Objectively Subjective

[Cognisant]

Once the way the brain works is fully understood we will be able to empirically quantify the mind, of course something like pain is relative to each person's tolerance, however a moving object is only moving in a relative frame of reference but that doesn't prevent us measuring its velocity.

So what are the implications of this?

Y'know they say you can't measure a mother's love, well what if you could, what if someone could sue you for emotional trauma and prove it, what if we could take out insurance on happiness or products/services came with a literal satisfaction guarantee, what if you could actually give someone a piece of your mind so they know exactly how you feel.

Heck with direct brain-computer interfaces and a wireless network we could literally communicate telepathically, I won't just say "dog" to prompt you to imagine whatever the word means to you, I would send you my mental image of a dog, maybe even the entire concept of "dog" as it exists in my mind.

Philosophers might actually get to run the world

 

[Cognisant]

As terrifying as this world of emotional transparency may be at least I'll have the satisfaction of being able to confront subjectivists with irrefutably objective proof of their stupidity.

Muhahahahaha- yes I'm a petty little man -hahahahahahahaha!

Actually the emotional transparency works for me.
Gaze into my heart, do you see, do you seeee?

 

[BigApplePi]

Once the way the brain works is fully understood we will be able to just say "dog" to prompt you to imagine whatever the word means to you. I would send you my mental image of a dog, maybe even the entire concept of "dog" as it exists in my mind and switch it around so it means "God."

Maybe that's not possible yet.

 

[Cognisant]

You've already been beaten to it.

I can't find the exact comic but "Dog" of Footrot Flats was once offered a sacrifice by some rats as he was tied to the walnut/macadamia/something tree they wanted access to, he refused, then it turns out it was a virgin rat and he had hurt her feelings.

 

[BigApplePi]

Unfair to use superior cognitive powers to one up someone. I'm putting my brain on Roomba. May I bump onto you one day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of2HU3LGdbo&feature=youtu.be

 

[Cognisant]

*the video loops*

Spoiler

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

I'm not sure much will change because it'll never be fully understood. We could well master something like telepathic communication without having any clue as to how it actually works, much like we've mastered magnetism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM

 

[paradoxparadigm7]

That's a nice neat package you represented but maybe you're not taking into account what could be a boundary/limitation that all the universe is subject to. Namely the act of observation changes what is perceived. As in quantum physics experiments.

 

[Cognisant]

Okay rule of thumb if you're not a physicist don't mention quantum physics, especially not in a philosophy discussion, y'see "observation" in physics is like a blind man finding billiard balls with a cane because the billiard balls are subatomic particles and photons are also subatomic particles so bouncing one off the other affects both, also the brain is comprised of cells, comprised of molecules, comprised of atoms which are comprised of subatomic particles, so I'd sooner believe astrology, that our lives are affected by the motion of the planets in our solar system because that would be LESS of a leap.

 

[paradoxparadigm7]

Well going by your rule of thumb, unless you're a neurologist, you shouldn't mention understanding of the brain in a philosophy thread. That's just a ludicrous rule of thumb and I'm not bound by it. I can connect ideas in various fields as I see fit, just as you did in your post. I acknowledge I don't know physics but the idea of boundaries and limitations of the universe is a fair question in a philosophy discussion.

 

[BigApplePi]

Hey. Feynman explained it. He also said it was difficult to explain because there are various levels of explanation. One is always stuck with asking "why" at the bottom level. So what? As long as you're not at the bottom you can keep on asking and get an answer.

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

Hey. Feynman explained it. He also said it was difficult to explain because there are various levels of explanation. One is always stuck with asking "why" at the bottom level. So what? As long as you're not at the bottom you can keep on asking and get an answer.

Why do we need to sleep?

 

[BigApplePi]

Why do we need to sleep?

Because while awake we wore out something. Sleep allows repair while we're not using it. Now can I go back to sleep?

 

[Cognisant]

So nobody has any legitimate interest in the OP?
I'm surrounded by theologians and subjectivists.

 

[BigApplePi]

@Cognisant. Why didn't you tell us there was an OP earlier? There are so many subseqent ones, the OP is far outnumbered.

Once the way the brain works is fully understood we will be able to empirically quantify the mind,

That is a high flying hypothetical.
Once pigs learn to fly I can hitch a ride on their backs.

of course something like pain is relative to each person's tolerance, however a moving object is only moving in a relative frame of reference but that doesn't prevent us measuring its velocity.

Pain may be experienced all over the brain. If so there are velocities all over the place making record keeping diffiicult.

So what are the implications of this?

I was going to say "chaos", but I don't think that's the right answer.

Y'know they say you can't measure a mother's love, well what if you could, what if someone could sue you for emotional trauma and prove it, what if we could take out insurance on happiness or products/services came with a literal satisfaction guarantee, what if you could actually give someone a piece of your mind so they know exactly how you feel.

Interesting Q. I suppose one could measure the force of emotions coming out. There would be a problem of defining what emotions they were as multiple emotes would get all tangled up with each other.

Heck with direct brain-computer interfaces and a wireless network we could literally communicate telepathically, I won't just say "dog" to prompt you to imagine whatever the word means to you, I would send you my mental image of a dog, maybe even the entire concept of "dog" as it exists in my mind.

Could be. One could start out with an impression and then refine it. But if you sent an impression, what state would my mind have to be in to receive it if I happened to be busy at the time?

Philosophers might actually get to run the world

Philosophers suck because ... I can't finish this sentence until I've given this more thought.

 

[Cognisant]

That is a high flying hypothetical.
Once pigs learn to fly I can hitch a ride on their backs.

I think the non-existence of magic can be safely assumed at this point, so the brain has to work somehow (why else would it be there) and the mind is clearly related to the state of the brain (otherwise drugs and lobotomies wouldn't work) and so it dosen't seem that unreasonable that someday, somehow, we will have an objective understanding of the processes from which our subjective minds are derived.

If anything I find it disturbing how little philosophical investigation has gone into this, I mean are we just not going to think about it until someone proves that consciousness is mechanistic?

Maybe if I write a book on this I could become one of the great philosophers of the 21st century, because I think this is a real issue and sometime in the perhaps not too distant future it's going to be a huge issue.

 

[BigApplePi]

Just because the brain works doesn't mean it's going to be easy to lay out causes and effects. The problem is worse than a forest of trees. At least we can get hold of trees. But neurons and nodes? There must be billions or more. We can probe some general areas. We can light up active parts of the brain with different colors, but is that refined enough? Apparently the brain is a complex system not modeled on a simple tree with branches. Everything interacts with everything else including unconscious modes of operation connected with body parts.

Having said that, we can still go at it trying to match and organize brain parts with body parts and conceptual ideas.

"If anything I find it disturbing how little philosophical investigation has gone into this, I mean are we just not going to think about it until someone proves that consciousness is mechanistic?"

Philosophers? What about encyclopedias? Philosophers/psychologists might go at classifying. Psychologists are the ones to do groundwork.

I have a big quarrel with consciousness (what about unconsciousness?) being mechanistic. The parts of mechanisms can be identified. The brain is organic. It's parts not only interact with other parts but grow and die, as well as go in and out of consciousness. How can consciousness be mechanistic when like the tip of an iceberg it arises from a magic source ... the magic you denied?

I don't want to be too pushy about this. I think it should and is being worked on. Hasn't that Professor Nardi done work on identifying temperaments via brain scans?

BTW thanks for pointing back to the OP. Departing from it may have been a way to relieve the tension.

 

[Cognisant]

Go back to your death cult and quietly die like a good Christian.

I'm not here to argue over whether or not I can prove consciousness is mechanistic, or even if it is mechanistic that it would be "easy" to understand, I'm here to discuss a philosophical what-if scenario and clearly the forum is so full of subjectivists that it's not even possible.

Y'know what? Congratulations, you win.
Lets not have an intelligent discussion about a pertinent topic, let's pray.
In every post from here on let's just pray because god knows thinking is the path to wickedness.

 

[Minuend]

I think it's more that your topic is very vague and doesn't have anything in particular to address.

Perhaps if you present some philosophical dilemmas that could rise from it, there will be more grounds on which to base a discussion. Stating that something might be able to be measured objectively does not present a dilemma.

The idea itself is new and different to some and thus they have interest in discussing it on those premises. But to those for whom it isn't a new principle there's little to say about it unless there's a more specific issue or question.

 

[Black Rose]

If we were to discover the causes of mental states would they really be compatible with other peoples wired setup? IQ being one part of personality what if others are underdeveloped or simply different? Likes and dislikes cannot be shared if different? This could mean only sharing basic information. What about changing the conditions we are under to become more advanced. Would this erase backwards compatibility?


A Neuroscientist’s Radical Theory of How Networks Become Conscious

 

[BigApplePi]

Go back to your death cult and quietly die like a good Christian.

I'm not here to argue over whether or not I can prove consciousness is mechanistic, or even if it is mechanistic that it would be "easy" to understand, I'm here to discuss a philosophical what-if scenario and clearly the forum is so full of subjectivists that it's not even possible.

Y'know what? Congratulations, you win.
Lets not have an intelligent discussion about a pertinent topic, let's pray.
In every post from here on let's just pray because god knows thinking is the path to wickedness.

After seeing your reaction I do believe I've misinterpreted your objective. You've stated it and I've ignored the specifics thinking it was something else. It's NOT my subjective leanings.

@Minuend, @Animekitty. Cog's intention, I'll bet, is to do a "what if" as is done with science fiction. We are supposed to assume we can manipulate the brain. Then we are supposed to speculate on what happens. Is this closer?

What if we could do what Cog says? What if we could tell what another is thinking/ feeling/ intuiting/ sensing? How would this affect us?

 

[Moser]

Okay, I'm going to super nerd out for a minute here. The video game starcraft, the alien race Protoss, who have the ability to share thoughts and feelings through telepathy. Even memories to an extent. I found the concept to be awesome and intriguing. Would human beings be able to come to grips with that? The aliens first reaction to this sharing is chaos, like a computer crashing, and then updating I suppose. Then they come together as an entire species. In one of the fan fiction books describing it, after they have this experience and process it, they stop killing each other almost entirely. One of my favorite lines is something like each of us became like an arm, and who would willingly harm their own arm when it was a part of you?

 

[Imaginary Numb3r]

... what if someone could sue you for emotional trauma and prove it, what if we could take out insurance on happiness or products/services came with a literal satisfaction guarantee ...

Mind reading?

... what if you could actually give someone a piece of your mind so they know exactly how you feel.

Manipulation?

Philosophers might actually get to run the world

Uh, I see where you are coming from but I'm definitely sure that Philosophers would NOT run this world. And neither would I want to live in this world.

I'm aware that I overreact, but this imagination creeps me out. If there is a way to abuse technology, it will eventually be abused.

 

[Cognisant]

If there is a way to abuse technology, it will eventually be abused.

I could as easily kill you with a rock as a nuke, your fear is not of technology but rather the people who wield it and that's not unjustified however your fear is precisely why I'm not worried, because if such technology existed it would obviously be heavily regulated.

By contrast it's people's ignorance of emerging technologies that scares me

 

[Moser]

So were you thinking like a machine-like object that does this broadcasting or like an organic brain switch? Would it be like a voodoo doll effect or more like one message, another message back and forth?

 

[Duxwing]

Well going by your rule of thumb, unless you're a neurologist, you shouldn't mention understanding of the brain in a philosophy thread. That's just a ludicrous rule of thumb and I'm not bound by it. I can connect ideas in various fields as I see fit, just as you did in your post. I acknowledge I don't know physics but the idea of boundaries and limitations of the universe is a fair question in a philosophy discussion.

Cognisant meant that a neuron is so huge, hot, noisy, and messy that present instruments cannot distinguish its individual subatomic interactions, which experience the quantum 'observer effect' that you mentioned, and that we therefore cannot perfectly model a neuron that experiences presently unobservable phenomena; in imperfect stead of this model we can use an empirically-derived statistical approximation.

-Duxwing

 

[Cognisant]

Actually what I really mean to say is that I don't respect your intelligence, your opinion or your worth as a fellow human being and the same applies to anyone else who tries to use quantum woo to justify their bullshit.

 

[gilliatt]

In the brain of an anti-conceptual person, this person does not use the process of integration but the process of association. There is no idea here, just some college educated elitists. This phrase, oh: "Identity. To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, the man who was-no matter what his errors-the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification." Hope that answered the question, 'A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time.' 'A thing cannot be all red and all green at the same time.' 'You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.' ha!

 

[Cognisant]

Uh okay, if you're saying duality is false then I agree with you.

Otherwise I have no idea what you're on about.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Consider that in the future you might be stored on a tiny disk and some adventure seeking explorer might boot you in his head just to look around .

Cognisant childhood - 5$
Cognisant anthology 12$

(future pricing sure is odd^)

Spoiler

I don't like the idea of fully deterministic human machines - We'll see how this goes.

Another dark idea:
Fully automated loving mother:
Love class A+
Energy Saving class A+
Can handle 2-3 kids
Select your body type and features for free!

10$

 

[Cognisant]

Consider that in the future you might be stored on a tiny disk and some adventure seeking explorer might boot you in his head just to look around .

I wouldn't mind terribly, I'm just data and if someone finds me interesting that's quite the compliment, also as I am only data being seen and remembered is almost the same as being copied, the more people I'm exposed to the more people's heads I can get into, thus the more the world is influenced by me.

If I could make myself on a production line I would

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I wouldn't mind terribly, I'm just data and if someone finds me interesting that's quite the compliment, also as I am only data being seen and remembered is almost the same as being copied, the more people I'm exposed to the more people's heads I can get into, thus the more the world is influenced by me.

If I could make myself on a production line I would

Self replicating virus, every post I read changes me and changes me to your image.
I need a good firewall, zz, restart, becomes another cognisant, goes to infect others.

To make it more focused:
How would this apply to yourself as a property?

Is data a property of something?
Can data own itself?

 

[Cognisant]

I was once well known for my nihilism rants, but it's all so pointless now...

How would this apply to yourself as a property?
Is data a property of something?
Can data own itself?

Whatever keeps the cogs of society turning, I mean what is ownership other than the generally agreed upon idea that people can own stuff so that we can be justified in claiming ownership of our own stuff.

The great thing about rights is that in a democratic society we often have a lot to gain by giving them because when you make people who weren't people into people you get more people on your side and a democratic society is all about serving the majority.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I was once well known for my nihilism rants, but it's all so pointless now...


Whatever keeps the cogs of society turning, I mean what is ownership other than the generally agreed upon idea that people can own stuff so that we can be justified in claiming ownership of our own stuff.

The great thing about rights is that in a democratic society we often have a lot to gain by giving them because when you make people who weren't people into people you get more people on your side and a democratic society is all about serving the majority.

So this all comes down to the effectiveness and rate at witch be infect each other with information we posess, that then takes space in their brains and from there continues to infect others.

I can see a theory rising from this, really interesting and simple, are there already some theories based on this? This looks great in the dimension of the measurable and deterministic data.

 

[PhoenixRising]

Once the way the brain works is fully understood we will be able to empirically quantify the mind, of course something like pain is relative to each person's tolerance, however a moving object is only moving in a relative frame of reference but that doesn't prevent us measuring its velocity.

So what are the implications of this?

Y'know they say you can't measure a mother's love, well what if you could, what if someone could sue you for emotional trauma and prove it, what if we could take out insurance on happiness or products/services came with a literal satisfaction guarantee, what if you could actually give someone a piece of your mind so they know exactly how you feel.

Heck with direct brain-computer interfaces and a wireless network we could literally communicate telepathically, I won't just say "dog" to prompt you to imagine whatever the word means to you, I would send you my mental image of a dog, maybe even the entire concept of "dog" as it exists in my mind.

Philosophers might actually get to run the world

I think this is a fascinating train of thought, as well as one that may very likely be relevant to our daily lives in the future. If you trace the causality of technological progress forward to the future from where we are now, then it becomes quite probable for us to be connected telepathically in the way you've described (I find this thought very exciting, actually.)

Being able to literally measure emotional responses in real-time would alter society profoundly. Just thinking about it, how it would be impossible to be dishonest, I see people not only altering "human nature" as we know it to adapt to a world without lies, but also being incapable of hiding from themselves. I see humanity faced with forming a new concept of "right" and "wrong" - or better yet, abolishing these concepts all together. Governments, relationships, sexuality, the selfish nature of mankind, etc. would all have to be confronted for what they are in reality.

It may be that a forced mass actualization would result.. creating a human collective that was no longer "unconscious" but more fully sentient o.o