Thursday, March 30, 2017

African grey parrot: New approaches to studying consciousness, philosophically, via brain science, and with realistic computer modeling?, Brainwave headsets, language and species?


What new possibilities for understanding consciousness will emerge by modeling it in a realistic virtual earth/virtual brains/bodyminds at the atomic, molecular, cellular and street view levels for many/all species?

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Consciousness


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I'm curious particularly about awareness as consciousness, as well as consciousness as "what is it like ...", and via language pathways in the brain. (I'm also further developing the ideas here - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/03/newnes-and-wolgan-valley-nsw-whats.html). How is it that humans and other species are conscious? How does awareness work brain-wise - in

A) all the many many ways humans have experienced this subjectively to all the infinite qualia (infinite qualities) that humans experience {including the generation of new ideas and experiences of consciousness} ...  to

B) our inability to explain consciousness from the third person, objectively, our inability to model it brain and bodymind-science wise?

These 1st and 3rd person experiences seem un-dovetail-able, irreconciable, unmeetable and un-joinable - again scientifically, brain and cognitive science-wise.  And how far down the phylogenetic tree does consciousness go - sea slugs? bats? What is it like to be that blue whale in a pod in the south seas as scientific and philosophical humans, in English, think about and study this idea of consciousness (post Darwin, and with science-STEM) to co-constitute with language an understanding about a biological process which many species seem to have in common. It's a mystery ... a fascinating question ... a new Mysterion (for some - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism) ... philosophically, linguistically and scientifically and experientially. (Yes, there's

Colin McGinn's "The Mysterious Flame" (1999) -
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mcginn-flame.html - and

Tom Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?" (1974) - http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/activities/modules/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf - which address some of these questions ... see, too - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_it_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F

and - 

David Chalmer's Consciousness.net e.g. "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" (1995) by David J. Chalmers - http://consc.net/papers/facing.html and http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/ -   ... and a recent book about

Octopus consciousness -

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness (2016)
by Peter Godfrey-Smith
https://www.amazon.com/Other-Minds-Octopus-Origins-Consciousness/dp/0374227764 - and this

New Yorker article -

DANIEL DENNETT’S SCIENCE OF THE SOUL
A philosopher’s lifelong quest to understand the making of the mind (2017)
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/daniel-dennetts-science-of-the-soul

re -

From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds 1st Edition
by Daniel C. Dennett
https://www.amazon.com/Bacteria-Bach-Back-Evolution-Minds/dp/0393242072/ -

and -

Consciousness Explained
by Daniel C. Dennett
https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Explained-Daniel-C-Dennett/dp/0316180661 -

re my -
Consciousness still unexplained
https://twitter.com/HarbinBook/status/844735060569837569


(see, too, my -

"From atom to cosmos: Getting loving bliss INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY neurophysiology as brain chemistry "correct" on-off switch wise, /Consciousness still unexplained: eg "third-person explanations and first-person experience" not reconciled -Will modeling brain atoms help? ... "
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/03/from-atom-to-cosmos-getting-loving.html).

If we are able to model the brain at the atomic, molecular and cellular levels and street view levels, and in all 7,097 living languages, what new interesting questions will we be able to pose to actually potentially understand how consciousness works in humans and other species? Here are some possible beginnings of modeling the brain in 3D and for learning purposes - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/03/from-atom-to-cosmos-getting-loving.html. I hope to explore all this further here - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/consciousness - today, as well.

I'm particularly interested in consciousness, for example, metaphorically as a computer application or program - from the third person - and its potentially to generate new ideas, new programs, new awarenesses (e..g language and conversation seem relevant here, in addition to thinking, and especially how consciousness emerges from genes) ... nevertheless, consciousness or awareness is a mystery ... a new Mysterion (See the book review in Nature, "Thinking about consciousness" by Paul E. Griffiths http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v397/n6715/full/397117a0.html from 1999, as well as Emotion and the problem of psychological categories - Paul E. Griffiths
https://philpapers.org/rec/GRIEAT-5 from 2001) ... mind experiment-wise. And actually conceiving of programming this is as unsolvable at this time as is this question of how consciousness or awareness works ...

So, in a way, philosophical and brain/bodymind science questions of consciousness are an amazingly beautiful flag for those who think about these questions, - since they are unresolved questions ... for us human primates, post-Darwin ... who enjoy y/our Yoga ... as well

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What's the newness "program" in the philosophical / brain science study of consciousness ... as in the school of "New Mysterions" (Nagel, McGinn et al.)?

It seems like we need to understand a lot more about atoms and genetics, for example, before we will be able to ask new questions about how consciousness or awareness "works" in humans, and in a variety of species.

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What interests you philosophically about questions of consciousness, and re - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/03/newnes-and-wolgan-valley-nsw-whats.html - (where I'm a little in the New Mysterion / and somewhat in the David Chalmers' schools relating to awareness / consciousness and brain science questions ... as well as the virtual world/brain modeling school (vis-a-vis Thomas Dean's at Google Research partial modeling of a fly's brain), - and which is my own new school re consciousness, I think - since modeling brains digitally at the atomic, molecular (see MIT's Scott Greenwald's recent "Electrostatic Playground" video), cellular and street view levels would allow us to address philosopher Tom Nagel's question - what is it like to be a bat (since we could/will conceivably be able to begin to experience the world digitally/virtually as a bat experiences the world) - as well as philosopher Colin McGinn's question about how can meat can be conscious - since virtually modeling atoms, molecules and cells - the "physical," and what meat is made up of - virtually, as bits - and in realistic multimedia {re the actual and the virtual - a focus of my Harbin book especially} will open avenues to understanding awareness emerging from the physical as consciousness.

How best to focus on understanding how consciousness works via language, possibly as chemical information technology in brains/bodyminds, and re, for example, African grey parrots and other parrots with speech?

Having tried the Brainfingers' brain wave headset - http://brainfingers.com - with its language focus (wearing these 3 sensors at the time in 2004, I was able to pick out letters from a keyboard on a computer screen to spell words, without speech or gesture - while needing to relax to be able to use the device), I'd like to develop a research focus at World Univ and Sch with brain wave headsets such as this language-oriented Brainfingers' brain wave headset develops, researchers will begin to understand subjective self-reported aspects of consciousness in relation to the brain chemistry. (I haven't seen a language focus in Tan Le's - https://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves - Conor Russomanno's, MIT CSAIL's - http://www.csail.mit.edu/brain_controlled_robots - or other brain wave headsets yet). In what ways could one further design a developing brainwave headset for species, such as the speech of parakeets, and the sign languages of both species of chimpanzees, of gorillas and of orangutans, which use language, for comparison? {In these regards exploring consciousness furthermore re generating loving bliss neurophysiology via singing is a related avenue of focus}.

Friendly regards,

Scott


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In many ways, this question about consciousness I'm asking here is what is it like to live inside a robot - and, for example, per https://twitter.com/JimSpohrer/status/847566004909514753 - and in particular, inside a parakeet robot or an orangutan robot, with language or speech, and from the atomic, molecular and cellular as well as street view, or forest-observing, levels, experientially - and especially with awareness? And how could we learn about this via language-oriented brain wave headsets over the next few decades as they develop? How to develop and design a orangutan brain wave headset and a parakeet brain wave headset differentially to contribute to this research? And how best to code or program for what is it like to live inside a parakeet robot, for example, or a human robot, consciousness-wise and information technologically - and even especially in terms of inter-species communication {eg. between orangutans and humans, or parakeets and humans, etc.}? And how does brain meat create conscious experience in species, - and especially those with language capabilities? And in what ways could we explore what is it like to live inside a robot with realistic digital avatar bots, going from, say a Google group video Hangout to Youtube to 3D interactive virtual world to avatar bot coding for consciousness at the atomic, molecular (Tom Dean's partial coding of a fly's brain) to the cellular level to the behavioral level - with consciousness?





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