Question on physical laws and consciousness

[Luke Skywalker]

(cont)
Jub, I'll get back to you tomorrow.

[Zeropoint]

Luke Skywalker, you have repeatedly asserted that qualia and consciousness are in some unclear way incompatible with the laws of physics as we currently understand them, but you've provided neither evidence nor a good argument that this is the case.

Physical laws -> neural activity is easy. Even you were able to do it.
Neural activity -> consciousness is easy if you work with the fact that we've observed correlations between the two, and there is clearly a causal link.
Physical laws -> consciousness is impossible. You instead have to go physical laws -> neural activity, then neural activity -> consciousness through observational data.

Meanwhile, all of these are child's play:

Physical laws -> taking a shit
Physical laws -> JFK's assassination
Physical laws -> masturbating

Do you see the difference now?

Not at all. I can vaguely see how someone might predict "taking a shit" in very general terms from physical first principles--IF you can get to the idea of chemical compounds and energy states and realize that a system could obtain energy for itself by changing high energy configurations of atoms into low energy configurations of atoms, THEN it's a relatively small leap to conclude that a system could expel the resulting low-energy compounds. Of course, that description is vague enough to cover changing the batteries in your personal electronics, back in the days before everything was rechargeable.

As for the others . . . I really don't see how anyone could reasonably be expected to predict the JFK assassination from nothing but the laws of physics and the exact values of the physics constants. Remember that radioactive decay (for instance) is NOT deterministic. That is, while we can make very accurate statistical predictions about groups of radioactive nuclei, the decay of any given nucleus is entirely random and is not controlled by any hidden variables.

[Jub]

That was Starglider's point, which you seemed to agree with. Either way, your attempted explanation of consciousness simply explained neural activity, which I was already well familiar with. Then to jump from neural activity to consciousness you just waved your arms and pointed out that there's an observed connection, not realizing that an observed connection is a far less fundamental explanation than the first-principles one you were easily able to make to neural activity.

No, Starglider's point was that when physicists try to explain things that people from other fields could do a better job explaining they tend to make a hash of things. This doesn't mean that physics has nothing to do with these fields, just that people with a deeper understanding of the under laying systems won't over simplify things the way a physicist does when explaining something outside his field might.

We don't use physical laws to directly model consciousness. We can use physical laws to model neural activity, and then use observed correlations to model consciousness.

By this insane logic you can't use physical models to model a computer program running. There is literally no difference, aside from complexity and processing/storage medium, between a human brain and a computer.

Like, how many times do I have to repeat that neural activity and consciousness are not the same problem at all? The former leads to the latter; this does not mean the link between the two is adequately understood.

Explain where you feel the divide between neurological activity and consciousness comes into play, because to me they are one and the same. Consciousness is nothing more than the end result of physiological activity within the brain and can; once our models, methods, and technology reach the right level; be tested and measured by setting up an artificially conscious simulated mind and then altering things to the point where it no longer meets our definition for conscious.

Though again, you still haven't defined what you mean by consciousness and where you feel the divide between physical process and untestable consciousness lies in a way that makes it clear what exactly you need explained.

It means that I can, with adequate instruction, explain everything that we have ever observed within this framework in the same manner you explained neural activity with electromagnetic theory, except for consciousness.

For example, the assassination of Juilius Caesar could, in principle, be explained through the neural activities of the various conspirators firing in a certain way due to the constituent fundamental properties, prompting them to grab knives, ambush Caesar through his eyes' limited field of vision, and then kill him through the momentum and pressure of the metal puncturing organs that are necessary to sustain neural activity in the brain. All of this is familiar content, because it has to do with what are ultimately connections of quarks and leptons behaving in a certain way. Consciousness is an entirely different beast, and I hope you don't come back to me by trying to confuse consciousness with neural activity yet again.

Back this claim up. How is consciousness a different beast? How does it differ from other forms of thought or instinctive unconscious behavior? Define why you feel it can't be explained, albeit crudely at this point, by our current understanding of the brain and the physical laws that govern it. I demand answers to these questions or I'm going to start assuming you're using wall of ignorance tactics and deliberately being obtuse.

Because you modeled from first principles neural activity, but then neural activity -> consciousness required observation of a correlation that was not independently verifiable through scientific equations.

This doesn't make any sense, observing the neural activity of a being that we define to be conscious is directly verifying the workings of consciousness. To put it bluntly, there is no non-physical aspect to consciousness aside from the untestable and poorly defined philosophical ideas that you seem to want us to provide physical answers for.

In practice, no. In principle yes, just as it can predict neural activity. Feel free to explain to me how it can predict consciousness, since you've wasted many a paragraph trying to dance around the issue.

You're the one making the claim that consciousness can't be predicted by physical models, but you haven't even begun to make a claim as to why this would be the case. You need to define your terms, explain why you feel it can't be tested in a way that makes sense and can be tested scientifically or nobody will ever be able to answer your questions.

Fundamental particles have qualities such as spin, mass and charge, which in large scales can aggregate into classical qualities such as mass and tensile strength, but cannot aggregate into producing subjective qualia in a set of arbitrary conditions that are neurons firing a particular way.

Qualia also has physical properties be they the firing of neurons to create an unshared idea or be they they physical state of a hard drive holding every work of fiction ever created.

Are subjective qualia composed of atoms? Molecules? Muons?

Subjective qualia are composed of the physical parts of the brain experiencing them or the physical matter that defines them. You wouldn't ask these same questions about velocity or other physical properties that exist only as they pertain to a physical object, so why is qualia different?

If you think consciousness is explainable, feel free to provide that pathway to explaining it, since the first time you tried you got stuck at neural activity -> consciousness.

First off define what you mean by consciousness and then we might be able to relate it to something you might understand. Nobody aside from you in this thread understand where you are seeing the device between neurological activity and consciousness, so you need to make us understand why you feel there is a divide at all.

Starglider thinks that physics has nothing to do with neural activity. He's even dumber than you are. Meanwhile, you continue to complain about a lack of criteria when you have no problem explaining neural activity to my satisfaction, and could have easily transposed those standards into explaining consciousness.

Please quote him having said this.

Because you can't assign a number to red, but you can assign a number to spin, or to velocity.

I can assign a number to red. Do you want the wave lengths of light that a specific shade of red absorbs/reflects? How about the specific cones in the eye that pick up the wavelengths that we define as red? Or would you rather I tell you the specific neurons firing in your brain when you look at the color? I could also find the RBG value for the color, the chemicals needed to mix a paint of that color, hell if we had the right tech I could even tell you the positions and states of the fundamental particles that make up the light that you call red. In the future I might even be able to plug into your head and see if the way your brain processes red is the same as mine so the answer to the question, 'Is my red his red' might finally be answered. Given all the things I can tell you about red, please explain to me what part of red can't be quantified, because I'm not seeing it.

[Simon_Jester]

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

what about philosophical zombies ? Assuming we are not pzombies where does conciousness come from ?

Presumably, from whatever processes are going on in the relevant chunks of the brain, as an evolved mechanism to go along with intelligence as a whole.

Without introspection, any complicated, powerful intelligence would be very, very dysfunctional. Consciousness is what humans use for introspection; as Starglider notes it's not a perfect tool but it's all we've got.

Philosophical zombies are logical silliness; they fail Occam's Razor. Consciousness and its associated consequences (such as art) are too complicated to be mimicked successfully, especially if no conscious lifeforms exist to define what it is that should be mimicked.

Also, this is a very important motif that runs through this discussion that you clearly don't have the cognitive capacity to figure out for yourself, so I'll put this in simple, bold letters:

THE MYSTERY IS NOT NEURAL ACTIVITY, WHICH CAN EASILY BE EXPLAINED. NOR IS IT DOUBTING THAT NEURAL ACTIVITY RELATES TO CONSCIOUSNESS, WHICH CAN EASILY BE ESTABLISHED. THE PROBLEM IS CONNECTING THIS RELATIONSHIP BACK TO PHYSICAL LAWS, AS YOU WERE ABLE TO CONNECT NEURAL ACTIVITY BACK TO MACKWELL'S EQUATIONS.

What on Earth causes you to become so upset over the issue?

I don't see why the fact that this is tricky to do strikes you as so problematic. Qualia (the things you're talking about) occupy a well-known relationship with patterns of neural activity.

We understand how the taste of sugar triggers neural activity. We understand that we evolved to find sugar pleasant. We understand that the neural activity triggered by sugar is related to a certain (sugary) qualia.

This last part of the relationship is not fully understood in the sense that we don't know why sugar tastes pleasantly like sugar, instead of pleasantly like something else. But that doesn't mean there is no mechanism.

Your mind, that which experiences the qualia, is a purely information-based construct: a program, so to speak. Understanding what it is like for a program to experience an input would probably require an intelligence greater than that of the program- which means figuring this question out for humans is likely going to have to wait a while. No big deal.

It means fundamental physical laws are supposed to be able to predict every observation. There may be practical problems with this, hence why there are certain engineering problems that we still don't know how to solve from first principles, but in theory we know that everything we've ever observed in the universe could be explained mathematically at the particulate level.

Except that in most cases, this is a terribly inefficient way to understand a complex physical system. Read Starglider's comments about levels of abstraction- the brain's smallest significant component is a synapse, so obsessing over quantum mechanics is wasting time.

Worry about synapses. Worry about how the action of synapses, of the parts of the brain at the level where brain activity occurs, give rise to consciousness. Pounding the table about quantum mechanics just makes you look like a pseudoscientist. Because frankly, as someone who actually learned some of it in grad school, it is grossly overrated as a tool for understanding anything but the interactions of individual subatomic particles. Which is largely irrelevant to neurobiology except insofar as it affects the stuff that is relevant.

Consciousness does not fall under these predictions, because there's no deduction from the mathematics of quantum mechanics of its existence, and indeed there isn't even a conceptual possibility of doing so.

I could equally well argue that there's "no deduction from the mathematics of quantum mechanics" that soap bubbles will exist. It's not that quantum mechanics doesn't describe particles that can be combined into atoms that can be combined into molecules that, in an inert atmosphere, act like soap bubbles. It's that quantum mechanics doesn't demand soap bubbles; the universe would work just fine without them.

The existence of subjective qualia, however, is fundamentally different from the existence of, say, strange mountain formations because the latter, while unexplained, is obviously explainable and composed of fundamental particles obeying fundamental laws, while the former is intrinsically different from anything we've ever encountered. Is this seriously so difficult for you to understand?

Qualia are information as experienced by a construct that is itself purely informational: input as experienced by a program that converts input into output.

We will learn to understand qualia by understanding more about information-processing, not by understanding more about physics. You're barking up the wrong tree.

The reason why it's not an "arbitrary subjective bar" is that every other mystery in science meets it. Mysteries about the early origins of the universe and the properties of spider webs have unexplained observations that nonetheless are reasonably assumed to follow from fundamental physical laws. Do I need to break this down into little baby language for you?

Why wouldn't qualia be reasonably assumed to follow from fundamental laws?

The problem you have is that you expect those to be the laws governing particles and forces. They're not. They're the laws governing information and computation.

What you're doing is as big a mistake as trying to understand a C++ program by stubbornly refusing to learn anything about programming and demanding that the program be explained to you in terms of individual electrons jumping around inside the CPU. The only reason this creates confusion is that you're refusing to think about the problem on the relevant scale level at which a human mind could plausibly hope to understand it.

That is an absolutely insane level confusion, between micrometre scale brain connectivity and femtometre scale physics. Quantum theory has nothing to do with brain function. I realise some famous people who really should have known better (cough Penrose cough) have made this mistake, but it's even less excusable now than it was in the 1980s.

You are an idiot. Quantum mechanics has to do with brain function in the same manner it has to do with throwing a baseball, in that it reduces to classical mechanics, electromagnetic theory, biology, etc.

And when real scientists want to understand a baseball they don't jump up and down and hoot and scream about QUANTUM THEORY.

No, they actually use classical mechanics. Because classical mechanics is a helpful, descriptive theory for describing how a baseball moves. Biology and anatomy are useful, descriptive sciences for understanding how a human being throws a baseball. Quantum mechanics is either totally useless, or almost totally useless, in both subjects.

b) finding another observation that falls under the same problems as consciousness, although this would only compound the issue.

English grammar. It doesn't follow from quantum mechanics, and cannot be described in terms of the actions of particles alone. Or set theory. Or contract law. Or the rules of sonnet format.

Or anything, really, that is expressed in terms of information alone, and which is only represented by physical matter because that's a convenient way to create instances of the information in the physical world.

This entire thread seems to have been triggered by you having a nervous breakdown over the revelation that information isn't a kind of particle.

You think physicists are "arrogant" for wanting to deal in all other sciences. This has issues for practical reasons, but it certainly does not refute the assertion that all science reduces to physics in principle. You have demonstrated the memorization of lots of terms but clearly have no clue what you're talking about if you think neural activity doesn't involve quantum mechanics. My taking a shit involves quantum mechanics. Even your faint brain activity does.

Are you seriously accusing Starglider of not knowing as much about consciousness and intelligence as you do? He's an AI scientist. What have you done to indicate that you know more about the science of mind than he does?

...
Meanwhile, all of these are child's play:

Physical laws -> taking a shit
Physical laws -> JFK's assassination
Physical laws -> masturbating

Do you see the difference now?

Uh... two out of three of those only happen because someone makes a conscious decision. By your own argument they are "inexplicable."

Again, your problem seems to be a psychological breakdown resulting from the stunning revelation that information isn't a kind of particle covered under the Standard Model. Which, well... it isn't. All the fully scientifically literate people in the audience already knew this.

Fundamental particles have qualities such as spin, mass and charge, which in large scales can aggregate into classical qualities such as mass and tensile strength, but cannot aggregate into producing subjective qualia...

How do you know that?

More to the point, how do you know that the properties of information and logic gates flipping can't aggregate into qualia... since those are what qualia are actually made of?

Yet, when I posit the same process for exploring consciousness in my previous post, you reject that as insufficient evidence. You don't seem to have a clear idea of what you are even arguing at this point.

Consciousness isn't even a physical thing, isn't composed of elementary particles, and isn't any sort of force field that would have a mathematical relationship with said elementary particles. The interaction of elementary particles in a particular way seems to arbitrarily produce it, but that's hardly the same thing.

English grammar isn't a physical thing. It isn't composed of elementary particles; there is no such thing as a grammaron. There isn't any force that would relate to grammar particles- there is no conjugation-force.

And yet, grammar is a well understood construct governing how the symbols in the English language are properly configured to communicate statements about the world.

Are subjective qualia composed of atoms? Molecules? Muons?

Bits. And NAND gates.

Starglider thinks that physics has nothing to do with neural activity. He's even dumber than you are.

No, he's pointing out that quantum mechanics has no utility in understanding consciousness, any more than it has utility in understanding how C++ programming works.

[Starglider]

This is why I don't spend time on cog sci forums any more, I am so tired of explaining basic concepts.

Luke, your brain is broken, in the same way that pretty much everyone's is broken, but for most people the flaw is either benign (because they don't spend much time thinking about philosophy) or they consciously overrule it. I am sure when the first formalised physical laws that contradicted human intuitive physics (e.g. the 'impeteus theory', lots of research on this) people screamed and wailed about how it was ridiculous and impossible just like you are doing now. Most of science now has such a weight of evidence, testable prediction and expert opinion that it steamrolls 'common sense' objections, aside for a tiny minority of fringe objectors (flat earthers etc). Unfortunately for cognitive science we are not there yet and even respectable people can still cling to 'common sense' self-models and sing 'la la la I can't hear you' in the face of actual research.

There are several problems with the intuitive human reflective model that produce bogus axioms when used as a basis for abstract reasoning, but the specific flaw here is;

The existence of subjective qualia, however, is fundamentally different from the existence of, say, strange mountain formations because the latter, while unexplained, is obviously explainable and composed of fundamental particles obeying fundamental laws, while the former is intrinsically different from anything we've ever encountered.

This is an intuitive perception that you have extrapolated into a compeletely bogus axiom, which is then blowing up your entire ability to reason. No amount of copy-paste insults, repetition or ranting will change that. You are saying that qualia are (uniquely) magical. They are not. Magic does not exist. Qualia are an information processing pattern, just like all other brain function. I admitt qualia looked kind of mysterious to me as well when I first got into cognitive science, but with some study of perceptual psychology, neurology and what we still quaintly call 'symbol grounding' (in AI) it becomes pretty clear that qualia are exactly what you would expect to get when you add introspective capability on top of a layered associative pattern recognition system. All of the characteristics of qualia come from the connections and associations between the lower level neural maps that store the basic perceptible units and the higher level models and symbols that they ground. Reflective capability in current AI systems is too primitive to make a convincing argument for replication of human-like qualia, but personally I'd say it's pretty clear that sufficient elaboration of some existing research would get you there.

In retrospect all those arguments about whether qualia are epiphenomenon make about as much sense as the arguments about free will. Qualia are not a product of sensory processing, they are the mid-level sensory processing process, and the reflective representation of them, although not logically or physically accurate, works fine for the common tasks where you would want to think about perception itself on an abstract level (e.g. artistic composition).

In short, don't try to do cognitive science without understanding brain function first, as otherwise your deductions will be worse than useless.

[Starglider]

Without introspection, any complicated, powerful intelligence would be very, very dysfunctional. Consciousness is what humans use for introspection; as Starglider notes it's not a perfect tool but it's all we've got.

Not exactly. This may seem like splitting hairs, but there is an important distinction between conscious attention and the brain's self-perception. The vast majority of processing activity that goes into perceiving (recognising, filtering, categorising, associating) the external world is unconscious, you consciously attend to just a few processed elements of it at any one time. Self-perception is not as well understood but it does seem almost certain that the majority of self-perceptual activity is similarly 'unconscious'. If we are classifying intelligences, 'sapient', 'self-aware' and 'conscious' are different things; e.g. most AI designs do not have the relatively sharp conscious vs unconscious distinction that humans have. This is more a limitation of the brain's global associative mechanism than anything else, much like the short term memory chunk limit.

Philosophical zombies are logical silliness; they fail Occam's Razor.

Well, they're interesting for some thought experiments. For example, given ridiculously large (physically impossible) but finite storage and computing power, we could pregenerate intelligent-seeming responses to all possible sequences of things you could say in a one-hour conversation. You could then interact with an agent that seems sentient but is actually just a playback device for a very elaborate choose-your-own-adventure type book. However the process that generated all the session logs would have to have been sentient*. So the 'p-zombie' is actually more of an illusion using implausible amounts of computing power to brute-force time travel etc. There are lots of interesting hypotheticals like this but very few of them have any direct bearing on things that exist in the real universe.

* Or rather, we can specify a brute-force process such as AIXI-TL to do that task, but it looks like the subprocesses that it would create as part of doing that would necessarily be sentient; exactly what kind of sentience depends on whether the human brain is actually the most resource efficient representation of human intelligence, where 'efficiency' itself is a metric that depends on the kind of computing resources available etc etc... these kind of debates can get very deep and esoteric.

This last part of the relationship is not fully understood in the sense that we don't know why sugar tastes pleasantly like sugar, instead of pleasantly like something else.

Isn't that tautological? You define 'the taste of sugar' as the combination of taste and olfactory signals you get when ingesting sugar. 'The taste of sugar' exists as an engram in your brain which is tightly coupled to various other aspects of the concept 'sugar' such as the sound of the word 'sugar'. In a simple AI system 'sugar' would be an entry in a graph database with a sound file, a chemical analysis etc attached; the chemical analysis is the 'taste of sugar'. The brain is a bit more complicated, not least because the 'taste of sugar' is embedded into the taste analysis network and is reprojected when you recall the taste (the brain does not have a clean data/processing distinction). But still conceptually equivalent.

This entire thread seems to have been triggered by you having a nervous breakdown over the revelation that information isn't a kind of particle... Again, your problem seems to be a psychological breakdown resulting from the stunning revelation that information isn't a kind of particle covered under the Standard Model. Which, well... it isn't. All the fully scientifically literate people in the audience already knew this.

Information is a physically rigorous concept though, quantified in quantum theory, cosmology etc, so I don't think it's information as such that's causing the hissy fit. Rather,

What on Earth causes you to become so upset over the issue?

People generally experience anger when their intuitive perceptions are challenged, but it's true that challenging people's intuitive ideas about their self seems to cause an unusually extreme amount of pushback and rationalisation. I'm not certain why but it seems to be a fundamental human insecurity, possibly tied into self-preservation instinct. I guess we are quite close to religious territory here, which shows the same behaviour; declaring arbitrary (usually nonsensical) things as axioms, refusing to counternance any alternate model of reality, derriving ludicrously elaborate chains of rationalisation from the broken axiom etc.

[Simon_Jester]

Without introspection, any complicated, powerful intelligence would be very, very dysfunctional. Consciousness is what humans use for introspection; as Starglider notes it's not a perfect tool but it's all we've got.

Not exactly. This may seem like splitting hairs, but there is an important distinction between conscious attention and the brain's self-perception. The vast majority of processing activity that goes into perceiving (recognising, filtering, categorising, associating) the external world is unconscious, you consciously attend to just a few processed elements of it at any one time. Self-perception is not as well understood but it does seem almost certain that the majority of self-perceptual activity is similarly 'unconscious'. If we are classifying intelligences, 'sapient', 'self-aware' and 'conscious' are different things; e.g. most AI designs do not have the relatively sharp conscious vs unconscious distinction that humans have. This is more a limitation of the brain's global associative mechanism than anything else, much like the short term memory chunk limit.

Ah. See, here I'd been thinking in terms of all the perceptual stuff other than introspection as unconscious... whereas the stuff in your conscious mind is the stuff you're thinking about, actively, which I had thought of as being related closely to introspection.

Even if you're not introspecting while consciously thinking about the book you're reading... you're still using your self-monitoring capability to watch yourself thinking about it. Otherwise it wouldn't be consciousness.

Or that was the idea in my head.

Am I making the mistake you think I'm making?

This last part of the relationship is not fully understood in the sense that we don't know why sugar tastes pleasantly like sugar, instead of pleasantly like something else.

Isn't that tautological? You define 'the taste of sugar' as the combination of taste and olfactory signals you get when ingesting sugar. 'The taste of sugar' exists as an engram in your brain which is tightly coupled to various other aspects of the concept 'sugar' such as the sound of the word 'sugar'. In a simple AI system 'sugar' would be an entry in a graph database with a sound file, a chemical analysis etc attached; the chemical analysis is the 'taste of sugar'. The brain is a bit more complicated, not least because the 'taste of sugar' is embedded into the taste analysis network and is reprojected when you recall the taste (the brain does not have a clean data/processing distinction). But still conceptually equivalent.

What I mean is, why is the qualia of sugar that qualia? Surely there are other ways in which sugar could taste, different from the taste we now experience, but still pleasant. Such other possibilities would satisfy the evolutionary need for sugar to taste good just as well.

So basically, the question that's at least somewhat interesting is:

"How does the specific neural activity that results from our taste and olfactory signals give rise to that specific qualia that we experience when tasting sugar? As opposed to other pleasant taste/olfactory-related qualia?"

And it's certainly helpful to say that it's the result of combining introspection with a layered system of pattern recognition.

[I interpret that as saying "when a mind is capable of thinking about itself, and also creates layered, interlocking arrays of pattern recognition, then that mind is going to predictably start perceiving those patterns as some kind of qualia."]

There's still an interesting question about why particular qualia are associated with particular stimuli- why Tab A happens to be the one that fits Slot A, in other words. But that's clearly a detail question.

This entire thread seems to have been triggered by you having a nervous breakdown over the revelation that information isn't a kind of particle... Again, your problem seems to be a psychological breakdown resulting from the stunning revelation that information isn't a kind of particle covered under the Standard Model. Which, well... it isn't. All the fully scientifically literate people in the audience already knew this.

Information is a physically rigorous concept though, quantified in quantum theory, cosmology etc, so I don't think it's information as such that's causing the hissy fit. Rather,

What on Earth causes you to become so upset over the issue?

People generally experience anger when their intuitive perceptions are challenged, but it's true that challenging people's intuitive ideas about their self seems to cause an unusually extreme amount of pushback and rationalisation. I'm not certain why but it seems to be a fundamental human insecurity, possibly tied into self-preservation instinct. I guess we are quite close to religious territory here, which shows the same behaviour; declaring arbitrary (usually nonsensical) things as axioms, refusing to counternance any alternate model of reality, derriving ludicrously elaborate chains of rationalisation from the broken axiom etc.

Fair point.

For some reason I seem to have been born without that particular feature. Dunno why.

[LaCroix]

What I mean is, why is the qualia of sugar that qualia? Surely there are other ways in which sugar could taste, different from the taste we now experience, but still pleasant. Such other possibilities would satisfy the evolutionary need for sugar to taste good just as well.

So basically, the question that's at least somewhat interesting is:

"How does the specific neural activity that results from our taste and olfactory signals give rise to that specific qualia that we experience when tasting sugar? As opposed to other pleasant taste/olfactory-related qualia?"

I think you are looking at it from the wrong direction. You start with the assumption that sugary taste is pleasant.
The "taste" itself is only a key for a Hashmap entry - a certain chemical stimulus. This stimulus does have a taste - a certain pattern of receptor output, which can be stored as a memory, but it is not per se a pleasant one. For most people, the introduction of sugar will trigger the "it's pleasant" reaction for various reasons.
But there are many people who do not like the taste of sugar, and avoid sweet tastes. (I, for example, think of the taste of maple sirup as bitter, not sweet or pleasant, even though it is almost exclusively sugar.)

Sadly, we learned this connection during our toddler years, so we can't really know if it is a gradual process where the body's response to sweet food causes the qualia to adapt until it is "pleasant". Or if it already happens as response to sugar exposure in the womb, - a map entry for "pleasant, because nourishing, but specific taste yet unknown" is formed, and is later mapped to the "taste" of sugar when body reactions to exposure fit the "nourishing" pattern.

Also, taste is not static, thus a bad example for what you are asking. Some people loose their "taste" for a certain food, or find themselves liking a taste they initialy despised after a certain exposure time.

[Starglider]

Am I making the mistake you think I'm making?

You're not making a mistake, one just has to be very careful with the definitions and explanations in this area, because our colloquial vocab for this stuff is so fuzzy and imprecise. Alas we're not at the point of having a comprehensive universally agreed technical vocab for talking about cognition yet. Lots of philosophers have made up their own but most of it wasn't associated with actual cognitive structures and thus didn't stick.

What I mean is, why is the qualia of sugar that qualia? Surely there are other ways in which sugar could taste, different from the taste we now experience, but still pleasant.

The answer is the same as for nearly every feature of the brain; it's some combination of being a local optima in an evolved behavior, and random side-effects of your evolutionary and developmental history. As with free will, the answer is perhaps less profound than we wanted, but it's really quite straightforward. What we can't say yet is exactly how close your sensation of 'sugar taste' is to my sensation of 'sugar taste', but that's due to insufficient brain scanning resolution, not any conceptual barrier.

"How does the specific neural activity that results from our taste and olfactory signals give rise to that specific qualia that we experience when tasting sugar? As opposed to other pleasant taste/olfactory-related qualia?"

It is interesting but it isn't a philosophical question. It's a question for evolutionary biology and developmental neuroscience, which is certainly being attacked with vigor now that the research tools are getting truly useful. Qualia cannot be any arbitrary thing and still actually work as a sensory system; there is some wiggle room, but as you say it's a detail question.

For some reason I seem to have been born without that particular feature. Dunno why.

Malign Hypercognition Disorder

[Starglider]

The "taste" itself is only a key for a Hashmap entry - a certain chemical stimulus. This stimulus does have a taste - a certain pattern of receptor output, which can be stored as a memory, but it is not per se a pleasant one. For most people, the introduction of sugar will trigger the "it's pleasant" reaction for various reasons.

This is important; almost everything consciously perceptible is an aggregate of smaller elements, usually several layers deep. Pleasant vs unpleasant is getting into reward and motivation mechanisms, which is seperate from but closely linked to perception. Qualia are a bundle of the raw sensory map activation, recognised patterns, closely associated non-present patterns (e.g. anticipation), adjacent patterns, abstract associations and as you say links into other neural subsystems such as emotions. All of this mess is mutable but some bits of it are more plastic than others.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Let me try to explain the problem here to you for a third time.
<snip more stupid bullshit>
Do you see the difference now?

Starglider and others have already responded to this bit, so in the interests in avoiding needles repetition I won't address it. Refer to their posts.

Remember how you eagerly and superfluously gave a first principles explanation for neural activity? Do the same for consciousness. Obviously, nobody is expecting exacting details, just as you did not give such exact detail in your original, entirely off base attempt.

You have yet to explain how my explanation doesn't apply. You just keep repeating that it doesn't count. Again, you are using circular logic: you are assuming from the offset that consciousness is somehow special, then rejecting any and all scientific evidence that doesn't support the assertion that consciousness is special. As you yourself said in your last post, there is a difference between unexplainable and unexplained. Consciousness is a state-dependent property of a complex and adaptive biological system; we can physically explain the states of that biological system, and reliably correlate that physical data with behavioral indicators, and accurately predict states of consciousness through this physical data. The onus is on you to explain EXACTLY why this is not sufficient. You have not done so, you have just repeated your assertion that it is not.

I mean, the inherent incapability with any known law of physics should be obvious enough, but I suppose with you we'll just have to learn by doing, or failing to do.

What, exactly, is your problem with me? To my knowledge, this is the first time I've ever interacted with you on this board, and you immediately assumed this incredibly petulant and antagonist attitude as if we had some history of contentious debate. Everything you say appears to be empty posturing: I'm not even sure you know ANY laws of physics, considering your utter refusal to actually explain which parts of the what laws are incompatible with the notion of consciousness. YOU NEED TO JUSTIFY YOUR CLAIMS. Tell me HOW consciousness is incompatible.

Either way, your attempted explanation of consciousness simply explained neural activity, which I was already well familiar with. Then to jump from neural activity to consciousness you just waved your arms and pointed out that there's an observed connection, not realizing that an observed connection is a far less fundamental explanation than the first-principles one you were easily able to make to neural activity.

Why? Consciousness is simply a consequence of certain patterns of neural activity. We can determine this through physiological and behavioral investigations of humans and animals. We can physically explain these patterns of neural activity. We can predict future states of consciousness USING this neural activity. In fact, we are getting close to the point where we can reconstruct subjective signals simply by using neural activity (this is how cochlear implants for deaf people operate, etc.). Apparently, you seem to think this is insufficient to ground consciousness as a physical phenomenon, but you have not explained what part of that process is inadequate.

We don't use physical laws to directly model consciousness.

You should tell that to the entire field of neuroscience. All of those people are going to be pretty bummed that they aren't living up to your unstated and possibly imaginary standards.

We can use physical laws to model neural activity, and then use observed correlations to model consciousness.

Yes. Just like we do in meteorology, geology, astrophysics, and every other field of science. That's the first step in building a predictive model. You seem to have conflated the concept, "We know that consciousness is a function of certain patterns of brain activity, but we do not know yet how to causally explain every single possible pattern" with "Consciousness is an unmeasurable and non-physical phenomenon". You do realize these are two very different ideas, right?

"What exactly is your criterion" - at the least, the same criterion you took upon yourself to explain neural activity. Some sort of connection to electromagnetic theory, or any physical law, that even has a variable in there that would have some sort of relationship to subjective qualia.

"A variable that would have some sort of relationship to subjective qualia"? Are you looking for someone to give you a formula, like C=Q+B, where C=consciousness, Q=qualia, and B=bullshit? This is exactly the problem that came up in the global warming thread (and thus why I made the analogy that you keep failing to understand). It's a nonsensical request.

Like, how many times do I have to repeat that neural activity and consciousness are not the same problem at all?

Why not? Consciousness is a particular type of neural activity. What makes consciousness so fundamentally different that it is unable to be explained by physical phenomenon, as the entire field of neuroscience indeed suggests?

The former leads to the latter; this does not mean the link between the two is adequately understood.

So? Yes, we don't yet have a complete understanding of the relationship. We also don't have a complete understanding of genetics or gravity. Does that mean that those two concepts are strictly a-physical phenomena? No, it does not. We have predictive, physical models for all 3 phenomena; for some reason, you refuse to accept the ones related to consciousness for reasons that are unclear. You keep appealing to the unknown as if it is inherently unknowable without demonstrating that consciousness is such an inherently alien problem that all of our standard techniques don't apply to it.

I love how you just vaguely claim that I "misunderstood" both analogies without bothering to explain how I did so, or addressing the specific justifications I made as to how the analogies are inadequate.

Actually, I clearly explained both analogies later in that very post, which you conveniently didn't respond to. Which further indicates that you are being deliberately dishonest. Since you are apparently incapable of understanding the concept of subtext, I will spell it out for you:

1) The global warming analogy: just as Purple did in the other thread with global warming, you are demanding a certain standard of evidence without clearly explaining what your standard is, and whole-sale rejecting everybody's explanations as being somehow "insufficient" without actually saying why they are insufficient.
2) The evolution analogy: just like creationists do with 'transitional fossils', you are constantly shifting the goal-posts and using vague language as a shield to refuse to accept physical evidence.

Clear enough for you? Your "justifications" for the analogies being inadequate missed the point completely, as you stubbornly insisted on blathering about evolution and global warming specifically, when it was clear I was actually talking about the logical structure of the argument rather than the specific physical phenomena being discussed. Your "justifications" were red herrings.

You've clearly mastered all of the right catchphrases and sound bites found on these forums but can't be bothered to make a coherent argument to save your life.

It's actually very telling that you think this is the case. Apparently logical lines of thought based on specific scientific evidence are, to you, incoherent catchphrases and soundbites.

It means that I can, with adequate instruction, explain everything that we have ever observed within this framework in the same manner you explained neural activity with electromagnetic theory, except for consciousness.

Again, I demand proof of your absurd statements. If you could actually explained "everything that we have ever observed within this framework" than statistics as a discipline would not exist. I would love to hear your explanation for how statistics is obsolete next to your grand mastery of the physical laws, it would save me a lot of coursework.

For example, the assassination of Juilius Caesar could, in principle, be explained through the neural activities of the various conspirators firing in a certain way due to the constituent fundamental properties, prompting them to grab knives, ambush Caesar through his eyes' limited field of vision, and then kill him through the momentum and pressure of the metal puncturing organs that are necessary to sustain neural activity in the brain.

Um ... so you admit that the deliberate decisions and activities of people can be explained through physical phenomena, but consciousness cannot? WHAT MAKES CONSCIOUSNESS SO SPECIAL? You have not yet explained why this is. Do you really not understand that the "neural activities of the various conspirators firing in a certain way" IS a physical explanation of consciousness?

All of this is familiar content, because it has to do with what are ultimately connections of quarks and leptons behaving in a certain way.

What do quarks and leptons have to do with neural activity, and how does they demonstrate a distinction between "consciousness" and the conscious decision-making, planning, and actions undertaken by Caesar's assassins?

Consciousness is an entirely different beast, and I hope you don't come back to me by trying to confuse consciousness with neural activity yet again.

WHY IS IT A DIFFERENT BEAST YOU STUBBORN LITTLE SHIT? You keep repeating this, without justifying it. You are now going out of your way to break board debate rules. Provide some evidence that consciousness is "an entirely different beast".

Because you modeled from first principles neural activity, but then neural activity -> consciousness required observation of a correlation that was not independently verifiable through scientific equations.

That's blatantly false. That correlation IS independently verifiable. Do you not consider cognitive psychology to be a real science? If not, explain why this is the case.

In practice, no. In principle yes, just as it can predict neural activity. Feel free to explain to me how it can predict consciousness, since you've wasted many a paragraph trying to dance around the issue.

I have explained it. I see no need to repeat myself because you are too stupid to understand the argument being made. And it is ironic that you accuse me of trying to dance around the issue, considering you have refused multiple direct requests to explained the two cruxes of your argument:

1) WHY IS CONSCIOUSNESS SPECIAL?
2) WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE OF A PHYSICAL BASIS FOR CONSCIOUSNESS?

You have rejected my proposed evidence for point 2) by appealing to point 1), but you have not yet actually explained what makes consciousness so special that our physical models cannot account for it.

Fundamental particles have qualities such as spin, mass and charge, which in large scales can aggregate into classical qualities such as mass and tensile strength, but cannot aggregate into producing subjective qualia in a set of arbitrary conditions that are neurons firing a particular way.

Yet we are able to reconstruct patterns of neural activity into images and sounds to aid blind and deaf people. How do you explain this?

The difference is you haven't presented any evidence whatsoever. You eagerly linked physical laws to neural activity (just as you could link physical laws to taking a shit or masturbating), but then to link neural activity to consciousness you just pointed out that we've observed a correlation.

Not just that we've observed a correlation, that we've observed a causal relationship. And we can accurately predict that relationship, and reconstruct that relationship in the reverse (i.e. convert patterns of neural activity into images and sounds). And you consider this insufficient ... why?

Consciousness isn't even a physical thing, isn't composed of elementary particles, and isn't any sort of force field that would have a mathematical relationship with said elementary particles.

PROVE IT, asshole. I'm sick of your constant dishonesty and stupidity.

The interaction of elementary particles in a particular way seems to arbitrarily produce it, but that's hardly the same thing.

Why?

Are subjective qualia composed of atoms? Molecules? Muons?

Depends on how you define qualia. There are a number of different definitions. True to form, you refuse to actually cleary define what you mean when YOU use the term. You prefer to keep it vague because you know you have no idea what you are talking about, and by keeping it vague you can keep moving the goalposts.

Wow, I can just feel the brain cells frying in you right now.

More self-congratulatory , eh?

If you think consciousness is explainable, feel free to provide that pathway to explaining it, since the first time you tried you got stuck at neural activity -> consciousness.

I didn't get stuck. You refuse to acknowledge the connection, for reasons you have refused to elucidate. So, again, for the umpteenth time, I ask you to please explain WHY consciousness is so special that our physical models of it, using neural activity, are inadequate.

Starglider thinks that physics has nothing to do with neural activity. He's even dumber than you are. Meanwhile, you continue to complain about a lack of criteria when you have no problem explaining neural activity to my satisfaction, and could have easily transposed those standards into explaining consciousness.

I used those standards to explain consciousness. You stubbornly refuse to accept that, and refuse to explain why. You are essentially throwing a tantrum, stamping your feet and screeching "NO!" at the top of your lungs, instead of actually explaining why you are rejecting my explanation. You just claim that "neural activity->consciousness" is an unbridgeable gap, despite the fact that we can go accurately predict states of consciousness based on neural activity, reverse engineer subjective states using patterns of neural activity, ad relate states of consciousness across humans and the evolutionary progression of those states across a variety of organisms.

You cannot explain consciousness the same way.

WHY THE FUCK NOT? Repeating this ad infinitum does not make it true. YOU HAVE TO JUSTIFY YOUR CLAIMS.

I have explained multiple times that we have physical models for consciousness. You have rejected those models. The burden of proof is on you to explain WHY those physical models are inadequate, without just repeating your assertion that consciousness cannot be explained physically.

This is circular logic, and that you are too stupid to figure this out goes a long way towards explaining your equally stupid belief that engineers don't need to use math. You have begun with the unjustified assertion that consciousness is not a physical event, just so you can reject all physical explanations of consciousness.

Because you can't assign a number to red, but you can assign a number to spin, or to velocity.

Actually, you CAN assign a number to red. In fact, you can assign multiple numbers. Red is a physical phenomenon; it is a function of the frequency and wavelength of light. And guess what? We can reliably and accurately predict the physical effect these numbers have on the brain, to the point that we can reconstruct sensory input based on patterns of brain activity (although only rudimentary in practice). Further, behavioral studies, and neurological studies on congenitally blind or colorblind or otherwise impaired individuals, allow us to compare the perceptual properties of this physical phenomenon across people.

In short, the fact that you think "you can't assign a number" to a color further shows that you have no idea what the fuck you are talking about, yet again.

Bullshit. You use fundamental physical laws to predict neural activity, and then neural activity to predict consciousness through observed correlations.

And you haven't explained why that's so abhorrent to you.

Although, if the other thread is any indication (the one where you somehow idiotically believe engineers don't need math), your grasp on logic and reality in general is extraordinarily tenuous. In fact, you are doing the same thing in this thread you are doing in the other thread: there, despite numerous people clearly explaining the practical benefits of the a background in theoretical mathematics in real engineering situations, you just keep whining, "But but but I don't think you DO need math!" You refuse to acknowledge that your preconceived bias is factually incorrect, you refuse to explain why you are rejecting anybody's arguments, you just stamp your feet and screech "NO!" hoping everyone will go away or agree with you. Everybody can see through your bullshit, and nobody is particularly impressed with the grand-standing and attempts to sound intelligent.

Now, again, I have to ask you to provide some evidence for your claims. You have ignored this request, and you have generally violated as many of this board's debating rules as you possibly could over the course of this thread.

1) Please provide an explanation for your belief that consciousness is so special that we cannot use our normal physical models to predict it. You keep repeating that neural activity cannot be used this way, but you have not presented any evidence for why this is the case, or even a logical argument explaining why you think it might be the case. WHY CAN YOU NOT EXPLAIN CONSCIOUSNESS USING PHYSICAL LAWS? You have said this multiple times, and every time you are challenged you absolutely refuse to clarify or elucidate the point.

2) Given that you have already assumed consciousness is not a physical trait, what would you accept as evidence that it is, indeed, a physical trait? You reject the notion that "neural activity->consciousness". Why do you reject this, on what basis do you reject this, and in the light of that basis what evidence would you accept?

[Luke Skywalker]

Luke, your brain is broken, in the same way that pretty much everyone's is broken, but for most people the flaw is either benign (because they don't spend much time thinking about philosophy) or they consciously overrule it. I am sure when the first formalised physical laws that contradicted human intuitive physics (e.g. the 'impeteus theory', lots of research on this) people screamed and wailed about how it was ridiculous and impossible just like you are doing now. Most of science now has such a weight of evidence, testable prediction and expert opinion that it steamrolls 'common sense' objections, aside for a tiny minority of fringe objectors (flat earthers etc). Unfortunately for cognitive science we are not there yet and even respectable people can still cling to 'common sense' self-models and sing 'la la la I can't hear you' in the face of actual research.

You are honestly one of the most idiotic human beings I've ever had the displeasure of interacting with. It has been explained to you half a dozen times that I never denied the fact that neural activity causes consciousness, and never doubted the legitimacy of neuroscience as a scientific field. It still escapes your feeble mind to understand that my question has absolutely nothing to do with anything that you're talking about. We are asking why, from a first principles, calculation based argument neural activity leads to consciousness, not whether or not it does. And just answering "because that's what we observe" addresses the latter question, not the former.

There are several problems with the intuitive human reflective model that produce bogus axioms when used as a basis for abstract reasoning, but the specific flaw here is;

Since I never relied on any "intuitive human reflective models", you are, once again, astounding me with one of the most pathetic displays of cognitive failure I've ever seen.

Remember when you failed hilariously to understand my point about how neural activity reduces to quantum mechanics, showing that you have about as much understanding of quantum mechanics as a chimpanzee, and then promptly snipped that blunder out of your reply?

That is the issue here. That the connection between physical laws and consciousness isn't there in the same manner it is between physical laws and every other scientific observation. The most we can do is connect physical laws to neural activity (which is easy, your objections notwithstanding) and then connect neural activity to consciousness through observation and statistical data rather than first principles.

This is an intuitive perception that you have extrapolated into a compeletely bogus axiom

Please show me the chemical composition of consciousness to me, then.

Qualia are an information processing pattern, just like all other brain function.

Obviously, but they are not a processing pattern that are predicted by physical laws. Show me the physical reason why neural activity creates consciousness but a lightning storm does not.

but with some study of perceptual psychology, neurology and what we still quaintly call 'symbol grounding' (in AI) it becomes pretty clear that qualia are exactly what you would expect to get when you add introspective capability on top of a layered associative pattern recognition system.

Obviously, but the question is not whether neuroscience and psychology predict qualia, it's whether physics predicts it. What part of this is so difficult for you to understand?

In short, don't try to do cognitive science without understanding brain function first, as otherwise your deductions will be worse than useless.

It's really sad to me that you've spent your entire waste of bandwidth on this thread trying to pontificate about information on the processing of the brain that has nothing to do with the question at hand.

Luke Skywalker, you have repeatedly asserted that qualia and consciousness are in some unclear way incompatible with the laws of physics as we currently understand them, but you've provided neither evidence nor a good argument that this is the case.

I have on multiple occasions, and the fact that you've merely skimmed briefly the arguments made before making an assertion as vague and non-responsive as this isn't my problem. Feel free to address the actual arguments made if you desire.

Not at all. I can vaguely see how someone might predict "taking a shit" in very general terms from physical first principles--IF you can get to the idea of chemical compounds and energy states and realize that a system could obtain energy for itself by changing high energy configurations of atoms into low energy configurations of atoms, THEN it's a relatively small leap to conclude that a system could expel the resulting low-energy compounds. Of course, that description is vague enough to cover changing the batteries in your personal electronics, back in the days before everything was rechargeable.

As for the others . . . I really don't see how anyone could reasonably be expected to predict the JFK assassination from nothing but the laws of physics and the exact values of the physics constants.

As I've explained dozens of times, I am not using the phrase "predict" to mean an airtight, mathematical derivation, which is impossible in many of the listed examples for practical reasons. I rather refer to the fact that in principle you could predict the JFK assassination, because all elements of the event are just a bunch of quarks and leptons interacting with one another. The limitations of our physical models' predictive power in all of these examples is one of practicality.

That is, while we can make very accurate statistical predictions about groups of radioactive nuclei, the decay of any given nucleus is entirely random and is not controlled by any hidden variables.

You can predict the probability that a particular nucleus will decay. I'm well aware of the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, but felt that I didn't need to have an explicit disclaimer behind my implication of determinism because it is a very weak form of determinism, to which the details are not at all relevant.

No, Starglider's point was that when physicists try to explain things that people from other fields could do a better job explaining they tend to make a hash of things. This doesn't mean that physics has nothing to do with these fields, just that people with a deeper understanding of the under laying systems won't over simplify things the way a physicist does when explaining something outside his field might.

Bullshit.


Why would physics be concerned with the structural details of nervous systems?

In response to an argument I made that referenced physics and did not at all reference the specific actions or inactions of physicists, which would be a more practical concern outside the bounds of the discussion. That Starglider often trips over himself is not my problem.

By this insane logic you can't use physical models to model a computer program running. There is literally no difference, aside from complexity and processing/storage medium, between a human brain and a computer.

Yes there is, the difference being consciousness. That's the entire point!

Explain where you feel the divide between neurological activity and consciousness comes into play, because to me they are one and the same. Consciousness is nothing more than the end result of physiological activity within the brain and can;

It is the end result, the question is why there is a causal link between neural activity and consciousness. Protip: just restating that there is one does not answer the question at all.

Why? Consciousness is simply a consequence of certain patterns of neural activity. We can determine this through physiological and behavioral investigations of humans and animals. We can physically explain these patterns of neural activity.

Wow.

Nobody here is denying that consciousness is a consequence of certain patterns of neural activity - this is an observation far beyond refutation (which is why your global warming and evolution analogies were beyond stupid). The question is where the first principles explanation for this link is. Given that you've created a first principles explanation for the connection between Maxwell's equations and neural activity, but not for the connection between neural activity and consciousness.

Notice how you say "we can physically explain these patterns of neural activity" using physics equations, but not the link between neural activity and consciousness, which is substantiated through observation and empirical data but not first principles?

So, this has to be the fifth time I've tried to explain this to you. Pray that you have understood it now.

1) Please provide an explanation for your belief that consciousness is so special that we cannot use our normal physical models to predict it. You keep repeating that neural activity cannot be used this way, but you have not presented any evidence for why this is the case, or even a logical argument explaining why you think it might be the case. WHY CAN YOU NOT EXPLAIN CONSCIOUSNESS USING PHYSICAL LAWS? You have said this multiple times, and every time you are challenged you absolutely refuse to clarify or elucidate the point.

Did you seriously just ask me to prove a negative? You eagerly explained neural activity through physical laws without even me asking, and could probably eagerly do enough wiki-ing to explain anything through physical laws if you wanted to.

When I ask you to directly explain consciousness (rather than get to neural activity and then rely on observational data to bridge the gap), you refuse to do so. That should be evidence enough.

2) Given that you have already assumed consciousness is not a physical trait, what would you accept as evidence that it is, indeed, a physical trait?

Show me the chemical analysis of consciousness. Tell me what kinds of constituent particles bitter is made of, what its tensile strength is and its boiling point at room temperature. Are you seriously this stupid?

[Jub]

It is the end result, the question is why there is a causal link between neural activity and consciousness. Protip: just restating that there is one does not answer the question at all.

Luke, you're an idiot. It is self evident that certain predictable patterns of neural activity create conscious minds and given that these neural states can be predicted by physicals laws so to can consciousness be predicted. Consciousness and neural patterns are linked just like vector is linked to a particle in motion, saying that consciousness can't be predicted is like saying that velocity can't be predicted.

Show me the chemical analysis of consciousness. Tell me what kinds of constituent particles bitter is made of, what its tensile strength is and its boiling point at room temperature. Are you seriously this stupid?

Show me the chemical analysis of vector. Tell me what kinds of constituent particles velocity is made of, what its tensile strength is and its boiling point at room temperature. Are you seriously this stupid?

-----

Also, way to miss the vast majority of what I have posted in this thread, are you dishonest, or just that stupid?

[Ziggy Stardust]

Also, way to miss the vast majority of what I have posted in this thread, are you dishonest, or just that stupid?

He's both dishonest AND stupid, really. But I can excuse ignorance, what bothers me is that he's fundamentally dishonest. He has continually ignored or misrepresented the arguments being presented, shifted the goalposts, and made baseless accusations. This is evident in his very first post directed at me, in which he grandiosely proclaimed,

It's been explained to you multiple times that there's a difference between something that is unexplained and something that is unexplainable

A statement I challenged him on, which he conveniently ignored in his later post to me, despite me specifically asking him where it's been explained to me once, never mind multiple times. That's a pretty blatant (not to mention bizarre) lie to make in the first place, and it's even worse that instead of admitting he was wrong or confused (or showing me the link that shows I'm wrong) he just quietly dropped the issue entirely. That, to me, is a very telling sign of intellectual dishonesty. A fundamentally honest person would, at the very least, have admitted being wrong on that point, even while continuing to pressure me on other points (regardless of the veracity of those other points).

And that isn't the only point he is being dishonest on. Notice how selectively he responded to my most recent post? He completely ignored 90% of my post to focus on a couple of points. Instead of actually addressing those points, or providing any of the evidence of his assertions that have repeatedly been requested of him, he just responds by repeating himself and shitting out snarky insults because he thinks he's clever.

Of course, he's also just an utter moron, as evidence by his bizarre insistence that red cannot be quantified numerically, despite the fact that there are actually MULTIPLE ways to quantify the color red. (Also notice that I brought this up in my previous post and he didn't respond to it at all? That brings us back to the dishonesty part of this).

Now, I'll respond to his latest pathetic bullshit:

Nobody here is denying that consciousness is a consequence of certain patterns of neural activity - this is an observation far beyond refutation

YOU DID DENY IT. Your entire argument DEPENDS on denying it, moron. If consciousness is simply the consequence of a specific pattern of neural activity, than a physical model that explains neural activity ALSO EXPLAINS CONSCIOUSNESS. Are you really this dense? In order for your claim that my physical model of neural activity doesn't explain consciousness, you are implicitly claiming that consciousness is somehow not a direct function of neural activity, or otherwise different from other neural activity. You have not justified why this might be the case, despite being asked multiple times by multiple people to do so.

Again, YOU CLAIMED CONSCIOUSNESS IS SPECIAL. YOU NEED TO DEMONSTRATE WHY IT IS SPECIAL. Or are you shifting the goalposts for the fifth fucking time and denying you ever claimed that consciousness is special?

(which is why your global warming and evolution analogies were beyond stupid).

Again, you prove you fundamentally misunderstood those analogies, and dismiss them as stupid without explaining why. God, you are going to be a TERRIBLE engineer if this is how you operate, you know that? You refuse to explain yourself, intentionally use vague and ill-defined terminology without being specific about what you mean, refuse to actually justify your claims, and generally conduct yourself like a complete asshole.

The question is where the first principles explanation for this link is. Given that you've created a first principles explanation for the connection between Maxwell's equations and neural activity, but not for the connection between neural activity and consciousness.

I have explained multiple times the connection between neural activity and consciousness. You have continuously ignored this point in order to repeat your assertion that I have not done so. You have repeatedly violated the board's debate rules, and your stubborn ignorance is getting extremely tiresome.

Again ... WHY IS MY PHYSICAL MODEL NOT SUFFICIENT TO EXPLAIN CONSCIOUSNESS? You keep repeating that I have not explained the link between neural activity and consciousness, but I did so multiple times in my previous post, and you didn't respond to any of those parts. You selectively quoted other parts of it.

Notice how you say "we can physically explain these patterns of neural activity" using physics equations, but not the link between neural activity and consciousness, which is substantiated through observation and empirical data but not first principles?

So you admit the link IS substantiated? Because that's sufficient for a physical model of consciousness. Again, since consciousness is only the product of a certain pattern of neural activity, a physical model of neural activity also explains consciousness. This is not difficult. The only way that physical model does NOT explain consciousness is if you claim that consciousness is more than just a function of neural activity. If that is your claim, then I expect you to present some evidence (which you have not done ONCE in this thread for any of your claims). If that isn't your claim, you need to clarify WHY there is a disconnect between neural activity and consciousness. You have not done this either. You just repeat again and again that there is a disconnect without explaining what that is.

So, this has to be the fifth time I've tried to explain this to you. Pray that you have understood it now.

It's funny that you think repeating yourself without presenting the evidence that I explicitly asked for MULTIPLE TIMES in my previous post somehow constitutes an "explanation." Are you as unfamiliar with the English language as your are with the basics of the scientific method, physics, biology, engineering, and math?

Did you seriously just ask me to prove a negative?

I asked you to substantiate a claim you have made multiple times in this thread. Instead, you deflect the issue by appealing (incorrectly) to logical fallacies that don't actually apply in this situation. And, actually, what I asked you to prove isn't even a negative to begin with, neither in spirit nor in presentation. So, for the eighth fucking time,

WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE THAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS SPECIAL IN THE WAY YOU THINK INVALIDATES OUR PHYSICAL MODELS?

Show me the chemical analysis of consciousness. Tell me what kinds of constituent particles bitter is made of, what its tensile strength is and its boiling point at room temperature. Are you seriously this stupid?

Apparently you are. For some reason, you seem to think that "emotion" (like bitter) and "consciousness" are somehow equivalent concepts, which is patently false and mildly ridiculous. Asking for the boiling point of an emotional concept isn't an intellectual coherent argument, you realize this right? It's just a complete non sequitir. Do you honestly think that what you said even makes sense, or presents some ironclad rebuttal of my arguments, or are you just flailing around wildly hoping to confuse everyone by being nonsensical? Hey, what's the chemical composition of light? Or sound? Or air pressure? Electricity? Guess none of those concepts are explainable by physical laws, either! Moron.

Again, you are using the same circular logic that I have accused you of multiple times (and, true to form, you haven't even responded to those parts of my post, because you're a dishonest little prick). You are assuming right off the bat that consciousness is special, thus preventing any possible physical explanations of consciousness. You seem to think that there is some step between "neural activity" and "consciousness", even though consciousness IS JUST THE UMBRELLA TERM HUMANS HAVE GIVEN TO A SPECIFIC TYPE OF NEURAL ACTIVITY. This isn't "neural activity leads to consciousness"; it's "consciousness IS neural activity". You have had trouble discerning this distinction, despite multiple explanations to that effect (which, again, I included in my previous post, and you ignored).

Consciousness is NOT special. It isn't even a stable concept. It's simply an abstract term used to describe a variety of different mental processes.

Here's another analogy for you, which you probably won't understand: genetics. How much do you know about genetics? It's actually a very similar situation to what we are talking about here with the relationship between neural activity and consciousness. Sequences of genes code for specific proteins; those proteins perform specific functions in the body; the cumulative effect of a certain group of genes results in the expression of a specific phenotype. We understand extremely well the exact physical nature of genes and gene expression; we have precise physical models, and predictive models, relating genotype to phenotype. Think about neural activity as the genotype, and consciousness as the phenotype. The latter is NOT a scientific designation, it is a perceptual one. The former is the scientific counterpart by which we can genetically explain the phenotype.

Consciousness is simply the result of an incredibly complex network of neural activity, just like traits such as height or weight or what your face looks like is the result of an incredibly complex network of genetic activity. And modern science is still figuring how the exact nature of these relationships. However, you are refusing to acknowledge the relationship, and are instead pretending that there is some magical intercession between neural activity and consciousness that makes it a-physical. This is a claim you need to present some evidence of.

[Luke Skywalker]

Luke, you're an idiot. It is self evident

Anybody who answers such a question for a physics derivation with "it is self evident" has no rights to doubt anyone else's intelligence.

I just asserted that you can't derive it from first principles. When asked to do so, you just rely on "self evidence". THAT YOU RESORT TO IT PROVES MY POINT, YOU DUMBFUCK.

Furthermore, it isn't "self evident" at all that neuroscience leads to conscious minds. It's evident to us because we clearly observe it just by the definition of observation, but from our laws of physics you can't come up with the idea of there being an inner "camera" in people's minds at all. But that's besides the point - the point is I asked for a first principles explanation for the final leap from neural activity to consciousness, and all your puny brain could muster is the word "self evident", as though that were an equation or something.

that certain predictable patterns of neural activity create conscious minds and given that these neural states can be predicted by physicals laws so to can consciousness be predicted.

"Neural states can be predicted by physical laws" - this assertion is correct.

My argument is that "Conscious minds can be predicted by [fundamental] physical laws" is incorrect.

You try to refute this by appealing to the "self evident" nature of it, which isn't a fundamental physical law at all! You can use fundamental physical laws to get to the existence of neural states, and then to get to the existence of consciousness, must bridge the gap with "self evidence".

Of course, it seems like you still don't understand the fact that I never denied that neural states cause consciousness (that much is obvious your own ape-like mind), but that physical laws can explain this.

Consciousness and neural patterns are linked just like vector is linked to a particle in motion, saying that consciousness can't be predicted is like saying that velocity can't be predicted.

You're a moron. Velocity is by definition the derivative of displacement with respect to time, which can be calculated mathematically and predicted from elementary physical laws. There is a mathematical relationship to explain the observational data. That consciousness exists is validated by observational data, but the mystery is where the first principles justification is.

You really aren't a man of science, are you?

Show me the chemical analysis of vector. Tell me what kinds of constituent particles velocity is made of, what its tensile strength is and its boiling point at room temperature. Are you seriously this stupid?

Don't pretend to understand what you're talking about, you arrogant little shit. Velocity itself is not a physical object, but it is a property we can assign to an object and then use to make predictions. We have not found any way to assign a mathematical state to elementary particles that produce consciousness in the same manner that we can assign quantities to spin, charge, magnetic character, etc.

Also, way to miss the vast majority of what I have posted in this thread, are you dishonest, or just that stupid?

No, I just have no interest in dealing with someone who is so mentally deficient, he reads this:

Why would physics be concerned with the structural details of nervous systems?

And then denies that the person making the statement is saying:

physics don't apply to biological systems

as I claimed he was, but instead:


"No, Starglider's point was that when physicists try to explain things that people from other fields could do a better job explaining they tend to make a hash of things. This doesn't mean that physics has nothing to do with these fields, just that people with a deeper understanding of the under laying systems won't over simplify things the way a physicist does when explaining something outside his field might."

Which is both hilariously self contradicting and irrelevant to the point,


and then subsequently snipped the fail out of his reply.

This is reading comprehension 101. Of which you have even less of than basic scientific aptitude. What kind of moron thinks velocity is not derivable from physical laws?

[Luke Skywalker]

A statement I challenged him on, which he conveniently ignored in his later post to me, despite me specifically asking him where it's been explained to me once, never mind multiple times.

Oh wow, so the most substantive "gotcha" point is that when I said "it's been explained to you multiple times" (a frequent turn of phrase) maybe I was explaining it to someone else instead of you, or maybe, in the most flagrant hypothetical, I had really just explained it then, in which case the only error on my part was falsely accusing you of missing something, and not of making an invalid argument?

It's been explained to you multiple times that this is an absurdly petty thing to get worked up over, something that has no bearing on the validity of what was said after that turn of phrase. If it were a serious accusation that I did not substantiate, then fine, complain about it. But "it's been explained to you" is something you should have a thick enough skull to stomach.

And that isn't the only point he is being dishonest on. Notice how selectively he responded to my most recent post?

Yeah, because obviously I have time to respond to 4 different multi-paragraph me-tooers jumping in and saying the same things all at once, and I wasn't rushing off to classes or anything. As if you've responded in detail to everything I've said, despite having only one person to focus on?

Your third-person whining is both irritating and a pathetic excuse for a smokescreen. Address the points or just get the fuck out of this thread.

Of course, he's also just an utter moron, as evidence by his bizarre insistence that red cannot be quantified numerically,

You're truly an idiot if you think that the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation that produces the color red and the subjective qualia of "red" are identical, but of course, you weren't here to make an actual point - you were just here to boast about your ability to google 8th grade science concepts.

The wavelength red isn't even what directly causes you to see red! Your brain can hallucinate the color by itself if it wants to.

YOU DID DENY IT. Your entire argument DEPENDS on denying it, moron.

WRONG, LIAR.

Yes, because the causal link between the two has been found. That's great for neuroscience. That's not a first principles explanation. Rather, we don't need the exact details of such an explanation, as we do not have such exact details for almost anything, but we do need a framework, because we can provide such a framework for everything else.

That's just one of the numerous utterances I've made on the subject matter.

If consciousness is simply the consequence of a specific pattern of neural activity, than a physical model that explains neural activity ALSO EXPLAINS CONSCIOUSNESS.

So I'm snipping out the rest of your post and tinying the part that I had already gotten to, not because I'm "evading" you (although if you have something important you really want me to address, feel free to repeat it) but because this alone here sums up the entire debate.


There are a few ways of explaining this problem, and to try to get it across, I'll even maintain the civility that I shed after you decided to address me in the third person for no apparent reason. Let's hope that this sticks.

1. These specific patterns of neural activity are the consequence of individual leptons and quarks moving in particular ways, interacting within force fields, etc. Every consequence of any structure can be explained in this way in addition to the simple observational correlation of structure -> consequence.

For example, fundamental physics can explain why cars run and we can observe that when cars crash, they deform, but fundamental physics can also explain why cars deform.
Take a more extreme example: buildings arrayed in a certain way are certainly possible within the laws of physics (or else they would collapse), and that these buildings can convey a sense of aesthetic appreciation can actually, in principle be explained through physical laws. Granted this would be far too complicated to us to do realistically, but you could mark every quark and lepton that moves in your brain and watch as it produces the chemical stimuli that lead to you liking the building.

However, when you say that these neural activities predicting consciousness is itself a fundamental physical law, you clearly miss the point that these fundamental laws are mathematical and reduce to classical mechanics and other sciences as evident through said mathematics. For example, that computer hardware can cause images to appear on your screen is just an aggregate property of quintillions of particles obeying Dirac's wave function.

The problem is, the variables that exist in these equations, such as wave function and momentum can clearly create a computer screen because this computer screen is itself composed of particles with such properties. But since consciousness itself - not the neural activity that we both agree is not a problem - but the qualia resultant of it - is not composed of such particles, and has certain characteristics such as subjective senses that do not relate to wave functions, particle masses, momentums, etc, at all.

So, to sum it up:

In every other instance where there is no problem.

Physics -> cause
Physics -> effect
Physics -> cause -> effect

are all possible, and usually the latter is the most practical.

With neural activity, only the first and the last are possible. Nobody can directly jump from physics to effect even in principle, without the observational data that the effect follows from the cause!

Remember when I claimed that a superintelligent computer would never deduce consciousness without direct observation if it had access to all our physical laws? You said "how do you know that?" Because that's a negative burden I can't prove - what I can point out is that you eagerly proved physics -> cause, but when asked to prove physics -> effect, seemed more inclined to come up with excuses and muddy the waters. Use Maxwell's equations to explain why neural activity leads to consciousness, and then we can talk.

2. Let's say we have made an observation that whenever humans create a line of 20 people, they spontaneously die. If this happens enough time in a controlled setting, we can call it a valid scientific field. We can even invent a name for its study. That's why I don't deny the field of neuroscience because it clearly makes testable predictions. That does not mean that our laws of physics predict this happening. The line:

Physics -> humans exist -> humans can line up in rows of 20

Does not mean that physics -> spontaneous death

Just because humans can line up in rows of 20 leads to spontaneous death through observation.

3. If I asked you to describe a computer to me, you could in theory give a complete physical breakdown of the wave functions and states of every particle in the computer. You could do the same with neural networks. You could never do this with consciousness, because you describe the feelings resultant of the quantifiable stimuli in purely subjective terms. We can never even know whether or not we see the "same" red.

4. So you gave an accurate derivation of neural networks from Maxwell's equations and other physics principles.

How about you do the same for consciousness?

See, what you did was go from Maxwell to neural networks, and then networks to consciousness by correlations and observations. But you didn't have to go from Maxwell to neurons, and then neurons to neural networks, because you could make the leap directly! So do the same here.

You used physics to get to neural networks, and then were stumped, and had to make a tautology that the physical laws must predict consciousness because otherwise how could it exist. Yeah, THAT'S THE PROBLEM BECAUSE THEY DON'T AND YET CONSCIOUSNESS STILL EXISTS - obviously our physical laws are incomplete!

[Jub]

Furthermore, it isn't "self evident" at all that neuroscience leads to conscious minds. It's evident to us because we clearly observe it just by the definition of observation, but from our laws of physics you can't come up with the idea of there being an inner "camera" in people's minds at all. But that's besides the point - the point is I asked for a first principles explanation for the final leap from neural activity to consciousness, and all your puny brain could muster is the word "self evident", as though that were an equation or something.

The fact that conscious minds exist, is self evident proof that physical structures and neural activity cause them to exist. In order to prove that the two are linked all I must do is show a single conscious mind that exists with a link to a physical form. Seeing as the physical form is predicted and we know that physical form produces conscious thought, we can thus predict conscious thought will arise where the physical structure for it is present.

If you want to dispute this self evident fact, you need to now show cases where the physical structure is present, active, and undamaged where conscious thought has failed to arise.

Don't pretend to understand what you're talking about, you arrogant little shit. Velocity itself is not a physical object, but it is a property we can assign to an object and then use to make predictions.

Just as consciousness can be measured and is a property of a properly functioning human mind past a certain stage of development. The reason we can't define or measure consciousness in the same way we measure other assigned values is simply due to the lack of solid definition for what consciousness means. We will obtain a clearer picture of how consciousness arises as our understanding of the human brain and AI hardware/software is advanced.

-----

Also:

Luke, I've asked you several times now to define what you mean by the terms qualia and consciousness and to define them in a way that is logically and scientifically rigorous so that we might attempt to give you the information you desire. You have failed to do so. If you make another post and fail to address these points, I will get the mods involved.

[Luke Skywalker]

The fact that conscious minds exist, is self evident proof that physical structures and neural activity cause them to exist.

This is an absurd tautology. I present the paradox that consciousness doesn't appear to have a first principles explanation, even though we know that all phenomenon must have one, and you reply by saying that consciousness must have a first principles explanation because it exists.

This is like denying that we haven't settled on a model of how the universe came into existence because the fact that the universe is here means that the universe must exist.

You see, obviously at the end of all things there is some sort of explanation for consciousness, since it exists. The question here is what that explanation is, because I don't see in any of the fundamental physical laws anything that implies consciousness. If you do, why don't you show me what it is?

Seriously, this is like laughing at the question of how Stonehenge was built by pointing out that its existence implies that it was obviously created.

Just as consciousness can be measured and is a property of a properly functioning human mind past a certain stage of development. The reason we can't define or measure consciousness in the same way we measure other assigned values is simply due to the lack of solid definition for what consciousness means. We will obtain a clearer picture of how consciousness arises as our understanding of the human brain and AI hardware/software is advanced.

All macro-observations are just mathematical aggregations of quantum mechanics (or general relativity). The problem is that a certain arrangement of particles with no statistically unique properties important to the laws of physics such as any energy level or other condition of the sort suddenly creating something fundamentally different from everything else (the fact that you admit we lack a solid definition for what it means is evidence of this) cannot aggregate from quintillions of Schrodinger's equations compiling in the same way that locomotion can. If you disagree with this obvious assertion, feel free to give me that physics explanation nobody has yet been able to provide.

Also, every macroscopic property such as mass or tensile strength can aggregate from fundamental properties such as spin and charge. Consciousness, a property of macroscopic neural structures, does not evidently aggregate from something as foreign as a mathematical quantity.

Luke, I've asked you several times now to define what you mean by the terms qualia and consciousness and to define them in a way that is logically and scientifically rigorous so that we might attempt to give you the information you desire.

Qualia is the sensations you feel in the little "video camera" that goes on in your mind, ie, experiences that only you can feel and that cannot directly be picked up by any physical instrumentation. Once again you run into tautologies when you ask for a scientifically rigorous definition because the entire problem is it's hard to do so, because all other observations can be described mathematically through constituent elementary particles or properties of said particles, except for consciousness! Yet it doubtlessly exists, just as everybody here agrees.

[Jub]

This is an absurd tautology. I present the paradox that consciousness doesn't appear to have a first principles explanation, even though we know that all phenomenon must have one, and you reply by saying that consciousness must have a first principles explanation because it exists.

This is like denying that we haven't settled on a model of how the universe came into existence because the fact that the universe is here means that the universe must exist.

You see, obviously at the end of all things there is some sort of explanation for consciousness, since it exists. The question here is what that explanation is, because I don't see in any of the fundamental physical laws anything that implies consciousness. If you do, why don't you show me what it is?

Seriously, this is like laughing at the question of how Stonehenge was built by pointing out that its existence implies that it was obviously created.

So you're asking random people on a message board to prove something that leading scientists in the field haven't yet come up with a hypothesis for? Yet at the same time when we point out the obvious link between neural nets and consciousness you dismiss it as not good enough. Go fuck yourself you dishonest, goalpost shifting troll.

All macro-observations are just mathematical aggregations of quantum mechanics (or general relativity). The problem is that a certain arrangement of particles with no statistically unique properties important to the laws of physics such as any energy level or other condition of the sort suddenly creating something fundamentally different from everything else (the fact that you admit we lack a solid definition for what it means is evidence of this) cannot aggregate from quintillions of Schrodinger's equations compiling in the same way that locomotion can. If you disagree with this obvious assertion, feel free to give me that physics explanation nobody has yet been able to provide.

Also, every macroscopic property such as mass or tensile strength can aggregate from fundamental properties such as spin and charge. Consciousness, a property of macroscopic neural structures, does not evidently aggregate from something as foreign as a mathematical quantity.

Except that all brains that contain conscious minds are unique and thus will have statistically unique properties if analyzed closely enough. Thus once again we loop back to the fact that conscious has an obvious tie to the physical brain and is explainable assuming enough advances in the scientific fields related to it.

Qualia is the sensations you feel in the little "video camera" that goes on in your mind, ie, experiences that only you can feel and that cannot directly be picked up by any physical instrumentation. Once again you run into tautologies when you ask for a scientifically rigorous definition because the entire problem is it's hard to do so, because all other observations can be described mathematically through constituent elementary particles or properties of said particles, except for consciousness! Yet it doubtlessly exists, just as everybody here agrees.

Then you have failed to ask a question that can be answered in a way that you demand it be answered. Until you define your terms in a testable way, we can't even begin to break things down to first principles for you.

[Luke Skywalker]

So you're asking random people on a message board

Grasping at straws has reached a new height: everybody who posts anything in these boards is asking random people on a message board.

to prove something that leading scientists in the field haven't yet come up with a hypothesis for?

The question is more philosophical and conceptual than that, as has been explained multiple times, but we've had discussions about big bang cosmology and the engineering of a fusion reactor before, and even hypothesizing advanced sci-fi technology science doesn't even have a clue about, and now what I'm doing is somehow out of line?

Straw grasping, yes, and an ad hoc attempt to cover up your realization that your previous argument was a useless tautology. And how did you just come up with this realization now, when it has remained unchanged since the OP?

Yet at the same time when we point out the obvious link between neural nets and consciousness you dismiss it as not good enough.

Learn to read, or comprehend, or both. There is an "obvious" scientific link between neural nets and consciousness; I pointed this out, what, in my second post here? When I say "not good enough", I mean that there's still the mystery of what the physics explanation is, which is something worthy of discussion! Do you seriously think that I am a "dishonest troll" if I don't just do what you do, and say "we have a correlation, so no need to try to find the first principles?"

We had catalogued the motions of the planets long before we had a first principles, mathematical model. Was Newton just a dishonest troll for wanting to find such a thing?

Except that all brains that contain conscious minds are unique

Prove that this is true. Catalogue every single brain, or I demand a retraction.

and thus will have statistically unique properties if analyzed closely enough. Thus once again we loop back to the fact that conscious has an obvious tie to the physical brain and is explainable assuming enough advances in the scientific fields related to it.

"obvious tie" =/= explanation from physics! An explanation from physics would require application of mathematical laws, and you clearly have the mathematical skills of a rodent.

Then you have failed to ask a question that can be answered in a way that you demand it be answered.

You are a fool. The entire point is that qualia can't be defined through first principles, even though it exists, and even though everything else that exists can be defined, because everything else can be defined in a clearly testable manner!

Again, you with the tautologies; you have no business being in this thread, because you have absolutely no idea about any of the concepts being discussed.

Until you define your terms in a testable way, we can't even begin to break things down to first principles for you.

Firstly, it takes quite the troll to act dumb when somebody brings up consciousness, as though you need a scientific textbook to tell you what consciousness is. If I ask "what is the scientific cause of crying?", you would have to be a real dick to then ask for an exact, particulate breakdown of human tears to answer the fucking question. Yet, that is exactly what you're doing, because you have no relevant knowledge or abilities to bring to this discussion whatsoever.

Secondly, who the fuck do you think you are, to think that I want you to "break things down...for me", when you didn't even know that engineering classes require math, and didn't even understand elementary physics concepts or the definition of a tautology?

[Ziggy Stardust]

I don't have time to respond to that whole post, now. Good to see it is full of the same utter intellectual dishonesty and stupidity we've all come to expect from you in this thread. I will get to that when I have more time, but I do the feel the need to address this point, quickly:

You used physics to get to neural networks, and then were stumped, and had to make a tautology that the physical laws must predict consciousness because otherwise how could it exist.

You still fundamentally misunderstand the argument, again ignoring most of what I have already explained in this thread in order to fuel this misunderstanding. I never claimed in the last your absurd strawman that "physical laws must predict consciousness because otherwise how could it exist". That isn't even remotely a reasonable summation of anything I've been arguing in this thread. I never even made the assumption that consciousness DOES exist, as I made clear at the end of my last post. You are the one that has continually relied on a circular logic. I've explained this at least 3 times, and again in your most recent post I see no attempt by you to even address this. You are assuming from the onset that "consciousness" is not only a discrete and distinct unit, and that there is something unique about it compared to other neurological functions, thus conjuring an imaginary step "neural activity->consciousness".

I explained this very carefully, and you ignored it. So I will state it again:

Consciousness is not some special, unique, and abstract thing. It is not even a discrete or singular entity the way you are treating it. "Consciousness" is a semantic concept (or an umbrella term, if you prefer) that describes a variety of different mental processes (in fact, in neuroscience, it doesn't even have a generic operational definition). In the same way that a complex phenotypic trait (for example, your facial structure, height, weight, body type, etc.) is actually a function of a variety of different genetic processes. For a more specific example, "height" is a measurable quality - from a genetic standpoint, however: there is no "height" gene. There are a hundreds of different genes that control different aspects of your body size and proportions that collectively determine your height. It's not a perfect analogy, mind you, but a useful one.

Consciousness is a variety of different mental processes: self-awareness, self-recognition, purposeful movement, decision making, moral/ethical judgments (one part of our brain handles deontological reasoning, another handles consequentialist reasoning, incidentally), networks of pre-determine stimulus-response mappings, verbal behavior, arousal, executive functions, etc. It is not a distinct object, it is the net effect of a variety of other interacting and overlapping processes, much the same way complex phenotypic traits like height are the net effect of a number of interacting and overlapping genetic pathways/expression patterns/epigenetic patterns. This is all to say that consciousness is just a category for a specific type of neural activity. It IS neural activity; there is no "step" from "neural activity->consciousness". None. Consciousness is, in fact, a subset of the total possible set of neural activity patterns. Once we can physically explain neural activity, we can physically explain consciousness, because so far as modern science understands consciousness is just a TYPE of neural activity, not some metaphysical consequence of neural activity as you are imagining.

And we can be more specific, too. The physical basis for individual neural activity has already been explained in this thread. Specialized sections of the brain will differentially access different ranges of neurons connected to different neural pathways; they process input as the topological, electrical, chemical, frequency, and temporal distribution pattern of neuronal excitation within the range accessed by that part of the brain. Other parts of the brain can temporally bind a variety of excitation patterns (most likely by use of the resonance of the thalamo-cortical network, but this is by no means a definitively solved question) into a cohesive perceptual unit. In essence, certain neurons oscillate periodically through the use of high-voltage dependent calcium channels; this oscillation is perturbed by the activity patterns in different parts of the brain that it is connected to. Essentially, the feedback from this perturbation relays the integrated signal from different parts of the brain; since there are a variety of such loops throughout the brain, this allows for the high-speed synchronization and integration of the signals from a wide variety of mental sub-processes. This feedback is further regulated by another set of neurons. The point being that it is an incredibly complex system that uses this high-speed synchronization to connect a wide variety of relatively simple but inherently chaotic neural functions.

Starglider or Alyrium may correct me on a handful of the details, but that's an overall accurate assessment of current neurological research. There is a variety of empirical evidence and physical models describing the exact nature of the calcium channels, the resultant oscillations, the circuitry of the feedback loops, etc. I can provide links, if you wish.

Do you see the point, here?

Consciousness is not a distinct unit from the concept of "neural activity". It is, rather, the term we use to describe the synchronization of a variety of other neural functions. It IS neural activity, modulated by other neural activity. This constitutes a physical model for consciousness. If you disagree with this model, you have to do one of two things:

1) Point out where in the above description that I am objectively incorrect.
OR
2) Explain how consciousness is so distinct from "neural activity" that the above description is fallacious and doesn't apply.

Otherwise, we have a physical model of consciousness. You already admit the physical model for neural activity is robust. In light of the above, since consciousness is only a specific type of neural activity and not some distinct phenomenon, we have a robust physical model for consciousness.

[Luke Skywalker]

I don't understand why this is so difficult for you to grasp. Perhaps you could read my posts a little more carefully instead of skimming them over and just assuming me to be another philosophical whimsical "science is flawed!" argument? That's what Starglider did, when he claimed that physics doesn't apply to biology. Don't be a Starglider, please.

Consciousness as in the electrical impulses that can be observed is NOT the mystery we are discussing.
Consciousness as in the subjective qualia, the "inner video camera" in our minds, is what we are discussing.

The two are very different things! There is a causal link from the first to the second. The question is what the physical, quantitative, fundamental-particles-and-forces framework for it is!

Why is it that you can easily explain the physical components of neural networks without even being asked to, in several long paragraphs, but shy away from explaining the latter? You keep on trying to explain the latter through the observation of a relationship, but nobody is denying that such a relationship exists. The question is what the maths behind it is.

All scientific observations except for qualia can be mathematically aggregated from fundamental properties of fundamental particles and forces. The arrangement of neural networks creating qualia cannot (and the positive burden is on you to show me what the explanation is) because quantum properties such as spin and charge don't aggregate into something as non-mathematical as the feeling of concrete.

They do aggregate into physical neurons, which somehow cause inner subjective experience, but we don't know what that somehow is!




So, you were very upset with my "physics -> neural networks -> consciousness" analogy because you thought the latter two weren't necessarily distinct. So let me rephrase it:

Physics -> neural networks/consciousness/etc. -> subjective inner experience

Subjective inner experience having several unique properties:
1. Nobody else can "see" yours directly.
2. It is not itself composed of particles.
3. It does not exist in any other natural object that we know, while everything in neural networks at a fundamental level do.

Now, explain subjective inner experience through physics, or why neural networks cause it, without just saying that the relationship has been observed. We know the relationship has been observed; the question is what the relationship comes from.

[Purple]

Consciousness as in the electrical impulses that can be observed is NOT the mystery we are discussing.
Consciousness as in the subjective qualia, the "inner video camera" in our minds, is what we are discussing.

And the point people are making is that they are NOT different things. It's just one same thing seen from two different perspectives. The "subjective" thing is only as subjective as much any other perception you have and only because one of those two perspectives happens to be your limited brain and senses.

[Luke Skywalker]

And the point people are making is that they are NOT different things. It's just one same thing seen from two different perspectives. The "subjective" thing is only as subjective as much any other perception you have and only because one of those two perspectives happens to be your limited brain and senses.

So why is there this other perspective to see consciousness as in the physical process as subjective qualia, and not, say, a metallic structure's internal distributions of electrons as subjective qualia? Where is the mathematical equation that predicts atoms arranged in such a manner as to create neurons organized in a particular manner create the ability to see things in a "different perspective" that doesn't exist for, say, hydrogen burning in stars, or a rock falling on the ground?

The fact that I made a thread about subjective consciousness is evidence that it isn't just a "different perspective" of a physical process.

For a more substantive discussion, you would be kind to actually give this first-principles explanation, rather than circularly point to the fact that it exists as the explanation, or try to dance around the issue some more with this "different perspectives" nonsense.

[Jub]

Ignoring the first bit because again you seem to have the retarded idea that there is some step between have neural net that is self-aware and predict consciousness. The same fundamental principles that define neural nets also define any acts that those neural nets can perform. Consciousness is no different than any other task a mind can perform.

Learn to read, or comprehend, or both. There is an "obvious" scientific link between neural nets and consciousness; I pointed this out, what, in my second post here? When I say "not good enough", I mean that there's still the mystery of what the physics explanation is, which is something worthy of discussion! Do you seriously think that I am a "dishonest troll" if I don't just do what you do, and say "we have a correlation, so no need to try to find the first principles?"

How else do you expect physics to predict that consciousness will arise outside of it predicting the rise of neural nets capable to attaining consciousness? We can model the rise of neural nets, we know of at least one specific kind of neural net that can be 'conscious' (a term you have still yet to define by the way) and thus if we can predict one we can predict the other. Beyond that we simply lack the ability to test things in a way to get an answer of greater clarity than that.

We had catalogued the motions of the planets long before we had a first principles, mathematical model. Was Newton just a dishonest troll for wanting to find such a thing?

I have already suggested ways to test such things such as taking an accurate working model of a human brain that we know is conscious and changing parameters until it no longer meets the criteria for consciousness, or any other mental value we wish to test. So I've mentioned the link between neurons and consciousness and even posited a way we might do further testing to define consciousness, what more can I be expected to do that experts in the field - such as Starglider who you shrugged off - can't?

Prove that this is true. Catalogue every single brain, or I demand a retraction.

That sounds like a creationist asking me to answer every question they have about science or concede that science is invalid.

While no absolute proof of anything can ever be had, I can say that with an average of 1.4 x 10^26 atoms per human brain - calculated by looking at the chemical composition and mass of the human brain - that it is astonishingly unlikely that any two human brains in all existence were ever exactly the same at any point in their histories. When we factor in that learning, injury, and genetics also play a factor in shaping the brain it becomes even less likely that any two brains have ever been identical. Beyond that given that each action we take alters the world around us slightly, no person can ever experience the exact same thing as another person, some detail of the event will always be different even if that difference is on a scale so small as to be on the quantum scale. For these, and other, reasons even identical twins with the the conditions of their birth and starting states of their brains being as similar as we can make them won't develop in the same way.

"obvious tie" =/= explanation from physics! An explanation from physics would require application of mathematical laws, and you clearly have the mathematical skills of a rodent.

As stated above given the number of factors that shape a brain's development, the number of atoms that make up a brain, and the fact that no two observers can ever view the same event all brains must be unique. Given that it is impossible to prove that all brains that can and will exist will be unique, the burden of proof falls to you to show that identical brains have or can exist and explain the mechanism that would allow them to do so.

You are a fool. The entire point is that qualia can't be defined through first principles, even though it exists, and even though everything else that exists can be defined, because everything else can be defined in a clearly testable manner!

Qualia can be tested though, we've even stated ways that we can read the brains state when certain qualia are viewed and in yet another point I made that you ignored I even explained how we can define the stimuli that make up any given qualia using the example of the color red which you yourself claimed was quantifiable.

Firstly, it takes quite the troll to act dumb when somebody brings up consciousness, as though you need a scientific textbook to tell you what consciousness is.

Given that several members in this thread have differing ideas for what consciousness is and one even asserts that consciousness as a whole may not exist in a testable way, how is it trolling to ask you to define your terms?