DRFseven

Though I agree with you that it seems unfathomable, science is full of counter-intuitive discoveries that seemed logically impossible before they were reduced. "How could living matter ever be produced by by a complicated arrangement of non-living matter?", asked the vitalists.



But complexity has never stopped the progress of science before; why should it now? This attitude of "Whoa; stand back! The mysterious area of mental representation is way, way too special for us to even consider.", is more than faintly repugnant to me.



Yet, I assume you have no objection to the phenomenon of pain being reduced to its neurobiological substrate in order to alleviate it. Or to sight being understood so that vision can be improved? Think of everything that has been done by virtue of these mental phenomena being reduced as far as they have.

You've linked to an essay by Patrica Churchland; one of my favorites. I couldn't agree more.

excreationist

mhc:
Have you read about Marvin Minsky's AI research? Note that he did it many decades ago... here is some information about neural networks... he was a pioneer in that field. But in the 70's AI programs used definite logic, etc, instead of being like little brains that were taught correct answers through experience ("trained"). BTW, neural networks can easily infer or predict things, etc. (They don't need to be explicitly taught everything).

Yeah, we don't communicate to other humans in our brain's native code... (through neural firings, chemicals, etc). A related thing is computers on the internet... they can communicate to each other using things like HTML, FTP, JPG, etc, and the user can also deal with those things only on their computer, but their computer has a native code as well - assembly or "machine code". And this code is different for different computers (e.g. Macs, Pentiums, etc) though they can share common formats (like JPG, etc)
BTW, I think that the 100 billion neurons in our brain are each connected to about 1000 or 10,000 others... and I think there is a cycle of signals in our brain going through at about 50 times per second...
It is more efficient for people to use a few words to communicate ideas to others. These words would trigger a large amount of associations in the other person's brain, causing them to think of similar concepts to the first person.

Well our neural network brains deal with the patterns we can sense... e.g. sights, sounds, etc... I don't think we can directly sense the state of all our brain's neurons. (That is like how people can't directly tell which transistors in the CPU are on or off or exactly how many electrons are flowing through them)

Have you read about how neural networks can learn things like how to recognize handwriting, or the sex of a person in a photo, etc? Remember that handwriting is very variable. And so is the appearance of different males and females...

BTW, the Chinese Room talks about a symbolic AI computer that has its "knowledge" programmed in. Searle apparently thinks conscious artificial brains are theoretically possible. (Neural network-style AI)

About heat:
We have a very strong instinct to move away from very hot or cold temperatures. Every fraction of a second that we fail to do this we feel the urge to find a way to stop the incoming signal... if the signal isn't very intense and we have stronger priorities then we'll just endure the discomfort... so anyway, I think it isn't learnt (as you probably do). And recognizing a specific person's face is learnt. (Although feeling attracted to "beautiful" faces and scared of "ugly" faces seems to be instinctual - based on studies done with babies)

jpbrooks:
I think bodily pain signals are automatically given a strong priority in our brain for us to avoid. Depending on our other priorities we might endure the pain or discomfort (mild pain) for a while. Some people might seek pain out of boredom or the sense of justice it brings (if they're a martyr). Even if we don't avoid the pain, we can still be aware of it (though there is a small limit to how many things we can be aware of). This information can then be used in the future. e.g. we might feel back pains every now and then, but act on it later... So it's about priorities - "do's" and "do not's", things to seek and things to avoid - and bodily pain is by default a thing our brain is set to avoid. So that's how I reduce pain. I don't think it's just some sensation that can't be reduced at all. The reason why it "feels" bad is because I think "we" are our brains - we are the thing with priorities - things we *must* seek or avoid - and lesser priorities that we would prefer to seek or avoid.
This suggests that mental phenomena has a very physical basis... e.g. chemicals and injury can affect your mood or thinking ability... stress can lower the immune system (due to other priorities) and increase the heart rate and muscle tension (for fighting/running), etc, (stress is just the instinctual fight or flight response to threats) and calm thoughts decrease the heart-rate and leave more resources to the rest of the body... (the brain uses a very large amount of resources, and intense thinking uses even more I think... and the absense of stress involves the fight/flight response not happening).

If the "observer" is totally passive (though still non-physical) then things would be a little more complicated..... if the observer wasn't passive (i.e. they could think and act "outside the box") then it would be more complicated....

excreationist

When we learn about how the world works we learn patterns. e.g. that things that aren't living birds or helium balloons will eventually fall if they're in the middle of the air...
Or that the thing that red balls and red cars and red paint has in common is a called "red".
We can learn about patterns in patterns... e.g. "blue" and "red" and things like that are "colours"... and "yellow" fits this pattern. We could imagine that there are probably many other things that fit that pattern (the similiarity - they all stimulate the colour receptors in our eyes in unique ways).
And there are patterns in patterns in patterns, etc.
Anyway, we can combine patterns together. e.g. "red cat"... the fur could be red and it is a cat. We can combine contradictory patterns - e.g. "a square circle" - though since they are contradictory it isn't truly a square or a circle...

I think it is always to seek pleasures or avoid pains. And these pleasures include newness and connectedness/familiarity/coherence. A desire for newness is what motivates people to discover and explore, etc. A desire for coherence/connectedness motivates people to make sense of their knowledge and to integrate it all together so that it is consistent.
I think every thought we have is based on simple desires we have and our short-term memory and immediate experiences are used as a starting point. I think our long-term memories are triggered with our short-term memory as a starting point and simple desires as a goal. We can determine subgoals along the way. Our problem-solving strategies would be learnt over time, and these can be very generalized patterns. These problem solving strategies can deal with problems like "demonstrate creativity to people -> ununusual animals are creative -> think of an unusual animal -> combine colours and pieces of known animals, etc, together -> search for most familiar things first.
I think we trigger the strongest associations first (the most recently accessed memories or what is strongly associated with current experience, or is most emotionally important to us) - then I think less strong associations are accessed after that. BTW, if you're searching for an animal and you have the letter "L" prominently in your short-term memory, you'd probably think "lion". Or a yellow colour in your short-term memory could trigger "canary" - even if you weren't aware that the colour in your short term memory was used to trigger an animal name.

DRFseven

Ex, how do you think of the relationship between the neural mechanism and the mental phenomenon of thought? IS the mechanism actually the thought, or does it CAUSE thought? Are they two sides of the same coin?

cobrashock

DRFseven- Reading your Mechsanistic mind set sorta reminds me of my mind set. I agree with your thread content/answers so far almost 100%, (I think) but I thought it out using other terminalogys.
To wit some other answers to questions that haven't been asked yet.
We are born mentally with the capability to learn in some sort of systematic fashion, and that is a direct result of genetic functions only. And even that is not developed well! Nothing has ever shown to me capability came from anything else, much less unproven rational input. The proof of this is with newborns that react to different stimuli in controled studys on the first days, even minutes after birth. My son was involved in such a test in the birthing room By Indiana University!
What's less known is the emotional package a baby is born with. For example we can startle a child but we don't know directly if that child experienced fear. There is lots of room here to say though that at least some of our emotion package is a learned response and not genetic.
Now for my assumptions. We are the results of our experiences and our genetic package. Nothing more. Even most or almost ALL of our learning processes are gained through experience. Nothing more. Is it 100% Mechanistic? No way, and by a long shot. Not even 10%!
Our experiences programs our brain growth. That is a basic physiology fact too. Too many dead brains in little glass bowls. We slice them, and dice them and look at them in microscopes. The results are in the books. That was my specialty for 35 years at Eli Lilly before I retired. Mouns't other things we looked at Prosac's impact on the brain.
Next thing to look at is random events. I know there can be true random events. How do I know that? Science tells me it's true, at least that's how we understand the science anyhow, as its known for now.
Now it can be argued that all events are predetermined at some level. But that don't change the fact that the mind percieves these events as random events as they happen. Makes no difference if they are predetermined or not. For better or worse we react, and in ways that experience asociates it with, at least at first anyhow.
So the mind does indeed react to random events in some way. Given time and in tandom with other experience the mind reacts in predictable patterns, and grows to except that input. We learn, for better or worse. Nothing more.
I think that if we was genetically altered to recieve other sensory inputs that the results would be a even greater randomly organized mind. Since that is not a option I choose to investgate sensory deprived minds. The results are forthcoming.
Ron Shockley
Cobrashock.

jpbrooks

[QUOTE]Originally posted by DRFseven


[QUOTE][B]

Originally posted by jpbrooks

But how could such a reduction ever be accomplished when what it would require is an account of things that are subjective and private in nature in terms of things that are objective and capable (at least in principle) of public observation? No amount of accumulated objective facts that relate to a subjective experience can be equivalent to the actual private experience itself.

[QUOTE][B]

Though I agree with you that it seems unfathomable, science is full of counter-intuitive discoveries that seemed logically impossible before they were reduced. "How could living matter ever be produced by by a complicated arrangement of non-living matter?", asked the vitalists.

Noted. See my next comment.

[QUOTE][B]

But if mental phenomena cannot be reduced to physical phenomena, the actual relationship between consciousness and the brain may be more complex than it appears to be from the standpoint of Physicalist Reductionism. Mental/physical causality, for example, can occur in both directions. Mental states can produce physiological effects and vice versa.

[QUOTE][B]

But complexity has never stopped the progress of science before; why should it now? This attitude of "Whoa; stand back! The mysterious area of mental representation is way, way too special for us to even consider.", is more than faintly repugnant to me.

This may surprise you, but I agree! I am not opposed to the practice of assuming that brain-to-mind causality is more fundamental or important (than mind-to-brain causality) in order to test hypotheses that lead to a greater understanding of the mind/brain relationship. I'm simply opposed to the assumption that brain-to-mind causality demonstrates that the mind is ontologically nothing but the brain.

[QUOTE][B]

Reductionism, as Nagel points out in that article I cited, "is the analysis of something identified at one level of description in the terms of another, more fundamental level of description--allowing us to say that the first really is nothing but the second".

But the process of reducing the "components" of thinking to their "lowest terms" seems to reach a stopping point in the case of mental phenomena, where subjective experiences, like pain for example, cannot be reduced to more fundamental terms.

[QUOTE][B]

Yet, I assume you have no objection to the phenomenon of pain being reduced to its neurobiological substrate in order to alleviate it. Or to sight being understood so that vision can be improved? Think of everything that has been done by virtue of these mental phenomena being reduced as far as they have.

Again, I don't view such cases as being the result of an actual (ontological) reduction. In such cases, reductionism is useful for providing a way to simplify the language that we are using in our attempts to explain and discuss our observations. The "reduction" is provisional and can even occur in the opposite direction, as some idealist philosophers have advocated.

[QUOTE][B]

However, I do agree with you generally on the issue of research in this area of inquiry. The "Mind/Body problem" is a complex one and reductionisms are useful in helping us to organize our thinking about the problem.

This is the first article written by her that I have read. I enjoyed reading it even though I'm not a reductionist.

DRFseven

You don't think of the mechanism of sight or of pain as actually being the pain. I don't either, really, but it is convenient to speak of it that way. And that's the way I look at thinking, as well. For all practical purposes, it seems identified with its mechanism, though when I really reduce it down, I am aware that electrochemical firing is not the same thing as the chalupa dinner I am anticipating now. But if it's not the same thing, it surely causes it, don't you think?

DRFseven

If you'd like to read more, here's a paper she wrote called Brainshy: Nonneural Theories of Conscious Experience where she discusses the theories of Chalmers, Searle, and Penrose.

excreationist

I think thought involves something like goal-oriented messages that are processed in our brains. The thoughts are the messages/signals. They constantly trigger lots of associated long-term memories/patterns which are used to define the "meaning" of the messages - this process makes the messages more useful and rich in association (meaning).
It is kind of like how computer information travels via electrons, but can thought of in higher-level ways - like there being files and directories, etc. (Though individual files might actually be fragmented across the physical disk, etc)

I was saying that the thought is the signal/message, and triggered associations give the thought "meaning" - they help define what the thought means - the implications of the thought - how to apply/use the thought, etc. So I'm saying our brains provide a system for these signals/messages to have meanings that are constantly being revealed (according to what people's goals, priorities, subgoals, etc are).
I think the mechanisms in the brain generate (cause) thoughts. At the moment I tend to see thoughts as being packets of information (that need to trigger long-term memories/patterns to be meaningful/useful) - rather than a process - though a process is involved...
Sorry that I can't answer your question very clearly.

mhc

To say that physical activities in the brain *cause* thoughts seems to lead back to dualism. How to avoid ending up with exclusive physical and mental realms again?