The watch analogy

[ellenjanuary]

Well, put George Lakoff on your list, as he is one of the seminal figures in the field. I recommend that you read Metaphors We Live By, if you haven't already. That's a very quick, readable book that requires no linguistic expertise. It discusses the way in which metaphor permeates language structure. That is the starting point for most of the other books that he has written since then. (I knew him well before that phase in his thinking.)

Thanks for the link.

 

[ellenjanuary]

That is why I'm going into that field. I'm planning a career in cognitive neuroscience. I'm still an undergrad though.



Here's my crash course in cognitive science:

The current reigning paradigm in cognitive science is the computational theory of the mind (CTM). This framework is meant as an analogy to computers; brains perform procedures ("algorithms" in computer science) on representations ("data structures" in computer science). Therefore running a program is analogous to thinking. The facilitation and inhibition you are referring to is parallel constraint satisfaction which is part of the connectionism approach in the CTM.

Connectionism (see The Architecture of Mind by Rumelhart) has evolved into theoretical neuroscience which is the use of computer modeling of biologically realistic groups of neurons. This tries to integrate several approaches in CTM including rule-based thinking (see Steven Pinker), logic, analogy (see Gentner and Markham for a very interesting model), concepts and imagery (How the Mind Works by Pinker has a great section on imagery).

It also tries to incorporate theories that are against CTM such as embodiment (especially Dreyfus' extreme version), dynamic systems (attractors, phase transitions, complexity, chaos theory etc.), and sociology (Wharf hypothesis, east vs west thinking). Finally there fringe theories like Penrose's that try to stick in quantum mechanics.

That's me at the end, fringe.

I was watching something on Dawkin's youtube -

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/user/richarddawkinsdotnet?blend=1&ob=4#p/u/51/1iMmvu9eMrg

I'm too dumb to remember the guy's name - but he was discussing a "theory of mind" based not so much on the mind being just a computer, but a predictor. That, in essence, what the mind really does is fabricate the immediate future. Any thoughts?

 

[ellenjanuary]

...and Mitchell has toys. That's two points for Mitchell.

 

[mitchellmckain]

I'm too dumb to remember the guy's name - but he was discussing a "theory of mind" based not so much on the mind being just a computer, but a predictor. That, in essence, what the mind really does is fabricate the immediate future. Any thoughts?

Well that is not a too far fetched characterization of our very important capacity for imagination, but that is hardly all that the mind does. The mind also fabricates the past and present -- and accuracy is not always what it primarily seeks when doing so. It finds/identifies connections and relationships between things. It creates information structures for the processing of sensory data into a meaningful form (this is what we call perception). I am sure a psychologist could tell you even more of the things that the mind does.

 

[Copernicus]

No observer is required at all and this is easy to demonstrate. You can set up an experiment where a detector can be placed in one of two position and even if no one is looking at what the detector shows it still alters the wave function differently depending on where it is placed (and an observer can see the difference after the fact even though he does not see what the detector has measured). The wave collapse is occurring because of how the detector interacts with the wave and not because there is any observer involved at all.

That is a very good point, Mitchell. Obviously, the detector is not sentient, but then neither is your finger or your eyeball. When you use a hammer or ride a bike, are they extensions of your body? Are eyeglasses? What about an automobile that you drive? All of these things are a part of us in the sense that they contribute to our sensoria. They form part of the physical system that connects us to reality. What is interesting about what you said is the expression "how the detector interacts with the wave". What is the nature of that interaction? Does the detector cause an event--wave collapse--that would otherwise not happen?

Since the topic is raised, my position on the mind body problem is that of a dual aspect physicalist. I believe that the mind is an entirely physical thing but that it presents many of the features of dualism because the mind is actually a non-biological living entity (a meme organism rather than a gene organism). Its extreme dependence on the biological organism and the brain is a normal situation for living things which are always highly dependent on the proper environment in which they can live. This comes from an understanding of living organisms as self-organizing dynamic structures, which is a process that can occur in many mediums with a sufficiently complex non-linear far from equillibrium environment (again I reccommend Erich Jantsch's book on this topic).

I haven't read Jantsch's book, but that sounds similar to some of my understanding of what a mind is. What I don't get is how you can believe that and still remain a theist. Physicalism is not easy to reconcile with belief in beings that can exist independently of physical reality or an immaterial being that is supposed to have created physical reality. I'm pretty sure that you are not a conventional Christian.

 

[St Giordano Bruno]

the universe as we observe it took 13.7 billion years to happen, a watch only took a few centuries through the industrial revolution to create.

 

[mitchellmckain]

What is interesting about what you said is the expression "how the detector interacts with the wave". What is the nature of that interaction? Does the detector cause an event--wave collapse--that would otherwise not happen?

Yes as I said previously I think the key to how this happens is in the process of amplification which is an inherently non-linear (as in non-linear differential equations) process, because the only way that a detector can inform us of the state of a particle is by making the behavior of a macroscopic number of particles depend on the state of that one particle. I believe that it is this process amplification that causes the decoherence to occur.

What I don't get is how you can believe that and still remain a theist. Physicalism is not easy to reconcile with belief in beings that can exist independently of physical reality or an immaterial being that is supposed to have created physical reality.

I am only a physicalist with respect to the mind-body problem. However much of a methodological naturalist I may be (expecting natural explanations to just about everything), I am not a metaphysical naturalist. I do believe that there is a spiritual aspect to reality. I just don't think that this spiritual aspect of reality should be confused with the mind.

My metaphysics is thus one with three overlapping distinct dualisms, that of substance and form (a modernization of Aristotle's matter and form), that of physical and spiritual, and that of mind and body. I think that many people oversimpify things when they conflate some of these dualisms with each other. So actually the most precise statement of my mind-body physicalism is actually "that I don't think that the mind is any less physical than the body". Because the truth is that I think that mind and body both have both physical and spiritual aspects to them. I discussed some of this in a previous thread I started under the topic of Monism, entitled a different kind of "monism"?

I would not call spiritual beings or God immaterial. The above means that I apply a substance and form dualism to the spiritual as well as the physical in a kind of substance monism involving a universal substance that I usually call energy. Thus I would say that there are physical forms of energy and spiritual forms of energy and the difference between these is quite simply that physical forms of energy are actually just parts of one single form of energy that we call the physical unverse. From that point of view, you could say that the physical universe as a whole can be considered a spiritual thing itself in that sense -- one that was created by God to operate according to these mathematical laws and relationships that we see in physics.

So you see if we consider an extention the mind-body conundrum to a question of how God and the world can interact when they are of such different natures then you can see I take a similar approach. They can interect because they are different forms of the same substance. This is how science has always explained the relationships between things: ice and steam as different collective states of the same molecule, water and air as different combinations of the same set of elments in the periodic table, hydrogen and oxygen as different combinations of the same particles, and so on...

I'm pretty sure that you are not a conventional Christian.

Well that can mean a lot of things. I am a Trinitarian evangelical Christian, BUT... I was not raised Christian but was trained in art of skepticism as a child (my father called it teaching us to think), then I dedicated myself to the study of science (eventually choosing theoretical physics to specialize in), meanwhile my thinking was greatly influenced by the existentialist ideas of Kierkegaard and Albert Camus. I was dissatisfied by the way we seem inherit much of our character from our parents and I wanted to be better than that, and I saw some promise in religion for an answer to that desire. I looked at many religions trying to figure our what this "God" thing could possibly mean and I finally came to the conclusion that a faith in God was equivalent to faith that life was worth living because that is the functional role that I saw it playing in the lives of religous people.

When I encountered the pragmatism of Charles Sanders Pierce, I discovered that this was the same epistemological methodology I was using myself. For I started with that functional role of God that I saw and then pursued the idea of God that best fullfilled that role, and that is what led me to find meaning and value in Christianity.

I certainly think for myself and come to my own conclusions for my own reasons if that is what you mean by unconventional. I certainly take a rather rational and even intellectual approach to Christianity and I so I discard the irrational, and what doesn't make sense to me, including that which is inconsistent with the discoveries of science. However, I am not only Trinitarian but I am not a universalist even though my concepts of heaven and hell are not only unorthodox but they may surprise you. My understanding of original sin and atonement is more like what you find in Eastern Orthodoxy which prefers a medical metaphor to the judicial one that Western Christianity tends to emphasize to the exclusion of all others in the Bible, but my understanding of the church and scripture is very "5 solas" Protestant and evangelical on top of that. But I am an open theist and my understanding of Christianity is highly inclusivist and pluralistic. For example, I would assert that a belief in God is not of benefit to all people and support this with the scientific fact that a belief in God is a central part of some people's psychopathology. My conclusion is that the naive claim by many theists that a belief in God is a solution to world problems is just as absurd as the naive claim by many atheists that a disbelief in God is a solution to world problems. But this actually fits quite snugly into my theology because I would say that is all a part of the seperation between man and God from what happened in the garden of Eden.

So I take the Bible quite seriously and as historical for the most part, if also rather symbolic in places (I don't believe in talking snakes, magic fruit or an origin of man in magically animated golems of dust and flesh), but think that the Bible must be understood in the context of ones experience of the world and for me science is very much a part of that. Furthermore, I tend to be quite a theoretician and thus for me to find meaning in the Bible it is a necessity for me to construct a theoretical framework that makes sense of what is in it -- and that enables me to go considerably beyond what it actually says when many Christians would not. All in all, I often find myself rather surprised at just how orthodox a Christian I have become.

 

[Surya Deva]

Lawrence,

I think the confusion is arising from the pecularity of terms used in Hindu science and their improper translations into English. A priori in the Hindu context simply means before the effect happened, rather than apperception. Its knowledge that dark clouds appraching entails rain is a priori because you are anticipating an event from before it happens, but how you got the knowledge originally was posteriori by noting the relationship of pervasion between dark clouds and rain in experience.

I think to avoid confusion I will avoid using the English translations a priori, posteriori and anaological because they they mean different things in Western culture. Rather lets translate them literally: the three types of reasoning are effect to cause, cause to effect where both the cause and the effect are observed in experience(fire and smoke, dark clouds and rain etc)
Then another type of reasoning is used to infer cause from effect where only the effect is observed in experience, but not the cause. In this cases the case is established based on comparing it to a similar situation. For example, the gravity is not visible, but by comparing it to another situation such as the fact that the arrow does not move until a force is applied or the axe does not cut the tree unless one applies a force, then the hidden cause that is causing objects to fall must be like that situation. In those situations the force is visible, but in this case it is invisible.

It is the latter type of reasoning that is used to establish the existence of all unseen things ni Hindu science from the existence of quantum matter, hidden forces in nature which cause transformation(gunas), atoms, internal instruments of cognition preceeding perception, as well as soul, karma, reincarnation and god, maya, time. So Hinduism is distinct from other religions in that the conclusions we make are based on discoveries we have made in reasoning, as opposed to suppositions made on faith or intuition.

This is very very similar to the alchemists idea of matter. However those atoms arrange in structure of 2^n (e.g. 2, 4, 8, 16).

Yeah, alchemy which is an arabic word is an arabic world for chemistry. They gained much of their knowledge, as they did in mathematics from the Hindus. The practice of mercury preparation was a practic used in Hindu medicine(Ayurveda) The applied science of chemistry is based on Hindu atomic theory. The paramanu is distinct from the Western concept of the atom because the paramanu has no magnitude at all, it is just a point in and time and space. These atoms are completely imperceptible and impossible to view by any instrument or split any further, and it their aggregates which give rise to all visible matter. In this definition even electrons are aggregates.

Could you explain again why modern science is not rational? Also could you define "rational" before you start.

There are two methods of knowledge recognised in philosophy of science: empiricism and rationalism. The empiricists maintain that all knowledge that is valid can only be known in experience and nothing which cannot be empirically verified is valid knowledge. Thus all knowledge is posteriori. The rationalists maintain that not all knowledge is empirical, that we have another faculty of reason which gives us knowledge not known to through empirical means.

Modern science is a bizarre mixture of the two. It uses empiricism in order to observe facts, but then explains those facts using the hypothetica-deductive mehod. A hypothesis is posited and then that hypothesis is rationalized by fitting the empirical data to fit it(anamolus data is rejected unless it reaches statistical significance) The hypothesis is maintained as the null hypothesis untill the data no longer fits, then it is revised or discarded. This is why modern science is not rational, for its theories are based on conjecture. This is why the theories end up getting falsified.

Hindu science is rational and not empirical. Although all knowledge in Hindu science begins from an observation, the observation could be as simple as the fact as something happens - "Here is an effect, this means there must be a cause" and then Hindu science deduces the rest through pure reasoning step by step. The Samkhya school uses this approach to ennumerate its 25 elements that make up reality. So there is no theorizing in Hindu science, in fact it called an invalid means of knowledge because any conjecture of the mind is conditioned by assumptions(an argument also put forward by Popper)

I disagree. Regardless of where we decide the default position is (I would argue default is still naturalist) there are two reasons why the burden of proof is on you. First, you are making an argument to try to convince people. There is no reason for us to accept your arguments without evidence. Second, and more importantly, you are making an ontologically positive claim. Namely that an observer (apart from the material world) exists. When you make the claim about the existence of an entity, the burden of proof is on you.

The burden lies with the claimant always. If you say something which is against a fact that we know then you must prove your claim. If you claimed the president of America is not Obama, then you must prove your position. Materialism is not default, because it is not established. It is a fallacy for the materialist to claim that they have no beliefs or faith, this is false, they believe in materialism, they believe everything, including consciousness is matter. When there is no evidence at all that consciousness is matter, they are known to be distinct substances. The burden of proof lies with the materialist to prove consciousness is matter. Just as the burden of proof lies with the flat earther to prove the earth is flat or the young earther to prove the earth is young.

You have a fact staring you directly in the face: the hard problem of consciousness. The basic fact that no materialist ever has been able to prove that matter and consciousness are the same thing. They have claimed they are, but never been able to prove it. The default position is they are not the same

 

[Surya Deva]

Such gaps arguments are anything but a victory, they are only a losing battle that signal to everyone else the ultimate doom of your worldview.

This not a case of a gaps in our knowledge fallacy. That is definitely a fallacy. To say that because we don't know something, therefore god did it, is a clearly a false argument.

In this case the fallacy is that the claimants claiming chaos produces irreducibly complex system or that the brain produces consciousness, or that reality is real and objective have not actually proven these positions. They behave as if these positions are default and actual knowledge that we have. But they are not, they are assumptions.

Materialism is a faith. I am going to treat it is like a faith. It is dishonest for a materialist to say to me they have no faith. As much as it is dishonest for me to claim Hinduism is a science. No, it is religion which uses a scientific method to ascertain its religious conclusions.

Of course. I am great believer in faith. I believe that all knowledge is based on faith. We put our faith in what works for us. Modern science has worked very well and shown us that it is indeed worthy of a great deal of faith. Apparently "Hindu science" or religion has worked for you and that's jolly good, but I remain disinterested.

All knowledge is not based on faith. It is not my faith the the Earth is a sphere and goes around the sun. Gravity is not my faith either. Anyway the point is if you are going to accept science at face value, you accept it on faith alone. A real scientist is one who is critical about everything - including the methodology they use. If you are not, then you are not a good scientist.

And yet I and the scientific community continue to do. It must be a miracle! LOL LOL

Appeal to authority does not prove your case.

I am a critical realist as are the vast majority of scientists because these are part of the premises upon which modern science operates. Critical realism includes a recognition of the limitations of human access to the objective reality to which it always goes in order to verify theory.

Theories are never verified, they are only ever falsified. The opposite of falsification is verificationalism, a philosophy which is obsolete and disproven in modern philosophy of science. For a scientist to claim that theories do not undergo falsification is dishonest and such a scientist does not deserve to be called a scientist.

It is in fact I who insist that religion must be kept out of it and you who refuse to keep your religion out of it. I have only mentioned my religion to show a common cause but it appears that you are incapable of seeing any common cause with other religions but are only interested in using whatever you can find in science for rhetoric to support your religion over other religions. I find that absurd and abomnable. I am afraid you demonstrate that you belong in the same class as the irrational fundamentalists of my own religion.

So far the only evidence of irrational fundamentalism I see is coming from you in the excessive name calling, accusing of motive and the complete rejection of even listening to what another religion says. I do not feel like I am talking to a scientist here, but a religious fundamentalist. I will gladly to listen to what your religion says and consider it, I will listen to any argument you have to make and consider it, irrespective of what your motives are.

I think I may have to end conversing with you if you maintain these unnecessary hostilities. Focus on arguments, rather than fabricating motives for me It is entirely possible to have a discussion or debate where two parities dsagree, but keep civil decorum.

 

[Surya Deva]

While I think that it is accurate to say that the Copenhagen interpretation is the standard view among physicists, I think that there are alternative interpretations such as the many-worlds perspective that could be considered mainstream views held by respected physicists. These "interpretations" are not "scientific" in the sense that they make no testable predictions. They are philosophical positions.

Quantum theory is no more philosophy than Newton's theory is. Science is not philosophy. It is based on knowledge obtained through a method. Philosophy is based on speculation. The Copenhagen interpretation is not philosophy either it is an observation of what is actually happening in the double slit experiment: When an observation is made, the wave collapses into a particle.

Now what part of the observation process is collapsing the wavefunction is known as the measurement problem. Is the process collapsed through the measuring instrument interacting with the the quantum system, is it collapsed when the information enters the retina of the observer, or is it collaped by the human observer alone. This chain only ends when the human observer becomes aware the collapse has taken place. Hence, why Bohr et al concluded that it was the observer itself which collapsed the wavefunction.

But as has already been discussed this conclusion did not sit very well with the scientific community, especially Schodinger who wanted to show it was absurd with this thought experiment. Thus the alternative hidden variable theory was suggested that before the human observer became aware of the collapse, the collapse had already taken place at some stage in the measurement process. These hidden variables were assumed(and many different hidden variables theories were suggested like the poster earlier who said information added to a system changes it)
but Bell finally settled the matter when he devised the test for the Bell inequalities whose violation would disprove all hidden variables theories, which was then first performed by Aspect. The bell inequalities were indeed violated and hidden variables theory was disproven.

The other alternatives that exist such Evertt's multiple word theory and some theories which are mathematical cannot be tested. In science if something cannot be tested it is not taken to be valid. This is the reason why the Copenhagen interpretation is accepted in science, and not because of some popularity contest. Science is not about popularity. It is about what theory has the most explanatory power.

The people continuing to maintain hidden variables theories are no more sophisticated than people who maintain the earth is flat. This theoy is now disproven.

Regarding the "mind is matter" issue, I have repeatedly tried to get Surya to see the difference between that and the mind viewed as an emergent, systemic phenomenon that emerges from physical interactions. I think that most of humanity believes intuitively in a spiritual plane of existence that is somehow independent of physical reality. My position is that minds cannot exist independently of matter, but that it would be a category mistake to equate the mind with the physical activity that sustains it. To the extent that there is a "spiritual reality", it is fully dependent on physical reality, but not vice versa. Surya is a radical reductionist who simply does not get that point of view. Moreover, he seems to take the opposite view that physical reality is fully dependent on spiritual existence.

I definity agree the mind is an emergent system, but what I do not agree with is that it is emergent out of physical matter or brain. I do not see any evidence of that and it actually goes contary to reason. Physical matter simply does not have any properties that could lead to mind.

As far as evidence shows me if you put together a rock with another rock you get a bigger rock. You never get a rock that thinks. How does matter aggregate to build up to develop thinking? It's patently absurd and I really wish you could see this.
If you argue that we can put together matter in a certain way so that it can compute and process data. No argument from me, that matter can do that - but that does not prove it is thinking. Moreover, that arrangement of matter requires intelligence design - intricate engineering of parts, processors, so intricate it has to be done with electron microscopes and scores of code written by programmers. This design does not get assembled without intelligence.

Surya, there is another theme that we have touched on in this thread, and that is Indian philosophy. I appreciate the opportunity to expand my understanding of samkhya. You have heightened my interest in it. However, I think that you are making a huge mistake to confuse it with QM concepts. I can see where the Copenhagen interpretation would be hugely attractive to samkhya adherents simply because of the central role that it gives to observation.

It is not the same as QM in modern science and I never said it was. But to argue it is not saying similar things to QM is wrong. It is saying matter is always at activity at the substratum level where it exists in a quantum state in a superpositioned and interconnected mode(it even uses the same word moolaprakriti: root/quantum matter) It is collapsed out of the quantum state when it is observed. Then begins to evolve into being and acquires mass.

We have spoken of Panini, an ancient Indian linguist who produced what is still arguably one of the greatest feats of language description ever produced. It served as the basis of a huge number of concepts in modern linguistic theory. Most 19th century European linguists were Sanskritists, although they did not tend to give a lot of credit to the Hindu tradition that they got so many ideas from.

Yep, the story of eurocentricism. Appropriating non-western traditions, without nary a reference. Much of modern Western philosophy and science has heavily plagiarised from Indian philosophy and science, and although you may find passing references to the original source, it is often passed of as "inspiration"

Generative linguists tended to call him the first generative grammarian, although his grammar was not based on intuitions of well-formedness, as generative theory is. [/quote]

I am not sure what you mean by well-formedness in the linguistic sense. If you literally means to form a well-formed language, then it is incorrect to say Panini is not based on that. The word "Sanskrit" itself means well-formed or perfectly formed. The aim of his grammar was to create a perfect and precise language and Sanskrit is by far the most well-formed language in the world, and even rivals formal languages.

Even if the Copenhagen interpretation is totally correct--that wave collapse can only take place when perceived by a sentient observer--that does not mean that physical reality itself is dependent on an observer. It only means that physical systems interact with each other in a certain way (if you want to view it in reductionist terms). In any case, that does not lead you to external, spiritually autonomous "purushas" any more than it leads you to a god.

If the Copenhagen interpretation is correct then it definitely means that there is no physical reality without an observer. It means no physical reality could have ever existed without an observer and it is impossible to conceive of a physical reality without an observer. So without positing the eternal existence of the observer one cannot posit the eternal existence of physical matter. The very reason that the Copenhagen interpretation entails this conclusion is why mainstream science has been fighting tooth and nail against it for decades.

 

[ellenjanuary]

Surya, you are willfully ignoring quantum decoherence...

Order arising from chaos can be shown using pure number; I do not see why this does not indicate that mind can emerge from matter. And there's eighteen different flavors of quantum theory floating around, with CI being one of the worst. With the LHC due to spawn a neutralino here in a month or two, SUSY may be ascendant; CI may be further in the past.

 

[Surya Deva]

It would be very easy to prove chaos theory. All somebody needs to do is write a program that simulates a chaotic system and see if that chaotic system can originate orders of irreducive complexity such as the complete works of shakespeare. The beauty of computers is that the problem of waiting billions of years for 1 million monkey typing on a typewriter for billions of years can be solved with billions of computer operations that can mimic the process.

Until I see actual evidence that chaos can originate anything but chaos I am not going to accept chaos theory. It's as good enough to me as fairies and elves until then.

 

[ellenjanuary]

It would be very easy to prove chaos theory. All somebody needs to do is write a program that simulates a chaotic system and see if that chaotic system can originate orders of irreducive complexity such as the complete works of shakespeare. The beauty of computers is that the problem of waiting billions of years for 1 million monkey typing on a typewriter for billions of years can be solved with billions of computer operations that can mimic the process.

Until I see actual evidence that chaos can originate anything but chaos I am not going to accept chaos theory. It's as good enough to me as fairies and elves until then.

Ok then! Now we're communicating. Chaos theory is part of my fundamental understanding. Without it... well, I'd have to invent it.

And as you continually refer to the irreducibly complex, I think we know which side your bread is buttered upon.

Here's some irreducibility that makes a kind of sense to me:
[youtube]_eC14GonZnU[/youtube]
YouTube - A New Kind of Science - Stephen Wolfram

 

[Surya Deva]

Can you summarize what the video says. It is is 1 hour 30 min approx and I watched the first 10 min and got bored

 

[ellenjanuary]

Can you summarize what the video says. It is is 1 hour 30 min approx and I watched the first 10 min and got bored

Not a mathematician, I take it.

Wolfram like guru to this fool. But the irreducibility it talks about is computational irreducibility. Like say I'm all done, and it's autopsy time, and the curious scientist goes, "what made that fool ellen tick?" Computational irreducibility is kinda stating that "ellen" is the least complex piece of programming possible to produce these words appearing under the avatar ellenjanuary. I'll have to watch it again laterz to give a better summary, but right now I'm partaking in my Christmas spirits.

 

[Copernicus]

Yes as I said previously I think the key to how this happens is in the process of amplification which is an inherently non-linear (as in non-linear differential equations) process, because the only way that a detector can inform us of the state of a particle is by making the behavior of a macroscopic number of particles depend on the state of that one particle. I believe that it is this process amplification that causes the decoherence to occur.

Your explanation still leaves me puzzled as to what specifically makes that one particle depend on the behavior of a macroscopic number of particles in the experiment. Wouldn't that particle always be dependent on a macroscopic number of other particles even when it wasn't interacting with the particles making up the detector? What makes the detector so special here? It seems to me that there are alternative interpretations to the Copenhagen Interpretation that make better intuitive sense, but I understand that what we are really interested in is falsifiability. These interpretations are somewhat clumsy attempts to explain technical results to laypeople, and it probably isn't worth spending a lot of time trying to make sense of them without proper training. I know that it is difficult or impossible to explain many linguistic phenomena to people who have had little or no linguistic training.

I am only a physicalist with respect to the mind-body problem. However much of a methodological naturalist I may be (expecting natural explanations to just about everything), I am not a metaphysical naturalist. I do believe that there is a spiritual aspect to reality. I just don't think that this spiritual aspect of reality should be confused with the mind.

I cannot make sense of that reply unless I have some description of what you think "spiritual aspect" means. If you are claiming that people have souls that are independent of their minds--which is a claim that I've heard many times--then I would ask what the distinction entails. In my experience, people who make that claim nevertheless go on to impute mental properties to the soul, which would suggest that they really think of them as at least a part of the mind.

...I discussed some of this in a previous thread I started under the topic of Monism, entitled a different kind of "monism"?

Thanks. I looked it up, but I felt that it was more of a declaration of beliefs than an explanation of why you held those beliefs. In any case, I have a little better idea of where you are coming from in terms of religion. Clearly, you have put a lot of thought into trying to reconcile your pragmatic side with your religious side.

 

[Copernicus]

Quantum theory is no more philosophy than Newton's theory is. Science is not philosophy...

True, but you are fairly alone in concluding that the Copenhagen Interpretation is anything more than one among several philosophical interpretations. I sense that you either just do not get why it is considered "philosophical" rather than "scientific", or you cannot concede the point. In any case, we should move on.

Now what part of the observation process is collapsing the wavefunction is known as the measurement problem. Is the process collapsed through the measuring instrument interacting with the the quantum system, is it collapsed when the information enters the retina of the observer, or is it collaped by the human observer alone. This chain only ends when the human observer becomes aware the collapse has taken place. Hence, why Bohr et al concluded that it was the observer itself which collapsed the wavefunction.

But, you see, you have naively assumed that the human observer is looking at something in real time. In actuality, what "enters the retina of the observer" is photons coming from an instrumental record of a past event. In any case, there is no logical connection between the Copenhagen Interpretation and your claim that an observer is necessary in order for events to happen. The Copenhagen Interpretation does not explain observed causality above the classical limit. Given that we lack a TOE, you are certainly jumping the gun in trying to harmonize samkhya concepts with QM.

I definity agree the mind is an emergent system, but what I do not agree with is that it is emergent out of physical matter or brain. I do not see any evidence of that and it actually goes contary to reason. Physical matter simply does not have any properties that could lead to mind.

Well, that is the question, and you are begging it with statements of that sort. We know for a fact that conscious thought is dependent on brain activity. You have not bothered to offer evidence to support your contention that any aspect of the mind functions indpendently of brain activity. All you do is repeat your claim, as if your personal credulity were the deciding factor here.

As far as evidence shows me if you put together a rock with another rock you get a bigger rock. You never get a rock that thinks. How does matter aggregate to build up to develop thinking? It's patently absurd and I really wish you could see this.

As usual, your metaphor is an example of false analogy. Rocks are not anything like brains. The question here is not whether any inanimate object can be made to think but whether mental activity can take place independently of physical activity in a brain. I have even given you a very good explanation of why animals have brains and plants do not. Bodies that move around need a guidance mechanism to survive, and brains quite clearly perform that function. We build moving machines with sensors that detect environmental changes and reasoning mechanisms that take actions to avoid collisions, prevent depletion of energy, and arrive safely at destinations. Those machines are not self-aware in the sense that we are, but we are already beginning to build some level of self-awareness into them. For example, walking robots must calculate where to step, lest they lose their balance. Hence, they need to be aware of the position of their "legs" and the potential for collision with obstacles on the ground in front of them. We can build robotic cars that maneuver in traffic, avoid collisions, and even pass other cars when it is safe to do so.

If you argue that we can put together matter in a certain way so that it can compute and process data. No argument from me, that matter can do that - but that does not prove it is thinking. Moreover, that arrangement of matter requires intelligence design - intricate engineering of parts, processors, so intricate it has to be done with electron microscopes and scores of code written by programmers. This design does not get assembled without intelligence.

Actually, intelligent design isn't good enough to achieve artificial intelligence in the way that you imagine. For one thing, we need intelligent machines to "program" themselves by learning, in just the same way that humans learn about their environment. Machine learning is a very hot topic now for AI researchers. Also, you may be unaware of the fact that engineers are coming increasingly to rely on evolutionary techniques for design. That is, computers can simulate environmental stresses on models and programmatically evolve the models to optimize design more quickly than intelligent designers can solve the problem. So it is likely that machine-aided design will help us to bootstrap even more intelligent machine behavior in the future.

BTW, intelligent designs quite often rely on evolutionary techniques anyway. For example, aviation engineers during WWII improved wings on their aircraft by examining holes in the aircraft that returned from combat missions. They then strengthened the places where there were no holes on the theory that planes with damage to those areas were the ones least likely to return safely.

Yep, the story of eurocentricism. Appropriating non-western traditions, without nary a reference. Much of modern Western philosophy and science has heavily plagiarised from Indian philosophy and science, and although you may find passing references to the original source, it is often passed of as "inspiration"

The classic English grammar of Sanskrit is William Dwight Whitney's Sanskrit Grammar. Although Whitney had unkind things to say about the native "hindoos", it is quite clear to anyone who knows Panini that much of his work was a plagiarism of Panini. My own Sanskrit professor used to complain that he had wanted to teach Panini at Kurukshetra University, but there was no place for it in the legacy British curriculum. He had to leave India in order to teach and publish the subject that he loved.

I am not sure what you mean by well-formedness in the linguistic sense. If you literally means to form a well-formed language, then it is incorrect to say Panini is not based on that. The word "Sanskrit" itself means well-formed or perfectly formed...

No, this is well-formedness in the sense of a formal language, where the rules of syntax define all possible well-formed expressions. Noam Chomsky theorized that native-speaker intuitions of well-formed linguistic expressions could be explained in terms of a mental "mechanism". In principle, a person acquires a set of rules that "generate" all the well-formed expressions of their language. Failure to assign a well-formed structure to an utterance would result in a sense of ungrammaticality. He called the ability of the mind to generate all well-formed expressions linguistic "competence". His classical generative theory did not try to account directly for language use, which can depart radically from what speakers recognize as well-formed structure. Chomsky called behavioral strategies for producing and perceiving language "linguistic performance". That distinction was fundamental to Chomsky's theory. Panini, on the other hand, did not really make such a distinction, nor did he really have the same kinds of rules as generative grammarians came up with. Nevertheless, a lot of generative linguists made misleading generalizations about Panini's grammar.

...The aim of his grammar was to create a perfect and precise language and Sanskrit is by far the most well-formed language in the world, and even rivals formal languages.

Honestly, there are no objective linguistic criteria to support the popular view that certain languages or dialects are superior to others. All languages and dialects appear to be equally complex, albeit not always in the same way. Sanskrit was a literary dialect that came to diverge considerably from native spoken languages over time. The same thing happened with Latin, which medieval Europeans came to revere as the "most well-formed language in the world". They were just as wrong in their hyperbolic praise as you are. No language is superior to any other. They all do the job.

If the Copenhagen interpretation is correct then it definitely means that there is no physical reality without an observer. It means no physical reality could have ever existed without an observer and it is impossible to conceive of a physical reality without an observer. So without positing the eternal existence of the observer one cannot posit the eternal existence of physical matter. The very reason that the Copenhagen interpretation entails this conclusion is why mainstream science has been fighting tooth and nail against it for decades.

No, all the Copenhagen Interpretation says is that the measurement of the wave somehow causes a collapse into a particle. It does not tell us that observers are necessary in order for there to be physical events in the universe. That is one of the weakest links in your chain of thought on this subject. In reality, waves and particles are just metaphors for the physical interactions that we detect at quantum levels. There may be different metaphors--for example, string theory--that do a better job of helping us to describe and predict quantum behavior.

 

[mitchellmckain]

Your explanation still leaves me puzzled as to what specifically makes that one particle depend on the behavior of a macroscopic number of particles in the experiment. Wouldn't that particle always be dependent on a macroscopic number of other particles even when it wasn't interacting with the particles making up the detector? What makes the detector so special here?

Well it was not exactly meant as a complete explanation of what is happening. This is an unresolved puzzle in quantum physics. I simply explained where the wave collapse is ocurring -- what is the significant agent that causes it to occur -- and that is this process of amplification that any detector must use in order to communicate information with our macroscopic selves. But if I must venture a speculative hypothesis to explain what is happening, it would be something like the following:

What is special about the detector is that it forces an interaction between the particle being "detected" and a macroscopically large number of the particles and by this interaction they alter each others behavior. I think the detector basically exhibits a symmetry breaking phenomenon where the superposition expanding to include more and more particles is basically an increasingly unstable state like a pin standing on its point that must choose one of the equally likely directions to fall. Whatever the result, the particles are correlated and thus must behave consistent with each other and thus the resulting state of the particle matches what is reported by the detector. As I said before something very similar happens in the bifurcation phenomenon in chaotic dynamics and you should look that up.

It seems to me that there are alternative interpretations to the Copenhagen Interpretation that make better intuitive sense, but I understand that what we are really interested in is falsifiability.

I think you mean Everett's many worlds interpretation, and it is not only unfalsifiable but is actually equivalent as far as what is actually observable and with regards to what we experience. A divergence of reality is really no less problematic than a collapsing wave. There is a discontinuity either way. Besides, despite misconception of Occam's razor that suggest otherwise, science doesn't really care what is philosophically simpler or philosophically appealing but is rather heavily biased towards what is actually useable in the pursuit of scientific inquiry.

I cannot make sense of that reply unless I have some description of what you think "spiritual aspect" means.

Well I have defined spiritual things as forms of energy that are not a part of the whole mathematical system of physical laws and relationship of which the physical universe consists. To say that the mind and body has a spiritual aspect is to say that there exists an interactive relationship between the physical phenomenon and a spiritual form of energy. But rather than the naive puppet master senario which is inconsistent with science I see a relationship that is considerably more subtle on the physical side of things and that the most significant aspect of this relationship is that the creative free will choices that the living organism makes results in an alteration of the spirit (that is epiphenomenal to some degree). Instead of the spirit being some kind of pre-existing cause of these choices, it is more like the alteration of the physical organism and the alteration of the spirit originate in the same choice making event, as the spirit becomes the cause of that choice. If you insist on seeing this in terms of time-ordered causality only, you can think of this as being like the spirit takes possession of the choice or action after the fact and calls it its own and the result of this is both experiences of consciousness and free will.

If you are claiming that people have souls that are independent of their minds--which is a claim that I've heard many times--then I would ask what the distinction entails. In my experience, people who make that claim nevertheless go on to impute mental properties to the soul, which would suggest that they really think of them as at least a part of the mind.

Well by the definition I already gave, all spiritual things are NOT a part of the mathematical relationships of the physical universe, but to elaborate further, I am saying that they are what they are by their own nature and so their existence and changes do not depend on anything outside of themselves except by their own choices. The spirit of living organisms take their form from the choices made by these living things. The claim I am thus making is that when living things make choices this leaves an imprint on non-physical energy (energy that exists outside the relationships of physical time and space), by its own choice of course. LOL

Choices being inseperable from the context in which they are made, means that such an "imprint" not only forms an organic whole but are quite likely to take on whatever form or structure is needed in order for those choices to be meaningful. Thus it seems to me that the spirit of Alice, for example, must to some degree represent a universe according to Alice, and it would have the same kind of autonomous existence as the physical universe itself.

Just so that you can see where I see this connecting with Christianity and the Bible (not because the reference proves anything), I refer you to 1 Corinthians chapter 15:35-54 -- but read, I suppose, as a theoretical physicist might read it.

 

[Surya Deva]

True, but you are fairly alone in concluding that the Copenhagen Interpretation is anything more than one among several philosophical interpretations. I sense that you either just do not get why it is considered "philosophical" rather than "scientific", or you cannot concede the point. In any case, we should move on.

The CI is not philosophy. Philosophy does not require empirical methods, it is about speculating from ideas. All philosophies are often of the type, "What if" What if for example matter was really consciousness or vis versa. This is not science. Science is about making empirical measurements of a phenomenon, and then best explaining those measurements using the hypothetica-deductive method and formulating a theory to best explain the data. For example Newton measures that an object falls. He then develops the theory of gravity to explain it. In the case of quantum theory, it is an explanation of the particle-wave duality phenomenon that we observe, especially in the famous double slit experiment. It's explanation is that because it requires a human observer to be present before the wave collapses into a particle, that it is the human observer that is collapsing it.

It is very clear that the CI which was originally formulated by Bohr and Heisenberg said that the human observer was collapsing the wavefunction. This was the original quantum theory that was put forward. This is why it invited several competing theories(hidden variable theory, multiple word theory etc) but none of these theories have any evidence to support them, and hidden variable theory has been disproven.

Hidden variable theory basically says this: It is not the human observer collapsing the wave, the wave is collapsed by the measurement itself. At some stage in the chain of measurement the collapse takes place and the human observer simply finds the particle after it has already been collapsed. This is why Schrodinger formulated the cat in the box thought experiment to show that to insist the human observer collapses the wave into the particle, is like saying the cat in the box is both alive and dead or the gun has both fired and half fired which is absurd. So it was assumed that there were hidden variables and from this point on several hidden variable theories were proposed. Bell finally dealt a death blow to hidden variables theory and since then hidden variable theory stands disproven. The logical outcome of this is it is a human observer that is causing the collapse.

The more important question here is not whether the human observer is collapsing the wavefunction or not, this has been settled by Bell already. The real question is at what stage in the human observeration process does it collapse - Wigners paradox.

I have read the original works of quantum theory and the scathing criticism of it by Karl Popper in this work, "Quantum theory and the schism in physics" which is considered the most important criticism of quantum theory in philosophy of science. Karl Popper was dead against the human observer interpretation of Bohr et al and devoted his entire work to destroying CI. He supported hidden variable theory. He was wrong. Hidden variable is dead. CI remains standing.

I think to a materialist it makes them feel better by calling the CI philosophy. But CI is no more philosophy than Newton's theory or Einstein's theory is. The materialist is on losing ground here.

But, you see, you have naively assumed that the human observer is looking at something in real time. In actuality, what "enters the retina of the observer" is photons coming from an instrumental record of a past event. In any case, there is no logical connection between the Copenhagen Interpretation and your claim that an observer is necessary in order for events to happen. The Copenhagen Interpretation does not explain observed causality above the classical limit. Given that we lack a TOE, you are certainly jumping the gun in trying to harmonize samkhya concepts with QM.

Yeah all prior stages before human measurement are covered by hidden variable theory. Bell has proven there are no hidden variables. This is not my assumption or my intepretation, which is exactly what quantum theory is based on as based on the CI, which is still standing today.

We know for a fact that conscious thought is dependent on brain activity.

No we don't. The hard problem of consciousness still stands in neurobiology, consciousness studies and philosophy of mind. You are begging the question by saying we know this. What we do know is known as the soft problem of consciousness that is neural correlates for mental states. Correlation is not causality.

Bodies that move around need a guidance mechanism to survive, and brains quite clearly perform that function. We build moving machines with sensors that detect environmental changes and reasoning mechanisms that take actions to avoid collisions, prevent depletion of energy, and arrive safely at destinations.

You have just underlined the most important part of what I am saying: needs. Evolution is need driven. Needs are the properties of conscious things, not inert and dead matter. My car if it runs out of petrol, does not drive off to the nearest petrol station by itself to fill up on petrol. However, human organism if it running out food and water, will indeed seek out food and water. Because it has needs.

All evolution theories depend upon a telefunctionalist assumption Natural selection imputes needs to nature. But this is simply false, nature has no needs. It is dead. No observation supports that nature has needs. This is why natural selection can only convert the already converted. It is illogical to me, hence why I reject it.

Materialism is not proven. Please do not behave as if it proven, because it is not. It is a philosophy and a faith for those who believe it.

For example, walking robots must calculate where to step, lest they lose their balance. Hence, they need to be aware of the position of their "legs" and the potential for collision with obstacles on the ground in front of them. We can build robotic cars that maneuver in traffic, avoid collisions, and even pass other cars when it is safe to do so.

They have no awareness. They are just machines that are programmed to do certain functions by humans. They are dead. They cannot go beyond what they are programmed to do. They have none of the properties a living being does. By your definition a smoke alarm is self-aware. It detects smoke and then sounds the alarm. Nothing of the sort. It is a machine that does what its circuit is designed to do. A robot is no less a machine, it is a more complex circuit, and the movement of electrons around the circuit is regulated by a code written by human programmers. There is no robot, computer or any other kind of machine that you cannot open up and see the circuit. Alternatively, there is no mind in the world that you can observe and measure and see its workings. You can open up a body, or a brain and see nothing but dead matter - but you cannot see somebodies thoughts, dreams, imagination.

Once again you provide another example of these machine do not arise until an intelligence designs them.

BTW, intelligent designs quite often rely on evolutionary techniques anyway. For example, aviation engineers during WWII improved wings on their aircraft by examining holes in the aircraft that returned from combat missions. They then strengthened the places where there were no holes on the theory that planes with damage to those areas were the ones least likely to return safely.

All the examples you are giving require intelligent humans to design these machines.

The classic English grammar of Sanskrit is William Dwight Whitney's Sanskrit Grammar. Although Whitney had unkind things to say about the native "hindoos", it is quite clear to anyone who knows Panini that much of his work was a plagiarism of Panini. My own Sanskrit professor used to complain that he had wanted to teach Panini at Kurukshetra University, but there was no place for it in the legacy British curriculum. He had to leave India in order to teach and publish the subject that he loved.

Yeah, it does not surprise me. Indian philosophy was taught in Western curriculums because they put in the same category as religion. Meanwhile, it was OK to teach Plato/Aristotle and Greek philosophy, Descartes, Berekley, Bergon, Spinoza etc etc.
It is simply eurocentrism and nothing else.

No, this is well-formedness in the sense of a formal language, where the rules of syntax define all possible well-formed expressions.

I am not a linguist, so I can only talk about the little I know. From what I know from reading some experts in these fields, Sanskrit is a well-formed language with formal language processing. It anticipates BNF and formal languages. It has a machine code like structure. Noam Chomsky was a big Panini devotee and even named a theory after him.

I have read articles by Rick Briggs and Subhah Kak, both computer scientists and specialists in AI, both of which have called Sanskrit the only natural language which doubles up as a formal language as well, or formal language with natural language processing.

Perhaps we should start another topic to discuss the linguistics aspect, as it is off-topic here and I would need to do some research, as linguistics is not my field.

No, all the Copenhagen Interpretation says is that the measurement of the wave somehow causes a collapse into a particle. It does not tell us that observers are necessary in order for there to be physical events in the universe.

It does. That is exactly what the CI says. Observers are required to collapse the wavefunction. This is why it is so controversial.

 

[Lawrence.O]

I think the confusion is arising from the pecularity of terms used in Hindu science and their improper translations into English.

Yes, I had a feeling that was the case.

effect to cause, cause to effect

Would modus tollens and modus ponens respectively be accurate translations here?

Then another type of reasoning is used to infer cause from effect where only the effect is observed in experience, but not the cause.

I think abduction is a reasonable translation for this.

There are two methods of knowledge recognised in philosophy of science: empiricism and rationalism. The empiricists maintain that all knowledge that is valid can only be known in experience and nothing which cannot be empirically verified is valid knowledge. Thus all knowledge is posteriori. The rationalists maintain that not all knowledge is empirical, that we have another faculty of reason which gives us knowledge not known to through empirical means.

Ok I understand what you mean now.

Modern science is a bizarre mixture of the two. It uses empiricism in order observe facts, but then explains those facts using the hypothetica-deductive mehod.

Remember empiricism is a philosophy not a method. Science is empirical but not governed by empiricism, just like science uses falsification but is not governed by falsificationism (as Popper would have liked).

Also, this following quote is more accurate than the picture the previous one paints:

A hypothesis is posited and then that hypothesis is rationalized by fitting the empirical data to fit it (anamolus data is rejected unless it reaches statistical significance)

Yes, this is accurate. But an important note is that the hypothesis should make testable and falsifiable predictions.

The hypothesis is maintained as the null hypothesis untill the data no longer fits, then it is revised or discarded. This is why modern science is not rational, for its theories are based on conjecture. This is why the theories end up getting falsified.

I would modify this. First, science is rational but it is not based on rationalism (see my empirical/empiricism distinction). Rational simply means agreeing with reason, as in not irrational. Second, its theories are not based on conjecture; its hypotheses are based on conjecture. Theories, on the other hand, must have sufficient evidence to support them so speaking from definition they cannot be based on conjecture. Third, some theories "end up getting falsified" because they no longer produce accurate predictions not because of irrationality (as implied by "not rational") nor due to being "based on conjecture" which they are not.

Hindu science is rational and not empirical.

Although you say this the next line discounts it:

Although all knowledge in Hindu science begins from an observation, the observation could be as simple as the fact as something happens -

And yet this is still empirical even if it may not be inductive. Also your use of “rational” invites accusations of conflation.

"Here is an effect, this means there must be a cause" and then Hindu science deduces the rest through pure reasoning step by step.

I disagree that this is possible. I would like an example.

So there is no theorizing in Hindu science, in fact it called an invalid means of knowledge because any conjecture of the mind is conditioned by assumptions (an argument also put forward by Popper)

The hindu atomic model is a theory. We’re talking in the scientific sense so these words have different meaning than in the colloquial sense. You mean to say there is no hypothesizing. It is still very difficult to believe that that would allow any significant science to be done. The problem is that biases and assumptions are present whether you believe they are or not.

The burden lies with the claimant always.

You are the claimant. In this discussion, you are hypothesizing a novel entity separate from matter (the observer) and are doing so in disagreement with Mitch, Copernicus, Ellen and myself. You are making an ontologically positive claim, namely that “observer” is a category separate from matter and causes matter. I am claiming that you are “unnecessarily multiplying entities” (to paraphrase Ockham). Simply taking into account parsimony, you are the one complicating things.

Materialism is not default, because it is not established.

I’m going to ignore this because I already said “regardless of what we consider the default position”.

It is a fallacy for the materialist to claim that they have no beliefs or faith, this is false, they believe in materialism, they believe everything, including consciousness is matter.

I agree with you that anyone who believes in “materialism” according to definition is a moron. Matter, energy, space/time, concepts, and transcendentals are all existing categories. Furthermore, no one in this thread claimed that matter=consciousness. I’ll expand on this below.

When there is no evidence at all that consciousness is matter, they are known to be distinct substances. The burden of proof lies with the materialist to prove consciousness is matter. Just as the burden of proof lies with the flat earther to prove the earth is flat or the young earther to prove the earth is young.

Surya, assuming your straw man that consciousness=matter, the fact is that the vast majority of scientists believe that to be the case and it is you that is making the non-parsimonious, ontologically positive claim and is also arguing a minority opinion. I challenge you to give me an example of a situation where a newcomer, with a new and different idea, that throws out an ontologically simple theory for a more complex one, would ever not have the burden of proof.

The basic fact that no materialist ever has been able to prove that matter and consciousness are the same thing.

Remember the argument from ignorance is a fallacy.

As for naturalism (“materialist” is outdated and wrong) there are several lines of evidence that I believe make this the preferred conclusion. First I would like to modify that straw man you keep bringing up. The naturalist position is not that matter=consciousness but rather that mental states supervene on brain states. Now for the evidence:

1) Brain damage impairs mental function
a) Brain damage can affect personality permanently

2) Chemicals (drugs, hormones, and cytokines etc.) change and impair mental function.

3) Changes in electrical states in the brain (via Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for example) can change:
a) Memory
b) Attitude
c) Decisions

The above shows, at the very least, that the brain is inherently tied to and affects the mind. Other supporting evidence is how the mind affects the brain but that is easy to come up with. Now for the evidence of causation and not correlation:

4) Changes in electrical activity predict (and precede) changes in mental activity

How your “observer” is caused by the measurable activity of the brain yet still causes it? Is there another observer homunculus?

5) The results of certain other experiments:

a) Blindsight – a condition where people are aware of something they cannot see

An experiment was conducted where a patient made rational decisions while unable to consciously know why. This shows that consciousness is not required for at least some decision making. That is, the brain makes decisions and the mind reacts to them

b) Split brain – a treatment for some neurological conditions where the corpus callosum

These patients manifest what would apparently be two consciousnesses (two observers) in one brain. Given different sensory input the two hemispheres of the brain make different decisions and the left hemisphere (the one with the capacity for speech) invents out of whole cloth (rationalizes) the decision of the other half. So not only does the non-conscious brain actually process information and make decisions but splitting the brain can split the mind into independent observers.

The most obvious conclusion is that the brain is the cause of consciousness. You don’t have to believe me, I can supply all the peer-reviewed academic papers that show these conclusions.