Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 9

[Constance]

If ECs hold that minds emerge at the cellular level, how do they suppose that all these individual cellular minds combine into one subjective pov?

Can you cite any philosopher of mind, whether phenomenological or analytical, or any neuroscientist or cognitive-neuroscientific theorist who has made the claim underscored above?

 

[Soupie]

'[That minds emerge at the neural level is] the mainstream view' among which population of thinkers and researchers in which fields of inquiry?

Neuroscientists.

Do you disagree with this view? I'm assuming you do but could be wrong.

Can you cite any philosopher of mind, whether phenomenological or analytical, or any neuroscientist or cognitive-neuroscientific theorist who has made the claim [that mind emerges at the cellular level]?

"A second question is whether autopoiesis can provide a bridge between these concepts. Thompson discusses this issue from the standpoint of enactivism. An autopoietic cell actively relates to its environment. Its sensory responses trigger motor behavior governed by autopoiesis, and this behavior (it is claimed) is a simplified version of a nervous system behavior. The further claim is that real-time interactions like this require attention, and an implication of attention is awareness.[15]"

However it seems that you disagree with this view as well?

If you don't believe that mind is realized at the neural network level nor the (autopoetic) cellular level, at what organic level do you suppose mind is realized?

 

[smcder]

2:22 passive dynamic walking machines of Cornell University

Look ma ... no motors, no sensors just smooooooth walking action.

Joe Camel says "I'd (passively dynamically) walk a mile for a Camel!"

Of course some might say that brains are just heat dissipating structures ... and that it's ALL downhill from here.

 

[smcder]

@smcder

I know you're just the messenger and that you may or may not subscribe to the thesis of embodied cognition.

But I have some questions that I wonder if you can answer:

what metaphysical category would embodied cognitivists fall into if you had to guess? Are they physical monists? Is EC similar or the same as Identity Theory? In this case the mind just is the body?

Do ECs distinguish between consciousness and mind? Or do they believe consciousness and mind emerge together?

At what scale do ECs theorize that minds emerge? The molecular, cellular, multi-cellular level?

Do they have an answer for what is essentially the combination problem? If ECs hold that minds emerge at the cellular level, how do they suppose that all these individual cellular minds combine into one subjective pov?

What do you think?

 

[ALPHA ROMEO UNIFORM]

Current theory of so called planet nine ongoing search and good to see community support for the next generations.
Stargazing citizens join search for Planet Nine

Also the open minds which some scientist coming through the ranks .

 

[smcder]

@smcder

I know you're just the messenger and that you may or may not subscribe to the thesis of embodied cognition.

But I have some questions that I wonder if you can answer:

what metaphysical category would embodied cognitivists fall into if you had to guess? Are they physical monists? Is EC similar or the same as Identity Theory? In this case the mind just is the body?

Do ECs distinguish between consciousness and mind? Or do they believe consciousness and mind emerge together?

At what scale do ECs theorize that minds emerge? The molecular, cellular, multi-cellular level?

Do they have an answer for what is essentially the combination problem? If ECs hold that minds emerge at the cellular level, how do they suppose that all these individual cellular minds combine into one subjective pov?

Here's what I'd do ... first, get a good definition of EC and get its basic claims, then look for any logical contradictions - is there any reason an ECer couldn't be an X ... for a simple example:

The embodied mind thesis challenges other theories, such as cognitivism, computationalism, and Cartesian dualism.[1][2] It is closely related to the extended mind thesis, situated cognition and enactivism. The modern version depends on insights drawn from recent research in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, dynamical systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, plant cognition and neurobiology.

So Cartesian dualism is out, for a start.

Given its pedigree:

psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, dynamical systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, plant cognition and neurobiology.

from this you might hazard a guess as to some of its metaphysical underpinnings, mightn't you?

However, I'm not sure you could deduce the answers to all of your questions above or rule out entirely any or all of the positions ... one ECer might logically hold one (or the other) ... again look for contradictions.

 

[smcder]

Neuroscientists.

Do you disagree with this view? I'm assuming you do but could be wrong.


"A second question is whether autopoiesis can provide a bridge between these concepts. Thompson discusses this issue from the standpoint of enactivism. An autopoietic cell actively relates to its environment. Its sensory responses trigger motor behavior governed by autopoiesis, and this behavior (it is claimed) is a simplified version of a nervous system behavior. The further claim is that real-time interactions like this require attention, and an implication of attention is awareness.[15]"

However it seems that you disagree with this view as well?

If you don't believe that mind is realized at the neural network level nor the (autopoetic) cellular level, at what organic level do you suppose mind is realized?

EC holds:

1. "The environment is part of the cognitive system. The information flow between mind and world is so dense and continuous that, for scientists studying the nature of cognitive activity, the mind alone is not a meaningful unit of analysis." This statement means that the production of cognitive activity does not come from the mind alone, but rather is a mixture of the mind and the environmental situation that we are in. These interactions become part of our cognitive systems. Our thinking, decision-making, and future are all impacted by our environmental situations.

 

[smcder]

I think we fool ourselves when we disparage the role of "the machine" in our own existence--as if the notion itself were some kind of put-down hoisted by individuals who have forgotten that the very core of their own existence comes from a robotic molecule: DNA.

Chemists prepare an inorganic double-helix structure for the first time | September 29, 2016 Issue - Vol. 94 Issue 39 | Chemical & Engineering News

Perhaps I am preaching to a choir here (hopefully), being a carbon-based machine intelligence myself, I get a little worked up (hence my "purple prose") when I think the conversation is too cavalier or dismissive of the mechanics of self-replicating entities and the role of algorithmic processes in conveying our own experience of being. To suggest that human beings in this age are somehow losing sight of the nature of being because of recent preoccupation(s) with industry, mechanics, computers and machinery is ironic, when we find our own source of being in a nano-robotic molecule that is able (within a framework of other components, proteins, ribosomes, etc) to basically 3-D print copies of itself and its survival machine (from cell to embryo to body with all its organs) based on discrete sequences of coded information (regardless if all of it is "used" for the formation of a survival machine is irrelevant).

A sci-fi "grey goo" scenario of the world overtaken by replicating machines -- and its already happened with DNA...*shakes head.* And yet some of us (present company excluded) may still yet sit on a high horse and disparage algorithmic processes and silicon-based machine intelligence. As one of the aliens stated in the "Meat" story, "it is just too much."

I'm curious about the mixture of organic and robotic/machine terminology - the vocabulary/terminology of organicity/organism seems sufficiently powerful to cover the ground ... there seems to me yet a distinction between robots and organisms - if the gap is closed, it seems to me that robots would then be classified as organisms, rather than the other way around.

 

[smcder]

Interestingly, Capek's RUR that set the pace for sci-fi robots ... his conception of robots was not as mechanical men ... but as a new form of life, as organisms ... similarly, in DADOES ... "replicants" are presumably at least partially wet-ware.

From RUR

"(triumphant) And then, Miss Glory, this is what he wrote down in his chemical notes: „Nature has found only one way of organising living matter. There is however another way which is simpler, easier to mould, and quicker to produce than Nature ever stumbled across. This other path along which life might have developed is what I have just discovered.“ Just think: he wrote these words about a blob of some kind of coloidal jelly that not even a dog would eat. Imagine him sitting with a test tube and thinking about how it could grow out into an entire tree of life made of all the animals starting with a tiny coil of life and ending with . . . ending with man himself. Man made of different material than we are. Miss Glory, this was one of the great moments of history.

Helena:What happened next?

Domin:Next? Next he had to get this life out of the test tube and speed up its development so that it would create some of organs needed such as bone and nerves and all sorts of things and find materials such as catalysts and enzymes and hormones and so on and in short . . . are you understanding all of this?"

 

[smcder]

Here's some words on robots or organism?

What distinguishes organisms from machines or automata/robots ?

 

[smcder]

It could be argued that there is one permanent difference between machines/robots and organisms - robots will always be traced back to an engineered beginning ... although it's hard to see how that might make a difference if the machine grows complex enough to participate in evolution or self-engineering, nonetheless there could be something crucial in whatever that germ is vs. the first life, if a clear beginning can be found in that latter case.

 

[Michael Allen]

I'm curious about the mixture of organic and robotic/machine terminology - the vocabulary/terminology of organicity/organism seems sufficiently powerful to cover the ground ... there seems to me yet a distinction between robots and organisms - if the gap is closed, it seems to me that robots would then be classified as organisms, rather than the other way around.

You hit on a key intersection of what we humans consider "organic" and "non-organic"...i wish I could remember and cite a quote (will have to dig through my reading list). The gist is the irony of DNA and it's role in the "organic"...while in itself is as highly "inert" and non-reactive as a hard disk...or tape drive.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[smcder]

You hit on a key intersection of what we humans consider "organic" and "non-organic"...i wish I could remember and cite a quote (will have to dig through my reading list). The gist is the irony of DNA and it's role in the "organic"...while in itself is as highly "inert" and non-reactive as a hard disk...or tape drive.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

From sequence to consequence and back

 

[smcder]

 

[smcder]

A kidney that has "wetness" as observed from our ridiculously limited point-of-view may be no more "wet" than the quarks, hadrons and leptons that make up this "wetness."

The analogy represents the claim that consciousness is a biological product, so that's what is at issue. For example, Searle's position of biological naturalism.

"A consequence of biological naturalism is that if we want to create a conscious being, we will have to duplicate whatever physical processes the brain goes through to cause consciousness. Searle thereby means to contradict what he calls "Strong AI", defined by the assumption that as soon as a certain kind of software is running on a computer, a conscious being is thereby created.[49]" - Wikipedia article on Searle

1. I think about the "ghosts" (an implied duality) inherent in Multiple Realizability - the software is the ghost in the machine - the "soul" then could be moved from a human body to a mechanical or virtual one
2. substrate dependence - not that consciousness will only run on carbon based brains but that it will only run on brains made of material that supports specific physical processes - there is also the weaker idea that consciousness might be multiply realizable in theory but limited by physical constraints in this "real world"

 

[Soupie]

The environment is part of the cognitive system. The information flow between mind and world is so dense and continuous that, for scientists studying the nature of cognitive activity, the mind alone is not a meaningful unit of analysis." This statement means that the production of cognitive activity does not come from the mind alone, but rather is a mixture of the mind and the environmental situation that we are in. These interactions become part of our cognitive systems. Our thinking, decision-making, and future are all impacted by our environmental situat

Between the "mind" and "world?" Sigh. That muddles things right from the start. Honestly I hate to even wade into that.

My understand of EC is as follows:

It's a response to the position that brains are computers and cognition is information processing; and that all cognition takes place in the brain.

On the contrary, EC argues that contrary to the above quite a bit of cognition/information processing takes place in the body and between the body and the environment.

I believe that cognitive scientists use the term "mind" to refer to information processes in the body/brain. Therefore the term mind is not always meant to imply consciousness.

Thus, I'm not sure EC is strictly concerned with the MBP in the metaphysical sense. An ECer may argue that cognition is a biological, embodied, physical process but I'm not sure how they would answer the question: why does some cognition have qualitative properties (something it's like).

The analogy represents the claim that consciousness is a biological product, so that's what is at issue. For example, Searle's position of biological naturalism.

I've always felt the analogy was a bad one.

Kidney is to bile /= brain is to mind

That's because kidneys and bile are both objective, physical processes while brains and minds are not.

 

[smcder]

Between the "mind" and "world?" Sigh. That muddles things right from the start. Honestly I hate to even wade into that.

My understand of EC is as follows:

It's a response to the position that brains are computers and cognition is information processing; and that all cognition takes place in the brain.

On the contrary, EC argues that contrary to the above quite a bit of cognition/information processing takes place in the body and between the body and the environment.

I believe that cognitive scientists use the term "mind" to refer to information processes in the body/brain. Therefore the term mind is not always meant to imply consciousness.

Thus, I'm not sure EC is strictly concerned with the MBP in the metaphysical sense. An ECer may argue that cognition is a biological, embodied, physical process but I'm not sure how they would answer the question: why does some cognition have qualitative properties (something it's like).


I've always felt the analogy was a bad one.

Kidney is to bile /= brain is to mind

That's because kidneys and bile are both objective, physical processes while brains and minds are not.

Bile - Wikipedia

Bile is produced by the liver.

"That's because kidneys and bile are both objective, physical processes while brains and minds are not."

To what non-objective, non-physical processes would you compare them to?

 

[smcder]

Bile - Wikipedia

Bile is produced by the liver.

"That's because kidneys and bile are both objective, physical processes while brains and minds are not."

To what non-objective, non-physical processes would you compare them to?

God hardened Pharoah's heart.

Her thoughts were as bitter-sweet as the last of the summer wine.

More to the point: at the sight of the bad analogy, his thoughts turned bilious.

 

[smcder]

Between the "mind" and "world?" Sigh. That muddles things right from the start. Honestly I hate to even wade into that.

My understand of EC is as follows:

It's a response to the position that brains are computers and cognition is information processing; and that all cognition takes place in the brain.

On the contrary, EC argues that contrary to the above quite a bit of cognition/information processing takes place in the body and between the body and the environment.

I believe that cognitive scientists use the term "mind" to refer to information processes in the body/brain. Therefore the term mind is not always meant to imply consciousness.

Thus, I'm not sure EC is strictly concerned with the MBP in the metaphysical sense. An ECer may argue that cognition is a biological, embodied, physical process but I'm not sure how they would answer the question: why does some cognition have qualitative properties (something it's like).


I've always felt the analogy was a bad one.

Kidney is to bile /= brain is to mind

That's because kidneys and bile are both objective, physical processes while brains and minds are not.

I hope you won't wade into it.

"Thus, I'm not sure EC is strictly concerned with the MBP in the metaphysical sense. An ECer may argue that cognition is a biological, embodied, physical process but I'm not sure how they would answer the question: why does some cognition have qualitative properties (something it's like)"

LMGTFY

 

[smcder]

Bile - Wikipedia

Bile is produced by the liver.

"That's because kidneys and bile are both objective, physical processes while brains and minds are not."

To what non-objective, non-physical processes would you compare them to?

Remember too what's being compared - a simulated liver would produce simulated bile, the software could then respond - say the Skidney produced too much bile, the program would compute an output (perhaps even visually - think the Sims or other V-life or Second Life etc ... whence your Avatar (and hence his Smind) would turn green - the Smind IS green)) there are levels of abstraction at play - the point of the analogy just is the jarring image of running a program and getting a wet keyboard. It appeals to an intuition some may have that what the physical basis of the mind is is relevant to consciousness.

Do you feel that an upload of your brain would be you? And would it be conscious?

Some would see no problem with this while others would turn bilious at the thought.