Myth of evolution and new drug discovery

[hecd2]

Of course, you do not accept that what you said is nonsense. Who ever does? But I was only referring to your take on a discussion that you jumped into without understanding what had been transpiring over many posts.

Fair enough - I did say I was coming in late - but I have acknowledged the distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions that you say were a roadblock before, so let’s take it from there.

That is a different matter than your interpretations of neuroscience. I don’t consider that interpretation, insofar as what little you stated, to be nonsense. I just take it to be a faulty interpretation based on a modern ideological bias.

I understand that you do, and I see that the discussion regarding Quiroga’s work has moved on down the thread, so we’ll pick that up later.

The bias of course is a philosophical materialism, or in matters of human psychology, it would be metaphysical behaviorism, as distinct from a methodological behaviorism.

We can agree that a theory of philosophical materialism is not nonsense. However, when anyone, scientist or otherwise dogmatically asserts philosophical materialism as true, then he is speaking nonsense. Philosophical materialism by its very nature cannot prove itself to be true. It can only remain an unproven assumption at best.

I agree with you - I do not think that any statement about reality can be *proven *in the same way that a proposition in a formal system such as natural arithmetic can be proven. The errors of Plantinga and others who claim that Naturalism is a self-defeating philosophy are based on this mis-characterisation of the human ability to demonstrate the truth of statements about reality. Philosophical naturalism maintains not that matter-energy is all that exists, but that the material world (ie that which we can sense) is all that we can know, and it eschews supernatural explanations as being fundamentally superstitious (in its formal rather than pejorative sense) and unknowable.

Next, the reduction of human psychology to physics leaves one with little explanatory power when it comes to human consciousness and thinking.

No-one, certainly not me, suggests the reduction of human psychology (or indeed any other science) to physics. However, explanations of phenomena that rely on unknowable domains and processes have no explanatory power at all - they are an abdication of explanation.

Locating areas of the brain and certain neurophysiological processes concomitant to or involved in certain psychological events does not tell us what the mind is or what its relation is to the body. One can merely assume that mind is an epiphenomena of brain activity, but that is not proven by detection of physiological correlates to mental activity.

As neurophysiology progresses, it becomes clearer that, not only are brain processes necessary for what we call mind, but that very specific neurophysiological circuits are correlated with and necessary for very specific mental processes (such as the recognition of the concept of an individual). In the absence of any demonstration that these processes are insufficient to explain the mental states, I conclude parsimoniously that neurophysiological and mental states are different aspects of the same phenomenon.

No researcher will claim, or rationally can claim, that he can observe mental events in the same way that he observes physical activity in the brain.

I don’t think that it is a matter of reason but a matter of practical limitation. There is no in-principle barrier to the observation of the entire stream of consciousness of a subject by direct physical observations of his brain activity.

The most that brain studies have shown is that brain and its processes are a necessary condition of consciousness and thinking.

Good. Let’s put that in the bank and move on. Do you acknowledge that brain and its processes are a necessary condition for mind? I think you do, and if so, your next step is to show that barin and its processes are an insufficient condition for mind.

Do you believe that computers also think?

Depends on what you mean by ‘think’.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Correction: I said hecd2 quoted from Nature. I checked the original post and I see that he is just referring to Nature. My critique still applies to the words I quoted from his post.

My fault for not representing the work clearly. What Quiroga et al have shown in this and subsequent work, is that a single neuron fires if and only if the subject is presented with a picture *or *any other representation of an individual such as their written name. In other words, the neuron is implicated not in image processing of a photograph (ie in the perceptive process - of course such neurons also exist ranging from the fundamental image processing tasks such as edge-detection to much more complex integrating activities in the visual cortex), but in the *concept *of that individual.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Agnosia presents instances of blind percepts. The implications of that pathology represent further evidence against the mind-brain identity hypothesis.

How on earth do you conclude that? It seems to me that that pathology, rooted as it is in physiological brain injury, is evidence *for *the hypothesis, since material damage interferes with the subject’s ability to conceptualise a perception, even though both the concept and the sensory part of the perceptive process remain demonstrably intact.

The person is not blind and they understand and recognise the object by other means, but they are unable to complete the mental process because of a material impediment.

There is nothing in the multi-modal percepts study that remotely suggests that consciousness and conceptual thinking is sufficiently accounted for by brain states.

I agree, but it is another nail in the coffin for the proposal that brain states are insufficient to account for consciousness and conceptual thinking.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

The logically unwarranted leap in the position is his following statement:
“so the default explanation is that mental states and brain states are different aspects of the same phenomenon.”

This is actually no explanation at all, merely an unproven assumption made at the outset, and it remains unproven by subsequent data. I would go further and state that all of the ongoing good quality brain research tends to disprove the above stated assumption.

Really? Perhaps you can refer us to the good quality brain research that tends to disprove the proposition that mental states and brain states are different aspects of the same phenomenon?

(By the way, it is not an assumption, but a tentative conclusion based on the evidence and parsimony.).

Alec
evolutionapges.com

 

[itinerant1]

I see what you mean. So you are arguing that the neurological correlates are sufficient for sense perception in animals but this is not the case with intellectual conception in humans. In which case blindsight subjects have sense perception (hence their performance on forced choice responses), but have lost their ability to link these perceptions with intellectual conception - hence their inability to articulate and to be aware of what they have perceived. You are arguing that Quiroga et al’s 2005 study has demonstrated the link with sense perception, but not the link with intellectual conception. What would be needed is a similar methodology but with subjects who are engaged in abstract thought - following an instruction such as “think about justice”. These could be criticised as being insufficiently controlled however.

Animals are confined strictly to perceptual thinking which involves particulars and the immediate environment. In the case of the human mind, concepts almost always enlighten percepts. Agnosia is just illustrative of this fact. The pathology may allow a person to recognize a rose through the sense of smell, while it is not recognized through the sense of sight or touch. I think I mentioned this earlier. And Kant’s expression about the human mind is apropos to this aspect of agnosia: Percepts without concepts are blind, and concepts with percepts empty.

This also suggests why a brain study with the subject thinking about non-physical subjects, eg. justice, will not reveal anything substantial because the phantasm always accompanies the concept, even concepts involving the immaterial or things that cannot be instantiated in matter. In fact, this is why many people have difficulty reasoning about highly abstract subjects because they fall back on the particular image in their mind rather than the idea itself.

 

[itinerant1]

Animals are confined strictly to perceptual thinking which involves particulars and the immediate environment. In the case of the human mind, concepts almost always enlighten percepts. Agnosia is just illustrative of this fact. The pathology may allow a person to recognize a rose through the sense of smell, while it is not recognized through the sense of sight or touch. I think I mentioned this earlier. And Kant’s expression about the human mind is apropos to this aspect of agnosia: Percepts without concepts are blind, and concepts with percepts empty.

This also suggests why a brain study with the subject thinking about non-physical subjects, eg. justice, will not reveal anything substantial because the phantasm always accompanies the concept, even concepts involving the immaterial or things that cannot be instantiated in matter. In fact, this is why many people have difficulty reasoning about highly abstract subjects because they fall back on the particular image in their mind rather than the idea itself.

Serious typo correction: Kant’s expression should read as follows:
Percepts without concepts are blind, and concepts without percepts empty.

 

[itinerant1]

Fair enough - I did say I was coming in late - but I have acknowledged the distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions that you say were a roadblock before, so let’s take it from there.

I understand that you do, and I see that the discussion regarding Quiroga’s work has moved on down the thread, so we’ll pick that up later.

NO big deal. I’m bad at not reading what went on previously in thread. So, I would be a hypocrite to hold it against you. Actually, my patience ran out that day with those ID supporters.

I agree with you - I do not think that any statement about reality can be *proven *in the same way that a proposition in a formal system such as natural arithmetic can be proven. The errors of Plantinga and others who claim that Naturalism is a self-defeating philosophy are based on this mis-characterisation of the human ability to demonstrate the truth of statements about reality. Philosophical naturalism maintains not that matter-energy is all that exists, but that the material world (ie that which we can sense) is all that we can know, and it eschews supernatural explanations as being fundamentally superstitious (in its formal rather than pejorative sense) and unknowable.

Well, this is not the thread to argue epistemology, but I will anyway, briefly. I have my own views about the epistemological approach of philosophical naturalism or materialism, how it never escaped a fundamental error begun by Descartes and that which followed, which were failed attempts to escape that error by Locke, Berkely, Hume, Kant, and most modern philosophers. At least some versions of philosophical naturalism believe that the mind can attain a reasonably accurate knowledge of physical reality. Sometime we will have to discuss, though, how it I think it puts the cart before the horse. It’s my historical explanation of moderns who still put Descartes before the horse.

There are versions of philosophical naturalism that dogmatically claim only matter and energy exist. The version you speak of I see as still limiting the human mind unnecessarily. In some cases, where the facts warrant it, the scientist should be willing to admit that an answer is not within the scope and province of the natural sciences. This is a limited claim I make here and assumes nothing about the existence of God, a spiritual human soul, or angelic spirits.

No-one, certainly not me, suggests the reduction of human psychology (or indeed any other science) to physics. However, explanations of phenomena that rely on unknowable domains and processes have no explanatory power at all - they are an abdication of explanation.

I would say it is not an abdication of explanation but a refusal to be dogmatic about the limitations of the human mind and the competence of natural science to provide explanations.

As far as a reduction of psychology to physics I was just reading the writing on the wall. In your view man is his biology, especially so if everything about his mind has a completely biological explanation. What then is biology or life? Would you not assert that it reduces to chemistry? What is chemistry but the study of the various specific organizations of matter? What science studies matter and motion? Physics. Hence, unless I am missing something entailed in your view, psychology ultimately reduces to physics. Maybe that just sounds too blunt.

As neurophysiology progresses, it becomes clearer that, not only are brain processes necessary for what we call mind, but that very specific neurophysiological circuits are correlated with and necessary for very specific mental processes (such as the recognition of the concept of an individual). In the absence of any demonstration that these processes are insufficient to explain the mental states, I conclude parsimoniously that neurophysiological and mental states are different aspects of the same phenomenon.

I would agree that brain processes are necessary for what we call mind. However, there is a power of the mind that by its very nature defies explanation as a function of brain, even though brain states are intimately involved. The crux of this involves intellect and its concepts, which I think the argument should focus on. I will start that argument in a separate post after I get through my prepatory rambling here and in the next post or two I think it will be.

I don’t think that it is a matter of reason but a matter of practical limitation. There is no in-principle barrier to the observation of the entire stream of consciousness of a subject by direct physical observations of his brain activity.

That’s where we disagree. If my brain were exposed right now and its processes being observed by a blue ribbon team of brain researchers who described everything they observed, their description would not be anything like how I would describe my experiences as I type. What we would get are two radically different stories. To say that the brain processes in themselves are my experiences seems to entail a leap not so much in logic but in imagination. More about this later.

Good. Let’s put that in the bank and move on. Do you acknowledge that brain and its processes are a necessary condition for mind? I think you do, and if so, your next step is to show that barin and its processes are an insufficient condition for mind.

Addressed above.

Depends on what you mean by ‘think’.

Excellent. Most people don’t stop to realize the very different meanings and uses of the word “think”.

 

[itinerant1]

Really? Perhaps you can refer us to the good quality brain research that tends to disprove the proposition that mental states and brain states are different aspects of the same phenomenon?

(By the way, it is not an assumption, but a tentative conclusion based on the evidence and parsimony.).

Alec
evolutionapges.com

I understand your interpretation of the research. I’ll be back in maybe in a couple of hours and just get to the main points of my position. I worked a late shift last night so I have to take a little siesta. Sleep is one of my favorite activities.

 

[Fran65]

The idea that I think hecd2 is getting at is related to Quiroga’s work in the following way. The neuron that activates when shown a picture of Halle Berry is just an example of how a single neuron embodies a concept. We have billions of neurons, there are also many, many concepts. Hyopthetically, each neuron could be mapped. The neuron for Quiroga, the neuron for concept, the neuron for brain, the neuron for agreement, the neuron for principle, the neuron for typing, the neuron for laptop…all active during the period that I am typing this. Each thought could be regarded as a stream of activation through a set of neurons and if we could read the activation (on/off) then we could read the thought(s).

However, this is still not explaining the experience of consciousness. It would be a very clever thing to do, but it *still does not explain *the subjective experience that I have.It does not matter how detailed and complex we make the pattern of activation - it still fails to show how all of these neurons acting together produce consciousness.

Nor does the hypothetical process described above demonstrate that the brain is sufficient for consciousness.

 

[itinerant1]

The idea that I think hecd2 is getting at is related to Quiroga’s work in the following way. The neuron that activates when shown a picture of Halle Berry is just an example of how a single neuron embodies a concept. We have billions of neurons, there are also many, many concepts. Hyopthetically, each neuron could be mapped. The neuron for Quiroga, the neuron for concept, the neuron for brain, the neuron for agreement, the neuron for principle, the neuron for typing, the neuron for laptop…all active during the period that I am typing this. Each thought could be regarded as a stream of activation through a set of neurons and if we could read the activation (on/off) then we could read the thought(s).

However, this is still not explaining the experience of consciousness. It would be a very clever thing to do, but it *still does not explain *the subjective experience that I have.It does not matter how detailed and complex we make the pattern of activation - it still fails to show how all of these neurons acting together produce consciousness.

Nor does the hypothetical process described above demonstrate that the brain is sufficient for consciousness.

Agreed.

There is no evidence to show that a single concept is embodied in one or any number of neurons.

Attempts to explain even the limited consciouness of animals by this method will be interesting to watch. Nonetheless, when we come to reflective consciousness in humans, the problem becomes insurmountable and explanation made impossible from the outset by the limitations of a method that seeks what is beyond itself.

Nowhere in nature do we find matter and energy exhibiting reflective consciousness. It remains outside the laws of nature or physics. No doubt, the philosophical naturalist will maintain the one exception is the human brain, which became reflectively conscious due to the complexity of its organization. “Complexity of the brain” explains nothing and masks the total inability to provide an explanation. In due time, they say, the answers will be forthcoming. Right. Just as soon as matter and energy jump outside the laws governing their limited nature.

 

[itinerant1]

I will attempt to define a critical problem and lay some ground for further discussion. It’s a challenge for me to present my ideas withouth using all of the technical terms I am used to working with. Simply put there is the modern *sensist *or radical empericist challenge to the traditional understanding of concepts. This is one of the areas where ancient and medieval psychology exhibit more perceptive and accurate insights than does modern psychology, each school basically influenced by a particular school of philosophy.

Sensists categorically deny the immateriality of the intellect by denying the evidence. They maintain that there is no intellect distinct from sensation and imagination, and that all acts of the mind are sensory in nature. Ideas are asserted to be sensory signs of the objects intended or meant. There are different lines of argument with various contemporary philosophical naturalists, but the fundamental distinctions made below between images, percepts and ideas or concepts is likewise denied.

Sensists deny that we have any universal or abstract ideas. These they say are merely sensory images or phantasms of the imagination. However, a brief comparison of ideas and images will show why ideas cannot be “embodied” in the brain.

The elements that costitute an image or phantasm are qualities of material objects as perceived by the external senses of the body. They are qualities such as shape, temperature, color, size, weight, tone, loudness, motion, rest, and so on. These qualities are represented in the image with the concreteness they have in particular physical things in the environment. We imagine a color, and it is a concrete thing or surface of a particular color possessing a particular shade, tone, and hue. It is not the abstract notion of color, or the essence of color. The three distictinctive features of images are materiality, concreteness, and particularity.

On the other hand, universal ideas are essentially different from percepts and images. Ideas have universal signification. An image has only particular reference. For example, the concept of “building” refers to any of millions of structures in that class. By concepts we are able to classify. The notion of "building can refer equally to the Empire State Building, the no longer extant Twin Towers (and the third tower), St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Colonel Sanders KFC facility.

Clearly, concepts and images have different content. Concepts represent the essence or nature, the “whatness” of a thng. My abstract idea of a three-sided enclosed geometric figure, the triangle, has no determinate length, color, size, etc. Every image of a triangle, though, as with every triangle existing outside the mind, has determiniate lines, angles, length, color, position, etc.

Every physical thing in nature is and must be a particular thing. One will never encounter a universal thing in nature. Existing universals are radically beyond the nature of physical matter and energy. Hence, we must posit their mode of being as extra-natural or non-physical. The physical brain, constituted as it is of matter and energy, has not the ability as matter and energy to produce what is not matter and energy, i.e. the universal concept.

That is the beginning of my argument. Response?

 

[Touchstone]

The idea that I think hecd2 is getting at is related to Quiroga’s work in the following way. The neuron that activates when shown a picture of Halle Berry is just an example of how a single neuron embodies a concept. We have billions of neurons, there are also many, many concepts. Hyopthetically, each neuron could be mapped. The neuron for Quiroga, the neuron for concept, the neuron for brain, the neuron for agreement, the neuron for principle, the neuron for typing, the neuron for laptop…all active during the period that I am typing this. Each thought could be regarded as a stream of activation through a set of neurons and if we could read the activation (on/off) then we could read the thought(s).

I don’t have the reference at hand, but I remember reading some other commentary on this by Quiroga, and I think that goes farther than Quiroga would in terms of the generality of what has been observed. If you look him up, you will see the guy is prolific, and this comes from comments on other work of his which I’m too lazy to go police up right now, but I think hardly needs be done to offer this caution; we have evidence that points right at the physical embodiment of concepts – some concepts, but the generality of that mechanism has not been shown. Obviously, it’s possible to distill an abstraction of “Halle Berry” into a neuron that fires when percepts coming in in different configurations and modes are encountered.

I don’t think that shows (and this is what I got from Quiroga), that the “neuron for ‘concept’” would obtain. It’s possible, I suppose, but it also strike me as ‘non-atomic’ in a logical sense, complex in a way that ‘Halle Berry’ as an abstraction, a proxy for the individual, would be. The point being that we don’t know until we isolate, or fail to isolate such distillation.

But I think your general take is still the one researchers take, thought “as a stream of activation through a set of neurons” which could, in principle, be interpreted through instrumental monitoring of the brain. This implicates the possibility of “mind reading” as a potential technology, no?

Anyway, I think from other reading I’ve done, that more complex concepts end up being networks of neurons, not just single neurons. An analogy I recall is that some concepts are more like “sentences” or “paragraphs” in English, as opposed to single words, meaning that a physical embodiment is will require “groups of neurons”.

If you are familiar with the work of Elena Plante at U of Az, her research points to just this kind of understanding in studying people with language disorder. In the language disorder group, we see diminished activity in Wernicke’s Area (comprehension) and this difference goes up as the “meaningfulness” of the written content goes up. Normal brains “light up” Wernicke’s Area and other areas to a greater extent than those in the language disorder group. This fits in with the hypothesis that meaning and conceptualization (particularly in terms of accumulation… sentences that build into a narrative which affords lots of implicit inferences, as opposed to a list of random sentences) obtain from more well established physical networks in the brain that substantiate meaning and extended abstractions.

However, this is still not explaining the experience of consciousness. It would be a very clever thing to do, but it *still does not explain *the subjective experience that I have.It does not matter how detailed and complex we make the pattern of activation - it still fails to show how all of these neurons acting together produce consciousness.

I can never decide how to parse these kinds of pronouncements. Is this a theological statement, or just incredulity? Maybe it’s better to ask: what is your criterion for “fails”, here?

Nor does the hypothetical process described above demonstrate that the brain is sufficient for consciousness.

Do you mean Quiroga’s neuronal abstractions? If so, certainly not. But as a matter of sufficiency, what is your test? If you are given a cognitive model that is way more robust and predictive, and yet completely natural in its description, I think one committed to a dualist (or “dual aspect monist”) framework could and would simply say “that doesn’t rule out the immaterial mind”. Why? Because there is no falsification for that hypothesis. There’s no way in PRINCIPLE to rule out a dualist’s intuitions, any more than one can rule out God. Same problem there, right? Even if we had an extremely robust natural model for physics (including cognition) right down to any phenomena you might name or care about, that would NOT be enough to deny ideas like “God created all this”, and “God is holding this together”, or “God is the source and sustainer of the weak nuclear force”.

If it’s not an intractable question, then, and there is some practical criterion for “sufficiency” here, what do you think that would be?

 

[itinerant1]

Good response. But just to let you know, my next reply may be about 5 or 6 hours from now. Unfortunately, I have to attend to some mundane business around town.

 

[Touchstone]

I will attempt to define a critical problem and lay some ground for further discussion. It’s a challenge for me to present my ideas withouth using all of the technical terms I am used to working with. Simply put there is the modern *sensist *or radical empericist challenge to the traditional understanding of concepts. This is one of the areas where ancient and medieval psychology exhibit more perceptive and accurate insights than does modern psychology, each school basically influenced by a particular school of philosophy.

What makes an insight accurate, then? You are starting off with begs to the question, not to mention making excuses for your articulation problems by blaming them on the shortcomings of others.

Sensists categorically deny the immateriality of the intellect by denying the evidence.

OK, what do you mean by evidence, then, and what evidence would you point to that argues for the existence of an “immateriat intellect”? If your evidence is “intuition”, then save us both some time and don’t bother – we get that intuition is an ancient source of conflation with knowledge. If your intuition is evidence, then we have evidence by extension of that to the reality of all sorts of absurd realities.

I, for one, do not categorically deny the immateriality of the intellect. Such may obtain. I just don’t see any evidence to support the idea. It’s only persuasive equity comes from the argument from ignorance – that natural explanations are not complete or satisfying at this point. Immaterial intellect as “winning by default” in light of shortcomings of natural models. This is the same mistake Intelligent Design proponents make: evolutionary theory is inadequate or incomplete, therefore God designed it!

They maintain that there is no intellect distinct from sensation and imagination, and that all acts of the mind are sensory in nature.

I don’t know of any act of mind that does not have physical correlates, any thoughts that aren’t tied to physical brains. Do you? Given the connection we do observe between mind and the activity of the brain (an fMRI “lights up” different parts of the brain dynamically in correspondence with the topic and category of your thoughts, for example), the “null hypothesis” is that mind is a description of natural functions of the brain. That is provisional, as a hypothesis always is. But it’s based on the evidence we do have.

As a matter of clarity, it’s not thought all acts of the mind are “sensory in nature”. Sense-data drives thought, but thought is not understood to be synonymous with “sensing”, on natural models.

Ideas are asserted to be sensory signs of the objects intended or meant. There are different lines of argument with various contemporary philosophical naturalists, but the fundamental distinctions made below between images, percepts and ideas or concepts is likewise denied.

Perhaps some deny in said fashion. I do not, with the caveat that “fundamental” is a descriptive, mechanical term, rather than a theological one. That is, if you read Quiroga, for example, he doesn’t construe an abstraction as a percept. He disinguishes percepts from their abstractions – the neuronal firing is described by abstraction, many different and multimodal percepts activating the abstraction, percepts which coalesce around the same object (e.g. Halle Berry).

Percepts are much better understood than “concepts” in terms of mechanical models. There is no consensus on what a concept is in terms of neuroscience. Concepts are the object of much ongoing investigation, and the way science works is that the mechanics are discovered, analyzed and reverse engineered, such as they are, and that provides the basis for grounded semantics about what a concept is, in natural terms.

-TS

(continued in a bit)

 

[Touchstone]

Sensists deny that we have any universal or abstract ideas. These they say are merely sensory images or phantasms of the imagination. However, a brief comparison of ideas and images will show why ideas cannot be “embodied” in the brain.

The elements that costitute an image or phantasm are qualities of material objects as perceived by the external senses of the body. They are qualities such as shape, temperature, color, size, weight, tone, loudness, motion, rest, and so on. These qualities are represented in the image with the concreteness they have in particular physical things in the environment. We imagine a color, and it is a concrete thing or surface of a particular color possessing a particular shade, tone, and hue. It is not the abstract notion of color, or the essence of color. The three distictinctive features of images are materiality, concreteness, and particularity.

On the other hand, universal ideas are essentially different from percepts and images. Ideas have universal signification. An image has only particular reference. For example, the concept of “building” refers to any of millions of structures in that class. By concepts we are able to classify. The notion of "building can refer equally to the Empire State Building, the no longer extant Twin Towers (and the third tower), St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Colonel Sanders KFC facility.

Clearly, concepts and images have different content. Concepts represent the essence or nature, the “whatness” of a thng. My abstract idea of a three-sided enclosed geometric figure, the triangle, has no determinate length, color, size, etc. Every image of a triangle, though, as with every triangle existing outside the mind, has determiniate lines, angles, length, color, position, etc.

Why is this a problem for concepts as physical phenomenon? Why does abstraction suggest “immaterial reality” as the ontic category you? Even in Quiroga, above, we see rudimentary abstraction at work in the physical brain. The neuron that fires on “Halle Berry”, does not fire on a particular percept, but an abstraction, triggered by diverse images as well as written text and the saying of her name out loud. “Halle Berry” is not any of those particular images, words or sounds, but an abstraction of them. The subject there has an abstract concept of “Halle Berry” that is matched by various concretes and particulars, just as “triangle” would be, an isomorphism between properties observed and an abstraction that corresponds. The small, red, fat triangle image and the big, thin, blue triangle both map to the abstraction the way the picture of Halle Berry’s normal picture, and the picture of her as Cat Woman map to “Halle Berry”. All of the triggering stimuli match something in the brain’s storage of “Halle Berry-ness”, including her name as text, and her name a said outloud.

Every physical thing in nature is and must be a particular thing. One will never encounter a universal thing in nature.

Of course. This is what as meant by “abstraction”. You will never meet a “person” that is not a particular person. But that does not put “person”, the abstraction, out of conceptual reach for brains. Many animals can recognize it’s own kind, and have demonstrable mastery of the concept of “my kind”. It’s just (as far as we can tell) a matter of pattern matching – agents (things that appear to move of their own accord) that match a particular list of common features or patterns fire the “my kind” response.

Abstraction ain’t magic. It’s just the identification of general features, features and attributes held in common for a set/class, apart from which members of the set can and do (often) vary. It gets complex when abstractions are made from other abstractions, and higher level abstractions are made from those abstractions, but this is complexity, not magic, not “universal immateriality”.

Existing universals are radically beyond the nature of physical matter and energy. Hence, we must posit their mode of being as extra-natural or non-physical. The physical brain, constituted as it is of matter and energy, has not the ability as matter and energy to produce what is not matter and energy, i.e. the universal concept.

That is the beginning of my argument. Response?

It’s not been shown that natural models can be exhaustive or even robust in addressing cognition. But the objections here are just unjustified assertions – “universals are radically beyond the nature of physical matter and energy”. There’s no reason (beyond theology) to accept such a claim. The only way to get there I can see is by presuming one’s conlusion.

-TS

ETA: This discussion should probably moved to its own thread.

 

[hecd2]

Well, this is not the thread to argue epistemology, but I will anyway, briefly. I have my own views about the epistemological approach of philosophical naturalism or materialism, how it never escaped a fundamental error begun by Descartes and that which followed, which were failed attempts to escape that error by Locke, Berkely, Hume, Kant, and most modern philosophers. At least some versions of philosophical naturalism believe that the mind can attain a reasonably accurate knowledge of physical reality. Sometime we will have to discuss, though, how it I think it puts the cart before the horse. It’s my historical explanation of moderns who still put Descartes before the horse.

As you say, this is not the place for this and we’ll have to pick this up elsewhere, but you will have to lay out in detail what you claim to be Descartes’ error, and how Enlightenment and modern philosophers attempted (and failed) to escape it, because so far you have merely opined that these errors exist without demonstrating what they are or why you believe them to be errors. I give you fair warning that I am a philosophical naturalist who holds with what I believe to be good reason the idea that the brain/mind can attain a reasonably accurate knowledge of some aspects of physical reality and I do not think that it is difficult to show that, for example, Plantinga’s EAAN fails.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

There are versions of philosophical naturalism that dogmatically claim only matter and energy exist. The version you speak of I see as still limiting the human mind unnecessarily. In some cases, where the facts warrant it, the scientist should be willing to admit that an answer is not within the scope and province of the natural sciences. This is a limited claim I make here and assumes nothing about the existence of God, a spiritual human soul, or angelic spirits.

I see it as limiting explanations necessarily if one’s project is gaining robust beliefs. Limits are no bad things in epistemic projects when what lies outside them are unknowable speculations and superstition.

I would say it is not an abdication of explanation but a refusal to be dogmatic about the limitations of the human mind and the competence of natural science to provide explanations.

I think you should be careful how you use this argument for it belongs to the same species as the arguments put forward by members of the Design Institute in a different area. If we were to agree that the mind belongs to a different non-material domain not accessible to science or amenable to analysis, then what should we do about neuroscience, human psychology, or psychiatry? Should we just abandon attempts to understand how abstractions, self-consciousness, theory of mind and free will are processed in the brain? Should we abandon the hard problem as fundamentally unsolvable?

As far as a reduction of psychology to physics I was just reading the writing on the wall. In your view man is his biology, especially so if everything about his mind has a completely biological explanation. What then is biology or life? Would you not assert that it reduces to chemistry? What is chemistry but the study of the various specific organizations of matter? What science studies matter and motion? Physics. Hence, unless I am missing something entailed in your view, psychology ultimately reduces to physics. Maybe that just sounds too blunt.

Yep - it’s too blunt. Just as a practical matter we have physics, but we also have inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, biology as areas of study. Although the boundaries between these can be somewhat blurred, what characterises the boundaries is the emergence of properties which cannot be explained in detail from the principles of the more fundamental science. And that’s just within science. Music, art, poetry are not merely physics; ethics and morals are not merely physics; and love, honour and courage are not merely physics. To characterise all philosophical naturalists as extreme reductionists is to commit the “merely” fallacy.

That’s where we disagree. If my brain were exposed right now and its processes being observed by a blue ribbon team of brain researchers who described everything they observed, their description would not be anything like how I would describe my experiences as I type. What we would get are two radically different stories.

Although I agree with you that that would be the situation now as a practical matter, you will have to produce a convincing argument why that should be so as a matter of principle, and then if you can do that, you will have to show how that entails a necessary spiritual dimension to mind.

To say that the brain processes in themselves are my experiences seems to entail a leap not so much in logic but in imagination.

Given the evidence, I don’t see why a leap of imagination is required to say that brain processes are my experiences (on the contrary), but I’m sure you will expand on this.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

The idea that I think hecd2 is getting at is related to Quiroga’s work in the following way. The neuron that activates when shown a picture of Halle Berry is just an example of how a single neuron embodies a concept. We have billions of neurons, there are also many, many concepts. Hyopthetically, each neuron could be mapped. The neuron for Quiroga, the neuron for concept, the neuron for brain, the neuron for agreement, the neuron for principle, the neuron for typing, the neuron for laptop…all active during the period that I am typing this. Each thought could be regarded as a stream of activation through a set of neurons and if we could read the activation (on/off) then we could read the thought(s).

Hi Fran, I don’t think that that is quite correct, or that Quiroga would agree with this explanation of his research. I don’t think he, or anyone else (certainly not me) is claiming that there is a single neuron that encodes or embodies a concept on its own. That is a similar error to the idea that there is a single gene for speech or altruism or colour perception.

I think that it is clear that the representation of a concept in the mind (the abstraction of Halle Berry or a parallelogram or pi) is embodied in many neurons, perhaps millions of neurons in more than one centre in the brain, with perhaps further complications such as time related firing and feedback/feedforward mechanisms. What Quiroga et al have done though is identify a single neuron (amongst the hundred billion in a human brain) which is part of that network, which fires every time the concept is invoked no matter what mode of invocation is used, and does not fire otherwise. The neuron therefore is implicated in a concept, not merely in a specific percept.

However, this is still not explaining the experience of consciousness. It would be a very clever thing to do, but it *still does not explain *the subjective experience that I have.It does not matter how detailed and complex we make the pattern of activation - it still fails to show how all of these neurons acting together produce consciousness.

I agree, it does not explain in detail how all brain states map to all mental states including consciousness. It is a tiny step up the vast mountain that is that problem.

Nor does the hypothetical process described above demonstrate that the brain is sufficient for consciousness.

Indeed, but it reinforces the idea that particular brain states are necessary for particular mind states. It is a step beyond the obvious idea that brain processes in general are necessary for mind towards the idea that specific brain processes or networks encode both conceptual and perceptual tasks. It is consistent with the hypothesis of brain and mental state identity. It is as I said to someone else, another nail in the coffin of the idea that brain states are insufficient to explain mind states.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Agreed.

There is no evidence to show that a single concept is embodied in one or any number of neurons.

This is false, as the Quiroga work is precisely that - evidence that a single concept is embodied in a specific network.

Attempts to explain even the limited consciouness of animals by this method will be interesting to watch. Nonetheless, when we come to reflective consciousness in humans, the problem becomes insurmountable and explanation made impossible from the outset by the limitations of a method that seeks what is beyond itself.

Nowhere in nature do we find matter and energy exhibiting reflective consciousness. It remains outside the laws of nature or physics. No doubt, the philosophical naturalist will maintain the one exception is the human brain, which became reflectively conscious due to the complexity of its organization. “Complexity of the brain” explains nothing and masks the total inability to provide an explanation. In due time, they say, the answers will be forthcoming. Right. Just as soon as matter and energy jump outside the laws governing their limited nature.

Now who’s being dogmatic? I understand that you think you’re talking to a fellow-traveller here, but what this reveals is an a priori view, a prejudice, that assumes your preferred position.

But in all seriousness, I am very interested in understanding the argument that you would use to show that the inability to explain consciousness using scientific methods logically entails the conclusion that mind exists in a non-material domain.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

I think you should be careful how you use this argument for it belongs to the same species as the arguments put forward by members of the Design Institute in a different area.

Doh! That would be the Discovery Institute.

Alec
evolutionpages.com