Will neuroscience overshadow philosophy?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Plazma Inferno!, Feb 25, 2016.

  1. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I am not proving anything. I just offer an alternative to the standard cognitive science POV of mental processing for perceptual experiences. My POV explains many things the standard POV (Perception"emerges" after many stages of neural transforms of the input sensory signals) can not.

    For example, how could visual dreams or mental images "emerge" in a darken room with you eyes closed. Why are phantom limbs just as "real" to one who has them as their still existing limbs? How do very disturbing hallucinations occur? and dozens of more real experiences humans have with no sensory inputs to be transformed and emerge as those experiences.
     
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  3. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    A dream isn't a simulation of reality. Far from it. It is a hallucinated surreal adventure that simulates nothing at all. A phantom limb isn't simulating anything either. There is no limb there. It is a false hallucination. An illusion. All these quirks of consciousness simply display illusory states of being. They certainly don't prove consciousness is accurately simulating anything for us.
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2016
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  5. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I don't insist on the term "simulating." The point is these not physically real experiences are produced and certainly are in conflict with the standard POV about perception. (Perception"emerges" after many stages of neural transforms of the input sensory signals.)

    Also note that quite a few perceptions not only do not emerge from sensory inputs being processed but are even in conflict with physic. Some have "out of body" experiences. Some think / experience that they are they are falling. Some have pain in the fingers of their phantom limb. etc.
     
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  7. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    The problem as I see it is the striking difference between a hallucinated state and an actual perception, the former being fleeting and temporary and the latter being constant and longterm. We thus distinguish between the hallucination and the perception as in fact not being the same thing. Both are brain states mind you, but one is solipstic and the other is continuous and connected to an outer reality. Whatever consciousness is, it is connected to a transcendental reality in some enduring and updating way.
     
  8. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Nonsense! A hallucination IS an experience. How long it last does not change that.
     
  9. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    What is the object of the hallucinated experience? "What" does the hallucination refer to?
     
  10. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    I don't know if its original or prior-in-rank status deserves to be called a "reality" anymore than instructions / data on a disc or solid-state drive deserve to be called a "webpage" until they are converted into such on screen. Via all the scattered browsers accessing its server (in addition to plenty of other programs and processes being involved). However, there's often not much choice but to refer to _x_ as a world or reality if one is to be understood at all by others, so back to language enslavement. Once converted into visual, aural, etc manifestations it's certainly an inter-subjective environment that outruns any single conscious agent that outputs it (in terms of ownership, control, and perfect predictability).
     
  11. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    On (1) What ever is being hallucintaed. For example green frogs climbing the wall. On (2) Nothing is refered to. It is experienced. What does an itch or being sleepy refer to? These all are silly questions.
     
  12. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    No..there is nothing behind the hallucination. There is no object behind it and nothing it refers to or represents. Hence it isn't consciousness of anything. It is a hallucination. Pure sensation without intentionality. A glitch in a malfunctioning brain.

    An itch or being sleepy isn't a consciousness of anything. It is a sensation. Are you saying sensations are conscious? We can certainly be conscious OF sensations, but that doesn't mean sensation is also a form of consciousness. Perhaps you're confusing experience with consciousness?
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2016
  13. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps "datasource" on the one hand, or "effulgent pleroma of conscious energy" on the other, would be more accurate than reality. Reality sounds so static and confining---like a place we never leave.
     
  14. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    See next post. I had trouble getting figures here and then killing the attachments my efforts made.
     

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    Last edited: Mar 25, 2016
  15. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    No I have not been speaking of consciousness - that is a big poorly understood subject, which only you have mentioned. I have been speaking of how perceptions occur, which often do have an external object one is "perceiving" but need not. For example, pain and hunger are perceptions (all the "qualias" are) as are hallucinations, phantom limbs, and illusions, which are misinterpretations of some external stimulus and there are perceptions of of non-existing 3D objects from 2D visual stimulation. Some times more than one (but only one at a time) like the Necker Cube or Jastrow's Duck/Rabbit below at left produces.

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    I am only offering an alternative to the accepted POV about how perceptions occur. I. e. I claim they are creations made in the parietal lobes, not the emergent results of many stages of neural processing of external stimulus; however, when awake evolutionary selections has made these creations quite a good representation of external reality, in most cases (but not in dreams as then there are no fatal results of doing what is impossible, like walking thru a fire). How this is achieved is described in small part in the next paragraph.

    Neural anatomy strongly supports my POV. For example there are slightly more "retrograde" neural fibers going from the parietal to the V1 visual cortex than come there, via the LGN, from the eyes! In my view they exist so the created perception of the world can be "checked" against the incoming stimulation from the eyes sooner /earlier. The cognitive scientists seldom mention that they even exist as in the "emergent" perception POV they serve no purpose.

    In sensory depredation experiment ( very slightly supported while floating in body temperature water with total absence of sound, light and smells, with hands immoblized in gloves ) there is not much “sensory input” your perception could “emerge” from; but you constantly have perceptions, usually visual in nature and soon they are clearly hallucinations.

    In my view, the parietal perception creation machinery is running on noise, not shut down, due to lack of sensory input.
     
    Last edited: Mar 25, 2016
  16. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    For those just joining this thread, who want to know more details of what I suggest, See:
    http://www.sciforums.com/threads/is...fe-is-it-an-illusion.49127/page-4#post-905778 and some of the discussion posts that follow. That post points out that Genuine Free Will is possible, need not be in conflict with the physical laws which control the firing of every nerve, but what / who has it requires a new concept of self. Nothing "spiritual" but you are not your body either.
     
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  17. river

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    Anyway the neuroscience will never overshadow philosophy simply because neurons meld.
    I will read ; about " free will " I agree ; we do have have free will ; the Universe is not just about the mechanics of matter ; the Universe is much more complicated ; life
     
  18. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Good. I hope you do read it all and think some about it; but I do not there claim we have Genuine Free Will, only that the fact that the firing of every nerve is 100% following the physical laws, does not as most think, make GFW impossible.
     
  19. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    So there's this simulation of reality running in our brains, but it isn't consciousness? What the heck is it? And don't say perceptions. Perceptions are nothing without consciousness.
     
  20. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    What is running in our parietal lobes is a part of consciousness. In fact IMO, what we are is created there too, with information from memory and the frontal lobes, mainly. We are not a body. We are an information process.

    Because it confuses you, I have stopped using the term "simulation." - In the parietal lobes the brain makes a continuously evolving model of external reality, with slight forward projection of input sensory data compensation for neural delays to make a "real time" model of external reality (for things we can sense - not the many EM waves, etc. near us we can not).

    As the task of creating and constantly updating perceptions of reality requires enormous commputing power, I think that is the main task of the parietal lobes. Creating "us" that is aware of these created perceptions is a relative small task.

    I nearly can agree most perceptions require we be conscious of them, but we perceive things we are not immediately conscious of. I don't want to discuss consciousness more, especially not with you, as you have many beliefs without foundation. (The existence of a soul being one I suspect.)
     
  21. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    You have no idea what I believe about consciousness, if indeed I believe anything at all. Also quit spamming this thread with links to your own posts. Nobody wants to read your convoluted theories if you can't explain them concisely and clearly in the first place.
     
  22. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    True, except when you assert your beliefs as facts. Then I do get some understanding of what you believe.

    For example in post 34 you said: "A simulation requires an already conscious person to view it from the outside on a monitor." in reply to my suggestion that a much more advanced computer could be both simulating external reality and be self-aware of its creations. - No need for an "already conscious person" and so no need for any monitor screen for a person to look at.

    The reason I don't think it worth my time to discuss the very complex subject of "consciousness" with you is you assume that your beliefs are facts. Currently, I agree there is no such capable form of AI which is self aware, but that is not proof that there never could be. - Just as in the example I already gave in reply to your post 34:

    Once there was no machine that could fly and that did not prove flying machines were impossible. Fact that there are no self-aware computational machines now does not prove there never can be as you assume is fact.

    Whether or not such a machine, aware of its environment and its self, is conscious or not mainly depends on how consciousness is defined. But again, I do not want to discuss consciousness, especially with you, for reasons just stated. (Your beliefs often are stated as facts and few facts about consciousness are known.)

    - - - -
    PS I don't “spam” my unique POV about how perceptions are achieved. I mention them less than every six months or so and only when they directly relate to someone's post. (Or later in the same thread to help later readers understand what is being discussed). I mentioned them in post 29 as I extensively discussed "free will" in old post that explained my POV about perception:

    In post 2 Edont Knoff had said:
    "...We still don't know if the concept of "free will" is true - if yes, then philosophy will stay important. If no, we'll have to dump a lot of anthro-centric thoughts from philosophy, and accept that we are rule-driven machines with just the illusion of free will. ..." and I replied:
    "There is a third POV. See:
    http://www.sciforums.com/threads/is...fe-is-it-an-illusion.49127/page-4#post-905778 and some of the discussion posts that follow. The GFW story is discussed in other later posts also."
     
    Last edited: Mar 25, 2016
  23. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    You don't know if we'll ever invent a self-conscious computer or not. Perhaps it's impossible. You can't assume there will one day be a self-conscious computer and use that as a basis for saying that is basically what our own brains are.
     

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