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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 7
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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Randall
J. Randall Murphy
Hey you're the one who mentioned it. I just wanted to know things are going OK for you.
Good thing I didn't go into unicorns and pixies too then ... lol
smcder
Paranormal Adept
I've been off the forum for months and now he says he's concerned ... Lol
Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk
Just a preliminary observation in response to Pearl's abstract for the Edge text:
“A new thinking came about in the early '80s when we changed from rule-based systems to a Bayesian network. Bayesian networks are probabilistic reasoning systems. An expert will put in his or her perception of the domain. A domain can be a disease, or an oil field—the same target that we had for expert systems.
The idea was to model the domain rather than the procedures that were applied to it. In other words, you would put in local chunks of probabilistic knowledge about a disease and its various manifestations and, if you observe some evidence, the computer will take those chunks, activate them when needed and compute for you the revised probabilities warranted by the new evidence.
It's an engine for evidence. It is fed a probabilistic description of the domain and, when new evidence arrives, the system just shuffles things around and gives you your revised belief in all the propositions, revised to reflect the new evidence.”
Engines of Evidence | Edge.org
My initial observation is simply to point out that in Consciousness Studies the "domain" to be investigated is consciousness itself, which Pearl apparently goes on to recognize in the second link Steve referred to as concerning "bayesianism and causality, or, why i am only a half ... "
I recall hearing reference in the past to a Zen saying, approximately as follows:
"If [or 'when'?] the mind works upon itself, how can it avoid an immense confusion?"
Consciousness Studies is a hard discipline because at its best it recognizes and continues to struggle against that potential confusion. The struggle begins, as Husserl explained, in confronting the presuppositions we bring to our 'thinking' about 'what-is'. Information theory, embedded in computationalism, seems to me to be the last gasp of the objectivist presuppositions of modern physics, whose still-dominant paradigm is challenged from many perspectives in our species' thinking from the basis of what we experience. We need to do a lot of work to avoid the 'immense confusion' seeded by the now-fading objectivist paradigm.
“A new thinking came about in the early '80s when we changed from rule-based systems to a Bayesian network. Bayesian networks are probabilistic reasoning systems. An expert will put in his or her perception of the domain. A domain can be a disease, or an oil field—the same target that we had for expert systems.
The idea was to model the domain rather than the procedures that were applied to it. In other words, you would put in local chunks of probabilistic knowledge about a disease and its various manifestations and, if you observe some evidence, the computer will take those chunks, activate them when needed and compute for you the revised probabilities warranted by the new evidence.
It's an engine for evidence. It is fed a probabilistic description of the domain and, when new evidence arrives, the system just shuffles things around and gives you your revised belief in all the propositions, revised to reflect the new evidence.”
Engines of Evidence | Edge.org
My initial observation is simply to point out that in Consciousness Studies the "domain" to be investigated is consciousness itself, which Pearl apparently goes on to recognize in the second link Steve referred to as concerning "bayesianism and causality, or, why i am only a half ... "
I recall hearing reference in the past to a Zen saying, approximately as follows:
"If [or 'when'?] the mind works upon itself, how can it avoid an immense confusion?"
Consciousness Studies is a hard discipline because at its best it recognizes and continues to struggle against that potential confusion. The struggle begins, as Husserl explained, in confronting the presuppositions we bring to our 'thinking' about 'what-is'. Information theory, embedded in computationalism, seems to me to be the last gasp of the objectivist presuppositions of modern physics, whose still-dominant paradigm is challenged from many perspectives in our species' thinking from the basis of what we experience. We need to do a lot of work to avoid the 'immense confusion' seeded by the now-fading objectivist paradigm.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
I did ask about you, and as pointless as it may seem, my best wishes have always been with you, because even though it's just a discussion forum here, you have had a significant impact on how I look at the topics we've discussed here, and you have been missed.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
I've now read the Edge article by Pearl. Following are a few of his presuppositional claims, followed by my own parenthetical responses in italics:
1. “I need to understand what I'm doing and I need to understand it mathematically. Rule-based systems were not mathematically solid to the point where you could prove things about their behavior. Mathematical elegance tells you: ‘If you do things right you are guaranteed a certain behavior.’ There's something very pleasing about such guarantees, which was absent from rule-based systems.” {Mathematical elegance is also absent in human experience, consciousness, and a great deal of human thinking. Not to mention, but I will, its absence in the attempts of physicists to produce, after sustained effort, a coherent ‘theory of everything’.}
2. “We took advantage of the fact that the knowledge builder understands what is relevant and what is not relevant.” {To the extent that he/she does in our time. We won’t know everything that is ‘relevant’ to a ‘domain’ being researched until we do.}
3. ‘free will is probably an illusion' {Probably? What if it’s not an illusion? This is one of those differences that make a difference.}
4. “What computational advantage do we get from this assumption that you and I have free will? This is an exciting problem, because once we understand it, we can have robots simulating free will. Never mind the unproductive philosophical question of whether they do indeed have free will. Obviously, they were programmed to follow deterministic rules, and they follow their programming rules faithfully, so, from metaphysical viewpoint they lack free will. {Category errors.}
At the same time, if they communicate the way we do, with free-will vocabulary, we can increase the bandwidth of the communication channel between man and machine. This is what counts. And once we build such robots we will be 100 times closer to understanding how human beings do that.” {Do 'what'? Pearl seems to think that by teaching our robots to share and mutually communicate with us about our mutual illusion of free will, we will thereby understand how we ourselves have arrived at our own illusion of free will [provided that we have been correct in assuming that our own free will is merely an illusion]. This passes for critical thought in cybernetics?}
5. “If you go to any statistical conference, you will find the word "cause" in at least 100 or 200 papers, competing for respectability through the word "cause." So causality flipped itself from being a liability to being an asset, a source of respectability. This flip is unseen in education, which is a terrible gap. I'm working a lot on that.” {The human concept of causality did not 'flip itself'. Rather, the claims of exponents of 'probability theory' exceeded their grasp.}
I see that I had hoped for too much from Pearl. But I'd still like to read the text Steve attempted to link earlier.
1. “I need to understand what I'm doing and I need to understand it mathematically. Rule-based systems were not mathematically solid to the point where you could prove things about their behavior. Mathematical elegance tells you: ‘If you do things right you are guaranteed a certain behavior.’ There's something very pleasing about such guarantees, which was absent from rule-based systems.” {Mathematical elegance is also absent in human experience, consciousness, and a great deal of human thinking. Not to mention, but I will, its absence in the attempts of physicists to produce, after sustained effort, a coherent ‘theory of everything’.}
2. “We took advantage of the fact that the knowledge builder understands what is relevant and what is not relevant.” {To the extent that he/she does in our time. We won’t know everything that is ‘relevant’ to a ‘domain’ being researched until we do.}
3. ‘free will is probably an illusion' {Probably? What if it’s not an illusion? This is one of those differences that make a difference.}
4. “What computational advantage do we get from this assumption that you and I have free will? This is an exciting problem, because once we understand it, we can have robots simulating free will. Never mind the unproductive philosophical question of whether they do indeed have free will. Obviously, they were programmed to follow deterministic rules, and they follow their programming rules faithfully, so, from metaphysical viewpoint they lack free will. {Category errors.}
At the same time, if they communicate the way we do, with free-will vocabulary, we can increase the bandwidth of the communication channel between man and machine. This is what counts. And once we build such robots we will be 100 times closer to understanding how human beings do that.” {Do 'what'? Pearl seems to think that by teaching our robots to share and mutually communicate with us about our mutual illusion of free will, we will thereby understand how we ourselves have arrived at our own illusion of free will [provided that we have been correct in assuming that our own free will is merely an illusion]. This passes for critical thought in cybernetics?}
5. “If you go to any statistical conference, you will find the word "cause" in at least 100 or 200 papers, competing for respectability through the word "cause." So causality flipped itself from being a liability to being an asset, a source of respectability. This flip is unseen in education, which is a terrible gap. I'm working a lot on that.” {The human concept of causality did not 'flip itself'. Rather, the claims of exponents of 'probability theory' exceeded their grasp.}
I see that I had hoped for too much from Pearl. But I'd still like to read the text Steve attempted to link earlier.
Randall, I think you need to research Libet's and others' papers responding to the experiment from which reductivist neuroscientists drew the initial conclusion you still take to constitute a "fact." I think your problem is that your conception of ‘consciousness’ is one-dimensional and (I have to say it, though it will bite) philosophically naieve.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
I haven't been expressing my "conception". I've been comparing two commonly held perspectives from an objective perspective for the purpose of discussion. If you would like to add another, please do so. It would probably be quite interesting.
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smcder
Paranormal Adept
If "no" ... The implications for example for criminal justice are ... big. Actually, they aren't because we can't ever do differently... so we can just quit worrying about it ... no we can't - because whether we do or don't worry is determined too.
(see how silly this is!)
Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk
(see how silly this is!)
Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk
smcder
Paranormal Adept
?? Consciousness ... Or free will? Because you seem to clearly state your position on free will.
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smcder
Paranormal Adept
The concept of free will: philosophy, neuroscience and the law. - PubMed - NCBI
Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk
Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk
Then how would you characterize the "two commonly held perspectives" on what 'consciousness' is that you seek to compare for the purpose of discussion?
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
The two perspectives I'm referring to are on the notion of free will, not consciousness, and I've "characterized" them as "commonly held" based on my personal experience reading about and discussing the issue with numerous people over the years, e.g. statements like: "Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action." - Wikipedia and this: "It would be misleading to specify a strict definition of free will since in the philosophical work devoted to this notion there is probably no single concept of it." - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and then distilling out the essential differences.
You might find it interesting to consider the idea that a biological brain-based context is irrelevant to contemplating the underlying principles of free will as illusory. The essential question is: Do thoughts form instantaneously complete within the conscious mind? Or are thoughts the product of subconscious processes that assemble them in bits and pieces until they are sufficient to be registered in the conscious mind as thoughts? Does a thought just pop into existence out of nowhere? No history? No assembling of prior data? Just poof! There it is?
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Regarding information theory
I would agree with you that searching for a computational origin for consciousness is a red herring. Also I know you have an affinity for a non-brain-based/non-neuron-based origin for consciousness. However you do search for a physical origin for consciousness, an origin that is based in the physical processes of life.
However I think this is a red herring as well. The problem with discontinuous physical models of consciousness have been well-covered in this discussion.
Furthermore, despite your dismissal, exploration of the nexus of mind, information, and brain is not fading. It's true that some hold out hope that these three things can be reduced into one another which may be misguided, but that they are related is not.
It's clear that processing information is a major part of what the brain does. I'm not suggesting the brain is running a software program composed of a preprogrammed set of algorithms. Neuroscientists do not understand exactly how the brain processes information.
In any case, it's becoming clear that when we are conscious, we are conscious of information in the brain. However there is lots of information in the brain, and we are not conscious of all of it.
Why are we conscious of some of it and not all of it? And why are we conscious at all?
As I noted, Hoffman's model gives a pathway toward mental causation by making consciousness primary and the physical derivative of consciousness. Because the physical is constituted of the mental, the two can interact.
The problem with free will is the causal flow. We appear to live in an orderly universe with a ordered causal flow. How can we have free will—the ability to step out of this causal flow—without disrupting the causal flow?
As I've speculated in other threads, it may be that causality is a feature of the species specific user interface and not a hard feature of what-it, the level at which consciousness originates.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Hm, it seems that any theories of consciousness which look for answers beyond the clanging together of sphere-like particles is just too anthroprocentric.
It's a pretty depressing read and the ending a cop-out if I've ever seen one. Read at your own risk.
The Rise of Neo-Geocentrism
It's a pretty depressing read and the ending a cop-out if I've ever seen one. Read at your own risk.
The Rise of Neo-Geocentrism
I don't find that essay to be depressing except in its brevity and the author's consequent failure [and perhaps inability?] to develop and interrelate the various concepts of consciousness and mind currently in circulation among the reading public, derived from contemporary popular science writing and blogging and the history of ideas our species has entertained about consciousness, mind, and reality. I think this little essay has some value for casual readers in characterizing in tiny bites the wide range of what our species philosophers and scientists have 'thought' about 'mind' and 'world' over our brief history to date.
The only worthwhile comment I found following the essay was this one:
"I'm perplexed by the quintessentially geocentric assumption you accept about the nature of consciousness in the first place. Namely: "As far as we know, consciousness is property of only one weird type of matter that evolved relatively recently here on Earth: brains." While brains on Earth are the only widely-accepted example of consciousness observed by brains on Earth, I think it's incredibly naive to assume consciousness is some property of only biological neural networks that grow on this planet." Horgan needs to read the Edge presentation by the Harvard astrophysicist I linked a few weeks or a month ago, which I'll link again when I locate it.
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