Mind: emergent property or "Ghost in the machine"?

Oncedeceived · Sep 21, 2006

TricksterWolf said:
I think it's fine to believe in the soul, but a mistake to try to back up belief with facts...this commonly leads to unscientific thinking.

Really? So if Darwin believed that evolution was the way in which nature worked, it was wrong of him to back up that belief with facts? How is that unscientific? Science moves and shakes due to the belief of men and women of something which is then supported or unsupported by facts.

It's equally likely, for example, that our instruments that detect brain activity fail to capture the actual brain activity leading to the detection.

That could be true, but then we can't really claim on the other hand that when no brain activity is present that the I in the head is shut down either. So both sides remain in the same boat.

Just because science can't presently explain something doesn't mean that the only remaining conclusion is something entirely outside the realm of science.

Science works on the very foundation that the same information that we all have or at least those in the same area of expertise have, can make assessments that lead to new discover due to the "I" in their heads.

People use this argument with evolution all the time. The fact that science isn't exact and that our theories are imperfect isn't evidence that the underlying assumptions of those theories are wrong, or that some otherworldly conjecture must be true.

True again, but it is true as well that theology is not perfect either and that just because we do not have all the answers does not mean that only a worldly conjecture must be true.

Oncedeceived · Sep 21, 2006

Tomk80 said:
No, the logic is "There is no evidence for X, hence there is no reason to assume X exists."

We also do not know hether there is a china teapot circling the earth. Sure, we haven't got any evidence that it does, but science is not equipped yet to look at the whole of the space surrounding the earth at the same time in such detail.

Ignoratio elenchi

All evidence that we do have, indicates that the "self" changes in a predictable way when parts of the brain are damaged.

In a predictable way? Such as?

There is no evidence of a duality. The best conclusion drawn is then monism, instead of dualism. It is not a conclusion drawn from unknowns. It is a conclusion that is purely drawn from what we know of the brain and it's relation to people's "self".

Which I disagree. It is a conclusion drawn from unknowns. You can't know if the brain is even part of the soul.

Grummpy · Sep 21, 2006

Oncedeceived

You can't know if the brain is even part of the soul.

Since you yourself said no evidence of a soul exists, and since we have much evidence the brain exists and that the mind is directly dependent on the state of the brain, why would we have any reason to posit that the brain is part of something we have no reason to think exists at all???

The mind(conciousness, the"I") is entirely dependent on the brain. If the brain is damaged or parts removed we can predict in advance the parts of the mind that will be affected. If the brain is damaged beyond a certain point the mind ceases to exist altogether. Therefore the conciousness is a product of the brains activity, they are inseperable and the "mind" has no seperate existence. Duality can therefore not be true, otherwise this brain/mind relationship would not be true.

Where does the "soul" come into the picture??? Nowhere, there is absolutely no reason to think it exists.

Grumpy

TricksterWolf · Sep 21, 2006

Tomk80 said:
In essence, I can also not send you a picture of a running computer program. Why, because it is made up of electricity running around on my computer, turning bits on and of. That's what happens in the brian also, brain cells are turned on or off.

There's a big difference there; we know how computer programs work and have very little clue as to how the mind works. That's why even the most sophisticated AI pales in comparison to a three-year-old child. It's also why we assume that computers aren't conscious.

Do you think your Solitaire program is conscious, similar to what you and I experience?

Trickster

EnemyPartyII · Sep 21, 2006

no evidence to suggest that the brain works on a binary "on/off" system either...

Indeed, does the brain have an underlying "operating program" like a computer?

I think it is better to think of computers as an advanced abacus, rather than as a simple brain

Oncedeceived · Sep 21, 2006

Grummpy said:
Since you yourself said no evidence of a soul exists, and since we have much evidence the brain exists and that the mind is directly dependent on the state of the brain, why would we have any reason to posit that the brain is part of something we have no reason to think exists at all???

If the mind is just the brain then we have no reason to reason at all. All your thoughts, all my thoughts are not anything more than what we have to think. You can't think any other thought than what you are thinking anymore than I can if we are just a physical mind/brain. Reason has no bearing on the thoughts that you are presenting, they are just controled by your brain.

The mind(conciousness, the"I") is entirely dependent on the brain. If the brain is damaged or parts removed we can predict in advance the parts of the mind that will be affected. If the brain is damaged beyond a certain point the mind ceases to exist altogether. Therefore the conciousness is a product of the brains activity, they are inseperable and the "mind" has no seperate existence. Duality can therefore not be true, otherwise this brain/mind relationship would not be true.

True and false are not manifestations of the physical world. True and False are determined by reason and facts which must be filtered by the brain but the brain can only function in a way that is already determined so you can't then rely on whether it is functioning according to truth or facts. If physicalism is true, then nothing really is true but only that which can be considered by your brain to be true. If it is true for your brain, what makes it true for anothers? Our thoughts are only a physical state and all physical states are determined by other physical states, governed by physical laws. If our minds are simply physical states, then we are not free. All of our decisions are determined. So free will as well as free thought is impossible.

Where does the "soul" come into the picture??? Nowhere, there is absolutely no reason to think it exists.

I believe it is in our free choice and reasoning power.

TricksterWolf · Sep 21, 2006

Oncedeceived said:
Really? So if Darwin believed that evolution was the way in which nature worked, it was wrong of him to back up that belief with facts? How is that unscientific? Science moves and shakes due to the belief of men and women of something which is then supported or unsupported by facts.

It's not unscientific. Evolution has mountains of scientific evidence to support it, as well it should. The evidence to support monism is also valid scientific evidence, but it's much more limited as it is based in the underlying premise that the behavior we can measure is more or less an exact representation of the mind; it says virtually nothing about how the mind actually works. The evidence for monism simply shows that brain change --> behavior change, which doesn't seem to have much to do with consciousness itself.

As for evolution--I think it's possible to be a scientist and not believe in it 100%. I'm not completely certain of how we came about, myself. Evolution is very compelling, and it's probably correct...but there's still more to the process of natural selection than currently we understand. I should add, though, that this doesn't mean it's wrong--in fact, it'd be more suspicious if a theory on something so complex could explain everything away.

Trickster

TricksterWolf · Sep 21, 2006

Grummpy said:
The mind(conciousness, the"I") is entirely dependent on the brain. If the brain is damaged or parts removed we can predict in advance the parts of the mind that will be affected.

Having worked in neurology, I can attest that this ability to predict the extent of brain damage is exceptionally poor. We can make an educated guess, but the brain is amazingly plastic. There are people who have been born with a mere rind of brain who are above-average intelligence, and others who recieve a very minor concussion and end up with terrible effects. It's not as easy to predict the extent of damage as you make it sound. That's why psychometric testing is always needed (I've performed over 800 hours of it, myself--people will surprise you).

Trickster

TricksterWolf · Sep 21, 2006

Oncedeceived said:
If the mind is just the brain then we have no reason to reason at all. All your thoughts, all my thoughts are not anything more than what we have to think. You can't think any other thought than what you are thinking anymore than I can if we are just a physical mind/brain. Reason has no bearing on the thoughts that you are presenting, they are just controled by your brain.

I don't think this is true. Life isn't suddenly meaningless if we have a deterministic brain, because we still can't know the outcome. As long as outcomes are hidden from us, we're not simply "going through the motions", and our decisions actually matter.

Trickster

TricksterWolf · Sep 21, 2006

EnemyPartyII said:
no evidence to suggest that the brain works on a binary "on/off" system either...

Indeed, does the brain have an underlying "operating program" like a computer?

I think it is better to think of computers as an advanced abacus, rather than as a simple brain

That's a good point. Neurons are amazingly complicated...imagine a non-binary computer capable of constantly rewiring itself and storing memory within the same circuits that transmit messages, where every action affects a million other systems. It's so far beyond us at present it's not funny.

Maybe someday we'll understand it better, though. It would be interesting to see what people could create if we stopped killing each other for a few centuries.

Trickster

Grummpy · Sep 21, 2006

Oncedeceived

If the mind is just the brain then we have no reason to reason at all. All your thoughts, all my thoughts are not anything more than what we have to think. You can't think any other thought than what you are thinking anymore than I can if we are just a physical mind/brain. Reason has no bearing on the thoughts that you are presenting, they are just controled by your brain.
True and false are not manifestations of the physical world. True and False are determined by reason and facts which must be filtered by the brain but the brain can only function in a way that is already determined so you can't then rely on whether it is functioning according to truth or facts. If physicalism is true, then nothing really is true but only that which can be considered by your brain to be true. If it is true for your brain, what makes it true for anothers? Our thoughts are only a physical state and all physical states are determined by other physical states, governed by physical laws. If our minds are simply physical states, then we are not free. All of our decisions are determined. So free will as well as free thought is impossible.

Sorry, this is just gobbledegoop. A sufficiently complex system is no longer predictable(deterministic) given a specific input(even our computer programmers know this, and the brain is several hundreds of orders of magnitude more sophisticated(and therefore complex) than the biggest computer). If you have one yes/no gate you have two possible outputs, 2 gives you 4, 4 gives you 16... So each layer of gates gives you an exponential increase of outcomes. Our brain uses neurons with HUNDREDS of possible outcomes each so each layer gives you 10,000 different outputs for each input. Learning is the narrowing down of those outputs to those that give the best results, but they are far from predictable(and therefore far from just a robotic response). Thankfully we have the benefit of millions of years of self programing to control these myriad responses or all would be chaos(as in autism). Just because it is all just physical effects in no way limits the emergence of conciousness or any other observed phenomina.

Grumpy

TricksterWolf · Sep 21, 2006

Grummpy said:
Oncedeceived

Sorry, this is just gobbledegoop. A sufficiently complex system is no longer predictable(deterministic) given a specific input(even our computer programmers know this, and the brain is several hundreds of orders of magnitude more sophisticated(and therefore complex) than the biggest computer). If you have one yes/no gate you have two possible outputs, 2 gives you 4, 4 gives you 16... So each layer of gates gives you an exponential increase of outcomes. Our brain uses neurons with HUNDREDS of possible outcomes each so each layer gives you 10,000 different outputs for each input. Learning is the narrowing down of those outputs to those that give the best results, but they are far from predictable(and therefore far from just a robotic response). Thankfully we have the benefit of millions of years of self programing to control these myriad responses or all would be chaos(as in autism). Just because it is all just physical effects in no way limits the emergence of conciousness or any other observed phenomina.

Grumpy

This is true. There's no certain way to determine the output of any set of programs of non-trivial complexity, if they were written in a Turing-complete language (which virtually every programming language is).

I find the uncertainty inherent in both physical reality and abstract reality to be rather amusing, in a spiritual sense. In multiple ways, even if you could map the brain you couldn't exactly predict behavior. There's always a little wiggle-room for some type of outside intervention.

Trickster

Tomk80 · Sep 21, 2006

TricksterWolf said:
There's a big difference there; we know how computer programs work and have very little clue as to how the mind works. That's why even the most sophisticated AI pales in comparison to a three-year-old child. It's also why we assume that computers aren't conscious.

Do you think your Solitaire program is conscious, similar to what you and I experience?

Trickster

This misses the point of what I was trying to convey. Even though we know how a program works, we cannot make 'pictures' of it in a working (or non-working) state.

The same for the brain. Even if we knew exactly how it worked, we couldn't directly 'show' it. At best we have images of running electric currents, such as produced by MRI.

TricksterWolf · Sep 21, 2006

Tomk80 said:
This misses the point of what I was trying to convey. Even though we know how a program works, we cannot make 'pictures' of it in a working (or non-working) state.

The same for the brain. Even if we knew exactly how it worked, we couldn't directly 'show' it. At best we have images of running electric currents, such as produced by MRI.

Oh! Well, I agree completely with that.

Most of memory isn't just the electrical impulses, too...it's the chemicals left behind. The brain is largely a physical device, not a circuit.

I wonder if they'll have simplistic, neuron-based computers in my lifetime; I've worked in a lab doing research on that. Might be some interesting ethical issues there.

Trickster

Tomk80 · Sep 21, 2006

Oncedeceived said:
In what way does it not function anymore? If the personality is changed is the I changed? No, I still exists. The brain may not work in the same way but the I still is in our heads. If I can't remember former experiences, it is the I in me that can't remember and "I" know that I can't remember. Who is it that knows it can't remember what "I" should remember?

People who had electroshock therapy, like Pirsig, do not agree. They say the old "I" is gone and a new "I" is there. Sure, they will have some shared personality characteristics, because not the whole brain is damaged. We only have partly damaged people to work from, because a wholly damaged brain means only one thing, death.

The "I" in my mind considering the same thoughts that you have presented disagrees. I read your post, your thoughts of the I in your head and yet the I in my head disagrees. We can have the same information put into our brain yet the "I" in our heads can disagree with the findings of that information. We can look at a picture and see the very same things in that picture but we can not know what that picture is activating in the other's brain. Why, because we don't just look at that picture and have just the same image, we bring with that event our experiences, memories and conciousness and that affects how we see and feel about a picture. The same places in the brain are firing when we look at the picture but the I in our heads may see it very differently.

That we can disagree does not suddenly mean the evidence does not exist. I have yet to see you present evidence for the existence of a mind/brain duality, other than some vague references to the 'I'. That's fun, but it is not evidence.

Again, this is your "I"'s opinion based on what you perceive as "no evidence" whereas my "I"'s opinion is that just because there is no material evidence for the soul does not mean that the soul does not exist. Just because I can not feel your pain, I can understand that it exists and that you feel it, although I can't.

The bolded part is the point I'm making. There is no evidence for a soul, hence I have no reason to think a soul exists.

Why would I believe something for which there is no evidence?

Tomk80 · Sep 21, 2006

TricksterWolf said:
Oh! Well, I agree completely with that.

Most of memory isn't just the electrical impulses, too...it's the chemicals left behind. The brain is largely a physical device, not a circuit.

I wonder if they'll have simplistic, neuron-based computers in my lifetime; I've worked in a lab doing research on that. Might be some interesting ethical issues there.

Trickster

Then you know more about the 4 mouse-brainscells that piloted an aircraft simulation? I'd say that's the first set-up for such a simplistic, neuron-based computer (if it is not such a computer in itself already).

Tomk80 · Sep 21, 2006

Oncedeceived said:
Ignoratio elenchi

Feel free to elaborate. How is the reasoning that if there is no evidence for something, it probably does not exist a logical fallacy.

In a predictable way? Such as?

Such as we can correlate discunctioning of the 'mind' to areas in the brain.

Which I disagree. It is a conclusion drawn from unknowns. You can't know if the brain is even part of the soul.

If there is no evidence for something, which you admit, why would the conclusion that it exists be valid?

TricksterWolf · Sep 21, 2006

Tomk80 said:
Feel free to elaborate. How is the reasoning that if there is no evidence for something, it probably does not exist a logical fallacy.

It's logically unsound to conclude anything on the basis of no information. Science obeys this by not drawing firm conclusions when theories are made and tested. Otherwise, science itself would be proven wrong every time a new theory comes out.

In hypothesis testing, just to act as exemplar, you either "reject the null hypothesis", lending weight to the theory, or "fail to reject the null hypothesis", not lending weight to the theory. You can never "accept" a hypothesis based on data, only "reject" or "fail to reject". Science doesn't make the same assumptions about the mind that many in this forum are concluding.

Trickster

TricksterWolf · Sep 21, 2006

Tomk80 said:
Then you know more about the 4 mouse-brainscells that piloted an aircraft simulation? I'd say that's the first set-up for such a simplistic, neuron-based computer (if it is not such a computer in itself already).

What's even more interesting is that a handful of cells--like seven or eight--can in random situations mimic the basic elements of what we call personality. Shyness, aggression, confusion, sadness, etc. can all result from the right order of feedback from outside stimuli. (This either lends weight to the idea that animals are often over-anthopomized, or more poigniantly, the idea that humans are!)

Trickster

Tomk80 · Sep 21, 2006

TricksterWolf said:
It's logically unsound to conclude anything on the basis of no information. Science obeys this by not drawing firm conclusions when theories are made and tested. Otherwise, science itself would be proven wrong every time a new theory comes out.

Science is not proven wrong. Sure, every conclusion in science is tentative, and this includes the conclusion that there might be no duality. But until evidence is provided of something, there is no reason to presume it's existence, neither practically nor scientifically. We do that with all claims. Why does science not participate in 'cryptozoology'? Because there is no reason to believe the yeti, sasquatch or nessie exist. For the yeti or Sasquatch, there is enough wilderness for them to hide in. Yet scientists still reject their existence, based on the fact that noone has ever produced evidence for their existence. If someone produces evidence of their existence, the scientific conclusion is that they do not exist. That does not mean that the scientific method failed. It's the strength of the scientific method to look at what the evidence shows. If there is no evidence, drawing the conclusion that it does not exist is valid, both practically and scientifically.

In hypothesis testing, just to act as exemplar, you either "reject the null hypothesis", lending weight to the theory, or "fail to reject the null hypothesis", not lending weight to the theory. You can never "accept" a hypothesis based on data, only "reject" or "fail to reject". Science doesn't make the same assumptions about the mind that many in this forum are concluding.

Trickster

I would disagree. Look at scientific articles, there is plenty of 'accepting hypotheses based on data' going on there. That is because what science does is draw conclusion from evidence. Falsification is a part of that, but not the only part. It is too restrictive a criterium to only base your conclusions on that.

But I wasn't even talking science. I was just thinking practically. What logical reason do I have to accept that something exists when no evidence is presented in favor of it's existence? If you think this is not logically sound, do you really seriously think that you have to consider the idea of an invisible, untouchable pink unicorn on my balcony?

Mind: emergent property or "Ghost in the machine"?

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