Scientific determinism.

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Scientific determinism.

Post #1

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If all is matter and motion in a closed system, isn't everything that happens predetermined by a chain reaction of cause and effect, including the being that considers itself able to make independent choices? If so, isn't that being engaging in a faith based lifestyle? If not, what is it that enables that being to make independent choices?

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Re: Scientific determinism.

Post #21

Post by Divine Insight »

[Replying to post 20 by Metadian]

After reading your post #20 it has occurred to me that you and I are actually asking two entirely different questions, and therefore attempting to explore entirely different possible answers.

You seem to be attempting to address the question of "How is it done?"

In other words you seem to be focused on the question of how the illusion of a self is created. And once you have answered that question, then you appear to be interested in how this created illusion of self could be either transported onto a different medium (i.e. from biological to inorganic), or whether it could be copied entirely to make a whole new independent self.

I, on the other hand am asking a totally different question. The question I am asking is, "Exactly what is it that is having this experience of being a self?"

While these questions may at first glance appear to be very similar they are actually quite different.

~~~~~~

Also, your analogy with replacing the parts on an old ship is not nearly as straight forward as we would like for it to be.

For example, if we merely replace the parts one-by-one as they wear out over a long period of time, we would then naturally think of the ship as always being the same ship. It's just a ship that has had a lot of parts replaced. :D And we would even view it that way if over a long enough period we end up replacing ever single part that it's made from.

However if we do the same thing in one fell swoop: Simply take all the old parts out of the water simultaneously (i.e. the whole ship) and toss it in the junkyard, and then replace all the parts at once: simply lower a brand new copy of the ship into the water. Then we no longer think of it as being the same ship, even though it's precisely the same design right down to every nut and bolt or rivet.

The question then becomes one of our perspective of the situation entirely. In the first scenario we think of the same ship existing the whole way through the upgrading process, whilst in the second scenario we see an entire ship being replaced with a whole new ship. But in the end, the same result has occurred.

~~~~~~~

Now in regard to your question, "How is it done?" the answer seems pretty straight-forward. The ship simply exists as it is because of it's form. Period. That's "How it's done".

My question is, "What is it that is actually having an experience?". Of course in the analogy with ships this question seems meaningless since ships aren't having an experience. None the less we can take the ship analogy a bit further.

If instead of talking about a "single ship" that has all its parts replaced, why not consider an entire fleet of ships that are identical. What then makes these ship different other than their physical location in space. According to your analogy nothing would make these ships different. They would all be the same ship existing simultaneously in different spacial locations. Because remember, the parts they are made of are irrelevant. It's only the arrangement of the parts that matter.

So then my question becomes important. If all these ships are having an experience, then what it is that is having an experience? Just the individual instantiations of these ships? If we have twelve ships do we then have twelve instantiatoins of subjective experience?

And this comes back to the copy versus transport again. If we make a copy of a ship and produce a brand new ship, then have we created a brand new instantiation of experience? And if we have, then what would have happened if we entirely disassemble a ship and rebuild it somewhere else? Would this then be the same as "killing" the first instantiation of experience, and creating a whole new instantiation of experience?

This would be the equivalent of uploading the content of a human brain onto a silicon based computer. We've destroyed the first to build the other. So did we then kill the person we uploaded?

And my argument is that we necessarily had to have killed that first person, because we could have instead just uploaded the content without destroying the original, thus ending up with two brains both of which are having independent experiences.

This is why my question becomes important. "What is it that is actually having the experience"?

If your answer is that it's just the pattern of assembly of the parts, then this poses a problem.

If we accept that, then we could do the following with no problem.

1. Upload the configuration of a elderly person into a computer brain.
2. In this process we do not erase or destroy the original person's brain configuration.
3. Once the upload is complete and we are convinced that the artificial brain now believes it to be the original self we then kill the original person.

How would this be any different from having a procedure where the original simply dies during the process?

The original person still dies in both cases.

So my question of "What is it that is actually having an experience?" has never been addressed.

Instead, all you have addressed is "How it can be recreated or copied".

Not only this, but you appear to think that this sufficient. In other words, as long as we can recreate it or copy it, that's good enough. We don't need to explain what it is that is actually having an experience.

I suggest that this type of view can actually be potentially dangerous. The reason being that many people believe that if they create a "clone" of themselves then the "clone" is not a valid human. In other words, many people seem to think that if we could create clones we could then treat them as non-human slaves.

Moreover, if we recognize that a clone of our self is precisely as valid of an independent sovereign human as we are, we then need to also recognize that we have just created another instantiation of "subjective experience".

So what is it that is having this subjective experience? Just a pattern of configuration? How then do we explain how a pattern of configuration can have an experience (this brings me full-circle right back to the basic physics question)

What can we point to in our basic understanding of our physical world that could possibly explain how anything could have a subjective experience? Anything at all, including a pattern or configuration of matter/energy. Because keep in mind, when all is said and done, all we have to ultimately work with is matter/energy.

So what is it about matter/energy that could end up having a subjective experience in any configuration?

In fact, that's the question that needs to be answered.

If we can answer that question, then we would have an explanation for how subjective experience is created and precisely what it is that is having an experience.

In other words, it would be the pattern of activity that is "having the experience", and we will have answered my question.

Not only this, but if this is the answer, then the answer concerning whether we would be "killing" the person in a transporter would also be yes. Because while we might be creating a copy of their pattern, we would also be destroying the original pattern. So every time we transport someone will we have simultaneously killed someone. We will have destroyed the instantiation of the original pattern. So that would be death to that original thing that was currently having an experience. The fact that we had simultaneously created a new identical pattern would basically be a moot point.
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Post #22

Post by Metadian »

I think I understand better now.

Yes, indeed, it is concerning that people would treat clones as slaves or not treat the consciousness-that-dies as a person endowed of full autonomy and rights.

There was another Black Mirror episode called "White Christmas" - this one was fully dystopian - in which people were offered devices to automatize their houses and do everything "in a personalized way". They created a copy of one's consciousness and stored it in a white egg-like device called "cookie", which was nothing but an aware mindclone. Initially, it was horrified that the rest of its (immortal) existence would be basically watching their "real self"'s life and anticipating wishes and desires (eg, turn on the thermostat, prepare breakfast through putting information on the kitchenware, etc). Since it was a novel and luxury product, users were actually rich spoiled people, so the personality wasn't exactly servile. When it "resisted", it was basically psychologically tortured by having its time perception altered (spending seconds as 6 months in total sleepless nothingness), so it was "desperate" to "do something", and submitted. Sorry for the language but this idea of torturing through time dilation and inaction really "fucked me up" more than any horror movie!
If instead of talking about a "single ship" that has all its parts replaced, why not consider an entire fleet of ships that are identical. What then makes these ship different other than their physical location in space. According to your analogy nothing would make these ships different. They would all be the same ship existing simultaneously in different spacial locations. Because remember, the parts they are made of are irrelevant. It's only the arrangement of the parts that matter.

True, they'd be the same "I-ness" even though clearly they possess an individual presence. So it seems that "I-ness" isn't a good concept after all after cloning because both possess diverging I-ness that are as endowed of personhood/individuality.
So my question of "What is it that is actually having an experience?" has never been addressed.

Well, you're right that arrangement can't be all. An arrangement creates one individuality, but several individualities can be obtained through copying it. In addition, there seem to be different arrangements (organic, machine, virtual, etc) with similar noogenic properties.

Yet, all need to have a certain complexity or "shape" if you will, though, such that for instance a neural 'line'work consisting of a very long 1-to-1 sequence of nodes, or a crystal rock with a repeated cubic structure, would never be noogenic. A hypothetical universe consisting entirely of homogeneously dense hydrogen and helium would never awaken consciousnesses, I feel, even if it had the same subatomic particles and forces that compose our matter/energy.
So what is it about matter/energy that could end up having a subjective experience in any configuration?

In fact, that's the question that needs to be answered.

:D I wish I knew. What do you think?

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Post #23

Post by Divine Insight »

Metadian wrote:
So what is it about matter/energy that could end up having a subjective experience in any configuration?

In fact, that's the question that needs to be answered.

:D I wish I knew. What do you think?
I don't know, that's why I remain agnostic (without sufficient knowledge) to answer this question.

There could be something to the mystical views of reality. The Eastern mystical view is that life is but a dream of some kind of cosmic mind. That's one possible answer, although it wouldn't be much of an "explanation" until the workings of this proposed "Cosmic Mind" could be explained.

Proposing an unexplained Cosmic Mind as an explanation is meaningless. :D

But then again the secular materialistic idea that subjective consciousness is just the result of specific patterns of electromagnetic activity or whatever, doesn't seem to fully explain it either. At least not without a detailed explanation of precisely how these patterns achieve this phenomena.

But then, wouldn't you agree, that even if this latter idea is true, doesn't the question of how a materialistic universe could "just accidentally" happen to be configured in such a way that it could evolve into complex patterns that create subjective experiences?

The idea that this would have just happened by pure accident seem extremely mysterious to me. I mean, one could argue "evolutionary pathways" that would naturally lead to this result. But that still leaves the question of how a purely accidental universe could have formed that even has this evolutionary tendency?

I mean, in the end, there has to be some credit given to the skepticism that a universe that just happens to be able to evolve into conscious patterns doesn't itself suggest an "explanation".

Such a universe would seem to be just as mystical as a "Dreaming Cosmic Mind".

The bottom line is that even a purely materialistic view of the universe truly isn't any less "mystical" than the idea that there is some underlying innate intent behind the whole shebang.

I mean, let's imagine for a moment that human subjective experience is nothing other than a specific physical pattern of electrical activity (i.e. information). We could then view that pattern as the basis of a "human soul". In other words, we aren't then our physical body (as you point out by your belief that our subjective consciousness could be uploaded onto another physical medium).

So in a sense you are actually arguing for a "human soul" that is entirely separate from the physical body (i.e. a specific pattern of information). Not only that but it wouldn't even weigh anything. The pattern itself has no mass. It's nothing more than information. In that sense it's not even physical at all, other than the fact that insofar as we know there would need to be a physical media to hold and represent this information. But the information itself has no mass or physical reality beyond that.

In short, when you argue that the subjective awareness of a biological human could be uploaded to another medium like a non-biological computer, then you are basically saying that the idea of "resurrecting human souls". All that would be required would be to recreate that specific pattern of subjective awareness.

In this sense, humans could be said to be "souls" who are living in a physical body. Where the "soul" is the information or configuration of the pattern of electrical activity of their brain. Destroying the physical brain wouldn't even destroy the soul if that pattern could be reproduced. All that would be required is another medium that could recreate that same pattern of subjective experience.

So ironically, if your idea is correct, then this opens up a means by which a creator God could create human souls. And then "save" those souls from death by uploading chosen souls to alternative media that can recreate and sustain those patterns of subjective awareness.

You have just given religions a mechanism by which their Creator God could 'save' souls. And souls (patterns of subjective experience) that the Creator God is not interested in "saving" would simply be allowed to die (cease to exist) when the brains that are creating those patterns physically die.

So if human conscious experience is nothing more than a pattern of information, then human souls are themselves immaterial. Because information is immaterial (at least in theory as a pattern).

Obviously it is true that insofar as we know patterns cannot exist without at a least some type of physical material to be "in-formation" because information cannot exist unless something is in the formation that constitutes that's information.

But you may well be right. Our subjective experience (i.e. the essence of who and what we truly are) may come down to a totally immaterial pattern of information.

But this still brings up the problem of making multiple copies of the same patterns!

If there are multiple copies of the same pattern are there more than one "individual" then? And if so, then how would those individual be different if all that constitutes them is the pattern of their subjective conscious experience?

These questions always end up leading to even more difficult questions ad infinitude.

It's a never-ending nightmare for anyone seeking answers. :D
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Post #24

Post by Metadian »

[Replying to post 23 by Divine Insight]
I don't know, that's why I remain agnostic (without sufficient knowledge) to answer this question.

Maybe we need a new word for that. I suggest oligognostic.
It's a never-ending nightmare for anyone seeking answers.

It's the Cosmic Nightmare!

Well, it is kinda mystical. I was thinking about this myself, that consciousness is in the end the universe rising to an organization level where it can "contemplate itself". Subjectivity being therefore as intrinsic to it as materiality. There could be patterns we don't suspect that are also noogenic, and also big-scale patterns that are noogenic in spite of being made of smaller parts, some of which are noogenic and others which aren't. Doesn't it make the larger scale structure of the universe seem curious, with it's neuron-like net structure?

I don't really subscribe to that particular view though, because taking subjectivity or intent as something ontologically primordial, just pushes the question back, since it has to be first some sort of 'object', be it material or immaterial. It has to exist, too. Explaining mind from non-mind seems more logical to me, in that most things seem to be non-mind, and simpler. For instance, God wants the universe to exist, but what wants God to exist and why. And if God is self-contained, then why isn't godless existence, etc.
In other words, we aren't then our physical body (as you point out by your belief that our subjective consciousness could be uploaded onto another physical medium).

So in a sense you are actually arguing for a "human soul" that is entirely separate from the physical body (i.e. a specific pattern of information). Not only that but it wouldn't even weigh anything. The pattern itself has no mass. It's nothing more than information.

We could use some Aristotle here. Actually, how I view it, information is not a "thing" in the sense objects are things, actual things. Structure is inherent to the matter and does not exist without it. Sure, they're real, but they're not tangible because like most things that are not tangible but make sense to us (such as "under" or "change") - they're categories of our own mind. They're how our mind is structured to understand things. It's like a pattern's "information". Information relates properties of our minds, not of things. Aboutness/relationality is also about our own minds, it just means that we associate or match something to another thing.

So the idea that this soul is a pervasive, immaterial thing that transcends it, is just our external modeling. We detect a pattern and relate it, we say "it's the same" to convey certain things about it. But it is not the same reality. When my consciousness ceases, things change in my brain. That's what "ends". Then my body decomposes. Matter changing shape, as it naturally does, just that in this one instance it was from noogenic to non-noogenic.

It would be interesting to "dissect" consciousness through experiments, sadly most are unethical. For instance, which parts of the brain are the minimum required to be aware, but not taken out in an evolution-congruous way, more like in a chaotic way (basically, reverse-engineering the brain). Could we compose consciousnesses to create a bigger consciousness, would the smaller ones retain individuality (eg brain-conjoined twins, at different parts of the brain)? Some people suggest that each of our brain hemispheres hide a different "personality", but that we suppress one and acquire a higher sense of unitary self that some diseases expose as a construct (eg alien hand syndrome).

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Post #25

Post by Divine Insight »

Metadian wrote: When my consciousness ceases, things change in my brain. That's what "ends".
I agree that this does indeed seem like the most rational view of the ultimate fate of human consciousness. None the less, just as a purely scientific question it seems rational to ask, "So exactly what was it that was having an experience prior to it ending?"

That's the question I'm interested in. And if the answer is that it was just the pattern of activity, then that's fine. I can accept that. But then my next question would be, "So HOW is it that a pattern of activity can have an experience?"

And now we have a hardcore actual scientific question because we are asking, "how" it's done, not why it occurs.

So my ultimate question is a hardcore scientific question. And one that I feel we should be able to answer, assuming that our consciousness is indeed entirely due to and the result of a pattern. We should then be able to explain how this pattern manages to pull off this stunt. And expect a meaningful scientific answer to this physical question.
Metadian wrote: It would be interesting to "dissect" consciousness through experiments, sadly most are unethical.
I'm not sure they would be. After all, if we accept the hypothesis that a fish is actually having an experience, then we could dissect a fish brain. I don't think too many people would consider that to be unethical save for the most adamant animal rights activists. We might even be able to go further down the animal kingdom. Just how far does subjective experience go? Does it go clear down to insects? Worms? Paramecium? How low does it go? Exactly what is required before subjective experience first starts to "emerge" from complex patterns of neural activity?

Assuming that this is indeed what's happening.
Metadian wrote: For instance, which parts of the brain are the minimum required to be aware, but not taken out in an evolution-congruous way, more like in a chaotic way (basically, reverse-engineering the brain).
Keep in mind though that we aren't looking at "parts". The hypothesis is that subjective awareness is the result of a pattern of activity. So rather than looking for parts, we need to be looking at patterns of activity. Looking at "parts" might not provide the answer we are seeking.
Metadian wrote: Could we compose consciousnesses to create a bigger consciousness, would the smaller ones retain individuality (eg brain-conjoined twins, at different parts of the brain)? Some people suggest that each of our brain hemispheres hide a different "personality", but that we suppress one and acquire a higher sense of unitary self that some diseases expose as a construct (eg alien hand syndrome).
These are very interesting questions to be sure.

Why is it that we feel like "One Person" and not many people sharing a single body? What causes a brain to settle on just one central subjective experience?

We do know that there are people who have multiple-personality disorders. But even those people seem to only experience being one of those personalities at a time. Although I do believe there are cases where some people have reported sharing their body with a second subjective experience that is totally different from their own. But that can be quite complicated too. Are these people themselves only experiencing a single subjective experience, but just feel that there is someone else residing in their brain who is having a totally separate subjective experience from them?

I've heard so many weird medical stories that I wouldn't be surprised if there have been many different kinds of "brain disorders" or "malfunctions".

In any case, since most brains tend to produce a single subjective experience that should be our first priority if we are going to investigate the idea of a pattern producing subjective experience.

Now you have mentioned dissecting biological brains to see what make them work. I would actually like to see the topic approached from an "artificial brain" perspective. The goal being to try to create some form of complex feedback loop that might actually explain how the phenomenon of subjective experience might be created by a pattern of activity.

Unfortunately most work being done on "A.I." today is being done on digital computers. The idea there is to write programs that can simulate intelligence and the hope is that once a great enough intelligence is simulated, that alone with then produce subjective experience. But this ASSUMES that subjective experience emerges from intelligence.

The problem with this is our observation that a fish may be having a subjective experience. IF that's the case, then our laptop computers are already more intelligent than a fish. :D So the idea that intelligence gives rise to subjective experience is most likely not going to pan out.

We might actually be much further ahead working with analog computers and trying to develop a feedback loop that could produce a subjective experience. I actually have ideas of how we would be able to tell if we succeeded. Because, it's not obvious how we could determine that the computer had become self-aware.

In any case, this has to be done on an analogy computer or "Neural Network".

What really surprises me, and actually disappoints me tremendously, is that most work being done on the study of "Neural Networks" is to actually try to simulate them on a digital computer. #-o

That's never going to work.

The good news is that there are computer scientists who have recognized that analog computers are the way to go. And so they are starting to move in that direction. But they are still in the minority at this time. And they aren't necessarily working toward researching "subjective experience". Many of them have simply recognize that analog computer are actually better than digital computers at many things.

And what really shocks me is that the electronics industry isn't really producing programmable analogy neural networks. They could be, but they aren't. The closest thing they have are FPGA's and CPLD's, etc.

Until they actually start producing low-cost programmable analogy neutral networks research in this areas is going to proceed at a snail's pace, simply because there won't be enough people working on it.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

I think it's an interesting problem and we're probably on the right track. But in terms of actual research we've got a very long way to go.
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Re: Scientific determinism.

Post #26

Post by Dimmesdale »

bluethread wrote: If all is matter and motion in a closed system, isn't everything that happens predetermined by a chain reaction of cause and effect, including the being that considers itself able to make independent choices? If so, isn't that being engaging in a faith based lifestyle? If not, what is it that enables that being to make independent choices?
I do not buy into materialism. For the simple fact that choice is something we hold so dear. All of us respect the fact that we are autonomous agents who desire some things and deny others. It's called dignity, and whether you think you are just a bunch of fizzing chemicals or more (much more imo), you still demand dignity. For that reason alone we are free.

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Re: Scientific determinism.

Post #27

Post by bluethread »

7homas wrote:
bluethread wrote: If all is matter and motion in a closed system, isn't everything that happens predetermined by a chain reaction of cause and effect, including the being that considers itself able to make independent choices? If so, isn't that being engaging in a faith based lifestyle? If not, what is it that enables that being to make independent choices?
I do not buy into materialism. For the simple fact that choice is something we hold so dear. All of us respect the fact that we are autonomous agents who desire some things and deny others. It's called dignity, and whether you think you are just a bunch of fizzing chemicals or more (much more imo), you still demand dignity. For that reason alone we are free.
Then that would be a position of faith, would it not?

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Re: Scientific determinism.

Post #28

Post by Dimmesdale »

bluethread wrote:
7homas wrote:
bluethread wrote: If all is matter and motion in a closed system, isn't everything that happens predetermined by a chain reaction of cause and effect, including the being that considers itself able to make independent choices? If so, isn't that being engaging in a faith based lifestyle? If not, what is it that enables that being to make independent choices?
I do not buy into materialism. For the simple fact that choice is something we hold so dear. All of us respect the fact that we are autonomous agents who desire some things and deny others. It's called dignity, and whether you think you are just a bunch of fizzing chemicals or more (much more imo), you still demand dignity. For that reason alone we are free.
Then that would be a position of faith, would it not?
I don't think bags of chemicals could have faith.

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