A difficult puzzle..

You know your perspective. And your perspective of your hands is essentially identical to your perspective of your brain, for the identical mental machinery is used to perceive both. You may be using different specific senses, but that's one of the reasons nature gave us seven of them. Not all are useful all the time for all purposes and situations.

Yes... all of this could just be a figment of your imagination. If you really want to spend effort on such a pointless and untestable speculation, I'm happy to leave you here to argue with your other imaginary friends. I would choose something more productive, like watching imaginary cute cat videos on imaginary YouTube.

I suspect that is only one of the many things you experience on a daily basis that you have no actual idea what it is. Welcome to the human condition. For most of human history we looked at the sun, moon and stars with no idea what they really were.

Now we know.

Because it helps secure the survival of the species.

Without the paper and pen there would be no book and no story

Odd that you feel that way.

Enjoy yourself. Laughter is good for your health. It's not an argument though.

I'm never sure. Science is tentative. That's what keeps it humble.

No demons necessary. An electrode and a battery can do the trick.

 

Yes, and since A (the story) is the result of B (the paper and pen), it must be identical to B, right?

When something causes something else, the cause and effect must be entirely inseparable and identical, right?

 

If that is meant to clarify, you are actually doing the exact opposite. Physical is the more appropriate foil to your supernatural proposition, as mathematics does not necessarily distinguish between them. Why shouldn't the supernatural be completely mathematical?

This new attempt to clarify your position sounds suspiciously like an effort to parse your way into a rhetorical score of some sort that was unavailable to you with the actual argument.

Yes. They are. The mathematics is proving quite complex, but still solvable.

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/

 

Reality itself is not mathematical.

Feelings and sensations of color etc. (i.e. "qualia"), cannot be described by quantitative equations or space or sets, i.e., by mathematics. Only the currently accepted physical theories of quantum and classical mechanics etc. can.

Again, the only thing anyone has ever been able to (arguably) demonstrate, is that feelings are the result of physical interactions. If A is the result of B, that does NOT mean that A is identical to B!

 

One of the first rules in science is that anything that is physical must occupy space, have weight and have dimension. So, if those thoughts, emotions, pains, pleasurable feelings, etc., are within the brain which is physical, then those things must occupy space; if they occupy space, then they must have weight and must have dimension. This little scenario is seemingly quite a problem for science to figure out.

Months ago, I presented this same problem to the forum in another thread. Because the brain is physical, and because thoughts occur within that physical brain, then those thoughts must occupy space within that brain. Because those thoughts (my thoughts, your thoughts, their thoughts) are all isolated to the space of the individual brains and are not inherently shared by each brain, indicates that there is a physicality to those thoughts which restrict the thoughts to a specific physical location within time and space. Therefore, it can be safely assumed that the thoughts are physical. Under the assumption that the thoughts are physical, then they must comply with the other sets of laws to which science is bound. The challenge: capture a single thought, weigh it, measure it, and analyze it to whatever degree to learn as much as possible about the nature of that thought, then publish a scientific report detailing all of the findings of that research.

 

"Because thoughts and feelings are the result of the brain, they must be equal to the brain".

"Because A is the result of B, A and B must be identical".

Do you not see how that's not logical?

The challenge is to get a robot to conceptualize feelings; if feelings are model-able by mathematics, then computers ought to be able to conceptualize them.

 

An underlying issue to be resolved with this discussion is that reality itself is not mathematical (i.e. reality is not bound to quantities and quantitative equations, sets, space and time).

So why should our universe necessarily be bound to mathematics?

 

Now you are setting up straw men. I have never said that "there can't be any non-mathematically-describe-able-physical explanations for anything in this universe" and it is bad form to put such a statement in quotations and then ascribe it to me.

What I have said is that there is no evidence that anything in the universe cannot be described by mathematics, to include emotions and feelings. So I empirically conclude that that there are no such things. It is entirely an observation regarding what is, not what "can be." I have made this point explicitly now at least twice. I would appreciate if moving forward you did not misrepresent my position.

We know what you "contend." We are long past needing to decipher your position. But what is your evidence for such things? That is what we've been futilely trying to extract from you for this whole thread.

At least it has meaning. I think you have it completely backwards regarding which of the terms is "broad," "fuzzy" and "subjective."

 

Nonsense.

There is no evidence of any feeling existing at any distance let alone independently of the electro-physio-chemical operation of the material brain. We are not talking about causality. We are talking about identity.

This is a bald assertion that has no evidence in its favor and a vast amount of evidence in contradiction.

 

Write down a mathematical description of a single feeling (be it an emotion, pain, etc.). You can't do it. You can mathematically model neurons firing and the brain and chemistry etc., but feelings are intangible, whereas the brain and chemicals are tangible.

The fact that feelings cannot be described by mathematics?

Also, how about the concept of "synergy", as I've mentioned? Something can be more than the sum of it's causing parts. I think feelings are more than the sum of it's causing parts (neurons firing etc.). This is because, well, neurons are tangible. Feelings are not.

 

So??? Feelings are not intrinsically quantitative or spatial, so why would they be separated by any spatial distance or temporal time from the physical interactions which result in them?

 

Where do your quotes in red text come from? What is the source reference?

Well, the scientific community (in parts and segments) are currently working with their mathematical models, formulas, theories, in a hope of constructing an AI system that will meet those demands. I personally don't see it happening within the near future, because our current state of technology will only allow a computer to process the commands that are input from an outside source. In other words, the output of a computer is only as good as the information provided and the information that is currently being provided or input is inadequate to meet such demands.

 

A book is a single thing.

It is composed of (among other things) paper and ink. We can leave the pen out of it since we all know that while a pen may have been used to create the book, it is not itself part of the book.

The paper, the ink and the story are a same single thing. One does not "result" from the other.

That single thing can be looked at from different perspectives, and hence perceived in different ways by different people.

But it is still the same single thing.

 

That's a summary of the logic behind feelings being identical to the process of neurons firing etc. It ignores synergy, i.e. something being able to be more than the sum of it's parts.

If they created an AI system that could truly feel feelings, or anything of the sort, they'd never know it.

 

The fact that "synergy" exists, makes this premise untrue. Something can be more than the sum of it's components, unlike mathematics, and still exist in reality. Why? Because reality is not bound to mathematics.

 

Another bald assertion for which there is no evidence in its favor, and vast amounts of evidence in contradiction.

Wrong yet again.

The fact that independent actors are even capable of agreeing on "qualia" such as "blueness" demonstrate that the concept represents a physical reality that is independent of the act of perception and conception. And in fact blue is a measurable, physical, mathematical thing; it is light at a wavelength of 450-495 nm. The further fact that some anomalous individuals are color blind does not suddenly change the wavelength of blue light or make it vanish.

Again, there is no evidence of any feeling existing at any distance let alone independently of the electro-physio-chemical operation of the material brain. There is no empirical basis for considering a non-physical explanation.

At least, you have offered none, in spite of being repeatedly asked.

 

Got it. I can accept that.

Though a broad speculation, I would have to say that there is a strong likelihood that your estimation is pretty close to accurate.

 

What does "should" have to do with anything? We do not get to impose our preferences on reality.

The existence of the universe is what Bertrand Russel called "a brute fact." If that universe is bound to mathematics, that too would be "a brute fact."

We don't get a vote.

 

You have to assume that synergy is impossible in order to assume that only mathematical things can exist.

Also, what about your quote about unfathomability? You may not be able to fathom that non-mathematical things exist in reality, but I sure as heck can.

So? A robot could sense that something is blue with the right light sensors. Does that mean that the robot would have the sensation of blueness that I'm seeing now on these forums? Of course it wouldn't. The robot would agree with us humans that something was blue, but it wouldn't and couldn't have the slightest clue about the intangible sensation of "blue" that I'm having right now.

 

I meant "should" as in "logically expected". But reality is not mathematical.

Mathematics exists within reality, but reality does not exist within mathematics.

 

I also cannot (currently) solve a three body problem in space mechanics, even with the most powerful supercomputer known to man. Does than mean orbiting satellites do not behave according to mathematics?

3,000 years ago I could not have performed a mathematical operation using the number zero. Certainly you understand how genuinely pointless your challenge here is, right?

You too loosely use the term "cannot." By doing so you are begging the question. We also "cannot" send a human being to Mars. A hundred years ago it would have been fair to say we "cannot" send a human to the moon.

In truth, none of those statements are likely to actually be true. Without a temporal qualifier, one of them has already been proven false.

What about it? Synergy is a well understood phenomenon... actually several well understood and often completely different phenomena. What about synegy do you imagine provides the argument that you have been sorely struggling to formulate to this point?

 

You are arguing in a circle, asserting your desired conclusion in your premises.

There is no basis to insist that feelings are not intrinsically qualitative. We know from PET scans that they absolutely are spatial.

But causality is absolutely and necessarily demanding of a temporal relationship. Causes must precede effects by definition. If as it appears you are acknowledging here complete temporal identity between the neurology and the experience of emotions, you have conceded that one does not cause the other.

 

Certainly you cannot have forgotten that addition is not the only operation in mathematics, right?

Have you never heard of multiplication?

 

But you can conceptualize how to even objectively pose the question. A three body problem in space mechanics would be a mathematical question involving nothing but mathematical terms. Feelings..are not.

This is one of the most important parts of the whole thread. When one models neuronal firing etc. processes in the brain, they are considering a bunch of parts separately; but feelings are more than the sum of all these neuronal firings etc., because they're intangible, and neurons are tangible. What these mathematical models cannot seem to do, is describe how all these neurons and ionic exchanges come together and produce something which is more than the sum of all these physical exchanges.

When I talk about synergy, I'm talking about "more than the sum of something's parts"-in this case, "more than the sum of the brain's parts". Feelings, consciousness etc.

 

See my note just prior on mathematical operations.

Who said I can't fathom it?

Different perspectives, different actors, different outcomes. I robot's failure to perceive "blueness" does not have anything to do with yours or mine.

What about that continues to elude your understanding?