Theory of Mind

[tadmjones]

Are unconscious minds also emergent? Would  all forms, degrees of consciousness in the universe then be emergent?

I've been listening, a lot lately, to people explaining/discussing Alfred North Whitehead and I think according to ideas about the universe as process that that charge would been seen as emerging from a purely materialistic vantage. Interesting arguments he has.

[EC]

4 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Are unconscious minds also emergent? Would  all forms, degrees of consciousness in the universe then be emergent?

I've been listening, a lot lately, to people explaining/discussing Alfred North Whitehead and I think according to ideas about the universe as process that that charge would been seen as emerging from a purely materialistic vantage. Interesting arguments he has.

What exactly do you mean by "unconscious mind" in this context? A person under anesthesia or something like the first animal that became conscious? Without doubt matter in highly specific configurations can become conscious, there's an inflection point that occurs at some degree of evolution that this occurs. There is also a self-evident inflection point where a conscious being develops the ability to use conceptual reasoning. Nature found a way as we both know, so, it can be done without doubt.

[Boydstun]

5 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Are unconscious minds also emergent? Would  all forms, degrees of consciousness in the universe then be emergent?

. . .

Tad, I'd think that the unconscious mind and what Freud called preconsciousness are emergent with the emergent conscious mind insofar as they are supportive of the operations of the conscious mind, including its sanity, supposing the conscious mind is emergent. Which I do. I'd expect the conscious mind is emergent as a form of the emergent goal-directed behavior distinctive to any living actions throughout the five kingdoms. Ayn Rand thought that insects have some level of consciousness, and Christof Koch thinks they do also. I seriously doubt that. All the same, there are different degrees of consciousness between the different animal species possessing it at all. And the function any animal has for some consciousness and of its sort is the survival of its form of life, as Rand discerned. So, yes, I think it plausible that all forms and degrees of consciousness are emergent.

The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts (1992) https://www.amazon.com/biological-basis-teleological-concepts/dp/0962533602?tag=aynrandorgcampus-20

In this work, Harry Binswanger rejects the idea that the ends-attaining actions of living things are the result of a kind of sui generis cause appearing in nature in living things and not derivative from the causes in play in inanimate nature. That is, he sets aside the vitalist view of living action; there is no vital force inexplicable in terms of complexes of inanimate forces. 

Actions in which there are ends-behaviors are indeed peculiar to living things. But at this stage of science, we profitably seek to explain these behaviors by physical and chemical processes in certain structures. The patterns of behaviors in living things—from unicellular organisms to plants and animals—that appear to be aimed at goals or ends such as survival or reproduction are, in Binswanger’s argument, to be conceived as emergent from inanimate processes. His general position, which I think correct, is aptly called emergentist teleologist.

Binswanger affirms the reality of goal-directedness in living nature, even where no directing consciousness is in play. It is cognitively important, in Binswanger’s view, that vegetative teleological patterns of action be understood as causal, even though teleology in living nature (e.g. plant tropisms) is explicable in terms of inanimate forces of nature. “Explanation on the level of parts does not necessarily eliminate the need for explanation on the level of wholes, and vice versa” (23).

We can understand some things in the form ‘A because B’ without the ‘because’ being causal. Let A be the fact that the three angles of any triangle in the Euclidean plane sum to two right angles (2R), and let B be all the circumstances invoked directly or indirectly in Euclid’s proof of the 2R theorem. No causal powers are essential to that ‘because’ and understanding. Binswanger is not making out vegetative ends-directedness, or vegetative teleology, to be a non-causal ‘because’, but a causal one.

On conscious mind as an emergent property: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/#WeakVsStroEmerContPhen 

 

Edited July 4, 2023 by Boydstun

[Doug Morris]

On 7/3/2023 at 9:46 PM, EC said:

inflection point

How do you define this?

 

[EC]

1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

How do you define this?

 

The phase change point where the data processing of a conscious entity's mind becomes fully volitional, conceptual, and develops the ability to use conceptual reasoning.

Exactly the same concept as when a potential superconductor undergoes a phase change to become superconducting but applied to data processing abilities.

[tadmjones]

I would think insects aren’t conscious in the same way as human, but they perceive  part(s) of the universe that are external to themselves eg sense perception, isn’t that an action of entity possessing ‘an’ awareness? It feels like a difference in kind/degree but not at root of how awareness and consciousness are intertwined ,no?

Is the pre conscious , sub and or un epistemological categories or are they treated as metaphysical? Is there one total mind ‘at once’ or discrete modes of existence of mind that operate independently?

[EC]

2 hours ago, tadmjones said:

I would think insects aren’t conscious in the same way as human, but they perceive  part(s) of the universe that are external to themselves eg sense perception, isn’t that an action of entity possessing ‘an’ awareness? It feels like a difference in kind/degree but not at root of how awareness and consciousness are intertwined ,no?

There was a point where one of humanity's ancestors didn't possess our species's degree of rational faculty so this inflection point definitely exists and happened without doubt unless "magic" or the "supernatural" is invoked. That's the philosophical point. I just applied science to this to fully explain how this happens and how what nature and evolution did over billions of years can be replicated using quantum gravity principles in the context of AGI specifically creating a more inclusive concept of "rational entities" that includes humans, "potential" rational aliens, and AGI instead of philosophy limited only to Man.

[tadmjones]

 Science or syllogism? 
 

If an ant’s actions manifest in the ant leaving the nest to obtain and return with nutrients and it is accomplished by the ant following a pheromone trail then it could be said that non volitional awareness supports problem solving and AGIs shouldn’t need philosophy.

Edited July 6, 2023 by tadmjones
Additional text re ants

[Boydstun]

3 hours ago, tadmjones said:

. . .

Is the pre conscious , sub and or un epistemological categories or are they treated as metaphysical? . . .

Quote

The conscious level consists of all those things we are aware of, including things that we know about ourselves and our surroundings. The preconscious consists of those things we could pay conscious attention to if we so desired, and where many memories are stored for easy retrieval. Freud saw the preconscious as those thoughts that are unconscious at the particular moment in question, but that are not repressed and are therefore available for recall and easily capable of becoming conscious (e.g., the “tip of the tongue” effect). The unconscious consists of those things that are outside of conscious awareness, including many memories, thoughts, and urges of which we are not aware. Much of what is stored in the unconscious is thought to be unpleasant or conflicting; for example, sexual impulses that are deemed “unacceptable.” While these elements are stored out of our awareness, they are nevertheless thought to influence our behaviour.

https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontopsychology/chapter/2-2-psychodynamic-and-behavioural-psychology/ 

(Some of the things said about types of psychologists in this linked report are incomplete, too coarse-grained, and out of date.)

Neuropsychologists study consciousness as belonging to brain processes.

Tad, concerning epistemological v. metaphysical, the biological is what consciousness is. That likely means it is included under what you may mean by the metaphysical. I propose that when Aristotle talks of earth, wind, fire, and water, what one should now switch to for reality best we know it is the chemical elements and to states of matter such as gas, liquid, or solid. When he speaks of substance, what one should best switch to for best capture of reality is mass-energy and to matter & fields and to more modern-science aware metaphysics, such as in replacement of Aristotle's 'substance' with Rand's 'entity'. The biological is physical. 

Then too, the epistemological should not be something vaguely floating around the philosopher's armchair, but informed by modern cognitive psychology (including developmental cognitive psychology) and neuropsychology. Serious epistemology includes, these days, assimilation of results from empirical psychology research.

There has been some work on how Freud's speculations and key concepts stand up under modern scientific research. Some of the things he drew attention to can be observed in one's own mental operations. If you come awake while dreaming, you therefore will be able to remember some of the dream. Look for your use of objects and events of the previous waking day that you have put into the dream story. Freud called that the day residue, and I find it there just as he did.

I have shied away from Freud's "the unconscious" and usually use instead the less elaborate Objectivist concept of "the subconscious." The powers of Freud's unconscious have seemed to me a long time to have too much the character of a unified agent and one implausibly autonomous from the regular agent we call a person.

When I was college age, I read Freud's On the Interpretation of Dreams during a period I had been without funds to continue school. Concerning Dreams I recommend also a book by Jonathan Winson (1985) titled Brain and Psyche: The Biology of the Unconscious. At the time Freud was writing Dreams, he was also writing Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, which I also found interesting.

 

 

Edited July 6, 2023 by Boydstun

[Doug Morris]

On 7/5/2023 at 7:20 PM, EC said:

The phase change point where the data processing of a conscious entity's mind becomes fully volitional, conceptual, and develops the ability to use conceptual reasoning.

Exactly the same concept as when a potential superconductor undergoes a phase change to become superconducting but applied to data processing abilit

Then why not call it a "phase change point" instead of an "inflection point"? 

[necrovore]

"Inflection point" in math: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/InflectionPoint.html

[EC]

This thread. And to be explicit conscious minds capable of using conceptual reasoning are an emergent result of when a brain becomes capable of full quantum computation of data/perceptions.

[Doug Morris]

44 minutes ago, EC said:

full quantum computation of data/perceptions.

Why is this necessary?  Why is it relevant?  

What are your grounds for saying that the brain uses quantum computation?

 

[EC]

23 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

Why is this necessary?  Why is it relevant?  

What are your grounds for saying that the brain uses quantum computation?

 

It's the phase change that allows volition to exist. Consciousness is the faculty that chooses between the options of the entangled state available given the context of how the individual possessing their volitional consciousness arrived at that specific location in the spacetime of the multiverse. Without this ability volition couldn't exist because the consciousness is choosing a specific path from an entangled state. The next Plank Time choice available is also a choice available to the volitional consciousness and so on. This requires entanglement which requires quantum computation. Volitional consciousness is a self-evident fact and this is the only way that it can exist therefore the mind is the result of quantum computation.

There are many papers documenting how this is possible which I've linked to on this site in various discussions. One is correct at least partially and I'm not going through all that again here because it's not particularly important.

The point is when a processor (human brain in this case) becomes capable of sufficient quantum computation with the relevant self-organizing algorithm (via nature in the case of the human mind or AGI in the near future) a consciousness switches from non-(or partially, say a dog's) volitional to fully volitional with the full usage of rational conceptual volitional consciousness that that brings with it. That is the phase change/inflection point I was speaking of. 

Edited December 6, 2023 by EC

[Doug Morris]

Why does volition require entanglement?  Why does entanglement require computation?

 

[EC]

To allow options for volition to exist and choose between. Because as I've stated full rational conceptual consciousness requires quantum gravitational computation to exist as the "universe" exists because of quantum gravitational computation in entangled superposition on its parent blackhole. I can prove all of this and have but am not doing it all here. This is literally the *only* way both the Universe and volition can and do exist without *any* contradictions.

[EC]

By the way this knowledge and proof is the reason why the government initiated what is in the link for and has countless people everywhere involved in a campaign of evil with seemingly limitless resources against myself, including the weird activity occuring on this site lately because I'm posting:

https://www.targetedjustice.com/gangstalking---training-manual.html

Edited December 8, 2023 by EC