. . .
···
-------------------------------
[Paul George 940708 15:00 EDT]
Looking forward to next week.
It has been a good week. A handful more from BPR-L are lurking.
Oldtimers on CSG-L are committed to PCT and try to be very careful
in their answers, no matter who asks; no matter what the question,
because there are many lurking, watching the discussion and
learning from it. I learn too. I think it has been abundantly
clear from discussions this past week that PCT is a serious
physical science, not an "off the top of your head" word model.
-------------------------------
I have found the discussion on FACTS very useful. Thanks, Dan.
-------------------------------
One BPR-L subscriber, Keith Cowan, (not on CSG-L (as of July 8,
anyway)) sent me an invitation to subscribe to PSYCHE-D, as it
"represents the other side and might be a better forum for
discussing PCT."
Send message to listserv@nki.bitnet
with
subscribe psyche-d Your Name
set psyche-d digest
PSYCHE-D has 720 subscribers in 40 countries. I have listened in
for a week and a half, and found what to me seems like unsupported
speculation, followed by:
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 1994 22:37:31 +1000
From: PATRICK WILKEN <X91007@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au>
Subject: Guidelines for posting to Psyche-D
Since Psyche-D has become much more active in the last few weeks I
thought it a good time to post some guidelines for posting to the
list.
The central tenet of the list is that consciousness is an outcome
of information processing in the brain. While this is a very
general statement I still receive many messages denying its truth.
I will not forward these messages on for discussion. There are
certainly other models for consciousness, but their discussion is
not appropriate for this list.
I suspect that while most of neuroscience, AI, philosophy,
psychology and anthropology is *indirectly* relevant to an
understanding of consciousness, much of it is not *directly*
relevant. Postings that only *indirectly* address the question of
consciousness will have a low probability of being forwarded to the
group - no matter how insightful they are in their own terms.
This list is moderated. Messages will not automatically be
forwarded to the list. I want to make this list a fairly noise free
discussion group. Think of this as a letter column in some
newspaper or magazine. Only letters that have something fairly
substantial to say will forwarded on to the group. This is not to
say I will not post messages that I disagree with, rather that all
messages need to be argued well.
All messages need to have an appropriate subject header and have
the name and email address of the writer clearly listed at the
bottom of the message. Messages without these parts will not be
forwarded to the group.
While I would like to respond directly to every writer who's
posting I reject I simply do not have time. If you message does not
appear within 48 hours there is a high probability that it has been
rejected for one or more of the reasons listed above.
Best wishes,
Patrick Wilken
X91007@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au
------------------------------
Sounds like a refereed journal, does it not. Don't care how false
our discussion is, as long as we maintain our basic thesis. Well,
it is all way beyond any connection to the physical sciences
anyway. Dag
------------------------------
I found this interesting:
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 1994 11:28:40 +1000
From: PATRICK WILKEN <X91007@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au>
Subject: Consciousness and the past
From: IN%"rkwallen@shrsys.hslc.org" 13-JUL-1994 09:55:59.74
I have followed the various threads dealing with consciousness for
the past month or so. The high calibre of the discussion, the
thoughtful probing and reasoned responses are a credit to PSYCHE-D.
There has been much to think about and I find it encouraging.
However, I have wondered to what extent we are repeating the
arguments of other times. My idle wondering turned to more solid
conviction when I ran across a book by Wilhelm Wundt, acknowledged
by nearly every history of Psychology text as the the founder and
definer of experimental psychology. The following passage is drawn
from the first lecture, bear in mind that this was written in 1896
and is referring to arguments that were formulated nearly 200 years
earlier.
Wundt begins by describing the materialism of Descartes -- that
animals are natural machines. He asserts that the inference that
the Materialism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries drew
from Descartes was that the same explanation could be applied to
Humans.
BEGIN QUOTE
Quoting from: Wundt, W. (1896) _Lectures on Human and Animal
Psychology_. Macmillan & Co.
The naive Materialism with which philosophy began had simply
ascribed some kind of corporeality to mental existence. But this
modern Materialism took as its first principles physiological
hypotheses; thought, sense, and idea are physiological functions of
certain organs within the nervous system. Observation of the facts
of consciousness is of no avail until these are derived from
chemical and physical processes. Thought is simply a result of
brain activity. Since this activity ceases when circulation is
arrested and life departs, thought is nothing more than a function
of the substances of which the brain is composed.
More particularly were the scientific investigators and physicians
of the time inclined, by the character of their pursuits, to accept
this explanation of mental life in terms of what seemed to them
intelligible scientific facts. The Materialism of today has made no
great advance in this or in any other direction upon the views
promulgated in the last century,.... But this equating of mental
process and brain function, which makes psychology a department of
cerebral physiology, and therefore a part of a general atomic
mechanics, sins against the very first rule of scientific logic, --
that only those connections of facts may be regarded as causal
which obtain between generically similar phenomena. Our feelings,
thoughts, and volitions cannot be made objects of sensible
perceptions. We can hear the word which expresses the thought, we
can see the man who has thought it, we can dissect the brain in
which it arose; but the word, the man, and the brain are not the
thought. And the blood which circulates in the brain, the chemical
changes which take place there, are wholly different from the act
of thought itself.
Materialism, it is true, does not assert that these _are_ the
thought, but that they _form_ it. As the liver secretes bile, as
the muscle exerts motor force, so do blood and brain, heat and
electrolysis, produce idea and thought. But surely there is no
small difference between the two cases. We can prove that bile
arises in the liver by chemical processes which we are able, in
part at least, to follow out in detail. We can show, too, that
movement is produced in muscles by definite processes, which are
again the immediate result of chemical transformation. But cerebral
processes give us no shadow of indication as to how our mental life
comes into being. For the two series of phenomena are not
comparable. We can conceive how one motion may be transformed into
another, perhaps also how one sensation or feeling is transformed
into a second. But no system of cosmic mechanics can make plain to
us how a motion can pass over into a sensation or feeling.
At the same time modern Materialism pointed out a more legitimate
method of research. There are numerous experiences which put beyond
all doubt the connection of physiological cerebral function on the
one hand and of mental activity on the other. And to investigate
this connection by means of experiment and observation is assuredly
a task worth undertaking. But we do not find that Materialism, even
in this connection, has made a single noteworthy contribution to
our positive knowledge. It has been content to set up baseless
hypotheses regarding the dependence of mental function upon
physical process; or it has been concerned to refer the nature of
mental forces to some known physical agency. No analogy has been
too halting, no hypothesis too visionary, for its purpose. It was
for some time a matter or dispute whether the mental force had more
resemblance to light or electricity. Only on one point was there
general agreement, --that it was not ponderable.
In our day the conflict between Materialism and Spiritualism, which
was raging in the middle of the century, has almost worn itself
out. It has left behind nothing of value for science; and that will
not surprise anyone who is acquainted with its details. For the
clash of opinion was centred once more round the old point: in the
questions concerning mind, the seat of mind, and its connection
with the body. Materialism has made the very same mistake which we
have charged to the spiritualistic philosophy. Instead of plunging
boldly into the phenomena which are presented to our observation
and investigating the uniformities of their relation, it busied
itself with metaphysical questions, an answer to which, if we may
expect it all, can only be based upon an absolutely impartial
consideration of experience, which refuses to be bound at the
outset by any metaphysical hypothesis.
END QUOTE.
Here we are nearly 100 years after Wundt. In April I attended the
conference _Toward a Scientific Explanation of Consciousness_ held
in Tucson Arizona. David Chalmers presented the third paper. It is
understatement to say that he rather provoked the audience by
asserting that everyone was going to deal with easy questions. He
assured the audience that they would hear answers to many good
questions based on e.g. cortical oscillations or cognitive models
of information processing. However they would not hear an answer to
the really difficult question-- which is why these functions and
processes to be described give rise to conscious experience.
Chalmers argued that a theory of consciousness will not be possible
until we recognize some new fundamental laws of nature able to
bridge the gap between physical processes and conscious experience
and speculated on some of the possible characteristics of these new
laws.
My purpose is not to describe Chalmers speculations. It is, rather,
to point to the fact that Chalmers argument and Wundt's argument,
though separated by almost exactly 100 years, are fundamentally
identical. Much of what I've read on PSYCHE-D during the last few
months seems to me to be the kind of thing that both Chalmer's and
Wundt were criticizing. What is it about the issue of consciousness
that leads us to revisit it periodically, developing similar
arguments using different analogies?
In the 1700s it was the hydraulic machine. The 1800s gave us the
electricity, the 1900s spawned neurochemical systems and computer
networks. It appears that 2001 will enter with Quantum mechanics
supporting microtubules and neural oscillation. We change the
metaphor but its the same argument. How do we get off the
treadmill?
__________________
Kurt Wallen (Ramesh)
Behavioral Science
Neumann College
Aston PA
-------------------------------------------------
My post in reply to this was accepted:
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 12:01:10 +1000
From: PATRICK WILKEN <X91007@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Consciousness and the past
From: IN%"DForssell@aol.com" 14-JUL-1994 04:22:27.70
Kurt Wallen (Ramesh) IN%"rkwallen@shrsys.hslc.org"
13-JUL-1994 09:55:59.74
Writes:
In the 1700s it was the hydraulic machine. The 1800s gave us the
electricity, the 1900s spawned neurochemical systems and computer
networks. It appears that 2001 will enter with Quantum mechanics
supporting microtubules and neural oscillation. We change the
metaphor but its the same argument. How do we get off the
treadmill?
A new approach is available that resolves your dilemma. The 20th
century gave us the control system. Following Wiener's
introduction of control in the 1940's, control was discussed and
dismissed in the behavioral sciences. This mistake occured because
it was misinterpreted and misunderstood by nontechnical people.
A new behavioral science is developing, based on a correct
interpretation of control as it applies to living organisms. It is
called Perceptual Control Theory. This new science has already
provided many novel interpretations of psychological phenomena and
compelling results in tests, but has not yet matured enough to
define or discuss consciousness. Understanding the new science
requires study of several unfamiliar concepts. It is not an
addition to what we think we know from our existing behavioral
sciences, but a new, very technical approach that points to new
research methods.
Patrick Wilken's _Guidelines for posting to Psyche-D_ show clearly
that Psyche-D is not the right forum for discussing this, but I
would hope it is appropriate to inform you of a forum where it is:
To subscribe to the Control System Group List (CSG-L) and learn of
your options, send
Subscribe CSG-L Firstname Lastname
help
info refcard
set csg-l digest
query csg-l
to: LISTSERV@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU
CSG-L volume is about 300 KB per week. You get an introductory
message with literature references. Listen in, PLEASE read the
literature first and introduce yourself when ready to ask
questions to clarify your understanding.
Dag C. Forssell M.S.M.E., M.B.A. Purposeful Leadership(R)
23903 Via Flamenco Valencia, California 91355-2808 USA
Phone (805) 254-1195 Fax (805) 254-7956
Preferred Receiving Address: dforssell@mcimail.com
Sending from: dforssell@aol.com
-------------------------------------------
Best, Dag