Are spirits stupid?

[_Tarski]

. A set of abilities is not the same as experience.

Why not? To be able to experience the world is to [what?]
You can't say anything.

But I can...

To be able to experience the world is to see it (with eyes and visual cotex), hear it (with ears and brain), feel it, tast it, fear it, like it, talk about it (that's a biggy) , write poetry about it,--have behaviorally expressed propensities toward it (have attitudes about it) etc. etc.

[_Tarski]

The inability to describe the ineffable is not limited to me.
.

Umm, ineffable just means can't talk about it. So what?
An inability is not a miracle.

I have yet to read an adequate description from you of how the brain produces the experience of being conscious (e.g. conscious awareness and conscious thought).

You haven't read Consciousness Explained then. Of course like I said, it took me three reads before I got the point and broke through this tiny tiny circular word trap: consciousness=spirit=ineffable=consciousness=spirit=.....
Its just a shiny bobble entrancing you. Pointing mutely at "that". It serves no intellectual purpose and has no explanitory power or definition. I was caught in that trap too and I too had nothing.

[_Tarski]

Tarski wrote:
Did you know that there is even a neural model of why color qualia is felt to be ineffable?

Cortical Feedback and the Ineffability of Colors:

ABSTRACT: Philosophers long have noted that some sensations (particularly those of
color) seem to be ineffable, or refractory to verbal description. Some proposed
neurophysiological explanations of this ineffability deny the intuitive view that sensations
have inherently indescribable content. The present paper suggests a new explanation of
ineffability that does not have this deflationary consequence. According to the hypothesis presented here, feedback modulation of information flow in the cortex interferes with the production of narratives about sensations, thereby causing the subject to assess as inadequate his or her own verbal descriptions of sensations.

Duh, "feedback modulation of information flow in the cortex." Explain that in terms of neuronal activity.

"...causing the subject to assess..." The brain of some individual? The brain is assessing itself?

Of course!

More likely the consciousness of the individual would assess the inadequacy of the verbal descriptions

But what is consciousness that it could do something like assess. See you are now talking about consciousness as an ability! Whoops!!

[_SeekerofTruth]

Tarski wrote:
Cortical Feedback and the Ineffability of Colors:

http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/articles ... harlow.pdf

In parsing this article I came upon such phrases as “making the subject aware,” “will be able,” “will not seem,” “does not notice,” “The subject might experience either of these incapacities as a feeling of being unable to find the right words,” “to describe the color,” “can understand each other,” “inability to consciously discriminate,” and “unaware of the neural fluctuations.”

While the author attempts to show how visual input and modulating feedback can directly affect narration, he is obviously unable to avoid involvement of the subject’s consciousness in the process. Furthermore, the author implies that the subject is consciously monitoring the activity of his/her brain. I am not opposed to this possibility. However, nothing is said in the article about how the brain might produce this consciousness or even if it does. Consciousness is just assumed.

[_SeekerofTruth]

Tarski wrote:
But what is consciousness that it could do something like assess. See you are now talking about consciousness as an ability! Whoops!!

There is a difference between having an ability and being an ability. You said previously that consciousness is a set of abilities. I would say that consciousness has the ability to assess.... The article you had me read seems to affirm this.

[_Tarski]

Tarski wrote:
Cortical Feedback and the Ineffability of Colors:

http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/articles ... harlow.pdf

In parsing this article I came upon such phrases as “making the subject aware,” “will be able,” “will not seem,” “does not notice,” “The subject might experience either of these incapacities as a feeling of being unable to find the right words,” “to describe the color,” “can understand each other,” “inability to consciously discriminate,” and “unaware of the neural fluctuations.”

While the author attempts to show how visual input and modulating feedback can directly affect narration, he is obviously unable to avoid involvement of the subject’s consciousness in the process.

But unlike you, he is using the word consciousness in its nonmystical sense like me. The person can talk about, describe narrate, express, take mental note of, record, process etc. These all make sense as activities and abilities.
Nothing about the way he is using the words aware, conscious, etc. imply he is refering to something wholely inexplicable in a material world. That's just your stupor of ineffable thought.
The way you (meaning the whole ball of flesh you) are hooked up to your own brain and how one part of the brain is hooked up to another has advantages and disadvantages (visual cortex is hooked up to language centers but that doesn't mean the language centers can speak about how the hook up works and where the signals are coming from. So there is this inner fantasy world of mind stuff). Its just a way you talk to your self and carry out inner or intraneural "pointing" at brain activity you can't quite make sense out of. One disadvantage is the confusion about why we can't see the activity as brain activity by proprioception. But of course we can't! What a waste of computing power that would be. Nature is parsimonious.

[_SeekerofTruth]

I

Tarski wrote:
Its just a way you talk to your self and carry out inner or intraneural "pointing" at brain activity you can't quite make sense out of.

Even you cannot write about brain function without involving conscious experience. If you believe you are just your brain, use language that describes what your brain is doing, not psychological language that has no necessary reference to brain activity. "You can't make sense out of" implies an outside observer. I call that consciousness. It is an experienced awareness of brain activity but it is not, in and of itself, dependent upon brain activity. If you believe otherwise, then go ahead and describe how the brain produces conscious awareness (without using psychological terminology).

[_Tarski]

I

Tarski wrote:
Its just a way you talk to your self and carry out inner or intraneural "pointing" at brain activity you can't quite make sense out of.

Even you cannot write about brain function without involving conscious experience. If you believe you are just your brain, use language that describes what your brain is doing, not psychological language that has no necessary reference to brain activity. "You can't make sense out of" implies an outside observer. I call that consciousness. It is an experienced awareness of brain activity but it is not, in and of itself, dependent upon brain activity. If you believe otherwise, then go ahead and describe how the brain produces conscious awareness (without using psychological terminology).

Well, describe what heat is without using mechanical terms. If you do I will just repeat "but that not heat".
Can't you see what you are doing. You ask me to describe it in terms of brain function but the very fact that I mention brains and neurons is you sole and incorrigable criterion for rejecting what I say. It is if you have an axiom :If is is in terms of brains it isn't consciousness".
Well, I could do that with heat too: "If it is mechanical then it isn't heat itself -mechanical can't explain heat"

"If it is chemical then it isn't life--you can't explain the life of a cell in chemical terms (its my definition!)

To be aware is for your neurons to carry information from the environment to those portions of your brain that, by neural activity, carry and process information used by control centers (even robots have control centers) to make actions appropriate to survival in this largly social world.
To be truely consciousness, a bit of information instantiated by neural activity, has to be such that the person is able to hinge action policies on the presence of that information and , if probed with a question , is able to indicate by a speach act that the information is present.

This isn't good enough because it takes a book to get the whole idea across. it would take a book as think as the universe to give every detail from every angle--the brain is a huge mess of complex activity.

It is like asking how the built in characters in a video game seem to be aware of what I do and guess how to defeat me, and then demand that I explain it only using Maxwell's equations or solid state quantum physics for the motion of electrons in the material of the X-box. How silly that would be.
I need the software level terminology. You see you are just playing a bait and switch game.

Your asking me to never use a psychological terms is like asking the computer guy to never use software terms like loops and if/thens. He must only use physics or electronics. When he does you say "but that's just electrons moving it doesn't explain why the character chased me into the virtual cave". He would need forever to give every step of that.

This is just a game you are playing. If I spent volumes giving plausible details about how you might decide to point at an apple and say how red it is or how you might write poetry or how you might come to say outloud the things you do about consciousness, you would simply fall back on the axiom that IF I am decribing it in terms at the level of brain activity then it just ain't consciousness (by your implicit axiom).

I can't talk about neurons and information flow without talking about neurons and information flow, that's all you end up with.

I could play that same game with heat or software of any number of things that have different soundinding explanations at different levels of magnification.

By the way, I am starting to sense that you aren't even reading what I write so why should I write more detail?

As long as you hold onto your idiosyncratic implicit definition that consciousness just equals what is not describable in neural terms then what can I do?

You are just stipulating a priori that "If its physical, it can't have anything to do with consciousness in my sense"
You're stuck in a little semantic trap.

[_SeekerofTruth]

Tarski wrote:
By the way, I am starting to sense that you aren't even reading what I write so why should I write more detail?

Oh, but I do. What I got out of what you just wrote is that you cannot explain how the brain produces consciousness because it is too complex a process. From this and previous comments by you I come away with the impression that you believe in only a physical world.

Let me take a different approach. I propose that nothing physical exists outside of consciousness. There is no direct evidence for the existence of a physical world. The universe, as you know it, exists only in your brain. However, there is no direct evidence that you have a brain. The source of evidence that you have a brain comes from the same source that has convinced you of the existence of the universe. Without conscious awareness the universe and your brain would not exist for you. So in reality, you think (a conscious experience) there is a physical world and that you have a brain which is in some complex way the source of consciousness, whereas it is just the reverse. It is consciousness that has in some complex way caused you to think that there is a physical world and that you have a brain.

[_Tarski]

Tarski wrote:
By the way, I am starting to sense that you aren't even reading what I write so why should I write more detail?

Oh, but I do. What I got out of what you just wrote is that you cannot explain how the brain produces consciousness because it is too complex a process. From this and previous comments by you I come away with the impression that you believe in only a physical world.

No the main point is that you are defining away my ability to do it. Defintion: "Consiousness is whatever else but what can be said in terms of brain and information". (Not!)

Answer the heat analogy.

If I say anything at all about neurons you just claim that I didn't explain consciousness since I only mentioned neurons and compuational or functional aspects. Then you ask me to explain consciousness using just neurons.

OK, lets play that. You explain to me how heat can be the average kinetic energy of moving molecules.
Each time you start talking about the molecules I will object "but that isn't heat itself! You are just talking about molecules! Where oh where is the heat? I don't see it in the moving molecules".

You are just stipulating that any brain talk missed the mark. That's called trying win the argument by making it by mere definition, impossible. Don't you comprehend that explanations at different levels of details use different languages and categories? Do you not see that this is how it is with thermodynamics and statistical mechanics or with electronics and software, with neurology and psychology, with chemistry and anatomy.

Essential you are demanding this "Explain to me what consciousness is in terms of the brain but don't talk about neurons or anything physical because I will just deny that it is consciousness"


Explain how heat could be a just mechanical property of ensembles molecules but do so without without talking in terms of molecules. (WTF?)

It literally makes no sense.

Let me take a different approach. I propose that nothing physical exists outside of consciousness. There is no direct evidence for the existence of a physical world. The universe, as you know it, exists only in your brain. However, there is no direct evidence that you have a brain. The source of evidence that you have a brain comes from the same source that has convinced you of the existence of the universe. Without conscious awareness the universe and your brain would not exist for you. So in reality, you think (a conscious experience) there is a physical world and that you have a brain which is in some complex way the source of consciousness, whereas it is just the reverse. It is consciousness that has in some complex way caused you to think that there is a physical world and that you have a brain.

You could take this approach (I actually did for a while in my foolish youth--acid thoughts)--it is essential a version of solipsism. The problem is the whole thing is over in a paragraph and there is no further progress- it is a dead end. I mean where do you go from there? Its is a useless way of looking at the world. How would you test it? What would you do with it? The utter uselessness of it, the utter muteness of any follow up is a huge hint that it is not to be taken seriously. There is no explanitory power in it.

You may as well say its all magic. Done!