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

I edited this in later, and Peck seems to have (understandably) missed it:

Psychology experiments have shown that memory is unreliable. For example, if you ask a test subjects who you showed a video tape of a car crash, whether the cars were driving fast when they crashed into each other, they will say the cars were driving fast. When you ask test subjects who you showed the same video tape how fast cars what speed they had when they bumped into each other, they will say they did not drive that fast.

When you let someone ask directions to another person and disturb them by walking between them with a large wooden board so they cannot see each other for a few seconds, and in that time replace the person asking directions with someone of approximately the same height and of the same sex, more people will not notice. Etc, etc. Memory works up to a point, but psychological testing has shown again and again that it doesn't work all that well.

peck74 said:

I never implied it was perfect. Let me refresh your memory with what was actually said:
Chalnoth: "Put simply, you cannot trust peoples' memories, even your own. The only thing you can trust absolutely is empirical data."
He said this to debunk my story. This implies that empirical data somehow speaks for itself, but of course it doesn't. We look at data through the framework of our experiences (memories). Hence mistakes are made. Do you deny this?

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Yes, I do. Since scientists from completely different backgrounds, whether they are from India or China or the Netherlands or the USA, reach the same conclusion if sufficient data has been collected, this shows that empirical data does indeed speak for itself.

Of course not, and I think you know that's not what we're speaking about.

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You certainly imply so.

You guys kill me.

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Then maybe you might want to read up on psychology.

I'm sure you would. And how exactly would they get anything peer-reviewed without the word evolution used in a positive way?

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By providing evidence, which they haven't. But the most important part is, they don't have to publish in magazines reviewed by evolutionists. They've got their own magazine. Nothing published in there either. How many papers did they actually submit for review in the last 15 yeas, regardless of whether they would be accepted?

When is Dembski finally going to apply his 'specified complexity' to anything? He says it is useful, why doesn't he show it. That can be done independent of evolution. Why has Behe still not coughed up to the fact that all proteins except one or two in the bacterial flagellum have homologues in other proteins, instead of the 'only 10' or some such that he claims? Those are all things that do not need publishing, that can bypass 'hostile evolutionists'. Why do they no produce them?

And you agree with this? This is absolutely absurd Tom.

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1. Sensory input is recieved.
2. The mind creates a perception from this input.
3. The mind then uses accumulated knowledge (memory) to interpret it.

Data does not, cannot, speak for itself. Period. Without the mind, there is no data to interpret, and it all comes back to one thing: consciousness. Data, like the mind, is subjective, because everything must pass through the mind. It is the lens, the filter, the interpreter of the world, like it or not.

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Whomever you speak to, when you do a certain experiment or make a certain observation the empirical data will look the same for everyone. A red wooden duck is a red wooden duck, no matter whom you talk to. If you put a plate with bacteria under a counter, you will get the same count, regardless of the person counting. If you describe a bone, the description will be the same, regardless of the person describing. The data itself is not open for interpretation.

What empirical data do you have to back this up?

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It's a matter of definition. All traits that we define as belonging to a person, a captured in the word personality. How they act, react ect, all those traits are captured in the word personality.

What part of your 'person' does not fall under the umbrella of 'personality'?

Oh you can draw conclusions, but that's not the last word. You could say "at present, research points to the conclusion that matter somehow gives rise to mind, although the mechanism is not in the least bit understood" And I would accept that wholeheartedly. What you cannot say however, is something like this:

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Chalnoth: "And imagination is a physical thing. It is a process in the brain." Because you simply don't know that to be true. You can say that is your *belief*, but that wasn't what was said.

"I do posit that we have enough data to conclude that the mind is not seperate from the brain, and unless you can give something that gainsays that evidence, we have no reason to think otherwise."

Sure Tom, that is your belief based upon the data you have seen and choose to accept. What is the mind? How about a definition to start with? Then describe to me the mechanism(s) which cause mind to exist, to pop-out of matter, then describe the way it interacts with the brain, then describe exactly how thoughts are formulated, step by step, then construct one in the lab. That would do it no? Because until you can even describe what mind is, it's foolish to say what it is not.

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Please, you say the mind exists, not me. Why should I give a definition, if you're the one claiming it's existence. The burden of proof is on the claimant. You claim there the mind is seperate from the body, so you should give the evidence of this.

If you have not got any evidence that the mind is seperate from the body. If you cannot even define 'mind'. What reason do I have to accept the existence of the mind is factual? The mind is the brain, that is what the evidence indicates. That is why we cannot describe the 'mind', because it is not seperate. Why would my knowledge need to be all-encompassing about all processes of the brain to deny a claim that does not have any evidence in any way?

Every way the 'mind' has ever been described by people, as consciousness, personality etc etc, has been shown to alter when the brain alters. That is clear evidence that such a seperation of brain and 'mind' doesn't exist. If you cannot define what the mind is, cannot show it the mind to exist, cannot show it's independence from the brain, the logical conclusion to reach is that the mind is not seperate from the brain.

peck74 said:

But Chalnoth, what emperical data do you have that proves beyond any doubt that you're right? You've made matter of fact statements, so where's your proof? It is your belief that matter is mind, nothing more. And I guess this also means you don't believe in M-theory right?

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I never said that I could prove beyond any doubt that I am right. And I never try to. One cannot prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But I see no reason whatsoever to believe in things where the sole evidence is personal experience. There is good empirical data that shows that personal experience is faulty.

Chalnoth said:

Nah, there is no soul. This can be shown quite easily, in fact. Just consider this:
A soul is defined as the "essence" of what makes a person a person. It is an immortal something that carries our sense of self with us to the afterlife when we die. A soul is disconnected from the body, but resides within it.

Thus, if a soul is all of these things, then it should not be affected by anything that we do to a body. If a soul is a spirit that defines our sense of self, then no amount of damage to our brain should be able to change our sense of self.

And yet we all know that things that have physical effects on the brain have tremendous effects on personality. The most familiar one is alcohol: ingest enough alcohol, and suddenly people start making very different choices. How can our sense of self be a divine soul when our sense of self is directly affected by chemical alterations of our brain?

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Perhaps a little too simplistic.

Let's say the body, mind and soul are all an essential part of your earthly life. They all interact with each other in some way here.

Let's assume, for example, the mind transfers only positive information content to the soul, and the negative is not transferred. This way, negative alterations and impacts to the brain, such as the way it negatively reacts to certain stimuli like drugs or alcohol, are ignored and not transferred to the soul.

If our soul is constantly being fed information, gleaning only the positive and discarding the negative such as the effects to our personality from things like drugs or alcohol, etc., then there is no problem such as you propose.

If heaven is a place of no negativity or sin, then this type of theory makes sense.

JGL53 said:

I think this concept is one many people just tend to overlook or fail to intellectually appreciate, as they tend to focus on the impressiveness of so-called "spotlight" conscious awareness, overlooking how much of our "minds" are of the unconscious or subconscious type.

And, of course, the totality of our "minds" constantly changes, as nothing stands perfectly still in all of reality - though certain patterns change at different rates and some give the appearance of solidity and "sameness" over time, in the short run. E.g., no one can step into the same river or stream because both the person and the stream are different from moment to moment.



Here's where Occam's Razor comes into play. No one to date (to my knowledge) has shown in a publically sharable way an example of a, so to speak, "free-floating" mind sans a brain. I.e., one can have a brain without a mind, but where is mind to be had without a brain?

So, when we detect "mind" it is always in a brain. Lacking any other evidence, or a less complicated but sufficient theory, then we can only conclude that mind emerges from brain - that is their obvious relationship - that, and the feedback entailed so that they both, in effect, evolve together.

The only other theory I have heard of is the television transmission analogy - that "mind" or "spirit" or "soul" or "life force" comes from some other mysterious diminsion and that the brain "merely"serves as the transmission point into our mundane or physical reality - that, and the brain serves as a "housing" for the immaterial "substance".

No real explanation is ever given for how this works, exactly, it's just believed as truth because it is flattering, and thus became a part of early pre-scientific human culture, and is now passed on generation to generation, in apparently all societies, inculcated in humans (children) at that formative stage wherein naivete allows nearly any idea, no matter how out of bounds with observed reality, to be so inculcated.

One would need to explain why "spirit' would prefer the brain to be the point of transmission or housing, rather than the foot or the liver, or any other body part. Until then, Occam's Razor cuts this notion out - for the thinking person.

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We don't detect a mind in the absence of a lot of things, not just a brain. A brain is clearly important, but you can't simply float a brain in a jar and detect a mind.

This argument is tantamount to saying "you need a brain to communicate", which is pretty obvious. Seeing as the brain is connected to the entire rest of the body through lightning-fast connections, it seems a logical spot for the seat of a mind. So I don't think the mind is discounted as a separate entity merely because its detection is limited to the presence of the cortex of the brain.

On the other hand, I would not assume that a mind exists on the basis of faith alone. That sort of logic is what drove the FC craze and filled a lot of people with false hope. I just wouldn't make a firm statement either way.

Curious that the symbol here for atheism is a brain. I've seen an atom used in other places. Neither of these seem particularly atheistic to me, unless one confuses science for atheism.

Trickster

Chalnoth said:

Nobody is saying that memory has no use. We're just saying that memory is flawed and is not to be trusted.

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I agree that memory is flawed. Observations aren't innately empirical. To be scientific, observations need to be systematic and avoid bias.

But memory is an indispensable part of science, too. It's assumed by science to be mostly correct in the short term, at least enough that consistent measurements can be made at all. The real power of science comes from measurements that are made independently of one another, from multiple different observers. This causes the error inherent in each observer to matter less. It doesn't matter that the individual scientists and their observations are flawed if the process is correctly designed to reduce those flaws to background noise.

Memory is reconstructive rather than literal; its encoding depends on our mental state at the time we created the memory, and its retrieval depends on our mental state at the moment of recall. It also changes substantially over time, often becoming fiction in amusing ways. But experience alone is still a way of coming to know things that has substantial value. I'd trust an engineer with 10 years work experience more than one with 10 years theoretical experience, because practical experience is a fast teacher that teaches things you can't learn from scientific research alone (where scientific study takes much more time).

Trickster

Tomk80 said:

I do not think the machine described by Searle with pass the Turing test, because it would give conflicts as soon as you ask question that go into this self-awareness. I do not think such a machine can keep up this 'front' if you question it enough, because there are no direct rules. Each rule in conversation has it's exceptions and these only can be grasped by an entity that is self-aware to some extent.

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Certainly there are a finite number of questions you could ask the machine. As long as you limit the conversation time to a finite number of questions (say, one google questions), the thought experiment still works. It's not practically possible to build a machine like that, but mathematically possible.

Trickster

Chalnoth said:

I never said that I could prove beyond any doubt that I am right. And I never try to. One cannot prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt.

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Yes we agree on this 100%. But this is also my point concerning data – that it is subject to interpretation, although many times the interpretation is the same for the majority of scientists. And I think you are absolutely correct to say that we have no conclusive proof that consciousness is not an emergent quality of matter. IMHO we have no conclusive proof that it is either – at least not yet. The mind is not like say, the heart. With the heart you can see it pump blood; can take it apart and see how it works and why. It is completely understandable and logical - a machine. The brain/mind just isn’t like that. You can’t see inner experience; can’t see thought – all we can see is the effect of it. It is my opinion that mind remains a mystery.

Chalnoth said:

But I see no reason whatsoever to believe in things where the sole evidence is personal experience. There is good empirical data that shows that personal experience is faulty.

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So what would you do if you died, and had an NDE? After coming back to life, how would you feel about it? Would you debunk yourself? Would you try to dismiss it? Would you believe you imagined it? Many atheists have had NDE’s, and have converted to theism. I think personal experience is the most powerful force each of us is subject to.

peck74 said:

I think personal experience is the most powerful force each of us is subject to.

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I remember reading a story once (actually happened, but I'll mangle it with poor memory here) about a conversation between an Archbishop and an Atheist/Agnostic fellow who happened to be a scientist. The Agnostic said to the Archbishop, "You know, the only reason you believe in God as you do is because of the sum of your experiences have driven you to that belief." The Archbishop nodded, conceding, "Perhaps that is so. But then, the only reason you believe that your claim is true would be because of the sum of your own experiences."

Trickster

TricksterWolf said:

Curious that the symbol here for atheism is a brain. I've seen an atom used in other places. Neither of these seem particularly atheistic to me, unless one confuses science for atheism.

Trickster

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This is my theory, not meant to offend, but I think it's just that for atheists, science is their God. It is my belief that all humans have the need to "believe" built into them. If this is an evolutionary leftover or supernatural design remains to be seen. But once they remove belief in God, they must believe in something, so science fills that void, probably because science is the only thing that might one day achieve God-like miracles. Science and scientists are elevated to divinity on earth, and reason and logic take on a new meaning: debunking anything that does not fit into a world devoid of the supernatural, and with good reason, because anything that does not fit into it is a threat to it. Most atheists will vehemently insist that they have no faith in anything, that they are “skeptics”, but their actions usually don’t confirm this insistence. That’s just my $.02.

TricksterWolf said:

I remember reading a story once (actually happened, but I'll mangle it with poor memory here) about a conversation between an Archbishop and an Atheist/Agnostic fellow who happened to be a scientist. The Agnostic said to the Archbishop, "You know, the only reason you believe in God as you do is because of the sum of your experiences have driven you to that belief." The Archbishop nodded, conceding, "Perhaps that is so. But then, the only reason you believe that your claim is true would be because of the sum of your own experiences."

Trickster

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This is great! Thanks.

peck74 said:

So what would you do if you died, and had an NDE? After coming back to life, how would you feel about it? Would you debunk yourself? Would you try to dismiss it? Would you believe you imagined it? Many atheists have had NDE’s, and have converted to theism. I think personal experience is the most powerful force each of us is subject to.

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Well, intellectually I would understand that it's just a hallucination brought on by lack of oxygen to the brain. But being so close to death might change how I view life and death, and I might be driven to theism, but as of right now I doubt it.

And you seem to be stating that all scientists are atheists, which they most certainly are not.

peck74 said:

This is my theory, not meant to offend, but I think it's just that for atheists, science is their God.

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And how is it a 'god' exactly? Science doesn't tell us what to do or what not to do. Science didn't cause anything to exist or change. Science is simply an intellectual tool to increase mankind's knowledge.

The Internet is another tool that can be used to increase mankind's knowledge. By increasing communication, the Internet allows the findings of one person to be transmitted across the globe instantly. Does this mean that people who use the Internet to share knowledge are worshipping the Internet? Of course not!

Neither is science a god.

TricksterWolf said:

But memory is an indispensable part of science, too. It's assumed by science to be mostly correct in the short term, at least enough that consistent measurements can be made at all. The real power of science comes from measurements that are made independently of one another, from multiple different observers. This causes the error inherent in each observer to matter less. It doesn't matter that the individual scientists and their observations are flawed if the process is correctly designed to reduce those flaws to background noise.

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Right, but none of this requires human memory. Human memory is just a tool that scientists use to keep from continually looking stuff up.

For example, the majority of the work that I perform is programming. When programming, I have to look up, for example, definitions of standard library functions quite frequently. Sometimes, if I've used a function enough times, I'll be able to just remember how to make use of it. Here, memory was used as a tool to increase the speed at which I program. Sometimes, of course, I am mistaken, and do not remember correctly. So I have to reign myself in and look things up more frequently than I otherwise might in order to prevent a significant loss of time later on.

Chalnoth said:

Neither is science a god.

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I agree, and I would add that most scientific propositions and theories--even those of a controversial nature among particular religious ideaologies, are not inherently intrusive on faith: evolution, psychology, and cosmology, to name three. This is because the realm of science is about only those things we can see and measure. Unless you believe God is trying to decieve people by placing us in a world with false evidence, there should be no harm in investigating and cataloguing and theorizing about the evidence at hand. I think that's what our brains are for, really.

However, some people do take elements of speculative science and attempt to turn them into a faith. Such attempts are rarely scientific. Hawking's insistence that God can be disproven by science (in particular, by his breed of science which is more the realm of mathematical conjecture than hard empiricism) is the sort of claim I find unprofessional and silly, and smells of a strong faith-bias. People can turn anything pleasant and ritualistic into a religion: science, money, sex, you name it.

I'm comforted by the fact that I've known a number of atheists and Christians alike who did not attempt to use wacky pseudoscience to prove their beliefs. It's not really "faith" if the only thing tying you to your opinion is a shaky strand of logic.

Trickster

Chalnoth said:

Right, but none of this requires human memory. Human memory is just a tool that scientists use to keep from continually looking stuff up.

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If this were true, scientific research could be done exclusively by robots. The human element, buggy memory and otherwise, is one of creativity. Creativity requires flawed thinking and jumbling of memory. People like to complain that human beings are irrational and flawed, but if we weren't so flawed and error-prone, we could never act without perfect information. Without emotion and impulse to guide us, we'd be unable to make quick decisions and come up with new ideas from old rubbish. It's precisely our flaws that let us do all the cool stuff we can do. Our minds take risks for us, and occasionally make mistakes in the process.

Individual bias is prominent in research because researchers look "for" things, and they're more likely to notice and remember the things that meet with their expectations. For this and other reasons, individual measurements aren't scientific. But high bias (while maintaining strict ethical standards over the scientific method's application) is exactly what reasearch-1 institutions want to see that potential professors and grad students have. Why? Because bias means motivation. The motivation of biased, imperfect people making imperfect measurements is that which drives the science machine. The science machine is more error-free than the scientists who compose it. Human memory, and human error, is involved in every single step of this process.

Even without memory issues, science suffers from bias at the larger social level. I'm intimately familiar with the peer-review system. There isn't a science in existence that isn't heavily influenced by social trends. Fields like psychology are the worst (studies almost always are designed to mirror what the system already believes), but every field is affected, even math.

One recent example... It was very recently discovered that stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria, not stress or excess acid as previously thought. But this tidbit was also discovered with conclusive research over 50 years ago, and the research, though perfectly good, was repressed by the peer review system because it was an unpopular theory at the time. Some amount of belief in a theory is absolutely essential before a study will be able to squeak through the gates.

Science is a system of knowledge acquisition that demands reexamination of evidence, so eventually, things that are predictable and determinable should float to the surface. But this arises as a natural process, as a regression to the mean over time.

Trickster

My only point about human memory being fallible is that one cannot use human memory alone as evidence. Any body of evidence that relies solely upon human memory is almost certain to be false.

Chalnoth said:

My only point about human memory being fallible is that one cannot use human memory alone as evidence. Any body of evidence that relies solely upon human memory is almost certain to be false.

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Indeed. It seems as if there is a tendency here to equate flawed to useless, this is not the case.

But if a scientist wants evidence, he doesn't revert to memory. Evidence are the measurements, the detailed description etc etc. Those are not a product of memory, but a product of observation.

TricksterWolf said:

I agree that memory is flawed. Observations aren't innately empirical. To be scientific, observations need to be systematic and avoid bias.

But memory is an indispensable part of science, too. It's assumed by science to be mostly correct in the short term, at least enough that consistent measurements can be made at all. The real power of science comes from measurements that are made independently of one another, from multiple different observers. This causes the error inherent in each observer to matter less. It doesn't matter that the individual scientists and their observations are flawed if the process is correctly designed to reduce those flaws to background noise.

Memory is reconstructive rather than literal; its encoding depends on our mental state at the time we created the memory, and its retrieval depends on our mental state at the moment of recall. It also changes substantially over time, often becoming fiction in amusing ways. But experience alone is still a way of coming to know things that has substantial value. I'd trust an engineer with 10 years work experience more than one with 10 years theoretical experience, because practical experience is a fast teacher that teaches things you can't learn from scientific research alone (where scientific study takes much more time).

Trickster[/color][/font]

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What you are writing here seems to underline the position that memory is flawed according to science. Why else the need for reproduction etc, if not that bias and flawed memory are taken into account?

My only point about human memory being fallible is that one cannot use human memory alone as evidence. Any body of evidence that relies solely upon human memory is almost certain to be false.

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Try telling that to the People who say Moses wrote the first 4 books of the Bible... that requires the memory of everyone passing the Story from Adam onwards to be infalible!