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 GoreTuzk
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 What is more fundamental? 
#16078767 - 04/12/12 04:46 AM (12 years, 7 days ago) |
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I'm talking about something many people have probably heard about, the so-called "hard problem of consciousness". If you haven't, it goes something like this: how can something as immaterial as consciousness ever arise from something as unconscious as matter? In other words how do you explain the fact that you actually feel and undergo experiences, why isn't just everything running in the dark? This is an anomaly in our current paradigm for two reasons, the fact that you are conscious can't be doubted and can't be explained.
Most people believe that there was the big bang or whatever that originated all matter, and somehow in the last billion years something magical happened, a point was reached (be it single cells, nervous systems, etc., make your pick) that now allowed the capacity for experience. This stems from a view of the world that says that the real world is the material world, space, time and matter are primary. What I'm suggesting is that consciousness is primary, and space, time and matter are just mental models used by organisms to navigate their own self-generated virtual realities.
Here's the excerpted version of an illustrative talk on this subject:
"Peter Russell explores the problems science has explaining consciousness and proposes that consciousness is not created by the brain, but is inherent in all beings. He shows why mind is more fundamental than matter, and that the key to this shift is the revolution in our understanding of light."
Any thoughts?
And before anyone misinterprets what I'm saying, I do believe the brain and consciousness are related; if you mess with a person's brain you're producing effects in that person's consciousness, but the issue here is whether consciousness originates in the brain or is a fundamental and inherent quality of existence (or any other theory you may have).
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blingbling
what you chicken stew?
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: GoreTuzk]
#16078781 - 04/12/12 04:59 AM (12 years, 7 days ago) |
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your description of materialism is very skewed. the fact is: both idealism and materialism have some compelling arguments. imo we should not throw one away for another. it is possible to have two answers to one question. imo the people who lean towards idealism have a particular bent or sensibility that makes them believe in it and the same goes for materialism. really, this argument between materialism and idealism is stupid and unnecessary for the study of consciousness. it's mostly only engaged in to test wits between philosophers. this argument will probably never be settled.
"an argument between philosophers should be taken as seriously as a philosophical argument between two brick layers." - Nietzsche
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Kupo said:
let's fuel the robots with psilocybin.
cez said:
everyone should smoke dmt for religion.
dustinthewind13 said:
euthanasia and prostitution should be legal and located in the same building.
White Beard said:
if you see the buddha on the road, rape him, then kill him. then rape him again.
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GoreTuzk
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: blingbling]
#16078847 - 04/12/12 05:36 AM (12 years, 7 days ago) |
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I'm sorry if my description was skewed, it wasn't my intention, I'd better post here a more official definition to get that problem out of the picture.
Quote:
WikiPedia said:
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter or energy; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance, and reality is identical with the actually occurring states of energy and matter.
To many philosophers, 'materialism' is synonymous with 'physicalism'. However, materialists have historically held that everything is made of matter, but physics has shown that gravity, for example, is not made of matter in the traditional sense of "'an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist'… So it is tempting to use 'physicalism' to distance oneself from what seems a historically important but no longer scientifically relevant thesis of materialism, and related to this, to emphasize a connection to physics and the physical sciences."[1] Therefore much of the generally philosophical discussion below on materialism may be relevant to physicalism.
How can both theories coexist? One says that matter is fundamental and consciousness is a result of material interactions alone; the other one says that subjectivity is fundamental and that matter is just a construct of the way the brain works and not something that exists, as it were, "out there" in a hypothetical "exterior world".
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blingbling
what you chicken stew?
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: GoreTuzk]
#16078866 - 04/12/12 05:52 AM (12 years, 7 days ago) |
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How can both theories coexist?
they coexist because there is no easy resolution. people with a particular slant towards one or another position are simply choosing which came first, matter or consciousness, the chicken or the egg. these kind of arguments get know where and are mostly used simply to engage in debate. personally i lean towards a materialist stance but through many hours of debate at the shroomery i've found idealism to have some persuasive arguments although imo most of them are simply a retreat from the facts. the worst arguments are found in a kind of perverted materialism many idealists eventually fall back on ie. consciousness is a energy field like gravity or radiation.
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Kupo said:
let's fuel the robots with psilocybin.
cez said:
everyone should smoke dmt for religion.
dustinthewind13 said:
euthanasia and prostitution should be legal and located in the same building.
White Beard said:
if you see the buddha on the road, rape him, then kill him. then rape him again.
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Freedom
Pigment of your imagination
 
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: blingbling]
#16079070 - 04/12/12 07:48 AM (12 years, 7 days ago) |
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Nothing explains the primary origination of anything- consciousness or matter or energy or the laws of physics. There is nothing that explains how consciousness can interact with matter.
Theories of one arising out of another are wild guesses, I see no evidence supporting either one. Its equally likely that there is a third thing we don't know about that produces both matter and consciousness, as this would also account for the observed correlations.
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 Diploid
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Freedom]
#16079335 - 04/12/12 09:26 AM (12 years, 7 days ago) |
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Theories of one arising out of another are wild guesses, I see no evidence supporting either one.
This is true, but we can still draw parallels from other examples in nature of unlikely things arising out of another through the phenomenon of emergance.
Given the well known examples of emergence described in that link and the countless other examples all throughout nature, it's stands to reason that emergence gives consciousness rise out of matter.
In any case, neurological science is making great advances, and I believe we will have a full, coherent description of how consciousness emerges from matter within the next few decades.
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Republican Values:
1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.
4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
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saintphotios
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Freedom] 1
#16079393 - 04/12/12 09:43 AM (12 years, 7 days ago) |
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I don't think we do the hard problem of consciousness any justice by attempting to explain it in a materialist framework.
Daniel Dennett tries to drive around the hard problem of consciousness by simply ignoring it. If you think this is an unfair treatment of Dennett, read his work on consciousness. That's exactly what he does. Chalmers and company don't find this very compelling. And I think anyone that truly understands the hard problem of consciousness sees that Dennett is really missing the point.
The idea that consciousness is primary, if that's to imply panpsychism subscribed to by Chalmers and Nagel, I don't find very helpful. That just pushes the problem back and calls primary what we can't explain. According to that framework, Dennett and Chalmers "solve" the hard problem of consciousness in the very same way -- the only difference being Chalmers accepts it and Dennett doesn't.
Ultimately, I think we're stuck having to accept that consciousness cannot be explained using scientific methods. We've had this discussion in other threads and almost everyone disagrees with me on this. But imagine trying to verify scientifically that our sense perceptions accurately reflect the world. How would we scientifically verify this? By using the very sense perceptions we're attempting verify. So we're caught in this circular trap of assuming the very thing we're attempting to prove. Consciousness, I think, works the same way. Even when we succeed in explain the soft problem of consciousness and how the physical brain results in all of the various mechanisms of consciousness, we're still no closer to solving why those mechanisms are accompanied by what we experience as subjective awareness -- qualia. This is why Dennett dismisses qualia altogether.
Quote:
Given the well known examples of emergence described in that link and the countless other examples all throughout nature, it's stands to reason that emergence gives consciousness rise out of matter.
Granted consciousness is a case of strong emergence, I don't think that brings us any closer to explaining it. Even if we were to speak only of the various mechanisms of consciousness, we could still only refer to those properties as strongly emergent. We could talk about all of those things without any account of the awareness that accompanies them. Emergence doesn't explain consciousness, it's simply further admission of our inability to explain it. We're just saying -- we've got this brain tissue, and somehow it produces consciousness. There's no more explanatory value in it than if we were to simply say we have no idea what consciousness is.
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soldatheero
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Quote:
Nothing explains the primary origination of anything- consciousness or matter or energy or the laws of physics. There is nothing that explains how consciousness can interact with matter.
Ultimately Idealism doesn't really have to explain how consciousness interacts with matter because if idealism is correct then matter does not actually exist. Instead matter is reducible to perception, as in there is no real matter, just perception.
(All reductionism really is is eliminating our own misconceptions of what we think exists down to one thing that is real.)
Now in materialism it is the reverse and posits that all that really exists is physicality and consciousness or perception must be reducible to matter. Now that is why Dennett would claim consciousness/perception to be an illusion because really to say consciousness is reducible to matter is the same as saying consciousness is really just matter.
So here is the fatal flaw in materialism - It is not logical to conclude perception to be an illusion when our own perception is all we direct access to, the only thing that cannot be denied, it is all we really have.
In fact that is why matter was theorized in the first place, as a means for explaining our perceptions. It has failed to do so and now our theory of matter has come full circle, the existence of perception is being denied due to it's incompatibility with matter. Problem is perception is a reality and matter is only a theory yet they deny the existence of reality (experience) in the name of reason.
It is a trick of the intellect veiled by maya.
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..and may the zelda theme song be with you at all times, amen.
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GoreTuzk
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: soldatheero]
#16081313 - 04/12/12 05:09 PM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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Quote:
soldatheero said:
Quote:
Nothing explains the primary origination of anything- consciousness or matter or energy or the laws of physics. There is nothing that explains how consciousness can interact with matter.
Ultimately Idealism doesn't really have to explain how consciousness interacts with matter because if idealism is correct then matter does not actually exist. Instead matter is reducible to perception, as in there is no real matter, just perception.
(All reductionism really is is eliminating our own misconceptions of what we think exists down to one thing that is real.)
Now in materialism it is the reverse and posits that all that really exists is physicality and consciousness or perception must be reducible to matter. Now that is why Dennett would claim consciousness/perception to be an illusion because really to say consciousness is reducible to matter is the same as saying consciousness is really just matter.
So here is the fatal flaw in materialism - It is not logical to conclude perception to be an illusion when our own perception is all we direct access to, the only thing that cannot be denied, it is all we really have.
In fact that is why matter was theorized in the first place, as a means for explaining our perceptions. It has failed to do so and now our theory of matter has come full circle, the existence of perception is being denied due to it's incompatibility with matter. Problem is perception is a reality and matter is only a theory yet they deny the existence of reality (experience) in the name of reason.
It is a trick of the intellect veiled by maya.
Exactly.
Edited by GoreTuzk (04/12/12 05:11 PM)
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blingbling
what you chicken stew?
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: soldatheero]
#16081758 - 04/12/12 06:54 PM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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you've made some compelling points but idealism if taken literally ends in solipsism. are you willing to admit that the entire universe may simply be a dream you are having and that no one else really exists? solipsism seems delusional to me and again, this is the logical conclusion if idealism is to be taken seriously.
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Kupo said:
let's fuel the robots with psilocybin.
cez said:
everyone should smoke dmt for religion.
dustinthewind13 said:
euthanasia and prostitution should be legal and located in the same building.
White Beard said:
if you see the buddha on the road, rape him, then kill him. then rape him again.
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HagbardCeline
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: blingbling]
#16082038 - 04/12/12 08:13 PM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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Quote:
blingbling said:
you've made some compelling points but idealism if taken literally ends in solipsism. are you willing to admit that the entire universe may simply be a dream you are having and that no one else really exists? solipsism seems delusional to me and again, this is the logical conclusion if idealism is to be taken seriously.
There are ways to resolve that.
What if instead it was the output of an unimaginably complex computer? What if was simply an infinitely capable piece of hardware with operating conditions that continually cycled until it gradually self-organized and developed conscious recognition of itself. Eventually it got bored because it's entire existence consisted of nothing more than seemingly infinite self-awareness. It's only experience was it's own emptiness. In longing for something more than it was it began to contemplate on the only thing it could at that point imagine. If it was experiencing itself as a dark infinite void then light could have been its first creation. Everything we have today is the result of the interactions and experiments resulting from it becoming aware of itself.
I am not claiming this is true, but it is a way that you could attempt to understand our observations. If the computer was never aware of anything outside of its own internal existence, then it would regard itself as coming from nothing and every something from it is still nothing. All those somethings would regard themselves as real. Which could be both true and false without contradiction.
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I keep it real because I think it is important that a highly esteemed individual such as myself keep it real lest they experience the dreaded spontaneous non-existance of no longer keeping it real. - Hagbard Celine
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Desert Elf
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: GoreTuzk]
#16083441 - 04/13/12 03:54 AM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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You are how the universe feels about a singular, although somewhat blurred, perspective.
I agree mostly with what Chalmers has put forward. The problem is that we have to take leaps, not steps, in order to comprehend consciousness.
It takes leaps to comprehend gravity, although we seem readily able to make those leaps. Every child must have wondered why people people aren't upside down in Australia!!!
When we talk about emergence I think we are missing the mark a bit. As if consciousness is a system requiring parts which remain intangible.
But I would hint towards consciousness as more of an inherent quality rather than a functioning system.
When I think about emergence and physical mechanisms... it is only in regards to human consciousness. That is, the extra bag of goodies, the cognition, the sense of identity and a central ongoing 'self'
We should focus more on explaining these systems, rather than consciousness as something which requires these systems. It is like trying to explain gravity as planet formation, orbits, trajectories, as if these things were gravity itself. No, we accept gravity as an intangible quality of matter. We can then observe what effect it has on matter.
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Om Bhur Bhuvah Svaha
Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi
Dhiyo Yo Nah Prachodayat
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blingbling
what you chicken stew?
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imo your explanation is even more messy than solipsism. personally i would go with a much simpler explanation ie. consciousness is a product of the structure of matter, but that's just my take on a subject that we will probably never get a straight answer out of.
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Kupo said:
let's fuel the robots with psilocybin.
cez said:
everyone should smoke dmt for religion.
dustinthewind13 said:
euthanasia and prostitution should be legal and located in the same building.
White Beard said:
if you see the buddha on the road, rape him, then kill him. then rape him again.
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blingbling
what you chicken stew?
Registered: 09/04/10
Posts: 2,987
Last seen: 3 years, 4 months
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Desert Elf]
#16083448 - 04/13/12 03:57 AM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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great post 
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Kupo said:
let's fuel the robots with psilocybin.
cez said:
everyone should smoke dmt for religion.
dustinthewind13 said:
euthanasia and prostitution should be legal and located in the same building.
White Beard said:
if you see the buddha on the road, rape him, then kill him. then rape him again.
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Desert Elf
Registered: 08/23/11
Posts: 765
Last seen: 10 years, 8 months
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: blingbling]
#16083491 - 04/13/12 05:01 AM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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What I find really interesting is the mechanism by which the brain allocates things as positive or negative, like/ dislike etc.
Thoughts that get allocated as negative we consciously feel as aversion.
Thoughts that are allocated as positive we feel as desire or impulse.
Many people would suggest that that process is dependant upon consciousness. As if the brain sends a signal to the soul to ask what it thinks. I would suggest it is independant of consciousness, just a hard-wired process, but it is felt from the central perspective as if it were coming from that perspective.
It is like there are a group of processes which are layered up to form a central perspective. So why dont these layers feel consciousness independantly of each other?
The answer is: They do! That is why I say the central perspective is blurry. Have you ever noticed how your bodily sensations are not always within your central perspective? What is it that brings them in and out of focus? Could it be a question of decibels?
Perhaps each layer is conscious at all times, your hands 'feel' like your hands all the time, but until the 'volume' is turned up on that layer, you dont notice it. Or rather, when the volume of other process is turned down.
I cant remember which, but one of the parts of the brain actually acts as the centre. Perhaps all of the blending of layers occurs here.
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Om Bhur Bhuvah Svaha
Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi
Dhiyo Yo Nah Prachodayat
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HagbardCeline
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: blingbling]
#16083644 - 04/13/12 07:01 AM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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Perhaps it is messy. I was simply trying to imagine an environment where consciousness was the only "real" thing that existed from our perspective. We would never know otherwise.
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I keep it real because I think it is important that a highly esteemed individual such as myself keep it real lest they experience the dreaded spontaneous non-existance of no longer keeping it real. - Hagbard Celine
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GoreTuzk
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: blingbling]
#16083914 - 04/13/12 08:38 AM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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Quote:
blingbling said:
you've made some compelling points but idealism if taken literally ends in solipsism. are you willing to admit that the entire universe may simply be a dream you are having and that no one else really exists? solipsism seems delusional to me and again, this is the logical conclusion if idealism is to be taken seriously.
Solipsism is biased by Western culture thinking and the inherent assumptions it brings with it. The error is that you see yourself as separate from your environment.
"A human being is a part of the whole called by us "the universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." - Albert Einstein
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Desert Elf
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: GoreTuzk]
#16084043 - 04/13/12 09:09 AM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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Quote:
GoreTuzk said:
"A human being is a part of the whole called by us "the universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." - Albert Einstein
Sometimes I find it hard to believe that man ever existed.
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Om Bhur Bhuvah Svaha
Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi
Dhiyo Yo Nah Prachodayat
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Icelander
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Desert Elf]
#16084137 - 04/13/12 09:34 AM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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He didn't as far as you know.
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"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.
" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.
With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Desert Elf
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Icelander]
#16084158 - 04/13/12 09:38 AM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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Quote:
Icelander said:
He didn't as far as you know.
I would honestly cry if I found out.
I handled Santa and God reasonably well, but I don't think I could cope with that.
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Om Bhur Bhuvah Svaha
Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi
Dhiyo Yo Nah Prachodayat
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Icelander
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Posts: 95,368
Loc: underbelly
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Desert Elf]
#16084183 - 04/13/12 09:43 AM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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I hear ya. I cried hard for years when I found out what humans were really like.
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"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.
" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.
With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Desert Elf
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Icelander]
#16084194 - 04/13/12 09:47 AM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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Quote:
Icelander said:
I hear ya. I cried hard for years when I found out what humans were really like.
I find a look in the mirror is a good reminder. But you can't extrapolate that too far.
Well, you can, but there is always room for error. In both direction too, mind you.
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Om Bhur Bhuvah Svaha
Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi
Dhiyo Yo Nah Prachodayat
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
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Posts: 95,368
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Desert Elf]
#16084209 - 04/13/12 09:50 AM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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You bet. I'm fully human. 
An accident of birth.
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"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.
" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.
With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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redgreenvines
irregular verb
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Posts: 38,173
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Freedom]
#16084781 - 04/13/12 12:24 PM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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Quote:
Freedom said:
Nothing explains the primary origination of anything- consciousness or matter or energy or the laws of physics. There is nothing that explains how consciousness can interact with matter.
Theories of one arising out of another are wild guesses, I see no evidence supporting either one. Its equally likely that there is a third thing we don't know about that produces both matter and consciousness, as this would also account for the observed correlations.
Existing interpretations of materialism lack the inspiration to address consciousness - so what we need in materialism is more inspiration.
It comes from beholding the big picture, or rather not letting go of what we know while trying to see and describe consciousness in terms that still fit the big picture.
A lot of inspiration just means taking in a big breath and holding it long enough to see how matter and consciousness wrap each other.
For this I highly recommend leaving out things like 'telepathy' and 'the 49 days of bardo after death' and any other extrapolations on the idea of consciousness for which it is hard to get verified accounts. everything else goes. mingles with matter. supports memory is consistent with feelings, emotions, sex evolution etc.
in psychology the term conditioning is taught, usually to illustrate the fact that a person can be conditioned to respond in a certain way to any stimulus by repetition of that stimulus in combination with some other stimulus or event.
Mind associates things that occur together or right after one another (i.e. the fading of one thing and the arising of another).
Association is the one big trick of mind, and this big trick is a material based event. (I can review that elsewhere since I want to drive towards consciousness which 'emerges' from associative mentation)
All memory is associative.
This means that while walking down the street, the mind is producing fragmentary reminiscent images and sound bits and body sensations according to what the walker is seeing and hearing.
People usually call the aggregate of all those vague fragments of memory 'feelings', and these are constantly arising and fading away, although some resonate quite strongly and contribute to more focused thought sequences. These may include words, and may even recycle with effort to be grammatically erudite thoughts worthy or writing down and reading to the public.
Have I missed anything glaringly? all of that process is what is termed stream of consciousness, or consciousness. Are people honestly concerned that "Qualia" is other than this - certainly unique to each being, but indubitably made of this, mind and body and memory.
All of that is completely provided by associative processes that occur as a result of body sensations entering the brain adding to the history of what has already been experienced (memory) and echoing through what - through repetition - has become the current framework of memory of things having occurred together (and in sequences).
There is no need of another universe with other rules or other physics to explain mind and consciousness even though it seems utterly amazing that while walking down the street, a person will seem to be accompanied by so much mental media that it 'could only be' originating in heaven or hell or the ether beyond.
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Rahz
Alive Again
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: GoreTuzk]
#16084990 - 04/13/12 01:16 PM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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The potential for consciousness rests not 'in the matter', but as a quality of existence itself, just as matter is a quality of existence. This doesn't mean matter is conscious by default, but it also doesn't mean consciousness stems from matter. It seems to take some matter to create specific forms that conduct consciousness and prompt it to arise, just like it takes certain conditions to cause lightning, and certain conditions need to be met for a volcanic eruption to occur, yet the potential for these phenomena are found within the tendencies of matter/energy to interact with itself.
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rahz
comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace
"Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free."
~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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thefloodbehind
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Freedom]
#16085109 - 04/13/12 01:47 PM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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Freedom said:
Nothing explains the primary origination of anything- consciousness or matter or energy or the laws of physics. There is nothing that explains how consciousness can interact with matter.
Theories of one arising out of another are wild guesses, I see no evidence supporting either one. Its equally likely that there is a third thing we don't know about that produces both matter and consciousness, as this would also account for the observed correlations.
God explains (most) all those things.
Edited by thefloodbehind (04/13/12 01:53 PM)
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thefloodbehind
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Rahz]
#16085122 - 04/13/12 01:50 PM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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Rahz said:
The potential for consciousness rests not 'in the matter', but as a quality of existence itself, just as matter is a quality of existence. This doesn't mean matter is conscious by default, but it also doesn't mean consciousness stems from matter. It seems to take some matter to create specific forms that conduct consciousness and prompt it to arise, just like it takes certain conditions to cause lightning, and certain conditions need to be met for a volcanic eruption to occur, yet the potential for these phenomena are found within the tendencies of matter/energy to interact with itself.
this sounds like Spinoza's dual-aspect theory, i.e., mind (thought) and matter (extension) are not really distinct, but are in fact two attributes, i.e., different ways of describing the same Substance = God = Nature.
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Freedom
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redgreenvines said:
Have I missed anything glaringly? all of that process is what is termed stream of consciousness, or consciousness. Are people honestly concerned that "Qualia" is other than this - certainly unique to each being, but indubitably made of this, mind and body and memory.
For me this right here is where it gets tricky. Computers are learning to create associative networks ('tags'). They aren't smart about it, for example they can't use it to replicate human intuition, but one could imagine with the right algorithms one could make a good replica of the human association process. But the computer as far as we know has no experience of what is going on.
We can study the brain and look at these amazing things like the regulation of AMPA receptors and memory and see extraordinarily choreographed mechanics underlying memory, but what is it that gives rise to our experiences of consciousness? What process in the brain creates awareness?
Knowing what we do about the brain we can look at it a bit closer. For example it appears that the experience of consciousness arises from a network or multiple networks of brain cells. But what is it in these networks that produces experience? The movement of ions through channels? The organization of biomolecules? Yes we can see that these things can store memories just like we know how a hard drive stores memories, but what produces the experience or qualia of that memory?
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redgreenvines
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Freedom] 1
#16085504 - 04/13/12 03:07 PM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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Quote:
Freedom said:
Knowing what we do about the brain we can look at it a bit closer. For example it appears that the experience of consciousness arises from a network or multiple networks of brain cells. But what is it in these networks that produces experience? The movement of ions through channels? The organization of biomolecules? Yes we can see that these things can store memories just like we know how a hard drive stores memories, but what produces the experience or qualia of that memory?
there are a few problems in this.
consciousness is experience,
if you say the experience of consciousness, you presuppose that there is any other kind of experiencing, or you confuse the issue by accident of habit of speech or grammar.
let's please call it an accident or habit to push the obvious away to avoid enlightenment.
now what is experience?, and please stay focused on that rather that what it arizes from - which will be clear in a moment.
experience is...
all of the energies
all of the senses
all together with feelings and background thinking...
it is the breath and the guts whatever is there at the moment.
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I do not say whatever you are aware of in the moment - though that comes into the background thinking arena
it is unqualified, all the experience is validly experience and the sequence of moments of that is consciousness or stream of consciousness.
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there are many ways to hide it or to make it hard to admit that this is consciousness, by supposing you must have an ego, and that the ego has to be aware of itself, or of the stream as separate from the ego, but really all of these are just mental objects and the echoes of smart sounding words floating in the background of consciousness.
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but being able to think this stuff, to wonder about the self, to play hide and seek with self, this is part of the experience, part of the qualia, that makes me me... yes but that is also just content, the particular personal mental objects floating along in the stream, which is all those patterns happening in the cerebral cortex in sequence. The cortex is a bit like a reverberant electro-biological screen - like a larger form of a retina,
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BUT you are certain it is more than just energy projecting into the cerebral cortex from the senses, and you are right...
it is all of that - moment to moment plus all that associating with similarity from past experience.
and that - in a nutshell - is the only piece you need to look for:
HOW DOES ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY WORK.
i.e. how are things that happen together stored as a retrievable unit, and how are things that are simmilar recalled later.
and this is something that the crebral cortex as a unit does very well and it does it with pattern abstraction exactly in the same way holograms work - using interference and that same interference is used in memory fixation so that activated cells become connected together - and sequentially activated ones are connected too.
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millzy
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: GoreTuzk]
#16085508 - 04/13/12 03:07 PM (12 years, 6 days ago) |
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GoreTuzk said:
the fact that you are conscious can't be doubted and can't be explained.
if consciousness can't be explained, which it cannot, then i think we should work on doing that before trying to fit it into our model of the universe. if we can't describe or even measure it (consciousness) then merging it with things we can is silly.
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I'm up to my ears in unwritten words. - J.D. Salinger
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redgreenvines
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: millzy]
#16085870 - 04/13/12 04:40 PM (12 years, 5 days ago) |
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yes precisely, in a nutshell;
except I just described it and showed how it fits
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falcon
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you talk around this very well, great outline
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blingbling
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: GoreTuzk]
#16087724 - 04/14/12 01:32 AM (12 years, 5 days ago) |
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The error is that you see yourself as separate from your environment.
that's a pretty big call for someone who knows very little about me.
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Kupo said:
let's fuel the robots with psilocybin.
cez said:
everyone should smoke dmt for religion.
dustinthewind13 said:
euthanasia and prostitution should be legal and located in the same building.
White Beard said:
if you see the buddha on the road, rape him, then kill him. then rape him again.
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redgreenvines
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: blingbling]
#16088157 - 04/14/12 06:33 AM (12 years, 5 days ago) |
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maybe it's not personal but a general error in the paradigm (most likely)
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Freedom
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right I say experience of consciousness to try to be clear that consciousness is experience, that I'm not talking about some abstract process or neurons firing but experience.
The experience is always experienced as primary because we experience nothing but experience. Its not just the foundation but the walls and roof and stove with the teapot on.
But isn't this thread also about where the experience comes from? Sure a photon resonates with the electrons of a retinal molecule, and we can interpolate all the physics from the retinal molecule all the way to the higher levels of the visual cortex, where presumably the physics turns into experience.
This is where we wave a magic wand and say something like the cortex is experience or the cortex produces experience. There is a leap from something physical to something experiential.
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millzy
Registered: 05/12/10
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
yes precisely, in a nutshell;
except I just described it and showed how it fits
not really. you're using aristotle's ten categories of being in order to attempt to explain consciousness when it fits into none of them including substance.
for those who aren't following, these are aristotle's ten categories of being. aristotle's metaphysical model follows as such: every being exists in itself and not another. if it exists only in itself, it is a substance. if it exists in another, it is an accident. this constitutes the ten categories of being (substance + nine accidental qualities).
substance
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quantity - the determination of the matter of substance, giving it parts distinct from parts i.e. "tall" "short" "fat" "skinny"
quality - the determination of the nature or form of a substance i.e. "smart" "dumb" "handsome" "ugly"
relation - the reference which a substance or accident bears to another i.e "friend" "enemy" "near" "far"
action - the exercise of the faculties or power of a substance so as to produce an effect in itself or another i.e. "smiling" "running" "building" "breaking"
passion - the reception of a substance of an effect produced by some cause i.e. "being hired" "being fired"
when - the position in relation to the course of extrinsic events which measure a substance's duration i.e. "sunday afternoon"
where - the position in relation to other bodies which surround a substance and determine its place i.e. "on a beach" "on a lake"
posture - the relative position which the parts of a substance have toward each other i.e. "leaning" "sitting"
habiliment - ornaments (clothing, tools, weapons) by which a substance by their art complement their nature in order to preserve their own being or that of other beings i.e. "black coat"
consciousness transcends all categories of accident. it does not designate the matter or nature of any substance, nor does it establish a substance's relation to another. it is not an action nor is it produced by any apparent cause by another substance. consciousness itself has no relation to time and space, it has no parts and is obviously not an ornament that we have made for ourselves.
moreover, in addition to consciousness transcending all accidental categories of being, it isn't a substance in that it does not singularly exist in itself and not another and possesses no accidental qualities. so, the question must be raised once again; what is consciousness? i don't lay any claim on that answer, but my point is that consciousness can't be logically reduced to anything aside from itself.
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I'm up to my ears in unwritten words. - J.D. Salinger
Edited by millzy (04/14/12 09:51 AM)
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redgreenvines
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: millzy]
#16088889 - 04/14/12 11:25 AM (12 years, 5 days ago) |
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Miltzy: Aristotle's 10 categories are not helpful to this discussion although they could be used to resolve attributes and relations of mental objects (and physical objects), and I am not using them because I am looking at experience the sequence of which makes consciousness.
Freedom: I agree - to be comprehensive, the matter of how mental association works in the cerebral cortex is the next area of examination; the most fundamental issue (with respect to discussing consciousness) was to establish that it is about experience and that
experiencing is the moment to moment totality of sensations (forming new memories) combined with associative recollection of memory (fragments)
if that much can be taken as an agreeable premise then when we do discuss associative processing in the brain, it may be considered that we are talking about consciousness (experiencing), otherwise it could either swing this discussion away (from the most fundamental aspect of consciousness) or it could be a fundamental issue about associative memory formation and recall and just go in a different thread.
OK,
Using the shroomery search engine I find that I was talking about some of that earlier on with some members of this group
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/4646053#4646053
and at some point I must have been going through it in detail:
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millzy
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
Miltzy: Aristotle's 10 categories are not helpful to this discussion although they could be used to resolve attributes and relations of mental objects (and physical objects), and I am not using them because I am looking at experience the sequence of which makes consciousness.
by referring to consciousness as an accident of being you are referencing aristotelian metaphysics. i agree that it's not helpful in describing consciousness, which is what my point is. consciousness defies description using conventional logic.
but moving on to your most recent definition of consciousness as:
Quote:
the moment to moment totality of sensations (forming new memories) combined with associative recollection of memory (fragments)
this is an incomplete picture of phenomenal consciousness. sensory data and the associative memories that allow us to abstract meaning from that data moment to moment is a partial, but good - i'll give credit where it's due - description. we also have the unconscious mind, which i would summarize as a deeper level of indirectly associated memories - perhaps some of which have even been repressed - along with appetites and instincts that act from a place completely beyond the limits of our awareness but yet somehow intermingles with our response to sensory experience and therefore influences our mental states moment to moment. and from my albeit armchair understanding of psychology, this unconscious mind cannot be accounted for because it cannot be observed due to its very nature of un-observability, thus it cannot be measured, quantified and described. it's a substantial piece of the picture that we simply don't have, and without it we cannot have a comprehensive explanation for phenomenal consciousness.
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I'm up to my ears in unwritten words. - J.D. Salinger
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redgreenvines
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: millzy]
#16089187 - 04/14/12 01:03 PM (12 years, 5 days ago) |
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Quote:
millzy said:
this is an incomplete picture of phenomenal consciousness. sensory data and the associative memories that allow us to abstract meaning from that data moment to moment is a partial, but good - i'll give credit where it's due - description. we also have the unconscious mind, which i would summarize as a deeper level of indirectly associated memories - perhaps some of which have even been repressed - along with appetites and instincts that act from a place completely beyond the limits of our awareness but yet somehow intermingles with our response to sensory experience and therefore influences our mental states moment to moment. and from my albeit armchair understanding of psychology, this unconscious mind cannot be accounted for because it cannot be observed due to its very nature of un-observability, thus it cannot be measured, quantified and described. it's a substantial piece of the picture that we simply don't have, and without it we cannot have a comprehensive explanation for phenomenal consciousness.
I am glad you brought that up, certainly it is post aristotelian, but the proposal of an unconscious mind is actually not a good one in the sense that you will not find it as an organ, nor as a separate process from associative linkage of mental contents from one moment to the next.
Any behavior of an unconscious mind can be re-analysed and attributed to associative recall, either in fragments or all at once, in sequence or as an underlying mood.
the term "unconscious mind" was introduced to simplify and mystify a generality of memory effects - especially ones that one does not consider to be volitional.
If analysed further, the only volitional acts (some hunt for free will) are those that enroll the person into habit changing programs. I.e. nearly all that is happening is mental reflex, except for little choices that pull the individual off course or into a different course.
That is not to say we are unconscious, even though we are largely not volitional beings, since what we are experiencing is a very rich soup of sensory and memory mixed mental activity. What we do is as practiced, or trained, or conditioned. You could argue that even our volitional stuff (from the prefrontal cortex) is trained, but I would contest that, since those decisions are variously multilayered and 'unpracticeable' and pertain to a review of all that is happening in the self, it is hard work and some people avoid it entirely.
so, the main point I am making is that the term unconscious mind should be tossed (as it is a fake construct), and associative mentation (consciousness) should be re-examined without the fake layers -- remember, in The Universe of Aristotle and Ptolemy the sun revolved around the earth and many fake systems (tie-ing back to god(s)) were proposed to make the world work. very esoteric - mostly because it was wrong.
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millzy
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i see where you're going, but in the scope of attempting to describe and define consciousness, i think unconscious mind is important to take into account. i'm not working with a specific, dogmatic definition of the term, but rather a definition of unconscious mind as everything that we aren't aware of thinking about in any given moment. once we bring it into focus it ceases to be unconscious.
moreover, i think you're contradicting yourself by saying the mind is one thing when clearly it's broken into functional parts by your own model. that being our response to sensory data and the recall of associative memory that informs that response. the part that responds and the part that recalls are functionally separate in the scope of this discussion. what i propose is that there is another functional component that factors into phenomenal consciousness as well. even if you were to approach this from an anatomical/neurochemical angle, the brain has separate functional components that all do separate things. why reduce the mind to a single thing in this case?
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I'm up to my ears in unwritten words. - J.D. Salinger
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redgreenvines
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: millzy]
#16089612 - 04/14/12 03:18 PM (12 years, 5 days ago) |
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Quote:
millzy said:
i see where you're going, but in the scope of attempting to describe and define consciousness, i think unconscious mind is important to take into account. i'm not working with a specific, dogmatic definition of the term, but rather a definition of unconscious mind as everything that we aren't aware of thinking about in any given moment. once we bring it into focus it ceases to be unconscious.
To simplify that, you should say that the unconscious mind is memory that is not active, i.e. latent souveniers of experience that have been linked into a recallable format.
For this we already have a term and that term is "memory"; the other term 'unconscious mind' is a throwback (useless habit).
memory is housed in the very same biological fabric that experience is hosted in.
Some theorists have considered that it is like a radio and we are just the receiver, or that it is in dna and rna and there are little encoders and decoders, but these ideas have also been disproven and tossed.
activated memories are part of experiencing, so we do not need a separate word for memory that is not active especially one that makes you drift off imagining additional brain structures are required or that it is off in the ether.
Quote:
millzy said:
moreover, i think you're contradicting yourself by saying the mind is one thing when clearly it's broken into functional parts by your own model. that being our response to sensory data and the recall of associative memory that informs that response. the part that responds and the part that recalls are functionally separate in the scope of this discussion. what i propose is that there is another functional component that factors into phenomenal consciousness as well. even if you were to approach this from an anatomical/neurochemical angle, the brain has separate functional components that all do separate things. why reduce the mind to a single thing in this case?
the functions of my model reuse the same cortical cellular matrix. I provide some illustrations that indicate how the same cells can receive sensation from outside the brain (or recollection from inside), and can be involved in the fixation of the memory fragments and be the site of memory patterns.
the first 3 major areas listed below are cortex which is involved in the fixation and recall of memory as well as in the experiencing of the sensory and memory patterns - i.e. the ONE FABRIC.
1) the frontal cortex which copies its feed from all the sensory areas of the cortex.
2) the pre-frontal cortex which is a kind of over-view region (involved in free-will, or new habit dedication/tropism).
3) the various sensory areas such as visual cortex, auditory, and motor areas which have point for point body connectivity.
The next physical brain section is supportive of sensation and memory fixation and recall but does not have any memory in it and does not have exprerience pattern in it.
4) the thalamus and basal ganglia which are involved with some feedback support so that incoming signals are turned into pulse trains (pulse trains change the condition of cortical neurons into a memory fixable state)
5) some structures like the amygdala which constitute the bulk of the held over reptile brain or homeostatic impulse modulators (fight/flight/fuck/feed etc.)
Some structures are like electronic peripherals:
6) the cerebellum is just a bank of accurate timers or delay lines and is used to help in motor coordination as well as expectation, or attention to events, hearing and music.
7) the reticular formation is equipped to shut down non-autonomic signals through the spine.
Other structures are discernable and have roles that are of less concern to the main idea of experiencing, memory fixation and recall.
The main structures for that are cortical. (and thalamus to help generate pulse train feedback out of simple signals)
there are also some critical cellular considerations enabling cross-linking of activated cells (cells responding to pulse trains) into memory engrams and these are distributed throughout the cortex and only in the cortex - they are multi-axxon cells which can respond to peak energy fields in from interference patterns in the dendritic layer of the cortex, and they branch out connecting at sub threshold to a plurality of cortical neurons. only those that are active create a link to the sub-threshold connection, but when that link is stimulated again it fires more readily - repetition creates stronger learning this way and we end up getting memory in the same layered material that hosts primary experiencing.
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millzy
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
To simplify that, you should say that the unconscious mind is memory that is not active, i.e. latent souveniers of experience that have been linked into a recallable format.
no. as i stated before, in addition to the way we respond to sensory data, memory is only part of consciousness and there is a clear division as to how each type of memory influences it. there is memory that is directly associated with sensory data and memory that is indirectly associated, far out of our mental "flashlight" so to speak. maybe it's less ambiguous to say that indirect memory is associated with direct memory rather than our experience of reality, hence why it's part of the unconscious mind. nevertheless processing and responding aren't the only functional parts of consciousness. there are also instinctual drives and appetites that are defined by genetics, environment as well as direct/indirect memory. it all seems to loop in on itself in peculiar and puzzling ways. i don't think simplification is the way to go with something as complicated as what we're discussing.
Quote:
For this we already have a term and that term is "memory"; the other term 'unconscious mind' is a throwback (useless habit).
semantics.
i won't argue against there being a physical understructure of the mind, because it seems evident that there most certainly is and the brain is part of that in addition to the rest of the body. you clearly have a better grasp on the machinations of the brain and i won't contend with you on those points due to my ignorance. and really unless you were just mistaken about any of that there wouldn't be any disagreement from me on my part anyway. but in discussing the brain, i think we're getting away from the subject; consciousness isn't a property of the brain or the body but rather an aspect that pertains to what the brain and the body seem to interact with - the mind. you can have a brain and a body and not have phenomenal consciousness in the way we're discussing it. think sea slugs. this is the problem being discussed and there doesn't seem to be a complete answer as to why what happens does. at least from my perspective. 
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I'm up to my ears in unwritten words. - J.D. Salinger
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Freedom
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I do not agree that experience is association. Yes the particular experiences that we have are shapped by association, but how does the physical process create something that we experience? does the movement of an ion create experience? sure the brain processes and maybe your wave theory of the cortex is correct, but how does that say anything about how physical things can create what appears to be non physical?
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millzy
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Freedom]
#16089852 - 04/14/12 04:48 PM (12 years, 4 days ago) |
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Quote:
Freedom said:
I do not agree that experience is association. Yes the particular experiences that we have are shapped by association, but how does the physical process create something that we experience? does the movement of an ion create experience? sure the brain processes and maybe your wave theory of the cortex is correct, but how does that say anything about how physical things can create what appears to be non physical?
i don't think it's a question of whether or not the mind is physical. physical derives from the greek word "physike", which can be translated to "reality". people seem to get hung up on this because they confuse the term "physical" with "material". everything in the world has form, and i would say the main aspect of the debate over consciousness is really over what the form of that, in addition to the mind, is.
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I'm up to my ears in unwritten words. - J.D. Salinger
Edited by millzy (04/14/12 04:54 PM)
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tribesman
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: GoreTuzk]
#16090123 - 04/14/12 05:56 PM (12 years, 4 days ago) |
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A nexus of space and time. 
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Freedom
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: millzy]
#16090164 - 04/14/12 06:06 PM (12 years, 4 days ago) |
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I was refering to the things modern physics studies like mass and energy we can describe the brain with these things but not consciousness, although we are forced to use those things as metaphors since we don't really have words to describe the non material
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redgreenvines
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: millzy]
#16092009 - 04/15/12 02:28 AM (12 years, 4 days ago) |
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I can revert to "It is what it is", simple in some ways and more complicated in others,
with a physical basis if you care to look; or you can make it as complex as the geocentric universe if you want to include theories of unconsciousness, consciousness, and super-consciousness all the way to god and heaven.
There is no particular harm in going with the majority who do have a geocentric spiritual cosmology of consciousness, and you make the words work the way you want them to.
My view resolves as:
Experiencing (consciousness) is the mixing of sensations and associations and that adds more associations (forms new memory).
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deCypher
Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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redgreenvines, you may have to revise your theory of mind/brain interaction as a recent study has shown that memories are NOT stored holographically throughout the entire brain, but rather in specific, individual neurons.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/123485-mit-discovers-the-location-of-memories-individual-neurons?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews
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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
  
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redgreenvines
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: deCypher]
#16092970 - 04/15/12 10:01 AM (12 years, 4 days ago) |
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sorry deCypher,
did you actually read that blurb or the article referenced?
the sensational blurb misleads you since the referenced article explicitly regards.
"Optogenetic stimulation of a hippocampal engram activates fear memory recall"
and pertains to a population of neurons rather than single ones, and besides this 'poor article' the scientific literature is replete with examples of holographic memory (i.e. engram is stored in arrays of cells across the cortex).
and
if you take one step back we are being presented with a fear response statistical test.
fear response is pretty general, and equating generalized fear behavior with learning and engrams has erroneously given credence to such things as RNA based learning theories where the only RNA like factor was Scotophobin, which does have RNA character and does facilitate fear of light reactions in mice, and it can be extracted from brains of mice that are traumatized by training to fear light and will facilitate light trauma learning in mice that have the brain extract injected.
I will reserve any revision of my theory until I see some meaningful research. This is bunko stuff, and the Nature report is idiotic.
anyway I do expect hippocampal, limbic, and amygdalic circuitry to be involved in flight or fight, and hunger as well as sexual motivations or agitations, it is the old brain and it is not where associative learning or engram formation takes place.
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Freedom
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hey I'm still confused here
in my paradigm consciousness is experience, experience is not material. The brain is material. I'm not concerned with holographic memory or anything thats in that black box other than what creates an immaterial experience from the material.
I don't know how anyone can even begin to approach that. Just to say its neurons interacting in a specific pattern is not enough because thats just material stuff and provides no explanation for how the associative pattern of a material brain becomes the associative pattern of experience. Sure they follow the same pattern. This is correlation.
Perhaps its one and the same and its an illusion that conscousness is immaterial. Perhaps anything that explains correlation. We even have some studies that show the pattern forms in the brain before the individual acknowledges the experience so we even have direction of correlation but it says nothing about a mechanism of how matter/energy can become an experience.
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deCypher
Registered: 02/10/08
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Did you read the article?
Quote:
“Our results show that memories really do reside in very specific brain cells,” Liu says, “and simply by reactivating these cells by physical means, such as light, an entire memory can be recalled.”
http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/conjuring-memories-artificially-0322.html
Calling the study "bunko" and "idiotic" without any support doesn't really seem like a valid refutation.
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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
Loc: underbelly
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This is bunko stuff, and the Nature report is idiotic.
I know by intuition that I'm a hologram projected here from the anti earth hidden on the dark side of the moon.
This is a true story. 
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"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.
" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.
With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Diploid
Cuban
Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
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engram is stored in arrays of cells across the cortex
This is pretty well established by now. The actual mechanism probably is not so simplistic is the concept engendered by the word hologram, but it's still a good description for the non-localized character of memory. I think a better description than hologram may be something called a wavelet.
If you're sufficiently geek to know what a wavelet is in the math that underpins advanced image compression algorithms, you can see a parallel to memory a-la holograms. Wavelets are used to compress images in such a way that, when you transmit 10% of the image, it can be rendered at the destination as a sharp image covering only 10% of the frame and the rest of the frame black (because the data hasn't arrived yet) or as a complete frame but 90% blurry (because only 10% has arrived). Surprisingly, these two types of rendering can be done from the SAME 10% of the data set. The sender doesn't have to choose between the two versions because both use the same data and the rendering system at the destination can chose which way to render on the fly. It can even render both versions simultaneously in real time if the processing horsepower is available.
In other words, that 10% of the data contains both, a completely sharp 10% of the frame, AND the entire frame but only 10% sharp so it's blurry.
The advantage is that as the data arrives over time, the rendering can be optimized for the application. Sometimes you want to see the whole image as quickly as possible to identify gross features so blur is tolerable as long as the gross features can be identified. Other times you want to see sharply only one small part of the frame where your subject is, and you don't care that the rest of the frame is black.
Something similar may be happening in the way memory is stored. Someone who has suffered brain damage doesn't sharply lose pieces of their memory. They never forget just the middle two digits of their phone number. It doesn't happen that way which is what should happen if memory were localized. But what is actually seen is that the person's entire memory gets a little fuzzy but it's still all there. It might take them a little longer to remember their phone number, but they'll remember the whole thing, only poorly.
That suggests a kind of signal spreading is happening in the same way that if you cut a hologram in half, you end up with two COMPLETE copies of the original, only each is smaller and of degraded quality. This is because the hologram is stored orthogonally in wave interference so the entire image is everywhere. Even if you cut off a tiny piece of a hologram, it will still contain the entire image much degraded. With a regular photograph, if you cut it in half, each half completely loses the missing part but the part it DOES retain is as sharp as it was before.
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Republican Values:
1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.
4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
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deCypher
Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Diploid]
#16093208 - 04/15/12 11:02 AM (12 years, 4 days ago) |
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Diploid, check out the article whose link I just posted. Some memories may in fact be localized to specific brain cells rather than being holographically stored.
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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
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redgreenvines
irregular verb
Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 38,173
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: deCypher]
#16093798 - 04/15/12 02:39 PM (12 years, 4 days ago) |
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deCypher;
the article does not indicate that single cells contain entire memory or even fragments but that a set of cells will trigger a memory or recalled fragment of memory.
precise stimulus of a single cell will not create interference, but precise stimulation of a set of cells will trigger a interference and stimulate some recalled memory.
the same memory each time for the same cluster of precise stimulations.
so the article does not mean that memory is stored in individual cells.
but specific memories are triggered by stimulating specific combinations of cells.
this is consistent with what I have been saying for a long time now,
specific cells (namely point for point cells that map somato-sensory innervation to teh cortex) will contribute to specific memory recollections that had involved those cells (either by direct trigger or by interference).
more than one cell will be required to create any interference and more than just a few will be required to generate any specific memory recollections.
the Nature magazine reporting is simplistic and sensational, and this is evidenced by how you bought into the wrong meaning of it.
in the mean time the article referenced is not good science since it is looking for engrams which can be very sophisticated in a location that will only yield simple reptile brain motivators (fear/hunger/mating).
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Freedom
Pigment of your imagination
Registered: 05/26/05
Posts: 6,016
Last seen: 19 days, 21 hours
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Red I'm wondering if you understand what I mean here about the difference between the apparent immateriality of consciousness which I experience and the brain?
Because you had a nice description of a consciousness process (association) and then of a material process and yes I understand these things are tightly correlated but correlation provides nothing of the mechanism of how the material produces the immaterial.
Also when Diploid says this mechanism will be understood in a few years I would like to know just what would give one that impression because as I said I'm not aware of even a theory that could plausibly explain the mechanism.
I think ya'll can explain memory storage and things like that just like we could explain memory storage on a computer but a human has an experience.
I don't think I've received a single response that seems to have understood and replied to my question.
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redgreenvines
irregular verb
Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 38,173
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Freedom]
#16096737 - 04/16/12 08:36 AM (12 years, 3 days ago) |
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Hi Freedom;
my "nice description of a consciousness process (association)"
is all I can say about the thing itself.
the description is
the moment to moment totality of sensations (forming new memories) combined with associative recollection of memory (fragments)
the totality of sensations includes all the events considered as qualia.
it is everything in your personal cosmos.
it is also an electronic interference dance in the cerebral cortex (the physical layer).
nothing you experience is excluded from that
everything sensed, everything recalled, imagined, in whole or in part.
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the physical layer is an whole other world to explore, but I like to remind people that it is there and it is comprehensible if you include interference and everything else we know about how neurons work.
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when you think of this, you are building a model in your mind of your mind modeling your mind, so it is a bit awkward, but if you put your attention to sensations, and if you watch the arising and fading of them, and if you watch the arising and fading of associations you will see consciousness directly instead of the mind modeling it.
we are modeling it to lay it on the table and talk about it, but talking is not it; being is it.
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millzy
Registered: 05/12/10
Posts: 12,409
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again, i think talking about the brain is only going to get us so far when discussing that which possesses consciousness - the mind. have fun though. 
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I'm up to my ears in unwritten words. - J.D. Salinger
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redgreenvines
irregular verb
Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 38,173
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: millzy]
#16096891 - 04/16/12 09:49 AM (12 years, 3 days ago) |
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because?
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Desert Elf
Registered: 08/23/11
Posts: 765
Last seen: 10 years, 8 months
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: millzy]
#16097006 - 04/16/12 10:29 AM (12 years, 3 days ago) |
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Quote:
millzy said:
again, i think talking about the brain is only going to get us so far when discussing that which possesses consciousness - the mind. have fun though.
Discussing, or, reaching conclusions about?
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Om Bhur Bhuvah Svaha
Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi
Dhiyo Yo Nah Prachodayat
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millzy
Registered: 05/12/10
Posts: 12,409
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
because?
because consciousness has to do with the mind and not the brain. there is certainly seems to be a link between the mind, the brain and consciousness, but explaining our individual experience of reality from a purely "nuts and bolts" approach continues to be problematic, rife with reductionism.
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I'm up to my ears in unwritten words. - J.D. Salinger
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redgreenvines
irregular verb
Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 38,173
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: millzy]
#16098115 - 04/16/12 03:53 PM (12 years, 2 days ago) |
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OK; I went around the block for you (having done it for myself before)
and your position on the matter remains that
consciousness in the cerebral cortex is too nuts and bolts.
Then let poetry prevail; forget how it got there if you like: the haiku works - and that is what matters.
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millzy
Registered: 05/12/10
Posts: 12,409
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
OK; I went around the block for you (having done it for myself before)
and your position on the matter remains that
consciousness in the cerebral cortex is too nuts and bolts.
Then let poetry prevail; forget how it got there if you like: the haiku works - and that is what matters.
you obviously didn't go around enough blocks, because starting a few days back i've insisted on the same point which you somehow seem to habitually be missing. the link to the brain is obvious, but staying in the brain and not exploring anything beyond that - the beyond being the mental aspect of consciousness, which i would say is a much larger component of it - will lead you into an incomplete picture of what's happening.
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I'm up to my ears in unwritten words. - J.D. Salinger
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redgreenvines
irregular verb
Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 38,173
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: millzy]
#16098674 - 04/16/12 06:11 PM (12 years, 2 days ago) |
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Miltzy,
a complete picture?
who has or might have that?
you need much more poetry if you are looking for that.
I met someone who wanted to put the entire louvre museum on a cd rom
can you imagine how much would have to be left out?
holy!
complete picture of all of consciousness.
well
good luck then.
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millzy
Registered: 05/12/10
Posts: 12,409
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Quote:
redgreenvines said:
Miltzy,
a complete picture?
who has or might have that?
you need much more poetry if you are looking for that.
I met someone who wanted to put the entire louvre museum on a cd rom
can you imagine how much would have to be left out?
holy!
complete picture of all of consciousness.
well
good luck then.
nobody knows what's going on. that's my point.
one of the most interesting ideas i've heard is from hegel, who proposes that we can't truly understand consciousness until we develop a perspective that's neither objective or subjective, because neither perspective gives us that total picture. what that is hegel admits to not knowing, but it's an interesting idea.
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I'm up to my ears in unwritten words. - J.D. Salinger
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Freedom
Pigment of your imagination
Registered: 05/26/05
Posts: 6,016
Last seen: 19 days, 21 hours
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: millzy]
#16098906 - 04/16/12 07:15 PM (12 years, 2 days ago) |
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yeah that was my point too, I was responding to diploid who said that science will figure out how matter produces consciousness in a few years and that science doesn't even have a theory about that yet.
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millzy
Registered: 05/12/10
Posts: 12,409
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Freedom]
#16099021 - 04/16/12 07:39 PM (12 years, 2 days ago) |
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Quote:
Freedom said:
yeah that was my point too, I was responding to diploid who said that science will figure out how matter produces consciousness in a few years and that science doesn't even have a theory about that yet.
my bad on that. i thought you were talking to me.
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I'm up to my ears in unwritten words. - J.D. Salinger
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Freedom
Pigment of your imagination
Registered: 05/26/05
Posts: 6,016
Last seen: 19 days, 21 hours
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: millzy]
#16099075 - 04/16/12 07:50 PM (12 years, 2 days ago) |
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consciousness is so normal we usually take it for granted I think its really difficult to grasp just how incomprehensible it is, I have to go deep to observe it and I find both matter and consciousness to be really weird. It puts me in an altered state because the strangeness of it is so overwhelming and I just don't have words to explain it at all really.
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
Loc: underbelly
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Freedom]
#16099204 - 04/16/12 08:19 PM (12 years, 2 days ago) |
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Quote:
Freedom said:
consciousness is so normal we usually take it for granted I think its really difficult to grasp just how incomprehensible it is, I have to go deep to observe it and I find both matter and consciousness to be really weird. It puts me in an altered state because the strangeness of it is so overwhelming and I just don't have words to explain it at all really.
Thinking about any one thing can do this if you are in the right frame of mind. Lets face it, nothing is comprehensible.
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"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.
" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.
With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Freedom
Pigment of your imagination
Registered: 05/26/05
Posts: 6,016
Last seen: 19 days, 21 hours
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Re: What is more fundamental? [Re: Icelander]
#16099618 - 04/16/12 09:40 PM (12 years, 2 days ago) |
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right right right!
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