Virtual Reality - Consciousness Really Explained! pptx

1 2 Virtual Reality: Consciousness Really Explained! (Second Edition) Jerome Iglowitz (February 22, 2010) 3 4 Copyright February 8, 2010 Jerome Iglowitz 5 6 Dedication: For Chen Who has taught me more about courage Than I had ever known. 7 8 9 A Note for Impatient or Skeptical Minds Impatient or skeptical minds should probably begin the New Précis, (“In a Nutshell”) –at the very beginning of Chapter 1 and then skip to Chapter 12 which show two relatively contemporaneous criticisms of my ideas and my answer to them. 1 I This should resolve many difficulties before they start. This is clearly a very difficult subject to present with any other perspective than the standard ones: i.e. the very ones that have already clearly failed! Give me some space and I’ll try to make a revolutionary out of you! I think the answer is important. On the other hand, let me insert an apology at this point. I am currently 71 years old, and have had several strokes which have impaired my abilities. And yet, I consider the new content 1 (Note: This is the second edition of “Virtual Reality: Consciousness really Explained” which was completed in 1995, (revised 1998). Though it lacks some of the detail of the former, it incorporates a later and richer perspective with much n ew material and elucidates my second thesis far better than the original. I do not think it changes, but rather enriches the substance and sense of the earlier edition and clarifies its rationale. This version uses a mix of footnotes and endnotes. The footnotes, (in ordinary numerals), are necessary for immediate clarity, but I felt the material included in the endnotes, (in Roman numerals), interrupted the flow of thought. Hence it was relegated to its endnote status.) of this book important. What it is lacking is an overall stylistic form of sufficient refinement to do it justice as my concentration has been narrowed to specific problems which I have responded to and which I think make my perspective clearer. Some of the citation references might need “tweeking”, but that should be achievable with minimal effort given sufficient interest. This is the “hard problem” and you’d better begin by expecting it to be so. Jerome Iglowitz, 2010 10 [...]...Table of Contents VIRTUAL REALITY: CONSCIOUSNESS REALLY EXPLAINED! 3 COPYRIGHT 5 DEDICATION: 7 A NOTE FOR IMPATIENT OR SKEPTICAL MINDS 9 TABLE OF CONTENTS 11 PREFACE: 19 PREAMBLE: ... God’s and Edelman’s Eye 514 On “Presentation” 515 Re-entrant Maps 517 What Edelman has not solved: the problem of the Cartesian Theatre 521 On Epistemology: 526 16 Conclusion 535 APPENDIX C: CASSIRER AGAIN 537 HOW? THE LOGICAL PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 537 (CASSIRER- HILBERT- MATURANA: AN ARCHIMEDEAN FULCRUM) 537 CASSIRER AND CLASSICAL LOGIC:... materialist explanations of the mind-brain problem It purportedly explains how new phenomena “emerge” from more fundamental explanations These new emergent phenomena are said to embed themselves hierarchically in ontic material -taken at the deepest level The conception seems to derive from, or at 23 It is the phenomenology of realism –those relations that work -and the “naïve realistic world” itself... language! Materialist explanations of consciousness of the usual sort all have this flaw As I will state the problem later: “how can a (biological) machine/mechanism whose parts are discrete in time and space ever know anything whatsoever? But I mean “knowing” in a different sense than simple mechanical, “zombie-like” performance, and I think you wish it to be taken so too Consciousness could never arise... brain process at some fundamental level Computer people do essentially the same thing in their quest for artificial intelligence (I took a half dozen computer classes long ago to try to see if the “brain-is-a- computer” people had anything important to say at this fundamental level When I came to the “systems” course, I concluded that they didn’t It all came down to microcoding of the CPU which entailed... What good would feedback do if it were not imprinted right back onto the very output which then again re-affects its input? It implies some connection between its input and its output domains This is the one good thing I found in Merleau-Ponty 33 To quote W.J Freeman: “In particular, Maurice Merleau-Ponty in "The Phenomenology of Perception" [2] conceived of perception" [itself] "as the outcome of the... constant peril I wish to severely question realism’s ultimate “objects” themselves to resolve the deepest dilemma of mankind: i.e the mind-body relationship But I must do so in a way that preserves the realism of science, the realism of the naïve world, and the reality of the mind which perceives them both This is the core and the center of my conception I think that all of us, deep down, accept these... simply repeating Kant This is fair in one perspective –I am very much like Kant insofar as the “What” of reality is concerned, though we differ about the categories and ethics, and fundamentally about epistemology My particular thesis consists in supplying the actual “How” and the “Why” –and the “Where - of Kant’s profound insight however, and which he never even attempted to 5 By an anonymous JCS reviewer... famous logician W.V.O.Quine 2 which I will quote in its entirety to serve as an introduction: "The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field... “Emergence” supposedly solves the problem of hierarchy in materialist explanations of the mind-brain problem, (e.g P.S Churchland’s) It purportedly explains how new phenomena “emerge” from more fundamental explanations These new emergent phenomena are said to embed themselves hierarchically in ontic material -taken at the deepest level The conception seems to derive from, or at least be analogous to . 1 2 Virtual Reality: Consciousness Really Explained! (Second Edition) Jerome Iglowitz (February 22, 2010) 3 4. by expecting it to be so. Jerome Iglowitz, 2010 10 Table of Contents VIRTUAL REALITY: CONSCIOUSNESS REALLY EXPLAINED! 3 COPYRIGHT 5 DEDICATION: 7 A NOTE FOR IMPATIENT OR SKEPTICAL MINDS. And yet, I consider the new content 1 (Note: This is the second edition of Virtual Reality: Consciousness really Explained” which was completed in 1995, (revised 1998). Though it lacks