Monkey see, monkey do, right? 
Denying your own existence is not an intelligible claim. It is a blatant self contradiction.
Aside from reproducing, I don’t know what might possibly be considered an objective meaning of life. Subjectively, although we are all influenced by others in most aspects of our lives, the meaning of my life is entirely my decision. I may decide there is no meaning of life. Some have decided that killing others, whether everyone in general or just a specific group, is the meaning of their lives. Being social animals, that certainly puts their meaning at odds with others.
In a deterministic sense, in a chemical sense, in a physical sense, it really isn’t. A more complex physical system does not mean it is valued “higher” than others. If we look at life as a higher complexity than molecular matter, then life is just a state of physical objects that behave in (from our perspective) a more complex way. But who defines what is considered “more complex”? It’s a human concept, and we could zoom out to see the universe as a whole, where life becomes just the next layer of matter; complexity going from quantum physics to particles, to atoms, to molecules, to bacterial life, to the compounds of bacterial life that is us… but because our experience is from this level of perception, we are only able to give value or importance from the perspective of it, just as bacteria is only able to give value and importance from its own perspective, and a rock is only able to give value and importance from its perspective.
If there was a being composed of complex intelligent life that we are unable to perceive, like an intelligent biome that functioned by the combined behavior of everything within it, viewing back in on itself in the same way we view bacteria, it would look upon our consciousness as merely an action/reaction operation in the same way we view bacteria in an action/reaction function.
And I think this is the divergent point of view between me and @Wayfarer while agreeing on the nature of perception. While he looks for the meaning and purpose within the phenomenological, I see the limitations of humanity within the concepts phenomenology provides. While he sees the limitations as signs that scientific endeavours are limited, I view those limitations as guidelines to understand scientific evidence more clearly. A way to understand the limitations in order to more easily spot the biases and flaws in human reasoning, especially when it comes to studying the self.
From the logic of a system managing the entire complexity of the body and mind while needing to operate towards reality with near-instantaneous adaptation to changing conditions, it cannot physically be in perfect sync with external reality. Therefore, it has to use mental models of reality to predict actions, rather than operating from free-willed reasoning of reality around it. It doesn’t matter how fast we operate; we are slower in processing than actual reality unfolds because it needs processing before experiencing. So everything is formed out of optimizing our actions for speed. Like how our eyes don’t see a stream of photons, they sample and build consistency between those samples, predicting this stream of visual perception more than actually forming a correct representation of reality.
If we are experiencing the automated self constantly updating the parameters of operation, we are unable to distinguish this from free will. Even if we experience reality in the past of actual reality, the automatic operation of us works faster and more in sync with external reality, operating from these mental models, rather than from waiting out a fully processed experience of reality.
Experiencing this process and being in full control of it would be indistinguishable, and our experience would be that of reality in an instant, even if lagged behind the external.
Would it be more reasonable and logical to conclude that we are able to operate in perfect sync with actual external reality? Or is it more reasonable that the processing time to form a perfectly up-to-date mental model of current reality is too slow for it?
This also becomes true of more complex thought that uses longer thinking; it still is reasonable to say that it draws on similar mental models towards an output, both conceptually and affected by present external reality. Our concepts and mental models of abstract ideas are compositions of stored memory and past ideas of those memories. Why would gen AI be any different in this form of processing? Other than being unable to update and adapt this foundational data?
The fundamental point is that there’s enough evidence and reasonable interpretations of that evidence to say that the human mind is simply processing forward choices and mental models automatically rather than through free will; always behaving as a consequence of input. What I’ve tried to argue is that we’ve not yet identified the reason for why it is doing this, and it is that which led me to “adaptation” in evolution. That a key point of evolution is for generations to adapt to changing conditions and that this usually only happens over generations, not within the lifetime of an animal. But with mammals especially, we’re seeing them adapt better within one lifetime, able to change behavior to survive better. But one animal was able to achieve this better than any other: humans.
While other mammals are able to change behavior, it’s like they slowly program their instincts to change. Essentially, it takes a while for them to change their instinctual automatic behavior into something else. But humans are able to reach past this and change almost within moments of a changing condition. But it doesn’t mean our automatic system is any different; only that we update this automatic system much faster than other animals.
And it’s when viewing it from the perspective of evolution that we can see another aspect to this. Evolutionary traits usually form single changes. Animals do not change their entire being through evolution; it changes single things that cascade into new operation.
A single trait that gave us much faster updates to the automatic function of our operation could easily cascade into a number of behavior differences compared to animals closer to us in cognitive functions. That what is usually only a mental model used for critical prediction of current actions became expanded into a mental model of time; the ability for our system to store not only events in the external now, but the external reality over time, and adapt to a concept of change over time; forming the foundation for the ability to predict and plan in complex conceptual frameworks. And that it’s this operation that caused the formation of social culture, innovation, and tools, because the mind is constantly working to adapt towards a simulation that the brain constructs of reality.
And nothing of this requires us to be in control. It’s deterministic.
As a philosophical concept about the mind and our experience, an extrapolation from what the science says, this is following the research.
Because I could easily ask you about what evidence would conclude our mind to be in perfect time alignment with external reality, and to be untethered to any prior inputs that inform every action and behavior we have; any evidence for our mind to be free enough to act outside of the logical limits that nature has set for us—and I would argue the evidence for that is less than for the concept I’m drawing here.
As a philosophical concept, I’m conceptualizing what the holistic result of the scientific research is showing us; I’m not making a scientific conclusion here, because at the moment, it’s the lack of such conclusions and absolute theory that spawns the very existence of a philosophy of mind and consciousness.
Basically, I’m formulating my idea as an expanded predictive coding concept. That it’s not just for present time actions to function properly, it’s a more fundamental basic principle of the entire human experience. A fast and slow thinking operating on the same automatic principle of prediction from simulation, one in sync with sensory perception and one in sync with long term memory and its simulation constructs. And that the priority model push slow prediction models into shorter ones, from slow to fast thinking the more data we have in memory to form simulations. That the problem with much of the speculation on consciousness is that it separates the brain and mind too heavily into neat categories, the same way we once separated body and mind before realizing the two are basically unable to function in separation.
Why then would we separate different aspects of cognition? When the logical conclusion would be that it is operating as a whole system from similar principles all share. We have looked at the brain too much like a machine with parts, rather than something with entangled functions, crossing over and operating more overlapped. Which is what modern research shows; that different parts of the brain doesn’t fully house that simple operating function, but has more to do with the origin of chemical balances and node points, while processing happens everywhere together. It points towards more simple principles, with a cascading complexity, driving our consciousness.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18408715/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17049881/
https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273%2818%2930857-2
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-023-00011-2
1 Like
Is that different from the complexity of a solar system or the biome of a planet compared to the underlying layer of just one specific molecular structure? The behavior of an entire planet’s biome is more complex than the specifics of individual chemical compounds on that planet. And that compound is more complex in its molecular synthesis than each individual elemental matter, and that elemental matter is more complex than the individual electrons and neutrons and protons and so on…
Why would we be anything else but a more complex form of matter that operates in reaction to preceding conditions? Like a chemical process, a physical process moving through time like other processes in the universe.
I think that if we attribute the highest level of uniqueness to us, then we are blinded by the arrogance of our own existence. A higher intelligence who would operate on a more complex layer of reality, would look upon life as just another base layer of reality, obviously moving and behaving more complex than layers underneath it, but still just a behavior over time that fits within complex models of reality that they’ve mapped out.
I don’t think we need cosmic horror to grasp that life itself is a form or state of matter that lower level matter could end up in within the right conditions. Like any chemical interaction, the right conditions can cause cascading chemical complexities and form unique emerging properties.
What’s unique to us, might not be unique to the universe.
There are things, and things happening, on our planet that cannot be found anywhere else in the universe that we are aware of. How’s is that not unique? Ok, granted, it’s certainly possible that they exist elsewhere, too far for us to have seen any evidence of them. But they cannot be found in the absence of intelligence like ours or greater. We cannot defy the laws of physics. Nothing in the universe can do that. To paraphrase the last two sentences of my last quote below, all of these things are consistent with the laws of physics because they are not forbidden by them. But they are not explained by them either. They do not happen due to random chance.
If there is another intelligence out there, and it finds Voyager 2, do you think it will be amazed thinking that this thing came to exist simply because of the laws of physics? Or will they be as excited as we would be to have discovered something that had to have been intentionally made by some intelligence? If some catastrophe takes place (idk, crazy solar flare?) that eradicated all life on earth, but leaves everything else just as it is, would an alien who runs across the planet in a couple centuries be amazed seeing what it assumes must be the products of some never-before-seen crystaline growth patterns?
Here are a few quotes expressing this idea. The first is from Incomplwte Nature, by Terrance Deacon. The second and third are from Life as No One Knows It, by Sara Imari Walker.
I know a thing or two about panpsychism, specifically Strawson’s is an interesting view. But I don’t think it solves much.
As for certainty in having non-linguistic thoughts, well certainty is too high for empirical matters. We probably have non-linguistic thought. But it is non-trivial to talk about it in a sensible manner.
Heh. No guess about any of this solves much. They’re all just guesses. They all play out the same, and can’t be verified or falsified.
Is every thought we have about everything we see in words? As I see a cardinal fly past, I think the words “A cardinal is flying past”? There is no moment when the thought is only visual?
What if I tell you to picture a beach on a beautiful, sunny day, with some people surfing, and the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen in a bikini. Is you’re head filled with the words “a beach on a beautiful, sunny day, with some people surfing, and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in a bikini”, rather than an image, possibly in motion, with the sounds of people laughing and whooping as there watch the surfers, and the crashing waves?
Could my thoughts when I’m listening to a string quartet possibly be words?
Speaking of which, have you seen the Asch’s conformity experiment? I haven’t. But might be a good idea because a good majority of people will do what others do.
Fair. I don’t know if there’s an objective meaning of life. To me, each person is related to others, one way or another, and so this is how a person gets to view life, not in isolation.
Most other species would agree with you.
If they could talk, that is.
The Quantum uncertainty that wayfarer was talking about occurs in the absence of a probe. You can also measure without probing.
Take the classic illustration of uncertainty in the double slit experiment. Fire one electrons at a slit, and you get a diffusion pattern. Fire one electron at a double slit and you get an interference pattern. The electron goes through both slits and interferes with itself.
No probing required.
Most of the experiments at CERN are set up in this way, with passive sensors looking at the end results rather than probing the interactions themselves.
It’s more accurate than any deterministic model we have.
No one is stopping determinists from implementing their ideas in a form that can successfully predict human behaviour better than a model based on the idea of conscious decision making. They just haven’t managed it.
I don’t understand where this idea comes from. Has someone suggested that complexity is precious? Can you explain?
I don’t agree. Reductionism of this kind is a trained skill that peopole have to be drilled in. There’s no reason to assume a theoretical higher being would practice it.
Nor can any system, conscious or unconscious.
Why not both? Why does free will and only free will require this immediacy, when, as you claim, the body is full automatic processing systems that have exactly the same limitation?
Yes it does. And we know this precisely becasue we see processes optimised for speed, and we can see processes optimised for additional functionality, and we see which areas in the brain they operate.
So we can the neurological difference between one person pulling their hand away from a hot-plate that might otherwise burn them, and another person being asked a question and thinking about the answer. We can see and measure the neural activity in each case. We can measure the time taken in each case. We can measure the output in each case. The first is very much optimised for speed. The latter is not.
If two examples of processing take place in different regions of the brain with different physical architecture, producing different patterns of outputs, under different resource restraints, with different timings, that suggests that the processing in each case is different. Not the same.
Why would we need to?
Because it runs on totally different physical architecture. All you need for genAI is the ability to train to a pattern such that you can reproduce new instances of the same pattern. It does not produce internal models of reality, not even in abstract. That’s why you can’t extract the reasons for a decision from an AI model. Human neurology works on the principle of content addressable memory, where the content is the label, and vice versa, thus allowing disperate systems to access what effectively becomes a commonly accessible store of memory, even while it remains modality-specific.
You’re conflating two different criteria here.
Yes you can adopt the belief that the human mind is simply processing choices automatically. No matter what evidence is unearthed, either now or in the future, you can adapt this theory to adjust. And Wayfarer can do the same with his model of the human mind and again no matter what evidence gets unearthed, he can adjust his view to suit.
In that sense, both views are ‘reasonable’. But by the same token there can not be any evidence for or against them.
What we’re left with is whether what we see in the science seems to indicate one way or the other, and it’s there that the science seems to count against you.
There’s no evidence (since the collapse of Libet) for the seperation of decision making and automatic processing. You’ve given no reason to suggest why free will might require perfect coordination with reality when automatic processes don’t. There’s no evidence to suggest that conscious decision making is illusory, and certainly no trace of the processing required to make or maintain that illusion. Models involving determined decision making fare poorly compared to those involving free will in actually predicting human behaviour. And the whole idea of a determined will is based on the assumption of a determined universe, which likewise has it’s own issues.
Because of your insistance that human cognition is divided into two neat categories, one of which makes decisions, and one of which only appears to do so.
I have not advanced any such requirement for seperation. Only you have. All I’ve pointed out is that since human cognition in different areas is measureably different, the idea that it all works according to the principles of sensory input is extremely unlikely.
You might as well argue the whole brain is basically just simple automatic stimulus-response, like someone snatching their hand away from an unexpected pain.
And there again. One thing can only drive another if they are seperate. Why such resistance to the idea of conscious decision making, such that you feel the need to create this seperation?
The first two are exactly what I was talking about when I said that Libet’s ideas ran into the sand 10-15 years ago.
The first is probably the study that really killed off the idea that what they were measuring was a decision process. It was detectable over 10 seconds (sic) before a decision was made, which is too long to fit into a decision model, and there’s still no evidence that the subjects were any less aware than the researchers of what they were going to decide. And then subsequent studies 2010-2015 (ref “veto studies”) showed that the effect still occured when no decision to act was taken.
It’s still a nice experiment, and I know Haggard was looking into using it as part of his model for conscious attention in schools, but it’s not an example of a conscious decision.
There’s a good discussion of this topic here, by one of the original experimenters of your cited study, published in 2024.
The last two studies you provided are examples of predictive processing in sensory input, which we agree occur. Nothing there about an absence of free will more generally, or anything to establish that such processing occurs more widely in the brain, outside sensory analysis.
There is a lot of truth to this when it comes to metaphysics. But we may advance a little if we take a look at the empirical evidence. On the panpsychist view I understand, it is argued that physics is silent on experience, it does not show that elementary stuff is either mental or non-mental.
On the psychological side, which is where we recognize consciousness, we see that it arises it certain configurations of matter such as in the brain of a human being (and a few other animals).
The issue is that I see no good reason to suspect that rocks or water have elementary experience. We should attempt parsimony as much as we can, I’d think.
Assuming that one has thoughts while listening to music as opposed to emotions. As for beautiful sunsets and beaches, blind people can’t see them, yet we know they think. This much should render suspect “imagistic” accounts of experience.
Because, as you said, physics is silent on experience - and not only because it does not show that elementary stuff is either mental or non-mental, but also because it does not show how higher level structures or processes can become conscious - I am skeptical that that is the answer. If there is no understanding of how consciousness arises in certain configurations of matter, such as in the brain of a human being, I question the belief that it does arise in such configurations. Obviously, it is in such configurations, but that doesn’t mean it is explained by such configurations.
It’s difficult to know. But I think we are thinking without words often.
A guy named Russell Hurlburt did studies on this kind of thing. Something called Descriptive Experience Sampling. He gave people devices that would beep at random times throughout the day. When it went off, they wrote down what they were thinking at that moment. They found that people were thinking non-linguistically 75% of the time.
Of course, that’s only if you believe that’s possible.
I haven’t read about it, so I don’t have more info. I only, coincidentally, heard about it for the first time two days ago.
“Images” is just a catch-all, as Damasio says in Feeling and Knowing: Manning Minds Conscious:
I just thought of this. Maybe the most famous piece of music ever is the opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Do you know the theme?
I don’t explicitly recall. I’m familiar with the 9th, of course.
That’s maybe another good example. Although the most famous theme of the 9th is sung at times, with German lyrics. So if you know German, and know what the lyrics are, it wouldn’t be a good example.
Here’s the 5th. I assume you recognize it?
Yes, I listened to a part, I do recognize it.
I’m still on the idea of thinking without language. You can hum or whistle the first few seconds of Beethoven’s 5th whenever you want. You can probably even “play” it in your head, silently. If I say, “Think of the opening to Beethoven’s 5th”, you can easily do so.
My question is, although there is no language associated with that music, are you thinking it as you whistle, hum, or play it silently in your head?
I am not saying that there is no thinking outside language, I’ve in fact explicitly said the opposite. What I am trying to get at is that we don’t know what it is. You can point to images, emotions, patterns and so on, but this seems to me like William James “blooming buzzing confusion”.
I am doing something when I listen to that song (or any song). Maybe it is thinking, maybe it is not. I can’t tell the difference I am supposed to spot in a case in which thinking occurs vs. a case in which thinking does not occur.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. Not positive I’m perfectly clear now, but hopefully at least some better.
I think I understand what you are getting at, regarding when listening to music. But I think it’s a different thing in this scenario, in which you are intentionally “playing” music in your head.
And still different when you are not hearing anything, but have a song stuck in your head.