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I am not religious, but I feel something is not adding up in this purely scientific view of the world. I never tried to explain this thought to anyone else, bec

by ma2rten 15y ago

I am not religious, but I feel something is not adding up in this purely scientific view of the world. I never tried to explain this thought to anyone else, because it's damn hard to explain. I will give it a try: As far as science goes (or I understand it) the brain is just a neural network, which gets activated based on inputs and produces some outputs, like a computer does. Neurons can also self-activate, but that is not really the point. The point is consciousness would not be required for that. When look around me I see things. If my brain would just do input/output, there would be no need for me to see anything. I would just act without seeing/hearing/feeling consciously. I don't claim I have any idea about anything, but I feel like something is not adding up here on a fundamental level. I don't even know if other people experience the same thing or if they do indeed just act on inputs and have no idea what I am talking about. I wonder if what I said made any sense to anyone and if any philosophers were considering the same thing.

jbri 15y ago
Are you talking about the self-awareness and introspection you perceive yourself as having? Does it help if you view your consciousness as both being produced by the brain, and used as an input - i.e. a key part of a feedback system?
- ma2rten 15y ago
  Are you talking about the self-awareness and introspection you perceive yourself as having? Maybe, depends how you fill in those words. I guess you could write a computer program that has self-awareness, in the sense that it is able to talk about itself. That is not what I meant. Does it help if you view your consciousness as both being produced by the brain, and used as an input - i.e. a key part of a feedback system? I'd even say that this is what most likely is going on, but it opens a completely different can of worms, with questions like: Does the part responsible for the consciousness (let's call it soul for lack of a better word) survive after you die? This realization tipped the scale for me from "No, that is just wishful thinking." to "I have no clue, but it is slightly more likely that it does, than that it does not.". It's very annoying that I can barely talk about this without using words, which have been claimed by people, who hold believes I consider completely irrational.
xyzzyz 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
- ma2rten 15y ago
  Thanks. This is what I am talking about (I think). I have a hard time understanding the counter-arguments though, without any background in philosophy beyond Plato. I will try again when I am less tired.
cpeterso 15y ago
You might like Douglas Hofstadter's book I Am a Strange Loop. He examines consciousness as a recursive feedback loop. The book has some hokey tangents, but I think it's a good presentation. btw, this book is much more accessible that Hofstadter's GEB. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop
- ma2rten 15y ago
  Thanks. From the WP article it sounds like his ideas are somehow related to mine, but that he is viewing it from a completely different angle. Very interesting.
Retric 15y ago
Your thinking of a basic classifier Neural net from an AI class. But, that's a poor analogy for anything more complex than reflexes. We have both short and long term memory, and we can do planning. A really simple way to thank about short term memory is to have a single neuron in a feed back loop. Basically it's output leads to it's input and it can be switched on and off. Of course real neurons have far more than just 3 connections and tend to work in fairly large networks, but it's gives you an idea of how you can have a short term memory you keep cycling though the lyrics of some song and it's 'stuck in your head'. Long term memory is a physical change in the layout of a neural network. Spend long enough walking around a new city and there is an abstract but physical map that's actually stored in the layout of neurons in your head. At the same time pieces of that layout represent locations on the map and how they connect to other locations. Think of an entrance to a parking lot and you might have a fairly static picture of the location linked to the choice of where that will take you if you go there. (So short term memory is now a neuron that cycles, a network that picks which target network to activate, and a network that represents something, plus feedback to turn on and off the targeting.) So what's consciousness? It's the ability to think about things as abstractions. When you say Apple to your self your actually activating neurons that keep cycling Apple over and over. Picture yourself tossing a ball and your thinking thinking about starting the cascade of muscle memory that causes you to through something while picking the perimeters of where you want the ball to end up and how hard you want to to hit the target, and possibly the position you need to be in to actually be able to through the ball. You can play around with the outcomes of if I do this that will happen by checking what neural net's predict the outcome will be. Chess is a great analogy for this, players don't think about moves as picking a piece up and moving it somewhere else, but what it means when the piece is in a new location. Though experience, education, or just thinking about things you can even train these neural networks to get better at those predictions. Of course the actual implementation of these things is horribly complex, and many of the specifics are not all completely understood / studied. Also, chemicals play a major role, there are actual chemicals that represent things like pleasure in the brain. EX: Cocaine mimics the mostly hard coded chemical reward response for things like having sex by blocking the dopamine reuptake transporters. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1704 http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1704 PS: Still I hope this simplified model helps you understand what's going on.
jbrechtel 15y ago
Are you saying you see no evolutionary purpose for consciousness? This is a (very short) interesting book on the topic: http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Red-Consciousness-Behavior-Initiative/dp/0674021797 http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Red-Consciousness-Behavior-Init...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

by ma2rten 15y ago

jbri 15y ago

Are you talking about the self-awareness and introspection you perceive yourself as having? Does it help if you view your consciousness as both being produced by the brain, and used as an input - i.e. a key part of a feedback system?

ma2rten 15y ago
Are you talking about the self-awareness and introspection you perceive yourself as having? Maybe, depends how you fill in those words. I guess you could write a computer program that has self-awareness, in the sense that it is able to talk about itself. That is not what I meant. Does it help if you view your consciousness as both being produced by the brain, and used as an input - i.e. a key part of a feedback system? I'd even say that this is what most likely is going on, but it opens a completely different can of worms, with questions like: Does the part responsible for the consciousness (let's call it soul for lack of a better word) survive after you die? This realization tipped the scale for me from "No, that is just wishful thinking." to "I have no clue, but it is slightly more likely that it does, than that it does not.". It's very annoying that I can barely talk about this without using words, which have been claimed by people, who hold believes I consider completely irrational.

xyzzyz 15y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

ma2rten 15y ago
Thanks. This is what I am talking about (I think). I have a hard time understanding the counter-arguments though, without any background in philosophy beyond Plato. I will try again when I am less tired.

cpeterso 15y ago

You might like Douglas Hofstadter's book I Am a Strange Loop. He examines consciousness as a recursive feedback loop. The book has some hokey tangents, but I think it's a good presentation. btw, this book is much more accessible that Hofstadter's GEB. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop

ma2rten 15y ago
Thanks. From the WP article it sounds like his ideas are somehow related to mine, but that he is viewing it from a completely different angle. Very interesting.

Retric 15y ago

Your thinking of a basic classifier Neural net from an AI class. But, that's a poor analogy for anything more complex than reflexes. We have both short and long term memory, and we can do planning. A really simple way to thank about short term memory is to have a single neuron in a feed back loop. Basically it's output leads to it's input and it can be switched on and off. Of course real neurons have far more than just 3 connections and tend to work in fairly large networks, but it's gives you an idea of how you can have a short term memory you keep cycling though the lyrics of some song and it's 'stuck in your head'. Long term memory is a physical change in the layout of a neural network. Spend long enough walking around a new city and there is an abstract but physical map that's actually stored in the layout of neurons in your head. At the same time pieces of that layout represent locations on the map and how they connect to other locations. Think of an entrance to a parking lot and you might have a fairly static picture of the location linked to the choice of where that will take you if you go there. (So short term memory is now a neuron that cycles, a network that picks which target network to activate, and a network that represents something, plus feedback to turn on and off the targeting.) So what's consciousness? It's the ability to think about things as abstractions. When you say Apple to your self your actually activating neurons that keep cycling Apple over and over. Picture yourself tossing a ball and your thinking thinking about starting the cascade of muscle memory that causes you to through something while picking the perimeters of where you want the ball to end up and how hard you want to to hit the target, and possibly the position you need to be in to actually be able to through the ball. You can play around with the outcomes of if I do this that will happen by checking what neural net's predict the outcome will be. Chess is a great analogy for this, players don't think about moves as picking a piece up and moving it somewhere else, but what it means when the piece is in a new location. Though experience, education, or just thinking about things you can even train these neural networks to get better at those predictions. Of course the actual implementation of these things is horribly complex, and many of the specifics are not all completely understood / studied. Also, chemicals play a major role, there are actual chemicals that represent things like pleasure in the brain. EX: Cocaine mimics the mostly hard coded chemical reward response for things like having sex by blocking the dopamine reuptake transporters. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1704 http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1704 PS: Still I hope this simplified model helps you understand what's going on.

jbrechtel 15y ago

Are you saying you see no evolutionary purpose for consciousness? This is a (very short) interesting book on the topic: http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Red-Consciousness-Behavior-Initiative/dp/0674021797 http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Red-Consciousness-Behavior-Init...

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]