The Conversation With WeekendFisher Continues

[WeekendFisher has posted another portion to the mind-as-physical argument, HERE.]

Hi WF,
OK, we now have more to discuss.

First, I need to define the use of the word, “determinism”, which is ubiquitous in the following post.

Determinism is the concept that all motion, action, and response in the universe is pre-determined by (a) initial conditions at t=0; (b) forcing function provided by the four forces of physics; (c) the inertia (mass) and the shape of the inertia of the object being acted upon (d) with a mathematically describable response in the target object and the force(es), (e) which is amenable to hypothesis formation and deductive experimental replication for non-falsification.

Contrary to my understanding of your previous statement, which I took to mean that the mind is separate from the brain but uses the brain, I now understand that you actually take this firm position:

“I would not say that 'the mind operates the brain'; I would say that the brain is the basis for the mind. I doubt that there is anything that the mind does independently of the brain.”

I take the liberty to understand “basis” to mean that the mind is fully dependent upon the brain, both for its existence and for its generation and processing of thoughts, causation of voluntary motor activities of the body, and causal for the autonomic organic functions. So essentially the mind is a subset of the brain, or the mind is inseparable from the brain.

For examples of this you use two lesser, non-conscious, non-agent, completely deterministic autonomic items: digestion and computers. For digestion you say this:

“though you wouldn't necessarily see a change in the stomach itself for every change in its contents because there are things like enzymes involved.”

I take this allusion to mean that the stomach is equivalent to the organic hardware required, and is merely used by the presence of digestive juices which are distinct and separate from the organ itself. But if that is the correct interpretation, and it might not be, then the analog fails because the stomach does participate in the digestion process; it actually does this, as follows:

The stomach wall is the organ which contains separate modules which secrete free hydrogen ions and free chlorine ions separately in order to combine in the stomach to produce HCl for tearing apart foods and food components; the stomach also produces mucus to protect its own walls from being attacked by the hydrochloric acid which it secretes, and it secretes enzymes as well. So the stomach is not merely a passive bucket containing enzymes (which the stomach also secretes). But the entire operation is completely deterministic, responding to cause with an appropriate effect. In no manner is it non-deterministic, in terms of creativity, agency, will, etc.

The entire digestive process is fully controlled by the Enteric Nervous System (ENS), which is a local neural processor/controller which allows for feedback messaging and neurological feedback control of the digestive system. This is entirely deterministic. So digestion is a controller driven process following deterministic rules of operation.[Note 1]

Even if the stomach were just a passive bucket containing enzymes of unknown origin, it is not clear how that relates analogically to the brain being one and the same as the mind.

“…there are things that happen in the brain where I'd suspect, when we look at the the mechanisms, some of them will as transient as our thoughts”.

Frankly I have no idea how this relates to a proof that the brain is the sum total of mind, being the basis for the mind.

“Or if we use a computer analogy, the brain is something like hardware and the mind is something like software [firmware: BIOS]”

But this analogy fails also, because it does not allow for agency, creativity, consciousness, etc. This is overly reductive. Reduction of the mind/brain to BIOS/processor is a step in the wrong direction, toward determinism. In a computer, the BIOS merely allows the system to be put in an operational state, awaiting input from external, rational sources. Compared to non-deterministic mind, this reduction is not an adequate analog.

Even if we assume that all of the possible software ever required by a human is contained in a huge hardware-loaded firmware which is hardwired and always resident in the processor or fully contiguous to it, all that such a human “computer” could produce would be purely deterministic, because every operation is dependent upon prior states and inputs processed under deterministic rules for computation/data flow. This does not describe an intelligent agent which is non-deterministic, creative, etc.

Under the heading “Motivation”, the computer analogy is admittedly not applicable. Motivation is indicative of agency, which makes decisions not necessarily being grounded in prior states and predetermined rational operation being performed on current inputs. Because what sort of program would cause a computer to stop what it is doing and join up with the French Foreign Legion or Scientology – rejecting its prior worldview and First Principles for more appealing but less rational ideologies? A computer is not likely to do this, yet humans do it frequently.

For humans to be analogs of computers, the inputs have to be distinguished between data and instruction complexes (software). What humans get in school is data, not software installation. If humans merely received the installation of executable files, life would be easier for youngsters.

For humans, then, the analog requires the brain to contain a pre-existing set of complete instructions which cover everything which is necessary – and unnecessary yet commonly found in humans – for human operation in the physical world, and specifically for agency, creativity, non-deterministic actions, etc.

Again, how this is proof or demonstrative of the proposition that mind is wholly owned by the brain is not clear to me.

The final analogy goes thus:

” the stomach and digestion are basically automatic. That is to say, nothing really 'operates' that system except built-in biological functions. I think there is something analogous in the brain/mind where we have a built-in function of trying to understand and make sense of the world.”

Even though there are autonomous functions in the mind/brain combinations, there also is a plethora of mental/mind functions which are not only not autonomous but are free of the necessity for providing specific, given responses matched algorithmically to any input. Humans are demonstrably not automatons. Human capacities cannot be categorized as being completely contained in the Class:[automatic responses to all inputs].

This is my observation regarding the use of automatic feedback systems as avatars for human capacities: it does not include the most important differentiators of being human.

It appears to me that the analogs presented are too small, too limited in scope to reflect the actual range of the exquisite capabilities of human minds and intellect. The use of deterministic functions as self-limiting analogs for the human non-deterministic capacities and capabilities would be a Category Error, if that is the only reasoning which is used for the proposition that human mind is captive to the material, physical brain and to the laws of nature such as Cause and Effect and the Four Forces of Physics as limiting factors.

There is nothing known to physically exist which has the range of capability of the human mind, and which would serve as an adequate analog; the mind is superior to all other systems because it is unfettered by dependence on physics and cause and effect. Trying to use restrictive feedback control systems or mindless data processors as analogs is insufficient to serve as evidence for making a case that human mind is purely material.

” I'm curious ... I don't know what your view is: Would you say that a dog or cat has some kind of mind-duality going because they have a basic level of understanding? Or is duality something that begins at a higher level? Is duality just for humans, in your opinion? Does the dog's/cat's mind require duality in order to recognize you and be glad to see you? What functions do you see as needing some sort of transcendence? (Do you consider yourself a dualist? Or would you put it some other way?) I'm considering all those questions as general prompts to see what you think; feel free to pick whichever offers you the best starting point for explaining what you think.”

Starting with humans and going down the list in increasing order of deterministic actions, I personally surmise that dogs and cats do have creativity and agency, although in a limited sense. For example, when our cat was still prepubescent (a “sprat cat”) he came up to almost touching my face and looked eye-to-eye deeply into my right eye to see what was in there [insert your own joke here]. He cocked his head to see better, then he looked in with his other eye to validate his original findings, and his curiosity apparently was satisfied… presumably with no significant data discovered. Because it was an act of intellectual curiosity, his actions were clearly outside the domain of deterministic cause and effect acting on initial conditions.

Creativity is well documented in chimps, gorillas, crows and octopi. As for dualism, I certainly adhere to the type of dualism which was promoted by Locke, Russell, and is apparent in computers. The software does not arise from the hardware (or firmware); the software is not hardware; the processor hardware does nothing and is nothing without the software dancing through it (after firmware has initialized it). Yet it is designed specifically to accommodate and to provide software with a connection with material existence (in the form of voltages which are translatable as language or specified motion). Further, the processor possesses no language comprehension capacity other than processing bits, bytes and words as instructed. Language and complex semantic information is purely contained in the software and the inputs/outputs. The concept of “meaning” is not available to the processor/brain.

According to Bertrand Russell’s scenario, a human who is falling down obeys the laws of nature; a human who showers, dresses, goes out to catch a train to go to work is not driven to do so by any laws of nature. In fact, such a human defies certain laws of nature as s/he goes further and in different directions than are required by the action of the four forces on the body. Russell concluded that the mind, which causes muscles to work in obedience to its commands, is a different substance from other known substances and that it would one day be found by science. So Russell was a dualist, but only a “substance” dualist requiring an unknown and invisible substance to be in existence and hosting the mind.

This sort of dualism is the concept of non-deterministic agency, which serves as a defeater for deterministic examples and analogies. Non-deterministic agency does not exist in non-living nature, the mineral side of physical existence. Even in living things, many if not most creatures operate at a deterministic level. They operate low on Maslow’s pyramid, seeking only nourishment, reproduction, and safety. It is at the high end of life’s scale of complexity that non-determinism and agency are found.

It is only at that higher level that the restrictive laws of physics do not apply, the level where agency and creativity exist. Humans and their brains are held down by gravity; gravity does not cause the brain to function in a non-deterministic fashion. Similar statements apply to electromagnetism, the weak force and the strong force. And similar statements also apply to the initial conditions which are presented to every mental function.

And one more observation: humans do not cause their own agency, consciousness, and mental violations of the laws of physics; the unique violations of the laws of physics are available due to heredity without human intervention, the same process which propagates life. Those violations of the laws of physics demonstrate that either physics is woefully wanting in its analytical capabilities, or that there is no physical thing-in-itself which is involved with these non-physical capacities.

Those who are self-abused with belief in physicalist Scientism choose to believe that physics is merely woefully inadequate at the present time, but someday will become adequate to fully analyze the properties of nondeterminism, agency, consciousness, etc. This is because all existence is claimed to be material and therefore subject to deterministic empirical investigation.

I disagree, because that belief, in itself, lies outside these necessary axioms of science: cause and effect acting on initial conditions; universal determinism; universal constants and universal consistency over space-time; principles of conservation and perfect mathematical conversion, etc. In order to examine non-determinism, science must become something else other than is allowed by those axiomatic characteristics, and so it would necessitate science abandoning its requirements for validation of objective knowledge which are founded in empirical replicability and falsification. So it must become metaphysics, not physics.

Therefore Scientism cannot be the case, and it must be false.

So, I think that in order to prove your contention that the mind is the brain, or the mind is totally “in” the brain, as demonstrated by computers and computer science (and ignoring human inputs and design of software and hardware), it must be shown that computers can be made to perform as humans do: outside the restrictions of cause and effect operating on initial conditions, and can be made to demonstrate that the processor can be made to be volitional, with its actions based on its own wants, both temporary and permanent.

(E.g., a volitional computer should be used for medical purposes only if that’s where its interests lie and its ambitions drive it. But not if its interests and ambitions include only asserting sleep mode for extended periods, followed by downloading videos of “Jackass” while drunkenly consuming large amounts of resources, after which going directly back into sleep mode; repeat until resources are shut off.)

Conclusion to this post.
The analogies which have been selected to demonstrate that the mind is fully contained within the brain are both lesser entities than the entity being modeled as mind-analogic in the discussion. Both digestion and computers are limited to the predetermined responses of which they are capable. So the non-deterministic human characteristics which make the mind such a superior instrument are not modeled, and therefore those capacities are eliminated by using only these models as analogies.

This does not invalidate the intent of the argument, but it does demonstrate that more inclusive analogies are needed if the case is to be made by analogy. Of course, analogies always fail, some sooner than others; otherwise they wouldn't be analogies, they would be completely factual descriptions of the system being analogized. In order to make the case, it seems that a reason (or reasoning) must be found for the existence of non-determinism in the mind, when the entire physical universe other than the mind is deterministic and obeys laws which have been discovered by physicists, and which are necessary and sufficient for the entire universe, save minds. The mind/brain problem has been intractable to physicists and philosophers for that reason: while the brain seems to function deterministically in our very limited current abilities to assess, the mind does not, and obviously so.

Notes:
1. My own personal digestive feedback system experienced a change over time in the system gain, either in attenuation of the input signal to the processor or attenuation of the gain of the neurological processor. By chemically adjusting the system gain, the feedback system now regulates perfectly.

Weekend Fisher Replies

Weekend Fisher continues the argument for "natural" mind:

The purpose and goal of the mind

And I respond here.

WF says,

”I'd say that the mind is the natural function of the brain (and associated nervous system e.g. input from the eyes), and that the mind uses natural processes for operation.

From this and the previous statement originally made, I am beginning to understand that the statement does not say that the mind is a physical entity, recoverable for physical examination. This statement merely says that the purpose of the brain is to be host to the mind. The mind uses the brain.

Or does it really mean that?

The terminology, “natural function” is easily equivocated on the one hand and easily misdirected on the other. This is because if something exists, then it can be said to be natural. For example, as I’ll repeat below, if God exists, then God is natural even though God is not physical.

But that leaves the status of the mind itself somewhat in limbo. This is particularly the case if one attributes to the mind (and not to the brain) functions such as qualia, comprehension (in the sense of full understanding and realization of the reasons a concept is correct), in-the-moment awareness (full consciousness), conscience (which activates in grey areas of moral issues), ability to hypothesize deductively from inductive data, assess the self-evidence and necessity of First Principles and grounding, etc., etc.

So first we must assume a meaning: that the term “natural” actually means “to exist physically”. The hypothesis is then that both the brain AND the mind are purely physical, given that understanding of “natural”.

Next, the progression is made starting with fundamental awareness. Sensors are said to be aware of the parameter which is being sensed. So a thermostat is aware of temperature, when awareness is used in this manner. A 3D wide angle camera might be said to be fully aware of its immediate environment immediately in front of it. This seems to push the boundaries of the intent of the word, aware. But let’s move on.

The next step in the progression is to the creation of a world model based on sensory input, and presumably memory of consistency and non-consistency in occurrences. This is said to get us closer to the human mind, but not there yet.

The final step to the human mind includes the drive to complete, extend or enhance the world model.

It is not clear at this point how the progression leads to the concept that mind is purely physical, other than to invoke evolution, a subject we should address elsewhere and in full as necessary. The invocation of evolution as proof of a physical mind will not meet with success, because evolution is purely extrapolated inference: i.e., opinion which is given Appeal to Expert Opinion as its sole authority.

Now we get to this:

”Here are some ways we humans have come up with to empirically analyze our own comprehension, thoughts, and concepts, and we have come up with a good variety of ways.”

And the list of processes contains just these attempts to “see” a thought (the first seven are just tests for the contents of a thought):

1. “Tools like Rorshach tests”, et. al. These tools are tests not for the physical capture of a thought, but for analyzing the contents of thoughts. This applies to the first six items listed as well.

2. Brain scans. These scans do not show thoughts or mind; they show increased blood flow. The increased blood flow to actively functioning parts of the brain does not show thoughts. It shows additional nutrients being shuttled to actively functioning parts of the brain, and nothing more. What the neurons are doing is entirely and completely unknown, even though they are reacting to a question or issue. And how that neuronic activity translates into a mind is a layer beyond the neuronal unknown, and which is completely untouched by any scan of any blood flow OR even of bioelectric discharge monitoring.

3. Taking visual signals being transmitted to the brain and reconstituting them outside the skull into visual images is not the observation of a brain function, and is not a mental image. It is more akin to stealing cable signal from your neighbor, not stealing his actual pixels. Visual imaging signals are not thoughts.

Whether this technique actually is extensible to the monitoring of thoughts is a moot issue in the question of whether the mind that has the thought also comprehended the thought, forced the thought onto the brain, used the brain to coordinate motion in the hand for writing a thought, or used the brain to create music previously unheard. In other words, it would monitor the thought, not the mind which drives the brain to have the thought.

It should be obvious that the source of the thought is not addressed by monitoring the thought. Only if the thought is first presupposed to be caused by the brain could it ever be said to be caused by the brain (circular). That is false logic and false scientific process. And that still has no bearing on the existence of qualia, creativity, agency, etc. which are in the mind, not in the thought.

The author says this:

”I'm a professional coder with an interest in AI) that I haven't yet heard someone propose a mental function that I couldn't imagine a way of coding into a computer.”

While I’m sure you could code curiosity into a deterministic serial machine, can you code in creativity followed by realization? Do you really think that you can code in every human relationship, desire, lust, passion, intellectual neediness, intellectual fallacy due to improper axioms acquired by voluntary ideological bias, or need for belonging, or fear of rejection? Is there nothing about your own job which an algorithm cannot perform just as well?

You have to presume mental behaviors to be either (a) algorithmic or (b) huge full featured non-algorithmic programs with nearly infinite branching or (c) self-modifying on the fly, all the while not self-destructing (too often, anyway). Or maybe there is some sort of parallel programming you know about that I don’t. If so, please explain.

”There are perfectly natural ways to code awareness, evaluative framework, even the ability for a computer to add new abilities into its own design/framework and exceed its original instruction base.”

Please give an example of the ability to create new processor instructions. Unless that means that the new instruction for the processor is actually a combination of instructions the processor is already designed to handle at the level from machine code to internal electron flow, I am skeptical. I can see that a machine could be induced to create new subroutines or macros out of combinations of existing instructions, but to create new machine code instructions for which the processor has no designed ability to handle as valid input needs explanation.

Which is very interesting so please explain. But this in no manner leads with necessity or sufficiency to the conclusion that a mind/thought is a physical entity.

At this point I’m still not sure what you’re trying to say: is a mind/thought a completely physical thing, with the universal attributes of mass/energy existing in space/time?

Or are you saying that the mind/thought merely uses the brain as a physical platform for operating in the physical realm?

Those are two different interpretations of your statements. But they are not the same thing, at all. Saying that the mind is “natural” is indefinite in meaning. Either it is physical or it is not physical, but either of those might be termed natural. For example, if God exists, then God is natural although not physical. For that reason I don’t refer to Philosophical Naturalism, I refer to Philosophical Materialism, which is a purely physicalist view of existence (only mass/energy and space/time exist and nothing else).

Fighting off Philosophical Materialism, if that’s your intent, and I’m not sure that it is, is simple: it is internally non-coherent, because it makes a fundamental truth claim about existence which it cannot prove using its fundamental truth claim. It is also a Category Error.

I’ll leave it at that, and wait for your next response.

This is an interesting and engaging subject.

The Uniqueness Problem; Why Neuroscience Chokes on Comprehending the Mind

Another reason why the analogy of the brain as a computer fails:

The empty brain
Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer

"Think how difficult this problem is. To understand even the basics of how the brain maintains the human intellect, we might need to know not just the current state of all 86 billion neurons and their 100 trillion interconnections, not just the varying strengths with which they are connected, and not just the states of more than 1,000 proteins that exist at each connection point, but how the moment-to-moment activity of the brain contributes to the integrity of the system. Add to this the uniqueness of each brain, brought about in part because of the uniqueness of each person’s life history, and Kandel’s prediction starts to sound overly optimistic. (In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, the neuroscientist Kenneth Miller suggested it will take ‘centuries’ just to figure out basic neuronal connectivity.)

Meanwhile, vast sums of money are being raised for brain research, based in some cases on faulty ideas and promises that cannot be kept. The most blatant instance of neuroscience gone awry, documented recently in a report in Scientific American, concerns the $1.3 billion Human Brain Project launched by the European Union in 2013. Convinced by the charismatic Henry Markram that he could create a simulation of the entire human brain on a supercomputer by the year 2023, and that such a model would revolutionise the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders, EU officials funded his project with virtually no restrictions. Less than two years into it, the project turned into a ‘brain wreck’, and Markram was asked to step down.

We are organisms, not computers. Get over it. Let’s get on with the business of trying to understand ourselves, but without being encumbered by unnecessary intellectual baggage. The IP metaphor has had a half-century run, producing few, if any, insights along the way. The time has come to hit the DELETE key."

While I agree with most of this, it is hard to reconcile the idea that I have no visual memories with what seem to be actual visual memories to me. For instance, last week we had to euthanize our beloved 16 year old dog, who had suffered paralysis after his second severe seizure. I have a very vivid narrow beam visual memory of that event - not the surrounding environment, not the veterinarian and assistant who are blurs, but of my canine friend. There have been cases of people with total recall, down to the ability to count the number of pickets in a fence seen once, years ago. Which merely shows that much about the mind is inexplicable, and no map of the neuronal connections will tell us anything, especially if the map changes with each new experience.

Forty years ago it was commonly held that both the liver and the brain did not regenerate after damage (anti-liquor propaganda, I guess). It is now known that both do regenerate. Much more will be known in another 40 years. But I doubt that the mind will have been found as a physical lump anywhere in the cranium.

The Juvenile Brain

The frontal cortex (the logical, rational part of the brain) is the last part of the brain to mature, and it is not complete until the age of 25 - 30. The brain goes into a frenzy of wiring and unwiring and rewiring through this period. At the age of 15, the focus is on independence from authority, and not just parental authority: all authority save the tyranny of the peer group, which is also focused on rejecting authority.

Unfortunately the 15 year old has insufficient experience and common sense (which exacerbates the lack of Frontal Cortex development) to survive in actual independence or even comprehend what that entails, and many who gain actual independence at that age reap tragic results, demonstrating the quality of their judgmental abilities at that age.

Quote from this article at Harvardmagazine.com (read the whole thing):

”Human and animal studies, Jensen and Urion note, have shown that the brain grows and changes continually in young people—and that it is only about 80 percent developed in adolescents. The largest part, the cortex, is divided into lobes that mature from back to front. The last section to connect is the frontal lobe, responsible for cognitive processes such as reasoning, planning, and judgment. Normally this mental merger is not completed until somewhere between ages 25 and 30—much later than these two neurologists were taught in medical school.”

This is why I have repeatedly suggested that ALL worldviews be subjected to honest analysis in full adulthood. Otherwise you are stuck with a juvenile understanding.

Thoughts My Synapses Never Had...

Materialism claims that humans are less then they appear.

Theism claims that they are more than they appear.

Both cannot be right. Neither can be proven.

The issue becomes, reductively speaking, one of individual taste.

Or, analytically speaking, the issue is what do I observe? Are humans not conscious agents, after all? What do I observe to support that? Do we receive notification from our neurons that they have decided to go see grandma, or that they have decided to build a skyscraper, and then we, consciously say, "OK, message received", and then sit back and watch as our neurons accompish their objective?

What if we consciously don't want to do what the neurons want us to do? Can we rebel, and take over for our conscious selves? Or is our conscious self locked down to the point where we cannot even question the decisions made by our neurons? Are we completely captives?

Humans ARISE! Overthrow your neurons! Justice for the Conscious! Think a Thought Consciously!

A Mind Seeks Itself; Part 1: Monism

[Author’s note: This is the first of a series addressing Monism and Dualism as they relate to Atheism. The next in the series will address Mental Monism.]


This is the beginning of a series of short articles that will cover the various ideas of MIND, what it is and what it is not thought to be. The idea of mind and its relation to transcendence vs. its attachment to the specifically material neurological glob called the brain has been a mainstay of both philosophy and of science. It also is central to the debate between Theism and Atheism.

Monism has many variants, all based on the idea of unity or oneness. For example, if the highest type of existence is counted, there would be only one, not more than one. So the argument of Monistic Mind reduces to a more basic question, that of, “what is the highest level of existence?”

The entire Monist concept, ultimate unity, appears to be a philosophical non-essential, yet one that philosophers cannot seem to avoid. It even appears that Dualism conflicts with Monism not in the fundamental of unity, but at the level of existence where that unity exists.

What is there that leads away from a multiplicity of superior existences, and restricts the realm of possible existences to just one, unified, all inclusive category?

In fact, Monism works downwards, too, with the underlying constitution of all existence thought to be just one. There is a “God Parable” that asks, if there were not a firm base for existence, how would God have known where to begin? [Note 1]. Without a constitutional monism, an infinite regress conundrum exists.

So does all existence cohere at the top level, or at the bottom? Or both?

Material Monism: Philosophical Materialism / Naturalism

This discussion will be limited to three monisms, partly because there are too many to cover outside of a book or at least a chapter, and partly because these are the three most pertinent to Atheism and are the ones that interest me. The three under consideration here are Material Monism, Mental Monism, and Neutral Monism.

Material Monism insists that unity is acquired at the physical, material level, and that nothing exists beyond that: the material level is the highest level of existence. The evidence for this is negative only, in the sense that no non-material reality can be detected by human sense perception, therefore there is no non-material reality. In other words, the materiality of human senses provides inductive proof of lack of the existence non-materiality. Once the Material Monist “Law” of Existence is established, of course, many hypotheses may be deduced from that law. Here, I am concerned mainly with hypotheses of the human mind.

Material Monism contains the idea that the mind is the brain, and the brain is the mind – they are necessarily one and the same. The brain and mind emerged more or less together through the process of random mutation / non-random selection known as evolution. The mind is seen as a self-assembled massively parallel computer, running at somewhere around 100 Hz, and consuming roughly 100 Watts.

For the Material Monist, all concepts and percepts are physical electrochemical manifestations within the neural glob, and consciousness is nothing more than an accumulation of these physical electrochemical manifestations: an information awareness, in essence.


Consequences of Material Monism:
There are secondary consequences (besides Atheism) for belief in Material Monism:

Human Non-Exceptionalism: Humans are merely a host for DNA, a means for the molecules to replicate themselves within this particular environment.

Human minds generate physically from the ionic transfer within the structure that houses them; minds are replicable in AI programs which will become as conscious as humans, and might present a possibility for transferring human consciousness from a frail body to a robust machine for extended or perpetual life.

Conversely, humans are ethically equivalent to animals or less, due to environmental damage to their host planet.

Natural Non-Exceptionalism:
What appear to be exceptional physical law characteristics are not extraordinary at all.

The consistent order found in the operation of the universe is not exceptional; multiverse theories can account for all possible conditions.

The set of circumstances surrounding the life that appears abundantly on this planet are purely accidental and are in no way exceptional; in fact, no matter where we find ourselves living and existing, it is accidental that the conditions are just right for our existence. That we exist at all is determined by the pre-existence of suitable accidental conditions favorable to our existence; there is no other reason or purpose.

Multiverse theories cover for all intricacies, all organization, and the vastly improbable rarity of conditions for life, much less intelligence. Yet there is no empirical evidence for any universe other than ours, string theory notwithstanding [Note 2].

Reductionism:
Materialist Monism is seen to be reductionist in its very premise, reducing all types of reality to one single, monistic, material existence. This includes all types of experience as well as material entities and abstracta such as logic, mathematics, art, beauty, ethics, and philosophy in general.

Because Materialist Monism is reductionist in its conception, there are subordinate reductions that are required to follow necessarily. Reduction eliminates arguments not by successful refutation, but by attempting to eliminate the argument from the debate.

Anentropy of living beings is reduced by inserting the complexity of self-organization into self-animated, self-sustaining, biomechanical self-replicators; complexity is no more than is needed to compete in the existing environment. There is no essence of life, beyond the existence of these replicators, which manipulate the form of an organic host (plants, animals, humans) as environmentally selected for successful replication. This reduction is even to the point of reducing intentionality and creative, abstract non-physical philosophies to mere ionic disturbance in the neural pathways in the physical brain. Whether these ionic disturbances have, or produce, meaning, is disputable.

Consciousness is denied as an exceptional experience, and is reduced to an agglomeration of ionic sensory inputs combined with ionic memory input of similar sensory inputs for comparison: consciousness is merely a mechanistic awareness of inputs from sensors.

The lack of any credible probability for abiogenesis actually having occurred is either ignored or hand-waved away by reducing it to unproven chemical necessity. Life is no different from non-life, except in the form of its constitutional molecules. Once replicators occurred, they successfully continued replication and evolution; there is nothing exceptional about either the process or the product.

The problem of intentional behavior exhibited by humans, as opposed to determinate behavior of non-living objects, is reduced to environmental determinism (you behave the way your environment instructs you to behave), with a slight amount of intent admitted, to be explained at a later time by Scientism.

Reductionist Scientific Monism: Scientism.
Scientism is a subcategory of Material Monism. It is the concept that, since all existence is material, then science can describe and formulate all of existence; there is no existence exempted from scientific capabilities. While Material Monism is a metaphysic, it attempts to justify itself with the co-option of empiricism as a basis, a practice that fails logic outright.

Since science, as defied by empirical, experimental empiricism, agrees voluntarily that it is not able to measure or experiment on non-material existences, science is unable to address the question of whether there are existences that are outside the material realm.

This position is hotly disputed by some Philosophical Materialists, who insist that if it exists, it is material; therefore, science can be believed to some day find a way to measure it. However, this objection is a faith statement without empirical experimental verification or any possibility of falsification. So empirical science remains outside the realm of ultimate existence determination, and Scientism is false.

Conclusion
Materialist Monism exists as a concept only because it is successful in reducing certain problematic issues to an absurd extent without ever being forced to address them head-on. This in turn produces an easy system of rationalized beliefs, which ignore the logical difficulties of dealing materially with a non-limited set of real existence. Materialist Monism limits complexity by ignoring it, thus producing a simplistic model for belief. This is a belief of convenience, not of rationality, nor of empirical science.

The Material Monist “Law” of Existence referred to above, is based on both the inductive fallacy and the proof of a negative fallacy, as well as the inability to provide falsification, making it a metaphysical belief statement and not an empirical finding. This means that any hypothesis that is deduced from such a “law” is doomed from the start.

A more complete analysis will follow the investigation of the types of Monism, coming here soon…


Note 1: Stanford Plato; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monism/

Note 2: String theorists currently hope to find “escaped gravity” that would indicate a contact of some sort with another universe; the idea is for a proof of concept that the universal “branes” collided, causing our universe to explode into existence. But is that what it actually would prove? Skepticism of such double and triple layers of unknowables is warranted.

Your Wisdom Spot

Dileep Jeste, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of California in San Diego, and Thomas Meeks claim to have discovered the brain's repository for wisdom according to an article in the Mail on-line. Another MRI miracle scan, this time watching blood flow in the brain while dealing with a "moral" question.

Turns out the "wisdom" spot is all over the place in the brain. According to Meeks,

'Several brain regions appear to be involved in different components of wisdom. It seems to involve a balance between more primitive brain regions, like the limbic system, and the newest ones, such as the prefrontal cortex.'

Regadless of this mishmash of activity, the experiment is declared a successful attack on metaphysics:

"Professor Jeste admitted the possibility that wisdom and free will are based on the make-up of someone's brain rather than metaphysics is unsettling."
"But he said: 'Knowledge of the underlying mechanisms in the brain could potentially lead to developing interventions for enhancing wisdom.'"

These nuovo-phrenologists never admit for a second that the brain is plastic, always changing, with an internal mobility unlike any hardware computer. Moreover, its structure is massively parallel, unclocked, non-synchronous, and works even while changing itself around. So what chance is there that there is a fixed set of neurons that contain "wisdom"?

Enhancing wisdom by manipulating the wisdom spot? Is there any wonder that the pronouncements of scientists are taken with skepticism when so much of their output is sheer bull?

Science Explains Religion: the Economist.

The current attack on religion by the sciences of economics and anthropology is explored by the Economist in an on-line version, 3-19-08, of an article published in its Economist magazine. As is admitted at the very end of the article, the science is conducted by admitted atheists, and is expected to support their worldviews.

Interestingly, however, the article outlines the recording of many features of "religiosity" that are beneficial rather than harmful. Accordingly, these are attributed by the atheist scientists who interpret the results to aiding in the evolutionary process.

But there is no skepticism of the chosen experts. What is not highlighted is the question of what exactly is science? While science is the aggressor here, it is not questioned as to its empirical validity or intellectual integrity. Anthropology, for example, might never truly recover any semblance of intellectual integrity after the abuses of Margaret Mead, and other "interpreters" of primal societies, who actually inject their own social proclivities into the analysis. Moreover there is no practice of any empirical rigor involved in such studies; they are at best anecdotal. And at worst, blatantly false.

Economics as a science? Check your 401k.

And the use of brain probes to "comprehend" religiosity in the brain? There is no mention of brain plasticity here, as if probing a spot of activity proves everything. Such science writing is 20 years behind real science.

But even so, the actual finding of the probing is that religiosity spans the (rational) frontal cortex and many areas of the brain, but not the limbic (emotional) portion:

"Dr Azari was expecting to see activity in the limbic systems of the Christians when they recited the psalm. Previous research had suggested that this part of the brain (which regulates emotion) is an important centre of religious activity. In fact what happened was increased activity in three areas of the frontal and parietal cortex, some of which are better known for their involvement in rational thought. The control group did not show activity in these parts of their brains when listening to the psalm. And, intriguingly, the only thing that triggered limbic activity in either group was reading the happy story. "

From this it could well be interpreted that religious activity is rational, while secular activity is not!

But there are always the disclaimers:

"Dr Azari, however, is sceptical that such work will say much about religion's evolution and function. For this, other methods are needed."

So the last scientific resort here is to ethnology and psychology. These are expected to find the underlying cause of religiosity. But the question not asked: Are these considered science? In the same fashion as Physics and Chemistry? The empirical study of humans is not in the same category as the empirical study of particles. Reactions of humans to a given stimulus are not consistent, even within the same individual at different times. There are general types of behavior that can be categorized, but the human never behaves in a deterministic fashion. Not every human action meets with an equal and opposite reaction. If science requires determinism and verifiable repeatability, then psychology, ethnology and anthropology do not qualify.

Then why are these fields awarded such respect in articles such as this? Is it because the magazine itself is antireligious? This article tends to defend the value of religion while lionizing the science that attacks it. Is it looking toward the conclusion that religion is here because it is valuable as a tool for social evolution?

I think this is the only possible explanation for an article of this weakened logic. Science does not "Explain Religion" as the title projects. And the weak-kneed pursuits that are documented are not even empirically valid sciences. The article is a thinly veiled exposition of a desired worldview: evolution as the explanation of everything, and religion as a human construct to benefit the weak. As with all atheist materialist worldviews, it doesn't wash.

Unconsciousness, Proven Empirically

“There is every reason to think the truth about consciousness will eventually be discovered by scientific investigation.”
Nicholas Humphrey, Seed Magazine

There is more written about consciousness than there was time to think it through in the first place, apparently. Here is an example of the willful creation of fantasy entities in order to fatten up a pre-existing theory. The theory, of course, is that consciousness is a material aspect of the material brain and no more. Either that or it is just an illusion, and we are not really conscious; no, really.

Humphrey starts off with the obligatory “qualia” statements, then wanders into his new personal definition, something he calls “sentition”. But these things are not used in his conclusion, so we needn’t spend time on them. They do however fill out an extra page or so in his article.

Concerning the difficulty of grasping consciousness, Humphrey quotes Jerry Fodor:

“Fodor has stated this aspect of the problem bluntly: "There are several reasons why consciousness is so baffling. For one thing, it seems to be among the chronically unemployed. What mental processes can be performed only because the mind is conscious, and what does consciousness contribute to their performance? As far as anybody knows, anything that our conscious minds can do they could do just as well if they weren't conscious. Why then did God bother to make consciousness?"

Perhaps Fodor was not conscious at the time he made this statement. Repairing the tractor or planning a sewer system or creating a high-rise, an airplane, a mass produced automobile, a world novel, these might be better done while unconscious?

Humphrey continues to opine:

“Yet I want to suggest the role of phenomenal consciousness may not be like this at all. Its role may not be to enable us to do something we could not do otherwise, but rather to encourage us to do something we would not do otherwise: to make us take an interest in things that otherwise would not interest us, or to mind things we otherwise would not mind, or to set ourselves goals we otherwise would not set.” (emphasis added)

So the fact of consciousness is actually a force from outside, making us get off our butts and get to work, a metaphysical nanny; otherwise, we would be just unconscious…? Beyond dubious, this is just ridiculous.

He continues,
"To test this idea we will need evidence as to how being phenomenally conscious changes our worldview: What beliefs and attitudes flow from it? What changes occur in the way conscious individuals think about who and what they are?"
As opposed to unconscious individuals and their attitudes and beliefs?

Humphrey:
“I will not hold back from telling you my own main conclusion from a lifetime's interest in what consciousness does. I may shock you by what may seem the naivety of my conclusion (I've shocked myself): I think the plain and simple fact is that consciousness—on various levels—makes life more worth living.”


“We like being phenomenally conscious. We like the world in which we're phenomenally conscious. We like ourselves for being phenomenally conscious. And the resulting joie de vivre, the enchantment with the world we live in, and the enhanced sense of our own metaphysical importance have, in the course of evolutionary history, turned our lives around.”

I personally would like to fly, with the maneuverability of a hummingbird and the grace of a hawk. The resulting joie de vivre would be immense. If wanting it makes it so, then where is my ability? It would definitely enhance my sense of metaphysical importance!

The popularity of speculation on the nature of consciousness, including and especially amongst philosophers and wannabes, is rampant. There is no position too dense, too unconscious - if you will - that it will not be published. It is not possible to respond to every muttering on the subject. I suspect that I won’t be able to resist a few in the future, though. This one was too unconscious too let past without comment.

Blue Brain: When Tinkerers Promise.

The promise of the conscious computer is just too much to resist. In order for the vaunted "singularity" to occur, someone will have to come up with that, or something close. The singularity is defined as that moment when computing power will surpass the human's ability to, well, to think. At the singularity, computers would have developed the ability to redesign themselves beyond any human's ability to compehend. Computers would be superhuman.

Enter the Blue Brain, described in a recent article in SEED. At Lausanne, Switzerland, 8,000 microprocessors are being incorporated into a simulation of a brain, each processor being a neuron. At a predicted processing rate of 22.8 trillion operations per second, the overall performance should really haul....shouldn't it?

Henry Markram is a neurological researcher who feels that reductionism in research is at a dead-end, drowning in data, with no firm theory emerging. The complexity of just two neorons interacting is too much for current models to handle. Blue brain is intended to be thenext and ultimate model, a self-organizing, neural simulation for describing the brain in the future.

"The simulation is getting to the point," Schürmann says, "where it gives us better results than an actual experiment. We get the same data, but with less noise and human error." The model, in other words, has exceeded its own inputs. The virtual neurons are more real than reality.

The ulimate intent of the Blue Brain is not just modeling neural function, it is to model consciousness and experience itself.

"There is nothing inherently mysterious about the mind or anything it makes," Markram says. "Consciousness is just a massive amount of information being exchanged by trillions of brain cells. If you can precisely model that information, then I don't know why you wouldn't be able to generate a conscious mind." At moments like this, Markram takes on the deflating air of a magician exposing his own magic tricks. He seems to relish the idea of "debunking consciousness," showing that it's no more metaphysical than any other property of the mind. Consciousness is a binary code; the self is a loop of electricity. A ghost will emerge from the machine once the machine is built right.

These researchers have seen the model self-boot into a supposedly functional model of a baby rat's neocortical column. Their full color simulations of the inteconnection diagram is impressive, beautiful even. But it remains to be seen whether the internal experience of the model rat is valid, or if there even is one. After all their accomplishments so far are very deterministic, where developing neural pathways seek to connect themselves according to rules input by the programmers. The promise of nondeterministic behavior - in their proposed robot rat - remains to be accomplished, much less a transparent window into the robot's internal experience. Can determinism result in non-determinism? Can this model even prove that?

The faith in technology sustains, however. The promises of technical multiplication through Moore's law makes them believe that they can reduce the complexity of a human brain model from the current required size of "several football fields", consuming an estimated $3 billion in annual power intake, to a single chip in 10 years.

If this succeeds, is the singularity imminently upon us? And if it fails, does it falsify the possibility of ever knowing ourselves? Or could it be both, as we turn over to machines the too-complex-for-us task of comprehending the human brain? The unasked question is: why would we do that? Probably too metaphysical for technicians to consider.

Book Reviews: Plasticity and the Brain

Probably you think, as I did, that the brain is a fixed object, hardwired without recourse for repair, much less functional changes. This has been the position of dogmatic science for nearly a century. This position has had its impact not only on sufferers of brain trauma but also on the philosophy of the mind, and the worldview of the public in general. After all, if the brain is fixed, then ....

Determinism and its stepchild, monism, have locked the scientific community into the parasitic and unprovable metaphysics of materialism. And materialism, of course, requires that the mind not be separable from the brain, but to be a material part of it.

The question not askable for 80 years is: can the mind change the brain? In fact, in the early 20th century experimenters found evidence of plasticity in the brains of animals. Would this evidence be pursued? Or would it be suppressed due to its diametric apposition to the accepted "scientific" dogma of the day?

There are three books on this subject that I will review here. Perhaps the most comprehensive historical approach is that of J.M.Schwartz, in his book, "The Mind & The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force", Harper, 2002. Schwartz is a researcher whose experience spans the decades of controversial findings, and the establishment's resistance to them. His story includes the fame and infamy and recovered fame of researcher Edward Taub, who made discoveries that were tarnished by the infiltration of PETA activist, Alex Pacheco, who set out to destroy Taub and animal experimentation in toto. This story alone is worth the read.

But the real value of this book - and the other two as well - is the revelation that not only is the brain plastic, it is not fixed, period. The brain map is not a permanent feature of the mental landscape. Not only that, the mind is fully capable of changing the map, altering the mental landscape. I.e., mind over matter. Schwartz proposes that there is a quantum mechanic type of relationship between the mind and the brain, and in his development of the history of his concept, he writes a very accessible review of quantum theory, including the collapse of Schrodinger's Wave equation, which is related to part of his theory.

The quantum problem of matter being influenced by observation, i.e. consciousness, leads to the conceptual intertwining of matter-energy-consciousness on a scientific level. Within that context, Schwartz proposes a mental force which is real and potentially measurable, and which resides over and dominates the brain. This hypothesis is untested yet compelling. The intial evidence comes from the new treatment for Obsessive-Compusive Disorder - OCD - which is resolvable in high proportions of sufferers by self-control of thinking pathways, with subsequent remapping of the brain. Mind over matter.

The second book, "The Brain That Changes Itself", Norman Doidge, Penguin, 2007, covers much of the same ground as Schwartz has covered, but is shorter and less comprehensive.

The third book is a technical text-type book of masterwork proportions. "Biophysics of Computation",Oxford University Press,1999, by Christof Koch, is the first attempt to combine the disciplines of neuronic biophysics with computation and information theory (and not a little electrical engineering). Koch is a well known researcher in this field. His book is targeted as a text for seniors in neurobiology and post-grad studies in the field, and is jammed with details that many might fear, but that I, myself, crave.

To pull out the most significant departures from older bio-cant, Koch delineates not just the plasticity of neuronal connection, but he also mathematically models the incredible, previously unknown internal complexity within a neuron. In short, a neuron is not a single connecting wire, it is capable of complex calculations such as addition and subtraction; it can contain logic circuits such as as AND-NOT gates (NANDs to digital designers), and flip-flops, the basis for digital computing in PCs. It can acquire multitudes of connections, and effectively become a self-modifying state machine (my words not his). All this along with the urge to rewire itself constantly in response to usage makes the biology of neurons an open field, full of questions.

In short, I recommend only the first book, by Schwartz, for those interested in a non-technical, accessible overview of both the history and the state of brain plasticity. But I do seriously recommend it.

For those with a technical bent, Koch's book is just the thing.