21 ms·

Objects of consciousness

51 points by MichaelAO 11y ago

memming 11y ago
No.
- vog 11y ago
  Do you care to elaborate on your disagreement?
  - enord 11y ago
    I'll chime in with this conceptual map of the article (as far as i read it anyway): Perception->Visual perception->Ontology of visual perception and consciousness->Quantum physics->No. edit: Actually, when i think about it, there's something analogous to Goodwin's law in papers/articles about the mind and consciousness. Whenever quantum physics becomes a topic the whole article just unravels into nonsense. This is of course obvious to anyone who've studied the physical properties of the mind (We don't even understand how whole braincells work together to form mental phenomena and conscious thought, so anything on a sub-atomic level is just out on a bike-ride (Norwegian idiom, sorry)).
    - sudioStudio64 11y ago
      That was perfect, thank you. It's quantum woo.
      - kabdib 11y ago
        Had to look that up ("woo woo" = unfounded or ludicrous belief).
        gipp 11y ago
        It's usually a bit more specific than that. Something like "Disguising an unfounded or ludicrous belief as science by using the right vocabulary, just in nonsense ways."
        sudioStudio64 11y ago
        Right, like Deepak Chopra saying that "brains are soul localizing devices". Using the misconceptions around scientific jargon to describe the same old dualist who-hah (that one's my own).
    - TelmoMenezes 11y ago
      It is true that a lot of woo is produced by people who appeal to quantum weirdness without having a basic understanding of modern physics. This article seems to be no exception (I did not have the patience to read it all). What you say, however, is dogmatic. You assume the emergentist theory of consciousness: that consciousness somehow emerges from the complex physical interactions in the brain. This theory is itself woo at the moment, because there is not even a proposed mechanism by how this could happen. There is just a magic step: complexity -> magic -> consciousness. It makes all the sense to take into account the additional information about reality that quantum mechanics provides when trying to understand consciousness, which is so far a mysterious aspect of reality.
      - titzer 11y ago
        It's not hard to argue that materialism implies emergentism, since materialism assumes nothing but physical properties and processes exist. No one really believes that individual neurons are conscious, yet no one disagrees that brains are conscious. Brains are made of neurons and thus have a property their parts do not; ergo, emergent behavior. So it's either emergentism or woo, by my reckoning. YMMV.
        lgas 11y ago
        The problem is that saying that consciousness emerges from neurons, or the configuration of neurons in the brain, or whatever doesn't provide any actual explanation. It doesn't give us any more information than we had before. http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/
        TelmoMenezes 11y ago
        > Brains are made of neurons and thus have a property their parts do not; ergo, emergent behavior. I think you're being too quick. Let's think about things that we know to be emergent structures/behaviors: cities, societies, the human body, ecosystems, etc. In all of them, you can recognize that the network of interactions is too complex for human intelligence to fully grasp, but you can pin-point the building blocks. It's not magic. We know how DNA directs the synthesis of proteins, how proteins fold, how they combine to form larger structures, etc. It's not possible to fully grasp the full mechanism that is a human body, or a society, but this is because it's too complicated, not because we don't know the components. With conscious we don't have that. It's an all-or-nothing proposition. What is your consciousness made of? Can you identify building blocks? If not, then you just have faith in emergentism, but you don't have a serious scientific theory. If eventually you can identify building blocks, and emergentism is correct, then surely these parts will belong to smaller chunks of the system. Eventually neurons are part-conscious. Otherwise how could the big thing emerge? So, in this case, there is something fundamental about matter that we know nothing about. Or, consciousness is more fundamental than mater. Serious people have also proposed this throughout the ages -- call it platonism maybe. This is an unfashionable philosophical position theses days, but as valid as materialism. Both are perfectly compatible with current scientific theories.
ivan_ah 11y ago
I gave this a chance (seeing there were equations), but after reading the whole thing I still don't understand what they're talking about. It just doesn't make any sense. What would be the one paragraph summary of this paper? The math in particular seems inappropriate to present in a Psychology journal, even a frontier one. I question the authors' motivation to cover such advanced mathematical topics, from so many different areas of science. Was the intent that the reader will understand, or just be impressed by the math? The mention of Deepak Chopra in the Acknowledgment section lends further support to my "perception" that this is not a legitimate paper, but an intellectually-dishonest attempt at disguising improv-style nonsense behind impressive-sounding physics jargon.
- gus_massa 11y ago
  I'd like to add an example. From the article: > However, recent studies of perceptual evolution, using evolutionary games and genetic algorithms, reveal that natural selection often drives true perceptions to extinction when they compete with perceptions tuned to fitness rather than truth: Perception guides adaptive behavior; it does not estimate a preexisting physical truth. Moreover, shifting from evolutionary biology to quantum physics, there is reason to disbelieve in preexisting physical truths: Certain interpretations of quantum theory deny that dynamical properties of physical objects have definite values when unobserved. The properties that "don't have a definite value" are much smaller than the properties that a cow or a human can sense. The properties of big objects can be estimated so correctly with classic mechanics that you can safely ignore the quantum mechanics effects. More precisely, you can hide the quantum mechanics details as average macroscopic properties. For example, the color of an orange is determined by quantum mechanics details of the molecules in the orange skin, but to simulate a cow or a human it's enough to mark all oranges as macroscopically orange and forget about quantum mechanics.
- orasis 11y ago
  Let's start with this question: What makes an object an object? Find an object in the room, say a chair. What imbues the chair with "chairness"? Why is it considered separate from the floor? If you investigate this you will find that all objects are mind created. There is no essense or Platonic form of an object inherent to the object. The object cannot be said to have inherent existence apart from the mind perceiving it. This concept is called "Emptiness" in Buddhism and training the mind to recognize the truth of emptiness frees the mind of all sorts of pathology (except maybe sounding weird when trying to explain this to people)
based2 11y ago
"How can consciousness be cast in a mathematical formalism without losing something essential? The mathematics does lose something essential, viz., consciousness itself. Similarly, mathematical models of weather also lose something essential, viz., weather itself. A mathematical model of hurricanes won't create rain, and a mathematical model of consciousness won't create consciousness. The math is not the territory. But, properly constructed, mathematics reveals the structure of the territory." http://www.pnas.org/content/105/7/2745.full http://www.pnas.org/content/105/7/2745.full Bayesian learning of visual chunks by human observers
- Lambdanaut 11y ago
  The eerie thing is that as far as we can tell, our brains are no more than models of consciousness, and yet they are conscious. The line is very blury between a model of consciousness and the point where it can not only be described as conscious but truly has that ethereally, hard to define quality that we "feel" as consciousness. Would the first truly general AIs simply be working models of consciousness, or would they also feel consciousness as we do? When does the viz creep into our model?
  - geophile 11y ago
    > The eerie thing is that as far as we can tell, our brains are no more than models of consciousness, and yet they are conscious. Wow. That is an extremely good description of the problem of consciousness. Is this your own formulation? If not, where did you run into it?
    - Lambdanaut 11y ago
      I've been thinking about it a long time and hadn't heard it from anyone else. I'm glad to get feedback :)
  - orasis 11y ago
    Right, which is exactly why our brains do not directly perceive the "truth" of physical reality. It's models all the way down.
dgreensp 11y ago
There are some real howlers in here, such as when the author is quick to point out that the theory of natural selection in biological evolution assumes DNA exists even when you aren't looking at it, but we can patch this hole in the argument by saying we aren't talking about that natural selection, but natural selection in the abstract. It's like using the fact that apples fall from trees as evidence for gravity, but because we plan to use gravity to show that time doesn't exist, we refuse to grant that an apple on the ground was ever previously on the tree, but no matter, we still believe in the concept of "falling." In fact, the principles of falling show us that down is better than up, independent of time. What I appreciate about the article is it grapples with this deep question (albeit framed oddly): When we model the fabric of reality by inventing quantum mechanics, are we somehow just projecting the building blocks of how we think? This is related to another mysterious question: Is math an invention or a discovery? Were prime numbers and linear algebra there before we came along, or do they emerge from the structure of our brains? There are primitive tribes of humans who have not invented counting, so they are unable to distinguish 10 berries from 11 berries and do not experience integers as part of the natural world; they would probably consider properties of the integers to be properties of the act of counting if they had a mental framework for doing so. So back to the first question, how much of what we find when we peer out into the universe and model it with particles and waves and math is in our heads, and how much is really "out there"? If physics to date is unknowingly identifying the fabric of reality with the fabric of thought, then we should be able to take either reality or thought as primary and use it to explain the other. The author chooses thought (consciousness) as primary. However, the author's claim that objects aren't really there turns out to be more provocative than substantial. The author takes conscious agents as the building blocks of reality, and the conscious agents are still there when you aren't looking. They are just a different representation. You can replace the term "conscious agent" with anything. The author fully acknowledges both of these facts in his responses to objections 1 and 6.
- goblin89 11y ago
  I admit that the DNA/natural selection point is somewhat over my head still. However, with my limited understanding of the research, I’d somewhat disagree with this: > …author's claim that objects aren't really there turns out to be more provocative than substantial. The author takes conscious agents as the building blocks of reality, and the conscious agents are still there when you aren't looking. They are just a different representation. You can replace the term "conscious agent" with anything. My understanding is as follows: conscious agents, as the foundation, exist unperceived. What we see, however, is not a representation of said agents—not a ‘map’. Rather, it’s a hugely simplified interface to the world of interactions between said agents. As symbols of the interface, objects or even space-time can’t be claimed to exist when we’re not looking. It’s like an API spec that describes various entities and whatever manipulations we can request on them. These Users and Posts don’t actually exist as such, but for our practical purposes they’re always there, helpfully constructed. As API consumer we can fetch a user whenever we need it, but network can be down between our requests for all we know. (A precise map then could probably be raw SQL shell, the complexity of which API hides. I know this analogy is far from ideal, but it somewhat helped me understand some aspects of the idea.)
edne 11y ago
I stopped reading at: "Moreover, shifting from evolutionary biology to quantum physics [...]" https://xkcd.com/1240/ https://xkcd.com/1240/
- brobdingnagian 11y ago
  Why would you stop reading there? That's when it gets interesting. It's OK to think for yourself :)
goblin89 11y ago
Very interesting and thought-provoking read, about halfway into it. I started disagreeing with authors at the point where they define conscious experience: I can’t see why it’s contingent on subject’s ability to interact with the outside world, and I don’t follow how subject’s messages to the world can be proved as caused by conscious experience. I suppose I just haven’t yet internalized their definitions (of ‘world’, ‘subject’, etc.), though.
orasis 11y ago
For the more audio-visual oriented - here is a talk covering the same topic. http://youtu.be/dqDP34a-epI http://youtu.be/dqDP34a-epI
- throwitup 11y ago
  Associated with IRVA (International Remote Viewing Association) http://www.irva.org/conferences/speakers/hoffman.html http://www.irva.org/conferences/speakers/hoffman.html and Deepak Chopra http://www.choprafoundation.org/speakers/donald-hoffman/ http://www.choprafoundation.org/speakers/donald-hoffman/ So why not go the whole hog, and listen to Rupert Sheldrake explain to you why materialism is bunk? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR1SLQwHDog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR1SLQwHDog
Elrac 11y ago
This starts off with a rephrasing of theo-philosopher Alvin Plantinga's claim that evolution makes (e.g. human) perception optimal for survival, not truthiness to reality. Many feel that Plantinga has failed to substantiate this claim even though he wrote a fat book on the topic. He fails to make it clear how a badly unreliable model of reality would have greater survival value. Plantinga _needs_ it to be true though, to prop up his argument for the existence of God, so he treats us to many pages of philosophical hand waving. It gets worse in Act 2: The ol' Deepak Chopra trick of equivocating on "observer" in quantum experiments. What Chopra and other people fail to tell you is that the "observer" doesn't need to be human, or even sentient. A video camera or some similar piece of recording equipment - even a photographic film plate - will do fine. That piece of kit would faithfully "observe" the quantum event - and apparently influence it - even if all of humanity had wiped itself out hours earlier. I'm sure there are sensible arguments to be made about consciousness, but these two seriously doubtful premises do not make for a good start.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
markhahn 11y ago
They lost me at "there is reason to disbelieve in preexisting physical truths". Conclusion: Psychologists shouldn't play with quantum theory unless their goal is merely masturbation.

51 points by MichaelAO 11y ago

memming 11y ago

No.

vog 11y ago
Do you care to elaborate on your disagreement?
- enord 11y ago
  I'll chime in with this conceptual map of the article (as far as i read it anyway): Perception->Visual perception->Ontology of visual perception and consciousness->Quantum physics->No. edit: Actually, when i think about it, there's something analogous to Goodwin's law in papers/articles about the mind and consciousness. Whenever quantum physics becomes a topic the whole article just unravels into nonsense. This is of course obvious to anyone who've studied the physical properties of the mind (We don't even understand how whole braincells work together to form mental phenomena and conscious thought, so anything on a sub-atomic level is just out on a bike-ride (Norwegian idiom, sorry)).
  - sudioStudio64 11y ago
    That was perfect, thank you. It's quantum woo.
    - kabdib 11y ago
      Had to look that up ("woo woo" = unfounded or ludicrous belief).
      - gipp 11y ago
        It's usually a bit more specific than that. Something like "Disguising an unfounded or ludicrous belief as science by using the right vocabulary, just in nonsense ways."
        sudioStudio64 11y ago
        Right, like Deepak Chopra saying that "brains are soul localizing devices". Using the misconceptions around scientific jargon to describe the same old dualist who-hah (that one's my own).
  - TelmoMenezes 11y ago
    It is true that a lot of woo is produced by people who appeal to quantum weirdness without having a basic understanding of modern physics. This article seems to be no exception (I did not have the patience to read it all). What you say, however, is dogmatic. You assume the emergentist theory of consciousness: that consciousness somehow emerges from the complex physical interactions in the brain. This theory is itself woo at the moment, because there is not even a proposed mechanism by how this could happen. There is just a magic step: complexity -> magic -> consciousness. It makes all the sense to take into account the additional information about reality that quantum mechanics provides when trying to understand consciousness, which is so far a mysterious aspect of reality.
    - titzer 11y ago
      It's not hard to argue that materialism implies emergentism, since materialism assumes nothing but physical properties and processes exist. No one really believes that individual neurons are conscious, yet no one disagrees that brains are conscious. Brains are made of neurons and thus have a property their parts do not; ergo, emergent behavior. So it's either emergentism or woo, by my reckoning. YMMV.
      - lgas 11y ago
        The problem is that saying that consciousness emerges from neurons, or the configuration of neurons in the brain, or whatever doesn't provide any actual explanation. It doesn't give us any more information than we had before. http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/
      - TelmoMenezes 11y ago
        > Brains are made of neurons and thus have a property their parts do not; ergo, emergent behavior. I think you're being too quick. Let's think about things that we know to be emergent structures/behaviors: cities, societies, the human body, ecosystems, etc. In all of them, you can recognize that the network of interactions is too complex for human intelligence to fully grasp, but you can pin-point the building blocks. It's not magic. We know how DNA directs the synthesis of proteins, how proteins fold, how they combine to form larger structures, etc. It's not possible to fully grasp the full mechanism that is a human body, or a society, but this is because it's too complicated, not because we don't know the components. With conscious we don't have that. It's an all-or-nothing proposition. What is your consciousness made of? Can you identify building blocks? If not, then you just have faith in emergentism, but you don't have a serious scientific theory. If eventually you can identify building blocks, and emergentism is correct, then surely these parts will belong to smaller chunks of the system. Eventually neurons are part-conscious. Otherwise how could the big thing emerge? So, in this case, there is something fundamental about matter that we know nothing about. Or, consciousness is more fundamental than mater. Serious people have also proposed this throughout the ages -- call it platonism maybe. This is an unfashionable philosophical position theses days, but as valid as materialism. Both are perfectly compatible with current scientific theories.

ivan_ah 11y ago

I gave this a chance (seeing there were equations), but after reading the whole thing I still don't understand what they're talking about. It just doesn't make any sense. What would be the one paragraph summary of this paper? The math in particular seems inappropriate to present in a Psychology journal, even a frontier one. I question the authors' motivation to cover such advanced mathematical topics, from so many different areas of science. Was the intent that the reader will understand, or just be impressed by the math? The mention of Deepak Chopra in the Acknowledgment section lends further support to my "perception" that this is not a legitimate paper, but an intellectually-dishonest attempt at disguising improv-style nonsense behind impressive-sounding physics jargon.

gus_massa 11y ago
I'd like to add an example. From the article: > However, recent studies of perceptual evolution, using evolutionary games and genetic algorithms, reveal that natural selection often drives true perceptions to extinction when they compete with perceptions tuned to fitness rather than truth: Perception guides adaptive behavior; it does not estimate a preexisting physical truth. Moreover, shifting from evolutionary biology to quantum physics, there is reason to disbelieve in preexisting physical truths: Certain interpretations of quantum theory deny that dynamical properties of physical objects have definite values when unobserved. The properties that "don't have a definite value" are much smaller than the properties that a cow or a human can sense. The properties of big objects can be estimated so correctly with classic mechanics that you can safely ignore the quantum mechanics effects. More precisely, you can hide the quantum mechanics details as average macroscopic properties. For example, the color of an orange is determined by quantum mechanics details of the molecules in the orange skin, but to simulate a cow or a human it's enough to mark all oranges as macroscopically orange and forget about quantum mechanics.
orasis 11y ago
Let's start with this question: What makes an object an object? Find an object in the room, say a chair. What imbues the chair with "chairness"? Why is it considered separate from the floor? If you investigate this you will find that all objects are mind created. There is no essense or Platonic form of an object inherent to the object. The object cannot be said to have inherent existence apart from the mind perceiving it. This concept is called "Emptiness" in Buddhism and training the mind to recognize the truth of emptiness frees the mind of all sorts of pathology (except maybe sounding weird when trying to explain this to people)

based2 11y ago

"How can consciousness be cast in a mathematical formalism without losing something essential? The mathematics does lose something essential, viz., consciousness itself. Similarly, mathematical models of weather also lose something essential, viz., weather itself. A mathematical model of hurricanes won't create rain, and a mathematical model of consciousness won't create consciousness. The math is not the territory. But, properly constructed, mathematics reveals the structure of the territory." http://www.pnas.org/content/105/7/2745.full http://www.pnas.org/content/105/7/2745.full Bayesian learning of visual chunks by human observers

Lambdanaut 11y ago
The eerie thing is that as far as we can tell, our brains are no more than models of consciousness, and yet they are conscious. The line is very blury between a model of consciousness and the point where it can not only be described as conscious but truly has that ethereally, hard to define quality that we "feel" as consciousness. Would the first truly general AIs simply be working models of consciousness, or would they also feel consciousness as we do? When does the viz creep into our model?
- geophile 11y ago
  > The eerie thing is that as far as we can tell, our brains are no more than models of consciousness, and yet they are conscious. Wow. That is an extremely good description of the problem of consciousness. Is this your own formulation? If not, where did you run into it?
  - Lambdanaut 11y ago
    I've been thinking about it a long time and hadn't heard it from anyone else. I'm glad to get feedback :)
- orasis 11y ago
  Right, which is exactly why our brains do not directly perceive the "truth" of physical reality. It's models all the way down.

dgreensp 11y ago

There are some real howlers in here, such as when the author is quick to point out that the theory of natural selection in biological evolution assumes DNA exists even when you aren't looking at it, but we can patch this hole in the argument by saying we aren't talking about that natural selection, but natural selection in the abstract. It's like using the fact that apples fall from trees as evidence for gravity, but because we plan to use gravity to show that time doesn't exist, we refuse to grant that an apple on the ground was ever previously on the tree, but no matter, we still believe in the concept of "falling." In fact, the principles of falling show us that down is better than up, independent of time. What I appreciate about the article is it grapples with this deep question (albeit framed oddly): When we model the fabric of reality by inventing quantum mechanics, are we somehow just projecting the building blocks of how we think? This is related to another mysterious question: Is math an invention or a discovery? Were prime numbers and linear algebra there before we came along, or do they emerge from the structure of our brains? There are primitive tribes of humans who have not invented counting, so they are unable to distinguish 10 berries from 11 berries and do not experience integers as part of the natural world; they would probably consider properties of the integers to be properties of the act of counting if they had a mental framework for doing so. So back to the first question, how much of what we find when we peer out into the universe and model it with particles and waves and math is in our heads, and how much is really "out there"? If physics to date is unknowingly identifying the fabric of reality with the fabric of thought, then we should be able to take either reality or thought as primary and use it to explain the other. The author chooses thought (consciousness) as primary. However, the author's claim that objects aren't really there turns out to be more provocative than substantial. The author takes conscious agents as the building blocks of reality, and the conscious agents are still there when you aren't looking. They are just a different representation. You can replace the term "conscious agent" with anything. The author fully acknowledges both of these facts in his responses to objections 1 and 6.

goblin89 11y ago
I admit that the DNA/natural selection point is somewhat over my head still. However, with my limited understanding of the research, I’d somewhat disagree with this: > …author's claim that objects aren't really there turns out to be more provocative than substantial. The author takes conscious agents as the building blocks of reality, and the conscious agents are still there when you aren't looking. They are just a different representation. You can replace the term "conscious agent" with anything. My understanding is as follows: conscious agents, as the foundation, exist unperceived. What we see, however, is not a representation of said agents—not a ‘map’. Rather, it’s a hugely simplified interface to the world of interactions between said agents. As symbols of the interface, objects or even space-time can’t be claimed to exist when we’re not looking. It’s like an API spec that describes various entities and whatever manipulations we can request on them. These Users and Posts don’t actually exist as such, but for our practical purposes they’re always there, helpfully constructed. As API consumer we can fetch a user whenever we need it, but network can be down between our requests for all we know. (A precise map then could probably be raw SQL shell, the complexity of which API hides. I know this analogy is far from ideal, but it somewhat helped me understand some aspects of the idea.)

edne 11y ago

I stopped reading at: "Moreover, shifting from evolutionary biology to quantum physics [...]" https://xkcd.com/1240/ https://xkcd.com/1240/

brobdingnagian 11y ago
Why would you stop reading there? That's when it gets interesting. It's OK to think for yourself :)

goblin89 11y ago

Very interesting and thought-provoking read, about halfway into it. I started disagreeing with authors at the point where they define conscious experience: I can’t see why it’s contingent on subject’s ability to interact with the outside world, and I don’t follow how subject’s messages to the world can be proved as caused by conscious experience. I suppose I just haven’t yet internalized their definitions (of ‘world’, ‘subject’, etc.), though.

orasis 11y ago

For the more audio-visual oriented - here is a talk covering the same topic. http://youtu.be/dqDP34a-epI http://youtu.be/dqDP34a-epI

throwitup 11y ago
Associated with IRVA (International Remote Viewing Association) http://www.irva.org/conferences/speakers/hoffman.html http://www.irva.org/conferences/speakers/hoffman.html and Deepak Chopra http://www.choprafoundation.org/speakers/donald-hoffman/ http://www.choprafoundation.org/speakers/donald-hoffman/ So why not go the whole hog, and listen to Rupert Sheldrake explain to you why materialism is bunk? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR1SLQwHDog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR1SLQwHDog

Elrac 11y ago

This starts off with a rephrasing of theo-philosopher Alvin Plantinga's claim that evolution makes (e.g. human) perception optimal for survival, not truthiness to reality. Many feel that Plantinga has failed to substantiate this claim even though he wrote a fat book on the topic. He fails to make it clear how a badly unreliable model of reality would have greater survival value. Plantinga _needs_ it to be true though, to prop up his argument for the existence of God, so he treats us to many pages of philosophical hand waving. It gets worse in Act 2: The ol' Deepak Chopra trick of equivocating on "observer" in quantum experiments. What Chopra and other people fail to tell you is that the "observer" doesn't need to be human, or even sentient. A video camera or some similar piece of recording equipment - even a photographic film plate - will do fine. That piece of kit would faithfully "observe" the quantum event - and apparently influence it - even if all of humanity had wiped itself out hours earlier. I'm sure there are sensible arguments to be made about consciousness, but these two seriously doubtful premises do not make for a good start.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

markhahn 11y ago

They lost me at "there is reason to disbelieve in preexisting physical truths". Conclusion: Psychologists shouldn't play with quantum theory unless their goal is merely masturbation.