Brain Hammer

Metaphysical Daring as a Posthuman Survival Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Sat, 15 Aug 2015 19:37:00 +0000

For those of you who have been holding off on getting your brains destructively uploaded, I have a couple of bits of good news. There's a new video and a paper draft available for my project, "Metaphysical Daring as a Posthuman Survival Strategy," forthcoming in a special issue of Midwest Studies in Philosophy on science fiction and philosophy edited by Eric Schwitzgebel. Gander at the draft at this link. Here's the abstract:

Believing that one can survive having one’s mind “uploaded” to a computer (while having one’s brain destroyed) may be better than the contrary belief in a sense of “better” determined independently of the belief’s truth. Different metaphysical views about a person’s persistence conditions can be ordered on a scale ranging from extremes of metaphysical daring to extremes of metaphysical timidity. Further, the adoption of more daring metaphysical views may confer survival advantages to posthuman adopters and their descendants. Regardless of whether their views are true, the metaphysically timid who refuse to upload may go extinct and be supplanted by their more daring posthuman descendants. This possibility can serve as a basis for contemporary humans to endorse posthumanist values and projects, including a willingness to subjecting themselves to mind uploading procedures.

The video has just been made available by the University of Texas, Arlington, where I presented this stuff in 2014. If you want to skip around in the video, here are the main landmarks: Kenneth Williford's very nice introduction ends around 03:20. Following the talk is a Q-and-A that starts around 31:39.

Hermanns Lecture Series 2014 - Philitechia - Dr. Pete Mandik from English Department, UTA on Vimeo.

And here's an interview with me about this stuff from hopesandfears.com: "Upload Your Mind and Live Forever."

(Cross-posted at Alternate Minds.)

Dennett on Mandik on Dennett and Rosenthal

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 15:31:00 +0000

Out now is Content and Consciousness Revisited: With Replies by Daniel Dennett edited by Carlos Munoz-Suarez and Felipe De Brigard. My chapter in the book is "Conscious-state Anti-realism." Dennett's reply to my chapter is on pp. 218-219, viewable below as well as at this link containing all of his replies.

Here's an excerpt from my chapter:

Dennett’s most famous argument for his first-person operationalism (hereafter, FPO) proceeds by pointing out the alleged empirical underdetermination of theory-choice between “Stalinesque” and “Orwellian” explanations of certain temporal anomalies of conscious experience (Dennett, op. cit., pp. 115-126). The explanations conflict over whether the anomalies are due to misrepresentations in memories of experiences (Orwellian) or misrepresentations in the experiences themselves (Stalinesque).
David Rosenthal (1995, 2005a, 2005b) has offered that his Higher-order Thought theory of consciousness (hereafter, “HOT theory”) can serve as a basis for distinguishing between Orwellian and Stalinesque hypotheses and thus as a basis for resisting FPO. The gist of HOT theory is that one’s having a conscious mental state consists in one’s having a higher-order thought (a HOT) about that mental state.
I’ll argue that HOT theory can defend against FPO only on a “relational reading” of HOT theory whereby consciousness consists in a relation between a HOT and an actually existing mental state. I’ll argue further that this relational reading leaves HOT theory vulnerable to objections such as the Unicorn Argument (Mandik, 2009). To defend against such objections, HOT theory must instead admit of a “nonrelational reading” whereby a HOT alone suffices for a conscious state. Indeed, HOT theorists have been increasingly explicit in emphasizing this nonrelational reading of HOT theory (Rosenthal, 2011; Weisberg, 2010 and 2011). However, I’ll argue, on this reading HOT theory collapses into a version of FPO.

Here's Dennett's reply (click image for larger image or click here):

Here's a video synopsis from back when my project was a contribution in Consciousness Online 4 (2012):

And as a video bonus, here's my rundown of Dennett's theory of consciousness:

My review of Intelligence Unbound by Blackford and Broderick

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 03:09:00 +0000

Out now at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: my review of Intelligence Unbound: The Future of Uploaded and Machine Minds, edited by Russell Blackford and Damien Roderick.

Excerpt:

This work collects contributions to the growing literature in what might be dubbed "singularity studies," where the singularity in question is the technological singularity, a hypothetical future moment when the rate of change of human technology reaches a speed that surpasses human capacities to predict and prepare for further changes. On the presumption that technological increase follows an exponential curve, the singularity is the knee of the bend, the point beyond which the graph abandons the nearly horizontal for the nearly vertical. Despite the danger that merely human cognition won't keep up with post-singularity events, perhaps cognition that is either artificially enhanced or wholly artificially constituted will be able to thrive in post-singularity times. But if such cognitive systems appear on the scene, we must wonder what implications this will have for humans of the sort currently predominant. Can wholly non-human super-intelligent minds be tamed or otherwise coaxed into friendliness toward their human creators? This is the core question of super artificial-intelligence (super AI). Can the essence of what presently counts as a human be preserved in a wholly artificial substrate? This is the core question of mind uploading. These core questions, as well as equally important and intriguing related questions orbiting the cores, are engagingly tackled in a variety of styles by the tome's contributors.

Succinct New Video Overview of the SpaceTimeMind Podcast

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 16:49:00 +0000

Interview of me on mind uploading

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 22:24:00 +0000

"Upload Your Mind and Live Forever" is an interview of me on mind uploading over at hopesandfears.com.

Excerpt:

Well, part of what I’m trying to say is that, like most metaphysical debates, this is going to be irresoluble by argumentation. There’s really nothing that pure reason is going to allow us to settle one way or another. All the evidence that we have we all tend to agree on. That evidence just underdetermines whether computers could have conscious experiences or whether they would be mere copies or actual survival of personal identity.

What I try to do as a way of resolving that metaphysical impasse is to look at it from a Darwinian or evolutionary point of view. The basic point of Darwinian evolution applies to any kind of system where you have things that are replicating and various degrees of fitness that would apply to the things that are reproducing. On this kind of abstract characterization, we could describe various hypothetical systems as having features that would be more fit.

Now one of the features that these computer simulations would have is something we could describe as being belief-like. In particular, these things are going to have the belief that they are going to survive the procedure. Now the metaphysical debate is about whether that belief is true, and what I’m trying to argue is that we can say, regardless of whether that belief is true, that belief would have survival value. Physical systems that have that belief are more likely to make more copies of themselves than physical systems that lack that belief.

Video Trailer for the 2015 spring semester of the SpaceTimeMind podcast

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 00:49:00 +0000

Two new Mandik videos on intentionality

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 13:21:00 +0000

The man with two brains.

I've just uploaded two new videos to my YouTube channel. The first, "Brains, Machines, and Intentionality" presupposes some familiarity with Searle's Chinese room argument against artificial intelligence, so I made a second video for the uninitiated. That one is called "Searle's Chinese Room Argument Against Artificial Intelligence."

If you haven't seen 'em yet, do check out my older videos, "Dennett's Multiple Drafts Theory of Consciousness" and "Two Flavors of Neurophilosophy."

Support PIKSI, the Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Sun, 05 Oct 2014 19:25:00 +0000

Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute, PIKSI, is dedicated to improving the pipeline of diverse and under-represented students into Philosophy graduate programs and, ultimately, into the profession. PIKSI is conducting a fund-raising campaign this month with the hope to get support from far and wide.

This is something concrete we can do to increase diversity in philosophy.

Here is a link to the PIKSI fundraising page, where you can also find a video made by previous participants,

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/piksi-2014-changing-the-face-of-philosophy

If you’d like more info about PIKSI, here is a link to the homepage,

http://rockethics.psu.edu/education/piksi

SpaceTimeMind Podcast Episode 13: Neurophilosophy and Consciousness (with Brit Brogaard)

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 14:26:00 +0000

The latest episode of my podcast with Richard Brown is out today, Episode 13: Neurophilosophy and Consciousness (with Brit Brogaard) — Space Time Mind.

From the show notes:

Hide your brains; the neurophilosophers are coming! Philosopher and neuroscientist Berit (Brit) Brogaard joins Richard Brown and Pete Mandik on the SpaceTimeMind podcast to discuss what makes some states of the mind or brain conscious and others unconscious. Is this sort of question answerable from a psychological or philosophical perspective that makes no essential reference to neuroscience? Or, instead, are neuroscientific data unavoidable in this domain? And: Can Brit go a full ten minutes without using the word “brain?"

New Mandik Paper: What's It Like When Your Eyes Move?

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 20:32:00 +0000

Image source: Pete Mandik on flickr

Is there a distinctive visual phenomenology that accompanies saccadic eye movement? I suggest that there is none in my short piece "What's It Like When Your Eyes Move?" appearing starting today at the Brain's blog symposium on Wayne Wu's “Against Division: Consciousness, Information, and the Visual Streams.”

Here's an excerpt from my contribution:

On this alternative to Wu’s hypothesis, the best way to account for so-called spatial constancy is [...] instead of treating it as the appearance of an absence of motion, we treat it as an absence of an appearance of motion. So, back to my visual inspection of my yard, I see the chairs and the tree trunk, which involves, I presume, neural processes encoding relevant information concerning shape, location, and color, and during saccades I just don’t have any representations of those things as moving, which, I presume, is different from having representations of the things as not moving.

I made a short video about Dennett's Multiple Drafts Theory of Consciousness

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 18:21:00 +0000

I made a short video about Dennett's Multiple Drafts Theory of Consciousness:

Epic cinematic trailer for the Fall 2014 semester on the SpaceTimeMind podcast

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 18:04:00 +0000

Coming this fall on the SpaceTimeMind podcast: Philosophy professor co-hosts Richard Brown and Pete Mandik are joined by neuroscientist Joe LeDoux, philosopher-scientist Brit Brogaard, and science fiction author Roger Williams to discuss topics including, but not limited to: consciousness, the singularity, the physics and metaphysics of time, memory and emotion, the simulation hypothesis, and music.

Cosmology and the Future of the Brain: The Cosmological Case for Envatted Brains

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 20:24:00 +0000

Attack of the Boltzmann Brains

This is the first in a series of blogposts addressing certain points of conflict between transhumanists and adherents of the “4E cognition” research program in cognitive science (Menary 2010). Put very briefly, the conflict is over whether transhumanist aspirations of survival through mind uploading are doomed in the face of the essentially embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive nature of the mind. Slightly less briefly, the conflict concerns the quality of the following 3-part line of reasoning for the transhumanists’ position: 1. The mind is in the head. 2. What’s in the head is substrate independent. 3. A mind can survive a total change of substrate. In the present post, I concentrate on the question of what the likelihood is for there to exist a brain in a vat.

The Cosmological Case for Envatted Brains

The first point of 4E-cognitivism that clashes with certain transhumanist goals centers on the 4E-cognitivists commitment to embodiment. The embodiment thesis states that minds are essentially embodied. One way of making the key points of embodiment is in terms of hypothetical brains in vats. Call a brain in a vat that has all of the same intrinsic physical properties as your brain “your brain-in-a-vat (BIV) counterpart.” According to the kind of internalist classical view of cognition that the embodiment thesis opposes, there’s no bar to you and your BIV counterpart being maximally psychologically similar. On the classical view you and your BIV counterpart can both think thoughts like “there is a cat on a mat” and both have experiences like the visual experience as of there being a red cherry on a tree with green leaves. On the classical story, there might be differences in the accuracy or the truth values of you and your counterpart’s respective mental states—you think something true and your counterpart something false when you each think “I am not a brain in a vat”. However, these differences in truth or accuracy are not regarded as relevantly psychological by the disputants in the debate over embodiment. Where the embodiment theorist disagrees over brain in vats concerns much more than the truth of your BIV counterpart’s states. One especially strong option for the embodiment theorist is to deny that your BIV counterpart has any psychological states at all. Another option, one that is not as extreme, is to hold that in having very different circumstances of embodiment—the BIV either has no body, or its vat and hookups to the virtual reality computer counts as a body albeit one very different from yours—the BIV has very different psychological states from yours.

Question: Could there be a brain in a vat? Answer: Yes, and further, given certain cosmological assumptions, along with some further assumptions not just about physics but also about physicalism, there very likely are brains in vats, and further there are an infinite number of them.

The gist of how one can derive the actual existence of brains in vats from certain cosmological assumptions is the same as the line of thought discussed by Greene (2011). If the universe is infinite, then every event with a nonzero probability will occur, and further, will occur an infinite number of times. A brain intrinsically just like mine but lacking my body and my environment is an event with a nonzero probability, so there will be an infinite number of those, out there somewhere. This hypothesis is something discussed in the physics literature as the “Boltzmann brains” hypothesis (See Boltzmann 1887). What I want to do here is flesh out the argument, for I’ve not yet encountered it in such a fully fleshed out form.

Before proceeding, let us put aside for the present post the question of what psychological properties, if any, envatted brains can have. Could there be a physical entity intrinsically just like my brain over some indefinite stretch of my lifespan that, unlike my own brain, lacks any body or environment remotely like mine? We can come to see that the answer is "yes".

First, note that the system that comprises my brain, body, and environment taken all together is what I shall call a "composite of contingents". Further, I hold that everything that exists that isn't a physical simple is a composite of contingents.

Some further clarifications are in order. What are physical simples? It will do for present purposes to think of a physical simple as a particle at a place at a time.

An assumption that I make for the arguments that follow is an assumption I shall call the "uncertainty assumption". For any type of physical simple, the probability of the existence of the simple is always greater than zero and less than one. There is nothing that is that certainly is, and nothing that isn't that certainly isn't. This uncertainty assumption applies to complexes as well: entities that have physical simples as their proper parts. There are no pairs of parts of a complex such that the existence of one member of the pair guarantees the existence of the other. The conditional probability of the one given the other is always greater than zero. Further, token physical simples are such that given a token physical simple, there is no type whose tokening is absolutely ruled out. To whatever degree the tokening of one physical simple type excludes another, the exclusion is not guaranteed, as the "excluded" occurrence has a nonzero probability of happening anyway.

Two more assumptions I shall be making both involve finitude. Further, they are well supported by contemporary physics. The first is that there are a finite number of particle types. The second is that the smallest increments of both space and time are only finitely small—there are no infinitely small amounts of space or time.

An additional assumption I shall make concerns infinity. It is consistent with contemporary physics. The assumption is that space is infinite, and that an infinite amount of matter and energy is distributed throughout it.

Another assumption that I shall make, and I seriously doubt anyone won't grant it, is that none of the following listed items are physical simples, and that all of the following listed items are composites of contingents: (1) my brain, (2) the rest of my body, and (3) my environment taken all together.

Since my brain is non-simple, and my body is non-simple, they are ontological complexes the proper parts of which are all subject to the uncertainty assumption. There are no pairs of parts such that one part is a part of my brain, the other is a part the rest of my body, and the joint probability of tokens of those types coexisting is equal to one.

An ontological complex of a finite volume is composed of only a finite number of physical simples, and, as stated previously, there is a finite number of types of simples out of which any finite complex may be composed. Combining this with the infinity assumption gives us that there are an infinite number of intrinsic doppelgängers of my brain that have neither my sort of body or my sort of environment. There are, then, an infinite number of brains in vats.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m postponing until a later post the question of what psychological properties, if any, your BIV counterpart can be expected to have. But what the above cosmological considerations serve to show is that it cannot be rejected as a remote possibility that you even have a BIV counterpart. Not only is it highly likely that you do, but by the same reasoning you have an infinite number of them.

References

Boltzmann, Ludwig (1887). Zu Hrn. Zermelo’s Abhandlung “Ueber die mechanische Erklärung irreversibler Vorgänge”. Annalen der Physik, 296 (2), 392-398.
Greene, Brian (2011). The hidden reality. New York: Vintage.
Menary, R. (2010). Introduction to the Special Issue on 4E Cognition [Special Issue]. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9, 459–463.

The Best of SpaceTimeMind

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 14:07:00 +0000

SpaceTimeMind is a project I’ve been working on with Richard Brown. It’s a podcast, a video series, and a blog. It’s both a shampoo and a conditioner. It exfoliates while it moisturizes. Here’s the best of SpaceTimeMind, July 2014 edition:

Most Popular Podcast Episode (according to iTunes): Episode 9: A Journey to the Edge of Hypertime

Most Read Blogpost: Sci-Fi Author Roger Williams

Most Viewed "In the Virtual Studio” video: Scientism

Most Viewed “MindChunk" video: Advice to Graduate Students:

Upcoming Mandik Talk

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 14:16:00 +0000

Attention NYC-area cognitive philosophy types. Come see me jibber-jabber live and in person about vision science, illusions, Wilfrid Sellars, and bananas. I'm giving a talk, "The Myth of Color Sensations" at 2pm on Tuesday, July 1st at the CUNY Grad Center. For further spatiotemporal particulars, see this flier about the excellent talk series that David Rosenthal hosts: http://tinyurl.com/cstalks. My talk is based on my paper, "The Myth of Color Sensations, Or: How Not to See a Yellow Banana."

ABSTRACT: I argue against a class of philosophical views of color perception, especially insofar as such views posit the existence of color sensations. I argue against the need to posit such nonconceptual mental intermediaries between the stimulus and the eventual conceptualized perceptual judgment. Central to my arguments are considerations of certain color illusions. Such illusions are best explained by reference to high-level, conceptualized knowledge concerning e.g. object identity, likely lighting conditions, and material composition of the distal stimulus. Such explanations obviate the need to appeal to nonconceputal mental links in the causal chains eventuating in conceptualized color discriminations.

Video discussion of my paper "Shit Happens"

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 15:17:00 +0000

My paper on the epistemology of conspiracy theories, "Shit Happens," is discussed in this video by YouTube user Maki Sierra:

Video discussion of my papers "The Neurophilosophy of Subjectivity" and "The Neurophilosophy of Consciousness"

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 13:16:00 +0000

The following video, from YouTube user YuryLarrea, discusses two of my papers on neurophilosophy, "The Neurophilosophy of Subjectivity" and "The Neurophilosophy of Consciousness.":

Video discussion of my paper "Representational Parts"

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 13:08:00 +0000

Check out this video discussion of my paper "Representational Parts" I co-authored with Rick Grush. The video comes from YouTube user Andrea Galvis Herrera:

Video discussion of my paper "Evolving Artificial Minds and Brains"

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 12:55:00 +0000

Several YouTube users have recently uploaded discussions of my paper "Evolving Artificial Minds and Brains" (coauthored with Mike Collins and Alex Vereschagin).

From YouTube user SuperZ707:

Part 1:

Part 2:

From YouTube user Laura Garcia:

From YouTube user Diego Rodriguez:

Conscious-State Anti-Realism

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 20:15:00 +0000

A presentation related to my chapter in a forthcoming book about Daniel Dennett. "Conscious-State Anti-Realism" is to appear in Munoz-Suarez, C. and De Brigard, F. Content and Consciousness Revisited. Berlin: Springer. Read the chapter here: http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/csar.pdf

Color-Consciousness Conceptualism

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 20:14:00 +0000

A presentation related to my paper, "Color-Consciousness Conceptualism" which appeared in 2012 in the journal Consciousness and Cognition. Read the paper here: http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/ccc.pdf

New Mandik Papers

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Fri, 09 May 2014 20:04:00 +0000

I just put a bunch of new-ish papers of mine up on my publications page at my website, petemandik.com. And they're here, too. Check 'em out.

The Myth of Color Sensations, Or: How Not to See a Yellow Banana. ms.
Reflecting on Neural Self-reflection: The Churchlandish Introspection of Brain States. In Schwenkler, J. (ed.) Symposium on Paul Churchland's "Matter and Consciousness" (3rd ed., 2013), Brains: A Group Blog on Topics in the Philosophy and Science of Mind.
Welcome To Infinity. ms.
On Whether the Higher-Order Thought Theory of Consciousness Entails Cognitive Phenomenology, Or: What is it Like to Think that One Thinks that P? (with Richard Brown) (2012) Philosophical Topics. 40(2), 1-12.

Bernard J. Baars and the Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness — Space Time Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Wed, 07 May 2014 18:41:00 +0000

Cognitive neuroscience meets philosophy in the latest installment of SpaceTimeMind, a project by Pete Mandik and Richard Brown. Read more about it here: Bernard J. Baars and the Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness — Space Time Mind

Check out my podcast with Richard Brown

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 22:22:00 +0000

Dear Hammer Heads,

Things have been quiet here at Brain Hammer, but things have been far from quiet elsewhere. In particular, please do check out the new thingamajig I'm working on with Richard Brown: SpaceTimeMind (http://www.spacetimemind.com). Central to SpaceTimeMind is a podcast that Richard and I are putting out on a biweekly basis. Episode 3 was just published today. There's a blog there as well, and I aim to be moving more of my blogging over there.

Cheers,

Pete

Two Flavors of Neurophilosophy video lecture

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Mandik) — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 14:14:00 +0000

Two Flavors of Neurophilosophy part 1 of 3

http://youtu.be/2nn2nAOMYRo

Two Flavors of Neurophilosophy part 2 of 3

http://youtu.be/iLsP7-NkocA

Two Flavors of Neurophilosophy part 3 of 3

http://youtu.be/sTTHTeyYBsk