Thinking About Thought

[indigobusiness]

Thinking About Thought
Piero Scaruffi

Nature of Mind
Consciousness: The Factory Of Illusions


(James, Flanagan, Farthing, Nagel, Jackson, McGinn, Damasio, Edelman, Gray and Koch, Llinas, Harth, Varela, Crick, Churchland, Gazzaniga, Ornstein, Calvin, Winson, Hobson, Mead, Gibson, Kinsbourne, Dennett, Baars, Lycan, Eccles, Neisser, Ornstein)

Science’s Last Frontier

Studies of the mind (in Psychology, Philosophy, Mathematics, Physics, etc.) have traditionally neglected consciousness (awareness, self-awareness). Such an omission is appalling, as consciousness, more than anything else, is "the" feature of the mind that makes it a mind.

The twentieth century has witnessed prodigious scientific progress in many fields. This has brought about a better understanding of the world we inhabit, of the forces that drive it, of the relationships between the human race and the rest of the universe. Scientific explanations have been provided for most of the phenomena that were considered divine powers until a few decades ago. Little by little we have learned how the universe was born, and how it gave rise to the galaxies and the stars and ultimately to our planet; and what life is, how it survives, reproduces and evolves; and what the structure of the brain is, and how it works.

The mystery is no longer in our surroundings: it is inside ourselves. What we still cannot explain is precisely that: "ourselves". We may have a clue to what generates reasoning, memory and learning. But we have no scientific evidence and no credible theory for the one thing that we really know very well: our consciousness, our awareness of being us, ourselves.

No scientific theory of the universe can be said complete if it doesn't explain consciousness. We may doubt the existence of black holes, the properties of quarks and even that the Earth is round, but there is no way we can doubt that we are conscious. Consciousness is actually the only thing we are sure of: we are sure that "we" exist, and "we" doesn't mean our bodies but our consciousness. Everything else could be an illusion, but consciousness is what allows us to even think that everything else could be an illusion. It is the one thing we cannot reject.

If our theory of the universe that we have does not explain consciousness, then maybe we do not have a good theory of the universe. Consciousness is a natural phenomenon. Like all natural phenomena it should be possible to find laws of nature that explain it.

snip

http://www.thymos.com/tat/consciou.html

[Pepperbelly]

1. Yup ... but there are some models that explain it pretty well ...

not pretty, of course, but you can't always have that.

[indigobusiness]

2. Heisenberg said we are forever

peeling the onion. Perhaps there is no brass ring?

[Pepperbelly]

3. A few things to ponder ...

I think these might be key in understanding the human mind and consciousness.

First ... what is the purpose of the mind. Realize, when you approach this notion objectively, I think that must be the second question one asks oneself.

The first one is what exactly is the mind ... definitionally.

Then comes a big one ... how does it work? You know how you can tree a program and see what makes what work. How does this mind thing work?

BTW, I have some ideas on all 3 of these questions but I think it is good to fist examine these questions.

[indigobusiness]

5. It seems to me

the reductionist approach to mind science is doomed to fail as it continuosly confirms more holistic models of thought, such as Alchemy and Buddhism...(which seem to be waiting for it to catch up).

Reductionism is doomed to ever deeper levels of Heisenbergs onion principle/metaphor. Lateral thinking is called for, another Einstein with a similarly short-circuited brain that can cut through the noise to get at the essential signal.

How do we define mind when we can't define the tools we use to make definitions? Purpose? That is a value judgment. How does it work? We don't even fully understand the electricity in the signals coursing through the the hardware (brain) that we assume powers the mind.

All is mind, according to Buddism. That's something to ponder.

[GodlessBiker]

7. Great questions.

Perhaps a beginning of a definition of mind would be that which recognizes that it is not everything else.

[Pepperbelly]

4. one other thing ...

I know this is one of your interests so I thought you might want to check out this thread I posted in the skeptics forum ... into the belly of the beast, so to speak.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=247x789

[dutchdoctor]

6. Read "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennet

It goes a long way in doing what the title promises. For me it was a real eye-opener

[Stunster]

9. You might want to read this too

Dennett Denied: A Critique of Dennett’s Evolutionary Account of Intentionality.

[ChairOne]

10. LOL - great - a bible-thumper critiques Dennett.. that'll be interesting..

"My interests now are in promoting Christian teaching and scholarship"

http://www.cs.cuw.edu/department/faculty/menuge.html

I wonder where he received his Ph.D. from? It seems extremely odd that a faculty info page would leave out that one single bit of information.

Sheesh - everyone's trying to convert me...

[Stunster]

12. University of Wisconsin-Madison

Angus Menuge is associate professor of philosophy and associate director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia University Wisconsin. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Warwick, an M.A. and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it says here.

[Stunster]

8. An argument against complete scientific explanation of consciousness

Here's an argument by Christopher Small against the idea that consciousness can be "dissected by the formalized reasoning that underlies mathematics, logic and the empirical sciences".

The full article, extending over six longish pages, is available here, but the main statement of the argument follows below. It's a lengthy piece and relies on some technical, but still fairly well known, aspects of mathematical logic. I think it's well done, and quite plausible. One would need to read the whole thing to appreciate fully the excerpt I reproduce now, but here it is anyway:

Let us consider all computer aided scanners which can effectively answer questions posed about conscious states of a subject being scanned. Suppose we label such brain scanners. For any given brain scanner coupled with a computer program let us categorize brain processes into two kinds in relation to that scanner.

* We will say that a particular brain process is (S,A)-allointentional if an algorithm A for interpreting the information from a scanner S determines that the process does not correspond to a thought about that particular process.

For example, the process associated with thinking about a certain passage of the Jupiter Symphony would presumably be (S,A)-allointentional. On the other hand, if I start to think about the processes occurring in my brain at this very moment then I am having (S,A)-autointentional processes, provided that a scanner S can effectively determine this fact.

* We will say that a particular process is (S,A)-autointentional if the scanner S determines that the process does correspond to a thought about that particular process.

In response to an (S,A)-autointentional process, the algorithm A might report (in part): HE IS THINKING ABOUT HIS OWN BRAIN PROCESSES. Note:

* Thoughts about processes strictly other than the actual ones associated with that particular thought are (S,A)-allointentional and not (S,A)-autointentional.
* Brain proccesses which correspond to thoughts about themselves and also about other things are (S,A)-autointentional, not (S,A)-allointentional.

Now, consider the thought of all (S,A)-allointentional processes. If all thoughts correspond to processes interpretable by scanner S and algorithm A, then there is some process that corresponds to this. The hypothetical scanner S and its algorithm A should be able to report that this idea is the object of consciousness. Is a process corresponding to thinking about all (S,A)-allointentional processes itself (S,A)-allointentional or (S,A)-autointentional? Attempting either answer leads to a contradiction.

[ChairOne]

11. LOL - mathematics neglects consciousness - APPALLING!!

lol - There are few things as amusing as people who know nothing about a field yet nevertheless feel qualified to declare the activities of the field appalling.

I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense, given the skeptical, solipsitic inclinations of the author...

EDIT: Spelling typo.