Talk:Consciousness Studies/The Philosophical Problem

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Is this the proper place to talk about the book? I thought this would be interesting... http://www.ctmu.net/ . I think the real problem is the myth of 'seperate objectness' and the myth of 'outside' vs 'inside'. Objects are not ultimately seperate, only distinct, i.e. reality is one surface with distinctions we perceive as 'seperate'. So there is no "outside" or "inside", it is continuous, with distinctions that appear discrete and disconnected. Like bumps or waves in a unified surface. But the are actually all connected in the ultimate sense. That would do away with any 'problems', each piece of reality = self-excited circuit/self-detecting-self-processing-ring, and it would explain evolution as well.--Zack Bran

Hi, I have just had a look at your paper. I found it interesting. I think you clearly identified the regression arguments with the postulate of the universe as a 3D manifold with an independent time dimension. A few thoughts phrased as questions:

Can we have states without topologies and are space and time simply terms for degrees of freedom in a topology? Given that the world is at least 3+1D, are you sure that mind is not an nD state at one end of your information channels rather than the transforms/languages that relate the ends? Have you considered the duality inherent in nD projective geometry (cf Steiner)? Have you considered manifolds of signature +++-, +++--, ++++- etc where the negative signature gives a projective geometry? Recursion is a feature of successions of 3D classical manifolds (where time is separate) but is recursion always necessary in higher dimensional manifolds with mixed signatures (in complex manifolds events can be projected and at a point)? RobinH (talk) 19:04, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Robin join the discussion here and the main index http://www.ctmu.org/ and http://www.megafoundation.org/index2005.htm - there's a member area, and a discussion forum for members there. -- Zack

(Zack again) I am not the author of CTMU. I have been working on my own ideas and I disagree with some point's of the CTMU. Specifically that our reality is 'self-contained', in that the universe of change is the 'real' universe, i.e. that is all there is. I've been studying fractals and fractal recursion, and my current conjecture is that our universe is a fractal subdivision of a larger entity. I have been developing my own ideas but the are far from complete, you are welcome to contact me though, if interested. Just leave a message here, and tell me where I can leave a post in your talkback (post a link to where you want me to post so then you can just click and post). Part of the new ideas I've been working on is partially related to the half-finished (i.e. that's my judgment) ideas of G. Spencer http://www.lawsofform.org/ there is also a discussion group here http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lawsofform/ and also http://www.boundarymath.org/

I have a problem with the characterization of the hard problem given at the beginning: "A state is an arrangement of things in space over a period of time." This is implying that a conscious state is an arrangement of things in space over a period of time. That is, this assumes physicalism.

In fact, the way this page is written, it betrays a misunderstanding of the Hard Problem, and what the Hard Problem side calls "consciousness."

The Dennett crowd projects that when we (Lanier, Chalmers, myself) talk about consciousness, that we are talking about something that can make decisions, and performs processing with some sort of ontology living within the mind. Soft (like a fuzzy neural network,) or delineated (like a computer,) however.

This is not actually our claim. We are saying that there is a visage, an appearance, an experience, and that it is this visage that is epiphenomenal. Unnecessary. That there is an explanatory gap there.

It needs to be perfectly clear: Any functional explanation isn't it. If you say, "Oh, but the brain rotates shapes this way," or if you say, "But associative reasoning works this way," then you haven't done a thing to explain the epiphenomenal experience. You may as well be talking about the motions of cars outside of the body.

Not only "conscious experience is not required for a nineteenth century model of the behaviour of organisms", but conscious experience is not even required for a 20th or 21st century model of the behavior of the organism.

The brain is just as external to the experience as the motions of cars. And the experience is just as epiphenomenal to the mechanics of the thinking in the brain, as it is epiphenomenal to the motion of the car. The car could move just perfectly fine without anybody experiencing it, and the brain could think, talk, and reason (even about consciousness) just fine, without experience.

It's entirely within bounds to say: "consciousness comes from the motions of the brain." But the epiphenomalism of consciousness is still there, regardless, hangling off as an unnecessary dangler. Poke a body with a brain in it, and it should go "ouch," the brain should start working out strategies for telling a person to bug off, a face should scoul, and the reputation systems held in mind should update and the chemistry and neural patterning of emotions should turn to anger, but -- there's no need for anything to actually experience it.

Dennett argued in "The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies," saying (paraphrased,) "Could you really believe in zombies? I find that hard to believe." But this is an argument from incredulity. The explanatory gap is still present, Dennett's incredulity does not close it.

LionKimbro

Excellent point and a regrettable oversight in the text. I have put in a paragraph in the module pointing to your discussion as a temporary measure. That said, I do not see 'the hard problem' as Chalmers' possession, it also refers to observations by a large number of philosophers from Leibniz gazing at a brain made from cogs and wheels onwards. But the lack of mention of the impetus behind property dualism is a black hole in the current book! RobinH 14:12, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I have extended the introduction to explain the objective of the section in more depth. The objective of the section is to show that information about the physical state of the world is incomplete and subject to revision. That there are deep, unresolved problems in physics, especially about the nature of time, space and matter that impinge directly on the problem of consciousness. Some arguments for dualism, such as epiphenomenalism, are actually aspects of problems in science that are awaiting explanation. I am also going to add the missing section on dualism in the previous module. RobinH 13:59, 15 December 2005 (UTC)