13 ms·

We Are Beast Machines

ericmay 5y ago
> Brains are not for rational thinking, linguistic communication, or perceiving the world. Isn't this false? Brains are for whatever brains are for, and if brains are thinking rationally (2+2 = 4), communicating linguistically (I'm typing this using language), and perceiving the world using senses than they are for those things just as much or as little as they are for or not for anything else. I suppose you can say something along the lines of "brains are for continuing survival and propagation of genes" as they author did which is fine, but it would make more sense to state that and try to prove it... Because how do we know that thinking rationally isn't what evolutionary drive is? How do we know that brains are evolved for survival? Survival for what? Gut bacteria? The earth (keep reproducing to keep organic material churning)? How do we know that the emergence of language and propagating that isn't what brains are for? I think it's hard to really say what brains are for or not for. That's a deceptively difficult question and probably shouldn't casually throw out "brains are not for X". -edit- I also wouldn't take it for granted that brains or anything is for anything. I do think we are "philosophical zombies" as someone else put it, but it's not a distinction that matters because whether we are or are not doesn't change anything. It's like accepting that you don't have free will - it doesn't change anything. You still go to jail if you rob someone (the interesting question comes from the morality of this actually IMO). Consciousness is probably an evolutionary adaptation for increased cooperation - to that end it's a shared delusion (language allows us to become "more" conscious), but a useful one. I'd posit that certainly all mammals are conscious (if they're not, then I'm not sure you can argue that anything is conscious besides yourself which is fine if you hold that view) and likely all animals are conscious, just a matter of degree of genetic expression. Panpsychism is tempting but if we wanted to say that rocks are conscious than I think we could set aside still different "levels" of conscious expression and draw meaningful distinctions - it's not a hill one has to die on. Most of our work on consciousness that I've observed has historical religious baggage (not insulting religion here) with humans being at the center and "special" but if you strip that away I think it's pretty easy to see that we're not. Many scientists that I've seen or observed kind of have the God problem - which is that they're wrestling with a question or dilemma and supposing God is involved or exists and so it must be dealt with. Similarly in the study of consciousness it seems that we're supposing that humans are conscious to some special degree and trying to fit science to explain that - which is a faulty premise from the start. /rant :)
mensetmanusman 5y ago
“ Experiences of being you, or of being me, emerge from the way the brain predicts and controls the internal state of the body.” I don’t know about you other beast machines, but I rarely ever think of the internal states of my body (trying to adjust beating heart, pupil adjustment, etc.). To think that consciousness is required for these rare moments of internal state reflection seems a stretch (considering most life doesn’t require it).
ganzuul 5y ago
I'm finally starting to unravel New Age terminology which deals with this subject. Eastern philosophy is almost impenetrable due to the cultural barrier, but those who succeeded imported some relevant ideas to Wester society. It's really bizarre how some of these wisdom teachers go on conspiratorial rants which have a completely different tone from the actually useful information.
- joeberon 5y ago
  Eastern philosophy isn't impenetrable, and people who cannot penetrate it aren't hampered by cultural difference. Even for natives of those cultures, penetrating that philosophy often takes years of spiritual practise and training. The reason is that it isn't about ideas, it's an actual body-mind training and transformation of being. It isn't something you just sit and talk about and discuss, although it can include that, but also it must come with actual implementation to occur. That's the main difference I've noticed between western philosophy and eastern philosophy which makes them difficult to integrate. The former is almost always understood by the experience of so-called "ordinary beings" and communicated in terms of intellectual arguments, whereas the latter cannot really be understood unless you actually physically and spiritually transform your very being. For example, I used to practise Soto Zen, and Dogen's philosophical writings are very popular there. Western philosophers, or just general non-practitioners, absolutely bash their heads against his writing, it's just so difficult to wrangle and there's no connection. In Soto Zen we understand it by sitting zazen (seated meditation). Literally, the only way I know to understand it is by doing meditation practise. Then next time you read it and you have a deep connection with it that you can't explain in a way that someone who hasn't had that connection would understand. Western philosophy seems to not be compatible with those kinds of transformations. If it cannot be explained in a way that is somehow independent of the observer's own practise, then it is not considered rigorous, but also such a thing is impossible when talking, for example, about Zen.
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    I did use the qualifier 'almost'... and I don't see you actually disagreeing with what I meant. There was something called Eckhart Seminar Training or something which took people through decades of training in the more cumbersome system in a week. Similarly, a lot of cultural impedance has been removed in the teachings of Western sages. Teachings need to be updated and modernized as we progress as society.
nickelpro 5y ago
Nothing in this essay addresses the single most prominent question of contemporary philosophy of mind, which is the hard problem of consciousness. It only addresses the soft problems, which everyone agrees are solvable "merely" with enough time, funding, and initiative. Nothing about the "beast machine" addresses how qualitative experience arises from physical phenomena, or as Chalmers puts it, "Why are we not philosophical zombies?" Of course the hard problem, by its nature, is likely irreducible, so expecting it to be solved is unreasonable. The point is books and passages like this are only compelling if you've already accepted a hand-wavey answer to the hard problem. In this case the author's accepted answer seems to be the ever popular, "consciousness is an illusion," but that particular explanation to the hard problem is no more valid (or any less vague) than any other. Stating it with authority and not acknowledging it as a "faith-based" axiom undermines the work.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- joeberon 5y ago
  So far the only answer I've seen people give to the question is "what problem? There's no problem". Basically, there are many people who don't (or also have convinced themselves that they don't) perceive an incongruity between their personal subjective experience and the idea that consciousness is just an emergent phenomena of a physical system. I haven't found a good way to explain it, I just know that there's something wrong or missing. So basically it seems there's three camps: Those that feel the incongruity and don't know a solution. Those that feel the incongruity and have found their own solution (which is usually what people will call "religion"). Those that do not feel the incongruity. I don't personally see a way to justify it if someone doesn't feel the problem in their bones.
  - nickelpro 5y ago
    I don't understand how someone can not understand the problem. You and I have conscious experience, we have a meaningful sensation of qualia. A billet of 4140 steel does not, or so we assume. Both are governed by physical laws of the universe, so there must be some distinction beyond these physical laws that differentiate them. In this framing, there are typically four camps, three of them line up with your camps: 1) I am not like a block of steel, but I don't know why. 2) I am not like a block of steel, but I know why ("religion") 3) I am like a block of steel, neither are conscious (no incongruity/consciousness is an illusion) 4) I am like a block of steel, both are conscious ("it from bit"/Chalmers's universal conciousness) Of course this implies the existence of a 5th and 6th camp that believes the block of steel is conscious, but we are not. I find these camps throw the best parties.
StuntPope 5y ago
Another materialist who has it exactly backwards. Consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of the brain. It is the base layer of reality.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  You have to admire the repeatability with which they get it wrong. It's almost like they copied their homework.
- callesgg 5y ago
  Of subjective reality yes.
  - hnthrway 5y ago
    Which is all any of us have access to, and which all science is couched within Objective reality is just consensus reality
    - callesgg 5y ago
      I don’t know.. consensus reality is what I would call the reality that is portrayed in media or mabye the reality that fits the most nr of people. Objective reality is best described with particle physics but that stuff can’t be understood by the human mind. The human mind can’t keep track of so much complexity at once.
state_less 5y ago
We may have body consciousness at times, though conscious doesn’t depend on body consciousness or is required to be embodied. When I dream I often am not conscious of breathing or my body for example. I once had a strange dream that exemplifies this. I was dreaming in Wisconsin of being on a subway train in NYC. A man in the train crouches down near me. I follow him down. He asks, “What is your name?” I tell him, “it’s Seth.” “That’s an old name”, he responds. I am thinking, who is this guy? Then as if to show me something, he pantomimes a mallet and strikes an imaginary bell, except I hear the bell ring out as clear as if I were awake. A disembodied voice says something in German, which I don’t understand, though I wish I could remember it now. Then I wake. See I was conscious of the bell, though none was struck. I didn’t hear it in my ear, I heard it in the mind. So I don’t think vibration is sound and EM waves aren’t color, though they are the most common precursors to this sort of consciousness. We can go to places in our minds where our bodies can not follow. I think it’s a hopeful vision of what might be possible some day. That we might find a way to transform ourselves into a world less inhabited with fears and self loathing to world of wonder and discovery. P.S. I understand I’m not solving the hard problem of consciousness in this passage. Though I wanted to add some notes of what I’ve learned about consciousness along the way.
esarbe 5y ago
Consciousness is nothing more but the final arbiter of attention. As such it must have a way to evaluate situations, including our own internal state and this is done by emotions. Emotions are our default approach interpret a given situation. I think the 'beast machines' analogy is a good one. We're reproduction machines. We're not thinking machines. We do not evaluate our environment using logical thinking and although some may learn to use this tool (logical thinking) to justify paying attention to something in particular, it's emotions that guide our eyes and our attention. Anything that has attention to guide has a consciousness. It might not use words or other symbols to reinforce attention but the basic mechanism, the cycle of emotion, evaluation and attention stays the same.
- jdmichal 5y ago
  For those who want to read more, this is the attention schema theory of consciousness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory
m3kw9 5y ago
I’m always curious on how the selection process works. How come I’m not this person or that person? How come I’m this person
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  Extreme selection bias.
haspoken 5y ago
https://archive.is/LOo0f https://archive.is/LOo0f

> Brains are not for rational thinking, linguistic communication, or perceiving the world. Isn't this false? Brains are for whatever brains are for, and if brains are thinking rationally (2+2 = 4), communicating linguistically (I'm typing this using language), and perceiving the world using senses than they are for those things just as much or as little as they are for or not for anything else. I suppose you can say something along the lines of "brains are for continuing survival and propagation of genes" as they author did which is fine, but it would make more sense to state that and try to prove it... Because how do we know that thinking rationally isn't what evolutionary drive is? How do we know that brains are evolved for survival? Survival for what? Gut bacteria? The earth (keep reproducing to keep organic material churning)? How do we know that the emergence of language and propagating that isn't what brains are for? I think it's hard to really say what brains are for or not for. That's a deceptively difficult question and probably shouldn't casually throw out "brains are not for X". -edit- I also wouldn't take it for granted that brains or anything is for anything. I do think we are "philosophical zombies" as someone else put it, but it's not a distinction that matters because whether we are or are not doesn't change anything. It's like accepting that you don't have free will - it doesn't change anything. You still go to jail if you rob someone (the interesting question comes from the morality of this actually IMO). Consciousness is probably an evolutionary adaptation for increased cooperation - to that end it's a shared delusion (language allows us to become "more" conscious), but a useful one. I'd posit that certainly all mammals are conscious (if they're not, then I'm not sure you can argue that anything is conscious besides yourself which is fine if you hold that view) and likely all animals are conscious, just a matter of degree of genetic expression. Panpsychism is tempting but if we wanted to say that rocks are conscious than I think we could set aside still different "levels" of conscious expression and draw meaningful distinctions - it's not a hill one has to die on. Most of our work on consciousness that I've observed has historical religious baggage (not insulting religion here) with humans being at the center and "special" but if you strip that away I think it's pretty easy to see that we're not. Many scientists that I've seen or observed kind of have the God problem - which is that they're wrestling with a question or dilemma and supposing God is involved or exists and so it must be dealt with. Similarly in the study of consciousness it seems that we're supposing that humans are conscious to some special degree and trying to fit science to explain that - which is a faulty premise from the start. /rant :)

mensetmanusman 5y ago

“ Experiences of being you, or of being me, emerge from the way the brain predicts and controls the internal state of the body.” I don’t know about you other beast machines, but I rarely ever think of the internal states of my body (trying to adjust beating heart, pupil adjustment, etc.). To think that consciousness is required for these rare moments of internal state reflection seems a stretch (considering most life doesn’t require it).

ganzuul 5y ago

I'm finally starting to unravel New Age terminology which deals with this subject. Eastern philosophy is almost impenetrable due to the cultural barrier, but those who succeeded imported some relevant ideas to Wester society. It's really bizarre how some of these wisdom teachers go on conspiratorial rants which have a completely different tone from the actually useful information.

joeberon 5y ago
Eastern philosophy isn't impenetrable, and people who cannot penetrate it aren't hampered by cultural difference. Even for natives of those cultures, penetrating that philosophy often takes years of spiritual practise and training. The reason is that it isn't about ideas, it's an actual body-mind training and transformation of being. It isn't something you just sit and talk about and discuss, although it can include that, but also it must come with actual implementation to occur. That's the main difference I've noticed between western philosophy and eastern philosophy which makes them difficult to integrate. The former is almost always understood by the experience of so-called "ordinary beings" and communicated in terms of intellectual arguments, whereas the latter cannot really be understood unless you actually physically and spiritually transform your very being. For example, I used to practise Soto Zen, and Dogen's philosophical writings are very popular there. Western philosophers, or just general non-practitioners, absolutely bash their heads against his writing, it's just so difficult to wrangle and there's no connection. In Soto Zen we understand it by sitting zazen (seated meditation). Literally, the only way I know to understand it is by doing meditation practise. Then next time you read it and you have a deep connection with it that you can't explain in a way that someone who hasn't had that connection would understand. Western philosophy seems to not be compatible with those kinds of transformations. If it cannot be explained in a way that is somehow independent of the observer's own practise, then it is not considered rigorous, but also such a thing is impossible when talking, for example, about Zen.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  I did use the qualifier 'almost'... and I don't see you actually disagreeing with what I meant. There was something called Eckhart Seminar Training or something which took people through decades of training in the more cumbersome system in a week. Similarly, a lot of cultural impedance has been removed in the teachings of Western sages. Teachings need to be updated and modernized as we progress as society.

nickelpro 5y ago

Nothing in this essay addresses the single most prominent question of contemporary philosophy of mind, which is the hard problem of consciousness. It only addresses the soft problems, which everyone agrees are solvable "merely" with enough time, funding, and initiative. Nothing about the "beast machine" addresses how qualitative experience arises from physical phenomena, or as Chalmers puts it, "Why are we not philosophical zombies?" Of course the hard problem, by its nature, is likely irreducible, so expecting it to be solved is unreasonable. The point is books and passages like this are only compelling if you've already accepted a hand-wavey answer to the hard problem. In this case the author's accepted answer seems to be the ever popular, "consciousness is an illusion," but that particular explanation to the hard problem is no more valid (or any less vague) than any other. Stating it with authority and not acknowledging it as a "faith-based" axiom undermines the work.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
joeberon 5y ago
So far the only answer I've seen people give to the question is "what problem? There's no problem". Basically, there are many people who don't (or also have convinced themselves that they don't) perceive an incongruity between their personal subjective experience and the idea that consciousness is just an emergent phenomena of a physical system. I haven't found a good way to explain it, I just know that there's something wrong or missing. So basically it seems there's three camps: Those that feel the incongruity and don't know a solution. Those that feel the incongruity and have found their own solution (which is usually what people will call "religion"). Those that do not feel the incongruity. I don't personally see a way to justify it if someone doesn't feel the problem in their bones.
- nickelpro 5y ago
  I don't understand how someone can not understand the problem. You and I have conscious experience, we have a meaningful sensation of qualia. A billet of 4140 steel does not, or so we assume. Both are governed by physical laws of the universe, so there must be some distinction beyond these physical laws that differentiate them. In this framing, there are typically four camps, three of them line up with your camps: 1) I am not like a block of steel, but I don't know why. 2) I am not like a block of steel, but I know why ("religion") 3) I am like a block of steel, neither are conscious (no incongruity/consciousness is an illusion) 4) I am like a block of steel, both are conscious ("it from bit"/Chalmers's universal conciousness) Of course this implies the existence of a 5th and 6th camp that believes the block of steel is conscious, but we are not. I find these camps throw the best parties.

StuntPope 5y ago

Another materialist who has it exactly backwards. Consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of the brain. It is the base layer of reality.

ganzuul 5y ago
You have to admire the repeatability with which they get it wrong. It's almost like they copied their homework.
callesgg 5y ago
Of subjective reality yes.
- hnthrway 5y ago
  Which is all any of us have access to, and which all science is couched within Objective reality is just consensus reality
  - callesgg 5y ago
    I don’t know.. consensus reality is what I would call the reality that is portrayed in media or mabye the reality that fits the most nr of people. Objective reality is best described with particle physics but that stuff can’t be understood by the human mind. The human mind can’t keep track of so much complexity at once.

state_less 5y ago

We may have body consciousness at times, though conscious doesn’t depend on body consciousness or is required to be embodied. When I dream I often am not conscious of breathing or my body for example. I once had a strange dream that exemplifies this. I was dreaming in Wisconsin of being on a subway train in NYC. A man in the train crouches down near me. I follow him down. He asks, “What is your name?” I tell him, “it’s Seth.” “That’s an old name”, he responds. I am thinking, who is this guy? Then as if to show me something, he pantomimes a mallet and strikes an imaginary bell, except I hear the bell ring out as clear as if I were awake. A disembodied voice says something in German, which I don’t understand, though I wish I could remember it now. Then I wake. See I was conscious of the bell, though none was struck. I didn’t hear it in my ear, I heard it in the mind. So I don’t think vibration is sound and EM waves aren’t color, though they are the most common precursors to this sort of consciousness. We can go to places in our minds where our bodies can not follow. I think it’s a hopeful vision of what might be possible some day. That we might find a way to transform ourselves into a world less inhabited with fears and self loathing to world of wonder and discovery. P.S. I understand I’m not solving the hard problem of consciousness in this passage. Though I wanted to add some notes of what I’ve learned about consciousness along the way.

esarbe 5y ago

Consciousness is nothing more but the final arbiter of attention. As such it must have a way to evaluate situations, including our own internal state and this is done by emotions. Emotions are our default approach interpret a given situation. I think the 'beast machines' analogy is a good one. We're reproduction machines. We're not thinking machines. We do not evaluate our environment using logical thinking and although some may learn to use this tool (logical thinking) to justify paying attention to something in particular, it's emotions that guide our eyes and our attention. Anything that has attention to guide has a consciousness. It might not use words or other symbols to reinforce attention but the basic mechanism, the cycle of emotion, evaluation and attention stays the same.

jdmichal 5y ago
For those who want to read more, this is the attention schema theory of consciousness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory

m3kw9 5y ago

I’m always curious on how the selection process works. How come I’m not this person or that person? How come I’m this person

robotresearcher 5y ago
Extreme selection bias.

haspoken 5y ago

https://archive.is/LOo0f https://archive.is/LOo0f