The Big Why

[sophie]

There are many whys in many lives.
By now we are able to trace most whys back to explanations.
Causations. Forces. Constants.

But there are three fundamental - three big - questions we do not know the answer for:

1. Where does reality come from? (no it is not the Big Bang - even if that theory happens to be actually true, it does not explain why there were the conditions for such a bang to begin with)

Probably Big Bang. Why were the conditions there? Because if they weren't we wouldn't be here talking about it right now.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I think we've done brain scans to show the brain's activity during emotion, love, hate, when you're eating a pie you enjoy, when you're enraged, when you're thinking hard, when you're dreaming, etc.

So it doesn't seem funny undetectable to me. I mean, we know which parts of the brain get excited when we're doing specific things. So you can sort of see thinking in action.

Yes, we can see the physical action of our thoughts. But I think El_Machinae's point was that we can not see or in anyway detect thoughts themselves, there are kinda just there. After all, the only reason we even know that brain activity corresponds to thoughts is us experiencing that phenomena. And knowing what physically happens doesn't completely tell us - so far at least - why they are there. From what kind of quality they stem from. Some quality inherent to all matter? Or beyond matter? But what?

 

[El_Machinae]

Warpus, that's missing the consciousness aspect. You're watching "matter and energy go in, transform each other, then come out". But you cannot actually see the thinking.

Now, in that entire set-up, there is something detecting that thinking. But it's only the person doing the actual thinking. There's a entire dimension of information contained within that qualia. It's not infinite, but it's ginormous.

To use physics lingo. If you have my head in a scanner or you have a 5 lb slurry of soylent green, they both contain the same amount of information in every physical way we understand and can detect. And yet, there's clearly an entire massive store of information in the qualia that only I can detect.

edit: think about it this way. How much of the information from my brain scan would a blind person need before they experienced the same experience I get from looking at something? Not even all the information would do

 

[warpus]

I think you guys are just thinking a bit too hard about this, expecting there to be some sort of a "magical" component, due to the complexity of the phenomenon and the self-referential nature of sentient existence.

edit: think about it this way. How much of the information from my brain scan would a blind person need before they experienced the same experience I get from looking at something? Not even all the information would do

Or maybe I don't understand what you're trying to get at..

If you took an exact copy of your brain and replaced their brain with yours - they'd experience similar things as you. The only difference would be that the nerve endings are different, and the nervous system connecting to the brain would be different. But I don't really get what that's supposed to hint at or whatever.

I think you're trying to say that a part of our mind/consciousness/etc. lives outside of our brain and nervous system. And if so, I have to disagree 100%. There is no evidence for such a thing being the case and all experts say something else.

Warpus, that's missing the consciousness aspect. You're watching "matter and energy go in, transform each other, then come out". But you cannot actually see the thinking.

You can though, if you do a brain scan - you can see in many cases which parts of the brain increase in neuron activity while you're thinking hard about a math problem (or about whatever). Those neurons firing is you thinking! You can see the thinking!

 

[Terxpahseyton]

but thinking about it too much just means it's time to get out into the world. More sobriety (or for some, less), depending on which state lead you here and be like the eiffel tower for 72 hours on this world, you know?

I was so sober when doing this thread. I swear...
Yes you are of course totally right that brooding over those questions isn't of any use. I don't intend to do that. But I at least want to appreciate them once in a while. And I wanted to invite OT in joining me.

Why do you feel the need to answer these questions, Mr Seyton?

"Just because" seems to satisfy most people after a bit. And what other answers are there, in the end?

Well none, true enough. But why I'd liked the answer? I guess the truth is that there is this faint hope that the answer would make our universe seem a bit less meaningless. But also because it just is so wondrous that there is a thing like awareness and sensation.

Probably Big Bang.

That the Big Bang, apparently, is currently the best theory we got doesn't suggest to me in this case that it is also probably true.

 

[El_Machinae]

Yes, you can see the thinking. But, you cannot see the thoughts. Consciousness is apparently the only 'output' of a physical machine that cannot be detected by anyone else. And, this consciousness contains an incredible amount of information.

Every other physical process we know of has physical outputs that can be measured. But there's literally no detector you can put into my brain to capture the bits of qualia.

We can't see the thoughts. This is why there are so many moral conundrums. Do fish feel pain? We can see the nociceptors. We can see that they trigger avoidance reflexes. We see that fish retain a memory for the conditions that caused nociceptors to fire. But pain. Do they feel pain? We don't know.

 

[Borachio]

But it looks like fish feel pain. So why wouldn't they?

Does another human being truly feel pain? I don't know. I can't know. But it's a very good assumption that they do.

 

[warpus]

Yes, you can see the thinking. But, you cannot see the thoughts.

Ah.. The reason we can't see thoughts, is because we're not really quite sure how the brain fully works. Each thought is composed of trillions (or more?) of neural connections and neurons firing here and there.

Order comes out of apparent chaos - that's the nature of a neural network that arose via evolution. We're not that great with working with that sort of data.

So you're right - you can't see thoughts, exactly. They are very abstract things, sitting on layers of other abstractions, with neurons sitting way at the bottom. How do you make sense of all of that? We still haven't really figured it out.

It's kind of like a computer. You can look at the invidividual AND and OR gates that are used to build the thing, and say: "Where are the files? You can't see the files". You can't unless you move up several abstract layers and get to the files.. but if all you're looking at is the AND and OR gates, you will not make sense of it, unless you're a computer scientist who studies stuff like that - in which case you will see order in the "chaos". And in this case the "chaos" isn't really chaos - it's all been carefully designed, gate by gate. In the case of a human brain, that is not the case. So we can look at the neurons, then say "?", and then several levels of abstraction above, there are thoughts. What's in between? How does it work? We just don't have all the answers yet. With a computer we do - because we designed the things - but if you jut showed somebody the gates and the electrical impulses that lie at the bottom of all the abstract layers that make a computer tick - that person might say: "Where is youtube? Where are my files? Where is windows?"

 

[dusters]

Ah.. The reason we can't see thoughts, is because we're not really quite sure how the brain fully works. Each thought is composed of trillions (or more?) of neural connections and neurons firing here and there.

Order comes out of apparent chaos - that's the nature of a neural network that arose via evolution. We're not that great with working with that sort of data.

So you're right - you can't see thoughts, exactly. They are very abstract things, sitting on layers of other abstractions, with neurons sitting way at the bottom. How do you make sense of all of that? We still haven't really figured it out.

It's kind of like a computer. You can look at the invidividual AND and OR gates that are used to build the thing, and say: "Where are the files? You can't see the files". You can't unless you move up several abstract layers and get to the files.. but if all you're looking at is the AND and OR gates, you will not make sense of it, unless you're a computer scientist who studies stuff like that - in which case you will see order in the "chaos". And in this case the "chaos" isn't really chaos - it's all been carefully designed, gate by gate. In the case of a human brain, that is not the case. So we can look at the neurons, then say "?", and then several levels of abstraction above, there are thoughts. What's in between? How does it work? We just don't have all the answers yet. With a computer we do - because we designed the things - but if you jut showed somebody the gates and the electrical impulses that lie at the bottom of all the abstract layers that make a computer tick - that person might say: "Where is youtube? Where are my files? Where is windows?"

Why don't you guys just ask a mind reader how he does it? It would help the case.

 

[warpus]

Cold reading wouldn't really help in any way here.

 

[dusters]

Cold reading wouldn't really help in any way here.

I just read a load on science of the mind - scientists scanning brains of Zen monks - and well, they pretty much got the answers there.

Nothing violates second law of thermodynamics though -
since most people are lazy and pressured by peers, what would an average Joe choose - meditation for 10-30 years and mind reading/telepathy or learning English naturally at age of 3?

 

[luiz]

The thing about the laws of physics is that we can learn what they are, but not why they are. Our understanding is purely empirical, not rational. Matter attracts matter, but it could just as well repulse it (then of course the world wouldn't exist as it does). A lot of things that make intuitive sense to us, like conservation of parity, are not true (again, we can observe violations of the conservation of parity, but we don't know why).

Again, we have no explanation for the rules of the universe, just observations. The only existing explantions are religious and thus won't satisfy the OP.

Will we ever have "real" explanations? I strongly doubt it. I think we tend to forget just how ignorant, and irrelevant, we are on the grand scheme of things.

 

[Borachio]

But if gravity were a repulsive force, and the world wouldn't be here, then we wouldn't know about it.

So... is this the anthropic principle at work again? Gravity has to be attractive for there to be beings (us) to figure out that it is an attractive force.

How does gravity work, btw? Ah, it's that business about distorting the fabric of space, again. I remember. I never did like that one.

 

[warpus]

The thing about the laws of physics is that we can learn what they are, but not why they are. Our understanding is purely empirical, not rational. Matter attracts matter, but it could just as well repulse it (then of course the world wouldn't exist as it does). A lot of things that make intuitive sense to us, like conservation of parity, are not true (again, we can observe violations of the conservation of parity, but we don't know why).

Again, we have no explanation for the rules of the universe, just observations. The only existing explantions are religious and thus won't satisfy the OP.

Will we ever have "real" explanations? I strongly doubt it. I think we tend to forget just how ignorant, and irrelevant, we are on the grand scheme of things.

I reckon that's why the scientific explanation for sensation does not satisfy OP. Even though it exists and all..

 

[luiz]

I reckon that's why the scientific explanation for sensation does not satisfy OP. Even though it exists and all..

You just gave a description, when he was looking for the reason. We don't know the ultimate reasons.

 

[Borachio]

Could it be that we can't know the ultimate reasons?

Suppose we could, and we found out what the ultimate reasons are? What then? (Actually, my brain's beginning to ache a bit now.)

 

[El_Machinae]

Ah.. The reason we can't see thoughts, is because we're not really quite sure how the brain fully works. Each thought is composed of trillions (or more?) of neural connections and neurons firing here and there.

Yeah, that's my theory too. I mean, I totally figure the answer is there somewhere. But unlike every other piece of information stored within a physical system, I don't think we've gotten very far with the how qualia exist.

We barely understand the conditions required for their existence. We certainly have no real theory on what is necessary and sufficient, in any broad sense. Sure, maybe a reasonable understanding, in crude terms, what primate brains need to have qualia instead of sheer 'learning reflexes'.

I expect it's solvable. We've just not had a Darwin moment. The ongoing funding of neuroscience will eventually produce that moment, but it hasn't yet. If neuroscience was magnetics, we're still at the stage where we say "Hey, Maxwell, have you noticed that some rocks will align themselves in a North/South direction if you hang them from a string?"
"Yeah, I wonder why that is?"
"Not sure. Still trying to figure out how to tell the orienting rocks from the non-orienting rocks, y'know, without actually suspending them from a string"

When it comes to qualia, we basically don't have a better mechanism than asking someone if they have qualia. Once we get outside of the mammalian brain, the neuroanatomy changes enough that the rules-of-thumb we developed regarding human consciousness cannot be robustly applied.

But it looks like fish feel pain. So why wouldn't they?

There are many "nociceptor -> learning reflex" systems that look like pain, but don't actually experience pain. This is mainly because they don't have the neurobiology for the percept of pain. The neuroanatomical streams (in people) for responding to aversive stimuli are independent of our neuroanatomy for perceiving pain.

So, it's unclear whether fish have the neuroanatomy to experience pain, as a qualia. The model for whether a person, a primate, or even a mammal can experience pain doesn't apply to fish, because our neuroanatomies are too different.

 

[warpus]

When it comes to qualia, we basically don't have a better mechanism than asking someone if they have qualia.

Our brain - the second last great frontier.

I can't imagine what sorts of things we're going to end up figuring out about it and what sorts of doors that's going to open (and how it's going to change our society).

 

[Smote]

Brains & AI (Maybe not totally relevant but I think super interesting)

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0085175

 

[warpus]

Hmm weird, I thought I responded to this.

You just gave a description, when he was looking for the reason. We don't know the ultimate reasons.

Why does the moon orbit the Earth? Wouldn't you just answer the question using our understanding of gravity? There is no why - the best you can do with a lot of phenomena is a description of how it works. Same with sensation - but I'm guessing OP didn't really mean to use the word "sensation".