scholarly journals A Priori Problems with the Metaphysical and Causal Reduction of Consciousness

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-27
Author(s):  
Karnarajsinh Vaghela
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Cell Phone ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
A Priori ◽  
John Searle ◽  
Specific Point ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Physical Laws ◽  
The Brain

Consciousness exists, or so it seems to us most of the time. However, consciousness is unlike your car-keys or your cell-phone in that it is not located at a specific point in space and time. The applicability of physical laws like gravity seem moot at best when it comes to consciousness. What is desirable is an explanation of consciousness that allows it to exist and be part of the very same reality as the car-key or the cell-phone, a ‘philosophy of immanence’ as Gilles Deleuze would put it.  I prefer a view that construes consciousness as causally-efficacious (having material effects upon one’s body in real time) and metaphysically separate from the brain. In essence, to say that the mind is metaphysically separate from the brain is to deny the proposition that there is nothing more to our subjective experience of mind than the mere activity of the physical brain. This paper looks at a view proposed by John Searle and tries to show that there are empirical problems with a consciousness that is causally inefficacious (unable to cause material changes) and metaphysically identical (not separate from the brain).

scholarly journals Comparing supervised and unsupervised approaches to emotion categorization in the human brain, body, and subjective experience.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bahar Azari ◽  
Christiana Westlin ◽  
Ajay Satpute ◽  
J. Benjamin Hutchinson ◽  
Philip A. Kragel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Ground Truth ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Physical Measurements ◽  
Supervised Classifiers ◽  
Emotional Episodes ◽  
Emotion Labels ◽  
The Brain

Machine learning methods provide powerful tools to map physical measurements to scientific categories. But are such methods suitable for discovering the ground truth about psychological categories? We use the science of emotion as a test case to explore this question. In studies of emotion, researchers use supervised classifiers, guided by emotion labels, to attempt to discover biomarkers in the brain or body for the corresponding emotion categories. This practice relies on the assumption that the labels refer to objective categories that can be discovered. Here, we critically examine this approach across three distinct datasets collected during emotional episodes- measuring the human brain, body, and subjective experience- and compare supervised classification studies with those from unsupervised clustering in which no a priori labels are assigned to the data. We conclude with a set of recommendations to guide researchers towards meaningful, data-driven discoveries in the science of emotion and beyond.

Yoga Psychology and Yoga Therapy

1997 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-14
Author(s):  
Swami Sivananda Radha
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Yoga Therapy ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Physical Laws ◽  
The Brain

Every man and woman is a bridge between two worlds, the material and the mental. The body is the material tangible side, subject to its own laws; the mind, which uses the body as a tool of expression (frequently violating the physical laws), has its own realm of time and space where it roams about, often undirected or misdirected. The body is material – the bones, muscles,blood, and everything that makes up the cells. The brain, too, is material. The mind, however, is immaterial and intangible; we can only become aware of it through its manifestation in thought and other functions.

scholarly journals Contribution of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence in the Simulation of the Complex Human Mind

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 928-932
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Computational Procedures ◽  
The Mind ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Interdisciplinary Theory ◽  
The Brain

The research incorporated encircles the interdisciplinary theory of cognitive science in the branch of artificial intelligence. It has always been the end goal that better understanding of the idea can be guaranteed. Besides, a portion of the real-time uses of cognitive science artificial intelligence have been taken into consideration as the establishment for more enhancements. Before going into the scopes of future, there are many complexities that occur in real-time which have been uncovered. Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the brain and its procedures. It inspects the nature, the activities, and the elements of cognition. Cognitive researchers study intelligence and behavior, with an emphasis on how sensory systems speak to, process, and change data. Intellectual capacities of concern to cognitive researchers incorporate recognition, language, memory, alertness, thinking, and feeling; to comprehend these resources, cognitive researchers acquire from fields, for example, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, semantics, and anthropology. The analytic study of cognitive science ranges numerous degrees of association, from learning and choice to logic and planning; from neural hardware to modular mind organization. The crucial idea of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."

Psychiatric Consultation in Medico-Surgical Settings

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (S1) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
F. Sirois
Keyword(s):  
Brief Intervention ◽  
Basic Assumption ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Psychiatric Symptoms ◽  
Medical Procedures ◽  
External Reality ◽  
Clinical Episode ◽  
The Mind ◽  
And Coping ◽  
The Brain

The author resents a frame for evaluating patients in various medical contexts and discusses principles of brief intervention. the frame relies on a basic assumption differentiating the approach of the mind from that of the brain whereby the subjective experience of the patient is compared with the reality process of medical procedures. In that specific context, psychiatric symptoms are seen as elaboration of the gap between the subjective experience of the patients and the objective medical assessment. Psychiatric evaluatiion is therefore subjected to that context where assessment of anxiety and coping mechanisms is paramount to search for the central psychic position from which the patient experiences the clinical episode. Principles of brief intervention are based on the interplay of psychic and external reality. Such principles are spelled out in ten different items along the clinical course of patients as to follow a short, stepwise path to help patients move from accommodating the external reality to their subjective experience to the other way around.

scholarly journals First-person subjective vs. Third-person objective; the universe is a collection of self-driven mathematical entities; the first-person subjective consciousness is the use of mathematical models by a Turing machine

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyang Yu
Keyword(s):  
Turing Machine ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
World Line ◽  
Geometric Model ◽  
First Person ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Physical Interactions ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Physical Laws ◽  
Level Calculation

Physical interactions among any number of elementary particles (EPs) are governed by physical laws (e.g., the Schrodinger equation). In the reality, the predetermined world lines of all EPs form a predetermined state machine. What a Turing machine perceives/predicts, is not the reality itself (but a mathematical model (MM) of the reality), but it is incorrectly treated by this Turing machine as the reality, when this Turing machine deals with everyday challenges. The subjective experience is actually the use of a MM by a Turing machine within its low-level calculation. For example, when a Turing machine uses its geometric model of the reality (GMR), it feels like the subjective experience of being immersed within a geometric structure. The GMR, which is a component of the mind, is a real-time representation of all the EPs within the reality; the GMR only includes the physical objects perceived in the mind. A naïve cognitive researcher might incorrectly treat her GMR as the real world. A Turing machine can use its GMR. Using the semantics of human language, the use of GMR is described as subjectively experiencing the GMR. The subjective experience shouldn’t be able to impact the predetermined world line of any EP within this world.

Emergence and Complexity

2021 ◽  
pp. 166-194
Author(s):  
Marco Bernini
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
System Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Dynamics ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

The chapter argues that Beckett’s exploration of the mind is not just complicated, but targets non-linear, interacting, networking dynamics in cognition that, according to contemporary theories of complexity, classify the mind as a proper complex system. Within contemporary cognitive science and philosophy of mind, it is increasingly suggested that the brain should be regarded as a complex system (see, e.g., Gazzaniga 2012): as the physical site of decentralized interactions and distributed, looping causality among its neurons. Within this complex account of human cognition, also the mind and its mental properties, including consciousness and a sense of self, have been interpreted through the conceptual lenses of complex system theory. Theories of complexity in cognition, therefore, can help us thread together, and collectively reconsider, all the cognitive dynamics, patterns of emersions, and laws of the mind that Beckett has modeled when exploring consciousness and subjective experience. An emergentist reappraisal of prior chapters should give us a more complex, more global interpretation of Beckett’s early call for a formal access to (as a modeling exploration of) the “recondite relations of emergal” (D, 16) within human cognition. Also, it should support an interpretive shift from a view of Beckett as a complicated author to an account of him as an explorer of the mind’s complexity. The chapter begins by addressing the kind of problems complexity poses to modeling in general, and to narrative modeling in particular.

Semantic Pragmatism and A Priori Knawledge (or ‘Yes we could all be brains in a vat’)

2001 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Jackman
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Self ◽  
Semantic Externalism ◽  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
The World ◽  
Rational Acceptability ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Brain In A Vat

Hilary Putnam has famously argued that we can know that we are not brains in a vat because the hypothesis that we are is self-refuting. While Putnam's argument has generated interest primarily as a novel response to skepticism, he originally introduced his brain in a vat scenario to help illustrate a point about the ‘mind/world relationship.’ In particular, he intended it to be part of an argument against the coherence of metaphysical realism, and thus to be part of a defense of his conception of truth as idealized rational acceptability. Putnam's discussion has already inspired a substantial body of criticism, but it will be argued here that these criticisms fail to capture the central problem with his argument. Indeed, it will be shown that, rather than simply following from his semantic externalism, Putnam's conclusions about the self-refuting character of the brain in a vat hypothesis are actually out of line with central and plausible aspects of his own account of the relationship between our minds and the world.

Sensory cortex and the mind-brain problem

1978 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Puccetti ◽  
Robert W. Dykes
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
Structure And Function ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Rule Out

AbstractOne of the implicit, and sometimes explicit, objectives of modern neuroscience is to find neural correlates of subjective experience so that different qualities of that experience might be explained in detail by reference to the physical structure and processes of the brain. It is generally assumed that such explanations will make unnecessary or rule out any reference to conscious mental agents. This is the classic mind-brain reductivist program. We have chosen to challenge the optimism underlying such an approach in the context of sensory neurophysiology and sensory experience. Specifically, we ask if it is possible to explain the subjective differences among seeing, hearing, and feeling something by inspecting the structure and function of primary visual, auditory, and somesthetic cortex.After reviewing the progress in localization of sensory functions over the past two centuries and examining some aspects of the structure and function of somesthetic, auditory, and visual cortex, we infer that one cannot explain the subjective differences between sensory modalities in terms of present day neuroscientific knowledge. Nor do present trends in research provide grounds for optimism.At this point we turn to three philosophical theories to see what promise they hold of explaining these differences. A brief discussion of each – identity theory, functionalism, and eliminative materialism – suggests that none adequately accounts for the facts of the situation, and we tentatively conclude that some form of dualism is still a tenable hypothesis.

scholarly journals .The predetermined destiny, and its mathematical models within the neural network

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyang Yu
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
World Line ◽  
Geometric Model ◽  
The Neural Network ◽  
Physical Interactions ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Physical Laws ◽  
Level Calculation ◽  
The Universe

Physical interactions among any number of elementary particles (EPs) are governed by physical laws (e.g., the Schrodinger equation). Let’s call the superdeterministic state machine which is formed by the world lines of all EPs the destiny. To a human neural network, the reality is a snapshot of the destiny. What a neural network perceives/predicts, is not the destiny itself (but a mathematical model (MM) of the destiny), but it is incorrectly treated by this neural network as the destiny, when this neural network deals with everyday challenges. The subjective experience is actually the use of a MM by a neural network within its low-level calculation. For example, when a neural network uses its geometric model of the destiny (GMD), it feels like the subjective experience of being immersed within a topological structure. The GMD, which is a component of the mind, is a real-time representation of all the EPs within the universe; the GMD only includes the physical objects perceived in the mind. A naïve cognitive researcher might incorrectly treat her GMD as the real world. A neural network can use its GMD. Using the semantics of human language, the use of GMD is described as subjectively experiencing the GMD. It’s possible that a neural network can’t subjectively experience its GMD. Otherwise, its subjective experience shouldn’t be able to impact the actual world line of any EP within this universe.

scholarly journals .The predetermined destiny, and its mathematical models within the Turing machine

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyang Yu
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
World Line ◽  
Geometric Model ◽  
Time Representation ◽  
Physical Interactions ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Physical Laws ◽  
Level Calculation ◽  
The Universe

Physical interactions among any number of elementary particles (EPs) are governed by physical laws (e.g., the Schrodinger equation). Let’s call the predetermined state machine which is formed by the predetermined world lines of all EPs the destiny. To a human neural network, the reality is a snapshot of the destiny. What a neural network perceives/predicts, is not the destiny itself (but a mathematical model (MM) of the destiny), but it is incorrectly treated by this neural network as the destiny, when this neural network deals with everyday challenges. The subjective experience is actually the use of a MM by a neural network within its low-level calculation. For example, when a neural network uses its geometric model of the destiny (GMD), it feels like the subjective experience of being immersed within a topological structure. The GMD, which is a component of the mind, is a real-time representation of all the EPs within the universe; the GMD only includes the physical objects perceived in the mind. A naïve cognitive researcher might incorrectly treat her GMD as the real world. A neural network can use its GMD. Using the semantics of human language, the use of GMD is described as subjectively experiencing the GMD. It’s possible that a neural network can’t subjectively experience its GMD. Otherwise, its subjective experience shouldn’t be able to impact the predetermined world line of any EP within this universe.

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