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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

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marduk said:
Hold on now, tex.

Just because I don't want determinism to be true doesn't mean that I can prove to myself it isn't. I'm open to it, I just don't want it.

SOME impulses happen beyond our conscious control, THEN we become aware of it. As an example, my heart beats and I'm not aware of it in general, until I choose to focus on it, and then I can feel it.

If I touch a hot stove my hand pulls back before I think "what's that funny smell and pain in my hand, perhaps I should move it."

However, I can decide to wear a red shirt instead of a blue shirt, and cause the red shirt to be on my body. Whether at the heart of it that was a result of free will or a pre-set conditional state that determined that, I can't say for sure.
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I understand that. It appears to me a consistent physicalist stance requires the latter. That's Nagels critique in the bat paper.
 
marduk said:
I didn't say what I think you said. At least I didn't mean to if I did.

My position is that neurons (or groups of neurons) are state machines that are able to have a feedback loop on themselves.

A neuron that fires can (and does) influence on how often it will continue to fire for example. It's a feedback loop.

It's like economics. If I choose to buy a lot of gold, I'll get a lot of gold. But I'll also drive up the price of gold which will influence my decision to buy more or not.
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See my distinction between what you say is consciousness and subjective awareness.
 
technomaget said:
No, the very concept of understanding presupposes that we can learn something. To learn something is to be able to identify what is true and what is not true using free will. If I don't have free will and am pre-determined to make a selection, it's not learning; it's just adding information into my brain with no idea of whether it's true or not.
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Searle makes something like this argument, I'll find a link if you want to read his take on it.
 
What I've learned from this thread is that all of these arguments and many more have been beaten in the mouth like gift horses ... but even a dead horse tells the truth twice a day ... I'll post a link to where Chalmers puts it all in a few categories and you can pick out which one you like and then look up counter arguments and counter counter arguments ... in the old days folks had to think for themselves! ;-)

@marduk

The name ain't Tex, it's Slim, Arkansas Slim ...

(Whistles and saunters into the sunset)
 
marduk said:
can you talk more about that?

Since awareness is part of the definition of consciousness, I was kind of equating the two.
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How can a thought have an effect? It IS an effect - you said it emerges ... this is the whole hard problem ... read Nagel and Chalmers.
 
smcder said:
What I've learned from this thread is that all of these arguments and many more have been beaten in the mouth like gift horses ... but even a dead horse tells the truth twice a day ... I'll post a link to where Chalmers puts it all in a few categories and you can pick out which one you like and then look up counter arguments and counter counter arguments ... in the old days folks had to think for themselves! ;-)

@marduk

The name ain't Tex, it's Slim, Arkansas Slim ...

(Whistles and saunters into the sunset)
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The difference is that for the first time in human history, we can test it.
 
marduk said:
can you talk more about that?

Since awareness is part of the definition of consciousness, I was kind of equating the two.
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How can a "thought" have an effect? It IS an effect - you said it emerges from neural activity and this is the whole hard problem ... read Nagel and Chalmers then we'll have the terminology and won't be going over well trod ground.

http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf

Chalmers
Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness
Consciousness and its Place in Nature
 
marduk said:
can you talk more about that?

Since awareness is part of the definition of consciousness, I was kind of equating the two.
Click to expand...

The Panksepp papers linked so far develop an understanding of consciousness as evolving in stages from 'affectivity' in primordial organisms to increasing 'self'-awareness and intentionality in evolving animals, eventually to reflection on experience leading to reflective thinking and mind in humans and potentially in some other highly evolved species on earth (such as elephants, dolphins, and whales).
 
smcder said:
How can a "thought" have an effect? It IS an effect - you said it emerges from neural activity and this is the whole hard problem ... read Nagel and Chalmers then we'll have the terminology and won't be going over well trod ground.

http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf

Chalmers
Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness
Consciousness and its Place in Nature
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What you just described was causality to information and physical science.

A cause is by definition able to have other effects (and hence other causes) down the arrow of time.
 
marduk said:
Philosophically maybe it's hard.

Computationally, it's not.
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Why that's downright audacious, Tex ...

Read the papers, you might be surprised, Chalmers has a bit of a maths background and got his PhD under Douglas Hofstedter.

If you don't walk to talk philosophy it's ok with me ... and I can see a conscious computer emerging and no one knowing any more how it works than we do our own mind ... In fact, "how" is a bit of an endangered question:

http://www.uschamberfoundation.org/sites/default/files/Big Data and the Sciences.pdf
 
marduk said:
What you just described was causality to information and physical science.

A cause is by definition able to have other effects (and hence other causes) down the arrow of time.
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Yes I know ... Ok try this, I don't mean the neurons firing, I mean the subjective experience ... you could be thinking of blue velvet a while your playing chess for all the causal effect that experience would have .., I see exactly where your thinking is and it's why some people don't see a problem, don't get Nagels point ... and I'm willing to concede he might not have one, but I gotta be convinced.
 
smcder said:
Yes I know ... Ok try this, I don't mean the neurons firing, I mean the subjective experience ... you could be thinking of blue velvet a while your playing chess for all the causal effect that experience would have .., I see exactly where your thinking is and it's why some people don't see a problem, don't get Nagels point ... and I'm willing to concede he might not have one, but I gotta be convinced.
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What I'm saying is the subjective experience is the act of specific neurons firing a specific way.
 
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marduk said:
Yup, I do.
Prove me wrong. You can say something is intuitively incorrect, or you can attempt to build something off philosophical axioms. Leaving out the math or logic axioms (because nobody here seems to be interested in that stuff) there is exactly one that I am aware of: I think, therefore I am.

So yes, philosophy is not in general tested, except in domains of logic, math, or the intersection of the two known as the philosophy of mathematics.

Show me one philosophical "test" of any claim that is not rampantly subjective and I'll retract my statement.

In my opinion, which is of course heavily biased by my experience of philosophy in modern academia -- it's degenerated to a bunch of verbal masturbation that serves no-one excepts getting some phd's and tenure.

But that's me.

I've practiced Zen and Japanese martial arts for 20 years, you're not helping your position.
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I'm interested in math and logic "axioms" ...
and I'm interested in Zen. Tell me more about both, if you like.
 
smcder said:
I'm interested in math and logic "axioms" ...
and I'm interested in Zen. Tell me more about both, if you like.
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It's kind of a big area, can you tell me what bit you're interested in?

Axioms are generally quite simple, self-evident statements. One basic one in logic and math is equivalency:
x = x for all values of x.

You can find a lot of them. In set theory (part of mathematics), there's an axiom such that a set exists of which there is no set contained in that set (the "empty set" axiom).
d493977b5c670c59f3644677852e955b.png


There's a bunch in the formal domains:
List of axioms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You generally take the list of axioms and use them to derive theorems out of them.

Not sure what more you want me to say about it.

The Zen stuff I'll leave aside. I know enough that I don't know much about it, but I think I'm starting to know what I don't know.
 
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