[Wittrs] Is Homeostasis the Answer? (Re: Variations in the Idea of Consciousness)
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:22:39 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
>
> > Now note, as well, that I don't reference "magical internal
> > processing" so your response concerning it seems to miss (or
> > mischaracterize) some of what I've said. I am, rather, talking
> > about perfectly ordinary processes, the kinds we can observe and
> > track in brains using the right instrumentation.
>
> Arthur C. Clarke supposedly said "Any sufficiently advanced technology
> is indistinguishable from magic
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws> ." I was using
> "magic" in that sense. No mischaracterization intended.
>
Then there would be nothing special in calling it "magic" of course, it would
just be a remark about the current state of knowledge, namely that we lack it.
But then there WOULD be something "magical" going on in that sense, no? That
is, we don't know what the processes in brains are precisely, how they do what
they do, and to acknowledge that is not to assert that there is something
beyond the ordinary going on. Yet didn't you say there is no magic to the
processes in question though, since we lack knowledge of how they work and you
are using "magic" in this Clarkian sense, it would be more appropriate to say
there is!
I wouldn't use that formulation myself because of the normal uses of "magic"
but given your definition it would be acceptable to do so without violating the
norms of scientific discourse.
>
<snip>
>
>
> > So there is still this problem of subjectness that, perhaps, speaking
> > of interaction with the world is not quite sufficient to address.
>
>
> >> Unfortunately, you don't seem to be receptive to a discussion of
> >> that way of interacting.
>
> It seems to me that you have just done it again. I try to introduce a
> discussion of interaction. It is hard to see your response as anything
> other than giving it the brush off.
>
This I don't understand, Neil. I am trying to discuss experience, being
conscious, being a subject, etc., etc. To have that we have this first person
point of view and the challenge is to say how that can exist in what seems, on
the face of it, to be an otherwise third person world. There have been lots of
answers to this ranging from idealism to dualism to materialism, etc., and many
nuances in between. All seem to founder on the ongoing strangeness that some
physical things are animate, sentient, aware while others aren't. It looks like
this being aware, etc., is a special case, explainable as an added property or
as a co-existing stuff with the stuff of matter.
You propose we suppose that the answer to this lies in talk about interacting,
i.e., that we say consciousness comes about because of the way we interact with
our environment. Now if you mean the physical interactions of our underlying
physical stuff with all the other physical stuff around us, then I won't
disagree because this is to say no more than what I have been saying all along,
that physical operations give rise, in certain cases, to subjective experience.
But if you mean to say that we get consciousness by interacting with our
environment where the interactor is us in the fuller sense of the word
(including our being subjects) it seems to me this begs the question. Now I
certainly did take you to be saying this latter since, if you were saying the
former, it would seem we were already in agreement in which case there would be
no reason to try to convince me of the role of interaction in the world.
However, to take this a step further, what we are really trying to do here, I
think, is give an account which could explain HOW such interactions (which are
recognizable as wholly third person, i.e., observable, phenomena) bring about
the subjective. I've argued that it is perfectly explainable as processes in
the brain and I am presuming you agree. Then the question is what do we mean by
"processes in the brain", that is what is it about the processes that could
make the difference?
My view, oft expressed here and elsewhere, is that it is the functions, the
things the processes accomplish. Described in terms of computers we might say
the programs but that term is misleading because we tend to think of
instructions devised and coded by persons for a purpose, i.e., to get the
machine to do what it does. And no one is claiming that brains are programmed
in this way even if what they are doing is running processes that accomplish
certain tasks like computer programs do. So the better way to think about this,
I believe, is to chuck the term "program" and replace it with "algorithm" which
is just to put a name to sets of instructions, broken down into steps. Computer
programs embody algorithms and an organizational procedure, followed by workers
in the organization would also be appropriately called an algorithm
On that view, there is nothing strange in saying that brains are constructed by
the human organism in its formative stages according to a blueprint contained
in the DNA which is to say according to algorithms, and that they then do what
they do according to other algorithms some of which are, perhaps, just a
function of their construction and some are uniquely developed through
interaction with the environments in which they find themselves.
Now I am guessing that you have no problem with any of this so that we are
really not so far apart. Jeff Hawkins, as we've seen, argues that brain
algorithms, at least at the level of operation, have to be relatively simple
and it is for this reason he thinks the AI project is doomed to fail, i.e.,
because it is aimed at reconstructing everything brains do via minute
algorithms which, he notes, would be too demanding for the relatively slow
processing capacity of our brains. Therefore he argues for a simple and
relatively uniform algorithm at the neuronal level and for complexity in the
architectural level (how the neurons are arranged and interact in the brain).
So your proposal that consciousness is about interacting does not strike me as
strange if it is meant in a sense like this (which is what I now take you to be
saying). But, if so, what is the difference between what you are proposing and
some of the stuff I've floated here, vis a vis computationalism, Hawkins' ideas
about intelligence, etc.? We get consciousness through interaction you say.
Okay, but how? (I am not asking you to give me a defnitive answer, to prove
anything. I am just asking that you spell out the mechanism[s] you think are at
work here as I try to do, as Dennett does and as Hawkins does. Since you are
disagreeing with them, and apparently with me, what are you saying is wrong
with these approaches and what would be a better approach?)
> You seem to be saying there "Well, okay, maybe interaction is
> important. But it is boring humdrum stuff. So lets postpone any
> discussion for now, and instead get right the heart of consciousness."
Not at all. I am just saying what kind of interaction do you have in mind? What
interacts with what and which interactions are specific to the production of
consciousness on your view? I have suggested it is a kind of information
processing that is occurring in brains. But you seem uncomfortable with that
approach. What then is going on that does it?
> However, my whole point is that interaction is at the heart of
> consciousness, and that consciousness cannot be understood except in
> relation to our interaction with the world.
>
I think there is some truth to that. But lots of things interact with the
world. The question is why do certain things interact in a certain way and that
brings about consciousness? Why do some things, like rocks, remain inanimate
whereas other things like people do not? And where are the gradations, the
thresholds, between people and other animals. What are the processes that
differentiate these?
>
> > Maybe it's just me Neil. I really don't follow this well
> > enough. Normally when we speak of decisions being made we already
> > have a conscious entity making decisions in mind. Machines don't
> > make decisions though we can use computers to make pre-programmed
> > choices and, thus, decisions in a sense.
>
> Perhaps you missed the literature on free will, wherein it is often
> argued that we don't make decisions either. Even Searle is troubled by
> this, as he indicates in his youtube video
> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCyKNtocdZE> . If decisions are based
> on truth, then you aren't really making a decision, for the truth
> dictates the decision to you. So you are left with dictated decisions
> and totally random decisions.
>
I think that kind of thinking stems from a misunderstanding of what we mean by
"free will". Freedom is lots of things from political freedom to existential
freedom. The term denotes different capacities within different contexts.
Supposing that we are not free when we act on good reasons because we are
somehow bound to abide by reason is a strange, and to me misapplication, of the
notion of freedom.
> It seems to me that the only real decisions we make are those that are
> pragmatic.
Meaning to act for reasons (to achieve particular ends)? Okay, but on this
view, when you invoke "pragmatism" I immediately hear a thinking, reasoning
subject which implies consciousness. But from what you've said, that isn't what
you have in mind so presumably you mean just a kind of blind activity that
bumps along until something works and that the evolutionary process delivers,
in the end, an entity that bumps better than other entities. I think this is
fine as far as it goes. I have no beef with it. But it doesn't begin to specify
what it is our bumping entity has learned to do that makes it aware of itself
and what is going on around it, etc.
> And it seems to me that pragmatic decisions require some
> sort of purpose, though they need not require consciousness.
>
I agree with that as well. But at some point we get consciousness and that is
the question before us. Why does consciousness come about at some point and
what is it that our bumping entity does that generates the features we
associate with being conscious?
>
> > This means it needs to be able to know and understand its choices
> > and to come to the point of selection in a way that is at least
> > roughly analogous with how and what we do what we do.
>
> A pragmatic decision requires some sort of weighing of choices to see
> how they fit the driving purposes. But I think such weighing requires
> a lot less than a full human consciousness.
>
>
I agree. Lots of animals at every level give evidence of being able to make
choices. I recall Hawkins' example of the lizard and the rat in the maze. The
rat learns, he notes, the lizard doesn't. He ascribes that to the fact that the
rat has a cortex which the lizard lacks. Yet a lizard will scream in pain as
much as a rat so it would seem odd to say the lizard lacked awareness (an
important feature of consciousness). Hawkins aims to show the role of cortexes
in intelligence but in so doing he also presents a picture of a very truncated
consciousness in the lizard. Yet even the lizard is capable of making some
choices, running away in some cases, attacking in others, mating in still
others. Eating or not eating. This puts our lizard above the rock though,
perhaps, not above other lower forms of life like frogs and fish and protozoas.
<snip>
>
> > Is this picture really all that different from Dennett's proposal
> > that brains run processes in the way computers run algorithms?
>
> Yes, very different. I'll think about posting a comparison in the next
> day or two.
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>
I'll look forward to it then. So far I have to say that I don't see a lot of
difference, in principle, between your account and Dennett's. Granted you don't
like the computational analogy but, insofar as your account hinges on an
identification of consciousness with the occurrence of certain processes it is
on the same order. I presume you will differ from Dennett in somewhat the way
that Hawkins differs from Minsky?
SWM
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