Thinking About Thought and Belief
by JoyIn the now very long thread Mystery of Consciousness Mesk introduces some alternative descriptions of irreducibly complex properties we associate with mind and consciousness. This allows me to go ahead and post a new blog for the continuation of discussion on that topic, along with a more in-depth examination of concepts that seem intelligently designed to cause terminal confusion in those silly enough to think about thinking and beliefs about such things.
Mesk said:
Being unaware of concepts such as emergence and non-linearity, they observe the seeming lack of simple deterministic correlation between a brain's environment and its behaviour, and conclude that a brain's behaviour is not determined by its environment.
But "emergence" and "non-linearity" are, once you parse their definitions, just alternative ways of describing apparently magical properties that matter and energy don't explain by their mere existence and interactions. These terms are most often encountered in arguments about the magical properties that humans have always associated with life and Mind.
Both the physical description [emergence] and the mathematical formulation [non-linearity] are attributed to properties that are fundamentally irreducible to any additive or multiplicative effects of the physical substrate or any mathematical description thereof. Scientistic materialists tend to insist that while they may appeal to the causal supervenience of the greater 'emergent' properties on the lesser substrate properties, people who believe that Mind and consciousness are real, immaterial phenomena in and of themselves are somehow deficient in understanding the end result of thinking about thinking - neither thought nor belief can be real!
Worse, the eliminative materialism that asserts these alternate descriptions of objective and subjective properties does absolutely nothing to eliminate that which they are alternative to. Very inconsistent, but admirably post-modern. Rather than admit the materialist position is just another mythology in competition with more traditional mythologies, the proponents hope to trade on the modern misconception of 'Science' as exclusive arbitrator of Absolute Truth [TM] through semantic sleight-of-mind.
And this also explains why so much ink is spilled in the attempt to supplant ideas of irreducible complexity as a signifier of intelligent design with appeals to sciency-sounding terms that say exactly the same thing (but attribute cause to blind edge-of-chaos processes).
Finally, what the sleight-of-mind intends to supplant is belief. Which eliminative materialism works hard to pretend does not exist in the first place. IOW, replacement of belief with belief, describing the exact same phenomena in variant terms, to establish the non-existence of that which is being explained.
From the Stanford encyclopedia, eliminative materialism, section 3.2.3:
To get a stronger eliminativist conclusion, it would need to be shown that there is nothing in our scientific psychology that shares the central properties we attribute to beliefs, at any level of analysis. Ramsey, Stich and Garon (1990) have argued that certain connectionist models of memory and inference could serve as the basis for this stronger eliminativist sort of argument. Since some connectionist models store information in a highly distributed manner, there are no causally discrete, semantically evaluable data structures that represent specific propositions. It is not just that these models lack the sort of sentential, compositional representations assumed in more traditional (or language of thought) models. Rather, it is that in these networks there are no causally distinct structures that stand for anything specific. Consequently, there do not appear to be any structures in these networks — even at a syntactic level of analysis — that might serve as candidates for identifying beliefs and other propositional attitudes. If Ramsey, Stich and Garon are right, the newer connectionist models may, for the first time, provide us with a plausible account of cognition that supports the denial of belief-like states.
Because the other thread is getting cumbersome to refresh from dial-up, and because I think (because I CAN) that it's fairly important to understand that no new information is actually introduced by changing the descriptive words or simply denying the existence of that which needs explanation, this thread is intended (because intent guided my thoughts and actions in producing this blog entry) for continuation of that very interesting discussion.
Check out the links to definitions and descriptions, and have at it!
January 25th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
In one's pursuit to understand
why or how it all began
it would be a fool's mistake
reduction to atomic states.
To hold the inner eye is but
tiny bits arranged just such
isolates the one who speaks
from the answer that he seeks.
It matters not one tiny whit
what you think or say;
It simply is because
the Universe unfurls that way!
Comment by todd — January 25, 2007 @ 3:44 pm
January 25th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Way to go Edgar Allen Todd!
Comment by Bradford — January 25, 2007 @ 4:04 pm
January 25th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Emergence and non-linearity assert a causal relationship without describing it. Scientific lingo without the substance.
Comment by Bradford — January 25, 2007 @ 4:11 pm
January 25th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Or as Dennett would have it, acceptable 'sky hooks'.
Comment by Doug — January 25, 2007 @ 4:22 pm
January 25th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Bradford:
The amazing thing to me is that this is big-S 'Science' accepting the existence of "irreducibly complex" phenomena. Naming them something fancier than IC is just semantics.
They actually do recognize that these labels are a radical causal departure from science's normal reductionism. Supervenience is top-down causation.
So even the terminology "Irreducibly complex" makes an unwarranted semantic assumption. Complexity is all about pieces-parts and interactions. If the emergent property doesn't have any identifiable pieces-parts and interactions of its own that are of greater complexity than the substrate through which it 'emerges', then it's not more physically complex than the substrate. It's something else, which tends to support the notion of supervenience.
We don't know much of anything about supervenient causes. We only see the effects. Sort of like gravity.
Comment by Joy — January 25, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
January 25th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Joy would have us believe that "nonlinearity" and "emergence" are just fancy words for "magic":
Bradford falls into the same trap:
It's true that you'll sometimes hear people misusing the term "nonlinearity" to refer to mysterious, magical phenomena. New Agers are particularly prone to this. But to scientists and mathematicians nonlinearity has a precise, non-magical meaning.
Nonlinearity simply means that if you perform an operation separately on a number a, then on a number b, and add the results together, you won't get the same answer as you will if you add a to b first, and then perform the operation on the sum. That's it — no magic at all.
Nonlinearity occurs frequently in physics and electronics as well. Put two signals into a nonlinear amplifier at the same time and you'll see a different result than if the signals are amplified separately and then combined. Nonlinearity is a major cause of distortion in audio amplifiers, which is why linearity is considered a figure of merit when comparing different models.
Possibly the simplest example of mathematical nonlinearity is the square. If you square 3, you get 9. If you square 4, you get 16. Add those together, and you have 25.
Now do the addition first. Add 3 to 4 to get 7. Square 7 and you have 49. But 49 is different from the answer we got by squaring first and then adding: 25. Magic? Hardly.
The same problem applies to "emergence". There are people who misuse the term to refer something magical (strong emergence), but for most scientists emergence is the straightforward result of building large and complex systems out of simple components (weak emergence).
The ant colony is the classic example of weak emergence. Each individual ant behaves in a simple and stereotyped way, yet the whole colony behaves in complex and fascinating ways. Nothing about combining the ants into a colony changes the individual ant's rules for behavior — each ant goes on being an ant. No magic here, either.
In the same way that an ant colony is "smarter" than the individual ants, a brain is smarter than the individual neurons. Intelligence arises via weak emergence. No magic needed.
While intelligence is not difficult to explain as an emergent property of an organized collection of neurons, conscious experience itself is. Nothing about the individual behavior of neurons seems to predict that conscious experience will arise when enough of them are interconnected in a certain way.
That's why they call it the Hard Problem, after all.
I think the reason that nonlinearity and weak emergence get this bum rap for being "magical" is that their results are counterintuitive. All of the weirdness of chaos theory, for example, results from the nonlinearity of the underlying processes. Zoom in on any portion of a chaotic process and you'll see simple (but nonlinear) rules being applied in a straightforward way, over and over. Absolutely no magic there. But look at the complex behavior of the chaotic process as a whole and it seems magical, simply because our limited human intuition does not expect such complexity to arise from such fundamentally simple constituents.
Comment by keiths — January 25, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
January 25th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
One can logically link individual and group behavior either from a bottom up analysis or a top down one. Explanatory theories can be detailed and repeatedly verified. The transitions are visible and easily subjected to analysis. This contrasts with the brain matter/consciousness relationship. We have limited notions of what biochemical reactions correspond to particular intellectual activity. Moreover we cannot even accurately define thought transitions so as to attempt to correlate them with brain activity. I used the example of a computer programmed to play chess yesterday. If you change the rules of the game so that different pieces have slightly modified moves or if you interchange initial starting positions both the computers and humans will have to make adjustments. Humans will adjust rather quickly. Not so with computers whose programming will need significant adjustments in many scenarios by humans whose intelligence cannot be reduced to simple processing.
What you are overlooking is an inability to describe and quantify abstract thinking processes. Unlike associated biochemical activity they resist reductionist analysis. Brilliant chess moves by humans are largely intuitive and often not comparable to the mechanical approach of their computer counterparts. Ditto creative breakthroughs and more. To explain these things as non-linearity amounts to intellectual bravado; assertions proceeding from preferences rather than analytical insight.
Comment by Bradford — January 25, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
January 25th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
keiths:
Keith, in the application to consciousness, these labels have specific meaning. Yes, non-linear science tackles self-organization of matter, complex systems, condensed matter, etc., and in physics attempts to define 'rules' (sort of sub-laws) governing the spontaneous emergence of such things from inadequate substrates. There is no law or minor rule of the universe named "Joy," yet here I am.
Well, at least not in the universe you and I share. My private universe is another matter… §;o)
The definition of "emergent property" is a property (quantity or quality) that is not reducible to any properties or collection of properties of the substrate. Look it up, it's not hard. Irreducible to the substrate. Merely calling it "emergent" does not explain where it came from or how it operates beyond the inadequate substrate.
You assume that if we added up the number of neurons and multiplied by the number of brain 'modules' dedicated to certain tasks of information processing, consciousness must 'emerge' as a matter of physical course. A lot of the AI guys who put a lot of funding into consciousness researches think the same thing, hoping to create a conscious computer one of these days. But it hasn't happened yet (that they've let any of us know about, anyway, and it would be a big deal) and isn't likely to happen, imo.
Did you read the Stanford link to supervenience? It's pertinent to this line of discussion.
Comment by Joy — January 25, 2007 @ 6:13 pm
January 25th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
This is a good statement of the faith of reductionists. But it is a faith with little evidential basis. How do you prove that the behavior of the ants in a colony is solely a combination of the behaviors of the individual ants?
For evidence that colonies and other holons have emergent properties beyond the properties of their constituents, and one that specifically covers strong emergence in insect colonies, read Rupert Sheldrake's book The Presence of the Past. A very brief summary covering his theory is available on his website, but omits the discussion of insect colonies.
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 25, 2007 @ 7:08 pm
January 26th, 2007 at 2:11 am
I admit I haven't read the entire ginormous thread on consciousness, so perhaps this has already been brought up.
One thing I often see overlooked in discussions of consciousness is a fact that is hard to explain precisely because it is so obvious. You see, there is no empirical basis for consciousness at all. You can talk about "emergent" properties all you like, but we don't know about consciousness from looking at properties. We know about consciousness by BEING conscious.
Take the question, "what is it like to be George W. Bush?" This question makes sense to us, we assume it has an experiential answer that we could relate to - by assuming life for him is like it would be if we were in a similar situation. Now go further. "What is it like to be a dog?" This is harder, but you can imagine perhaps having a much more basic knowledge of the world around you and try to imagine it. Now go further - "What is it like to be a dell notebook computer?" The question seems silly - Dell notebook computers are just machines - there's no point to asking what the experience of existence is like to them. And finally, "what is it like to be a rock?" makes no sense at all.
But here's the clincher - we have no empirical basis at all for saying that "what is it like to be Bush?" has any more meaning than "what is it like to be a rock?" We have not quantitatively measured consciousness. We have never observed it objectively at all. For all I know, everyone else in the world is in fact a machine with its inputs determined by its outputs - there is no empirical reason to assume some presence, some experiential existence. It is not accounted for by the some of its parts at all.
And yet I AM. It is undeniable - I am me, and am not that rock, and I know what its like to be me. I can say nothing for anyone else in the world, but I know my own existence (and I'm not talking about a helpful model for understanding large scale patterns of particles). The materialist has to essentially disbelieve in his own existence.
Comment by Wonders For Oyarsa — January 26, 2007 @ 2:11 am
January 26th, 2007 at 11:14 am
The "I AM" is undeniable, in that your consciousness is undeniable. However the thought "I am me, and I am not that rock" is simply a thought.
Look at what makes the thought "I AM" possible. It is the witnessing awareness in which all these things unfold:
thoughts,
feelings,
sense perceptions.
This witnessing awareness is what the eastern philosophers called "unconditioned consciousness". It is often referred to metaphorically as a "light" which "illuminates" what appears, such as particular thoughts, feelings, sensations.
The particular thought "I am me, I am not that rock" is something different. It is a conceptual model, a thought. Conditioned consciousness. That thought is given life by the unconditioned consciousness that perceives it. There could be and are a million other thoughts which arise, all are given life by that which is perceiving the thought.
What you truly are is the unconditioned consciousness. That consciousness in which arise all things, the "me" thought, the idea of the rock, the computer that is being perceived and the shapes on the screen interpreted into letters and words being read right now. . .
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 26, 2007 @ 11:14 am
January 26th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
MatthewCromer:
What is the thought? It might be the simple apprehension of self-other (which could arise purely from the physicality of the executive circuits, which arise naturally from the demarkation of life from non-life - the basic self-other distinction that underlies life's volitional motivations. 'Self' requires nourishment, must consume 'other', 'self' is threatened by 'other' that preys upon 'self', defenses ensue… etc.
Yet "I Am" is identity. How does the supervenience relationship operate on this global level? Is it metaphysically necessary, or just logically necessary? Consciousness as supervenient upon the matter of the brain/body physical system raises a "grounding problem." I liken this to my grandson's particular talent with clay (he's been amazingly talented all his life), and a principle he explained quite matter-of-factly to me when he was four.
He called it "conservation of clay." I'd wanted to save one of his amazing little dragons, but that would diminish his store of available clay. He carried a hunk around with him all waking hours, creating and destroying a dozen or more different 'things' during the day, often a 3-D representation of whatever he was interested in from whatever television show he was watching. His Pokemon (sp?) figures were better than anything you could buy. Yet his creations were always 4-D instead of just 3-D, due to the "conservation of clay."
The forms came, and the forms went back into mere clay again when a new form seemed necessary to him. That way the only clay that got lost was what ended up under his fingernails (we had to replenish the supply regularly before discovering Sculpy and sneaking his critters off to be fired). A dinosaur gave way to a cartoon character gave way to a helicopter gave way to a great bird gave way to a dragon… the same lump of clay changing form every time his mind conceived another form to actuate.
The philosophical question [Section 5.5 in Stanford 'supervenience'] is:
Two objects can occupy the same spatio-temporal location - "coincident." The two objects are the lump of clay and the dinosaur formed of the clay. How can the clay and the dinosaur differ in their modal properties, given that they are identical in every other way? What grounds their difference in persistence conditions, and in virtue of what do they have differing persistence conditions?
The difference (as I see it) is that the dinosaur, while it does supervene upon the clay for the duration of its persistence (there being no doubt that the form *is* a dinosaur to all who can recognize the form), that supervenience is not necessary to the existence of the clay. The clay can be whatever the sculptor decides it should be, per form. The form is *always* supervenient on the clay for the duration of its persistence, is *always* physical - as the clay - for so long as it persists, but is in no way necessary to the existence of the clay.
Clay is necessary to form in order for form to physically exist, but form is not necessary to clay, which apart from its raw physical composition and circumstances of its environment, cannot impose form upon itself.
Age-old metaphysical questions philosophers will continue to disagree about forever. Theology parses the coexistence of body and soul according to these metaphysical questions, and has struggled with them as long. Interesting examinations can be found here and here.
Whenever the metaphysical materialists (physicalists) tell you the issue is resolved by appeal to "emergence," they're only fooling themselves.
Comment by Joy — January 26, 2007 @ 12:25 pm
January 26th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Or at least attribute the plausibility of the no free will position to the belief that one's own thought processes are flawed and therefore, one is better advised to accept the thinking of a source, whose processes are unknowable, assuring him that his perceived free will is but an illusion.
Comment by Bradford — January 26, 2007 @ 10:15 pm
January 27th, 2007 at 1:33 am
How exactly does one hold another responsible for actions they do not control? Isn't that what will is? Self-control?
Comment by todd — January 27, 2007 @ 1:33 am
January 27th, 2007 at 2:10 am
Dawkins seems to be asking that same question. If choices are not self determined and Im referring to a self that is immaterial, logically there can be no responsibility.
No, the will is the faculty that enables intention. Control comes from the self.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 27, 2007 @ 2:10 am
January 27th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Joy wrote:
Nonlinearity in physics is not about the "spontaneous emergence of things from inadequate substrates", any more than the number 49 is inadequately explained as (3 + 4) squared (see the example in my earlier comment). We know why nonlinear amplifiers distort audio signals, and if we know the characteristics of the amplifier, we can predict how it will respond to a given signal. Totally causal. No magic. No "inadequate substrates."
Only under what's known as "strong emergence" are emergent properties irreducible to the properties of the substrates. Strong emergence is accepted by a small number of scientists, including Robert Laughlin, but is rejected by most.
The prevailing emergentist view is of "weak emergence", in which the emergent property is explainable in terms of the properties of the substrates.
Viscosity is an example. An individual molecule of water, floating in space, has no viscosity. Viscosity is an emergent property arising only when many molecules interact as a fluid. Does this make viscosity magic? Not at all — it can be explained in terms of the properties of individual molecules, even though it is a qualitatively different manifestation of those properties.
I do not assume this. To assume this would be to assert that the "Hard Problem" has been solved. I do not believe this, and I remain open to other hypotheses which are consistent with the evidence. For example, the idea of a causally closed world accompanied by causally impotent, epiphenomenal consciousness also seems compatible with the evidence, and I haven't ruled it out.
Note that the Hard Problem applies only to the problem of conscious experience, and not to the problem of the will or of intelligence. The latter two can be explained in terms of pure physical interactions, in a way that the former cannot (at least yet).
I'm already familiar with the concept.
Joy, from an earlier comment:
Supervenience is emphatically not top-down causation. I, and the vast majority of neuroscientists, accept that our mental lives supervene on the activities of our brains. That does not mean that we believe that neurons are magically influenced by mental states to behave differently from the way they would otherwise according to low-order physical laws.
Comment by keiths — January 27, 2007 @ 9:28 pm
January 27th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
There is a continuity to the anlysis of viscosity that has no counterpart in the link between brain cells and consciousness. One can describe viscosity by reference to molecular properties. One cannot do this same with reference to consciousness. In the first example the emergence is documented by reference to sound theoretical principles. In the second it is asserted by reference to an association linkage.
Comment by Bradford — January 27, 2007 @ 10:27 pm
January 28th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Bradford wrote:
I agree. But the viscosity example shows that weak emergence is not magic, just as the math and amplifier examples show that nonlinearity is not magic.
That's why you were incorrect to say that "Emergence and non-linearity assert a causal relationship without describing it", and why Joy was wrong in saying that nonlinearity and emergence are "just alternative ways of describing apparently magical properties that matter and energy don't explain by their mere existence and interactions."
Comment by keiths — January 28, 2007 @ 8:24 am
January 28th, 2007 at 11:08 am
The Hard Problem applies to the intelligence as well. In what way intelligence can be explained in terms of physical interactions? The underlying mechanisms that creates intelligence are still a mystery. Intelligence in no way is less mysterious than the consciousness itself and indeed remains as a "Hard Problem".
Intelligence: capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.
If the intelligence was a physical only phenomenon then we should be able to successfully mimic it using complex algorithms and computer software. Our failure in creating Artificial Intelligence through past decades shows that our initial assumptions about mechanisms that create intelligence were wrong. There is no difference between a computer programmed to play chess and a washing machine programmed to wash wool! Both share the same level of intelligence which is evidently zero.
In past 20 years there has been an incredible progress in computers processing power. Our desktop PC's are as 100 times faster than mainframes of 30 years ago. But still there is no AI around. Intelligence cannot be produced by software algorithms. Today AI specialists could finally realize that intelligence is far way more complex and mysterious than what scientists used to believe decades ago.
Comment by Farshad — January 28, 2007 @ 11:08 am
January 28th, 2007 at 11:38 am
This is just a reiteration of the fact that most scientists are reductionists.
However we find that reductionism has done a very poor job accounting for protein folding, epigenesis, morphogenetic regulation, and, of course, consciousness itself.
The fact that most scientists are true believers that all these phenomena will be fully explained through strict reductionism is an interesting sociological phenomenon, but has very little bearing on its truth proposition.
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 28, 2007 @ 11:38 am
January 28th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
There is a continuity to the anlysis of viscosity that has no counterpart in the link between brain cells and consciousness.
I agree. But the viscosity example shows that weak emergence is not magic, just as the math and amplifier examples show that nonlinearity is not magic.
That's why you were incorrect to say that "Emergence and non-linearity assert a causal relationship without describing it",
My comment was made with reference to consciousness, not viscosity. The causal relationship (of emergence) between brain cells and consciousness is asserted.
Comment by Bradford — January 28, 2007 @ 1:06 pm
January 28th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Bradford says:
But immediately before making your accusation, you quote Joy saying that these terms refer to magical properties of life and mind, not just to consciousness:
Biologists do not invoke strong emergence to explain life. The laws of physics are followed inside and outside of living organisms. Therefore weak emergence is quite sufficient.
Comment by keiths — January 28, 2007 @ 1:56 pm
January 28th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Hmmm.
Explain why proteins fold in the precise characteristic shape they do. Why are humans bilaterally symmetric (for the most part)? Why do acquired characteristics tend to become inherited characteristics?
None of these have been explained reductionistically. It is absolutely premature to proclaim that "weak emergence is quite sufficient" — since it hasn't been sufficient to explain epigenesis, developmental regulation, protein folding, and a host of other holistic phenomena.
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 28, 2007 @ 2:50 pm
January 28th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
keiths:
It's basically an attempt to make predictable (at least in a stochastic sense) that which is not predictable due to the limitations on our knowledge of initial state of the system, and all subsequent effectual interactions in the past lightcone. A way to justify getting around the singularities in the equations that have usually been 'renormalized' away (cheating), under the baseline assumption that dynamical systems - even chaotic ones - are at root deterministic.
This can easily become a tautology, and often does. "If only we knew everything [omniscient], we'd know everything!" It works fairly well to provide a range of prediction (like a point-spread) short-term for simple dynamic systems. Like FAPP predictions of gravitation in 3-body systems, for example. For much more dynamic constructs it's not better than any other method we ever developed, including cheating (it 'works', FAPP).
Nonlinear approaches to prediction for something as multi-complex as Schrodinger's cat seem pretty ridiculous to me, when other methods work as well (come up with the same probability) with much less wasted effort. Figuring the Hamiltonians (degrees of freedom) for every piece-part is cumbersome. Odds are 50-50 no matter how you do the math. Still, a non-linear approach lets the aproachees believe they're working with a fundamentally deterministic system, so they don't have to think about the idea that maybe it's indeterministic. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, and simply asserting that emergent properties arise in nonlinear fashion from the substrate in deterministic fashion ("if we only knew everything…") doesn't make it so.
It'll probably prove useful as an approach to what arguably *are* deterministic systems. I do not share the wishful thinking of reductionists that biological systems qualify, thus I think the application to biological systems is a mistake. You can of course disagree. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
You wish. The verdict on that hasn't come in yet, and isn't likely ever to come in, so I call it a "hung jury." Heck, the very definition of a "complex system" in nonlinear terms is just as magical as the definition of emergence (which nonlinear approaches are supposed to explain).
Complex Systems - Complex systems are spatially and/or temporally extended nonlinear systems characterized by collective properties associated with the system as a whole - and that are different from the characteristic behaviors of the constituent parts. [Emergent properties]
So what? How many of those "most" scientists are working directly in nonlinear science applied to biology, and how many are involved in the quest for consciousness? Appeal to authority [consensus] in this case is itself a misapplication. I am not "most," and I don't care what they believe.
The application to biology - and particularly to consciousness - is "strong." So that is of course what I'm talking about, given the title of this blog - Thinking About Thought and Belief. Did you read it? If so, why come back in panic to define-away the application very much applicable to the subject? That's a total waste of time, keith. If you don't want to discuss the subject of this blog, then don't post to it. Spamming it with your personal objections to the subject and terms is a distraction.
Well duh. Read the blog title again. The subject is easily discerned. Besides, both intelligence and will are conceptually classified - in this application - as emergent properties [qualitative] of an emergent property [quantitative]. They are NOT something else entirely.
Appeal to your own authority isn't all that impressive (though it does make me glad for Cytowic and other open-minded researchers). You don't believe in emergence as supervenience, don't believe supervenience is downward causation* per its controlling agency over the collective substrate, and you don't believe that any of it reduces to nonlinear dynamics. Noted.
But your beliefs don't settle the matter, and they don't convince me. Again, if it makes you uncomfortable to discuss the topic, don't. For those who are interested, I have given a number of links to material that explains pretty well the philosophical concepts and scientific applications. Complaints about those expositions should be directed to those sources.
* Donald T. Campbell, "Downward Causation in Hierarchically Organised Biological Systems," in F.J. Ayala and T. Dobzhansky, eds., Studies in the Philosophy of Biology: Reduction and Related Problems (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974).
* William Jaworski, "Mental Causation from the Top Down," in Erkenntnis, Volume 65, Number 2, September 2006 (Springer).
Comment by Joy — January 28, 2007 @ 3:54 pm
January 28th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Biologists do not invoke strong emergence to explain life. The laws of physics are followed inside and outside of living organisms.
Of course organisms function according to laws of physics. Noone is contending otherwise. Laws of physics do not explain life's origins though.
Therefore weak emergence is quite sufficient.
How is consciousness explained by the properties of brain cells?
Comment by Bradford — January 28, 2007 @ 3:55 pm
January 28th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Bradford wrote:
It surprises me too, but Joy seems to be contending otherwise.
You quoted Joy as follows:
That quote seems to indicate that she believes there are "magical" properties associated with life, and that scientists invoke nonlinearity as a hand-waving non-explanation of these. You can hash it out with her if you wish.
That's debatable, but my assertion is about life, not life's origins.
We don't know. That's why it's called the Hard Problem. My assertion was about life, not consciousness.
Comment by keiths — January 28, 2007 @ 4:50 pm
January 28th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Joy: These terms are most often encountered in arguments about the magical properties that humans have always associated with life and Mind.
That quote seems to indicate that she believes there are "magical" properties associated with life, and that scientists invoke nonlinearity as a hand-waving non-explanation of these. You can hash it out with her if you wish.
I just have to read it to conclude there is a difference between an assertion of magical properties and her statement that there is an association between magical properties and life and Mind.
Laws of physics do not explain life's origins though.
That's debatable, but my assertion is about life, not life's origins.
If it is debateable then presumably you have a reference to specific laws of physics and how they are linked as causal generators of life
How is consciousness explained by the properties of brain cells?
We don't know. That's why it's called the Hard Problem. My assertion was about life, not consciousness.
Human life entails consciousness. If life is an emergent property of matter then so are humans and their consciousness right?
Comment by Bradford — January 28, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
January 28th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Bradford:
It's not. Though the 'strong' [eliminative] reductionist position very much wants it to be. Hence the connectionist models folks like Ramsey, Stich and Garon hope will someday provide 'plausible' - that means believable - explanation of mind as a physically determined phenomenon that will support the denial of belief-like states of mind.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt… §;o)
Comment by Joy — January 28, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
January 28th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Joy writes of nonlinearity:
Joy,
Don't confuse nonlinearity with chaos. Nonlinearity is a necessary but insufficient condition for producing chaotic behavior. There are many nonlinear systems which are not chaotic, e.g. my audio amplifier example.
Also, nonlinearity is not an attempt to make chaotic systems predictable. Rather, it demonstrates and explains their unpredictability.
Singularities are not the inevitable result of nonlinearity. F(x) = x^2 is nonlinear, but it has no singularities.
All of mathematics is tautological in this sense. "2 + 2 = 4" is a tautology. This doesn't diminish the usefulness of mathematics at all.
Who are these people who claim that Schrödinger's cat is a deterministic system? The consensus among physicists is that while the wave function is deterministic, its collapse is inherently probabilistic.
Of course it doesn't. What makes nonlinearity successful as an explanation is that, like any successful scientific explanation, it is confirmed by experiment and observation.
Viscosity is not a property of an individual molecule, but of many molecules organized as a fluid. Yet no "magic" is required to produce viscosity — each molecule simply has to follow the same unmagical physical laws it follows when isolated.
Not true. Where have I written any such thing?
You cite the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on supervenience. Have you read it? It states that
Nothing in that definition requires downward causation. Supervenience and downward causation are separate concepts.
Again, I have written nothing of the sort. Where did you get that idea?
It doesn't make me uncomfortable at all. Brain and mind are among my favorite topics.
Are you sure you're not projecting your own discomfort at being challenged?
Comment by keiths — January 28, 2007 @ 9:18 pm
January 29th, 2007 at 1:51 am
keiths:
We already know about unpredictability. We assess it probablistically, and have been doing so for almost a century. Works pretty well in a number of applications. As Macht points out in his blog Emergent Properties, Abstraction, and Reductionism, the abstractions can get so generalized that they lose whatever explanatory power the original conception might have had in certain (specified) applications. Physics has a problem with this tendency to overgeneralize, but in many applications it's been immensely useful… FAPP.
Unpredictability isn't very useful to us, unless at some level it becomes predictable. On the level of Schrodinger's poor cat, material 'cat-ness' extends in time very predictably (something probability on the single particle level doesn't explain, so it's mostly ignored). Spontaneous combustion of cats isn't that common, and nobody I've ever heard of has ever seen a cat turn into a shrubbery or a herring.
That's not what I said. I said that nonlinearity works (or tries to work) around singularities that arise using other methods. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
Reality must be presumed 'real' in order for any of our abstractions to work… FAPP. Problems arise mostly when abstractions are taken too seriously.
I know. I haven't claimed otherwise.
From your posts. All I can do is parse the words you write through my processors. If I have it wrong, try re-phrasing. That sometimes works.
If you challenge, it would be nice to have a clear idea of what your position is. You tell me I'm misunderstanding your position, and you obviously misunderstand mine. Go ahead and spell it out. It would save a lot of space.
Comment by Joy — January 29, 2007 @ 1:51 am
January 29th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Joy wrote:
I gave Joy the benefit of the doubt and re-examined the thread, looking for places where I contributed to her misunderstanding by failing to "spell out" my position. For each case where she mistook my stance, I've excerpted an earlier statement where I address the misunderstood topic.
Here are the results:
Joy wrote:
What I wrote, earlier in the thread:
Joy wrote:
And:
Here the problem is not any vagueness on my part, but rather Joy's misunderstanding of the definition of supervenience as contained in the very source she cites, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Nothing about this definition mandates that supervenience is top-down causation, as Joy claims.
Joy wrote:
What I wrote, earlier in the thread:
So you see, Joy, the statements are quite clear. The problem is on the receiving end. Slow down, comprehend your opponents' positions, and you might be able to respond meaningfully rather than tilting at windmills all the time.
Finally, doesn't it strike you as a bit ironic to criticize someone for being unclear when you pepper your own statements with entirely unnecessary and irrelevant references to lightcones, Hamiltonians, and renormalization?
Physician, heal thyself.
Comment by keiths — January 29, 2007 @ 5:04 pm
January 29th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Thanks for the attempt at clarification, keith. You said:
Accepted. My questions: To what do you attribute the 'emergence' of conscious experience from physical brains? What are the "simple but nonlinear rules" that account for consciousness, and what is the causal mechanism?
Not at all. My statements were quite clear as well, yet rather than try to understand my context, you chose instead to complain that I didn't understand yours. It works both ways. Let's see if we can rectify that. Answering the above three questions would be a good start.
Comment by Joy — January 29, 2007 @ 9:14 pm