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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Neuroscience of Belief in God :)
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by OliviaCA:
I really really recommend that you read some of the articles I linked to above, if you have time, because most of them do seem to do a much better job than me at explaining this.
The above statement is the finest example of real life dramatic irony I have ever seen. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
No, but that is precisely what the brain is dealing in, representational information/data/"stories" about things, including stories about "experiencing"/"being aware".
It may be the case that the brain is dealing (only) in that. But you are not dealing (merely) in that. You are actually experiencing things, you are actually aware. If you are correct in your assessment here, then in fact you have shown that "you" are not reducible to being some kind of product of your brain. That is not to say that the brain does not contribute to "you" being you. Obviously it does, a lot. But if your assertion is correct, then the fact that you are aware and experiencing means that there must be some aspect of "you" that is beyond the brain. That's what actually follows from this, not that these experiences or awareness is some kind of "illusion". (A comment that is entirely self-contradictory, since having an illusion just is a specific kind of aware experience.)
And I write that your awareness and experience is a fact, because it is. It is not a fact in the sense that I can objectively assess your conscious state, of course. But I can assess mine, and you can assess yours, and most other humans can assess theirs, and by comparing we can in fact objectively determine that humans in general have experiences and are aware. There is nothing subjective about this statement, just because every individual consciousness is only subjectively accessible. Under the assumption that humans are similar enough to each other to deserve a common label and be treated as a somehow coherent group of entities, the sum of these subjective reports establishes the objective fact. If one is going to doubt this, then all of science is in trouble, for all of it relies on the sharing of subjective data to establish objectivity by consistency across multiple observers. You can also not see what I see with my eyes. You rely on me communicating this to you, and on finding sufficient (but not perfect!) similarity conclude "we are seeing the same". That's the nature of objective evidence. Well, there's no particular reason why introspection should be treated differently to extraspection.
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
It is something that we/our brains tell ourselves. Our brain tells itself that it is "experiencing". It tells itself a story.
Can you not see that you are contradicting yourself even in the very act of writing this down? If I tell you a story, then indeed you are experiencing this. But that's because you are in fact capable of experiencing! If I tell the same story to a wall, nothing will happen to that wall but perhaps a slight increase of heat where the sound waves struck it. If I tell the same story to a microphone, which is connected to a speech recognition system sitting in a computer, which is parsing this input with machine learning algorithms and a massive database full with recorded human conversations, then this computer may print on some screen "I experience IngoB telling me a story."
The whole problem here is that you think this last computer example is more similar to you listening to my story, when in reality it is more similar to the wall listening to my story. Just because you see meaning in that message the computer prints doesn't mean that its physical functions are qualitatively different from the wall heating up. It is you who sees the meaning, not the computer. And the reason why the computer printed that message is because some human programmer thought that it would be meaningful. And the whole complicated arrangement of hierarchical analysis to get to that message was built by humans just so that they could see something more meaningful in this message than in the heat pattern on the wall. The grand illusion here is that the computer is doing anything significant, just because of all the significance imposed on it by teams of programmers, and all the significance read out of this by you. But that there is significance to be had here is not an illusion, that is manifest fact. You see it. I see it. The programmers see it. Every human who understands English can see it. The computer is really just a highly complex and unusually active medium for a particularly weird human interaction imbued with meaning.
Because there is no room for this in your materialistic ideology, you have to deny the very thing that makes you human. That is truly tragicomic, a normal absurdity. And let's be clear about this: neither you, nor any other human, will ever actually "talk the talk, walk the walk" on this. Your position is profoundly hypocritical: you cannot even for a moment live your life as if this theory of yours were correct. Not that you cannot be absent-minded and forget about this theory of yours while in action. But you cannot at the same time think this theory and enact it. As soon as you reflect upon yourself in any way or form, you will find yourself somehow - and since this theory necessarily reflects on you, you will always find yourself in the very act of denying yourself. It's like saying "I would never eat this!" right as you stuff it in your mouth, chew and swallow.
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
"Awareness"/consciousness/"conscious self experience"/experience is a caricature, a basic exaggerated and/or simplified model/representation of that activity, which the brain uses to tell itself/inform itself of what the attention processes are doing, like a sort of homeostatic-regulator keeping an eye on a system.
Maybe, maybe not. However, that is entirely irrelevant for the question at hand. For the brain informing itself of what its attention processes are doing is just that: the brain informing itself of what its attention processes are doing. What it very much is not is the brain therefore being "self-aware" in an experiential sense. It is "self-aware" only in the restricted sense of having information about itself, but information is not experience. My computer stores billions of bits of information, including many about itself, without experiencing anything at all. Two mirrors placed to face each other reflect each other endlessly (up to whatever physical limits), but that we find one mirror represented in the other does not establish any kind of awareness. Information is "flat", it does not have the "depth" of experience.
It is hard to talk about this not because it is particularly esoteric or complex. It is hard to talk about this because it is so basic, so fundamental to our lives. You know all this, you are just in ideological denial. Once you will have written your reply here, you will get up, you will eat, you will talk to people, ... Once you have regurgitated the theory, you will utterly ignore it in practice, simply by being you. Every waking second of your own life stands in evidence against what your are telling us here, even those very seconds when you are telling us this. It's a perfect, if perhaps unintended, sham.
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
I really really recommend that you read some of the articles I linked to above, if you have time, because most of them do seem to do a much better job than me at explaining this.
You are explanations are not lacking. I understand perfectly fine what you are saying, and I have understood it right from the start. It's just that what you are explaining is plain wrong.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
I've just gone back to review some of the earlier material on this thread.
It seems to me, OliviaCA, that in reading about the models of reality (so-called) that the brain inarguably constructs (largely due, I believe, to its limitations rather than its capacities), you have conflated the notions of "self-concept" (a model you or I construct of a self) with the notion of Irving Goff's presentation of self (old-fashioned, I know, but that doesn't necessarily render Goff's ideas invalid).
What is a self? If I understand you correctly (and it's more likely than not that I don't), you are claiming that the authentic self is a sort of "piece" of divinity that somehow inhabits a physical human body. That physical body imposes such limits on this divine piece that the material organ in which you claim this piece resides, the brain, is forced to construct a sort of avatar or model in order to manage it.
Therein lies at least one part of the problem IngoB seems to me to have put his finger on: given the brain's limitations, at least vis-à-vis the "divine" god-like bit, such "management" is a contradiction in terms: you seem essentially to be arguing that the dog on the lead is taking its master for a walk.
Here's my first issue with your claim (again, if I understand it, and probably I don't): that the brain alone is the site of all this model-constructing, avatar-building, self-maintaining activity. I would argue that the brain is in complete and constant partnership with the rest of the physical body in this(these) activit(ies). I would argue also that the self is in more-or-less constant corrective mode in its interactions with other selves, monitoring & responding to what's being reflected back at the self from other selves.
My second issue is the age-old question about the existence of any "objective" reality, which seems to me to be central to your argument.
It sounds as if you're positing that there is no such animal, since we all construct our own mental models of reality, so-called.
While I agree that we're all pretty much stuck with filtering, organizing, and interpreting experience differently (we do, after all, differ from one another, though probably not as much as we suppose, and in addition encounter different experiences), that doesn't automatically exclude the possibility that there are some stable, consistent phenomena that, regardless of how we experience these, persist in the ways it which they present themselves.
Thus, even if I "see" that half-hidden rock in the grass as a soccer ball, I am going to stub my toe when I kick it. That rock is not going to fly off across the yard, however sincerely I interpret it by shape and color as a ball. Our "reality-constructing" abilities take us only so far.
Even if I see myself (and others may see me) as being helpful in constructing a schedule for my client to follow so that he washes and dresses and gets to work on time so as to keep his job, that doesn't mean I am not also, for him, a heartless controlling b*tch who is micro-managing his life. Both things can be true simultaneously.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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OliviaCA
Shipmate
# 18399
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Posted
Thank you, Porridge, and everyone else again for your posts.
I am currently reeling at how badly it seems I have been explaining my opening "thesis", and pretty much overwhelmed by the degree/levels of misunderstanding. :? ![[Frown]](frown.gif) ( eg. anyone who still thinks that there has to be an "experiencer" has misunderstood; anyone who thinks that I don't believe in an objective/absolute/"kingdom of heaven" reality of waves, particles, energy etc, has misunderstood me, etc ).
I am actually quite astonished at how hard it has been to describe the basic "attention model" theory of "consciousness/awareness". And in trying to I have found myself over and over again slithering into old ways of thinking about it, often without even noticing.
It's been really weird, thinking on several occasions that I am finally explaining it better, have really got it, totally clearly, only to realise that I have been way off, botching it totally. :?
What's that story/film where the protagonist thinks that they are making progress, going in the right direction, only to discover that mysteriously they have turned round, going the other way, or are sitting still not moving? ...
I'm going to take a moratorium on this for now, but will conclude with one last remark about the theory:
The whole thing of "conscious self experience" may have evolved originally for modeling other people and animals attention processes, which would have been a significant advantage for complex social interaction and hunting and/or domesticating animals.
The brain runs a model of the attention that someone/animal is paying to something, and describes it in detail, if in a simplified way; what kind of attention, which parts of the body are involved, whether it is predominantly aggressive or receptive or analytical, whether the guts feel melted ( fear ), whether the heart races, whether the eyes are dilated, palms moist, cold, hot, primarily optic or auditory etc, etc etc.
The model represents the attention processes as part of its representation of another person/animal's behaviour relative to self or something else. The model is not the same thing as the attention processes, it is a necessarily extremely simplified sketch/model of it.
That sketch/model is what we call "consciousness"/awareness/experience.
And when applied to the model of our self it is read by the brain as "the self" "experiencing/being aware of" "x, y,z".
There really is no "experiencer", no need for one.
The only "being"/thing observing/tracking/following the ( three part ) model of "x"/self" "experiencing"/"aware of" "x, y, z" is the part of the brain responsible for running the model of attention processes.
Data from the model feeds into the management of attention processes/enhancement of representations etc and into various decisions, behaviours etc.
I am sorry not to reply in more detail/individually to all your many lengthy comments, but I assure you that I have been doing a terrible job of explaining it, ( changing tack, losing sight of the main principles, and quite literally getting it wrong sometimes, etc ), and am overwhelmed by the level of misunderstanding, and have no idea where to start anymore to even begin to clear it up.
But thank you very much anyway for all your posts. They have forced me to look over and over again at the theory, and to "take it in"/really "get it" more fully than I did at first. I'm thinking however, again, that it is perhaps impossible to explain to anyone who doesn't already get it for experiential reasons.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
[ 20. May 2015, 09:42: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
Posts: 91 | From: Europe | Registered: May 2015
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
I am sorry not to reply in more detail/individually to all your many lengthy comments, but I assure you that I have been doing a terrible job of explaining it, ( changing tack, losing sight of the main principles, and quite literally getting it wrong sometimes, etc ), and am overwhelmed by the level of misunderstanding, and have no idea where to start anymore to even begin to clear it up.
I see few signs of misunderstanding in the many different posts critical of your position. I see lots of people disagreeing with your position, which they are understanding perfectly well. It's not that we do not understand you, we think you are wrong. It is not that we would agree with you if only we understood you better. We understand you, we think you are mistaken. It is not that we would agree with your theory if you only explained it better. We comprehend your theory, we consider it false.
Maybe you cannot deal with the fact that people disagree with you outright, maybe you cannot fathom that they think you are in error even after all doubt has been removed about your claims. Well, upgrade your cognitive model of the world then, for that is exactly what is happening. Whereas thinking that you have failed to explain things right is a delusion. Do not delude yourself. You have not failed to explain what you are thinking, it is your thinking itself that we consider as faulty.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
Adding my agreement to IngoB.
I think your explanations have been good - in many respects you've explained the theory more clearly than it is explained in the articles that you link to.
We disagree, but not because we have misunderstood what you are saying.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Jack o' the Green
Shipmate
# 11091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
There really is no "experiencer", no need for one.
I think this sentence sums up very well why your ideas are utterly wrong. If there is no 'experiencer', then how do you explain that I am experiencing my own existence at this very moment. In your language, a good definition of consciousness would be the experiencer and the 'experienced' being identical. It's only if an entity experiences itself that it can then experience internal, cognitive events e.g. emotions, memories, facial recognition etc, or receive external sense data regarding the outside world. Of course the brain creates models of the external world. You can see the failure of the brain to do this with some people suffering from dementia. However, that's totally different from saying that everything to do with our selves is due to the brain 'model making'.
An entity's experience of its own mind is (I would suggest) a primary or intrinsic property, other parts of cognitive experience are secondary and could (at least in theory) be faked or mistaken. In the 'brain in a vat' thought experiment, a mind might be wrong about all sorts of things e.g. the existence of an external, objective world, the reality of other minds, the accuracy of past memories etc. What it can't be wrong about (even in theory) is that in some way, it must exist because it experiences its own existence.
Descartes' famous statement of radical doubt "I doubt therefore I think, I think therefore I am" could be criticised for not being radical enough. He could have gone another step back and eliminated thinking and doubting altogether and simply said "I experience or perceive my own existence therefore I am". Or more generally; "That which perceives or experiences its own existence must exist."
Posts: 3121 | From: Lancashire, England | Registered: Feb 2006
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Grokesx
Shipmate
# 17221
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Posted
@IngoB
Whatever the deficiencies of Olivia's strange Tao of Eliminative Materialism theory, your objections, however forceful they seem to you, don't really touch it. If Olivia is correct in thinking the conscious "I" is an illusory product of human brains, then endless protestations of the "fact" of your conscious experience is just what we would expect. You say "...having an illusion just is a specific kind of aware experience." Well, yeah it is, but the special part about it is that it is not true. Illusory experience is a mistake.
And to berate Olivia for living her life as if her theory were false is nonsense. She has no choice, just as we have no choice in perceiving the rising moon as much larger near the horizon than at its zenith whether we acknowledge the illusion or not, whether we have seen the effect disappear when we look at it between our legs or not, whether we favour the flattened sky-dome hypothesis over the anisotropy of visual space theory or whether we cling onto the idea that atmospheric refraction accounts for it even though that would make it look smaller at the horizon not bigger. It doesn't matter. Next time you are upright and watching the moon rise over the horizon it will look considerably bigger than it does at its zenith, courtesy of some shenanigans in the brain that we have no control over whatsoever.
What you're saying is akin to someone reading through this examination of the moon illusion and then saying, "You know what, that's just shite, it doesn't address the fact that the moon is bigger at the horizon at all."
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
Posts: 373 | From: Derby, UK | Registered: Jul 2012
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OliviaCA
Shipmate
# 18399
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Grokesx:
What you're saying is akin to someone reading through this examination of the moon illusion and then saying, "You know what, that's just shite, it doesn't address the fact that the moon is bigger at the horizon at all."
Thank you so very very much for this psot.
.
Posts: 91 | From: Europe | Registered: May 2015
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OliviaCA
Shipmate
# 18399
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Posted
PS. @ Grokesx Thank you so much for so perfectly pointing out what the biggest problem has been here. The relief is huge! I have been feeling completely crushed by the level of misunderstanding.
Especially as repeatedly explaining the theory has felt like struggling constantly against a 9-force gale Stroop Effect. ( paying a lot of attention to describing how the experience of paying attention etc is a model )
[ 21. May 2015, 07:14: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
Posts: 91 | From: Europe | Registered: May 2015
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Grokesx:
Whatever the deficiencies of Olivia's strange Tao of Eliminative Materialism theory, your objections, however forceful they seem to you, don't really touch it. If Olivia is correct in thinking the conscious "I" is an illusory product of human brains, then endless protestations of the "fact" of your conscious experience is just what we would expect. You say "...having an illusion just is a specific kind of aware experience." Well, yeah it is, but the special part about it is that it is not true. Illusory experience is a mistake.
Rather, my critique strikes right at the heart of any eliminative materialism, including her embellished version. If you side with eliminative materialism, then you are simply not allowed to talk about "illusion", any more than you are allowed to talk about any other experience. Nothing in your theoretical system has any means to represent finding yourself at odds with reality, since you cannot represent finding yourself in any sort of circumstance.
You can only say that your theoretical system is at odds with reality. But to say that this amounts to an illusion reintroduces the perspective of experience and meaning. That is an interpretation relying implicitly on an observer, and reintroduced precisely what you set out to eliminate.
If you pay attention, you will find that any attempt to remove the person from the description leads to it popping up somewhere else, if in disguise. The homunculus haunts cognition, and this is no different for you, just because you have made yourself the homunculus for another (by interpreting features of their brain in a personal manner, which is required but cannot be delivered by your approach otherwise). This suggests that "personhood" is an irreducible feature of the system.
quote:
Originally posted by Grokesx:
And to berate Olivia for living her life as if her theory were false is nonsense. She has no choice, just as we have no choice in perceiving the rising moon as much larger near the horizon than at its zenith whether we acknowledge the illusion or not, whether we have seen the effect disappear when we look at it between our legs or not, whether we favour the flattened sky-dome hypothesis over the anisotropy of visual space theory or whether we cling onto the idea that atmospheric refraction accounts for it even though that would make it look smaller at the horizon not bigger. It doesn't matter. Next time you are upright and watching the moon rise over the horizon it will look considerably bigger than it does at its zenith, courtesy of some shenanigans in the brain that we have no control over whatsoever.
This is not comparable at all. Her approach does not deal insufficiently with the light of the moon being bent by the atmosphere. Her approach denies that there is a moon. It calls the moon, whether perceived big or small, an illusion. A person who writes poems about the moonlight, takes evening walks when there is a full moon, or perhaps turns into a werewolf depending on the moon phase, can be validly accused of lived, practical hypocrisy if they then turn around and deny that there even is any moon. That is sheer lunacy.
Step one of eliminative materialism is to ignore data, and not just any data, but indeed as Jack o' the Green has noted, the very best and most certain data available. All your sensory data can be questioned. This is not particularly sensible as a general approach - for example, it can be used to reject all science ever produced (quantum phenomena are an illusion, genetics is an illusion, etc.). However, there is exactly one piece of data that you cannot possibly question, and that is your experience of being yourself. Because that is the very root of anything else that you find in the world. And it is this which eliminative materialism wants to eliminate. That's not even wrong.
Materialism is a philosophical extrapolation from the scientific methodology of attempting to investigate systems as "observer independent" as possible in terms of its material constituents and their relationships. However, the very same scientific methodology makes full use of the observer in actually perceiving and judging the data so obtained. It is scientists who evaluate hypotheses, they do not magically evaluate themselves. Thus in science, the inevitable observer-dependence is as much as possible separated from the system and relocates into the observer. Ideally, the data is "objective" and its evaluation is then a separate process of agreement among the subjective observing scientists. However, if science is now turned on the observer, this method must fail. I cannot move the observer-dependence out of the system into the observer if the system is the observer and I'm studying that dependence. There is a vicious loop here. Eliminative materialism ignores this problem, and pretends that all is "business as usual". But that's just not true. The observer is not a system like any other system as far as the usual scientific methodology is concerned. And to believe that somehow it must be is not something that science has determined. It is simply the philosophical assumption of materialism coming to the fore. And it is highly questionable to extrapolate from a methodology to a philosophy, in particular in place where the methodology runs into coherence problems.
[ 21. May 2015, 09:10: Message edited by: IngoB ]
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
I have been feeling completely crushed by the level of misunderstanding. (italics mine)
The word you are looking for is "disagreement". Or perhaps "dispute", "controversy", "disaccord", "contention", "division", "conflict", "clash", ...
Perhaps instead of needlessly multiplying smileys (where is Ockham's razor when one needs it?), you could finally accept that we understand what you are saying and still think that it is wrong? Please?
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
hosting/
IngoB, you are veering into personal attack territory and by your use of "we", attempting to drag others into the fray. Either take it to Hell or back off.
/hosting
[ 21. May 2015, 10:11: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Grokesx:
You say "...having an illusion just is a specific kind of aware experience." Well, yeah it is, but the special part about it is that it is not true. Illusory experience is a mistake.
There's no such thing as the moon illusion. Illusions don't exist. An illusion is when you think something is the case or something is there, but it's not. There's no such thing as the illusion. That's what illusion means.
So when someone looks at the moon on the horizon and it appears larger, that's not an illusion, because as proved above illusions don't exist.
If you can see what's wrong with the above argument, you'll be able to see what the objection is to the position you're defending.
There is a difference between saying that illusions aren't real in the sense that they're not true; and saying that illusions aren't real in the sense that there's no such thing as illusions; and OliviaCG's argument entails the latter.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
I think that illustrates nicely the difference between observation and interpretation - our capacity to observe/sense through our senses is substantial. And the scientific estimate of the number of senses that we have available to us and their sensitivity is constantly expanding.
Interpretation is where the problems often begin. This is where the model of the world we carry either reduces our capacity to use our senses or makes us think that we have detected one thing when actually we have senses something different.
What confuses matters is that there are variations in how we sense. For instance - red "colour blindness" is actually an increased capacity to distinguish between subtly different shades of green. So a red colour blind person could look at a green wall and say "I see a pattern in that" and someone who can see red would say "rubbish - there is no pattern". Similarly we have varying capacities to detect echoes which give us a 3D sonar representation of our environment, varying magnetic senses which allow us to orient (or not) to magnetic north, varying capacities to feel emotions, varying capacities to be aware of muscles and joints and other proprioceptive information, etc etc. If we boil all this down to the lowest common denominator and say "this common ground is the extent of human sensory capacity because everyone can do this", the result is a description of a deaf dumb and blind kid who probably doesn't play pinball because he can't feel the paddle buttons.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
I think I may be to blame for persuading OliviaCA that it's "misunderstanding" which is primarily at work here. It's a mental habit of mine from my work: to approach any notions I form about a situation as though they may be mistaken (since they sometimes are) and/or temporary (since I work with people, and they often change).
OliviaCA, I'm sorry you feel crushed. I hope, though, that you can take heart from the fact that what you've presented here has sparked a great deal of lively discussion.
That said, I'd like to address the "experience" issue again, but from a different starting point. You have, if I understood you, claimed that there is no such thing as "experience," since what most/all of us are dealing with most/all of the time is the product of our interpretations of sensory data.
The first issue here seems to me to be a faulty assumption -- the same one I've been known to make in my work; the starting assumption that, since I'm working with an interpretation, it's necessarily, or at least probably, at odds with the reality.
This starting assumption ignores the fact that even the proverbial stopped clock is right at least twice every day. Sometimes our interpretations turn out, in fact, to square with reality, so-called.
The second issue is one that often develops out of the kinds of thinking done by highly intelligent folks like yourself who delve into abstractions. What "works" and makes enormous sense at an abstract level doesn't always work at the practical one. Anomalies crop up. Hard evidence seems to contradict the theory.
My training for the work I do was based on a particular set of premises:
1. Humans form societies.
2. Societies form ideals and mythologies.
3. Societies teach these to their members, and
4. Require a certain level of compliance from members.
5. Members often fall short of these ideals/myths.
In American society, for example, we have the myth of the go-it-alone rugged individualist who achieves power and wealth on his/her own. We also have accompanying stories about success: work hard, and you'll come out on top; the name of the game is competition -- those "on top" must be the best & smartest, because they're "on top," and we should all strive to be like them, etc.
Yet when we compare these stories with what we have actually experienced, we see that "hard work" does not, in itself, always (or even often!) lead to financial security; most people work dreadfully hard all their lives, and yet are still only scraping by. Much depends on what we work at, and how we're enabled to work at all.
When we enquire into theexperience of those "on top," we find that they often had a head start by being born to wealthy, powerful families, or by being particularly lucky or blessed with a remarkable set of abilities, etc. Sometimes they even took unlawful or immoral advantage of others.
Then we also have the phenomenon of tokenism, which I won't go into here.
These are social realities. And it's the social world with which the theories you offer here seem not to deal. (From my perspective, they don't deal very well with the physical world either, but leave that aside.)
We are not isolates. Our "selves" are formed not only from encounters with God (for those who believe in one) or with the molecules and forces that comprise the physical "universe;" our "selves" are formed primarily from our interactions with other human beings and the social structures they develop.
That, it seems to me, is the largest defect of the notions you present. They're still interesting to consider, and there may be aspects of this theory which will prove helpful in understanding one another (and ourselves). But as a radio host of a program I often listen to once observed, "Reality often astonishes theory."
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
Thank you, Porridge.
I didn't/still don't know where to start with replying to most of the posts of the last page or so, because of precisely what grokesx has pointed to. I wish that I could put things more clearly.
Michael Graziano does say that introspection cannot solve this issue; simply thinking about it is not to be trusted; the brain cannot do anything but tell itself the story: "This self is aware of/experiencing x, y, z".
All I seem to be able to come up with at the moment is the same old statements:
In the same way that our brain builds and scans its models of things, eg. an apple, represents it as something round and green or red etc, ( and with other/more properties, weight, texture, taste, if we pick it up and eat it etc ), it builds and scans a model of attention processes, represents them as "awareness/conscious self experience", and that is what the attention-modeling part of our brain reads:
: round red and green object" and "awareness/experience of".
The part of our brains which models "attention processes", which scans/reads/runs them for feedback on the state of attention processes, ( which it then "sends" to the parts of the brain organising the enhancements of representations, which is what attention processes do ), is not a homunculus, it is not a "self", it is a set of neural circuits in just one area of the brain.
This "thing" we call experience/consciousness/the conscious self experience is just part of that model, it is the "attention process"-bit of the model.
There is no "I" or "self" or meaningfully independent/separate/"whole" observer watching/"experiencing" the model of the self and the world. ( though there is a "being", our infinitely more complex "real self", receiving data from this model, however indirectly )
Conscious experience/the conscious self" is part of the model.
This "experience" is not the "experience" that our brain and body/real self is having. It is a sketch of ( part of ) it, sometimes very like; sometimes oddly functional/useful but not at all like, and often totally mistaken, as for instance about the size of the moon when close to the horizon, or about people having horns on their heads, or about white being an absence of colour rather than a spectrum.
And there is no one having this experience, because it is just a sort of recording, which can play to noone.
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[ 21. May 2015, 14:45: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
Olivia. I think you're hitting the basic problem that arises when we reject our own sense of reality in favour of someone else's opinion; or in favour of a theory that says our experience is invalid in some way.
To quote an NLP teacher - "If you don't trust yourself, who do you trust?"
If you trust nobody and nothing, then life falls apart pretty quickly.
In one sense (though not in it ultimate sense), Buddhist teaching appears to demand that we trust nothing an that there is nothing to trust and that it all eventually collapses into nothingness. That - is a very incorrect western interpretation based on reading the words rather than following the experience. If you were to go to a Buddhist monastery (e.g. Samye Lyng in Dumfriesshire), you would see that although there is a dissolution of ego, the sense of identity i strengthened so that the monks have a solid foundation from which to leap into the unknown. Without that foundation, it's a fast track to psychosis.
[ 21. May 2015, 15:13: Message edited by: itsarumdo ]
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
Olivia. I think you're hitting the basic problem that arises when we reject our own sense of reality in favour of someone else's opinion; or in favour of a theory that says our experience is invalid in some way.
I don't know if I understand the point that you are making. :?
Graziano's "attention model of consciousness/conscious self experience" resonated instantly with me when I first came across it because it provided scientific support and explanation for my own "experience".
It fitted with my no longer believing in free will, with how my conscious-self-experience seemed to follow my brain/body's activities like foam in the wake behind a ship, ( or shadows on a cave wall I suppose! ), etc.
But I suspect that if I had come across such a theory ten years ago I would have thought that it was rubbish, because it wouldn't have matched my "reality" ( model world ) at the time, ie. that so long as I believed that my conscious-self was a sort of CEO it wouldn't have made any sense at all.
It's obviously extremely gratifying, :lol as well as reassuring, to find work of some scientific standing/pedigree supporting and explaining what seems to be a rather minority "experience"/model/representation of reality.
I have often had trouble understanding and accepting that other people's models are *not* built the same as "mine" ( poor TOM ). I'm pretty sure that I would feel a lot worse about it if I hadn't decided to believe in God a few years back.
What exactly did you mean in your comment?
[ 21. May 2015, 16:02: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
@ itsarumdo:
Ah, I think I know what you're referring to; where I say that Graziano thinks that it is impossible for the brain etc, and that can't trust introspection?
It's interesting, because although I think he'd be right about that with respect to just "thinking"/reasoning it may be possible via experiential steps?
[ 21. May 2015, 16:09: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
Olivia - although I haven't read Graziano enough to know where he's coming from, what I've gleaned form your posts is that his theory is very cerebral - and although it may be based on "scientific" observation of others and animals, I get the feeling it isn't based very heavily on his personal experience of using a conscious mind. When the nitty gritty day to day experience of life is added in, a theory that says it's all a simulation is somewhat self-negating. Again referring to the Buddhist schools, "nothingness", "void" etc are attempts to describe *something* - but that something is not a total absence - it is an almost-intangible that is just beyond common everyday language to describe adequately.
If you want to really look at neurochemistry, Austin's "Zen and the Brain" is definitive. This is a neuroscientist who also is a long term meditator who has attempted to reconcile the two.
[ 21. May 2015, 16:55: Message edited by: itsarumdo ]
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
Olivia - although I haven't read Graziano enough to know where he's coming from, what I've gleaned form your posts is that his theory is very cerebral - and although it may be based on "scientific" observation of others and animals, I get the feeling it isn't based very heavily on his personal experience of using a conscious mind. When the nitty gritty day to day experience of life is added in, a theory that says it's all a simulation is somewhat self-negating. Again referring to the Buddhist schools, "nothingness", "void" etc are attempts to describe *something* - but that something is not a total absence - it is an almost-intangible that is just beyond common everyday language to describe adequately.
I don't know how much, if at all, Michael Graziano's personal experience, ( outside of his many years of research in neuroscience, into neural pathways and modeling, etc ), has contributed to his theory, but in my own case his theory was like a scientific "seal of approval" for what had definitely been my own experience ( using these terms here in their conventional fashion ) the last few years.
The reason why I don't feel anything self-negating about his theory, ( or in neuroscientists' general consensus that what we "experience" is a model ), is because have realised/understood that a simulation/model always simulates something else, and that the original is almost always way more impressive than the model, ie. it is simulating something even more awesome, more amazing, which is the kingdom of heaven/reality of waves, particles, energy etc.
But I suspect that that would probably not help me much either, if I didn't feel personally connected with that other reality/kingdom of heaven/"real self"/God as a result of deciding to "believe in God" ( a few years ago ) and reminding myself of/reinforcing/reaffirming that belief most days the last couple of months since realising how potent an antidote it is to feelings of alienation.
I might perhaps have achieved similar results with meditation, or other religious/spiritual practices. This ( repeating the belief out loud several times ) is the one which has worked for me so far.
.
[ 21. May 2015, 17:33: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
PS. ie. this thing we call experience, ( this part of the model, this "attention processes" bit of it between "self/other people" and the "objects of those attention processes" ) is a mere shadow of what our "real self"'s connection with the rest of the world is like.
eg. the surface area of the gastrointestinal system is gigantic, many times bigger than that of the lungs, which is already many times bigger than that of our skin ... and it is permeable, and engages in complex interactions with bits of the "outer world" almost all the time. It also contains almost as many neurotransmitters as the brain, influencing the brain in many ways, and playing important/essential role in the immune system, etc.
I imagine it rather like a combination of the Old Forest and Fangorn, among other things, involved in mixtures of never-ending skirmishes and alliances and exchanges with the rest of the world more complex than most human-scale wars or governments.
And the number of bacterial cells in, on and around our body is ten times that of cells bearing our DNA, and they influence our behaviour subtly but powerfully/profoundly all the time.
This thing we call "conscious self/experience", that we think so highly of, which seems so important and powerful, is actually tiny, incredibly limited, narrow, and powerless in comparison.
ie. our "real self"'s connection with/"experience of" the rest of the world is probably astonishingly different, almost unimaginable.
[ 21. May 2015, 17:55: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
I'd agree with that, for sure
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
... It's the social world with which the theories you offer here seem not to deal.
We are not isolates. Our "selves" are formed not only from encounters with ... the molecules and forces that comprise the physical "universe; our "selves" are formed primarily from our interactions with other human beings and the social structures they develop.
That, it seems to me, is the largest defect of the notions you present ... [ though ] there may be aspects of this theory which will prove helpful in understanding one another (and ourselves).
Thank you again for this post.
Only really taking in the contents of it today. :oops I didn't see what you were getting at with the "hard work" etc example, etc. And I have been wondering in what ways if any the theory/perspective is actually helpful, especially when it causes such disagreement.
About your first/main? point:
The thing I call my self is a model, a simplified representation of the far vaster infinitely more complex being which is my real self. The "other people" and "social structures" that my model self "encounters" are models also, built by that same vast and infinitely complex "real self".
In that sense "I" only "see" other people and society through a glass darkly, as through a veil with who knows how many distorting embroideries, and what I do see is all constructed by my greater "real self".
I don't know how much the social structures that I ( appear to ) perceive, in this model, the social constructs, myths, beliefs, customs, rules, etc really do shape or form me, and how much they, and language, might actually be this model world's representations /manifestations of more "purely" physical phenomena, a sort of translation for the purposes of the model. Code.
I agree that in this model world we do seem to be formed/shaped v largely by social forces, but I don't know if that is true about the "real world"/kingdom of heaven, of waves, particles, energy etc, where things like "equality", "justice", "tomorrow", "science", "class", "work" etc don't exist.
In this model world humans appear to be shunted around, shaped and propelled by a great many non-physical things, like ambition, fear, love, hate, etc etc etc but perhaps those things are just representations/symbols in this model of physical forces that we/science has so far only discovered/identified some of, ( 4% apparently? ).
Got to go, breakfast with son is calling, but will return to your second point ( about how the theory/perspective could be helpful ) soon.
[ 22. May 2015, 06:53: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
... It's the social world with which the theories you offer here seem not to deal.
Actually, coming back to this a couple of hours later, this sentence in your comment seems quite funny/ironic, and shows again just how badly I have been explaining things, because Michael Graziano's "attention model/schema theory of consciousness/the conscious self" suggests that the model exists/was built and is used very largely in order to enable/facilitate complex social interactions, ( as well as other more abstract higher cognitive functions ), eg. modeling the attention of another person in order to better/more successfully understand or relate to them.
How will/might his theory be helpful ... well, a lot of people still put a lot of energy into trying to work out what consciousness/conscious self experience is, and it should ( eventually ) save them from wasting any more time on that ... and it might enable treatment of people who suffer from actively disabling ( confusing or extremely distorted/partial models of the world, eg. who believe they have squirrels in their head, or that other people have horns on theirs, etc ... and might perhaps encourage a generally calmer detachment from beliefs/world-views if are understood to be models/map rather than territory.
[ 22. May 2015, 09:42: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
This "thing" we call experience/consciousness/the conscious self experience is just part of that model, it is the "attention process"-bit of the model. There is no "I" or "self" or meaningfully independent/separate/"whole" observer watching/"experiencing" the model of the self and the world.
The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. - Thomas Henry Huxley
The ugly fact here is that the "I" or "self" is the single most secure data point in existence. It is the mother of all facts. Nothing, and I repeat, nothing in the entire universe is better known to you than the very fact of your self-existence. This entire world could be a Matrix-like illusion. Even Kant-style preconceptions about what the world is like (space, time, ...) could have been designed into you by some nasty neuro-cyber-surgeon. One of the few things Descartes got right is that you can doubt absolutely everything, but not yourself. Because that which doubts is you.
It is true that materialism cannot deal with this. Hence as a hypothesis it is slain. You may wish to parade the zombie theories that one can animate out of its decaying corpse. I guess that sort of fits with pretending that you have no "free will" and are merely a drone in the Borg hive mind of your "real self". But it does not change that the "self" is a fact, indeed the fact, and hypotheses that disagree with facts are simply dead. And frankly, this one smells to the high heavens...
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
The thing I call my self is a model, a simplified representation of the far vaster infinitely more complex being which is my real self. The "other people" and "social structures" that my model self "encounters" are models also, built by that same vast and infinitely complex "real self".
Can you please clarify whether you believe that every self-identifying human consciousness is merely a model of its own "real self", which is mostly circumscribed by the individual human body, or whether they are all models within one overarching "real self" (humanity, animated matter, the world, ...)? If you die in a car crash, has your "real self" died?
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA: This "thing" we call experience/consciousness/the conscious self experience is just part of that model, it is the "attention process"-bit of the model. There is no "I" or "self" or meaningfully independent/separate/"whole" observer watching/"experiencing" the model of the self and the world.
The "I" or "self" is the single most secure data point in existence. It is the mother of all facts. Nothing, and I repeat, nothing in the entire universe is better known to you than the very fact of your self-existence. ... You can doubt absolutely everything, but not yourself. Because that which doubts is you.
Love the post, very rhythmical, full of rolling rhetoric etc, fun to read.
And in this instance I agree with you as well, that nothing is better known to me than this "conscious self experience" ... however my argument is that this "cse" is not "where" or "what" you think it is.
Instead of being at the centre of the universe, as if standing at the top of a huge cliff/mountain looking down at the rest of the world, it is actually on route 59 in front of a gas station or somewhere equally extremely insignificant/humble ... .
ie. It doesn't have the privileged viewpoint that we tend to think/are taught to think that it has.
And it isn't actually watching anything either. It, both the "self" and the apparent "attention"/awareness/"experience", is a simulation, a highly simplified representation of a "real self" and its real attention processes. It is the representative, and "obedient servant" ( carrying out orders ), of a far greater thing/being.
The change in perspective is rather like going from being the richest in the world to being one of the poorest.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB: quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA: The thing I call my self is a model, a simplified representation of the far vaster infinitely more complex being which is my real self. The "other people" and "social structures" that my model self "encounters" are models also, built by that same vast and infinitely complex "real self".
Can you please clarify whether you believe that every self-identifying human consciousness is merely a model of its own "real self", which is mostly circumscribed by the individual human body, or whether they are all models within one overarching "real self" (humanity, animated matter, the world, ...)? If you die in a car crash, has your "real self" died?
I can't clarify that because I don't know. I don't know what the originals of me and you and x, y, z are like in the kingdom of heaven/waves, particles and energy, whether they are all one or as separate, ( if in different ways ) as they seem to be in my model.
.
[ 22. May 2015, 11:57: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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Porridge
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# 15405
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
I didn't see what you were getting at with the "hard work" etc example, etc.
Sorry; I didn't make the point explicit. Here's what I was going for:
1. Social myth: Hard work will lead to material security, so work hard. (Please understand that I'm speaking from a US perspective, since that's the only society of which I have knowledge, and that this may differ markedly from European, er, realities.)
2. Workers accept myth, work hard.
3. Social result: Wide variations. Some workers will achieve security; some will exceed mere security; some will achieve only occasional bouts of security; some will never achieve security at all and will be destitute or nearly so.
4. Despite these varying results, the myth continues to operate in our social set-ups as if it were uniformly true, with the tacit, perhaps unconscious, agreement and support of society members. Public policies get predicated on this myth; society members continue to speak and behave as though work / employment is a "cure" for various social ills, including poverty, when (in a country where the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is insufficient in almost any urban marketplace to secure even minimally-adequate shelter, much less food, clothing, transportation, etc.). The myth operates, and with great power.
The point is this: what happens when the individual who works hard, as instructed, finds himself destitute or nearly so? Does he question the myth? Not usually; typically, he blames himself for his "failure," rather than consciously noticing that the myth is simply not uniformly true. He may try alternative approaches, but they will nearly always involve some variation on the theme that hard work leads to material security.
Every society develops its own mythologies, and these have enormous power simply because we are social beings who need each other to survive.
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
The thing I call my self is a model, a simplified representation of the far vaster infinitely more complex being which is my real self.
Some of my confusion here may be a matter of terminology. For me, a "model" is a sort of copy of an original. If I understand you, the "original" here is an infinitely complex being which is my real self, on which I have somehow fashioned a limited / faulty / incomplete / copy which I call my self. That much seems clear, and here are the aspects of it which I accept: the thing I call my self is probably not especially congruent with the thing some other human perceives as "me." I also accept that it's likely that neither of these perceptions (models, if you will) represents the "real me" either completely or with full accuracy.
Here's where we part company, though: who or what is constructing this inadequate / incomplete / limited / faulty model? How does this model come into being? How, when, and by what means does the faulty copy get made?
The theory seems to imply an agent, one with the capacity to develop a model, however limited, based on the original. Is this also "me," or my "self?" Is it the "real me?"
If I go to a museum with sketch pad and pencils, I can set these up before a drawing and wait from now until doomsday, and nothing will appear on my page until I, or another museum-goer, attempts to copy the drawing.
How do we get this model from the original? Who or what is doing this? When and how does this get constructed, or are we faced with the famous Escher print of the hand drawing itself?
Must stop here; out of time.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:What happens when the individual who works hard, as instructed, finds himself destitute or nearly so? Does he question the myth? Not usually; typically, he blames himself for his "failure," rather than consciously noticing that the myth is simply not uniformly true.
Yes, it can take a long time for model(s) to be changed, months, years, etc, and it can also simply never happen. Some models change constantly through life, eg. of the body shape as grow up, of where one lives, when move house, etc etc etc, and others like those symbolised/represented by social constructs and myths like "work hard get rich" may never be changed. I imagine it would depend on how important/necessary or painful it became. Extreme pain can cause models to change radically.
quote:
Who or what is constructing this incomplete / limited model? How does this model come into being? How, when ...
The theory seems to imply an agent, one with the capacity to develop a model, however limited, based on the original. Is this also "me," or my "self?" Is it the "real me?"
How do we get this model from the original? Who or what is doing this? ... Are we faced with the famous Escher print of the hand drawing itself?
The model is built/created ( constantly/at every moment ) and run/scanned/read by the part(s) of the brain ( probably the temporo-parietal junction and superior sulcus, just above the ears, especially, for some reason, on the right hand side ), which model the organism's attention processes, with ( probably fairly constant ) input from the rest of the brain ( and body ), and the data from the model(s) is fed back to the attention processes, in order to help them successfully manage/optimise attention "resources" and the enhancements of representations/models that are used for various cognitive tasks including social interaction.
Attention processes are the brain's way of organising ( enhancing or reducing focus on ) its representations of things for "higher"/complex cognitive purposes/calculations/computations.
To optimise those processes the temporo-parietal junction etc part of the brain models them; creates a model representing "attention to", ( which we "know" as awareness/"experience of" etc ), and a model of the "who or what" that is, ( according to the "equation" ), "doing the attending to", plus the object of the attention. Modeling and then tracking/monitoring that model helps the brain's attention processes to plan for distractions, sustain attention etc, as well as react more appropriately to other people.
I don't think that the temporoparietal junction, etc qualifies as my "real self". It is part of it but very very far from being all of it.
The whole of the brain, ( including the attention model ... ) and the body, and the environment acting on it too, is responsible for the model, play roles in creating it, however indirectly.
.
[ 22. May 2015, 15:05: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:What happens when the individual who works hard, as instructed, finds himself destitute or nearly so? Does he question the myth? Not usually; typically, he blames himself for his "failure," rather than consciously noticing that the myth is simply not uniformly true.
Or he finds a scapegoat: Jews, Muslims, illegal immigrants, the black guy in the White House, the gummint, secularization, the educated elite, etc.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Porridge
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# 15405
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Posted
Where/what is/are the original(s) from which the brain creates the model(s)? What is the brain using for a template?
@ Mousethief:
Oh, yes: that, too.
[ 22. May 2015, 16:03: Message edited by: Porridge ]
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
Playdoh, I think
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Porridge
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# 15405
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Posted
Surely you mean Aristoddle?
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
Where/what is/are the original(s) from which the brain creates the model(s)? What is the brain using for a template?
: Data about how those ( or similar ) things appear to function/have functioned in the past, which may result in a model/models which "physically"/visually resemble the originals, but may not. Even when the "behaviour"/functional nature of something is correctly modeled, ( which is the priority ), it may look very different to the original, eg. white which looks like no colour.
Most of the data will be coming from memory, ( already used for millions of previous incarnations/models of that "thing" ).
Those memories will be based on data from encounters/interactions with those things in the past, and from all the masses of motor-sensory-etc information received from its own body etc. ie. the models will be based on what our body, brain etc, has been able to perceive and process of other people, the world, itself, etc ( and consequently is its "truth" ).
And the models will necessarily be very highly simplified. Think water represented by pixels in video games.
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[ 22. May 2015, 16:52: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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OliviaCA
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Posted
PS. Ref. what templates used. cont. :
Primarily what has been found to "work", I think.
ie. the models probably evolve/are selected for/reused according to "success" rates ( how well they seem to support attention processes ) ... ?
... except perhaps when attention modeling processes are damaged/disturbed ... ( as in Autism Spectrum, or ADHD, or after brain-damage/injury, etc ).
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[ 22. May 2015, 16:58: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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Porridge
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# 15405
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Posted
Now I'm lost again.
For most humans I've known, there's a point at which no "past" or memories exist. Some folks I've known (and I'm not including clients in this group, because they may be special cases in this context, though I'm not committed to this point)can remember little or nothing of their childhoods earlier than 8, 9, or 10. Does this mean their imperfect-model selves did not emerge until this point?
On the other hand, there are people (I'm one of them) who remember, or claim to remember, events from very early on -- toddlerhood or even before.
Does this mean they were constructing model selves at this point?
And are we sans-self as infants?
How does the brain acquire memories or a past with which to work or model prior to model-self formation? I can speak only for myself, but my personal memories have one common feature: that self is firmly at ground zero for every one of them.
Here again, the theory seems to fall down for me. If the development of a model self requires accumulating data (memories, a past), what is available to begin the data-accumulation process? I predict you'll say, "The brain/body mechanism -- it records everything." And you may be right about this, but surely more is needed. Because it isn't, after all, a simple matter of accumulating data; it is, as I think we all agree, also a matter of organizing and interpreting that data. Surely, for these activities, a self is needed. That's why we have "selves" who see glasses as half-full, whereas others see them as half-empty. We have individuals who deem themselves failures for not winning a rigged game, and other individuals who blame their inability on the handiest scapegoat, as Mousethief points out.
This begins, for me, to echo the "uncaused first cause" argument for the existence of a god. I find neither one persuausive.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
Now I'm lost again.
I don't know if you saw this bit in my last but one post or not, but surely it explains/answers your question?
" ... data from encounters/interactions with those things in the past, and from all the masses of motor-sensory-etc information received from its own body etc. ie. the models will be based on what our body, brain etc, has been able to perceive and process of other people, the world, itself, etc ( and consequently is its "truth" )."
ie. first models, eg. of tiny infant, will be constructed from what its body and brain perceives and processes of its environment and itself ( and genes as well as early nurture will determine/shape what is perceived and processed to a significant extent ).
These models will be very different to later ones, but some of them may last a long time, others will be replaced as grows up.
NB. Whether you remember something or not, eg. before age 5 etc, is no indication of whether it is contributing to your model or not.
[ 22. May 2015, 17:43: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
PS. quote:
Posted by Porridge ...
Ref. requiring a "self" to organise data.
No, a "conscious self experience" is not needed to organise the data. The "cse" is a simulation created by a part of the brain as part of modeling attention processes.
Attention processes are required to help the brain organise its attention, enhancements of representations, etc for higher cognitive functions, but in earliest infancy the model(s) will be rudimentary.
Sorry I didn't notice/answer that bit of your question in my first reply.
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[ 22. May 2015, 18:00: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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OliviaCA
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Posted
PPS. I rushed out those replies because was being called on for advice ref. best way to grill a pizza!!!
To clarify/elaborate/confirm:
Infants/v young children don't, apparently, have a clear sense of separation from "the other"/the rest of the world etc until somewhere around a year or a year and a half ( I don't remember exactly, does anyone else know? ). And yet infants obviously do a lot of organising of data in that time.
The construction of the model of a self and of attention processes probably doesn't happen fully until there is quite a lot of info to base it on. And yes, then it no doubt begins to contribute, however indirectly, to cognitive function by way of the feedback from the attention-processes model.
[ 22. May 2015, 18:16: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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Jack o' the Green
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Posted
Two questions. 1 Is a baby conscious from birth? 2. If we have a true self beyond the models which we are experienceing now, why not dismiss that as a needless (not to say incoherent) complication and have a self albeit contingent and changing within the world which is what we experience directly anyway.
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Grokesx
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# 17221
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Posted
@IngoB
Firstly I need to say I don't have a dog in this fight. To my – ahem – mind, eliminative materialism is just one of a number of positions in the philosophy of mind which we don't have nearly enough information at this time to say is true or not. Personally I tend towards the hand wavery of emergentism, although I would be very surprised if every one of our cherished folk psychological notions remain un-eliminated when all the data is in. As for dualism, well, it's not so much hand waving as throwing a big blanket over the subject with the nine billion (minus one) names of God exquisitely embroidered upon it.
Anyway, to business.
quote:
This is not comparable at all. Her approach does not deal insufficiently with the light of the moon being bent by the atmosphere. Her approach denies that there is a moon.
As an aside, her approach doesn't deal with atmospheric refraction at all because it doesn't have to. Atmospheric refraction is the pineal gland of moon perception - an incorrect explanation whose time has passed.
Anyway, my analogy, my rules. In it, Olivia's approach doesn't deny there is a moon, it denies that the size of the moon changes with its position in the sky. The reason I brought it up is because even though most of us accept that fact intellectually, it makes no difference to our perception. We cannot will it to look the same size to "us" at the horizon or its zenith. We are stuck with this artefact of how our brains go about their business whether we like it or not. And if Olivia is correct, the conscious “I” is exactly the same – she can accept that it is an illusion at the same time having to putting up with the consequences.
As far as I can see your critique of her position rests solely on the problem of third person analysis of first person matters. The usual hard problem stuff and fascinating it can be, too. But way, way more interesting than you make it sound. Me, I’m particularly taken with the introspective illusion at the moment. Not that it applies to me, of course.
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
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Grokesx
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Posted
Oh shit - forgot the smileys.
![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif)
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Grokesx:
And if Olivia is correct, the conscious “I” is exactly the same – she can accept that it is an illusion at the same time having to putting up with the consequences.
Either the conscious I is an illusion or it is not an illusion.
Suppose: the conscious I is an illusion. We think there is such a thing, but there isn't.
Similarly, conscious experience is an illusion, since it depends upon the conscious I. We think there are such things as conscious experiences, but there aren't; they're an illusion.
Illusions are a type of conscious experience. (Granted by you in an earlier post.) If there is no such thing as conscious experience, there are no such things as the types of conscious experience called illusions.
Therefore, the conscious I is not an illusion, because there are no such things as illusions.
This is a contradiction.
Therefore, the conscious I is not an illusion.
[ 22. May 2015, 23:39: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Grokesx:
As for dualism, well, it's not so much hand waving as throwing a big blanket over the subject with the nine billion (minus one) names of God exquisitely embroidered upon it.
There's more than one kind of dualism, and "God" does not feature directly in most of them.
quote:
Originally posted by Grokesx:
Anyway, my analogy, my rules.
Then I reject your (unmodified) analogy. Illusion is disagreement of experience with reality. Consequently, experience as such cannot be an illusion, because that would deny the basis of the definition at the same time as applying it. Your analogy does not match this pattern of self-contradiction, and hence is fundamentally flawed.
quote:
Originally posted by Grokesx:
As far as I can see your critique of her position rests solely on the problem of third person analysis of first person matters.
Well, my critique is more that she claims that a third person analysis can somehow undermine the primacy of first person data.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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OliviaCA
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# 18399
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jack o' the Green: Is a baby conscious from birth?
If you mean "does it have a "conscious self experience"/clear sense of self" from birth" then I would say no, it doesn't.
Babies apparently only gradually begin to develop a sense of being separate or independent beings after a few months, seem to be unaware of any division between their mother and themselves for example, and this can last until at least a year old, maybe even a year and a half (? ). There is just "data collection".
I suspect that their experience to begin with is of a "formless void" ( sort of like a picture of the galaxy/universe, clouds of the "dust" of stars etc ), and then gradually, as data from their eyes begins to be organised by the brain, of light and dark, and then as data from their muscles and proprioceptive systems begins to be organised by their brain, of land/solid earth and sky/air and so on ...
ie. the brain collects/collates and organises data from all available points, and creates and uses models from that data to help it function in the world, learn from actions, regulate behaviour, etc and gradually a faint shape/form begins to emerge in the model which is based on data from the skin, and reach/grasp from arm movements, hands, and mouth etc, and possible actions etc.
That model of the body and its more obvious "boundaries" and "powers" becomes more detailed over the next couple of years, and then around the age of two years ( sometimes earlier, sometimes later/a lot later/never ), children begin to model other people's attention processes, what others are ( probably ) paying attention to, because when done well it tends to lead to more successful interactions.
The brain may perhaps have already been doing that sort of modeling of its own attention processes by then, or perhaps it happens simultaneously or somewhat after; either way once the brain has a working ( if highly simplified ) model of "itself" and a working model of "attention processes" the combination of the two ( plus the objects of attention ) produces that which we know as "conscious self experience".
Mary throws a ball. [ Olivia ] [ is aware of ] [ an apple ]. The part of the brain responsible for modeling attention "reads" that "sentence"/that set of data/series of models and "creates" this "me"/conscious self experience, simulation of my "real self's" attention processes.
But babies are not born with it. It is created/"born" later.
quote:
Originally posted by Jack o' the Green:
... How do you explain that I am experiencing my own existence at this very moment?
... An entity's experience of its own mind is (I would suggest) a primary or intrinsic property, other parts of cognitive experience are secondary and could (at least in theory) be faked or mistaken. In the 'brain in a vat' thought experiment, a mind might be wrong about all sorts of things e.g. the existence of an external, objective world, the reality of other minds, the accuracy of past memories etc. What it can't be wrong about (even in theory) is that in some way, it must exist because it experiences its own existence.
The temporo-parietal junction and superior sulcus read/scan the model as they run it and what is read is "Jack o' the Green is aware of the new post by OliviaCA". There is no "you" reading or scanning the model, unless you want to identify with one very small area of your brain that is.
quote:
If we have a true self beyond the models which we are experiencing now, why not dismiss that as a needless complication and have a self albeit contingent and changing within the world which is what we experience directly anyway.
Because it's not anything like the whole story. It is life without the source of life. It is a shadow world, however seductive, vivid, beautiful etc it is not even a thousandth as amazing as the world we mostly don't see, the world of waves, particles, energy, of molecular, cellular interactions. I only faintly glimpse the scale and wonder of my real self when I use the word God/believe in that construct, but it is there.
... And "we" don't, experience the real world directly, that is. Putting aside for a moment the question of a higher reality/kingdom of heaven which is the one of waves, particles, energy etc, neuroscientists agree that we do not experience the "world" directly, but always by way of a model, which is made up of mere symbols/representations of things, a place of value judgements, labels.
And this "self"/conscious self experience is too, a sketch of a self, a caricature, a cartoon, which is perhaps more likely to behave in cartoonish ways if it forgets/is unaware of its "real self".
[ 23. May 2015, 08:31: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
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OliviaCA
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
My critique is more that she claims that a third person analysis can somehow undermine the primacy of first person data.
First person data is frequently very unreliable, even when many people swear to it: eg. just because thousands of people believe in homeopathy doesn't mean it works in any way other than as placebo.
Individuals who would swear in a court of law that they had a squirrel in their head, ( documented ) or that everyone else had horns on theirs, are easily judged delusional, but what if "conscious self experience" was just as much of a brain-induced effect, "suffered" by the vast majority like that of the moon seeming larger at the horizon?
Why should the thing/element which we call "experience" be somehow exempt from the modeling system?
The brain models it in other people, and even objects.
It is capable of attributing "consciousness" to ventriloquists' puppets, and I believe ( as per Michael Graziano's theory ) that it does it to the model of itself that part of the brain uses for "attention modeling" purposes.
It convinces itself ( as a computer could be made to do to given the right data ) that the model is conscious, that it has a "conscious self".
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
First person data is frequently very unreliable, even when many people swear to it: eg. just because thousands of people believe in homeopathy doesn't mean it works in any way other than as placebo.
Once more then, with feeling: there is nothing in all of science, knowledge, wisdom and intuition that is more reliable than the experience of self. All else can be doubted, but to doubt this is simply self-contradictory (in a double meaning of the word). Furthermore, this experience is perfectly objective, affirmed a billionfold this very second by independent observations that can be shared freely and are understood easily. To compare this with false theories like homeopathy is a category error. The self is not theory, it's data. Data that eliminative materialism cannot explain. Hence eliminative materialism must be false somehow.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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Jack o' the Green
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# 11091
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Posted
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
If you mean "does it have a "conscious self experience"/clear sense of self" from birth" then I would say no, it doesn't.
Babies apparently only gradually begin to develop a sense of being separate or independent beings after a few months, seem to be unaware of any division between their mother and themselves for example, and this can last until at least a year old, maybe even a year and a half (? ). There is just "data collection".
I understand that a baby isn't born with a fully developed sense of a separate self, capable of introspection, but that wasn't what I asked. Much of what you describe in this post is bog standard neurological and psychological development. However, it fails to address the distinction between the intrinsic and secondary properties of consciousness.
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
The temporo-parietal junction and superior sulcus read/scan the model as they run it and what is read is "Jack o' the Green is aware of the new post by OliviaCA". There is no "you" reading or scanning the model, unless you want to identify with one very small area of your brain that is.
So if there isn't an "I", how can there be an I which wants to identity with the I which doesn't exist? Furthermore, it isn't about what I want. Reality is what it is. The question is how we can meaningfully talk about it, and cogently justify describing it in a particular way.
Originally posted by OliviaCA:
Because it's not anything like the whole story. It is life without the source of life. It is a shadow world, however seductive, vivid, beautiful etc it is not even a thousandth as amazing as the world we mostly don't see, the world of waves, particles, energy, of molecular, cellular interactions. I only faintly glimpse the scale and wonder of my real self when I use the word God/believe in that construct, but it is there.
... And "we" don't, experience the real world directly, that is. Putting aside for a moment the question of a higher reality/kingdom of heaven which is the one of waves, particles, energy etc, neuroscientists agree that we do not experience the "world" directly, but always by way of a model, which is made up of mere symbols/representations of things, a place of value judgements, labels.
I don't have a problem with the world not being the same as we perceive it to be, or that it has to be interpreted via our senses and the model making apparatus of our brains. Nor do I disagree with the idea that our sense of self fluctuates throughout our lives. I think my problems with your position are twofold. First, your view of consciousness as an illusion. As I have said earlier, my experience of my own existence, is an intrinsic experience, utterly different in principle to my memories, emotions, ability to recognise faces, perceive a table etc which could in theory be illusions. Secondly, your jump from general neuroscience to something else without any evidence or cogent philosophical reasoning.
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