Jun 28 2011
“Brain Like” Computing
I am fascinated by the quirkiness with which science is communicated to the public, and specifically the way the media filters and presents science. For example, there are a limited number of hooks used to sell science stories. The formula is as follows: take any scientific discovery and ask, “how will this discovery affect or interest the average person.” Then you find some holy-grail type problem or some iconic futuristic application and make any connection you can to it – no matter how tenuous.
Some of these science-journalism cliches are now familiar to all of us. Every fossil find has to be a “missing link.” If a connection can be made to human evolution, no matter how far removed from our tiny branch, then that connection will be pointed out. Every advance in virology might someday lead to a “cure for the common cold.” Similarly, any biological advance with the slightest possible connection will someday lead to a “cure for cancer.” There is also the fairly recent addition – any advance in metamaterials will lead to the development of a “Harry Potter-like invisibility cloak.” The goal is to get the phrases in quotations into the headline of the article at all costs.
I believe there is another similar science journalism cliche in the making – relating any computing advance to the development of artificial intelligence or “brain-like” computing. The connection is not always unreasonable, but the catch phrases are key.
Media reporting on a recent study in Advanced Materials falls into this new cliche. The article itself is titled: Arithmetic and Biologically-Inspired Computing Using Phase-Change Materials. The press release – Study brings brain-like computing a step closer to reality.
“Biological inspired” or “brain-like” refers to the concept of building computers with components that both store and process information. Current desktop computers have separate components for these functions. The central processor, as the name implies, processes information, but the information itself is stored in the RAM (random access memory). For long term storage memory is placed on a hard drive or similar device, but in order to be processed information has to be loaded into RAM, which is the “working memory” of the computer. This is why increasing the RAM in your computer can make it faster, because it reduces the need to access the hard drive (which is much slower than accessing memory in RAM).
But still – information has to be shuttled back and forth between RAM and the central processor. The need to move around all that information is a significant limiting step in the speed and efficiency of computers.Vertebrate brains, on the other hand, use the same medium to both store and process information – neurons.
It has therefore been a goal of computer research to develop a material that can both store and process information – to merge RAM and the processor and thereby eliminate the need to constantly shuttle information back and forth between the two, resulting in huge gains in speed and efficiency.
Here is the abstract to the current research:
Phase-change materials offer a promising route for the practical realisation of new forms of general-purpose and ‘brain-like’ computers. An experimental proof-of-principle of such remakable capabilities is presented that includes (i) the reliable execution by a phase-change ‘processor’ of the four basic arithmetic functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, (ii) the demonstration of an ‘integrate and fire’ hardware neuron using a single phase-change cell and (iii) the expostion of synaptic-like functionality via the ‘memflector’, an optical analogue of the memristor.
Sounds like the first step in developing the hardware for a computing system that combines memory and processing. That’s pretty cool – if it pans out (always the rub). This does seem like a promising direction to go in, and this type of technology may find applications in developing AI systems. It’s still a long way from being truly “brain-like”, except in the one feature described – so the connection is reasonable if a little thin. I wonder how long it will be before I have memflectors in my desktop computer or smart phone.
In any case, I may have to add “brain-like” to my list of Google alerts to track this research.
122 Responses to ““Brain Like” Computing”
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Regarding science journalism exaggerations, distortions and hyperbole, I heartily recommend this excellent article by Martin Robbins at The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1
But remembering things well is something computers do a lot better than people… what’s the advantage?
Phase change memory has long been a promising alternative to flash memory, so that aspect of the technology may be around sooner than one might think based on the article.
That said phase change computing could be a long way away from competing with ordinary microprocessors outside of nice roles.
“But remembering things well is something computers do a lot better than people… what’s the advantage?”
Speed, basically.
And I would contend that our memory is actually “better” (loaded word) but less veridical to the source. That the brain can abstract the world such that complex and novel inferences can occur make it superior to, and fundamentally not like, any computer.
I think over exuberant AI folks have sort of pushed this brain/computer analogy further than the state of the work warrants.
@banyan & steve12
computers store data and instructions and run them with fixed hardware that does the same thing regardless and doesn’t optimize to any particular task (though the software can). If this technology can be used to create neuron like hardware, it could allow the computer to come up with faster and better ways of solving certain problems like recognizing images, voice, etc. that brains can clearly do better with ‘slower’ hardware.
I think that all this focus on “brain-like” computing is somewhat misplaced.
In order to progress forward, we shouldn’t be trying to build something that is “like the brain” that we have already, but rather, use the intelligence our brains provide to come up with better and more efficient ways of solving the same problems the brain does.
I definitely appreciate how complex the brain is, and that it is definitely a feat to have a computer that could work on a similar level, but if the goal is forward progress, then technology should take us in newer and better directions.
“use the intelligence our brains provide to come up with better and more efficient ways of solving the same problems the brain does.”
Right now, there’s nothing that’s even remotely close to as good as the brain in AI, so better is that much longer off.
This is an interesting point – is it better to try and emulate the brain or not? I would think it’s a “safer” route as it’s the only engine of intelligence we know. But really, we don’t know enough about how intelligence eminates from the brain to emulate it, so maybe another direction is better?
I dunno…
“is it better to try and emulate the brain or not?”
It makes no difference. Computers have not come any closer to real intelligence after decades of trying. So I don’t think you need to worry about whether to create human-like intelligence or something better. They can’t even create the intelligence of an insect.
I agree with the post — many people have trouble separating science fiction from science. Including a lot of scientists.
But I don’t agree that processing and memory are made of different materials. All the logic circuits in computers are integrated circuits printed on silicon chips. Processing and memory are all made of logic circuits.
The processing and memory circuits are separate and data is passed between them. But they are the same materials.
Neural networks were supposedly a way to make computers that work like the brain. Of course that didn’t amount to much.
I think the brain is a very different kind of machine than what neuroscientists and AI researchers assume. They all jumped to the conclusion that the brain is a computer that generates our conscious experience.
Actually the brain is probably not what they think it is, so of course every attempt to simulate a brain has to fail.
@neverknow: Nobody said they are different materials. Dr. Novella said they are different components. The rest of your response is also relatively incoherent and pointless. Nobody thinks it is simply a computer that generates our conscious experience – it is a vastly parallel system of flip-flop switches with certain compartmentalization of function but fully integrated across all systems. It is wholly different from the computers we have right now – which is why we are interested in emulating it. Steve12 raises a good point that while we may not ultimately want a fully emulated human brain, it is a good direction to start off in to understand more fully where we may actually want to go with it. Your assertion that we can’t yet create the intelligence of an insect after decades of trying is also pointless – you are essentially saying that we should give up after trying for such a short time. You are also asserting that the reason our attempts to simulate a brain have failed is because we don’t know what a brain is. Also piffle.
Watch out steve12 – we have recently learned that rocks, wheat, bacteria, and even the universe are all intelligent things. We could model computers after the intelligence of a rock instead of our own.
“It makes no difference. Computers have not come any closer to real intelligence after decades of trying. ”
I agree, but maybe that’s why different approaches are needed? It’s obviously a tough problem.
I don’t think intelligence as exists in the brain is coming anytime soon. I’m not big on all of this singularity business. I agree that it’s essentially an engineering problem, but I think the challenge has been drastically understated.
“Watch out steve12 – we have recently learned that rocks, wheat, bacteria, and even the universe are all intelligent things. We could model computers after the intelligence of a rock instead of our own.”
I guess I didn’t realize how controversial of a statement that was!
lol – just being tongue-in-cheek. My apologies!
Good one nyubgrus. Somewhere in the dark recesses of my soul is a major league ball buster that I’m trying to control…
Nygbrus’ intelligence is more like a rock than the other items, in recognition that the rock has none that it can use to think with and the others do.
Steve12 comes close but busting balls takes practice that he doesn’t have.
We’ve actually made huge gains forward in making machines do animal like things. I would actually put our computer intelligence and robotic possibility at about that of a slow mouse, if all the research was put into one super project.
Of course the papers would sarcastically be calling it the billion dollar mouse.
What about a two pronged attack. A bottom up attack building on our present knowledge of computer systems and a top down attack using the brain as the learning tool. Maybe one day the two will meet.
neverknow: “Computers have not come any closer to real intelligence after decades of trying. So I don’t think you need to worry about whether to create human-like intelligence or something better. They can’t even create the intelligence of an insect.”
So true. So true. We might do well to remember the ill-fated 1922 attempt to climb Mount Everest led by Charles Bruce. He failed of course, and from that day to this no-one has ever, ever conquered that towering icy fortress…
Oh wait…Hang on…That’s not right is it, because now people climb the thing every damn week! So many they’ve probably sold a McDonald’s franchise for the summit.
I’ll leave you to work out the moral of the story.
“Computers have not come any closer to real intelligence after decades of trying.”
Funny that you say “decades” as if that is a long time, and deny that any progress has been made despite obvious progress (especially recently). Have we not come along way since the days of calculators the size of houses?
“We’ve actually made huge gains forward in making machines do animal like things.”
This may be true, but it has always seemed like forcing a square peg into a round hole to me. Since the hardware is different, it always seems like an uphill battle to try to force very different hardware to the same functionality. Not that there is anything wrong with trying (we will learn something along the way), but I will assume that we will still fly in a version of an airplane 100 years from now -versus a Quetzalcoatl-like machine =).
“A bottom up attack building on our present knowledge of computer systems and a top down attack using the brain as the learning tool. Maybe one day the two will meet.”
If not meet, then one will win out. Or perhaps one method will be good for certain applications, and the other will be good other other circumstances. And/or a whole new approach will emerge that currently is under the radar/unknown
I think we have to define our terms and timelines when we talk about a machine achieving AI. Sentient computers in 30 or 40 years based on some extrapolation of Moore’s Law (Kurzweil & the singularity crowd) is almost a joke. The brain achieves what it does through many clever algorithms that we’re not close to understanding, not just brute calculation force.
If we mean computers that seem to possess AI (i.e., almost seem sentient), that ‘recognize’ objects from different viewpoints, ‘understand’ natural language, etc – I think this is happening (Watson, e.g.) and faster processing will enable more achievements in this realm.
But if you’re waiting for Hal 3000, I think you might be disappointed.
No idea how we’ve made it to 20 comments and not a single mention of Dr. Gerald Edelman (Nobel Laureate) and the ‘Brain-Based-Devices’ developed at the Neurosciences Institute. Edelman has long been adamant that the brain does not working like a computer/Turing machine.
http://www.nsi.edu/index.php?page=ii_brain-based-devices_bbd
For further explanation the best introduction is likely, ‘The Man Who Made Up His Mind’, BBC series available on YouTube (~ 40 mins in 4 parts).
Questions and observations that may or may not be funny–
Computers have users- brains don’t.
There is no intelligence. Not a particle, box, handful of it anywhere.
How can something that doesn’t exist be made artificially?
Or- perhaps more appropriate- How many years of study would it take before one could realize that there is no such thing as intelligence?
The singularity will occur moments before the singularity occurs (the machine will figure out how to go back in time to arrive before it arrived– obvious)
I can’t imagine anyone would want to buy a computer that works like my brain– should I trust anyone who thinks someone should buy one that works like theirs?
If hype can’t be quantified, how come so many science articles depend on it?
“It has therefore been a goal of computer research to develop a material that can both store and process information – to merge RAM and the processor ”
“@nybgruson 28 Jun 2011 at 9:15 pm
@neverknow: Nobody said they are different materials. Dr. Novella said they are different components. ”
He said it’s a new material that can both store and process information. But that is true of the integrated circuits that have been in use for decades. They can store and process information.
“If we mean computers that seem to possess AI (i.e., almost seem sentient), that ‘recognize’ objects from different viewpoints, ‘understand’ natural language, etc – I think this is happening (Watson, e.g.)”
No, Watson is not intelligent. Just a big program full of complicated tricks.
neverknow,
what is novel about phase change materials is they allow the same features to both store and process information. It’s a smaller simpler structure that accomplishes both. In normal computers information is stored in different types of circuits from those that preform operations event though their both made of silicon.
“There is no intelligence. Not a particle, box, handful of it anywhere.
How can something that doesn’t exist be made artificially?”
Intelligence is conceptual, but that does not mean that it does not exist. Digestion, anxiety, anger, strength, love apparently don’t exist either since you can’t scoop it up and put it in a cone. Your point is well taken, however, if you mean to point out the flaw with the term intelligence… how will we know when we see it in the form of a computer?
I think you are either being disingenuous or missing the point, neverknow.
Robm addressed the materials issue – yes, both made of silicon, no both are separate entities and separate types of IC.
And you even quoted it, but mis-read it:
The key phrase is in bold – seem. No one implied they are actually intelligent. The very point of the statement was that indeed, Watson is “[j]ust a big program full of complicated tricks” – which is why it seems like intelligence.
Since we are the informal definers of what the word intelligence means, we will simply know it when we see it. Or it’s the old turing idea that if you can’t tell it’s fake then for all intents and purposes it’s real.
Also intelligence is a continuum, we technically had intelligent robots when they learnt to stop driving into walls.
Zencat:
Has Edelmann’s approach of imitating brain function shaped by embodied representation yielded anything that we might call intelligent? I like the idea, but I’m not sure if it’s yielded anything along the lines of true AI yet.
The key phrase is in bold – seem. No one implied they are actually intelligent. The very point of the statement was that indeed, Watson is “[j]ust a big program full of complicated tricks” – which is why it seems like intelligence.
Yeah, Nybgrus, that’s what I was saying.
And I think this is as far as AI will go in our lifetimes. Very happy to be proven wrong!
Intelligence- I’ll know it when I see it.
And I will see it when a measurable amount of it can be produced.
Perhaps if there were an effect or phenomena that could be traced to the stuff– whatever that stuff may be.
As it stands it seems you speak of fairy dust.
@steve12: I agree, though I always reserve that there is a distinct non-zero chance we could both be wrong.
@sonic:
Do you know love exists? How do you know? Can you box it and sell it?
From my perspective, I can assume love is present because enough people talk about it and share experiences of it. I can also claim love exists because I currenly am in love with a pretty blond engineer. But how can I prove love exists? Or even that I am actually in love? Anybody can easily claim I am not in love. How could my girlfriend prove someone wrong who makes such a claim?
She could simply say, “Nuh-uh! He so is! I know it when I see it!” Which would likely suffice, albeit not extremely highbrow. But what if someone demanded actual proof?
She might tell them about how I buy her flowers, take her to surpris dinners, clean the apartment when she is gone, give her a kiss every time I see her, etc etc
But that isn’t “love” those are the things you do when you are “in” love. Where is my love-o-meter that clicks faster and faster when you point it at people in love (you know, like a Gieger counter for love particles)?
And what if I were a cruel heartless bastard who suddenly said, “Actually I never loved you, it was all an act. Goodbye.” What then? Was the “love” ever actually there to begin with? Was the fact that it was fake on my part, but ostensibly “real” on her part mean that it wasn’t there for me, but somehow was for her? What would the love-o-meter readings be then?
The point I am making is that we can’t objectively know love exists, but we can infer it from various other metrics we have decided are indicative of love. And for all intents and purposes, well acted “love” is indistinguishable from “actual” love. It makes me think of gravity versus uniform acceleration or the Kurt Vonnegut book Mother Night.
Substitute intelligence for love, and I think the analogy is pretty good. We just have to decide what attributes give us that evidence of intelligence (what is the intelligence test version of giving a random bouquet of flowers?) and then apply it. As long as whatever it is we apply it to meets the parameters of the test, it must be considered intelligent, at least equivalently so.
Of course, what if it fails in some, but not all? Well, we should realize there is a continuum of intelligence. It isn’t just us humans = intelligent and everything else =/= intelligent. Humans have natural variations in intelligence, dolphins are pretty friggin’ intelligent, so are chimps, and some birds can use tools.
Yeah, it is hard to quantify, but not impossible, though it will never be directly measurable. Of course, that is also the case for many subatomic particles we know exist – no one has or will ever see a quark. Yet by indirect actions and influences (plus a pile of math I can’t understand) we know them to exist. Same with intelligence. We just beg the question for ourselves.
“In normal computers information is stored in different types of circuits from those that preform operations event though their both made of silicon.”
They are all made out of the same kind of logic circuits, with combinations of AND, OR and NOT gates.
more than that they are all made out of metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors.
oh except for ram, thats capacitors.
Sonic: “Intelligence- I’ll know it when I see it. And I will see it when a measurable amount of it can be produced. Perhaps if there were an effect or phenomena that could be traced to the stuff– whatever that stuff may be. As it stands it seems you speak of fairy dust.”
This is ridiculous.
You can’t capture intelligence in a box, but you can capture it on a scrap of paper – it’s a word. A word that will mean different things to different people in different contexts.
It’s also, as eiskrystal pointed out, a continuum.
You seem to be straining this discussion through some sort of theist filter to avoid asking yourself uncomfortable questions. I’m guessing that on some level you equate intelligence with the possession of a soul (or a New Age equivalent). But if men could build an intelligent machine…? Oh deary.
The Turing Test is the gold standard. If you can’t tell the difference; there is no difference.
I work at a university. There are so many intelligent people here! That is, if intelligence is: lots of facts at the ready and very logical thinking.
But most of them I wouldn’t want to have to rely on if I got stranded in the wilderness somehow. Doesn’t the measure of intelligence need to account for the environment within which it operates?
For instance, I would think my computer was intelligent if it knew, based on the nature of my interactions with it and the look on my face and the tone of my voice: when I had a headache.
My boss can’t tell.
@steveA:
I was just discussing this thread with my girlfriend over dinner last night and said that almost word for word to her about sonic. I kid you not.
Intelligence is creative. Computers are never creative, all their ideas are programmed into them by human beings. Human beings are creative; yes all of us are. We seldom say the same sentence twice. Even our everyday communication usually involves something at least a little bit new.
A totally non-creative human being does not exist. If you met one, you would swear he was a mere machine.
The only way a machine could pass the Turing test is by demonstrating creativity. Answering trivia questions is not creative. No machine can ever pass the Turing test because a machine is, by definition, not creative.
Creativity is beyond logic. A machine can be perfectly logical but cannot generate a new idea. When we think logically we are not generating ideas, we are judging ideas that have already been created.
The scientific process and the ordinary thinking process are similar — ideas are generated by a creative process we do not understand, and then they are judged as valid or not.
We can’t define or understand intelligence because we can’t define or understand creativity. Therefore, we cannot build an intelligent machine. You can’t build something if you do not know what it is.
That is why AI has always failed and always will fail. The underlying premise is wrong.
Neglected the fact that you yourself defined it in the beginning:
Just because you personally can’t find an adequate definition doesn’t mean it is simply impossible.
Then you beg the question:
This smacks of ideology – “A machine doesn’t have a soul therefore it can’t be creative.”
You have offered nothing substantive – simply personal incredulity and begging the question.
Actually quite a bit of what people create is derivative in some form, taking preexisting ideas and recasting, recombining, or creating a counterpoint or antithesis to them. People can do this in surprising ways, but they rarely make something from nothing.
“Actually quite a bit of what people create is derivative in some form, taking preexisting ideas and recasting, recombining, or creating a counterpoint or antithesis to them. People can do this in surprising ways, but they rarely make something from nothing.”
Creativity does not mean making something from nothing. No one ever makes something from nothing.
“Then you beg the question:
No machine can ever pass the Turing test because a machine is, by definition, not creative.”
Oh fine. But you chose to not get my point. Creativity is something we do not understand. Materialist/atheists deny it altogether, refuse to see it in nature. But it is obviously there, everywhere, all the time. Every little thought we have is in some way creative, every conversation we have is creative. What I am writing at this moment is creative because I have never tried to express exactly the ideas I am trying to express now, in exactly this way.
Machines are not creative, they do what they are designed and instructed to do. Genetic algorithms are not creative, they are programmed with a range of possibilities which they go through randomly, or pseudo-randomly. The outcome is not expected by the programmer, but that is true of almost any program.
We can’t define creativity because we don’t know what it is. We can make vague statements about how we perceive or experience it. But it is beyond logical analysis. Anything that is beyond logical analysis CANNOT be programmed. Computers and their programs are 100% logic.
That is the fundamental fallacy that underlies AI research. It has failed so far, and that is why it will continue failing. It is based on a false philosophy — materialism, and it is based on a false premise — that creativity can be programmed into a logic machine.
“That is the fundamental fallacy that underlies AI research. It has failed so far, and that is why it will continue failing. It is based on a false philosophy — materialism, and it is based on a false premise — that creativity can be programmed into a logic machine.”
Does everything have to be shoe-horned into this tired debate? Really?
Go to church.
I agree… it seems to be a commonly recurrent theme over at the blog these days. Novella mentions anything that could remotely encroach on theistic dogma and bam! They come out of the woodwork complaining about “atheist science” – whatever the heck that is. Science is just science.
Assertion with no evidence followed by an incorrect assertion.
Creativity is somethig we are beginning to understand. I am very much an atheist and a physical realist. However, I fully embrace the notion of creativity and I see wonder and splendor in nature all the time. I am constantly amazed at the creative ways animals and plants have adapted to their environment and eeked out a life in their ecological niche. I look at biological processes and know that there are many peaks and valleys in the fitness plane and many times am suprised at how adaptation found a peak I would not have thought of. The only difference is that I don’t ascribe these things to the guidance of an invisible, untestable, non-evidenced, intrinsically self-contradictory sky fairy.
Machines are not creative…. yet. The funniest part (to me) about that statement is the “designed and instructed to do.” Theists love to claim that that humans are intrinsically different, they have a soul and thus creativity and intelligence, they have free will and are special creatures for it. Yet they also believe that we were literally designed and that we must follow the instructions of an ancient text… kind of like the machines we create ourselves. Oh, we have free will (says the theist) but to be good human beings we musn’t exercise it! We must instead bow to the “programming” of [insert religious holy text here.]
Such a narrow and provincial outlook. Go back in time before any specific technology and you can always find someone claiming we can’t possibly do that, understand that, or master that.
“Technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke said it well. Some of us simply choose to recognize that and realize that what we feel is unlikely due to personal incredulity has been proven wrong so many times in the past it is better not to take such an assured stance.
I agree that defining, measuring, and re-creating “true” creativity is a difficult endevour. But to say it is fundamentally impossible is simply an uninformed stance. Your only arguments so far have been from personal incredulity. You may even be right that our current tack may not pan out. But you dismiss the possibility of ever achieving it out of hand simply based on your own lack of understanding and disbelief. That’s why PI is considered a logical fallacy.
It is not if man can produce an intelligent machine or not-
It is if anyone can define the word in such a way as to be meaningful enough to know when it is accomplished.
SteveA-
Of course my comment is ridiculous.
And I have an intelligent machine all ready– at least I can’t tell the difference. And that is the test- right?
Thank-you for the clarification- please let everyone know that the creation of an intelligent machine has been accomplished- I have done it and the proof is that I can’t tell the difference.
Of course my comment is ridiculous.
Mlema-
exactly.
nybrus-
It is good to see that great minds think a like.
Perhaps you can explain what intelligence is better than –”If you can’t tell the difference; there is no difference.”
As you might have noticed- I can’t tell the difference.
Why wouldn’t I want an intelligent machine? Perhaps then there would finally be someone for me to talk to….
“Theists love to claim that that humans are intrinsically different, they have a soul and thus creativity and intelligence, they have free will and are special creatures for it. Yet they also believe that we were literally designed and that we must follow the instructions of an ancient text… kind of like the machines we create ourselves.”
You think there is only one kind of “theist” and you think you know what they all believe. You are very ignorant.
“you dismiss the possibility of ever achieving it out of hand simply based on your own lack of understanding and disbelief.”
If you repeatedly insist you can build a perpetual motion machine, I would repeatedly deny that you can. Some things are not possible, and it doesn’t matter how urgently you want to believe they are possible, they still remain impossible.
I have plenty of understanding of AI, and I am aware of its history. From the beginning, atheists have insisted it could be done. At first they expected it to be easy. Now at least they admit it’s hard.
But they will never admit that it’s impossible, because their philosophy depends on AI being possible.
I’ll never admit it is impossible because I think nothing is impossible. Only highly improbable. A perpetual motion machine is improbable enough to round off the error and call it impossible… though there is much about quantum mechanics that we don’t know yet, I reserve the notion that it may, at some point, become possible.
I think AI is less improbable, but also very difficult. My atheism (nor anyone elses) depends on that notion. The more research we do the more we realize there is no mind/brain duality and that our own notions of free will are an illusion. What you may consider “intelligence” may not in fact even exist. So when it comes to creating an intelligent machine, one must define their terms. If you mean create an artificial brain, in every way analagous to the human brain, then I think that is indeed possible, albeit extremely difficult. Unlike you I am not willing to give up and say it is impossible based on a few decades of trying and some difficulty.
As for my comment about theists – I am aware there is not only one kind. However the vast majority fit into the description I gave above. If the generalization doesn’t fit you specifically, then I apologize. However, your arguments seem to fit the bill for such assumptions. If you really don’t think it is a soul that makes man completely different from all other life on the planet and thus endows us with the peculiar ability of intelligence (which I have argued is a continuum and certainly not peculiar to our species) then feel free to state so and frame your arguments against AI from that perspective. Because it sure doesn’t come across that way from what you have said so far.
“The more research we do the more we realize there is no mind/brain duality and that our own notions of free will are an illusion.”
There is no research showing anything like that.
“If you mean create an artificial brain, in every way analagous to the human brain, then I think that is indeed possible, albeit extremely difficult.”
That is your evidence-free opinion. You can state it all you like, but it is not scientific.
“If you really don’t think it is a soul that makes man completely different from all other life on the planet and thus endows us with the peculiar ability of intelligence”
Why would I think man is completely different from other animals? That makes no sense. If you know some people who think that, because their minds are stuck in the middle ages, that has no bearing at all one what I think.
And the word “soul” is old-fashioned and we really have no modern definition for the concept. I believe that intelligence is universal, occurring in some unknown way on the quantum level. And I believe that there are substances on higher dimensional levels not yet studied by mainstream science.
I do not think the mind is restricted to the physical neuron cells that we are familiar with. Just because we happen to be familiar with something doesn’t mean there can’t also be something else. I think the neurons have important roles, of course, in information processing. But we have absolutely no reason to think there isn’t more to the mind.
Yes, you probably took college courses where the professor insisted that the brain IS the mind. We’ve all had those courses. But we are not forced to always and forever agree with anything any professors ever told us.
After I was out of college, I began studying on my own and found out that so much fascinating science is completely left out of the text books. I think it’s because there is a preference for materialism that increased greatly throughout the 20th century.
But a preference is not necessarily truth. Intellectual fashions come ago, although they often last decades.
When you make an atheist/materialist statement, think about whether it is based on actual observations and logic, or just something stated by an authority.
It’s interesting to me how some people can question the authorities they grew up with (religion teachers, parents, etc.) but never think of questioning the authorities they learned from in college.
and the assumptions swing back the other way.
I never questioned my religion teachers because I never had any. I was baptised and that was it. Never went to church again.
I have extensively question my college professors, however, particularly the ones who tried to tell me there IS a mind/brain duality.
As for the research, that is not an evidence free statement – Dr. Novella blogs on it a fair bit and I have read the articles myself as well. It is not an argument from authority, but my own synthesis of the knowledge I have gained and studies I have read.
As for my statement about being able to recreate the human brain, that is not entirely evidence free, but is certainly opinion. Hence why I said “I think” not “I know” or “evidence shows.” It is my opinion based on the science I do know and the track record of scientific progress.
How many times to I have to say it isn’t an atheist statement? It is a statement based on evidence and philosophical realism – I don’t believe there is anything outside of the descriptive capacity of empirical testing.
The rest of your post is more Jeremiah-esque “everything is information” gobbledy-gook, so I am not even going to bother addressing it further. Been nice chatting with you up till now, but I’m not interesting in firing up another quantum philosophical debate.
Nybgrus: The more research we do the more we realize there is no mind/brain duality and that our own notions of free will are an illusion.
Neverknow: There is no research showing anything like that.
Nybgrus: If you mean create an artificial brain, in every way analagous to the human brain, then I think that is indeed possible, albeit extremely difficult.
Neverknow:That is your evidence-free opinion. You can state it all you like, but it is not scientific.
There’s a lot of good evidence for both of Nybgrus’ statements. Literally ALL of the scientific evidence indicates that the exclusive seat of human cognition is the brain. Let’s go further; there is not ONE SHRED of evidence that says anything else! If there is evidence for the existence of some type of cognition that has been attributed to something outside the body, please let us know about it.
IF we accept that the brain is the seat of all higher cognition (some of what the peripheral NS does might count as some form of rudimentary processing), then the statements naturally follow.
I will say that the freewill argument is a little tougher. I’m swayed by Dennett’s argument that human freewill as we think of it exists at the ecological level, not the level of absolute determinism. This is a poor synopsis – I highly suggest reading about it or watching a lecture of his on the topic on youtube.
Neverknow, you also argue that Nybgrus doesn’t have absolute evidence for all of his assertions, yet you say stuff like this:
“I believe that intelligence is universal, occurring in some unknown way on the quantum level. And I believe that there are substances on higher dimensional levels not yet studied by mainstream science.”
There is 0 evidence for this. Which is OK – there’s plenty of room for speculation if you call it what it is. Speculate away – it can be fun! But you’re giving Nybgrus a hard time about the scientific evidence behind his assertions, and then you counter with something that has literally no evidence.
Again, if you have evidence for human cognition that requires the invocation of QM, please share.
We’ll just build a quantum computer, problem solved! By college professors.
http://consc.net/papers/extended.html
The Extended Mind
Andy Clark & David J. Chalmers [*]
Department of Philosophy
Washington University
St. Louis, MO 63130
1 Introduction
Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? The question invites two standard replies. Some accept the demarcations of skin and skull, and say that what is outside the body is outside the mind. Others are impressed by arguments suggesting that the meaning of our words “just ain’t in the head”, and hold that this externalism about meaning carries over into an externalism about mind. We propose to pursue a third position. We advocate a very different sort of externalism: an active externalism, based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes.
“We’ll just build a quantum computer, problem solved! By college professors.”
Like Carlin said – how often the simple solution eludes us!
There is some rumor going ’round that quantum fields act as a communicative medium in ways that suggest a quantum field culture.
Well steve if the problem of intelligence and consciousness is the magic of QM, all we have to do is turn our reductionist bits (computer bits), into qubits and the problem should go away, no matter how many higher or orthogonal dimensions are involved.
I think a quantum computer will be conscious ipso facto that it’s quantum.
thats supposing the two are synonymous as neverknow does, I actually doubt it is, or that quantum computing is even necessary.
I suppose I should have said sarcasm on!
The body is a way to experience consciousness/existence. But that doesn’t mean that consciousness doesn’t exist without a body.
A lot of people can’t comprehend the idea of multiple levels of consciousness or a consciousness beyond their brain because they’ve never experienced anything beyond their ongoing, everyday thoughts, and the sensations of their everyday body. Except maybe in dreams, or through drugs, which they have no control over.
Of course there are physiological correlates to different states of consciousness. Just like the functioning of the universe correlates to the laws of physics. And while you are alive you will not escape the nature of how the body causes you to experience consciousness. But we don’t know if there are in fact people who learn how to do that. By definition, they might be hard to spot.
Miema, the quantum of solace is infinitely divisible.
[Neverknow, you also argue that Nybgrus doesn’t have absolute evidence for all of his assertions, yet you say stuff like this:
“I believe that intelligence is universal, occurring in some unknown way on the quantum level. And I believe that there are substances on higher dimensional levels not yet studied by mainstream science.”
There is 0 evidence for this. Which is OK – there’s plenty of room for speculation if you call it what it is. Speculate away – it can be fun! But you’re giving Nybgrus a hard time about the scientific evidence behind his assertions, and then you counter with something that has literally no evidence.]
I didn’t expect Nybgrus to have absolute evidence for all his assertions. I expected him to have some evidence for some of his assertions.
My statements that you quoted say “I believe.” I was not pretending they were facts.
We can’t know everything, we understand very little. We can speculate, if our speculations do not conflict with known facts. And when we try to make factual statements, we should explain why we think they are facts.
“My statements that you quoted say “I believe.” I was not pretending they were facts.”
Fair enough – you did say that. I just plain got that wrong.
But what Nybgrus said was backed up by facts – literally all of the evidence that we have says that there is no duality (i.e., the brain is the only shown seat of cognition) and there is 0 evidence for cognition being caused by anything else (e.g., a soul, some QM phenomena, etc.).
That has to count as following the evidence, right?
And this is very easily falsified (e.g., by some reflection of cognition’s influence on quantum states outside the brain or vice-versa) – but nothing – at least so far.
Considering, Nybgrus was exactly following the scientific evidence.
Thanks very much steve12. It is a bit tedious repeating and re-hashing stuff to defend against accusations like neverknow. Besides, as you say, citing the evidence would be a massive “references cited” page by itself.
@neverknow:
That’s the point. Refer to much of what Dr. Novella writes about if you want a starting point. But my assertions arise from the body of knowledge. Your claim that they are evidence free is simply wrong and asking me to explain, cite, and reference all the evidence is… well, you may as well go ahead and get a degree in neuroscience at that point.
Mlema said: The body is a way to experience consciousness/existence. But that doesn’t mean that consciousness doesn’t exist without a body.
Except that, as nybgrus and steve12 have suggested, that’s the conclusion to which the scientific evidence leads.
Not only that, but according to evidence supporting the embodied cognition thesis, “all aspects of cognition, such as ideas, thoughts, concepts and categories are shaped by aspects of the body.” I’ve referenced cognitive scientist/linguist George Lakoff’s books on this topic here before, but also “Neuroscientists Gerald Edelman, António Damásio and others have outlined the connection between the body, individual structures in the brain and aspects of the mind such as consciousness, emotion, self-awareness and will.”
So, just because we can speak of consciousness as an abstract, disembodied concept doesn’t make it so. What’s more, if we agree to empirical, science-based norms of discussion, then (at least to my layman’s eyes, it seems) we ought to instead speak of consciousness as a product of the body (e.g. the sensory-motor system) until we have enough evidence to warrant doing otherwise.
PS: Just to qualify what I meant by “empirical, science-based norms of discussion”, the standards of this forum are far from academic, which is why I (as a non-academic) can participate in it. So what I have in mind here is more of an informal discussion of what scientific research thus far has to say about a given topic. That alone seems sufficient to feed (and often heat up) these comment threads (no metaphysical speculation required).
“literally all of the evidence that we have says that there is no duality (i.e., the brain is the only shown seat of cognition) and there is 0 evidence for cognition being caused by anything else (e.g., a soul, some QM phenomena, etc.).”
No, it is a misconception that we have any evidence for that. There is none. We have evidence that without a functioning brain, a person cannot communicate with others in the physical world. The brain is required for sensory input and motor output.
You are going way beyond the evidence if you therefore conclude that our mental experiences are created by the brain.
I am not saying I believe in dualism, that there is a soul completely separate from the brain. I am saying that we have no reason to suspect that the brain (what we know of it currently) IS the mind.
The physical neurons and synapses are obviously a big part of the machinery. It’s the part we can touch and see, that we can observe with current technology.
However there are scientists who believe there is much more to the mind than the brain as we know it. And yes, quantum processes are supposedly involved. And substances and fields not yet understood by science.
Mainstream neuroscience tends to believe the brain IS the mind. However, aside from some sensory-motor aspects, it has minimal knowledge of how mental experience is related to the brain.
neverknow: I am saying that we have no reason to suspect that the brain (what we know of it currently) IS the mind.
The mind and the brain are different concepts (e.g. one is psychological, the other physiological) – so in that sense I agree with you.
But that observation is compatible with steve12′s claim that “the brain is the only shown seat of cognition.”
In other words, destroy a human’s brain and you destroy his/her body’s ability of perform cognition – that is what the scientific evidence thus far suggests (quite strongly, in fact).
Typo correction: “…you destroy his/her body’s ability to perform cognition…”
PS: That probably won’t stop anyone from believing in extra-bodily and/or non-physical seats of cognition. The point is that there is no scientific basis for such beliefs (for whatever that’s worth to you, philosophically speaking).
“No, it is a misconception that we have any evidence for that. There is none. We have evidence that without a functioning brain, a person cannot communicate with others in the physical world. The brain is required for sensory input and motor output.
You are going way beyond the evidence if you therefore conclude that our mental experiences are created by the brain.”
You are exactly wrong. EVERY piece of evidence says cognition is relegated to the body, and the body only. Not one piece of evidence to the contrary exists. You’re trying to turn it around, and have me prove a negative, that there is no other seat of cognition.
But that’s not how science works. You need to falsify that the brain is the soul seat of cognition, because a negative cannot be proved. This is where you’re getting confused about the state of the evidence.
“I am not saying I believe in dualism, that there is a soul completely separate from the brain. I am saying that we have no reason to suspect that the brain (what we know of it currently) IS the mind.”
You’re quite right here – we needn’t suspect anything. We have an amazing amazing of evidence that the proposition is true, and none that speaks to the contrary. IOW, we have many, many reasons to say this.
“However there are scientists who believe there is much more to the mind than the brain as we know it. And yes, quantum processes are supposedly involved. And substances and fields not yet understood by science.”
Again, cite them! Please! I’m saying there is literally not one shred of evidence for this. Show me I’m wrong.
“Mainstream neuroscience tends to believe the brain IS the mind. However, aside from some sensory-motor aspects, it has minimal knowledge of how mental experience is related to the brain.”
There is a lot that’s unknown – I’ll grant you. But reasoning that the current lack of knowledge argues for your specific proposition is illogical. Can I say that our lack of understanding in neuroscience is poor, therefore alien possession must explain cognition? By this standard I can, but that’s absurd.
Again, you’re point is easily supported by any – ANY – piece of evidence that falsifies the proposition that the body is the exclusive seat of human cognition. That you cannot find one (not your fault, there’s none to be had) is telling.
“destroy a human’s brain and you destroy his/her body’s ability of perform cognition – that is what the scientific evidence thus far suggests (quite strongly, in fact).”
No, as I said, if a person’s brain is destroyed they lose the ability to communicate in the physical world. They can’t hear or see, or speak or write. So it might seem like they have no cognition, but we don’t know.
Actually brain damage is not an all or nothing proposition, people have had profound changes in memory, cognition, mood, decision making, and personality without effects on their ability to see, hear, move or speak. Various effects on the mind have been temporarily created through transcranial magnetic stimulation, without affecting the ability to communicate. That is very good evidence that the mind is the product of the brain. There is no evidence that any of it exists without an associated brain function, even if communication and sensory abilities remain intact.
“you’re point is easily supported by any – ANY – piece of evidence that falsifies the proposition that the body is the exclusive seat of human cognition. That you cannot find one (not your fault, there’s none to be had) is telling.”
There is a very large quantity of good quality research on perception that bypasses the physical senses. Mainstream scientists are often unaware of it because it tends not to be published in mainstream journals. However Daryl Bem has recently published experiments in a mainstream journal that demonstrate awareness of the future: http://dbem.ws/FeelingFuture.pdf.
Materialists usually reject all parapsychology experiments as not being replicated. However, many have been, although not usually published in a mainstream journal. The kind of experiments performed by Bem have been done successfully by others.
Materialists also claim that parapsychology is worthless because there is a “decline effect.” That means later effect sizes tend to be smaller than earlier effect sizes, within a given type of experiment. But that is true in other types of research also.
Steve Novella recently said that the decline effects in parapsychology inevitably leads to zero effect size. But that is absolutely not true. If you extrapolate the decline effect in any type of research, it goes to zero.
That assumes the decline never levels off or reverses, which is a completely unwarranted assumption. And it would not be assumed with any other type of research.
Skeptics who looked carefully at certain kinds of parapsychology research have been unable to find anything wrong with it.
We’ll see what happens with Bem’s “feeling the future” experimental design. Materialists struggle to reject it, without trying to look at it objectively.
thoughts, emotions, memories, bodily sensations are not the same as consciousness, and are not in their sum total=consciousness. People may possess any degree of consciousness, from unawareness of their own existence, to a continually expanding awareness of the nature of all existence.
neverknow: What robm says.
In addition to his example of transcranial magnetic stimulation, there are numerous techniques, both surgerical and pharmaceutical, which are known to alter cognitive functions without necessarily impacting vision, hearing, or speech. But even if/when these techniques do impact those functions; e.g. as in the case of side effects from certain antidepressant drugs), the point is that their impacts are not confined to those (e.g. SSRI’s, which increase active serotonin levels in brain synapses, also impact the subject’s mood and behavior.
Also, take Alzheimer’s disease, which is “associated with plaques and tangles in the brain”, and for which, in “the early stages, the most common symptom is inability to acquire new memories, observed as difficulty in recalling recently observed events.” Sure, the victim’s senses and ability to communicate decline, as well, but the symptoms extend well beyond just those cognitive functions.
Simply put: Unless we admit certain religious/metaphysical doctrines as “evidence”, there is only evidence (as far as I am aware) that the body (especially, but not exclusively, the brain) is involved in performing cognition.
That is either a statement of denialism or ignorance.
If you look at case studies of brain damaged people you find that literally every possible manifestation is possible. What do I mean by that? Not only do personalities change (impulsivity increases, anger, lethargy, happiness, etc), not only do certain parts of the body stop working (paralysis), or even complete neglect of part of your body, but fundamental constructs of reality can change as well. Lesion the correct part of the brain and people won’t be able to discern that they are a separate entity from the rest of the universe.
Think about that. There is a specific part of the brain, reproducibly so, that when defunct will leave you completely the same except that you will no longer feel or be able to tell where your body begins and ends.
Or how about back in the day when they used to split the corpus callosum for epiplepsy? Those people would go about their day and their right arm would pick out clothing completely different from their left. The would half dress and notice the other half was dressed already, in something they would not have picked. Does that mean this person now has two non-physical minds? If the mind is some discrete non-physical entity outside the brain, why does splitting the brain result in each half of the body having distinct “personality?”
Or how about the transcranial magnetic studies robm mentioned? You can do mundane things like shut down the use of an arm or completely stop someone from speaking. But you can also prevent people from remembering the correct word to use, but the rest of the sentence is fine. They can get stymied on a single word and simply not be able to say it until the field is removed.
How about the alien hand syndrome? How about body dysmorphic syndrome, where the person feels odd and incomplete unless a limb is amputated?
Or how about the study where researchers were able to trick people into thinking they had swapped bodies with another human being?
These are just the quick things I can think of off the top of my head at 6:30am. I’m sorry neverknow, but not only is there no evidence to demonstrate any form of duality or otherwise the existence of the mind not being a direct phenomenon of the brain, but indeed there is specific evidnence to the contrary.
So your statement, “I am saying that we have no reason to suspect that the brain (what we know of it currently) IS the mind.” is simply incorrect and likely uninformed (I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt).
However, if you are going to make statements like:
Then I’d respectfully ask that you do not accuse me of making evidence free remarks. Because usually, all my comments are rooted in the evidence. The one you made is pure speculation. Just because some scientist may “believe” something doesn’t mean anything. Just because you’d like to think quantum effects are involved (and there is evidence against this actually, much to the chagrin of Deepak Chopra, not that he cares to read the evidence anyways) and because you think there are “substances and fields” yet to be understood doesn’t make the argument any different. Besides the fact that your last statement is indeed pure speculation, it is also, IMO, a pretty poor statement to make should you actually know the science. I will admit that the question is not yet fully answered, so there is room for me to be wrong, but there is no reason to think that quantum effects play any role in the physical processesing of the brain (even the smallest neurotransmitters are order of magnitude too large), the likelihood that there are substances in the brain we simply haven’t yet discovered is very low (after all, we may not know what they do, but we can detect them – even ephemerally short-lived neurotransmitters like NO have been detected and studied – just ask daedalus), and the notion that there are “fields” of some sort that science doesn’t know about/can’t detect yet that somehow influence the brain is also exceedingly unlikely. And as if that weren’t enough, based upon what we do know IF any such things are actually discovered they will almost certainly fall into line and merely be another aspect of the physical function of the brain generating the illusion of a separate mind.
And I haven’t even gotten into the notion that free will is actually an illusion. Not only can people have the sense they no longer have free will after a brain lesion, but we can empirically measure and detect a person’s thoughts before the person has the thought themselves! Think about that – we can take readings and (on the order of a couple hundred milliseconds) prior to the person being consciously aware of the decision they will make we can predict it – accurately.
As far as I am concerned too many nails in the coffin there.
I’d love to provide you with link to every reference and all the studes, but besides being quite numerous and thus time consuming, I simply do not have time. I actually have to put on some nice clothes and go do ward rounds today (normally I just wear tattered jeans and a T-shirt for classes) but I reckon steve12 and robm can back up everything I’ve said.
So to close:
Firstly, why do you think you can go against “mainstream neuroscience” with such aplomb? There is a reason they are experts. But more to the point, as I have briefly elucidated above, there is vastly more knowledge of mental processes than just sensory-motor deficits.
@steve12:
Oh yeah, noticed a typo you made:
Freudian slip perhaps?
Just razzin’ ya mate
oh yeah, and mufi – rock on. Solid commentary, my lay friend. From what I have been reading from you to date, I’d say you should be quite proud of not only your level of specific knowledge but your application thereof. I don’t know half as much about your field as you know about mine.
Mlema: You and I would hardly be the first folks to debate the meaning of “consciousness”, but I’ll say this much: I tend to use the term interchangeably with “subjective awareness”, and I understand it from cognitive science to be, not only a brain function, but a rather minor one (e.g. representing roughly 2-5% of cognitive thought).
Of course, existentially, it means a lot more than that (and phenomenologically, it means everything), but I see that as a different topic.
nybgrus – thank you kindly – you just made my day
What we experience is that “I have a mind and that I can see a picture in it.”
But upon inspection, we find that there is no picture in a brain, nor is there a place for ‘I’ to see anything. (Read ‘Consciousness Explained’ by Dennett)
In other words, what we experience is not found anywhere in the brain or any other place in the physical universe.
When a person says, “I have a mind that I can change if I want to,” the dualism implied is obvious.
But there are those who claim that there is no “I” that can change anything- certainly not their mind.
And one wonders why they never lose an argument…
“After years of striving to explain the mind on the basis of brain-action alone, I have come to the conclusion that it is simpler (and far easier to be logical) if one adopts the hypothesis that our being does consist of two fundamental elements .” Penfield-
(The book Mystery of the Mind is an easy read for lay people where Penfield goes into what he has observed and why he draws this conclusion.)
Other evidences for mind-body dualism include–
1) Near death experiences. The first story goes back to Plato- the story of Ur. Since that time numerous other examples exist.
2) Past life recalls. The most ‘convincing’ stories come from Ian Stevenson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stevenson
(I usually avoid wikipedia, but this is actually a good article!)
3) ESP, remote viewing…
For a more complete listing of evidences I would suggest the book “Irreducible Mind” by Kelley and Kelley.
This is not to say that dualism is true.
It is to say that the reasons for belief (evidences for) are much greater than many naysayers understand.
“Freudian slip perhaps?”
LLOL!
What can I say, I’m a closet dualist!
mufi, you define consciousness as both “subjective awareness” and also a part of “cognitive thought”.
I will go with subjective awareness, but cognition is mental processes, an information-processing ability. They aren’t the same, although there is correlation. If I increase my awareness about how my cognition works, I am expanding my consciousness. But I am not necessarily improving my cognitive skills.
In a way, this is about proper definition. But it can be difficult for anyone to try to discern the differences between their own ongoing, everyday thoughts, figuring, emotions and bodily sensations and their consciousness.
“you’re point is easily supported by any – ANY – piece of evidence that falsifies the proposition that the body is the exclusive seat of human cognition. That you cannot find one (not your fault, there’s none to be had) is telling.”
There is a very large quantity of good quality research on perception that bypasses the physical senses. Mainstream scientists are often unaware of it because it tends not to be published in mainstream journals. However Daryl Bem has recently published experiments in a mainstream journal that demonstrate awareness of the future.
Materialists usually reject all parapsychology experiments as not being replicated. However, many have been, although not usually published in a mainstream journal. The kind of experiments performed by Bem have been done successfully by others.
Materialists also claim that parapsychology is worthless because there is a “decline effect.” That means later effect sizes tend to be smaller than earlier effect sizes, within a given type of experiment. But that is true in other types of research also.
Steve Novella recently said that the decline effects in parapsychology inevitably leads to zero effect size. But that is absolutely not true. If you extrapolate the decline effect in any type of research, it goes to zero.
That assumes the decline never levels off or reverses, which is a completely unwarranted assumption. And it would not be assumed with any other type of research.
Skeptics who looked carefully at certain kinds of parapsychology research have been unable to find anything wrong with it.
We’ll see what happens with Bem’s “feeling the future” experimental design. Materialists struggle to reject it, without trying to look at it objectively.
“In addition to his example of transcranial magnetic stimulation, there are numerous techniques, both surgerical and pharmaceutical, which are known to alter cognitive functions without necessarily impacting vision, hearing, or speech. ”
No that is besides the point. You don’t need transcranial magnetic stimulation to alter consciousness — just have a glass of wine. We know, and we always knew, that things that influence the brain influence the mind. It is a two-way street.
The brain connects us to physical reality, in both directions. The mind isn’t just hanging there ignoring what happens to the brain and body.
It is a complete misconception to think that because physical changes in the brain have an effect on consciousness, then consciousness must be created by the brain.
“There is a reason they are experts.”
Let us bow down and worship them then.
But you don’t realize there are also non-mainstream experts, which you have chosen to ignore because you think majority rules in science.
Mlema-
I’m interested in what you say of consciousness and trying to define it.
Is my consciousness the sum total of what I’m conscious (aware) of or is it an ability that the total of what I’m aware of is a manifestation?
In other words- consciousness is an ability, the manifestation of that ability is what I am currently aware of.
Does any of that make sense?
Would you please improve upon it…
As far as psi and all of that goes, I’ll let their lack of replicability speak for itself. The countdown is on for Bem, if his selective reporting hasn’t already nullified the paper.
The decline effect is seductive to many and seems complex, but it’s ultimately nonsense.
Steve’s discusses it here:
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-decline-effect/
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-decline-effect-revisited/#more-3311
As I previously commented on Radiolab:
There are many reasons for the so-called decline effect, most notably regression to the mean, differing biases of experimenters under replication, changes in effect size when replicating with additional factors that test boundary conditions of the effect, and publication bias (e.g., toward experiments with greater effects sizes.)
Any combination of these (et al. not cited above) can fully account for this so-called decline effect. No need to talk about cosmic habituation and other such nonsense.
Well neverknow, here’s where we part company, although it was fun while it lasted.
The Daryl Bems and Dean Radins of the pseudoscientific world of parapsychology are in my view little more than frauds and charlatans. At least Deepak had his religion to blame, but there’s no excuse for promoting something as science that can see supposedly beyond the sequential nature of changing time with any more than educated guesswork. What hasn’t changed yet hasn’t changed. It’s not there to be pulled out of the future for viewing or for any other than imaginary purposes.
“The decline effect is seductive to many and seems complex, but it’s ultimately nonsense.”
You missed the point. The decline effect is used by materialists to reject the parapsychology results.
Mlema: Yes, subjective awareness (a.k.a. consciousness) is a type of cognitive thought (a very small part, as it turns out).
neverknow: As I’m enjoying a glass of wine right now, I’m in no position to argue with you.
That said, it seems we’re now dueling in assertions. The difference is that mine are science-based (albeit, from a lay person’s perspective) and yours are not.
So, one more time (with feeling): Unless we admit certain religious/metaphysical doctrines as “evidence”, there is only evidence (as far as I am aware) that the body (especially, but not exclusively, the brain) is involved in performing cognition.
“The Daryl Bems and Dean Radins of the pseudoscientific world of parapsychology are in my view little more than frauds and charlatans.”
Is this an evidence-free view?
Actually all sorts of people use regression to the mean to reject all sorts of scientific results if the effect size approaches 0. Thats what falsification is. If a belief is not willing to be subjected to some form of falsification it is not science, period.
Making excuses or concocting explanations for negative results or regression to the mean amounts to wishful thinking unless the explanation is also testable. The ‘decline effect’ is useless because it allows parapsychologists to count the positive studies and ignore the negative studies, based on no criteria other than what advances their opinion.
sonic, I’ not sure how to answer your question, but I will try to explain myself some more.
But when you say “In other words- consciousness is an ability, the manifestation of that ability is what I am currently aware of.” it has something in common with my conceptualization.
But I don’t think of consciousness as an ability.
.
i think of it as awareness in relationship to anything experienced inside or outside the body. What people think of as “thoughts” (which tie into words, images and possibly “ideas” like 2+2), emotions, pain, taste, etc. are all experiences of consciousness “in” a human body. Through them we are aware of “reality” and ourselves (we are real too
The sum total of what you’re aware of would help to inform the current state (degree of presence?) of your consciousness. But I don’t believe your consciousness is limited by what you’re currently aware of. It’s limited when it’s identified with things that are limited themselves, that is, the things that it’s NOT (like the thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc. described above)
But you needn’t try to understand what I’m saying as though I’m expounding on some great philosophical or scientific truth. I’m just talkin’ outmah ass like everybody else here!
This is my “educated by the best teachers of scientific methodology” and the “philosophically determined nature of assessing credibility of evidence” based view. The best evidence must first stand up to the analytical test of scientific logic. The “future viewing” aspects of parapsychology have never met that test, nor any other well structured testing as we’ve already seen here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness
i would define consciousness this same way!
All the various viewpoints here are legitimate under the discussion of theories of consciousness. Nothing’s been decided, but of course if you want to be on the winning team, you will side with me.
And Miema, don’t be a wise ass.
wow, so much wrong with neverknow’s assertions… where to start:
Not much to there except, nope. You just don’t know what “good quality research” means, apparently.
Conspiracy theorists are just skeptics on overdrive. If they were that good and high quality, what on earth is keeping them from being published in “mainstream” journals? The very notion that there is some sort of underground cabal of “experts” with good data and good research that refutes the mainstream, but somehow can’t actually make it into the mainstream is conspiracy theorism. Sorry, but the “lone maverick experts” is simply a fallacy. If they had good stuff, it would be mainstream and wouldn’t be considered as fringe or bad.
Wow, so far every sentence must be deconstructed:
Dr. Novella has already written on that. I won’t belabor the point, since he is much moreso an expert than I. Suffice it to say, the research is preliminary at best, shoddy at worst, and likely just noise in the signal.
I don’t think so. For such research you need not only a large sample size, a good study design, and many reproductions, but a very large effect size. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Show me the studies – otherwise you’ve made yet another evidence free assertion (which you have, Novella dissects that in the above link).
No we don’t. You don’t even apply the notion of the decline effect properly as steve12 pointed out. We claim parapsych to be worthless because it has never shown any consistent results, almost zero reproducibility, very small effect sizes (if any), and have no basis in known mechanisms (aka very low a priori probability).
No he didnt. The only legitimate use of the decline effect here is as an explanation of why the very few small positive studies will likely return to no effect size. It is a contrapositive explanation for why the positive effect exists in the first place. But once again, the decline effect has nothing to do with parapsych specifically and you are simply using it incorrectly.
I’ll refer you once again to Novella’s dissection of the Bem research.
You completely missed the point. I wasn’t discussing the general altering of consciousness. I was discussing the very specific ways in which the consciousness is altered, which indicates (when taken as a whole) that the concept of reality, the mind, etc are all generated as an epiphenomenon of the brain and nothing more.
Besides, it is utterly asinine to say that the mind can’t exist without the brain but the brain is still separate. If every experiment shows that every single function of the mind, down to realization of where “self” ends, can be selectively altered or turned off through specific lesions of the brain, then that is evidence that everything we view as the “mind” is directly a function of the brain. The two are not separable.
Mufi said it quite well – without accepting religious/metaphysical cogitations as evidence, you cannot assert a separate non-physical mind.
The brain connects us to physical reality, in both directions. The mind isn’t just hanging there ignoring what happens to the brain and body.
You are right in one direction. Show me ANY proof of the other direction. There is none, and until you do, you cannot assert that the mind is ANYTHING but a manifestation of the physical brain. Period.
Why is it that denialists and their ilk always assume everything is black and white? It is either bow down and worship expertise (i.e. argument from authority) or nothing. No, neverknow. There is a reason people are experts. Their opinion isn’t sacresanct but it is more valuable than yours or mine. When looking at a question, the best starting point it to begin with the expert consensus and move from there. But you cannot begin to refute expert consensus as a non-expert without significantly educating yourself – sometimes to the point of becoming an expert yourself.
Majority does not rule in science. Evidence does. The reason the majority in science tend to agree is because they have enough knowledge and training to evaluate the evidence properly and come to the same (correct) conclusion. Of course this isn’t always the case, but it usually is – much more so than a lay person trying to interpret it.
People think they can become experts on google. It always blows my mind. Would you fly in a plane designed and built by someone who has zero background in any science, was a dancer his/her whole life, and then spent a few months learning on google? I sure wouldn’t!
@sonic:
Sorry mate, that isn’t evidence. Each bit either has no support, been thoroughly debunked, or has alternate explanations that are much more sensical.
Novella talks about near death experiences here and in a follow up to that just a couple days later
And a recent article (May 15, 2011) in psychology today further NDEs.
So yeah, no evidence there either sonic
seems like we will be taking this conversation over to the newest entry by Dr. Novella and likely have a few theist apologists spew out more “arguments”
sonic, if you come back:
I hope I wasn’t being flippant in my response to your request, which honors me.
mlema-
Thank-you. I don’t think your answer was flip but I’m not sure the notion of consciousness as ability is all that bad. Of course I’m sometimes really stupid for long periods of time. I keep hoping the current long period will come to an end sometime soon, but perhaps that is just part of the stupidity…
nybrus-
To say one has a plausible explanation for something that is different from some other explanation is often a convincing argument.
But then one realizes that nature doesn’t seem to care if it is plausible or not– I’m thinking about physics for example– but nobody believes the ‘twins paradox’ because it is plausible.
BTW– another example of a researcher seeing ‘nonrandom’ mutations–
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43431736/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/humans-are-evolving-slower-thought/
“”This makes us think about what are the underlying mechanisms of these mutations, other than just a random process,” said study researcher Philip Awadalla, of the University of Montreal in Canada.”
Oh well, that whole random thing really isn’t plausible anyway– or is it?
Does it matter?
@ sonic:
A plausible explanation based in known mechanisms and laws of the universe will always be superior than any other explanation. Sure, the NDE could be explained by an afterlife, god, mind/brain duality. And if that is all we had to go on, then we may be at an impasse.
The difference here is that everything else we know about the body, brain, and universe do not support a metaphysical explanation. AND we don’t have any evidence for any metaphysical processes whatsoever. Every one has been explained satisfactorily by natural means. So looking at one tidbit that could be metaphysical means nothing in light of the body of evidence. The best explanation is the most plausible one, period.
As for your further looking into non-random mutation – I have said from the get-go that non-random mutation is a huge part of evolutionary theory. But it is not the basis upon which things started. Random mutation was the start and is still very much present and happens very regularly. Medical genetics alone demonstrates that. Don’t get bogged down with the common “all or nothing” fallacy of most denialists. It is not “random mutation” or “non-random mutation” – BOTH exist and work simultaneously now. But further, you mustn’t conflate “non-random” with “intelligently guided.” If I throw a tennis ball down a hallway it will bounce in a “non-random” way since it is confined by the dimensions and features of the hallway. That doesn not mean there was any intelligent guidance.
sonic, here’s a good article from the field of synthetic biology about how life could have started with non-random guidance:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/oscillator/2011/07/05/starting-at-the-beginning/
I don’t know why I feel compelled to post this comment. But, I’ve wondered recently if the reason people think of their consciousness as being “in” their brain is because our eyes and ears (and our nose to some extent), which are our main “input” sources, create a sort of “locus of awareness” somewhere in the middle of our brain area. So people feel like they’re “inside” there, looking out. It would have been interesting to talk to Helen Keller about it. I wonder where her “locus of awareness” was? Do you think she felt her fingertips were where she herself was located? Would we feel like our thoughts were “in” our head if our thoughts didn’t have to make use of words and images – that originate through information from the eyes and ears?
@Mlema:
There is research and case study that demonstrates that localizing “self” to within your own body is due to specialized processing and activity of a specific part of the brain. Lesion or impair that part and you no longer can discern that your “self” ends at the extent of your physical body.
To me (and Dr. Novella – he blogged on it, I just haven’t the wherewithal at the moment to find it again) that clearly indicated the mind is generated by the physical brain and that much (likely all) of what we think is static and somehow “just is” is in fact manufactured as an illusion by our brains – self, free will, consiousness – all generated as perceived phenomenon by the brain itself.
Also, I do not perceive my conscioussnes as being “in” my brain. I perceive myself as conscious and nothing more specific than that. I don’t think your idea with Keller would pan out – her locus of being would be the same as ours. The notion that our conscioussnes rests “in” our brain is a relatively recent construct. The ancient Egyptians thought the heart was the seat of the soul and conscioussness and the brain was useless and thrown away. I would venture to guess if you perceive your “locus of self” as being “in” your brain it is only because you are aware of what the brain does and are currently engaged in a discussion about it – in other words an artifact of the cultural hegemony and environment in which you are.
I don’t mean to say anything negative about your comment – I thought it was a pretty good question. I’m just stating my thoughts and opinion on it based on some evidence and my own personal experience.
oh yeah, and the above also demonstrates to me the explanation for NDE’s. Disrupt the part of your brain that defines your “self” as being inside your body, and suddenly you have an out of body experience. Couple that with the rest of your brain dying and bam – stereotypical NDE. Which also fits the fact that NDE’s are all quite similar based on the culture of the person experiencing it. Nothing mystical there at all.
nygbrus, I did not mean to propose anything like “locus of being”, which is a philosophical undertaking. I wasn’t really meaning the “self” inside the self thing when talking about feeling like you’re “inside” yourself (although I see now where that might be misunderstood), and I wasn’t meaning to refer to the mind/body problem. I was meaning something like: where most people are simply “aware” so to speak. (very hard to describe!) We are “aware” of our whole self. But we seem to be “aware” that our thoughts are “in” our heads. There is no way that Helen Keller, who would have no auditory or visual memories to reference in her brain, could possibly experience the world the same way we do. Her awareness of the world had to come to her through taste, smell and touch. So, where did she feel like her thoughts were located when she thought? Did she form visualizations through her touch, which she then “saw” in her head like others? Or was the information from her touch registered like anyone else’s? (but perhaps for her highly developed) Maybe this has been explored elsewhere. I am simply musing, because it’s no coincidence that our eyes and our brains are so close together.
theists: backward, rigid, superstitious, self-righteous, hypocritical, only love those who share their beliefs, unable to think critically, think everything is a problem of good and evil
atheist: angry, egotistical, arrogant, disrespectful, unimaginative, only love those who share their beliefs, unable to discern philosophical problems, think everything is a material problem
agnostics: wimps! pick a side!
oops, meant to put that on the “front” page! Oh well. Maybe I did myself a favor
Meima,
We instinctively focus on our heads as the seat wherein lies our lives through the lessons learned from the time honored experiences of our species that the best avenue for death to find us is through putting tunnels in our heads.
Jeremiah!!!! that is my BEST funny of the day!!!! (and so insightful, as always
)
why don’t we have additional eyes in the back of our heads to see where those tunnelers are coming from? Needed them in front more to see where the hell we were running to and looking for a place to hide!
@mlema:
I think I see what you are saying. That is indeed an interesting question.
As for your characterization of theist vs atheist, not sure if it was intended as a jest, but I don’t think it really applies.
The fundamental reason being that (besides the fact that not all theists are like that) grouping atheists as a category to describe simply makes no sense. Theists are so because they do ascribe to a specific set of ideas that we can definitely say sets them apart from other groups. Theist being the largest group term, that becomes a bit tougher to describe, but the only really valid descriptors, IMO, would be: believe in a diety, are comfortable with magical thinking, ascribe to dogma, believe faith is a virtue and a positive thing. If you bring the descriptor down a level, to a specific type of theist (Christian, Muslim, etc) then you can become more specific.
Adding attributes to describe atheists at large is like doing the same for “people who have mustaches” or “people who wear hats.” Besides the fact that someone has a mustache or hat (or lack of belief in any deity) you cannot describe them any further.
You can describe the so-called “militant” atheists (of which I would be one, though that term is generally used as a pejorative and is, in my mind, akin to referring to a black person as a n*****) and that would fit your above description. However, you must realize that the group of atheists with whom you tend to interact are the ones that are the subset that self-select as being louder, more angry, and thus more active on the internet and comments threads.
Miema,
Good question about eye placement, and the answers would seem to require knowledge of the effects of past experiences of environmental change, instead of knowledge of some certainty of proper placement held by some great sight giver in our upper atmospheres.
Check out this baby and wonder why and how.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Calliphora_vomitoria_Portrait.jpg
Jeremiah, the work of the great sight-giver in my very own soul.
amazing photo – life is infinitely incredible
nygbrus,
I thank you for your sincere an thoughtful reply. I choose to respect your opinion on this, but to me saying something like: theists are prone to magical thinking, just sounds really wrong. Perhaps our personal experiences with theists are so different that we really can never agree on this. Perhaps the labels atheist and theist should remain in discussions about social, psychological, etc. issues, and not be used to talk about real people, who ALWAYS defy labels. It’s only in my recent days spent visiting this site that I see people dividing the world into theists and atheists. But perhaps it’s a sign of the times. Perhaps atheism is reaching critical mass.
But I just wanted to give you some friendly advice too. Comparing being called a militant atheist to being called a racial slur is overly dramatic and might embarrass you in certain social settings. Just be cautious, OK? i know that’s not who you are.
mlema,
Disagreement is something I am always OK with when done in the manner you are currently using. So thank you for that.
I think that my generalization of theists being prone to magical thinking is justified on one tiny point alone – they believe in a god (by definition). That, in and of itself, is magical thinking. The notion of separating out someone’s belief in an invisible, all knowing, all powerful, dictates-everything-you do, sky fairy that is not empirically observable is ludicrous. You cannot say that homeopathy is magical thinking but believing in a god is not. They are both magical and both on par – one is just more socially acceptable. I do not like the artificial wall that religion has around it – “everyone is entitled to their beliefs” and “don’t question my religion it is rude.”
I would also agree that atheists are finally starting to reach a critical mass – I see big parallels between what is currently happening with the atheist movement and the women’s lib, civil rights, and gay rights movements. It is, in essence, a culture war to upset the dominant paradigm. This one hits pretty deep and close to home for many though and as such will have ugliness on both sides.
As for your friendly advice, thank you. You are probably right that it isn’t particularly effective or entirely necessary. However, I do truly believe that “militant atheist” is used in exactly the same pejorative, dismissive, and class-hierarchical way as a racial slur. The slur was used to define who was not part of the in-group, to justify hatred and malignment by insinuating there was some fundamental defect in the out-group individual, and to establish a class hierarchy defining the in-group as superior to the out-group. “Militant atheist” is used in that exact same manner – it defines group status, it is used in an insulting way to clearly state a fundamental defect (not only are they atheist, but they shove their ideas down others throats, they’re mean, angry, etc), and establishes a class hierarchy where the in-group (theists) are superior to the out-group. Just look at polls about the least likely person to get voted into presidency (hint: most Americans would vote in just about anyone else over an atheist).
So yeah, probably a bit dramatic, but I really believe a correct assessment. But you are right, in certain settings it likely would prove to be more hassle than it is worth, so thanks for being kind enough to be thoughtful on the topic.
nygbrus – just read your reply on the front page too. Thanks.
If we are in for a social paradigm change, it is even more important that we remain tolerant in every direction, and treat every situation on a case-by-case basis. That in itself will go a long way towards getting rid of magical thinking, right? Good luck to us all!
Tolerant yes, appeasing, no. Otherwise, I’m all for it. As I have said before, I am not against (nor do I hate) the individual theist. I hate religion as a whole and as an institution and as the basis for a way of thinking.