[extropy-chat] RE: [wta-talk] RE: [Trans-Spirit] Multi personalities reveal self isfiction

[mike99]

Thanks for your reply, 1Arcturus. I especially like that you mentioned the
"noetic technology" described in John C. Wright's GOLDEN AGE trilogy, which
is some of the best science fiction of the recent decades.

The issue you raised about modeling the mind within the mind is, I think,
the heart of the matter.

In Wright's novel the protagonist, Phaethon, discovers that his memory has
been tampered with. Later, he also has reason to believe that someone may
have infected his mind with a memetic virus (like a computer virus). I have
greatly simplified the plot situation here, needless to say. What I want to
focus on is the episode in which Phaethon, reacting to the possible mental
virus infection, shuts down most of his vast, technologically-enhanced
brain-machinery, and goes into his basic mental "workspace." This is the
equivalent of operating your PC in "safe mode." Within this workspace,
Phaethon runs a system diagnostic to look for any suspicious, mental-virus
type activity.

This fictional situation raises the question: Who is operating in the
workspace? Is there some "kernel" within the brain-machinery of Phaethon
that is his essence? (I am disregarding any non-physical, soul-type
explanations here.)

Consider, now, a different science fiction example. In Greg Egan's short
story "Transitions Dreams" the reader sees the protagonist's dreams taking
place during the scanning and uploading of his consciousness to a machine
substrate. These dreams, although definitely experienced, are said to be
impossible to remember, according to a character who is almost certainly
speaking for the author, because they are artifacts of the upload process.
As artifacts, they are not included in the memory set that is being
uploaded. So although these dreams (sometimes nightmarish) are sure to
occur, they are also sure to be forgotten.

Is an experience that cannot be remembered something we should be concerned
about? Suppose the experience is terrifying, painful, and hellish? Would you
care about this in the case of others? Would you dare to endure it yourself
as part of the upload process?

I suspect that you are right, 1Arcturus, in saying that there is a "limit on
how much awareness one can have about mind processes in one's self." As with
Phaethon, we probably have some sort of core or kernel or essential mind
process set that is the bare minimum required for 'us to be us' if I may put
it that way. This kernel would still not be an irreducible entity, however;
it's not some sort of 'atomic self'. There is no irreducible self, but only
the minimum necessary set of mental processes required in order to have
human-level awareness. This level of mental operation cannot 'look at
itself' because, although aware, it is too simple to be self-reflective.
This level is already the bare minimum; if we terminated even one of the
mental processes that comprise it, awareness would cease.

My goal, as a transhumanist, is to add all the best noetic technology I can
to the brain-machinery where all mental processes reside. My kernel mental
processes can employ these enhancement tools to think faster, remember more
(and more accurately) and to experience aesthetically pleasing combinations
of thoughts and sensations that are beyond the present capacity of any human
mind to entertain. These enhancements could even provide "biofeedback"
information about mental processes within the kernel that the kernel itself
has no capacity to see unaided.

That's a long-term goal, to say the least. My present practice as a Soto Zen
priest is to become more aware of the bare attention that *is* the kernel
mental state, totally shorn of the many layers of distractive mental
processes we ordinarily experience. I can observe those other layers float
by, but I cannot see the one (i.e., the mental processes) who observes them.


Regards,

Michael LaTorra

mike99 at lascruces.com
mlatorra at nmsu.edu

"For any man to abdicate an interest in science is to walk with open eyes
towards slavery."
-- Jacob Bronowski

"Experiences only look special from the inside of the system."
-- Eugen Leitl

Member:
Board of Directors, World Transhumanist Association: www.transhumanism.org
Board of Directors, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies:
http://ieet.org/
Extropy Institute: www.extropy.org
Alcor Life Extension Foundation: www.alcor.org
Society for Universal Immortalism: www.universalimmortalism.org
President, Zen Center of Las Cruces: www.zencenteroflascruces.org

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wta-talk-bounces at transhumanism.org
> [mailto:wta-talk-bounces at transhumanism.org]On Behalf Of 1Arcturus
> Sent: Saturday, June 11, 2005 11:49 AM
> To: wta-talk at transhumanism.org
> Subject: [wta-talk] RE: [Trans-Spirit] Multi personalities reveal self
> isfiction
>
>
>
> Michael LaTorra,
>
> A great research question indeed. I don't know enough about the field,
> but I think there might be a kind of limit on how much awareness one
> can have about mind processes in one's self, because awareness would
> need to create a model to comprehend it and developing the model
> would require time, which would create a time lag. With machine interfaces
> one might be able to beat the pace of human consciousness in order
> to create a higher-order awareness, but this would not be useful,
> because one would want to use the technology to increase the pace
> of one's own consciousness in the first place. Certainly, there is
> room for much more self-awareness than we currently have, and perhaps
> also automatic monitors for the state of consciousness. I'm reminded
> of the "noetic technology" in The Golden Age, where people can examine
> the state of their consciousness when they need to, to tweak its
> performance or intervene in the mind processes.
>
>
>
> >>>Here's the research question: Can we learn to maintain conscious
>
> awareness at a deep enough level such that we can observe
> ourselves going through
>
> processes (1) and (2) listed above?
>
> = Can the mind of a person who is about to take an action observe the
>
> source of decision that **actually** chooses that action?
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
======= ORIGINAL MESSAGE REPLY ==========

The most fascinating opportunities for research on human consciousness
appear at those moments of transition between states. Two such moments, for
example, are mentioned in Syed's article below:

(1) when the person suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder is
switching between alter personalities (or "selves")
     and there is a moment of "vacancy"
(2) when the person in Benjamin Libet's experiment on voluntary action
exhibits the brain activity that begins about half
     a second before the person is aware of deciding to act


Here's the research question: Can we learn to maintain conscious awareness
at a deep enough level such that we can observe ourselves going through
processes (1) and (2) listed above?

This question can be recast into two specific questions about the research
discussed in Syed's article:

- Can the mind of a person suffering from DID learn to see what is happening
during the personality switch between alters?
= Can the mind of a person who is about to take an action observe the source
of decision that **actually** chooses that action?

These are questions about our own degree of awareness. According to the
spiritual traditions, individuals who are "Enlightened" or "Realized" etc.
can observe themselves at such a deep level. But are these traditions
correct? Is such a degree of awareness truly possible? Or is this just
another instance of imagining fantastic possibilities that are not now, and
never have been, possible for human beings?

Even if such deep awareness had never been possible before, will technology
someday make it possible? Libet's experimental apparatus might be turned
into a biofeedback system, for instance. Could it then be used as a tool for
training ourselves to become more aware of the source of our own action?
Might we then become conscious of that source, become one with it, and be
able to act more quickly and authentically? And would that even be a good
thing? (Fans of the super-ego, please take note!)



Regards,

Michael LaTorra

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Trans-Spirit at yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:Trans-Spirit at yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Hughes, James J.
> Sent: Friday, June 10, 2005 9:55 AM
> To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List
> Cc: Trans-Spirit at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Trans-Spirit] Multi personalities reveal self is fiction
>
>
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1644788,00.html
>
> June 08, 2005
>
> A case of mistaken identity crisis
>
> Matthew Syed
>
> People afflicted with multiple personalities reveal that the idea
> of the self is a fiction
>
> THE MOST sinister form of abuse is that meted out to a child by a
> parent. The young have a biological predisposition to "belong" -
> a duckling, for example, will instinctively snuggle up to a human
> leg if that is the first thing it sees - so it is particularly
> traumatic when this need for tenderness is met with systematic
> physical or sexual violence.
>
> Pamela, the subject of a haunting documentary on Channel 4
> tonight, developed a novel, if somewhat disquieting, mechanism to
> cope with her sadistic upbringing: she created new selves. When
> the pain, squalor and ignominy became too much to endure, Pamela,
> as it were, "left it all behind": while she was abused, she
> dissociated and departed to another place - leaving a new person
> in her place.
>
> Rémy Aquarone, an analytical psychotherapist, has dealt with
> these disturbing cases of what is known as Dissociative Identity
> Disorder (DID). "Dissociation is a primitive defence mechanism,"
> he said. "When something is unbearable to consciousness and
> cannot be cognitively processed, it is split off: quite literally
> dissociated."
>
> In many cases the various "alters" have their own memories and
> personality traits. When a switch is about to occur the patient
> often undergoes a temporary look of vacancy before the background
> alter "emerges". One psychoanalyst I spoke to had worked with a
> patient who had a successful job in the City during the week and
> then travelled to the South Coast at the weekend to work as a prostitute.
>
> One of the most fascinating aspects of witnessing such people is
> our own knee-jerk scepticism. I watched a tape of the documentary
> and found it difficult to suppress a growing sense of
> incredulity, as if I expected Pamela eventually to wink at the
> camera and say: "Gotcha!" This response is not confined to lay
> people. Doctors repudiated the condition when it was first
> diagnosed and it remains hotly contested today, regarded by many
> as a phenomenon that has been induced under hypnotic suggestion
> by over-zealous clinicians.
>
> But why this reluctance? The problem here is not a lack of
> evidence - which is overwhelming - but a failure of intellectual
> courage. For DID strikes at the heart of the most basic myth in
> our intellectual vocabulary: the self.
>
> Since we first learnt to use language we have regarded the
> first-person pronoun as referring to something that existed in
> childhood, exists today, will continue to exist in the future and
> - for those of a religious persuasion - will survive bodily
> death. We fondly think of this self as the subject of our
> experiences, the instigator of our actions and the custodian of
> our morality. We are lulled into this idea by the seeming unity
> of our consciousness: our various thoughts and perceptions all
> knitted into a seamless whole.
>
> This cherished conception is, however, a cruel fiction. It has
> taken extreme cases, such as DID, to ram the truth home. Take
> brain dissection. In these operations, the corpus callosum - a
> large strand of neurons which facilitates communications between
> the hemispheres - is cut to stop the spread of epileptic seizures
> from one half of the brain to the other. Under certain laboratory
> conditions, two "centres of consciousness" seem to appear in
> patients who have had this operation.
>
> For example, suppose that we flash the word CANNOT on a screen in
> front of a brain-bisected patient in such a way that the letters
> CAN hit one side of the retina, the letters NOT the other and we
> ensure that the information hitting each retina stays in one lobe
> and is not fed to the other. If such a patient is asked what word
> is being shown, the mouth will say CAN while the hand controlled
> by the hemisphere that does not control the mouth will write NOT.
> So much for the "unity" of consciousness.
>
> What about the notion of the self as instigator of action? We
> naïvely suppose that we consciously decide to move, and then
> move. When Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment on voluntary
> action in 1985 he found that the brain activity began about half
> a second before the person was aware of deciding to act. The
> conscious decision came far too late to be the cause of the
> action, as though consciousness is a mere afterthought. Many
> reacted to this with astonishment. Why? Did they really suppose
> the body was animated by some ghostly mini me lurking behind the brain?
>
> A more plausible theory is that which is emerging from both
> biology and artificial intelligence. As Daniel Dennett, the
> philosopher, puts it: "Complex systems can in fact function in
> what seems to be a thoroughly 'purposeful and integrated' way
> simply by having lots of subsystems doing their own thing without
> any central supervision." The self, then, is not what it seems to
> be. There is no soul, no spirit, no supervisor. There is just a
> brain, a dull grey collection of neurons and neural pathways -
> going about its business. The illusion of self is merely a
> by-product of the brain's organisational sophistication.
>
> Seen in this light, DID is neither a philosophical absurdity nor
> a medical fantasy but a vivid demonstration of the infinite
> adaptability of the human mind in the quest for survival. Those
> who tune in tonight will feel an overwhelming sense of compassion
> for the pathetic figure of Pamela. But, for those who take the
> intellectual plunge, the most acute pity will be directed
> inwardly. Accepting the death of "self" is both strange and
> traumatic, bringing with it a profound a sense of bereavement.
> Except that there is nothing there to bereave.
>
> Being Pamela, Channel 4, 9pm