Quantified Consciousness - Michio Kaku

DavidMcC · **#401** by **DavidMcC** » Apr 21, 2014 11:16 am

CharlieM wrote:
DavidMcC wrote:
CharlieM wrote:According to my perception, the moon was moving across the landscape and keeping up with the bus. By the time I had added the concept of the solar system and planetary motion to my world picture, I did not see the moon in the same way. I stopped seeing it as moving across the landscape at a similar speed to the bus. I had added to my given picture of the world. But what I had added were concepts which were already part of reality in the first place.

Likewise when I see a pencil in a glass of water, I don't see a bent pencil, I see a straight pencil the image of which has been altered by the property of the water. I have added refraction of light to my concepts.

These are not percepts, they are concepts, so you got the right word the second time. What you got wrong on both occasions, however, was to confuse perceptions with cognition.

Well I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of word definitions, but I take your point that "moon" and "landscape" are concepts.

Those weren't the relevant "concepts". The apparent motion of the moon and lanscape were the relevant concepts.

But from this example I would hope that you could see where I was coming from. Now that I already have a concept of "moon" I cannot go back and experience what it was like to have the separate percepts without having the associated concept in my mind, but I can go back as a thought experiment and imagine a time prior to my forming these concepts. What I am trying to get at is that if we want to examine human cognition and knowledge then we should start at the beginning of the process of knowledge. And I would say that it begins by receiving information through the senses before any thinking activity sets about to understand these impressions.Do you argee with that?

DavidMcC wrote: The "moving moon" and the "bent pencil" are the result of cognition based on incomplete information about the world/solar system that you perceive.

So you agree that gaining knowledge is a process of moving from a position of having inputs which are totally disconnected towards a unifying of all these unconnected sense inputs?
...

I doubt that anyone could disagree with such an anodyne statement, tbh, apart from a possible issue with "totally disconnected".
Where is this going?

DavidMcC · **#402** by **DavidMcC** » Apr 21, 2014 11:35 am

CharlieM wrote:
DavidMcC wrote:
CharlieM wrote:According to my perception, the moon was moving across the landscape and keeping up with the bus. By the time I had added the concept of the solar system and planetary motion to my world picture, I did not see the moon in the same way. I stopped seeing it as moving across the landscape at a similar speed to the bus. I had added to my given picture of the world. But what I had added were concepts which were already part of reality in the first place.

Likewise when I see a pencil in a glass of water, I don't see a bent pencil, I see a straight pencil the image of which has been altered by the property of the water. I have added refraction of light to my concepts.

These are not percepts, they are concepts, so you got the right word the second time. What you got wrong on both occasions, however, was to confuse perceptions with cognition.

Well I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of word definitions, but I take your point that "moon" and "landscape" are concepts. But from this example I would hope that you could see where I was coming from. Now that I already have a concept of "moon" I cannot go back and experience what it was like to have the separate percepts without having the associated concept in my mind, but I can go back as a thought experiment and imagine a time prior to my forming these concepts. What I am trying to get at is that if we want to examine human cognition and knowledge then we should start at the beginning of the process of knowledge. And I would say that it begins by receiving information through the senses before any thinking activity sets about to understand these impressions.Do you argee with that?

DavidMcC wrote: The "moving moon" and the "bent pencil" are the result of cognition based on incomplete information about the world/solar system that you perceive.

So you agree that gaining knowledge is a process of moving from a position of having inputs which are totally disconnected towards a unifying of all these unconnected sense inputs?

DavidMcC wrote:
Graziano wrote:There is wavelength out there, and wavelength and colour match only in a very crude way. One of the best examples is white light, we look at white light and we say, "Ah! Brightness without any colour".

I think it is more accurate to say that there is no such thing as black and white in the outside world. Our perceptioons of colour are, indeed, a crude approximation to the real world of light spectra, whereas the neutral "colours" are entirely artificlal products of the crude spectrometers we have in our heads, that represent wavelength spectra so crudely.

Look at the above "colour illusion". By your account it is an illusion built on an illusion. We see a black and white disc (seemingly its no such thing) and when it spins red and blue hues appear (Its subtle but it can be seen). Now the standart line is that the motion gives us the illusion of seeing red and blue. Goethe would disagree that its an illusion. From his idea of colour then this is exactly what we should see. Blue is the effect of looking at darkness through light and red is the effect of looking at light through darkness. Areas of the spinning disc appear as white (light) in front of black (darkness) and thus blue appears and where black overlaps white, red appears. The red sunset and the blue of the sky are examples of this effect.

Load of BS! The blue sky is simply the higher scattering cros-section for blue light by nitrogen molecules in the air. The red sunset likewise, because the scattering in this case is out and not into our eyes.

When we receive red light mixed with violet light, ie long wavelength mixed with short wavelength, why do we not experience medium wavelength, ie green?

Colour percepton is not a question of averaging, unless the colours are quite close in the spectrum, which red and violet are not. The colour, violet is itself a mixture of red and blue cone signals, IMO, because "red" cone cells actually have a small response peak in the violet. This is all but lost in the background signal in mammalian opsins. However, it is clear in avian opsins, where the response curves extend into UVA (ie, ~350nm), and a distinct second response peak is visible for "seeing red".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BirdVisualPigmentSensitivity.svg
This is why tritanopes (who lack the SW cones) see violet as a dark red.

kennyc · **#403** by **kennyc** » Apr 21, 2014 11:45 am

But David! it's the 'Experience of Shit' ummmmm.....errr.....Red'

:rofl:

SpeedOfSound · **#404** by **SpeedOfSound** » Apr 21, 2014 12:06 pm

GrahamH wrote:...I reject the fallacy of decomposition that leads to conscious thermostats, either because its the same fundamental mechanism, or that 'consciousness is feedback'. ....

No one here suggested that thermostats are conscious. You're not in Kansas anymore G.

SpeedOfSound · **#405** by **SpeedOfSound** » Apr 21, 2014 12:09 pm

GrahamH wrote:
Morgan Kelly wrote:As time goes on, Graziano is able to better explain his theory and his colleagues can better understand it. But he allows that of the doubt he's received, the majority of it cannot be assuaged — people believe in a special human magic and want to know where it comes from.

"People say, 'Great, you've explained how brains claim to have magic inside them, but you haven't explained the actual magic.' That's almost impossible to get people to see from the opposite perspective," he said. "Ninety percent of the pushback comes from that belief in magic. It's really almost like an ideological difference."
...

Sweet irony. He is talking about YOU Graham!

kennyc · **#406** by **kennyc** » Apr 21, 2014 12:11 pm

SpeedOfSound wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
Morgan Kelly wrote:As time goes on, Graziano is able to better explain his theory and his colleagues can better understand it. But he allows that of the doubt he's received, the majority of it cannot be assuaged — people believe in a special human magic and want to know where it comes from.

"People say, 'Great, you've explained how brains claim to have magic inside them, but you haven't explained the actual magic.' That's almost impossible to get people to see from the opposite perspective," he said. "Ninety percent of the pushback comes from that belief in magic. It's really almost like an ideological difference."
...

Sweet irony. He is talking about YOU Graham!

DavidMcC · **#407** by **DavidMcC** » Apr 21, 2014 12:46 pm

CharlieM wrote:...

Look at the above "colour illusion".
...

A TV or monitor screen cannot reliably illustrate Benham's disc illusion, because the screen has clashing coloured pixels in it, which can easily interact with the motion of the disc to create additional colour effects. The effect is no doubt real, because it was discovered before TV became widespread. However, it is clearly a very weak effect.

By your account it is an illusion built on an illusion.

I'm not even sure what you mean by that.

GrahamH · **#408** by **GrahamH** » Apr 21, 2014 4:18 pm

SpeedOfSound wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
Morgan Kelly wrote:As time goes on, Graziano is able to better explain his theory and his colleagues can better understand it. But he allows that of the doubt he's received, the majority of it cannot be assuaged — people believe in a special human magic and want to know where it comes from.

"People say, 'Great, you've explained how brains claim to have magic inside them, but you haven't explained the actual magic.' That's almost impossible to get people to see from the opposite perspective," he said. "Ninety percent of the pushback comes from that belief in magic. It's really almost like an ideological difference."
...

Sweet irony. He is talking about YOU Graham!

Quote me.

I'm still waiting for you to step up on the previous challenge, to justify your nonsense about thermostats, so Idon't suppose you will justify this latest crap either.

kennyc · **#409** by **kennyc** » Apr 21, 2014 4:26 pm

GrahamH wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
Morgan Kelly wrote:As time goes on, Graziano is able to better explain his theory and his colleagues can better understand it. But he allows that of the doubt he's received, the majority of it cannot be assuaged — people believe in a special human magic and want to know where it comes from.

"People say, 'Great, you've explained how brains claim to have magic inside them, but you haven't explained the actual magic.' That's almost impossible to get people to see from the opposite perspective," he said. "Ninety percent of the pushback comes from that belief in magic. It's really almost like an ideological difference."
...

Sweet irony. He is talking about YOU Graham!

Quote me.

I'm still waiting for you to step up on the previous challenge, to justify your nonsense about thermostats, so Idon't suppose you will justify this latest crap either.

The point Graham is that you have absolutely nothing, no science, no rational reasoning backing up your claims. You appear to believe in magic, just like the theists, pseudo-scientists and philosophers.

As far as the thermostat issue, it has been thoroughly explained to you, the fact that you can't grasp the analogy or refuse to accept it is simply further evidence of the irony.

zoon · **#410** by **zoon** » Apr 21, 2014 6:11 pm

kennyc wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:
GrahamH wrote:[url=http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S38/91/90C37/index.xml?section=featured]

Sweet irony. He is talking about YOU Graham!

Quote me.

I'm still waiting for you to step up on the previous challenge, to justify your nonsense about thermostats, so Idon't suppose you will justify this latest crap either.

The point Graham is that you have absolutely nothing, no science, no rational reasoning backing up your claims. You appear to believe in magic, just like the theists, pseudo-scientists and philosophers.

As far as the thermostat issue, it has been thoroughly explained to you, the fact that you can't grasp the analogy or refuse to accept it is simply further evidence of the irony.

If I understand GrahamH correctly, he agrees on almost all counts with Prof. Graziano, as I do also. Are you claiming here that GrahamH is not in agreement with Graziano, or that Graziano’s claims have no basis in science or rational reasoning?

SpeedOfSound · **#411** by **SpeedOfSound** » Apr 21, 2014 6:36 pm

zoon wrote:
kennyc wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:
Sweet irony. He is talking about YOU Graham!

Quote me.

I'm still waiting for you to step up on the previous challenge, to justify your nonsense about thermostats, so Idon't suppose you will justify this latest crap either.

The point Graham is that you have absolutely nothing, no science, no rational reasoning backing up your claims. You appear to believe in magic, just like the theists, pseudo-scientists and philosophers.

As far as the thermostat issue, it has been thoroughly explained to you, the fact that you can't grasp the analogy or refuse to accept it is simply further evidence of the irony.

If I understand GrahamH correctly, he agrees on almost all counts with Prof. Graziano, as I do also. Are you claiming here that GrahamH is not in agreement with Graziano, or that Graziano’s claims have no basis in science or rational reasoning?

What I am claiming is that the understanding what Kaku said about thermostats is the atomic first step at understanding how a brain has semantics and hence how this magic feeling of consciousness gets stuck to our intuitions.

Stringing together a bunch of words about some higher level theory is not going to cut it. Talking about 'knowing' is not going to cut it. When you want a physical description you have to find a bridge to the physics. If you can begin to understand that a thermostat has it's own semantics as a tiny little atomic slice you can get a glimpse of what needs be done to build all the way up to the massive number of very different things in what we call our conscious minds. Barring that we are all just still talking shit.

zoon · **#412** by **zoon** » Apr 21, 2014 7:16 pm

SpeedOfSound wrote:
zoon wrote:
kennyc wrote:
GrahamH wrote:

Quote me.

I'm still waiting for you to step up on the previous challenge, to justify your nonsense about thermostats, so Idon't suppose you will justify this latest crap either.

The point Graham is that you have absolutely nothing, no science, no rational reasoning backing up your claims. You appear to believe in magic, just like the theists, pseudo-scientists and philosophers.

As far as the thermostat issue, it has been thoroughly explained to you, the fact that you can't grasp the analogy or refuse to accept it is simply further evidence of the irony.

If I understand GrahamH correctly, he agrees on almost all counts with Prof. Graziano, as I do also. Are you claiming here that GrahamH is not in agreement with Graziano, or that Graziano’s claims have no basis in science or rational reasoning?

What I am claiming is that the understanding what Kaku said about thermostats is the atomic first step at understanding how a brain has semantics and hence how this magic feeling of consciousness gets stuck to our intuitions.

Stringing together a bunch of words about some higher level theory is not going to cut it. Talking about 'knowing' is not going to cut it. When you want a physical description you have to find a bridge to the physics. If you can begin to understand that a thermostat has it's own semantics as a tiny little atomic slice you can get a glimpse of what needs be done to build all the way up to the massive number of very different things in what we call our conscious minds. Barring that we are all just still talking shit.

My immediate question, without going into the merits of the case, is whether you would see your views as being close to Graziano’s? It’s not that I regard him as an infallible authority, more that I’m wondering if we are talking past each other, since I see his views as being very much the same as GrahamH’s and mine, and at one time you seemed to be in favour of them.

My own view is that humans evolved to attribute consciousness to each other, but that we easily extend that attribution of consciousness to other things, especially anything which appears to show goal-directed behaviour (which requires feedback loops). This is where thermostats come in: they show an extremely simple form of goal-directed behaviour, so we have a slight tendency to attribute consciousness to them.

zoon · **#413** by **zoon** » Apr 22, 2014 7:34 am

SpeedOfSound wrote:What I am claiming is that the understanding what Kaku said about thermostats is the atomic first step at understanding how a brain has semantics and hence how this magic feeling of consciousness gets stuck to our intuitions.

The only 100% scientifically hard evidence we have about consciousness is that humans attribute it to each other and themselves. This is Graziano’s starting point: there is no publicly observable evidence that we or anything else actually has it, there is a vast amount of evidence from every human culture studied that humans think about each other in terms of mental lives. Neural imaging studies show that this specifically social form of cognition is reliably linked to certain areas of the brain (example early paper here), and that it develops in predictable stages throughout childhood (a particularly striking example being the verbal understanding of false beliefs, which three-year-olds generally do not have and five-year-olds do).

Since the only publicly observable aspect of consciousness is not that it exists, but that it is attributed by human brains, human brains (rather than thermostats) are the primary place to look for phenomena associated with it. Graziano’s view, which GrahamH (I think) and I are arguing for, is that human brains have a slight tendency to attribute consciousness to thermostats, not that thermostats have a small amount of consciousness (which seems to be Michio Kaku’s view).

GrahamH · **#414** by **GrahamH** » Apr 22, 2014 9:09 am

SpeedOfSound wrote:What I am claiming is that the understanding what Kaku said about thermostats is the atomic first step at understanding how a brain has semantics and hence how this magic feeling of consciousness gets stuck to our intuitions.

So, do it. Take that first step and begin explaining how a brain has semantics by saying something substantive about thermostats that relates to brains. I dare you to try (in another thread).

Although 'how a brain has semantics' is a key issue, and any approach that actually explains something about it is welcome, it is beside the point w.r.t. the self model idea. For that you merely have to accept as a premise that brains generate semantics, that brains understand what is understood by humans. Given that we can move onto what a brain might understand about self and experience. The science will have to fill in any gaps. Having said that Graziano, Damassio, Kaku and others have quite a lot to say about semantics, typically starting with body maps. It's not the Hard Problem.

kennyc · **#415** by **kennyc** » Apr 22, 2014 9:23 am

SpeedOfSound wrote:
zoon wrote:
kennyc wrote:
GrahamH wrote:

Quote me.

I'm still waiting for you to step up on the previous challenge, to justify your nonsense about thermostats, so Idon't suppose you will justify this latest crap either.

The point Graham is that you have absolutely nothing, no science, no rational reasoning backing up your claims. You appear to believe in magic, just like the theists, pseudo-scientists and philosophers.

As far as the thermostat issue, it has been thoroughly explained to you, the fact that you can't grasp the analogy or refuse to accept it is simply further evidence of the irony.

If I understand GrahamH correctly, he agrees on almost all counts with Prof. Graziano, as I do also. Are you claiming here that GrahamH is not in agreement with Graziano, or that Graziano’s claims have no basis in science or rational reasoning?

What I am claiming is that the understanding what Kaku said about thermostats is the atomic first step at understanding how a brain has semantics and hence how this magic feeling of consciousness gets stuck to our intuitions.

Stringing together a bunch of words about some higher level theory is not going to cut it. Talking about 'knowing' is not going to cut it. When you want a physical description you have to find a bridge to the physics. If you can begin to understand that a thermostat has it's own semantics as a tiny little atomic slice you can get a glimpse of what needs be done to build all the way up to the massive number of very different things in what we call our conscious minds. Barring that we are all just still talking shit.

Exactly. And with that I'm outta here cause this thread has devolved into the usual bullshit and has already consumed it's own tail.

kennyc · **#416** by **kennyc** » Apr 22, 2014 9:25 am

zoon wrote:[.....
The only 100% scientifically hard evidence we have about consciousness is that humans attribute it to each other .......

Completely and absolutely the wrong place to start.

:doh:

zoon · **#417** by **zoon** » Apr 22, 2014 9:53 am

kennyc wrote:
zoon wrote:[.....
The only 100% scientifically hard evidence we have about consciousness is that humans attribute it to each other .......

Completely and absolutely the wrong place to start.

The hard, observable evidence is the wrong place to start?

:ask:

DavidMcC · **#418** by **DavidMcC** » Apr 22, 2014 10:41 am

zoon wrote:
kennyc wrote:
zoon wrote:[.....
The only 100% scientifically hard evidence we have about consciousness is that humans attribute it to each other .......

Completely and absolutely the wrong place to start.

The hard, observable evidence is the wrong place to start?

Maybe it's the "wrong place" not because it's supposedly "hard evidence", but because it is a side-issue.
IMO, the "right place" is in relating specific thoughts to specific neural activity, but in as general a way as possible.

zoon · **#419** by **zoon** » Apr 22, 2014 11:21 am

DavidMcC wrote:
zoon wrote:
kennyc wrote:
zoon wrote:[.....
The only 100% scientifically hard evidence we have about consciousness is that humans attribute it to each other .......

Completely and absolutely the wrong place to start.

The hard, observable evidence is the wrong place to start?

Maybe it's the "wrong place" not because it's supposedly "hard evidence", but because it is a side-issue.
IMO, the "right place" is in relating specific thoughts to specific neural activity, but in as general a way as possible.

It’s easy to suppose that attribution of consciousness is a side issue, but in fact it’s central. When we consider things scientifically, we start with an ancient set of brain processes which evolved to track and predict objects. When we consider other people and ourselves in relation to other people, we automatically use a different, much more recently evolved set of brain processes which track and predict complex goal-seeking objects, especially other people like ourselves. This type of prediction requires extremely complex sets of feedback loops, discussed for example in this 2013 paper. When we use the second set of processes, we attribute consciousness to the objects being tracked and predicted. These specialised social processes in the brain sidestep the whole scientific way of looking at things, which is why integrating consciousness into the scientific view of the world is still causing problems. (At any rate, this is a view of the matter which is currently gaining some ground among neuroscientists, it’s not solely an invention of philosophy.)

GrahamH · **#420** by **GrahamH** » Apr 22, 2014 11:35 am

Thanks for that paper zoon.

I think people here are really struggling to grasp that the familiar terms used here have unfamiliar contexts and that 'attributing consciousness' is NOT having a conscious thought that A is conscious or B is not.

Thoughts are a consequence of the modelling and attribution, not a magical entity doing the thinking.

Quantified Consciousness - Michio Kaku

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