One of the challenges for CTM is that all physical processes can be described as computations or information processing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What distinguishes brains and computers from the rest of the universe is their universality. Unlike anything else we know, brains and computers can enact the informational processing part of other physical processes, without the physical part. Computers can even enact the information processing of different computers. Or, they can enact purely imaginary informational processes, which have no physical correspondence. They are of course limited by time and energy (computational power), space(memory), and reliability especially in the case of brains, but given those limitations, they are universal. (That said, they are wildly different, specialized for totally different kinds of problems.)

I'd suggest that some systems are conscious because they are in an ongoing process of melding incoming sensory information with what arises from deep learning, into a model of whatever aspect of the world the system is conscious of as a result of such modeling and model monitoring. — wonderer1

And yet modern AI does such modelling, presumably without consciousness. I think what makes brains conscious is that they are general informational processors whose interface to the world is the result of the modelling of sensory information you are talking. To brains, as far as they/we are concerned, such models are the subjective plentitudes we experience, they/we are wired to interface with the world in this way. Just as computers run on symbolic logic, our wet "computers" "run" on sensory experiences: we perceive, feel, imagine, and think to ourselves, all of which are fundamentally sensorial. It is these and only these sensations, externally and internally derived, that we are aware of, every other brain process is unconscious to us.

Causal closure does not imply epiphenomenalism, unless you interpret it too broadly (i.e., not the way it is usually understood). One could believe that the world is closed under fundamental physics, but that does not automatically imply that everything else, such as consciousness (or chemistry), is causally inert. It just doesn't have a place in the explanatory framework of fundamental physics, and if you put it there by hand, then you would have causal overdetermination. But alternative explanatory frameworks can coexist without conflict. Consciousness (and chemistry) could still take place in a world that is closed under fundamental physics, but you would need other means than physics to identify and describe mental (chemical) phenomena qua mental (chemical) phenomena. — SophistiCat

I think (weak) emergence is the concept here.

Of course you can predict Life, or anything similar. You could do it with a pencil and paper, just apply the rules and go step by step. You can predict any instance of Life by inputting the starting conditions and running it forward, computation works as well here as for calculating orbits of billiard balls bouncing off one another. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But only in theory, on the subset of starting conditions that can actually be solved. Some may only reach a steady state after trillions of iterations. Some may never. But the only way to know is to actually do the simulation. No law can predict it in the absence of simulation.

Maybe a cleaner example is the halting problem. There is no way to predict wherever a program will eventually halt. But this in no way implies that the behavior of a program is not reducable to it's instructions.

That and facts about composition is misunderstood as a reduction. To be sure, all cells are made from molecules. All molecules are made from atoms. This isn't a reduction. You can't predict how a molecule works from theory in physics, you need all sorts of ad hoc empirically derived inputs for it to work. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This conflates reduction and prediction. No one can or will predict the steady state behavior of Conway's Game of Life from it's initial state. Yet no one denys the reduction of that behavior to the very simple rules.

He also introduces the Fitness Beats Truth idea and the kinds of experiments that he says proves its validity. — Wayfarer

Does it though? For a perception to be fit, it must correlate to truth in some way. Pure hallucination cannot do an organism any good

Though the same cannot be said of ideas. Some ideas might be perfectly false, and yet have fitness value.

Obviously one does not 'have' reality in one's eye or in one's brain, one has visions and models and heuristics. But crossing the road without attending to what one can see and hear is perilous and foolish.

Hint: "... truly see reality" is a dog's breakfast of a phrase. — unenlightened

Right.

"Truly see reality" is the legacy of naive r realism. You can reject naive realism while maintaining this concept as an impossible standard. That is how we don't "truly see reality". If naive realism is thoroughly abandoned, then "truly seeing reality" is visions and heuristics, when they reasonably correlate with real features. Anything beyond this is a naive realist fantasy.

There's plenty of evidence. — Sam26

You allude to this often. This thread is quite long, so it might be helpful to edit the op with a compilation of the best evidence.

I think the fundamental philosophical issue, apart from life after death metaphysics, is epistemological. Most epistemology focuses (obsesses) on the mundane: "am I really seeing this tree?" Comparatively less attention is given to the epistemology of the extraordinary. What would it take to (rationally) believe such a thing as NDEs? Clearly, testimony establishes that such experiences occur. But can testimony establish their interpretation as legitimate experiences of disembodied souls? What weight of evidence could establish such a thing?

It is the testimony of doctors, nurses, and other witnesses that ultimately counts. How strong is this testimony? They are basically witnesses to miracles. How do we evaluate such testimony?

Also, I haven't seen much attention paid to DMT. You agree that it includes very similar experiences. On the surface, this seems devastating to your argument, if chemical manipulation of the brain can induce this. Moreover , most people who take DMT understand the context, that they are taking a drug, and do not attribute their experiences to anything supernatural. It is only in the context of almost dying that people make such interpretations. I know that if I had a powerful psychedelic experience surrounding my near death, I would be absolutely fooled, and insist on a supernatural explanation. Whether it was, or just a natural trip.

BTW, have you tried DMT? How was it, or, why not?

I for one think this is great fun, and will definitely be submitting an answer. Some people are being way over-cynical. No one here knows whether you would ultimately follow through or not, but even if you do not, it is an enjoyable dream, and great motivation to put our best philosophical foot forward.

That being said, I do hope for your own sake that you follow through. Being dishonest impairs our ability to freely make a rational choice on whether to expend the time and energy in participation, and so is deeply immoral :P

Do you plan on engaging with your respondants?

Let's all enjoy this brief window of hope before they undemocratically shove through another centrist loser offering absolutely nothing, guaranteed to lose to the evil clown.

On the other hand, the science that discusses a tree is not just filling space, not just a lot of empty fictional narrative. Religion, too, taken seriously, is not this. — Constance

I don't want to give an all too easy answer that "everything is just a narrative" and science and religion are"just empty fictions filling space". My point is that cognitive architecture comes first, not some inescapable reality standing outside all narrative.

The cognitive architecture I think drives the religious impulse is the one that allows a hunter gatherer to observe a dragonfly and see:

* The phenomenal impression of the insect, it's appearance and motion through space.
*The apprehension that these phenomenon are not chaotic, but they belong to an organized entity of the category "dragonfly", and more broadly "insect".
* The larger irrelevance of this entity to the current task of hunting a deer.
*The larger still relevance of the early appearance of the dragonfly, possibly presaging an early summer.

At least four levels of meaning, all attached to the same phenomenon, all held by the same brain. But this one-to-many relationship between appearance and meaning begs the question:: is that it? Or is there a deeper meaning beyond all these? What is the meaning of all these meanings?

Religion arises to fulfill the spiritual need, the need to fill in all these "higher", "deeper" meanings whose existence is like a shadow cast by our own cognitive machinery. If it doesn't provide all the answers, it at least provides a framework within which answers can be found. Having such a framework seems to be a deep human need, without which we suffer, as @Tarskian points out.

I mean, we put out of inquiry all, or nearly all, that circulates though typical religious mentalities, in an effort to determine if there is something "real" that religion is truly about; something that is not simply a historical fiction conceived in an ancient mind. — Constance

I think your inquiry about religion itself captures the essence of religion.

Religion is how we fill the symbolic space. The symbolic space is a product of how we think. Any object of thought can have multiple levels of symbolic meaning. "Surface" meaning, and any number of deeper meanings "behind" this. A tree isn't just a tree: it is a source of food or building materials. Beyond this, it might symbolize ecology, a stand-in for the beneficient features of life itself. And it might mean God's benevolence, or timeless persistence. All these symbolic meanings are bestowed upon the tree, none are inherent to the actual tree.

Religion is how this symbolic space is colonized in different cultural arenas. It apparently cannot be left empty, it has to be filled in one way or another. Everything has meaning in religion, because religions fully fill the symbolic space.

So your question, what is the true meaning of religion, is itself an expression of the basic religious impulse to fill the symbolic space. In this case, the space behind "religion".

And this is why science is a competitor to religion. Not because the mechanistic accounts of how things work differ. But because it offers a parallel, and empirically grounded, vision of what explaining the meaning of things looks like. The tree isn't just the tree we see. It is the vast scientific story that explains it.

The two statements are not contradictory. They simply imply ~A.

Kamela? Really? From one deeply unpopular candidate to another. I have long given up on the Democrats actually delivering anything meaningful policy wise. All I need from them is to prevent the descent into outright fascism by defeating a totally unqualified sub moronic evil clown. Even that very low bar is too much for them.

The Democratic party has long ago degenerated into complete worthlessness. In a functioning democracy they would have been swept away long ago. It is our winner take all electoral system that makes a third party impossible, and therefore keeps the existing two parties entrenched, no matter how awful they become. This will be America's downfall.

If that makes you murderously upset, please go elsewhere. — Baden

Was that some kind of inept death threat? I couldn't tell, verbal expression is not this guy's strong suit. If so, I have to wonder why he is permitted to stick around.

Gladly. It's so beneath my effort I require a few sips to simply fit the role, naturally. — Outlander

:rofl: yeah...

You're tolerable. — Outlander

Wish I could say the same.

Please, gtfo. The music is not there to somehow induce tipping (show me this "scientific evidence"). It's there because management decided the shopping public wants to hang out in a place playing music they presumably like. The poor employees have to endure the literal torture of being force fed this drek 8 hours a day. It is cruel as fuck.

And, "most valuable"??

disrupts my intuitive feeling for a place, replacing it with a candied consumerised cadence that I find repulsive and emotionally disruptive. — Baden

Spot on.

I feel like it's the artist, not philosopher, in me whose stomach turns at such auditory assaults. But that may be conceit. — Baden

Death metal eh? I think it is the metalheads that can least abide the ear-vomit that passes for music these days.

I used to be a black metal exclusive, I even wrote it, but I've been expanding my horizons to include goth, quality pop, punk, thrash and death metal. I'm mostly an old school guy, been playing this one quite a bit lately:

That is an interesting perception. I think there is no lack of melody in todays pop, and certainly, they have lyrics. It's just that they are maddening, obnoxious drivel.

Gen-Z gets an undeserved bad rap, yet somehow to me their music embodies some the worst traits attributed to them: smug, narcissistic self satisfaction and self aggrandizement. The overall loss of quality compared to earlier generations (including ones I feel no special connection to) is stark.

Shitty ass modern pop (that is, modern pop)
People blarting their shitty ass modern pop in public places (Beach, park) or next door, implicitly demanding I either enjoy or endure their shitty ass modern pop, or gtfo

I really don't believe Biden is senile — Wayfarer

The way he would become lost, dazedly fumbling between unrelated topics, gazing vacantly, can be explained either by severe anxiety at the enormity of the moment -- what you or I might experience, but not a lifelong politician with his career -- or mental impairment. Given his age and other worrying signs, senility is the most natural and likely explanation.

good for me and the millions of others who aren’t political hobbyists — Mikie

Lol, then what do you think you are?

It's not just a silly debate, or the silly impression it made, it's what it indicated. The man is senile, there is no denying it, we cannot count on anything better from him in the rest of the campaign. Cognitive decline goes one way only. Peoples assessment that he is unfit is correct, to lead a campaign, let alone a country.

I did find out that the name ‘Nosferatu’ is Romanian for ‘the insufferable one.’ — Wayfarer

Lol, it's true

Biden's competent, effective administration is not populated by "senile bitches"; however, The Clown's "Project 2025" will be populated by a fanatically loyal horde of "incorrigible morons" just like him. — 180 Proof

We know this, but does America? Administrations are largely unseen. What was seen was a doddering old fool, next to which the malignant moron seemed sharp. It is America, not you and me, that is set to fail the national IQ test. Again.

Hysterical? As it stands, Trump's victory is all but guaranteed. Even before this, Bidens polling was terrible, losing every swing state. Now, it's over. The arrogant whim of a single, senile bitch is what is guaranteeing neofascist America, to run or not is his prerogative alone.

Good for you.

a second Trump term likely being a death knell for the environment (and therefore life as we’ve known it) — Mikie

Ceding life as we know it to the incorrigible morons is bad enough. Ceding it to senile bitch Biden? It's too much. Biden has to go.

but in a week no one will really care. — Mikie

I think not. All Trump's pathological stupidities, outrages, and crimes have apparently slid down the memory hole already. But Repubs remind us incessantly of shit they just make up. This debate was an audio visual GOLD MINE for them. No one will be forgetting any of it before November. Even without their help, it was too emotionally visceral, too memorable, it will stay burned into people's heads. The painful cringe was enough to ensure that, it was downright traumatic watching it live. This was a death blow to an already flawed, faltering campaign.

Here is the "Dean Scream" that doomed Howard Dean's campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6i-gYRAwM0&ab_channel=CNN

2004 Howard Dean, scream and all, would LANDSLIDE Trump. NO CONTEST. Keep the scream, add some wet nasty hot mic'd farts, a commando dropped fly, I don't care. That scream was a M80 firecracker next to Biden's H-BOMB of a performance.

What a debacle.

In the immediate aftermath the momentum for forcing Biden out felt overwhelming. But now with enough authority figures in the DNC rallying behind their man, it might be faltering a bit.

It would be a horrific mistake to keep Biden after last night. Already, he was one of the few candidates that could lose to Trump. He literally has no chance now, the optics were that bad, and fed right in to the very strong preexisting narrative that he is too old and feeble. My hope is that the next batch of poll numbers will be so bad that there will be no choice.

Shame on the Fucking DNC for cancelling primaries and foisting this "choice" on people.

I am happy the Dems are in turmoil. They fully deserve that and more. — Baden

Not their problem. Another 4 years of great donations where they can play "Resistance". They are not and cannot go anywhere, thanks to our totally broken electoral system. No, the problem is entirely ours.
.

And that cannot happen in a monetized economy, because powerful vested interests will do anything to thwart it. — Vera Mont

Not just thwart it. They will coopt the system so that they are the true polity: the system's desires becomes their desires, which are at odds with any kind of communalism. I think there is truth in the Communist idea that it is incompatible with democracy. A strong party must always be in place to suppress these monied interests, not share power with them... And thereby securing its own controlling interest.

There has never been a country ruled by communism that didn't end up being a tyranny. Why? Opinion - communism goes against human nature, so it can only be forced on people from above. — T Clark

In a system where "the people" (aka the state) owns everything, tyranny is inevitable.

Thanks, I enjoyed this intersection of (the practice of) art, Buddhism and philosophy. He has a clear (and very clearly articulated) indirect realist perspective. I wonder how the intransigent direct realists here would respond.

Yes, we interpret those differences via introspection, but it's only with very careful examination that you can use those phenomenal characteristic differences to infer anything about differences of actual cognitive computational processing and representation. I treat the brain as a computational system, and under that paradigm all state is representational. And it's only those representations, and their processing, that I care about. — Malcolm Lett

Nonetheless any theory of consciousness and particularly deliberative consciousness needs to explain how our mental features seem to us to be qualitatively different. Ignoring these differences does not seem constructive, even if they are all ultimately representational. In any case I want to treat self talk here as an example, without claiming it is somehow unique in its neutral implementation.

Tying this back to your original question a few posts earlier, I think perhaps the question you were asking was something like this: "does MMT suggest that deliberative processing can occur without conscious awareness or involvement, and that conscious experience of it is some sort of after-effect?". In short, yes. — Malcolm Lett

What I was also grasping at in my question is, what exactly do you mean when you say meta management models deliberative thought. From my above post,

The idea of "model" to me is something like an informationally lossy transformation from one domain into another. A map lossily transforms from physical territory to a piece of paper. A model airplane lossily transforms from big expensive functional machines to small cheap non-functional hobby objects. Representational consciousness lossily transforms from physical reality to phenomenal representations of the world. — hypericin

How do you characterize the modeling in the MMT case? Because to me, "modelling" implies that in the example of self talk, you have two different regimes, language, and the system that language models, which is not parsimonious. Again, without suggesting any special privilege of language, I want to ground your Idea of a modeling feedback loop in a more concrete example.

At a node deep in the tree, AlphaZero uses a slimmed down version of itself, that is, one with less resources. You could say it uses a model of itself for planning. It may be modelling itself modelling itself modelling itself modelling itself modelling itself modelling itself. Meta-management and self-modelling are not in themselves an explanation for very much. — GrahamJ

"What is a model?" is maybe not easily answered, but this example of a "model" doesn't seem to capture the notion. The slimmed down evaluations are aproximations, but not I think models.

The idea of "model" to me is something like an informationally lossy transformation from one domain into another. A map lossily transforms from physical territory to a piece of paper. A model airplane lossily transforms from big expensive functional machines to small cheap non-functional hobby objects. Representational consciousness lossily transforms from physical reality to phenomenal representations of the world.

But a cheap and expensive evaluation function are the same kind of thing: one is just less accurate. The comparison unfairly downplays the power of models, and so of MMT.

The modeling in MMT, as I understand it, are true models: they transform from the deliberative state of the brain to a phenomenal representation of that state, which in turn informs the next deliberative "state".

Thus, the rock-based simulation and our reality are effectively the same thing. — Malcolm Lett

It's an interesting question, deserving of it's own thread. But I think this isn't right.

Strictly speaking a computer cannot simulate anything physical. It's can only simulate the physical thing's informational state. The state of a kidney peeing on your desk, but not a kidney peeing on your desk. That is why an interpreter is needed: it is state, divorced from substrate. That state piggybacks on top of the actual, embodied system: the physical computer, or rockputer. And so, the rock based simulation and our reality are fundamentally different.

But what if consciousness is itself fundamentally state? While in the physical/informational divide I very much want to place consciousness on the informational side, I don't think this is the same as saying consciousness is state. Consider that in a computer the relevant state is represented in certain memory regions. These memory regions, taken together, are just an enormous binary number. So, while counting to infinity if we reach the same number as the relevant state of a consciousness simulation, will that particular state of consciousness wink into existence? I think not.

Does that answer your question? — Malcolm Lett

Sorry for the late reply.

"Epiphenomenal" was a poor choice of words. I think I was and am at least partially misunderstanding you.

Take an example. I have the deliberation "I should go to the store today", and I am aware of that deliberation. I initially thought you would say that verbalization "I should go to the store today" would be just the summarized cognitive sense of the actual deliberation, some non-verbal, non conscious (I should go to the store today). The language would come after the deliberation, and is not the form that the actual deliberation takes.

Is this what you think? Or do you think the brain deliberates linguistically whether or not we are aware of it, and the meta management just grants awareness of the language?

my intuition is that reductive scientific methods can explain consciousness - and so a big motivation -- in fact one of the key drivers for me - is that I want to attempt to push the boundaries of what can be explained through that medium. So I explicitly avoid trying to explain phenomenology based on phenomenology. — Malcolm Lett

I absolutely agree with your intuition.

Of course, there is a difference between explaining self-awareness and explaining phenomenology. I am trying to explain self-awareness, not phenomenology, with phenomenology. Your theory is clearly an explanation of self-awareness, much less clearly an explanation of phenomenology. As you say, you have an intuition of how it might partly explain it, but struggle to articulate it.

So I wouldn't say that my theory diminishes any of that, rather that it offers a theory of just one part. — Malcolm Lett

My concern was that you were treating what we in the everyday sense term "deliberation", such as self talk, as epiphenomenal, as the "cognitive sense" corresponding to the real work happening behind the scenes. Was that a misunderstanding? Is self talk not the sort of deliberation you had in mind?

“We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

“I’m a robot, and you’re a robot, but that doesn’t make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions,” Daniel Dennett said. “Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable?” — Wayfarer

These are expressions of physicalist reductionism, but this doesn't entail the more drastic reduction to "the 4 Fs".

F***king, of course, but as a rule I avoid profanity. — Wayfarer

Aw, I had a few more Fs lined up.

here have recently been some quite convincing virtual reality attempts to help humans what cats see, hear what bats hear, etc. — Vera Mont

Oh? I work in the VR space, I'm interested in this. Do you have a link?

Of course, we can make a stab at mapping the sensory ranges of other species onto our own. But this doesn't truly give us the slightest idea of what it is actually, subjectively like to be another animal.

Come on now. — Lionino

Oh! :yikes: Of course, "father".

summarised as 'the four F's' (Feeding, fighting, fleeing, and reproduction.) — Wayfarer

Fecundating? Or fertilizing?

Incredible op!!! :sparkle: You have clearly poured a lot of thought into the matter, to great effect. I will read your blog post next, and your paper is on my list. I've had similar ideas, though not nearly at your level of depth and detail.

I think where we most sharply differ is in the nature of deliberation.

In your account, deliberation is something that chugs along on its own, without awareness. It is only via a meta management process that a predictive summation enters awareness.

But this is at odds with my introspective account of deliberation. Deliberation itself seems to be explicitly phenomenal: I speak to my self (auditory), and this self talk is often accompanied by imagery (visual). The conscious brain seems to speak to itself in the same "language" that the unconscious brain speaks to it: the language of sensation.

Is your idea that phenomena such as self talk is a model of the unconscious deliberation that is actually taking place? This does not seem to do justice to the power that words and images have as tools for enabling thought, not just in providing some sort of executive summary. Think of the theory that language evolved primarily not for communication but as a means of enabling thought as we know it. Can meta management explain the gargantuan cognitive leap we enjoy over our nearest animal neighbors?

If deliberation is phenomenal, then there is no need for this meta management process. Deliberation enters awareness in a manner that is co-equal with the phenomenal models of the external world. If deliberation goes off the rails, then the executive brain can regulate it, since deliberation is at least partially voluntary.

The evolutionary novelty enabling deliberation would be the ability of the executive brain to insert phenomenal models into it's own inputs. This explains the relative feebleness of especially visual imagery: the same predictive modeling systems used by sensation are *not* reused by the executive brain. Rather, it (sometimes quite crudely) mimics them. Audio, being less information dense, is more amenable to this mimicry.

Since the cost/benefit ratio of this change seems very favorable, we should expect at least crude deliberation to be widespread in nature. Adding language as a deliberative tool is where the real cognitive explosion happened.

Here is a rough sketch of my alternative take. (I see I used "rumination" for "deliberation". )

remove duplicates online

The second part of my argument is that the sort of competence that we acquire to perceive those invariants aren't competences that our brains have (although our brains enable us to acquire them) — Pierre-Normand

I find this notion very problematic. When we learn anything, we are training our brains to acquire new competences. Not any other organ. Even though, to learn necessarily involves interaction with the environment.

When we learn to play the piano it is not our fingers that are becoming more clever, but our brains. When we learn to see, our brain, not our eyes, gains the competence to process sensory inputs in such a way that the phenomenological experience of the world we are familiar with is possible. Damage to the occipital lobe of the brain, not to other parts of the body, renders us blindsighted.

I would say that illusions and hallucinations are phenomenal experiences, instead of saying that they are the consequences of phenomenal experiences — Luke

I'm not saying that they are the consequences of phenomenal experience. I'm saying that mediation makes illusions and hallucinations possible, mediation is the condition for the existence of perceptual errors. This is most clear to me with hallucination: without the meditating layer of phenomenal experience, we simply couldn't hallucinate.

I think the issue is that people misleadingly think of this as being the distinction between direct and indirect realism: — Michael

Nice, I wish this could be stickied at the top of every page of this thread. You made it?