Re: Making your mind up

On 22/04/2024 10:23, Martin Harran wrote:

On Wed, 17 Apr 2024 15:37:42 +0200, Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me> wrote:
 

On 17/04/2024 13:54, Martin Harran wrote:

On Sat, 13 Apr 2024 14:41:16 +0200, Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me> wrote:
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On 12/04/2024 13:56, Martin Harran wrote:

On Thu, 11 Apr 2024 21:32:18 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
wrote:
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On 2024-04-11 2:42 AM, Martin Harran wrote:

On Wed, 10 Apr 2024 10:19:45 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
wrote:

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snip
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As discussed just a couple of months ago, science, at least at this
point in time, cannot explain consciousness of which decision-making
is a subset.

>
Is this an accurate description of the problem though? I thought the
most common dualist position at this point was that science cannot
explain *qualia*, and that explaining the underpinnings of various
visible behaviors could never even in principle account for them. When
you say "consciousness" in that sentence do you mean "qualia" or "any
aspect of consciousness at all"?

>
Qualia is one of those loosely defined expressions for things we
experience. A typical example is how do you explain the difference
between 'black' and 'white' to a person blind from birth? I mean
consciousness in *all* its many aspects such as how we do experience
things like colour and why we are awed by, for example, a spectacular
sunset but other things like how we are able to forecast future
conditions and plan ahead for them; where our moral values come from;
how we can create imaginary characters and build a story about them;
one of favourites is negative numbers - they don't exist in reality
yet the drive the commerce and financial systems which are an esentail
part of modern life. The big one for me, however, is how do
neurological processes lead to us being able to have the sort of
discussion and debate that we are having right here?
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Thank you for clarifying.
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And is "decision-making" not a visible
behavior? Certainly this whole conversation seems to have built
arguments on visible manifestations of it (like coming to a decision
after sleeping on it, or changing one's mind).

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Sorry, I can't get a handle on your point here, why you think
*visibility* of behaviour is relevant.
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Because that's the core of what's called "the hard problem of
consciousness"; the idea that we can imagine philosophical zombies that
would outwardly behave exactly like us but with no inner experience and
that the behavior of such philosophical zombies might be scientifically
studiable, but that is all science could study and science can never
account for subjective experience. The visibility of behavior matters
here because it's what makes it amenable to scientific study, as opposed
to qualia/subjective experience/the thing the hard problem suggests
science can't study.

 I accept that science can only study *visible* behaviour - that is the
very definition of science. That doesn't mean that all the answers can
be found purely through visible behaviour and we certainly should not
rule out potential answers just because they aren't based on visible
behaviour. There seems to be a double standard here; scientists rule
out dualism because it's non-visible yet are quite happy to accept
other ideas that are equally unamenable to study, like the multiverse
for example.
 

I don't think that's a very relevant tangent since we've established that we're talking about visible stuff anyway, but I think that's a pretty big misunderstanding about how science works or what "study the visible" implies. Science isn't about mindlessly looking at things, science is about building models, theories - and validating them by figuring out if they have any consequence on what anything might look and looking there. The theory is more fundamental than the observations and it can get away with even the most glancing relationship to the "visible". The issue with dualism isn't that it's non-visible, it's that it has no explanatory power and the main reason it has no explanatory power is that it behaves like a false idea in response to evidence (for example act like it's irrelevant when brain activity turns out to totally correlate with every distinct aspect of the mind one can find). In other words there is "being non-visible" and then there's "actively shunning visibility", and dualism does the latter. This is a tradeoff of risk of disconfirmation for lack of content, and it's lack of content that's the real problem for science.
Multiverse ideas that science entertains (which is obviously not all of them) are straightforward deductions from models that have been otherwise validated by their interactions with visible things, and the scientists entertaining them would love nothing more than to work out consequences of these models that would result in a yet-unobserved-but-visible difference compared to other models. Because until they do, being "entertained" by science is the best those ideas can hope for.

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But it sounds like it isn't the hard problem of consciousness you are
talking about, but more that you don't think science could account for
the behavior of philosophical zombies to begin with.

 I think you are overplaying the zombies problem, it's just one thought
experiment to illustrate the 'hard problem'. Having said that, I'm not
suggesting that science could not account for it; what I am saying is
that the *approach* science has taken so far has provided very few
real answers and I think we need to widen our thinking (no pun
intended).
 

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Except that there are scientists working on the problem and believe they
have some promising ideas (there is a short discussion in last months
Scientific American on AI)

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They have been promising for rather a long time. As I pointed out to
you two months ago, in Matthew Cobb's book "The Idea of the Brain", he
refers back to a meeting of 20 scientists in Quebec in1953 for a 5-day
symposium on 'Brain Mechanisms and Consciousness'. Opening the
symposium, Horace "Tid" Winchell Magoun, regarded as one of the
fathers of neuroscience, warned his colleagues of 'the head-shaking
sympathy with which future investigators will probably look back upon
the groping efforts of the mid-twentieth century, for there is every
indication that the neural basis of consciousness is a problem that
will not be solved quickly'. Cobb observes that "Tid would probably
have been amused to learn that nearly seventy years later the neural
basis of consciousness is still not understood, nor, the optimism of
Science magazine notwithstanding, is there any sign of an answer on
the horizon."
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Has there been some major development since that book was published of
which I am not aware?

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Plenty. Scanning technology has improved and has allowed to connect
brain functioning to all kinds of conscious processes and behaviors to
an extent they didn't imagine in 1953 or whenever it is they came up
with the joke of the astronaut saying "I've been hundreds of times to
space & have never seen God" and the neurosurgeon answering "I've
operated on hundreds of brains & have never seen a thought". Dualists
now straight-up grant that brain processes *correlate* to conscious
activity and see dualism as a claim that this correlation isn't
identity. Of course for science "correlations" is all one can ever study
so it isn't an issue for developing our understanding.

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I wasn't talking about development since 1953, I was talking about
development since Cobb's book was published in 2020. Unless, of
course, you are trying to suggest that there were significant
developments since 1953 that he failed to take into account. I would
need to see specific examples of that because the book is a
comprehensive account of the study of the brain from Ancient Greece
(and even earlier) through to the present day. TBH, I found the detail
he goes into a bit tedious at times.
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You're right, I'd missed that or kinda skipped over it. I haven't read
the book but reading the sentence and some reviews it looks like he is
talking about the hard problem of consciousness - i.e. he isn't saying
there's been no progress since 1953 in accounting for the neural bases
of our behavior, or the way our internal lives correlate to brain
events, but that this isn't the same as accounting for
qualia/awareness/[the thing philosophical zombies lack], and it's that
last one he sees no progress on.
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If that is indeed what he's saying then we debate how unrelated the
"easy problem" is to the "hard problem" but the position is at least
defensible. But it's not the one you seem to have.
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Am I wrong about what he's saying, and if so do you maybe have a quote
that shows more clearly he's talking about lack of progress on the
neural basis of more specific aspects of consciousness you're thinking
of like decision-making, emotion, imagination, predicting the future etc?

 He's not talking about the 'hard problem' at all; he only briefly
touches on Chalmers and also Nagel ('What Is It Like to be a Bat?')
and dismisses both of them  as not taking us any further forward,
having nothing to offer regarding answers:
 "These views [Chalmers and Nagel] are really a confession of despair,
for we know even less about hypothetical immaterial substances or
speculative exotic states of matter and how they might or might not
interact with the physical world than we do about how brain activity
produces consciousness. Not one piece of experimental evidence
directly points to a non-material explanation of mind. And above all,
the materialist scientific approach contains within it an
investigative programme that can in principle resolve the question
through experimentation. This is not the case for any of the
alternatives."
 Cobb is only concerned with our efforts to understand how the brain
work; although he never calls it that, he's effectively talking about
what are supposed to be the *easy* problems i.e. those that should be
solvable using a materialist approach.

Okay, then I have no idea what Cobb is talking about. Maybe he's referring to some bar for "understanding" or "answer" that hasn't been met and not saying there's been no change at all, or maybe he's referring to some specific over-optimistic predictions made by that 1953 magazine. Or maybe he's indeed saying something I disagree with, idk.

 

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The more basic behavioral tools of breaking down consciousness & mental
life into distinct processes via double dissociations, studying people
with brain and/or psychological disorders and running experiments have
also continued bearing fruit. Antonio Damasio for example who wrote
classics in the field mostly uses such methods IIRC and his first book
is in 1994, over 40 years after 1953.

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Cobb does discuss the work of Damasio and others in the context of
localisation theories, particularly the different roles played by the
left and right hemispheres of the brain.  He goes on to show how those
localisation theories have been shown to fall short in further studies
showing that if a particular hemisphere stops functioning, the other
hemisphere can take over that function. He particularly refers to work
by Robert Sperry, 19814 Nobel recipient, that showed that when the
corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres, is physically
severed, each hemisphere starts to perform as a whole brain,
recreating the functions of the missing hemisphere. In Sperry's own
words: "The split-brain cat or monkey is thus in many respects an
animal with two separate brains that may be used either together or in
alternation." Although Sperry's work was initially on animals, further
work by one of his students on a man who had his corpus callosum
severed to treat epilepsy showed the same thing in humans.
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Damasio's work goes far beyond localisation theories, and the fact a
hard right brain/left brain division has been abandoned to some extent
and brain plasticity is a thing hardly undermines the more general
observation that certain aspects of consciousness are associated with
certain areas within the brain.

 Yes, I accept that but a single book covering every aspect of every
researcher is obviously impossible. I'm not familiar with Damasio's
work but I'd guess that Cobb has addressed at least some aspects by
discussing work by other reearchers in the same area. Have you any
specific aspect of his work in mind?

I read "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" and "Musicophilia"; the former is as fun as the title suggests but I'm guessing your reading list is quite full already :) Like I said, I was mentioning him as an example of work into how our mind can be broken down into different processes that are sometimes surprisingly separable (like speaking and understanding) or surprisingly linked (like emotion and decision-making).

 

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The study of animal and machine cognition has also made huge strides
since 1953. Most of classic experiments with chimpanzees and other great
apes that taught us how similar yet different from us they are were made
after then. 1953 IIRC was still behaviorists looking at basic reflexes
in rats and pigeons; all the cool work into the surprising intelligence
of dolphins, orcas, elephants, corvids (notably Caledonian crows) as
well of course as our closest relatives came after. All the classic
research into human vs animal language came after. These all tell us a
lot about what our consciousness is or might be and isn't.
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Let's not even get into machine intelligence, which barely existed as a
field in 1953 and teaches us a huge deal about human intelligence mostly
(so far) by showing us what it isn't. In 1953 people still thought that
a computer would have to be intelligent like a human in order to beat
one at chess. Alison Gopnik's books like "The Philosophical Baby" and
"The Gardener and the Carpenter" are pretty good about unifying those
different strands of animal, machine & human cognitive research to give
insight into consciousness (and many other things).
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Anil Seth wrote "Being You" in 2021 and I think it probably gives a
decent account of the current state of neuroscience and cognitive
science on the question of consciousness specifically. In terms of that
quote he'd probably say that it's accurate insofar that 70 years between
1953 and 2021 is by no means "quickly" and that even now one can't say
the hard problem has been solved or dissolved quite yet, but that our
*understanding* of the neural basis of consciousness has advanced leaps
and bounds.

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What has advanced leaps and bounds is the amount of *data* that has
become available but as leading French neurologist Yves Fregnac put it
in an article in Science in 2017,
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"Big data is not knowledge …
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   … Only 20 to 30 years ago, neuroanatomical and neurophysiological
information was relatively scarce, while understanding mind-related
processes seemed within reach. Nowadays, we are drowning in a flood of
information. Paradoxically, all sense of global understanding is in
acute danger of getting washed away. Each overcoming of technological
barriers opens a Pandora's box by revealing hidden variables,
mechanisms and nonlinearities, adding new levels of complexity."
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It's true the big data is not knowledge, and it's also definitely true
that advances in scanning technology have been a mixed bag, with fMRI in
particular resulting in a lot of junk science. It doesn't mean it's all
junk however or that advances haven't been made. Anil Seth's book in
particular is definitely discussing advances in our understanding, not
raw data or junk fMRI entrail-reading (if he was careful enough at
least, which he comes across as being).

 Cobb certainly does not dismiss the wealth of data as junk, he thinks
the problem is that no *framework* has been found within which sense
can be made of the data. He also thinks we are trying too hard to look
at the big picture, he is particularly disparaging about the Human
Brain Project wich ran for 10 years with £1 billion in funding from
the EU and produced nothing of value. His own solution is to start
small and gradually build up knowledge:
 "My own preference for how best to proceed in understanding the brain
would be to pour resources into discrete, doable projects able to
provide insight that can subsequently be integrated into a more global
approach. Crick's approach to studying consciousness applies to the
brain as a whole, it seems to me. As some parts of theoretical physics
demonstrate, high-flying ideas that are not rooted in experimental
reality can generate vast amounts of excitement and occupy whole
academic careers, without necessarily advancing understanding. By
developing analytical techniques and theoretical frameworks to
understand what a fly thinks, we will lay the ground for understanding
more complex brains; trying to understand simple animal brains will
keep us busy for the rest of the century, at least. If you feel that
any study of the brain must involve a vertebrate to be truly
interesting, the brain of the tiny zebrafish larva consists of only
100,000 neurons, and easily falls into the small-brain category."
 

Again I'm not sure what he means by a lack of "framework" or "discrete, doable projects". There are plenty of people investigating the brain and consciousness from all kinds of angles and most of them are "concrete, doable projects". I think Anil Seth's "Being You" describes such frameworks and projects for example. He's either referring to something specific that I'm not getting from context, or I just disagree with him.

  

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I'm especially surprised at you highlighting decision-making as
inexplainable because ISTM it's one of the most investigated. It's what
"System1/System2 thinking" is about for example.

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OK, I haven't read Kahnemann's book though I note he is a
psychologist, not a neurologist or a research scientist. That, of
course, does not mean that his ideas are wrong but it always strikes
me as somewhat funny how scientists are generally dismissive of the
contribution of the likes of psychologists and philosophers - unless,
of course, their contribution matches what the scientists already
believe :)
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I haven't read it either but I probably should, "system 1/system 2" puts
names to ideas I'd cobbled together myself from various sources but
didn't know had a name. I've been starting to use those terms but should
probably check what he actually uses them to say before I go too far
with that.
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I'd definitely recommend Anil Seth's "Being You" for you though. He also
has talks on youtube, I could find one to link if you like.
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Incidentally, I said some time ago that I think that if we do
eventually get an understanding of consciousness, it is more likely to
come from work on machine learning and AI rather than neurology. I
said that some time before the recent explosion in AI applications and
that explosion reinforces my thinking.

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I think the field of AI as it currently stands, those I hear most about
at least, would benefit hugely from looking into what the research into
human & animal cognition has been doing the past few decades. A lot of
the talk seems stuck in, well 1953 is a good date actually - the idea
that intelligence is an ineffable, incomprehensible black box to the
point the Turing Test is the only way it can be tested even in
principle. Which would come to a surprise to those who study animal
cognition and human cognitive development.

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Those working in AI are already taking account of research into human
& animal cognition - the fundamental concept of machine learning,
which leads to AI,  is driven by *neural networks* which are an
attempt to replicate the neurological processes that take place in the
human brain.

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Neural networks are decades old, they're not the kind of contribution
from human & animal cognition I was thinking of. In fact to my understanding people working in AI aren't really keeping up to date with
research into neurons themselves either, figuring that the kind of
neuron behavior they already implement is sufficient to the processing
they're trying to do and/or that adding complexity at that level will
harm rather than help. I don't have an opinion as to whether they're
right or wrong on that, like I said it's not the contribution I had in
mind. But I don't think I'd be wrong to say that the contributions of
neural science currently used in computer neural networks were pretty
much all contributed in the previous millennium.
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It should be a two way-process, however,  and those
working in human & animal cognition should also be learning from what
is happening in AI (perhaps they are already doing so but I'm not
aware of it.)

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You definitely want to read Alison Gopnik then, her work is very much
informed by AI research and it is clearly a field she keeps up to date
with and collaborates with researchers from.
>

 I will get around to reading some of her stuff but my reading list is
lengthening by the day as inevitably happens when I get involved in
this type of discussion <smile>. I note she is a
psychologist/philosopher, not a neurologist. I don't have an issue
with that, as I've said previously, I think we will only ever get to
understand the brain and consciousness by drawing from a wide range of
areas. I only mention it because I think there is still overwhelming
reliance on neurology to provide the answers.

"Is there" really overwhelming reliance on neurology to provide the answers or is it you who expect neurology to provide them and are therefore only looking there and not finding what you hoped? I can relate, I remember getting a textbook on the brain hoping to find insight into consciousness and being sorely disappointed. When looking into mind-related research I've found "cognitive" to be a much more productive keyword than "neuro-". For your questions specifically you want "cognitive neuroscience", not "neurology".
But I don't know how that comports with your quote from Cobb, if you agree with it at least, because I'd have said the very *reason* "neurology" isn't the field with satisfying insights on consciousness is *because* it's focused on much lower-level processes, full of zebrafish and discrete, doable investigation into "scripts" and such.

 

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I earlier suggested to Don Cates that we perhaps need a modern-day
Copernicus to turn around our approach to the relationship between
neural processes and consciousness, perhaps we need a similar
turnaround in how we approach the similarities between computers and
the human brain. It seems to me that people tend to focus on how the
brain can be considered as a computer but I think we could maybe learn
more by approaching it the other way round. Computers are a product of
the human brain; it seems to me perfectly rational that in conceiving
and designing computers, the brain would draw on the processes that it
already "knows" and uses itself so that the computer is in some ways a
rudimentary brain. I think neurological researchers could perhaps
learn something by looking at AI, seeking to identify more about the
gap between AI and human consciousness and exploring ways to fill that
gap.
  

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I agree, and last I checked I'd gotten the impression that they were,
and doing so more seriously than the other way around. But I can't say
I've done a thorough survey either and I could be influenced by the fact
I follow Alison Gopnik so I could be improperly generalizing from her
work and that of people in her circles.
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