Consciousness and the World

[eternalstudent2]

Originally Posted by paulhanke

... while I'm leaning away from PDP as the understructure (I'm reading an interesting book that asks if the brain is more of an edge-of-chaos dynamic system, given the ubiquity of these in nature) I'm certainly on board with the "virtual machine" concept ... but let's take it one step further - the understructure of these virtual machines (ranging from simple symbol manipulation systems all the way to consciousness?) is not just the brain - it's the brain + body + world ... stated another way, take away the brain and the virtual machine ceases to function; take away the body and the virtual machine ceases to function; take away the world and the virtual machine ceases to function ...

Paulh,

That must be a most interesting book. However, I wonder why the brain could not have or at least partly utilize a PDP architecture, and also operate as an edge-of-chaos dynamical system? Parallel distributed processing is a data processing architecture; chaos is a state-change effect frequently encountered in complex recursive systems whereby system behavior moves from steady-state to extremely complex patterns with increasingly random elements; and dynamics are the opposite of statics. From what I understand of data processing and massively parallel architectures (to which I am admittedly not an expert), there certainly is much reason to consider them highly dynamic; and given the many feedback loops and high complexity of a PDP-based human brain, there is every reason to suspect that the PDP brain would 'live on the edge of chaos', despite PDP's inherent mission as a pattern recognizer.

From what I've read, the brain probably isn't a unified PDP net; it certainly is compartmentalized into semi-specialized components that have higher-level communication circuits and participate in a variety of complex interaction mechanisms. Some of those components may be purely PDP based, others may be more Von Neumann - like symbol processors, still others may used mixed designs, e.g. symbol processors being emulated on a PDP base; and some may use a processing architecture not yet fully known, for all that I know (Clark was very careful in Microcognition to be open to this possibility).

Still, from what I've read thus far, it seems a fairly good bet that at least parts of the brain use a massively parallel architecture with pattern recognition and data abstraction capacities which are consistent with what is currently known from psychology regarding human sense-input / behavioral-output characteristics, and the reported mental states between these.

And there is no reason I could think of (again with apologies for not being an expert) that a PDP architecture, especially in the context of compartmentalization and higher level organization between compartments, would prevent the overall brain from being "always near chaos"; and sometimes even going over the edge, when input conditions go too far from what we were designed by natural selection to handle. E.g., when too much stress causes us to act erratically and unexpectedly, to have delusions, to have seizures, etc.

As to taking away the brain and the body and the world, causing the 'virtual machine' to stop; sorry, I must admit my ignorance here regarding what your point would be, beyond the fact that if the brain is disabled, or if the body is destroyed, or if the world disappears, the info processing activity that the environment / body / brain system supports would all be expected to come to a halt and be permanently obliterated, to the best of our experience and empirical knowledge regarding the physical world at this point in human history. Which, as science itself occasionally reminds us, is far from complete and ultimately reliable. Although I will certainly stipulate that a virtual computational machine such as the word processing application on your home computer will reliably come to a halt and have no further relevance if you destroy the motherboard and memory devices; ditto for the virtual cognition machines in human brains that allow thinking.

With thanks to all on this forum for the continuing banquet of food for thought, given that my own motherboard and memory devices and virtual machines still seem to be functioning, however intermittently,

Jim G.

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by eternalstudent2

... and given the many feedback loops and high complexity of a PDP-based human brain, there is every reason to suspect that the PDP brain would 'live on the edge of chaos', despite PDP's inherent mission as a pattern recognizer.

... my own leanings at this point in time go slightly beyond that ... yes, connectionists have demonstrated remarkable achievements in pattern recognition - but these nets are engineered, and so even though they are examples of PDP they are heavily influenced by linear thinking ... rather than saying that the brain 'lives on the edge of chaos' I would hazard to say instead that the brain 'computes on the edge of chaos' - that human thought is more akin to a system actively jumping from chaotic attractor to chaotic attractor than it is a pattern recognizer ... from that perspective, human thought is qualitatively similar to the genetic network that computes a human body; human thought is qualitatively similar to the behavioral network of insects that computes the shortest path to a food source; human thought is qualitatively similar to the auto-catalytic chemical network that computes life ...

Originally Posted by eternalstudent2

As to taking away the brain and the body and the world, causing the 'virtual machine' to stop; sorry, I must admit my ignorance here regarding what your point would be, beyond the fact that if the brain is disabled, or if the body is destroyed, or if the world disappears, the info processing activity that the environment / body / brain system supports would all be expected to come to a halt and be permanently obliterated, to the best of our experience and empirical knowledge regarding the physical world at this point in human history.

... I'm thinking more along the lines of the classic "brain in a vat" thought experiment ... if you took a human brain and put it in a vat and only provided it with the bare essentials of life support, would it be capable of consciousness? ... and if not, what sorts of inputs/outputs would be required to "scaffold" consciousness? a keyboard? a mouse? ... or a full-blown simulation of a human body embedded in the world?

[boagie]

eternalstudent

I am a fraid I have pulled a frightful error, in trying to respond to your post to that Byron quote, first my response came up under your name and then when I tried to remove it, I am fraid I deleted the entire post. I am new at this you might have gathered, at anyrate you have my apology, I fear that post is in cyberspace somewhere. If your interested, here is the intended response to your post.

Jim G,

The quote it is true has the individual in mind, when you speak of biological extensions/ scaffolding, forming culture you are speaking of the benifits to humanity in general, not really personal/ as of the individual. I would think however that an individual would have difficutly living life through an entirely secondary means--as often prisoners do. All in all I think Byron did pretty good for a brief oneliner. If you expect a oneliner to express an entire philosophy, you will often be disappointed. Again my apology!!!

[Holiday20310401]

"whereby system behavior moves from steady-state to extremely complex patterns with increasingly random elements"

What is a random element? I thought randomness was about perception and cognition abilities.

Though naturally there is no pure randomness I can't see complexity adding to randomness in any way, just requiring a better understanding of the system to see that the randomness hasn't at all been influenced.

[paulhanke]

... yes ... deterministic chaos is, well, deterministic ... it only has the appearance of randomness because highly similar initial conditions typically lead to wildly different future states - so if you can't get an exact measurement of a chaotic system's initial conditions (which in theory you never can, let alone in practice), predictions of the system's future state diverge fairly rapidly from the actual system's future state (prediction error grows exponentially) ... you have to constantly recalibrate by taking new measurements and using those as new initial conditions for short-term future predictions ... it's like predicting the weather ... wait a minute - it is predicting the weather!!! ...

[Holiday20310401]

I guess I have a problem with such a thing as deterministic chaos. I seem to have defined chaos as something absolute; a word for pure randomness, or at least very close to it.

Deterministic chaos implies there be knowledgeable chance of what the future holds in the system, which I can't see being the system causing consciousness; just as there can be no pure randomness.

Randomness implies infinite possibilities otherwise chance can be derived from it, right? Pure randomness is not just the inability to know the odds but also the inability to know the potentials so as to have the arrow in the first place (and we can say the arrow simply doesn't point to aything in particular, pretty obvious), but also for irrational chance, at least that would seem more appropriate anyways.

But since consciousness allows for perception of randomness and order and the cosmos are infinite, reality must rely on consciousness to exist and actuality as well, unless it is pure randomness, or pure order (being the same thing), thus one dimensional (which is the essence of actuality when you think about it).

Otherwise one of the premises are wrong. Either pure randomness exists, which blatantly we can say if potential exists pure randomness cannot; or the cosmos are not infinite.

But perhaps we can arrive at a mutual conclusion. Maybe there are divisions in the universe or cosmos that potential is completely untangled from one another.

I'd better stop, I'm becoming incoherent again.

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by Holiday20310401

I'd better stop, I'm becoming incoherent again.

... no worries ... when you get to be my age and I'm off in a nursing home somewhere, I'm sure you and the rest of the philosophic community will be entertaining thoughts that I can't even dream of ... you lucky dogs!

[Holiday20310401]

Due to my lack of coherence I'm just a latent potential, at least you are a self styled super genius.

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by Holiday20310401

Due to my lack of coherence I'm just a latent potential, at least you are a self styled super genius.

self-styled (slfstld) adj. As characterized by oneself, often without right or justification. (American Heritage Dictionary)

... better to have latent potential than none at all!

[Holiday20310401]

Yeah, I was being tricky with the word latent too.

latent - Definitions from Dictionary.com