SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:Kaku is, I think, on the right track with the evolutionary basis and models, and social interaction. He is in-step with Damassio there. He just doesn't take it through to a conclusion. He doesn't get to mind or address subjective experience, so he doesn't actually address the defining characteristic of consciousness. Because of that omission he ends up saying that thermostats are a little bit conscious.

subjective experience is weasel language. In any event it's a habit of language and clears nothing up in these discussions. I want to refer you to another discussion and the article linked. I think it pertinent to these damned mind talks we have.

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/philo ... l#p1977603

There is weasle language around it, but personally I have no problem whatsoever in making a distinction between my language faculties and my experiences to state that I am sure it is not merely a quirk of language that I feel tired or elated, taste salt or honey, itch or ache. That does not lead me to think that something fundamentally different is going on with the experiential bits than with language use, or regulation.

So you equate C with great complexity of the model. I can't do that because I feel many things and few of them have to do with self models. As do my furry friends the Cat and Squirrel and Thermostat.

Here's a huge question: How would you know if your feeling was a model or not?

If the self model concept is right then what you feel is what your brain models 'you' as experiencing. Evidently that does not include anything about mechanisms of mind or models. We are blind to our own brain function. It's simply foolish to dismiss the idea because your feelings are not about self models. There may be good reasons to reject the idea, but that surely is not one of them.

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

subjective experience is weasel language. In any event it's a habit of language and clears nothing up in these discussions. I want to refer you to another discussion and the article linked. I think it pertinent to these damned mind talks we have.

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/philo ... l#p1977603

There is weasle language around it, but personally I have no problem whatsoever in making a distinction between my language faculties and my experiences to state that I am sure it is not merely a quirk of language that I feel tired or elated, taste salt or honey, itch or ache. That does not lead me to think that something fundamentally different is going on with the experiential bits than with language use, or regulation.

So you equate C with great complexity of the model. I can't do that because I feel many things and few of them have to do with self models. As do my furry friends the Cat and Squirrel and Thermostat.

Here's a huge question: How would you know if your feeling was a model or not?

If the self model concept is right then what you feel is what your brain models 'you' as experiencing. Evidently that does not include anything about mechanisms of mind or models. We are blind to our own brain function. It's simply foolish to dismiss the idea because your feelings are not about self models. There may be good reasons to reject the idea, but that surely is not one of them.

Well you do have a point. I have no idea what this self model you speak of consists of. So how could I know it wasn't happening to me? Note my previous complaint was that you are replaced a word with a salad.

SpeedOfSound wrote:Well you do have a point. I have no idea what this self model you speak of consists of. So how could I know it wasn't happening to me? Note my previous complaint was that you are replaced a word with a salad.

Irrespective of what the model consists of, we are subjectively blind to the workings of our own brains, so any objection such as 'how could I know it's happening to me?' is absurd. You won't know it by introspection. I thought you knew that already.

The real hard work is in mapping the model to the neurology and subjective reports, and you have some small insight into how phenomenally difficult that must be for the professionals. It's perfectly fair to reserve judgement for want of some hard data, but the first step on that road is to grasp the concept and entertain the possibility. We aren't going to do more than that here, are we? If we could do that here I'd be well satisfied. Calling the concept 'salad' is an admission of defeat.

What did you make of Damassio's version of self model (he called it a map)? What do you make of Kaku's self model for social interaction? What do you think of Barr's Global WorkspaceTheory. These all refer to virtual data constructs that are built and interracted with by neural circuits. It's a small step to thinking of these constructs as virtual entities and the VR analogy points the way to a 'world in side your head' like a 'world inside your PC'. The brain can synthesise an internal viewpoint, and doing so enables it understand own functioning as an integrate 'self' that experiences things.

It doesn't seems such a hard concept to engage with, even though is is highly counter-intuitive to think 'I'm a virtual entity'.

I'm not sure what your block is, but try thinking it through.

If the self-model (mind-model) idea is on the right lines then 'The hard problem' is a conceptual obstacle, not a measurement problem.

Let's try to take the salad down to it's components.

First. Are you claiming that a self-model is consciousness and any other model is not?

I am having difficulty seeing how calling something a model ends up being conscious. Presumably you believe the thermostat has no model and our brains do. I'm trying to grasp what this means.

It's the ugga-bugga dontcha know!

kennyc wrote:It's the ugga-bugga dontcha know!

It's a nice intuition. As are all those other ideas he mentioned(GWS etc.) I am just having issues with getting from an intuition to the facts. It's an entailment problem.

Now I do this myself all of the time and end up with the same issues. Something sounds good and I offer an IS-ness relation to my cobbled knowledge of my own recent experience. I can start with an intuition of the thalamo-cortical loop. I then add things to sort of uncrumple or widen my intuition and eventually I end up with 'mind, body, world'. That's as far as I can go in the uncrumpling process. Unfortunately it doesn't say much at the end of the day to claim my mind is everything.

That doesn't stop me though! I think ending up in this frustrated position of mind is everything does have the effect of getting my mind to shut the fuck up about subjective experience.

That's a good thing.

SpeedOfSound wrote:Let's try to take the salad down to it's components.

First. Are you claiming that a self-model is consciousness and any other model is not?

Almost. I'm suggesting that the 'self model' is a model of mind, a model of a subject having experiences. In making such a model the brain gets a useful predictive model of its own behaviour, and that of others, and provides patterns that its internal sensory systems can respond to. It allows a brain to 'understand' a mind without being a mind. A model of a mind (it's states and the capcatity to model and respond to them) is a mind, is a subject. I'm suggesting that there may be no ontological depth to self or subjectivity, whilst having the appearance (sensed) depth of inferiority, intentionality and controlling agency. I'm suggesting that modelling system is the 'agency', the capacity to interpret, plan and act.

Just modelling some system is not modelling a mind or experience, so models and feedback are not conscious.

SpeedOfSound wrote:I am having difficulty seeing how calling something a model ends up being conscious. Presumably you believe the thermostat has no model and our brains do. I'm trying to grasp what this means.

It doesn't matter what you call it. The distinction is functional, in it's function in the context of a sensory-motor system, environment, social interaction.

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:I am having difficulty seeing how calling something a model ends up being conscious. Presumably you believe the thermostat has no model and our brains do. I'm trying to grasp what this means.

It doesn't matter what you call it. The distinction is functional, in it's function in the context of a sensory-motor system, environment, social interaction.

Like the function of a thermostat.

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:Let's try to take the salad down to it's components.

First. Are you claiming that a self-model is consciousness and any other model is not?

Almost. I'm suggesting that the 'self model' is a model of mind, a model of a subject having experiences. In making such a model the brain gets a useful predictive model of its own behaviour, and that of others, and provides patterns that its internal sensory systems can respond to. It allows a brain to 'understand' a mind without being a mind. A model of a mind (it's states and the capcatity to model and respond to them) is a mind, is a subject. I'm suggesting that there may be no ontological depth to self or subjectivity, whilst having the appearance (sensed) depth of inferiority, intentionality and controlling agency. I'm suggesting that modelling system is the 'agency', the capacity to interpret, plan and act.

Just modelling some system is not modelling a mind or experience, so models and feedback are not conscious.

Sounds fishy to me. Why would the model changing to be a self-model make me conscious and my brain not sufficient to make me conscious?

Are you sliding toward consciousness as the illusion that we are conscious?

SpeedOfSound wrote:...
Are you sliding toward consciousness as the illusion that we are conscious?

Ahem! How do you have any illusion about yourself at all without being conscious? Doesn't your above sentence imply an oxymoron?

SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:Let's try to take the salad down to it's components.

First. Are you claiming that a self-model is consciousness and any other model is not?

Almost. I'm suggesting that the 'self model' is a model of mind, a model of a subject having experiences. In making such a model the brain gets a useful predictive model of its own behaviour, and that of others, and provides patterns that its internal sensory systems can respond to. It allows a brain to 'understand' a mind without being a mind. A model of a mind (it's states and the capcatity to model and respond to them) is a mind, is a subject. I'm suggesting that there may be no ontological depth to self or subjectivity, whilst having the appearance (sensed) depth of inferiority, intentionality and controlling agency. I'm suggesting that modelling system is the 'agency', the capacity to interpret, plan and act.

Just modelling some system is not modelling a mind or experience, so models and feedback are not conscious.

Sounds fishy to me. Why would the model changing to be a self-model make me conscious and my brain not sufficient to make me conscious?

Are you sliding toward consciousness as the illusion that we are conscious?

You may have some idea what you mean 'make me conscious'. Are thinking of some sort of special sauce?

what would an illusion that we are conscious mean?

We think we are conscious, therefore we are conscious. Now, what does that cognition imply? If your brain constructs a virtual self, a model of a subject, a mind with mental experiential content, then the terms 'conscious' and mind have referents. They bot are, and are not 'illusion'. In this view the mind is a construct, some sort of fiction that is an integral part of the constructor brain. Telling the story is the causal process of mind-in-charge.

It's a strange loop sort of thing so it's slippery.

If a brain (ant system) can build the semantics of mind and identify it's own operation with that construct/model it's conscious, because it thinks it is. If a system cannot build those semantics in that context it isn't conscious, because it can't think that it is.

We don't like P-Zombies, but imagining what it would take for a P-Zombie to function I think we have to envisage aome sort of model of mind that is coherent and enables the P-Z to converse about inner states, experiences and so on. It must understand mind, even though by some definition is has no 'real mind'. The paradox being, as we have mooted before, if a P-Zombie was possible it would be conscious.

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:...
Are you sliding toward consciousness as the illusion that we are conscious?

Ahem! How do you have any illusion about yourself at all without being conscious? Doesn't your above sentence imply an oxymoron?

On the face os yes, it seems to imply that. However, ideas of mind already embrace a duality of cognition (easy problem, functional) and subjectivity (hard problem).

The concept discussed is that the cognitive brain handles the semantics, all of it, and constructs a virtual interior self/mind. This virtual space is 'observable' as it is in the cognitive brain. Virtual mental states are as integrated into brain as sensory states. The brain selects what to 'render in the virtual space' and responds to that rendering.

Imagine a computer generated virtual world in an AI robot in which the operation of the computer AI represented as avatar. Suppose that avatar is rendered with the output of a very simplified and abstracted model of the system's functions and states. Suppose it glows with green polka dots when the system is route-finding and gets fuzzy at the edges when touch sensors contact the real world. The avatar integrates diverse information about sensory systems, otor systems, forward planning, memory systems etc on an 'internal whiteboard'. The information the brain processes is distributed over the brain, but it synthesises a unified view that connects across that distributed system.

The first step is to consider whether you think brains build semantics. Is it neural processes that learn and make context? If you accept that the question to pose is:
Can a brain understand?
If you answer yes to that then ask:
Can a brain understand mind?
If yes then:
Can a brain model mind?
If yes:
Can a brain make a model of a mind and understand it to be 'I'?

What I do not like is the idea of there being some necessary higher order cognition or cognitive model for C. I think it's more of a collection sort of thing with fine gradations between thermostats and humans that allows all of the animals into the C-dome along the way.

What you are talking about is human conceptual consciousness which is of course what is often the confusing factor in these discussions. But run with it. If you think C lights like a match at some point in the building of a model I would like to know what that point is and how the match lights. For me to understand what you are saying I need a lot more information about the details of this model. Do you think squirrels have it? Are alligators p-zombies? Let's try and narrow it down to the moment that his model became sufficient.

SpeedOfSound wrote:What I do not like is the idea of there being some necessary higher order cognition or cognitive model for C. I think it's more of a collection sort of thing with fine gradations between thermostats and humans that allows all of the animals into the C-dome along the way.

.....

Yep, and that's what Michio is saying in the video. (and in his book I presume -- I'm on the waiting list at the library).

There is nothing special about humans or consciousness.

SpeedOfSound wrote:What I do not like is the idea of there being some necessary higher order cognition or cognitive model for C. I think it's more of a collection sort of thing with fine gradations between thermostats and humans that allows all of the animals into the C-dome along the way.

What you are talking about is human conceptual consciousness

No, I understand why it seems so, but that is not what I mean.

'higher level' is relative. I do mean higher level than many brain functions, But I don't mean at the level of absract conceptual thought. I mean at more basic level more akin to face perception or body motor planing. Think Damassio's body model as the basis for modelling, reheasing motion, route planning. Extent that to modelling characteristic behaviour.

SpeedOfSound wrote:... which is of course what is often the confusing factor in these discussions. But run with it. If you think C lights like a match at some point in the building of a model I would like to know what that point is and how the match lights. For me to understand what you are saying I need a lot more information about the details of this model. Do you think squirrels have it? Are alligators p-zombies? Let's try and narrow it down to the moment that his model became sufficient.

Drawing fine lines is impossible. I certainly don't think consciousness is unique to humans. It seems to that something like a brain is necessary to connect context and build semantics (meaningful relations, not language).

Any animal with complex social interactions (grooming, retribution, gifting) probably has it.
I wouldn't rule out plants or colonies of ants having some, but forward planning seems to be important, ant evidence for that is, AFAIK, lacking.

Does thermostat 'cognition' allow for mind modelling? Can a thermostat understand itself as a subject having experiences? If so then I'd call it conscious.

GrahamH wrote:....

Does thermostat 'cognition' allow for mind modelling? Can a thermostat understand itself as a subject having experiences? If so then I'd call it conscious.

and this is where you misunderstand the analogy. You first have to understand what a feedback loop/system is and then you have to recognize that that is exactly the function of consciousness, in the same manner as a thermostat is in its system.

It has nothing to do with what you think of as subjective experience, but certainly a thermostat is aware of and senses the environment and makes conscious decisions based on that experience/awareness/sensation. So yes it does 'model' its environment its 'mind' even as simple as it is.

... Of course, in the dream state of consciousness, you are under the illusion that you are fully conscious (ie, awake), but that only applies to the dream state.

Like kenny says. Throwing out the phrase 'self-model' is not helping us. What is a self-model and why is it necessary to have the self prefix? If I were hooked up to the Mars rover instead of my body I wouldn't be conscious? I suspect you think I would be conscious so we can lose the self part.

Next think about what that hookup means and how a model is the sum of many such hookups. Then you get down to the thermostat reduction.