tar

iNow, Sort of an unspecific finding on your part. Can you specifically mention what is the peg and what is the hole I am forcing it into? Knowing you, I am concerned you are concerned about ascribing consciousness to non-humans. Perhaps even according to Dunning-Kruger you are against allowing anybody to be superior to you in particular. You have certain arguments you have repeated throughout the many years we have both been on this board, and you habitually come out with ad hominem arguments, that portray me, or your adversary as somehow foolish, without mentioning the particular part of my argument, that you find foolish. In this thread, one of the issues is are animals, and even perhaps are plants, conscious, or do they operate on autopilot, building their nest according to wiring, without any conscious involvement. To this, I offered a definition widening solution, where we differentiate between being conscious, and having human consciousness. That is, a Zebra has Zebra consciousness and a human has human consciousness, and that requires that there may be some similarities between Zebras and Humans, that allows both to be conscious, but also allows for differences between the two that would explain why Zebras run in herds, and humans do crossword puzzles. Regards, TAR

Worse in what sense, iNow?

Ok, perhaps we can make a distinction between consciousness and human consciousness. but I would not say life and consciousness are automatically bound together as one idea to that I would ask, "is a string of DNA aware of itself?" is a virus alive? Is it self aware? It probably does not have a fully functioning TPJ or any ears or eyes and probably was not told bedtime stories by it parents So what do you figure it is conscious of? Just conscious of being a pattern of amino acids? How?

Ten oz, Well I do have a little logical bind there in the theory, if the TPJ is responsible for consciousness, how does a 2 year old achieve consciousness before the TPJ functionality is operational. Well I am not sure how exactly that works, but I am thinking that a less than 3 year old, while perhaps not having the moral discussions with oneself possible after the TPJ gets going, is still capable of a rudimentary theory of mind. Knows who mama is and understands from experience it is better to please mama than to make her mad...and such. So I would imagine the TPJ is not absent, just not developed as it will be after a few years. I think I remember Dr. Saxe saying the TPJ continues to develop right into adulthood and never actually stops developing. There is a term in evolution and fetal development that I forget but that says there are analogs between how the fetus develops and how we as a species developed. That is things like a little tail and webbing between the fingers and toes and such, that may have been actual characteristics of our ancestors, are seen in stages of the fetal development, where they manifest and then morph into the next stage, reminiscent of the evolutionary trail. In this way, perhaps the development of the TPJ as the child grows might be analogous to its importance and development in the evolutionary path. But to the thread title, instinct vs consciousness, I have to think that consciousness did not just pop up all of a sudden, and it make sense to try and model a progression, where various senses form, and the ability to match the senses to build a model of the place, and then facilities emerging, like mirror neurons, and TPJ where the consciousness of seeing and smelling an hearing and feeling and tasting becomes more human like. as facilities for language and sharing thoughts and experiences developed. Not much evolutionary work has been done on the human consciousness in the last 5 or 10 thousand years, but a lot of functional knowledge and experience sharing has gone on. This would say to me. that we were probably nearly as smart 10000 years ago as we are today. That is, our brains were ready to learn about the world and share the experience with other humans. Instinct and consciousness are not, under this idea at odds, or found over here and not over there. It makes more sense to me, if we accept we have the evolutionarily built equipment to be conscious humans, and in that sense, instincts, though pretty much gone from humans, because of socialization, are still built in, and we cannot be other than human in our consciousness because of the wiring we have. Regards, TAR Embryonic Recapitulation is the evolutionary theory that embryos reconstruct evolutionary forms in the development of the organism. This is often stated as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.". It is the theory that a human embryo's development appears to represent the different stages in evolutionary development

Ten Oz, Perhaps that is what we call it, but I was thinking more specifically about the portion of the brain Rebecca Saxe is studying that develops at the age of 3 or 4 that seems to be responsible for having a theory of mind about yourself and others. In some way this seems to me to be WHY we are conscious. And this ability to be aware of a mind, is something that not all living things have. At least even humans don't fully have it until the age of three or four. A two year old is conscious, but according to Rebecca Saxe's work, they do not put themselves in other people's shoes or make moral judgements until this part of the brain begins to develop to its full operational status. https://spectrumnews.org/news/profiles/rebecca-saxe-fine-tuning-the-theory-of-mind/ This facility evolved in us. One could easily argue it evolved for survival reasons, and made us able to think as a group, thus enhancing our knowledge and problem solving abilities by an additive amount, if not a multiplicative amount. It might exist in rudimentary form in other mammals. Regards, TAR

Ten oz, I don't know how it was determined that Neanderthals were stronger than humans but not as smart, I took it as a given as it was on a definition block on my browser. However, I also had read somewhere that the nasal passage and smelling apparatus were superior in the Neanderthal, to where, to your point, they may have been more successful at tracking or finding prey and avoiding predators. But since humans seem to have wiped out Neanderthals, I would maybe guess that in the long run the humans outsmarted the Neanderthals, and their physical strength was not successful in seeing them victorious over human smarts. But although I am not sure what happened on an encounter by encounter basis between the humans and the Neanderthals, and how interbreeding affected the dynamics, I am guessing that somewhere along the line there was a situation where the one species thought themselves superior to the other and thought it best to proceed without the other on the planet, perhaps. Maybe some other dynamics, disease or adaptability issue was involved, but it seems possible that humans became the dominant species on the planet by finding ways to neutralize the threat to survival posed by any and all other species. As to me, myself and I being a yes or no consideration, I am thinking you might be wrong, and it instead is a continuum. The ability to put yourself in other people's shoes, allows one to develop a theory of mind, and to be self aware and to converse with unseen others and imagine that they have a mind like your own and can think thoughts that will affect their behavior toward you and so on...but other animals may have similar brain components as we have, and mirror neurons and the like, that allow them to put themselves in other Zebra's shoes. They might not be aware of being a person, but they might be completely aware of being a Zebra. I am thinking of fish schooling, and plains animals herding and pack animals hunting and such. They must each have some facility that allows them to put themselves in each other's shoes. We are related to other mammals and have some of the same brain parts, I do not know that you could draw a line on being conscious although you could probably draw a line on having human consciousness. Regards, TAR Maybe human farts and BO were so distressingly awful to the Neanderthals that they lost the will to survive.

Ten Oz, So do you think there are species more conscious than others? That is, do we use mammal consciousness as a ruler and guide with which we can elevate our class or phylum as having the "best" characteristics, and other cold blooded creatures, just don't rate. Mammals are any vertebrates within the class Mammalia, a clade of endothermic amniotes distinguished from reptiles by the possession of a neocortex, hair, three middle ear bones and mammary glands. ​​Perhaps being conscious involves what one is conscious of, and that in turn is reliant on what senses you have and how you procreate. ​To that, then the thread question would be is there a line to be drawn between species where it would mean anything to say that life on the other side of this line, does not know its alive? Regards, TAR side question Neanderthals were shorter and smaller than humans, and they had thicker bones, shorter limbs, and a ridge above their eyes that stuck out like their teeth. They were much stronger than modern-day humans, but they weren't as smart. ​Do people with Neanderthal genes have different physiological needs and capabilities as opposed to humans without Neanderthal genes, to where their "instincts" and consciousness might actually diverge?

Ten Oz, Well yes, was agreeing that animals are conscious, but not considering it a switch that is on in the case of humans and off in the case of animals. It is more a continuum as the nature/nurture controversy is. But I do think it OK and natural to elevate humans to a higher standard. Objectively, as you imply, there is no particular reason to elevate a human...but as the Dunning-Kruger effect teaches us, we are wired to elevate ourselves over others. In a certain way other species are also similarly wired and will choose their own survival over the survival of another. Like we easily grind up the seeds of grass to make flour without any concern for the particular life we destroyed to facilitate our own. There is a general philosophical overview I maintain, that says its OK and natural to love your own, before including others in your feeling of self. I have built my whole worldview, since 9/11 off the understanding that there are those that will support and promote me and my way of life, and there are those that would seek to destroy my way of life. Such is the way reality is structured. And such is the way we are wired. It is OK to subjectively elevate yourself. Rational is, that if you let the bear eat you, rather then flight or fight, you will be dead. Regards, TAR

Ten Oz, No, you are right, my statement was too simplistic and did not take into account the various religions and political systems and institutional acceptance that any idea requires. I withdraw it as a general statement of fact, as it obviously is very layered and complex, as to what ideas are accepted and which rejected. However that goes both ways, and it would be equally wrong to consider a brilliant scientist had a valuable idea, when the idea is only valuable or workable to her, and the rest of the world has no particular use for it. But to your OP. ​"If animals operate purely on instinct how does their behavior(s) evolve? If instinct is akin to a program what or who is responsible for the program?" It seems that the world is complex and what an animal does, is somewhat done according to how they are wired by evolution, and somewhat done according to how the world presents itself to the animal. Similar in kind to how and why people do various things, have certain behaviors, that seem similar across the board, but include variations according to the environment the human finds herself in. Where we have ways to take advantage of solutions prior humans have found, where various other animals do not have the same communication of real world solutions found, that can be shared outside the genes, the various other animals do still have conscious awareness of each other and their environment, and can teach each other tricks on what to seek and what to avoid. Perhaps more similarities in these abilities when considering other mammals, as the senses are similar and the biology is similar and other mammals can look and learn. The young wolf can learn to hunt by doing what the older wolves are doing to run down and kill the prey, etc. To this, evolution would favor abilities the mammals would have to want to learn from each other and from the environment. The behaviors evolving might not be as important as the ability to mimic successful behavior evolving is. Regards TAR perhaps, as humans evolved and learned to hunt they took successful strategies from watching wolves and lions and spiders and other predators find and trap and kill their food various of our tools and weapons are taken from tooth and claw and quill and venom and such, which we never pursued as a species to include in our genes, but which we found we could create from the environment as if we had the scales and fangs that other lifeforms included in their genes some lifeforms live as parasites off of others sometimes we need another species to live, as in the bacteria in our digestive systems evolution is not done in a vacuum, we evolve to fit the place, including to fit with other evolving species

Ten oz, I see your point, but I was thinking in terms of things like the internet. One person's idea perhaps, but as it was instituted the good workable portions of it were instantly accepted by everybody involved and built upon. Ideas, I think, can be rated as good, when they are workable, and vice-a-versa. A brilliant idea on how to solve world hunger, by eating your enemies, might be workable in one sense, and horribly unworkable in another. Did you ever notice how a good idea in one field of endeavor is often copied over and applied in an other area? That is because the idea was workable. While there is the possibility that a brilliant person can have a good idea that is "before its time" and has to wait until technology and ethics catch up with it, or perhaps political reasons, and controlling interests fight the implementation, on the whole, I will still stick with the thought, that good ideas are accepted into everybody's thinking, and bad ideas are discarded, if only temporarily, as unworkable. Take our planet for instance as a real example of humans having ideas, good and bad. The people there are to please with a thought and to judge a thought for its workable features and its unworkable, for its good and bad, for to be accepted and folded in, or for it to be discarded, are the actual 7 billion plus currently here. A good idea for me, living in the suburbs of NJ, USA might be thought a bad idea to a North Korean or a Saudi Prince, but we might ALL enjoy the internet. Regards, TAR Or take bitcoin. Brilliant idea to track every transaction and verify every transaction by solving for all the others...but it takes tremendous computer resources to make a transaction, and the anonymity is currently used for criminal and terrorist transactions, since there are no entity specific records kept. Good idea or bad? Highly workable for selling drugs and porn and bullets and bombs, and instantly accepted and built upon by dealers and scum and terrorists and gangs.

Thread, I had learned in HS psychology class that humans, outside of perhaps suckling, have no species wide complex unlearned behaviors suitable to be classified as instinctual. Common reflexes and proclivities, sure but no behaviors like building the same shape nest out of the same materials, just because you are a certain species of bird. As a species though we do have language and stories and books and architecture to where we might all build a house in the same way with square rooms made out of wood or something and it would not be instinctual, because it was learned. To the Dunning-Kruger effect I would say we rightly use the smarts provided by objective reality to our own advantage, and we actually can accrue that capability to our own capability. While it is true that there is always someone smarter than you, unless you are the smartest person on the planet, the large majority of these smarter people are actually on your side, in the effort to understand, and modify the world to our mutual advantage as a species. To this, for me, it is not the fact that we inappropriately accrue superiority to ourselves, it is that we appropriately accrue the strengths of our leaders to ourselves as members of the team. We, as a group, instantly accept good, workable ideas when we see them, and fold them into our thinking, regardless of where we got the idea, whether it was from watching how a bird did it, or a lion, or a wolf, or a glacier, or a parent or a teacher or a genius scientist. So, as people on the thread have already discussed, I think animals are conscious of the world, and learn from it, the same as we do. My dogs follow my wife around, and have to be in the same room as she is in. Pack behavior possibly is behind the exercise, but she is also the one that lets them out in the morning and gives them breakfast, lets the little one sit next to her, and feeds them peanut butter at bedtime in the kitchen. I think our dogs have us trained as much as we have them trained. Regards, TAR

1 2 and 3 seem pretty good, but if someone would have submitted the spelling of 1 to me as part of a proposed system of spelling I would have put two bugs in for "one" the pronunciation of a w when there wasn't one, and the silent e are both unrequired complexities and not user friendly. Strange, How come you get so much enjoyment making fun of me? I think I will put you down as a bug in the thread. Regards, TAR Though I don't have the fix.

why do we teach our children to count and spell in the first grade...and start them out with a number sounded with a w sound and spelled without one, followed by a number that is spelled with a w and has no w sound?

HiMyNameIs Word play. Same reason you drive on a parkway and park in the driveway. We can eat some eats. Why can't we soda some soda? Regards, TAR What is the reason you were thinking? Comedian Gallagher did it best. http://www.eszlinger.com/jokes/gallagherjokes.html Here is one I made up . If you buy pizza at a pizzeria where do you buy diaries?

Mordred, In the one link though it showed an electron responding to zero point energy like a ball on the end of a spring, with a sine wave type recoil pattern shown. An electron can't become a little more or a little less matter. It has to have a little more or a little less energy to follow the sine wave pattern shown. That would indicate a potential in an energy field, carried by a photon like entity. And my question is, if energy is exchanged in quanta, by a single photon of a certain energy, wavelength and amplitude, does this mean, to get the sine wave pattern shown in the spring recoil model, does an electron need to receive a photon on every up and release a photon on every down? Regards, TAR

matter fields though exchange energy with other matter fields through energy fields quanta of energy are photons how does a lepton change energy levels without accepting or emitting a photon? to the thread topic, I ran into this guy, looking up the definitions of energy https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carl-Friedrich-Freiherr-von-Weizsacker

that is, the energy is not coming from nothing, it is coming from a neighboring electron, and electrons are all in the business of trying to reach the rest state, but they can't because of all the other electrons in the universe trying to get rid of their energy

beecee, Philosophy and its methodology also includes a formalized language. I do not know it, or use it, but there are various formalized symbols for logical argument components, and truth tables and variable levels of truth considered and such. The OP question as to which methodology is better in determining what is real, is still not settled here. I would expect that we can agree that truth is very close to real in this discussion. That is, if something is objectively true, that means it is real and can be experienced by other than one observer. Quick question on the zero energy point. If an electron acts like a spring recoiling accepting and releasing tiny bits of energy down to half plank amplitudes is there a photon released on a down move and one absorbed on an up move? regards, TAR

"What does it mean to state the energy of a system is zero?" If we are going by E=MCsquared I suppose it would mean the system is devoid of mass or velocity. "Secondly why is the observer aspect so important to consider in the first question?" because the position and momentum of the observer defines the rest mass of the system in question and it matters greatly whether the observer is an inertial observer or an other than inertial observer

Mordred, The fact that you believe there is a correct answer to your first question depends on the fact that all the models you propose will have the same answer, because they all use the same mathematical definition of zero. If zero means the same thing as nothing, then math would have to exist prior to, or come into existence at the same moment as energy and matter and time and space came into existence. So there might be a difference in claiming the universe came from nothing, and claiming the universe came from zero. There is a small tribe in South America (Piraha,) who did not have much of a language able to describe mathematical concepts. Eventually Everett came up with a surprising explanation for the peculiarities of the Pirahã idiom. "The language is created by the culture," says the linguist. He explains the core of Pirahã culture with a simple formula: "Live here and now." The only thing of importance that is worth communicating to others is what is being experienced at that very moment. "All experience is anchored in the presence," says Everett, who believes this carpe-diem culture doesn't allow for abstract thought or complicated connections to the past -- limiting the language accordingly. Living in the now also fits with the fact that the Pirahã don't appear to have a creation myth explaining existence. When asked, they simply reply: "Everything is the same, things always are." The mothers also don't tell their children fairy tales -- actually nobody tells any kind of stories. No one paints and there is no art. http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/brazil-s-piraha-tribe-living-without-numbers-or-time-a-414291.html ​So I do not think reality started with the Arabs or the Greeks, or whoever first had a notion of zero. So mathematical proofs of balance of energy and matter on either side of zero are not good depictions of what coming from nothing, means. ​Regards, TAR Just thinking...you can write an equation down, poke and prod it and it never moves. Taste it and it tastes like ink or graphite, and tastes nothing like the thing it represents. The equation itself does not work, does not have any substance or energy or relationship or reality of its own. It is the definition of a simulation. It means something but it only is standing for a relationship that actually exists in reality already. Math can not create reality, only encode the relationships humans note. and for this discussion, the human mind can only represent reality that already is, or imagine rearranging it and then rearrange reality on reality's terms you can't fool mother nature

DrP, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" Regards, TAR

dimreepr, Where do you draw the line between those living in reality, and those residing in their own internally constructed world? Here is the exact central dilemma and the simple solution to the quandry is one I personally noted several years ago and have been trying to espouse on this board, since I noted it. EVERYTHING is happening outside a person, except for the stuff happening inside. And most, if not all of what is happening inside a person is brought in from the outside, so there is a direct connection and what is happening inside a person is part of reality, as well. Thusly we each are in and of reality. And internal thoughts are mostly composed of what it is we can say about the world. With other people having nearly exactly the same way of internalizing reality, we have 8 billion people we can talk to, about reality. Plus of course the millions who left their thoughts in the literature and art and works of constructions and technology. And we have a need to please each other and hold similar models of the place, and we teach each other what we learn about the place. So we each have an analog model of the world built within us, in our memories. The whole place, residing inside our body/brain/heart group. It is a reflection of the place, and is not better than the place. Regards, TAR

SwansonT, Well then go ahead and discuss. I thought it central to the discussion. But go ahead and discuss it without human neurotransmitters involved. I personally don't see how that is going to work out for you. Regards, TAR

String Junky, SwansonT, Understood that good scientists, on purpose, try to minimize confirmation bias. And, understood that a major tenant of science is an effort to falsify a claim, particularly a belief of your own...but to my thesis, that dopamine flows, when we are correct about reality and when the match between our model and reality is secure, go both considerations. I know I feel good, when I think I am correctly understanding the place, and I assume in this idea, that if I feel good about a thing (get dopamine) it is very possible, if not probable that other human beings with the same evolutionarily developed serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, need, motivation, reward system, would find pleasure and good feelings of comfort and security and victory if they experienced a similar set of circumstances as I did, when I felt good, and smart and alive and victorious. To this, it is not wrong to think yourself right. It is human. And sometimes, especially with the help of others, you feel right twice. Once, when your model matches the place, and twice when your model matches someone else's model of the place. Regards, TAR

dimreepr, My thesis depends on the fact that our senses provide an actual analog model of the reality that surrounds us. We have rods and cones in our eyes and lenses that focus an image of the world on these rods and cones. They report the frequencies are present that engage the.... "Red, green and blue-violet are regarded as the three primary colours of light. They stimulate one cone type and the brain translates this information received by the eye into what we call colour. When two sets of cones are fired, we respond that we see for instance yellow-a mixture of red and green light." That this is all representation and translation of frequencies really extant and what and how we perceive them is a given. We are all the same in this regard, if we have normal sight. When we say the thing is red it is because the same cones in our eyes that sensed red light last time, sensed it again. I don't need infallible. I need and have workable. Regards, TAR