How do YOU define consciousness?

[Randall]

There is more mental nutrition here than I can digest, but it still fascinates. I would like to pose a couple of loose questions in hopes of gleaning viewpoints and better understanding.

Student raises his hand from back of classroom. He has read but dismally failed to comprehend Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind". He hopes his questions have not already been answered and he has simply missed them :

-Can the emergent process of human consciousness be deconstructed as no more than a kind of awareness producing algorithm following an essentially hierarchical set of (self-modifying or externally modified) codes? Does the 'algorithm only' view violate the notion (often attributed to Kurt Godel and the math is gibberish to said student) that any algorithm can generate true statements that can only be proved within the concept of a larger algorithm, ad infinitum?

-If consciousness is indeed no more than an algorithm occurring in the macro vs quantum world, does that mean it is indeed substrate independent ? Can it be mapped in silicon as well as carbon based systems?

Are the above questions evidence the student has entered a psychologically dissociative state and should have signed up for "Turfgrass Management 101" instead?

As a former landscape lead hand, I appreciate your humor more than the average Joe. I think Mike and I will probably have different answers, but I'll take a stab at what you seem to be getting at. What Penrose appears to be doing is applying the principles of quantum physics to information processing in such a manner as to suggest that consciousness ( the mind ) as we experience it, cannot be algorithmically modeled, the assumption being that a computational model requires all algorithms to resolve in a predictable manner, which is contrary to the behavior of quantum processes. An example would be the difference between a hardware random number generator and a Rube Goldberg machine.

So Penrose presumes that because our brains include quantum processes, that those unpredictable processes are in part responsible for giving rise to our consciousness, and therefore due to the inherent unpredictability, cannot be duplicated by sheer calculating power alone. I would suggest that there are a couple of ways around this. First of all does all consciousness have to be identical to that produced by a human brain to qualify as consciousness? I don't think so. Secondly, how closely to the quantum world of a human brain can a computational system be modeled?

It turns out that the math involved with quantum physics has already been used to model particle behavior, and future computers based on the principles of quantum computing are predicted to be able to model particle interactions, including those we see in CERN with great accuracy. Combine that processing power with the architecture of the human brain and there's no reason to assume that a reasonable AI equivalence won't emerge. In fact I would suggest that at the present time it is already evolving and is at a stage analogous to the first digital media, highly pixelated and limited in resolution, a sort of proto-consciousness, that as resolution and real time processing evolves, will at some point become self aware.

I'm sure you've heard of Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines. Although somewhat dated now, it still provides some thought provoking counterpoint to Penrose.

 

[boomerang]

As a former landscape lead hand, I appreciate your humor more than the average Joe. [quote/]

We may have here a kind of minor synchronicity, as I actually took a 3 hour course in "Turfgrass Management" (so help me) during a confused period of my sporadic college career. It failed to chart my future. But I came away certain that a good choice of majors for me lie somewhere along the spectrum between Agriculture and Advanced Physics lol. I settled on Psychology--closer to Ag than Physics, but probably a wise move lol.

So Penrose presumes that because our brains include quantum processes, that those unpredictable processes are in part responsible for giving rise to our consciousness, and therefore due to the inherent unpredictability, cannot be duplicated by sheer calculating power alone. [quote/]

I could never quite make Sir Roger's connection between unpredictability and how the brain navigates reality. It's seems an appeal to the mysterious. But--conscious self-awareness is, I think, unavoidably mysterious. As is the quantum. "I AM" seems a kind of unattainable value, like the speed of light. We may approach it ever more closely as we learn more and more about process. But a complete grasp may remain forever out of reach. Or perhaps we may evolve into a species that understands how our minds did (past tense) operate.

I'm sure you've heard of Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines. Although somewhat dated now, it still provides some thought provoking counterpoint to Penrose.

I have not read it, but probably should. Penrose and Kurzweil are both highly controversial figures amongst their peers. But both are also seminal thinkers.

 

[Randall]

I could never quite make Sir Roger's connection between unpredictability and how the brain navigates reality. It's seems an appeal to the mysterious. But--conscious self-awareness is, I think, unavoidably mysterious. As is the quantum. "I AM" seems a kind of unattainable value, like the speed of light. We may approach it ever more closely as we learn more and more about process. But a complete grasp may remain forever out of reach. Or perhaps we may evolve into a species that understands how our minds did (past tense) operate.

I suspect that the we'll find that random quantum processes amount to nothing more than noise that the brain has to filter out rather than something it depends upon for coherency. If true, this will mean that hardware generated computational consciousness will be even less encumbered than our biological versions. It will also mean that Penrose's premise is false to begin with.

 

[Pierre]

Slightly off topic, but here is something I believe many of you will find very interesting, this expresses my viewpoint of paranormal phenomenon:

"In Plato's fictional dialogue, Socrates begins by describing a scenario in which what people take to be real would in fact be an illusion. He asks Glaucon to imagine a cave inhabited by prisoners who have been chained and held immobile since childhood: not only are their legs (but not arms) held in place, but their necks are also fixed, so they are compelled to gaze at a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which people walk carrying things on their heads "including figures of men and animals made of wood, stone and other materials". The prisoners cannot see the raised walkway or the people walking, but they watch the shadows cast by the men, not knowing they are shadows. There are also echoes off the wall from the noise produced from the walkway.
Socrates suggests the prisoners would take the shadows to be real things and the echoes to be real sounds created by the shadows, not just reflections of reality, since they are all they had ever seen or heard. They would praise as clever, whoever could best guess which shadow would come next, as someone who understood the nature of the world, and the whole of their society would depend on the shadows on the wall.

Socrates then supposes that a prisoner is freed and permitted to stand up. If someone were to show him the things that had cast the shadows, he would not recognize them for what they were and could not name them; he would believe the shadows on the wall to be more real than what he sees.
"Suppose further," Socrates says, "that the man was compelled to look at the fire: wouldn't he be struck blind and try to turn his gaze back toward the shadows, as toward what he can see clearly and hold to be real? What if someone forcibly dragged such a man upward, out of the cave: wouldn't the man be angry at the one doing this to him? And if dragged all the way out into the sunlight, wouldn't he be distressed and unable to see 'even one of the things now said to be true' because he was blinded by the light?"
After some time on the surface, however, the freed prisoner would acclimate. He would see more and more things around him, until he could look upon the Sun. He would understand that the Sun is the "source of the seasons and the years, and is the steward of all things in the visible place, and is in a certain way the cause of all those things he and his companions had been seeing" (516b–c). (See also Plato's metaphor of the Sun, which occurs near the end of The Republic, Book VI.)[3]

Socrates next asks Glaucon to consider the condition of this man. "Wouldn't he remember his first home, what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners, and consider himself happy and them pitiable? And wouldn't he disdain whatever honors, praises, and prizes were awarded there to the ones who guessed best which shadows followed which? Moreover, were he to return there, wouldn't he be rather bad at their game, no longer being accustomed to the darkness? Wouldn't it be said of him that he went up and came back with his eyes corrupted, and that it's not even worth trying to go up? And if they were somehow able to get their hands on and kill the man who attempts to release and lead them up, wouldn't they kill him?" (517a) The prisoners, ignorant of the world behind them, would see the freed man with his corrupted eyes and be afraid of anything but what they already know. Philosophers analyzing the allegory argue that the prisoners would ironically find the freed man stupid due to the current state of his eyes and temporarily not being able to see the shadows which are the world to the prisoners.

Socrates remarks that this allegory can be taken with what was said before, namely the metaphor of the Sun, and the divided line. In particular, he likens
"the region revealed through sight"—the ordinary objects we see around us—"to the prison home, and the light of the fire in it to the power of the Sun. And in applying the going up and the seeing of what's above to the soul's journey to the intelligible place, you not mistake my expectation, since you desire to hear it. A god doubtless knows if it happens to be true. At all events, this is the way the phenomena look to me: in the region of the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of good; but once seen, it must be concluded that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful—in the visible realm it gives birth to light and its sovereign; in the intelligible realm, itself sovereign, it provided truth and intelligence—and that the man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see you it" (517b–c).
After "returning from divine contemplations to human evils", a man
"is graceless and looks quite ridiculous when—with his sight still dim and before he has gotten sufficiently accustomed to the surrounding darkness—he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the representations of which they are the shadows, and to dispute about the way these things are understood by men who have never seen justice itself?" (517d–e)"

Your Thoughts?

 

[Jeff Davis]

Slightly off topic, but here is something I believe many of you will find very interesting, this expresses my viewpoint of paranormal phenomenon:

"In Plato's fictional dialogue, Socrates begins by describing a scenario in which what people take to be real would in fact be an illusion. He asks Glaucon to imagine a cave inhabited by prisoners who have been chained and held immobile since childhood: not only are their legs (but not arms) held in place, but their necks are also fixed, so they are compelled to gaze at a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which people walk carrying things on their heads "including figures of men and animals made of wood, stone and other materials". The prisoners cannot see the raised walkway or the people walking, but they watch the shadows cast by the men, not knowing they are shadows. There are also echoes off the wall from the noise produced from the walkway.
Socrates suggests the prisoners would take the shadows to be real things and the echoes to be real sounds created by the shadows, not just reflections of reality, since they are all they had ever seen or heard. They would praise as clever, whoever could best guess which shadow would come next, as someone who understood the nature of the world, and the whole of their society would depend on the shadows on the wall.

Socrates then supposes that a prisoner is freed and permitted to stand up. If someone were to show him the things that had cast the shadows, he would not recognize them for what they were and could not name them; he would believe the shadows on the wall to be more real than what he sees.
"Suppose further," Socrates says, "that the man was compelled to look at the fire: wouldn't he be struck blind and try to turn his gaze back toward the shadows, as toward what he can see clearly and hold to be real? What if someone forcibly dragged such a man upward, out of the cave: wouldn't the man be angry at the one doing this to him? And if dragged all the way out into the sunlight, wouldn't he be distressed and unable to see 'even one of the things now said to be true' because he was blinded by the light?"
After some time on the surface, however, the freed prisoner would acclimate. He would see more and more things around him, until he could look upon the Sun. He would understand that the Sun is the "source of the seasons and the years, and is the steward of all things in the visible place, and is in a certain way the cause of all those things he and his companions had been seeing" (516b–c). (See also Plato's metaphor of the Sun, which occurs near the end of The Republic, Book VI.)[3]

Socrates next asks Glaucon to consider the condition of this man. "Wouldn't he remember his first home, what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners, and consider himself happy and them pitiable? And wouldn't he disdain whatever honors, praises, and prizes were awarded there to the ones who guessed best which shadows followed which? Moreover, were he to return there, wouldn't he be rather bad at their game, no longer being accustomed to the darkness? Wouldn't it be said of him that he went up and came back with his eyes corrupted, and that it's not even worth trying to go up? And if they were somehow able to get their hands on and kill the man who attempts to release and lead them up, wouldn't they kill him?" (517a) The prisoners, ignorant of the world behind them, would see the freed man with his corrupted eyes and be afraid of anything but what they already know. Philosophers analyzing the allegory argue that the prisoners would ironically find the freed man stupid due to the current state of his eyes and temporarily not being able to see the shadows which are the world to the prisoners.

Socrates remarks that this allegory can be taken with what was said before, namely the metaphor of the Sun, and the divided line. In particular, he likens
"the region revealed through sight"—the ordinary objects we see around us—"to the prison home, and the light of the fire in it to the power of the Sun. And in applying the going up and the seeing of what's above to the soul's journey to the intelligible place, you not mistake my expectation, since you desire to hear it. A god doubtless knows if it happens to be true. At all events, this is the way the phenomena look to me: in the region of the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of good; but once seen, it must be concluded that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful—in the visible realm it gives birth to light and its sovereign; in the intelligible realm, itself sovereign, it provided truth and intelligence—and that the man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see you it" (517b–c).
After "returning from divine contemplations to human evils", a man
"is graceless and looks quite ridiculous when—with his sight still dim and before he has gotten sufficiently accustomed to the surrounding darkness—he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the representations of which they are the shadows, and to dispute about the way these things are understood by men who have never seen justice itself?" (517d–e)"

Your Thoughts?

My thoughts are greatly inspired by this remarkable piece of perceptive analogy. It's truth undeniably voices precisely what I have come to believe concerning reality itself. Namely, that reality is entirely relevant, even native, to the sentient creatures inextricable bound to it's center of experience. Beautiful. Can we see through such an illusion that we ourselves not only create, but further define, and willfully participate within as well?

IMO the science of Phenomenalism, which your post perfectly elucidates, is the ONLY way to proceed.

 

[Michael Allen]

OK I think we're getting into the nuts and bolts here. Good show. Here's how it breaks down from my perspective:

• Imagined Object = subjective reality ( SR )
• Material Object = objective reality ( OR )
• SR ≠ OR therefore duality.

• The above corresponds to a general view of Duality.
• We don't need to get into the specifics of substance duality or anything else. All that is required is that we recognize that mental constructs and material constructs both exist.
• Arbitrarily discarding either OR or SR is not an option because the evidence that both types of reality exist is overwhelming.
• Given the above, it is not possible to reasonably discard duality.

So now you need to postulate another term IR (intermediary reality) which needs to be inserted between SR and OR. How else is SR and OR going to interact (you can't say that they do not interact, unless you are prepared as Descartes is in asserting SR and OR are like synchronized clocks that have no causal link)

How does SR interact with OR? The answer is obvious: something in the middle in common with SR and OR has to be postulated.

So SR::IR::OR

Now to which of your "dualistic categories" does IR belong? SR or OR

IF IR in SR or OR then we are back to the same problem when we started

I.e. then we'd have to create another IR2 term to fit between [SR::IR]::OR or SR[::IR::OR]
If we keep doing this then we end up with an infinite regress of IRn terms that are swallowed by the SR and OR categories.

IF IR is not in SR or OR, then dualism fails.

So in order for IR to work, it must have something in common between SR and OR.
If it has something in common with both, then there's a larger genus for which SR and OR emerge and dualism fails.

QED

 

[Randall]

... After "returning from divine contemplations to human evils", a man "is graceless and looks quite ridiculous when—with his sight still dim and before he has gotten sufficiently accustomed to the surrounding darkness—he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the representations of which they are the shadows, and to dispute about the way these things are understood by men who have never seen justice itself?"

Your Thoughts?

We usually hear The Cave quoted in discussions about the nature of existence and in particular the concept of duality, but the last part quoted above deals with the issue of justice, which I've not considered before. I would suggest that it is a reflection of Plato's view of true justice compared to the justice system ( the bureaucratic and judicial institutions ), and how those who understand true justice are forced to contend with the dim wits in the system who wield the power. Seems like a recurring theme throughout history doesn't it?

 

[Randall]

So now you need to postulate another term IR (intermediary reality) which needs to be inserted between SR and OR. How else is SR and OR going to interact (you can't say that they do not interact, unless you are prepared as Descartes is in asserting SR and OR are like synchronized clocks that have no causal link)

How does SR interact with OR? The answer is obvious: something in the middle in common with SR and OR has to be postulated.

So SR::IR::OR

Now to which of your "dualistic categories" does IR belong? SR or OR

IF IR in SR or OR then we are back to the same problem when we started

I.e. then we'd have to create another IR2 term to fit between [SR::IR]::OR or SR[::IR::OR]
If we keep doing this then we end up with an infinite regress of IRn terms that are swallowed by the SR and OR categories.

IF IR is not in SR or OR, then dualism fails.

So in order for IR to work, it must have something in common between SR and OR.
If it has something in common with both, then there's a larger genus for which SR and OR emerge and dualism fails.

QED

So the issue here is whether or not we need to introduce IR. The answer is no, and there are two main reasons: 1. We have evidence that OR and SR exist, but no evidence that IR exists. This brings us to reason 2. Is non-intermediated emergence of any kind possible? The answer is yes, and therefore because non-intermediary emergence is possible, there's simply no need to invoke an intermediary for which there is no evidence of existence.

To illustrate by way of analogy, let's return to the analogy of the light bulb, wherein the brain is the analogous to the light bulb and consciousness is analogous to the light. Is there any intermediary between the electron that makes up the material of the bulb and the photon ( light ) that emerges? No. ( At least none that we know of ). The photon simply emerges when an electron shifts to a lower energy state. So at this point, IR is an arbitrary and unnecessary inclusion that leads us to same problem we have with Zeno's paradox. Ultimately we can create an infinite number of intermediaries, and therefore no progress ( emergence ) should be possible. However the evidence is that despite Zeno's Paradox we do make progress without the need for an intermediary. So let's punt IR until we have either evidence that an intermediary exists or until we establish a reason as to why consciousness cannot emerge without it.

This returns us to:

• Imagined Object = subjective reality ( SR )
• Material Object = objective reality ( OR )
• SR ≠ OR therefore duality.

 

[Michael Allen]

So the issue here is whether or not we need to introduce IR. The answer is no, and there are two main reasons: 1. We have evidence that OR and SR exist, but no evidence that IR exists. This brings us to reason 2. Is non-intermediated emergence of any kind possible? The answer is yes, and therefore because non-intermediary emergence is possible, there's simply no need to invoke an intermediary for which there is no evidence of existence.

To illustrate by way of analogy, let's return to the analogy of the light bulb, wherein the brain is the analogous to the light bulb and consciousness is analogous to the light. Is there any intermediary between the electron that makes up the material of the bulb and the photon ( light ) that emerges? No. ( At least none that we know of ). The photon simply emerges when an electron shifts to a lower energy state. So at this point, IR is an arbitrary and unnecessary inclusion that leads us to same problem we have with Zeno's paradox. Ultimately we can create an infinite number of intermediaries, and therefore no progress ( emergence ) should be possible. However the evidence is that despite Zeno's Paradox we do make progress without the need for an intermediary. So let's punt IR until we have either evidence that an intermediary exists or until we establish a reason as to why consciousness cannot emerge without it.

This returns us to:

• Imagined Object = subjective reality ( SR )
• Material Object = objective reality ( OR )
• SR ≠ OR therefore duality.

You are confusing the category SR and OR with actual substances or instantiations of objects that like in SR and OR. You'll win the argument by default as long as you continue on this silent equivocation. Either objects in your ontology are in the categories you posit or they are not, and if they are not then the dualism argument falls to pieces (i.e. literally). The point is that if you don't have evidence of IR, then you don't have a basis for any causality between SR and OR and therefore have no basis to assert the existence of either. Are you ready to throw away causality too?

You answered the question, you have evidence that SR and OR exist and evidence that one causes the other. If you say there is no evidence that SR and OR have an intermediary then I will tell you that is equivalent to saying the existence of the Red Ferrari (an element of OR) and its image (an element of SR) are completely unrelated (i.e your image of the Red Ferrari and the real Red Ferrari existence is purely coincidental--which is absurd by your own premises). You have no choice.

Either an object in SR and OR are completely unrelated or you will have to admit the category of IR or dismiss causality altogether.

If you refuse to admit the "real" Red Ferrari caused the impression in your "mind" as an image, then we are done here...your dualism collapses under its own absurdities and we have nothing further to discuss (i.e. and you are a crazed lunatic--which I know you are not). That also means that everything else that is different in your ontological scheme is also deserving of a separate "reality" category separate from the other (e.g. record vinyls are different than sound waves therefore there's a "record reality" and a "sound reality" each independent).

You cite Zeno's paradox as the problem for inserting IR, and I am telling you that positing categories of SR and OR demand the presence of IR, now you either have to admit the categories are false or succumb to the paradox. I am not the creator of the paradox--you are. Get rid of dualism and the paradox vanishes.

One final remark on the consciousness emergency you mentioned: Up till now we've been talking about objects and images of objects in your dualistic ontology; now you re-introduce consciousness as if that's what we were talking about all along. This is evidence that you are still mistaking the contents of mind for the actual mind itself. I caught you in the beginning doing this...and I feel obligated to remind you that you are still doing it.

One final technical remark

To illustrate by way of analogy, let's return to the analogy of the light bulb, wherein the brain is the analogous to the light bulb and consciousness is analogous to the light. Is there any intermediary between the electron that makes up the material of the bulb and the photon ( light ) that emerges? No.

Yes of course there is. Without the electron, there would be no light. The photon emerges as a direct result of the energy state fluctuations of the electron. And there are some theories that show that all of this is the working of a common basis found in an even lower level framework: string theory. The fact that there's quantum information exchange in QED means that the electron and photon are part of the same reality. And I doubt seriously you are willing to say that we need to divide the quantum world into the "mental" and "physical" thus abusing your analogy and turning it against itself.

 

[Michael Allen]

-Can the emergent process of human consciousness be deconstructed as no more than a kind of awareness producing algorithm following an essentially hierarchical set of (self-modifying or externally modified) codes? Does the 'algorithm only' view violate the notion (often attributed to Kurt Godel and the math is gibberish to said student) that any algorithm can generate true statements that can only be proved within the concept of a larger algorithm, ad infinitum?

-If consciousness is indeed no more than an algorithm occurring in the macro vs quantum world, does that mean it is indeed substrate independent ? Can it be mapped in silicon as well as carbon based systems?

Algorithmic processes may certainly lie as the basis, but not as something that is created by some universal architect. Further reading on this subject can be found in Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life in chapter 4. titled "Natural Selection as an Algorithmic Process." I am too tired tonight to give the content due justice here, but I promise to provide at least a summary of his ideas tomorrow.

In general, I think the algorithmic process underlying all being (including human consciousness) is very much unlike that we we are used to speaking of in relation to Von Neumann machines and finite discrete computer systems. In the reference above, Daniel talks about the sorting of billions of grains of sand on a beach as a type of evolutionary algorithmic process.

What Darwin discovered was not really one algorithm but, rather, a large class of related algorithms that he had no clear way do distinguish. We can now reformulate his fundamental idea as follows:

Life on Earth has been generated over billions of years in a single branching tree--the Tree of Life--by one algorithmic process or another
​

In another quote:

All algorithms are guaranteed to do whatever they do, but it need not be anything interesting; some algorithms are further guaranteed to tend (with probability p) to do something--which may or may not be interesting. But if what an algorithm is guaranteed to do doesn't have to be "interesting" in any way, how are we going to distinguish algorithms from other processes? Won't any process be an algorithm? Is the surf pounding on the beach and algorithmic process? Is the sun baking the clay of a dried-up riverbed an algorithmic process? The answer is that there may be features of these processes that are best appreciated if we consider them as algorithms! Consider, for instance, the question of why the grains of sand on a beach are uniform in size. This is due to a natural sorting process that occurs thanks to the repetitive launching of the grains by the surf--alphabetical order on a grand scale, you might say. The pattern of cracks that appear in the sun-baked clay may be best explained by looking at chains of events that are not unlike the successive rounds of a tournament

Now its interesting to pull the example here that Dennett is referring to...that of an elimination tournament (i.e. illustrated by a binary tree of contenders playing dice or flipping a coin). You can add as many contenders as you like and make the outcome of each round as random as you like--as long as there's a winner in each round that proceeds to the next round--for a 100 round elimination tournament where everyone pairs in twos and flips a coin, you are guaranteeing something quite profound: there is bound to be at least one person who will win all 100 rounds, regardless of the improbability. So given vast astronomical fields of time and space and a process that repeats itself over and over and over ..... and over ... again, the world of being emerges.

My view on embodied intelligence: we are already an example of thinking matter that follows a kind of embodied code--DNA--its not a stretch from that point to consider the possibilities of sentience emerging in another matrix, even that which we create ourselves. One might even consider DNA as the nano-bots created by an earlier type III civilization. And if you think that's silly, then just revisit the coin toss elimination tournament and make # of players in the billions. Remember that the rules of the tournament are discrete, but the result is something in isolation (someone winning billions of times in a row) extremely extremely improbable that is guaranteed to happen.

Stuff like this gives me chills when I think about it...

 

[Randall]

The point is that if you don't have evidence of IR, then you don't have a basis for any causality between SR and OR and therefore have no basis to assert the existence of either. Are you ready to throw away causality too?

Sure we have a basis for OR causing SR. That basis is called evidence, specifically neuroscience. The evidence that brains exist and that consciousness is intimately associated with them is so substantial as to be unreasonable to deny.

One final remark on the consciousness emergency you mentioned: Up till now we've been talking about objects and images of objects in your dualistic ontology; now you re-introduce consciousness as if that's what we were talking about all along. This is evidence that you are still mistaking the contents of mind for the actual mind itself. I caught you in the beginning doing this...and I feel obligated to remind you that you are still doing it.

If I didn't mention it before, whether or not the mind=mental content isn't relevant because either way it still amounts to SR, and since SR ≠ OR, duality remains intact.

Without the electron, there would be no light. The photon emerges as a direct result of the energy state fluctuations of the electron.

Exactly, and when that happens there is no "intermediary", no IR. The photon simply emerges from the electron intact as a separate thing.

The fact that there's quantum information exchange in QED means that the electron and photon are part of the same reality.

The above is a perfectly valid point, but closer analysis reveals that it still doesn't eliminate duality. The electron and the photon are separate within a common reality just like OR and SR remain separate within a common reality. This common reality has different labels, e.g. Universe, existence, or The One ( if we want to get into Neo-Platonism ). I often refer to it as This Realm. But the point here is that of context. Two separate things can exist within a single larger context, and when those two separate things are OR and SR we have duality.

Something you brought up before that I found interesting is:

How else is SR and OR going to interact (you can't say that they do not interact, unless you are prepared as Descartes is in asserting SR and OR are like synchronized clocks that have no causal link).

The above question is interesting to contemplate. I propose that SR and OR don't interact in the way we usually think of "interaction" I think it's more of a feedback loop. In other words, when we imagine things, they don't have a life of their own. So they don't interact with us in that manner. Rather, to use a simplistic right brain - left brain illustration, the imagery emerges out of the right hemisphere, is stored in memory, and sent over to the left hemisphere where it is analyzed and the results merged with stored memory, which is then recalled by the left brain to emerge as updated imagery. Jill Bolte Talor's excellent TED clip posted by @boomerang illustrated some of this neuroscience in a very moving fashion. At any rate, there is evidence that the gears work along these lines. In this context we might even be able to consider memory to be your intermediary.

 

[Michael Allen]

If I didn't mention it before, whether or not the mind=mental content isn't relevant because either way it still amounts to SR, and since SR ≠ OR, duality remains intact.

Its entirely relevant because you don't consider the active visceral image of the object as you are looking at it as yours. The whole point is that part of the mind that says "mine" vs. "not-mine." You feel a certain inextricable ownership or mineness with relation to the mental image in SR but not the same when its standing in your driveway. I find this very curious.

Exactly, and when that happens there is no "intermediary", no IR. The photon simply emerges from the electron intact as a separate thing.

So a sound blast from the speakers of a CD or MP3 player is separate from the actual electrical signals in the wires; separate from the actual music sounds played live or recorded; separate from the instruments used in the recording or live concert; separate from the musicians who worked the instruments. All of these things are separate, none of them are simple, and they all emerge in the framework of one reality.

The above is a perfectly valid point, but closer analysis reveals that it still doesn't eliminate duality. The electron and the photon are separate within a common reality just like OR and SR remain separate within a common reality. This common reality has different labels, e.g. Universe, existence, or The One ( if we want to get into Neo-Platonism ). I often refer to it as This Realm. But the point here is that of context. Two separate things can exist within a single larger context, and when those two separate things are OR and SR we have duality.

Well you see it does, at least the strong version of dualism which says that all objects are either SR or OR and both SR and OR do not have a larger context. When you say that they have a common reality, you are saying that there exists a basis R constitutive of both. That basis R cannot be defined either in terms of SR or OR. And if you can't fix reality(R) in your subjective(SR) or objective reality(OR), then your reality model needs to be updated to another schema. Hopefully one that gets rid of the unlucky division you postulated in the very beginning.

The above question is interesting to contemplate. I propose that SR and OR don't interact in the way we usually think of "interaction" I think it's more of a feedback loop. In other words, when we imagine things, they don't have a life of their own. So they don't interact with us in that manner. Rather, to use a simplistic right brain - left brain illustration, the imagery emerges out of the right hemisphere, is stored in memory, and sent over to the left hemisphere where it is analyzed and the results merged with stored memory, which is then recalled by the left brain to emerge as updated imagery.

Well firstly, a feedback loop is a normal interaction--there are plenty of examples in the physical sciences that one can refer to not alluding to any kind of mysterious inscrutable actionless action through a non-existent medium. In your example, you don't know how that imagery emerges out of the right hemisphere and goes to the left, it just happens, and so to you the phenomenon tells you that it "just happened" without an intermediary. You seem to be reporting this peculiar lack of IR on the basis of your non-experience regarding the processes--but as I said before 99.99999....% of the processes in our body are not immediately experienced but are transparent to our perspectives. SR didn't just "emerge" magically from the object in OR; something happened that made the thing form and your *mind* (formal indication here) is unaware of its own processes that did it--this does not mean there is no IR, it just means--to use a better analogy---that the spectacles on your nose are so close to your eyes and transparent, you didn't even notice them.

 

[Randall]

Its entirely relevant because you don't consider the active visceral image of the object as you are looking at it as yours. The whole point is that part of the mind that says "mine" vs. "not-mine." You feel a certain inextricable ownership or mineness with relation to the mental image in SR but not the same when its standing in your driveway. I find this very curious.

OK let me rephrase that. It's not that what you are saying doesn't have relevance or isn't interesting to contemplate or doesn't have value. Rather, it's that what you are illustrating is still within the realm of the mind and therefore within the realm of subjective reality and therefore still amounts to SR. So when we compare SR to OR we still find SR ≠ OR, therefore duality remains intact. If we can agree on this much, we can explore the phenomenon you're talking about in a separate discussion.

So a sound blast from the speakers of a CD or MP3 player is separate from the actual electrical signals in the wires; separate from the actual music sounds played live or recorded; separate from the instruments used in the recording or live concert; separate from the musicians who worked the instruments. All of these things are separate, none of them are simple, and they all emerge in the framework of one reality.

That all seems to correspond to the way things are.

Well you see it does, at least the strong version of dualism which says that all objects are either SR or OR and both SR and OR do not have a larger context. When you say that they have a common reality, you are saying that there exists a basis R constitutive of both. That basis R cannot be defined either in terms of SR or OR. And if you can't fix reality(R) in your subjective(SR) or objective reality(OR), then your reality model needs to be updated to another schema. Hopefully one that gets rid of the unlucky division you postulated in the very beginning.

It's not that my reality model needs updating so much as it has always been there, but not brought into the discussion until now because we've been focused on the subset of realities OR and SR which form the basis of duality, and duality is a phenomenon that is in the context of the relationship between the mind and things external to the mind, not the context of a compete metaphysical model of the universe. Once this is accepted, we can then move on and discuss larger issues. But in the meantime we're still exploring the issue of duality.

Well firstly, a feedback loop is a normal interaction--there are plenty of examples in the physical sciences that one can refer to not alluding to any kind of mysterious inscrutable actionless action through a non-existent medium. In your example, you don't know how that imagery emerges out of the right hemisphere and goes to the left, it just happens, and so to you the phenomenon tells you that it "just happened" without an intermediary.

Right. But I'll also stress here that it's not just that I don't know. Nobody knows, though there are simulists, mystics and religious people who will tell you that they know. Maybe one of them is right, but I remain skeptical at this point.

You seem to be reporting this peculiar lack of IR on the basis of your non-experience regarding the processes--but as I said before 99.99999....% of the processes in our body are not immediately experienced but are transparent to our perspectives.

On the above, we are in agreement, but that's not the specific kind of emergence I'm talking about. In other words, I'm not just talking about the numbers of neurons that are required to fire in order for consciousness to manifest itself. Neurons all remain in the realm of OR. Rather I'm talking about the cumulative result of individual processes taking place at the atomic level. Consciousness appears to emerge from these quantum bioelectric processes like light emerges from a light bulb. This implies that consciousness is itself made up of quanta, but exactly what kind remains a mystery. It's obvious that it isn't equal to the neurons themselves, and therefore it must be something separate, thus SR ≠ OR ( duality remains intact ).

SR didn't just "emerge" magically from the object in OR; something happened that made the thing form and your *mind* (formal indication here) is unaware of its own processes that did it--this does not mean there is no IR, it just means--to use a better analogy---that the spectacles on your nose are so close to your eyes and transparent, you didn't even notice them.

Not exactly, In your analogy of the eyeglasses, the concept of quantum emergence is being fudged in with neurobiology. Quantum emergence is not something we fully understand. We just know it happens. To be clear here, if you try to look it up you're going to run into a variety of interpretations all the way from motivational seminars to quantum mysticism. What I'm specifically referring to is the same type of emergence on the quantum level that we see when a photon is created, an emergence that takes place as an electron lowers it's energy state. There is no IR. It just happens. We don't know exactly how. We just know it does.

Because we don't know how to explain it yet doesn't mean it's magic. It's part of the other mysteries in science, like what is responsible for the fundamental forces of nature? All we know is that they exist, but we don't know what gives rise to them. Consciousness seems to be in this category. But it's not any of them in particular. There is no tiny image of a red Ferrari projected onto some tiny screen in some tiny corner of our brain someplace. Yet that image exists, and therefore it's real within that context. It's also as separate from our brain as the music is from the instrument ( to use your analogy ). In fact I like that analogy so much, we might even think of our brain as an instrument and consciousness as the music of our lives. Are you feeling in tune today? Are you experiencing harmony in your life?

 

[Randall]

I am tossing in a link to Jill Bolte Taylor's Ted Talk, "Stroke Of Insight", because I think it makes a salient point about the distinction between the phenomenon of consciousness versus consciousness that is aware of itself as a discrete entity ...

I watched the video you posted again last night with my other half, and it was just as moving as the first time. But it also gave rise to two questions, one that is quite skeptical and cynical ( left brain ) and the other much more "right brained". The somewhat cynical question was when my other half said, "She remembers all this?" and my left brain suddenly lit up and went, "You know that's a really good point. This lady is basically telling us she's had siginificant brain damage. How do we know that these supposed experiences aren't some sort of confabulation? Or for that matter how do we know they're not fabrications for the sake of promoting lectures and articles and books based on her supposed experience? On second look, this talk does look well rehearsed and staged.

On the other hand, my right brain was getting the impression that Jill's story was genuine and heartfelt and it brought me close to tears ( why I don't know ). But this isn't where this post ends. The following video may be posted someplace already, but I don't know where, and a couple of searches didn't yield any results:

Sam Harris - American author, philosopher, public intellectual, and neuroscientist
speaks on continuity of consciousness

Now why I'm posted the above clip is because at about 55 seconds in, Harris says, to quote verbatim: "It's not that everyone with brain damage is per, has their soul soul perfectly intact, they just can't get the words out ...". This particular statement seems to be in sharp contrast to Jill's experience ( remember she's also a neuroscientist ), when she said that while experiencing the effects of her stroke, that in her mind, she could clearly see the business card she needed to identify in order to call her office, but couldn't identify it among her real business cards ( why she didn't just call 911 is curious - but also beside the point ). She also knew what she wanted to say but literally couldn't recognize external language. Her experience, contrary to Harris, seems to indicate the presence of an internally intact entity that actually "couldn't get the words out". How might we explain this? Can it be reconciled with what we know about neuroscience? I think so, but I thought that you might want to reflect on it as it presents an interesting juxtaposition of experience and educated opinion.

 

[Burnt State]

Now why I'm posted the above clip is because at about 55 seconds in, Harris says, to quote verbatim: "It's not that everyone with brain damage is per, has their soul soul perfectly intact, they just can't get the words out ...". This particular statement seems to be in sharp contrast to Jill's experience ( remember she's also a neuroscientist ), when she said that while experiencing the effects of her stroke, that in her mind, she could clearly see the business card she needed to identify in order to call her office, but couldn't identify it among her real business cards ( why she didn't just call 911 is curious - but also beside the point ). She also knew what she wanted to say but literally couldn't recognize external language. Her experience, contrary to Harris, seems to indicate the presence of an internally intact entity that actually "couldn't get the words out". How might we explain this? Can it be reconciled with what we know about neuroscience? I think so, but I thought that you might want to reflect on it as it presents an interesting juxtaposition of experience and educated opinion.

I thought her point was that while operating from only her right brain that she was feeling the life force energy of the universe and that without her left brain that was flickering on and off she was having immense difficulty in following what she was doing, but only knew that the single plan her left brain offered her was to sort through the cards. In any crisis, and/or when the brain is damaged, i can see how you can get caught by the first thought that is trying to help instead of reasoning out the best thought of what to do. (been there done that and failed).

What I saw there was not a perfectly intact brain but simply one that was holding onto instruction, remembering what needed to be said but unaware that her speech centre was garbling up the intentionality of the signal. It reminded me a lot of those moments of sleep paralysis where you believe that you are speaking the words, calling out for help, but instead you just hear yourself moaning, trying to speak through frozen muscles that just will not move. I don't see the contrast at all in their statements - faulty brains are just faulty, no matter what your consciousness and feelings are telling you, and obviously, even with a hemisphere not functioning properly, whole thoughts can arise. In fact thinking about these two videos is starting to make me think about recanting my thoughts regarding the continuity of consciousness and the ectoplasmic software identity that just moves from cerebral cortex to cortex. Hmmmmmm...now if only I coud solve those reincarnation puzzles I might be more satisfied with the notion that death is in fact final.

 

[Michael Allen]

I had similar experiences--i.e that Jill BolteTaylor had--many many times as a kid trying to deal with horrible migraines that completely disabled my language processing centers. I could walk around and look at things that were familiar; I could see the shapes and colors of the words on signs, objects, products, etc, but I could not process them nor could I "read" them. Speaking was extremely difficult or impossible, but other than that I was completely aware of everything. There was nothing special in my opinion in this experience. When I decided to do something I just did it--i..e there was no internal monologue in my head (as is always the case).

I think the only thing I got out of these horrid headaches was a terrible pain in the side of my head that lasted for hours along with a newly refreshed respect for the parts of my brain that effortlessly handle my linguistic and symbolic processes. In may ways, I always had a bittersweet appreciation for the "ending" of the dysphasia period of the migraine which marked the beginning of a 3-4 hour period of agony in the next. By the time I recovered from the pain stage, I had already forgotten about the dysphasia I had the day earlier (actually the day after I had problems "finding my words") and could care less.

 

[Michael Allen]

Her experience, contrary to Harris, seems to indicate the presence of an internally intact entity that actually "couldn't get the words out".

Sure, after the fact the brain can synthesize all of its prior experiences and fill in gaps.

I cannot remember where I read this (probably Freud actually) -- I hate searching the damned internet for dream stuff, get a whole bunch of crappy new age sites...

I find the dream recall sequence very illuminating -- one example is the man who goes through several trials and tribulations in a revolution (felt time is days) only to find himself in trouble with the aristocracy and on his way to the chopping block after a kangaroo court type of trial. After sentencing it seems to take hours before he's finally raised up to the guillotine and his head is placed on the block. As the blade comes down and hits his head he sees a bright flash in his eyes and....

The man wakes up, his bed backboard has disconnected from the frame and has fallen on top of his head waking him from his dream.

Of course the question is, how in the hell did his dream "know" when to start before inserting the external stimulus--the answer (according to the author) is obvious, it had to be constructed after the fact by the brain filling in details on waking up.

Ever wonder why dreams are forgotten so quickly? Well if hours, days or years of actual lived time was impressed on your brain in an electro-chemical storm as you woke up....easy come easy go, as they say.

In like manner, when the brain mechanics break down it is easy to see how a recovery can effect what Dennett refers to as a "stalinistic revision" of its own contents.

 

[Michael Allen]

I have to say one quick [ok probably not so quick...*sigh*] thing about this comment:

Not exactly, In your analogy of the eyeglasses, the concept of quantum emergence is being fudged in with neurobiology. Quantum emergence is not something we fully understand. We just know it happens. To be clear here, if you try to look it up you're going to run into a variety of interpretations all the way from motivational seminars to quantum mysticism. What I'm specifically referring to is the same type of emergence on the quantum level that we see when a photon is created, an emergence that takes place as an electron lowers it's energy state. There is no IR. It just happens. We don't know exactly how. We just know it does.

Actually I am didn't mean to allude to anything like quantum emergence or any other quantum mysticism regarding the intermediary. What I was trying to say was that the processes that made up your visceral manifold perspective are so built-in and embedded into the same that you don't notice them (they are transparent).

The glasses metaphor was meant to show that what you look through (i.e. the glasses analogous to your biological optical equipment as well as the electro-chemical lines to the GNC of synapses and axons in your brain) is not seen...but what you do see is the effect of all of the above working properly. Only in severe breakdown scenarios do you take notice of the peculiar distortions created by the breakdown.

Is dualism is a real phenomenon?
Does it need an explanation?
If so then will it be based on a world-view ontology that is dualistic?


Overall I think the entire subject/object schema weaponizes our intellect and thrusts it against the world of things. We are no longer a part of that which we emerged from and we wage war against our environment--I think this is a dangerous stance to begin a philosophical inquiry, as it indicates we have already lost our way before starting the investigation. I.e. we have already decided that the answer of the is-ness of reality is settled before the start; we have already decided which of the two fictional representations of reality underlie the other. Taking the internal symbols SR and OR as really being aspects of our own ego tunnel (to borrow Metzinger's theoretical term), we have already pinned them against the wall of our own cartesian theater (to borrow Dennett's term) and decided on their causal principles. To apply Plato's Cave as an analogy, both SR and OR are the shadows on the wall created by the very existence of another shadow: the Plato's Cave Analogy itself!

I have a problem with starting out an investigation before understanding the terms of the question--you should too I would think You're view seems to be that dualism is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored or dismissed, but at the same time are not fundamental ontological categories of existence. If that's the case, then I agree its something worth examination.

From Being and Time (Stambaugh translation):

As a seeking, questioning needs prior guidance from what it seeks. The meaning of being must therefore already be available to us in a certain way. We intimated that we are always already involved in an understanding [not cognitive..or conscious] of being. From this [implicit understanding] grows the explicit question of the meaning of being and the tendency toward its concept. We do not know what "being" means. But already when we ask, "what is being'?" we stand in an understanding of the "is" without being able to determine conceptually what the "is" means. We do not even know the horizon upon which we are supposed to grasp and pin down the meaning. This average and vague understanding of being is a fact. ​

 

[Randall]

I thought her point was that while operating from only her right brain that she was feeling the life force energy of the universe and that without her left brain that was flickering on and off she was having immense difficulty in following what she was doing, but only knew that the single plan her left brain offered her was to sort through the cards. In any crisis, and/or when the brain is damaged, i can see how you can get caught by the first thought that is trying to help instead of reasoning out the best thought of what to do. (been there done that and failed).

What I saw there was not a perfectly intact brain but simply one that was holding onto instruction, remembering what needed to be said but unaware that her speech centre was garbling up the intentionality of the signal. It reminded me a lot of those moments of sleep paralysis where you believe that you are speaking the words, calling out for help, but instead you just hear yourself moaning, trying to speak through frozen muscles that just will not move. I don't see the contrast at all in their statements - faulty brains are just faulty, no matter what your consciousness and feelings are telling you, and obviously, even with a hemisphere not functioning properly, whole thoughts can arise. In fact thinking about these two videos is starting to make me think about recanting my thoughts regarding the continuity of consciousness and the ectoplasmic software identity that just moves from cerebral cortex to cortex. Hmmmmmm...now if only I coud solve those reincarnation puzzles I might be more satisfied with the notion that death is in fact final.

I think Jill summarizes her main point very well on her own. But apparently I'm not so good at getting mine across. Allow me to clarify. What I was doing in the post you quoted was making a comparison between specific observations that Jill made during her stroke experience, and a comment made by Harris, and relating them to what constitutes consciousness ( the theme of this thread ) by posing the question of how we might resolve these seemingly contradictory situations. Specifically, consider the following statements by Jill:

8:00 | "I could actually hear the dialog inside of my body. I heard a little voice saying, "OK you muscles you gotta contract and you muscles you relax".
11:30 | "Even though I could see clearly in my mind's eye what my business card looked like, I couldn't tell if this was my card or not."
13:05 | "And so I say to him clear in my mind, I say to him, 'This is Jill. I need help' and what comes out of my voice is, 'Wroo wroo wroo wroo rwoo' "

In contradiction to the above, Harris talks about observations made when certain parts of the brain are damaged and makes this statement:

00:55 | "It's not that everyone with brain damage is per, has their soul perfectly intact, they just can't get the words out ...".

So neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor whose brain was damaged by a stroke, seems to have experienced exactly the opposite of what neuroscientist Sam Harris claims. How do we reconcile this? Also to be even more clear here let's not get into a debate as to what constitutes a "soul". Harris' use of the word soul is a convenience term for use in his debate about life after death, but for all intent and purpose here, we can set religion aside and consider that what he means by "soul" is one's sense of self, and the thing that let Jill know she could hear words clearly and see pictures clearly in her own mind.

 

[Randall]

You're view seems to be that dualism is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored or dismissed, but at the same time are not fundamental ontological categories of existence. If that's the case, then I agree its something worth examination.

I think we might even be on the same page now . In your opinion does the following statement seem to correspond with what you said above? Dualism doesn't explain the nature of existence itself, it's merely a state of affairs that takes place within the context of an individual consciousness relating to realities beyond itself.

If the above is in synch, then we're on solid and common ground, and can move on to the bigger picture ( whatever that is ). At present I'm tempted to consider the possibility that our spacetime continuum ( what would be observable to astronomers if they only had telescopes powerful enough to see everything there is ), is some sort of generated construct and that whatever is responsible for generating it is only an intermediary between us and The One.