"Integrative Science”: The Death-Knell of Scientific Materialism?

various ^ | various | vanity with much help

[betty boop]

But, if you are sincere, you might answer one question. What is consciousness?

Hold that thought, Hank. I'll need time to do justice to that topic. But I'll ping you when the time comes.

[unspun]

Good grief. If those who go out of their way to offend cannot, certainly nothing you said, which I know would never be inteded to that end, is going to offend me.

Hi there. If in any way you're referring to me, I'm not sure what to apologize for, but if there is something, you have it. I tend to be willing address in a higher degree of scrutiny with skepticism, the behavior and persona of those who would be offensive toward God and those who believe Him at his Word, i.e., intentional blasphemers. I am certainly willing to be offensive toward you, some definitions of the word. (But I don't hold anything against you.)

Now, who does pay you to write, if you are a person who writes and are paid for it?

bb, Capt. Kierkegaard was known for beating on people, around the bush, while trying not to explain himself, wasn't he? Maybe that is where this poster has picked up the tactics.

[unspun]

I hit "Post" while distracted on the phone and posted prematurely. So, I apologize for the grammatic mistakes. ;-)

[gore3000]

So where does this lead? If consciousness can survive some fairly major brain damage, it's no delicate interplay of thousands of neural signals. I don't know, and haven't researched, whether there are regions of the brain whose loss seems to diminish a persons' humanity or consciousness, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were clues buried in dry clinical language in the medical literature.

There certainly are. in the 40's or so psychologists were trying to cure crazyness by lobotomies. This failed to do anything. Nowadays they are trying to cure epilepsy the same way, failing again. There are also examples from people who have brain operations for cancer. The brain does heal itself.

[gore3000]

There is , I think, a difference between saying matter behaves according to scientific laws, and saying scientific laws describe the behavior of matter.

Everything is not a matter of measurement as you make it sound. If matter did not behave in a predictable manner science would be impossible. To postulate that scientific laws which have been proven to work numerous times prove nothing is to descend into complete skepticism of reality, the kind Hume went into. In a way this is a strange position for materialists to put themselves in since they claim that what you see is the reality and they are even denying that when they turn to skepticism.

[unspun]

bb, Capt. Kierkegaard was known for beating on people, around the bush, while trying not to explain himself, wasn't he? Maybe that is where this poster has picked up the tactics.

In sales tactics, they call that "spreading FUD" --i.e., fear, uncertainty and doubt. It seems that the HK and TMS' effictive FR missions have been to separate Christians from their Savior --and prevent unbelievers from believing --under the banner of autonomist-ness (spiritual autism would be a better use of the prefix).

A fair characterization, Hank Kerchief?

BTW, it's up to you to explain consicousness --I'm sure it would be very good to read, but I've asked the same question of Hank Kerchief. If he wants to discuss, shouldn't he do the same, instead of waiting for you to post, so if past performance is indicative of future result, he can attempt to obfuscate, invert, and pervert?

[RightWhale]

The brain does heal itself.

To a great degree, it can.

I don't know if you are following the computer and AI sub-thread, but I had a random thought on that. It seems to me that we can build a machine to do what the brain does as far as consciousness is concerned. However, the conscious computer would lack the biological base and would not be self-repairing the way the bio-brain is, would not grow on its own, and would only have the kind of consciousness the tech builds into it. Whether it could do the kind of abstraction we do and whether it could form concepts and then denature them as we do in scientific management and politics would depend on the cleverness of the programmer. Since it is getting harder to find people who like to find general concepts, preferring concrete things instead, it would seem unlikely that we would find a programmer with the tech expertise and the conceptual depth to create a mechanical brain of the level of any average uneducated dirt farmer. It could be done, but probably it won't be done. Nevermind that we don't know how the brain works except for some motor functions. It might be a radio for all we know.

[gore3000]

There is a difficult problem in computer science related to this computational model that, once solved, will allow us to build software systems that exhibit the same basic computational properties and capabilities of the human brain.

And what problem would that be? Of course , one cannot know that a problem is 'solvable' until it has been solved. There are numerous problems in philosophy which are still unsolved after thousands of years so I think I will wait to see if the problem is solved. Also, I do not think that the problem of AI is one of computational ability. In time it can exceed man's computational ability. That is why we use calculators. There are many more things to man such as intuition that are not accounted for by computational ability.

[js1138]

However, the conscious computer would lack the biological base and would not be self-repairing the way the bio-brain is...

It would pretty well have to, since one of the known properties of the brain is that learning involves growing new interneural connections. That process would have to be emulated. The self-healing is not just an add-on doodad. It is integral to the functioning of the healthy brain.

[RightWhale]

Once you have the basic machine, then you need to consider other modes of thought, intuition, learning, behavior, self-repair of logic, but no matter what, the mech brain will only do what it is programmed to do. If you can put all that human consciousness in there, then maybe, but we don't know much about our consciousness and it would be difficult to deliberately create something we don't know about.

[gore3000]

However, the conscious computer would lack the biological base and would not be self-repairing the way the bio-brain is, would not grow on its own, and would only have the kind of consciousness the tech builds into it. Whether it could do the kind of abstraction we do and whether it could form concepts and then denature them as we do in scientific management and politics would depend on the cleverness of the programmer.

Those are certainly problems which I think prevent a computer from being 'human'. However, the real problem is consciousness. If we cannot tell what it is, how can we design it into a computer? Seems we have to first discover what consciousness is before we can put it into a computer. The problem of abstraction is also a difficult one for computers. Take face recognition. We are told this can be done, however, we also hear that a mustache or a hat can render such machines obsolete. We may take a second look when a friend puts on or takes off a mustache, but we easily recognize the person anyway just as we do a woman who has changed her hair color and hair-do. When we realize that babies can do some of the stuff that computers cannot, we must stand in awe. We also must realize that the problem of face recognition is only one of the many abstraction problems which humans can perform readily - even little humans.

[RightWhale]

I say that we can build a conscious machine because I believe, for the moment, that the primeval stuff of consciousness is inherent in all matter from atoms to galaxies and the matter needs to be organized to a sufficient complexity for the attributes of consciousness to begin to manifest. Potential consciousness is in everything, but won't activate until a certain level of complexity. Biological entities do this naturally, that is, the stuff of the universe naturally organizes itself enough to become conscious, and the machine is made of the same stuff--it just needs to be organized, which it won't do by itself if it is not biological.

[unspun]

If you can put all that human consciousness in there, then maybe, but we don't know much about our consciousness and it would be difficult to deliberately create something we don't know about.

I've heard plenty in this thread about consciousness and some about will, but as I've gone off in another thread or two, the same for this thread. What about the set of characteristics some tend to superficially call emotion?: the desire that is more than mere motivation -- passion -- conviction -- sense of being inwardly compelled to rise above oneself and be greatly moved and move others toward high purposes?

I know, I know, let's not bring "too much" humanity into the equation.... ;-`

[Hank Kerchief]

Hi there. If in any way you're referring to me ...

Be assured, I never refer to you.

Hank

[Doctor Stochastic]

Okay. Vector as used by Cray means basically a pipelined system. All parts of the Cray-1 (and subsequent developments along this line) were pipelined. For example, memory latency was 11 clocks and memory cycle type was 4 clocks. By using memory interleaving (the bank address was the least signigicant address bits) one word (64 bits plus parity) could be delivered to the CPU each clock. If addresses were not accessed by multiples of 16 (I think there were 16 banks in the early machines), one got no conflicts. It's like a bucket brigade. The 11 segments from memory to CPU were the latency but the throughput was 1 word per clock.

Other functional units worked the same way. Most units could be "chained" so that one had (on the XMP, YMP series) instructions such as LOAD, LOAD, MULTIPLY (by a scalar) ADD, STORE. Each unit (2 load pipes, multiplier and adder) would be active at the same time, delievering 1 result per clock back to memory. Later Crays had more units and could access memory irregularly (I helped invent this process.)

The last multi-processor Cray I worked on had 2 billion words (16 gigabytes, memory is much cheaper now), 8 processors, where each processor had 2 load pipes, 1 store pipe, and 1 I/O pipe. Memory could be accessed 32 words at a time, irregularly spaced. Of course, the speed of the memory was about 20us so it was like having all cache. (No true cache was used.)

[unspun]

Sorry Hank Kerchief, but you just contradicted yourself again.

[Doctor Stochastic]

I haven't checked much but I do think one can have an "emergent clock" from a large number of small processes.

PDF link: http://www.envmed.rochester.edu/wwwvgl/jeab_articles/1999/donahoe-71-257.pdf

[Hank Kerchief]

BTW, it's up to you to explain consicousness ...

Why? I don't care if you know what it is or not. Betty knows what she means. I don't, so I asked her.

If I were interested in giving you good advice I would tell you to mind your own business, but I'm not interested in giving advice to those who refuse to learn anything, so I won't.

Hank

[Hank Kerchief]

Sorry Hank Kerchief, but you just contradicted yourself again.

Oh, don't be sorry. It's one of my chief pleasures, especially when it annoys others.

Hank

[js1138]

Thanks. Memory is a major bottleneck in PCs. I am convinced in my own mind that anything attempting to embody a mind, as opposed to a very fast calculator, will have an architecture as yet unimagined. I doubt if it will simply be a reverse engineered brain, but it will have to emulate all the functionality of the brain, not just verbal ability. I assume it will evolve in the same basic progression as biological brains.