Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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Skepdick
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by Skepdick »

SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:05 pm I expect that Science will adopt whatever Outside the Box methods are necessary to understand Consciousness. Not sure what the point of your Link was. Looks like an open source Neural Net package. Is it because it is a programming language rather than a spoken language? Ok it's an example of another kind of language.
The neural net is a scientific explanation!

It's a scientific model. It does what consciousness does.
It recognises the same things consciousness recognizes.

It can distinguish 'redness' from 'blueness' from 'greenness'.

And it tells you EXACTLY HOW. That's literally what algorithms do. They answer the 'HOW' question.
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by SteveKlinko »

Skepdick wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:58 pm
SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:55 pm That's exactly what I want, and I think Science will be able to do that someday.
Do what? explain your experiences to you?

Are you cognisant of the fact that science can't explain anything TO YOU.

Science can only explain things to the scientist who has the background knowledge to interpret the explanation in context off all the concepts the scientist is familiar with and already accepts as true. Which is precisely the point I am making.

Nobody can explain quantum field theory TO YOU. Understanding QFT requires background knowledge.
Nobody can spoon-feed you this knowledge. You actually need to LEARN IT. All by yourself.

What you expect from science is a byte-sized answer that you can comprehend.
What if that's not possible? What if comprehension requires you to learn new things?

You seem to expect short inferential distances.
I have spent the last 25 years studying Philosophy and Brain Science, as a hobby. I have studied and understand the equations of Quantum Mechanics. I have a Masters degree in Electrical and Software Engineering. I have been a practicing Engineer and Programmer for the last 45 years. I don't need a quick answer I just want an answer.
Skepdick
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by Skepdick »

SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:13 pm I have spent the last 25 years studying Philosophy and Brain Science, as a hobby. I have studied and understand the equations of Quantum Mechanics. I have a Masters degree in Electrical and Software Engineering. I have been a practicing Engineer and Programmer for the last 45 years. I don't need a quick answer I just want an answer.
Then you will forgive me, but... there is a software model of 'consciousness' in action before you.

It does what consciousness does. This is par for the course for a scientific model.
It is 'an answer'. In so far as functional equivalence goes.

You don't seem to like it either way? I am afraid science doesn't give much better answers than this...

I am afraid you need some introspection as to what an 'answer' means to you...
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by SteveKlinko »

Skepdick wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:16 pm
SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:13 pm I have spent the last 25 years studying Philosophy and Brain Science, as a hobby. I have studied and understand the equations of Quantum Mechanics. I have a Masters degree in Electrical and Software Engineering. I have been a practicing Engineer and Programmer for the last 45 years. I don't need a quick answer I just want an answer.
Then you will forgive me, but... there is a software model of 'consciousness' in action before you.

It does what consciousness does. This is par for the course for a scientific model.
It is 'an answer'. In so far as functional equivalence goes.

You don't seem to like it either way? Does the fact that you are 'just a computer with feelings' upset you perhaps?

I am afraid you need some introspection as to what an 'answer' means to you...
Consciousness is too general a topic and encompasses too many things. I like to stick with Visual Perception. And in particular I like to study the Experience of Redness. If you are saying that just because Machines can Detect Red that then that Explains how We See Red then you are confusing two different ways of Detecting Red. The way Computers detect Red is all about numbers. Computers have no Experience of Redness. We detect Red using the Experience of Redness. The question is not How do Machines Detect Red it is How do we Detect Red? You say a Machine does this and a Machine does that and it's just a Diversion, intentional or otherwise from the topic of this thread. If I wanted to talk about how Computers work I would go to a Computer forum.
Skepdick
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by Skepdick »

SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:27 pm The question is not How do Machines Detect Red it is How do we Detect Red?
You have stated the question over and over again. What you are failing to express is your own expectations of the kind of answer that you are expecting to accept.

Because I am not sure that talking about detection theory, sensitivity/specificity, 'discrimination threshold' and classification is going to get us anywhere...

Methinks what is lacking here is the emotional intelligence to accept that man is the measure of all things.
Including the 'quality' and 'sufficiency' of any particular answer.

Have you considered the possibility that there is no such thing as THE 'experience of redness'?
What if your experience of 'redness' is different to my experience of 'redness'. What if we merely agree on what to call it?

That is the problem of distributed consensus
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by RCSaunders »

SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 1:42 pm As a matter of fact I have spent years working on Computer Vision algorithms and that is definitely not how Conscious Visual perception happens.
Absolutely right. The algorithms I worked on detected and located fast moving targets of different colors in real time for military applications. (Lots of Gflops) Ask him if he knows how a butterfly algorithm solves fast Fourier transforms. They certainly have nothing to do with perception.
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by I Like Sushu »

SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:36 pm
I Like Sushu wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:17 pm Steve -

Stating the obvious can sometimes help. There are numerous ways to try and express an idea/viewpoint. Honestly I think you’re going to have a hard time with this one here unless you try a different tack and/or supplement what you mean with another separate, yet related, line of questioning/investigation.

I don’t think you’re going to get much more out of me at least on this topic. Just trying to help find SOME common ground. I’m not interested in complete ‘agreement’ myself.
If nothing I have said has convinced you then I have failed in your case. Thanks for trying.
I don’t really know what you are trying to convince me of tbh. I think my point was indisputable; that is ‘red’ is experienced in an ‘of’ sense (the redness of the ball). To imagine ‘red’ is still to imagine a ‘red space’.

I firmly side with Husserl in this respective and ‘intentionality’. If we talk about any colour I insist that that, using Husserlian terms again, that we CANNOT imagine any colour without brilliance, tone or hue anymore than we can imagine a solid object without width, depth and breadth. Certain experiences, real or imagined, require certain features.

That is the only position I can offer to work from/toward if there is any hope of dialogue. I’d like to know what you mean whether I would ‘agree’ or not doesn’t matter so much.
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by SteveKlinko »

Skepdick wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:31 pm
SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:27 pm The question is not How do Machines Detect Red it is How do we Detect Red?
You have stated the question over and over again. What you are failing to express is your own expectations of the kind of answer that you are expecting to accept.

Because I am not sure that talking about detection theory, sensitivity/specificity, 'discrimination threshold' and classification is going to get us anywhere...

Methinks what is lacking here is the emotional intelligence to accept that man is the measure of all things.
Including the 'quality' and 'sufficiency' of any particular answer.

Have you considered the possibility that there is no such thing as THE 'experience of redness'?
What if your experience of 'redness' is different to my experience of 'redness'. What if we merely agree on what to call it?

That is the problem of distributed consensus
Your experience of Redness may very well be different from mine. But it will certainly be something close. For example I don't think you are Smelling Bleach when you See Red. If you are not color blind you are probably having quite the same experience as I do. For purposes of studying Conscious perception we assume we are having similar Experiences. The fact that there may be differences in the Experience is irrelevant to the central question: Whatever the Experience is that you are having, How do you have that Experience?
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by SteveKlinko »

RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 1:32 am
SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 1:42 pm As a matter of fact I have spent years working on Computer Vision algorithms and that is definitely not how Conscious Visual perception happens.
Absolutely right. The algorithms I worked on detected and located fast moving targets of different colors in real time for military applications. (Lots of Gflops) Ask him if he knows how a butterfly algorithm solves fast Fourier transforms. They certainly have nothing to do with perception.
Good point.
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by SteveKlinko »

I Like Sushu wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 9:21 am
SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:36 pm
I Like Sushu wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:17 pm Steve -

Stating the obvious can sometimes help. There are numerous ways to try and express an idea/viewpoint. Honestly I think you’re going to have a hard time with this one here unless you try a different tack and/or supplement what you mean with another separate, yet related, line of questioning/investigation.

I don’t think you’re going to get much more out of me at least on this topic. Just trying to help find SOME common ground. I’m not interested in complete ‘agreement’ myself.
If nothing I have said has convinced you then I have failed in your case. Thanks for trying.
I don’t really know what you are trying to convince me of tbh. I think my point was indisputable; that is ‘red’ is experienced in an ‘of’ sense (the redness of the ball). To imagine ‘red’ is still to imagine a ‘red space’.

I firmly side with Husserl in this respective and ‘intentionality’. If we talk about any colour I insist that that, using Husserlian terms again, that we CANNOT imagine any colour without brilliance, tone or hue anymore than we can imagine a solid object without width, depth and breadth. Certain experiences, real or imagined, require certain features.

That is the only position I can offer to work from/toward if there is any hope of dialogue. I’d like to know what you mean whether I would ‘agree’ or not doesn’t matter so much.
My study is more of a Reverse Engineering quest than a Philosophical quest. This will be the short story: I can trace the processing path of a 670nm Electromagnetic Wave (Red Light) that hits the Retina. The Electromagnetic Wave is converted into a Neural Signal that travels to back of the Brain where the Visual Processing Areas are located. There are 5 or so major processing Areas that are connected to each other with Feed Forward and Feed Back connections. Brain Scientists have mapped out what the Processing is for most of these 5 Areas. Science can trace that initial 670nm Wave all the way up the Processing chain to particular Neuronal Activity. The problem is that we know we will have an Experience of Redness in our Conscious Minds. However Science does not have any clue How you get over the hurdle of Neuronal Activity to a Redness Experience. That is the Problem and that is the classic Hard Problem of Conscious Perception.

We can start with the Redness Experience and try to go the other direction back to Neural Activity. We immediately hit a Brick Wall. There is no conceivable (at least not yet) way, if you truly think more Deeply about the Redness itself, that you can ascribe that to any kind of Neural Activity. There is an Explanatory Gap here that defies Explanation for now.

It may very well be true that ‘red’ is experienced in an ‘of’ sense (the redness of the ball). That is all well and good but it does not solve the question of this thread as to: How we actually Experience that Redness with whatever Brilliance, Tone, and Hue it might have? This is an Engineering Signal Processing problem.
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by I Like Sushu »

Steve -

Neurophenomenology. If you’ve solved the hard problem I don’t see any sign of it yet. If you’re saying - as it appears to be the case - that the phenomenology approach requires careful investigation you’re not going to get an argument from me there.
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by SteveKlinko »

I Like Sushu wrote: Sat Jul 06, 2019 3:26 pm Steve -

Neurophenomenology. If you’ve solved the hard problem I don’t see any sign of it yet. If you’re saying - as it appears to be the case - that the phenomenology approach requires careful investigation you’re not going to get an argument from me there.
The Hard Problem is alive and well. But you wouldn't know that if you have talked to any Physicalists/Materialists lately. The say the Hard Problem is solved and that is the end of that. It's been a while since I came across the Neurophenomenology project and Phenomenology itself. The thing I like about Neurophenomenology is that they admit the Hard Problem exists and are trying to solve it. There is no Insane Denial of Conscious experience with that group. My argument is mostly with the Physicalists/Materialists whose cages are easily rattled.
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by I Like Sushu »

SteveKlinko wrote: Sat Jul 06, 2019 9:04 pm
I Like Sushu wrote: Sat Jul 06, 2019 3:26 pm Steve -

Neurophenomenology. If you’ve solved the hard problem I don’t see any sign of it yet. If you’re saying - as it appears to be the case - that the phenomenology approach requires careful investigation you’re not going to get an argument from me there.
The Hard Problem is alive and well. But you wouldn't know that if you have talked to any Physicalists/Materialists lately. The say the Hard Problem is solved and that is the end of that. It's been a while since I came across the Neurophenomenology project and Phenomenology itself. The thing I like about Neurophenomenology is that they admit the Hard Problem exists and are trying to solve it. There is no Insane Denial of Conscious experience with that group. My argument is mostly with the Physicalists/Materialists whose cages are easily rattled.
That’s an exaggeration. Dennett is is ONE person who denies the ‘hard problem’ as a problem.

You’re wrong about phenomenology in and if itself. It isn’t interested in the ‘hard problem’. It’s sphere of interest is conscious experience and nothing more. Neurophenomenology is a term coined that borrows certain aspects of Husserl’s regard toward the investigation of consciousness - today we have more probing means to apply experience to the neural/physical than in Husserl’s day (but the original point of phenomenology was to create a subjective science; a science of consciousness.

Dennett isn’t a fool. I don’t agree with him in some areas and I’m happy to accept his position as a position, not as an overarching authority on the issue. People who’ve dedication decades to Philosophy of Mind have been recently disgruntled because neuroscience has flourished, and is flourishing, providing hard evidence that confirms denies many philosophical positions - even in neuroscience some old myths are still bandied around (and even in textbooks written a few decades ago).
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by I Like Sushu »

Steve -

Here is a slice of text from what I’m currently reading that touches in this matter:
In addition to this difficulty of reaching firm results, capable of being self-evidently reidentified on many occasions, we have the further difficulty of stating such results, of communicating them to others. Completely self-evident truths essence, established by the most exact analysis, must be expounded by way of expressions whose rich variety does not compensate for the fact that they only fit familiar natural objects, while the experiences in which such objects become constituted for consciousness, can be directly referred to only by way of a few highly ambiguous words such as ‘sensation’, ‘perception’, ‘presentation’ etc.,. One has, further, to employ expressions which stand for what is intentional in such acts, for the object to which they are directed, since it is, in fact, impossible to describe referential acts without using expressions which recur to the things to which such acts refer. One then readily forgets that such subsidiarily described objectivity, which is necessarily introduced into almost all phenomenological description, has undergone a change of sense, in virtue of which it now belongs to the sphere of phenomenology.

Husserl, ‘Logical Investigations’, book II, section 3
Note: “object”, as Husserl uses the term, doesn’t refer to “physical object” - he uses ‘object’ so as to refer to any entity (imagined or otherwise, concrete or abstract)

When it comes to the ‘hard problem’ I’m fairly convinced - and have been long before I read the above quote - that we don’t currently possess a concise enough set of concepts to frame the ‘hard problem’ let alone possess a set of concepts to help navigate a better sense of understanding.

I’m not wholly cleaved to this as the only path to go down phenomenologically though. If it is a path you wish to explore at the expense of the full scope of phenomenology (as Husserl provides; a nascent set of Investigations into consciousness) then maybe you’ll find more satisfaction in Heidegger’s work Being and Time and find use for his take on the terminology useful for this kind if task - the ‘beings being of beingness’ and such; loosely framed as Dasein. Just be aware that Heidegger’s path is a hermeneutical path ,an interpretative path, rather than being like the raw open wound of the phenomenological ‘regard’.

Reading either is something akin to wading through treacle. It seems to me that Husserl’s disregard toward ‘conclusions’ is the strength of the phenomenological approach whereas Heidegger’s approach is constantly haunted by terminology, pursuit of meaning, and a necessarily narrow view through the lens of word play and a form of relativism - but he does manage to offer some decent examples of what Husserl is pointing towards in terms of the semiotics involved with language and understanding.

In short, I’m not interested in talk of the ‘hard problem’ if the question possesses a whole species of concepts embedded within it that remain unattended and/or willfully covered over.

As for ‘redness’ it is like asking about ‘numberness’. I don’t experience numbers in any direct sensible manner. I experience the concept, yet I am never ‘embracing’ the concept of number when I do mathematics. I simply apply the concept to my sensibility, as I apply my experience of the concept ‘redness’ to my sensibility. I don’t need the concept of ‘redness’ - the thought ‘redness’ - in order to have phenomenal experience of some red object. In the same manner I don’t need to articulate the concept ‘pain’ in order to feel pain.

Our major difficulty is reading between the lines (like with my fumbling attempts above). We can also look at this in terms of explicit memory. If you punch me in the face I feel pain, yet when I forget about the event the pain is no longer there and if my memory of the event only lasts for 10 seconds then, in some sense, I ‘felt no pain’ whilst in another sense I only possessed the experience of pain briefly. I can certainly feel the same pain again, yet when I do I won’t be ‘reminded’ of a previous event - it will be a wholly new experience.

In a reply somewhere above from Skepdick they touched on something true for us all. We don’t understand what we are saying, none of us. Getting to grips with such is an almost nihilistic task; it’s unsurprising that post-modernism took an ugly turn when you look at how close to the abyss such serious contemplation take place.

The wisdom I’ve found in the general underlying principle of phenomenology is not to understate the obvious. That which we pay no heed to is likely, and often so psychologically (you can confirm this to yourself if you’re brave enough to see mistakes made), the crux of the problem it seems wholly disassociated from.

The fact that I can move is utterly bizarre! I have legs that make weird movements and then I seem to traverse spaces and eat up distances whilst birthing a new distance in my wake. Then there is my temporal regard of this, where my ‘moving’ is an “-ing”, a continuity. My thoughts also have a sense of ‘movement’ to them as the culminate into worded items or are expressed into vague or vivid images. My knowledge of ‘being on Earth’ is hardly ever something I attend to consciously, it is a superfluous speck of knowledge on one hand yet a dauntingly abyssal beast that springs up like a leviathan when I bring my sense of being into direct confrontation with this ‘being on Earth’ - it both hulks over me and yet possesses a complete finite meaning; a strange comforting, and uncomfortable, ‘obviousness’ of my human experience.

Contemplating ‘redness’ is just a doorway into the whole regard we cloth our sense of being with. In the phenomenological mindset the ‘non-physical’ or ‘physical’ are bracketed out. All the matters is the phenomenon, the ‘consciousness of’ not some extrapolated ‘otherness’ as the ‘otherness’ IS the ‘consciousness of’ whilst having no qualitative possession (other than in this crude worded form).

I’m not the best at expressing these things and make no apologies for this. I understand there is a limit and sometimes I reach out hopefully in order to find a better means if expressing what is essentially an endless and infinite object - to explain ‘absolutely’ to me is not to ‘explain’ at all. No explanation is required for what is given with a ‘pure obviousness’.
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Re: Insane Denial Of Conscious Experience

Post by Dontaskme »

SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:27 pm The question is not How do Machines Detect Red

it is How do we Detect Red?
Steve, a machine is known, it's an image in consciousness known only to conscious knowing. A machine is a conceptual image and can be pointed to as an object within conscious knowing...but can the seer / the conscious knowing of the known seen object be pointed to?

Then you ask how do ''we'' detect red...first of all before we can know the answer to how we detect red we need to be able to point to the ''we'' that is experiencing the red. Notice a machine can be pointed at, but can the 'we' that can point to a machine...can that same 'we' point to the 'we' that is pointing?

In other words...Can the 'we' that is pointing at an object point to the pointer of the object? ..as in there is definitely a seeing of red .. red is seen absolutely, but can the seer of the seen red ...be seen too? and if it can, what will be seeing the seer? what will the seer look like?

What if the seer in that moment of seeing red looks like the colour red?


What's happening here, is there is an assumption that red is seen, and so that seen red implies there must be a seer, else how would red be seen..so instead of focusing on the SEEN RED....why not just shift away from what is seen to who or what is actually seeing here?

So the question is, what does the 'we' look like that sees the colour red?
Now the most obvious answer is consciousness.

So then we are back to square one again, how does a conscious experience ..experience a conscious experience?
Can the consciousness that sees an object, see itself as the seer of the object, or can the seer only focus on the object of seeing and not on the actual seer?

And then there's another strange thing about consciousness...in that consciousness cannot experience itself as the object it sees....it's never the object, but is the seer of the object.

Now the only reason I can think of why consciousness is able to see red is because consciousness has no colour and is why actual colour can be seen via the contrast, in the same context a word cannot be seen or read without the bank screen of the computer behind the word, inseparable from the word.



So back to the 'we' that is assumed to be seeing.

If 'we' don't know what the 'we' looks like..the 'we' who is assumed to be seeing red, then what hope of ever knowing how this red is seen or experienced at all?

So another question arises...if consciousness is the blank screen behind the experience of red...and consciousness cannot experience itself as the red, but can only know the red...then who or what is experiencing red...the answer is in the question, the answer is the blank screen of consciousness, aka no thing is experiencing consciousness that is experiencing the thing known as red...it's an infinite self sustaining feedback loop within itself. In that in the moment red is known..that gives birth to the knower/seer that cannot be known. Both the seer and the seen have to exist simultaneously in the exact same moment as ONE.

So then another question arises...how can ONE exist...how can the notion of ONENESS be?
And yet IT IS without doubt or error.

I'd appreciate your feedback on what I've just written Steve, thanks.

.
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