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GEddie
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I did not say consciousness was non physical.
I do not equate consciousness with the mind.
I would agree that consciousness–which is tied to the brain stem and the senses–is a body function.
ICXC NIKA
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I do not equate consciousness with the mind.
I would agree that consciousness–which is tied to the brain stem and the senses–is a body function.
ICXC NIKA
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fisherman_carl
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An AI exists solely to interact with human minds, not for its own sake. It still needs a human mind to interpret it and make sense of its data. It does everything according to the will of the human mind. True AI is a pipe dream. And anything AI you would not consider it to be alive anymore than your laptop.
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Wesrock
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I ask sincerely, as I truly want to learn, and I’ve been studying A-T metaphysics the last month or so. I am concerned because the human brain is a physical thing, and conceivably you could model every neuron and connection in a computer, whether hardwired or as a program. The program itself, if modeled on biology, could conceivable even adapt to form new connections. Surely this would either be a very large machine or a require a lot of computer memory, but it is technically possible.
It is impossible for this “brain” to have an intellect and to know things? I suppose I am erring into functionalism, but I’m not sure I’m comfortable declaring it to be impossible until we’ve tested this. This assertion itself is falsifiable.
I am worried this goes beyond metaphysics and is like calling fire perfect hotness.
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yppop
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Carl
An excellent post! It is excellent because it gets to the heart of the matter/mind problem, namely that matter can’t have “sentience experiences” such as the image of a giraffe. Yes, computers do create amazing representations of reality simply by organizing streams of 1’ and 0’s which then activate pixels on a screen and we see a giraffe running from a lion. However it is “WE” who see, not the wonderful machine. The computer successfully represents reality because it is a digital (discrete) device just as, I believe, objective reality is. What we see in our minds are analog (continuous) images we call percepts. The digital (name removed by moderator)ut from our sense receptors are processed in the peripheral nervous system until reaching the brain where they activate, through what I call an afferent event (matter activating the immaterial), the immaterial memory to create a analog (continuous) sentience experience. Neurobiologists deal with this phenomena by mentally constructing complex maps and meters (to divert one’s attention I suppose) then claim the image of the giraffe is an “emergent” property of the brain. Emergence is the neurobiologist’s equivalent of the creationist’s “God did it”.
The transformation from digital to analog demands a dual memory - material and immaterial - and that demands the presence of an immaterial (spiritual) substance to work with the material brain. The immaterial substance is called “nous”; it along with the language instinct found in the material memory in the brain forms the mind. Consciousness is the manifestation of activity of the mind. When we shut down the action of the brain, the mind becomes inactive and we appear to be unconscious.
Yppop
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inocente
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People have brought up that idea before, but it seems to be based on an homunculus, as if a male giraffe can’t recognize his mate without having a little immaterial giraffe inside.
But the main problem is that inventing the word “immaterial” and then calling recognition “immaterial” is no explanation at all. It’s just a name. Daddy, how do cell phones work? Oh, it’s the “immaterial” son. Thanks dad, that explains it.
And in the context of free will, the immaterial invention brings nothing to the party. To make rational decisions by free will, we must follow the rules of logic. The rules of logic are deterministic. Material is very good at being deterministic. The only thing that the “immaterial” invention could add is to make indeterminate random decisions which break the rules of logic.
Meanwhile, neuroscience keeps chipping away at these problems, and less and less can to be explained away as “immaterial”.
Take a look at this video. It’s been known for some time that the only information leaving the eyes is a stream of pulses. Therefore the only data available for recognition, (however it is accomplished) is this bit stream. Sheila Nirenberg has decoded the stream to the point where she can replicate it with a camera and a chip, a prosthetic eye, to help the blind to see. Amazing research. So much for the immaterial “explanation”
.bbc.com/future/story/20141111-the-code-that-may-treat-blindness
physiology.med.cornell.edu/faculty/nirenberg/lab/research.php
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Tomdstone
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How does consciousness differ from the experience of the human mind?
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Ben_Shipman
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This is why I emphasize context. It is the context stored in the human mind that enables the picture of a giraffe to have its full meaning. If you had a computer that had the full knowledge of a human stored in a useful way, then it could draw the same conclusions upon seeing the picture of a giraffe that a human could. It could even draw the same conclusion about itself (I am an AI constructed to serve humans) as a human would (This is an AI constructed to serve us).
Now, if the AI lacked a soul, then its intelligence would be a simulation rather than something inwardly experienced by the AI itself. But simulated intelligence behaves like the real thing, and it is the behavior of the AI that determines its impact on others.
I suppose that natural free will consists of quantum indeterminacy. Since quantum indeterminate systems can be predicted in terms of probability distributions, you might find this unsatisfactory. But this seems necessary for free will to be natural. If our brains don’t obey quantum statistics, then they don’t obey the laws of physics, and are supernatural rather than natural.
As I said, I believe in supernatural grace. I just suppose that even in our brains, natural physics largely prevails, and the supernatural is subtle or occasional. For the supernatural to be required for ordinary intelligence would mean that our brains have to be constantly interfered with in order to work, and that seems wrong.
How would you know if it did or did not?
I have found it useful in looking at things like this from the perspective I had when I learned Assembler Language and later when I started dabbling in
Machine language itself.
We have a tendency to believe a machine to be smarter since it can follow along a more and more complex program. That we can simply say the words and the machine does what we ask gives us a healthy illusion that the machine understands to some degree.
Dig into it, beyond the programs riding on top, beyond the OS riding underneath that, and even below the IO bus…and you find a machine that does not think. That does not feel, that is simply following along with what the laws of physics dictate.
And no matter how many transistors we can cram into a space, it is nothing more than a collection of circuits that use 1’s and 0’s in a clever way.
A machine taking the Turing test is no more creative then a marble rolling down a hill.
They both follow the laws of physics, no more and no less.
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GEddie
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Ben_Shipman
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Physics does some surprising things.
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fisherman_carl
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“Immaterial” is precisely the best explanation because the problem is how can physical material hold immaterial thoughts? If it is not possible for a material object to have abstract knowledge, yet our minds do have abstract knowledge, then our minds can not be material. When we have an idea or thought in the mind is it physical or immaterial? For instance, is the thought “divine providence” physical or immaterial? It seems that thoughts and ideas reside in the immaterial and not physical. Ideas are immaterial objects. How do you explain the presence of these immaterial objects in the mind, if the mind is only material?People have brought up that idea before, but it seems to be based on an homunculus, as if a male giraffe can’t recognize his mate without having a little immaterial giraffe inside.
But the main problem is that inventing the word “immaterial” and then calling recognition “immaterial” is no explanation at all. It’s just a name. Daddy, how do cell phones work? Oh, it’s the “immaterial” son. Thanks dad, that explains it.
And in the context of free will, the immaterial invention brings nothing to the party. To make rational decisions by free will, we must follow the rules of logic. The rules of logic are deterministic. Material is very good at being deterministic. The only thing that the “immaterial” invention could add is to make indeterminate random decisions which break the rules of logic.
Meanwhile, neuroscience keeps chipping away at these problems, and less and less can to be explained away as “immaterial”.
Take a look at this video. It’s been known for some time that the only information leaving the eyes is a stream of pulses. Therefore the only data available for recognition, (however it is accomplished) is this bit stream. Sheila Nirenberg has decoded the stream to the point where she can replicate it with a camera and a chip, a prosthetic eye, to help the blind to see. Amazing research. So much for the immaterial “explanation”
bbc.com/future/story/20141111-the-code-that-may-treat-blindness
physiology.med.cornell.edu/faculty/nirenberg/lab/research.php
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fisherman_carl
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I would say that even if you could model the physical activity of the brain perfectly in a computer simulation you would still not have a mind that can know things. Because it would lack the immaterial mind. You would only have a computer simulation, not a mind. You might see neurons firing but is the thought the sky is blue a neuron or an electrical signal? These are immaterial, metaphysical concepts. There is no neuron or electrical signal that represents a blue sky. Sure, you could store a representation of a blue sky, but you still need a mind to interpret that representation or symbol. What symbol corresponds to a blue sky? The mind would have to assign a symbol to it. There is no physical object that automatically generates a symbol for a blue sky.
The brain is like an interface that connects the immaterial mind to the body. Yet, it is so valuable to the human person that God feels it is necessary to resurrect it.
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Michael19682
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Intellect is a wide term. . As dreams indicate, we can see without our eyes open. Images are “light” when they are experienced. Light is at least partially immaterial?
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inocente
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The world’s “first computer programmer”, Ada Lovelace, saw this in the 1840s.
Take Hume’s division between facts and ideas. The only real difference between the two is that facts must refer back to the world (concrete) but ideas don’t necessarily (abstract).
We know that material can record facts (since every computer can).
Now you could say that the idea of “giraffes”, as a category, is an abstraction. But it’s also a fact that giraffes look, smell and move to similar ways. A fact which material can remember. A giraffe can recognize his mate, and other giraffes, with just the stuff between his ears.
Also, given your background, you will realize that the only difference between storing a fact and storing an idea is a single boolean property we’ll call Abstract - true for an idea, false for a fact. Those philosophers just needed to go to Programming 101 and they would have seen what Ada saw 170 years ago.
PS: You didn’t comment on Nirenberg’s work. The thing which interested me is that it is known for sure that the only information leaving the eyes (down the optic nerve) is a stream of pulses. Therefore, whatever processes those pulses and converts them into the “movie” we see in our mind, must be digital. That’s no problem for the brain (after all, it was neurons in the eyes which produced the bit stream), but it means that the “immaterial”, if such exists, must be digital. Which is surely a big problem for “immaterialists”, since an immaterial bit must be much the same as a material bit.
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GEddie
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Well, yeah, because without the human body there is literally nobody; and the brain/head is where the mind resides.
The brain began as a body-control and operations center. The human-mind aspect got added on.
Whether you agree or disagree with the OP about the nature of our minds, we are every bit as much thinking bodies as immaterial minds. Without the body’s senses and limbs by which to live life, our minds would have nothing to think about!
ICXC NIKA
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GEddie
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Light is immaterial, in that it has no weight, but it is definitely physical. That is why a piece of black cloth over your eyes can stop your seeing.
ISTM that a word better than immaterial is needed for the mind, if what is meant is that Our mind is not a process of the physical body. All of our human senses are physical, but only smell and taste involve strictly material substrates. The others receive pure energy (as light, sound, pressure, heat or motion) that is not per se material.
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Ben_Shipman
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I question your premise that that it is not possible for a material object to have abstract knowledge. A computer could quite well represent the concept of divine providence internally in a useful way, as part of a generic framework. A very crude example would be something like:
Divine providence = [INFLUENCE OF] - God - [ON] - World.
the same framework that could handle a mundane definition like
Tides = [INFLUENCE OF] - gravity [OF] moon - [ON] - oceans [OF] Earth
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fisherman_carl
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I have already dealt with representation in the brain. You still need a mind to assign representations or symbols to an object. You still haven’t explained how does a neuron or physical object or electrical impulse automatically assign symbols to objects through natural physical laws? In your example your mind is assigning symbols. But how does a physical object do that unaided by a mind?
Yes, information can be stored in the brain just like information can be stored in a computer. But a mind is still needed to interpret that information.
Btw, if our minds are purely physical then we don’t have free will. Do you agree with that?
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fisherman_carl
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Storing information in a physical medium is not the issue. We all know that is possible. From computer disks to dna information is stored. But, as I previously posted the mind is more than information. A mind needs to be able to interpret that information. Just having information stored as binary does not help us if we can not recognize what those patterns of 1s and 0s mean. And, very important, there is nothing about the nature of an object that dictates a symbolic representation. A mind still needs to assign a pattern representation and be able to interpret that representation later on. In a computer all of this is determined by the mind of the programmer.
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