SpeedOfSound wrote:Pertinent to the discussion:
http://brainsciencepodcast.com/bsp/108- ... 0-80062477

Fuck yes. That's what I'm on about.

My problem with Graham and the self-model is this.

Someone says that A is C
someone else says that B is C
and on and on A...Z is C

I usually agree with ALL of the claims. I can agree with David and Graham and Zoon and still agree that the thing the thermostat is doing is also C.

I'm kind of a slut that way.

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:Pertinent to the discussion:
http://brainsciencepodcast.com/bsp/108- ... 0-80062477

Fuck yes. That's what I'm on about.

I know. And you are right. But so is Michio Kaku. And Damasio. And Baars and Dennett and...

SpeedOfSound wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:
What do you mean by "no conscious bit"? You can't possibly think that the entire brain deals with anything of which we are conscious. That would be absurd, and is refuted by neuroscience.

Tell me where that is refuted by neuroscience.

Look up any work on the effects of removal of the cerebellum - it does not affect consciousness. Therefore, the rest of the brain is the "conscious bit", if that phrase means anything. This excercise can be repeated with various other local parts of the brain. The conscious bit (if the phrase means anything) is the part containing the T-PFC-T loops, which is not the entire brain, and is therefore arguably "the conscious bit". Other brain areas contribute to the richness of C, but that is a different matter.
The problem with the phrase is that somone like you is going to interpret it as a cell somewhere, as you did a couple of years back, after assuming (incorrectly) that I was claiming such a small "bit" "did consciousness".

going to interpret it as a cell somewhere, as you did a couple of years back,

No. I never did that.

Okay. So I can remove a neuron and I am still conscious. I can remove a lot of things and still be conscious. Now if I remove a chunk of the ILN I am not. But if I remove one neuron from the ILN I am. If I remove my heart I am not.

Silly point-, because heart removal only INDIRECTLY causes loss of consciousness. A sensible person would only consider removal of neural srtructures.

None of this logically implies that the parts removed have no contribution to C.

Exactly. That was my point - various parts of the brain play a role in C, but few are essential to other than one small aspect of it. Taking out the entire VC only makes you blind, you don't lose consciousness, except of light!

First off, C is never of the same quality from one moment to the next. It is absolutely unique across time and individuals and species and things
...

Details, details... see above

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Tell me where that is refuted by neuroscience.

Look up any work on the effects of removal of the cerebellum - it does not affect consciousness. Therefore, the rest of the brain is the "conscious bit", if that phrase means anything. This excercise can be repeated with various other local parts of the brain. The conscious bit (if the phrase means anything) is the part containing the T-PFC-T loops, which is not the entire brain, and is therefore arguably "the conscious bit". Other brain areas contribute to the richness of C, but that is a different matter.
The problem with the phrase is that somone like you is going to interpret it as a cell somewhere, as you did a couple of years back, after assuming (incorrectly) that I was claiming such a small "bit" "did consciousness".

going to interpret it as a cell somewhere, as you did a couple of years back,

No. I never did that.

Okay. So I can remove a neuron and I am still conscious. I can remove a lot of things and still be conscious. Now if I remove a chunk of the ILN I am not. But if I remove one neuron from the ILN I am. If I remove my heart I am not.

Silly point-, because heart removal only INDIRECTLY causes loss of consciousness. A sensible person would only consider removal of neural srtructures.

None of this logically implies that the parts removed have no contribution to C.

Exactly. That was my point - various parts of the brain play a role in C, but few are essential to other than one small aspect of it. Taking out the entire VC only makes you blind, you don't lose consciousness, except of light!

First off, C is never of the same quality from one moment to the next. It is absolutely unique across time and individuals and species and things
...

Details, details... see above

It's in the details. That is MY point. All of them. If you take out the entire VC your consciousness will never be the same again. If you take out the heart it will simply be gone. Your reliance on taking things out and recording whether or not we are still conscious as a means of erecting a C-IS equation is of no use.

What you need do instead is to characterize two successive moment in C and then ask yourself if they would be identical if you removed this or that. If you remove one little area of the retina what would happen? would C1 be the same as C2?

SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:Pertinent to the discussion:
http://brainsciencepodcast.com/bsp/108- ... 0-80062477

Fuck yes. That's what I'm on about.

I know. And you are right. But so is Michio Kaku. And Damasio. And Baars and Dennett and...

That's OK, they aren't exactly contradictory on the core ideas. It's just that some go further than others.
Graziano takes it through to a conclusion. Baars and Damasio are coming at the same thing from different directions, the the information content - the sematics in the model (Baars) or the physical calculation systems how brains make model (Damasio)
Dennett is looking at the same thing in a more abstract sense.
Kaku doesn't go far enough and slips into some sort of pansychism.

Graziano makes the point that modelling mind makes us very susceptible to attributing consciousness everywhere. It's understandable that people might label thermostats as conscious.

I thoroughly recommend listening to Graziano's podcast. Hopefully his version will be easier to grasp that my efforts so far. He is saying exactly what I've been trying to explain.

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:Pertinent to the discussion:
http://brainsciencepodcast.com/bsp/108- ... 0-80062477

Fuck yes. That's what I'm on about.

I know. And you are right. But so is Michio Kaku. And Damasio. And Baars and Dennett and...

That's OK, they aren't exactly contradictory on the core ideas. It's just that some go further than others.
Graziano takes it through to a conclusion. Baars and Damasio are coming at the same thing from different directions, the the information content - the sematics in the model (Baars) or the physical calculation systems how brains make model (Damasio)
Dennett is looking at the same thing in a more abstract sense.
Kaku doesn't go far enough and slips into some sort of pansychism.

Graziano makes the point that modelling mind makes us very susceptible to attributing consciousness everywhere. It's understandable that people might label thermostats as conscious.

I thoroughly recommend listening to Graziano's podcast. Hopefully his version will be easier to grasp that my efforts so far. He is saying exactly what I've been trying to explain.

Kaku is not doing the panpsych thing you think he is. Nor am I. I think it's important to reread my exchange with David and the follow on posts to clear your head of this notion. C1 is not the same as C2. Something as tiny as what the thermostat does will make that difference. Hence you cannot attribute C to one thing or the other but only the whole. You have a billion little thermostats doing a bit each and the total is C. From that place you can start to address your questions about semantic content.

Now in the podcast he is talking again about a particular bit of cognition as are you. I protest this. Being aware that i am aware is not all there is to C. It's just further layers of cognitive complexity and it is the layers that keep us the most confused in these discussions.

As I said yesterday I am conscious even when I am completely focused on a distant star and not having a thought or model at all about myself as a conscious being.

http://brainsciencepodcast.com/bsp/108- ... 0-80062477

And so, these are the kinds of questions we’re asking: What is the circuitry that’s
computing this self-attribution? What is the circuitry that’s allowing a brain to
conclude that it is aware of something? What happens when that circuitry is
damaged? Do other animals have that circuitry? What is its evolutionary
path? These are all the questions that we’re trying to address in this way that
puts it into the testable domain.

To me this is a further abstraction about consciousness. I think if you peeled away that layer you would still have 'something it is like'. I don't think children born with no cortex are p-zombies.

I disagree with THIS:

Dr. Campbell: ... We know that most of what our
brain does never reaches our awareness.


SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

Fuck yes. That's what I'm on about.

I know. And you are right. But so is Michio Kaku. And Damasio. And Baars and Dennett and...

That's OK, they aren't exactly contradictory on the core ideas. It's just that some go further than others.
Graziano takes it through to a conclusion. Baars and Damasio are coming at the same thing from different directions, the the information content - the sematics in the model (Baars) or the physical calculation systems how brains make model (Damasio)
Dennett is looking at the same thing in a more abstract sense.
Kaku doesn't go far enough and slips into some sort of pansychism.

Graziano makes the point that modelling mind makes us very susceptible to attributing consciousness everywhere. It's understandable that people might label thermostats as conscious.

I thoroughly recommend listening to Graziano's podcast. Hopefully his version will be easier to grasp that my efforts so far. He is saying exactly what I've been trying to explain.

Kaku is not doing the panpsych thing you think he is. Nor am I.

Kaku thinks 'feeback' is 'one unit of C'.
Fallacy of decomposition!

Listen to Graziano again. According to the self-model, 'feedback' is not conscious.
Keep listening to him untill you understand why C = self model means feedback <> C.

SpeedOfSound wrote:I think it's important to reread my exchange with David and the follow on posts to clear your head of this notion. C1 is not the same as C2. Something as tiny as what the thermostat does will make that difference. Hence you cannot attribute C to one thing or the other but only the whole. You have a billion little thermostats doing a bit each and the total is C. From that place you can start to address your questions about semantic content.

Yep, fallacy of decomposition.

Remember when you argued "It's all information!", well the concept here is that YOU are 'all information'.

SpeedOfSound wrote:Now in the podcast he is talking again about a particular bit of cognition as are you. I protest this. Being aware that i am aware is not all there is to C. It's just further layers of cognitive complexity and it is the layers that keep us the most confused in these discussions.

You keep thinking of the model as some high level conceptual model. Throw that out. Listen to what Graziano is saying about body movement, body shemas. That isn't conceptual or abstract. The 'self model' is like that.

SpeedOfSound wrote:As I said yesterday I am conscious even when I am completely focused on a distant star and not having a thought or model at all about myself as a conscious being.

Thoughts are experiences, content in the model. The model is not anything to be experienced. You (subject, self, are the model. When you experience the star your brain is mapping the star perception in the model. That is your experience of seeing the star.

Conceptual stuff gets integrated into the model, along with senses, emotions, anything experiential. What is modelled is experience, it is your brain interpreting a self/subject having experiences.

I think we can have a continuum of evolving consciousness, from mapping sensor events onto the body map, to social interaction and the emergence of mental states, to basic language, highly abstract thought, long-range forward planing and symbolic manipulation.

SpeedOfSound wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:
Look up any work on the effects of removal of the cerebellum - it does not affect consciousness. Therefore, the rest of the brain is the "conscious bit", if that phrase means anything. This excercise can be repeated with various other local parts of the brain. The conscious bit (if the phrase means anything) is the part containing the T-PFC-T loops, which is not the entire brain, and is therefore arguably "the conscious bit". Other brain areas contribute to the richness of C, but that is a different matter.
The problem with the phrase is that somone like you is going to interpret it as a cell somewhere, as you did a couple of years back, after assuming (incorrectly) that I was claiming such a small "bit" "did consciousness".

going to interpret it as a cell somewhere, as you did a couple of years back,

No. I never did that.

Okay. So I can remove a neuron and I am still conscious. I can remove a lot of things and still be conscious. Now if I remove a chunk of the ILN I am not. But if I remove one neuron from the ILN I am. If I remove my heart I am not.

Silly point-, because heart removal only INDIRECTLY causes loss of consciousness. A sensible person would only consider removal of neural srtructures.

None of this logically implies that the parts removed have no contribution to C.

Exactly. That was my point - various parts of the brain play a role in C, but few are essential to other than one small aspect of it. Taking out the entire VC only makes you blind, you don't lose consciousness, except of light!

First off, C is never of the same quality from one moment to the next. It is absolutely unique across time and individuals and species and things
...

Details, details... see above

It's in the details. That is MY point. All of them. If you take out the entire VC your consciousness will never be the same again. If you take out the heart it will simply be gone. Your reliance on taking things out and recording whether or not we are still conscious as a means of erecting a C-IS equation is of no use.

What you need do instead is to characterize two successive moment in C and then ask yourself if they would be identical if you removed this or that...

That seems to be the nub of why we disagree. You don't seem to be able to distinguish between an NCC and the NCCe. I am saying that the thalamus is an essential part of the NCCe, whereas you emphasise the sensitivity of the details to all kinds of regions (true, but not relevant to the NCCe).

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:



No. I never did that.

Okay. So I can remove a neuron and I am still conscious. I can remove a lot of things and still be conscious. Now if I remove a chunk of the ILN I am not. But if I remove one neuron from the ILN I am. If I remove my heart I am not.

Silly point-, because heart removal only INDIRECTLY causes loss of consciousness. A sensible person would only consider removal of neural srtructures.

None of this logically implies that the parts removed have no contribution to C.

Exactly. That was my point - various parts of the brain play a role in C, but few are essential to other than one small aspect of it. Taking out the entire VC only makes you blind, you don't lose consciousness, except of light!

First off, C is never of the same quality from one moment to the next. It is absolutely unique across time and individuals and species and things
...

Details, details... see above

It's in the details. That is MY point. All of them. If you take out the entire VC your consciousness will never be the same again. If you take out the heart it will simply be gone. Your reliance on taking things out and recording whether or not we are still conscious as a means of erecting a C-IS equation is of no use.

What you need do instead is to characterize two successive moment in C and then ask yourself if they would be identical if you removed this or that...

That seems to be the nub of why we disagree. You don't seem to be able to distinguish between an NCC and the NCCe. I am saying that the thalamus is an essential part of the NCCe, whereas you emphasise the sensitivity of the details to all kinds of regions (true, but not relevant to the NCCe).

I can't remember how your terminology works here but my idea is that one of these things is incoherent. C is the total of all things in the local environment. There is no one mechanism that has an IS relationship with it. This is the root of all confusion over the brain and how we feel about our brains.

There is no specific NCC.

SpeedOfSound wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:
Silly point-, because heart removal only INDIRECTLY causes loss of consciousness. A sensible person would only consider removal of neural srtructures.

Exactly. That was my point - various parts of the brain play a role in C, but few are essential to other than one small aspect of it. Taking out the entire VC only makes you blind, you don't lose consciousness, except of light!

Details, details... see above

It's in the details. That is MY point. All of them. If you take out the entire VC your consciousness will never be the same again. If you take out the heart it will simply be gone. Your reliance on taking things out and recording whether or not we are still conscious as a means of erecting a C-IS equation is of no use.

What you need do instead is to characterize two successive moment in C and then ask yourself if they would be identical if you removed this or that...

That seems to be the nub of why we disagree. You don't seem to be able to distinguish between an NCC and the NCCe. I am saying that the thalamus is an essential part of the NCCe, whereas you emphasise the sensitivity of the details to all kinds of regions (true, but not relevant to the NCCe).

I can't remember how your terminology works here but my idea is that one of these things is incoherent. C is the total of all things in the local environment. There is no one mechanism that has an IS relationship with it. This is the root of all confusion over the brain and how we feel about our brains.

There is no specific NCC.

A. My teriminology is borrowed from Koch and Crick, specifically the book, "The Quest for C."
B. I suspect that pretty much all C mechanisms depend on the T-C loops, directly or indirectly.
C. There IS a specific neural circuit for a specific NCC (which is to say a specific percept, with its associated qualia). According to Koch, the qualia bring in further circuits, in connection with the feelings we associate with a percept.

GrahamH wrote:.....

Kaku thinks 'feeback' is 'one unit of C'.
Fallacy of decomposition!
.....

Nope. He says consciousness is about feedback, a feedback mechanism, vast and multiple feedback. A thermostat IS a feedback mechanism and its 'one unit of consciousness' is the temperature. (NOT feedback)

BTW is feeback what you get when you use your credit card.

jamest wrote:I haven't read Damasio, but what you're describing sounds exactly like Dennett's Multiple Drafts model with the 'fame in the brain' metaphor used to address encounters with lions and suchlike. There are many problems with this model, and Kenny won't appreciate me discussing them in one of his threads (I'm not sure that Kenny is interested in discussing anything he doesn't already believe, to be honest). Anyway, if you have 5 minutes just have a look at this overview of Dennett's model and tell me if it's similar to Damasio's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_drafts_model

For those interested:

* Schneider, Susan. "Daniel Dennett on the Nature of Consciousness." In The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, edited by Max Velmans and Susan Schneider, 313-324. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.

SpeedOfSound wrote:http://brainsciencepodcast.com/bsp/108-graziano?utm_source=All+Newsletters&utm_campaign=9ca2f2e160-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_92424be05a-9ca2f2e160-80062477

And so, these are the kinds of questions we’re asking: What is the circuitry that’s
computing this self-attribution? What is the circuitry that’s allowing a brain to
conclude that it is aware of something? What happens when that circuitry is
damaged? Do other animals have that circuitry? What is its evolutionary
path? These are all the questions that we’re trying to address in this way that
puts it into the testable domain.

To me this is a further abstraction about consciousness. I think if you peeled away that layer you would still have 'something it is like'. I don't think children born with no cortex are p-zombies.

...

Do you really mean "No cortex"?? Surely, if you are missing ALL cortical regions, you will be a zombie of sorts - one that would need a lot of care by someone!

Well that former neuroscientist above claims consciousness is in the brain stem.

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:
I know. And you are right. But so is Michio Kaku. And Damasio. And Baars and Dennett and...

That's OK, they aren't exactly contradictory on the core ideas. It's just that some go further than others.
Graziano takes it through to a conclusion. Baars and Damasio are coming at the same thing from different directions, the the information content - the sematics in the model (Baars) or the physical calculation systems how brains make model (Damasio)
Dennett is looking at the same thing in a more abstract sense.
Kaku doesn't go far enough and slips into some sort of pansychism.

Graziano makes the point that modelling mind makes us very susceptible to attributing consciousness everywhere. It's understandable that people might label thermostats as conscious.

I thoroughly recommend listening to Graziano's podcast. Hopefully his version will be easier to grasp that my efforts so far. He is saying exactly what I've been trying to explain.

Kaku is not doing the panpsych thing you think he is. Nor am I.

Kaku thinks 'feeback' is 'one unit of C'.
Fallacy of decomposition!

Listen to Graziano again. According to the self-model, 'feedback' is not conscious.
Keep listening to him untill you understand why C = self model means feedback <> C.

SpeedOfSound wrote:I think it's important to reread my exchange with David and the follow on posts to clear your head of this notion. C1 is not the same as C2. Something as tiny as what the thermostat does will make that difference. Hence you cannot attribute C to one thing or the other but only the whole. You have a billion little thermostats doing a bit each and the total is C. From that place you can start to address your questions about semantic content.

Yep, fallacy of decomposition.
...

Fun thing to say that Fallacy of Composition. But no. Let's look at the facts later with the hope that we can start to communicate again.

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:
It's in the details. That is MY point. All of them. If you take out the entire VC your consciousness will never be the same again. If you take out the heart it will simply be gone. Your reliance on taking things out and recording whether or not we are still conscious as a means of erecting a C-IS equation is of no use.

What you need do instead is to characterize two successive moment in C and then ask yourself if they would be identical if you removed this or that...

That seems to be the nub of why we disagree. You don't seem to be able to distinguish between an NCC and the NCCe. I am saying that the thalamus is an essential part of the NCCe, whereas you emphasise the sensitivity of the details to all kinds of regions (true, but not relevant to the NCCe).

I can't remember how your terminology works here but my idea is that one of these things is incoherent. C is the total of all things in the local environment. There is no one mechanism that has an IS relationship with it. This is the root of all confusion over the brain and how we feel about our brains.

There is no specific NCC.

A. My teriminology is borrowed from Koch and Crick, specifically the book, "The Quest for C."
B. I suspect that pretty much all C mechanisms depend on the T-C loops, directly or indirectly.
C. There IS a specific neural circuit for a specific NCC (which is to say a specific percept, with its associated qualia). According to Koch, the qualia bring in further circuits, in connection with the feelings we associate with a percept.

I read about a fourth of that book and my impression as that Koch has left behind the idea of C as a TC or gamma oscillation being the NCC. He's still hopelessly addicted tot he NCC though.

Not sure what you mean by addicted to the NCC, but if I understand what he and/or others are getting at with NCC I'm thinking it is equivalent to what I term the 'process' of consciousness which is really just a pattern of neural activity that is the 'seat' of consciousness though it is likely distributed throughout the brain rather then being some particular area or region, though certainly it does rely heavily on certain other regions which is what the neruologists and cognitive scientists are beginning to see as crucial to consciousness.

kennyc wrote:Not sure what you mean by addicted to the NCC, but if I understand what he and/or others are getting at with NCC I'm thinking it is equivalent to what I term the 'process' of consciousness which is really just a pattern of neural activity that is the 'seat' of consciousness though it is likely distributed throughout the brain rather then being some particular area or region, though certainly it does rely heavily on certain other regions which is what the neruologists and cognitive scientists are beginning to see as crucial to consciousness.

All assuming of course that consciousness is some singular container with contents of consciousness. No evidence for any of that. That's my issue.