Michael,

Let me add that this isn't novel ground. you're saying :" I think mind stuff is mysterious , it's just bad terminology that makes it mysterious. "

This was the entire history of artificial intelligence: explaining elusive conscious decision making by simulating it with lots of other stuff. 

Herbert Simon, the most prolific social scientist of the 20th century, began where you are. That's exactly where his work started Then he went on for 60 more years of work and did 1000 papers ... and before death admitted he wasn't much closer to solving anything truly philospicslly  difficult. 

 Herbert Simon was the expert of explaining complex problems with simpler rules. 
 He was one of the inventors of complexity mathematics ... 
 And he also was the 1st person to teach an artificially intelligent program to play chess with learning algorithms rather than just rig some sort of dumb program to imitate chess play with reactive algorithms. 

 Simon was convinced that most of what humans do can be automated. Whereas John searle was skeptical of strong a.i., Simon was skeptical of strong human consciousness.  His simple answer to the consciousness problem was that consciousness itself was an illusion and that most of what we think we we can do in our brains we actually can't do. For example he doesn't think that we actually make that many decisions with our consciousness. He did studies  show that most of our behavior with subconscious and rather simple.

 On the other hand he was rather impressed with how difficult it was to simulate human behavior. It was far more fascinated with the human unconscious than the human consciousness.

I tend to agree the unconscious is far more compelling and mysterious to us. And it does far more of our thinking than our conscious brain does. Over 90% of our decisions are driven by unconscious unconscious processes. Really the conscious part of our brain is the easiest to simulate because it tries to follow the simple rules of reasoning. It's our intuition that fascinated Herbert Simon. He found that it took about 10000 hours for the average expert to become an expert of a specialized human field. He also found that experts rarely could explain to you how they made decisions. When they could explain it to you it was always very simple. 

In other words, wuse people can't explain wisdom because it's not coming from their consciousness. 

This unconscious thought is non reductive. Chess study has shown that machines can only beat humans using pure brute force and calculating hundreds of trillions of times per move, and being truly encyclopedic and trying literally every outcome possible before picking a best path. 
 Humans somehow avoid having to try every possibility. 

Mind is the qualitative difference between simulating mental experience with outside technology humans crested (computers) and actually doing it with the exact physical hardware of the human mind itself.   Obviously you don't need to believe in some spooky magic. The definition of mind simply requires it to be something you can't describe without loss of information.  

 You may want to look at mathematics. Indeed the most important issue here is loss of information. Mathematically speaking a complex system that is modeled as a complicated system suffering suffers from loss of information. So you may be able to simulate a complex system with a complicated system but you'll never actually be the thing itself and there will always be some ambiguity or uncertainty due to loss of information and those things create real qualitative problems. 

Similarly speaking humanity has erected a staggeringly  complicated global unfrastructure to support  Our economy and routines of life.... However there is some loss of information between how we describe the modern world is modern world and the actual complexity of the modern world. The size of that information loss is enough that our society Is a tower of Babel...  Even with very small differences in and our perceptions of of the human condition we come up with radical different conclusions on an individual basis about how to live our lives and how to describe reality.  This is partially because in a complex system 2 different complicated hated reductions of that same system are going to be wildly different. So my verbal description of society is going to be very different than yours even though we live in the same society. Mind is very much an irreducibly different qualitative filter.... In fact you might say that mental processes kind of suck because they're not very accurate and reproducible. But the one thing we can't do is throw away the concept of mind. Any simulation of the human mind is gonna be too Too rational but yet not into it of enough to count as mind. Indeed some philosophers would prefer to replace the human mind with a computer because the computer is more elegant and consistent.

I have a feeling that you're trying to do the same thing. That your theory of mind is gonna create a more elegant sort of artificial intelligence rather than describe the mind as it actually works. Herbert Simon conceited near the end of his life that his entire career was on the path of creating simulations thst were more elegant than human minds , partially because he didn't LIKE the mysteries of the mind and it disturbed him that ubconscous minds couldn't be tamed controlled and replaced with fully conscious knowledge and materialistic truths. So he created his own very good  models of the conscious mind rather than go down the rabbit hole of modeling our really persistently hard unconscious. 

Michael, you've got a lot of reading to do about the history of a.i. and about the philosophy of science.... 
 Clearly you've got some sort of significant significant background in these topics but I'm cautioning you that there's a lot that's been done that you seem to be unfamiliar with....its a huge topic. 

Thanks..

Robert 







On Tue, Sep 7, 2021, 5:48 AM ryanrc111 <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
hi,
Bruce is correct - the hard problem is stubbornly resistant to external explanation. 

For example, qualia. The color we see that we call red. We can explain it very well externally- the frequency of it, the way the eye processes red, etc. all very well known. 
But the theory of the qualitative experience of red is persistently difficult. 

I dont think its "unsolvable" because synesthesia is the primary approach. there is famous scene in the movie, Mask, where te main character is trying to teach the blind person about colors by qualitative analogies, such as by showing how temperatures "Feel" like colors. However, like most things, the solution itself will never "Explain" red as qualia as well as just experiencing red. The explanation must necessarily be clumsier, more complicated, and less petic than the direct experience. 

Thus, is seems that qualia are real but irreducible, and only analogously explainable with indirect methods. 

Robert
  

On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 11:22 PM Bruce Alderman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
Hi, Michael, I am familiar with the H2O metaphor for the emergence of 'mind' or the psychological, but in my view it still is reductionistic -- and / or it doesn't do the work it is supposed to do.  All examples of emergence we have are of the same kind:  new organizations of matter, with new emergent behaviors.  But in my understanding, the 'hard problem' is deemed a hard problem, not because agent-like behaviors can emerge in complex systems -- that's all still third-person, objective description and focus; still a behavior-orientation.  The hard problem is a hard problem because there seems to be no objective explanation of how or why any of that would lead to first-person, qualitative feeling or experience.  There is a leap being made, where we assert that 'subjective feeling / experience is here,' but all we have accounted for is the emergence of new complex forms of the behavior of material forms.  Not the irruption of 1p experience into a world utterly devoid of such until then.

Best wishes,

Bruce

On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 4:23 PM Michael Mascolo <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.

Hi All:

In a recent post, I expressed agreement with the an article that asserted that that “the mind does not exist” – at least to the extent that “mind” and “mental” are defined in contrast with “physical” and “material”.  The mental/physical dichotomy is a nasty one, as it suggests that “mind” is something that is non-corporeal.  Robert Ryan — in a post that I am deeply grateful for — suggested that the ideas that I had advanced are reductionistic. Robert inspired me to try to be clearer in my thoughts about why “mind” and “mental” are unhelpful concepts, and how it is possible to be both a materialist and to be non-reductionist.  I believe that it is possible to have a non-reductionist materialist conception of consciousness and experience.  And I think that this position aligns quite closely indeed with Gregg’s system.

I want to assert a concept that I have called embodied emergence (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019) — the idea that psychological processes and states (consciousness, experience) are complexly-organized biological processes, albeit ones with novel emergent properties. (Please – stay with me – there is something new here as I hope will become clear below.)  Novel psychological properties – e.g., awareness meaning, experience, qualia – are emergent from biological processes in the sense that they are not found in their base biological elements.  However, these novel and emergent psychological processes do not contain (nor do they have to) properties that override or conflict with the properties of their base elements.

To make this argument, I want to show that qualitative transformations routinely occur in everyday physical systems without creating structures that override or conflict with the properties of their base elements.  This can be illustrated with the common example of how we get liquid – water – from the combination of two gasses – hydrogen and oxygen.  When we combine hydrogen and oxygen – two gasses – we don’t get more gas – we get a liquid – something with qualitatively different properties.  How is this possible? 

This is not a mysterious process. This well-understood process is described in the graphic below.  The short story: A water molecule, of course, is formed with two molecules of hydrogen combine with one molecule of oxygen. When this happens, individual water molecules connect to each other through the formation of a hydrogen bond between the slightly negatively-charged oxygen molecule of one water molecule and the slightly positively-charged hydrogen molecule of another This bond, however, is very weak. As a result, movement breaks the bond quickly, allowing molecules to flow over each other – thus producing liquid.

The novel way of understanding this process is to be found in the concept of EQUIVALENCE (which, as I understand in mathematics, is different from equality).  Liquidity is an emergent property of H20 molecules aggregated together.   When we combine material gas of H and the material gas of O, we get the material liquid of H20.  When we say that liquid emerges from a combination of H2 and O, we do not say that the combination produces H20 and then also the liquid we call water.  H20 is the EQUIVALENT of the liquid we call water. The properties of water are fully explainable by the novel structure that arises from the relations between H2 and O.  We don’t need to add something in addition to the novel structure of H20 to explain its properties.  We simply have a novel structure with emergent properties.  The properties that emerge from the coordination of base elements are not to be found in those base elements. In this way, the novel properties cannot be reduced to their base elements.

I want to say that the same basic equivalence relation occurs between base biological processes and emergent psychological processes.  We have biological structures and processes – cells, neurons, synapses, etc.  Psychological states and processes emerge from the complex organization of biological structures and processes (in ways that we do not understand).  Now, here is the important philosophical point: When this happens, the higher-order biological organization has novel psychological properties – e.g., awareness, qualia, etc. – that are not found in the base elements themselves (e.g., individual cells). 

What I want to say is that the relation between (a) base biological processes and (b) biological processes with emergent psychological properties is akin to the relation between (a’) the base physical elements of H and O (b’) and the physical water molecule -- H20 – with the emergent property of liquidity. That is:

The liquid we call “water” is the EQUIVALENT of H20.  There is not H20 and THEN ALSO something else – some emergent liquid we call “water”. Liquidity is the emergent property of H20 – a higher-order structture  We don’t have H20 plus something else called “water” or “liquid”.

States we call consciousness, awareness or qualia are the EQUIVALENT of complexly organized biological processes. There are not the complexly-organized biological structures and THEN ALSO some novel “mental” or “non-biological” something called “consciousness”.  We don’t have biological processes PLUS something else called “mind” or the “mental”. Psychological processes ARE complex biological processes with emergent properties (awareness).

But wait, you might say: The psychological person is an agent – the person has something akin to “free will” – the capacity to control his or her own behavior.  Physical systems don’t do this.  How do we get something like conscious agency from a physical system?  To explain psychological processes in a material system, don’t we have to explain how we are capable of conscious control?  Don’t our powers of conscious control mean that somehow “minds” emerge that control “physical” or “biological” bodies?

The answer is “no” – we do not have to postulate a “mental” entity to control behavior – because the capacity for hierarchical regulation is already built into the structure and processes of biological systems. 

I believe that we tend to believe that “mind” is something that is separate from “body” not not because we can’t imagine how awareness can emerge from biological processes, but instead because we cannot imagine how human agency –  the capacity to consciously control behavior --  emerges from a physical or biological system.  We attribute a capacity for conscious control (sometimes called “free will”) to “mind”.  How else can “we” be in control? 

But the point is this: We don’t need complex “mental” processes to explain the capacity for agency.  Agency – or at least hierarchical regulation is a basic property of biological systems. Even single celled organisms are self-regulating systems.  The complexity of self-regulation increases as we move up phylogenetic levels of complexity.  At some point, the capacity to represent one’s environs (and indeed, one’s own processes) comes to function as part of the biological self-regulating system itself.  If this is true, then we do not need to invoke mysterious conceptions of “I” or attribute mysterious properties of agency to consciousness to explain human behavior. Consciousness and other psychological processes serve functions other than agency in the human system.  Consciousness and other psychological processes transform the already existing capacities for agency and hierarchical control that already exist in biological systems.  Consciousness likely serves the function of coordinating or integrating information from endogenous and exogenous sources so that the organism can respond to increasingly complex systems of adaptive challenges.

And so, the assertion that psychological processes ARE complexly-organized biological processes is not a reductionistic statement (although it can be, in some formulations).  Glucose metabolism is a biological process but not a psychological process (although it can arguably be influenced by psychological processes). Consciousness is both a biological and a psychological process; it is a biological process with emergent properties that function in the service of the already adaptive self-organizing organismic system as a whole.  

All My Best,

Michael F. Mascolo, Ph.D.
Academic Director, Compass Program
Professor, Department of Psychology
Merrimack College, North Andover, MA 01845
978.837.3503 (office)
978.979.8745 (cell)

Bridging Political Divides Website: Creating Common Ground
Blog: Values Matter
Journal: Pedagogy and the Human Sciences
Author and Coaching Website: www.michaelmascolo.com
Academia Home Page 
Constructivist Meetup Series

Things move, persons act. -- Kenneth Burke
If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well. -- Donald Hebb

############################

To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1






On Aug 31, 2021, at 4:18 PM, ryanrc111 <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
Dr. Mascolo,

That is a reductionist reasoning that i cannot agree with.

When systems are qualitatively different, they deserve qualitative labels that are different. 
 "everything is just ____________" never has worked in the history of science, and I don't think it will start working now. 
Biological systems are not merely just physical. Social systems are not merely just biological.
They do have different features, different epistemic concerns, and indeed differing levels of action.
The universe is digital -quantum particles do not continuously effect large scale systems. 
 There are clear breaks at different scales, where hardly any activity on scale 1 affects systems on scale 2. 
the math of differential equations and complexity supports a digital world of level-based actions and level-based systems. 

You might be interested to read the work of Sandra Mitchell , a top philosopher of science, whom I took coursework from at U Pittsburgh. "
IN fact, Sandra is the department chair of the #1 rated philosophy of science dept. in the world, and I learned from her there!
She has presented full theories about the qualitative difference between the "sciences". and they are close to Henriques. 

Sandra Mitchell - Wikipedia

There is no possibility of reducing social to biological , and so forth. 
Just because there are causal linkages through the material world, does not mean these systems are qualitatively identical in character. 
Emergence is very well established, but I do realize there are people who hate it as a concept.
 However, Its far easier to defend the qualitative thesis because it doesn't require a magic bullet theory. 
I have yet see a magic bullet theory that accurately reduces one "science" to another. They have all failed. 
thus, knowledge still stands as qualitatively different for different systems.

Thanks

Robert Conan Ryan
  


On Tue, Aug 31, 2021 at 4:03 PM Michael Mascolo <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
Greetings All:

Thanks for pointing us to this article Gregg.

I must admit, I agree deeply with Gough’s thesis in this paper.  I think that terms like “mind” and “mental” should be discarded — except metaphorical terms to use in everyday discourse.  

Like any term, the meanings of “mind” and “mental” gain their meaning dialectical through a contrast to what they are not.   Different meanings of a term can be illuminated by understanding the different ways in which they can be contrasted with what they are not. 

A central meaning of the terms “mind” and “mental” arise from their contrast with terms like “physical”, “bodily” and “corporeal”.  This contrast identifies “mind” and “mental” in contradistinction to that which is material.  It is this meaning that is problematic.  The moment we suggest that “mind” and “mentality” are in some way “not physical”, we become deeply entrenched in the intractable mind-body problem: How can something non-physical “cause” changes in something “physical”, and so forth.  This problem is intractable.

In my view, terms like consciousness, experience, meaning, representation, awareness all refer to psychological processes. The difference is that these terms do not carry any necessary connotations of non-corporality.  This is why, in my view, it is preferable to use these terms rather than “mind” or “mental”.

From this point of view, psychological processes ARE physical and material processes — biological processes that function at a higher (yes higher) level or organization.  There is no mind/body problem because what people call mind — consciousness, experience, agency — is not non-physical.  Thus, it makes sense to ask, How does consciousness emerge in a bio-physical system — where consciousness is NOT assumed to be non-physical.  In contrast, the question, How does “the mind” emerge from bio-physical systems suggests that there is something called “mind” that is “nonphysical”. 

My Best,

M.





 
Michael F. Mascolo, Ph.D.
Academic Director, Compass Program
Professor, Department of Psychology
Merrimack College, North Andover, MA 01845
978.837.3503 (office)
978.979.8745 (cell)

Bridging Political Divides Website: Creating Common Ground
Blog: Values Matter
Journal: Pedagogy and the Human Sciences
Author and Coaching Website: www.michaelmascolo.com
Academia Home Page 
Constructivist Meetup Series

Things move, persons act. -- Kenneth Burke
If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well. -- Donald Hebb

On Aug 31, 2021, at 1:55 PM, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi List,
 
Although we hardly need more evidence for the Enlightenment Gap’s claim that there is profound confusion regarding the relationship between matter and mind in modern systems of understanding, here is yet another article that makes the point, with the assertion that we should discard the concepts of mental and the mind all together:
 
Since there are several new people on the UTOK list, I will take this opportunity state what many here already know, which is that the central feature of UTOK is that it affords us a new, different and much richer metaphysical vocabulary for the domain of the mental. Indeed, my current book is on how the UTOK solves the problem of psychology by affording us clarity about the ontology of the mental. (summarized here). 
 
Because I want practice streamlining this, here is the basic summary: First, via the ToK System’s divisions of complexification, it gives us the category capital “M” Mind, which is a tier of complex adaptive behaviors in nature. Specifically, it is the adaptive behaviors exhibited by complex animals with brains that produce a functional effect on the animal-environment relationship. These are the set of mental behaviors.
 
Second, via the Map of Mind, we divide these mental behaviors first into the neurocognitive processes within the nervous system (Mind1a) that can be tracked by things like fMRIs, and the overt activities of animals that can be observed (Mind1b). 
 
Mind2 is used to denote the interior epistemological space that is subjective conscious experience that can only be accessed from the inside and cannot be accessed directly from the outside. This divide is called the epistemological gap. No camera or any other device we can consider allows us to directly experience the Mind2 of another. The most interesting possible exception to this I have seen is the Logan Twins who are conjoined at the head, and share some brain domains. Even here, however, they experience the world via their own epistemological portal and the way they describe sharing thoughts is akin to talking.
 
Speaking of talking, this is the domain of Mind3. Talking flows through the interior and exterior without losing its form. It is a shared intersubjective space. Mind3a is when it is private speech, Mind3b is when it is translated across the barrier of the skin in some other medium. 
 
Finally, regarding UTOK’s solution to this world knot, it should also be noted that science is anchored into the language game of behavior and the exterior epistemological position. The ToK represents a behavioral systemic map of nature. Our subjective idiographic point of view is different. It is represented by the iQuad Coin.
 
Thus, my reply to the article is to agree that it makes an important point, but it is laughable that (a) we can just stop using the terms and (b) that words like cognitive, psychiatric and psychological are fine even though mind and mental are hopeless. What is needed is a proper descriptive metaphysical system that is in accordance with natural science ontology that affords us clarity about the various domains of the mental and the ways they emerged and interface.
 
This essay is mental in the sense that it is an example of Mind3b behavior that operates at the Cultural Person plane of existence, and functions to network propositions together to legitimize a version of is and ought.  
 
Best,
Gregg  
 
___________________________________________
Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Graduate Psychology
216 Johnston Hall
MSC 7401
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
(540) 568-7857 (phone)
(540) 568-4747 (fax)


Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.

Check out the Unified Theory Of Knowledge homepage at:
 
############################

To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1


############################

To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1

############################

To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1


############################

To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1

############################

To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1

############################

To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1