Locked Mind Thought Experiment

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

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Impenitent
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

Post by Impenitent »

if mind is dependent on the body, the mind can die when the body does...

if the mind is associated with an "immortal" soul...

-Imp
SteveKlinko
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

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Arising_uk wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 6:00 pm
SteveKlinko wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 11:58 am Could be. All Speculations are still on the table when it comes to Conscious Experience. I have tried to understand how Conscious Experience could be in the Neurons but can not find any good explanations of how that could be true. ...
Think about it this way. We know from research with computational neural nets that they can store, retrieve and match patterns, Now the CNS is a gigantic massively parallel neuronal net which quite clearly is what produces what we call perception or the 'happening' of the world, ie colours, objects, space, etc (although personally I think you need a body and an external world too). So to produce self-consciousness we could imagine another set of neurons that take those inputs and model them against themselves in a feedback loop and also continuously modelling them against the new inputs from the world.
I agree with your last paragraph where you say that Consciousness must be in some other Dimension or Reality. I like to call the place where Consciousness exists, Conscious Space. Conscious Space is not a Physical Space but it is more of a conceptual place for Conscious Experience to exist in.
Okay but why could this 'conceptual space' not be the CNS?
Might be, but there is a huge Explanatory Gap as to how the CNS produces Conscious Experience or Consciousness in general. Science has known that there was a connection between Neural Activity and Conscious Experience for a hundred years. Also for a hundred years there has been no Explanation for how that happens. We are literally no closer today than we were a hundred years ago in Explaining something as simple as the Redness of the color Red. This is taking so long that we have to think that we are not looking at this in the right way. Why is it that some new concept like Conscious Space can not be true?
Skepdick
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

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Sculptor wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 9:41 pm
Skepdick wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 9:20 pm
Arising_uk wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:40 pm Gotta be stored somewhere.
commonsense wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:33 pm Because conceptual space isn’t a physical space.
In computer science "space" is another name for "memory".
More irrelevant word play?
FFS!
It's the same notion/concept of "space" that it is talked about in physics.

Physics is not word-play. It's science. And computation is bound by its laws.

It seems to me you are just lashing out. Did I hurt your feelings?
Last edited by Skepdick on Wed Jul 31, 2019 7:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
Skepdick
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

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Arising_uk wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 10:12 pm Sure, and this is why I'm puzzled why people seem to think this 'conceptual space' is needed for 'mind' as given the size of our CNS we have more than enough space for it.
Dualism. It fragments the universe into obscurity...
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Arising_uk
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

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SteveKlinko wrote: Might be, but there is a huge Explanatory Gap as to how the CNS produces Conscious Experience or Consciousness in general. Science has known that there was a connection between Neural Activity and Conscious Experience for a hundred years. Also for a hundred years there has been no Explanation for how that happens. We are literally no closer today than we were a hundred years ago in Explaining something as simple as the Redness of the color Red. ...
Personally I'm dubious about qualia as for me there iare just Reds not 'Redness' but if you mean why do we perceive colour then that is aparently a function of how objects absorb wavelengths and how the CNS has evolved to distinguish them. As to explanations, well neural imaging is still pretty new as is the study of neuron functions but like I've said experiments from compurational neurons show that pattern recognition is feasible as is memory and Red is a pattern. Consciousness is perception and memory and computational nets perceive and store and retrieve, self-consciousness can be recursive feedbacjs loops of groups of neurons modeling themselves.

This is taking so long that we have to think that we are not looking at this in the right way. Why is it that some new concept like Conscious Space can not be true?
Well apart from the contradictions most things could be true but where is any evidence for such a thing? And if there was then it'd have to be in something so you'd just face an infinite regress plus what explanatory power does such a concept bring.
It's not really taking that long as we are moving in leaps and bounds in the respective fields.
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Sculptor
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

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Skepdick wrote: Wed Jul 31, 2019 7:12 am
Sculptor wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 9:41 pm
Skepdick wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 9:20 pm


In computer science "space" is another name for "memory".
More irrelevant word play?
FFS!
It's the same notion/concept of "space" that it is talked about in physics.

Physics is not word-play. It's science. And computation is bound by its laws.

It seems to me you are just lashing out. Did I hurt your feelings?
PLONK!
SteveKlinko
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

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Arising_uk wrote: Wed Jul 31, 2019 8:59 am
SteveKlinko wrote: Might be, but there is a huge Explanatory Gap as to how the CNS produces Conscious Experience or Consciousness in general. Science has known that there was a connection between Neural Activity and Conscious Experience for a hundred years. Also for a hundred years there has been no Explanation for how that happens. We are literally no closer today than we were a hundred years ago in Explaining something as simple as the Redness of the color Red. ...
Personally I'm dubious about qualia as for me there iare just Reds not 'Redness' but if you mean why do we perceive colour then that is aparently a function of how objects absorb wavelengths and how the CNS has evolved to distinguish them. As to explanations, well neural imaging is still pretty new as is the study of neuron functions but like I've said experiments from compurational neurons show that pattern recognition is feasible as is memory and Red is a pattern. Consciousness is perception and memory and computational nets perceive and store and retrieve, self-consciousness can be recursive feedbacjs loops of groups of neurons modeling themselves.

This is taking so long that we have to think that we are not looking at this in the right way. Why is it that some new concept like Conscious Space can not be true?
Well apart from the contradictions most things could be true but where is any evidence for such a thing? And if there was then it'd have to be in something so you'd just face an infinite regress plus what explanatory power does such a concept bring.
It's not really taking that long as we are moving in leaps and bounds in the respective fields.
You say Red is a Pattern. Are you also saying that the Experience of Redness is no more than a Pattern? If so I don't understand what you are saying. How is an Experience of something like Redness a Pattern?
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Arising_uk
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

Post by Arising_uk »

SteveKlinko wrote: You say Red is a Pattern. Are you also saying that the Experience of Redness is no more than a Pattern? If so I don't understand what you are saying. How is an Experience of something like Redness a Pattern?
Because the various wavelengths hitting the retina cause the neurons in the CNS to activate as a pattern with the experience of Red being the way the pattern is differentiated from other wavelengths that produce the patterns for the other colours.
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

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Arising_uk wrote: Thu Aug 01, 2019 2:46 pm
SteveKlinko wrote: You say Red is a Pattern. Are you also saying that the Experience of Redness is no more than a Pattern? If so I don't understand what you are saying. How is an Experience of something like Redness a Pattern?
Because the various wavelengths hitting the retina cause the neurons in the CNS to activate as a pattern with the experience of Red being the way the pattern is differentiated from other wavelengths that produce the patterns for the other colours.
Ok so you are saying that a Pattern of Neurons is involved. Saying that it is a Pattern of Neurons firing has no more Explanatory power than just saying there was Neural Activity and then the Redness happened. There is a huge Explanatory Gap between the statement Pattern of Neurons and an Experience of Redness. The 100 year old mystery is no closer to being solved by using a word like Pattern. You are talking about the Neural Correlates of Consciousness and not Consciousness itself.
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

Post by Envelope »

Arising_uk wrote: Wed Jul 31, 2019 8:59 am
SteveKlinko wrote: Might be, but there is a huge Explanatory Gap as to how the CNS produces Conscious Experience or Consciousness in general. Science has known that there was a connection between Neural Activity and Conscious Experience for a hundred years. Also for a hundred years there has been no Explanation for how that happens. We are literally no closer today than we were a hundred years ago in Explaining something as simple as the Redness of the color Red. ...
Personally I'm dubious about qualia as for me there iare just Reds not 'Redness' but if you mean why do we perceive colour then that is aparently a function of how objects absorb wavelengths and how the CNS has evolved to distinguish them. As to explanations, well neural imaging is still pretty new as is the study of neuron functions but like I've said experiments from compurational neurons show that pattern recognition is feasible as is memory and Red is a pattern. Consciousness is perception and memory and computational nets perceive and store and retrieve, self-consciousness can be recursive feedbacjs loops of groups of neurons modeling themselves.

This is taking so long that we have to think that we are not looking at this in the right way. Why is it that some new concept like Conscious Space can not be true?
Well apart from the contradictions most things could be true but where is any evidence for such a thing? And if there was then it'd have to be in something so you'd just face an infinite regress plus what explanatory power does such a concept bring.
It's not really taking that long as we are moving in leaps and bounds in the respective fields.
Hi guys, I’m gonna have a go at clearing this confusion between neural correlates of consciousness and consciousness itself, and also explaining the term consciousness space as for what SteveKlinko originally meant it. You’ll tell me if it makes sense and I’m right.
First, let's be sure we agree on the definition of qualia: instances of direct experience. Look at your hand, the experience that you are having is a visual qualia (talking about the "pinkness" of the hand I think is just a way to describe the fact that we are having an experience of the color). Now touch it with the other hand, the experience you are having is a haptic qualia. Our subjective experience is sensorial. Qualia are just that, what we perceive with our senses (including proprioception and mental representations). Qualia are experience.
Now, I would focus on the comment about light wavelength and CNS functions. When we refer to experience we have to make sure we don't confuse the symbols we use to map this experience with the experience itself. We can define terms (i.e. map/match an experience to a corresponding symbol) in very rigorous ways, i.e. measuring (and we can measure using tools that are much less variable than our organic sensors so as to obtain a higher degree of shareability). To follow up with the example of red, we can define what we mean by red as being an electromagnetic wave of roughly 700nm wavelength. The way we do it is by establishing units of measure and using tools. We arbitrarily choose what we experience as a certain length and we call it meter; we observe the properties of materials that we experience and we call them electromagnetism and photosensors; and during all this process of measuring and development of technical jargon we have turned the symbol "red" from a term that described a quale that was only subjectively experienced, and therefore not very useful for communicating precisely, into a term that describes a set of very precise and repeatable qualia, hence making it too a technical term with a high degree of shareability/communicability. But as you see, in all this measuring effort we have not really been able to bypass even once the fact that ultimately anything we know has to be experienced in the realm of qualia. We selected the length of the meter by experiencing a visual qualia of some object with a certain length and declaring such object to be our reference point. The same goes for the materials that exhibit electromagnetic properties, we make an experience of a material behaving according to certain patterns and we call those patterns in which they present themselves in our subjective experience "electromagnetism". And still the same goes for the CNS, we can consistently experience seeing a PET scan lighting up in the same particular area, which we decided to match to the term 'visual cortex', when the scanned person is seeing the colour red. From this repeatability of experience that comes with taking a methodical approach and measuring things, we can be easily confused into starting to think that a quale and its matched symbol are the same thing. Confusing the neural correlates of consciousness for consciousness itself and giving primacy to the inductively theorized outside world. While, instead, experience is the most primary thing, the gate by which ultimately all information has to pass, so to speak. In other words, Anything we know at all always happens in the realm of qualia.
The realm of qualia is what we may call consciousness space.

Now, speculating on this virtual reality hypothesis I find it to be really interesting but also really confusing. There is a guy called Tom Campbell that wrote a 3-parts book about it and I’m reading it but, honestly, I’m struggling to understand it. Anyone else knows about him?
Connecting back to the OP I wouldn’t know if we would have to exist in some other dimension in which also the computing of the consciousness space in which our experience happens is done. And what do we mean by “we”? And also as Arising said, thinking in this way leaves us with the infinite regress problem.
Other terms in which might be cool to speculate are consensus reality and non consensus reality. I like to imagine something like there being one field of consciousness in which many non consensus realities exist and they are all converging back to oneness by this process of scientific inquiry which connect the non consensus realities together into one consensus reality. Obviously I'm just throwing some words down here, it's nowhere close to an accurate model, just a possible incipit to be developed further. bye ;)
Skepdick
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

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SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Aug 01, 2019 5:49 pm There is a huge Explanatory Gap between the statement Pattern of Neurons and an Experience of Redness.
What metric are you using for determining whether an explanatory gaps is tiny or huge?

What is the size of the explanatory gap between "computer vision capable of object recognition and classification" and "seeing a dog"?
SteveKlinko wrote: Thu Aug 01, 2019 5:49 pm You are talking about the Neural Correlates of Consciousness and not Consciousness itself.
And you are talking about a "thing in itself". Kant's noumenon.

Dualism is a conceptual gap. Science can't help you bridge it.
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Sculptor
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

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philosopher wrote: Mon Jul 29, 2019 8:09 pm Your mind is locked to your body. That's weird. I'll explain below:

When you change your personality (for a variety of reasons, damage, drugs - whatever) you will still see the world through the eyes of that very same body - even though the body has replaced all the atoms over many years.

I find that a very weird thing. If consciousness is locked to your brain, it should fade away as the chemicals and other components of your brain gets replaced and changing over time.
No. Your problem here is that you start with the assumption that the mind is other than the body (which it is not). This means that everything you continue with is slewed in understanding.
If I replace the tires on a car, or a battery, or even the engine it is still the same car.
The idea that changing atoms in the brain gradually should mean diminishing consciousness has no basis.
The thing is that consciousness is not "locked in" the brain. Consciousness is what the brain does. Your language assumes separateness.
Where was your consciousness before you were born?
I see no reason to not accept a continuing and evolving consciousness as we grow. The character of our mental growth is concomitant with the physical and structural growth of the brain, from child to adult. I think you would have to account for a mind which evolves from child to adult (which bears a stunning resemblance to the physical growth of the brain) are you saying it is just a coincidence?
What is the brain doing with all that change?
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

Post by Skepdick »

Sculptor wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 2:21 pm If I replace the tires on a car, or a battery, or even the engine it is still the same car.
Is it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
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Sculptor
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

Post by Sculptor »

Skepdick wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 5:34 pm
Sculptor wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 2:21 pm If I replace the tires on a car, or a battery, or even the engine it is still the same car.
Is it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
And you are not skepdick. But we all know that.

This does not alter anything about my argument.
Trigger's Broom still belongs to Trigger, and as that is his only Broom he gets to indentify that broom as his own.
Skepdick
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Re: Locked Mind Thought Experiment

Post by Skepdick »

Sculptor wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 5:38 pm This does not alter anything about my argument.
...
I see no reason to not accept a continuing and evolving consciousness as we grow.
Can you even make up your own mind?

You argued that "The idea that changing atoms in the brain gradually should mean diminishing consciousness has no basis."
Completely ignoring all the science around brain ageing e.g devolution rather than evolution.
Sculptor wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 5:38 pm Trigger's Broom still belongs to Trigger, and as that is his only Broom he gets to indentify that broom as his own.
Non-sequitur.

Trigger's consciousness still belongs to Trigger, and as that is his only consciousness he gets to identify that consciousness as devolving.
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