Turing test

[Serial_Apologist]

The brain sending contemporaneous messages would be disastrous on a ladder. Simultaneous is to be preferred

Simultaneous was meant I think - or even sooner, if possible!

[Serial_Apologist]

The way this figment of your imagination (the part that has your well-being at "heart") likes to think of it, Dave, is that if your subconscious is capable of creating characters as different from each other as Caliban, Brassbandmaestro, Eighthobstruction and akacalum (to name but seven) then it's a subconscious you can be really proud of.

So why does it have such difficulty remembering where the rest of you has put your keys?

We live massively distracting lives, overwhelming our minds with data which could better be stored on computers, as part of an overall pattern of lifestyle simplification, which would allow the mind to operate optimally.

[Dave2002]

So why does it have such difficulty remembering where the rest of you has put your keys?

Who told you that? MI5?

Currently they are in the key box - and even if they're not, you have no way of knowing!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Who told you that? MI5?

Currently they are in the key box - and even if they're not, you have no way of knowing!

[teamsaint]

We live massively distracting lives, overwhelming our minds with data which could better be stored on computers, as part of an overall pattern of lifestyle simplification, which would allow the mind to operate optimally.

well you speak for yourself, S_A .
I allow myself only to be distracted by random music that comes into my consciousness.
I store everything in my wallet, being a bloke.

[pastoralguy]

Zen Master to Homer Simpson 'You have travelled far to meet me. Your reward is that you can ask me three questions and I will try to answer'

Homer:- 'Are you REALLY a Zen Master'?

Zen Master:- 'Yes'.

Homer:- 'Really, REALLY a Zen Master'?

Zen Master-: 'Yes'.

Homer:- ...'and I can ask you ANY question'?

Zen Master-: 'Yes. That was your last question'.

Homer:- 'D'oh!'

[Serial_Apologist]

[Quarky]

We live massively distracting lives, overwhelming our minds with data which could better be stored on computers, as part of an overall pattern of lifestyle simplification, which would allow the mind to operate optimally.

Couldn't agree more S_A. Lifestyle simplification, optimal mind operation. Then the workings of the mind may become wonderfully apparent. As Calum pointed out "ooops but your brain has already engaged long before you are aware if at all ". If feeling strong, might even get into clairvoyance.

Acknowledging MRI scans and experiments with cats, but these are external issues of interest to scientists. What matters to me is what is going on in my mind, and the sense I can make of it, without having to resort to Scientific results.

[Serial_Apologist]

Couldn't agree more S_A. Lifestyle simplification, optimal mind operation. Then the workings of the mind may become wonderfully apparent. As Calum pointed out "ooops but your brain has already engaged long before you are aware if at all ". If feeling strong, might even get into clairvoyance.

Acknowledging MRI scans and experiments with cats, but these are external issues of interest to scientists. What matters to me is what is going on in my mind, and the sense I can make of it, without having to resort to Scientific results.

The way out culture messes with our heads was well elucidated by RD Laing pointing out the psychological Catch 22 that on the one hand we are expected to repress or suppress our "baser instincts", ie disown part of ourselves, then to be told that by holding back we are being insincere, untransparent and therefore untrustworthy. If you are to belong then you must belong, and these are our terms, though we will not acknowledge them, even to ourselves. Thereby the consensual majority maintains the civilised veneer of apparent order, and few wonder why so many - the scapegoated into whom the unacknowledged is projected - turn to drugs, compulsions, irrationalities and fundamentalisms. I was thinking about Mike Cooley's argument in relation to the amount of distraction provided by overcomplicated lives and systems of distribution and dissemination, even communication, such as mobile phones; namely that, to reiterate your and calum's point, the brain is a phenomenal organ, and that those who speak of "ordinary people" should think one moment of the calculation required in crossing a road with oncoming traffic; and yet a whole section of a TV chat show this morning was devoted to a question exemplifying this issue today, namely the burgeoning instance of large numbers of people randomly crossing busy main roads, oblivious of their surroundings.

[Alain Maréchal]

We live massively distracting lives, overwhelming our minds with data which could better be stored on computers, as part of an overall pattern of lifestyle simplification, which would allow the mind to operate optimally.

I am often asked to recall facts and conclusions relevant to our research, and I point out that the brain (my brain anyway) is a processing unit: give it a problem to solve and it will do its best, but asking it to recall the answers to problems already solved by somebody else is a waste of everybody's time, there being a filing system expresssly for that purpose. Techies understood this, never the professionals.

One problem I never solved: If you put a cat in a refrigerator and close the door, is the light on or off, and how could you know, if it was on when you opened it, whether the cat had turned it on.

[Pabmusic]

Hmm. Try telling that to 'compatibilist' Daniel Dennett, or Daniel Clement "Dan" Dennett III as he's known to his chums.

These experiments are in their very early stages. MRI scans, so beloved of the neuroscience quacks to Suddenly Explain Everything (and write a bestselling book about it), don't actually reveal an awful lot. Even quantum physics may allow for free will: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sta...l_of_free_will

Dan Dennett accepts that idiomotor reactions and the rest seem to make free will illusory, and he sees that as dangerous. His point is that although it's true that we do not have "ultimate responsibility" because our choices are always in some ways the result of things we didn't choose, we have enough self-control to make sense of the difference between (say) the psychopath, the person who murders unwittingly in a sleepwalk and the cold-blooded killer.

The earliest experiments into idiomotor reactions were carried out by Faraday in 1860 (table-turning). There were also a lot done in the 1930s. MRIs are (of course) recent but seem to confirm in much greater detail what was already suggested by all the earlier work.

[Pabmusic]

... but it's still 'me', and 'my brain'. It may be that parts of it are subconscious, and that the conscious brain post-rationalises, claiming the 'choice' as part of its conscious work, even if in error. But it's still 'me', 'my brain' (even if using those bits which may be less or more aware, less or more 'self' conscious of what's going on). The notion / problem of freewill remains, I think, in the domain of the philosophers rather than of the neuroscientists.

True.

Or it might all be me and my brain...

[Pabmusic]

The brain sending contemporaneous messages would be disastrous on a ladder. Simultaneous is to be preferred

I think you're right, Beefy. Good job I cannot climb ladders any more!

[Thropplenoggin]

Dan Dennett accepts that idiomotor reactions and the rest seem to make free will illusory, and he sees that as dangerous. His point is that although it's true that we do not have "ultimate responsibility" because our choices are always in some ways the result of things we didn't choose, we have enough self-control to make sense of the difference between (say) the psychopath, the person who murders unwittingly in a sleepwalk and the cold-blooded killer.

The earliest experiments into idiomotor reactions were carried out by Faraday in 1860 (table-turning). There were also a lot done in the 1930s. MRIs are (of course) recent but seem to confirm in much greater detail what was already suggested by all the earlier work.

My point was really: what do MRIs show? Clumps of neurons lighting up. What does this tell us about consciousness and decisions made therein?

Raymond Tallis is good on this. Can we really say, 'My brain made me do it'?

[Pabmusic]

My point was really: what do MRIs show? Clumps of neurons lighting up. What does this tell us about consciousness and decisions made therein?...

Oh yes, you're quite right about that, with the proviso that we do know quite a lot about what different areas of the brain control. Things don't light up willy-nilly (at least not with most people, though you sometimes have to wonder).

...Can we really say, 'My brain made me do it'?...

Well, yes actually, it seems - whatever position we take on this. Unless we posit an undetectable outside source for it, of course.