The blind ghost

[Physics Guy]

We seem to have individual consciousnesses now, though. I'm not aware of any universal awareness. Perhaps Buddhists would say that's my big problem.

Currently my individual awareness, whatever exactly it is, is supported by hardware that is distinct from my awareness. Some of that distinct hardware is stuff in my own brain, and its distinction from my awareness is like the distinction between book and story. A lot of the interface between my awareness and the rest of the world is distinct from my awareness in more obvious ways; I'd count the light waves that get absorbed in my retinas as part of that more-obviously-distinct interface.

Where exactly the line gets drawn between what is and is not "my awareness" is a tricky question. It's surely not a sharp line in any case, but some kind of fuzzily gradual transition between me and not-me. Surprisingly similar trickiness is involved, however, in deciding where the borders of anything lie, between it and the rest of the universe.

An electron is surrounded by a cloud of vacuum polarisation; if you can only resolve the cloud so precisely, then the inner core of the cloud that lies within your resolution radius is indistinguishable, as far as you're concerned, from the electron itself. In the end the only consistent conclusion is to accept that "the electron" includes whatever part of the polarisation cloud that cannot be resolved. So if you ask what even an electron is, where it stops and the rest of the universe starts, then the answer depends on the resolution scale that you have in mind when you ask your question.

This is part of the concept called "renormalisation" in quantum field theory. The idea itself is maybe not so hard to grasp but understanding why we really have to apply it even to elementary particles is harder—I'm not happy with my own understanding of that. Anyway, if the frontier between "this electron" and "not this electron" is that subtle an issue, then no wonder the frontier between "me" and "not-me" is kind of hard to define. Nonetheless electrons exist, and so do I. The borders can be drawn in some way, or perhaps in a range of ways that are appropriate in a range of contexts. There are such things as individual things, even though all things connect.

[Rad]

I think Sam Harris makes a good argument when he points out that we know the function of various parts of the brain by what functions we lose when each part is damaged or destroyed. There is some plasticity when the brain has a chance to recover but the basic function never really completely recovers. Let's say you have a posterior cerebral artery territory infarct and wipe out an occipital lobe and lose your sight on one side. Then you wipe out a middle cerebral artery territory and lose sensory and motor function to half your body. Then you have a small brain stem infarct and lose some of your swallowing function. This is all layered on top of gradual small vessel is ischemic disease that slowly knocks out your memory and executive function, basically slowly resulting in dementia and stark changes in personality. It becomes apparent, especially after you see a large number of patients that the physical structures inside the brain are required for it to function normally. It really doesn't seem like there is a separate entity in there thinking independently. Why should we think that if you just kill the whole thing instead of only parts that there will be a component that comes out a better more intelligent conscious unit?

If you have never heard of Phineas Gage he's an interesting case study. He had a pole driven through his head and survived. It gave people who worked with him an opportunity to try to understand what the damaged part of his brain was supposed to be doing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

[Rivendale]

We seem to have individual consciousnesses now, though. I'm not aware of any universal awareness. Perhaps Buddhists would say that's my big problem.

Currently my individual awareness, whatever exactly it is, is supported by hardware that is distinct from my awareness. Some of that distinct hardware is stuff in my own brain, and its distinction from my awareness is like the distinction between book and story. A lot of the interface between my awareness and the rest of the world is distinct from my awareness in more obvious ways; I'd count the light waves that get absorbed in my retinas as part of that more-obviously-distinct interface.

Where exactly the line gets drawn between what is and is not "my awareness" is a tricky question. It's surely not a sharp line in any case, but some kind of fuzzily gradual transition between me and not-me. Surprisingly similar trickiness is involved, however, in deciding where the borders of anything lie, between it and the rest of the universe.

An electron is surrounded by a cloud of vacuum polarisation; if you can only resolve the cloud so precisely, then the inner core of the cloud that lies within your resolution radius is indistinguishable, as far as you're concerned, from the electron itself. In the end the only consistent conclusion is to accept that "the electron" includes whatever part of the polarisation cloud that cannot be resolved. So if you ask what even an electron is, where it stops and the rest of the universe starts, then the answer depends on the resolution scale that you have in mind when you ask your question.

This is part of the concept called "renormalisation" in quantum field theory. The idea itself is maybe not so hard to grasp but understanding why we really have to apply it even to elementary particles is harder—I'm not happy with my own understanding of that. Anyway, if the frontier between "this electron" and "not this electron" is that subtle an issue, then no wonder the frontier between "me" and "not-me" is kind of hard to define. Nonetheless electrons exist, and so do I. The borders can be drawn in some way, or perhaps in a range of ways that are appropriate in a range of contexts. There are such things as individual things, even though all things connect.

This is just the Ship of Theseus only dealing with atoms. It reminds me of the factoid dealing with atoms in the human body being replaced every 7 years. Or the transporter problem in Star Trek. When does your identity coalesce? When do living organism gain self awareness? That is one for the youth to tackle.

[drumdude]

This is just the Ship of Theseus only dealing with atoms. It reminds me of the factoid dealing with atoms in the human body being replaced every 7 years. Or the transporter problem in Star Trek. When does your identity coalesce? When do living organism gain self awareness? That is one for the youth to tackle.

If we ever have functional artificial neurons, you could imagine replacing each organic neuron one by one with its functional artificial equivalent. But the scary part is, even though your patient may show no discernable outside change, inside he might be slowly dying and losing his continuity of self similar to Alzheimer's.

[Physics Guy]

The Ship of Theseus is a hypothetical ship in which every part and plank had been replaced at one time or another over many years. It nonetheless remained Theseus's ship the whole time, and everyone would have agreed that in all that time he had only had that one same old ship, which kept getting repaired.

And it's a good starting point for the kind of identity issues that bother me about defining minds, because it's a nice example to show that composition can't always settle identity issues. Being composed of the same atoms may not be necessary for a thing to remain itself. Containing the same atoms may not be sufficient, either. Atoms from quite a few plants and animals are currently part of my body, because at some point I ate them, but I am not even partly a carrot or chicken.

Once one accepts that determining identity is harder than just checking continuity of components, then I'm not sure the Ship of Theseus is all that helpful as an analogy, though. The only kind of change that is involved in the Ship idea is replacement of parts. However it works that things get identified as distinct things, complicated patterns of behavior over time would seem to be involved. One could probably express the issues in terms of a ship. Is it the same ship when it is sailing and when it is in harbor? Is the bow wave part of the ship, or not?

Presumably the only answers to such questions are pragmatic ones. There is enough correlation between the movements of the bow and the stern that it often saves bandwidth to cover them both with one word. The bow wave, in contrast, varies a lot even within a few minutes; if it were included as part of the ship one would either be constantly having to add adjectives specifying what the ship's bow wave was doing or else constantly caricaturing the bow wave by talking about it as if it were always the same. I take it for granted that we are looking for pragmatic answers like these, to questions about what defines ship versus not-ship. My problem is just that I don't understand what all the important pragmatic issues are.

Our brains do somehow resolve these kinds of problems all the time. We focus on some features of the world as salient and ignore everything else. In linguistics there is Quine's gavagai problem: show a person a scene, like maybe a meadow with a rabbit running across it, and say "gavagai". The person will probably guess that "gavagai" is your word for "rabbit". If they think about it more, though, they will likely wonder whether maybe "gavagai" instead means "meadow". Or "running". Or perhaps "lunch". Or perhaps merely, "Hey look at that!" The real gavagai problem for linguists is not figuring out how to resolve such hypothetical puzzles, but figuring out how the brains of small children resolve the many puzzles of this kind that they really do face every day when they are first learning language.

How things get named or labelled isn't just arbitrary, though some arbitrary choices are clearly involved. Nonetheless naming is based to a significant degree on real and objective features of how things happen. My interest in labelling things as distinct is not about naming as such, but about the kinds of features that tend to get named as distinct things, and why they tend to get named like that.

[Rad]

The Ship of Theseus is a hypothetical ship in which every part and plank had been replaced at one time or another over many years. It nonetheless remained Theseus's ship the whole time, and everyone would have agreed that in all that time he had only had that one same old ship, which kept getting repaired.

And it's a good starting point for the kind of identity issues that bother me about defining minds, because it's a nice example to show that composition can't always settle identity issues. Being composed of the same atoms may not be necessary for a thing to remain itself. Containing the same atoms may not be sufficient, either. Atoms from quite a few plants and animals are currently part of my body, because at some point I ate them, but I am not even partly a carrot or chicken.

Once one accepts that determining identity is harder than just checking continuity of components, then I'm not sure the Ship of Theseus is all that helpful as an analogy, though. The only kind of change that is involved in the Ship idea is replacement of parts. However it works that things get identified as distinct things, complicated patterns of behavior over time would seem to be involved. One could probably express the issues in terms of a ship. Is it the same ship when it is sailing and when it is in harbor? Is the bow wave part of the ship, or not?

Presumably the only answers to such questions are pragmatic ones. There is enough correlation between the movements of the bow and the stern that it often saves bandwidth to cover them both with one word. The bow wave, in contrast, varies a lot even within a few minutes; if it were included as part of the ship one would either be constantly having to add adjectives specifying what the ship's bow wave was doing or else constantly caricaturing the bow wave by talking about it as if it were always the same. I take it for granted that we are looking for pragmatic answers like these, to questions about what defines ship versus not-ship. My problem is just that I don't understand what all the important pragmatic issues are.

Our brains do somehow resolve these kinds of problems all the time. We focus on some features of the world as salient and ignore everything else. In linguistics there is Quine's gavagai problem: show a person a scene, like maybe a meadow with a rabbit running across it, and say "gavagai". The person will probably guess that "gavagai" is your word for "rabbit". If they think about it more, though, they will likely wonder whether maybe "gavagai" instead means "meadow". Or "running". Or perhaps "lunch". Or perhaps merely, "Hey look at that!" The real gavagai problem for linguists is not figuring out how to resolve such hypothetical puzzles, but figuring out how the brains of small children resolve the many puzzles of this kind that they really do face every day when they are first learning language.

How things get named or labelled isn't just arbitrary, though some arbitrary choices are clearly involved. Nonetheless naming is based to a significant degree on real and objective features of how things happen. My interest in labelling things as di stinct is not about naming as such, but about the kinds of features that tend to get named as distinct things, and why they tend to get named like that.

I think that when you apply The Ship of Theseus thought experiment to the mind it suggests that there is a combination of form and function that combine to create the self. The ship is the same but it does change over time. I feel like I am the same individual I was as a child but I have gradually changed over time. I'm so different now that I only remember a very small percentage of the things that I have experienced but I am a sum of all of the experiences and materials that have been added in.

That being said, there is a point when enough is subtracted away from the ship without being replaced that it is no longer a ship. At some point what is left cannot be termed a ship at all. It may be a part of a ship such as a mast or a sail or a plank or a nail. I think the same is true of the mind or self. There is a point when enough is subtracted away without being replaced that it can no longer be termed a mind. I don't think that there is a self that transcends this physical loss that will be preserved as an independent conscious unit beyond death. I am open to the possibility that machine components could be utilized to replace the cellular components that currently constitute what I consider to be myself. I would consider a cochlear implant to be a primitive example of how this might begin to work.

[dantana]

Anyone up for a little science fiction? Or, as some would probably say, science fantasy.

Physicalism posits that particles rule. Particles and forces are all that really matter and the phenomenon of consciousness is just a result of the mindless interaction of particles. All quite maybe true, but - if particles are eternal, and how could they not be? I mean, I understand that particles have been shown to pop into existence in a vacuum, (maybe they are just coming from somewhere currently un-measurable). Anyway, it is just so hard to grasp the concept that particles/existence popped into existence from non-existence. (This doesn't mean I'm saying God did it)

So, if particles and forces just are. Are eternal and infinite, then the phenomenon of consciousness that they create is just as eternal. In an infinite system, how could there ever be a point or time when particles hadn't yet organized to the complexity to create the consciousness?

Yeah, so what, you say. This still doesn't mean that individual entities have a soul. The consciousness abates when the body dies and the particles disassemble.

What if though, a society of intelligent beings were able to survive long enough to learn everything there is to know about the ways of particles and forces. If they were able to figure a way to record the specific energy pattern of the individual, and encode it at a sub-atomic level, or whatever. A recording that could survive the big crunch and the big bang and be reconstituted with a transmogrifier machine... or whatever. Then for all intents, there is your eternal soul.

A billion years from now, Joe Montana is throwing passes again. And none the wiser. He didn't spend any time in some fuzzy spirit world but, he didn't think that place made any sense anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_(atoms)

https://calvinandhobbes.fandom.com/wiki/Transmogrifier

[Rad]

Anyone up for a little science fiction? Or, as some would probably say, science fantasy.

Physicalism posits that particles rule. Particles and forces are all that really matter and the phenomenon of consciousness is just a result of the mindless interaction of particles. All quite maybe true, but - if particles are eternal, and how could they not be? I mean, I understand that particles have been shown to pop into existence in a vacuum, (maybe they are just coming from somewhere currently un-measurable). Anyway, it is just so hard to grasp the concept that particles/existence popped into existence from non-existence. (This doesn't mean I'm saying God did it)

So, if particles and forces just are. Are eternal and infinite, then the phenomenon of consciousness that they create is just as eternal. In an infinite system, how could there ever be a point or time when particles hadn't yet organized to the complexity to create the consciousness?

Yeah, so what, you say. This still doesn't mean that individual entities have a soul. The consciousness abates when the body dies and the particles disassemble.

What if though, a society of intelligent beings were able to survive long enough to learn everything there is to know about the ways of particles and forces. If they were able to figure a way to record the specific energy pattern of the individual, and encode it at a sub-atomic level, or whatever. A recording that could survive the big crunch and the big bang and be reconstituted with a transmogrifier machine... or whatever. Then for all intents, there is your eternal soul.

A billion years from now, Joe Montana is throwing passes again. And none the wiser. He didn't spend any time in some fuzzy spirit world but, he didn't think that place made any sense anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_(atoms)

https://calvinandhobbes.fandom.com/wiki/Transmogrifier

I love Calvin and Hobbes! In my science fantasy there will come a time when humans will be able to continually renew their cells through some as yet unknown mechanism, possibly with DNA modification and targeting degenerative and maligmant cells with immunotherapy. This process could combine with benevolent A.I. (assuming benevolent A.I. is possible) to allow us to colonize the universe over the course of billions of years in self-replicating machines/computers/space-ships, ultimately finding a way to thrive in whatever environment the future heat death of the universe has to offer. I'm presuming in the end this will all likely be indoors. Though on the time-scale of billions of years "indoors" could be a paradise.

[dantana]

Anyone up for a little science fiction? Or, as some would probably say, science fantasy.

Physicalism posits that particles rule. Particles and forces are all that really matter and the phenomenon of consciousness is just a result of the mindless interaction of particles. All quite maybe true, but - if particles are eternal, and how could they not be? I mean, I understand that particles have been shown to pop into existence in a vacuum, (maybe they are just coming from somewhere currently un-measurable). Anyway, it is just so hard to grasp the concept that particles/existence popped into existence from non-existence. (This doesn't mean I'm saying God did it)

So, if particles and forces just are. Are eternal and infinite, then the phenomenon of consciousness that they create is just as eternal. In an infinite system, how could there ever be a point or time when particles hadn't yet organized to the complexity to create the consciousness?

Yeah, so what, you say. This still doesn't mean that individual entities have a soul. The consciousness abates when the body dies and the particles disassemble.

What if though, a society of intelligent beings were able to survive long enough to learn everything there is to know about the ways of particles and forces. If they were able to figure a way to record the specific energy pattern of the individual, and encode it at a sub-atomic level, or whatever. A recording that could survive the big crunch and the big bang and be reconstituted with a transmogrifier machine... or whatever. Then for all intents, there is your eternal soul.

A billion years from now, Joe Montana is throwing passes again. And none the wiser. He didn't spend any time in some fuzzy spirit world but, he didn't think that place made any sense anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_(atoms)

https://calvinandhobbes.fandom.com/wiki/Transmogrifier

I love Calvin and Hobbes! In my science fantasy there will come a time when humans will be able to continually renew their cells through some as yet unknown mechanism, possibly with DNA modification and targeting degenerative and maligmant cells with immunotherapy. This process could combine with benevolent A.I. (assuming benevolent A.I. is possible) to allow us to colonize the universe over the course of billions of years in self-replicating machines/computers/space-ships, ultimately finding a way to thrive in whatever environment the future heat death of the universe has to offer. I'm presuming in the end this will all likely be indoors. Though on the time-scale of billions of years "indoors" could be a paradise.

That is next level funny there dude. Thanks!

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Anyone up for a little science fiction? Or, as some would probably say, science fantasy.

Physicalism posits that particles rule. Particles and forces are all that really matter and the phenomenon of consciousness is just a result of the mindless interaction of particles. All quite maybe true, but - if particles are eternal, and how could they not be? I mean, I understand that particles have been shown to pop into existence in a vacuum, (maybe they are just coming from somewhere currently un-measurable). Anyway, it is just so hard to grasp the concept that particles/existence popped into existence from non-existence. (This doesn't mean I'm saying God did it)

The way I make it work is fairly simple, conceptually. If reality existed in a higher state, a more ordered state, like, say, the fourth dimension everything that existed was already there. If that extra-dimensional state suffered a vacuum decay and collapsed into a third dimensional state, from our perspective we’d be seeing a huge explosion and particles popping into existence from nowhere. This collapsing 4th dimensional ‘floodwater’ of energy and matter would most likely account for why the universe is expanding and increasing in size, not to mention accounting for the ‘dark energy’ that scientists know exists but can’t find. The size of our universe is much larger than what the size of a fourth dimensional universe would look like, and the ledgers will still balance out once the collapse of the fourth dimension is complete - it just hasn’t finished flooding into the third dimension, yet.

- Doc