Turing test

[Thropplenoggin]

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

Did you watch the video, Pabs? Tallis posits the notion of being able to blame the singularity for all deeds in a wholly deterministic universe. 'It was the Big Bang wot made me do it, your honour.'

I think it's a tad more complicated than you're making it out to be, as Tallis demonstates. In the video. Unless, of course, you've solved the whole mind/matter debate.

If consciousness is a form of matter, then it must be subject to the same physical laws as all matter. But what 'consciousness' consists of, how it 'magically' happens, no one has yet fathomed. What, it's all there - in the brain - lots of neurons interlocking to form neural networks. Hmm. Some animal brains resemble human brains with seemingly similar neural paths. Are they conscious? Still, look at Dark Energy and Dark Matter -constituting most of the known universe and we still have no real idea what they are.

[Pabmusic]

...I think it's a tad more complicated than you're making it out to be, as Tallis demonstates. In the video. Unless, of course, you've solved the whole mind/matter debate. ...

It is indeed a tad more complicated. Yet this is not so very unlike the issue raised by Richard Dawkins in 1976 in The Selfish Gene - the idea that the driving force of life is the gene, and we are merely machines 'built' by genes so that copies of genes can be passed from one generation to the next. It could be argued that our actions have their roots in genes ("It was me genes wot made me do it"). However, we also have big brains that can make sense of our world, so that we cannot have resort to 'cop out' simplicities and blame our genes. But we also now have considerable understanding of how our genetic makeup influences our predispositions.

No, I haven't solved anything (I'd be a cert for a Nobel prize if I could).

There's plenty of research suggesting other animals have 'consciousness', show emotion, demonstrate empathy and the like. Loads of it.

(I did watch the video, by the way. Very good - but I'm not so reliable at acknowledging these things. )

[Edit] After I posted the above, I received this from Jerry Coyne (a biology professor at Chicago), which seems relevant: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress....ompatibilists/

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i like the way this chap puts some of the issues

[Pabmusic]

i like the way this chap puts some of the issues...

Superb! I have actually done the rubber hand illusion and what Metzinger says is so.

Odd isn't it that what we see is actually a model of reality constructed by our brains; now it seems that the context in which we react to what we see is itself a model constructed by our brains.

[barbirolli]

The rubber hand illusion is an illusion: the set up is designed to lead you to develop the false impression that the rubber hand is in fact yours. It shows that the brain can sometimes be deceived when someone wishes to induce 'false reality'. What we see is not a model of reality, it is reality. We may not perceive reality well enough and jump to conclusions about reality which turn out to be wrong: so what?

[Pabmusic]

The rubber hand illusion is an illusion: the set up is designed to lead you to develop the false impression that the rubber hand is in fact yours. It shows that the brain can sometimes be deceived when someone wishes to induce 'false reality'. What we see is not a model of reality, it is reality. We may not perceive reality well enough and jump to conclusions about reality which turn out to be wrong: so what?

You might have misunderstood my last post. Nothing that we 'see' is in one sense at least, 'real'. The signals from our eyes pass to the brain, which makes sense of them by constructing a virtual image - the thing we think we're seeing.

As to your point, yes of course the brain is being misled in the third arm illusion. The brain succeeds in part by making lots of assumptions, which are usually right but can often be wrong. One reason for its having to make assumptions is that our eyes are quite inefficient. (Helmhotz himself said that if an optical engineer made something as poorly designed as the vertebrate eye, he'd lose his job.) For instance, we do not form on our (back-to-front) retinas an exact image of what we're looking at (as, for instance a camera does); our eyes work more like scanners, recording very small areas of the scene very quickly. Our brains make sense of this by (1) making decisions about the relative importance of different things in view and (2) using previous knowledge of similar situations to fill in gaps. Thus, it's very easy for different people to recall different things from the same scene, or to miss something entirely (have you ever done 'spot the gorilla'?).

I'm not sure what your dismissive 'so what?' means. Surely understanding the nature of reality is important.

(Incidentally, I thought you were a very fine conductor.)

[Sydney Grew]

. . . what we see is actually a model of reality constructed by our brains . . .

No; all reality IS constructed by one's own mind (not "brain" ha ha ha). There is no "modelling" going on. Materialism falls far short; always has.

[Pabmusic]

No; all reality IS constructed by one's own mind (not "brain" ha ha ha). There is no "modelling" going on. Materialism falls far short; always has.

I disagree. I was talking about the physical process of seeing something in the real world. We don't 'see' what we look at - we see the result of the brain's (yes, brain) interpretation of signals received from the eyes.

There may be something metaphysical, but we have no evidence for it. Perhaps one day we shall, but until then we have - in the one corner - scientific reality controlled by laws of physics, and - in the other - an invisible, intangible dragon that breathes heatless fire and cannot be detected by any tangible means (to paraphrase Carl Sagan). The question is: in what way does the undetectable dragon differ from nothing?

[Thropplenoggin]

You might have misunderstood my last post. Nothing that we 'see' is in one sense at least, 'real'. The signals from our eyes pass to the brain, which makes sense of them by constructing a virtual image - the thing we think we're seeing.

As to your point, yes of course the brain is being misled in the third arm illusion. The brain succeeds in part by making lots of assumptions, which are usually right but can often be wrong. One reason for its having to make assumptions is that our eyes are quite inefficient. (Helmhotz himself said that if an optical engineer made something as poorly designed as the vertebrate eye, he'd lose his job.) For instance, we do not form on our (back-to-front) retinas an exact image of what we're looking at (as, for instance a camera does); our eyes work more like scanners, recording very small areas of the scene very quickly. Our brains make sense of this by (1) making decisions about the relative importance of different things in view and (2) using previous knowledge of similar situations to fill in gaps. Thus, it's very easy for different people to recall different things from the same scene, or to miss something entirely (have you ever done 'spot the gorilla'?).

I'm not sure what your dismissive 'so what?' means. Surely understanding the nature of reality is important.

(Incidentally, I thought you were a very fine conductor.)

Thanks for the above response to my previous post, Pabs.

Wittgenstein's early examinations into gestalt/Aspect theory - 'seeing as' - is a similarly odd mental phenomenon: the duck-rabbit. One image, two possible aspects - impossible to see both simultaneously.

[ardcarp]

Which sets me wondering; was Mr Talis a neuro-scientist or a Head Chorister?

[Pabmusic]

...Wittgenstein's early examinations into gestalt/Aspect theory - 'seeing as' - is a similarly odd mental phenomenon: the duck-rabbit. One image, two possible aspects - impossible to see both simultaneously...

Yes. It's reproduced in Paranormality by Richard Wiseman - well worth a read and a good attempt at an interactive book (it even includes the third arm illusion):

http://www.richardwiseman.com/Paranormality.shtml