Miscellaneous Chatter > Philosophy & Science

Consciousness and emergence

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What Came Before:

--- Quote from: Abalieno ---Just found on Bakker's blog, from a few days ago, and proof that Bakker really needs to come here.

Jorge:
Causality cannot go top down. It doesn’t work. Causality flows upwards from the small to the large. If there can be no reductive explanation of consciousness, then it is intractable to science and that’s that.

Bakker:
My own guess – the one that horrifies me to no end – is that once we finally get rid of all the ghosts, bracket all our intentional intuitions and traditional theoretical commitments to things like truth, representation, and normativity, the ‘irreducibility of the intentional’ will be shown to be an artifact of the informatic bottleneck that constrains attentional awareness (BBT).

Jorge repeats the same things I was saying here. That reductionism belongs to science and without it you're into magic. So the assumption is that there is going to be a reductionist model of the brain, eventually.

Bakker confirms again the idea against "free will" and consciousness as the center and priority of the brain activity. That's the first step, but it was not the part I was arguing.

Elsewhere he says:
the primary problem posed by the science: the ever growing gap between our scientifically derived knowledge of human nature and our intuitive understanding of the human condition. This is literally the primary thematic hinge of Neuropath: the more we gain of the former, the more we discover the latter is skewed, deceptive, or outright hallucinatory.
--- End quote ---

What Came Before:

--- Quote from: Callan S. ---I think I really must have a different concept of free will than he uses.

The information bottle neck is kind of disturbing in the idea that the identification of self is simply like a line in the sand, drawn to evaluate survival techniques as pass or fail.
--- End quote ---

What Came Before:

--- Quote from: Madness ---I feel like we're missing each other on the communicative passes here, Abalieno. I've often read your posts on TPB, as well as Jorge's, and I feel I could learn much by internalizing your perspective here. I'm, obviously, not engaged in your conception at issue - I couldn't possibly start a discussion already "getting" the communication of those trying to impart it to me. But I do want to understand. I realize I'm a poor substitute for Bakker.


--- Quote from: Madness ---Emergence is a theoretical idea. However, cosmologically - its longest pedigree of use - it definitionally satisfies more of its criterion than we can get using it in the cognitive sciences at this point. On a gradient, it's a more secure theoretical distinction when discussing the universe rather than minds and brains.
--- End quote ---

Firstly, I was simply paraphrasing your post above.


--- Quote from: Abalieno ---"Emergence" is a theoretical idea. It does not exist in nature. I said this:


--- Quote ---the world is continuous and there should be laws at the "bottom level" that can regulate everything that happens "above".
--- End quote ---

That's the scientific belief. It negates the possibility of emergence and it's essentially the deal with reductionism.
--- End quote ---

Which I have to suggest seems at odds with:


--- Quote ---Emergence is simply the way consciousness works, or appears to work. Without emergence there's no consciousness.

So it's a theoretical idea that sustains logic and perception. It's the premise that makes everything work on our level.

If the brain has a breadth of activity, of which only a small part "surfaces" into consciousness, then what surfaces and generates consciousness is "emergent".

I don't know what kind of use of it you have cosmologically.
--- End quote ---

Though you seem to say two contradictory propositions, I think we might balance our perspectives with some understanding of the term emergent. History defines words, neh? Nothing has shaped my own use of the word so much as this: Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity.

In that lecture series, Professor. Christian uses the term emergence, with its philosophic and biological connotations, to mark distinctive leaps in complexity in the Universe. In this case, I think he'd suggest that the real emergent phenomena of Consciousness, represented now as an embodied human society and culture, would emerge from human brains but like Neil's wet dream of all the brains on Earth interacting and rewiring through that interaction into some Super-Brain or, perhaps, the neurological analog of the TTT.

Again you have me on the fence now as to how I should internalize your use of the word emergent here.


--- Quote from: Abalieno ---Nope, when I was discussing with him I was conceding the possibility of constraints and limitations. That consciousness is a "small" part of the brain process is kind of obvious, that's not the part being argued (the part that was argued: whether or not consciousness is authoritative, coming on top of the order of command, and whether or not its "cartoon" is relevant). But Bakker isn't simply stating about those limits. He says consciousness is (could be revealed to be) entirely obsolete, and that what we get into it is COMPLETELY in the dark. Not partially.

In fact my attempt was about trying to find some handhold, so that from there you could argue the rest. But Bakker isn't for an adjustment of consciousness. He's for rewriting the whole thing as radically as you may think.
--- End quote ---

I feel again that what you're writing might be ambiguous.

I'm pretty familiar with much of the research Bakker is basing BBH and Encapsulation on. In one frame, I might read this and suggest that consciousness and non-conscious aspects of the brain are completely interactive. This certainly is an enduring academic thought within the cognitive sciences. In another frame, I might read this as you taking Bakker to suggest that conscious isn't experienced.


--- Quote from: Abalieno ---I have no idea what you mean with "collapse our perceptual experience". If you can describe the brain in reductionist terms you not only have mastered the brain, but reality itself. If Bakker's right, at that point we're way past consciousness, and so past any worthwhile attempt writing things down.
--- End quote ---

You seem to be suggest that your perceptual experience would change or disappear, if we only internalized the proper reductionist nomenclature. I was using that quote to try and communicate that this is what I thought you meant.

This thread is called consciousness and emergence? I'm simply curious.


--- Quote from: Abalieno ---We simply assume that the brain COULD be described in reductionist terms. But it's so enormously complicated that we only grasp an infinitesimal part. Science tells you that, eventually, the reductionist model will be achieved and mastered. If this is not possible or not going to happen, then we're out of science and into occultism, magic, religion and all those fun and consolatory things. Into anthropomorphic fantasy. The kind that Bakker writes.

The problem we have now, and assuming we're grounded in science, is whether or not the emergent level we're at is somewhat "coherent" with everything below we don't understand yet (essentially: a cartoon preserving all the important aspects, instead of a completely delusional one), or if getting to know that part would completely rewrite what we have now (instead of merely augment or reframe it).
--- End quote ---

Perhaps this is the clearest to me so far.

I'll avoid taking issue with you skewering my passion.

I attempted in my very first post to highlight the way that brain sciences are, in the past ten years, using the term emergence - from its fields of origin and utility, philosophy and cosmology - and coopting it to describe the brain as much as possible. And big surprise - the conscious experience is an amalgamation of innumeral subsystems, which give rise to our the coherency we experience. Which is where Bakker starts philosophizing in the Last Magic Show. How within that framework, not only is our conscious experience constructed of these subsystems but that our experience of them at all passes through informational horizons.

As to the bolded specifically, I'm not sure Bakker is even commenting on this but I'll read your Jorge/Bakker quotes below.


--- Quote from: Abalieno ---If you believe that our "cartoon" contains something worthwhile, that the bottom of your heart must be good and right, THEN you're on a position that is at the opposite of Bakker's. Bakker believes this story doesn't have an happy end. He doesn't have "faith" that the human being is on the right path and "good". He believes instead we are utterly deceived, always following false gods and abusing each other while we weave self-flattering stories. And that it gets worse from here.

It's all about "faith".
--- End quote ---

I'm not sure how much of this actually reflects Bakker's opinion, excepting that it gets worse from here.

And that "worse from here," as it always has, largely depends on the actions of human beings alive now.


--- Quote ---Jorge:
Causality cannot go top down. It doesn’t work. Causality flows upwards from the small to the large. If there can be no reductive explanation of consciousness, then it is intractable to science and that’s that.

Bakker:
My own guess – the one that horrifies me to no end – is that once we finally get rid of all the ghosts, bracket all our intentional intuitions and traditional theoretical commitments to things like truth, representation, and normativity, the ‘irreducibility of the intentional’ will be shown to be an artifact of the informatic bottleneck that constrains attentional awareness (BBT).
--- End quote ---


--- Quote from: Abalieno ---Bakker confirms again the idea against "free will" and consciousness as the center and priority of the brain activity. That's the first step, but it was not the part I was arguing.
--- End quote ---

Well, I'm not entirely convinced that reductionism/science are one and the same - I feel very much like that is a carry over topic from the Vox Invasion. Jorge is here though, we should ask him.

Also, I read Bakker's quote as suggesting that once we stop actively deceiving ourselves intentionality won't even be a word used in relation to people or brains because of how old questions stop mattering and new ones surface as we reframe our perspectives - in this case, within the BBT.


--- Quote from: Abalieno ---Elsewhere he says:
the primary problem posed by the science: the ever growing gap between our scientifically derived knowledge of human nature and our intuitive understanding of the human condition. This is literally the primary thematic hinge of Neuropath: the more we gain of the former, the more we discover the latter is skewed, deceptive, or outright hallucinatory.
--- End quote ---

Again, we're reading the ambiguity differently, Abalieno. The problem here, in my understanding, is not science itself but about how science forces us against difficult perspectives of ourselves and the world around us and how we react in internalizing these revelations.
--- End quote ---

What Came Before:

--- Quote from: dharmakirti ---I'm curious if anyone here is familiar with Terrence W. Deacon and his book "Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter."  I received a copy of the book for Christmas and I'm both equaly intrigued and intimidated by it (intimidated because I have no formal training in philosophy and only a high school level science education...well I did take a college level theoretical physics class in high school but had to drop out 'cos I couldn't handle the math (except for vectors)).
--- End quote ---

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