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  • Originally posted by seer View Post
    OK, so you know where my favorite color is stored (this may in fact not be possible since it may be too diffuse). And you could possibly say that my favorite color has a specific frequency of X - but what color does X represent? If I don't self-report how could you know?
    The visible optical spectrum is a range of electromagnetic frequencies (also known as wavelengths) between 380 and 700 nanometers or 484-668 TeraHertz (THz). This is the range most human eyes are sensitive to. Each color maps to a specific part of that range. Various shades we call "violet," for example, fall in the 380-450 nm, or 668-789 THz. So if someone reports they are seeing a violet color, it will pretty consistently be a portion of the spectrum in this range. If you are seeing light in this range, and report it as "green," we will now that you are either lying, or you have a defective (compared to the rest of us) optical system.

    Originally posted by seer View Post
    It matters for the reason I stated. It demonstrates that some things are beyond science, but how can that be possible if materialism is true.
    When did I say anything about "materialism?"

    When did I dispute that "some things are beyond science?"

    And how on earth does this relate to the inital discussion about our being able to have confidence that our abstract beliefs/reasonings are true?

    That's a lot of head scratching!
    Last edited by carpedm9587; 02-13-2018, 02:47 PM.
    The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy...returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Martin Luther King

    I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. Frederick Douglas

    Comment


    • On the subject of consciousness and neuroscience, I have been listening to a few lectures on the subject lately, and IMO a depressingly low amount of research seems to be being done on the topic in general. However one group doing quite interesting work is Giulio Tononi's research group. The theory they are pursue is that, loosely speaking, the neural correlates of consciousness are going to be the most interconnected self-interacting networks, so they have developed mathematical measures of self-interactingness (that literally boil down to a single number measuring the self-interactivity). And they have had very good success with this model and have been able to predict whether people who were asleep and dreaming or under anesthetics or in comas would subsequently report being conscious or not. Their research seems to be going to be particularly useful for doctors (and courts) deciding whether or not to shut off life support to people who are in comas. There's some good lectures by him and interviews with him on youtube, e.g. here. An interesting product of his theory is that a standard computer would not be conscious even if it computationally models an entire human brain with neurons firing, because it is a step-by-step data processing entity whereas the correlate of consciousness is the interacting network itself - but he thinks it would be possible to deliberately create a robot that was conscious if you constructed the computer circuitry in certain ways that linked up with each other in an iterative fashion (rather than performing step by step instructions as computers are currently designed to do).

      At a philosophical level, he personally seems to equate consciousness with this interacting-information-complexity that they are measuring, and he takes the view that consciousness is simply "what interacting information 'feels like'". But I would say that his scientific research is equally applicable to any sort of dualist view where the complex self-interacting networks are operating as a 'satellite dish' for connecting to consciousness, as if consciousness is able to nudge things a tiny bit at a quantum level or interact with the wavefunction, then the iterative self-interacting nature of the systems allows for maximal interactions between consciousness and matter, as consciousness would be able to nudge the wavefunction over and over and over again and have a bigger effect on the system.
      "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
      "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
      "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

      Comment


      • Originally posted by Starlight View Post
        On the subject of consciousness and neuroscience, I have been listening to a few lectures on the subject lately, and IMO a depressingly low amount of research seems to be being done on the topic in general. However one group doing quite interesting work is Giulio Tononi's research group. The theory they are pursue is that, loosely speaking, the neural correlates of consciousness are going to be the most interconnected self-interacting networks, so they have developed mathematical measures of self-interactingness (that literally boil down to a single number measuring the self-interactivity). And they have had very good success with this model and have been able to predict whether people who were asleep and dreaming or under anesthetics or in comas would subsequently report being conscious or not. Their research seems to be going to be particularly useful for doctors (and courts) deciding whether or not to shut off life support to people who are in comas. There's some good lectures by him and interviews with him on youtube, e.g. here. An interesting product of his theory is that a standard computer would not be conscious even if it computationally models an entire human brain with neurons firing, because it is a step-by-step data processing entity whereas the correlate of consciousness is the interacting network itself - but he thinks it would be possible to deliberately create a robot that was conscious if you constructed the computer circuitry in certain ways that linked up with each other in an iterative fashion (rather than performing step by step instructions as computers are currently designed to do).

        At a philosophical level, he personally seems to equate consciousness with this interacting-information-complexity that they are measuring, and he takes the view that consciousness is simply "what interacting information 'feels like'". But I would say that his scientific research is equally applicable to any sort of dualist view where the complex self-interacting networks are operating as a 'satellite dish' for connecting to consciousness, as if consciousness is able to nudge things a tiny bit at a quantum level or interact with the wavefunction, then the iterative self-interacting nature of the systems allows for maximal interactions between consciousness and matter, as consciousness would be able to nudge the wavefunction over and over and over again and have a bigger effect on the system.
        Just for argument's sake, modern computers are no longer "step-by-step" devices. They incorporate the concepts of pipelines and look aheads. YOu also now have multiple processors interworking to complete a task. As time moves on, these devices look and operate more and more like a neural network than a linear processor.
        The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy...returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Martin Luther King

        I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. Frederick Douglas

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Starlight View Post
          Why? I would usually call myself a "dualist" or an "idealist" on the mind-body problem. I think the idea that the brain acts a satellite dish to communicate through to another realm on the quantum level as I described in post 202 seems perfectly plausible, and certainly not logically inconsistent.
          Interesting but highly speculative. For me the logical incoherence of dualism presents itself at the interface between the 'material brain' and the posited immaterial 'mind/soul'. Where is the nexus? AFAICT the mind and consciousness can be reduced to the neurological function of the brain and nervous system.
          “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

          Comment


          • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
            For me the logical incoherence of dualism presents itself at the interface between the 'material brain' and the posited immaterial 'mind/soul'. Where is the nexus?
            Well, how do immaterial radio waves interact with the material antenna that emit and receive them? The answer is that radio waves interact very weakly with matter in general, but if you have the right arrangement of matter you can multiply and concentrate that interaction to have an interface.

            You can of course reply that "well, radio waves are part of the material world". But that is something that has been made to be true by science expanding its definition of the material world to encompass things like radio waves that would previously have been viewed as immaterial and spooky, but which we have since pretty fully quantified.

            Modern physics tells us that there are all sorts of weakly-interacting sub-atomic particles - neutrinos, WIMPs etc, and some theories about quantum wavefunctions postulate that our universe may be interacting with other universes on the quantum level. Let us imagine we discover that consciousness resides in one of those weakly-interacting particles or fields, a new AWAKE particle say, or we discover that actually it lies in one of those other multi-universes that our universe is accessing through quantum events, and we discover that the pattern of neurons in the brain are evolutionarily well-organized to maximally send/receive/interact with the consciousness-particles/field or to tunnel through to the conscious universe, in some fashion similar to how the particles in a radio receiver are well-organized to maximally interact with radio signals that otherwise have very weak interactions with matter... that is the kind of thing I am thinking of.

            Now, it is totally possible you would still then want to say that "consciousness is material in the sense that it interacts with matter and is part of our wider 'material' universe in the sense that it interacts with the material in this universe" just as you might say that radio waves are "material". But it is not clear to me that you would be achieving anything useful by that definition.

            AFAICT the mind and consciousness can be reduced to the neurological function of the brain and nervous system.
            I see this as an alternative hypothesis to the above. In this view, the brain is self-contained in the sense that it doesn't access any sort of pervasive fields or weakly interacting particles or other universes, and is fully explained with respect to the components in the brain and functions with regard to them.

            To give two everyday examples in my room that match these two hypotheses: My TV versus my calculator. My calculators function is fully explicable with regard to itself and itself alone: The components in it interact to give a particular function. If we created a perfect computational model of the wires inside my calculator, we could 100% predict its behavior and what outputs it would give when we pressed its buttons. Whereas my TV isn't self-sufficient, and if I turn it on it will do absolutely nothing useful unless it is receiving the external signal from the pervasive immaterial field that gives it information and interacts with it. If we created a perfect computational model of the wires inside my TV, that model when we ran it in our computer sandbox would give a blank screen and not show a TV program, because the TV requires a constant stream of information from outside itself for its function, and it is a receiver for that information.

            So the question with regard to the brain, is: Is the brain a self-contained processor like the calculator, or is it a receive/transmit device like the TV?
            "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
            "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
            "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

            Comment


            • Originally posted by carpedm9587 View Post
              We really don't know how the concept of causality applies outside of the universe we know/love. We don't know how/if time and/or space apply outside of this known universe. So there is at least a possibility that we are trying to apply concepts that are meaningful within this universe, to things outside this universe, and that this application may not work. So there may be a third (or fourth, or infinite number of) option(s) we cannot conceive of.
              Sounds like wishful thinking to me.
              Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

              Comment


              • Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                Well, how do immaterial radio waves interact with the material antenna that emit and receive them? The answer is that radio waves interact very weakly with matter in general, but if you have the right arrangement of matter you can multiply and concentrate that interaction to have an interface.

                You can of course reply that "well, radio waves are part of the material world". But that is something that has been made to be true by science expanding its definition of the material world to encompass things like radio waves that would previously have been viewed as immaterial and spooky, but which we have since pretty fully quantified.
                I would say that the material world and its phenomena would encompass such things as radio waves just as it has encompassed many things over the centuries hitherto regarded as immaterial or “spooky”. There is no reason to think that the emergence of consciousness among higher animals won’t succumb to an equally uncontroversial explanation by the physical sciences.

                Modern physics tells us that there are all sorts of weakly-interacting sub-atomic particles - neutrinos, WIMPs etc, and some theories about quantum wavefunctions postulate that our universe may be interacting with other universes on the quantum level. Let us imagine we discover that consciousness resides in one of those weakly-interacting particles or fields, a new AWAKE particle say, or we discover that actually it lies in one of those other multi-universes that our universe is accessing through quantum events, and we discover that the pattern of neurons in the brain are evolutionarily well-organized to maximally send/receive/interact with the consciousness-particles/field or to tunnel through to the conscious universe, in some fashion similar to how the particles in a radio receiver are well-organized to maximally interact with radio signals that otherwise have very weak interactions with matter... that is the kind of thing I am thinking of.

                Now, it is totally possible you would still then want to say that "consciousness is material in the sense that it interacts with matter and is part of our wider 'material' universe in the sense that it interacts with the material in this universe" just as you might say that radio waves are "material".
                I would say that 'consciousness' is the manifestation of a self-aware material brain and is part of our wider 'material universe’.

                But it is not clear to me that you would be achieving anything useful by that definition.
                Well, if verified, it would give us greater understanding of the material world in which we live. The accumulation of knowledge is surely a good thing.

                I see this as an alternative hypothesis to the above. In this view, the brain is self-contained in the sense that it doesn't access any sort of pervasive fields or weakly interacting particles or other universes, and is fully explained with respect to the components in the brain and functions with regard to them.
                I think the brain is self-contained and that your hypotheses are too speculative, fanciful even.

                To give two everyday examples in my room that match these two hypotheses: My TV versus my calculator. My calculators function is fully explicable with regard to itself and itself alone: The components in it interact to give a particular function. If we created a perfect computational model of the wires inside my calculator, we could 100% predict its behavior and what outputs it would give when we pressed its buttons. Whereas my TV isn't self-sufficient, and if I turn it on it will do absolutely nothing useful unless it is receiving the external signal from the pervasive immaterial field that gives it information and interacts with it. If we created a perfect computational model of the wires inside my TV, that model when we ran it in our computer sandbox would give a blank screen and not show a TV program, because the TV requires a constant stream of information from outside itself for its function, and it is a receiver for that information.

                So the question with regard to the brain, is: Is the brain a self-contained processor like the calculator, or is it a receive/transmit device like the TV?
                There is no good reason why the mind and consciousness cannot be reduced to the neurological function of the brain and nervous system...even the mysteries of life and reproduction itself are now reduced to the well-understood complexities of molecular biology. Why should consciousness be any exception? Why should the brain be the only complex physical entity in the universe to have an interface with a non-material realm of reality?
                “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                  1. For example his statement that "I think Intelligent Design creationism is just as strained, just as ludicrous, just as fallacious as Tzortzis’s Muslim creationism, or Ken Ham’s fundamentalist creationism, or Hugh Ross’s old earth creationism, or Biologos’s theistic evolution. I despise you all equally."
                  That quote gives a very different impression when read in context.
                  Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                  MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                  MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                  seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Roy View Post
                    That quote gives a very different impression when read in context.
                    I just read the whole thing from the link, and no, it really doesn't.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Jedidiah View Post
                      Sounds like wishful thinking to me.
                      I am not wishing for anything, I'm simply acknowledging that we are in an area where I mostly have to say "I don't know." Nobody wishes for ignorance, AFAIK.
                      The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy...returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Martin Luther King

                      I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. Frederick Douglas

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by carpedm9587 View Post
                        Just for argument's sake, modern computers are no longer "step-by-step" devices. They incorporate the concepts of pipelines and look aheads. YOu also now have multiple processors interworking to complete a task. As time moves on, these devices look and operate more and more like a neural network than a linear processor.
                        Actually no. Modern processors and programs use multi-core, multithreaded processes but that is merely splitting up the problem and solving it using parallel processing, which is still "step-by-step" at the processor stage and nothing at all like a neural network.

                        You can create neural networks at the software level and that is what a lot of AI programs use, like Google's Deepmind and Deep dream which uses neural networks to recognize patterns.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                          Actually no. Modern processors and programs use multi-core, multithreaded processes but that is merely splitting up the problem and solving it using parallel processing, which is still "step-by-step" at the processor stage and nothing at all like a neural network.
                          My reference was to the combination of pipelining and look aheads. Modern computers are designed with the ability to make "best guesses" on outcomes so they can pre-process future tasks, using the outcome if their "guess" was correct and abandoning if it was not. I did not say they were "like" neural nets - I said, "as time moves on, these look and operate more and more like a neural network than a linear processor." The initial similarity is crude, I grant you. But the idea that a processor simply executes one step at a time is simply no longer true.

                          Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                          You can create neural networks at the software level and that is what a lot of AI programs use, like Google's Deepmind and Deep dream which uses neural networks to recognize patterns.
                          Yes - fully functional neural nets, today, are primarily done in software. But computer processors are moving in that direction. Indeed, Intel announced a hardware neural net processor last year.
                          The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy...returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Martin Luther King

                          I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. Frederick Douglas

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by carpedm9587 View Post
                            My reference was to the combination of pipelining and look aheads. Modern computers are designed with the ability to make "best guesses" on outcomes so they can pre-process future tasks, using the outcome if their "guess" was correct and abandoning if it was not. I did not say they were "like" neural nets - I said, "as time moves on, these look and operate more and more like a neural network than a linear processor." The initial similarity is crude, I grant you. But the idea that a processor simply executes one step at a time is simply no longer true.
                            You were wrong. Just admit it. You have no idea how neural networks work, or apparently processors. No shame in that.

                            Pipelining is just a way to subdivide processes. It is a type of parallel processing. Lookahead is just a way to allocate resources needed in upcoming processes. Not guessing outcomes.


                            Yes - fully functional neural nets, today, are primarily done in software. But computer processors are moving in that direction. Indeed, Intel announced a hardware neural net processor last year.
                            Yes they are starting to design neural nets in hardware, but this has nothing to do with what you were saying earlier.

                            FYI - here is a good overview of how computer neural nets work:

                            https://news.mit.edu/2017/explained-...-learning-0414
                            Last edited by Sparko; 02-14-2018, 09:51 AM.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                              You were wrong. Just admit it. You have no idea how neural networks work, or apparently processors. No shame in that.

                              Yes they are starting to design neural nets in hardware, but this has nothing to do with what you were saying earlier.
                              Sparko - my Master's Degree is in Computer and Information Sciences, and I teach telecommunications and computer sciences for a living. My company deals with these concepts all the time. I stand by my observations.
                              The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy...returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Martin Luther King

                              I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. Frederick Douglas

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by carpedm9587 View Post
                                Sparko - my Master's Degree is in Computer and Information Sciences, and I teach telecommunications and computer sciences for a living. My company deals with these concepts all the time. I stand by my observations.
                                Go back to school.

                                Pipelining is just a way to subdivide processes. It is a type of parallel processing. Lookahead is just a way to allocate resources needed in upcoming processes. Not guessing outcomes.

                                Nothing at all to do with neural networks or how they work.

                                Neural networks are just a way to sort things according to patterns.

                                Comment

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