DRFseven

This attitude makes no sense to me. To explain what happens when light strikes a rose and bounces off to the retina, stimulates sensory neurons and is conveyed to the visual cortex with chemically coded data from the cortex and limbic system is to say nothing of the beauty of the sight of the rose; yet we DO explain it that way. We don't say that because we can't explain beauty in terms of electro-chemical transmission, we should just drop it and not attempt to understand the physical mechanism of sight, do we?

I certainly don't understand consciousness, which is why I didn't ask about it. But I do understand that there is a physical correlate for thinking and that we are making great progress through current technology in coming to an understanding of this mechanism.

When you say you don't deny the physical mechanism is involved, what do you mean? You never answered my question from before; do you think mechanism is involved in thinking in the same way that the heart is involved (i.e., that we must be alive to think), or do you see a more significant correlation than that? If so, what does it mean to you?

John Page

But to demonstrate? Demonstration can connect the description with the phenomenon.

Words in themselves mean nothing, to explain things in physical terms implies having a physical model we can both relate to.

Again, would a demonstration of how conscioussness emerges do it for you? (obviously it would have to be convincing, given your skepticism).?

Cheers, john

mhc

DRFseven:
No, and I don't think I suggested we just drop the attempt.
As to your physical explanation of how we see a rose, I agree. But, that description, in quality if not in detail, is how a camera "sees" a rose. It doesn't explain our conscious experience.

John Page:
I think such a demonstration would be adequate, but I can't even think of how it would be to demonstrate the "emegence" of consciousness. A chain of physical events, A>B>C>D>E>F, gives rise to a conscious experience, G. The problem I see is how we can infer G from F, without simply taking it on faith, or saying that's the way it *must* be.
What kind of demonstration could show that some sequence of physical processes will give rise to, say, a thought of my grandmother, or an idea about breaking rush-hour gridlock?

John Page

Mind probe/monitor. Examine one's own brain activity through analysis of the probe's measurements and compare with your conscious thoughts. Think of grandmother. Look at picture of grandmother etc.

Apparently this kind of thing has been done to analyze brain activity related to humour. From what I remember, our brains eventually "learn" the joke, the synaptic firing pattern becomes shortened and this corresponds with us not finding the joke funny after a number fo repetitions.

Cheers, John

mhc

It seems a chicken-and-egg problem.
Our familiarity with the joke is the cause of the shortened pathway, not the result of it.

DRFseven

OK, well, sorry, then.

Quote:

As to your physical explanation of how we see a rose, I agree. But, that description, in quality if not in detail, is how a camera "sees" a rose. It doesn't explain our conscious experience.

No, and I never meant to explain conscious experience. I'm saying that if you treat "understanding thinking" as you treat every OTHER question in science, you come up with the answer that thinking is mechanistic. The mental part is ALWAYS incomprehensible, but it doesn't stop us from understanding seeing, hearing, feeling, etc., and from saying that certain physical actions cause seeing, hearing, feeling, etc. Why not thinking?

John Page

I'm not sure we disagree, but the shorten pathway seems to be the cause of it not being funny any more. I was meerly pointing out the apparent correspondence without verdict as to which is cause and which effect.

Cheers, john

mhc

But it makes all the difference, which is cause and which is effect, doesn't it?
If we think of seeing, hearing, feeling, we can see environmental phenomena which produce sensa. That the pinprick stimulates electrical activity to the brain is pretty clear. But how can I have a thought of something that doesn't exist in my environment? What is the stimulus of thought?

DRFseven

You can't have a thought of something not accessible through memory, which works by automatically encoded chemical potentials in previously ennervated neuron groups that have "learned" something (changed chemically due to that firing experience). The stimulus can be external to your brain by the senses, or it can exist in your subconscious (which is the state in which the majority of your memories exist). Remember, memories aren't discreet cells stored in some compartment of the brain; they exist as potential firing groups awaiting chemical cues that become encoded according to reflections of the stimulus (as in rate or pattern of firing). The transmission of the generated potentials reach the limbic areas BEFORE they reach the cortex, which then supplies valence or weight to the whole domino-like constellation of activated neural structure that has sprung up as a result of the original stimulus (there are many more nerve pathways from the limbic system to the cortex than there are from the cortex to the limbic system).

John Page

Agreed, this skews our point of view. It seems we look for causal chains running forward in time, irreversible changes if you will.

Why? Because this perception has utility in predicting the behavior of reality and if, through our organs of imagination, we can project what will happen our anticipation produces evolutionary advantage.

Ironically, I am inferring the above by looking for cause and effect realtionships to explain why I think we look for causal chains running forward......

Cheers, john