A difficult puzzle..

How do you know that? Have you built a robot like that?

There are two limits on your scenario. The first is practical, the brain is very complex. It's not that it uses hard to understand physics, it's the fact that there are around 100.000.000 neurons in a brain, and they act in different manners and each have several processes going on. Even if we made a computer that could calculate that, we'd have to go through the entire brain checking most if not all of those 100.000.000 cells of a brain to start the system. You can't just dump a heap of neurons on each other and hope they will start thinking.

The second problem is the fact that the feelings we have is an interpretation. The same interpretation is not necessarily obvious for a machine. Let's look at the process of someone hitting your arm, and you flinching. To the robot, it would look like someone hit you, and you moved your arm. It's memory might include the concept of pain, but it is not likely to be able to identify it.

Edit: The practical argument is of course not an argument about whether certain kinds of robots are built, it's saying that you don't know how powerful a computer is needed and what kinds of stuff such a computer could do.

 

I don't see the difference between emotion (responses to reactions in the brain) and imagination (responses to reactions in the brain). The two things are closely tied together, probably to the point that they're difficult to separate (is fear of a spider just sitting in your bathtub an emotional reaction to the spider itself or is it augmented by imagination of what they could do).

It basically all boils down to the same thing - information travelling from our senses (via a physical medium) to the brain which processes all the information and produces ideas, images, emotions and sensations as a result (which themselves trigger yet more in an ongoing process).

I never suggested they were. I still think the only puzzle here is a result of your concept of physical and non-physical and, quite frankly, I feel that you're too close to you hypothesis to let it go regardless of how much rational explanation there is against it.

 

I don't think this all matters because this is hypothetical, but there's no reason to not believe that a robot could be built to perfectly understand the laws of physics as the scientific community currently accepts them.

Well we now have to bring up the topic of whether or not it's possible to conceptualize pain, emotions etc. without experiencing them.

See, with math and currently accepted physical laws, it's possible to conceptualize them without experiencing them. With feelings/sensations, such is not possible......or is it?

 

I see - I should not call the brain any longer a "reality simulator" - I should call it better "reality communicator" because it is an open system. Analogy: A calculator is not mathematics. If someone understands how a calculator works exactly - this makes him not to a genius in mathematics. But a race of genia of mathematicians will for sure one day construct a calculator so everyone is able to do complex calculations. The question is maybe not where the brain comes from - the question is, where a circle comes from. Why was a circle always a circle without any evolution?

http://youtu.be/sUAbHhlOYhE

 

Why is it that instead of purely a physical reaction occurring (e.g. a neuron firing to signal damage), there's also an intangible feeling that occurs when this physical signal reaches the brain? Why is that necessary?

Is it even necessary, considering that we could theoretically design robots to react to high heat, pressure etc. and essentially react the same way humans do when exposed to something which causes physical pain?

Why do we experience these feelings/sensations? It's conceivably possible for a robot/machine/some other entity to act the same way humans do, without these intangible feelings/sensations.

Well it is a hypothesis rather than a theory because I don't believe there are non-physical things going on, but I am suggesting that if feelings etc. are actually purely physical in nature, then the current accepted laws of physics are not nearly enough to explain everything in our universe. If they were enough to explain everything, then these laws of physics (classical mechanics through quantum mechanics and the standard model of particle physics etc.), by themselves, would predict feelings and emotions etc. But obviously, they don't predict anything even remotely close to that.

 

And now I have a very big problem to understand this: What is the perspective of the electrochemical powers within our brain and body? How do this powers know that they have to produce a feeling called "love" and why are this powers doing this? And if they are doing something completly different and the feeling of love would be only an illlusion because of other intentions - why is this unkown intention then procuding a feeling of "love"?

I'm asKing myselve: Is your perspective here not only a kind of materialistic demonology? And is the very strict materialism of some people here nothing else than only a belief in supernatural abilities of electrochemical powers?

http://youtu.be/X6B-gjjmjOY

 

Is this also true of all thoughts and convictions?

 

I'm not sure necessary is a helpful word to use here. The intangible feelings which occur in response to input from our senses are just part of what inform the reactions to them (both considered and instinctive). Nothing about how the human body works is really "necessary" as such, it's just how it has developed to (largely) work.

But these things can be explained by our (the human race) understanding of physics. Just because you personally (and I for that matter) don't understand enough of the field to fully explain it doesn't prove anything.

 

Absolutely.

 

The question then becomes what it means to experience something, an emotion for instance.

Does experiencing an emotion mean anything else than acting upon it, like a robot can act on information? Does it means that it enters your mind? Then what is your mind? Does one have any reason to believe that what we experience and our minds are anything but processes?

It also begs the question what does it mean to conceptualize an emotion?

 

What "problem" does such a hypothesis solve? What unexplained "facts" suggest a need for any "gateway" to "non-physical phenomena?"

Generally, science is about solving problems and answering question. Without a problem, any proposed solution is quite meaningless.

 

That is simply the first person experience of a neuron firing. The "intangible feeling" is not some different or additional "thing." It is simply how you experience your own neuronal activity.

Because it is the mechanism that evolution has found most effective for driving behaviors that provided a survival advantage. Pain is the mechanism by which animals are notified that they are being damaged or in danger of being damaged. Without it a child would not remove their hand from an open flame, favor an injured ankle (preventing additional damage) or cease a repetitive activity before inflammation destroys tissues.

So too with all our other feelings and emotions. Love, fear, pleasure, anger... all of these things are physical reactions to circumstances or stimuli that directly contribute to our differential survival.

That is why we experience them.

 

You know full well what that perspective is. You experience it yourself as proven by your recognition of them in the context of this discussion. The same neuronal pattern will produce in you the same experience every time. There is a pattern that is "love," and when it exists within your brain, that is what you experience.

The "powers" don't "know" anything. It is an automatic (not a volitional) process. There are circumstances and stimuli that create certain neuronal patterns that you experience as "love." The Darwinian benefits of (for example) loving your child are huge. So too the Darwinian benefits of sexual pleasure or a sweet tooth or fear of falling.

Our ancestors who felt these things tended to live longer and produce more offspring. Those potential ancestors who did not tended to die early and leave no children behind.

The feeling of love is never an illusion. It is the direct first hand experience of neuronal patterns. If we feel it, then we are physically experiencing it.

I don't even know what that means. There are (as far as I know) no such things as demons.

No. Nothing supernatural is required or implied.

 

Yes.



10 char

 

What things, exactly? You definitely can't predict, using solely all the currently accepted laws of physics, feelings.

Assumption 1: Feelings (emotions, sensations of pain etc.) are an actual phenomenon that do occur and do exist, not only in concept, but in reality, in this universe.

Assumption 2: If we had a theory(s) that could legitimately predict everything that happens in this universe, then it would a legitimate theory of everything in the universe.

Assumption 3: None of the current accepted theories and laws of physics (classical mechanics, continuum mechanics, quantum mechanics, even string theory etc.) even come close to addressing, let alone predicting, things such as emotions and pain. They are mathematical models that are entirely separate from predicting any such thing.

Conclusion: Currently accepted laws of physics cannot explain feelings. In order for physical laws to explain feelings, we have to improve on the currently accepted laws and theories of physics, dramatically.

 

Trying to understand this universe as deeply as possible, and I think this universe might go beyond mathematical (i.e. quantities and sets) models. Quantities and sets (which form mathematical models of the laws and theories of physics, currently) are not reality, they are only aspects of reality.

Considering that you can't predict or really describe feelings with a mathematical model, feelings seem to go beyond mathematical models and thus beyond the current accepted laws and theories of physics, which are mere mathematical models.

The fact that we can't explain feelings with the current accepted laws of physics.

 

Possibly.

No, obviously they cannot! lol you can observe chemicals and neurons; things which are describe-able by quantitative models, with brain scans. You CANNOT observe feelings with brain scans.

 

And? It is difficult to genuinely discern your point here. It seems like little more than an observation that our understanding of the physiology of emotions is incomplete. This same thing could be said of any and every scientific field of study.

Six of the seven Millennium Prize Problems in mathematics remain unsolved as of this posting. Is that a basis for proposing some "gateway" between mathematics and the supernatural?

Remember! At one time even the most prosaic of natural phenomena were attributed to supernatural actors... from the wind and rain to eclipses and comets. The history of science has been a record of a universe in which there is progressively less and less for God to do.

What would lead you to believe that the physiology of emotions should be any different? Especially since we can elicit any emotion we want simply by placing an electrode and connecting it to a battery.

 

Again... what would actually inspire such a position? What about the universe would lead you to believe it "might go beyond mathematical (i.e. quantities and sets) models?"

This is a massive non sequitur.

We also can't (for example) solve a simple three body problem in space mechanics. Would that be a basis for any thinking person to assert that gravity "seems to go beyond mathematical models and thus beyond the current accepted laws and theories of physics?" Such a position would be absurd.

Through the judicious application of an electric current, I can elicit from you involuntarily any emotional state I desire. Using chemicals or surgery I can alter or destroy every single aspect of personal consciousness, cognition, personality, perception, memory or emotion. I can point you to people who because of brain lesions or congenital disorders are incapable of experiencing any one or any number of "feelings and emotions."

The physical basis for every single mental faculty and capability is well established. How is that possible if these things are not purely physical phenomena?

 

Up, yes you can.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4313263...e-science/t/how-your-brain-handles-love-pain/

There is nothing supernatural or immaterial about emotions. They are chemical and electrical discharges. At the moment you have all of neuroscience standing against you, and you haven't proven your case.

 

And here is where (as I said in my first post) your problem lies. Your first person experience of an emotion is not the emotion itself. It is no more the emotion itself than your memory of a sunset is that sunset, or the perception of a musical note is the vibrating air.

The emotion is an electro-physio-chemical event that we can see and measure in the third person. That your first person experience is different in perspective does not magically transform the event into something other than what it is.

 

The actual feeling that you get when say, you're stricken with a pin or emotionally involving event, is perhaps caused by, but itself is not intrinsically a mathematical thing (quantities, space and sets) which can be entirely described, explicitly, by mathematical models (such as the currently accepted laws of physics).

If you can precisely describe the sensation of pain or emotions by a mathematical model, then so do so. In itself, those things are not mathematical.

 

What you observed are chemical and electrical discharges. The only way to observe a feeling, at least it would seem, is to..feel one for yourself.

This is like saying that we can literally "see" pain just because someone just got hit with a metal baseball bat and is wincing-no, we cannot "see" their pain, we can only see their physical bodies and infer their pain based on inductive reasoning that says that such an event usually causes pain.

The same is true for observing neurons firing with a brain scan. You can't actually prove that any feelings of any kind are going on. You can only prove (well technically not even prove, but give strong objective evidence that) neurons are firing in a certain way.

For all you know, you're the only one who actually experiences sensations such as "pain" and "joy" etc., and everyone else is simply a biological robot whom act identically to a being that does truly experience the intangible feelings of pain and joy.

 

No, because the physiology of every other event seems to be mathematically model-able (such as classical mechanical systems, quantum mechanical systems, etc.). You can't do that with emotions themselves. Only the causes of emotions etc., such as neurons firing, can be mathematically modeled.

No, because

1. just because something isn't mathematical (space, quantities and sets) in nature, doesn't mean it's "supernatural", it just means that our current theories of physics, which are all mathematical, are incomplete. And,

2. the answers to those mathematical problems are probably mathematical. Not so when it comes to describing feelings from an intrinsic perspective.

Remember, watching neurons fire on a brain scan is an indirect perspective and doesn't directly observe emotions intrinsically, because neurons are purely mathematical (i.e. made of atoms which in turn are describable, it appears, by space, quantities and sets), whereas reality itself, and in this case feelings, are not mathematical.

 

Of course it is.

But in the same way most people cannot pretend to understand the math behind their computer keyboard of their flat screen TV, most people also can't pretend to understand the math behind the electro-physio-chemical events that are their feelings.