything about what is happening.

We consciously hear sounds and sense color, not
because of where the signals come from but because of something else,
something in the way the brain works that escapes our understanding.

Well, that's only true to a very limited extend. We know that which neuron
we activate determine what the person reports being aware of. And we know
that neuron is then sensed by other neurons. So in fact, where the signal
comes from is exactly what determines what the person becomes aware of, and
what they might report to us. If you move the neuron to a new location,
like the dish on the lab table, the sensation is no longer the same for the
person, so where it comes from is important.

Now explain to me why cortical location alone gives rise to the
conscious phenomenon of color.

Again? How many times do you want me to repeat myself? You have never
been able to grasp it in the past so really, what's the point? Probably
just because you know I can't resist. :)

Cortical location gives rise to the conscious phenomenon of color in the
exact same way the location of a wire in a camcorder gives rise to the
sensation of red, blue and green colors in the camcorder. The wires are
all identical, but their different reactions to color is determined not
by their make up (they are all the same) by by their location relative
to the other parts of the camcorder. How on earth is this so hard for
you to understand?

You make my point for me. But you are either evading the point or you
just don't get it. The location of a wire or nerve fiber only explains
signal detection. It does not explain why the signal is seen as red or
blue, since all signals look and behave exactly the same as you
admitted. BTW, the neurons do not react to color because there is no
color signal as I pointed out earlier.

How could something so trivial be so hard for people to understand?

If I build a computer to print the message "I see red" when I activate wire
A, and build the computer to print "I see blue" when I activate wire B,
then when I active wire A, it will report seeing red, and when I activate
wire B, it will report seeing blue. That's all that is happening in the
brain. There's nothing more complex than that which needs to be explained.

What you sense as "seeing something red" happening in you is just the
activation of the neurons that, with the help of millions of other neurons,
makes you say, "I see redness".

What you fail to accept, is the possibility that the signal flowing in
the wire (aka how it connects in the chain reaction from the rainbow) is
an identity with what you keep calling "conscious experience".

Yes, I reject your explanation because, as I keep repeating, there is
no color signal coming from the outside. In fact, people who have been
born blind (no optic nerve), are able to see bursts of color when
their visual cortices are artificially excited.

How do they know they are seeing color?

What are they reporting when they tell you they are seeing color if they
have never seen anything with their eyes in their lives?

Show me the research that reports this nonsense and I'll show you the holes
in it big enough to drive a truck through.

All you can do, is find a neuron which you believe to be the "red" neuron,
and then activate it. Then, teach them to respond to that activation by
saying, "I see red now".

You haven't taught them to "see red". You have taught them to sense you
activating some neuron in their head and reporting you that it is "redness"
they are sensing when you activate it.

Yet, there is no evidence to support the idea it's not an identity. The
only evidence is that people like you just keep saying it's not an
identity even though you can provide not even a single piece of data to
support that the identity doesn't exist. And even worse, if you assume
it's not an identity, it creates an endless list of unexplainable
conflicts with reality, where as if you assume it is an identity, there
are no conflicts. But yet, you guys keep sticking with a belief that
creates conflicts. Why is that?

I gave the evidence above. You keep evading it. Why?

Because you are talking nonsense. I'm not avoiding anything. Stop talking
nonsense and I'll respond to it. Until you say something cogent and
intelligent, how can I respond to it?

The pathways and
connections have nothing to do with it. The reason that the evidence
creates conflicts in your mind is that you are a materialist. There is
no conflict in my mind. ahahaha...

:)

If the pathways and the connections have thing to do with it, then you
could remove the "red-neuron" from the head, and then activate it, and the
person would still report seeing red. But surprise surprise, they never
will. How do you explain this if you think the pathways and the
connections have nothing to do with it?

And while you're at it, explain to me
how you would implement the same thing in a computer.

The same way it's implemented in a brain and in a camcorder. You create
signal processing circuits that break the visual information into
signals that represent different frequency bands.

Nonsense. Representation is not consciousness. The signal coming from
a microelectrode inserted into someone's visual cortex in no way
represents color. It represents nothing. This is what I and a few
psychologists have known for quite some time. Psychologists call it
"the operational closure of the nervous system". It means that the
brain operates on its own states, not on some imagined model or
representation of the external world.

But the brain clearly is creating representations of the external world.
If there's a neuron in the brain which fires whenever red light falls on
your eye, then that neuron is clearly a representation of red light - just
like the video signal coming from the camera (or if you want to remove the
confusion created by the word "signal" - just talk about the vibrations of
the electrons in the wire) is a representation of the light entering the
camera which is itself a representation of the objects the light came from.

All causal chains create representations. The universe is full of it -
even rocks - not just a "conscious" brains or computers.

And don't talk
to me about how those neurons are connected to other neurons.

Sure, why not ignore the reason the circuit works and then try to
explain how it works.

I know how the circuit works, thank you.

How does one wire in the robot become the wire that carries
the red signal and the other wire carries the blue signal? You can't
answer it by looking at the structure of the wire alone. You answer it
by looking at how it's connected with the other wires and the other
transistors and the light sensors.

No you don't. Again, a micro-electrode evokes the same sensation of
color even though it is not connected to a light sensor that responds
to color.

Why don't you try to explain to me how a robot is able to see color
without explaining how the wires are connected. Then change the word
"robot" to "brain" and you will have your answer for the brain as well.

Robots do not see color or hear sounds or feel touch or temperature.
You are projecting your subjective feelings onto machines. Robots
simply respond to signals. And so does the brain, IMO. Being an
unabashed dualist, I believe that there is something else that make us
consciously sense those things.

This is where I just have to stop reading and responding.

You, and all the other hard or soft dualist have no data to support this
type of view - you simply define it to be true because you want it to be
true.

At least some are wise enough to argue that it's unknown what a robot
"sees". That argument has merit (it simply then forces us to say there is
no answer). The pure philosophical argument has to end there - there is no
possible answer. I however don't have to limit myself to pure rational
philosophy. I'm a pragmatic engineer who choose to believe we operate on
probabilities. I happen to believe the brain works this way, and that for
the brain, nothing is absolute. As such, nothing we know, or understand,
is absolute. Some things simply are so highly probable, that we have
learned to treat them as being absolute. As such, it's irrational to treat
things that are highly probably, as if they are unknown. Highly probably
is what we call "a fact" (though it's open to debate at what level of
probability something becomes a fact). The probability that materialism is
correct is so highly probably, that it's irrational to assume otherwise.
All the data is stacked in its favor. No data we have supports dualism as
being even an option. All we really have, is a lot of people that really
want it to be true, and since there is no way to prove that want to be
absolutely wrong, they continue to follow their desire, (aka their
conditioning).

The argument that humans do see, and robots don't see, is just
stupid from all rational perspectives. There's no data to support it.
It's just something many people want to be true. And if that is what you
want to believe, feel free to continue to believe it - just stop wasting my
time trying to argue as if there was a rational basis for the belief. Take
the debate to a religious faith group where it belongs.

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

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