[Wittrs] Further Response to Justintruth
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:55:32 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Justintruth <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> The classical
> physical model is an objective model. It does not describe experience
> in any way. There is no experience in it. It is just objects moving.
> The physics however is more than the objective model at least in
> assumption. It assumes that the physical model is "about" what my
> experience will be.
>
Yes, it assumes experience. Indeed everything we do and say in an effort to
understand or describe anything assumes experience because experience is the
milieu of our existence. We are not rocks or other inanimate things. We are
conscious entities!
> If a physicist were to predict that a particular electronic display on
> a piece of equipment would change its state and then turn away from
> the equipment and report that he did not see it change state he would
> be summarily dismissed. There is an assumption that someone will look
> at the instruments or at the phenomenon directly (if you believe in
> such distinctions) and the meaning of the reports he will give will be
> relevant to the model.
>
Of course.
> So the current "physics" here referring to the model plus ordinary
> assumptions made about its relationship to experience does include a
> model of consciousness in it.
Everything does.
> Physics is not just its theory. It
> includes predictions about what an "observer" will experience.
> Einstein especially is loaded with descriptions of "observers" and
> quantum mechanics makes frequent use of the idea of the "appearing" of
> a particle. The visual spectrum is very good example of this as it
> even associates "color" which is certainly subjective with certain
> electromagnetic frequencies. This is not a statement of the frequency
> response of the optics of the system. It includes "color photographs"
> presented as a device to stimulate the optic channel and demonstrate
> the meaning of the effect. The actual "color" is then demonstrated.
>
Yes. We are conscious and what we do assumes consciousness.
> So then I seem to be supporting your claim! If classical physics
> already has an observer in it and realizes that an eye needs to be
> placed at the one end of a telescope while the other end is pointed to
> a certain place in the sky in order to see the moons of Jupiter then
> physics is already describing and including consciousness and its
> relationship to the body in it. So where is the new information?
>
> Well it is true that there are unstated assumptions such as I have
> described but I also said that they were not part of the physical
> model. When Dennett or you state that consciousness can be explained I
> interpret it to mean that the physical model itself predicts
> consciousness.
I have no problem with that at all. After all, if consciousness is certain
things certain physical things do then if we have the right things doing the
right things we would expect consciousness to be there, too. Indeed, that is
essential for a scientific claim and Dennett's thesis, finally, is just that, a
proposed model that is scientifically testable.
> It does not currently do that. As I said I believe that
> the current physical model does not predict experience at all.
>
Yes, you've said that is what you believe but then you are assuming Dennett's
model is irrelevant to detecting the presence of consciousness which is really
just to assume his model is wrong. Why
would anyone do that? Taking a leaf from Dennett's book I would suggest it is
because you are still thinking of consciousness in an implicitly dualistic way.
You are thinking Dennett's model can't work because that's not what
consciousness is! But he says that it is what it is and the only way to check
this out is either to discover something in consciousness his model fails to
account for or to show that a system built on the model still cannot achieve
the features we associate with consciousness. The first possibility is to show
a flaw or gap in his theory. The second is to show it is empirically wrong.
But you can't simply assume it's wrong because it doesn't account for a dualist
conception of consciousness when that is just its point!
> Now you may claim that some intricate mechanism is all that is needed.
Yes, something like our brains. What reason do you think properly working
brains wouldn't be enough?
> Some very complex arrangement of parts moving in a certain way and
> then the model will predict that experience will occur. I wish we
> could have advantage of a complete description of the brain so that we
> could just look at the model and see if it predicts consciousness but
> it's a red herring. I am saying that "on principle" any objective
> mechanical model will not predict the emergence of consciousness.
Yes, I know that is what you are saying and I think it's a mistake. But let's
see the support you want to give for this view.
> Why?
>
> Again, because the current model just posits the existence of some
> state of objective reality at one point in time and then allows one to
> specify the objective state at a future time. And the state is limited
> basically the position and velocity of matter.
Aren't you just applying the wrong picture here, a picture that assumes no
relation between position and velocity of matter and the occurrence of
consciousness? What if that is really all there is? In that case, predicting
the right events will also predict instances of consciousness.
> If we don't add to that
> model then there is no experience posited at all. That description, no
> matter how intricate the mechanism, is all that it does. And the
> meaning of "being conscious" is simply not that.
>
So because you artificially truncate the model, you want to say that there is
no model with a physical dimension that can predict instances of consciousness?
What if you don't make this arbitrary truncation? What if you simply agree to
suppose that there is a direct correlation between particular physical events
and instances of consciousness? If that is the case, then you get the
predictions you think we are missing.
> Now you will argue like this: You will say (have said): "But that is
> not the issue. The issue is not to describe it but to account for it
> causally"
>
> But if you understand physics in the way I do that is never the issue.
Again, I would say that you are drawing some artificial lines here and
constraining the picture in order to arrive at a desired conclusion, that
physics can have no relation to consciousness. But think about it. What are
your alternatives? If it's not physics (through the increasingly "higher"
iterations you've already mentioned) what is left? A ghost in the machine? A
monad peering through a window on the world?
> Physics gives no causal explanation but is descriptive.
I've already answered this yet I am reluctant to snip away here, despite Sean's
desire that we do so! I refer you therefore to my prior responses on this same
issue.
> Material
> causality that is inherent in ideas like force are really descriptive
> of nature. They just say how the thing is not what causes it to be
> that way.
Physics tells us that lightning is a discharge of built up electrons in cloud
formations under certain circumstance, not Zeus' thunderbolts! That's certainly
a matter of causes, don't you think?
> Further the current model predicts only objective
> properties. No where in the model does it include a statement like
> "And then the mechanism is conscious".
That's a fault of the model. Dennett's thesis and the research program pursued
by others in the field certainly have theories that say things like that
(whether or not they have yet succeeded in achieving the desired results).
> What it says is that if you
> position an observer in such and such a way this is what will be
> observed. It does not say that if you position matter in such and such
> a way an observer will be positioned!
>
> Its just not in the theory.
>
Then you are looking at the wrong theories!
> It can be extended to do so. What is needed is to understand exactly
> what arrangements of the mechanism are necessary to produce it.
>
Yes, of course. But aren't you arguing here that that is unachievable?
> In a sense this is not new news. Every father or mother knows that
> physical mechanism causes in a "material causal" sense consciousness
> and it is the source of their concern over whether to get pregnant.
> Your idea that it is possible to set up within physics some principle
> that would accurately describe what type of mechanism would be
> required to cause a particular type of consciousness to occur I agree
> with fully.
I am not proposing any extra principles but a theory that accounts for the
occurrence of consciousness within current, known principles.
> I further agree that the rules of material causality would
> apply, meaning that arranging the material would reliably produce the
> consciousness and disrupting it would cause it to cease. This is why
> we duck when a rock is thrown. But I do not agree that it is currently
> in the physics of Newton, or Schrodinger or Einstein to describe under
> what conditions this would occur. In fact it is not.
>
Whether the physicists you mention were studying consciousness is a different
question. I am quite prepared to agree that they were not. But that says
nothing about the possibility of applying some or all of their scientific
insights, discoveries, etc. to consciousness as the subject matter of inquiry.
> Furthermore it would be revolutionary to physics to do so because for
> the first time some aspect of the model would not be objective.
I think Dennett would argue about the non-objective part but I don't think one
needs to. There is no reason to think that the fact that subjectness is
different from objectively observable features in the world precludes the study
of how subjectness comes into being, what it is, etc.
> The
> model would no longer just be about the position and velocities of
> particles (or matter ? excuse the exclusion of modern physics). It
> would have now included a radically new principle. Instead of saying
> that if you set up this arrangement and stand here you will see this
> in ten minutes. It would say that if you set up this material
> arrangement someone will be standing there.
>
Okay. Why not? That IS just the point of this approach!
> Further new experimental techniques will be required to support this
> new physics.
I don't know that we need to call it "physics" anymore than we call chemistry
"physics" or biology "physics", etc.! But yes, a regimen of experimentation
would need to be developed tailored to studying this. But nothing extraordinary
I should think.
> I went back and re-read your posts and found a quote
> about connecting physically our brains up with other entities and
> experiencing what it is like to be them. I mentioned the same thing in
> an earlier post. These are radical departures from the current theory
> and methods of physics and indicate that something that would
> currently be termed "non physical" is being considered for inclusion
> in the models of physics. No experiment that I am aware of conjectures
> such and arrangement and attempts to test it.
>
I took it from the work of Stanislas Dehaene for whom a link was provided by
another poster on this list. He proposed it as a future possibility if his
theory of how brains produce consciousness proves productive (yields positive
results in the course of his research).
> If I take your framing of the issue: "The issue is not to describe it
> but to account for it causally" and interpret it this way? "The issue
> is to see that the material of the brain when arranged in the
> mechanism of the brain is conscious not in the sense that the meaning
> of the phrase "consciousness" is reducible to the meaning of the
> phrase "an arrangement of particles moving" but in the sense that the
> existence of a physical brain is a necessary and sufficient reason for
> the existence of consciousness and hence in that sense we can say that
> consciousness "is" this mechanism since disassembling it will remove
> consciousness and assembling it will bring it back." Then I agree with
> you.
>
Hmmm, you've taken the long way round then!
> However, if you make the leap from that to assuming that there exists
> a physical mechanism which, if its motion is correctly understood
> according to the standard current laws of physics, the workings of
> which would express the meaning of consciousness, would "be" conscious
> not by the interjection of a separate principle but by looking at the
> mechanism itself, then I still believe you and Dennett are just wrong
> on principle.
Except for your adding in "a separate principle" I see no difference between
your first formulation and this one! You have not given any convincing reason
that a new and entirely "separate principle" is required.
Note that above I took it that we were in agreement but then your introduction
of what I take it as a gratuitous demand for a new principle seems to alter
that. But if you take out this issue over a new principle, we would likely be
in agreement on this, based on your statement above.
> Remember as Claude Shannon has said the fact that
> information means something is irrelevant to the engineering problem.
> I do not think that the fact that we do not know the working of the
> mechanism has any bearing on the situation. A mechanism will remain a
> mechanism and the current physical meaning of a mechanism does not
> include the fact that it is conscious no matter how it moves or how
> complex it gets. It's just not in the physics.
>
That just repeats what I take to be a mistake since there are many levels we
can look at in a mechanism and just because looking at the pulsing of a brain,
say, doesn't reveal consciousness doesn't mean that if we could figure out how
the pulsings all relate in terms of the behaviors and the reports of the
subject, that it wouldn't. Moreover, note that I make my case on the issue of
what tasks are performed, regardless of the processes performing them so this,
of necessity, is still another level of the operations involved.
> To say that something "is only a mechanism" means that its properties
> are exhausted in a physical description of matter located over time.
One man's mechanism might be another's organism!
> There are no other properties of a mechanism in the current physics.
> And even if information is received processed stored and causes the
> mechanism to move in various directions that does not mean that it is
> conscious. It does not mean that the information means anything to the
> mechanism or that it can see.
>
That is the challenge, isn't it? Well how do we know that other beings like
ourselves see, understand, etc.? Do we ever really know? Wittgenstein suggests
that we do know because all we mean in such uses is how they behave (including
the self reports we observe). Why should we expect it to be any different for a
computer as subject?
But in the case of the computer we will have at least one other thing and that
is a deep knowledge of the internal workings since we will have designed it or
are in a position to reverse engineer it, something that is so far much farther
away for us with brains.
So we would recognize consciousness in the behavioral responses of the
artificial system as well as in the internal components going on.
Now if people like Dehaene are right, it might even be possible to access the
conscious experience of such subjects because it might even be doable with real
brains. Thus there is a third way that science can be done vis a vis this
question.
> Current physical law does not posit the existence of consciousness in
> its model.
Physics qua physics is not directed at consciousness as a subject of inquiry
but that says nothing about possibilities.
> Therefore in a sense consciousness is non-physical.
Yes it is, in a sense, though not this sense. It is non-physical if by
"physical" we mean tangible physical things, entities. But insofar as it is
physically derived, a part of the entire physical reality of the universe it
certainly would be "physical".
> A
> radical change in the principles of physics would be required to
> include the obvious facts that mechanisms such as our brains with
> properties not yet posited but which we presume neurology and
> cybernetics will discover become conscious.
That IS your assertion but I see no reason at all to assume it. And you haven't
really made a case here that it is necessary to assume it.
> That new assignment would
> be a radical departure because it would cause the physical model to
> include statements about facts that cannot be reduced in meaning to
> the motion of matter. You might be able to identify them ontologically
> (I don't think so but even if you did) you would not be able to say
> that the new entity was just an object moving and "an object moving"
> is what the current physics has in it.
>
How do we know that anything besides ourselves in the universe is conscious?
> It would also be a radical departure because the only way that
> confirmation of such a fact could be achieved by a scientist would be
> for him to engineer a physical situation that would allow him to be
> that arrangement (and remember it) so that he could see for himself
> what it would be like to be that arrangement.
Here you assume direct access would be essential but, as I have said, there is
no reason it must be (though Dehaene, and Dennett by the way, hazard the idea
that even direct access is not unachievable).
> Such a program is
> conceivable and even probably achievable. In some ways we already
> achieve it when we drink, take drugs (in fact it is inherent in the
> meaning of the term drug) and undergo anesthesia. We already know that
> by injecting anesthetics into our bodies we lose consciousness. I can
> report that to you myself. I can say that under anesthesia I was not
> conscious as far as I can remember.
>
Of course you may have simply forgotten!
> There is a therefore a dangerous equivocation that must be avoided. To
> say that conscious is the mechanism of the brain can easily be
> interpreted to mean that there is no other principle than mechanistic
> physics required to describe the meaning of consciousness.
Depends on what we mean by "mechanistic physics". I think that is already a
loaded term absent adequate explication.
> I take you
> at your word that you do not mean that but only mean that the
> arrangement of physical brain causes consciousness in the sense of
> material cause. And while I do not believe in the ontology of material
> particles
Why do you think it THAT is an ontological question?
>you may be able to say that the material that is the body is
> conscious but only by changing the limits of what material can be not
> by understanding the geometry of a mechanisms motion. Many of the
> discussions I see cause this equivocation
> .
I'm not sure you've really pinpointed an equivocation here. What is the term
you think is being equivocated and what are the meanings that are being slipped?
> I have been reminded that I have not yet introduced myself to the
> group so I must take a break from this thread now to figure out how to
> do that.
Okay. Nice effort though long and really repetitive. It would be better if you
could tighten up your comments by trying to say a thing once rather than
repeatedly. Repetition doesn't make for stronger arguments. (By the way, I have
also been accused of being overly verbose and I must admit that sometimes that
is a very fair accusation. Sean is probably gonna murder me for responding to
your every line, or almost every line, here as he is trying to get us to trim
down and focus more.)
SWM
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