Because it's not just playing sound, it's thinking! Proto-thinking, because it is prelinguistic, but thinking still. What more natural thing for an animal to subvocalize than what they vocalize? Once a cohort starts thinking, it is a natural conclusion that their communicative scope increases. For my theory to work it needs only to increase in scope enough so that "sophisticated" seduction becomes possible, meaning that it relies on verbal virtuosity.

I don't understand your objection that this development inclines us towards a verbal firm of language. All natural language is verbal. If the visual pathway has developed first we might all be signing.

We know we can think, and we know we have verbal language. I think the strength of my theory is that thinking is actually the simple part and so came first, and it plausibly suggests how language arose subsequent to thinking.

It's hard to imagine what thoughts sound like before language, insofar as those thoughts are not already auditory content — Welkin Rogue

Prior to language I would call these proto-thoughts. Strings of the noises that the animal makes in the world, noises which have innate, instictive meaning, played in the head. My intuition tells me that this ability enabled a greater communicative complexity, without yet arriving at language. Via rumination, play with onself and others, and expanded cultural transmission. But I haven't worked out the details.

I'm surprised this part is puzzling, since it is such an intimate part of human experience. The connection enables us to "play sounds in our heads". That we "play" sounds indicates they originate in central processing. That we play "sounds" indicates that they partake of the same neural machinery external sounds do.

Try the following exercises, which test the strength of the different perceptual feedback loops of this kind. I don't claim my results are universal, so ymmv.

Imagine the sound of wind chimes.
Easy. I can do this with seeming perfect fidelity.

Imagine a rose
A wispy, unstable thing. I'm sure many can do better than me here.

Imagine the taste of mint
I immediately visualize a sprig of mint. I'm not sure I can do this at all.

Imagine the smell of coffee
I visualize a cup of coffee. Not sure I can do this either

Imagine the feel of sandpaper
I visualize the sandpaper, in one of those tools. This one seems otherwise inconceivable.

According to my theory it is no accident that the auditory feedback loop is by far the most developed.

Poor @Brett is dazed and confused.

Now we all know, this is what fascism looks like in this country. It is so dangerously strong, even with the most dunderheaded leader known to history, they almost pulled it off. (I don't mean this recent nonsense, they came way to close to winning... or to the election being stealably close). What if they can come up with an intelligent trump next time?

It must be obvious to even the stupidest now, who these Trumpies are. For all their America this and Flag that, they hate this country, hate democracy. After 4 years of trashing this country, they literally trash our capitol! It amazes me how someone can wrap themselves in the flag, profess love for this country, while, at the very same time, shitting all over it.

I vote for a preemptive ban here. He's going to be looking for a new home to post, and I want to be proactive. — Hanover

I wouldn't mind dogpiling on the motherfucker.

So I'm experiencing my brain? Here I thought I was experiencing the world the whole time. Is your post in my brain or in the world that my brain accesses? — Harry Hindu

Any externally originating experience is both the experience of the world, and a phenomenal event generated by your brain. And, you can experience the brain from the third person, by looking at one, even your own with the right instrument. As well as your everyday experience of the brain in the first person.

Sounds like dualism is presupposed to me. — Harry Hindu

But only the dualism of perspective presupposed by everyone: the world out there vs the world in the head.

The first person experience is a manifestation of the way in which sensory information is presented. — Harry Hindu

This is not what I had in mind.
You can regard a brain as a lump of grayish, convoluted tissue. This is the third person perspective of the brain.
Or, you can experience it as a rich internal universe. This is the first person perspective.
The hard problem is to reconcile these two perspectives. In particular, it seems that no matter how much you elaborate the working of the brain scientifically, from the third person, there is no conceivable way to make the leap to explaining the first person experience.

The answer may somehow involve substance dualism. But posing the problem certainly does not presuppose it.

At least NOS4A2's cognomen honestly represents his hero: a malignant, undead parasite, draining the lifeblood from his host. 2021 America is looking awful pale.

No, there is no presupposition of dualism.
There are two perspectives, first person, and third person. The brain, uniquely, is an object that can be experienced from either perspective. Simultaneously, with the right equipment.
Science is the endeavor of explaining third person facts with third person facts. But to explain consciousness, science must make the perspectival leap, and explain first person facts with third person facts. This required leap is unique to this problem, and is what makes it the Hard Problem.

I don't know about that. I was glued to the screen during the impeachment trial, and I think they did as well as they could — Wayfarer

Really? We have President High Crimes and Misdemeanors himself. After two years of dismissing impeachment entirely, Pelosi finally consented to one of innumerable impeachable offences Trump had committed. Not only did they not get him convicted. They couldn't even get the Republicans to bring witnesses!

After the sham trial, Trump emerged completely unscathed. pathetic. But they did get some screen time, provided you some political theater. This, to you, is an effective response?? This just proves that you are already conditioned to expect zero from the "opposition party".

And I don't buy the 'they're all crooks' narrative, that is a corrosive form of cynicism — Wayfarer

Kleptocracy is also apt, but I will stick with oligarchy. They are not all crooks, only by virtue of the fact that the bribery they receive is (bizarrely) legal. But they are all rich, their friends are rich, their connections are rich, their donors are rich. The ruling class is all rich. This is an oligarchy, and it is it in none of their interests to destroy the most oligarchic party, even though they could have easily chosen to do so, against the most ludicrous world leader we have seen.

And, where's the outrage? — Wayfarer

A question that has been fairly asked countless times this century, starting with W's outright theft of the election. (Just imagine if the roles had been reversed there!)

I think there are many factors. Two salient ones, IMO:

First, the relationship of Republicans to the rest of the country has become outright abusive. Trump is the perfect incarnation and avatar of this, he could not be a more archetypical American bully. (This I think is the true source of his popularity). But the trend hardly began with him. We have been lulled into accepting more and more outrages, hoping to forestall the bully's wrath, in the pattern of the abused everywhere.

The second is where the "both sides" chestnut really is relevant. Not only is the funding of both sides from monied interests, both sides are themselves, monied interests. There is never one "-archy" that exclusively characterizes any state. But among all the "-archies", oligarchy most strongly characterizes this one, at this point in time. This is homogenous across both party's leadership, indisputably. Therefore, the Democrats really do agree with the Republicans more than they disagree, their core ideology is the same.

This best explains the incredibly muted and ineffectual reaction of Democrats to all of Trump's outrages. It is really a cozy relationship, playing Blue good cop to Red's bad, in an ironclad two party system. If crazy Red wins again and imposes yet more extreme wealth redistribution to the top, ultimately they win too. They are at the top as well.

For a machine to do work it must be in direct contact with reality. Otherwise it won't do anything. But the information processing component of machines can be abstract as you like and comprise of many layers of symbolization.

You say there is nothing you can say about things as they are. I'm just making the obvious point that there is plenty you can say, even though things as they are cannot be perceived. Science is the endeavor of doing just that. I'm butting into a conversation I didn't fully read, so I'm probably missing something.

Not true. It is what grounds perceptions and makes them possible. From that perspective you can say quite a lot. Science investigates and attempts to model the principles underlying observations.

Since we cannot discern the goings on in this world as it is in itself, we cannot make statements about it, let alone true statements. On this view, there is precious little that we can say that is true. — Banno

You can say, tautologically, that the world as it is is non-perceptual, simply because as soon as you perceive it, it is a perception, and therefore not the world as it is. .

Strange then that we can read what you’ve written. (Which is not to say it was worth the trouble ;-) ) — Wayfarer

Damn, you got me. Checkmate.
You don't understand. But looking at your many "contributions" over the years, that is an unreasonable expectation.

how is the brain/mind informed as to which perception is in play, if the symbol has no connection with the signal? — Mww

Of course it is connected. I'm saying it's not intrinsically connected. There is nothing doglike about "dog". You cannot examine the 3 glyphs comprising the word and arrive at canines. An outsider can only look in an extrinsic rulebook to discover it's meaning.

As opposed to a vinyl record. A record has an intrinsic relation to the sounds it captures. It is a time series of sound waves, captured in a different, stable medium, frozen in time. You can literally examine a record and see the sound waves. A clever archaeologist can feasibly deduce what it is, just by examining it. Unlike words, records are in direct, non symbolic, relation with sounds.

And I claim that qualia stand in the first, symbolic, extrinsic relationship with reality. Our relationship with reality is mediated by symbols, and so it is an extrinsic relationship too. The very notion of perception implies this extrinsic relationship. Therefore there is no such thing as "directly see reality", it is a contradiction in terms.

"see the world as it is" is inherently contradictory. "See" is a stand in for perceive. "Perceive" as we know it means to transform signals into a symbolic domain These symbols have no inherent connection with their corresponding signals in reality. Qualia (Red) is totally unconnected to the reality of light at red wavelengths, except by convention. An alien somehow looking into our brains and examining the qualia (red) would have no way of connecting it to red light, absent the convention.

Red light is to (red) as (red) is to "red". "Red" is therefore the result of two symbolic transformations.

This is perception as we know it. Symbolic translation is inherent in the concept. We know nothing else. We don't know what it would mean to perceive the world as it is.

Conspiracy theories serve the believers. They permit them to believe what their reason would otherwise cause them to abandon, and avoid suffering the consequent ego loss.

But conspiracies serve another master as well. Once the conspiratorial mode of thinking is adopted, the believer can no longer be reasoned with. Just imagine trying to argue a QAnon true believer out of their belief. Obviously impossible. The mind of a conspiracist is much more flexible than a rational person's: their main epistemological criteria is, “does the answer come out right?”. Any mooring with reality is unimportant, which gives the conspiracist tremendous rhetorical latitude. Foolishly attempt to debunk a conspiratorial claim, hydra-like, 7 new claims will spring from nowhere to replace it.

As they are imperturbable to logic and facts, conspiracists are fanatics. They are the core of Trump's notorious base, the reason his approval never went much below 40%. Having fanatics on your side is solid gold for politicians. Is it any wonder that conspiratorial thinking is so encouraged?

The American right, by their lunacy, have forced their adherents to conspiracy theories. And since their reason is shut down, the right is full of fanatics. Paradoxically, the more ludicrous the right has become, the stronger it has become. To believe them, reason must be surrendered, and so fanaticism is required, a devil's bargain the right wing masses have accepted.

LOL
On the one side you have QAnon, the Orwellian "Stop the Steal", 1000 voter fraud conspiracies, Fake News (the conspiracy of the entire media against Trump), Covid Hoaxers, Climate Hoaxers, RussiaGateGate (aka "investigate the investigators"), UkraineGate, Sandy Hook, etc. But that's just scratching the surface. The right wing is a witches cauldron of conspiracy, new ones bubble up faster than anyone can keep track.

And for the other side the best you could muster is RussiaGate, corroborated by US intelligence and the republican Senate, and something about whatever right wing promulgated conspiracy hunter biden's laptop was.

And you prefer the first one. What a sad joke.

To summarize my op, it is not reasonable to hold right wing beliefs in America anymore. But instead of changing their beliefs, which for many amounts to ego death, the right changes something far more fungible: their reason. If reason produces the wrong results, change reason, not the desired results. This is the conspiracy theory mindset: alternative reasoning, to complement alternative facts. The right political class has therefore become peddlers of cheap conspiracy theories to a base of insane people.

With words there is a fine line between "common misconception" and "common usage". No one is going around thinking there is no such thing as conspiracies. "Conspiracy theories" are not merely theories about conspiracies. The term picks out a particular, paranoid style of reasoning. One which is totally out of control in the right wing. I'm presuming you are all familiar with the usage.

The problems I mentioned are not features of individual conspiracy theorists, they are features, as I see it, of this genre of interpretation.

In other words, the problem is not the conspiracy so much as conspiracy theories.

I would argue that conspiracy theories are vastly worse than reading bones.

Reading bones is basically guessing about the future. As long as the divinator interprets the bones so as to make reasonable guesses, this is about as good as you can predict the future anyway (apart from the limited subset of cases we understand and can predict accurately). You would therefore expect reading bones to be at least a middling prognosticating tool.

Conspiracy theories don't predict, they interpret events. The basic methodology is to substitute the best interpretations of experts with amateur, sloppy, often politically motivated, usually batshit crazy interpretations. Their accuracy is therefore terrible, and ranks far lower as an interpretive technique than reading bones ranks as a prognosticating technique.

... just as there is nothing about predictions made by casting bones that renders them automatically wrong.

It's one thing to doubt a claim but another to come up with an even more improbable alternative. — TheMadFool

Right. Conspiracists are not skeptics, they are the exact opposite: True Believers.
Doubting established wisdom is one thing. But then giving full credulity to a far less likely theory is where skepticism ends.

The flaw was not in any of the possibilities, it was in denying the same possibilities to a non-being as I gave a being. Since the ratio is now equal, this leaves the chance of a Being as a first cause versus a First Cause that is not a being at 50%. Of course this still holds a God is possible, just not as possible as my first conclusion held. — Philosophim

In fact, any event can be explained by an infinite variety of mundane causes, and an infinite variety of supernatural ones. And if your criteria is not mundane vs. supernatural but literally anything (i.e blue Ys vs any other colored Ys), you still get infinity on either side. Using this method, the probability is always 50%. Therefore, this method has zero predictive power, and discloses zero information about the world.

The real flaw is, this is not how probabilities are calculated. You don't just enumerate the possibilities and count them, you need to assign weights to them. Merely enumerating possibilities tells you exactly nothing.

Sure they will cite evidence until the cows come home. They show infinite creativity here.
But, the conclusion is what is all important. The "evidence" is just means to that end. Typically this "evidence" is easily dismissed, by experts. But conspiracy theories operate outside the domain of experts (otherwise I guess they would be "fringe theories"). Their audience is the lay public, and the quality of evidence must only be good enough to fool them.

True, I misspoke:
Russian collision was a conspiracy, to assist a hostile power to illegally affect the election. One can theorize about such conspiracies, without engaging in a conspiracy theory.

A conspiracy theory is something more than its name suggests: It is typically the work of amateurs, seeking to overturn expert opinion in favor of an outlandish alternative. Such "theories" require the complicity of the entire body of subject experts to cover up the truth the theory purports to expose. I think this is ultimately the "conspiracy" referred to. Facts and sound reason fall by the wayside, as every sophistic trick and duplicity possible is employed by the conspiracist to arrive at the desired conclusion.

BTW, Collusion happened, so it almost by definition is not a conspiracy theory. I wonder what conspiracy theory you employ to discount the findings of the republican controlled Senate Intelligence Committee?

It is probably true that declining quality of education increased the vulnerability of the population to conspiracies. A true conspiracy theory can only be believed when there are massive gaps in the believer's model of the world. I would contend that the balkanization of the media, taken to the extreme on social media, is a far more salient factor.


Great reply, very thoughtful, but not a conspiracy.


Great reply, very thoughtful, but not a conspiracy.

This is what we do when we "speak to ourselves". Typically we just borrow the existing language and speak to ourselves literally, but we can employ other perceptual systems: visual, spatial, musical, emotional.

Qualia themselves are symbolic, not linguistic, but we cobble together a kind of language out of qualia we use to communicate with ourselves.

And how is the Chinese room general more than the equivalent of a book I’m this thought experiment? — apokrisis

Books merely present information, they don't process it.

You seemed to be making the argument that the Chinese room does not "push against the world", therefore it is a simulation and cannot be conscious.

But my point is that any simulation can trivially be made to "push against the world" by supplying it with inputs and outputs. But it is absurd to suggest that this is enough to make a non-conscious simulation conscious.

... or something he's overlooked. — Mijin

But he seems to have overlooked it.

If neuroscience is able to isolate the mechanical process that gives rise to consciousness, then Searle grants that it may be possible to create machines that have consciousness and understanding — Searle

He presents a false dichotomy:
* Consciousness cannot be emulated by a Turing machine
* Therefore, it must be physical, not informational, and can only be reproduced with the right mechanical process.

But what if consciousness is informational, not physical, and is emergent from a certain processing of information? And what if that emergence doesn't happen if a Turing machine emulates that processing?

Any questions? — Daemon

I don't think this is the right approach. There is nothing special going on with observer dependence. Yes, a bit, or an assembly instruction, has no meaning in itself. But neither does a neuron. All take their meaning from the assembly of which they are a part (rather than an outside observer). In hardware, the meaning of a binary signal is determined by the hardware which processes that signal. In software, the meaning of an instruction from the other instructions in a program, which all together process information. And in a brain, the meaning of a neuron derives from the neurons it signals, and the neurons which signal it, which in totality also process information.

but that the brain gives rise to consciousness and understanding using machinery that is non-computational — Mijin

Thanks for the quote, this is precisely the point where I disagree with Searle.
There is a middle ground between Turning Machine and physical process.
Searle argues that a Chinese Program (a strip of magnetic tape processed by a Turing Machine) does not (necessarily) understand Chinese. He then pivots from this, to say that the brain therefore gives rise to consciousness using *non-computational* machinery.

This then ties consciousness to biologic process or machines which can emulate the same physical process.

But there is a middle ground which Searle seems to overlook: computational machines which are not Turing machines, and yet are purely informational. Such a machine has no ties to the matter which instantiates it. And yet, it is not a Turing machine, it does not process symbols in order to simulate or emulate other computations. It embodies the computations. Just like us.

So then would Searle agree that it is possible to build a machine that thinks? Either via replicating nature (the thought experiment of replacing each brain cell one by one with a functionally equivalent replacement), or, by a novel design that just fulfills the requirements of conscisiousness (whatever they may be)?

But then it is no longer just a simulation, is it? — apokrisis

Really? As soon as you attach inputs and outputs to the robot brain, it is no longer a simulation?
So, if the Chinese room simulated a famous Chinese general, and it received orders which the laborers laboriously translated, and then computed a reply, and based on this orders were given to troops, it is not a simulation? Seems absurd.

directly pushing emotional buttons — Pfhorrest

But then you are not explaining how music is able to "directly push emotional buttons". The last time you were saying that it is explained by our responses to recognizing patterns. This time, it seems like you are saying music somehow has direct access to emotions.

Simulations have no real effects on the world. — apokrisis

This is just not true. You can plug a simulation into the world, for example a robot, feed it inputs, and it could drive it's body and modify the world.

How do you know this? Why not percussion first? Could we have g before we gave meaning? If not, why not? — Benkei

Good point, I didn't think about percussion. Note that percussion also serves a spiritual function in primordial cultures. Also it is hard to imagine percussion without at least chanting.

It seems highly unlikely song as we know it came first. We would expect to observe this behavior in at least one nonlinguistic animal.