This dude got me.

Sadly it’s been a week. I’ve read this several times as closely as I could and tried to understand where my apprehension lies. I spent some time with the wiki link to counterfactuals and wanted to really dedicate more time doing so, but wasn’t able to dedicate the time to it.

So, again, to restart the conversation, I wonder if, I have two separate confusions. The first, if consciousness is a property that is weakly emergent in brains, what is a brain?

I think I have a hard time buying that consciousness is a property of a brain and not mind. And I get that you are not trying to prove that it does. I’m far more interested in why, in the face of minimal support, we would align ourselves with weak emergence over strong emergence.

I have a lingering second problem. What is a model? In that wiki link, it has a three layer model: association, intervention, and counterfactuals. I would be hard pressed to consider the first two layers as sufficient for bing considered a model. But I think the three layer model doesn’t, as far as I’ve read, address intention, causal connection, or first order simulation. I think I’m hard pressed to see a collection of cells, neuron or otherwise, doing more than creating a response to a condition.

Here’s some others:

• Windows is garbage. The last time windows was good was Windows [10, 7, 2000, NT, 3.1, O/S2].
• don’t you care about your privacy?
• All AI is all slop all the time. If you think of using AI you are garbage.
• Star Trek. I have no issues with my Star Trek homies. Y’all are awesome.

I should start off and say I’m less interested in the quesiton of free will than the relationship between consciousness and matter. I want to reframe that so you know what I’m focused on.

Modern theories are a lot more integrative. … [I]nstead it is an essential active element in the thought process.

Here, I’m assuming “it” is a conscious perception. But now I’m confused again because I don’t think any theory of mind would deny this.

On the other hand, if “it” is “the brain” then I need to know more about the theory. As I understanding it, the theory says that the brain creates models. Models are mental. I just don’t know how that escapes the black box that connects to the mind. But as you assert and I understand, it is:

stimuli -> CPM ⊆ brain -> consciousness update CPM -?> black box -?> mind -?> brain -> nervous system -> response to stimuli

If it isn’t obvious, the question marks represent where I don’t understand the model.

So if I were to narrow down my concerns, it would be:

1. Is a model a mental process?
2. If mental processes are part of the brain, then how so?

I’m going to stick with the meat of your point. To summarize,

1. Some materialist views create a black box in which consciousness is a passive activity
   brain -> black box -> mind
2. CPMs extract consciousness from the black box
3. Consciousness plays a function role by providing feedback
   brain -> black box -> CPM-> consciousness -> black box -> mind

But to go further, stimuli -> brain -> black box -> CPM-> consciousness update CPM -> black box -> mind -> response to stimuli

The CPM as far as I can tell is the following:
representation of stimuli -> model (of the world with a modeled self) -> consciousness making predictions (of how the world changes if the self acts upon it) -> updating model -> updated prediction -> suspected desired result

I feel like I’ve mis-represented something of your position with the self. I think you’re saying that the self is the prediction maker. And that free will exists in the making of predictions. But presentation of the CPM places the self in the model. Furthermore, I think you’re saying that consciousness is a process of the brain and I think it’s of the mind. Can you remedy my representation of your position?

Quickly reading the review, I went to see if they posited role for the mind. I was disappointed to see that they, not only ignored it (unsurprising), but collapsed functions normally attributed to the mind to the brain. Ascribing predictions, fantasies, and hypotheses to the brain or calling it a statistical organ sidesteps the hard problem and collapses it into a physicalist view. They don’t posit a mind-body relationship, they speak about body and never acknowledge the mind. I find this frustrating.

Sorry for the long delay. I think engaging with the material and what you wrote requires some reflection time and, unfortunately, my time for that is limited these days. And so while I was hoping to offer a more robust response after having read the links you provided, I think engagement was more necessary to keep the conversation fresh even if I’ve only had a glance at the material.

The brain in the dish study seems to be interesting and raised new questions for me. “What is a brain?” comes to mind. For me, I have a novice level understanding of the structures of the brain and the role in neurotransmitters, hormones, neuron structures, etc. But I’ve never really examined what a brain is and how it is something more than or other than it’s component parts and their operations.

Some other questions would be:

• What is the relationship between brain and mind?
• What do we mean by mind? Do all brains create a mind?
• Or, in context of this conversation, do all brains have a CPM?
• Does adaptive environmental behavior by species without a brain indicate a CPM?

So those are some of the initial thoughts I had and would read the paper to see if the authors are even raising that question in their paper.

But more fundamentally, we still have to examine the mind-body problem. Recontextualizing it to a CPM, “what is the relationship between a CPM and either the brain or the mind?” I am unclear if the CPM is a mental or physical phenomena. There seems to be a certainty that the CPM is part of the brain, but the entirety of it’s output is non-physical. I imagine that we assume a narrative where the brain in the dish is creating a CPM because it demonstrates learning, adaptive behavior based upon external stimuli.

Ultimately, I bring it back to a framing question. Why choose weak emergence prematurely? It limits our investigation and imagination.

Well… that’s my set of issues. I’ll try to find time to read those articles in the next few days!

Cheers!

Is the emergent phenomena, consciousness, weak or strong? I think the former, which I think you support, posits a panpsychism and the latter is indistinguishable from magic.

I’m a little confused about the relationship between the causal prediction machine (CPM) and the self. to reiterate, the brain has a causal prediction engine. It’s inputs are immediate sensory experience. I assume the causal prediction engines’ output is predictions. These predictions are limited to the what the next sensory stimuli might be in response to the recent sensory input. These predictions lead to choices. Or maybe the same as choices.

So these outputs are experienced. And that experience of making predictions is me. Am I the one experiencing the predictions as well?

So this sentence confuses me: “This prediction machine is me making predictions and choices.” Am I making the predictions or is it the CPM?

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