Does the brain really "cause" consciousness?

[Billy T]

I think consciousness exist in different degrees and that APL/JHU may have been the first, 60 or so years ago, to make a robot with some low level of both consciousness and intentionality. It was about the size of a round metal waste basket with motor driven wheels run by a rechargable battery. It freely wondered around the halls in several bulidings and understood that it needed to find an AC plug and recharge when its battery was getting low. I.e. it had a "I´m hungry" qualia and awareness of its internal states and the enviroment it was in. It had some purposeful intentionality "about ness" in its actions. In addition to finding AC plugs, it avoided banging into wall or falling down stairs. I´m not sure, but think it may have changed floors with the elevator if some one opened the door for it. Its arm would not reach to the button, only a little higher than the AC plugs on the wall. (We all have our physical limitations. I can´t fly but my pet bird can.)

I think that any conscious being must interact with its environment to have intentionality and see no reason why some quite impressve levels of consciousness and intentionality plus real understanding of their internal and external conditions can not be expected to be found in machines in the next few decades.

 

[Syne]

Certainly true, but both are often called computers; however, none of the 12 "not Von Neumann computer" types I listed in post 206 were human computers. They were all physical devices used by humans* for calculation or decisions making.

Neither did any of them display any behavior even remotely similar to consciousness.

You have apparently equivocated the meaning of "consciousness". You cannot make arguments that use common words unless you either use their common meaning or fully define how you use the term.

 

[Magical Realist]

This it probably the first digital self portrait made by a digitally programed computer:

It required more than 100,000 bits of information (stored in more than 10,000 cards with punched holes or not) to program the silk weaving loom, which made the above silk self portrait.Programable, mechanical computers were used long before WWII code cracking and generating ones, like the Enigma-Machine. When the output of your digital camera is displayed on the screen of your Von-Neumann computer your are doing exactly what was done ~200 years ago, by mechanical technology. -I.e. converting stored digital information into a image you can view.

Billy, just because a loom and computers were once controlled by punch cards doesn't make the loom a computer. A punch card-operated machine maybe. But I'm not seeing any process of computation going on.

 

[Magical Realist]

Hubert Dreyfus' critique of AI:


"Dreyfus's critique of artificial intelligence (AI) concerns what he considers to be the four primary assumptions of AI research. The first two assumptions are what he calls the "biological" and "psychological" assumptions. The biological assumption is that the brain is analogous to computer hardware and the mind is analogous to computer software. The psychological assumption is that the mind works by performing discrete computations (in the form of algorithmic rules) on discrete representations or symbols.

Dreyfus claims that the plausibility of the psychological assumption rests on two others: the epistemological and ontological assumptions. The epistemological assumption is that all activity (either by animate or inanimate objects) can be formalised (mathematically) in the form of predictive rules or laws. The ontological assumption is that reality consists entirely of a set of mutually independent, atomic (indivisible) facts. It's because of the epistemological assumption that workers in the field argue that intelligence is the same as formal rule-following, and it's because of the ontological one that they argue that human knowledge consists entirely of internal representations of reality.

On the basis of these two assumptions, workers in the field claim that cognition is the manipulation of internal symbols by internal rules, and that, therefore, human behaviour is, to a large extent, context free (see contextualism). Therefore a truly scientific psychology is possible, which will detail the 'internal' rules of the human mind, in the same way the laws of physics detail the 'external' laws of the physical world.

But it is this key assumption that Dreyfus denies. In other words, he argues that we cannot now (and never will) be able to understand our own behavior in the same way as we understand objects in, for example, physics or chemistry: that is, by considering ourselves as things whose behaviour can be predicted via 'objective', context free scientific laws. According to Dreyfus, a context free psychology is a contradiction in terms.

Dreyfus's arguments against this position are taken from the phenomenological and hermeneutical tradition (especially the work of Martin Heidegger). Heidegger argued that, contrary to the cognitivist views on which AI is based, our being is in fact highly context bound, which is why the two context-free assumptions are false. Dreyfus doesn't deny that we can choose to see human (or any) activity as being 'law governed', in the same way that we can choose to see reality as consisting of indivisible atomic facts ... if we wish. But it is a huge leap from that to state that because we want to or can see things in this way that it is therefore an objective fact that they are the case. In fact, Dreyfus argues that they are not (necessarily) the case, and that, therefore, any research program that assumes they are will quickly run into profound theoretical and practical problems. Therefore the current efforts of workers in the field are doomed to failure.

Although Dreyfus has a reputation as a Luddite in some quarters, he doesn't believe that AI is fundamentally impossible, but rather that the current research program is fatally flawed. He argues that to get a device or devices with human-like intelligence would require them to have a human-like being-in-the-world and to have bodies more or less like ours, and social acculturation (i.e. a society) more or less like ours. (This view is shared by psychologists in the embodied psychology (Lakoff and Johnson 1999) and distributed cognition traditions. His opinions are similar to those of robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks as well as researchers in the field of artificial life.)

Daniel Crevier writes: "time has proven the accuracy and perceptiveness of some of Dreyfus's comments. Had he formulated them less aggressively, constructive actions they suggested might have been taken much earlier."----http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Dreyfus

 

[Sarkus]

Billy, just because a loom and computers were once controlled by punch cards doesn't make the loom a computer. A punch card-operated machine maybe. But I'm not seeing any process of computation going on.

I'd agree - it was the first programmable device, but not strictly a computer due to not actually doing any computation, rather just purely preset mechanical operations, where the cards have replaced the operator. One might as well call a pair of scissors a computer, with the hand as the operator.
I'd argue that a "computer" is something/someone that calculates... and an automatic computer is something that does calculations without intervention from human intelligence.
The automated loom that Jacquard built was merely automated - as he removed the intelligence from the operation of the loom to the production of the thousands of cards that were needed for its operation.
But it was certainly programmable, in that you change the input, and you get a different output. But you fed into the machine exactly what output you wanted, whereas a computer is something that will create the output (within the scope of its limitations) without you needing to know up front what the answer will be.
I don't think the loom was ever used to calculate anything.

I could tap into a calculator 16*81 and it would tell me the answer without me needing to have known the answer. Because it computes the answer for me.
With the loom the answer is known at the start. It is the "answer" that is used to create the inputs into the machine so that the desired "answer" is created.
The calculation remains solely with the person who creates the punchcards, not the machine.

 

[Billy T]

Neither did any of them display any behavior even remotely similar to consciousness.

I agree and never claimed they had any level of consciousness. I did discuss, briefly in post 221 a robot case that might be considered to have a very low level of both consciousness, (certainly awareness of its environment of concern to it - just like humans are not aware of parts of their environment of little direct concern to them - for example the 100 or so EM waves surrounding them) and intentionality.

You have apparently equivocated the meaning of "consciousness". You cannot make arguments that use common words unless you either use their common meaning or fully define how you use the term.

No, I have been very clear what I think is the nature of human consciousness. It exists ONLY when awake and when in dreaming sleep. I have identified it with the execution of a Real Time Simulation, RTS, of the environment (that includes your physical body)* and the creation of "your self" sort of as a subcomponent of the RTS. Again my quotes indicate that I am NOT speaking of my physical body, put my psychological self (including but not always active, only accessible (like an old FORTRAN call) my history recorded in memory).
Thus you can not correctly accuse me of “equivocating on the meaning of "consciousness". I have been quit clear on its meaning.
What do you mean, when you speak of “consciousness”? – I suspect you don’t really know, but if you do, please define it.
Be careful your definition does not include a hall monitor motion sensor, which is very aware of the hall environment.

While few either believe the RTS exists or have any working definition of consciousness that distinguishes it from "awareness" my definition of human consciousness is remarkably clear and definite. Post 221 generalizes, with less clarity and precision, my concept of consciousness to non-humans.

*The RTS is what one perceives. Sometimes it does not perfectly replicate the physical environment one has sensors for. Phantom limbs are such a case and they are just as psychologically "real" as those that do physically exist as both are created in the RTS for your perception of them. What you directly experience is the only thing one can directly perceive. We infer that what we call the "real external world" does exist from the directly experienced world of the RTS, but no one can prove it does.

 

[hansda]

There is no evidence for the existence of a non material “soul.” Even if it did exist, it could not make any difference that is observable as only material things (and their force fields) can move mater. A “soul” can not even deflect a single atom from the trajectory the natural laws impose upon it. There is a great deal of evidence that consciousness exist, even if it is hard to get universal agreement on what consciousness is and which creatures have it.

When a 'human being' or a 'living being', moves his limbs; Isn't this an interaction between "soul" and "atom"?


Consider our physical body is consisting of atoms. Mover of our physical body is our "soul" or "consciousness". In spiritualism, "soul" and "consciousness" are considered as same, which is non-physical and considered as 'know-er' and 'do-er'.



Note 1: A dead 'human being' or a 'dead being', which does not have "soul" or "consciousness(spiritual)" can not move its limbs.

Note 2: Newton in his 'Laws of Motion' used the term "external"(external to a mass...) to explain 'inertia' and 'force'. "Soul" or "Consciousness" also can be considered as "external" to a mass.

 

[Billy T]

... I don't think the loom was ever used to calculate anything.... without me needing to have known the answer. Because it (a hand calculator) computes the answer for me. ... With the loom the answer is known at the start.

Probably never made an unknown "answer", unless someone accidently mixed up the order of a set of punched cards. Then it would "calculate" an at least partially random design you did not know before seeing it.

It really all comes down to the definition of "calculate" That could be: "The procedure of accepting one or more "inputs" and transforming them into an output." For example, many if not most, modern cognitive scientists speak of the brain as a device that makes many stages of neural data transformations (or calculations) following which our experiences (or actions) "emerge."

Please feel free to offer a different definition for "Calculate."

I can speak Portuguse, but not well, and never had any formal instructions in that language - just "picked it up" with ~20 years of exposure, even though much too old to learn it well that way like a sub-four year old child does. I almost never translate from English. If I have a question or some thought I wish to express, it just flows out of my mouth and I have no idea what the words will be until I hear them.

Speaking is really controlling various mussels mainly in the head and neck area, especially the tounge and lips. I.e. in some way totally unknown to "me" my brain takes my thought as input and calculates a very complex sequential set of motor commands that make the words "flow out of my mouth." If that is not a "mental calculation" I don´t know what is.

 

[C C]

Hubert Dreyfus' critique of AI: [...] Although Dreyfus has a reputation as a Luddite in some quarters, he doesn't believe that AI is fundamentally impossible, but rather that the current research program is fatally flawed. He argues that to get a device or devices with human-like intelligence would require them to have a human-like being-in-the-world and to have bodies more or less like ours, and social acculturation (i.e. a society) more or less like ours. (This view is shared by psychologists in the embodied psychology (Lakoff and Johnson 1999) and distributed cognition traditions. His opinions are similar to those of robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks as well as researchers in the field of artificial life.) Daniel Crevier writes: "time has proven the accuracy and perceptiveness of some of Dreyfus's comments. Had he formulated them less aggressively, constructive actions they suggested might have been taken much earlier."----http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Dreyfus

Disembodied cognition, or 'first generation CogSci' as Lakoff also calls it, was arguably descended from Kant (especially when factoring in the epistemological grounding). But Kant meant to keep what was making his "ought" division of philosophy possible separate from the empirical evidence version of "is" (what exists and how such exists in perception and understanding). The brain is mentioned in some of his critical-era works, he knew that the organ and its body would be the explanation of "mind" in terms of appearances, involving the interconnectivity of the materialist's corporeal components / forces or physical phenomena (large and small). So it's hard to say what he would have thought of the twist of 20th century researchers grabbing some items from his transcendental explanation of mind and planting them in the natural / phenomenal world explanation of it.

Andrew Brook: ...some of his [Kant's] ideas came to have an enormous influence on his successors. Ideas central to his view are now central to cognitive science.

[...] Three ideas define the basic shape (‘cognitive architecture’) of Kant's model and one its dominant method. They have all become part of the foundation of cognitive science.

(1) The mind is complex set of abilities (functions). (As Meerbote 1989 and many others have observed, Kant held a functionalist view of the mind almost 200 years before functionalism was officially articulated in the 1960s by Hilary Putnam and others.)

(2) The functions crucial for mental, knowledge-generating activity are spatio-temporal processing of, and application of concepts to, sensory inputs. Cognition requires concepts as well as percepts.

(3) These functions are forms of what Kant called synthesis. Synthesis (and the unity in consciousness required for synthesis) are central to cognition.

These three ideas are fundamental to most thinking about cognition now. Kant's most important method, the transcendental method, is also at the heart of contemporary cognitive science.

(1) To study the mind, infer the conditions necessary for experience. Arguments having this structure are called transcendental arguments.

Translated into contemporary terms, the core of this method is inference to the best explanation, the method of postulating unobservable mental mechanisms in order to explain observed behaviour. --Kant's View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self; SEP

Yet as much as philosophers may contend that an epistemological or a methodological view rules in science, rather than literal commitment to a metaphysical ontology or presupposition (physicalism / materialism usually)... I seriously doubt that scientists themselves across the board dismiss the contributions of substrates via regarding them merely as practical concepts a field has chosen, as opposed to being valid as legitimate "be-ings" or levels of being with some causal powers (as Searle puts it) -- or that such ontological indifference would even possible in all areas or disciplines.

Richard Lewontin: "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot [or anything transcendent, extra-phenomenal, purely formal or intelligible, non-spatiotemporal] in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen." --Billions and Billions of Demons; January 9, 1997, NY Times Book Reviews

 

[Billy T]

When a 'human being' or a 'living being', moves his limbs; Isn't this an interaction between "soul" and "atom"? ...

No. Not if you understand "soul" the way I think you do.

There is a physical cause for every motion. Be that of a living body or rock falling in a gravity field. If you think a soul is required for motion then the tiny ant walking or the ameba swimming all have souls and they are huge compared to creatures too small to see that move. For example the 10,000 plus sperm ejaculated are all flailing away with their tails in an effort to be first to reach the woman´s egg – do they all have souls? What happens to the souls of 9,999+ who lost the race?

I try to answer your questions. Please answer mine:

Do your really believe living and dead are distinct, discontinuous state transitions. I.e. that 1 ms after T, the last instant when you were alive, your body is dead?
I suspect you do as I think you believe death is when the soul leaves the body.

[part of post 119} ... There is no sharp line between. Historically different tests for being dead have been used. I.e. No fog on a cold mirror held many minutes next to nose, No heart sounds, No EEG signals (brain dead) even if the body is functioning with machine assists. Etc. IMHO, various parts of the body die at different times. Fingernails & hair still grow more than a week after brain dead. Organs, if keep cold until transplant can live in someone else´s body for years. Bodies can live without many parts, including an electrically active brain, if located in an advanced medical center, keeping organs alive for transplant needs.

Do you really think that one ms after time T, when you were alive, you are dead? ...

 

[Billy T]

... we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot [or anything transcendent, extra-phenomenal, purely formal or intelligible, non-spatiotemporal] in the door. ...

Guilty as charged - miracles do not exist.

 

[Sarkus]

Probably never made an unknown "answer", unless someone accidently mixed up the order of a set of punched cards. Then it would "calculate" an at least partially random design you did not know before seeing it.

It really all comes down to the definition of "calculate" That could be: "The procedure of accepting one or more "inputs" and transforming them into an output." For example, many if not most, modern cognitive scientists speak of the brain as a device that makes many stages of neural data transformations (or calculations) following which our experiences (or actions) "emerge."

Please feel free to offer a different definition for "Calculate."

I'm not sure the definition I've bolded above is adequate, as it includes almost any tool you care to mention... a pair of scissors takes two inputs: the force of a thumb and the force of a finger (or two), and creates a cutting motion as the output etc.
I would say that "to calculate" is to employ a process to discover an output that one doesn't know from the outset, by using inputs and a process that one can determine.

With the loom there is no unknown pattern - just an automated mechanism to get the same picture out each time.
The "calculation" would be in the process of transferring the picture into the cards, as the specifics of the cards would not be known at the outset.

As another example, I can calculate 191 * 223 by using a process that I had been taught at school - or through delegating that calculation to someone/thing else (e.g. a calculator).
But I no longer need to calculate 2*2 and other such (simple) mathematical questions, since I "know" them without the need to calculate.

I can speak Portuguse, but not well, and never had any formal instructions in that language - just "picked it up" with ~20 years of exposure, even though much too old to learn it well that way like a sub-four year old child does. I almost never translate from English. If I have a question or some thought I wish to express, it just flows out of my mouth and I have no idea what the words will be until I hear them.

Speaking is really controlling various mussels mainly in the head and neck area, especially the tounge and lips. I.e. in some way totally unknown to "me" my brain takes my thought as input and calculates a very complex sequential set of motor commands that make the words "flow out of my mouth." If that is not a "mental calculation" I don´t know what is.

It probably is a "mental calculation", but the issue is complicated through not being conscious of it, nor having a full understanding of the mechanism at work... whereas when we consciously calculate things we are obviously aware of the processes we employ... or if we delegate to an automated calculating machine then while we may not know how they work, someone somewhere will do (i.e. at least the designer will know).

 

[Billy T]

I'm not sure the definition I've bolded above is adequate, as it includes almost any tool you care to mention... a pair of scissors takes two inputs: the force of a thumb and the force of a finger (or two), and creates a cutting motion as the output etc. ...

Point well taken. I need to narrow down my defintion of "calculate" to exclude imputs like energy, etc. lets try:

"The procedure of accepting one or more informational or "data inputs" and transforming them into an information or data output by a well defined (even if unknown) logic."

I am resisting your idea that the output cannot already be known for the process to be considered a "calculation" as what someone knows and someone else doe not should not enter into the definition of a calculation process.

For example if I re calculate 234x567 you want to say I am not calculting it a second time as just learned the answer from the first calculation. After some time I may be only 99% sure my memory is correct so am I then calculating it a second time?

 

[Syne]

I agree and never claimed they had any level of consciousness. I did discuss, briefly in post 221 a robot case that might be considered to have a very low level of both consciousness, (certainly awareness of its environment of concern to it - just like humans are not aware of parts of their environment of little direct concern to them - for example the 100 or so EM waves surrounding them) and intentionality.

So a mirror displays some "level of consciousness"? You have not demonstrated awareness. You have simply assumed it. A robot is programmed to react to certain input, and this is just a degree is sophistication over the reaction of a calculator to its input. Neither imply awareness or consciousness. Any intentionality is merely a complex obfuscation of the programmer's own. A person designs something to appear to display intention, and so it does.

No, I have been very clear what I think is the nature of human consciousness. It exists ONLY when awake and when in dreaming sleep. I have identified it with the execution of a Real Time Simulation, RTS, of the environment (that includes your physical body)* and the creation of "your self" sort of as a subcomponent of the RTS. Again my quotes indicate that I am NOT speaking of my physical body, put my psychological self (including but not always active, only accessible (like an old FORTRAN call) my history recorded in memory).
Thus you can not correctly accuse me of “equivocating on the meaning of "consciousness". I have been quit clear on its meaning.
What do you mean, when you speak of “consciousness”? – I suspect you don’t really know, but if you do, please define it.
Be careful your definition does not include a hall monitor motion sensor, which is very aware of the hall environment.

So you have defined consciousness with some other term you have invented. That is nothing more than a regress, where you have erected a new term without any further explanatory power.

Consciousness is the quality or state of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, sentience, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind. -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness​

Nothing about any technological system has yet to give any impression of a qualitative judgment independent of programming. Now you might be somewhat successful at comparing AI to animal consciousness, but only because we can only compare superficial external behaviors. Being aware of "something within oneself" necessitates self-awareness and potential subjectivity.

 

[Magical Realist]

Playing a bit of the devil's advocate here,here's an exerpt of an article by noted philosopher John Searle:



"What are the relations between consciousness and the brain?

This question is the famous `mind-body problem'. Though it has a long and sordid history in both philosophy and science, I think, in broad outline at least, it has a rather simple solution. Here it is: Conscious states are caused by lower level neurobiological processes in the brain and are themselves higher level features of the brain. The key notions here are those of cause and feature. As far as we know anything about how the world works, variable rates of neuron firings in different neuronal architectures cause all the enormous variety of our conscious life. All the stimuli we receive from the external world are converted by the nervous system into one medium, namely, variable rates of neuron firings at synapses. And equally remarkably, these variable rates of neuron firings cause all of the colour and variety of our conscious life. The smell of the flower, the sound of the symphony, the thoughts of theorems in Euclidian geometry -- all are caused by lower level biological processes in the brain; and as far as we know, the crucial functional elements are neurons and synapses.
Of course, like any causal hypothesis this one is tentative. It might turn out that we have overestimated the importance of the neuron and the synapse. Perhaps the functional unit is a column or a whole array of neurons, but the crucial point I am trying to make now is that we are looking for causal relationships. The first step in the solution of the mind-body problem is: brain processes cause conscious processes.

This leaves us with the question, what is the ontology, what is the form of existence, of these conscious processes? More pointedly, does the claim that there is a causal relation between brain and consciousness commit us to a dualism of `physical' things and `mental' things? The answer is a definite no. Brain processes cause consciousness but the consciousness they cause is not some extra substance or entity. It is just a higher level feature of the whole system. The two crucial relationships between consciousness and the brain, then, can be summarized as follows: lower level neuronal processes in the brain cause consciousness and consciousness is simply a higher level feature of the system that is made up of the lower level neuronal elements.

There are many examples in nature where a higher level feature of a system is caused by lower level elements of that system, even though the feature is a feature of the system made up of those elements. Think of the liquidity of water or the transparency of glass or the solidity of a table, for example. Of course, like all analogies these analogies are imperfect and inadequate in various ways. But the important thing that I am trying to get across is this: there is no metaphysical obstacle, no logical obstacle, to claiming that the relationship between brain and consciousness is one of causation and at the same time claiming that consciousness is just a feature of the brain. Lower level elements of a system can cause higher level features of that system, even though those features are features of a system made up of the lower level elements. Notice, for example, that just as one cannot reach into a glass of water and pick out a molecule and say `This one is wet', so, one cannot point to a single synapse or neuron in the brain and say `This one is thinking about my grandmother'. As far as we know anything about it, thoughts about grandmothers occur at a much higher level than that of the single neuron or synapse, just as liquidity occurs at a much higher level than that of single molecules.

Of all the theses that I am advancing in this article, this one arouses the most opposition. I am puzzled as to why there should be so much opposition, so I want to clarify a bit further what the issues are: First, I want to argue that we simply know as a matter of fact that brain processes cause conscious states. We don't know the details about how it works and it may well be a long time before we understand the details involved. Furthermore, it seems to me an understanding of how exactly brain processes cause conscious states may require a revolution in neurobiology. Given our present explanatory apparatus, it is not at all obvious how, within that apparatus, we can account for the causal character of the relation between neuron firings and conscious states. But, at present, from the fact that we do not know how it occurs, it does not follow that we do not know that it occurs. Many people who object to my solution (or dissolution) of the mind-body problem, object on the grounds that we have no idea how neurobiological processes could cause conscious phenomena. But that does not seem to me a conceptual or logical problem. That is an empirical/theoretical issue for the biological sciences. The problem is to figure out exactly how the system works to produce consciousness, and since we know that in fact it does produce consciousness, we have good reason to suppose that are specific neurobiological mechanisms by way of which it works.

There are certain philosophical moods we sometimes get into when it seems absolutely astounding that consciousness could be produced by electro-biochemical processes, and it seems almost impossible that we would ever be able to explain it in neurobiological terms. Whenever we get in such moods, however, it is important to remind ourselves that similar mysteries have occurred before in science. A century ago it seemed extremely mysterious, puzzling, and to some people metaphysically impossible that life should be accounted for in terms of mechanical, biological, chemical processes. But now we know that we can give such an account, and the problem of how life arises from biochemistry has been solved to the point that we find it difficult to recover, difficult to understand why it seemed such an impossibility at one time. Earlier still, electromagnetism seemed mysterious. On a Newtonian conception of the universe there seemed to be no place for the phenomenon of electromagnetism. But with the development of the theory of electromagnetism, the metaphysical worry dissolved. I believe that we are having a similar problem about consciousness now. But once we recognize the fact that conscious states are caused by neurobiological processes, we automatically convert the issue into one for theoretical scientific investigation. We have removed it from the realm of philosophical or metaphysical impossibility..."--- http://www.users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/searle.prob.html

 

[hansda]

No. Not if you understand "soul" the way I think you do.

There is a physical cause for every motion. Be that of a living body or rock falling in a gravity field. If you think a soul is required for motion then the tiny ant walking or the ameba swimming all have souls and they are huge compared to creatures too small to see that move.

My understanding is that, every living cell(be it ant or amoeba); which has life, has soul.

Consider our physical body in a gravitational field. Gravitational force is always working on our body. Our body should fall on the ground due effect of gravity but in reality it does not happen so, because soul is there in our body. The moment soul leaves our body, our body can not stand on the ground and it falls(as a dead body) on the ground like an apple. So, this implies soul exerts some force on our physical body; which can balance gravitational force and we are able to stand on the ground.

For example the 10,000 plus sperm ejaculated are all flailing away with their tails in an effort to be first to reach the woman´s egg – do they all have souls? What happens to the souls of 9,999+ who lost the race?

Sperms only travel towards ovum and not in any other directions. When a sperm meets an ovum, soul manifests in the cell. Until this meeting soul does not manifest in the cell.

I try to answer your questions. Please answer mine:

Do your really believe living and dead are distinct, discontinuous state transitions. I.e. that 1 ms after T, the last instant when you were alive, your body is dead?
I suspect you do as I think you believe death is when the soul leaves the body.

I believe death is when the soul departs our body. Though our body can be preserved after death by various means like 'pyramids of Egypt' and body organs can be re-used as transplants. But there must be some time limits within which only our body organs can be transplanted and not beyond that.

 

[Billy T]

Thanks. I own The Rediscovery of the Mind and another of Searle´s but have not read them for years. I have long thought Searle´s Position on the mind/ brain problem the most reasonable (next to mine, of course) and agree 100% with all he says in you quote. I go a little farther than Searle does, in that I identify consciousness as being a higher level creation of the brain, mostly achieved in parietal lobes. -A part of the larger process that makes the world we directly perceive.

Searle, like almost all cognitive scientists ignores several embarrassing known facts that are not only explained by my RTS version of perception, but required for it to be correct. For example:
(1) Everyone, me included, agrees that the first processing of all the sensory input information by the brain is deconstruction. To use visual data as an example: Information arriving at V1 is parsed into sets of neural loops with different mutually re-enforcing oscillation frequencies in the general range of 30 to 50 Hz. These, probably correspond to objects so separated from the continuous field of visual stimulation. I have published a detailed paper in 1994 on how this is achieved at the neuronal level by known properties of neurons (not some higher hand-waving phrases). The most important neural facts being that each neuron part of a "contrast line detector receptive field" mutually excites near by line detector neurons of the same or nearly the same line orientation and has an inhibitory effect on the nearby line detectors whose "receptive fields" are orthogonal. (It is very much like the same process that occurs when several AC generators with slightly different natural frequencies are interconnected - they all lock together with a common frequency.)

After this main V1 (and some of V2) segregation or parsing into objects, each object is "tagged" by it locally unique frequency, is then further deconstructed into "characteristic." This takes place in well separated parts of the visual cortex. For example, in V4 there are three sets of color (intensity of white vs. black being one set). The other two are the red / green axis and the blue / yellow axis neurons. Motion (speed and direction) of each of frequency distinct objects is "measured" in V5; But no where does the deconstructed into physically separated object "characteristics” ever come together again in any one set of neural tissue. Yet, if the visual scene was a red cube and a bouncing yellow tennis ball that is what we perceive. Not any other alternative such as a bouncing yellow cube a stationary red ball. Very few cognitive scientists even acknowledge this "where & how does it all come together" problem.

The same deconstruction happens to all the sensory inputs. For example, the very first thing that happens to the sound waves an orchestra makes in the cochlea is to be separated into their different frequency components (Sort of like Fourier analysis) before being separately sent into the acoustical part of the temporal lobes. The "Middle C" energy from the piano and all the other instruments is exciting the same cilia (fine hair cells) inside the liquid filled cochlea as if one, yet we hear the instruments each distinctly!

Summary of (1): We perceive correctly the unified world, not the neurally deconstructed (separated into different parts of the brain and never rejoined) characterizes of it. In my RTS version of perception this deconstruction into separated characteristic is done for the same reason a pilot uses an item-by-item check list. For example if on your TV a red ball rolling down a hill becomes and it suddenly becomes blue - only that one color characteristic in the Real Time Simulation needs to be revised. - Keeping the RTS an accurate model of the external world is most accurate and efficient if the sensory data has early on in the neural processing been deconstructed into a set of characteristic. (More than a dozen are known: For example surface texture as well as color is one.)

(2) Without some temporal projection ahead of steady motions to compensate for the neural delays, playing a fast game of ping-pong would be impossible. I.e. you would perceive the ball where it was at least 0.2 seconds earlier - i.e. still on the other side of the net when you should be hitting it back. That temporal forward projection is the essence of what the Real Time Simulation of a world to perceive is all about. It provided a huge survival advantage to our ancestors who first perfected the RTS when in combat (thrown rocks and spears) with the larger, stronger, bigger brained, Neanderthals (and at least a dozen other hominoid types) so they could "explode" Out of Africa about 50,000 years ago and dominate the world of other creatures that still perceived the world with a small fraction of a second delay due to sequential stages of neural processing.

(3) Numerous neural/physiological facts have no reason to exist if as cognitive scientist believe, our perception "emerge" after many stages one neural processing - neural transformations or calculations operating on the sensory input data. For example, The existence of these large white fiber retro-tracks is such an unexplained embarrassment to the accepted theory of perception that it is rarely even acknowledged to be the case (except by neurophysiologist, but not by cognitive scientists). For example, slightly more than half of the input to the visual cortex V1 comes not from the eyes, but via "retrograde fibers" (axons) from the parietal brain!

The RTS not only explains why these retrograde fibers exist, but REQUIRES that they do so that checking, characteristic by characteristic, what is being simulated in the RTS in parietal brain can be corrected to agree with the changing sensory input data ASAP. Likewise there is a huge set of white fibers feeding data back from parietal brain to earlier part of the sensory input system process, especially going back to thalamus, which was often considered to be a "relay station" for the sensory inputs. Visual data from the retina for example goes thru the LGN part of the thalamus. Probably the thalamus functioned prior to the evolution of cortex as a "central processor" for more privative creatures and it is now recognized to be more than just the "relay station" it was thought to be 30 years ago.

There are more than a dozen other well established facts difficult or impossible for the accepted POV about perception to explain that are logical results explained by the RTS. Just to mention one: How can you have a visual experience in dreams with your eyes closed if visual experiences “emerge” following many stages of neural data transformations of retinal data? (Illusions, hallucinations, phantom limbs, etc. – a large list)

Again, If you want to know more about the RTS, please read (and then comment on) the "GFW essay" (Last part of a paper I published in 1994) found here: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?2868-About-determinism&p=882356&viewfull=1#post882356

 

[Sarkus]

My understanding is that, every living cell(be it ant or amoeba); which has life, has soul.

Or is merely exhibiting activity that we describe as "life"?

Consider our physical body in a gravitational field. Gravitational force is always working on our body. Our body should fall on the ground due effect of gravity but in reality it does not happen so, because soul is there in our body. The moment soul leaves our body, our body can not stand on the ground and it falls(as a dead body) on the ground like an apple. So, this implies soul exerts some force on our physical body; which can balance gravitational force and we are able to stand on the ground.

So people with paralysis that can not stand are soulless?
Given that we can create artificial bi-ped machines with a similar, if somewhat less developed, sense of balance, that can run, climb stairs etc (e.g. Asimo), and rather incredible quadrupeds that can walk on ice and even survive massive force to the side without losing balance (look up "BigDog" by Boston Dynamics - as in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZPRsrwumQ]this video[/url])... and looks creepily "alive" when recovering its balance...
... all this suggests that the ability to stand upright in a balanced posture is merely evidence of developed sense of balance rather than some "soul".

 

[Billy T]

... Sperms only travel towards ovum and not in any other directions. When a sperm meets an ovum, soul manifests in the cell. Until this meeting soul does not manifest in the cell.

You are contradicting your self as earlier you said it was the soul which animated things - caused the movement of ever atom of a life form, not the natural laws. So you believe the soul joins the egg when it is fertalized by a sperm cell. These fertalized eggs are often stored in Liquid N2 for more than a year, but most just end up being discarded. - What ahppens to the "trash-canned" souls?

... I believe death is when the soul departs our body. Though our body can be preserved after death by various means like 'pyramids of Egypt' and body organs can be re-used as transplants. But there must be some time limits within which only our body organs can be transplanted and not beyond that.

So you still cling to the idea that ms before T when you were last alive, you are dead. - I guess with the invisible, undectatbel soul hanging around just in case a few minutes later the doctors restart your heart, etc.

 

[gmilam]

My understanding is that, every living cell(be it ant or amoeba); which has life, has soul.

Sperms only travel towards ovum and not in any other directions. When a sperm meets an ovum, soul manifests in the cell. Until this meeting soul does not manifest in the cell.

A sperm is alive - yet it has no soul?
Seeing as how there is no sperm and egg involved, when does the amoebas soul "manifest"?
Or do all amoebas share a soul?
How about identical twins, do they share a soul?

It appears that you should think this idea through a little longer...