Neo-naturalism and spatio-temporal surprises

[Chris Nunn]

Dear All

Some of you may be interested in attached paper. Uzi is a very bright, trans-disciplinary thinker who has consistently interesting things to say.

Best

Chris

 

[John Jay Kineman]

It tries to cover the territory of current ideas but to my read makes no argument to support the claim that a physical theory will suffice except that physicists are considering strange ideas about origins of backgrounds that were previously taken as given. That is the correct approach because what is missing in physicalism is origin. In the end we can predict success of any current ‘ism’ if we allow for changes in the ‘ism’. Everyone will be able to claim credit as they adjust their view to match reality because ultimately every view is a possible part of the whole. But to frame the holistic result requires insight into its obviousness and simplicity of construction and I tend to lose interest in approaches that try to get there from within all the current diversity of inadequate ideas. Indeed recognizing their shortcomings and promises may be interesting but I don't think there is a straight line from that exercise and getting the correct view. We are far too enamored with our own complexity of thought to adapt that to the ultimate unity of nature. I think the successful approach is going to go the other way, an unlearning of the many ways we have invented to miss the ultimate unity by formalizing a special highly complicated view of it. That exercise itself indicates something we are denying about reality and thus trying to calculate a path around it rather than accepting the obvious.

John

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/021201d4fc2e%24c2573fa0%244705bee0%24%40btinternet.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

<Uzi's paper. Neo-Naturalism_Conciliatory_Explanations.pdf>

[cmh...@btinternet.com]

Ah well . . . . I liked the emphasis on extending physics and thinking about how to test promising extensions. But agree it’s more of a pointer than a solver.

Best

chris

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/60BE7B9F-4A9D-4CD2-B2F9-2D82394A2222%40colorado.edu.

[Cathy Reason]

Chris Nunn wrote:

> Some of you may be interested in attached paper. Uzi is a very bright,
> trans-disciplinary thinker who has consistently interesting things to say.

I have read this paper, and I regret that I don't find anything
particularly novel or profound in it. It seems to be yet another spin
on the phenomenal concept strategy, bolstered in this case by some
very speculative physics.

The phenomenal concept strategy is just a device for philosophers to
avoid answering difficult questions: much like the notorious British
politician who tried to dodge an awkward question with the line "That
is the wrong question to ask."


Cathy

[BT APJ]

Cathy,
Phenomenality is more than a concept. It refers to a type of experience.

Mary's cognitive experience (in Frank Jackson's tale) is not sufficient to account for

color, because the feel (quale) of color is missing.

A better term for "phenomenality" is Sentience. We have used "Sentience" to account for

animal and plant conscious experiences.

Best Regards,

Alfredo

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAGPzamXVMBV46vFY3FqxJEdOLx6ySM%3D2NOVRbyVCNamu_yHErQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Cathy Reason]

Alfredo Pereira wrote:

> Phenomenality is more than a concept. It refers to a type of experience.
> Mary's cognitive experience (in Frank Jackson's tale) is not sufficient to
> account for
> color, because the feel (quale) of color is missing.
> A better term for "phenomenality" is Sentience. We have used "Sentience" to

Yes, this is pretty much what I meant. The phenomenal concept
strategy is used by certain philosophers as an excuse to avoid
answering difficult questions about phenomenality 9or "sentience", if
you prefer) by treating phenomenality as an explanatory concept rather
than a feature of experience. It's effectively a weaker form of
illusionism.

Not only is this a copout, it relies on an untestable assumption that
introspective consciousness is representational in character. My own
work is aimed at showing, in part, that such an assumption leads
inevitably (and uncontestably) to a contradiction.


Cathy

[cmh...@btinternet.com]

Thanks for reading Cathy. I was hoping it might help you think about how to test your deduction.
Best
chris

-----Original Message-----
From: scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Cathy Reason
Sent: 27 April 2019 16:11
To: scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Neo-naturalism and spatio-temporal surprises

[Alex Hankey]

RE:  Not only is this a copout, it relies on an untestable assumption that

introspective consciousness is representational in character.  My own
work is aimed at showing, in part, that such an assumption leads
inevitably (and uncontestably) to a contradiction. 

Please can you send a reference to your work, or any preliminary thoughts you 

may have written on it. 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAGPzamXWZHq9RqL6rHSOUPiia3eX7m2sDcnUzQZC3EL43_n7-w%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Alex Hankey M.A. (Cantab.) PhD (M.I.T.)
Distinguished Professor of Yoga and Physical Science,
SVYASA, Eknath Bhavan, 19 Gavipuram Circle
Bangalore 560019, Karnataka, India 
Mobile (Intn'l): +44 7710 534195 

Mobile (India) +91 900 800 8789

____________________________________________________________

2015 JPBMB Special Issue on Integral Biomathics: Life Sciences, Mathematics and Phenomenological Philosophy

[cmrn...@gmail.com]

Alex Hankey wrote
 

<<Please can you send a reference to your work, or any preliminary thoughts you 

may have written on it.>>

I don't want to overload readers with an avalanche of material so it's probably best to do this in bite-sized chunks.  I'll start with my forthcoming paper in the JMB (vol 40, number 2, 2019 -- I don't have the page numbers yet) for which the title and abstract are pasted below.

For copyright reasons I can't post this paper to the list, but if anyone would like a copy, I can email them a copyright-compliant version individually -- just email me privately to ask for a copy.  Alternatively there is a preprint version archived at:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1706.04192

However the preprint has a different title and is now somewhat out of date.  The published version has a much tighter introduction explaining the methodology, together with a lengthy discussion on what level of rigor required for such a proof.

As regards the current topic -- the reliance of the phenomenal concept strategy on representational assumptions, and the fact that these lead to a contradiction -- the relevant part of the paper is the proof itself, which shows how all the necessary introspective processes can be represented as appropriate functions.  I shall post some more on this later in the week.


Sincerely

Cathy

A No-Go Theorem for the Mind-Body Problem:  An Informal Proof that No Purely Physical System Can Exhibit all the Properties of Human Consciousness
 


This article presents an operationalized solution to the mind-body problem which relies on a well-defined effective procedure rather than philosophical argument.  I identify a specific operation which is a necessary property of all healthy human conscious individuals -- specifically the operation of self-certainty, or the capacity of healthy conscious humans to "know" with certainty that they are conscious.   This operation is shown to be inconsistent with the properties possible in any meaningful definition of a physical system.  I demonstrate this inconsistency by proving a "no-go" theorem for any physical system capable of human logical reasoning, if this reasoning is required to be both sound and consistent.  The proof of this theorem is both general -- it applies to any function whereby evidence affects the state of some physical system -- and recursive, since any physical process subserving a function of this type is shown to imply another such function.  Thus, for at least one aspect of human consciousness, the mind-body problem is resolved.

[Kushal Shah]

Thanks Cathy for sharing your very interesting work. Although there is lot of merit in your arguments, please note that it does NOT resolve the mind-brain problem since there is no way to prove that brain has an objective reality to it. Human beings are inherently subjective. All objectivity is just a hypothetical notion assumed for convenience.

Best,

Kushal.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/fca8e67d-5db8-4c9c-83e4-9e65616147cc%40googlegroups.com.

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

Thanks Kushal, 

I suspect that the majority of quantum physicists would agree that the brain, and actually all of nature, does not have objective reality. But rather than saying that humans are inherently subjective, we seem to be inherently following the rules of quantum mechanics. The quantum world we live in isn't subjective or objective. It is wonderfully very strange. 

Stan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CABSgQwpL-Pb0P0agRn-9KDKJK1f6wxpEc60ZUOu9DhNA%3DuHLRQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Kushal Shah]

Stan, if the general scientific community agreed with this view, we would not have to worry about the "hard problem of consciousness". Science is inherently based on the assumption of an objective reality, and if we can change this perspective, it will be a huge contribution to human progress!

Best,

Kushal.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ1EQG1hfB7zZG8Cv0B_-p3JpXnEji4uiD8zXUNRF9wsKQ%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kushal Shah @ EECS Dept, IISER Bhopal
http://home.iiserb.ac.in/~kushals

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

Kushal, You are correct about the "general scientific community" who aren't familiar with the implications of standard quantum mechanics.

Stan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CABSgQwqae09f1usZzdy39Jeei%2B1KCGvTjMkxSUY0tHrnNidnSw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Bernard Baars]

The last philosopher worth reading was Karl Popper. The last psychologist worth reading was Sigmund Freud. (Well, okay, Carl Jung, too). The last mathematician worth understanding hasn't been born yet. 

You have no idea how that heuristic simplifies life for me... 

:)b

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ2UfegVOuW_cuPwxzDsicqTpAqoPLyj1pYVgFjahkQhVA%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Kind regards, Bernard J. Baars Editor-in-Chief Society for MindBrain Sciences Email baa...@gmail.com Publications BernardBaars.com

[Bernard Baars]

Dear Dr. Reason, 

By your definition, anyone who denies the reality (or "the "reality"") of consciousness must be excluded. Galen Strawson recently wrote an NYRB article on "denialism" (behaviorism). 

Now it is quite possible that all behaviorists are technically insane. There is some evidence that the great behaviorists suffered from very deep, traumagenic depersonalization disorder. So this is not empirically impossible, and among seriously traumatized people depersonalization may be quite common. There is excellent research on dissociative disorders. 

The trouble with that approach is that it follows the path of so many philosophers in history, who believed, or claimed to believe that "everybody's crazy, 'cep for thee and me." And the other New England farmer replied, "And I'm not to sure 'bout thee." 

Philosophy is a marvelous thing to behold, at least since Bertrand Russell, who ruined a good thing for Anglophone philosophers. 

(Are you by any chance related to my old friend James Reason?)

:)

[Alex Hankey]

Thanks for this clarification, Cathy. 

Will discuss later.

Alex Hankey 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/fca8e67d-5db8-4c9c-83e4-9e65616147cc%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[cmrn...@gmail.com]

Bernard Baars wrote:
 

By your definition, anyone who denies the reality (or "the "reality"") of consciousness must be excluded. Galen Strawson recently wrote an NYRB article on "denialism" (behaviorism). 

If you read the JMB paper you'll see that I'm very careful not to do this.  (I notice that you haven't asked for a copy, by the way.)  The JMB paper includes a lemma which extends the proof to include not only statements about consciousness, but also the Cartesian cogito.  The JMB paper applies only to statements which are epistemically certain, but the preprint I mentioned in an earlier posting (which, by the way, I'm betting you haven't read either) extends the proof to abitrary levels of confidence.  I'm posting this preprint as an attachment.
 

(Are you by any chance related to my old friend James Reason?)

Not that I know of.


Cathy
 

[cmrn...@gmail.com]

Kushal Shah wrote:

Thanks Cathy for sharing your very interesting work. Although there is lot of merit in your arguments, please note that it does NOT resolve the mind-brain problem since there is no way to prove that brain has an objective reality to it. Human beings are inherently subjective. All objectivity is just a hypothetical notion assumed for convenience

Please note that the forthcoming version of the paper does not claim to have resolved the mind-body problem in its entirety, only to have resolved one aspect of it.   What the paper shows is that physicalism is impossible except under a highly specific set of special circumstances.  Peer review does work :-)

Cathy

[Bernard Baars]

Thank  you, Dr. Reason.

I am about to publish a thick volume of most of my major writings over three or four decades, which address those issues empirically (and theoretically), but not in the language of metaphysics. It is called On Consciousness, and it will be available in any book store, real or virtual. 

I hope to finally write a paper on the philosophically defined "mind-body problem," which is untestable as typically stated, and therefore not in the realm of observable science. That should appear soon, and I may post a preprint soon. 

b

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/41e12ea2-986b-4da0-bc5e-14999e68254c%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Bernard Baars]

Please forgive this one final point. The so-called "mind-body" problem is entirely unresolvable AS STATED. It's an either-or claim, totally arbitrary, and without a shred of empirical evidence - or even subjective evidence. It is very similar  to the "which comes first, the chicken or egg?" question, which children learn to understand as a joke. 

The  first rule in the history of ideas, including science and mathematics, is to work out the right question to ask. If you  have 25 centuries of failure, in recorded history, that is a good indication the question is a dud. In ordinary science such questions are evaded or thrown out, viz., Karl  Popper, who knew physicists familiar with all that. The cosmic ether is untestable. The elan vital from Henri Bergson is untestable. In biology the Creator God is untestable, which is the exact reason Darwin gave for avoiding it. Newton thought that the physical basis of gravitational force was untestable in his time --- and he was right. (The graviton was only verified very recently).

Any m-b hypothesis that is untestable tends to invalidate the question itself. Twenty five centuries of circular debate suggest that the conventional statement of the so-called m-b problem is untestable. 

When restated properly there are testable versions, and I've spent all my career publishing on that topic --- empirically. The update and republication of my work is now appearing at On Consciousness (Nautilus, 2019). With an endorsement by Patty Churchland and other philosophers. 

b

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/ff3eb2d2-6b80-4fde-8423-d6863c376f44%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Cathy Reason]

Bernard Baars wrote:

Please forgive this one final point. The so-called "mind-body" problem is entirely unresolvable AS STATED.

If you had read the paper (and you obviously haven't, becuase it hasn't appeared yet and the only way you could have gotten a copy is by accepting my invitation to send you one)  you would have seen that the paper is not a metaphysical paper.  It's a theoretical paper (do you actually know what a no-go theorem is?)  Therefore the mind-body problem as addressed in the paper is formalized.  So your remarks here are not relevant.

 

The  first rule in the history of ideas, including science and mathematics, is to work out the right question to ask.

I agree.  I have no patience with philosophical or metaphysical arguments, for reasons which I can elucidate at somne length if you so wish.  The methods I use are mathematical, not philosophical -- which you would have known, had you read the paper.

Perhaps you can explain to me how and why you are so quick to comment on a paper which you obviously haven't read -- and apparently have no intention of reading?


Cathy
 

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

Dear Cathy, 

I kind of agree with Bernie that it is hard to do the science of mind. I disagree with Bernie in that I think the mind (qualia or subjectivity) is well worth studying. So I'd like to offer a mystery of mind that I just now experienced..  I just now was looking out my window and I made my eyes move back and forth horizontally with maybe 3-5 deg jumps. Shockingly the world looked stable. How can than be?? Most of the high resolution parts of my brain would not only be jumping around, but color is in one part of the brain and lines and dots and depth are in other parts. So how come my subjectivity is so much like a perfect photograph/ Also I have the illusion that I'm seeing a high quality image over the central 5 degrees. But actually when doing experiment my high quality is only over the central 1/10th of a degree. We have no idea how the brain does mind. 

But the good news is that good progress is being made. WIth some thanks going to Bernie on his various books and publications. Hiw new book will be well worth reading I suspect. 

S

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/0c391c89-e5ff-4b8d-a715-d2c18cdc7dcd%40googlegroups.com.

[Bernard Baars]

... well, partly because your premises are so obviously false that I can refute them at a glance. Life is short, art is long. 

AND partly that I have spent half a century of my career doing exactly what you propose, but EMPIRICALLY, not speculatively. 

Math won't do the trick, because in science, math depends on empirical assumptions, and you do not establish the empirical basis of your assumptions. 

Isaac Newton knew better, and so did Aristotle. 

All men are mortal. (EMPIRICAL FACT)

Socrates is a man. (EMPIRICAL FACT)

THEREFORE  

Socrates is mortal. 

(THIS IS THE MATH/LOGIC FORMALISM, and given the empirically correct premises, the conclusion is valid.)

By itself mathematics is beautiful but not true. That takes empiricism. 

Aristotle knew all that. Anglophone philosophers lost that plain fact with Bertrand Russell, and they have been lost at sea ever since. 

b

PS. On reading carefully, I read carefully when the first paragraph is persuasive. All men are mortal (persuasive). Socrates is a man (persuasive.). THEREFORE logic works. 

You can't you logic or math without a ton of evidence. It does not work. You end up with empty scholasticism. 

Sincerely,

b

On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 9:20 AM Cathy Reason <CMRn...@gmail.com> wrote:

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/0c391c89-e5ff-4b8d-a715-d2c18cdc7dcd%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Cathy Reason]

 Bernard Baars wrote:

... well, partly because your premises are so obviously false that I can refute them at a glance. Life is short, art is long. 

What premises?  You haven't read the paper, so how can you even say what premises it contains, let alone whether they are false or not?

AND partly that I have spent half a century of my career doing exactly what you propose, but EMPIRICALLY, not speculatively. 

If your notion of the empirical method involves expressing opinions on work you know nothing about, I can only say that your notion of empiricism is somewhat different from mine.

 

Math won't do the trick, because in science, math depends on empirical assumptions, and you do not establish the empirical basis of your assumptions. 

How do you know that I don't establish the empirical basis of my assumptions?  You haven't read the paper.

Here's a challenge for you -- state which assumptions in my paper do not, in your view, have an empirical basis.


Cathy

 

[BT APJ]

Dear Stan: This issue was addressed before 1950 with the hypothesis of the corollary discharge, which has been confirmed.

The theoretical implication is that the motor system controls perceptual systems.

Best

Alfredo

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ0YpVtjOb20TSVYkr2YcxP0bhbSTzPBEQdjSWMeES629g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Cathy Reason]

Bernard Baars wrote:

Math won't do the trick, because in science, math depends on empirical assumptions, and you do not establish the empirical basis of your assumptions. 

Here is one of those assumptions, so perhaps you can let me know on what grounds you question its empirical basis:

Condition 2:   Self-certainty does not require that the conscious state which is found to exist has any particular property or set of properties.


 The significance of this condition cannot be overstated.  It has repeatedly been pointed out to me that nothing can be inferred about the nature of consciousness from such formalized definitions.  Condition 2 illustrates that this situation is intentional.  The no-go theorem to be proved in this paper depends on this formal definition alone, and not on any philosophical notions about what consciousness is or should be.  To underline this, one can express self-certainty as illusory self-certainty, as in the sentence "It is absolutely certain that I have at least the illusion of being conscious" without affecting the validity of the proof.


You will find a number of assumptions such as this laid out in the prelude to the proof, and I would appreciate your providing some evidence to support your claim that these assumptions have no empirical basis.  Your explanation of the difference between validity and soundness in a proof, by the way, is unnecessary -- this is not my first barbecue.


Cathy

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

Dear Alfredo, Could you clarify what you mean by motor system controlling perceptual system. Could you give an example from YOUR vision, audition, taste or smell. If you want to include touch then you would need to have me touching you, not your touching something that would involve your motor system by definition.

Stan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwMsVkcHF0Vvzj3Woc5Ei-XdL3cfFfqmoREgXZtrLXap%3DA%40mail.gmail.com.

[BT APJ]

Dear Stan:

These are the first 20 of 372 results of a PubMed search on "corollary discharge":


1: Jack BN, Le Pelley ME, Han N, Harris AWF, Spencer KM, Whitford TJ. Inner
speech is accompanied by a temporally-precise and content-specific corollary
discharge. Neuroimage. 2019 Apr 16. pii: S1053-8119(19)30324-6. doi:
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.04.038. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 31002966.


2: Amey-Özel M, Anders S, Grant K, von der Emde G. Central connections of the
trigeminal motor command system in the weakly electric Elephantnose fish
(Gnathonemus petersii). J Comp Neurol. 2019 Apr 13. doi: 10.1002/cne.24701. [Epub
ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 30980526.


3: Longtin A. Learning to generalize. Elife. 2019 Apr 10;8. pii: e46651. doi:
10.7554/eLife.46651. PubMed PMID: 30969171; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6457890.


4: Grechuta K, Ulysse L, Rubio Ballester B, Verschure PFMJ. Self Beyond the Body:
Action-Driven and Task-Relevant Purely Distal Cues Modulate Performance and Body
Ownership. Front Hum Neurosci. 2019 Mar 20;13:91. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00091.
eCollection 2019. PubMed PMID: 30949038; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6435571.


5: Phillips D, Kosek P, Karduna A. Force perception at the shoulder after a
unilateral suprascapular nerve block. Exp Brain Res. 2019 Mar 30. doi:
10.1007/s00221-019-05530-1. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 30929033.


6: Parlikar R, Bose A, Venkatasubramanian G. Schizophrenia and Corollary
Discharge: A Neuroscientific Overview and Translational Implications. Clin
Psychopharmacol Neurosci. 2019 May 31;17(2):170-182. doi:
10.9758/cpn.2019.17.2.170. PubMed PMID: 30905117.


7: Dempsey C, Abbott LF, Sawtell NB. Generalization of learned responses in the
mormyrid electrosensory lobe. Elife. 2019 Mar 14;8. pii: e44032. doi:
10.7554/eLife.44032. PubMed PMID: 30860480; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6457893.


8: Paradiso MA, Akers-Campbell S, Ruiz O, Niemeyer JE, Geman S, Loper J.
Transsacadic Information and Corollary Discharge in Local Field Potentials of
Macaque V1. Front Integr Neurosci. 2019 Jan 14;12:63. doi:
10.3389/fnint.2018.00063. eCollection 2018. PubMed PMID: 30692920; PubMed Central
PMCID: PMC6340263.


9: Yao B, Neggers SFW, Rolfs M, Rösler L, Thompson IA, Hopman HJ, Ghermezi L,
Kahn RS, Thakkar KN. Structural Thalamofrontal Hypoconnectivity Is Related to
Oculomotor Corollary Discharge Dysfunction in Schizophrenia. J Neurosci. 2019 Mar
13;39(11):2102-2113. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1473-18.2019. Epub 2019 Jan 10.
PubMed PMID: 30630882.


10: Gurtubay-Antolin A, León-Cabrera P, Rodríguez-Fornells A. Neural Evidence of
Hierarchical Cognitive Control during Haptic Processing: An fMRI Study. eNeuro.
2018 Nov 27;5(6). pii: ENEURO.0295-18.2018. doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0295-18.2018.
eCollection 2018 Nov-Dec. Erratum in: eNeuro. 2019 Jan 28;6(1):. PubMed PMID:
30627631; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6325533.


11: Roach BJ, Ford JM, Biagianti B, Hamilton HK, Ramsay IS, Fisher M, Loewy R,
Vinogradov S, Mathalon DH. Efference copy/corollary discharge function and
targeted cognitive training in patients with schizophrenia. Int J Psychophysiol.
2018 Dec 29. pii: S0167-8760(18)31017-1. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2018.12.015.
[Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 30599145.


12: Railo H, Olkoniemi H, Eeronheimo E, Pääkkönen O, Joutsa J, Kaasinen V.
Dopamine and eye movement control in Parkinson's disease: deficits in corollary
discharge signals? PeerJ. 2018 Dec 7;6:e6038. doi: 10.7717/peerj.6038.
eCollection 2018. PubMed PMID: 30568856; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6287583.


13: Mukherjee D, Sokoloff G, Blumberg MS. Corollary discharge in precerebellar
nuclei of sleeping infant rats. Elife. 2018 Dec 5;7. pii: e38213. doi:
10.7554/eLife.38213. PubMed PMID: 30516134; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6281370.


14: Mathalon DH, Roach BJ, Ferri JM, Loewy RL, Stuart BK, Perez VB, Trujillo TH,
Ford JM. Deficient auditory predictive coding during vocalization in the
psychosis risk syndrome and in early illness schizophrenia: the final expanded
sample. Psychol Med. 2018 Sep 25:1-8. doi: 10.1017/S0033291718002659. [Epub ahead
of print] PubMed PMID: 30249315.


15: Enikolopov AG, Abbott LF, Sawtell NB. Internally Generated Predictions
Enhance Neural and Behavioral Detection of Sensory Stimuli in an Electric Fish.
Neuron. 2018 Jul 11;99(1):135-146.e3. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2018.06.006. PubMed
PMID: 30001507.


16: Schneider DM, Mooney R. How Movement Modulates Hearing. Annu Rev Neurosci.
2018 Jul 8;41:553-572. doi: 10.1146/annurev-neuro-072116-031215. PubMed PMID:
29986164; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6201761.


17: Mifsud NG, Beesley T, Watson TL, Elijah RB, Sharp TS, Whitford TJ.
Attenuation of visual evoked responses to hand and saccade-initiated flashes.
Cognition. 2018 Oct;179:14-22. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.005. Epub 2018
Jun 9. PubMed PMID: 29894867.


18: Mathews MA, Camp AJ, Murray AJ. Corrigendum: Reviewing the Role of the
Efferent Vestibular System in Motor and Vestibular Circuits. Front Physiol. 2018
May 30;9:687. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2018.00687. eCollection 2018. PubMed PMID:
29875704; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5988898.


19: Bose A, Nawani H, Agarwal SM, Shivakumar V, Kalmady SV, Shenoy S, Sreeraj VS,
Narayanaswamy JC, Kumar D, Venkatasubramanian G. Effect of fronto-temporal
transcranial direct current stimulation on corollary discharge in schizophrenia:
A randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled mediation analysis study. Schizophr
Res. 2019 Feb;204:411-412. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2018.07.040. Epub 2018 Jul 31.
PubMed PMID: 30076111.


20: Wurtz RH. Corollary Discharge Contributions to Perceptual Continuity Across
Saccades. Annu Rev Vis Sci. 2018 Sep 15;4:215-237. doi:
10.1146/annurev-vision-102016-061207. PubMed PMID: 30222532.

Best

Alfredo

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ3832FfuSfPqy%2BFGgSUH%2Bo6Wd9-5%3D-YTz%2BRFHtzUgN%2B6w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Bernard Baars]

With all due respect, Dr. Reason, you are trying to flip the 

burden of proof to the skeptics. That is not how science or

mathematics works. The burden of proof is on the PROPOSER, which is not me. I assume that if you are ever

accused of driving dangerously you will accept that you are

automatically guilty, because, after all you have to prove

your innocence. Which is obviously impossible. 

Aristotle would have recognized flipping the burden of proof

as a false move in reasoning. It still is. 

So the burden is on you to prove your point. It is normally done by publishing your evidence and reasoning in respectable,

peer-reviewed journals. Then what the rest of us do is check

the journal, look at some of its editors and board members,  and keep VERY careful track of the performance of the journal and its authors. They stand and fall together, and I

have personally been very disappointed by some formerly

trustworthy journals for publishing blatant bs. Journals are

not perfect, authors are not, and evidence is often questionable. But the logic of empiricism and mathematics has

worked remarkably well since Aristotle. 

I've published in respectable journals and via academic book publishers involved reviewers who did believe a word I said without looking at the evidence. Mother Nature decides, not me nor anyone else. Even Einstein turned out to be only half-right, and took an extreme dislike to QM. He was not exactly right on that, but then, the EPR paper showed that he was not exactly wrong either. 

But as far as I know, Einstein never demanded that the world should believe him, because he know with the greatest possible clarity that the burden of proof is on the proposer. He was rigorously honest, and so were his colleagues in science. 

:)b

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwOvHXZuLEM8xZEhFFBwyh-Sr0R5UKRNyBXYCnqJn1AEVw%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

Dear Alfredo,

Isn't corollary discharge involved with eye movements for tracking moving objects? So for that example, by definition there is a connection between vision and the eye motor system. That is similar to what I said previously about touch. 

Stan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwOvHXZuLEM8xZEhFFBwyh-Sr0R5UKRNyBXYCnqJn1AEVw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Bernard Baars]

On Stan's point about corollary discharge, my impression is that the more we understand about cortex, the more tightly coupled the "input" and "output" look. There was a wonderful school of perception in the 1930s called Transactional Functionalism, which demonstrated that beautifully via the work of architect-psychologist Adelbert Ames --- the Ames Room, the Ames Trapezoid, and other demonstrations. In the trapezoidal Ames Room you have to look with only one eye through the spyhole in the "front" wall for it to work, and the effects are very robust and surprising. Kids walking in the room really grow and shrink as they come closer and go farther from the spyhole. For reasons I can't figure out, the face of a kid turning into a giant looks more pimply than the same kid when he shrinks. It's all "carpentered space" perception, except of course that the Ames Room is a powerful illusion. 

That illusion collapses when the observer is allowed to toss a pingpong ball in the room (via a larger hole below the spyhole). Since the balls bounces in the wrong direction (because it "detects" in a way, the phony shape of the walls, the carpentered space assumption collapses, and suddenly we see the kid being the same size, regardless of his position in the room. 

The theoretical point (which is correct but is largely lost today) was that sensory perception involves a kind of sensorimotor transaction, or what Friston might see in terms of a Bayesian hierarchy, a stack of predictions that force the conscious percept to change when some level of prediction is falsified. But then all the levels of the Bayesian hierarchy also adapt, when necessary, so that their predictions change as their "priors" change. 

It's very cool, and I'm sorry that that stuff isn't taught clearly enough in standard perception courses. Most psychologists know about the demos, but not about Transactional Functionalism. Too bad. 

But speech perception is strongly coupled to speech production, for example, and object constancy depends on sensorimotor coupling. Broca's area is mostly output, Wernicke's areas (plural) are mostly input, and the arcuate fasciculus (a big bundle of nerves) constantly signals back and forth between those two areas.

It's hard to model those interactions, because you have to worry about transmission times for long neurons as well as short neurons. But if Walter Freeman and Robert Kozma are right (which I think they are), then sizable regions of cortex can "click" in a cinematic fashion, and  you don't have to worry about time lag differences, because now you have a 100 ms self-organization followed by 10 ms chaotic collapse, to large areas of cortex have all-or-none phase differences, as if cortex freezes and melts alternately. 

I think Walter and Robert also made a fabulous discovery in that respect. It's still controversial, I think, but miracles don't happen unless something real is going on. 

Who knew? 

:)b

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ3n9htLQO5VZn%2BTx_mRrD8-v2L3oX_vd5juUNL04JzVHw%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

[Chris Nunn]

Bernie. As I’m sure you know Freeman and Kozma’s idea built on ideas popular in the 1960s that the brainstem incorporated a kind of cine camera shutter cutting cortical processes into chunks. This was generally supposed to correlate with alpha rhythm. Indeed my own earliest EEG work showed that brain processing of visual information didn’t occur if the information arrived at particular alpha phases.

 

However this didn’t really solve the binding problem, which in any case seems so correlate better with gamma coherence. Any ideas about how to reconcile the two findings?

Best

Chris

 

From: scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Bernard Baars
Sent: 01 May 2019 05:08
To: Scientific Basis of Consciousness <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Neo-naturalism and spatio-temporal surprises

 

On Stan's point about corollary discharge, my impression is that the more we understand about cortex, the more tightly coupled the "input" and "output" look. There was a wonderful school of perception in the 1930s called Transactional Functionalism, which demonstrated that beautifully via the work of architect-psychologist Adelbert Ames --- the Ames Room, the Ames Trapezoid, and other demonstrations. In the trapezoidal Ames Room you have to look with only one eye through the spyhole in the "front" wall for it to work, and the effects are very robust and surprising. Kids walking in the room really grow and shrink as they come closer and go farther from the spyhole. For reasons I can't figure out, the face of a kid turning into a giant looks more pimply than the same kid when he shrinks. It's all "carpentered space" perception, except of course that the Ames Room is a powerful illusion. 

 

 

--

Kind regards,

Bernard J. Baars Editor-in-Chief Society for MindBrain Sciences Email baa...@gmail.com Publications BernardBaars.com

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CACAsnSMyxkcGCJYiHx%2BKD3%2BnV-h1WzhuA-coOnL1vWs0tCgjrA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

Dear Chris and Bernie, Many thanks for your comment on what has been called "the binding problem". I just now did a google search and found the standard place for finding nifty overviews:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_problem  

I found lots great insights at that wiki site.  I'm confident that in the next 50 years or so we will have a nifty understanding of that awesome puzzle. 

Stan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/019401d4fff4%2494d272b0%24be775810%24%40btinternet.com.

[Kushal Shah]

Sorry Bernie, but I think thats a little unfair criticism. I would also like to know which assumption(s) in Cathy's paper you find to be false and on what grounds (precisely).

Best,

Kushal.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CACAsnSNOPBuWcq1PxW%3D%3Dm3gok5w2ZpgWzV5YAwYLmBijA3dThg%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

[Cathy Reason]

Bernard Baars wrote:

With all due respect, Dr. Reason, you are trying to flip the 

burden of proof to the skeptics. That is not how science or

mathematics works. The burden of proof is on the PROPOSER, which is not me.

As a matter of fact. you are the one who proposed the following claim:

... well, partly because your premises are so obviously false that I can refute them at a glance. Life is short, art is long. 

Since the burden of proof is, as you rightly say, on the proposer, it's for you to provide evidence to support your claim.  Thus far, you haven't done so -- indeed you cannot possibly do so, because you still haven't asked for a copy of the paper. So you obviously can't refute the premises at a glance, because you have never had them to glance at.

 

So the burden is on you to prove your point. It is normally done by publishing your evidence and reasoning in respectable,

peer-reviewed journals.

 

Which I have done.  I have given you the citation and offered to send you a pre-publication copy.  You still haven't accepted the invitation.


Cathy


Cathy

 

[BT APJ]

Yes, Stan, the fascinating findings indicate that it is present in all senses, in several animal species. For instance, in reference 16: Schneider DM, Mooney R. How Movement Modulates Hearing.

Conscious experience involves the inter-modulation of cognition, feeling and action sub-systems of the nervous system.

Best

Alfredo

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ3n9htLQO5VZn%2BTx_mRrD8-v2L3oX_vd5juUNL04JzVHw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Whit Blauvelt]

On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 03:25:22PM -0700, Cathy Reason wrote:

> Condition 2:   Self-certainty does not require that the conscious state which
> is found to exist has any particular property or set of properties.

Cathy,

Perhaps it's unfair for me to react to that without reading your paper.
Also, I'm not sure what meaning of "condition" you intend. Yet the statement
appears on the face false. The conscious state which is found to exist has
the particular property fo self-certainty. There also are plausible
prerequisites for a conscious state with self-certainty to exist at all.
Those not being explicit within the conscious state does not negate their
possibly necessary implication.

The mind-body problem can be restated as "What are the prerequisites for a
conscious state?" Or at least one of the many mind-body problems is that. Is
the prerequisite just a body, however functionally constituted, or something
more? Can consciousness be bodiless? Etc. Down each of the roads from this
junction are other problems. But, if I read your paper, do you promise it
will identify the right way to go at this major, preliminary juncture? Which
of the mind-body problems are you claiming to have solved?

Best,
Whit

[Cathy Reason]

Bernard Baars wrote:

But as far as I know, Einstein never demanded that the world should believe him, because he know with the greatest possible clarity that the burden of proof is on the proposer. He was rigorously honest, and so were his colleagues in science. 

I don't for one moment expect anyone to accept my work on my word alone.  I fully expect my work to be criticized in depth and by people who know what they are talking about.  What I don't expect is for people who have never read the paper, and who know nothing about what's in it, to demand the right to express opinions on it based on no evidence whatsoever.   To try and pass this sort of behavior off as "scientific" would be laughable if it weren't so intellectually dishonest.

What's so deeply ironic about all this is that I actually agree with and accept your conditions and criteria for judging theoretical papers.  Avoid metaphysical terms -- check.  Publish in peer-reviewed journals -- check.  Avoid assumptions which aren't empirically verifiable -- I won't say check, but I have gone out of my way to do this, and in future work I intend to weaken the necessary assumptions still further.  So it's far from obvious what your objections -- which by the way seem increasingly self-contradictory and ad hoc -- are based on.

Cathy
 

[Cathy Reason]

Whit Blauvelt wrote:

> Condition 2:   Self-certainty does not require that the conscious state which
> is found to exist has any particular property or set of properties.

Cathy,

Perhaps it's unfair for me to react to that without reading your paper.
Also, I'm not sure what meaning of "condition" you intend. Yet the statement
appears on the face false. The conscious state which is found to exist has
the particular property fo self-certainty. There also are plausible
prerequisites for a conscious state with self-certainty to exist at all.
Those not being explicit within the conscious state does not negate their
possibly necessary implication.

I can see why you might argue this, but self-certainty as described in the paper is an operation, so this is at best a minor technical point -- ie, whether such an operation should be regarded as a property of a state or not.  This is the sort of metaphysical point which as theoreticians we don't need to worry about, because whether or not self-certainty is regarded as a property of a conscious state or not has no effect on the validity of the proof.
 

The mind-body problem can be restated as "What are the prerequisites for a
conscious state?" Or at least one of the many mind-body problems is that. Is
the prerequisite just a body, however functionally constituted, or something
more? Can consciousness be bodiless? Etc. Down each of the roads from this
junction are other problems. But, if I read your paper, do you promise it
will identify the right way to go at this major, preliminary juncture? Which
of the mind-body problems are you claiming to have solved?

Please bear in mind that the published version of the paper no longer makes this claim, precisely because reviewers objected to it on more or less the same grounds you give here.  The title of the published paper is:

A No-Go Theorem for the Mind-Body Problem:  An Informal Proof that No
Purely Physical System Can Exhibit all the Properties of Human
Consciousness

The aim of the paper is to demonstrate mathematically that physicalism (as formalized in the paper) is inconsistent with the properties of a humanlike physical system (as formalized in the paper).  You can retain physicalism if you define physical systems, or humanlike conscious systems, in a way that they fall outside of the equivalence classes defined in the paper -- but this gets you into a whole heap of  problems which I leave to others to sort out :-)

The paper attempts to avoid metaphysical definitions, replacing them all by functions and equivalence classes -- a coomonplace in mathematical theory, but for some reason almost unheard of in relation to the mind-body problem.  The proof itself is a type of diagonal construction of the sort which has been well-known to mathematicians for more than a century -- it's the means by which Cantor showed that the set of real numbers is larger than the set of countable numbers, and is also the basis for Godel's incompleteness theorems and Turing's undecidability oproof for the halting problem.


Cathy
 

[Bernard Baars]

Dear Chris,

The idea of cortex as a "cinematic" mode of "clicking" probably goes back to Charlie Chaplin, and certainly to the 19th century in German experimental psychology, and I think Wm. James called attention to those little paper cartoon books kids used to play with, and to camera obscura toys, and, more empirically, to Gordon Allport and a slew of others. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21541015

   It is so boring and cliche-ish that it can't possibly true. And here is Mom Nature's weirdest tricks, that sometimes she solves problems in very boring ways. I know about the reticular formation resurgence with Moruzzi and Magoun, and so on. The brainstem RF appears to be mainly about 40 nuclei, according to Parisi (sp?) and Damasio. The network nature of other brain tissue in the brainstem, both "ascending and descending" RF, which also links to the nucleus reticularis thalami, which surrounds the anterior thalamus like the shell of an egg. This is not what Walter found with Kozma's close co-work as a very good mathematician. 

What they found was widespread CORTICAL phase-difference plateaus and collapses, the plateaus circa 10 Hz and the chaotic reorganization at 10 ms, very reliably recorded from cortex (DIRECTLY, not scalp), so that the S/N improves by a factor of 1000. Scalp recordings are useful medically, but they drove everybody nuts until Penfield-type direct cortical recording in humans came back, as you know. Now there are ways to analyze the EM field around the head at much higher resolution and source localizability, but direct cortical recording, stimulation, and treatment in humans is back, with many hundreds of new articles in the literature. That thousand-fold improvement in S/N makes a huge difference. 

Cortex is dramatically different from 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/019401d4fff4%2494d272b0%24be775810%24%40btinternet.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Kind regards,

Bernard J. Baars Editor-in-Chief Society for MindBrain Sciences Email baa...@gmail.com Publications BernardBaars.com

[Bernard Baars]

Sorry, here is the main Freeman-Kozma 3-d diagram, based on a linear strip of electrodes directly on cortex. See PubMed for W.J. Freeman and Robert Kozma, quite a few articles. 

Notice that nearly identical patterns of cortical "clicking" is found in rabbit EEG and human. Also called ECoG right now, or iEEG (for intracranial EEG). This is subjected to Hilbert analysis to get the spatial frequencies, and at various points also to FFA and binning. The details are in the original articles. 

Unfortunately Walter left some implications for others to work out, and I believe there are math people especially who are working on it. But regular scientific EEG people know about it, there are very good engineering PhD's who do, and if we all pull together we might get additional understanding of it. This is a very solid empirical-analytical-theoretical link, and naturally it leaves some implications unexplored. 

b

[Cathy Reason]

Whit Blauvelt wrote:

Perhaps it's unfair for me to react to that without reading your paper.
Also, I'm not sure what meaning of "condition" you intend. Yet the statement
appears on the face false. The conscious state which is found to exist has
the particular property fo self-certainty. There also are plausible
prerequisites for a conscious state with self-certainty to exist at all.
Those not being explicit within the conscious state does not negate their
possibly necessary implication.

 Just a little more on this: the proof contains two parts, one which deals with the limitations of physical systems, and one which deals with the properties of humanlike conscious systems.  The Condition referred to here relates to the second part.  The equivalence class of statements which are unprovable for physical systems is so broad that self-certainty falls into it no matter how it's defined.

But, if I read your paper, do you promise it
will identify the right way to go at this major, preliminary juncture?

In a word, yes.


Cathy

 

[Bernard Baars]

I just follow my favorite philosopher, Karl Popper. His question (I think) would be, well, what's YOUR NOVEL PREDICTION that we can test? That's how Einstein's 1905 work got accepted, at least the "bending" of light around large masses. All it took was an astronomical expedition to Africa and BANG! there was the evidence. 

So that's the empirical question. Since formalisms do not lead to empirical predictions unless the terms are anchored in observations, or at most are compellingly implied (like the "F" term in F = ma), preferably by multiple observable sources, purely formal claims are not enough. Solipsistic philosophical claims are also untestable, for obvious reasons. Platonic definitions don't count. 

I actually defined all my theoretical terms in my 1988 book from Cambridge UP, with updates in the Oxford book in 1997, and updated theoretical and empirical definitions in our 2013 article with Stan Franklin and Thomas Ramsoy. If any of those operational or conceptual definitions are wrong or debatable, obviously I would be happy to revisit them. In fact, the French team of Dehaene and Changeux, really very good scientists, have proposed a much better term for what I called "broadcasting" in my 1988 book. Dehaene calls it "ignition," and he has observed it under exactly the right experimental conditions, which is just fabulous. Dehaene has a new OUP book that develops all that, and I'm very grateful. In addition the recent article from Blumfeld's lab at Yale Med School has found robust evidence for a "switch and wave" phenomenon in the first second of conscious vision, again using DIRECT cortical EEG (not scalp EEG, but electrodes placed on the cortex of epileptic patients in waking surgery, or on the dura, I'm not sure. But the S/N ratio is fabulous, in the millivolts, not just microvolts like scalp EEG. In any case, Dehaene, Changeux, and other solid scientists are constantly refining the meaning of terms like "ignition," and I'm always trying to figure out where I was wrong, or at least not right enough, which is how things normally go in early science. For Galileo "heat" was not a measurable continuum with a zero point at 0 degrees K. But Galileo still managed to build a fairly good working thermometer, good for his time. 

This is all pretty standard empirical work, and when it yields results they can be fabulous, unbelievably interesting, like Stan's proposed 18 particles. Those are not arbitrary constructs, if I understand it, but highly constrained by a ton of evidence collected over many years. 

As for flipping the burden of proof, I am willing to promise five dollars towards your bail costs if you get caught speeding on the highways in the UK. Since the burden of proof is now on you to prove innocence, your bail might be very expensive. 

Please count on me for five bucks towards your habeas corpus lawsuit, at least if they still accept that the burden of proof is on the prosecution. 

With best wishes, 

:)b

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/a9f663e4-0b7e-433c-baa8-abcefeae62d6%40googlegroups.com.

[Cathy Reason]

Bernard Baars wrote:

I just follow my favorite philosopher, Karl Popper. His question (I think) would be, well, what's YOUR NOVEL PREDICTION that we can test? That's how Einstein's 1905 work got accepted, at least the "bending" of light around large masses. All it took was an astronomical expedition to Africa and BANG! there was the evidence. 

Actually my work does make an empirical prediction, it's just that I haven't been making very much of it because I can't so far think of any practical way to perform the test.  The theorem in the paper predicts a violation of energy conservation in the human brain under certain conditions.  If you really are interested in doing actual science, instead of making ever more contrived excuses for commenting on papers you haven't read, you might like to turn your expertise toward this problem.  Details of this prediction can be found in the paper, and my offer to email you a copy remains open.

 

So that's the empirical question. Since formalisms do not lead to empirical predictions unless the terms are anchored in observations, or at most are compellingly implied (like the "F" term in F = ma), preferably by multiple observable sources, purely formal claims are not enough. Solipsistic philosophical claims are also untestable, for obvious reasons. Platonic definitions don't count. 

Once again, if you had actually read the paper, you would realize just how irrelevant these points are.

 

As for flipping the burden of proof, I am willing to promise five dollars towards your bail costs if you get caught speeding on the highways in the UK. Since the burden of proof is now on you to prove innocence, your bail might be very expensive. 

I see you're continuing with your ridiculous claim that requiring someone to read a paper before commenting on it amounts to flipping the burden of proof.  You know, you have probably expended more energy in coming up with fatuous excuses for not reading the article, than it would have taken for you to read the paper in the first place.  Just what is it about this paper that alarms you so much?  The reasons you've given so far are ludicrous, so they obviously aren't the real ones.


Cathy

[Kushal Shah]

Cathy, it's very interesting to know that you predict violation of energy conservation, which is a possibility that we were discussing on this group earlier. Please share more details about it.

Best,

Kushal.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/b2fae5e0-5839-49dc-ac65-65bda69c2de2%40googlegroups.com.

[Bernard Baars]

I have to confess that I'm saving some of my emails for later use, WITHOUT naming names. So I do have what the Freudians call "secondary gain," other than my compulsive need to teach about science, especially psychobiology, which is now the umbrella term for research on conscious cognition. So please forgive my passionate interventions - it's my biggest hobby. 

I DO NOT ever quote others without full permission, of course. But I do appreciate being provoked to explain how decent empirical science is done. 

PS: The history of predicting violations of conservation of energy is not encouraging, see "perpetual motion machine" in Wikipedia. However, everyone should be free to speak, think and write as they wish, of course. 

PPS: Sorry: Both Walter Freeman and Gerald Edelman have written about thermodynamic and nonlinear math issues with regard to the cortex, a profoundly important question. I just read other people on that, it's not my game. 

b

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CABSgQwrdXa8KgrZSLWn0CPbg2UVsE%3Dz9CwpyhxU4SxboBuFMPQ%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal]

Hi Uzi,

 

I have started reading your very interesting article “Awret 2019 Neo-Naturalism, Conciliatory Explanations, and Spatiotemporal Surprises”.

 

You write, “Among the possible advantages of naturalist theories of mind over their physicalist counterparts are the following:

a) They are more flexible; all the theories of mind in Chalmers' A–F classification have at one time or another appeared in naturalized versions (section Chalmers's A–F Classification of Major Theories of Mind).”

 

My understanding is that (Chalmers, 2003)’s types A-C are materialism, D-E are dualism, F is dual-aspect monism (DAM). This means that DAM is a version of Naturalism. Is this correct?

 

My query is that what is the definition of physical entity (matter) used in your Neo-Naturalism? Does it have potentiality of experience of subject and object? It is well known that the matter in old physics/materialism/physicalism is non-experiential and non-mental.

 

FYI: There are two concepts of the matter:

 

(i) First, Yājñavalkya-Bādarāyaņa-Aristotle’s (YBA) concept of matter, where the matter has rūpa/form/pattern and has the potentiality for experiences (Pereira Jr., 2013; Radhakrishnan, 1960; Swami Krishnananda, 1983); it is used in our frameworks (Pereira Jr., 2013; Pereira Jr. et al., 2015; Vimal, 2013).

 

(ii) Second, the Kaṇāda-Democritus’ (KD) concept of matter (who identifies matter with atoms/particles), which implies that matter is non-experiential (Vimal, 2015d); it is used in science (such as physics, chemistry, and biology). 

Cheers!

Kind regards,

Rām

----------------------------------------------------------

Rām Lakhan Pāndey Vimal, Ph.D.

Amarāvati-Hīrāmaṇi Professor (Research)

Vision Research Institute Inc, Physics, Neuroscience, & Consciousness Research Dept.

25 Rita Street, Lowell, MA 01854 USA

Ph: +1 978 954 7522; eFAX: +1 440 388 7907

rlpv...@yahoo.co.in; http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ram_Lakhan_Pandey_Vimal 

Researched at the University of Chicago and Harvard Medical Schools

On Friday, 26 April, 2019, 8:51:36 am GMT-4, 'Chris Nunn' via Scientific Basis of Consciousness <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Dear All

Some of you may be interested in attached paper. Uzi is a very bright, trans-disciplinary thinker who has consistently interesting things to say.

Best

Chris

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/021201d4fc2e%24c2573fa0%244705bee0%24%40btinternet.com.

[Kushal Shah]

Bernie, everything that is within the universe is subject to birth and death, and hence cannot go on for ever. But the universe as a whole is a perpetual motion machine. It was never born and will never die. It just goes on and on through various cycles. 

Energy conservation is already violated within well established physics, but for a very very small fraction of time. What we need to see is if we can stretch this time duration to measurable values.

Best,

Kushal.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CACAsnSMJ5%3DTX%3Dkjjq%3DrWNweiFdCBC15rBmCh%2BaYn%2BSqSmf90RQ%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

[Bernard Baars]

Thanks, Kushal.

What are the specific conditions under which energy conservation can be violated? Is energy-mass still conserved? 

b

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CABSgQwrdwkWUb4B4OUOX5VejUFDDCh7mkLhzL-z_Sk5icZB0zQ%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Kushal Shah]

Bernie, energy conservation is violated, as you may know, in QFT calculations of particle scattering, where off-shell virtual particles need to be invoked. This has been discussed a lot on this group earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_shell_and_off_shell

Best,

Kushal.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CACAsnSP35ruWb6GBUnOVzbuL8uAEW94Heh%2ByH5gMxqd7vVOLAw%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Bernard Baars]

Does Dr. Reason's theory of consciousness invoke QFT? 

b

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CABSgQwrx1bvpUjwB6GYcPkHJqyezdDx%3D9nar5KTnax7RZ2_y7g%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Kushal Shah]

In order to answer that question, lets request Cathy to send us her paper, which we can read and properly comment upon.

Best,

Kushal.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CACAsnSOfOwurxzAOsRxLnDUN_jmq%3Dtaspz5CRwt0%2BB4wOMzO%2Bw%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

I'm pretty sure energy conservation is never violated according to quantum mechanics and Feynman diagrams. I recommend going to 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman_diagram .

It is totally awesome!

Stan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CABSgQwrx1bvpUjwB6GYcPkHJqyezdDx%3D9nar5KTnax7RZ2_y7g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Vasavada, Kashyap V]

Dear All,

Overall energy –momentum conservation is not violated in Particle physics, QFT (QM). Uncertainty pr. fluctuations are only for a short time interval. When the particle scattering is over, these are conserved. Also at each vertex in Feynman diagrams energy-momentum are conserved. Intermediate particles do not have the usual mass mentioned in particle physics tables. That is why most physicists do not like the nomenclature of “virtual particles”. These are just field effects. They should not be called particles. “Virtual particles” is old nomenclature which writers of popular books use. There is no physics in these words!

Best.

Kashyap

 

From: scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com [mailto:scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bernard Baars
Sent: Thursday, May 2, 2019 1:14 AM
To: Scientific Basis of Consciousness <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Neo-naturalism and spatio-temporal surprises

 

Does Dr. Reason's theory of consciousness invoke QFT? 

 

b

 

 

Kind regards, Bernard J. Baars

Editor-in-Chief Society for MindBrain Sciences Email baa...@gmail.com Publications BernardBaars.com

 

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CACAsnSMJ5%3DTX%3Dkjjq%3DrWNweiFdCBC15rBmCh%2BaYn%2BSqSmf90RQ%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

 

--

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kushal Shah @ EECS Dept, IISER Bhopal
http://home.iiserb.ac.in/~kushals

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CABSgQwrdwkWUb4B4OUOX5VejUFDDCh7mkLhzL-z_Sk5icZB0zQ%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

 

--

Kind regards, Bernard J. Baars

Editor-in-Chief Society for MindBrain Sciences Email baa...@gmail.com Publications BernardBaars.com

 

--

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CACAsnSOfOwurxzAOsRxLnDUN_jmq%3Dtaspz5CRwt0%2BB4wOMzO%2Bw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

Dear Kashyap, 

Would you agree that at EVERY vertex of every Feynman diagram, energy is conserved!

Stan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/d6c7f91c2bab491b8272220b840b6063%40BL-CCI-D1S08.ads.iu.edu.

[Vasavada, Kashyap V]

Dear Stan,

That is exactly what I said!!

KV: “Also at each vertex in Feynman diagrams energy-momentum are conserved.”

Best.

kashyap

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ2%2B6u7E4jkp6ZM-bftH6zfU_ie2spmh8s%3DDY%2BgXKKdB0w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Kushal Shah]

But between the vertices, there is violation of energy conservation, no matter for how small a time. You may call it field effects, but that holds for everything, including real particles. In a strict sense, there are only fields and measurements. Everything else is just terminology.

Best,

Kushal.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/36530af8164545d5a047adaeb2f3a1ae%40BL-CCI-D1S08.ads.iu.edu.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Cathy Reason]

Bernard Baars wrote:

Does Dr. Reason's theory of consciousness invoke QFT? 

No.it doesn't.  Stanley Klein is quite correct that neither QM nor QFT allows violations of energy conservation of the sort predicted.

I shall post some more on this subject when I get aound to it.

In the meantime, though, on the subject of empirical predictions:  my paper describes a no-go theorem, not a theory.  An empirical test of a no-go theorem is a de facto test of the theory within which it is derived.  Since we have no general theories of consciousness worth the name, the empirical prediction I make is actually a test of a whole class of theories defined by two assumptions.  One assumption is that human logical reasoning is in principle both sound and consistent; the other is that human beings are capable of self-certainty.  The only way any sort of physicalist theory can be retained is by abandoning one or other of these assumptions.  But as I pointed out in my reply to Whit Blauvelt,  neither of these assumptions can be abandoned without considerable cost.  Abandoning the first assumption would make it impossible for us to have confidence in our ability to perform any sort of logical reasoning at all, however basic.  Abandoning the second amounts to denying the Cartesian cogito -- it would mean none of us could ever have any basis for saying "I think therefore i am."


Cathy

[Vasavada, Kashyap V]

No!!! That is the exact point. At each vertex in Feynman diagram energy-momentum is conserved. If you take E^2 = c^2*P^2 + m^2 * c^4, mass m will come out to be imaginary at times. So it is pretty much nonsense to call it a particle! Feynman had probably a bad day when he called these “virtual particles”!! Every genius has a bad day!! But luckily he did not call them “particles”!

Best.

Kashyap

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CABSgQwp_ppOCB_suC_AQmYaMBkeWQoJkZXPWpLBazL1UiB9_7g%40mail.gmail.com.

[BT APJ]

Dear Kushal, In a sense I agree with you (in spite of my ignorance of QFT).

In the sense that fields = coherent parts of waves, and measurements = partial decoherence and recoherence.

In this sense, physical energy may be not conserved, but converted to mental energy (and vice-versa) in the act
of measurement. This issue was discussed in this group some time ago.
The total energy of reality (Energy with capitol E) is conserved when physical and mental energies convert to each other.
Best

Alfredo

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CABSgQwp_ppOCB_suC_AQmYaMBkeWQoJkZXPWpLBazL1UiB9_7g%40mail.gmail.com.

[BT APJ]

Dear Kayshap: Where is the observer in this picture?

No need of an energy exchange with the observer during the measurement act?

Best

Alfredo

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/9fc871a100fd4213bfc0f33a979c42a6%40BL-CCI-D1S08.ads.iu.edu.

[Kushal Shah]

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/168845/why-dont-virtual-particles-violate-conservation-of-mass-energy

"Conservation of energy holds, quantumly, only inside correlation functions and up to contact terms - the quantum version of Noether's theorem, which classically guarantees conservation of energy, are the Ward-Takahashi identities. Even if the internal lines of Feynman diagrams represent particles in any sense, conservation of energy/momentum is only guaranteed to hold as a statement about expectation values, so that individual states may well, from a classical viewpoint "violate conservation of energy". (Note, though, that "energy of a state" may even be an ill-defined thing to say)"

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/9fc871a100fd4213bfc0f33a979c42a6%40BL-CCI-D1S08.ads.iu.edu.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Kushal Shah]

https://hst-archive.web.cern.ch/archiv/HST2005/bubble_chambers/BCwebsite/articles/06.pdf

"A consequence of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is that one cannot exclude the possibility of processes that violate energy conservation by amounts Eviolation for times shorter than h/4πEviolation—the magic loophole."

[Vasavada, Kashyap V]

Dear Alfredo,

Very interesting question! I think present day QM-QFT has no answer for this. It is part of 90 years debate on interpretation whether it is necessary to have a conscious observer or not.  QM processes went on for billions of years before human beings appeared. You might say universal consciousness was there all the time and particles were watching themselves!

Best.

Kashyap

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwNAvTMkXaUbO8%2B8WJDiABaktTEtnCfDf-83fgSdHfi_9g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Chris Nunn]

Dear Bernie,

 

Many thanks for the clarification and the link. Wonderful timing data in the paper, and am only sorry I missed it when it came out!

Best

Chrs

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CACAsnSODmxQNUtoEP3BiXvF3y--cZ4wDjKXpcpU7A3%2BTHwaHhQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[BT APJ]

Der Kayshap: I think that Universal Consciousness is the religions' solution. We need a scientific/philosophical one, taking into consideration that the observer is not outside the reality system.

Best

Alfredo

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/7e6ada27c98a42c4adc300fd6c7e363f%40BL-CCI-D1S08.ads.iu.edu.

[Vasavada, Kashyap V]

I am just stating how calculations of Feynman diagrams are done by people who actually calculate and compare with experiments. The uncertainty principle says what happens just momentarily. Just like loans, borrowed energy have to be paid back to the vacuum! So far people have not observed a single process locally on earth or solar system which violates energy-momentum conservation, either classical or quantum. This does not stop some people from expressing their views on violation of energy conservation!! Nobody knows physics of consciousness. These are all speculations!

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CABSgQwpR%3D0vjxsydVzHdaJ%2BTiW7q-X2Dfx1Fu9QW9iRL-oTOVA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Chris Nunn]

Bernie. Looks as if it could be picturing a strange attractor version of the mainly periodic attractors pictured in the classic Skarda and Freeman paper. Just a thought; no idea how how it could be checked.

Best

Chris

 

From: scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Bernard Baars
Sent: 01 May 2019 18:12
To: Scientific Basis of Consciousness <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Neo-naturalism and spatio-temporal surprises

 

Sorry, here is the main Freeman-Kozma 3-d diagram, based on a linear strip of electrodes directly on cortex. See PubMed for W.J. Freeman and Robert Kozma, quite a few articles. 

Notice that nearly identical patterns of cortical "clicking" is found in rabbit EEG and human. Also called ECoG right now, or iEEG (for intracranial EEG). This is subjected to Hilbert analysis to get the spatial frequencies, and at various points also to FFA and binning. The details are in the original articles. 

 

Unfortunately Walter left some implications for others to work out, and I believe there are math people especially who are working on it. But regular scientific EEG people know about it, there are very good engineering PhD's who do, and if we all pull together we might get additional understanding of it. This is a very solid empirical-analytical-theoretical link, and naturally it leaves some implications unexplored. 

 

b

 

On Wed, May 1, 2019 at 10:05 AM Bernard Baars <baa...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Chris,

The idea of cortex as a "cinematic" mode of "clicking" probably goes back to Charlie Chaplin, and certainly to the 19th century in German experimental psychology, and I think Wm. James called attention to those little paper cartoon books kids used to play with, and to camera obscura toys, and, more empirically, to Gordon Allport and a slew of others. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21541015

   It is so boring and cliche-ish that it can't possibly true. And here is Mom Nature's weirdest tricks, that sometimes she solves problems in very boring ways. I know about the reticular formation resurgence with Moruzzi and Magoun, and so on. The brainstem RF appears to be mainly about 40 nuclei, according to Parisi (sp?) and Damasio. The network nature of other brain tissue in the brainstem, both "ascending and descending" RF, which also links to the nucleus reticularis thalami, which surrounds the anterior thalamus like the shell of an egg. This is not what Walter found with Kozma's close co-work as a very good mathematician. 

What they found was widespread CORTICAL phase-difference plateaus and collapses, the plateaus circa 10 Hz and the chaotic reorganization at 10 ms, very reliably recorded from cortex (DIRECTLY, not scalp), so that the S/N improves by a factor of 1000. Scalp recordings are useful medically, but they drove everybody nuts until Penfield-type direct cortical recording in humans came back, as you know. Now there are ways to analyze the EM field around the head at much higher resolution and source localizability, but direct cortical recording, stimulation, and treatment in humans is back, with many hundreds of new articles in the literature. That thousand-fold improvement in S/N makes a huge difference. 

Cortex is dramatically different from 

 

On Wed, May 1, 2019 at 1:05 AM 'Chris Nunn' via Scientific Basis of Consciousness <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Bernie. As I’m sure you know Freeman and Kozma’s idea built on ideas popular in the 1960s that the brainstem incorporated a kind of cine camera shutter cutting cortical processes into chunks. This was generally supposed to correlate with alpha rhythm. Indeed my own earliest EEG work showed that brain processing of visual information didn’t occur if the information arrived at particular alpha phases.

 

However this didn’t really solve the binding problem, which in any case seems so correlate better with gamma coherence. Any ideas about how to reconcile the two findings?

Best

Chris

 

From: scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Bernard Baars

Sent: 01 May 2019 05:08

To: Scientific Basis of Consciousness <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Neo-naturalism and spatio-temporal surprises

 

On Stan's point about corollary discharge, my impression is that the more we understand about cortex, the more tightly coupled the "input" and "output" look. There was a wonderful school of perception in the 1930s called Transactional Functionalism, which demonstrated that beautifully via the work of architect-psychologist Adelbert Ames --- the Ames Room, the Ames Trapezoid, and other demonstrations. In the trapezoidal Ames Room you have to look with only one eye through the spyhole in the "front" wall for it to work, and the effects are very robust and surprising. Kids walking in the room really grow and shrink as they come closer and go farther from the spyhole. For reasons I can't figure out, the face of a kid turning into a giant looks more pimply than the same kid when he shrinks. It's all "carpentered space" perception, except of course that the Ames Room is a powerful illusion. 

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/0c391c89-e5ff-4b8d-a715-d2c18cdc7dcd%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ0YpVtjOb20TSVYkr2YcxP0bhbSTzPBEQdjSWMeES629g%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwMsVkcHF0Vvzj3Woc5Ei-XdL3cfFfqmoREgXZtrLXap%3DA%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ3832FfuSfPqy%2BFGgSUH%2Bo6Wd9-5%3D-YTz%2BRFHtzUgN%2B6w%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwOvHXZuLEM8xZEhFFBwyh-Sr0R5UKRNyBXYCnqJn1AEVw%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ3n9htLQO5VZn%2BTx_mRrD8-v2L3oX_vd5juUNL04JzVHw%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

 

--

Kind regards,

Bernard J. Baars Editor-in-Chief Society for MindBrain Sciences Email baa...@gmail.com Publications BernardBaars.com

 

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CACAsnSMyxkcGCJYiHx%2BKD3%2BnV-h1WzhuA-coOnL1vWs0tCgjrA%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/019401d4fff4%2494d272b0%24be775810%24%40btinternet.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

 

--

Kind regards,

Bernard J. Baars Editor-in-Chief Society for MindBrain Sciences Email baa...@gmail.com Publications BernardBaars.com

 

 

--

Kind regards,

Bernard J. Baars

Editor-in-Chief Society for MindBrain Sciences Email baa...@gmail.com Publications BernardBaars.com

 

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CACAsnSMuO0VW73XOGac-bwXvVz%2BU4yRYqAn-AvPGNqCis2ak8g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Cathy Reason]

 Kushal Shah wrote:

Cathy, it's very interesting to know that you predict violation of energy conservation, which is a possibility that we were discussing on this group earlier. Please share more details about it.

Ok, I'll cut to the chase and upload the preprint of my paper.  Please note this early version contains a much more rambling introduction than the published version, doesn't address in detail the issue of formal vs informal proofs, and doesn't include the Cartesian lemma.  It does however list all the relevant assumptions and the proof itself is pretty much the same ( except that there is no explicit diagonal representation).

I can't upload the published version for copyright reasons -- journals impose these conditions because, obviously, they have to remain commercially viable.  I can email copies to people individually, but you'll need to give me an email address to send it to -- alternatively, write to me privately at the correspondence address given in the preprint.

Or of course you could wait until the Journal comes out and read it then :-)

Cathy

[Kushal Shah]

There can be no physics of consciousness!

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/b560da842e1147ce9fd2fe21c5a04d79%40BL-CCI-D1S08.ads.iu.edu.

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

First an apology to Kashyap for not realizing he had earlier said the same thing about energy ALWAYS being conserved. The Feynman diagrams account for ALL objective measurements. The role of the observer is "simply" to convert probabilities to actualities. Energy is conserved by that process. Our universe seems to follow that simple rule. 

Stan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwNAvTMkXaUbO8%2B8WJDiABaktTEtnCfDf-83fgSdHfi_9g%40mail.gmail.com.

[BT APJ]

Dear Stan:

If the observer operates with some type of Energy, then the measurement act is an exchange of energies between the observer and the observed. In this case, it is possible that the physical energy of the system is not conserved; the system can receive energy from the observer, or give some energy to the observer.

Best

Alfredo

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ0EetLZdW9EdtNksagHLVR4iruOWzfy0gZB3iwZy4wgqg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Kushal Shah]

Hi Alfredo,

Might sound strange, but there's nothing physical about energy in physics! A certain subset of our experiences can be measured. And a certain subset of what can be measured can be expressed using mathematical equations. And some of these equations have various conserved quantities associated with them, one of which is called energy. So, there is no question of conversion of physical energy to mental energy, since all real energy is mental only. 

Best,

Kushal.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwOE7sRuwmDhne1LeNqdWouVT%3DxK0ng6tKUPX_5DhU-ovg%40mail.gmail.com.

[BT APJ]

Dear Kushal: This is probably a terminological issue, but I call "physical energy" the energy related to matter, or more precisely to the 4 fundamental forces (weak and strong nuclear, electromagnetic and gravitational). I call "mental energy" the energy related to psychological motivation and the capacity of feeling, which are not reducible to the physical types; for instance, in depression mental energy is low, while physical energy in the brain (glucose and ATP levels) may be high. There is also information energy, or neguentropy, which is another controversial issue we have been discussing in the past. My claim about energy conservation is that the total energy of the universe (including the balances between physical, informational and mental energies) is conservative "in the perspective of Eternity" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub_specie_aeternitatis) - but if we look only at one of the types of energy there may be no conservation in a given spatio-temporal process.

Best

Alfredo

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CABSgQwpidb569Q0aNyePsUCqnjcvJSCuSFFi7ZUjx7pf8bu1qQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

Alfredo, you said: 

"If the observer operates with some type of Energy, then the measurement act is an exchange of energies between the observer and the observed. In this case, it is possible that the physical energy of the system is not conserved; the system can receive energy from the observer, or give some energy to the observer."

The only role of observer is to convert the probability to an actuality. All the probabilities sum to 1. EACH of the probabilities conserve energy for the collapsed object. There is zero exchange of energy to the observer. At least that is what present standard quantum mechanics and quantum field theory tell us. 

It's a wonderfully simple world in some sense. 

Stan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwPUi2ZJ2iLO3banfs8e%3DFm6WEV1mdF0KcnFMMfdBGu7tQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Kushal Shah]

Alfredo, I would avoid using the word physical since it doesn't have a specific meaning. There are experiences, measurements and mathematical models. What we call physical energy is just one of the conserved quantities in our mathematical models. Nothing more profound about it. How to define an equivalent energy at the level of experience is not clear to me. 

The total energy of the universe is neither experienceable nor measurable, and so i don't see any point in discussing it.

Best,

Kushal.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwPUi2ZJ2iLO3banfs8e%3DFm6WEV1mdF0KcnFMMfdBGu7tQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

Kushal, we're not talking about the whole universe. We're talking about you or me simply looking at an experiment. Quantum mechanics has been incredibly successful at telling us about the outcomes of those experiments.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CABSgQwpKkC%2BgBxkhhc7VoYH-TNW50aKcuK%3DYGnci%3DKN_-SaPJw%40mail.gmail.com.

[BT APJ]

Dear Stan,

In this case you assume that the observer is a disembodied spirit!

What do you tell us about the measuring apparatus?

Best

Alfredo

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ30BwWNM7SPjzMw2rJk_cG7FfFvuTQiLzTTBkk-aRvj3w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

Alfredo, You asked: 

Dear Stan,   In this case you assume that the observer is a disembodied spirit!

What do you tell us about the measuring apparatus?

QM is so flexible that the measuring apparatus could be a camera or according to Stapp and some others it could be the human (or other animal) looking at the camera's output. The many, many different interpretations of QM enable different observers. And most all (not Penrose) come to the same outcomes for measurable data. I'm leaving out qualia since it isn't objectively measurable. 

Stan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwNc7-cWdRJ19JdB1ONwNHLCpr98tS46eJY3zXWk2Wp5-w%40mail.gmail.com.

[cmh...@btinternet.com]

Stan. Conservation of energy follows from Noether’s theorem. Physics is not affected by smooth transitions in time. The loophole is in the assumption that temporal transitions have to be smooth. As Kashyap pointed out, if temporal intervals are so small as to be in effect quantized, there can be fleeting, notional conservation violation.

 

We know from Bem and other anomalies that larger non-smooth temporal anomalies occur and one might expect them to go along with potentially measurable conservation anomalies.

Best

chris

Kind regards,

Bernard J. Baars Editor-in-Chief Society for MindBrain Sciences Email baa...@gmail.com Publications BernardBaars.com

 

--

scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CACAsnSOfOwurxzAOsRxLnDUN_jmq%3Dtaspz5CRwt0%2BB4wOMzO%2Bw%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ0EetLZdW9EdtNksagHLVR4iruOWzfy0gZB3iwZy4wgqg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

Chris, If Bem's precognition data is replicable then present quantum mechanics / quantum field theory needs to be revised. 

It would be wonderful for Bem's controversial data to be replicable. 

Stan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/022801d50104%24eee7e710%24ccb7b530%24%40btinternet.com.

[Cathy Reason]

Stanley A. KLEIN wrote:

First an apology to Kashyap for not realizing he had earlier said the same thing about energy ALWAYS being conserved. The Feynman diagrams account for ALL objective measurements. The role of the observer is "simply" to convert probabilities to actualities. Energy is conserved by that process. Our universe seems to follow that simple rule. 

I ought to point out here that the violation of energy conservation predicted in my paper is an effect which cannot even in principle be modeled by any physical theory.   The no-go theorem shows that:

either:

Energy conservation is violated in a physically unpredictable way;

or:

Human reasoning is intrinsically unsound;

or:

Humans cannot infer the Cartesian cogito.


At least one of these statements must be true.


Cathy
 

[Bernard Baars]

Thank  you all for those thoughts. I think we have found a potentially testable question that bears on the proposed theory. That is progress. But we still have expert disagreement on the conservation point. 

I'm not deep into QFT, so I have to rely on those who are. I take it that we have a stand-off on conservation. 

Thanks again,

b

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/8ce0b820-ad6b-4e25-bcb0-155a39d1ef34%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[BT APJ]

Stan, The problem here is not qualia, but the status of the observer and the measuring apparatus. A camera needs energy to run.
An observer needs energy to register the information. Any interaction between the three involves excahnges of energy.
Remember the old discussion about the Maxwell Demon,

Best

Alfredo

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ0%2BS26gWZ_TfgdWQxW2cGAn1oUgG72EpNQpRom5txdP7Q%40mail.gmail.com.

[Christopher M H Nunn]

Cathy. Sorry you are wrong about the possibility of modelling violation of energy conservation, or at least measurable energy conservation. The clue is in your first alternative that might account for anomaly "energy conservation is violated in a physically unpredictable way". 'Unpredictable' implies a context involving no disturbance in the normal smooth flow of classical causality. But there are a range of quite strong grounds for thinking that this is not inevitable.
Best
Chris

On 2 May 2019, at 18:04, Cathy Reason <cmrn...@gmail.com> wrote:

Stanley A. KLEIN wrote:

First an apology to Kashyap for not realizing he had earlier said the same thing about energy ALWAYS being conserved. The Feynman diagrams account for ALL objective measurements. The role of the observer is "simply" to convert probabilities to actualities. Energy is conserved by that process. Our universe seems to follow that simple rule. 

I ought to point out here that the violation of energy conservation predicted in my paper is an effect which cannot even in principle be modeled by any physical theory.   The no-go theorem shows that:

either:

Energy conservation is violated in a physically unpredictable way;

or:

Human reasoning is intrinsically unsound;

or:

Humans cannot infer the Cartesian cogito.


At least one of these statements must be true.

Cathy
 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/8ce0b820-ad6b-4e25-bcb0-155a39d1ef34%40googlegroups.com.

[Cathy Reason]

cmhnunn wrote:

Cathy. Sorry you are wrong about the possibility of modelling violation of energy conservation, or at least measurable energy conservation. The clue is in your first alternative that might account for anomaly "energy conservation is violated in a physically unpredictable way". 'Unpredictable' implies a context involving no disturbance in the normal smooth flow of classical causality. But there are a range of quite strong grounds for thinking that this is not inevitable.

Chris, you seem to be under the impression that unpredictable violations of energy conservation can only occur when the transformation group is a smooth or differentiable manifold.  I'm afraid this is incorrect, at least as far as the chi effect in my own work is concerned (I can't speak for violations of energy conservation in other contexts).  The Gemini theorem (I'm going to call it that from now on because I have to call it something)  demonstrates that self-certainty is impossible in any system whose dynamics are completely detemined by objective properties.  There's no way round this, I'm afraid, other than by abandoning one of the other two postulates.


Cathy

[Stanley A. KLEIN]

Yup, that's the sort of thing I've been studying since 1973.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwPjYvdSektxT5FzVFpgnLvUWiTSeiDEd0UJ92u2u3N%3DVw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Bernard Baars]

Stan,

I did not know that. Thanks for telling the group -- it's a little hard for outsiders to grok the physics... 

:)b

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ3AD7fyfXSwOpv%2BoqHEL6Yu77tZtSmfw_3Xh-jEekqDLQ%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Christopher M H Nunn]

Stan. Extended more than revised. And the obvious extension required is to start taking Heisenberg time/energy uncertainty as seriously as position/momentum uncertainty is taken in every textbook.

Doing this has radical implications for the nature of the world, which is perhaps why such an obvious extension is usually brushed under the carpet.
Best
Chris

On 2 May 2019, at 17:41, "Stanley A. KLEIN" <skl...@berkeley.edu> wrote:

Chris, If Bem's precognition data is replicable then present quantum mechanics / quantum field theory needs to be revised. 

It would be wonderful for Bem's controversial data to be replicable. 

Stan

On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 9:34 AM cmhnunn via Scientific Basis of Consciousness <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Stan. Conservation of energy follows from Noether’s theorem. Physics is not affected by smooth transitions in time. The loophole is in the assumption that temporal transitions have to be smooth. As Kashyap pointed out, if temporal intervals are so small as to be in effect quantized, there can be fleeting, notional conservation violation.

 

We know from Bem and other anomalies that larger non-smooth temporal anomalies occur and one might expect them to go along with potentially measurable conservation anomalies.

Best

chris

 

From: scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Stanley A. KLEIN

Sent: 02 May 2019 15:32

To: Scientific Basis of Consciousness <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Neo-naturalism and spatio-temporal surprises

 

First an apology to Kashyap for not realizing he had earlier said the same thing about energy ALWAYS being conserved. The Feynman diagrams account for ALL objective measurements. The role of the observer is "simply" to convert probabilities to actualities. Energy is conserved by that process. Our universe seems to follow that simple rule. 

Stan

 

On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 4:24 AM BT APJ <alfredo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Kayshap: Where is the observer in this picture?

No need of an energy exchange with the observer during the measurement act?

Best

Alfredo

 

Em qui, 2 de mai de 2019 às 08:19, Vasavada, Kashyap V <vasa...@iupui.edu> escreveu:

No!!! That is the exact point. At each vertex in Feynman diagram energy-momentum is conserved. If you take E^2 = c^2*P^2 + m^2 * c^4, mass m will come out to be imaginary at times. So it is pretty much nonsense to call it a particle! Feynman had probably a bad day when he called these “virtual particles”!! Every genius has a bad day!! But luckily he did not call them “particles”!

Best.

Kind regards,

Bernard J. Baars Editor-in-Chief Society for MindBrain Sciences Email baa...@gmail.com Publications BernardBaars.com

 

--

scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CACAsnSOfOwurxzAOsRxLnDUN_jmq%3Dtaspz5CRwt0%2BB4wOMzO%2Bw%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/9fc871a100fd4213bfc0f33a979c42a6%40BL-CCI-D1S08.ads.iu.edu.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CA%2BcKjwNAvTMkXaUbO8%2B8WJDiABaktTEtnCfDf-83fgSdHfi_9g%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ0EetLZdW9EdtNksagHLVR4iruOWzfy0gZB3iwZy4wgqg%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/022801d50104%24eee7e710%24ccb7b530%24%40btinternet.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/CAEKJmQ2tNgFJJvnz8udwWjKPffYh%2B6ocjUQxFOVdAjtvLgqzfQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Christopher M H Nunn]

Cathy. I actually pointed out that energy conservation follows from smooth, differentiable temporal change (Noether's theorem). Any non smooth temporal change might involve violation. Envisaging non-smooth time is already implicit in the notion of virtual particles, but extending it macroscopically would require adjustments to contemporary physics. So far as i can see they would be compatible with your gemini theorem since one could picture the temporal anomaly as providing a perfect mirror for the 'self', with obvious implications for 'self certainty'.
Best
Chris

Cathy

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/59fbc6be-0eef-4665-9e13-c3e413513f99%40googlegroups.com.

[Kushal Shah]

Thanks Cathy for sharing your JMB paper. It will take a lot of time and effort to go through it fully, but here are two comments on a quick reading:

1. We can never really prove the objective existence of any system. I think it will be more interesting if we can say something about systems which are governed by Quantum Field Theory, or even non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics.

2. Answering the question "Am I certainly conscious?" is highly dependent on understanding the meaning of that question in a particular language (English, in this case). Can this question be phrased in all human languages? I am not sure. Even in English, what does this question really mean? This term "consciousness" cannot have an objective definition in any language to begin with. 

Best,

Kushal.

On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 7:53 PM Cathy Reason <Catherine...@btinternet.com> wrote:

Hi Kushal

>Please send me the published version of the paper.

Attached.

Cathy

[Cathy Reason]

Hi Chris

Cathy. I actually pointed out that energy conservation follows from smooth, differentiable temporal change (Noether's theorem). Any non smooth temporal change might involve violation. Envisaging non-smooth time is already implicit in the notion of virtual particles, but extending it macroscopically would require adjustments to contemporary physics. So far as i can see they would be compatible with your gemini theorem since one could picture the temporal anomaly as providing a perfect mirror for the 'self', with obvious implications for 'self certainty'

Yes, I guessed that Noether's theorem was at the back of your concerns. There's a rather subtle point here that I probably didn't make clear enough, which is that although chi can't be physically predictable, it can't be random either.  But "physically unpredicable" has a rather special meaning here, which results from the way the various assumptions interact with each other.  It means that a physical theory which allows the existence of human beings capable of supporting sound, consistent logical reasoning, cannot explain the chi effect unless it is internally inconsistent.  Relaxing the symmetry assumptions in Noether's theorem does not, I'm afraid. offer any way of getting round this.


Cathy

[Chris Nunn]

Dear Cathy,

 

Seems to me you have a nice argument showing that loops and chains of logically or physically closely defined causation can never achieve ‘self-certainty’. It’s a kind of closed system that you are envisaging, analogous to an universal Turing machine which also has well defined constraints on what it can do.

 

But nature may encompass broader possibilities – it certainly does so in the case of Turing machines. If you define these as ‘non-physical’ in principle, that’s only a matter of semantics. Nature doesn’t have to agree with you! And, if you are looking for energy conservation violations, very basic quantum theory (along with Emmy Noether) tells you that you have to be looking for some time related possibility.

 

Best

Chris

 

 

 

From: scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Cathy Reason
Sent: 03 May 2019 13:42
To: Scientific Basis of Consciousness <scientific-basis...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Neo-naturalism and spatio-temporal surprises

 

Hi Chris

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/f2959c71-fba3-4264-a1f8-2aeb026e1ae7%40googlegroups.com.

[Bernard Baars]

Dear all,

I feel lost without clear and empirically testable definitions. My own 1988 Cambridge book defined all of its theoretical terms, along with then-standard technical jargon in cognitive psychology. 

So I'm totally lost without a clear and testable definition of "self-certainty." If it means Descartes and nothing more, then the counter-examples are too obvious to count. Descartes lived almost half a millennium before the IT explosion, including its strong links to entropy and much more. Descartes was a great thinker, mathematician, and ALSO empirical student of the optics of the eye. He was also fearful of persecution, and it took a lot of courage to do what he did in the face of inevitable accusations of non-political correctness of the time. A very formidable contributor to what we call science, which he thought of as "truth."

But Descartes did not have a deep understanding of Turing and Super-Turing computation. His cogito is a kind of desperate effort  to keep his standing with Church doctrine by positing the unavoidable truth of the soul (i.e., consciousness, psyche, etc.). That solved inner questions for many people at that time, when atheism and Christian theism were at war. We have to look at him in the context of his time. 

If we can imagine Descartes running an iMac to solve his problems, and having picked up basic computational math and all that, then his conceptual grounds might have shifted and he might have become a neo-Platonist, a "mystic" as we tend to call it. 

I do not believe that Descartes was a mind-body dualist in the modern sense. He was a believer in a unified soul, and was therefore astonished with his first sheep brains, to realize that mirror-image dualism of the physiological brain. He asked exactly  the right empirical question for his time, i.e., how can a unified consciousness (he was correct on that) be reconciled with a dual brain? And that is still not entirely solved, though we have much, much better conceptual and empirical tools. The pineal hypothesis is still proposed today. Francis Crick pinned his hopes on the claustrum, a global workspace-like thin structure underneath the cortex proper, folded into the temporal lobe, I believe. The claustrum hypothesis was Crick's version of Descartes' pineal hypothesis. But there are several other GW-like brain structures, and when you look at a brain with the naked eye, it is hard to avoid some GW-like idea, because you can clearly see the cranial and spinal nerves (visible with the naked eye) converging spectacularly on the upper brainstem and the great cortical opening at the bottom of the bony cranium, through which spino-cortical nerves flow back and forth. So the idea of some domain of integration and motor output control must be very ancient: Every ancient hunter was also a butcher, because you can't eat until you've carefully "unzipped" the midline of the torso, strip off the outer skin and protective fur and hair, and broken into the cranial and spinal cavities. So this must have been a daily experience for human hunter-forager nomads at least since the current guesstimate of spoken language, which is 100 - 300 KYA. 

For normal humans in nature, this is everyday knowledge, and therefore the "obvious" convergence of inbound and outbound nerves must have indeed been obvious. Your butcher, your baker, your candlestick maker would have known all about it, because there were no highly specialized professions. Men and women knew how to prepare flesh foods. The kids were crying to be fed, so you did what was needed. 

Descartes proposed the pineal as the organ of convergence and divergence, and now we realize he was wrong about that, because we have fabulous microscopes. But if all you have is the naked eye and maybe a rough glass lens, and sunlight, and talking to your butcher, then the pineal looks perfectly plausible. Descartes was not an idiot. 

Crick thought it was the claustrum, which is now being studied properly. Moruzzi and Magoun thought it was the reticular formation, and they had good evidence. Others have suggested the reticular formation of the thalamus, another good idea. Still others put the organ of subjective unity in the brainstem (like Damasio, but he is incorrect about that). Gazzaniga hinted at the left  hemisphere (also wrong). 

Most anatomical thinkers historically have suggested cortex, actually neo-cortex, since that's the biggest and baddest neural structure in the human brain. In fact, non-invasive brain imaging has now shown the answer to be the double-decker cortex, both neo-cortex and paleo-cortex. This is preferable to the alternative microscopic GWs like the claustrum, because we are really talking about a world-wide brainweb, not a localized structure at all, but rather a hugely adaptable network. This is clear from the connectome (see connectome.org). This was proposed by Edelman and Tononi in their 2000 book, but Edelman had the basic idea in 1978. But then SO DID OTHERS. It was just baffling to figure out how all that could work. 

The cortex is the favorite organ of mind every since Hippocrates of Cos, a school of medical thought much focused on the epilepsies, but also on brain damage. The endless warfare of those times also gave them plenty of battlefield cases to study. Hippocrates already knew about the cross-wiring of the motor cortex, because in some brain damage cases the cortex is exposed, and you can actually probe motor cortex, and the opposite hand and foot will move.

But  I think every smart hunter-forager-nomad in hominid history probably knew about that, because it was everyday common sense that you could easily demonstrate. 

:)b

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/02e401d501b3%240cecd8c0%2426c68a40%24%40btinternet.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Kind regards,

Bernard J. Baars Editor-in-Chief Society for MindBrain Sciences Email baa...@gmail.com Publications BernardBaars.com

[Cathy Reason]

 Kushal Shah wrote:

Thanks Cathy for sharing your JMB paper. It will take a lot of time and effort to go through it fully, but here are two comments on a quick reading:

1. We can never really prove the objective existence of any system. I think it will be more interesting if we can say something about systems which are governed by Quantum Field Theory, or even non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics.

2. Answering the question "Am I certainly conscious?" is highly dependent on understanding the meaning of that question in a particular language (English, in this case). Can this question be phrased in all human languages? I am not sure. Even in English, what does this question really mean? This term "consciousness" cannot have an objective definition in any language to begin with. 

Hi Kushal -- first of all, thank you for your interest in my work.   Hopefully as you go through the paper in more detail, you'll find the answers to some of these concerns. To deal with the second point first, self-certainty is defined so that the equivalence class it refers to is broad enough to encompass self-certainty no matter how you define it.  This is done quite deliberately, in order that the proof be as general as possible.

As regards your first point, please bear in mind that objectivity is formalized in the paper in terms of multiple observers.  (It's done this way in case the definition needs to be operationalized at some point.)   The theorem shows only that no member of the equivalence class of systems defined in this way can exhibit self-certainty.  Of course if tou already think that physicalism is unviable, then the paper won't be telling you anything new.


Cathy

[Cathy Reason]

 cmhnunn wrote:

 

Seems to me you have a nice argument showing that loops and chains of logically or physically closely defined causation can never achieve ‘self-certainty’.

Yes. that's the idea.  No physically closed system can exhibit self-certainty

 

It’s a kind of closed system that you are envisaging, analogous to an universal Turing machine which also has well defined constraints on what it can do.

Not just universal Turing machines, but any sort of closed system
 

 

But nature may encompass broader possibilities – it certainly does so in the case of Turing machines. If you define these as ‘non-physical’ in principle, that’s only a matter of semantics.

Physicality is defined in the paper in terms of multiple observers.  If you want to define ad hoc oracles as physical entities, that's ok with me.  But the key term is "ad hoc".  No physical system could predict the behavior of such oracles without being internally inconsistent.

 

Nature doesn’t have to agree with you!

No, but we do have agree with nature.
 

And, if you are looking for energy conservation violations, very basic quantum theory (along with Emmy Noether) tells you that you have to be looking for some time related possibility.

No, sorry, this is just wrong.   Neother's theorem tells us that symmetry implies conservation.  It does not imply that lack of conservation can alsays be explained by lack of symmetry.


Cathy

t.

[Cathy Reason]

Bernard Baars wrote:

So I'm totally lost without a clear and testable definition of "self-certainty."

From Reason (2019):

Definition:  Self-certainty is the capacity of at least some conscious beings to verify with absolute certainty that they are conscious -- that is, to give the answer YES to the question "Am I certainly conscious?"

 


 

If it means Descartes and nothing more, then the counter-examples are too obvious to count. Descartes lived almost half a millennium before the IT explosion, including its strong links to entropy and much more.

I'm not sure what this means, and there's a lot of historical material in your post that I'm not sure I agree with or think is particularly relevant.  If you mean you don't think human beings can perform the Cartesian cogito, then I agree you can escape the implications of the theorem.  But It's really not at all clear what counter-examples you have in mind, nor what they are supposed to be counter examples to.


Cathy

[Cathy Reason]

I wrote (replying to Kushal Shah):

 
To deal with the second point first, self-certainty is defined so that the equivalence class it refers to is broad enough to encompass self-certainty no matter how you define it. 

Sorry, this was clearly a mistake.  It should have read:

To deal with the second point first, self-certainty is defined so that the equivalence class it refers to is broad enough to encompass consciousness no matter how you define it. 


Cathy

[Bernard Baars]

Frankly, the denial of everyday truth and reality strikes me as a desperation move. People use it when they are about to sell you a proposition that is so out-of-this-world that it is generally only used by used car salesmen and their ideological equivalents. In a time of anti-religion we might remember that great religious institutions (and governments, which are much the same) resort to that same argumentum ex nihilo when they are losing to the church next door. 

This is not an infallible heuristic, since there are indeed important times in well-grounded human knowledge when we have genuinely novel insights into settled understandings of the truth. The best-known names in science and other empirical forms of knowledge often  "paradigm changes," which are not noticeably different from other deeply challenged belief systems. It's all cognitive dissonance to me. 

Having said that, we should of course keep evaluating out-of-this-world proposals on the merits, as long as we can allocate our own limited resources to them. 

We end up with  handy heuristics, and when Einstein manages to overcome deep skepticism among fellow physicists to publish his famous five papers of 1905, the heuristic probabilities shift in his favor, so that people are suddenly paying attention to something they laughed at five years before. 

That's really okay, as long as the players don't cheat. But "paradigm revolutions" are rare, because we benefit from all the prior periods of "settled science" AND "paradigm changes," the cumulative knowledge and wisdom of a dedicated profession. 

b

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/c0d4cd72-928f-4d46-a3ce-305878857be3%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Bernard Baars]

The counter-examples are countless, so much that they are required in introductory psychology courses.

b

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Scientific Basis of Consciousness" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scientific-basis-of-co...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/scientific-basis-of-consciousness.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scientific-basis-of-consciousness/5859f3c4-4d10-46c5-aa85-82d08d32d1b7%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.