The subjective observer is a fictional character

[SpeedOfSound]

Because brain states that are PURELY responses to the environment, cannot - by logical default - exhibit 'creative' tendencies.

Why? And who ever said "PURELY' other than you?

Graham did. Brain states are just responses to the environment, he said. But to exhibit 'creativity', they'd have to be something other than just that.

Either he misspoke or you took it out of context.

[Trolldor]

Because brain states that are PURELY responses to the environment, cannot - by logical default - exhibit 'creative' tendencies.

Why? And who ever said "PURELY' other than you?

Graham did. Brain states are just responses to the environment, he said. But to exhibit 'creativity', they'd have to be something other than just that.

No. If a brain responds to the environment, then the imagination is the mimicry of response.

[jamest]

Because brain states that are PURELY responses to the environment, cannot - by logical default - exhibit 'creative' tendencies.

Why? And who ever said "PURELY' other than you?

Graham did. Brain states are just responses to the environment, he said. But to exhibit 'creativity', they'd have to be something other than just that.

Either he misspoke or you took it out of context.

No, he must stick with that theory, or else he cannot say that an individual's response to the environment is JUST caused by that environment. That is, he'd have to concede that brain states were more than JUST responses to the environment... which kinda mucks up his theory.

[jamest]

Because brain states that are PURELY responses to the environment, cannot - by logical default - exhibit 'creative' tendencies.

Why? And who ever said "PURELY' other than you?

Graham did. Brain states are just responses to the environment, he said. But to exhibit 'creativity', they'd have to be something other than just that.

No. If a brain responds to the environment, then the imagination is the mimicry of response.

Yer what? I don't understand.

[Trolldor]

The brain fires in certain ways in order to respond to stimuli. If the brain fires in certain ways in the absence of stimuli it produces the same result, that's hallucination.

Memory stores information of events, the brain shapes those events in to sounds, colours, "movement". What if you recalled a memory that never happened? Either you're delusional, or you're imagining things.

[GrahamH]

Because brain states that are PURELY responses to the environment, cannot - by logical default - exhibit 'creative' tendencies.

Why? And who ever said "PURELY' other than you?

Graham did. Brain states are just responses to the environment, he said. But to exhibit 'creativity', they'd have to be something other than just that.

I did ? I said brains are part of their own environment, as are other people.

I don't think creativity necessarily requires more than vast experience of a hugely diverse world full of relations that work, evolved solutions, people undertaking trial and error adaptation on a vast scale and communicating the results to each other.

Creativity is like evolution. I suspect the brain makes trial and error connections between concepts known from experience of the world, until it recognises a fit between a new combination and a current obstacle or opportunity. Random variation plus selection produces novel adaptations. Results that fit become inputs to further permutation. At some stage when the fit is particularly good, attentional circuits make this new information 'Something I know', which is what we call becoming conscious of a good idea.

This is why answers 'pop into our heads', they are not products of subjectivity or consciousness. 'conscious thought' is a process of arranging known concepts so that they keep getting fed into the permutations.



Why did you suggest that I start this thread James? To give you another platform to spout your ideas?

[jamest]

The brain fires in certain ways in order to respond to stimuli. If the brain fires in certain ways in the absence of stimuli it produces the same result, that's hallucination.

Memory stores information of events, the brain shapes those events in to sounds, colours, "movement". What if you recalled a memory that never happened? Either you're delusional, or you're imagining things.

I don't see what your point is, since I'm arguing against the claim that brain states are JUST responses to the environment. Clearly, if I'm hallucinating or being aware of things that have no equal in the environment, then my brain states must be something other than JUST responses to that environment.

[Trolldor]

It's the same function. I can grasp my hand around a bottle, and I can do the same movement in the absence of a bottle. "Grasping" is not contingent on a bottle, but it being labelled Grasping is.

[Surendra Darathy]

Because brain states that are PURELY responses to the environment, cannot - by logical default - exhibit 'creative' tendencies.

Really? Then, all responses any organism makes to the environment are "determined"? That must explain why species go extinct. They were fated to do so from the Beginning of Time as ordained by The Great Oogly-Googly.

I don't see where you draw the line between "creative responses" entered into by "ensouled beings" and any responsiveness whatsoever to the environment. You seem not to care that lots of critters exhibit far more than reflexive behavior, unless you believe nobody but humans operate on anything but reflex and instinct, and that there isn't an evolutionary path through animal brains to the human. Just around the corner is James' reminding us that "evolution is just a theory".

Thus goes the circular argument about the "special sauce" dolloped over human beings, and no other organism. As proven by what? From where in the environment comes the reflex determining that an animal has had enough to eat? Where do you draw the line between the autonomic and the so-called "creative"?

[Surendra Darathy]

You are hopelessly stuck on this dualist version of mind and your religious beliefs.

Wake UP!!!

Actually, I'm just entertaining Graham's theory. I don't even believe in the reality of brains, remember?

Remember, James, unless you are a metaphysician, or an SoS-materialist-mystic, you don't believe in the "reality" of anything. But even if you're not either of those, you can still try to do something with the idea that the brain is where you should go to model where behavior is organised. The difference between SoS-middlism-mystical-materialism and your stuff is that

SoSM3ism

doesn't have any special sauce in it. That M-cubed brain is one speecy-spicy meatball.

SoS, you're a cubist-abstract expressionist materialist mystic middlist. Maybe even a gold-middlist in the brain olympics.

O-limbics?

[Surendra Darathy]

I can see we will need to have a definition of what 'subjective observer' means in order to keep some focus (I thought it was obvious enough).

We humans 'have subjective experiences' where it seems 'I observe the world and my thoughts and experience qualia'.

Actually, it should be "I observe qualia and experience the world". Whether there IS a world beyond my experience of it, because of those qualia, is a metaphysical issue. Something that we probably want to avoid right now.

But then, you don't distinguish between "reality" and a "model". A model is just a description of how things work. If you can predict anything with it, so much the better for you, because it allows you to anticipate conditions in the environment, like approaching shitstorms.

[Surendra Darathy]

I suspect the brain makes trial and error connections between concepts known from experience of the world, until it recognises a fit between a new combination and a current obstacle or opportunity. Random variation plus selection produces novel adaptations. Results that fit become inputs to further permutation. At some stage when the fit is particularly good, attentional circuits make this new information 'Something I know', which is what we call becoming conscious of a good idea.

+1

Learning (for humans), otherwise known as "conditioning". The difference with humans is that humans (at least some of them) recognise the advantage of constantly updating their "conditioning". It's what you might call "creativity". Why some people keep using the same failing responses over and over again is what one might call "bat shit crazy".

I'm arguing against the claim that brain states are JUST responses to the environment. Clearly, if I'm hallucinating or being aware of things that have no equal in the environment, then my brain states must be something other than JUST responses to that environment.

But you seem to be arguing against the claim that part of the activity in the brain consists of testing other activity in the brain against the expectation of the environment it finds itself in. That's why hallucinations are called hallucinations.

[GrahamH]

I can see we will need to have a definition of what 'subjective observer' means in order to keep some focus (I thought it was obvious enough).

We humans 'have subjective experiences' where it seems 'I observe the world and my thoughts and experience qualia'.

Actually, it should be "I observe qualia and experience the world". Whether there IS a world beyond my experience of it, because of those qualia, is a metaphysical issue. Something that we probably want to avoid right now.

There might be something significant in there.

What does it mean to 'observe qualia'?

[Kenny Login]

I can see we will need to have a definition of what 'subjective observer' means in order to keep some focus (I thought it was obvious enough).

We humans 'have subjective experiences' where it seems 'I observe the world and my thoughts and experience qualia'.

We assume this is the case for all humans, regardless of beliefs, personality, self identity and other aspects of 'mind'.

LI pared 'mind' right back to this minimal, ego-less, identity-less 'I'.

Is this a definition we can agree on, regardless of whether it refers to anything real. I think this is the fundamental that objectors of brain = mind point to and say that a physical object cannot give rise to 'subjectivity'.

I think 'observer' is a good one to explore - 'subjective' seems to derail into all sorts of complications around the personality and conditioned response, and the 'I' even more so. Just my 2 cents though.

[Surendra Darathy]

I can see we will need to have a definition of what 'subjective observer' means in order to keep some focus (I thought it was obvious enough).

We humans 'have subjective experiences' where it seems 'I observe the world and my thoughts and experience qualia'.

Actually, it should be "I observe qualia and experience the world". Whether there IS a world beyond my experience of it, because of those qualia, is a metaphysical issue. Something that we probably want to avoid right now.

There might be something significant in there.

What does it mean to 'observe qualia'?

I think it means "to talk about qualia". YMMV. Can the Great Oogly-Googly create such furiously-sleeping, colorless, green qualia that he can't be rid of them? What a nightmare. Why are qualia always so red? Green is just as furious as red.