lehelvandor wrote:If we now take a big jump to the recent experimental findings confirming a few years older theory about consciousness being created essentially by a cluster of connected cells that organise the different sensory experiences and memories, then one could say that the above mechanisms yielding a special cluster of cells may produce something that for aeons was considered something beyond the material brain.

Is there not something essentially different between machines and living things, Lehel?
Life itself. What is it? What's the essential difference in an animal say, a second before and a second after it dies?

Here's an article I found by Stephen L Talbott titled; The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings.

Is it all just biological mechanisms? Talbott is a theist.
I think our worldviews impact how we see and interpret nature.
http://www.natureinstitute.org/txt/st/m ... nome_5.htm

Machines and living things are useful to compare in this context. The mentioned small cluster of cells in the brain (claustrum) that, with stimulation, can stop/resume consciousness work as a switchboard. Dragged in artificial neurons purely to show that often something we experience at macro level as 'beyond the material' can at micro level, in both biology and AI, consist of and work with very simple things.
If we can disrupt consciousness with a few tiny electrodes upsetting a relatively tiny cluster of cells that merely connect sensory and memory information (some made the analogy of a conductor in front of an orchestra), then it could be seen as just another biological mechanism poked with a toothpick.
However, this then inevitably opens the vast area of how one defines life, and yikes, how one defines intelligence - and whether the delimitation line between living and not living can be crossed by non-biological machines.

lehelvandor wrote:Machines and living things are useful to compare in this context. The mentioned small cluster of cells in the brain (claustrum) that, with stimulation, can stop/resume consciousness work as a switchboard. Dragged in artificial neurons purely to show that often something we experience at macro level as 'beyond the material' can at micro level, in both biology and AI, consist of and work with very simple things.
If we can disrupt consciousness with a few tiny electrodes upsetting a relatively tiny cluster of cells that merely connect sensory and memory information (some made the analogy of a conductor in front of an orchestra), then it could be seen as just another biological mechanism poked with a toothpick.
However, this then inevitably opens the vast area of how one defines life, and yikes, how one defines intelligence - and whether the delimitation line between living and not living can be crossed by non-biological machines.

So then, how do diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's come into play? As viruses? Not nitpicking or claiming to disagree with you, just curious.

Flann wrote:Life itself. What is it? What's the essential difference in an animal say, a second before and a second after it dies?

Most of the time, death is a state that is not reached until a few minutes after necessary biological functions cease. It is the reason CPR can "bring people back from the dead". Can you clarify what you mean when you use the word "essential"? Are you referring to an essence that is distinguished? Or do you mean it in another way?

There are parallels of the death of an organism and that of a computer. In some cases, a computer will have a "heart attack", where the power supply sends out freak voltage and fries many circuits. The computer cannot be brought back to life.

From Flann's link: IF YOU TRY TO DESCRIBE THE LIVING PROCESSES of the cell in a rather more living language than is typically found in the literature of molecular biology — a language reflecting the artfulness and grace, the well-coordinated rhythms, and the striking choreography of phenomena such as gene expressionlink, signaling cascadeslink, and mitoticlink cell division — you will almost certainly hear mutterings about your flirtation with “spooky, mysterious, nonphysical forces”. You should expect to hear yourself labeled a “mystic” or — there is no viler epithet within biology today — a “vitalist”. The previous article in this series reminded one reader of “some misty Shroud of Turin playing the pan flute and dancing with the fauns on the meadow”.

In both camps, we see the interplay of biological causation as going far beyond our understanding in aggregate. To the mystic, this is synonymous with the realm of the supernatural. To me, it merely means my brain is limited. Yes, these things are amazingly complex, and evoke feelings of wonder an awe. The world is infinitely more complex than I could hope to understand.

But I do not see the realm beyond my understanding as supernatural. I see it as my own ignorance. I've made progress into the territory of my ignorance, step by step every day of my life, and the journey has always turned up a naturalistic landscape. Whenever we zoom in on any particular detail of biology, it turns out to be naturalistic. Whenever we examine the interplay of biological mechanisms, they turn out to be naturalistic. Yet when we attempt to understand it all together, our brains simply fail. Not because there is supernaturalism to biology, but because we are incapable of understanding that much information all at once. A living breathing human is a causal orchestra so supremely complex and elegant that the human mind will never come close to full understanding.

We're not designed to understand the way the world works in a truthful manner. We're designed to understand the world in ways that help us survive. The two goals lead to different styles of thinking. I was at a gas station, and the woman in front of me asked if a certain type of scratch-off lottery ticket was lucky today. There are many people who have this faulty understanding of probability. It's representative of how our brains aren't configured to understand how things work. We must outsource our understanding to method, it is the only way.

Interbane wrote:But I do not see the realm beyond my understanding as supernatural. I see it as my own ignorance. I've made progress into the territory of my ignorance, step by step every day of my life, and the journey has always turned up a naturalistic landscape.

Whenever we zoom in on any particular detail of biology, it turns out to be naturalistic. Whenever we examine the interplay of biological mechanisms, they turn out to be naturalistic. Yet when we attempt to understand it all together, our brains simply fail. Not because there is supernaturalism to biology, but because we are incapable of understanding that much information all at once. A living breathing human is a causal orchestra so supremely complex and elegant that the human mind will never come close to full understanding.

We're not designed to understand the way the world works in a truthful manner. We're designed to understand the world in ways that help us survive. The two goals lead to different styles of thinking. I was at a gas station, and the woman in front of me asked if a certain type of scratch-off lottery ticket was lucky today. There are many people who have this faulty understanding of probability. It's representative of how our brains aren't configured to understand how things work. We must outsource our understanding to method, it is the only way.

Perfect

MovieNerd - apologies for not going through quotes, hastily whooshing by so just back-referencing to Alzheimers: interesting, I didn't think of making some analogy, so maybe I make one up that is not quite correct, but would see it as a removal of many of the nodes (neurons) and connections (synapses) or at least corrupting the latter.
Physiologically A. is seen as causing brain tissue loss, so it physically reduces the number of neurons.
So if one took a vast enough artificial neural network, and started erasing at random a bunch of connections that were "trained" to have certain weights based on presented information, then could achieve something similar. Of course this would need an intelligent enough network to be similar to what we have in our wetware.
Of course the whole other matter is what causes it - in Kubrick's 2001 the chap removes a bunch of modules from HAL and it gradually decays. Having had cases of A. in the family, I always found that sequences eerily similar (of course compressed to a few seconds) to how this nasty thing develops and affects the higher brain functions.

lehelvandor wrote:MovieNerd - apologies for not going through quotes, hastily whooshing by so just back-referencing to Alzheimers: interesting, I didn't think of making some analogy, so maybe I make one up that is not quite correct, but would see it as a removal of many of the nodes (neurons) and connections (synapses) or at least corrupting the latter.
Physiologically A. is seen as causing brain tissue loss, so it physically reduces the number of neurons.
So if one took a vast enough artificial neural network, and started erasing at random a bunch of connections that were "trained" to have certain weights based on presented information, then could achieve something similar. Of course this would need an intelligent enough network to be similar to what we have in our wetware.
Of course the whole other matter is what causes it - in Kubrick's 2001 the chap removes a bunch of modules from HAL and it gradually decays. Having had cases of A. in the family, I always found that sequences eerily similar (of course compressed to a few seconds) to how this nasty thing develops and affects the higher brain functions.

My interest in Alzheimer's came from helping to care for my greant aunt Rosa, my dad's aunt on his dad's side, who suffered with the disease for a little over 20 years and just passed away last month. The decay to her brain tissue and the loss of her identity and dignity were disheartening.

No apologies needed mate. As always I find your posts informative.

Thanks, and sorry to hear about it - had some cases in my family, and makes me wonder how my chances look like genetically speaking :O It admittedly side-steps the thread, but would dare to state my opinion that such physiological changes that fundamentally affect the *person* that we once knew can take a bigger toll on everyone around him/her than other changes that 'only' affect things outside the brain. As you say, I found that loss of identity the most difficult to deal with.

lehelvandor wrote:Thanks, and sorry to hear about it - had some cases in my family, and makes me wonder how my chances look like genetically speaking :O It admittedly side-steps the thread, but would dare to state my opinion that such physiological changes that fundamentally affect the *person* that we once knew can take a bigger toll on everyone around him/her than other changes that 'only' affect things outside the brain. As you say, I found that loss of identity the most difficult to deal with.

It is a disease where you wonder who's suffering more--the victim or the victim's friends and family. It certainly has some sociological ramifications which need exploring.