Evolution Of The Eye

[SneaksieDave]

No, not The Eye.

 

Thought you guys might like this, as this topic has come up several times here and TTLG and.. well pretty much everywhere.

 

http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=10623&where=index

[sparhawk]

Quite interesting find. Would be interesting to see the whole documentary.

[Komag]

Very intersesting, I agree. I am also a faithful Christian, but I have no problem at all with science and evolution studies.

 

A lot of believers think that it's blasphemy, but who are they do dictate the manner of God's creation? To them, God could only have waved his magic wand and POOF mankind is sitting there.

 

I think God could have utilized and perhaps directed/steered the natural process of evolution in all the creation. If God is perfect, then wouldn't he be efficient? It's highly efficient to let a natural process do the work for you, and you only have to nudge it a bit here and there, or set it up well in the first place, or whatever.

 

I don't want this to turn into a athiests vs believers discussion. I'm just mentioning that there are religious people out there that don't have a big bible belt problem with evolution and other science.

[Macsen]

Very intersesting, I agree. I am also a faithful Christian, but I have no problem at all with science and evolution studies.

But evolution disagrees with the Bible. How can you be a Christian and disagree with the Bible? That's like a Builder living in a tree. Those who know the Bible's truth but reject it will burn all the longer in hell! The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow... It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a long for ever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty merciless vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains. So that your punishment will indeed be infinite. Bwahahahahahaha! *choke*

 

Nah, I wouldn't know one way or the other really. I'm an agnostic.

[OrbWeaver]

It would be really ironic if all of the creationists died of bird flu.

[Komag]

It's easy enough to figure various parts of the Bible are figurative, metaphorical, whatever. For instance, I really doubt God and Satan really had a conversation in which they bet whether or not Job would remain faithful through his trials. And as far as Eve being literally made out of one of Adams ribs, fundamentalist crazy Christians can just kiss my butt on that one.

[sparhawk]

Personally I don't think that evolution and creationism goes along very well, in whatever kind of manner. If you consider evolution you don't need a god to explain anything except maybe how the universe itself came into existence. If god took evolution to do his work what would be the point? If he intended us all along, then why bother with evolution taking millions of years to do it with a chancy outcome? If he helped evolution along to create us, then why bother with eolvutionary processes in the first place? Just to have some fun? But this means that he doesn't really care about us anyway. IMO there are a lot of problematic questions to answer for if you mix religion and science.

[oDDity]

Yes, if the Earth was created for the purpose of humans to live on, why spend 2 billion years with nothing but bacteria living on it.

What was the 200 million years of dinosaurs for?

Just so we could have some pretty fossils to put in our musems?

OF course, theists can always come up with some desparate, unverifiable argument, that's their forte. I suppose they could say that god had nothing to do with life on earth, only intervened 5 million years ago to give some primates cognisence, which basically set them on the path to beng human.

There are plenty of chasms to poke in a theory like that however, so don't even bother.

The basis of faith is ignorance, faith is formed out of ignorance and sustained by it.

The opposite of faith is knowledge, and knowledge can only destroy it.

[Maximius]

Komag, although I disagree with much of what you profess to believe, it is refreshing to hear a Christian expressing a moderate point of view and a willingness to listen to something other than what one is "supposed" to believe. As an athiest, I have oftentimes stereotyped Christians as being dogmatic and irrational but I have encountered a number of individuals who have made me rethink some of my own prejudices.

 

Don't get me wrong, I am a complete materialist in regards to the physical world, and I only give immaterial reality any ground in the "gray zone" that our consciousness currently occupies. (It may come to pass that our consciousness is completely "accounted for" by physical processes someday for that matter, but I doubt it myself.)

 

Recently, I have learned of, get this, athiestic Christians! Yes, thats correct. These are individuals, some of them clergy, who have rejected the notion of a Divine being but who see the teachings of Christ as a strong ethical model by which humans can live their lives. Ideas such as these interest me a great deal, I would like to learn more about what these folks believe and how they arrived at those beliefs.

[oDDity]

Teachings of christ my ass. He had no ideas that didn't already exist. It's not like the world was a barbaric cesspool until he came along and told everyone to be nice.

If he wasn't the son of god, and just some average joe, then his words carry no more weight than any one else's, so atheistic christianity is nonsense.

It's a good point though. Why do poeple need to beleive that christ was the son of god before deciing to follow his words of wisdom. Why can't they just live a good life regardless of whether god exists, and if they can, then why does it matter. Why bring god into the equation at all. God is completely irrelivant.

No, what all god belief and religion is really all about, is the idea of some continued form of existence after your physical death. That's at the root of all religion. Just a bunch of greedy bastards who can't get enough of their own existence.

[OrbWeaver]

It may come to pass that our consciousness is completely "accounted for" by physical processes someday for that matter, but I doubt it myself.

 

Why do you doubt it? As far as I can see all dualistic theories of conscious thus far have been woo-woo bunk with no foundation in reality, which are totally unable to address either (1) how undetectable non-materialistic processes could influence a purely physical brain, or (2) why a physical existence is even necessary if consciousness can exist in a non-physical "universe".

 

 

No, what all god belief and religion is really all about, is the idea of some continued form of existence after your physical death.

 

Which is absurd in itself, because the existence of God does not logically imply a life after death. From the perspective of an ant, humans are "supreme beings", but this does not mean that ants have an afterlife.

[oDDity]

Yet, there isn't a single religion that doesn't advocate or insist upon some form of continued existence/reincarnation etc.

No religion states that you simply cease existing forever when you die. They wouldn't get many followers if they did.

 

I remember havibng an argument with some theist who was trying to play down the importance of an afterlife, that wasn't really the point of it, that was just a side issue he was saying, but it's actually the most fundamenrtal part of every religion, and the only common theme among every religion that has ever existed.

Starting a religon is easy, first you work out the afterlife package, and then just make up some rules about how you should behave in this life in order to get benefits in your next one.

[Ishtvan]

Yet, there isn't a single religion that doesn't advocate or insist upon some form of continued existence/reincarnation etc.

No religion states that you simply cease existing forever when you die. They wouldn't get many followers if they did.

 

Keep in mind that I'm remembering back on some lectures years ago and not an expert in these faiths or anything, but Buddhist enlightenment is sometimes described as "the drop becomes the ocean." I guess it is some form of continuing existence, but you can pretty much say goodbye to your individual consciousness. Granted, you might have to go thru some incarnations before you get there (unless you're really awesome in your first incarnation).

 

Also, some philosophies are almost religions, but because they make no attempt to describe what happens after death, they're labeled philosophies instead of religions.

[sparhawk]

(It may come to pass that our consciousness is completely "accounted for" by physical processes someday for that matter, but I doubt it myself.)

 

Why? Consciousness is not something out of the otherworld, so where else should it come from?

 

Recently, I have learned of, get this, athiestic Christians! Yes, thats correct. These are individuals, some of them clergy, who have rejected the notion of a Divine being but who see the teachings of Christ as a strong ethical model by which humans can live their lives. Ideas such as these interest me a great deal, I would like to learn more about what these folks believe and how they arrived at those beliefs.

 

I think religions ONLY work as an ethic guidance if they get rid of all supernatural anthropocentric justifications for being. As long as they have these supernatural anthropocentric justifications they will always find a reason to think them superior to others.

[obscurus]

Keep in mind that I'm remembering back on some lectures years ago and not an expert in these faiths or anything, but Buddhist enlightenment is sometimes described as "the drop becomes the ocean." I guess it is some form of continuing existence, but you can pretty much say goodbye to your individual consciousness. Granted, you might have to go thru some incarnations before you get there (unless you're really awesome in your first incarnation).

 

Also, some philosophies are almost religions, but because they make no attempt to describe what happens after death, they're labeled philosophies instead of religions.

 

 

Indeed, Buddhism is an interesting case, as it is both atheistic and denounces the concept of immortality of the personality. Buddhism is more a philosphy that has become a religion due to zealotry and misinterpretation. Buddha was not a god, rather someone who had acheieved enlightenment. In Buddhist philosophy, enlightenment means the complete destruction of the self as distinct from the rest of the universe.

 

Then there are the animistic religions (the most primitive of all religions), which do not recognise personal immortality or gods. Animists regard everything in the universe as parts of the same thing that change over time. Everything is said to be alive, even things like rocks or dried up skeletons, so in that sense, you are "immortal" in animist eyes, as you don't die, you just change state, and merge with the universe.

 

 

In terms of what is currently understood by science, everything is just a temporary configuration of space-time, there is no discrete "self", it is just an illusion. and the universe itself appears to be finite and mortal.

 

All religions have pretty much the same thing to say when it comes to how you live your life and treat others, and it is all self-evident to anyone who bothers to think about it. Jesus had nothing really profound to say about anything that none of a thousand "prophets" and self-help gurus before and after him all over the world hadn't figured out. Jesus was no different to Tony Robbins or Deepak Chopra - someone who could spin the bleeding obvious, infuse it with some mystical bullshit about God or angels or chakras or some similar rubbish, and milk thousands of gullible dimwits out of their ability to think for themselves, if not their money.

 

And then people use these religions, tack on their own bits to advance their own agendas, and it becomes a hodgepodge that can be used to justify any kind of behaviour you like.

[Maximius]

oddity/sparhawk: I dont think you can or should lightly discard the writings of any religious entity, short of pure ravings, because it has something to tell us about ourselves and the world. Thats really my point, a lot of people have lived their lives through the lense of religious belief and not all of what they thought and wrote is madness. Some is, dont get me wrong, superstition is superstition and I'll have none of it in my thoughts, but there is both something historical to examine about such things as well as something immediate in the world, given the billions of believers out there. I'm just a bit acquainted with the history of the major religions, enough to know of the bloodshed and horror they have wrought, but at the same time they represent the thoughts of untold people. Why reject so rich a resource of possible insight? Would you ignore the beauty of the architecture or the music that comes out of religious traditions? If not, why then the ideas? You have critical minds, you can see them for what they are while enjoying the flow of their message.

 

orbweaver/sparhawk: The problem is that while there is most certainly a physical basis to consciousness, the physical cannot fully account for the mental. A case in point: Suppose you, a neuro scientist, discover the exact mechanism by which anger is generated in the mind. (I doubt such a single thing really exists.) Now, you have a model of the chemicals and regions of the brain doing their loop de loops. Answer me this, does that model describe what YOU, as a conscious human being, experience as anger? Do those little diagrams and text even slightly resemble the anger you felt when a lover first dumped you like a sack of trash for another person? It doesn't resemble the angers I have felt in my life, the raging screaming fantasies of revenge against those who have hurt me, not even the milder bouts of anger over lost keys or midnight car alarms. Cause heres the hook guys, human experience is the ONLY standard by which we can judge a thing like anger. Our minds are something far more complex than the chemicals and states that produce them. They are, well, you. You do exist, dont you? THAT is the mystery, how that meat gives rise to the thing that undeniably exists but yet cannot be fully quantified, YOU. And its not an illusion, whoever said that, its your actual experience! An imperfect window on the world but a window nonetheless!

 

Orbweaver your specific points are valid but are only the mirror image of my point. I cannot answer how the immaterial effects the material. Nor can I describe the "bridge" between the two. These are very much up for question. I am merely pointing out that it seems to the best of my reasoning that the mental needs the physical to exist but that I know for certain that the states I experience as consciousness are not brutely reducible to the meat in my skull. What is at work I think is an example of higher order of organization arising out of a multiplicity of internal simpler states and the interplay of the senses. How does this work? Dont ask me!

Edited September 19, 2006 by Maximius

[Gildoran]

Suppose you, a neuro scientist, discover the exact mechanism by which anger is generated in the mind. (I doubt such a single thing really exists.) Now, you have a model of the chemicals and regions of the brain doing their loop de loops. Answer me this, does that model describe what YOU, as a conscious human being, experience as anger?

This somehow seems like a fallacy to me. A model is by definition a simplification... a model to explain anger, which being simple enough for a human to understand, is necessarily simplified or limited in scope to an extent that it no longer fully predicts or explains every aspect of the real thing. However, this doesn't mean that there's anything non-physical about the mechanisms that produce anger.

 

Our minds are something far more complex than the chemicals and states that produce them.

I don't buy that that they're "more complex than the states that produce them", but even artificial neural-nets are notoriously difficult to analyze - there's a theorem about neural-nets that says you can sabotage a neural-net in polynomial time but the problem of comprehending the neural-net well enough to check for sabotage is intractible.

 

I am merely pointing out that it seems to the best of my reasoning that the mental needs the physical to exist but that I know for certain that the states I experience as consciousness are not brutely reducible to the meat in my skull.

...and you know this how? People are notoriously bad at analyzing how they think. For example, studies have found when you make a decision to do something, it can be detected from your brain almost as much as a second before you're even aware that you've made up your mind. At the very least, that suggests that what we intuitively "know" about human thought is likely a load of bunk. Furthermore, if the mind originated outside of the brain, I would expect the opposite of the study to be the case.

 

Edit: I'm not 100% sure, but I think this describes the study I was thinking of, or something like it.

[obscurus]

.....orbweaver/sparhawk: The problem is that while there is most certainly a physical basis to consciousness, the physical cannot fully account for the mental. .....

 

 

Along the lines of Gildoran's comments, the only reason you can say that the physical does not account for the mental is because of the complexity of analysing the system. But this leads to a false line of thought. There is no separation between your consciousness and the underlying neural activity that drives it. You only think there is becasue you are able to think about your own thoughts in an abstract way.

 

In fact, it can be very easily shown that your consciousness is determined by your brain. For example, if a particular area of the optic lobe of the brain is destroyed, that person will not only lose their sight, but their ability to remember things they have seen, and even their ability to conceive of what sight is, or was like. It becomes like sight never existed for that person. Clearly, the consciousness of vision arises from this part of the brain. Similarly, with blindsight, a person can see without being conscious of seeing, due to brain damage.

 

And many other mental functions have been linked not only to particular areas of the brain, but particular neurones in the brain. Things like memories are not the absolute, factual things we perceive them to be, bt rather, the brain takes vague bits and pieces of information we receive through our senses and thoughts, and then reconstructs them each time we recall them. Not only that, but every time you remember something, that memory changes slightly.

 

You can alter the way a person thinks and feels by altering their brain. You can turn a mild mannered reserved person into a sociopath by disabling the areas of the brain that handles inhibions and empathy. This permanently changes that person's personality. Everything you think is you is defined by a particular configuration of atoms in a watery sac, and as soon as that configuration changes, you change. When you die, that sac of chemicals changes into a form that can no longer support any of the things we perceive as consciousness.

 

 

here is a link for you to consider: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=...line-news_rss20

 

There is no reason at all to think your consciousness is anything more than the temporary activity of neurones in your brain.

Edited September 19, 2006 by obscurus

[sparhawk]

Why reject so rich a resource of possible insight?

 

That's simple. If people believe the right things for the wrong reason, they are easy to be manipulated. And history shows that is the case. If people are behaving good to their fellow people because they consider this to be a virtue, that's fine. If they are good to other people because they think they get a reward in after life, then this is the wrong reason. If they do it for this, the goodness doesn't come out of their heart, it comes out of greed. And if the agenda changes so does their 'goodness'. The Nazi regime is really a good example of that. People believed in what they were told and for this believe they forfeit their own thinking. It is similar with religions as well.

 

Would you ignore the beauty of the architecture or the music that comes out of religious traditions? If not, why then the ideas? You have critical minds, you can see them for what they are while enjoying the flow of their message.

 

Actually I do enjoy some stuff that came out of it. I like churches and cathedrals (at least the old ones) because they are certainly beutifull to look at. Same to pyramids or other temples. I guess such things may have not been constructed if there were no believe. The question though is, wether this is worth it. People would have come up with other beautifull stuff nontheless, because they are creative and want to show it. I don't think that religion is neccessary for that.

 

orbweaver/sparhawk: The problem is that while there is most certainly a physical basis to consciousness, the physical cannot fully account for the mental.

 

That remains to be proven. How can make this as a statement of truth, while it is only a statement of your believe?

 

A case in point: Suppose you, a neuro scientist, discover the exact mechanism by which anger is generated in the mind. (I doubt such a single thing really exists.) Now, you have a model of the chemicals and regions of the brain doing their loop de loops. Answer me this, does that model describe what YOU, as a conscious human being, experience as anger?

 

Ah, that's not needed. You are confusing the levels here. What you experience is your own personal configuration. The point though is: If they would discover this, and they know exactly hwo to reproduce it, guess what would happen. They could trigger the same anger everytime on a press of a button. What does this say about your anger though? You would still experience it, but if it were to become so reproducible, then your personal experience is no more than a program that executes until the chemicals involved have flown their course.

 

Do those little diagrams and text even slightly resemble the anger you felt when a lover first dumped you like a sack of trash for another person? It doesn't resemble the angers I have felt in my life, the raging screaming fantasies of revenge against those who have hurt me, not even the milder bouts of anger over lost keys or midnight car alarms.

 

You are again confusing levels here. The representations are just that. Representations. You can even learn to read the diagrams and experience the same. Did you know that good musicians can read the notes from the sheet and experience the music just as if they heard it? They no longer need to hear it actually, they can experience it from these little sheets that are nothign to you. If the representation is good enough it can be exchanged. If you learn to read the diagrams and interpret them correctly, you could even experience that anger just as if it were for real.

 

Cause heres the hook guys, human experience is the ONLY standard by which we can judge a thing like anger. Our minds are something far more complex than the chemicals and states that produce them.

 

This is the same as saying that humans (or any multicell organism) is more then just a lump of cells. Of course it is. That's the point of it. It wouldn't have evolved that way, if a lump of cells would have the same problems and same mechanisms as a highly complex human being. And the same is true of the mind. If the mind wouldn't be capable to achieve more than just the ingridients. If you bake a cake you need to put together all kind of ingridients. The final cake doesn't looke like a bunch of sugar, eggs, and so on. And it also tastes quite different. but nodboy would get the idea to say that the cake is something that can not be accounted for by the ingridients. You could say that you could mix it all together and eat it like this and you would have eaten the same, but of course that's not true. And if you dissemble the cake, you wont get your eggs and sugar and meal back. What you get is a dissembled cake and you might be able to infer what it was constructed from.

[sparhawk]

In fact, it can be very easily shown that your consciousness is determined by your brain. For example, if a particular area of the optic lobe of the brain is destroyed, that person will not only lose their sight, but their ability to remember things they have seen, and even their ability to conceive of what sight is, or was like. It becomes like sight never existed for that person. Clearly, the consciousness of vision arises from this part of the brain. Similarly, with blindsight, a person can see without being conscious of seeing, due to brain damage.

 

Actually my mother became blind because of diabetes when she was about 25. After a few years of blindness she could'nt recall how it was how to be able to see. When I asked here she said she doesn't even have the internal images anymore that you can easily 'see' if you close your eyes and think about stuff. She lost that abillity completely. Of course she knew in an abstract way how it was to be able to see, but this is not the same of course.

 

 

You can alter the way a person thinks and feels by altering their brain. You can turn a mild mannered reserved person into a sociopath by disabling the areas of the brain that handles inhibions and empathy. This permanently changes that person's personality. Everything you think is you is defined by a particular configuration of atoms in a watery sac, and as soon as that configuration changes, you change.

 

A good example of this is schizophreny. When the other personality takes over, it's not only the behaviour, but all the bodily parameters as well. It can be a complete change of personality which includes change of the voice, movement, attitudes, bascially everything that makes a person as the individual.

[oDDity]

oddity/sparhawk: I dont think you can or should lightly discard the writings of any religious entity, short of pure ravings, because it has something to tell us about ourselves and the world. Thats really my point, a lot of people have lived their lives through the lense of religious belief and not all of what they thought and wrote is madness. Some is, dont get me wrong, superstition is superstition and I'll have none of it in my thoughts, but there is both something historical to examine about such things as well as something immediate in the world, given the billions of believers out there. I'm just a bit acquainted with the history of the major religions, enough to know of the bloodshed and horror they have wrought, but at the same time they represent the thoughts of untold people. Why reject so rich a resource of possible insight? Would you ignore the beauty of the architecture or the music that comes out of religious traditions? If not, why then the ideas? You have critical minds, you can see them for what they are while enjoying the flow of their message.

What message? Morality has nothing to do with religion. All morality stems from simple common sense. If you want to live in a goup wiht other people, you all have to obey very obvious rules, such as not killing, raping and stealing from each other. It's really as simple as that.

As for morality towards outsiders, historically, most religons have no tolerance for outsiders at all, and they're either to be klilled, enslaved or converted.

Of course religion has evovled to keep wih with the times, but that's exactly the point, religion has never driven morality, religon has followed the morality that has naturally evolved in society.

: The problem is that while there is most certainly a physical basis to consciousness, the physical cannot fully account for the mental. A case in point: Suppose you, a neuro scientist, discover the exact mechanism by which anger is generated in the mind. (I doubt such a single thing really exists.) Now, you have a model of the chemicals and regions of the brain doing their loop de loops. Answer me this, does that model describe what YOU, as a conscious human being, experience as anger? Do those little diagrams and text even slightly resemble the anger you felt when a lover first dumped you like a sack of trash for another person?

Of course you can't describe the feeling of anger properly by pointing to chemicals and neurons and electrical signals, even though that is exactly what anger is 'made of'

But if you look at atoms though an electron microscope, you can't tell that they are actually atoms in a fingernail. THey are so small and basic and far removed from your experience of a fingernail, that you can't properly make a connection between the two, you just have to accept that a fingernail, and everything else, is made of atoms, just like you'll have to accept that emotions are made of atoms and electricity

I have no problem with that at all. You're not special, just a bag of atoms.

What are a jellyfish's instincts made of? Atoms and electricity. Same thing in us, just more evolved and complex, like the rest of our bodies.

[OrbWeaver]

A good example of this is schizophreny. When the other personality takes over, it's not only the behaviour, but all the bodily parameters as well. It can be a complete change of personality which includes change of the voice, movement, attitudes, bascially everything that makes a person as the individual.

 

Point of information - schizophrenia is not "split personality" syndrome. That is correctly known as "Dissociative Identity Disorder" and its actual existence is questionable.

 

Maximius - just because consciousness "feels" like it cannot be explained by purely material processes, does not mean that this is the case. All current evidence points to the concious mind being purely a result of the activity of the brain, rather than some magical phenomenon that cannot be explained by science.

[Gildoran]

Answer me this, does that model describe what YOU, as a conscious human being, experience as anger? Do those little diagrams and text even slightly resemble the anger you felt when a lover first dumped you like a sack of trash for another person?

I think a good analogy of this might be FPS games. There's mathematical models to tell you exactly how engines project triangles to the screen and fill them in with samples from 2D arrays, how they draw shadow volumes to the stencil buffer, how they caclulate diffuse and specular highlights, how they apply distortions using fragment shaders... But if I tell you that lighting for a pixel is calculated as color*dotProduct(unit(L),unit(E)), etc, does it feel the same as seeing it all come together to form a beautifully rendered landscape with reflections rippling through the water and shafts of light protruding from behind the clouds?

 

Nonetheless, that landscape can be fully accounted for by the models.

[demagogue]

I guess it's time for more philosophy-types to swoop in.

 

OrbWeaver - On consciousness (cns), from the way I studied it in phil of mind, your reply to Max. is missing something if you don't distinguish (1) and (2) below. I don't know if you actually did or didn't, but at least your post can be read as confusing on this point. So anyway, we're all supposed to distinguish:

 

(1) THE SUPERVENIENCE THESIS. Cns supervenes on NCCs (NCC=Neural Correlate of Consciousness, the minimal unique neural activity that gives rise to a specific cns experience). This just means that cns experience is entirely dependent on the physical substrate manifesting it, so an experience cannot exist unless there is an NCC there to physical support it. There is an emerical necessary, one-way connection from physical -> cns. In the lingo they say the experience "supervenes" on the NCC, as if it were conceptually hovering over it every time it comes into existence.

 

FROM

 

(2) THE ENTAILMENT THESIS. *This* NCC activity logically entail *this* experience. All it means for there to be an experience is that there is this NCC activity.

 

While most people (not otherwise predisposed against science) I think are on board with (1), (2) is actually a much harder case to sell. There are two big challenges:

 

(A) THE KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT: If you know everything about an NCC, you don't necessarly know everything about the cns experience. Imagine a great neuroscientist living her whole life in a black and white room. When she "understands" how the *blue* part of the color vision works in her brain, she still has no idea what "blueness" is like because she hasn't experienced it (a bad argument because it conflates "knowledge of" and "knowledge that", but the intuition is harder to shake off that this info doesn't entail these properties of experience, first person, no gaps, holistic)

 

(B ) THE CONCEIVABILITY ARGUMENT. You can imagine, or at least there is no logical inconsistency in imagining having the *same* NCC activity giving rise to *different* experience (red<->green), or even no experience; zombies. And what about silicon brains functionally equivalent to human brains; the behavior would be the same, but is the experience? You can imagine it as different. What if the nation of China manifests the same functional relationships as a small NCC (which ostensibly are smaller than 1 billion synapses) by 1 billion people waving red flags to one another (so the pattern of flag signalling is identical to neuron signaling by CL- charges firing adjacent neurons). Such signalling might run an FPS if correctly timed (very slowly!), but is it cns? If so, where? We can at least imagine it isn't.

 

Both of these argue that there is no *logical* necessary connection. There is only an emperical connection that logically could have been otherwise. It gives a foothold for some non-physical hangers-on in the universe, such as property dualism; the entities may be physical, but they have non-physical properties.

 

So most people now-a-days are on board with (1). But rejecting (2) is very hard to do at the same time. The problem is that a functional network of neurons (whatever makes up an NCC) doesn't have the same properties as experience, holistic, no gaps, a "feel" that is very modal (smells vs. colors vs. tastes. vs. pains, etc...), how does all the modality get in there? Where is the "orange" part, can you point to it, much less the "subjective" part of it, the part where the orange stops and the blue starts, and the part where blue stops and "smell" starts.

 

I mean, let's be very concrete. When you pull a single hair on your arm, a neural column of almost exactly 1000 neurons goes active, the minimal unique signal for the little "pain" of it. It's a very specific feeling, but it's very hard to get your head around the fact that it's *these* 1000 neurons firing in a pattern together that's giving rise to *this* pain. I mean, you can literally count them: 1000, and watch them firing in a Hebbian pattern, chug, chug, chug. At what nanosecond do we get "pain"?

 

So the point is, your (obweaver's) reply to Maximus is ok if all you're saying that cns cannot exist without the NCC. But when Maximus said that the NCC can't fully "explain" cns, that's a little different question that's much harder. Just because we know NCC->cns doesn't mean that we are sure the physical info of the NCC explains everything there is to know about the experience, its first person nature, its "likeness", etc.

 

Ok, all that said, my opinion is actually that there is a 'logical' connection between NCC and experience and that the knowledge and conceivability arguments are wrong. But I recognize that there's an "explanation gap" and I have to give reasons why the physical info gives rise to *this* experience. I have some ideas, and I know books that have some ideas, but I don't personally think this question has been fully answered yet and we can't make much any headway until at least they get something like a non-invasive realtime map of NCC dynamics at the synaptic level, something at that level of specificity to start modeling and theorizing over. Good luck in that happening any time soon. Then again, maybe it'll just be another 100 years and our grandkids will find an answer to it. It's just my intuition that there really is an answer; I just don't have illusions how tough the problem really is.

Edited September 19, 2006 by demagogue

[OrbWeaver]

So the point is, your (obweaver's) reply to Maximus is ok if all you're saying that cns cannot exist without the NCC. But when Maximus said that the NCC can't fully "explain" cns, that's a little different question that's much harder. Just because we know NCC->cns doesn't mean that we are sure the physical info of the NCC explains everything there is to know about the experience, its first person nature, its "likeness", etc.

 

I think there is confusion over the meaning of "explain". I am not asserting that knowledge of neural patterns alone will explain consciousness in the sense of allowing a neuroscientist to understand the experience from a first-person point of view (the "colour scientist" example), only that the conscious experience is based purely on physical and chemical processes, rather than any magical or dualistic phenomena.

 

THE CONCEIVABILITY ARGUMENT. You can imagine, or at least there is no logical inconsistency in imagining having the *same* NCC activity giving rise to *different* experience (red<->green), or even no experience; zombies.

 

I have heard this argument before and it seems totally bizarre to me. What exactly does it mean to say that you "can imagine" zombies? Can you imagine liquid water that isn't wet? Some might say that they can, but this proves nothing and does not change the fact that such a thing is meaningless and logically impossible.

 

For what it's worth, I sit somewhere between functionalism and epiphenomenalism, in that consciousness is merely the result of competing patterns or symbols in the brain, without there necessarily being a direct link between particular neurons and particular experiences (although I don't know enough about brain structure to say if this is possible or not). This is perfectly consistent with my own first-person experience, which is that of competing thoughts interfering, evolving and merging with one another, occasionally to "bubble to the surface" and influence an action.