The subjective observer is a fictional character

[SpeedOfSound]

Put it this way, pal: if some relativist bozo was imploring me to repeat posts of mine that he hadn't read, that were significant enough to render his relativism as a corpse, then I would do so. Especially if all I needed to do was cut & paste.

Stop fannying around and wasting my/our time. The gauntlet has been thrown. Either pick it up or fuck off, with your tail between your legs.

Why keep up the farce? You wont read the originals and you wont understand snippets. You just want some one-liners to go off on.

Read the posts. Not just mine. Your arguments have been tossed like a salad. I need to know that you understand what we are saying to you. It's not looking like you do.

[jamest]

The posts are there, and you openly admit you haven't read them, on top of requests to summarize them for you.

I haven't read them because I've been concentrating on Graham's theory. Regardless, there's now been an invitation, by myself, for him to repeat his own theory, since Graham's theory is fubar and is not worth any more consideration. If SOS can't be arsed to do so, then fuck it. End of convo... at his behest.

[Surendra Darathy]

The posts are there, and you openly admit you haven't read them, on top of requests to summarize them for you.

I haven't read them because I've been concentrating on Graham's theory. Regardless, there's now been an invitation, by myself, for him to repeat his own theory, since Graham's theory is fubar and is not worth any more consideration. If SOS can't be arsed to do so, then fuck it. End of convo... at his behest.

You're missing altogether too much of the conversation.

You don't regard any of it as worth reading. If you just want to strut arrogantly around telling everyone else their theory is fubar, without remarking on the defects, the suspicion is that you don't understand the argument.

You don't need to respond to individual persons. We are not here as gladiators. There's an argument presented against your half-assed idealism, James, and it has been presented in good faith.

[SpeedOfSound]

The posts are there, and you openly admit you haven't read them, on top of requests to summarize them for you.

I haven't read them because I've been concentrating on Graham's theory. Regardless, there's now been an invitation, by myself, for him to repeat his own theory, since Graham's theory is fubar and is not worth any more consideration. If SOS can't be arsed to do so, then fuck it. End of convo... at his behest.

Proving again that you aren't listening at all to us. GRAHAM'S THEORY IS THE SAME ONE AS MINE!!! You have not even touched the things that graham has offered. The FUBAR is all in your head.

Are you reading this?

( BTW you are making me hot with all that arse and convo and tail between the legs talk)

[jamest]

Put it this way, pal: if some relativist bozo was imploring me to repeat posts of mine that he hadn't read, that were significant enough to render his relativism as a corpse, then I would do so. Especially if all I needed to do was cut & paste.

Stop fannying around and wasting my/our time. The gauntlet has been thrown. Either pick it up or fuck off, with your tail between your legs.

Why keep up the farce? You wont read the originals and you wont understand snippets. You just want some one-liners to go off on.

Read the posts. Not just mine. Your arguments have been tossed like a salad. I need to know that you understand what we are saying to you. It's not looking like you do.

I accuse you of being disingenuous. I'm sat here imploring relevance, and just get bullshit.

Please don't follow the yellow brick road. Your shoes are full of shit and I'm sick of cleaning-up the same old mess.

[SpeedOfSound]

Put it this way, pal: if some relativist bozo was imploring me to repeat posts of mine that he hadn't read, that were significant enough to render his relativism as a corpse, then I would do so. Especially if all I needed to do was cut & paste.

Stop fannying around and wasting my/our time. The gauntlet has been thrown. Either pick it up or fuck off, with your tail between your legs.

Why keep up the farce? You wont read the originals and you wont understand snippets. You just want some one-liners to go off on.

Read the posts. Not just mine. Your arguments have been tossed like a salad. I need to know that you understand what we are saying to you. It's not looking like you do.

I accuse you of being disingenuous. I'm sat here imploring relevance, and just get bullshit.

Please don't follow the yellow brick road. Your shoes are full of shit and I'm sick of cleaning-up the same old mess.

I'm accusing you of not understanding the arguments. Neither the original or the follow up. Not reading them is even worse. What the hell are you here for?

Go read the thread again and have a long think. Get back to us with something new. You have lost this one.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Would you both like a day off to think about your behaviour and plan a strategy for interacting with other human beings in a civil manner? I am more than prepared to offer this service if it is what you would like.

If not, either treat each other with a little more respect, or ignore each other - either suits me.

[SpeedOfSound]

Yeah, yeah. Ill try and be good.

Jamest. SD linked you to a relevant post. Here is another.
http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 08#p416208

do you understand what a state machine is and how it addresses some of your complaints about the model?

[SpeedOfSound]

For consideration:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition

[SpeedOfSound]

If our conceptual reality is created by the structure of our bodies and the environment they develop in then our idea of the subjective observer is of the same kind as our idea of an external reality.

We develop with other animates. Usually humans but any mammal would work. Our idea of our subjective experience is probably completely intertwined with our concepts of how others experience.

All mammals seem to watch each others eyes and the attitude of the head and then body. The other is seen observing. We mirror them and embody the observer into our self-concept.

If we developed in an environment where we were the only animal we would probably have a reality that was near totally external and may not have any feeling of an ego or inner observer at all.

We would be outer-centric.

It's an idea. I think it has elements of truth.

[jamest]

Now, as discussed,
the brain's responses to its NN's can neither be 'blind' nor automatic (not completely, anyway),
since how the brain responds to those NNs
is largely dependent upon the current objective of the brain.
This means that the brain decides
which response to make wrt any given set of NN's.
And, therefore, this means that the brain must process the information as a whole to do this.

And so, the whole model is screwed.

The model is fine. It is your thinking that is screwed and skewed.

A simple state machine can do the things you are arguing against here. A robot can do this stuff. You are still operating with idealism that has been abandoned for for about a hundred years or more.

Read Chalmers about the Easy Problem. You haven't even grasped that much yet, let alone go on to the more difficult one of subjectivity.

Now once you realize your error there, if that's possible, we can go on to deeper questions of functionality and behavior. At that point the structure of the brain and it's function becomes important. You are not going to get way with dismissing it with this 'Clearly, the precise structure of the brain isn't going to be the focus of such a discussion' because it clearly is going to be the discussion.

One other thing. Quit talking about NN's like they were marbles rolling around loose inside your head. You should not use the terminology until you grasp it's basics. It's embarrassing.

You should also stop talking about the brain responding to NN's or anything else. Replace the word brain with Homunculus and it will look like you are attempting intellectual honesty.

How does any of this actually address the problems of assumption and semantics?

The easy problem of consciousness regards trying to explain how different mechanisms within the brain might fulfill specific functions, such as memory and attention, but even Chalmers said that if this were achievable the 'hard problem' would still remain. Anyway, you disregard that part of my reasoning where I discuss how brain 'processing' leads to my conclusions. That is, the easy problem isn't even relevant to addressing my posts. As far as I can tell, you're just name dropping and resorting to utilising red herrings in an attempt to distract from the actual focus of this discussion. Certainly, you haven't addressed the aforementioned problems in the slightest.

[jamest]

I specifically asked you to cut & paste the relevant parts of those posts (into a new post) that [you thought] actually addressed the [current] thrust of my reasoning...

The model is that there is a brain, and it responds to objects separate from it. The model more or less insists that if the brain was only responding to itself, awareness would be something like what happens when you aim a video camera at the monitor that is displaying its signal. If you don't know about these experiments, and what happens to people in sensory deprivation experiments, I suggest you have a look.

Please explain how this addresses the problems of assumption and semantics.

[SpeedOfSound]

How does any of this actually address the problems of assumption and semantics?

The easy problem of consciousness regards trying to explain how different mechanisms within the brain might fulfill specific functions, such as memory and attention, but even Chalmers said that if this were achievable the 'hard problem' would still remain. Anyway, you disregard that part of my reasoning where I discuss how brain 'processing' leads to my conclusions. That is, the easy problem isn't even relevant to addressing my posts. As far as I can tell, you're just name dropping and resorting to utilising red herrings in an attempt to distract from the actual focus of this discussion. Certainly, you haven't addressed the aforementioned problems in the slightest.

SO your theory this morning is that I'm purposefully using name dropping and red fish to distract you from the argument? Stop it james or we are going to get thrown out.


Semantics is the easy problem. It has nothing to do with the hard problem. But that doesn't matter.

The first problem that we have is one of you being fuzzy about the brain as a state machine(at least). It's actually not a finite state machine (FSM) but some of your suggestions about what the physical brain can't do could be done even by an FSM.

Starting with the idea of an FSM and then talking about how the brain is more complex is a good starting point for clarity.

The second problem is with semantics.

The issue is how that entity could know that its internal states were caused by something external to itself.

In the brain as well as an FSM the meaning is built into the structure of the system. You know that you are seeing something because the neruons that respond to seeing are actually physically hooked up to your eyes and have been since your brain formed in the womb.

You are going a little higher and talking about the Association Cortices (AC) of the brain where multi-modal sensory input is combined. It still doesn't matter. As the connections in your brain developed and the AC's became further etched by experience where the connections came from constructed meaning.

Examples of where this fails are found in synaesthetes. They have some overlap between two different association channels. The interesting thing that Ramachandran found out about that is that the confusion was always between two areas that had been found to be physically next to each other. This is strong evidence that physical wiring is where meaning comes from. Meanidn such as 'is it a number or a color'.

A third issue is your complaints about the model not being capable of things like context and intent.

So, now it comes to the crunch: can you explain all human behaviour in terms of that behaviour being nought other than automatic responses to NNs?

That is going to require a great deal more talk about structure and we should try and separate the issues into easy stuff and difficult stuff.

[jamest]

SO your theory this morning is that I'm purposefully using name dropping and red fish to distract you from the argument? Stop it james or we are going to get thrown out.

A hearing based on a herring. How novel.

I'll have a look at the rest of your post later, when I've got more time.

[Surendra Darathy]

I specifically asked you to cut & paste the relevant parts of those posts (into a new post) that [you thought] actually addressed the [current] thrust of my reasoning...

The model is that there is a brain, and it responds to objects separate from it. The model more or less insists that if the brain was only responding to itself, awareness would be something like what happens when you aim a video camera at the monitor that is displaying its signal. If you don't know about these experiments, and what happens to people in sensory deprivation experiments, I suggest you have a look.

Please explain how this addresses the problems of assumption and semantics.

Explaining the problem of semantics? The "problem of semantics" comes from not stating what the problem is.

I personally have less of a problem with semantics than someone who doesn't know how to express himself clearly.

The problems of dualism are so many and so deep that you should go back to the drawing board if that's what you mean by the "problem of semantics". Just state your "problem of semantics", and we will see that you're using it as a hidey-hole for the dualism we've all come to expect from you.

So, you would propose a different mechanism and structure for semantics than for dealing with direct sensory experience? Then the hard problem becomes one of accounting for this "second brain". That's dualism for you. If you want to concede sensory interactions with objects external to the brain, at least you'd be dropping your crippled version of idealism and taking up a dualism that has so many problems, and so deep, that dualists are laughed at by serious cognitive scientists these days. The only dualists still hanging in are those in the short bus of religious fuckwittery.