Re: backpropagation is nonbiological

[Paul Werbos]

On Fri, May 4, 2018 at 2:11 PM, Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal <rlpv...@yahoo.co.in> wrote:

Thanks, Paul.

Backpropagation, deep learning, deep neural networks,  recurrent neural networks (NNs), and long-term memory are interesting topics. However, my query is how consciousness (defined as experiencer/self and subjective experiences) arises with or without a brain.

Fair enough. My previous post (below) was a response not to your post but to the subject line. Your query now in certainly important -- though tricky here.

To address this query, there are 4 groups of metaphysical frameworks (materialism, idealism, dualism and dual-aspect monism), but how do we decide which one is the best? Do we have any evidence in our mundane life that consciousness exists without a brain (or brain-like NNs)?

The question is tricky, because many people in this discussion have very deep commitments to one or other legitimate definition of the word "consciousness."  

I pay most attention to the definition of consciousness qua mind or intelligence. (Please, other folks, I am not attacking the value of other definitions.) In my view, our human intelligence is actually a symbiotic system, combining mundane or brain intelligence with something else, which we have debated at length.

In this view, "mundane" consciousness is the consciousness we see in, or emerging in, the mundane brain, by definition. So of course it does not exist without a brain. In my view, most of those who assert that there is no consciousness in the brain are asserting views which emerge purely IN their mundane brain, displaying behavioral syndromes very familiar to psychiatrists requiring no assumption of soul or spirit to explain them. If my words seem a bit cryptic, I point to the great play Back to Methusaleh by George Bernard Shaw, and the wonderful novel Passage by Connie Willis, which give an excellent second person picture of what is going on in such discussions. (Or Jane Robert's oversoul trilogy, portraying an image of astral travelers she saw in the astral pane who needed the advice: "The brain is a great thing. You should not leave home without it.") 

But your first question about four frameworks is another matter. Maybe it is best that I pass on that for now.

Best regards,

   Paul 

[Vasavada, Kashyap V]

Hi Bernard,

If you do not mind, I will make a small correction to your statement

“Last year a physics group announced the discovery of the long-sought-for gravity wave-particle, now called the graviton.”

They did not discover graviton, a hypothetical quantum particle through which gravity acts. What they discovered were gravitational waves which were predicted by Einstein’s  classical (not quantum) general theory of relativity, not that anyone doubts existence of gravitons.

In any case please continue your contributions to this group. You seem to be very knowledgeable about biology and neurology.

Best Regards.

Kashyap

 

 

 

 

From: Bernard Baars [mailto:baa...@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, May 4, 2018 11:13 PM
To: Paul Werbos <paul....@gmail.com>; Bernard Baars <baa...@gmail.com>
Cc: Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal <rlpv...@yahoo.co.in>; Stanley A. KLEIN <skl...@berkeley.edu>; John Jay Kineman <john.k...@colorado.edu>; VINOD KUMAR SEHGAL <vinodse...@gmail.com>; Asingh2384 <asing...@aol.com>; Vasavada, Kashyap V <vasa...@iupui.edu>; George Weissmann <georg...@aol.com>; Robert Boyer <rw.b...@yahoo.com>; Alex Hankey <alexh...@gmail.com>; Murty Hari <murty...@yahoo.com>; Joseph McCard <joseph....@gmail.com>; sisir roy <sisir.s...@gmail.com>; BVKSastry(Gmail) <sastr...@gmail.com>; Dean Radin <dra...@noetic.org>; Dan Ghiocel <d...@ghiocel.com>; BT APJ <alfredo...@gmail.com>; Vivekanand Pandey Vimal <vvima...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sadhu Sanga] Re: backpropagation is nonbiological

 

Hooray for you, Paul. 

 

Look: Metaphysics is not empirical science. In physics, scientific findings often drive metaphysics, whether they should or not. Einstein did not like QM metaphysics because Der Alte does not play dice with the universe. But that is part of Newtonian metaphysics. In psychology and brain science, radical physicalistic reductionism has driven the science to an absurd degree. That's when we get John Watson, B.F. Skinner, and even I.P. Pavlov DENYING the existence of subjectivity altogether, a claim that would have been considered absurd in most of Vedanta, Buddhism, Greek philosophy, and pretty much all of human hunter-forager metaphysics. 

 

The hard evidence for brain based subjectivity is so large that a simple search on "conscious" AND "brain" in Pubmed or other biomedical databased brings up more than 20,000 citations from excellent peer reviewed journals. Those who are GLOBAL skeptics today are either adopting a different metaphysics, OR they denying tons and tons of increasingly better evidence. As Thomas Kuhn said so famously, what happens historically in these cases is that the community of evidence-based scholars and empirical scientists keep doing their thing, and the metaphysical dissidents go their own way. They simply cannot talk to each other any more (although the words they use might still be the same, which then becomes a source of endless confusion, because "gravity" no longer means what it used to mean in the empirical bifurcation). 

 

Last year a physics group announced the discovery of the long-sought-for gravity wave-particle, now called the graviton. That solved a problem that goes back to Newton, Einstein, Aristotle, and others. The graviton is a sort of pseudo-particle because actual particles are hardly in the game anymore, which is why the metaphysics have shifted. 

 

This is all very interesting, but from my narrow point of view, the empirical study of brain-based consciousness is being attacked by some people who just have not read the evidence. That's a no-no. 

 

Empirical studies of conscious brains has already had stunning medical and biological and psychological implications. For example, Steven Laureys on coma and paralytic pseudo-coma (with waking patients). Also the issue of animal consciousness, which is now wide open, at least for animals with cortex, which includes mammals, amnionts, probably fish (lampreys and perhaps zebrafish), but also creatures with a so-called "pallium," which does not look like cortex in gross anatomy, but it IS wired up like cortex histologically. So Ann Butler, Harvey Carton and others have published a consensus article proposing that the word "pallium" should be dropped for birds and reptiles, and "cortex" should be used instead. 

 

The worst left-over from radical behaviorism today is terms like "the default state," which is nothing but the old Stream of Consciousness (SoC). Marcus Raichle was surprised to discover that "default" activity of cortex is bigger than trivial task-driven activity. Had he bothered to look up Jerry Singer and John Antrobus (1957) and many other articles, he would have realized that conscious people with their eyes closed start worrying about their love lives, their exam worries, and anything else that is IMPORTANT IN THEIR OWN LIVES. No wonder you get a bigger fMRI signal. Those are the important things for college students, and counting backwards by threes from some arbitrary number is just a pain in the rear. 

 

The SoC has been discussed exquisitely by Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Wolf, William and Henri James, the phenomenologist, and OF COURSE the contemplative traditions in Asia and Europe and in hunter-forager tribes. The Andaman Islanders have the "dream time," and dreaming (including lucid dreams and dream paralysis) are routine topics in pre-settlement cultures. They occur spontaneously, no need even to teach people to do it, because some people discover it spontaneously. 

 

Not to mention Soma and other plant molecules that lead to a variety of extraordinary states. Not to  mention "gossip," which appears to be a human universal that probably goes back a couple of hundred thousand years, if you believe the conventional guess about symbolic language (from trade beads and pierced trade shells found far away from their places of origin in Africa). 

 

Sorry. That was way too long. 

 

Bernie

 

b

 

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