From: tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Date: 14 Oct 92 04:35:15 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Meteorology and Space Science

In article <1249@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <1992Oct8.211640.24394@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>|In article <1222@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>However, i have yet to see any reason to suppose that physico-chemical
>processes are intrinsically any different than the electro-physical ones
>that a computer uses.

I tend to agree with this. I think the Chinese Room argument has merit,
but I do not agree with Searle's offhand assertion that mind is obviously
a physiological process. I argue for "other".

>I do *not* claim to have explained consciousness.  I merely claim that noone
>has yet demonstrated the existance of any phenomena that are not physical
>in nature in the brain.

But you claim that it must be possible to explain it, that an explanation
exists. People claim that I am being superstitious in advocating a dualist
position, but this claim is based on faith in science, not on the methods
of science.

>Thus, I consider even *suggesting* dualism at this point to be unwarrented.
>Dualism is only admissible if *all* other explanations are eliminated.

Well, who made you King of Science?

Materialism is only warranted when there is a hint of a clue of how 
subjective phenomena relate to objective ones.

>|>What is subjectivity other than some form of recursive self-modelling?

>|I see no meaningful content in that question, since a model is not a model
>|without a consciousness to interpret it.

>On what *objective* grounds do you base this conclusion?

I continue to believe that the question is meaningless, but the example
of response to symbols in bees makes me realize that I need to refine the
argument. Withdrawn for now.

>What repeatable, generally available observations are there that rule
>out operational interpretation?

I genuinely don't understand this question; it might as well be in Chinese.

>Or, to put it another way, what is this 'consciousness' that interprets
>the model, and how does it do so?  

To quote Max's Hottentot, I dunno. Beats the hell out of me.

>What observable consequences are there
>to this 'consciousness'. 

According to the standard definitions of observability in science,
precisely none. Appealing to you as a fellow being, I would point to art 
and music, laughter and love, as something beyond algorithmic. This
sort of argument is inadmissible as science, but it should not thereby
be treated as inadmissible to models of truth. The basic fallacy of strong
AI is scientism, i.e., the belief that since the methods of science are
known to be extremely powerful, they must be complete: there is no particular
reason to believe that all phenomena are subject to objective attack.

In particular, subjective phenomena, being explicitly excluded from scientific
methodology, present science with a bit if a problem in accounting for them. It
is utterly ludicrous to turn around and say that they therefore do not exist,
as some of the participants here seem to.

>Yep, they do.  They also know almost nothing about neurology.  The biological
>section at the end of Penrose's book was so abysmal I could not even finish
>reading it.

>So far everthing we know about how a neurons interacts to produce 'thought'
>is consistant with them being purely mechanistic processing elements.

Of course everything we know about neurons is physical. Neurons are a
physical phenomenon. Everything we know about thoughts is mental, too.

>|On the other side, we have a phenomenon of
>|subjective existence that is not obviously reducible to physical processes.

>Oh?  Why should I trust intuition and self-referential analysis?
>Most classical paradoxes are derived from self-reference.

Hmmm. I thought consciousness resulted from self reference. Does this mean
consciousness is a classical paradox? ;-)

Seriously, I see this as my intuition against yours against Searle's against
... with no particular means of deciding among them. 

>Again, what objective evidence do you have that the phenomenon called
>'subjective' is anything other than an artifact of self-modeling?

Hmmm, Is Goedel's number conscious?

> The gap between subjective 
>|experience and physiological facts is not one that has been bridged by
>|defining one in terms of the other. 

>Then how is it to be done?  Without bringing in non-scientific stuff
>like dualism I see few other alternatives.

It probably is not to be done in a satisfactory way from a scientific
perspective. There is no answer even remotely available to the way we 
currently know and reason. I suspect that there will never be such an
answer, and this negative prediction is my evidence for dualism.

>Just because we have not yet formulated a definition of consciousness in
>terms of the interaction of its parts that satisfies *you* does not mean
>it is a maeaningless quest, or that it is impossible.

Prove it. (As the Ferengi candidate said, "I'm all ears!")

>|I think I know about as much about it as the average scientist who is not in 
>|AI, psychology, or the life sciences.

>True, but that is not enough for the subject at hand.

Prove it.

>|I do not deny that the brain has something to do with it. I just deny
>|that we know what that is, or even have anything resembling a hypothesis
>|of what that might be.

>How do you know this if you do not know the current state of neurology?
>There have been a number of really astounding breakthroughs in this field
>in the last five years.  The status of the mind/matter interface is quite
>different now than it was five years ago.

Do you have details, or is this just handwaving? See, I can do it too:
"emergent properties, systems analysis, chaos theory, fractals, hoo, hah,
therefore Aztec theology."

>|>Thus, the idea that there is more there *does* become unscientific, in that
>|>it lacks any supporting data, and makes no testable claims.

I made a weakly testable claim: that no solid theory of consciousness will 
arise. (It would have been better to say "emerge" but I'm starting to really
dislike that word.)

Other than that, I freely admit that my hypothesis is unscientific, and
would appreciate if you would do the same for yours. Unscientific does not
mean wrong unless the domain of science is coincident with the whole 
universe. I claim that the domain of science is only objective phenomena, and 
that subjective phenomena are inaccessible to anything I would call pure
science. (This gets me in no end of trouble with my wife, a PhD psychologist,
but I think psychology is not and probably never will be a pure science.)

mt