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Quote from: cheryl j on 28/10/2013 00:56:53So if these drivers serve a purpose, and have a function, and effects that are often very predictable, how are they not machine like?By being feelings/qualia. There's no problem creating a model which shows a drive process whereby the response is greater in proportion to the size of an input signal, but there are no feelings involved in that.
So if these drivers serve a purpose, and have a function, and effects that are often very predictable, how are they not machine like?
The function of emotions seems enough to salvage them from the pure qualia of consciousness box and put them into the machine box.
Even reasoning and analytic thought processes are accompanied by some sensation or feeling. Curiosity? Confusion? The sense of certainty of a right answer? The nagging feeling of a tip-of-the-tongue experience when you know you know something but can't quite name it? Doubt? I don't know if there is a computational equivalent to doubt, in which one thinks one has the right answer based on all the available information but still thinks that it could be wrong. Does it stem from a more primitive feeling, as in "My predator acts like he doesn't know I'm here, but what if I'm wrong, should I run or stay put?"
One could argue that emotion is too broad a term. Some people sub divide it into things like physiological arousal, cognitive appraisal, the conscious experience or feeling of an emotion, action tendency, and expressive behavior. But I don't think dissecting emotion completely lets one off the hook as in "Okay feeling goes in the qualia box, but arousal or expression goes in the machine box." Fear would be a good example of an emotion that is harder to dissect in that way, especially since a person can be afraid before one has had time to identify or figure out the cause, but can also fear things one has had a great deal of time to consider. And fear as a big effect on memory and aversion to things in the future, both rational and irrational.
Quote from: cheryl j on 29/10/2013 00:28:26The function of emotions seems enough to salvage them from the pure qualia of consciousness box and put them into the machine box.You have to separate out feelings from functions. Pain is not an emotion, but it is a feeling associated with a function which is to guide you away from damage. Emotions are also feelings which are associated with drives, such as with love where it guides you to care for things that are beneficial to your life. What actually distinguishes emotions from other feelings is simply that they are triggered by events in the brain rather than by external inputs. Colours, sounds, smells, pain, touch, heat sensors, balance sensors, etc. are things that result in qualia being experienced which are not labelled as emotions. Emotions may then be triggered in response to music, scenes or the sight of something disasterous befalling someone, but the cause of that is internal, coming from the results of processing inputs and not from the simple inputs themselves.
The chemicals released in the brain are part of the network of causation that leads to the brain making decisions, different chemicals triggering different emotions at some point somewhere in the system (if feelings are real). I don't think we're going to get to the answers though until we can model the brain well enough to track back the claims that come out of it to see the evidence they were based on. My hope (why do I hope it though?) is that there is another system of processing that computer science does not yet understand, a system which depends on qualia and something of substance that experiences them for real (an I in the machine) and which is somehow able to make itself known to the information system that generates the data claiming that consciousness is real. I don't think this is something anyone's going to work out until we've actually seen it and discovered how it works.
How can chemicals do just that via machine -like , computer -like computation or whatever = pure mechanistic materialist non-sense ,unbelievable .
...by some sort of inexplicable magical materialist mechanistic belief assumptions in science haha
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 31/10/2013 20:48:03...by some sort of inexplicable magical materialist mechanistic belief assumptions in science hahaYou're the one trying to bring in bucketloads of magic. I'm trying to remove as much magic from the model as possible. Your solution is to explain things by replacing cause-and-effect mechanisms with magic, not only for the bits that I can't explain, but for a whole stack of things that I can explain. Unbelievable! You still don't get it!
You materialists are stoopid - you believes that a calculator works by cause and effect mechanisms, but it doesn't. No one can explain how a calculator works. It actually works by non-materialistic science, but that isn't magic because I say so.
What is amazing is that you want to replace explanations based on cause-and-effect mechanisms which work with magical "explanations" which don't explain anything and then you deny that they are magical. You have more magic in your model than anyone else here.
Science has therefore been pretending to know the nature of reality as a whole already
QuoteScience has therefore been pretending to know the nature of reality as a whole already Rubbish. Science is an inanimate activity. It cannot pretend.
"This above all: to thine own self be true." If you tell yourself untruths, you will end up believing them even if nobody else does. Believing things that are false is a big step on the road to insanity. Stop now.
My friend : you are the one introducing inexplicable , inconsistent , illogical, irrational , unscientific and incoherent materialist magic in science or in the computer-like ,machine -like "information system " materialist analogy regarding life in particular and regarding reality as a whole in general ,by reducing everything to just mechanical physics and chemistry + to their materialist macroscopic extensions such as the alleged neuronal computational mechanisms regarding the nature , so-called emergence or origins evolution and function of human reason , idem ditto for feelings emotions , consciousness .... while science should be only confined to the observable , empirical ...part of reality .
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 03/11/2013 18:49:04My friend : you are the one introducing inexplicable , inconsistent , illogical, irrational , unscientific and incoherent materialist magic in science or in the computer-like ,machine -like "information system " materialist analogy regarding life in particular and regarding reality as a whole in general ,by reducing everything to just mechanical physics and chemistry + to their materialist macroscopic extensions such as the alleged neuronal computational mechanisms regarding the nature , so-called emergence or origins evolution and function of human reason , idem ditto for feelings emotions , consciousness .... while science should be only confined to the observable , empirical ...part of reality .Why are you dragging emotions/consciousness into that? You know full well that I label that as the part science appears to be unable to handle. The rest of it needs no magical explanation, but you insist on giving it one while denying that your magical explanation is magical. That puts you in a ridiculous position.