The mind begs the question

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Faustus5
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Re: The mind begs the question

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Atla wrote: April 23rd, 2021, 12:33 pm
Brain scans don't measure the internal "conscious" events themselves, but measure external correlates of such assumed events.
Actually, they do. At least, they do for the adults in the room who are scientifically literate and aren't harboring the ridiculous delusion that consciousness is some kind of non-physical magic, for which there is no evidence and not a single argument that isn't silly on the face of it.
Atla
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Re: The mind begs the question

Post by Atla »

Faustus5 wrote: April 25th, 2021, 5:36 pm
Atla wrote: April 23rd, 2021, 12:33 pm
Brain scans don't measure the internal "conscious" events themselves, but measure external correlates of such assumed events.
Actually, they do. At least, they do for the adults in the room who are scientifically literate and aren't harboring the ridiculous delusion that consciousness is some kind of non-physical magic, for which there is no evidence and not a single argument that isn't silly on the face of it.
If you were an adult, you would have had the intellectual honesty by now to stop talking about some kind of non-physical magic, which no one was arguing for here.

If you knew half as much about neuroimaging as you think you do, you would know now that internal events as in phenomenal consciousness, can't be measured and transmitted as they are. Only external correlations, material structure abstracts looking from the outside, can be generated from such assumed internal events. Yes they are generated from the inside of the brain, but still we get just correlations.
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Faustus5
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Re: The mind begs the question

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Atla wrote: April 26th, 2021, 12:00 am If you knew half as much about neuroimaging as you think you do, you would know now that internal events as in phenomenal consciousness, can't be measured and transmitted as they are.
To the extent this claim even begins to make sense, it is completely and fully irrelevant in every single way. The kind of thing you get from a model like the global neuronal workspace is what explaining phenomenal consciousness scientifically looks like. If you are asking it to do anything else, then whether you admit it or not, you are falling into the incoherent trap of positing that phenomenal consciousness is magical/non-physical.
Atla
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Re: The mind begs the question

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Faustus5 wrote: April 27th, 2021, 5:35 pm
Atla wrote: April 26th, 2021, 12:00 am If you knew half as much about neuroimaging as you think you do, you would know now that internal events as in phenomenal consciousness, can't be measured and transmitted as they are.
To the extent this claim even begins to make sense, it is completely and fully irrelevant in every single way. The kind of thing you get from a model like the global neuronal workspace is what explaining phenomenal consciousness scientifically looks like. If you are asking it to do anything else, then whether you admit it or not, you are falling into the incoherent trap of positing that phenomenal consciousness is magical/non-physical.
You have no idea what you're talking about. The GNW models human consciousness in a functional way, but it doesn't touch the problem of why there is phenomenal consciousness at all.
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Atla
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Re: The mind begs the question

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I don't just see Dennett and his followers as misguided, I think there is a certain malignance, a desire to hurt, behind all this denial of phenomenal consciousness. It's like wanting to extinguish all joy in life for others, make life not felt, just mechanic. If they can't enjoy life then neither shall anyone else. They even find the hipocrisy to pose like science was on their side, even though the opposite of that is true.
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Consul
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Re: The mind begs the question

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Atla wrote: April 28th, 2021, 1:40 am
Faustus5 wrote: April 27th, 2021, 5:35 pm To the extent this claim even begins to make sense, it is completely and fully irrelevant in every single way. The kind of thing you get from a model like the global neuronal workspace is what explaining phenomenal consciousness scientifically looks like. If you are asking it to do anything else, then whether you admit it or not, you are falling into the incoherent trap of positing that phenomenal consciousness is magical/non-physical.
You have no idea what you're talking about. The GNW models human consciousness in a functional way, but it doesn't touch the problem of why there is phenomenal consciousness at all.
"Global-workspace theory proposes that phenomenal consciousness simply is globally broadcast nonconceptual content."
—Peter Carruthers (Human and Animal Minds, 2019, p. 133)

If that is true, then there is a straightforward explanation of "why there is phenomenal consciousness at all":
If there is GBNC and GBNC = PC, then there is PC.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Atla
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Re: The mind begs the question

Post by Atla »

Consul wrote: April 28th, 2021, 12:16 pm
Atla wrote: April 28th, 2021, 1:40 am
Faustus5 wrote: April 27th, 2021, 5:35 pm To the extent this claim even begins to make sense, it is completely and fully irrelevant in every single way. The kind of thing you get from a model like the global neuronal workspace is what explaining phenomenal consciousness scientifically looks like. If you are asking it to do anything else, then whether you admit it or not, you are falling into the incoherent trap of positing that phenomenal consciousness is magical/non-physical.
You have no idea what you're talking about. The GNW models human consciousness in a functional way, but it doesn't touch the problem of why there is phenomenal consciousness at all.
"Global-workspace theory proposes that phenomenal consciousness simply is globally broadcast nonconceptual content."
—Peter Carruthers (Human and Animal Minds, 2019, p. 133)

If that is true, then there is a straightforward explanation of "why there is phenomenal consciousness at all":
If there is GBNC and GBNC = PC, then there is PC.
Yes, but a proposal without evidence. Obviously, content has to be distributed across the brain, brain regions have to be synchronized etc. And when there are problems with such global broadcastings, when not all signals get far enough, the mind can even fracture into pieces. I've done countless experiments on my own mind too, to see if I can improve these "broadcastings", there are a few techniques.

But as usual, science remains silent on the issue. Why would, say, some patterns of electrical activity create phenomenal consciousness, while other electrical patters don't? Why can this PC not be measured, even when the right kind of electrical activity is present? Why would such a thing even happen in principle?

GNW people seem to think that they suddenly own the place, after discovering the obvious fact that content has to be distributed across the brain, and normally, the brain regions work together in a coherent fashion, to establish/modulate the human mind.
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Consul
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Re: The mind begs the question

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GWT has been criticized by Chalmers:

QUOTE>
"Baars brings all sorts of experimental evidence to bear in establishing his main thesis: consciousness is a kind of global workspace in a distributed system of intelligent information processors. When processors gain access to the global workspace, they broadcast a message to the entire system, as if they had written it on a blackboard. The contents of the global workspace are the contents of consciousness.

Baars uses this model to explain a remarkable number of properties of human processing. The model provides a very suggestive framework for explaining a subject's access to information, and its role in attention, reportability, voluntary control, and even the development of a self-concept. The global workspace framework is therefore well suited to explaining consciousness in its whole bundle of psychological senses. There is at least a general theory of awareness on offer.

But there is no reductive explanation of experience to be found here. The question of why these processes should give rise to experience is simply not addressed. One might suppose that according to the theory, the contents of experience are precisely the contents of the workspace. But even if this is so, nothing internal to the theory explains why it is that the information within the global workspace is experienced. The best the theory can do is to say that the information is experienced because it is globally accessible. But now the question arises in a different form: Why should global accessibility give rise to conscious experience? This bridging question is not addressed in Baar's work."

(Chalmers, David J. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. p. 112)
<QUOTE

I think he does have a point here: The experientiality of the information within the global workspace seems to be an extra explanandum, because a global workspace whose information content is unexperienced or (phenomenally) unconscious seems logico-conceptually possible at least.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Atla
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Re: The mind begs the question

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The hallmark of the 21st century philosophical charlatan (like Dennett for example) is that he starts treating INFORMATION as this newly discovered magical substance, that can bridge explanatory gaps. Not quite physical, not quite mental either, somewhere in between, a bit of both, a bit of neither?

Anyway information.. information processing.. bits, computation, complexity... uhm magic, bum tsk, and now if I squint a little.. and there, we have phenomenal consciousness. Also, buy my new book about memes.

In real neuroscience, information is matter/energy. Electric impulses, firing synapses etc. all made of matter/energy. The same question remains, why would particular configurations of this be/create phenomenal consciousness?
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Re: The mind begs the question

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Atla wrote: April 30th, 2021, 12:25 pm The hallmark of the 21st century philosophical charlatan (like Dennett for example) is that he starts treating INFORMATION as this newly discovered magical substance, that can bridge explanatory gaps. Not quite physical, not quite mental either, somewhere in between, a bit of both, a bit of neither?

Anyway information.. information processing.. bits, computation, complexity... uhm magic, bum tsk, and now if I squint a little.. and there, we have phenomenal consciousness. Also, buy my new book about memes.

In real neuroscience, information is matter/energy. Electric impulses, firing synapses etc. all made of matter/energy. The same question remains, why would particular configurations of this be/create phenomenal consciousness?
I think most people, including Dennett know what information is, and what it can do.
But for yourself, I can see why you might think it is all spooky and magical.
Many people who share views similar to your own are still scared of the hard problem of consciousness, and you want magic to explain it, but serious people realise that we are only human and may never solve the consciousness question, and are satified with science which can never explain anything to people not willing to listen.
You'll just have to accept that what science does is not so much explain, but describe. It describes in such a way that demonstrates HOW.
If you want to know WHY then go to church and fill your brain with garbage. I undestand that many people find that satisfying.
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Sculptor1
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Re: The mind begs the question

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Atla wrote: April 28th, 2021, 1:55 am I don't just see Dennett and his followers as misguided, I think there is a certain malignance, a desire to hurt, behind all this denial of phenomenal consciousness. It's like wanting to extinguish all joy in life for others, make life not felt, just mechanic. If they can't enjoy life then neither shall anyone else. They even find the hipocrisy to pose like science was on their side, even though the opposite of that is true.
This sounds hysterical.
Are you sure you want to say that Dennett's followers want to extinguish joy?? :lol:
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Re: The mind begs the question

Post by Atla »

Sculptor1 wrote: April 30th, 2021, 12:31 pm
Atla wrote: April 30th, 2021, 12:25 pm The hallmark of the 21st century philosophical charlatan (like Dennett for example) is that he starts treating INFORMATION as this newly discovered magical substance, that can bridge explanatory gaps. Not quite physical, not quite mental either, somewhere in between, a bit of both, a bit of neither?

Anyway information.. information processing.. bits, computation, complexity... uhm magic, bum tsk, and now if I squint a little.. and there, we have phenomenal consciousness. Also, buy my new book about memes.

In real neuroscience, information is matter/energy. Electric impulses, firing synapses etc. all made of matter/energy. The same question remains, why would particular configurations of this be/create phenomenal consciousness?
I think most people, including Dennett know what information is, and what it can do.
But for yourself, I can see why you might think it is all spooky and magical.
Many people who share views similar to your own are still scared of the hard problem of consciousness, and you want magic to explain it, but serious people realise that we are only human and may never solve the consciousness question, and are satified with science which can never explain anything to people not willing to listen.
You'll just have to accept that what science does is not so much explain, but describe. It describes in such a way that demonstrates HOW.
If you want to know WHY then go to church and fill your brain with garbage. I undestand that many people find that satisfying.
As usual you have absolutely no idea what my views are.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: The mind begs the question

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Atla wrote: April 30th, 2021, 12:25 pm In real neuroscience, information is matter/energy. Electric impulses, firing synapses etc. all made of matter/energy. The same question remains, why would particular configurations of this be/create phenomenal consciousness?
You can just as well ask the same question about ANY dynamic relations of matter relative to ANY property.

The problem is that for some reason, people want the descriptions or explanations to somehow "seem like" mental properties, but that's a ridiculous double standard, because no scientific description or explanation of ANY property seems like the property in question. For all of that other stuff, people simply accept the description as equating to the property(ies) in question.
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Re: The mind begs the question

Post by Sculptor1 »

Atla wrote: April 30th, 2021, 12:39 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: April 30th, 2021, 12:31 pm
Atla wrote: April 30th, 2021, 12:25 pm The hallmark of the 21st century philosophical charlatan (like Dennett for example) is that he starts treating INFORMATION as this newly discovered magical substance, that can bridge explanatory gaps. Not quite physical, not quite mental either, somewhere in between, a bit of both, a bit of neither?

Anyway information.. information processing.. bits, computation, complexity... uhm magic, bum tsk, and now if I squint a little.. and there, we have phenomenal consciousness. Also, buy my new book about memes.

In real neuroscience, information is matter/energy. Electric impulses, firing synapses etc. all made of matter/energy. The same question remains, why would particular configurations of this be/create phenomenal consciousness?
I think most people, including Dennett know what information is, and what it can do.
But for yourself, I can see why you might think it is all spooky and magical.
Many people who share views similar to your own are still scared of the hard problem of consciousness, and you want magic to explain it, but serious people realise that we are only human and may never solve the consciousness question, and are satified with science which can never explain anything to people not willing to listen.
You'll just have to accept that what science does is not so much explain, but describe. It describes in such a way that demonstrates HOW.
If you want to know WHY then go to church and fill your brain with garbage. I undestand that many people find that satisfying.
As usual you have absolutely no idea what my views are.
No wonder
As usual you are only capable of confused gibberish.
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Sculptor1
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Re: The mind begs the question

Post by Sculptor1 »

Terrapin Station wrote: April 30th, 2021, 2:01 pm
Atla wrote: April 30th, 2021, 12:25 pm In real neuroscience, information is matter/energy. Electric impulses, firing synapses etc. all made of matter/energy. The same question remains, why would particular configurations of this be/create phenomenal consciousness?
You can just as well ask the same question about ANY dynamic relations of matter relative to ANY property.

The problem is that for some reason, people want the descriptions or explanations to somehow "seem like" mental properties, but that's a ridiculous double standard, because no scientific description or explanation of ANY property seems like the property in question. For all of that other stuff, people simply accept the description as equating to the property(ies) in question.
I do not think Dennett is unaware of that.
But like most smart people who moves on and gets on with talking about what we can about the phenomenon.
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