# Can we solve the mind-body problem?



## Kon

One of the most interesting and compelling criticisms on "dualism", "materialisn", "monism" and any "ism" is the following argument made by _Chomsky_:


> The mind-body problem can be posed sensibly only insofar as we have a definite conception of body. If we have no such definite and fixed conception, we cannot ask whether some phenomena fall beyond its range. The Cartesians offered a fairly definite conception of body in terms of their contact mechanics, which in many respects reflects commonsense understanding...[However] the Cartesian concept of body was refuted by seventeenth-century physics, particularly in the work of Isaac Newton, which laid the foundations for modern science. Newton demonstrated that the motions of the heavenly bodies could not be explained by the principles of Descartes's contact mechanics, so that the Cartesian concept of body must be abandoned.


In other words, when we think of causation in the natural world as Descartes did-that is, as involving literal contact between two extended substances-then the way in which a thought or a sensation relate to a material object becomes mysterious. Certainly it cannot be right to think of a thought or sensation as making literal physical contact with the surface of the brain, or in any other way communicating motion in a "push-pull" way. But when we give up this crude model of causation, as Newton did, the source of the mystery disappears. At the same time, no systematic positive account of what matter as such is has ever really been put forward to replace Descartes' conception:


> There is no longer any definite conception of body. Rather, the material world is whatever we discover it to be, with whatever properties it must be assumed to have for the purposes of explanatory theory. Any intelligible theory that offers genuine explanations and that can be assimilated to the core notions of physics becomes part of the theory of the material world, part of our account of body. If we have such a theory in some domain, we seek to assimilate it to the core notions of physics, perhaps modifying these notions as we carry out this enterprise.


That is to say, we have in Chomsky's view various worked-out, successful theories of different parts of the natural world, and we try to integrate these by assimilating them to "the core notions of physics," but may end up altering those core notions if we need to in order to make the assimilation work. As a result, as Chomsky once put it to John Searle, "as soon as we come to understand anything, we call it 'physical'" (quoted by Searle in The Rediscovery of the Mind). But we have no conception of what is "physical" or "material" prior to and independently of this enterprise. And since the enterprise is not complete, "physical" and "material" have no fixed and determinate content; we simply apply them to whatever it is we happen at the moment to think we know how assimilate into the body of existing scientific theory. As a consequence:


> The mind-body problem can therefore not even be formulated. The problem cannot be solved, because there is no clear way to state it. Unless someone proposes a definite concept of body, we cannot ask whether some phenomena exceed its bounds.There seems to be no coherent doctrine of materialism and metaphysical naturalism, no issue of eliminativism, no mind-body problem.


In short, if the problem has no clear content, neither do any of the solutions to it. Chomsky's preferred approach, it seems, is just to carry on the task of developing and evaluating theories of various aspects of the mind and integrating them as one can into the existing body of scientific knowledge, letting the chips fall where they may vis-à-vis the definition of "physical" or "material.":


> [The terms] 'body' and 'the physical world' refer to whatever there is, all of which we try to understand as best we can and to integrate into a coherent theoretical system that we call the natural sciences...If it were shown that the properties of the world fall into two disconnected domains, then we would, I suppose, say that that is the nature of the physical world, nothing more, just as if the world of matter and anti-matter were to prove unrelated.


*Chomsky on the mind-body problem*
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010...y-problem.html

There are some philosophers (e.g. _Nagel_) who question this view, however, as they argue that even with future revision of science/physics the mind-body problem or so-called "hard problem" of consciousness will remain:


> I have heard at least one respected physicist avert that "physics is finished," meaning that even microphysics is already empirically adequate and its physical ontology, its ontology of substances, is reasonably well understood; the remaining projects of microphysics - positing superstrings, constructing a unified field theory and the like-are only matters of interpreting and mathematizing the physical ontology. If that is so, then there is no reason to think that physics will expand its ontology in so fundamental a way as to afford a reduction of the mental that was not already available....Even, if our idea of the physical ever expands to include mental phenomena, it will have to assign them an objective character-whether or not this is done by analyzing them in terms of other phenomena already regarded as physical.


*Chomsky on the Mind-Body Problem*
http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20030401.pdf

Any thoughts on which position you hold? Please vote:

*Is the mind-body problem/"hard problem' of consciousness solvable?*

1. No, the "hard problem" of consciousness will never be solved by us.
2. Yes, a future revision of science/physics will allow us to unify the mental with the physical and solve it.
3. Other-please specify.


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## ugh1979

I voted for "other", but would have preffered to vote that a future revision of science/physics will *possibly *allow us to solve the "hard problem" of consciousness.

It's an interesting post, and I certainly agree with Chomsky and the issues the question raises in that we can't yet definitively say what the body/mind is and isn't, and that we could just augment our physics to accomodate as and when required.

As for Nagel, everything i've read of him has made me strongly disagree and dislike him. "Physics is finished". :roll (I've not personally never read any of his books, as i'd end up throwing them out the window, but going from reviews I find him highly disagreeable!)


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> As for Nagel, everything i've read of him has made me strongly disagree and dislike him. "Physics is finished".


Don't take him too literally. He means physics is finished for all intensive purposes. Nagel is simply arguing that the mind-body problem is different from all other so called previous "problems" seen in science, because unlike the others, subjectivity/qualia cannot be reduced/unified to any future "material" entity regardless of future revisions of our "material"/"physical" theories. Nagel believes this because he argues that regardless of future revisions of the physical, it can never expand to include mental phenomena because, in principle, the "physical" would have to assign them an objective or mathematical and/or computational character but any any such character cannot possibly shed any light on subjectivity/qualia/the phenomenal or "feel" of our experience/thoughts. Chomsky has challenged this point by Nagel:


> this argument presupposes some fixed notion of the 'objective world' which excludes subjective experience, but it is hard to see why we should pay any more attention to that notion, whatever it may be, than to one that excludes action at a distance or other exotic ideas that were regarded as unintelligible or ridiculous at earlier periods, even by outstanding scientists.


I have trouble understanding this point/counter-argument by Chomsky, to be honest. I mean obviously Nagel believes like Chomsky that consciousness/subjectivity/the mental is a natural phenomena in the world just as real as electrical, chemical, etc. phenomena but Nagel just doesn't see how it can be "unified" in any real sense of the term with a future brain science/physics, because the latter will always be missing the "qualitative feel" of our experiences which would basically missing one of the essential characteristics/nature of consciousness/the mental.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> Don't take him too literally. He means physics is finished for all intensive purposes. Nagel is simply arguing that the mind-body problem is different from all other so called previous "problems" seen in science, because unlike the others, subjectivity/qualia cannot be reduced/unified to any future "material" entity regardless of future revisions of our "physical" theories. Nagel believes this because he argues that regardless of future revisions of the physical, it can never expand to include mental phenomena because, in principle, the "physical" would have to assign them an objective character or mathematical character but any any such character cannot possibly help or shed any light on subjectivity/qualia/the phenomenal or "feel" of our experience/thoughts. Of course, Chomsky has challenged this point by Nagel:
> 
> I have trouble understanding this point/counter-argument by Chomsky, to be honest.


Have you read Nagel's Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False?

I've only read reviews but it appears to be based around the same argument you quoted Nagel on above. In my opinion it seems very short sighted and not having learnt from history of how malleable physics can be to accomodate the new and previously unknown.

Chomsky's counter argument seems perfectly sensible and valid to me.

The bottom line is we simply don't yet know and nobody can say they do with any certainty about what the future will or won't reveal.

Plus there is of course surely so much we don't yet know we don't know.


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> Have you read Nagel's Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False?
> The bottom line is we simply don't yet know and nobody can say they do with any certainty about what the future will or won't reveal. Plus there is of course surely so much we don't yet know we don't know.


I agree with your latter point and thanks for the link. No I haven't read Nagel's new book. I did find this quote by Nagel in the link you provided interesting because I've come across similar arguments before:


> Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history.


In many ways I think both Chomsky and Nagel raise very good points. I have been thinking about this stuff for a very long time and I'm still uncertain about the answer and I keep posting/reposting stuff on this topic.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I did find this quote by Nagel in the link you provided interesting because I've come across similar arguments before:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history.
Click to expand...

Although the jigsaw that is our understanding of reality is of course incomplete, that doesn't mean we don't have a rough idea what the picture is, even if we can't yet see some important parts. We simply can not yet say with absoulte certainty if it's entirely a materialist history or not. All we can say is that at the moment, from the pieces of the jigsaw we do have in place (or think we have in place) it appears to be an entirely materialist history.

I know i'm essentially repeating myself there from what I posted earlier but I like to use the jigsaw analogy in relation to our level of understanding of reality. Especially with regards to evolution, and how it doesn't matter if there are missing pieces. The important thing is that enough of the picture has been revealed to say with confidence what the reality is, and that it's not some totally different picture.

If a some missing pieces slot in later which alter the picture then so be it, and they are welcome. Until then we can only go on what we have and everything else is just speculation/faith.


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## Kon

I found a very interesting review of Nagel's book mentioned above in this 3-part piece by Edward Feser. Of particular relevance to this topic, Feser summarizes in an exceptionally clear way this point raised by Nagel in the quote in the first post (see part II):



> Now, Nagel's point is not that there is something wrong per se with overthrowing common sense in this way. It is rather that whatever value this method has, it cannot coherently be applied to the explanation of conscious experience itself. *If the reductive method involves ignoring the appearances of a thing and redefining the thing in terms of something other than the appearances, then since our conscious experience of the world just is the way the world appears to us, to ignore the appearances is in this case just to ignore the very phenomenon to be explained rather than to explain it.* Consciousness is for this reason necessarily and uniquely resistant to explanation via the same method scientific reductionism applies to everything else. For the application of the method in this case, writes Nagel, "does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us farther away from it." To treat the appearances as essentially "subjective"or mind-dependent is precisely to make them incapable of explanation in entirely "objective" or mind-_in_dependent terms.


 
*Aristotle, Call Your Office*
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/10/aristotle-call-your-office

*Nagel and his critics, Part II*
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2012/10/nagel-and-his-critics-part-ii.html

*Nagel and his critics, Part III*
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2012/11/nagel-and-his-critics-part-iii.html#more


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I found a very interesting review of Nagel's book mentioned above in this 3-part piece by Edward Feser. Of particular relevance to this topic, Feser summarizes in an exceptionally clear way this point raised by Nagel above (see part II):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Now, Nagel's point is not that there is something wrong per se with overthrowing common sense in this way. It is rather that whatever value this method has, it cannot coherently be applied to the explanation of conscious experience itself. *If the reductive method involves ignoring the appearances of a thing and redefining the thing in terms of something other than the appearances, then since our conscious experience of the world just is the way the world appears to us, to ignore the appearances is in this case just to ignore the very phenomenon to be explained rather than to explain it.* Consciousness is for this reason necessarily and uniquely resistant to explanation via the same method scientific reductionism applies to everything else. For the application of the method in this case, writes Nagel, "does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us farther away from it." To treat the appearances as essentially "subjective"or mind-dependent is precisely to make them incapable of explanation in entirely "objective" or mind-_in_dependent terms.
Click to expand...

I see no issue with ignoring how things _appear _to us in the same respect I don't say an object is definitively _x_ colour since colour is subjective, yet I _can _explain why we perceive colour.


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> I see no issue with ignoring how things _appear _to us in the same respect I don't say an object is definitively _x_ colour since colour is subjective, yet I _can _explain why we perceive colour.


But that's the whole point. Explaining why (really how) we perceive colour doesn't get us any closer to our actual experience of colour. So any theory that doesn't somehow explain how the experiential fits into nature (e.g. how technicolour phenomenology arises from soggy grey matter) will not be a complete description; even, if the two (experiential and non-experiential) can be paired together, as you argue. Strawson makes this point below (see "_The Impossibility of an Objective Phenomenology_" on p. 62-65):


> *My claim is not that non-experiential or N properties cannot in fact be paired with experiential or E properties in correlation statements of the form '[N1→E1]'.* It consists of two main points.
> 
> 1. Even if we attempted to put forward correlation statements of the form '[N1 → E1]', we could never hope to verify such statements across a human population by checking independently on E1 and N1 and thereby establishing the correlations, because we could never check independently on E1.If we somehow knew some of the correlation statements to hold true in the case of a single individual, we could perhaps take their general truth to be guaranteed by the truth of the supervenience thesis, but it is unclear whether even this would be acceptable, given the extent of our ignorance of the nature of the physical. Further, even if some statement of the form '[N1 → E1]' were somehow known to be true, the only people who could know for sure what 'E1' referred to would be those who had been shown to have N1 and had been told which of their experiences was specially correlated with, or realized by, N1 ('It's whatever visual experience you are having...wait...now').
> 
> 2. We could never make a start on testing interpersonally applicable correlation statements of the form '[E1 → N1]', because we could never be sure that we had distinguished the same experiential property in the case of two different people, even if they fully agreed in language about what experiences they were having. It is plausible that '[E1 → N1]' correlation statements would have to be of the form '[E1 → N1 ∨ N2 ∨ N3 ∨... ]': they would have to be disjunctive and open-ended on the righthand side, because of the possible "variable physical realization" of any experiential property. The present point, however, is that even if one could identify exactly which nonexperiential neural goings-on were involved in the occurrence of a particular type of experience in one's own case, and at a given time, one could never fill out the disjunctive right-hand side of the correlation statement by including other people, because one could never know that one was really dealing with the same type of experience in their case.


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## Keith

I just can't fathom how we can get an objective view of consciousness when its through that medium we experience the world. I cant say i know a lot about this, but I would like to know more.


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## Kon

Keith said:


> I just can't fathom how we can get an objective view of consciousness when its through that medium we experience the world. I cant say i know a lot about this, but I would like to know more.


Yes, I have come across such arguments. So, it might be as you suggested, that the problem has its source as some special feature of consciousness, itself; that is, by having this special access (inner experience) to it that we have to nothing else (and nothing else to us), this may not allow us to see the connection? The problem source lies at the gate, so to speak, has been suggested by quite a few authors.


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## Keith

Kon said:


> Yes, I have come across such arguments. So, it might be as you suggested, that the problem has its source as some special feature of consciousness, itself; that is, by having this special access (inner experience) to it that we have to nothing else (and nothing else to us), this may not allow us to see the connection? The problem source lies at the gate, so to speak, has been suggested by quite a few authors.


Yes exactly, my contention is based on not being able to observe consciousness objectively, and if we cant know what consciousness is outside of the subjective fact that it exists, how can we solve the mind body problem?


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## ACCV93

We can solve anything as soon as we stop thinking in dichotomies. Bohm's alluded to this before I think


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## The Professor

Not sure if I'm missing something, but isn't it all but scientifically proven that our thoughts directly result from the neuronal communications in the brain? Now I do think there is _more_ to consciousness, but not having to do with our minds per se. I'm sure you guys are interested in hearing my spiritual beliefs though


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## Kon

ACCV93 said:


> We can solve anything as soon as we stop thinking in dichotomies. Bohm's alluded to this before I think


You mean David Bohm, the physicist?


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## ACCV93

Kon said:


> You mean David Bohm, the physicist?


Ya :b


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## nullptr

My view is that the mind is the result of an amazingly complex system of neurons interacting. Think about a computer just transistors, logic gates and electromagnetic energy, but It creates an amazing level of abstraction, capable of simulating other complex systems. This is how I view the relationship between the mind and body, an analogy with software-hardware.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> But that's the whole point. Explaining why (really how) we perceive colour doesn't get us any closer to our actual experience of colour. So any theory that doesn't somehow explain how the experiential fits into nature (e.g. how technicolour phenomenology arises from soggy grey matter?) will not be a complete description; even, if the two (experiential and non-experiential) can be paired together, as you argue. Strawson makes this point below (see "_The Impossibility of an Objective Phenomenology_" on p. 62-65):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *My claim is not that non-experiential or N properties cannot in fact be paired with experiential or E properties in correlation statements of the form '[N1→E1]'.* It consists of two main points.
> 
> 1. Even if we attempted to put forward correlation statements of the form '[N1 → E1]', we could never hope to verify such statements across a human population by checking independently on E1 and N1 and thereby establishing the correlations, because we could never check independently on E1.If we somehow knew some of the correlation statements to hold true in the case of a single individual, we could perhaps take their general truth to be guaranteed by the truth of the supervenience thesis, but it is unclear whether even this would be acceptable, given the extent of our ignorance of the nature of the physical. Further, even if some statement of the form '[N1 → E1]' were somehow known to be true, the only people who could know for sure what 'E1' referred to would be those who had been shown to have N1 and had been told which of their experiences was specially correlated with, or realized by, N1 ('It's whatever visual experience you are having...wait...now').
> 
> 2. We could never make a start on testing interpersonally applicable correlation statements of the form '[E1 → N1]', because we could never be sure that we had distinguished the same experiential property in the case of two different people, even if they fully agreed in language about what experiences they were having. It is plausible that '[E1 → N1]' correlation statements would have to be of the form '[E1 → N1 ∨ N2 ∨ N3 ∨... ]': they would have to be disjunctive and open-ended on the righthand side, because of the possible "variable physical realization" of any experiential property. The present point, however, is that even if one could identify exactly which nonexperiential neural goings-on were involved in the occurrence of a particular type of experience in one's own case, and at a given time, one could never fill out the disjunctive right-hand side of the correlation statement by including other people, because one could never know that one was really dealing with the same type of experience in their case.
Click to expand...

I'm more inclined to favour [N1 → E1 ∨ E2 ∨ E3 ∨... ] where a non-experiential property can be paired with/result in an unlimited number of experiential properties. (1 per experiencer at any given time)

The average result of those experiential properties is then what it said to be "true".

To use the analogy of colour again, there is a global acceptence that the sky is blue, but only because the majority of humans agree that is their experience of it. Most animal life and the millions of colour blind people experience it as a different colour.

I appreciate this still isn't hitting the nail on the head of the question but I thought i'd add it anyway as your above quote made me think about it.


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## ugh1979

galacticsenator said:


> My view is that the mind is the result of an amazingly complex system of neurons interacting. Think about a computer just transistors, logic gates and electromagnetic energy, but It creates an amazing level of abstraction, capable of simulating other complex systems. This is how I view the relationship between the mind and body, an analogy with software-hardware.


Likewise.

Once we have developed a certain level of self learning AI I think the mind-body relationship will become much more transparent.


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## Kon

galacticsenator said:


> My view is that the mind is the result of an amazingly complex system of neurons interacting. Think about a computer just transistors, logic gates and electromagnetic energy, but It creates an amazing level of abstraction, capable of simulating other complex systems. This is how I view the relationship between the mind and body, an analogy with software-hardware.


This is the functionalist or computational thesis. There are a number of problems with this argument. One of the most famous is Searle's Chinese argument:


> Searle's strategy is one of avoiding quibbles about specific programs by imagining that cognitive science of the distant future can come up with the program of an actual person who speaks and understands Chinese, and that this program can be implemented in a machine. Unlike many critics of the computer model, Searle is willing to grant that perhaps this can be done so as to focus on his claim that _even if this can be done, the machine will not have intentional states..._His argument, then is that since the program of a real Chinese understander is not sufficient for understanding Chinese, no symbol-manipulation theory of Chinese understanding (or any other intentional state) is correct about what _makes_ something a Chinese understander. Thus the conclusion of Searle's argument is that the fundamental idea of thought as symbol processing is wrong even if it allows us to build a machine that can duplicate the symbol processing of a person and thereby duplicate a person's behavior.


*The Mind as the Software of the Brain*
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/msb.html

Personally, I tend to see computers/robots and anything of that sort now or in the future as something about as conscious as a piece of rock. Yet, even fairly simple life forms exhibit properties that seem to have some form of consciousness/experiential properties.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> This is the functionalist or computational thesis. There are a number of problems with this argument. One of the most famous is Searle's Chinese argument:
> 
> *The Mind as the Software of the Brain*
> http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/msb.html
> 
> Personally, I tend to see computers/robots and anything of that sort now or in the future as something about as conscious as a piece of rock. Yet, even fairly simple life forms exhibit properties that seem to have some form of consciousness/experiental properties.


Fairly simple life forms are still far more complicated in many respects than our current best AI. We still have a lot of work to do.

I'm not sure how you can be confident that a computer/robot can *never *be more conscious than a piece of rock.

Searle's Chinese argument is limited by the extent of what he could imagine a computer to ever be capable of. Also he doesn't seem to acknowledge that a brain system probably needs to run many thousands of "understanding" programs to ever get close to our level of understanding. The programs in isolation are mindless. But maybe when they are integrated and running in parallel they can form recognisable cognition?

We simply can't say that they will never be able to understand as we do, and maybe one day they will have even "better" understanding than us.

There is so much work being done in this field, from synthetic biology to synaptic CPUs. A huge amount of money and resources is being put up to develop this technology. There is the $1billion Human Brain Project, and renowned futurologist Ray Kurzweil has just moved to Google and been given "unlimited" resources to work on AI projects, to name but a few.

I see us humans as biological "robots".


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## nullptr

the cheat said:


> Whenever my ego tells me I'm smart, I like to read threads by kon and ugh1979...my ego shuts up pretty quickly. :yes opcorn


I'm thinking that way too. Philosophy nerd fight opcorn.



ugh1979 said:


> I see us humans as biological "robots".


Same here. I have wondered whether there is a soul behind the body, and it's not like I don't believe that but I can't certainly say that it exists. Just like I can't say there is no such thing as purple pandas, there is no way to deduce they don't exist with 100% certainty. In our universe of quantum mechanics certainty is an impossibility (sounds like a cool line to a song).


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## Kon

galacticsenator said:


> I have wondered whether there is a soul behind the body, and it's not like I don't believe that but I can't certainly say that it exists.


As I understand the arguments by the authors linked above, the problem seems to be that the stuff the body or matter is made of (e.g. at the micro/subatomic level) is not the stuff we once thought it was. In a sense, matter is becoming more and more "dematerialized" (witness modern physics/quantum mechanics: entanglement, non-locality, superposition, etc.) so it's not so much that modern science (particularly physics) has no room for the soul/mind/consciousness in a mechanistic or "material" world but the material/mechanistic world does not really exist. Chomsky points this out here:
_



It has been common in recent years to ridicule Descartes's "ghost in the machine" in postulating mind as distinct from body. Well, Newton came along and he did not exorcise the ghost in the machine: *he exorcised the machine* and left the ghost intact. So now the ghost is left and the machine isn't there.

Click to expand...

_Penrose sorta makes the same argument here:
_



For physics to be able to accomodate something as foreign to our current physical picture as is the phenomenon of consciousness, we must expect a profound change-one that alters the very underpinnings of our philosophical viewpoint as to the nature of reality.

Click to expand...

_I'm still skeptical that this can be done primarily because we've made zero progress in over 2000 years of our science despite immense progress in other areas. And interestingly that question still ranks in the top few unanswered scientific questions:

_*Journal Ranks Top 25 Unanswered Science Questions*_
_http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/misc/webfeat/125th/_


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## ugh1979

galacticsenator said:


> I'm thinking that way too. Philosophy nerd fight opcorn.




Philosophy is more Kon's field. I come to these discussions from a scientific background.


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> Philosophy is more Kon's field. I come to these discussions from a scientific background.


You'd be wrong about that. Although I do wish I had taken more courses in that area. I've only taken a few elective philosophy courses to meet previous degree requirements: philosophy of physics and philosophy of science and some logic courses. But I do try to read anything that has to do with quantum foundations and the mind-body problem. Most of my courses were either in life sciences (neuroscience, pharmacy, medicine, nutrition, biochemistry), physical sciences (geology, physics, chemistry) or cognitive sciences. And the 2 degrees I managed to finish were both science degrees. I kept moving around probably because of anxiety issues and wanting to avoid work, I think.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> You'd be wrong about that. Although I do wish I had taken more courses in that area. I've only taken a few elective philosophy courses previously to meet previous degree requirements: philosophy of physics and philosophy of science and some logic courses. Most of my courses were either in life sciences (neuroscience, pharmacy, medicine, nutrition, biochemistry), physical sciences (geology, physics, chemistry) or cognitive sciences. I kept moving around probably because of anxiety issues, I think.


Fair enough.  I guess it's just the impression you have given me as you sometimes start philosophical threads and readily quote philosophers.


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## Kon

ACCV93 said:


> Bohm's alluded to this before I think


I had written a paper on Bohm's interpretation of QM before. I read some of his philosophy but I found it a bit obscure. A pretty good summary of some of his most interesting stuff on the topic that also relates to the thread topic is the paper by Seager below. Bohm was a panprotopsychist. He felt that the wave function represented a kind of a primitive "informational field" that guides around particles but not in the usual "mechanical" sense. Some interesting quotes:


> Finally, our model in which wave and particle are regarded as basically different entities, which interact in a way that is not essential to their modes of being, does not seem very plausible. The fact that wave and particle are never found separately suggests instead that they are both different aspects of some fundamentally new kind of entity which is likely to be quite different from a simple wave or a simple particle, but which leads to these two limiting manifestations as approximations that are valid under appropriate conditions.


*Classical Levels, Russellian Monism and the Implicate Order *
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10701-012-9672-6


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## Kon

I've posted this quote before because I found the "intrinsic" argument (as argued by Russell, Stoljar, Strawson, Chomsky and Eddington) very persuasive. The core of the argument is that while we don't have access to the intrinsic properties of stuff described by physics, we do know with absolute certainty (e.g. by introspection) that some macroscopic phenomena of the world are intrinsically mental even though we can't literally "see"/measure such phenomena in others; at least, directly. 


> Do we therefore have no genuine knowledge of the intrinsic character of the physical world? So it might seem. But, according to the line of thought I am now pursuing, we do, in a very limited way, have access to content in the material world as opposed merely to abstract casual structure, since there is a corner of the physical world that we know, not merely by inference from the deliverances of our five sense, but because we are that corner. *It is the bit within our skulls, which we know by introspection. In being aware, for example, of the qualia that seemed so troublesome for the materialist, we glimpse the intrinsic nature of what, concretely, realizes the formal structure that a correct physics would attribute to the matter of our brains.* In awareness, we are, so to speak, getting an insider's look at our own brain activity.


We can do brain scans, etc. but we can't literally "see"/measure others' thoughts. It's then argued that it's difficult if not impossible to fathom how something like the brain (as currently conceived) can possibly spit out mental stuff (e.g. thoughts, qualia, etc.). So if one cannot fathom how mental stuff can emerge from stuff currently described by science/physics, it is tempting to speculate that the intrinsic nature of the basic constituents of the world must have some vestiges of some property that allows for the possibility of emergence of mind at the macroscopic level. This is also consistent with the panprotopsychist argument, I think:


> *It is indeed the case that mind cannot emerge from scientifically described extrinsic properties like mass, charge, and spin, but do we know that mind could not emerge from the intrinsic properties that underlie these scientifically observable properties?* It might be argued that since we know absolutely nothing about the intrinsic nature of mass, charge, and spin, we simply cannot tell whether they could be something non-mental and still constitute mentality when organised properly. It might well be that mentality is like liquidity: the intrinsic nature of mass, charge and spin might not be mental itself, just like individual H2O-molecules are not liquid themselves, but could nevertheless constitute mentality when organised properly, just like H2O-molecules can constitute liquidity when organised properly (this would be a variation of neutral monism).* In short, the problem is that we just do not know enough about the intrinsic nature of the fundamental level of reality that we could say almost anything about it.* Finally, despite there is no ontological difference between the micro and macro levels of reality either on the intrinsic or extrinsic level, there is still vast difference in complexity. The difference in complexity between human mentality and mentality on the fundamental level is in one-to-one correspondence to the scientific difference in complexity between the brain and the basic particles. Thus, even if the intrinsic nature of electrons and other fundamental particles is in fact mental, this does not mean that it should be anything like human mentality-rather, we can only say that the ontological category their intrinsic nature belongs to is the same as the one our phenomenal realm belongs to. This category in the most general sense is perhaps best titled 'ideal'.


*Mind as an Intrinsic Property of Matter *
http://users.utu.fi/jusjyl/MIPM.pdf

*Neutral Monism*
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neutral-monism/#7.2


----------



## ACCV93

Kon said:


> I had written a paper on Bohm's interpretation of QM before. I read some of his philosophy but I found it a bit obscure. A pretty good summary of some of his most interesting stuff on the topic that also relates to the thread topic is the paper by Seager below. Bohm was a panprotopsychist. He felt that the wave function represented a kind of a primitive "informational field" that guides around particles but not in the usual "mechanical" sense. Some interesting quotes:
> 
> *Classical Levels, Russellian Monism and the Implicate Order *
> http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-012-9672-6


Wow dude, thanks for sharing your seemingly boundless amount of knowldge on this topic!


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## lonelyjew

Kon said:


> We can do brain scans, etc. but we can't literally "see"/measure others' thoughts. It's then argued that it's difficult if not impossible to fathom how something like the brain (as currently conceived) can possibly spit out mental stuff (e.g. thoughts, qualia, etc.). So if one cannot fathom how mental stuff can emerge from stuff currently described by science/physics, it is tempting to speculate that the intrinsic nature of the basic constituents of the world must have some vestiges of some property that allows for the possibility of emergence of mind at the macroscopic level. This is also consistent with the panprotopsychist argument, I think:


I agree that at the moment it is impossible, and that we have no technology today that really can be used to attack the basic problem of how feeling and experience arise from cells interacting (which at heart is all chemical reactions and interactions), but I don't think it therefor is a reasonable to conclude that we will never have the technology available to make that connection. While we certainly do understand a lot about the brain, different parts of the brain, how they connect, what they do, and neuronal function, the details we know are more/less in isolation given how unified the brain must be for consciousness.

I'm with Ugh and others who've said that in the future, when we have far more sophisticated AI's than we do today, we'll be able to gain true insight in exactly how emergence plays out. Again, the computers we have today simply can't do this, so it is useless to use them as examples, but computers in the future could be far different, using different architecture, biological materials, and even living cells, which would allow for a level of functionality and complexity that we can't begin to imagine. Such technology could allow us to create a truly conscious AI use it to track how/where inputs become thoughts/feelings/experiences.


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## whattothink

No


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## ugh1979

whattothink said:


> No


How insightful. :lol


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I've posted this quote before because I found the "intrinsic" argument (as argued by Russell, Stoljar, Strawson, Chomsky and Eddington) very persuasive. The core of the argument is that while we don't have access to the intrinsic properties of stuff described by physics, we do know with absolute certainty (e.g. by introspection) that some macroscopic phenomena of the world are intrinsically mental even though we can't literally "see"/measure such phenomena in others; at least, directly.
> 
> We can do brain scans, etc. but we can't literally "see"/measure others' thoughts. It's then argued that it's difficult if not impossible to fathom how something like the brain (as currently conceived) can possibly spit out mental stuff (e.g. thoughts, qualia, etc.). So if one cannot fathom how mental stuff can emerge from stuff currently described by science/physics, it is tempting to speculate that the intrinsic nature of the basic constituents of the world must have some vestiges of some property that allows for the possibility of emergence of mind at the macroscopic level.


Regarding brain scans, we've only been doing them for 100 years, and only seriously since the 70s, so it's a technology still in its infancy. However there are neuroimaging technologies currently being developed which do allow us to see what someone is thinking.

Here's an atricle on brain scans which can read dreams. I've also read about conscious patients being shown static images and brain scanners actively reproducing the image their mind is seeing on a screen. (at very low resolution at the moment)

This technology of being able to read peoples minds has many future ramifications from the utopian to dystopian. However, the point is that it is being developed so the currently difficult/impossible question of how minds produce thought could be well known in the future.



> This is also consistent with the panprotopsychist argument, I think:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *It is indeed the case that mind cannot emerge from scientifically described extrinsic properties like mass, charge, and spin, but do we know that mind could not emerge from the intrinsic properties that underlie these scientifically observable properties?* It might be argued that since we know absolutely nothing about the intrinsic nature of mass, charge, and spin, we simply cannot tell whether they could be something non-mental and still constitute mentality when organised properly. It might well be that mentality is like liquidity: the intrinsic nature of mass, charge and spin might not be mental itself, just like individual H2O-molecules are not liquid themselves, but could nevertheless constitute mentality when organised properly, just like H2O-molecules can constitute liquidity when organised properly (this would be a variation of neutral monism).* In short, the problem is that we just do not know enough about the intrinsic nature of the fundamental level of reality that we could say almost anything about it.* Finally, despite there is no ontological difference between the micro and macro levels of reality either on the intrinsic or extrinsic level, there is still vast difference in complexity. The difference in complexity between human mentality and mentality on the fundamental level is in one-to-one correspondence to the scientific difference in complexity between the brain and the basic particles. Thus, even if the intrinsic nature of electrons and other fundamental particles is in fact mental, this does not mean that it should be anything like human mentality-rather, we can only say that the ontological category their intrinsic nature belongs to is the same as the one our phenomenal realm belongs to. This category in the most general sense is perhaps best titled 'ideal'.
Click to expand...

While i'm no proponent of panpsychism or ontological speculations this was still an interesting read. However as you highlighted in the quote, we just don't know enough to say, and i'll remain very skeptical of it for the time being.


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## whattothink

ugh1979 said:


> How insightful. :lol


What's even less insightful and more arrogant in my opinion is to assume that as biological vessels of matter we have the ability to understand the origins of consciousness. The simplified physical origins of consciousness that you subscribe to don't begin to account for the fact that the further we delve into physics, the less material and physical things become. It shows that the deeper we delve into physics, the less we seem to be able to comprehend.

Why do we consciously observe reality as a linear flow of events while quantum physics shows that particles exist in a superposition of an infinite number of states? Why am I observing this single reality? Why do I not exist in all possibilities? Why does a wave function collapse occur and what are the implications on reality at large?

I think it's presumptuous to assume that we as physical creatures, whose understanding of the universe appears to rely on the interaction of particles, have 'perceptual' access to what 'being' or existence may truly entail. I mean, our entire interpretation of the universe relies on a mishap of chance and may be completely false. And by all accounts of quantum physics, it _is _completely false.


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## ugh1979

whattothink said:


> What's even less insightful and more arrogant in my opinion is to assume that as biological vessels of matter we have the ability to understand the origins of consciousness.


Exactly why I don't. Our intelligence is limited by our current "hardware". Until the time comes that we can upgrade we will just have to try and understand it as best we can.

To give up and would be unhuman.



> The simplified physical origins of consciousness that you subscribe to don't begin to account for the fact that the further we delve into physics, the less material and physical things become. It shows that the deeper we delve into physics, the less we seem to be able to comprehend.


Well of course the boundaries of our current knowledge are less comprehendable. That's in the nature of learning. However we never stop learning and increasing/expanding our comprehension.



> Why do we consciously observe reality as a linear flow of events while quantum physics shows that particles exist in a superposition of an infinite number of states? Why am I observing this single reality? Why do I not exist in all possibilities? Why does a wave function collapse occur and what are the implications on reality at large?


All interesting questions that physics is continually developing and offering hypotheses and supporting theories for. Nobody is saying they know the definitive answers yet.



> I think it's presumptuous to assume that we as physical creatures, whose understanding of the universe appears to rely on the interaction of particles, have 'perceptual' access to what 'being' or existence may truly entail.


Maybe so, but until we have the means to say otherwise we just have to go on what we can perceive/detect. We need to start somewhere.

As I said earlier, giving up isn't an option for many people. It's better to try and understand and then find out you are wrong so you can amend and develop your understanding than to not try to understand at all.

"We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard" - John F. Kennedy



> I mean, our entire interpretation of the universe relies on a mishap of chance and may be completely false.


A mishap? Why do you think it was a mishap? :? What is bad/unfortunate about it?



> And by all accounts of quantum physics, it _is _completely false.


How so?


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## Kon

whattothink said:


> I think it's presumptuous to assume that we as physical creatures, whose understanding of the universe appears to rely on the interaction of particles, have 'perceptual' access to what 'being' or existence may truly entail. I mean, our entire interpretation of the universe relies on a mishap of chance and may be completely false.


I find that argument convincing. Steven Pinker makes the same claim here:


> We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness.


Thus, it's argued that our minds like most other biological systems/organs are likely poor solutions to the design-problems posed by nature. They are, "the best solution that evolution could achieve under existing circumstances, but perhaps a clumsy and messy solution." Thus, it seems we cannot have direct knowledge of how the world is like as the knowledge has to be routed in terms of the resources available to our theory-building abilities/mental organs and these are not likely to be "pipelines to the truth".

As an aside the only prominent philosopher/mathematician who has argued that somehow man has been provided the ability/gift to get to know the laws of nature is Charles Peirce. He writes:


> In this way, general considerations concerning the universe, strictly philosophical considerations, all but demonstrate that if the universe conforms, with any approach to accuracy, to certain highly pervasive laws, and *if man's mind has been developed under the influence of those laws, it is to be expected that he should have a natural light, or light of nature, or instinctive insight, or genius, tending to make him guess those laws aright, or nearly aright.*..This would be impossible unless the ideas that are naturally predominant in their minds was true...The history of science, especially the early history of modern science, on which I had the honor of giving some lectures in this hall some years ago, completes the proof of showing how few were the guesses that men surpassing genius had to make before they rightly guessed the laws of nature...


But others like Chomsky, Pinker, etc. criticize this view, and in a convincing way, in my opinion:


> But the fact that the mind is a product of natural laws does not imply that it is equipped to understand the laws... There would be no difficulty in designing a device (say, programming a computer) that is a product of natural law, but that, given data, will arrive at any arbitrary absurd theory to explain these data.


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## lonelyjew

whattothink said:


> What's even less insightful and more arrogant in my opinion is to assume that as biological vessels of matter we have the ability to understand the origins of consciousness. The simplified physical origins of consciousness that you subscribe to don't begin to account for the fact that the further we delve into physics, the less material and physical things become. It shows that the deeper we delve into physics, the less we seem to be able to comprehend.
> 
> Why do we consciously observe reality as a linear flow of events while quantum physics shows that particles exist in a superposition of an infinite number of states? Why am I observing this single reality? Why do I not exist in all possibilities? Why does a wave function collapse occur and what are the implications on reality at large?
> 
> I think it's presumptuous to assume that we as physical creatures, whose understanding of the universe appears to rely on the interaction of particles, have 'perceptual' access to what 'being' or existence may truly entail. I mean, our entire interpretation of the universe relies on a mishap of chance and may be completely false. And by all accounts of quantum physics, it _is _completely false.


Very interesting post and perspective. I've thought about this in a far more simple sense, but the questions you ask go way beyond that and open up a world of thoughts .



Kon said:


> Thus, it's argued that our minds like most other biological systems/organs are likely poor solutions to the design-problems posed by nature. They are, "the best solution that evolution could achieve under existing circumstances, but perhaps a clumsy and messy solution." Thus, it seems we cannot have direct knowledge of how the world is like as the knowledge has to be routed in terms of the resources available to our theory-building abilities/mental organs and these are not likely to be "pipelines to the truth".


I think that's a very short sighted assumption to make. Over the last 150 years or so the world has been transformed at an ever increasing rate, and today we are advancing faster than we ever have (and tomorrow we'll advance faster than today). Our limited perceptions have always limited our ability to measure worlds both smaller and larger than the one in which we live in, however we have created ever more sophisticated and intricate tools to observe that which was unobservable, and there is no reason to assume that eventually discover and create the right tools and methods to observe things that we can't even begin to approach today.

I've also heard an interesting point made about our intelligence, and how limited it may be. Because we are a whole factor smarter than the next most intelligent creatures we encounter, many people either don't think about it at all, or don't put it into context. A chimp can execute most of the same advanced functions that humans can in their most simple forms: teaching/learning, vocalized language and visual, imaginative problem solving, abstraction, etc. The things that chimps can do are things that come easily and intuitively to us; what is an obvious/basic problem, or solution to a problem, to us can be extremely difficult, if not impossible to the chimp.

If we are now being considered the "chimp," it provides some insight into what more intelligent beings could be like. What is very difficult for us, say discovering the laws of physics, could be so obvious and intuitive to a more intelligent being that they don't even have to actively think about them. While we have to run complicated calculations on computers to figure out how to get a rocket to Mars, a more advanced being might simply be able to "eye ball it" off the top of their head. So to could it be for the emergence problem, which is very difficult for us, but could be something that isn't too hard (or at least possible if it isn't for us) for those who are more intelligent than us.

The thing is though, those beings don't have to be aliens, they could be human beings that have certain genetic/developmental enhancements. We are still only just beginning to discover the very basics of epigenetics, cellular signalling/interactions, and neuronal interaction. As we discover more and more, it isn't unrealistic to believe that we will build the knowledge base and tools necessary to drive our own evolution into the direction we choose, which would certainly include improving our intellect. Considering the extremely minor changes (in relative terms) that transformed the ape brain into ours, just imagine how much smarter we could become with even a fractionally comparable structural improvement? Perhaps in 100 years the human beings will have become so intelligent that humans today would seem like mere chimps by comparison . The problems that often plague human action, which come from limited self awareness and limited self control could disappear, and pave the way for a true utopian society.


----------



## whattothink

ugh1979 said:


> A mishap? Why do you think it was a mishap? :? What is bad/unfortunate about it?


I hold the view that life is absurd and we're deluded into believing otherwise. A mishap. Yeah. I stand by that. We really shouldn't 'be', yet we are. Others will regale the wonders of emotion and pleasure, but the motivation of that is part of the delusion; a trap. Obviously this is just a personal opinion and that 'to be or not to be' is entirely subjective.


----------



## Kon

lonelyjew said:


> If we are now being considered the "chimp," it provides some insight into what more intelligent beings could be like. What is very difficult for us, say discovering the laws of physics, could be so obvious and intuitive to a more intelligent being that they don't even have to actively think about them.


I agree but I don't understand your disagreement. How is this inconsistent with the quotes and stuff I posted above? To use your analogy, if we are to chimps as some other greater intelligence is to us, then this would imply that we can grasp only a small part of "reality". Thus, although our form of representing the external world may be extremely useful/practical to us (as I'm sure the chimps' form is to the chimp for their survival needs), it is obvious that both the chimps' and our own representation of the external world is extremely limited. And just like chimps (regardless of tools they are given), we will never be able to understand what the greater intelligence can know, regardless of our growth in technology. So, we would seem to be in the same predicament to a more intelligent species as a chimp is to us. And this doesn't imply that our knowledge cannot continue to grow continously forever yet fail to penetrate much into the secrets of nature. As argued elsewhere, the set of integers is still an infinite set but it does not exhaust the infinite set of rational numbers. So from within our minds, while it may seem as if our science is discovering more and more of reality and closing unto the secrets of nature, it may, in fact, be only grasping a small part of it. This is an assumption we make of all other animals. I mean it would seem like a miracle if we were somehow endowed with cognitive powers to fully or even mostly comprehend the universe, unlike other animals:



> While it is possible that the endogenous constraints on our belief system do not limit our ability to fully or mostly comprehend this universe, it does not seem probable. Genetically we are virtually identical with our hunter-gather ancestors. There is no particular reason to suppose that the evolutionary pressures on our ancestors selected for brains capable of fully or mostly comprehending this universe. If the universe is fully or mostly comprehensible surely this would have to be the grandest case of pleiotropy ever.


*Skepticism and Naturalism: Can Philosophical Skepticism be Scientifically Tested?*
http://www.nmsu.edu/~philos/documents/naturalism-and-skepticism.pdf​


----------



## ugh1979

lonelyjew said:


> I think that's a very short sighted assumption to make. Over the last 150 years or so the world has been transformed at an ever increasing rate, and today we are advancing faster than we ever have (and tomorrow we'll advance faster than today). Our limited perceptions have always limited our ability to measure worlds both smaller and larger than the one in which we live in, however we have created ever more sophisticated and intricate tools to observe that which was unobservable, and there is no reason to assume that eventually discover and create the right tools and methods to observe things that we can't even begin to approach today.
> 
> I've also heard an interesting point made about our intelligence, and how limited it may be. Because we are a whole factor smarter than the next most intelligent creatures we encounter, many people either don't think about it at all, or don't put it into context. A chimp can execute most of the same advanced functions that humans can in their most simple forms: teaching/learning, vocalized language and visual, imaginative problem solving, abstraction, etc. The things that chimps can do are things that come easily and intuitively to us; what is an obvious/basic problem, or solution to a problem, to us can be extremely difficult, if not impossible to the chimp.
> 
> If we are now being considered the "chimp," it provides some insight into what more intelligent beings could be like. What is very difficult for us, say discovering the laws of physics, could be so obvious and intuitive to a more intelligent being that they don't even have to actively think about them. While we have to run complicated calculations on computers to figure out how to get a rocket to Mars, a more advanced being might simply be able to "eye ball it" off the top of their head. So to could it be for the emergence problem, which is very difficult for us, but could be something that isn't too hard (or at least possible if it isn't for us) for those who are more intelligent than us.
> 
> The thing is though, those beings don't have to be aliens, they could be human beings that have certain genetic/developmental enhancements. We are still only just beginning to discover the very basics of epigenetics, cellular signalling/interactions, and neuronal interaction. As we discover more and more, it isn't unrealistic to believe that we will build the knowledge base and tools necessary to drive our own evolution into the direction we choose, which would certainly include improving our intellect. Considering the extremely minor changes (in relative terms) that transformed the ape brain into ours, just imagine how much smarter we could become with even a fractionally comparable structural improvement? Perhaps in 100 years the human beings will have become so intelligent that humans today would seem like mere chimps by comparison . The problems that often plague human action, which come from limited self awareness and limited self control could disappear, and pave the way for a true utopian society.


I completely agree with this. The example of the vast difference between modern man and chimps can also be extended to a lesser but still notable extent to the difference between modern man and ancient man, despite ancient man having exactly the same brains as us.

I think it's important to realise though that our collective intelligence goes well beyond the capabilities of our individual intelligence. In many respects mankind's intelligence operates like a hive mind where nobody knows everything and shouldn't be expected to. It's parallel/hive mental processing that has lead us to many of our greatest accomplishments.


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## ugh1979

whattothink said:


> I hold the view that life is absurd and we're deluded into believing otherwise. A mishap. Yeah. I stand by that. We really shouldn't 'be', yet we are. Others will regale the wonders of emotion and pleasure, but the motivation of that is part of the delusion; a trap. Obviously this is just a personal opinion and that 'to be or not to be' is entirely subjective.


I find it sad you believe that but fair enough if that's what you believe.

I don't see why we shouldn't "be", and depending on some interpretations of quantum mechanics think our being is possibly inevitable and that we couldn't not "be". (The many worlds interpretation)


----------



## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I agree but I don't understand your disagreement. How is this inconsistent with the quotes and stuff I posted above? To use your analogy, if we are to chimps as some other greater intelligence is to us, then this would imply that we can grasp only a small part of "reality". Thus, although our form of representing the external world may be extremely useful/practical to us (as I'm sure the chimps' form is to the chimp for their survival needs), it is obvious that both the chimps' and our own representation of the external world is extremely limited. And just like chimps (regardless of tools they are given), we will *never *be able to understand what the greater intelligence can know, regardless of our growth in technology.


I don't see how you can say we will never, regardless of our future growth in technology.

The extrapolation of this analogy is that the highly intelligent aliens *also *emerged from primitive intelligence, just as we went from _x_ number of primitive animals to chimp like to current human intelligence levels over time.

There is no evidence that anything *starts *highly intelligent, so surely intelligent alien beings are subject to evolution and using technology to augment their intelligence?



> So, we would seem to be in the same predicament to a more intelligent species as a chimp is to us. And this doesn't imply that our knowledge cannot continue to grow continously forever yet fail to penetrate much into the secrets of nature. As argued elsewhere, the set of integers is still an infinite set but it does not exhaust the infinite set of rational numbers. So from within minds, while it may seem as if our science is discovering more and more of reality and closing unto the secrets of nature, it may, in fact, be only grasping a small part of it. This is an assumption we make of all other animals. I mean it would seem like a miracle if we were somehow endowed with cognitive powers to fully or even mostly comprehend the universe, unlike other animals:
> 
> *Skepticism and Naturalism: Can Philosophical Skepticism be Scientifically Tested?*
> http://www.nmsu.edu/~philos/documents/naturalism-and-skepticism.pdf​


Indeed maybe there is no intelligence anywhere in this or any other universe that comprehends it all and it's all just to varying levels of comprehension. I personally favour this view. Maybe we all just have different numbers of parts of the jigsaw but no intelligence/consciousness can ever complete the jigsaw and see the final true picture.


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## whattothink

ugh1979 said:


> I find it sad you believe that but fair enough if that's what you believe.


We are deluded into believing we have 'freedom'. We're a constant push and pull of our biological imperatives working in unison to create the illusion of freedom, all to promote contentedness and propagation. If you actually sit and think, you'll discover we really aren't 'free'. As a life form, we're only driven to lessen our suffering and nothing more, be it anxiety for status, procreation, or from physical suffering such as that from hunger or pain. Any narrow act we perform is only motivated by forces over which we have no control.

It's easy to conclude this using logic, but as an intuitive creature of survival, as the thing that lives, it is completely invisible. It is possible through enough introspection to intuitively realize this in an intuitive way and as an intuitive being. It is in this state that the recognition and distinction between the illusion of freedom and liberation from this illusion (the invisible imperatives of biology) becomes intuitively obvious. It's not something anyone can maintain, but to experience it a single time, to perceive 'you' as you are, completely liberated and free of motivation, is enough to know that outside of your 'human', everything is completely arbitrary and it's all objectively pointless and meaningless.



> I don't see why we shouldn't "be", and depending on some interpretations of quantum mechanics think our being is possibly inevitable and that we couldn't not "be". (The many worlds interpretation)


I'm familiar. I alluded pretty strongly to the many world's interpretation in one of my posts.


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## lonelyjew

whattothink said:


> I hold the view that life is absurd and we're deluded into believing otherwise. A mishap. Yeah. I stand by that. We really shouldn't 'be', yet we are. Others will regale the wonders of emotion and pleasure, but the motivation of that is part of the delusion; a trap. Obviously this is just a personal opinion and that 'to be or not to be' is entirely subjective.


I think it's wrong to say that we should or shouldn't be; we are, and that is far more relevant than should/shouldn't. Life only has whatever meaning we choose to give it, nothing more and nothing less; unless there's some sort of arbiter that places intrinsic values on things the very idea of value is ethereal.



Kon said:


> I agree but I don't understand your disagreement. How is this inconsistent with the quotes and stuff I posted above? To use your analogy, if we are to chimps as some other greater intelligence is to us, then this would imply that we can grasp only a small part of "reality". Thus, although our form of representing the external world may be extremely useful/practical to us (as I'm sure the chimps' form is to the chimp for their survival needs), it is obvious that both the chimps' and our own representation of the external world is extremely limited. And just like chimps (regardless of tools they are given), we will never be able to understand what the greater intelligence can know, regardless of our growth in technology. So, we would seem to be in the same predicament to a more intelligent species as a chimp is to us. And this doesn't imply that our knowledge cannot continue to grow continously forever yet fail to penetrate much into the secrets of nature. As argued elsewhere, the set of integers is still an infinite set but it does not exhaust the infinite set of rational numbers. So from within minds, while it may seem as if our science is discovering more and more of reality and closing unto the secrets of nature, it may, in fact, be only grasping a small part of it. This is an assumption we make of all other animals. I mean it would seem like a miracle if we were somehow endowed with cognitive powers to fully or even mostly comprehend the universe, unlike other animals:


I'm confused, are we talking about knowing everything, or simply the mind-body problem. I was limiting my post to the mind-body problem, and I was simply saying that even if we, in our present form, cannot solve this problem today doesn't mean that it is unsolvable, or that we'll forever be too limited in intellect to solve it (again, if that's even the case).

If we eventually greatly increased our intellect, it certainly also could be the case that we solve all of the hard problems that it has to offer when we can intuitively see how it functions, without the need for abstract theories to help us see. It also could be the case that as we can understand more, we are only made more aware of how much more there is to understand, and how much more we don't understand, with the mysteries of the universe being infinite and infinitely complex.

It's all speculation. I'm simply saying that given our pace of progress, there is no reason to be so pessimistic as to call any particular problem impossible to solve.


----------



## ugh1979

whattothink said:


> We are deluded into believing we have 'freedom'. We're a constant push and pull of our biological imperatives working in unison to create the illusion of freedom, all to promote contentedness and propagation. If you actually sit and think, you'll discover we really aren't 'free'. As a life form, we're only driven to lessen our suffering and nothing more, be it anxiety for status, procreation, or from physical suffering such as that from hunger or pain. Any narrow act we perform is only motivated by forces over which we have no control.
> 
> It's easy to conclude this using logic, but as an intuitive creature of survival, as the thing that lives, it is completely invisible. It is possible through enough introspection to intuitively realize this in an intuitive way and as an intuitive being. It is in this state that the recognition and distinction between the illusion of freedom and liberation from this illusion (the invisible imperatives of biology) becomes intuitively obvious. It's not something anyone can maintain, but to experience it a single time, to perceive 'you' as you are, completely liberated and free of motivation, is enough to know that outside of your 'human', everything is completely arbitrary and it's all objectively pointless and meaningless.


Well that would be deterministic logic. We've had a big free will thread recently so I don't want to derail this thread by getting in to it again.



> I'm familiar. I alluded pretty strongly to the many world's interpretation in one of my posts.


Did you agree or disagree about its plausibility?


----------



## ugh1979

lonelyjew said:


> I think it's wrong to say that we should or shouldn't be; we are, and that is far more relevant than should/shouldn't. Life only has whatever meaning we choose to give it, nothing more and nothing less; unless there's some sort of arbiter that places intrinsic values on things the very idea of value is ethereal.


Agreed.



> If we eventually greatly increased our intellect, it certainly also could be the case that we solve all of the hard problems that it has to offer when we can intuitively see how it functions, without the need for abstract theories to help us see.


This reminds me of something I meant to say earlier.

We already have a tool that allows us to experiment with and reveal the workings of universes beyond our comprehension. Mathematics.

If and when we can augment our minds with technology (which is obviously highly mathematical/computational) maybe we will be able to better comprehend the universe which itself may be mathematical/computational in nature?

Maybe the universe is best understood by computational minds and not biological minds, with the latter just happening to give rise to the former?


----------



## whattothink

ugh1979 said:


> Well that would be deterministic logic. We've had a big free will thread recently so I don't want to derail this thread by getting in to it again.


Neither did I want to derail the thread. I just wanted to give a brief, topical response as to why I believe what I do, as prompted by your response. I didn't intend to blab on the idea of free will - even though it seems to have veered that way. I just wanted to convey how I came to hold a nihilistic outlook on life, which you appear to disprove of, which is fine. 



> Did you agree or disagree about its plausibility?


I entirely agree. Quantum theory confirmed what I'd presumed for a long time before; I always wondered how a fine-tuned universe whose probability of occurring is virtually zero given the infinite possibilities for the physics and phenomenon (time and space for instance) could have came to be. I therefore decided that the probability of there existing an infinite number of universes was virtually 100%. They all must certainly 'be' or at least be possible: universes of every configuration of matter / unimaginable phenomenon and beyond, bound only by infinity.

Now I wonder what the source is. True infinity, I like to think: immaterial and unattainable in our mere extended 'possibility'.

BTW, I phrased my "shouldn't be [...]" comment to the point where it appears that I'm making a hard assertion when I merely intended strong sentiment. I actually agree with you.


----------



## ugh1979

whattothink said:


> Neither did I want to derail the thread. I just wanted to give a brief, topical response as to why I believe what I do, as prompted by your response. I didn't intend to blab on the idea of free will - even though it seems to have veered that way. I just wanted to convey how I came to hold a nihilistic outlook on life, which you appear to disprove of, which is fine.


Fair enough. Many of my own related views lean towards nihilism. 



> I entirely agree. Quantum theory confirmed what I'd presumed for a long time before; I always wondered how a fine-tuned universe whose probability of occurring is virtually zero given the infinite possibilities for the physics and phenomenon (time and space for instance) could have came to be. I therefore decided that the probability of there existing an infinite number of universes was virtually 100%. They all must certainly 'be' or at least be possible: universes of every configuration of matter / unimaginable phenomenon and beyond, bound only by infinity.
> 
> Now I wonder what the source is. True infinity, I like to think: immaterial and unattainable in our mere extended 'possibility'.
> 
> BTW, I phrased my "shouldn't be [...]" comment to the point where it appears that I'm making a hard assertion when I merely intended strong sentiment. I actually agree with you.


OK, thanks for clearing that up.


----------



## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> I don't see how you can say we will never, regardless of our future growth in technology.


I said: 


> And just like chimps (regardless of tools they are given), we will *never *be able to understand what the greater intelligence can know, regardless of our growth in technology.


So, basically there are things we can understand that the chimp or a squirrel can never understand. By the same token, there are things that another higher or other intelligence can understand/conceptualize that we will never be able to understand/conceptualize, regardless of technological progress/innovations.

With respect to the mind-body problem or so-called "hard" problem of consciousness, I still can't fathom how it would ever be possible to measure others' thoughts directly like other stuff we measure and take for granted in science/physics, for reasons mentioned by Nagel, I think. I tend to believe that physics can tell us only about the relational/extrinsic properties of matter but has little to say about the intrinsic ground of such objects. Yet I know with absolute certainty that there is an intrinsic ground for one small part of the world: my own brain, as per Lockwood quote above and summarized by Seager here:


> We might put the argument in another way, as follows. Matter must have an intrinsic nature to ground its dispositional properties. We know nothing of this nature, and in fact *the only intrinsic nature with which we are familiar is consciousness itself.* It is arguable that we cannot conceive of any other intrinsic nature because our knowledge of the physical is entirely based upon its dispositions to produce certain conscious experiences under certain conditions. Of course, we can assert that matter has a non-experiential intrinsic nature which is utterly mysterious to us, but this would seem to make the problem of emergence yet more difficult. An emergentism which made the generation of consciousness intelligible would be one that showed how experience emerged from what we know about matter, that is, from its dispositional properties. But it seems impossible to see how the dispositions to move in certain directions under certain conditions could give rise to or constitute consciousness, save by the kind of brute and miraculous radical emergence discussed above. If granting some kind of experiential intrinsic aspect to the fundamental physical entities of the world eliminates this problem, it might be worth the cost in initial uncomfortable implausibility.


But I'm just not completely persuaded by Seager's panpsychist argument/conclusion. I think I'm more sympathetic to Stoljar/Chomsky's and Russell's argument below as summarized here:


> Physics can tell us only about the dispositional or relational properties of matter, but since dispositions ultimately require categorical properties as bases, and relations ultimately require intrinsic properties as relata, *there must also be categorical or intrinsic properties about which physics is silent.* Yet these are properties of physical objects and thus are physical properties in one central sense. Instantiations of such properties would therefore constitute physical facts of which we are ignorant, as per the ignorance hypothesis.


*Review of D. Stoljar, **Ignorance and Imagination*
http://www.uriahkriegel.com/downloads/slugfest.pdf

*Panpsychism*
http://www.scar.utoronto.ca/~seager/pan_seager.pdf

As I see the issue, the debate is between the panpsychists (Seager, Strawson, Bohm) versus the emergentists (Stoljar, Chomsky) in trying to understand how the brain/matter/nonexperiential/structural (as currently conceived) can spit out experiential/mental/qualia. An interesting paragraph is this quote that I posted elsewhere:



> Suppose that Russell and Blackburn are correct, and scientific methodology will never reveal the ultimate ontological basis for observed phenomena, despite the optimism engendered by science's continuing progress. In that case, we are not justified in generalizing from cases in which scientific methods have shown that non-manifest phenomena explain manifest nonexperiential phenomena, to the conclusion that no experiential truth is primitive. If categorical properties are beyond the reach of scientific investigation, then at most we can conclude that manifest dispositions (of experienceless objects) will be initially explained by other, non-manifest dispositions. *But we have no reason to speculate about the nature of the categorical properties that ultimately explain the dispositions we observe.* In particular, even if the categorical properties that ground nonexperiential phenomena are physical-and this is a trivial truth, given the object conception of the physical-it remains an open question whether they are nonexperiential. And even if the categorical properties of experienceless objects are nonexperiential, it remains an open question whether the categorical properties of experiencers are experiential...This may seem a hollow victory for the primitivist, since allowing that categorical properties are experiential appears to lead to panpsychism, a view rejected by most primitivists. But as Stoljar himself notes, panpsychism can be avoided.


*"The Role of Ignorance in the Problem of Consciousness". Critical notice of Daniel Stoljar*
http://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/bg8y/


----------



## nullptr

Kon said:


> I said:
> 
> So, basically there are things we can understand that the chimp or a squirrel can never understand. By the same token, there are things that another higher or other intelligence can understand/conceptualize that we will never be able to understand/conceptualize, regardless of technological progress/innovations.


Defiantly don't agree with this. I can understand how we can't become far more intelligent without the aid of technology but with our current miniaturization and nanotechnology advancement I'm pretty sure we'll have human equivalent artificial intelligence, using these technologies as implants into our own brain I'm sure we can have godlike intelligence soon.


----------



## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I said:
> 
> So, basically there are things we can understand that the chimp or a squirrel can never understand. By the same token, there are things that another higher or other intelligence can understand/conceptualize that we will never be able to understand/conceptualize, regardless of technological progress/innovations.


That's exactly what you already said. My issue was with you saying we can *never*, regardless of technological progress/innovations. Why do you think that? Is it because you refuse to acknowledge that technology may well be able to augment/advance our intelligence?



> With respect to the mind-body problem or so-called "hard" problem of consciousness, I still can't fathom how it would ever be possible to measure others' thoughts directly like other stuff we measure and take for granted in science/physics, for reasons mentioned by Nagel, I think.


Fair enough, I obviously don't know exactly how it will be done either, but based on the current very crude thought measuring technology we have I fully expect it in time to develop to very sophisticated detailed level.

It's obviously currently such a speculative subject that we just can't yet say if it will truly be possible or not so I don't think there is too much more to say at this point.



> I tend to believe that physics can tell us only about the relational/extrinsic properties of matter but has little to say about the intrinsic ground of such objects.


Again, fair enough. I'm a proponent of complete reductionism of the universe so it's physics/math all the way down for me.



> Yet I know with absolute certainty that there is an intrinsic ground for one small part of the world: my own brain, as per Lockwood quote above and summarized by Seager here:


Nobody can with absolute certainty. You don't know for 100% certain that you aren't a simulation. However maybe everything is a simulation, so in effect nothing is a simulation and the "simulation" is the only reality. (Sorry bit of a tangent there!)



> But I'm just not completely persuaded by Seager's panpsychist argument/conclusion. I think I'm more sympathetic to Stoljar/Chomsky's and Russell's argument below as summarized here:
> 
> *Review of D. Stoljar, **Ignorance and Imagination*
> http://www.uriahkriegel.com/downloads/slugfest.pdf
> 
> *Panpsychism*
> http://www.scar.utoronto.ca/~seager/pan_seager.pdf
> 
> As I see the issue, the debate is between the panpsychists (Seager, Strawson, Bohm) versus the emergentists (Stoljar, Chomsky) in trying to understand how the brain/matter/nonexperiential/structural (as currently conceived) can spit out experiential/mental/qualia. An interesting paragraph is this quote that I posted elsewhere:
> 
> *"The Role of Ignorance in the Problem of Consciousness". Critical notice of Daniel Stoljar*
> http://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/bg8y/


I just don't think we can say for sure at our current fairly primitive level of understanding of the universe and physics.


----------



## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> That's exactly what you already said. My issue was with you saying we can *never*, regardless of technological progress/innovations. Why do you think that? Is it because you refuse to acknowledge that technology may well be able to augment/advance our intelligence?.


Because our technology is based and limited by our intelligence. 


ugh1979 said:


> Nobody can with absolute certainty. You don't know for 100% certain that you aren't a simulation. However maybe everything is a simulation, so in effect nothing is a simulation and the "simulation" is the only reality.


How would that change anything even if true? I still know that I'm a thinking, feeling, experiential subject.


----------



## ugh1979

Kon said:


> Because our technology is based and limited by our intelligence.


Far less so that biology, and look how that has evolved. We know for a fact that increase in intelligence is possible. Mankind's evolution has shown that we we evolved from more primitive animals with less intelligence, so we know we we didn't always have the brains we currently do.

That said, if we were different (less intelligent) in the past then surely we can be different (more intelligent) in the future? Surely you aren't saying we have reached the pinnacle of intelligence?

While intelligence increases via natural selection are on geological time-scales we are on the cusp of a new age of technology taking over from biological evolution so have the possibility of greatly accelerating the evolution process.

I appreciate this is transhumanist speculation but it certainly can't be ruled out and is actually highly likely in at least some respect. We just don't know what it will mean for the future of mankind.



> How would that change anything even if true? I still know that I'm a thinking, feeling, experiential subject.


It wouldn't really, it was just an outside note that it might just be an illusion and almost nothing can be 100% certain.


----------



## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> It wouldn't really, it was just an outside note that it might just be an illusion and almost nothing can be 100% certain.


I think the most insightful statement that anybody ever stated and is known with 100% certainty is, in my opinion, Descarte's: "I think, I exist". From there on, nothing is 100 % certain so I agree with you.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I think the most insightful statement that anybody ever stated and is known with 100% certainty is, in my opinion, Descarte's: "I think, I exist". From there on, nothing is 100 % certain so I agree with you.


You are right. Even if you are a simulation I'd say as an entity that is definitely self aware then you have a right to say you "exist", even if what existence actually is isn't set.

Sorry I kind of derailed things by talking about the simulation hypothesis.

Thanks for starting these threads by the way Kon. Very interesting and I love discussing these topics with people such as yourself.


----------



## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> Thanks for starting these threads by the way Kon. Very interesting and I love discussing these topics with people such as yourself.


I'm obsessed about these 2 topics. I started similar threads on the physics forum but the threads became too long and eventually got locked. Nobody I know around me has any interest in these questions, whatsoever. I try to bring it up and they shut me out/don't listen or get angry at me. They think I should concern myself with more important practical questions like finding more work, paying bills, mortgages, etc. So the internet is my only outlet. That and the journal articles I read. I cannot understand how someone cannot be interested in these 2 questions.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I'm obsessed about these 2 topics. I started similar threads on the physics forum but the threads became too long and eventually got locked. Nobody I know around me has any interest in these questions, whatsoever. I try to bring it up and they shut me out/don't listen or get angry at me. They think I should concern myself with more important practical questions like finding more work, paying bills, mortgages, etc. So the internet is my only outlet. That and the journal articles I read. I cannot understand how someone cannot be interested in these 2 questions.


Indeed. You are in a similar position to me in that I don't have anyone to talk to about these topics on anywhere near the level I want to.

I find them both fascinating and challenging, which is very rewarding as I love to further develop my understanding and knowledge.

I can appreciate they are challenging topics so they don't have mainstream appeal. Most people don't like to give themselves more work but hey, I love it.


----------



## Kon

I think one of the most interesting ideas I've ever come across on the topic of the relationship between mind/consciousness and matter (as we typically understand it to be e.g. spatial/temporal) is the following suggestion by McGinn:


> How do conscious events cause physical changes in the body? Not by proximate contact, apparently, on pain of over-spatialising consciousness, and presumably not by action-at-a-distance either. Recent philosophy has become accustomed to the idea of mental causation, but this is actually much more mysterious than is generally appreciated, once the non-spatial character of consciousness is acknowledged. To put it differently, we understand mental causation only if we deny the intuition of non-spatiality. The standard analogy with physical unobservables simply dodges these hard questions, lulling us into a false sense of intelligibility....
> 
> *Conscious phenomena are not located and extended in the usual way; but then again they are surely not somehow 'outside' of space, adjacent perhaps to the abstract realm.* *Rather, they bear an opaque and anomalous relation to space, as space is currently conceived. They seem neither quite 'in' it nor quite 'out' of it.* Presumably, however, this is merely an epistemological fact, not an ontological one. It is just that we lack the theory with which to make sense of the relation in question. *In themselves consciousness and space must be related in some intelligible naturalistic fashion, though they may have to be conceived very differently from the way they now are for this to become apparent.* My conjecture is that it is in this nexus that the solution to the space problem lies. Consciousness is the next big anomaly to call for a revision in how we conceive space-just as other revisions were called for by earlier anomalies. And the revision is likely to be large-scale, despite the confinement of consciousness to certain small pockets of the natural world. This is because space is such a fundamental feature of things that anything that produces disturbances in our conception of it must cut pretty deeply into our world-view....That is the region in which our ignorance is focused: not in the details of neurophysiological activity but, more fundamentally, in how space is structured or constituted. That which we refer to when we use the word 'space' has a nature that is quite different from how we standardly conceive it to be; so different, indeed, that it is capable of 'containing' the non-spatial (as we now conceive it) phenomenon of consciousness.


*Consciousness and Space*
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness97/papers/ConsciousnessSpace.html

What is kind of interesting is that there is kind of analogous problem in Quantum mechanics with respect to the relationship between the wave function evolving in a possibly infinite-dimensional space (configuration space) and how this relates to macroscopic stuff we are familiar with (e.g. particles/fields evolving in 3-dimensional space of 4-dimensionsal space-time): 


> A second point is that for a multi-particle system the wave function (q) = (q1 ,..., qN ) is not a weird field on physical space, its a weird field on configuration space, the set of all hypothetical configurations of the system. For a system of more than one particle that space is not physical space. What kind of thing is this field on that space?





> I have nothing definitive to say about this ontology, other than that it strikes me as strange. We have two disconnected spaces, with presumably no causal connection between the particles in the one space and the field in the other space, and yet the stuff in the two spaces is evolving in tandem. Presumably there is a nomic connection between the stuff in the two spaces, which supports counterfactuals of the following form: if the stuff in one space had evolved differently, the stuff in the other space would have evolved differently. But having that nomic connection without a causal connection makes it all the more mysterious how these spaces are associated with each other.


*Reality and the Role of the Wavefunction in **Quantum Theory*
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/8470/1/rrwf01.pdf​
*Life in configuration space*
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1272/

*Quantum Mechanics and 3 **N Dimensional **Space*
http://spot.colorado.edu/~monton/BradleyMonton/Articles_files/qm%203n%20d%20space%20final.pdf​​​


----------



## Kon

McGinn writes:


> Conscious phenomena are not located and extended in the usual way; but then again they are surely *not* somehow 'outside' of space, adjacent perhaps to the abstract realm. Rather, they bear an opaque and anomalous relation to space, as space is currently conceived. They seem neither quite 'in' it nor quite 'out' of it. Presumably, however, this is merely an epistemological fact, not an ontological one. It is just that we lack the theory with which to make sense of the relation in question.


I'm not sure about McGinn's argument on this point, but I find it interesting that _entanglement_ seen between microscopic systems in QM does seem to provide a kind of _"hidden" signal that is 'outside' space. _Whether it suggests/hints of a fundamental property of matter that may allow us one day to mesh together consciousness with what we presently call "matter" is pretty interesting. Some interesting quotes:


> The remaining option is to accept that influences must be infinitely fast-or that there exists some process that has an equivalent effect when viewed in our spacetime. The current test couldn't distinguish. Either way, it would mean that the Universe is fundamentally nonlocal, in the sense that every bit of the Universe can be connected to any other bit anywhere, instantly. That such connections are possible defies our everyday intuition and represents another extreme solution, but arguably preferable to faster-than-light communication. "*Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime*, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them," says Nicolas Gisin, Professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and member of the team.


*Looking Beyond Space and Time to Cope With Quantum Theory*
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121028142217.htm


> If so, whatever causes entanglement does not travel from one place to the other; the category of "place" simply isn't meaningful to it. *It might be said to lie *beyond* spacetime.* Two particles that are half a world apart are, in some deeper sense, right on top of each other. If some level of reality underlies quantum mechanics, that level must be non-spatial.


*How Quantum Entanglement Transcends Space and Time*
http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/994?search=1


> To put the tension in other words: no story in space-time can tell us how nonlocal correlations happen, *hence nonlocal quantum correlations seem to emerge, somehow, from outside space-time.*


*Quantum nonlocality: How does Nature perform the trick?*
http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/0912.1475.pdf



> In other terms, it is about accepting that, quoting here Aerts, space would only be...a momentaneous crystallization of a theatre for reality where the motions and interactions of the macroscopic material and energetic entities take place. But other entities-*like quantum entities for example-`take place' outside space, or - and this would be another way of saying the same thing-within a space that is not the three dimensional Euclidean space."* If we accept the idea that non-locality is actually an expression of non-spatiality, then of course there are no conceptual problems in considering that two non-spatial microscopic entities could remain, as time passes by, intimately connected (not "through space" but, more generally ,"through reality"!), and that it would be their non-spatial connection the responsible for the creation of correlations that violate Bell's inequality.


​​​​*Quantum dice*​http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/1301.3038.pdf


----------



## whattothink

Kon said:


> McGinn writes:
> 
> I'm not sure about McGinn's argument on this point, but I find it interesting that _entanglement_ seen between microscopic systems in QM does seem to be provide a kind of _"hidden" signal that is 'outside' space. _Whether it suggests/hints of a fundamental property of matter that may allow us one day to mesh together consciousness with what we presently call "matter" is pretty interesting. Some interesting quotes:
> 
> *Looking Beyond Space and Time to Cope With Quantum Theory*
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121028142217.htm
> 
> *How Quantum Entanglement Transcends Space and Time*
> http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/994?search=1
> 
> *Quantum nonlocality: How does Nature perform the trick?*
> http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/0912.1475.pdf
> 
> *Quantum dice*​http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/1301.3038.pdf


Very interesting stuff, Kon. I appreciate your openness to all possibilities of truth regardless of where it takes us. Some people reject these ideas at face-value simply because it is too substantial a shift from the norm.

There's a professor named Stuart Hameroff who collaberated with Roger Penrose on studying the links between consciousness and QM with very interesting results and theory.

He essentially proposes that consciousness, or the precursor to consciousness, is a fundamental property of the universe and originates at the most fundamental level of reality, the Planck scale, in the same way that matter does. He goes on to explain how objective reduction in the microtubules of our neurons creates a solitary conscious event (or qualia), and that through all of these solitary conscious events in all of the microtubules of our brain, a stream of consciousness is created.

The implications of this open up a world of possibilities, linking philosophy with science, and it may give credence to universal consciousness and enlightenment/mysticism.


----------



## Kon

I've read some of Penrose's stuff and I agree with him that certain properties of cognitive systems, like consciousness are fundamentally unsimulable/uncomputable. With respect to this:


whattothink said:


> He essentially proposes that consciousness, or the *precursor to consciousness, is a fundamental property of the universe* and originates at the most fundamental level of reality, the Planck scale, in the same way that matter does.


This is what is confusing to me. Even if non-locality is a necesssary prerequisite at the micro-level to allow for the mental/consciousness to emerge at certain macroscopic structures like ourselves, is that sufficient? It doesn't seem to be enough, contrary to McGinn's argument. And if it's not enough, how would we ever recognize what a microscopic precursor for consciousness would look like analogous to how we can recognize/understand how individual water molecules at the microlevel relate to liquidity at the macrolevel?

In many ways, this is the heart of the problem, for me. How do you know when you've come across this "rudimentary mentality or precursor to consciousnness" at the micro-level? I mean what kind of "behaviour" would more fundamental stuff (e.g. electrons, etc.) need to display for us so we get that "aha" feeling like: "Oh, well...now it's obvious how consciousness/experientiality/qualia can emerge from this basic stuff". I still can't see how this is possible via future revisions of physics as per Nagel's argument because ultimately any such property will likely have to be some mathematical description and I don't see how such a mathematical object can give us that "aha" feeling. I believe Chalmers makes this point when he argues:


> Of course it would be very desirable to form a positive conception of protophenomenal properties. Perhaps we can do this indirectly, by some sort of theoretical inference from the character of phenomenal properties to their underlying constituents.


I think that's a really good proposal but what are some of those protophenomenal conceptions that we can infer from the character of phenomenal properties? Non-locality/non-spatiality seems like one but it's not enough, in my opinion.


----------



## Kon

I think another interesting comment from Chomsky who doesn't see a problem with so-called '_brute emergence'_ is the following quote:


> It should be noted that the molecule-water example, commonly used, is not a very telling one. We also cannot conceive of a liquid turnng into two gases by electrolysis, and there is no intuitive sense in which the properties of water, bases, and acids inhere in Hydrogen or Oxygen or other atoms. Furthermore, the whole matter of conceivability seems to be irrelevant, whether it is brought up in connection with the effects of motion that Newton or Locke found inconceivable, or the irreducible principles of chemistry, or the mind-brain relations. There is something about the nature of Hydrogen and Oxygen "in virtue of which they are intrinsically suited to constituting water", so the sciences discovered after long labors, providing reasons "in the nature of things why the emerging thing is as it is." What seemed "brute emergence" was assimilated into science of ordinary emergence-not, to be sure, of the liquidity variety, relying on conceivability.* I see no strong reason why matters should necessarily be different in the case of experiential and nonexperiential reality, particularly our ignorance of the latter*, stressed from Newton and Locke to Priestly, developed by Russell, and arising again in recent discussion.


*Mysteries of Nature: How Deeply Hidden?*
http://www.pdcnet.org/collection/show?id=jphil_2009_0106_0004_0167_0200&file_type=pdf

But again, while this is a reasonable argument, there's still a difference between consciousness/the experiential that seems to force Chomsky to make the following comment:


> The new version of the mind-body problem resurrects some observations of Bertrand Russell's 80 years ago, and recently reinvented. Russell asked us to consider a blind physicist who knows all of physics but doesn't know something we know: what it's like to see the color blue. *Russell's conclusion was that the natural sciences seek to discover "the causal skeleton of the world." Other aspects of the world of experience lie beyond their reach.* Recasting Russell's insight in naturalistic terms, we might say that like all animals, our internal cognitive capacities reflexively provide us with a world of experience, largely shared in fundamental properties - the human Umwelt, to borrow the term of ethologists. But being reflective creatures, thanks to emergence of the human capacity, we go on to seek to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena of experience. These exercises are called myth, or magic, or philosophy, or "science" in the sense of that term proposed in the 19th century, distinguishing the pursuit from the rest of philosophy. If humans are part of the organic world, we expect that our capacities of understanding and explanation have fixed scope and limits, like any other natural object, a truism that is sometimes thoughtlessly derided as "mysterianism."* It could be that these innate capacities do not lead us beyond some understanding of Russell's causal skeleton of the world - including the principles that enter into determining conscious experience; there is of course no reason to expect that these are even in principle accessible to consciousness.* It is always an open question how much of Russell's "causal skeleton of the world" can be attained. These could become topics of empirical inquiry into the nature of what we might call "the science-forming faculty," another "mental organ." These are interesting topics, in principle part of normal science, and now the topic of some investigation. They should not be confused with the traditional mind-body problem, which evaporated after Newton.


*Biolinguistic Explorations: design, development, evolution*
https://www.law.georgetown.edu/facu...d/Noam_Chomsky_Biolinguistic_Explorations.pdf

So, it seems Chomsky in this fairly recent paper seems to be taking a positon similar to McGinn and Nagel; that is, we might never have the answer.


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## StevenB

I find it useful to think of consciousness as arising from a kind of whirlwind going on in our cortex. Much like one in the atmosphere, there are currents coming in from the various senses nudging the locus of the eddie here and there. This locus is the centre of our attention. This model has various useful properties - the locus can be wide or narrow and have strengths from whirlwind to tornado - from focused attention to daydreaming (and even sleep?). With an intact corpus callosum part of the whirlwind would be across both halves of the cerebrum, but at times it may move entirely into one side. With a severed corpus callosum there would be two independent whirlwinds. The butterfly effect makes it as unpredictable as the weather - a slight movement in the visual field over here drags the locus of the storm slightly in that direction, and it feeds back - if its important it will link into other senses to do with that movement. One whirlwind is the unity of our consciousness. It is far too complex to predict, except in outline, much like the weather. So we see ourselves as having free-will from an internal point of view, because we "are" the whirlwind.

This maybe a useful way of thinking about the problem of consciousness but I don't think it can explain it.

Understanding of how something works, or some property relies on three viewpoints.
(1) An overall (whole) view of the object or process concerned - ex the wetness of water; the French revolution  
(2) A reduced level of some of the parts and processes - ex - interaction of molecules, socioeconomic situation in France at the time,
(3) We view both from our own conscious level - we stand back from both levels. Like Penrose
says understanding involves awareness. 

Now when we try to understand our own consciousness we strike a problem. I cannot "see" anyone else's consciousness directly - I can only infer it. I have only one direct view of consciousness - my own. In trying to understand what gives rise to consciousness, one doesn't want to know what makes a person "appear" conscious; one wants to know what gives rise to the actual phenomena - I must therefore put my own personal consciousness on the stage. But I cannot do this. I cannot stand outside my own consciousness and look at it and its workings. The best I can manage is some reflections on myself, but then I am looking at myself in some detached way, that is not much better than observing someone else's inferred consciousness. We cannot consciously observe our own consciousness as a whole. Therefore how consciousness arises from a mechanical mind is beyond comprehension, and so appears as emergent.


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## ugh1979

StevenB said:


> I find it useful to think of consciousness as arising from a kind of whirlwind going on in our cortex. Much like one in the atmosphere, there are currents coming in from the various senses nudging the locus of the eddie here and there. This locus is the centre of our attention. This model has various useful properties - the locus can be wide or narrow and have strengths from whirlwind to tornado - from focused attention to daydreaming (and even sleep?). With an intact corpus callosum part of the whirlwind would be across both halves of the cerebrum, but at times it may move entirely into one side. With a severed corpus callosum there would be two independent whirlwinds. The butterfly effect makes it as unpredictable as the weather - a slight movement in the visual field over here drags the locus of the storm slightly in that direction, and it feeds back - if its important it will link into other senses to do with that movement. One whirlwind is the unity of our consciousness. It is far too complex to predict, except in outline, much like the weather. So we see ourselves as having free-will from an internal point of view, because we "are" the whirlwind.
> 
> This maybe a useful way of thinking about the problem of consciousness but I don't think it can explain it.


Interesting analogies.


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## Kon

> Originally Posted by *StevenB*
> Therefore how consciousness arises from a *mechanical mind* is beyond comprehension, and so appears as emergent.


Why do you make this assumption that the mind is _mechanical_ (machine-like)_?_ In fact, it's clear that even "the physical" is not mechanical (machine-like). Witness the counter-intuitive/non-mechanical aspects of our most fumdamental theory (e.g. quantum mechanics-non-locality, entanglement, etc.). Unless you mean something else by mechanical? Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you seem to be suggesting that we know enough about the mind and/or non-experiential stuff (e.g. 'the physical') that it is not intrinsically suitable to accomodate consciousness/the experiential. Others (Stoljar) argue that this is a mistake. Personally, I tend to believe that the issue will remain forever unresolved and probably because of cognitive limitations; that is, the problem is epistemiological in nature due to us. And actually this sounds a bit like what you are suggesting, I think:


> Conceptually, it is worth distinguishing two versions of mysterianism, one ontological and one epistemological. The former would hold that consciousness is mysterious in and of itself. The latter is the more modest claim that the mystery does not lie in consciousness itself, but rather flows from certain constitutional limitations of the human intellect... Introspection is our only channel to the properties of consciousness, but it does not afford us any access to the properties of the brain. Sensory perception is our only channel to the properties of the brain, but it does not afford us any access to the properties of consciousness. There is no third channel that affords us access to both consciousness and the brain. Therefore, our concept-producing mechanisms cannot in principle produce a concept for the connection between consciousness and the brain. Consequently, our knowledge of consciousness and our knowledge of the brain are doomed to be insulated from one another. More specifically, we can have no knowledge of the manner by which the brain produces or yields consciousness. The connection between the two is necessarily opaque to us. Therefore, we cannot possibly grasp the solution to the problem of consciousness.


*Mysterianism*
http://uriahkriegel.com/downloads/frankthetank.pdf

Stoljar and others also point out that the limitation is epistemological in nature by arguing that we lack knowledge/are ignorant of the intrinsic properties of nature (e.g. physics only deals with extrinsic/relational properties of matter) but it is these properties that we would need to know in order to understand how stuff like subjectivity/consciousness can emerge from "matter".

*Introduction to Ignorance and Imagination *
http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/people/I&I.Intro.pdf

Despite these beliefs I think McGinn is on the right track when he says:


> The heart of the view, put simply, is this: the brain cannot have merely the spatial properties recognised in current physical science, since these are insufficient to explain what it can achieve, namely the generation of consciousness. The brain must have aspects that are not represented in our current physical world-view, aspects we deeply do not understand, in addition to all those neurons and electro-chemical processes. There is, on this view, a radical incompleteness in our view of reality, including physical reality. In order to provide an explanation of the emergence of consciousness we would need a conceptual revolution, in which fundamentally new properties and principles are identified. This may involve merely supplementing our current theories with new elements, so that we need not abandon what we now believe; or it may be - as I think more likely - that some profound revisions are required, some repudiation of current theory. Consciousness is an anomaly in our present world- view, and like all anomalies it calls for some rectification in that relative to which it is anomalous, more or less drastic. Some ideal theory T contains the solution to the space problem, but arriving at T would require some major upheavals in our basic conception of reality.


*Consciousness and Space*
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness97/papers/ConsciousnessSpace.html


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## StevenB

Kon,
quantum mechanics-non-locality, entanglement, is all considered mechanics by physicists.
The rest of your reply is pretty much what i was trying to say. I consider myself an epistemological mysterian. Do you have any thoughts on Friedrich Hayek view of the mind explaining itself as a logical contradiction in a Godel incompletness sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_closure_(philosophy)


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## Kon

StevenB said:


> quantum mechanics-non-locality, entanglement, is all considered mechanics by physicists. The rest of your reply is pretty much what i was trying to say. I consider myself an epistemological mysterian. Do you have any thoughts on Friedrich Hayek view of the mind explaining itself as a logical contradiction in a Godel incompletness sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_closure_%28philosophy%29


Sure, it's all part of quantum _mechanics_ but it's anything but _"mechanical"_ in the classical sense of the term (e.g. local causality, etc). Unless one is willing to accept superdeterminism, which would kind of make science a moot exercise, Bell-Kochen-Specker theorems kind of force us to adopt either: _Non-locality or Anti-realism or both_. This non-classical or non-mechanical picture forced upon us, applies even to the most "classical-like" interpretation of Quantum mechanics (e.g. Bohmian mechanics) of which I'm quite familiar with:



> The choice of the term "Bohmian mechanics" is rather unfortunate because Bohm himself did not think the quantum formalism suggested a _mechanistic _interpretation. In his classic book _Quantum Theory_, Bohm wrote under the section entitled 'The Need for a Nonmechanical Description' "This means that the term _quantum mechanics _is very much a misnomer. It should, perhaps, be called _quantum nonmechanics_" (Bohm 1951b). The appearance of his later paper (Bohm 1952) did not change his position on this point. This can be clearly seen in his book _Causality and Chance _where he gave many arguments against adopting a _mechanistic _outlook in physics.


*From the Heisenberg Picture to Bohm: a New Perspective on **Active Information and its relation to Shannon Information.*
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/tpru/BasilHiley/Vexjo2001W.pdf​
I'm not sure I fully understand Hayek's specific argument. I know Penrose felt that Godel's incompleteness theorem argues against computational models of the mind and more specifically against any account of mathematical thought in computational terms. Penrose also argued that there must be a scientific account of consciousness but that would require a (yet to be found) non-computational extension or modification of present-day quantum physics. If Hayek's position goes against this possibility then I think I agree with that. This assumes that I understand Penrose's argument. I might not be understanding Penrose, but, I can't see how any extension/modification of QM, computational, non-computational or otherwise can possibly shed light on qualia/consciousness? ​


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## StevenB

Kon,
OK so perhaps mechanical was the wrong word. Lets say how consciousness arises from a mechanical mind is beyond comprehension, and so appears as emergent.


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## Kon

StevenB said:


> OK so perhaps mechanical was the wrong word. Lets say how consciousness arises from a *mechanical mind* is beyond comprehension, and so appears as emergent.


I still don't understand why you refer to the mind as "mechanical". Some refer the brain as "mechanical" but not the mind. Above, I tried to argue that even this notion of a "mechanical brain" or "mechanical matter" is ill-conceived because the stuff that all matter is made of, including our brain, appears to defy what we normally consider to be "mechanical". Why? Because the brain itself is composed of neurons which are composed of more fundamental stuff (molecules, atoms, etc.) but at the bottom or most fundamental level we still don't know what this stuff we call "matter" really is. And our most recent theory of matter in physics (e.g. QM) seems to call into question this idea of "mechanical" matter. And nobody knows what a future physics will say.

I agree with you that we have no clue how mind/consciousness emerges from the brain/matter and I also think (like you) that this will always be the case even with future revision of physics (as Nagel/McGinn argue) because unlike other types of emergence, qualia/consciousness/mind cannot be directly "seen"/measured as it is a first-person or private phenomena. We all know it exists, every time we think but I can't see how a future physics will ever allow us to "measure"/"see" others' thoughts, whether they be us or another conscious/mental life form (some other animal).


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I still don't understand why you refer to the mind as "mechanical". Some refer the brain as "mechanical" but not the mind. Above, I tried to argue that even this notion of a "mechanical brain" or "mechanical matter" is ill-conceived because the stuff that all matter is made of, including our brain, appears to defy what we normally consider to be "mechanical". Why? Because the brain itself is composed of neurons which are composed of more fundamental stuff (molecules, atoms, etc.) but at the bottom or most fundamental level we still don't know what this stuff we call "matter" really is. And our most recent theory of matter in physics (e.g. QM) seems to call into question this idea of "mechanical" matter. And nobody knows what a future physics will say.
> 
> I agree with you that we have no clue how mind/consciousness emerges from the brain/matter and I also think (like you) that this will always be the case even with future revision of physics (as Nagel/McGinn argue) because unlike other types of emergence, qualia/consciousness/mind cannot be directly "seen"/measured as it is a first-person or private phenomena. We all know it exists, every time we think but I can't see how a future physics will ever be allow us to "measure"/"see" others' thoughts, whether they be us or another conscious/mental life form (some other animal).


Future physics/tech could potentially create intelligent life that was capable of experiencing qualia/consciousness. It could be that this sentient "artificial" life could transmit the qualia to us via some as yet undeveloped human brain interface. Or give an action by action reason for the whole thought process that we can physically model on a software brain that we can examine in great detail. They are already being worked on as we've discussed in another thread.

If you stimulate the same senses in exactly the same way in two very similar intelligent life forms they are going to experience very similar thoughts about much of it.

Now you could always argue that maybe only you are truly concious and everyone else, biological and artificial are just illusions to make you think they are the same as you, but that's getting a bit too out there!


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> Future physics/tech could potentially create intelligent life that was capable of experiencing qualia/consciousness.


I just can't see how you can create something like consciousness given that we know next to nothing about it. I have more faith in answering the "why anything" question than finding a solution to the "hard problem", primarily because some progress has arguably been made in the former but zero progress in the latter and intelligent people have been banging their heads trying to answer it for over 2000 years. But I suppose if we were capable of creating life (intelligent or otherwise) then it seems reasonable to think that they would have qualia/consciousness/an experiential life, I think.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I just can't see how you can create something like consciousness given that we know next to nothing about it. I have more faith in answering the "why anything" question than finding a solution to the "hard problem", primarily because some progress has arguably been made in the former but zero progress in the latter and intelligent people have been banging their heads trying to answer it for over 2000 years.


Just because we don't have an answer today doesn't mean one won't come tomorrow. 



> But I suppose if we were capable of creating life (intelligent or otherwise) then it seems reasonable to think that they would have qualia/consciousness/an experiential life, I think.


Exactly!

It's true we don't yet know how consciousness arises but there is more work being done all the time to establish that along with many of the currently mysterious deep workings of the brain.

As we build more and more complex brains we will surely IMO start to see flickers of conciousness which left to develop in the right circumstances could become fully fledged self aware beings in their own right.

Maybe all truly successful life in the universe managed to evolve past this biological stage? I see this as being a currently relatively weak vulnerable stage, one which is entirely unsuitable for surviving anywhere in the universe but for any but a few climates.

We are still highly vulnerable to extinction while we are all stuck on this planet. However we know that no life stays static like inanimate matter and doesn't explore it's surroundings. The drive to explore and expand is hard coded in our nature and we will always wonder and imagine what's over the horizon.


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> Maybe all truly *successful* life in the universe managed to evolve past this biological stage? I see this as being a currently relatively weak vulnerable stage, one which is entirely unsuitable for surviving anywhere in the universe but for any but a few climates.


I think that's not a good argument. One shouldn't equate success with intelligent life forms. If by success one means reproductive success, etc. bacteria can go from 1 to 7 billion in a matter of days. Bacteria have been far more "successful" than all other larger, more complex species many of whom have gone extinct as the biologist Mayr wrote:


> They were debating the possibility of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. And *Sagan, speaking from the point of view of an astrophysicist*, pointed out that there are innumerable planets just like ours. There is no reason they shouldn't have developed intelligent life. *Mayr, from the point of view of a biologist*, argued that it's very unlikely that we'll find any. And his reason was, he said, we have exactly one example: Earth. So let's take a look at Earth. And what he basically argued is that intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation. And he had a good argument. *He pointed out that if you take a look at biological success, which is essentially measured by how many of us are there, the organisms that do quite well are those that mutate very quickly, like bacteria, or those that are stuck in a fixed ecological niche, like beetles. They do fine. And they may survive the environmental crisis. But as you go up the scale of what we call intelligence, they are less and less successful. By the time you get to mammals, there are very few of them as compared with, say, insects. *By the time you get to humans, the origin of humans may be 100,000 years ago, there is a very small group. We are kind of misled now because there are a lot of humans around, but that's a matter of a few thousand years, which is meaningless from an evolutionary point of view. *His argument was, you're just not going to find intelligent life elsewhere, and you probably won't find it here for very long either because it's just a lethal mutation.* He also added, a little bit ominously, that the average life span of a species, of the billions that have existed, is about 100,000 years, which is roughly the length of time that modern humans have existed.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I think that's not a good argument. One shouldn't equate success with intelligent life forms. If by success one means reproductive success, etc. bacteria can go from 1 to 7 billion in a matter of days. Bacteria have been far more "successful" than all other larger, more complex species many of whom have gone extinct as the biologist Mayr wrote:


I'm not dismissing non or very low intelligent life which can succeed in many places that are completely inhospitable to us and be a roaring success in their own right.

I'm talking about advanced life like ours.


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## Kon

This is an interesting paper that tries to argue against McGinn's claim that consciousness is a non-spatial phenomenon:



> McGinn asserts that, even though consciousness has a spatial-physical foundation, consciousness is not necessarily spatial. Our knowledge of physical reality, our knowledge about spatial-physical properties and entities, is not sufficient to explain consciousness. Therefore, there must be some hidden nonspatial features that contribute to determining consciousness. The unobservability or unperceivability of consciousness constitutes an important premise in McGinn's argument for consciousness' nonspatiality.



Gundersen then tries to argue that the_ unobservability_ of consciousness does not imply nonspatiality by discussing QM:



> The second premise in McGinn's argument-the conditional that states that a phenomenon is spatial only if it can be observed-is problematic because we are not entitled to pass from the statement that a phenomenon is 'invisible' or unobservable to the conclusion that it is nonspatial. This is an invalid inference, because not being perceptible does not entail nonspatiality, as illustrated by Quantum Mechanics...


​


> According to the most common interpretation, Quantum Mechanics supplies complete information regarding the particle's pre-measurement state, and in its pre-measurement state the particle is without a definite position. This pre-measurement state is called a 'superposition' and implies that the particle is both inside and outside the region at the same time. Even though we cannot observe a particle in its superpositioned state, the particle in this state is nonetheless a spatial phenomenon, because it is described by the Schrödinger equation (the wave-function), which refers to spatial coordinates. The moment we measure the particle's position, the wave-function will collapse and then the particle will have a definite position. Since a particle's super-positioned state is a spatial phenomenon that cannot be observed, the second premise is thrown into question. Unobservability and nonspatiality are not co-extensional.​


​​​​​​​​​​​​*Is Consciousness a **Nonspatial Phenomenon?*
http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_9/gundersen_june2011.pdf​


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> This is an interesting paper that tries to argue against McGinn's claim that consciousness is a non-spatial phenomenon:
> 
> Gundersen then tries to argue that the_ unobservability_ of consciousness does not imply nonspatiality by discussing QM:
> 
> ​*Is Consciousness a **Nonspatial Phenomenon?*
> http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_9/gundersen_june2011.pdf​


That makes sense to me and certainly fits with my current view of the question.


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> That makes sense to me and certainly fits with my current view of the question.


I don't agree with the author because non-locality or anti-realism is a necessary feature of QM. A single measurement cannot measure the wave function. Only a large number of measurements on an ensemble of equally prepared systems can determine the wave function of the system. Think about the double slit experiment. And not many physicists take the collapse of the wave function as a real process, so in a sense both the fundamental stuff describing the world of "matter" and mind don't appear to be localized in space-time, although on a large scale the classical world of everyday somehow emerges. How it emerges, nobody knows as there are many different interpretations, etc.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I don't agree with the author because non-locality or anti-realism is a necessary feature of QM. A single measurement cannot measure the wave function. Only a large number of measurements on an ensemble of equally prepared systems can determine the wave function of the system. Think about the double slit experiment. And not many physicists take the collapse of the wave function as a real process, so in a sense both the fundamental stuff describing the world of "matter" and mind don't appear to be localized in space-time, although on a large scale the classical world of everyday somehow emerges. How it emerges, nobody knows as there are many different interpretations, etc.


The trouble with QM is that it can kind of be both (as per a general consensus of our current numerous interpretations). I'm simply just lean towards Gundersen's explanation as detailed in your extracts above where as you lean towards McGinn's.

It's just the currently perplexing nature of it with often no clear right or wrong.


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> The trouble with QM is that it can kind of be *both* (as per a general consensus of our current numerous interpretations).


What do you mean by "both"?


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> What do you mean by "both"?


Sorry I should have been clearer as to what I was referring to. I'm talking about the question of non-locality/locality.

I know you lean more towards absolute non-locality but for me they are simply two sides of the same coin. The apparent result just depends on how you flip it.


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> Sorry I should have been clearer as to what I was referring to. I'm talking about the question of non-locality/locality. I know you lean more towards absolute non-locality but for me they are simply two sides of the same coin. The apparent result just depends on how you flip it.


I don't understand what you mean. If one adopts "realism" (e.g. quantum objects have pre-existing properties), Bell's theorem rules out "local causality" so nature is non-local. In fact, some physicists argue that non-locality is implied from Bell's stuff irrespective of realism, etc. The only other option is some conspiracy like "super-determinism" but hardly anyone takes that option seriously. So there seems to be only 2 major options:

1. Nature is non-local
2. Non-realism (e.g. quantum values/measurements do not pre-exist)

Either way, I think both are incompatible with Gundersen's argument. As an aside, I started a poll on the physics forum on that question and one of the physicists on that thread is Travis Norsen (who is poster _ttn_) who argues/has argued (convincingly, in my opinion) that Bell's theorem rules out _any_ local theory, so nature is non-local. Interestingly, this was also Bell's position (the physicist who actually came up with the inequality). Of course, many (most) physicists choose non-realism, but I still don't think that helps Gundersen's argument, because collapse isn't considered a "real" process. Moreover, even from an orthodox interpretation:


> ...the fact that after a measurement, the position probability distribution is peaked over a sharp value doesn't mean that the particle has suddenly aquired the real physical property of having a definite position, albeit it didn't have it one moment before. It merely means that we have come to know more about the probability distribution itself then we did before. The same thing applies to spin. An individual measurement tells us nothing about nature. Only the totality of many measurements allows us to make a statement about the world.


Moreover, unlike quantum objects/systems, we never observe consciousness (except our own), so I don't follow Gundersen's argument. Anyway, if you have some basic background/interest in physics (e.g. undergraduate QM course) or philosophy of physics, you might find the discussion/debate interesting:

*What do violations of Bell's inequalities tell us about nature?*
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=670856


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I don't understand what you mean. If one adopts "realism" (e.g. quantum objects have pre-existing properties), Bell's theorem rules out "local causality" so nature is non-local. In fact, some physicists argue that non-locality is implied from Bell's stuff irrespective of realism, etc. The only other option is some conspiracy like "super-determinism" but hardly anyone takes that option seriously. So there seems to be only 2 major options:
> 
> 1. Nature is non-local
> 2. Non-realism (e.g. quantum values/measurements do not pre-exist)
> 
> Either way, I think both are incompatible with Gundersen's argument. As an aside, I started a poll on the physics forum on that question and one of the physicists on that thread is Travis Norsen (who is poster _ttn_) who argues/has argued (convincingly, in my opinion) that Bell's theorem rules out _any_ local theory, so nature is non-local. Interestingly, this was also Bell's position (the physicist who actually came up with the inequality). Of course, many (most) physicists choose non-realism, but I still don't think that helps Gundersen's argument, because collapse isn't considered a "real" process. Moreover, unlike quantum objects/systems, we never observe consciousness (except our own), so I don't follow Gundersen's argument.


For me it really hinges around what is and isn't considered "real". It can be such a dificult question that I flip flop between answers. There are things I alternatively consider to be "real" or not depending on the context i'm thinking about them in. When I think about it in some ways I agree with you. However, while the nature of QM might not be local, I think there are arguments for saying the macroscopic material universe we do observe is "real" and local, even though the QM processes that triggered their existence aren't local. Non-realism giving rise to realism and non-locality giving rise to locality.

It is of course a very grey area which i'm frequently revising my thoughts on but these are the ideas i'm inclined to favour at this point in time.



> Anyway, if you have some basic background/interest in physics (e.g. undergraduate QM course) or philosophy of physics, you might find the discussion/debate interesting:
> 
> *What do violations of Bell's inequalities tell us about nature?*
> http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=670856


Thanks.


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> It is of course a very grey area which i'm frequently revising my thoughts on but these are the ideas i'm inclined to favour at this point in time.


It doesn't help that physicists themselves are confused/can't agree. But as of now I'm convinced that violation of Bell's inequality has nothing to do with "realism". So irrespective of the realism issue, I think violation of Bell's inequality shows us that nature is non-local (realistic or otherwise). I recommend reading Norsen's papers on the topic or his posts I linked above. He provides some pretty powerful arguments suggesting that violation of Bell's inequality suggests that nature is non-local:


> Since all the crucial aspects of Bell's formulation of locality are thus meaningful only relative to some candidate theory, it is perhaps puzzling how Bell thought we could say anything about the locally causal character of Nature. Wouldn't the locality condition only allow us to assess the local character of candidate theories? How then did Bell think we could end up saying something interesting about Nature?...That is precisely the beauty of Bell's theorem, which shows that no theory respecting the locality condition (no matter what other properties it may or may not have - e.g., hidden variables or only the non-hidden sort, deterministic or stochastic, particles or fields or both or neither, etc.) can agree with the empirically-verified QM predictions for certain types of experiment. That is (and leaving aside the various experimental loopholes), no locally causal theory in Bell's sense can agree with experiment, can be empirically viable, can be true. Which means the true theory (whatever it might be) necessarily violates Bell's locality condition. Nature is *not* locally causal.


*Local Causality and Completeness: Bell **vs. Jarrett*
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0808.2178.pdf

*J.S. Bell's Concept of Local Causality*
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.0401.pdf

Why nature appears local on the macroscopic level is another issue.


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## Kon

Here are some interesting summary points on why the mind-body problem is so difficult:

Science only reveals the causal / relational properties of physical objects, and that "we know next to nothing about the intrinsic nature of the world. We know only its causal/relational nature." (Russell) 
While physics can tell us only about the dispositional or relational properties of matter, dispositions ultimately require categorical properties as bases, and relations ultimately require intrinsic properties as relata so there must also be categorical or intrinsic properties about which physics is silent. Yet these are properties of physical objects and thus are physical properties in one central sense. Instantiations of such properties would therefore constitute physical facts of which we are ignorant, as per the ignorance hypothesis. (Stoljar) 
Matter must have an intrinsic nature to ground its dispositional properties. We know nothing of this nature, and in fact the only intrinsic nature with which we are familiar is consciousness itself. It is arguable that we cannot conceive of any other intrinsic nature because our knowledge of the physical is entirely based upon its dispositions to produce certain conscious experiences under certain conditions. Of course, we can assert that matter has a non-experiential intrinsic nature which is utterly mysterious to us, but this would seem to make the problem of emergence yet more difficult. An emergentism which made the generation of consciousness intelligible would be one that showed how experience emerged from what we know about matter, that is, from its dispositional properties. But it seems impossible to see how the dispositions to move in certain directions under certain conditions could give rise to or constitute consciousness, save by the kind of brute and miraculous radical emergence discussed above.* If granting some kind of experiential intrinsic aspect to the fundamental physical entities of the world eliminates this problem, it might be worth the cost in initial uncomfortable implausibility.* (Seager/Strawson) 
All this sounds plausible (except the last hi-lited part) which leads him to favour a type of panpsychism. Why is the last part wrong? As Jussi Jylkkä writes:



> But now it seems that Strawson is confusing here the possibility of the emergence of mind from scientifically described properties like mass, charge, or spin, with the possibility of the emergence of mind from the intrinsic properties that correspond to these scientific properties. It is indeed the case that mind cannot emerge from scientifically described extrinsic properties like mass, charge, and spin, but do we know that mind could not emerge from the intrinsic properties that underlie these scientifically observable properties? It might be argued that since we know absolutely nothing about the intrinsic nature of mass, charge, and spin, we simply cannot tell whether they could be something non-mental and still constitute mentality when organised properly. It might well be that mentality is like liquidity: the intrinsic nature of mass, charge and spin might not be mental itself, just like individual H2O-molecules are not liquid themselves, but could nevertheless constitute mentality when organised properly, just like H2O-molecules can constitute liquidity when organised properly (this would be a variation of neutral monism). In short, the problem is that we just do not know enough about the intrinsic nature of the fundamental level of reality that we could say almost anything about it...Thus, even if the intrinsic nature of electrons and other fundamental particles is in fact mental, this does not mean that it should be anything like human mentality-rather, we can only say that the ontological category their intrinsic nature belongs to is the same as the one our phenomenal realm belongs to. This category in the most general sense is perhaps best titled 'ideal'.


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## tieffers

3, other, for me. I sometimes think our physical realities are just mental manifestations. There's no mind-body problem to solve if there's no body.


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## pbanco

Kon said:


> I don't understand what you mean. If one adopts "realism" (e.g. quantum objects have pre-existing properties), Bell's theorem rules out "local causality" so nature is non-local. In fact, some physicists argue that non-locality is implied from Bell's stuff irrespective of realism, etc. The only other option is some conspiracy like "super-determinism" but hardly anyone takes that option seriously. So there seems to be only 2 major options:
> 
> 1. Nature is non-local
> 2. Non-realism (e.g. quantum values/measurements do not pre-exist)
> 
> Either way, I think both are incompatible with Gundersen's argument. As an aside, I started a poll on the physics forum on that question and one of the physicists on that thread is Travis Norsen (who is poster _ttn_) who argues/has argued (convincingly, in my opinion) that Bell's theorem rules out _any_ local theory, so nature is non-local. Interestingly, this was also Bell's position (the physicist who actually came up with the inequality). Of course, many (most) physicists choose non-realism, but I still don't think that helps Gundersen's argument, because collapse isn't considered a "real" process. Moreover, even from an orthodox interpretation:
> 
> Moreover, unlike quantum objects/systems, we never observe consciousness (except our own), so I don't follow Gundersen's argument. Anyway, if you have some basic background/interest in physics (e.g. undergraduate QM course) or philosophy of physics, you might find the discussion/debate interesting:
> 
> *What do violations of Bell's inequalities tell us about nature?*
> http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=670856


The mind and body are one. There really isn't any mind-body "problem".
The methods of psychotherapy which include the body in the 
treatment plan, are the more successful ones.


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## Kon

pbanco said:


> The mind and body are one. There really isn't any mind-body "problem". The methods of psychotherapy which include the body in the treatment plan, are the more successful ones.


That's not the argument. The difficulty is conceptualizing/understanding how a "material" spatio-temporal entity like the brain which is objective, in the sense of amenable to third-person verification can spit out something like qualia/subjectivity that only has a first-person point of view. The body/brain is knowable/observable from a third-person (objective) point of view. Consciousness/qualia/subjectivity is not. To be in a subjective state is to have a first-person point of view. You can't "see" another person's or animal's thoughts. The essential argument is that phenomenal qualities are essentially _intrinsic_, while physical properties are solely structural/dynamic/extrinsic and a future physics will not change that. Consider Frank Jackson's knowledge argument: 


> The knowledge argument aims to establish that conscious experience involves non-physical properties. It rests on the idea that someone who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being might yet lack knowledge about how it feels to have the experiences of that being. It is one of the most discussed arguments against physicalism.


*Qualia: The Knowledge Argument* 
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/


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## pbanco

Kon said:


> That's not the argument. The difficulty is conceptualizing/understanding how a "material" spatio-temporal entity like the brain which is objective, in the sense of amenable to third-person verification can spit out something like qualia/subjectivity that only has a first-person point of view. The body/brain is knowable/observable from a third-person (objective) point of view. Consciousness/qualia/subjectivity is not. To be in a subjective state is to have a first-person point of view. You can't "see" another person's or animal's thoughts. The essential argument is that phenomenal qualities are essentially _intrinsic_, while physical properties are solely structural/dynamic/extrinsic and a future physics will not change that. Consider Frank Jackson's knowledge argument:
> 
> *Qualia: The Knowledge Argument*
> [URL="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/"]http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/


Consciousness is an emergent phenomena. 
It emerges from those physical properties and structures
of the body as a whole, and all it's interactions. 
I'm probably not saying anything with this, but I believe
it will be possible to get a better understanding of how this happens,
if not the actual physics involved. I certainly don't think
there can be "spirits" existing unattached from their
associated bodies, as there is no good evidence for such a thing.
Sorry, I am just putting out thoughts; I haven't dug into the
information in this thread.


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## Kon

pbanco said:


> Consciousness is an emergent phenomena.
> It emerges from those physical properties and structures of the body as a whole, and all it's interactions.


Emergence seems reasonable but the difficulty is to understand/explain how an object like the body/brain that is spatial and can be probed and measured can spit out something like qualia/subjectivity which is essentially non-spatial. As Mcginn writes it: 


> We seem compelled to conclude that something essentially non-spatial emerged from something purely spatial - that the non-spatial is somehow a construction out of the spatial. And this looks more like magic than a predictable unfolding of natural law.


This leads him to the following suggestion posted previously:


> I am now in a position to state the main thesis of this paper: in order to solve the mind-body problem we need, at a minimum, a new conception of space. We need a conceptual breakthrough in the way we think about the medium in which material objects exist, and hence in our conception of material objects themselves. That is the region in which our ignorance is focused: not in the details of neurophysiological activity but, more fundamentally, in how space is structured or constituted. That which we refer to when we use the word 'space' has a nature that is quite different from how we standardly conceive it to be; so different, indeed, that it is capable of 'containing' the non-spatial (as we now conceive it) phenomenon of consciousness. Things in space can generate consciousness only because those things are not, at some level, just how we conceive them to be; they harbour some hidden aspect or principle.


But in physics we are already there; that is, the most fundamental "physical" object in physics that is supposed to be the basis of subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, bodies/brains is the wave function and it appears to have properties not seen in macroscopic objects like entanglement, non-locality, etc. and yet it's still not clear how the leap from non-conscious to conscious is accomplished whether by emergence or whatever. And what makes this problem more difficult than other emergent phenomena like say liquidity from water molecules, etc. is that the latter are verifiable/measurable/objective/spatial. The same cannot be said with consciousness/qualia. No matter how much I probe your brain/body, I won't see any hint of it, although I infer you have it since you are like me and I absolutely know I have it, even though you will never be able to "see"/observe my thoughts. You can measure the neural correlates of qualia/subjectivity (e.g. by some brain scan, etc.), but that is not the same thing.


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## pbanco

Kon said:


> Emergence seems reasonable but the difficulty is to understand/explain how an object like the body/brain that is spatial and can be probed and measured can spit out something like qualia/subjectivity which is essentially non-spatial. As Mcginn writes it:
> 
> This leads him to the following suggestion posted previously:
> 
> But in physics we are already there; that is, the most fundamental "physical" object in physics that is supposed to be the basis of subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, bodies/brains is the wave function and it appears to have properties not seen in macroscopic objects like entanglement, non-locality, etc. and yet it's still not clear how the leap from non-conscious to conscious is accomplished whether by emergence or whatever. And what makes this problem more difficult than other emergent phenomena like say liquidity from water molecules, etc. is that the latter are verifiable/measurable/objective/spatial. The same cannot be said with consciousness/qualia. No matter how much I probe your brain/body, I won't see any hint of it, although I infer you have it since you are like me and I absolutely know I have it, even though you will never be able to "see"/observe my thoughts. You can measure the neural correlates of qualia/subjectivity (e.g. by some brain scan, etc.), but that is not the same thing.


How did we conclude it to be non-spatial? Just because we experience it
that way? We locate our thoughts as being in our heads, at least I do.
I find that feelings come from my body. The "me" coordinating all of
this is located in those places as well. That is interesting for something
non-spatial.


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## Kon

pbanco said:


> How did we conclude it to be non-spatial? Just because we experience it that way? We locate our thoughts as being in our heads, at least I do. I find that feelings come from my body. The "me" coordinating all of this is located in those places as well. That is interesting for something non-spatial.


1. Consider not just your own but someone else's brain/body. Is it spatially located? Can it be measured? Obviously it can.

2. Consider not just your own but someone else's thoughts/feelings/intentions. Are they spatially located? Where? You claim the head/brain/body. Is that accurate? Have you ever "seen" one's thoughts? And I'm not talking about neural signals, etc. I'm talking about one's thoughts. That is not possible. No matter "where" I look in the body or brain or space you will never see them. If they are spatial, would those thoughts not have to have dimension/extension?

Of course, no-one in their rational mind assumes that the brain/body/nervous system is not involved; that is, the neural stuff provides the mechanisms for thought and if you mess up that, the thoughts change but the question is how does such a spatial entity spit out stuff that is not really in space/locality?


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> 1. Consider not your own but someone else's brain/body. Is it spatially located? Can it be measured? Obviously it can.
> 
> 2. Consider someone else's thoughts/feelings/intentions. Are they spatially located? Where? You claim the head/brain/body. Is that accurate? Have you ever "seen" one's thoughts? And I'm not talking about neural signals, etc. I'm talking about one's thoughts. That is not possible. No matter "where" I look in the body or brain or space you will never see them. If they are spatial, would the the thoughts not have dimension/extension?
> 
> Of course, no-one in their rational mind assumes that the brain/body/nervous system is not involved; that is, the neural stuff provides the mechanisms for thought and if you mess up that, the thoughts change but the question is how does such a spatial entity spit out stuff that is clearly not in space/locality?


It is of course still a highly contentious question but think about something like mathematics. It doesn't have a spatial element either, yet we know it's not just part of our consciousness apart from our comprehension and appreciation of it. We don't think it will cease to exist when we die. I just see our thoughts like software, which also doesn't have a spatial element bar from it's base code.

Imagine a virtual world. It's physical portrayal isn't spatially based in our physical space. It's technically in it's own obscure universe.

As for never being able to see people's thoughts,  there has already been studies which show what people are seeing by monitoring their brain activity.

It's surely just a matter of time before that technology is developed to the point it can monitor and reproduce their dreams, as that uses the same visual processing components, and in turn any idea they choose to visually imagine.

While emotions can of course not be visualised I also foresee a time when one persons brain which is activity being monitored can be transmitted to stimulate someone else's matching neurons which invokes the same or at least a very similar emotion.


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> It is of course still a highly contentious question but think about something like mathematics.


Mathematical objects do seem to be different and I have no clue about their ontology but I'm not convinced of Platonism. I still think they are mental stuff. But I'm guessing you would be sympathetic to Penrose's model (see thumbnail below).

With respect to the software-hardware analogy to the mind-brain, I think Searle's Chinese Room argument did a good to show why it fails (at least, the way I see it). That monitoring study you posted is very interesting but as per Strawson's argument which was discussed before, I don't think it makes any headway into the mind-body problem. But I do think that Strawson demands a bit too much. It's like trying to refure solipsism. Nobody can refute it but nobody takes it too seriously, either.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> Mathematical objects do seem to be different and I have no clue about their ontology but I'm not convinced of Platonism. I still think they are mental stuff. But I'm guessing you would be sympathetic to Penrose's model (see thumbnail below).


I'm not familar with Platonism so couldn't say. I'm not all that interested in philosophy.



> With respect to the software-hardware analogy to the mind-brain, I think Searle's Chinese Room argument did a good to show why it fails (at least, the way I see it).


I wouldn't say fail, just that self awareness/conciousness could be an illusion. For all we know nobody but ourself is self aware. Everyone but ourself could be operating as "Chinese Rooms".

I think it's something you can't outright 100% dismiss but just have to put to one side to make headway since it's ultimately unknowable. Everything could be a simulation, including ourself.



> That monitoring study you posted is very interesting but as per Strawson's argument which was discussed before, I don't think it makes any headway into the mind-body problem. But I do think that Strawson demands a bit too much. It's like trying to refure solipsism. Nobody can refute it but nobody takes it too seriously, either.


Funny you should mention solipsism, I typed my response related to it before reading your last two sentences.

Regarding the study making headway into the mind-body problem, indeed it does little, but it is surely progress and foundational work into casting some light on the issue. We just need to wait and see what new insights time and study reveals.


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> I'm not familar with Platonism so couldn't say. I'm not all that interested in philosophy.


Platonism is the view that mathematical stuff/objects exist independently of us. This is similar to what you wrote here:


> It is of course still a highly contentious question but think about something like mathematics. It doesn't have a spatial element either, yet we know it's not just part of our consciousness apart from our comprehension and appreciation of it. We don't think it will cease to exist when we die.


I personally don't subscribe to the view that mathematical objects exist "out" there. I tend to think that mathematics comes from us and is mental. I see mathematics as useful mental scaffolding to attach our claims about physical systems. We can't get to the physical world without using mathematics because non-mathematical versions of scientific theories just seem to be practically very difficult to do, especially in sciences like physics and chhemistry.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> Platonism is the view that mathematical stuff/objects exist independently of us.


Ah right yes I see now, i'm not sure why I was confused earlier. Yes I agree. However i'm more inclined to view the mental world as a construct of the physical world, but I can appreciate how it fits in to the diagram you posted.



> I personally don't subscribe to the view that mathematical objects exist "out" there. I tend to think that mathematics comes from us and is mental. I see mathematics as useful mental scaffolding to attach our claims about physical systems. We can't get to the physical world without using mathematics because non-mathematical versions of scientific theories just seem to be practically very difficult to do, especially in sciences like physics and chhemistry.


I guess we are just starting at two different points on Penrose's model.










I believe the Platonic gives rise to the physical, which in turn gives rise to the mental, which in turn becomes aware of the Platonic.

Therefore IMO the Platonic is the most fundamental as I don't see why it would need any mental world to be aware of it in order to exist.


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> Therefore IMO the Platonic is the most fundamental as I don't see why it would need any mental world to be aware of it in order to exist.


Because everything gets filtered through our mental (cognitive) structures. It's not possible to doubt this as per Descarte's famous argument: "I think, I exist". One can doubt the physical and the mathematical (e.g. we may be living in a matrix, we may be brains in a vat, the world outside of us may be vastly different than we think, etc.) but one can't doubt one's thoughts as argued here:


> Wretched mind, from us you are taking the evidence by which you would overthrow us? Your victory is your own fall.


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## pythonesque

I wonder if qualia can be made 'objective' - that is, if we may be able to convey our subjective conscious experiences to others - if we had an infinitely-detailed language or some other form of communication to that end.


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## Kon

pythonesque said:


> I wonder if qualia can be made 'objective' - that is, if we may be able to convey our subjective conscious experiences to others - if we had an infinitely-detailed language or some other form of communication to that end.


I can't see any way that conveying your experience in whatever language is ever going to get you there. There have been some attempts that I've come across to model qualia mathematically or as the authors write, to "begin translating the seemingly ineffable qualitative properties of experience into the language of mathematics" but even these authors concede:


> Some experiences appear to be ''elementary,'' in that they cannot be further decomposed. Sub-modes that do not contain any more densely tangled sub-sub-modes are elementary modes (i.e., elementary shapes that cannot be further decomposed). According to the IIT (integrated information theory) such elementary modes correspond to aspects of experience that cannot be further analyzed, meaning that no further phenomenological structure is recognizable. The term qualia (in a narrow sense) is often used to refer to such elementary experiences, such as a pure color like red, or a pain, or an itch.
> 
> Finally, we have argued that specific qualities of consciousness, such as the ''redness'' of red, while generated by a local mechanism, cannot be reduced to it, but require considering the shape of the entire quale, within which they constitute a q-fold.


*Consciousness as Integrated Information: a Provisional Manifesto* http://www.biolbull.org/content/215/3/216.full.pdf

But even this sheds no light on the qualititive feel of one's experiences. We assume other humans have the same kind of thoughts/feelings but we can't penetrate others' minds to verify this. With other animals (rats, bats, cats, etc.), I can't see how we can ever know what it feels like to be a rat, bat, cat.


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## pythonesque

^It serves that verification purpose and spares us the trouble of having to penetrate minds.

And my comment followed loosely from a thought that came from your discussion about the Chinese room argument - that if a computer had the ability to parse sentences to as nuanced an extent as a native speaker, it would necessarily have a vast number of interconnected discriminatory processes running symbiotically, and I don't see how we can be sure that the interaction between these processes doesn't produce some sort of...I guess you could call an emergent property in the computer, similar to the experience of 'understanding' a language in humans.

In any case I feel like it's jumping the gun a little to tackle the hard problem before we've cracked all the 'easy' problems - the neuronal activities behind the perceptions, responses, etc. that feed into the whole conscious experience.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> Because everything gets filtered through our mental (cognitive) structures.


Only because we are observing/comprehending it. However there is of course surely far more to "everything" than what we can observe/comprehend.

Are you saying the mind is necessary for anything to exist?



> One can doubt the physical and the mathematical (e.g. we may be living in a matrix, we may be brains in a vat, the world outside of us may be vastly different than we think, etc.)


I agree it could be and almost definitely is different from what we think it is, but I don't see why that means physical/mathematical reality doesn't exist out with our current understanding.


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## ugh1979

pythonesque said:


> I wonder if qualia can be made 'objective' - that is, if we may be able to convey our subjective conscious experiences to others - if we had an infinitely-detailed language or some other form of communication to that end.


Indeed. There was some interesting research reported this week of two rats brains being linked so one could experience what the other was sensing.

While obviously very simple and crude at the moment, I can imagine an advanced development of this technology possibly allowing the transmission of qualia from one person to another.


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I can't see any way that conveying your experience in whatever language is ever going to get you there. There have been some attempts that I've come across to model qualia mathematically or as the authors write, to "begin translating the seemingly ineffable qualitative properties of experience into the language of mathematics" but even these authors concede:
> 
> *Consciousness as Integrated Information: a Provisional Manifesto* http://www.biolbull.org/content/215/3/216.full.pdf
> 
> But even this sheds no light on the qualititive feel of one's experiences. We assume other humans have the same kind of thoughts/feelings but we can't penetrate others' minds to verify this.


The research I posted a link to above suggests there may be a day when elementary experiences can be transmitted to others.



> With other animals (rats, bats, cats, etc.), I can't see how we can ever know what it feels like to be a rat, bat, cat.


This could be true as I think you may need to have the mental hardware of those species to be able to truly know what it feels like to be them.


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## Kon

ugh1979 said:


> Are you saying the mind is necessary for anything to exist?


I believe in a world independent of us but I don't think we can ever know it's nature completely because everything must be filtered through our mental/cognitive structures and there's no guarantee that there's a one-to-one match between our cognitive structures (including our mathematical models) and mind-independent reality. In fact, it's probably unlikely as argued by Pinker:


> We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness.


Regardless, one can't deny the reality of the mental as argued here by Strawson:



> Many define naturalism primarily in a methodological way, as the doctrine that all valid inquiry into the nature of things must proceed in accord with the methods of the natural sciences. They believe that they can extract the conclusion that naturalism can take no account of experience (although it is the fundamental given natural fact), and also(somehow) the conclusion that experience doesn't exist. This is puzzling, because many experimental psychologists deal in the phenomena of experience in a fully realist manner. Self-styled "naturalists" tend to ignore this, and take physics as their foundational model of a natural science, but there is something else they can't ignore. This is the "structuralist" point familiar in the 1920s and 1930s (now severely underappreciated outside the philosophy of science, but reviving). It consists in the observation that the propositions of physics are equations, equations that contain numbers, terms that refer without describing, many other mathematical symbols, and nothing else; and that these equations, being what they are, can only tell us about the abstract or mathematically characterizable structure of matter or the physical world without telling us anything else about the nature of the thing that exemplifies the structure. Even in the case of spacetime, as opposed to matter or force-to the doubtful extent that these three things can be separated-it's unclear whether we have any knowledge of its intrinsic nature beyond its abstract or mathematically representable structure.


*Mental Reality*
http://www.amazon.com/Mental-Reality-Representation-Galen-Strawson/dp/0262513102


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## ugh1979

Kon said:


> I believe in a world independent of us but I don't think we can ever know it's nature completely because everything must be filtered through our mental/cognitive structures and there's no guarantee that there's a one-to-one match between our cognitive structures (including our mathematical models) and mind-independent reality. In fact, it's probably unlikely as argued by Pinker:
> 
> Regardless, one can't deny the reality of the mental as argued nicely here by Strawson:
> 
> *Mental Reality*
> http://www.amazon.com/Mental-Reality-Representation-Galen-Strawson/dp/0262513102
> 
> ​


I'm somewhat inclined to agree, but I think we differ slightly on our definitions of mathematics. It seems to me that you are referring to it as a product of our cognition, which is in many instances correct, but I'm not referring to our interpretation of it. I'm referring to the true reality that the language of mathematics describes, including all that we don't or can't know. A reality only described by exotic mathematics we simply don't know about yet and maybe never will.

The trouble with the word mathematics is that it's definition is so fuzzy, and it may just be for lack of another suitable term that I use it.

(Some people use the word god, but that term of course has a whole lot of undesired baggage that goes with it!)


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## Kon

I agree that some (many) mathematicians do agree with your position that they are "discovering" mathematical truths akin to discovering stuff in physics/science but not about the physical world but of some other platonic/mathematical realm. To be honest I could never understand what this means and I tried understanding it but it would never click for me. My philosophy of physics professor held this view and considered himself a Platonist like Penrose and yourself.


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## pythonesque

ugh1979 said:


> Indeed. There was some interesting research reported this week of two rats brains being linked so one could experience what the other was sensing.
> 
> While obviously very simple and crude at the moment, I can imagine an advanced development of this technology possibly allowing the transmission of qualia from one person to another.


That's very cool..But then again, how would the transmission of qualia help us to understand the process of their formation from simple brain activity? Or rather, how do we develop this technology to transmit qualia without figuring out how brain activity gives rise to qualia and essentially solving the hard problem first?


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## ugh1979

pythonesque said:


> That's very cool..But then again, how would the transmission of qualia help us to understand the process of their formation from simple brain activity? Or rather, how do we develop this technology to transmit qualia without figuring out how brain activity gives rise to qualia and essentially solving the hard problem first?


I'd say it would require us to know a lot more about the hard problem first.


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