The subjective observer is a fictional character

[jamest]

Actually, what's your take on 'experience' itself? Are you an eliminative materialist, or more of a central state theorist? Or, perhaps, an epiphenomenalist? It appears as though we've extended the reach of the 'creativity' issue, so perhaps we can discuss aspects of the philosophy of the mind. I believe that I can expose more flaws in your theory, if you're open to such discussion.

James, have you ever heard of how a fox will try to chew off its own leg after having had the experience of it's getting caught in a trap? That's what you appear to be doing here.

Nah, I've just recognised the need to change tack, as the focus upon creativity wasn't culminating with anything significant.

[jamest]

Hence, I'm peturbed by your apparent avoidance of my pertinent questions. Why would you avoid specifying your particular materialistic bent? Could it be that you are aware of the criticisms that I will present in response to your beliefs?

Damn. The irritation is going both ways. I flat out do not see where your questions have not been answered, each a half dozen different ways.

Well, if a half-dozen was commensurate with zero, then I could understand your concerns. The point is that the questions that I asked Graham to answer, were only asked a few hours ago and were essentially an invite to discuss different avenues of his perspective. As yet, he has avoided answering those questions.

That is, further criticisms of his theory are dependent upon understanding the specifics of his particular materialistic bent. It would be pointless, for instance, for me to focus upon the negative aspects of 'eliminativism', if Graham wasn't an eliminativist.

[SpeedOfSound]

Hence, I'm peturbed by your apparent avoidance of my pertinent questions. Why would you avoid specifying your particular materialistic bent? Could it be that you are aware of the criticisms that I will present in response to your beliefs?

Damn. The irritation is going both ways. I flat out do not see where your questions have not been answered, each a half dozen different ways.

Well, if a half-dozen was commensurate with zero, then I could understand your concerns. The point is that the questions that I asked Graham to answer, were only asked a few hours ago and were essentially an invite to discuss different avenues of his perspective. As yet, he has avoided answering those questions.

That is, further criticisms of his theory are dependent upon understanding the specifics of his particular materialistic bent. It would be pointless, for instance, for me to focus upon the negative aspects of 'eliminativism', if Graham wasn't an eliminativist.

Actually, what's your take on 'experience' itself? Are you an eliminative materialist, or more of a central state theorist? Or, perhaps, an epiphenomenalist? It appears as though we've extended the reach of the 'creativity' issue, so perhaps we can discuss aspects of the philosophy of the mind. I believe that I can expose more flaws in your theory, if you're open to such discussion.

Well it appears that he isn't online so I don't quite understand your irritation. If you asked me this question I would have to tell you that I am neither of these things. My opinion is that both of those labels were created by people who had beliefs about other peoples beliefs and they were wrong.

It's kind of like me calling a christian an 'ignorant fucktard'. Doesn't really say much except about my opinion. So I don't think a discussion of strawman philosophical labels is going to happen around here. I believe in science and it's explanatory power. Outside of that my beliefs are like loose fitting garments. From Walmart. But even with science the belief is not rigid or solid. Science is my trusty friend who had not let me down. Yet.

[jamest]

Hence, I'm peturbed by your apparent avoidance of my pertinent questions. Why would you avoid specifying your particular materialistic bent? Could it be that you are aware of the criticisms that I will present in response to your beliefs?

Damn. The irritation is going both ways. I flat out do not see where your questions have not been answered, each a half dozen different ways.

Well, if a half-dozen was commensurate with zero, then I could understand your concerns. The point is that the questions that I asked Graham to answer, were only asked a few hours ago and were essentially an invite to discuss different avenues of his perspective. As yet, he has avoided answering those questions.

That is, further criticisms of his theory are dependent upon understanding the specifics of his particular materialistic bent. It would be pointless, for instance, for me to focus upon the negative aspects of 'eliminativism', if Graham wasn't an eliminativist.

Actually, what's your take on 'experience' itself? Are you an eliminative materialist, or more of a central state theorist? Or, perhaps, an epiphenomenalist? It appears as though we've extended the reach of the 'creativity' issue, so perhaps we can discuss aspects of the philosophy of the mind. I believe that I can expose more flaws in your theory, if you're open to such discussion.

Well it appears that he isn't online so I don't quite understand your irritation. If you asked me this question I would have to tell you that I am neither of these things. My opinion is that both of those labels were created by people who had beliefs about other peoples beliefs and they were wrong.

It's kind of like me calling a christian an 'ignorant fucktard'. Doesn't really say much except about my opinion. So I don't think a discussion of strawman philosophical labels is going to happen around here. I believe in science and it's explanatory power. Outside of that my beliefs are like loose fitting garments. From Walmart. But even with science the belief is not rigid or solid. Science is my trusty friend who had not let me down. Yet.

If Graham is a materialist, then he has to specify the particulars of his own philosophy so that I might address those details. I'm certainly willing to discuss the problems inherent within any materialistic philosophy, but cannot do so unless details are forthcoming.
As for your own personal beliefs - I cannot address them either, since you have not specified them.

[SpeedOfSound]

If Graham is a materialist, then he has to specify the particulars of his own philosophy so that I might address those details. I'm certainly willing to discuss the problems inherent within any materialistic philosophy, but cannot do so unless details are forthcoming.
As for your own personal beliefs - I cannot address them either, since you have not specified them.

Beliefs are less of a problem if you just don't let them in the house.

I believe that science can tell us everything we know about the mind. I believe there could be something that science can't explain but I have no idea what that would be or even what it would be like.

I believe that we and our minds are just little teeny parts of something huge and our minds are not special.

[GrahamH]

Graham. You should clean this up up so we don't have to keep knocking down the little man stuffed with straw.

I call James on this. I don't think I wrote that at all. In fact I think it is an unoriginal derogative invention by James. Quote me James. Include a link and context.

I have referred several times to brains responding to their environment, which includes the activity and structure of the brain itself, and other people with brains. I don't call that 'just responding to the environment'.

But if you define everything here as the environment, then brains ARE just responding to their environment.

Actually, what's your take on 'experience' itself? Are you an eliminative materialist, or more of a central state theorist? Or, perhaps, an epiphenomenalist? It appears as though we've extended the reach of the 'creativity' issue, so perhaps we can discuss aspects of the philosophy of the mind. I believe that I can expose more flaws in your theory, if you're open to such discussion.

It is your phrase James, just your phrase, just your response to stimuli, just your mind.

What is? If there's no subjective observer involved in human interaction, why would 'you' mind if I rubbished your claims? That's a serious question btw - not a subtle way of rubbishing you.
It occurs to me that if there's no 'subjective observer', then wtf is 'the ego' about? I'd like a considered response to that.

This is why I would like you define your understanding of 'subjective observer' and 'observing qualia', so that we can understand each other. Do you think 'ego' and 'subjective observer' are the same thing, or is ego a fiction observed by the SO?

You don't believe that any aspect of mind has anything to do with brain activity and that the apparent correlations are only there to mislead people who think science can reveal how things work. It seems you are unwilling to entertain the hypothesis that the brain might be responsible for at least some aspects of mind. If that is the case is there any point discussing this with you? Your challenges have not been constructive so far. they amount to you saying 'but the mind does that!' for any aspect of brain activity that accounts for an aspect of mind. This is a an example. You can't grasp the fact that a brain that responds to senses, interprets them and recognises objects is 'an observer' of the world around it. It may not be a 'subjective observer', that is the topic, but it performs the functions of observation.

It is very good of you to offer to critique my theory, but I think you should attempt to comprehend it before throwing any more rotten cabbages. No harm done so far.

I comprehend it plenty... and I have civilly entertained everything that you've said on the matter. If I didn't understand it, then I would have no basis for countering it. Also, please remember that this thread was instigated at my request - in the hope that you would defend, to the hilt - the materialistic rejection of a 'subjective observer'. Hence, I'm peturbed by your apparent avoidance of my pertinent questions. Why would you avoid specifying your particular materialistic bent? Could it be that you are aware of the criticisms that I will present in response to your beliefs? I see nothing other than negative reasons for your evasiveness. Perhaps you can put my mind at ease? Certainly, if this thread was started by me to positively promote my own philosophy, then I wouldn't be doing the tango every time somebody asked me a difficult question. The reason for that is that I would need to justify to myself that I could respond to any credible counters to my philosophy, or else I wouldn't have a philosophy of any worth.

The wider scope of my philosophy is not relevant and pining a label on it will not advance the topic. It should be plain to you that I am approaching the topic with the hypothesis that physical brains account for 'subjective experience' and that 'subjectivity' is a representation, a fiction or model, used by the brain to guide its responses. Pin a label to that if it makes you happy, but don't bother asking me what I think matter really is.

Now, in the interest of communication, can you explain what you mean by 'observing qualia'?

I see this as a 'turning of the tables', Graham. An attempt, by you, to divert the progress of our enquiry onto my own beliefs. But if I wanted to discuss my own beliefs, then I would have started a thread about them. As stated, this thread is supposed to be about the reasons for rejecting the existence of a 'subjective observer'. It's not supposed to be about the reasons for rejecting anything else, including my own philosophy.

That is not to say that I won't be defending my own philosophy, at some future moment. However, I'm convinced that such an endeavour would be foolish, until after I have deconstructed certain obstacles that - for no reason - appear to muddy my own path.

I didn't ask you defend anything. I asked about your understanding of some terms that are key to this topic so that I know what you mean when you use them. I want to talk about 'observing qualia', but I suspect I mean something very different to you. If I am not to confuse you it would be best to know what the phrase means to you. I'm not going to ask you to defend what you say in reply to that question.

[GrahamH]

Actually, what's your take on 'experience' itself? Are you an eliminative materialist, or more of a central state theorist? Or, perhaps, an epiphenomenalist? It appears as though we've extended the reach of the 'creativity' issue, so perhaps we can discuss aspects of the philosophy of the mind. I believe that I can expose more flaws in your theory, if you're open to such discussion.

James, have you ever heard of how a fox will try to chew off its own leg after having had the experience of it's getting caught in a trap? That's what you appear to be doing here.

Nah, I've just recognised the need to change tack, as the focus upon creativity wasn't culminating with anything significant.

I think it did culminate in something significant James.

[GrahamH]

A hypothetical basis for physical brains to be creative in generating ideas has been established in principle. If brains contain representations of objects, relationships, generally 'concepts', then new concepts can be generated by semi-random permutation combined with a selection process that might somehow recognise a new combination as a fit with a problem, task to be performed, opportunity etc.

(I will say more about physical recognition later. For the moment I ask you to suppose that neural networks can learn to recognise generalised patterns.)

Whether this accounts for all creativity is too big a question to cover here, and we aren't justifying the claim with science, but in principle physical brains might be creative.

The justification that has been presented is that human creativity does fit this model. Entirely new ideas do not seem to occur to us. Invention takes existing concepts together with new observations of the physical world and makes something new in the form of a new combination of the pre-existing elements. If this is representative of all human creativity it is something that a mechanism that manipulates concepts might be able to do.

The idea could be falsified, at least to reject the possibility that all creativity can be accounted for in this way, by presenting an example of genuinely novel concept without antecedents. So far no falsifying examples have been presented and I can't think of any.

The relevance to the topic is that creative brains might be able to represent fictional concepts in the same way they represent real objects of perception. A brain might combine concepts of 'People out there' and 'people have minds' and 'I am a person' to get 'I am a person with a mind'.

I suspect evolution may have taken this route since recognising other creatures as objects seems the most critical to survival. After that it becomes highly beneficial to develop an instinctive theory of mind that predicts how these other creatures will behave. As that develops, social interaction can emerge. Social interaction is greatly benefited if the individuals can predict their own behaviour, which can be achieve by applying the tools of ToM used to model others to model the individual itself.

We haven't got to subjective experience yet, but we have the possibility of evolved physical brains evaluating and predicting self behaviour in relation to the world and fellow creatures. A mechanism that can predict the behaviour of another creature knows something about other creatures, and knows something about itself (as a creature), even though it doesn't engage in the sort of abstract thought and introspection we are familiar with. It doesn't know that it knows.

I don't suppose there will be any questions or challenges to that so we will soon get on to subjectivity.

[Kenny Login]

'In the gap between subject and object lies the entire misery of humankind.'

J. Krishnamurti

(What a lovely man.)

[jamest]

Graham, you are supposed to be eradicating all traces of creative thinking from our brains, but you're not doing a very good job.

Give me an example of an entirely new idea.

How about the idea of solipsism? (At its conception, of course).

Now, this is an interesting one - certainly when associated with claims that the world doesn't really exist - since now, the solipsist IS the environment!!

Regardless, how would you attempt to whitewash this new idea?

I would suggest that solipsism in an extension of the experience of dreams, which are recapitulations of elements of world experience. The nascent solipsist notes that there can be a seeming reality to dreams and supposes they are unreal and made by something.

Hold on, you've already rejected the notion of personal and singular review (the subjective observer). Here, you appear to be talking about One who is reviewing 'the data' and comparing it to other data. Sin bin!

You cannot set about rejecting the notion of a subjective observer by utilising him in that rejection.

The NS knows that he makes things, and some things he asks for he gets, so he simply connects experience A to experience B
I make...I experience.

And that covers the depth of solipsism?

It was perhaps a novel idea in the sense that it was a new combination of existing concepts. It is a common idea. I expect many children go through it when they get a stage of contemplating dreams.

Your theory shouldn't be expecting anyone to go through it, since you've already stated that our responses to the environment are driven by that environment.

[jamest]

If brains contain representations of objects, relationships, generally 'concepts', then new concepts can be generated by semi-random permutation combined with a selection process that might somehow recognise a new combination as a fit with a problem, task to be performed, opportunity etc.

C'mon, that's just gobbledygook. Do you really think that there's any solid explanation within this statement?

Entirely new ideas do not seem to occur to us. Invention takes existing concepts together with

Hold on. If new ideas/concepts don't occur to us, then how did "existing concepts" ever come into understanding?
The point is that each and every idea/concept must have an origin (they must have been 'new' at some point). Which means, undoubtedly, that the human mind has the capacity to create new ideas/concepts.

[GrahamH]

Graham, you are supposed to be eradicating all traces of creative thinking from our brains, but you're not doing a very good job.
...

Hold on, you've already rejected the notion of personal and singular review (the subjective observer). Here, you appear to be talking about One who is reviewing 'the data' and comparing it to other data. Sin bin!

You cannot set about rejecting the notion of a subjective observer by utilising him in that rejection.

Look, James, I'm am not denying that people are creative or report a subjective point of view. That would be absurd and it is absurd of you to assume it.

I am considering how a physical brain might account for this with no appeal to something else. I am questioning the assumption that 'subjectivity' has ontological significance.

Obviously brains are subject to effects from senses, body chemistry and their own internal states. So an individual brain does necessarily have a singular view, if it do any interpretation of 'data'.

The information it receive is not the information another brain receives and the way it processes that data will be unique in some respects due to the unique variations in the growth of every brain.

So put your straw away and try to engage constructively with the idea.

[SpeedOfSound]

(I will say more about physical recognition later. For the moment I ask you to suppose that neural networks can learn to recognise generalised patterns.)

Whether this accounts for all creativity is too big a question to cover here, and we aren't justifying the claim with science, but in principle physical brains might be creative.

a little on creativity. I have my own theory though it's more of a robbers sack of other peoples research.

The cortical sheet contains about 200,000,000 mini-columns that seem to be the Lego blocks of any given representation. Vernon Mountcastle has persuaded most of this MC structure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_minicolumn

MC's can contain around 100 neurons and they act as a functional I/O unit. I'm a bit foggy on this but my understanding is that the columns can overlap. One neuron can be used in more than one Lego. They do this with a brain trick that is also called lateral inhibition (like it is in the retina) and it means that for a given set of inputs that the column will 'define itself' by inhibiting a barrel of neurons around it.

There is a Big Myth that we use only 10% of our brains. That has no evidence whatever and never did. It was something the media misunderstood and picked up. By the time we are 24 we have used everything and are reusing all of it.

But due to the structure of MC's you can reuse a neuron without forgetting the old fact. The memory magic is in the connections and there can be up to 10,000 of them per neuron. But the magic is in an even stranger place in actuality. It is in the structure of the network thus formed. One neuronal group can be a part of many completely unrelated concepts and memories.

My unique idea is that there is some crosstalk to this process. There has to be. If a neuron fires it is likely to fire again. If I'm an engineer and I have happened to store my kid swinging with some facts about bridges with overlap than I am likely to contribute to my team an idea about swings and bridges.

We are each astronomically unique in our creativity as a result of this sort of thing. It's really quite obvious in people with ADD( attention deficit disorder). I talked yesterday about the contradiction of having a same overall structure with our actual neural networks being completely unique.

The same oddness is present in neural networks. We can all learn what a chair is but the fine grained neural net that supports it is completely unrecognizable between two individuals. I have a term for that that I use in other philosophical concepts. Ontologically shallow. Edelman just calls it degeneracy.

Any given session of thought, conversation, and bombardment of the senses is going to create massive electrical storms that pour over these columnar networks and across the entire brain. Like sheets of rain in a gale.

So my big question is not why are we creative but how and the hell do we stop ourselves from being too fucking off-the-wall creative and get anything done at all.

(Numerous papers by Mountcastle and Edelman are my source for all of this.)

edit: sorry I got my heroes mixed up. corrected. But it is just another example of those mini-columns cross-talking.

[SpeedOfSound]

Graham, you are supposed to be eradicating all traces of creative thinking from our brains, but you're not doing a very good job.
...
Your theory shouldn't be expecting anyone to go through it, since you've already stated that our responses to the environment are driven by that environment.

More straw from the straw-spin-master.

[SpeedOfSound]

James. You have been corrected by Graham and I yesterday about your misinterpreting what he said about creativity and SE. If you don't read the current posts and correct your course according to further explanations then things are going to get personal and heated again.

Last night you said that creativity has not been addressed. All of my posts about the brain addressed it. So has Graham. I would like you to read my brain posts and tell me how what I have described could possibly NOT allow for individual creativity and variance with similar environmental input.

No one here but you EVER said that human brains could not respond in uniquely creative ways!

The point of contention here should be whether or not physical brains can account for the creativity NOT whether or not it EXISTS! The latter is YOUR strawman.

Clear?