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sage
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what exactly is the hard problem of consciousness? why is it hard?
sage said:what exactly is the hard problem of consciousness? why is it hard?
Math Is Hard said:ooh! he's cute! I knew there was a reason I went into Cog Sci!
LOL!loseyourname said:Are you kidding me? He looks like Kate Winslet crossed with Jack Black.
Or rather we can't with our level of technology.
FZ+ said:Nah. The hard problem, as to where the feeling of experience comes from, is constructed so that it is absolutely insoluble by any objective method. Because we don't even know what we mean by experience, nor can we assume we know everything there is to know about the nature of physical law. Technology, and our perceptions extend only to the effects of laws and rules, and going beyond leaves only speculation and belief.
Good point. Computers can't do any math without instructions, which comes from humans
sage said:sleeth, I've read his book. it was rather diffucult to follow what he was saying.i'm not convinced that the hard problem exists. seems like a red herring. what exactly do we mean by qualia or subjective experiance? the question where the vividness of colours come from seem absurd. red is different from green because of its different frequency and wavelength and that difference is detected by our eyes. hence the brain perceives them to be different, what is so 'hard' to explain about that?i just do not get it.
Problem+Solve=Reason said:I doubt, no matter how sophisticated science becomes, we will never understand the true meaning of consciousness.
----- nwO ruoY evaH ,deeN oN <----?eeS I tahW eeS uoY oD
saltydog said:Consciousness is in the dynamics. It's nothing more than neural dynamics. Get a bunch of marbles behaving in the same non-linear fashion as neural assemblies and marble mind will emerge.
Math Is Hard said:I am reading a piece called "Quining Qualia" by Daniel Dennett at the moment. He seems intent on proving that there "simply are no qualia at all" at least none that fit the definition he has set up (ineffable, intrinsic, private, directly apprehensible properties of experience). If a materialist should somehow be able to prove that qualia do not exist, does that solve the "hard problem"? Or is there more to be challenged?
Math Is Hard said:Thanks, Les. I might have to PM you some questions later. I am almost done with the Dennett reading, but I am moving on to Owen Flanagan now.
Les Sleeth said:Absolutely! And guess what, that is exactly why Dennett wants to find a way to "dismiss" qualia . . . because he can't account for it with physical principles. It's in the way of his functionalist theory, so he'll just pretend it doesn't exist. Amazingly clever little bit of intellectual dishonesty there if you ask me.
That's same thing physicalists have done with life. They've "dismissed" any sort of vital force because they can explain most of the chemistry of life. Of course, they can't explain how all that chemistry got so effectively organized . . . but who cares. Find an excuse to "dismiss" and then you can get around those damn pesky facts which are making your theory come up short.
Les Sleeth said:Really? Would you care to demonstrate mind emerging from any sort of assembly or dynamics you choose to set up?
saltydog said:Ok, the marbles was a stretch but in principle but I still hold to the concept.
selfAdjoint said:salty, have you any books journals or online papers to give us to let us research this? I certainly think your nonlinear dynamics idea is a good one (if not the final answer in itself). There's a lot of stuff in this general direction on the arxiv, but my experience with those papers has been, the bigger the claim, the smellier the derivation.
Les Sleeth said:Thanks for the info, it is interesting work. Of course, I was simply challenging the way you made your original statement "Consciousness is . . . nothing more than neural dynamics . . . mind will emerge." You stated it as a fact, not as an unproven theory. I do not think mind will emerge from that complexity, but you do. So to see who is right, first it has to be done.
What I think you will get from complexity is nothing but complex programming, and never the independent "self." It will be a zombie, but by that time Dennett will be able to claim it is consciousness anyway because qualia will have been dismissed an illusion!
"Emergence" is a growing field with encouraging results. Many investigators have demonstrated the central concept: complex behavior emerges from interaction of simple parts.
arildno said:No one has ever said that the "Laws of large numbers" are easy to deduce from the basic principles.
What I'm slightly iffy about, is the "emergence" word, since that has some unfortunate connotations of new behaviour inexplicable or inconsistent with the basic mechanisms.
saltydog said:"Emergence" is a growing field with encouraging results. Many investigators have demonstrated the central concept: complex behavior emerges from interaction of simple parts. This complexity cannot be deduced from analysis of the parts.
saltydog said:I believe something "qualitatively different" emerges from some complexity other than just "complex programming" of the same "quality".
saltydog said:May I suggest "Self-Organization in Biological Systems" by Camazine as defense of my view? It contains many examples of "emergence" from the Biological world, simple ones I admit.
Les Sleeth said:Since it cannot be shown matter has the potential to self-organize itself into life, then the issue remains open as to whether there is yet some unrecognized organizational principle associated with life which is not associated with ordinary matter. And if it is, the lack of that same organizational principle may be what defeats AI researchers from ever getting consciousness to "emerge" from a computer.
All of those things you describe can be done, have been done, and are being done on computers."non-linear" devices which exhibit all the properties of non-linear dynamics: ergodic behavior, catastrophe, sensitive dependence, attractors, bifurcation, chaos, and fractal geometry
saltydog said:Well, you could have mentioned the termites as that's the finest example in the book and a little more impressive than fire-flies.
saltydog said:I believe we have "examples" of the "capability" of matter organizing into precursors of life: Miller was the first to show that amino acids could be created from pre-biotic chemicals (water, ammonia, methane, few more). At high temperature, amino acids spontaneously assemble into polymers called thermal-proteins which upon cooling, produce cell-like structures called microspheres. Pre-cursors of nucleic acids (purines and pyrimidines) have been synthesized from hydrogen cyanide and other chemicals under suspected pre-biotic conditions. . . . Also, I'm finding out you guys have been discussing this subject at length in the Epistemology section which I've just begun to look at.
saltydog said:Computers today are "linear" in my view, mostly "look-up" tables made up of transistors operating in their linear ranges (pretty sure about the transistors anyway). Someone someday is going to come up with "non-linear" devices which exhibit all the properties of non-linear dynamics: ergodic behavior, catastrophe, sensitive dependence, attractors, bifurcation, chaos, and fractal geometry. You'd think that would be a mess at first and I suspect the first workings would exhibit peculiar forms of "cognition" that we're not acustomed to. It's there I think we'll start to formulate better ideas of what mind is.
Bartholomew said:All of those things you describe can be done, have been done, and are being done on computers.
Les Sleeth said:The thing is, if there is an unrecognized organizational principle that worked with Earth's chemistry to produce life, the raw materials need to be somewhat predisposed to being organized. So it would not be unusual for some degree of spontaneous "mechanomorphic" organization to happen. But those few steps chemistry is capable of doesn't represent what happened, and happens, with life. There organization kept going, and going, and going . . . it is still going. Further, it wasn't just order that the organization produced, it was functioning systems which could operate in support of new systems that would be built on top. Matter alone has never been shown it can act that way spontaneously or even be kicked into "self-organizing gear" with lots of help from scientists.
saltydog said:Has Stuart Kaufmann been mentioned in these discussions? He proposes a revolutionary idea: catalytic closure. In essence, primitive RNA arose which had catalytic ability to assist with protein formation. Through selection, some protein chains arose which had catalytic ability to assist in RNA synthesis. At this point the RNA-protein system becomes synergistic and in some ways self-organizing. I realize it's a theory but it's based on reasonable chemical principles.
saltydog said:With regards to increasing complexity: As the diversity of form (molecules, life-forms, habitats, etc.) increases, the number of degrees of freedom increases. This necessarily increases the dimension of the system's state space (space of all possibilities). Enlarging the state-space this way allows access to a greater variety of high-dimension "attractors" (islands of stability). I propose that what we see as increasing complexity is actually a trajectory from low dimension attractors to high dimension attractors (attractors within attractors) made possible by an influx of energy (sun, chemical bonds) and increasing diversity. Thus, similar to the marble-analogy, if a system is designed in which it's degrees of freedom increases (greatly), a suitable dynamics (with influx of energy) can be defined within the system which will have similar characteristics to the evolution of complexity on earth.
saltydog said:At present, we're just too limited in our sophistication to model this. I mean, math is really at it's infancy now-days (no offense, I have a passion for math).