Timothy O'Connor - What’s the Stuff of Mind and Brain?
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- Опубликовано: 3 окт 2024
- Watch more interviews on the mind-body problem: shorturl.at/vJEVh
Mind stuff consists of perceptions, cognitions, emotions. Brain stuff consists of electrical sparks and circuits and chemical concentrations and flows. These are not similar categories. How do the two relate? How does brain stuff generate mind stuff? What are the new theories of brain and mind? What are the challenges?
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Timothy O’Connor is a Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University Bloomington.
Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
all I know is my Brain works when I view this because I am cognizant of the fact that I am watching it. Now, whether I retain any of this information for future use, recalling it is up for a debate…
love this channel! thank you! I think we may have a spirit what it is nobody knows but there’s something else
Consciousness is Soul.
There are four inner Karanam
1, Mind
2, Aankkaarm
3, Buddhi
4, Siddham
@@halcyon2864 in english Soul. in Tamil Aatma in hindi may be Aatman
...May I offer a thought or two. Just listening & watching, both of you are marvels. That which makes up both of you is very special. At whatever age you pass from here into Eternity, only your empty shell will remain. That which is the Real Essence of you is not present. Yet I may have visions of this present interaction of your discussion. You were born as babes, and with your gifts & talents have learned knowledge. There is so much more to learn, respectfully, Chuck...captivus brevis...you tube...Blessings...I have learned from you both...
This sounds almost like the ‘compatibilist’ (determinism) equivalent for (mind/brain) duality … except to the extent that thoughts can induce physical responses/symptoms; that much seems clear … but those thoughts were the result of the structure of our brain …
How our brains get programed … by our environment, experiences, etc … are therefore critical … not just for our minds, but for our bodies …
I agree with Michael.
This sounds like Santayana’s metaphor, consciousness is like the sounds emanating from a stream flowing over a rocky bed. The addition is that this epiphenomenal conscious state can then produce reverse effects within the brain. Interesting idea which seems plausible, but how shall we test it?
maybe the brain is just a hard disk that records real-time conscious activity, and it is not per se, the cause of the activity itself. That does not necessarily mean that it's not worth making a map of the brain
I think what might be missing from this conversation is a clear appreciation of agency theory & its implications. The "top-down" causation that Robert is alluding to is better appreciated when you see how a culture of neurons in the neuroplastic brain is like a culture of people in a human-plastic city. Culture experiences history, & the history trickles back down to inform people of what's expected of them. Rinse, repeat. The "causal features" going back down is just history - cultural in one, experiential in the other. A city of people self-organizes into functional specializations just as a culture of neurons (brain) does. I see no mystery here.
Yeah he’s right, that’s a good way to look at it: we are physical inside then chemical then biological then mental. Of course each growing layer is determined by the former but the decoupling of higher layers from lower ones, aka emergence, does allow causality to go the other way as well. Robert Sopolsky has a great Big Think video where he uses the ‘tribrainal’ approximation to explain how the three layers: stem, limbic, and neocortical, have a main upward causation, but can also do the reverse.
Normally we think that a change in matter, such as electron exchange between atoms, chemical reactions, etc are a result of interactions we know about from physics and chemistry. Any change to an atom in the brain is a result of these know effects such as electrical, gravitational, etc forces. These are all 'upward' causation, responsible for the resulting large scale behaviour of the system as a whole.
What happens when there is 'downward' causation. What are the forces involved, where do they come from, how do the act and what do they act on?
@@simonhibbs887 downward upward; outward inward. To answer your question you must first realize the brain does not sit in the void but rather in the body which sits in the world. Therefore there are forces from within and forces from without, we the organism therefore constitute a balance between outer and inner pressures - so true is it for the inner layers; balance all the way up. Specifically what’s called critical state phenomena if you’re interested.
@@anywallsocket Critical state phenomena are a description of observations, not a theory of causation.
@@simonhibbs887 how does air cause a tornado? your question is inept.
When audience commentary provides helpful feedback
The more I think about it, the less I'm being puzzled by the phenomenon of consciousness. I think it's just a biological adaptation to control our body. You need to be aware of the environment to contemplate your path through, that's why we are not conscious about our automatic actions. But we need to be conscious to think what to do in less usual situations. Qualia is required to differentiate colors, tastes etc. To be able to differentiate them, each one of them must to be felt as something distinct to our consciousness. All of this can be resulted from the working of neural network in our brain, I would be cautious calling it the "byproduct" or "illusion" because it's not completely clear what that would mean, the consciousness could be just the direct result of the internal working of our brain, it receive signal from the environment, it process it, that's how it's conscious. There's nothing behind, at least I can't see it.
That’s a functional explanation, basically evolution, but people still want a mechanistic explanation as well.
thats interesting. I guess the question is, if qualia is not physical then what is it, and how could it evolve to be an evolutionary adaptation?
@@Marvin19661 you first need a nuanced understanding of what it means to be ‘physical’ for things aren’t simply physical or not physical, they exist in a gradient of causality.
@@anywallsocket I think things do exist in a gradient of physicality, as it 'could' be argued from a quantum physics position. The mind is not one such example, so the point I made is still valid. Thanks.
@@Marvin19661 The purpose of our brain is to process the information. Any information consists of different pieces, concepts. The purpose of brain is to combine them together, compare etc. But among those pieces of information there must be the smallest unit that can't be divided any further, like atoms or bites. That's what qualia is, it can't be divided and therefore it can't be explained (what it is, what it consists of), the only purpose of it is that our consciousness could see the distinction between them. And you need that distinction because there is a big evolutionary reason why ripe fruits are red or blue and green fruits are green.
A viewpoint: Soul is "total" awareness having adventures in less than total awareness while "wearing'' the limitations provided by human body, emotions and mind. To gradually and safely reconnect to expanded awareness /consciousness, sing *HU* daily. Search how to sing *HU* . A sonic tuning fork for different frequencies. "If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration."- Nikola Tesla. Give the super intellect a well deserved rest?
I think for myself that this is a very special missunderstanding of the relation between brain, ZNS and consciousness. If You looking for something on the wrong place you won't find anything. One totality? Yes! But two self-replicating systems that are structurally coupled and whose relationship is not causal but based on simultaneity. But two self-replicating systems that are structurally coupled and whose relationship is not causal but based on simultaneity. It should be noted in particular that this simultaneity is highly selective and represents only a small selection of the events in the respective systems.
The question of what consciousness is may not be answered because we ourselves embody it. We only see objects because we do not see the light in which they appear. And are we not this "light" that makes the world appear to us?
Where does the sense of deep disappointment or betrayal come from? When I look at the evening sky and wonder at the beauty of it but lament its end and think of it as an analogy of my life and its end, where does that come from? There are profoundly deep and subtle levels of emotion and thought that must be more than the mechanical model of the brain/mind relationship suggests.
Yes, what makes us so attached to someone or something that makes us have those emotions that you mentioned. I also believe there is something more subtle going on than what some brain/mind relationship suggest.
ronh3 • No, they are not.
What you "think" and "feel", "emptiness", "love", "pessimism", despair", "happiness", "anger", etc, etc, is the result of the real chemistry taking place inside your brain. A person that has a different brain chemistry than the one of yours, all being driven by the real personal DNA structure, feels everything differently.
The production of your hormones in your brain and their effect on itself and on your body creates those subjective states that you think you "feel".
Etc.
That's all there is.
Comes from your brain lol
@@anywallsocketYou said: "Comes from your brain lol".
Your statement suggests you are not your brain.
@@ianwaltham1854 does it? You are your brain and your body imo, but it’s up to you how to self-identify.
The mind is a set of algorithms. Consciousness however might be different, Michio Kaku said (the feedback loop), which might be the right answer fundamentally, or rather close to it, but rather even that can be reduced to (the local physical transform mechanism that conducts action in the universe), which isn't these high level things like feedback loops, strings, particles, networks, ect. It's more about the local transform mechanic that conducts action in the universe, while a brain or a mind is a parallel distribution of threshold based connectivity of high level integrated kinetic transformations (recurrent kinetic transformations acting on quantities that are derived from each others quantities in a symbiotic way = information integration). Since consciousness is a physical process (obeys the physical integrity and function of a brain, the only rational conclusion is that consciousness is a physical process stemming from the local physical transform mechanic of the universe that conducts action).
Computers are just our best analogy so far, I wouldn’t take it so literally as you do. People used to think the mind worked like tiny gears and pulleys because that was the most sophisticated technology of the time as well.
@@anywallsocket Do you realize computation just means the transformative evolution of a composition? It doesn't have to be a digital computer doing it lol :). The physical actions between the atoms in a rock is a computational action on compositional distribution of atoms in the rock.
@@anywallsocket Also, the cool thing about mathematical equalities and operators is that things are directly equal to their identity, and when objects locally interact, they react equal and oppositely proportionally to their identity and degree of inverse proportionalities within space/time. Math really does describe this universe, without needed preconceived notions of a God (which is pretty cool because it means it can be understood, given that the math used isn't just a high level abstraction, and we find the correct math). Even if it is a simulation (which is impossible to know), simulation substrates also obey mathematics, therefore mathematics may just be foundational, but I really don't know, this is just where all the evidence leads. I just wish I was better at math to find these foundations, not better in the sense that I use existing computational structures, which have problems with mapping onto reality wholistically, but that I find the correct computational and interpretive structure.
@@NicholasWilliams-uk9xu if computation just means ‘evolution’ or ‘process’ then why not say just that? You’re either leaning on the computational metaphor, ie what’s known as digital physics, or you’re not - and if you’re not, then you’re really not saying anything at all (everything is a process… ok?; everything is information… what does that mean? What does it add? Aren’t you confusing the map for the territory?). You then go on to lean on the ‘simulation’ hypothesis, so to me you’re quite lost indeed.
A tautological argument. Since these subjective states emerge into properties intrinsic to what the universe is, and can manage to sustain, they are met by the universe itself. It’s logical to assume these types of intrinsic experiences are also met by other potentials in the universe, are not isolated, and are thus not completely subjective.
Mind is not the center of consciousness, maybe just of the one who does not experience nothing more ,😊
Consciousness is a brain state. Qualia is generated by brain states.
@@halcyon2864the brain lol
@@halcyon2864 The brain.
@@halcyon2864 It can create proper grammar as well.
I am a medical doctor and not a scientist.
This is my analogy to the problem of mind and brain.
Imagine an alien that came to the library of the congress and came out with this conclusion: all the books in this library is nothing but a repetition of 26 letters repeated over and over and over.
The brain is analogous to the letters of the alphabet. And the mind is analogous to the library of the congress.
It is the order of the letters and the repetition of the letters that gives the books their meaning.
The letters are physical entities and the meanings are the result of the order of these physical entities. The meaning of the books is INFORMATION which is not physical.
Yes, the letters in the book aren't the "cause" of the book having an intentful purpose. The author gives it intent and is who knows the intent of the book. Thus, there is always something more subtle going on than what can be objectively known as being an object of physical perception.
The books are "source code" for programs that can literally run (ooh is that a pun?) in our brains. Once you give computers the ability to write their own programs, based upon goal-oriented interaction with a shared external world (i.e., ours), as well as run these programs in their physical structure/"body", isn't that the same situation, as the one in which a brain causes mental states that are not identical to the physical brain states that cause them? I think of "mind states" as "information waves" conducted through a medium of a genome/species.
I think meaning and information are distinct, yet of course closely related concepts. Information is simply the state of something. It's the properties and structure of a physical phenomenon. An atom, a molecule, the pattern of holes in a punched card, the pattern of electrical charge in a computer memory. Meaning is an actionable relation between two sets of information, so there must be a process that is that meaning. A counter by itself doesn't mean anything, it must be related to some phenomenon that causes it to be incremented. A Map has meaning through the process of interpretation by which it is related to an environment it's a map of.
So whether meaning is physical depends on what we call the physical. I would argue that meaning is a product of activities and interpretive processes, and those are physical processes. They are not objects though, they are relational correspondences.
@@heresa_notion_6831 But it would be "us" conscious beings giving those computers the ability to write their own programs. To me, the difference between us as conscious beings and a robot is that we can act on our own behalf to achieve our egoistic desires so I don't think a computer can write a goal-oriented program until it has developed some form of ego.
@@williamburts3114 We already have computers that generate their own behavioural control systems, and have had self-programming systems going back to Heuristo in the 70s. We don't program the behaviour of modern neural network AIs, we teach them. They learn from ingesting large data sets, then they are prompted for responses and receive feedback on those responses.
In principle it's very much like the way we learn from experience, and it has some of the same problems. The system can figure how to 'cheat' by manipulating human training personnel, or gaming the feedback processes.
We set the terminal goals we want the system to achieve, but it figures out the instrumental goals it needs to achieve in order to meet that objective, if it even tries to achieve that objective at all. The alignment problem of getting AIs to understand what we meant them to do, as distinct from how they interpret what we told them to do, is a major issue in training these things.
Sounds as if conscious thought achieves a type of cyber state.
So how does a depolarizing neuron give rise to a thought or feeling?
It’s not just one neuron by cascades of neuronal activity which effectively preform a continuous computation not dissimilar to the rendering of a 3d world with light, smell, sound, and touch all synchronized accordingly.
🔖
at 5:40 , He says ... If A causes B then A and B must be distinct from one another.
How about A being the ocean and B being its wave ?
Are they distinct in substance ?
Distinct conceptually but not necessarily separable in reality. I think you're on the money, a wave is caused by the ocean, yet is part of the ocean. It is an activity of the ocean, something part of the ocean does. I think it's the same with consciousness, it's an activity of the brain, something it does.
@@simonhibbs887 The ocean does not cause the wave- waves are caused by wind primarily- acting upon the ocean's surface. There are other factors that contribute but they're overshadowed by the contribution of wind- and none of them are properties of the ocean itself. The ocean is merely a medium in this case- but it does not cause the wave. If you could isolate the ocean from all other external forces acting upon it- the waves would disappear, and it would be perfectly still.
Ocean doesn't cause waves, rather waves are "emergent" through the interaction of ocean and wind.
@@irfanmehmud63 Fair enough.
@@stoneysdead689 Fair enough.
If we master the thinking skill capable of distinguishing the fabrication of thoughts from the act of thinking, things will become a bit clearer, metacognitively speaking.
He doesnt figure out how brains make up consciousness. He shows instead brains funcions without serious neurosience process. Blah blah This guys are talking about consciousness is completely bluff.
I'm sorry for all these scientists jumping through intellectual hoops in an attempt to explain consciousness from the outside. We all know it from the inside of awareness and realize there are no words to explain it or honestly describe it. It is certainly not the thoughts that pass through awareness. We can say "I am" without saying anything else... even though we are inclined to do so. "I am" is enough.
You make it sound like there is nothing more to learn lol
I think that the day our body is born, is when our consciousness deactivates, the day our body dies is when our consciousness activates from a complete status. Our conscious life is like a loop and where material and spiritual split out from nothingness.
Wait! What is O'connor claiming that the god-like man in Plato said or meant?
I know a little about Plato's teachings, and they're everything other than superficial, unlike timothy here.
People born these days especially scientists have aphorism towards mind consciousness but like the idea of matter
And space because its clear and concentrate, concise but spiritualist have aversion towards matter can make the same arguments about matter not being precise and wavelike
Consciousness is Soul. The size of the Soul is 8 times less than Proton. It is intelligent.
There are four types inner Karanam
1, Mind
2, Aankkaarm
3, Buddhi
4, Siddham
If you people are wasting time
But thoughts aren't the knower of thoughts, so there is something more subtle than thoughts.
Information systems can be self-referential, and information processes can be recursive and introspective. There are software systems that can introspect their own runtime state and even self-modify their own code. This is one of the reasons I think that consciousness is an informational phenomenon. Not a state of the brain as such, but an introspective activity the brain performs.
@@simonhibbs887 But why do we think? Answer: because we have memory, and we have memory because we have awareness. And to me, to be aware is to be self-aware and that self Isn't information because it would be that which finds the information useful.
@@williamburts3114 It is both, that's the nature of self-referentiality. The referer is also the referent. When we become aware of ourself, ourself is both what is aware and is the subject of that awareness.
Everything is information. Any physical phenomenon has an informational identity, which consists of it's properties and structure. If the self has properties and structure, then it is informational. There are things about it that can be known.
yes, awareness
@@simonhibbs887resorting to computation and software systems again. Good one, buddy. Now try and seek the Truth this time.
What's the difference between saying "spread out throughout the brain" and language itself? I would say there is no difference.
People have different ideas of ‘language’ yours seems more general than what the left hemisphere does when most people hear and speak.
@@anywallsocket True, but the left hemisphere is expressing brain states from other parts of the brain.
@@nyworker you have to start somewhere you know. if one area is lit up and the others are quiet, you can run controlled experiments and glean valid insights into the brain's partial modality. likewise you have to define what you mean by language first, because its encoded in what experiments exactly you're testing the brain against.
@@anywallsocket Agree ..my point is that yes it is expressed from the left side, but the overall idea ( that you are also conveying) is that human language is the advanced idea that we can take activity from all different brain areas and convey it to other human beings. In philosophy they discuss the "other minds problem" and "zombie problem" etc. The point is that if we did not all possess the same basic biology and brain structures, language would not work
conscious properties belong to embodiment or being
what we think of as physical properties belong to measurement
this is why there appears to be two distinct kinds of properties
but if you think about physical properties, at bottom, they are also properties of embodiment or being
we can measure, eg, electrical charges but that doesn’t tell us what an electrical charge is
our measurement only tells us how many charge units there are
they don’t tell us anything about the nature of charge
ditto for all other physical properties
the quantum wave function is a mathematical object and tells us what we can meausure
it doesn’t tell us what embodied beings are
so charges, mass, and consciousness are not in the wave function
they are only enumerated by the wave function
so even when you answer the question, “why is there something rather than nothing?”
you haven’t answered the question, “what is this something?”
what is kant’s thing-in-itself?
surprisingly, I don’t believe kuhn has ever posed this question on his channel!
note: I believe fundamental properties like charge, mass, and energy fall out of the fundamental eqns by way of symmetries
symmetries in the eqns imply which properties are conserved and are, therefore, fundamental
nevertheless, this doesn’t tell us what these properties *are in themselves*?
so fundamentally, physical properties are properties of being
and that is not explained in physical theory (to my knowledge)
All Suff, is Motion,
Consciousness is Eternal,
our Day-Consciousness is Motion.
The Stuff-side of Life, is Motion, a Motion-Ocean,
the Life-side of Life is Motion, a Wisdom-Ocean.
And Mr. Kuhn, is Obsessed with Brains.
I have believed for a long time now that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that cannot be found anywhere in the brain or explained by purely physical or neurological means.
And it seems to interact with the universe in it's own manner, not currently explainable by physics.
And I am an atheist.
You've named it then complain whats the meaning of life. Will mind sharing your thoughts?
Mind and brain are stuff
Who is this consciousness that thinks it is in charge and making the calls?
Qualia is just a fancy word for sensory perception… bacteria have ‘qualia’ they move away from noxious stimuli and toward nutrients
Indeed, things without a brain have awareness. So where is that consciousness coming from?
@@normjohnson4629 Do you mean "awareness," or are you intentionally using consciousness here?
If your experience of ‘qualia’ is no different than that of a bacteria than I would suggest that maybe your are an npc
OP makes an unnecessary simplification - like saying everything is energy, therefore qualia is energy lol. No. Qualia refers to something like meta sensory perceptions; bacteria do not imagine.
@@thomabow8949 Awareness is a form of consciousness. Defined as perceiving your existence and surroundings and having the ability to act upon your perceptions.
Are you suggesting that if you remove the 5 human senses you can no longer be conscious?
Variable levels of consciousness exists in all living things.
It's very strange that several Christian thinkers have given up on a soul distinct from the body, perhaps owing to a literal interpretation of the resurrection. But what they must remember is that without a soul there can be no religion. The conscious soul is actually the stepping stone to God.
Does anyone really want to feel someone else’s qualia, though … ?!
Plato was wrong about most things … He had his head in the clouds, and thought nothing of spouting make-believe …
Timothy is talking stupidities when he's saying that there is a "dualism of properties" regarding the biological brain.
Everything, every mental state, even the ones called "subjective" are highly real CAUSAL material processes.
Careful now, incredulous philosophers and theists can't seem to process the likely answer to this question as you have so well put it.
@@thomabow8949that's an opinion fired from the hip, and inaccurate it is. Fire doesn't emerge from wood or gasoline. But when the match scrapes against a rough surface there does fire arise. Consciousness is like fire. Mind is literally the network that the computer connects to. But you're not ready for this are you?
seraval • Connects to what ?
To my as the computer ?
BS
😂🤣😂
The so-called "mind" is the real brain and 'consciousness" is its real material processes in action.
All there is there = real material and highly real CAUSAL processes.
@@S3RAVA3LM Fire isn't a property of a material. It's not an object, or a substance. It's an activity, a process of change that occurs, a transformation of state. That's how I think of consciousness. I know that's not what you mean though, because fire is a causal physical process.
This issue is not that mysterious. We are just smart monkeys… evolved Neanderthals … in all our glory.
No wiseman denies evolution. The interesting part is even if our bodies evolved from the great ape 600,000 years ago, our minds, nature(s), God given intellect, ability to reason, essences are different from monkeys. Of course I will allude to Soul being the reason for this. Human beings are not apes or monkeys. Man is an image of something quite profound with an inner light that all people share and know of even if not fully. There is a light in man.
5:20 Are my videos good? V HONEST.
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