The Flaw in the Definition of Consciousness

[Mentat]

The state of being conscious has been defined as "a state in which it is 'like something' to be you". IOW, if it's like something to be you, you're conscious.

However, this definition has recently presented itself to me as both fundamentally flawed, and extremely misleading in the attempt to find a reductive theory of consciousness. The way we're going, Chalmers is indeed correct, we will not find a reductive theory of consciousness. But, I think we are simply trying to explain the wrong thing, and I hope to show that in this post, along with presenting a new definition - and thus, a new objective.

First off, why is the definition fundamentally flawed? Because it presupposes the existence of a central, indivisible, self.

In order for it to be "like something" to be A, there must be an absolute A. However, this kind of Descartean reasoning (that there is a centeral point of consciousness and mind) cannot be correct, since it brings forth Cartesian and Dualistic ideas.

That's not to say that Dualism is completely untenable. Hypnagogue has shown a possible scenario, wherein a Dualistic reality is possible in principle; and there are probably more such scenarios. However, these scenarios do not explain the initial consciousness, only the subsequent "en-matrixed" ones, and so we are simply (IMHO) putting of the real problem.

So, if Dualism remains illogical - as an explanation of consciousness itself - then we should reject the idea of a central "self".

David Hume (at least, I think it was Hume) wrote a piece on this. The conclusion of his reasoning on the matter (as I have posted elsewhere) was that, if you strip away those innate properties of a person (those given by genetics) and all of the experiences that that person has had throughout his/her lifetime, you will not have a naked, blank "self" remaining - since such a concept is both undefined and nonsensical - but will have nothing at all.

Now, with the rejection of the central "self" we must also reject the idea that it can be "like something" to be that singular self. Instead, if it is "like something" to be a dog (for example) then it is "like something" for the particular mechanics of the dog's consciousness to be at work exactly as they are. But, for emphasis, there is no central "dog self", and so it is not "like something" to be the dog, but it is - instead - like something to go through that dog's experiences, having been endowed with all of that dog's previous conditioning.

Any corrections to this first part of the post are welcome. This is (hopefully) as far as I will go on this topic, until a new issue is raised.

Now to the redifining...

[Mentat]

Without the idea of a central "self", or the idea of it being "like something" to be that "self", we must adopt a completely new definition of consciousness, since it is clear that some beings are conscious, inspite of it's not being "like something" to be that singular being.

This new definition of consciousness should account for all of the things that the previous definition accounted for - which is not really that much, when you stop and think about it. It should also use less or an equal amount of assumptions (Occam's Razor). Finally, it should allow for reductive explanations of consciousness (this is not really a requirement of it's being an acceptable definition; I'd just like it to be that way [:)]).

My new definitions are:

Consciousness: The state of advanced computational ability that allows for innovation and the illusion of a central perspective.

Conscious (this is the one that is really replacing the previous "like-something-to-be-me" definition): 1) Under the illusion of a central perspective. 2) A synonym to "aware".


That's it. To be conscious, one must simply be under the illusion that it is a singular being.

btw, I didn't really need to add that bit about "computational ability", in my definition of consciousness, I just chose to.

Now, let's put this definition to the test...

[Mentat]

Please note: I added a second part to the definition of "conscious", just to avoid confusion. My new definition of "conscious" is a replacement for that which "the state in which it is 'like something' to be 'me'" accounted for. There is another form of consciousness (inexorably linked, but not synonymous to, definition #1), which is the basic awareness of one's surroundings (i.e. the computation of the stimuli entering the CNS).

Now, let's take the classic example of experiencing the color "red". This is not as obviously tied in to it being "like something" to be "me", or (using my definition) to the illusion that there is a central self. However, it can be dealt with under the new paradigm.

Let's say a stream of light enters the retina, that is of the wavelength we commonly call "red" (I don't remember exactly what wavelength that is, but I also don't think it's too relevant). Now, the retina is stimulated, and so electricity coarses through the axons of the nearby neurons, causing a release of neuro-transmitter by the dendrites on the other side of the neuron. This neuro-transmitter then stimulates other neurons, and the of stimulation continues.

Using the Hexagon model of William Calvin (as imperfectly paraphrased by myself on a previous thread), we now have a spatiotemporal stimulation, that will fire synchronously with other, purely spatial, patterns, and there will be replication of the same pattern (a vital part of the Darwin machine that is our brain).

Anyway, skipping all of the stuff I covered in the aforementioned thread, we now have computation. And, with that computation, coupled with the illusion that there is a central self (which is itself a computation, however flawed the result), one may now say that "I" have experienced "red".

This may not seem very convincing, but there's a bit more. You see, if a certain wavelength of light stimulates a harmonious firing of particular neurons, causing the brain to process/categorize this light as "the same as such-and-such previous light wave". The only reason my new definition of consciousness would ever come in is because, at some point, this brain could think "it was like something to experience that 'red' light"...then the brain could take it further and say "it's like something to think about it being like something...", and eventually they may even say "it's like something to be me, instead of being someone else". My postulate is that this is an illusion (much as the color red is a convenient illusion for the purpose of categorization and processing of a new bit of information), and sentient beings all fall prey to this illusion, which is what endows them with their sentience ITFP.

[Mentat]

Imagine a pyramid. If you could only see the tip, you would forever wonder what the pieces that built up to that tip look like. And, indeed, if there is a tip to the pyramid, then there must be pieces building up from the ground up to directly under that tip, that are of a different nature than the tip. However, what if - on the very top of the pyramid - you saw, instead of a tip, a square set of blocks. This square set of blocks is clearly built on top of other square sets of blocks, leading down to the ground. What's the difference?

The difference is that, in the end, there is either a complete eventuality, or there is not. The square set of blocks could easily be further built upon, to produce a taller pyramid, and - most importantly - the square set of blocks looks just like all the other levels of the pyramid, only higher.

If, however, there is a tip, then there is an eventuality on which nothing can be built, and which (again, most importantly) looks very little like the lower levels.

The typical definition of consciousness is symbolized by the tip of the first pyramid. It is qualitatively different than any of the previous levels of "sub-conscious" activity, and is not explanable purely in the same terms as one explains the previous levels...ergo, no reductive explanation.

What I hope to show (rather, what I hope I have shown) is that, if the tip is an illusion (perhaps produced by the very close proximity of the top set of squares) and the very top of the pyramid is merely a square set of blocks, then it can be explained in exactly the same terms as one would explain the previous levels; it's...just...higher.

Anyway, I kind of liked that illustration, so I thought I'd share it.

[hypnagogue]

Mentat, I think you're too hung up on the notion of the 'central self.' The 'what it is like to be' criterion is not to meant to highlight that there must be a central, incompressible self. What it is meant to highlight is that there must be some sort of subjective experience (or, if you prefer, 'feeling').

So the basic criterion for consciousness that 'it is like something to be A' is equivalent to 'A feels something.' If you still think that is too indicative of your 'selfhood' problem, it could be further rephrased 'there is feeling associated with system A.'

Simply stating that feeling is an illusion is no help; even if it is an illusion in some sense, the fact remains that the illusion itself must be felt, or subjectively experienced. And it remains as unclear as ever in principle how some set of physical processes, as we understand them in the 3rd person physical sense, could feel anything at all.

[Fliption]

An Illusion? Who is experiencing the illusion? This illusion argument has been used before and to me it only seems to beg the question because the ability to have an illusion is partly what it is we're trying to reductively explain to begin with.

[confutatis]

Let's get this straight:

- there's no central self
- the experience of a central self is an illusion
- the experience of a central self is accompanied by the experience that the central self is "conscious"
- since the experience of a central self is an illusion, the experience of anything associated with such central self must also be an illusion
- therefore consciousness is an illusion

Does that make any sense?

[Rader]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by hypnagogue
And it remains as unclear as ever in principle how some set of physical processes, as we understand them in the 3rd person physical sense, could feel anything at all.

One way to explain it is maybe, consciousness does the feeling, not the form.
[8)]

[Sariaht]

Robots who use what they see to help the needing in the best possible way is what we need.

I would like to see robots reading books in Africa etcetera.

Robots who use what they see or tries to find IN THE BEST POSSIBLE WAY (for them selves in the beginning) are conscious or gain consciousness after a while (although that's a part of being conscious).

Fortunatelly.

They will find that dying is the same thing as getting unconscious; if nothing needs to be the same before as after getting unconscious,
then dying is the same thing as getting unconscious. Therefore you get born if you die and win if you lose.

Robots are unfortunatelly the ultimate lifeform. They can live practically anywere, and will not die when the universe cools down.

Although, they will perhaps die when the universe falls down to it's old energylevel, in a big bang, caotically (the higgsparticles would be randomly distributed).


That's actually it. I promise

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by confutatis
Let's get this straight:

- there's no central self
- the experience of a central self is an illusion
- the experience of a central self is accompanied by the experience that the central self is "conscious"
- since the experience of a central self is an illusion, the experience of anything associated with such central self must also be an illusion
- therefore consciousness is an illusion

Does that make any sense?

As I said to Mentat:

Simply stating that feeling is an illusion is no help; even if it is an illusion in some sense, the fact remains that the illusion itself must be felt, or subjectively experienced.

In attempting to discredit consciousness, the illusory argument boils down to the following:

Subjective experience is only a subjectively experienced illusion.

I think that statement says all that needs to be said.

[phoenixthoth]

fortunately, there is no need to define something in order to investigate its nature.

[Fliption]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
As I said to Mentat:

Simply stating that feeling is an illusion is no help; even if it is an illusion in some sense, the fact remains that the illusion itself must be felt, or subjectively experienced.

In attempting to discredit consciousness, the illusory argument boils down to the following:

Subjective experience is only a subjectively experienced illusion.

I think that statement says all that needs to be said.

Perfect. I was going to respond by saying that if consciousness doesn't exists and is just an illusion then how do we explain that an illusion is an act of consciousness?

[Architeuthis Dux]

To define is represent some exterior reality in an intelligible concept. To conceptualize is to distort, to leave out certain features deemed accidental or unimportant, and to highlight others and make those others stand for the whole. The content of the concept is determined by the purposes for which one needs the concept.

Consider a basic concept that confuses no one: a car.

An engineer considers a car a device for carrying passengers, powered by an engine that burns gasoline vapor.

A teenager considers a car a device for attracting dates and raising his status among his peer group.

A city planner considers a car an object that needs a parking space and a road to drive on.

A Pep Boys store owner considers a car a device that needs tires, wiper blades, floormats, and fuzzy dice to hang on the mirror.

All of these concepts point in some way, but not completely, to the same external reality.

Can concsiousness, the thing that conceptualizes, fit into a concept that will fit into itself?

When you look, can you see your own eyes?

[phoenixthoth]

you can look into a mirror. in the language of consciousness, one can do self-reflection and meditation.

"Can concsiousness, the thing that conceptualizes, fit into a concept that will fit into itself?"

well it is possible to have a concept that will fit into itself. at least mathematically.

[Sariaht]

consciousnes is trying to find the best solution (for yourself mainly). It can be to find the best grass to eat and avoid getting eaten, like a dear. There goal is to get the best grass and to survive etc.

Why don't you believe me?

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Sariaht
consciousnes is trying to find the best solution (for yourself mainly). It can be to find the best grass to eat and avoid getting eaten, like a dear. There goal is to get the best grass and to survive etc.

Why don't you believe me?

You are proposing here a functional process that may overlap in some respects with consciousness, but also does not overlap with consciousness in many important ways. Consciousness is defined at bottom not by what it does, but how it feels.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
Mentat, I think you're too hung up on the notion of the 'central self.' The 'what it is like to be' criterion is not to meant to highlight that there must be a central, incompressible self. What it is meant to highlight is that there must be some sort of subjective experience (or, if you prefer, 'feeling').

So the basic criterion for consciousness that 'it is like something to be A' is equivalent to 'A feels something.' If you still think that is too indicative of your 'selfhood' problem, it could be further rephrased 'there is feeling associated with system A.'

Simply stating that feeling is an illusion is no help; even if it is an illusion in some sense, the fact remains that the illusion itself must be felt, or subjectively experienced. And it remains as unclear as ever in principle how some set of physical processes, as we understand them in the 3rd person physical sense, could feel anything at all.

Hypnagogue, I trust you read the entirety of my posts, so I apologize for any repetition I make:

First off, I kept mentioning the "central self" problem because it seems like people want an "end product" of "experience", and this is not the case. You see, if there were an end product, then there would an end destination, and there would be a "central self", which is illogical. Since there is no "end product", "experience" should be referred to in the participle tense (e.g. "He was experiencing red", not "He experienced red"). Again, the significance of this distinction lies only in its necessity for the removal of the central "self" (the final product; the emergent property; etc).

Secondly, the illusion is indeed subjectively felt, in one sense of the term. The feeling is the illusion, and it is only really descernable (as a "whole experience") in retrospect - and I think that's because there never really was a "whole experience", merely a set of minor computations (at the fundamental level) leading to more and more complex processing of the stimulus, but never to a "Final Draft".

Finally, the point was that they didn't really "feel anything at all", they just believed (belief being a form of computation in its own right) that they did in retrospect, when - in actuality - they were merely computing/processing the new stimulus using many of the different processing methods available to the brain.

Do you see what I mean by retrospective belief that there was an "experience"? In my definition of "conscious", there is the postulate that the being must succumb to illusion that it is a singular being experiencing singular events (this really must be an illusion, since, in physical reality, there are no singular occurances, merely ongoing processes).

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Fliption
An Illusion? Who is experiencing the illusion?


The experience is the illusion. The brain is a computer, and it doesn't just compute current, incoming data, but also continues computation long after the outside stimulus has subsided. Thus, it is in retrospect that the illusion of centralization is found, since it is only in retrospect that one really thinks coherently at all (this seems rather obvious, I'm sure, since there is no real "present" and we're still moving into the future).

[Mentat]

Originally posted by confutatis
Let's get this straight:

- there's no central self
- the experience of a central self is an illusion
- the experience of a central self is accompanied by the experience that the central self is "conscious"
- since the experience of a central self is an illusion, the experience of anything associated with such central self must also be an illusion
- therefore consciousness is an illusion

Does that make any sense?

Not quite...

- there is no central self
- the experience of a central self is an illusion
- this illusion is the "like-something-to-be-me" experience that Chalmers (and others) want explained.
- therefore centralization and "like-something-to-be-me" experiences are illusions.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
As I said to Mentat:

Simply stating that feeling is an illusion is no help; even if it is an illusion in some sense, the fact remains that the illusion itself must be felt, or subjectively experienced.

In attempting to discredit consciousness, the illusory argument boils down to the following:

Subjective experience is only a subjectively experienced illusion.

I think that statement says all that needs to be said.

Sure, but it's a misinterpretation (at least of what I said; I don't know about my predecessors in this line of thought). Subjective experience is not an illusion, it is the concept of a lump sum (a synergy or gestalt)of this experience that is the illusion, produced by both the manner and slowness of our CPU.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by phoenixthoth
fortunately, there is no need to define something in order to investigate its nature.

Expound please. I thought it was rather integral (if not completely indespensible) to have defined all terms in order to make sure that we are even discussing the same topic.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Fliption
Perfect. I was going to respond by saying that if consciousness doesn't exists and is just an illusion then how do we explain that an illusion is an act of consciousness?

An illusion is an act of building upon sub-experience (to borrow Canute's term from another thread). The computational processes occuring in the brain are occuring such that Multiple Drafts (I know you were probably hoping to never see that term again, but it has occured to me that all of the "good" explanations for consciousness, that I've seen, have been just as Dennett predicted they'd be) of the sub-experiences are created, and the illusion of a sum-total is processed right along with the rest of the information.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
You are proposing here a functional process that may overlap in some respects with consciousness, but also does not overlap with consciousness in many important ways. Consciousness is defined at bottom not by what it does, but how it feels.

But the whole reductionist approach to this is based on the idea that how it feels is a function of what it does.

[phoenixthoth]

Originally posted by Mentat
Expound please. I thought it was rather integral (if not completely indespensible) to have defined all terms in order to make sure that we are even discussing the same topic.

i understand the desire to define terms but
leaving something undefined can be done in math so why not here?

(eg, not all "things" in "the elements" are defined nor are sets in set theory... sure you try to say a set is a class contained in another class but what's a class? or you could try to say a set is a collection of things but what's a collection and what kind of thing are we talking about?)

for sure the number of undefined terms is kept to a minimum and perhaps consciousness ought to be one word we don't define. what do you think?

[Sariaht]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
You are proposing here a functional process that may overlap in some respects with consciousness, but also does not overlap with consciousness in many important ways. Consciousness is defined at bottom not by what it does, but how it feels.


Do you want a robot that feels but does not do?

The thing is, i consider myself a robot that is trying to solve a problem here, trying to convince you that a robot trying to use what it finds to solve a problem is conscious. How would you notice if i was a robot? You would not, cause I am. I am trying to use words to convince you that I am, but you wont listen.

If you do everything to survive, your conscious. IOW, if you look conscious, you are conscious.

The worst part is, how does that work if I know i am going to be just like you? That my life is neverending?

[Fliption]

Originally posted by Mentat
The experience is the illusion. The brain is a computer, and it doesn't just compute current, incoming data, but also continues computation long after the outside stimulus has subsided. Thus, it is in retrospect that the illusion of centralization is found, since it is only in retrospect that one really thinks coherently at all (this seems rather obvious, I'm sure, since there is no real "present" and we're still moving into the future).

Talk about infinte regress, sheesh. This is like saying a man put himself together and when I ask how he put his arms on, you say "why, of course he picked them up with his arms and stuck them on".

Mentat, I've read everything you've written, but I just don't see how calling something an illusion eliminates the need to explain it. As an example, a mirage can still be drawn by the person experiencing it piece by piece even though it doesn't actually exists. How can you do the same for "feeling"?

[Fliption]

Originally posted by Mentat
First off, I kept mentioning the "central self" problem because it seems like people want an "end product" of "experience", and this is not the case. You see, if there were an end product, then there would an end destination, and there would be a "central self", which is illogical.


Did you forget to explain why it is illogical?

From my perspective, no one "wants" anything. I just tell you what I'm seeing when I look at the problem. But I think many people really do "want" to keep the same world view that they understand and feel safe particpating in. And they will find a way to make things fit into it regardless of how ridiculous it sounds sometimes.

I read the rest of your post but it just sounds like semantic bungie jumping to me. As I've said before, redefining the problem doesn't solve the original problem. So making sure people agree that the redefinition is "what needs to be explained" is crucial.

[Sariaht]

I'm not much more than you see; I need food to find solutions to problems.


I like food. Very much. And I could not live without it.
I claim that I'm no more than a problemsolving robot (and that's not so very little). Most guys would do anything to survive, cause if they don't, they can't solve problems, and that's a really big problem you don't want to have

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
But the whole reductionist approach to this is based on the idea that how it feels is a function of what it does.

The point is that, even if a reductive explanation of consciousness were possible, it would have to address subjective experience on some level, not just objective structure and function. Objective structure and function might be interesting topics in their own right, but it is not acceptable to redefine consciousness as a different problem altogether.

For instance, I think your illusion argument is flawed, but at least it tries to address the question of how feeling (or the illusion thereof) can occur. The strategy of Sariaht's argument is to recast the problem as one of objective survival tactics at the outset, therefore addressing a topic distinct from subjective experience.

[Sariaht]

Good night, sleep tight.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
The experience is the illusion.

Originally posted by Mentat
Subjective experience is not an illusion

Care to clarify?

[Loren Booda]

Consciousness is that which we perceive inwardly simultaneous to that which we perceive outwardly.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue

Originally posted by Mentat
The experience is the illusion.


Originally posted by Mentat
Subjective experience is not an illusion

Care to clarify?

I figured I should address this first.

Subjective experience is not an illusion, as clearly we do, subjectively, experience the world around us. However, the idea of a complete experience - a Final Draft of "what it felt like" - is an illusion.

It is my (current) position that this misconception (that there is a final, end-product, gestalt from the multiple computations taking place in the CPU) is at the heart of the belief that it is impossible to subjectively explain consciousness. I think they are trying to explain something that doesn't really exist.

P.S. for clarity: Consciousness exists, but they are not trying to explain consciousness, they are trying to explain what they think consciousness/subjective experience is, and that (IMO) doesn't exist.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Loren Booda
Consciousness is that which we perceive inwardly simultaneous to that which we perceive outwardly.

That's the problem, the firings of our neurons are not nearly fast enough for us to experience each new stimuli completely before being confronted with new stimuli...in the end, the computational process of our brains yeilds such convenient frameworks as the so-called "specious present" in order to keep up.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
I figured I should address this first.

Subjective experience is not an illusion, as clearly we do, subjectively, experience the world around us. However, the idea of a complete experience - a Final Draft of "what it felt like" - is an illusion.

It is my (current) position that this misconception (that there is a final, end-product, gestalt from the multiple computations taking place in the CPU) is at the heart of the belief that it is impossible to subjectively explain consciousness. I think they are trying to explain something that doesn't really exist.

P.S. for clarity: Consciousness exists, but they are not trying to explain consciousness, they are trying to explain what they think consciousness/subjective experience is, and that (IMO) doesn't exist.

I find this a little confusing. Perhaps you can try to clarify some more?

In any case, if you grant that subjective experience is not an illusion, you still have to face all the traditional problems. A subjective experience is a feeling, and how can feelings be logically entailed by materialism?

As for the gestalt, I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at, but there is tentative evidence that some gestalt components existing in consciousness (eg grouping together precepts in the visual field as one coherent object) are reflected directly in brain processing via synchronous firing of neurons.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Fliption
Talk about infinte regress, sheesh. This is like saying a man put himself together and when I ask how he put his arms on, you say "why, of course he picked them up with his arms and stuck them on".

Mentat, I've read everything you've written, but I just don't see how calling something an illusion eliminates the need to explain it. As an example, a mirage can still be drawn by the person experiencing it piece by piece even though it doesn't actually exists. How can you do the same for "feeling"?

No, no, the feeling does exist. I'm not postulating that subjective experiences are illusions, merely that the concept of one, complete, experience is an illusion. Instead, I'm proposing that experience is an ongoing process, and that it itself is simply the computation of new stimuli by the brain; but, instead of trying to explain how we come to experience something complete (like the color red), I think we should be explaining how our brains process the incoming information, relate it to those already stimulated arrays, and then process the illusion that we experienced an entire picture (or sound or smell) instead of billions of discreet units of information.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
I find this a little confusing. Perhaps you can try to clarify some more?


I'll try...

It appears to me that most philosophers of the mind are trying to explain how a complete experience can be had by a person (these complete experiences are what they believe constitute consciousness). They are not trying to understand how the brain processes incoming data, or which parts of the brain are useful for (for example) visual stimuli, but they want to know how all of that comes together to form conscious experience (please correct me if I'm totally wrong about their expectations).

It is my opinion that, since there really is no "Final Draft" of the experience - there are just those discreet units of information being processed, which those philosophers are not really interested in - the question of how all that information "becomes" a complete conscious experience is completely moot. Instead, they should be studying those individual processes to see how it is that, in retrospect, our brains look back at all of that information and see, not discreet units of information, but a complete "picture". Of course, the quick answer (in terms of the paradigm I'm currently pursuing) is "it's a computing mechanism that is merely for convenience" (convenience in storage, recall, and communication to others).

It's like trying to study why I see a complete "picture" of the library, inspite of the constant shifting (saccades) of my eyes. I really do process that constant shifting, but my brain "compacts" it all into a concise "image".

I've got to go now...I hope I didn't seem to rushed, but the library's about to close.

[hypnagogue]

It appears you're talking what would be called an 'easy' problem and not the hard problem. You're talking about how it is that the brain treats diverse packets of information as coherent wholes. This can be treated entirely as an objective issue of styles of information processing, and so it has no fundamental link to the question of how it is that feeling exists, even if it is tangentially related to some aspects of how humans feel/subjectively experience under normal conditions.

The hard problem is not fundamentally about how subjective experience appears to be holistic or gestalt; the hard problem is fundamentally about how subjective experience comes to exist in the first place (regardless of whether it is holistic or disjointed).

[Jeebus]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
The hard problem is not fundamentally about how subjective experience appears to be holistic or gestalt; the hard problem is fundamentally about how subjective experience comes to exist in the first place (regardless of whether it is holistic or disjointed).

If we can't fundamentally and systematically reason our way through various methods of cognitive science and neuroscience objectivity on conscious experience physical or mental; how are we ever going to yielf an explanation for the "extra ingredient" posed by Chalmers to functionally assess the given maxim of provability? I just don't see how quantum pheonomena is still going to give the empirical objectivity we need in conscious experience? Although, Chalmers has the right approach on the hard problem and has the easy problem mapped out systematically, in what way is he or any other going to conclude the basis of reasoning he needs for that explanitory bridge?

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
It appears you're talking what would be called an 'easy' problem and not the hard problem. You're talking about how it is that the brain treats diverse packets of information as coherent wholes. This can be treated entirely as an objective issue of styles of information processing, and so it has no fundamental link to the question of how it is that feeling exists, even if it is tangentially related to some aspects of how humans feel/subjectively experience under normal conditions.

The hard problem is not fundamentally about how subjective experience appears to be holistic or gestalt; the hard problem is fundamentally about how subjective experience comes to exist in the first place (regardless of whether it is holistic or disjointed).

It appears to me (correct me if I'm wrong) that you are using the term "subjective experience" to mean something completely seperate from all of the things that are normally used to describe it...

What I mean is, I can reductively explain a particular experience, and how the brain processes the lump of information as a gestalt (in retrospect), and you can accept all of this, but you still ask that I explain "subjective experience"...what else is there to explain?

Remember my first post in this thread? In it, I mentioned Hume, who talked about how, if you remove all of a persons innate characteristics ("nature") and their learned ones ("nurture"), you will not have a naked self remaining, but you will have nothing at all, since "self" cannot be reasonably defined as anything but a collection of those aforementioned things. Well, it seems to be the same with experiences, if you take away the computation of new and old stimuli, the use of recall, and the apparent (thought illusory) synergy of these bits of information into a whole experience, you don't have a "naked experience" left, you don't have anything left since "experience" can't (so far as I can tell) be coherently defined as anything besides those aforementioned things.

[Mentat]

Jeebus, you mentioned the "extra ingredient" that Chalmers requires for an explanation of consciousness. That's what's symbolized by the "tip" of the "pyramid" in my illustration (third post down on the first page). The problem is, I think, that the "tip" doesn't really exist. It's just a bunch of the same blocks in the same kind of configuration as the blocks below them...they're just "higher". This is why I made threads like "Faulty expectations of a theory of consciousness" and "Vitalist nonsense versus Science": because people are expecting something "extra" out of a theory of consciousness that they don't expect out of any other Scientific phenomenon. This is exactly what the vitalists did, with regard to "life". They were convinced that you could explain every minute function of a living being, and still not discover how those processes "become 'life'". Their problem, of course, was that they thought there was "something more" to life, than those physical functions, when it turns out that the physical functions are all you need to explain life.

Now, I know that it has been said that the two cases are not analogous, but I say they are. It's not like a vitalist ever said "It may be possible to explain life, if you could know all of the physical functions, but you'll never know all of the physical functions". No, they said just what the Chalmerean (there's an interesting new word) philosophers are saying about consciousness now (just substitute "conscious" for "living", and "consciousness" for "life"): "You can explain all of the functions that take place in a particular living being, but that still doesn't bring you any closer to explaining how life can arise from all of those processes...(and this is my favorite part) I can clearly imagine all of those processes occuring in a particular being, without the presence of life in that being (conversely "...without it being alive" which is also replaceable with "conscious")".

[hypnagogue]

Mentat, you need to stop parading that analogy, because it just doesn't work.

With life, the thing that needs explaining is purely a set of objectively observable functions (reprodcution, growth, locomotion, etc). The non-physical vital spirit is an explanatory posit to try to explain how it is that the functions of life work, not something that needs to be explained in its own right. Once it is shown that physics can completely account for the functions of life, there is no longer a compelling reason to believe in the vital spirit; there is no fundamental question of the form "Why is it that reproduction, growth, locomotion, etc. are associated with life?"

With consciousness, the thing that needs explaining is not objective at all, but instead is subjective experience. (Again, that is not to beg the question, but rather to assert that any explanation, even one grounded in objective theory, must ultimately arrive at subjective experience if it is to be successful.) Subjective experience is NOT an explanatory posit like the vital spirit; rather, it is the central thing in need of explanation. No matter how much we address the objective processes of the objective brain, we are still always faced with the same question that must ultimately be addressed: "why is it that brain activity X is associated with subjective experience?"

It should not be surprising that investigations into consciousness are unique among all scientific inquiries. All other phenomena (including life) are by definition objective in nature, with only objective properties in need of explanation, and so may all be treated in the same general way by science. Investigation of consciousness is a unique undertaking in all of scientific inquiry, precisely because such investigation involves explanation of subjective experience, which does not reveal itself in objective observation.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
Mentat, you need to stop parading that analogy, because it just doesn't work.

With life, the thing that needs explaining is purely a set of objectively observable functions (reprodcution, growth, locomotion, etc). The non-physical vital spirit is an explanatory posit to try to explain how it is that the functions of life work, not something that needs to be explained in its own right.


Look, if it's not vitalism, then at least look at my example in its own right. Forget what the vitalists were after, that's irrelevant. I'm talking about the people (and I've actually met a few...they still exist) who think that all of these explanations of the physical processes involved in a living being are falling short of explaining "life" itself, since they can (and there arguments do indeed sound much like what I'm saying here - even if I do embellish from time to time for the purpose of making the similarity with your argument absolutely clear) "imagine all those processes occuring, and yet the thing not being alive". Much like someone could imagine a the proper configuration of particles, without them being "liquid". And like someone else could imagine the curvature of spacetime, without their being a percieved gravitational attraction. And like still others, could imagine the computation, memorization, and recall of information about stimuli gathered from any/all of the 5 senses, along with a "trick" (or "helpful tool") for compactification that gives the illusion of a complete, indivisble experience (while such a complete, final, draft never really existed); all this and yet there be no consciousness. I ask again, what is missing?


With consciousness, the thing that needs explaining is not objective at all, but instead is subjective experience. (Again, that is not to beg the question, but rather to assert that any explanation, even one grounded in objective theory, must ultimately arrive at subjective experience if it is to be successful.)


No, if I (along with those references which I've mentioned before) am correct, then you need only arive at a theory of how the illusion of a complete experience gets processed along with the rest of the information. There is nothing else to add to this. What Chalmerean philosophers are doing (AFAICT) is positing first and foremost the existence of a set of complete, indivisible, experiences, which (they say) must then be reductively explained. This, however, may be a straw-man argument, since it is not so obvious that we actually have complete experiences (instead of merely processing the illusion of such a thing along with the rest of the on-going computation in the brain), since we, as the subjective "experiencer", could not possibly tell the difference.

It's like a joke that used to be the quote of one of the members here; something to do with a philosopher asking a student why people used to think the sun moved, while the Earth remained motionless. The student said, because that's how it appears...it is the most obvious conclusion, since that is what it would look like if the sun really did move. The philosopher then said, "Oh, so what would it have looked like if the Earth were revolving around the Sun?".

Chalmers is, IMHO, trying to refute all possible explanations of what keeps the Sun moving around the Earth.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
What I mean is, I can reductively explain a particular experience

Really? You can show how the firing of neurons logically entails redness? You can discover processes that appear to be necessary and/or sufficient for redness, but can you really explain how they bring about redness?

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
Forget what the vitalists were after, that's irrelevant. I'm talking about the people (and I've actually met a few...they still exist) who think that all of these explanations of the physical processes involved in a living being are falling short of explaining "life" itself, since they can (and there arguments do indeed sound much like what I'm saying here - even if I do embellish from time to time for the purpose of making the similarity with your argument absolutely clear) "imagine all those processes occuring, and yet the thing not being alive".

"Alive" in the sense of the vital spirit is a notoriously shaky concept. The vital spirit cannot be observed at all, so how can we begin to talk about it?

Subjective experience can very plainly be observed (from the 1st person view), so it immediately has credibility and calls for a legitimate explanation. Unlike the vital spirit, it cannot be written off or ignored.

Much like someone could imagine a the proper configuration of particles, without them being "liquid". And like someone else could imagine the curvature of spacetime, without their being a percieved gravitational attraction.

That's a strawman. "Cannot be imagined otherwise" is just another way of saying "logically entailed." From the definitions of H2O and spacetime, given materialistic assumptions, those phenomena are logically entailed by their prospective causes. It remains to be shown how the prospective cause of brain functioning can logically entail subjective experience even in principle using only materialistic assumptions.

And like still others, could imagine the computation, memorization, and recall of information about stimuli gathered from any/all of the 5 senses, along with a "trick" (or "helpful tool") for compactification that gives the illusion of a complete, indivisble experience (while such a complete, final, draft never really existed); all this and yet there be no consciousness. I ask again, what is missing?

What is missing is experience! You claim to know how the illusion of indivisible experience is formed, but you avoid the question of how any experience at all can be created by a bundle of neurons.

There is nothing else to add to this. What Chalmerean philosophers are doing (AFAICT) is positing first and foremost the existence of a set of complete, indivisible, experiences, which (they say) must then be reductively explained. This, however, may be a straw-man argument, since it is not so obvious that we actually have complete experiences (instead of merely processing the illusion of such a thing along with the rest of the on-going computation in the brain), since we, as the subjective "experiencer", could not possibly tell the difference.

What is clear is that we have experience, regardless of how we wish to classify it as divisible or indivisible. What is not clear at all is how physics can entail experience of any kind.

Chalmers is, IMHO, trying to refute all possible explanations of what keeps the Sun moving around the Earth.

What Chalmers is doing is trying to steer us towards a sound theory of consciousness. Ignoring the hard problem is not a satisfactory approach, however much more it might make consciousness amenable to scientific study. If we ever want a complete theory of consciousness we will need to face up to and surmount the hard problem at some point, because it cannot be written off like so many vital spirits as you suggest.

[Jeebus]

Originally posted hypnagogue
What Chalmers is doing is trying to steer us towards a sound theory of consciousness. Ignoring the hard problem is not a satisfactory approach, however much more it might make consciousness amenable to scientific study. If we ever want a complete theory of consciousness we will need to face up to and surmount the hard problem at some point, because it cannot be written off like so many vital spirits as you suggest.

I was thinking the other day while reading Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness by Chalmers and he said:

"We are already in a position to understand certain key facts about the relationship between physical processes and experience, and about the regularities that connect them. Once reductive explanation is set aside, we can lay those facts on the table so that they can play their proper role as the initial pieces in a nonreductive theory of consciousness, and as constraints on the basic laws that constitute an ultimate theory...

And I thought about this and made an idea that sparked something definitively unrealistic but probable. As he defined the 'easy problems' of consciousness, what if that is the main factors of the 'hard problem' … what if there aren't any more factors and algorithms that go into the equation given? What if that problem is set and categorized and the answer is already there? That is the experience. Those factors of the easy problem 'make up' and contain the information needed for subjective experience?

I dunno.

[hypnagogue]

Jeebus, Chalmers realizes that solving the 'easy' problems will be instrumental and indispensible in any attempt to solve the 'hard' problem, but there are principled reasons (which Chalmers discusses in "Consciousness and Its Place in Nature") to believe that just solving the easy problems will not be enough.

[Zero]

I don't see what the difficulty is...Mentat is right, you guys need to just get in line![:D]

If I'm not mistaken, M, the point you are getting at is that it is possible that the process is the experience, and that there is nothing else that needs to be explained?

[Jeebus]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
Jeebus, Chalmers realizes that solving the 'easy' problems will be instrumental and indispensible in any attempt to solve the 'hard' problem, but there are principled reasons (which Chalmers discusses in "Consciousness and Its Place in Nature") to believe that just solving the easy problems will not be enough.

Thanks for the info.

I am reading it now and I came upon a paragraph that peeked my interested for further knowledge of.

Chalmers said: "What makes the easy problems easy? For these problems, the task is to explain certain behavioral or cognitive functions: that is, to explain how some causal role is played in the cognitive system, ultimately in the production of behavior. To explain the performance of such a function, one need only specify a mechanism that plays the relevant role. And there is good reason to believe that neural or computational mechanisms can play those roles.

My question is … doesn't behavior, in a broad sense, of the neurophysical system of materialistic functions approach -- directly compatible or parallel to cognitive experience on the physical level without the reductive explanation?

I know then further down Chalmers states:

(1) Mary knows all the physical facts.

(2) Mary does not know all the facts.

This isn't likely. Physical facts depict normal facts. If something it is not physical it is not factual to the human brain. If it can't be senesed or even verifiable, then the fact is there is no fact in question. If there is no empirical evidence for a zombie, there is no fact for me to believe that it ever existed ab ovo.

This leads to my question why Chalmers says 'materialism is false' without any empirical evidence. There were no facts given for the knowledge argument to follow but subjective choplogic. Where did he come up with this conclusion? He then explains the epistemic gap but that doesn't give me reasonable doubt to why facts are not facts without evidence for that fact.

Wish to clarify for me?

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Jeebus
My question is … doesn't behavior, in a broad sense, of the neurophysical system of materialistic functions approach -- directly compatible or parallel to cognitive experience on the physical level without the reductive explanation?

Can you rephrase this? I'm not sure from your wording exactly what you are getting at.

This isn't likely. Physical facts depict normal facts. If something it is not physical it is not factual to the human brain.

"Physical" just refers to properties that are detectable in the objective, 3rd person sense. If you define all facts as physical facts, you are begging the question by assuming that materialism coherently accounts for all existing phenomena. There could well be some property that is not what we would properly call physical but which is characteristic of human brains nonetheless.

If it can't be senesed or even verifiable, then the fact is there is no fact in question. If there is no empirical evidence for a zombie, there is no fact for me to believe that it ever existed ab ovo.

There is also no objective empirical evidence for consciousness, yet I doubt you would claim that consciousness does not exist.

And 'zombies' are a philosophical tool used to clarify the problems of consciousness, not actual entities that are presumed to exist.

This leads to my question why Chalmers says 'materialism is false' without any empirical evidence.

If you mean empirical evidence in the sense of objective information, then by definition such evidence would always be consistent with materialism, so you have no grounds for ever expecting such evidence to support the idea that materialism might be false. If you allow empirical evidence to include your own subjective experience, then you have very compelling evidence against materialism, for all the familiar reasons I've been explaining.

There were no facts given for the knowledge argument to follow but subjective choplogic.

The reasoning is simple. Forget Mary. For further clarity, let's go back to the non-conscious computer/demon D which draws conclusions from objective facts using the axioms of materialism. D can have complete information about a human brain, but D would never have reason to suspect that that human brain possesses anything like subjective experience. This is because consciousness cannot be logically entailed using only materialistic assumptions. (Re-read the 'faulty expectations' and 'liquid' threads if you doubt this.) It follows that D knows all the physical (objective) facts, but D does not know all the facts; in particular, D does not know anything about subjective experience in spite of its complete knowledge of the human brain.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
Really? You can show how the firing of neurons logically entails redness? You can discover processes that appear to be necessary and/or sufficient for redness, but can you really explain how they bring about redness?

That's a non-sequiter. If the process is necessary and sufficient for redness, then what does it mean to explain how the process "brings about" redness? The process is the experience of redness; that's why we call it "sufficient". You might as well, on this line of questioning, ask "You can discover the wavelength that is classified as 'red', but can you really explain how that wavelength brings about it's own 'redness'?" Or, more to the point of the "liquid liquid" example, "You can discover the arrangements of particles that are necessary and/or sufficient for the substance to be a liquid, but can you really explain how that arrangement brings about it's 'liquidity'?".

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
"Alive" in the sense of the vital spirit is a notoriously shaky concept. The vital spirit cannot be observed at all, so how can we begin to talk about it?


Define "observe". If "observe" entails any kind of perception, then I can indeed perceive the vital spirit, because I can perceive that I am alive.

Besides, I wanted to drop the whole "vital spirit" part of that, and get to the more important matter: The vitalists only needed the vital spirit to explain something that didn't really exist in the first place. As it turns out, there is nothing special about "life". Indeed, "life" is an illusion, since there are no clear-cut definitions of what is and is not "alive" (as I have shown on many older threads). We have settled for the scientific approach, and dropped the philosophical notion that life is a product of cellular functions. Life is not a product of cellular functions, but is simply a word used to encompass all of those many functions, for convenience in communication. Nothing more.

It is my opinion (currently) that Chalmers has erected the same brand of straw-man by first postulating that there is such a thing as a Final Draft of "the actual (complete; indivisible) experience", and then trying to figure out how neuronal functions "give rise" to this thing that doesn't really exist in the first place. That's what a "straw-man" is, isn't it?


Subjective experience can very plainly be observed (from the 1st person view), so it immediately has credibility and calls for a legitimate explanation. Unlike the vital spirit, it cannot be written off or ignored.


Subjective experience can be plainly observed? How plainly, exactly? I never notice the constant saccades of my eyes or seperateness of the functions of my visual cortex (each function taking place on it's own, and never "meeting up" with the others). No, subjective experience is, indeed, observed in the 1st person, but it is a compactification of information that did not get processed at the same time, and did not arrive at some final destination. This compactification may be computed (in the brain) as "reality", but it clearly cannot be.


That's a strawman. "Cannot be imagined otherwise" is just another way of saying "logically entailed." From the definitions of H2O and spacetime, given materialistic assumptions, those phenomena are logically entailed by their prospective causes. It remains to be shown how the prospective cause of brain functioning can logically entail subjective experience even in principle using only materialistic assumptions.


From the definitions of H2O and spacetime, you are right, they are indeed the logical outcome of their underlying processes. But, have you ever read Consciousness Explained, by Dan Dennett? From the evolutionary innovations on the proto-human brain, it is the logical necessity that their be a brain that plays this constant trick on itself.


What is missing is experience!


No. What is missing is a complete experience. Sub-experience is all over the place, but that one thing appears to be missing. The reason, as I've stated before, that this thing is "missing" is because it doesn't really exist. You are looking for the "end-product" of an on-going process...that's not logically consistent.


You claim to know how the illusion of indivisible experience is formed, but you avoid the question of how any experience at all can be created by a bundle of neurons.


Any experience at all? You have, I'm sure, understood the ways I've explained the computation, memorization, and recall of the neocortex. From this, you have a workable framework for the processes by which the brain processes the world around it. With all of this information being processed, but never meeting up at any place in the brain (or anywhere else, for you Dualists [;)]), the question isn't "How do they every sum up to experience?", it's "Do they ever sum up to experience", and, "If not, what is the evolutionary reason for having a brain that convinces itself that they do?". These things are answered in the books I've mentioned before.


What is clear is that we have experience, regardless of how we wish to classify it as divisible or indivisible. What is not clear at all is how physics can entail experience of any kind.


No, no, no, if the experience is "divisible", then it is not a coherent picture of anything, but merely a set of "sub-experiences", which are the individual computations of different kinds of information, occuring in different parts of the brain (you couldn't expect "texture" to be processed right along with "color" or "shape", could you?), and you have no final product to explain/reduce. Chalmers is indeed asking for an explanation of that final, indivisble, "product" which I'm saying doesn't exist.


Ignoring the hard problem is not a satisfactory approach, however much more it might make consciousness amenable to scientific study.

Ignoring a problem is not - you're right - a satisfactory approach at all. But Dennett is not ignoring the "hard problem". He's examining it directly, and showing it to be a straw-man, with no substance at all (aside from those things which Chalmers refers to as the "easy problems").

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Zero
I don't see what the difficulty is...Mentat is right, you guys need to just get in line![:D]


Nice to know I have a fan [:)].


If I'm not mistaken, M, the point you are getting at is that it is possible that the process is the experience, and that there is nothing else that needs to be explained?

Very close. The process is a set of "sub-experiences", or minor computations of different aspects of a stimulus. However, our brain has this little habit (extremely useful one, since we wouldn't be sentient without it) of looking back on previous sets of information (processed at different times, in different parts of the brain) as though they once formed a complete, indivisible, "experience" - even though they never really did.

So, you're pretty much right-on, Zero; the process is what we call the "experience", but they are asking for an explanation of an extra part of this process that doesn't really exist (IMHO).

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
Or, more to the point of the "liquid liquid" example, "You can discover the arrangements of particles that are necessary and/or sufficient for the substance to be a liquid, but can you really explain how that arrangement brings about it's 'liquidity'?".

Yes, you can. If I give you a certain set of general conditions C that are necessary and sufficient for a set of H2O molecules to be in a macroscopic liquid state, all I have done is given you necessary and sufficient conditions. Using this information, you can always determine whether or not a set of H2O molecules will be in a macroscopic liquid state based on a microscopic description, but you will not necessarily understand the underlying concepts of how the microscopic arrangement logically entails (accounts for) the macroscopic fluidity.

To make the macroscopic intelligible in terms of the microscopic, you need bridge principles connecting the two. You need to assert that water is composed of H2O molecules and then explain eg how electrostatic attractions between H2O molecules under conditions C allow them to 'roll over' eachother without totally escaping eachother, which allows for macroscopic properties such as taking the shape of the container. This is an explanitory step above and beyond simply stating necessary and sufficient conditions.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
Yes, you can. If I give you a certain set of general conditions C that are necessary and sufficient for a set of H2O molecules to be in a macroscopic liquid state, all I have done is given you necessary and sufficient conditions. Using this information, you can always determine whether or not a set of H2O molecules will be in a macroscopic liquid state based on a microscopic description, but you will not necessarily understand the underlying concepts of how the microscopic arrangement logically entails (accounts for) the macroscopic fluidity.

To make the macroscopic intelligible in terms of the microscopic, you need bridge principles connecting the two. You need to assert that water is composed of H2O molecules and then explain eg how electrostatic attractions between H2O molecules under conditions C allow them to 'roll over' eachother without totally escaping eachother, which allows for macroscopic properties such as taking the shape of the container. This is an explanitory step above and beyond simply stating necessary and sufficient conditions.

But all you stated was more necessary conditions. How does the ability to take on the shape of the container you are in bring about liquidity? Of course, it doesn't; that's just part of the definition of "liquid" itself. However, the only reason I can say that with impunity is because nobody has postulated that there is anything else to it. Nobody has attributed any reality to the illusion that (for example) a liquid is a coherent "blob" of material, instead of a collection of very tiny particles whose own position is probabilistic in nature.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Mentat
Nice to know I have a fan [:)].



Very close. The process is a set of "sub-experiences", or minor computations of different aspects of a stimulus. However, our brain has this little habit (extremely useful one, since we wouldn't be sentient without it) of looking back on previous sets of information (processed at different times, in different parts of the brain) as though they once formed a complete, indivisible, "experience" - even though they never really did.

So, you're pretty much right-on, Zero; the process is what we call the "experience", but they are asking for an explanation of an extra part of this process that doesn't really exist (IMHO). I'd say the "extra part" is either a flaw in reasoning or recollection. The reasoning flaw is in assuming the existance of something that is so far unproven, and unneeded to explain things. The other flaw is one of perception, in assuming that small bits cannot make up a bigger "whole"(although calling consciousness a "whole" is iffy at best). I'd describe it as similar to the way our brains interpret optical illusions, where we seek to fill in "gaps", even when there is no logical reason to do so.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
Define "observe". If "observe" entails any kind of perception, then I can indeed perceive the vital spirit, because I can perceive that I am alive.

What does it mean to perceive that you are alive?

Besides, I wanted to drop the whole "vital spirit" part of that, and get to the more important matter: The vitalists only needed the vital spirit to explain something that didn't really exist in the first place.

Quite right. But subjective experience obviously exists. I am experiencing the color black right now as I look at my keyboard; my experience of blackness exists self-evidently, and no amount of semantic obfuscation can force me to deny this. My metaphysical ideas of what accounts for this blackness may or may not be false, but it is not false that my experience of blackness exists.

It is my opinion (currently) that Chalmers has erected the same brand of straw-man by first postulating that there is such a thing as a Final Draft of "the actual (complete; indivisible) experience", and then trying to figure out how neuronal functions "give rise" to this thing that doesn't really exist in the first place. That's what a "straw-man" is, isn't it?

Chalmers does not postulate that something like a complete, indivisible experience exists. He only makes plain the observation that subjective experience of some sort exists, and proceeds from there.

Subjective experience can be plainly observed? How plainly, exactly? I never notice the constant saccades of my eyes or seperateness of the functions of my visual cortex (each function taking place on it's own, and never "meeting up" with the others). No, subjective experience is, indeed, observed in the 1st person, but it is a compactification of information that did not get processed at the same time, and did not arrive at some final destination. This compactification may be computed (in the brain) as "reality", but it clearly cannot be.

Ah, so saccades of the eyes are subjective experience as well? Come on, that's nonsense. The fact to be explained is not so much that you do not notice the saccades of your eyes as it is that you notice your eyes from a 1st person perspective to begin with.

Information does not get processed at the same time-- so what? The fact remains that I have subjective experience, and the fact remains that a good theory of consciousness should make it intelligible how that is so. By this criterion, the neural reductionist theory of consciousness, taken on its own without any further fundamental assumptions, is not a good one.

From the definitions of H2O and spacetime, you are right, they are indeed the logical outcome of their underlying processes. But, have you ever read Consciousness Explained, by Dan Dennett? From the evolutionary innovations on the proto-human brain, it is the logical necessity that their be a brain that plays this constant trick on itself.

Perhaps consciousness was necessary to help our ancestors survive, but this approach only begs the question. Evolution can only endow us with consciousness if consciousness is an ontological possibility in the first place. How is subjective experience ontologically possible? The reductionist approach makes it evident how cognitive functions are possible in the same sense that it makes evident how the functions of a pocket calculator are possible, but it so far has said nothing meaningful about subjective experience.

No. What is missing is a complete experience. Sub-experience is all over the place, but that one thing appears to be missing.

Explain what sub-experience is and how it is entailed by physics. If you define sub-experience as so many cognitive functions, however, you would be better served to simply call it sub-functions or functions. Experience implies feeling, and it is not clear how objective functions can account for feeling even in principle.

Any experience at all? You have, I'm sure, understood the ways I've explained the computation, memorization, and recall of the neocortex.

These are not experiences. These are functions. You can explain the functional workings of human memory, but in no richer sense than you can explain computer memory. The difference is that a human experiences memory while a computer (as we plausibly assume) does not. And precisely what you have not explained is eg the experience of memory.

From this, you have a workable framework for the processes by which the brain processes the world around it.

Agreed. But you do not have a workable framework for the processes by which the brain experiences the world around it.

With all of this information being processed, but never meeting up at any place in the brain (or anywhere else, for you Dualists [;)]), the question isn't "How do they every sum up to experience?", it's "Do they ever sum up to experience", and, "If not, what is the evolutionary reason for having a brain that convinces itself that they do?".

Simply saying "how does the brain convince itself that it is conscious?" begs the question. In order for the brain to convince itself of anything there must be a 1st person perspective for which the convincing is done. (This does not assume an indivisible self, only a certain perspective.) You have assumed the existence of the 1st person perspective when in reality the task is to show how it exists in the first place. You might as well try convincing a rock that it is conscious.

No, no, no, if the experience is "divisible", then it is not a coherent picture of anything, but merely a set of "sub-experiences", which are the individual computations of different kinds of information

Still haven't explained how computations can account for consciousness. For that you need an extra assertion such as "computation so and so is conscious in such and such a way as a simple fact of nature." That is an explanation, but not a reductive explanation.

Ignoring a problem is not - you're right - a satisfactory approach at all. But Dennett is not ignoring the "hard problem". He's examining it directly, and showing it to be a straw-man, with no substance at all (aside from those things which Chalmers refers to as the "easy problems").

Actually, Chalmers shows how Dennett's reasoning is flawed insofar as Dennett has a wonderful tendency to argue in circles.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
But all you stated was more necessary conditions.

No, I explained how those conditions which we established at the start make it intelligible that the microscopic properties completely account for the macroscopic ones.

How does the ability to take on the shape of the container you are in bring about liquidity? Of course, it doesn't; that's just part of the definition of "liquid" itself.

Indeed.

However, the only reason I can say that with impunity is because nobody has postulated that there is anything else to it.

Because there is nothing else to it. Everything that calls out for an explanation has been explained.

Subjective experience is one such phenomenon that calls out for explanation. It is not postulated, but rather it self-evidently exists. And to this point it has not yet been explained.

[Zero]

I think the point you are missing, hypnagogue, is that consciousness is computation, and that makes all of your speculation meaningless. Saying that the workings of the brain define subjective experience accounts for everything in a neat little bundle.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Zero
I think the point you are missing, hypnagogue, is that consciousness is computation, and that makes all of your speculation meaningless. Saying that the workings of the brain define subjective experience accounts for everything in a neat little bundle.

I recognize this position but I reject it.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11986&perpage=12&pagenumber=4

[Zero]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
I recognize this position but I reject it.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11986&perpage=12&pagenumber=4 Flawed analogy disguising as good reasoning. Great attempt, though. *grins*

[hypnagogue]

I love your style Zero. I knew I shouldn't have bothered with your attitude, but I won't make that mistake again. *plonk*

[Zero]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
I love your style Zero. I knew I shouldn't have bothered with your attitude, but I won't make that mistake again. *plonk* Nice...you don't have a leg to stand on, and you blame ME?!?

[Visitor]

Regarding the indivisible self, I can tell you for a fact that the self IS divisible. We on europa have a science that is far ahead of earth's. Medical experiments were done many years ago to not only separate the 2 halves of a brain, but transplant them into separate people. Yes, we did this to abducted humans but earth science will soon be able to perform the same experiment and I am sure someone will somwhere as soon as nerve regeneration technology and a few small problems like rejection are solved. When half a brain is removed from someone and transplanted to another body where the original brain has been removed, two distinct and unique individuals are created. Experiments have also shown that there is no psychic link between them so the only conclusion that can be made is that the self is divisible. Earth science should be advanced enough to perform this experiment within the next 50 years or so.

[g)]

[Jeebus]

Originally posted by Jeebus
My question is … doesn't behavior, in a broad sense, of the neurophysical system of materialistic functions approach -- directly compatible or parallel to cognitive experience on the physical level without the reductive explanation?[/b]
Originally posted by hypnagogue
Can you rephrase this? I'm not sure from your wording exactly what you are getting at.

All right let me try this again. Thanks for the info by the way.

Do you think that behaviour, itself, is congruent to materialistic functions of physical compatability? And do you think that materialistic functions, in turn are directly compatible with the opinion of experience? I think the two: behavior and experience are directly parallel to one another. Meaning, if you are experiencing one, then the other must follow.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Zero
I'd say the "extra part" is either a flaw in reasoning or recollection. The reasoning flaw is in assuming the existance of something that is so far unproven, and unneeded to explain things. The other flaw is one of perception, in assuming that small bits cannot make up a bigger "whole"(although calling consciousness a "whole" is iffy at best). I'd describe it as similar to the way our brains interpret optical illusions, where we seek to fill in "gaps", even when there is no logical reason to do so.

I think Daniel Dennett used a similar illustration, and it's a good one (IMO). Our brain is trying to make sense of all this data, while compactifying (I know there's a better word than that, used with regard to computers...compressing?) it all (and "filling in the blanks", as you put it) in order to make recall easier.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Mentat
I think Daniel Dennett used a similar illustration, and it's a good one (IMO). Our brain is trying to make sense of all this data, while compactifying (I know there's a better word than that, used with regard to computers...compressing?) it all (and "filling in the blanks", as you put it) in order to make recall easier. I think the best word would probably be "integrating"...we integrate partial data into "whole bits" for easier processing, including the "internal data" we call consciousness. It is conceptual shorthand, and useful most of the time.

I'm looking over at my BEAUTIFUL guitar, not 10 feet from me. Intellectually, I know it is made out of wood, metal, paint, etc. However, I never ever think of it as the sum of its components, I always think of it as being of a whole. "Consciousness" is really the same thing, except it is a collection of processes as well as physical parts.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
What does it mean to perceive that you are alive?


I don't know really; I just know, at any given time, that I am alive.


Quite right. But subjective experience obviously exists. I am experiencing the color black right now as I look at my keyboard; my experience of blackness exists self-evidently, and no amount of semantic obfuscation can force me to deny this. My metaphysical ideas of what accounts for this blackness may or may not be false, but it is not false that my experience of blackness exists.


Your experience of the color black does exist, but as a convenient computational tool of the brain, to contrast one wavelength of light from another. My point is that the concept of a complete picture of a black keyboard (to stick to your example) must clearly be an illusion of compactification (and "filling in the blanks") as the part of the brain that processes "black" is not the same that processes the shape and texture of the keys, and that is not the same as the part that recalls previous such images, and these separate parts never meet up...meaning that there are separate computations occurring, and yet you are fooled into believing that there is one coherent image in your "mind's eye".


Chalmers does not postulate that something like a complete, indivisible experience exists. He only makes plain the observation that subjective experience of some sort exists, and proceeds from there.


Then define "subjective experience", in Chalmer's terms.


Ah, so saccades of the eyes are subjective experience as well? Come on, that's nonsense. The fact to be explained is not so much that you do not notice the saccades of your eyes as it is that you notice your eyes from a 1st person perspective to begin with.

Information does not get processed at the same time-- so what? The fact remains that I have subjective experience...


Is that fact - which you are defending - that you have subjective experience, or that you had a subjective experience. Because of processing outside information in terms of previously-processed information (which is part of Chalmers' "easy problem") is what you call "subjective experience", then we have nothing to debate.


...and the fact remains that a good theory of consciousness should make it intelligible how that is so. By this criterion, the neural reductionist theory of consciousness, taken on its own without any further fundamental assumptions, is not a good one.


It should make it intelligible how what is so? How a computer (organic or otherwise) relates new stimulus to previous stimuli?


Perhaps consciousness was necessary to help our ancestors survive, but this approach only begs the question. Evolution can only endow us with consciousness if consciousness is an ontological possibility in the first place. How is subjective experience ontologically possible? The reductionist approach makes it evident how cognitive functions are possible in the same sense that it makes evident how the functions of a pocket calculator are possible, but it so far has said nothing meaningful about subjective experience.


I ask again, what is subjective experience, in Chalmers' terms or in your own.


Explain what sub-experience is and how it is entailed by physics. If you define sub-experience as so many cognitive functions, however, you would be better served to simply call it sub-functions or functions. Experience implies feeling, and it is not clear how objective functions can account for feeling even in principle.


Unless feelings are physical functions, instead of being "accounted for" by them. Again, you're going on the assumption that (for example) an excitation of cells in my finger - due to being poked by a needle - "gives rise" to pain; whereas scientists seem pretty well content to say that the excitation of cells is pain, and thus one needn't account for pain "in terms of excited cells"...this would be a non-sequiter.


These are not experiences. These are functions. You can explain the functional workings of human memory, but in no richer sense than you can explain computer memory.


Why is that distinction so imporant?


The difference is that a human experiences memory while a computer (as we plausibly assume) does not. And precisely what you have not explained is eg the experience of memory.


The "experience" of memory, or the experience of a memory?


Agreed. But you do not have a workable framework for the processes by which the brain experiences the world around it.


What if "processing" = "experiencing"? What if all things that process must also "experience", since the two terms are synonymous? That is what Dennett would call the equivalence of content and consciousness (I think).


Simply saying "how does the brain convince itself that it is conscious?" begs the question. In order for the brain to convince itself of anything there must be a 1st person perspective for which the convincing is done. (This does not assume an indivisible self, only a certain perspective.) You have assumed the existence of the 1st person perspective when in reality the task is to show how it exists in the first place. You might as well try convincing a rock that it is conscious.


The brain has a 1st person view because of the evolved ability for self-recognition. An ape can show this by recognizing itself in the mirror. There is nothing special about this. It's a matter of degree that seperates a dog's licking itself from a human's pondering about himself.


Still haven't explained how computations can account for consciousness. For that you need an extra assertion such as "computation so and so is conscious in such and such a way as a simple fact of nature." That is an explanation, but not a reductive explanation.


Unless I say "computation = consciousness, since consciousness is just another term for the complex computation of external stimuli that our mind does all the time".

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Zero
I think the best word would probably be "integrating"...we integrate partial data into "whole bits" for easier processing, including the "internal data" we call consciousness. It is conceptual shorthand, and useful most of the time.

I'm looking over at my BEAUTIFUL guitar, not 10 feet from me. Intellectually, I know it is made out of wood, metal, paint, etc. However, I never ever think of it as the sum of its components, I always think of it as being of a whole. "Consciousness" is really the same thing, except it is a collection of processes as well as physical parts.

Also a good analogy. Indeed, Broad would probably say that "guitar" is an "emergent" phenomenon from those materials that you mention - whereas a Dennett-like philosopher of guitars would simply say that "guitar" = "such-and-such material" and so it would be foolish to try and figure out how a guitar can "arise" from those materials, since it is those materials.

Now, I think hypnagogue would point out that a guitar is a bad analogy to subjective experience, since, when you take it from a microscopic perspective and build toward more and more complexity, the logical outcome is a guitar; whereas, when you build up from the cellular structure to the structure and function of neurons, the logical outcome is a brain...not subjective experience.

Then, I would say something like: "Subjective experience" is a vague term that is clouding the issue. You can build up from cellular functions into a machine that has an extension (the neocortex) which has no other purpose but to process/experience (synonymous terms, AFAICT) the world around it, and thus the logical outcome is a "subjective experiencer".

[Zero]

Originally posted by Mentat
Also a good analogy. Indeed, Broad would probably say that "guitar" is an "emergent" phenomenon from those materials that you mention - whereas a Dennett-like philosopher of guitars would simply say that "guitar" = "such-and-such material" and so it would be foolish to try and figure out how a guitar can "arise" from those materials, since it is those materials.

Now, I think hypnagogue would point out that a guitar is a bad analogy to subjective experience, since, when you take it from a microscopic perspective and build toward more and more complexity, the logical outcome is a guitar; whereas, when you build up from the cellular structure to the structure and function of neurons, the logical outcome is a brain...not subjective experience.

Then, I would say something like: "Subjective experience" is a vague term that is clouding the issue. You can build up from cellular functions into a machine that has an extension (the neocortex) which has no other purpose but to process/experience (synonymous terms, AFAICT) the world around it, and thus the logical outcome is a "subjective experiencer". Maybe, to extend the analogy, you describe the brain as a guitar, and "consciousness" as the music which emerges from it? We know there is nothing metaphysical about a G chord, but it an apt description, since there is a similar(if false) "non-physical" dimension to music and consciousness

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Zero
Maybe, to extend the analogy, you describe the brain as a guitar, and "consciousness" as the music which emerges from it? We know there is nothing metaphysical about a G chord, but it an apt description, since there is a similar(if false) "non-physical" dimension to music and consciousness

This is much like the old analogy of the steam engine vs. the steam that arises therefrom. Of course, the music is qualitatively different from the guitar itself, but can be reductively explained in terms of the vibration of the strings on the guitar...the problem would be with people who assume that the music itself has some separate existence, and must thus be explained completely separate from the functions which "give rise" to it.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Mentat
This is much like the old analogy of the steam engine vs. the steam that arises therefrom. Of course, the music is qualitatively different from the guitar itself, but can be reductively explained in terms of the vibration of the strings on the guitar...the problem would be with people who assume that the music itself has some separate existence, and must thus be explained completely separate from the functions which "give rise" to it. There's one in every crowd, isn't there? Of course, we both know that "music" is a purely physical phenomenon...

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Zero
There's one in every crowd, isn't there? Of course, we both know that "music" is a purely physical phenomenon...

As is every other one, IMO...which is why I have a problem with people saying that a physical explanation isn't good enough, but not providing a clear-cut alternative...of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I could just as easily be wrong as anyone else (in fact, being 15 years old, and having spent my whole life reading books instead "experiencing" life, there are some who'd say I have a much lesser chance of being right about this (think about it, how could I understand subjective experience as well as someone who's been "experiencing" so much more for so much longer?)), but I like my idea better, so I'm promoting it and seeing how well it holds up.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Mentat
As is every other one, IMO...which is why I have a problem with people saying that a physical explanation isn't good enough, but not providing a clear-cut alternative...of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I could just as easily be wrong as anyone else (in fact, being 15 years old, and having spent my whole life reading books instead "experiencing" life, there are some who'd say I have a much lesser chance of being right about this (think about it, how could I understand subjective experience as well as someone who's been "experiencing" so much more for so much longer?)), but I like my idea better, so I'm promoting it and seeing how well it holds up. Uh huh...the odd thing is that I am twice as old as you are, have had alot of the experiences that would lead people to believe in pseudorational ideas, and yet I remain firmly grounded in materialism. I've done the OBE, estatic meditative states, the whole gamut of "mystical" experiences.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
Your experience of the color black does exist, but as a convenient computational tool of the brain, to contrast one wavelength of light from another.

You have not illustrated any connection between computation and experience here. How can experience be derived from the axioms of materialism?

My point is that the concept of a complete picture of a black keyboard (to stick to your example) must clearly be an illusion of compactification (and "filling in the blanks") as the part of the brain that processes "black" is not the same that processes the shape and texture of the keys, and that is not the same as the part that recalls previous such images, and these separate parts never meet up...meaning that there are separate computations occurring, and yet you are fooled into believing that there is one coherent image in your "mind's eye".

This is really irrelevant to the central problem. Suppose I cut a red ping pong ball in half and place both sides over my eyes. What I see is a uniform red field with no other discernable visual properties. Now, what you need to explain is how it is that I experience this redness. If you tell a story about computation in my brain, it remains as mysterious to me as ever why these computations entail my subjective experience of redness.

This is the point where you say "subjective experience IS the computation." But from the purely physical definition of 'computation,' this does not follow. Such a relation cannot be logically derived from talk of physical functions; you need a fundamental assumption to the effect that it is just a brute fact of nature that computation has an experiential aspect to it. That's fine, and indeed it appears to be the route we must take; but such a route necessarily departs from materialism's viewpoint of focusing on only structures and functions.

Then define "subjective experience", in Chalmer's terms.

Feeling, in the general sense that any subjective experience is 'felt.' Or, 'what it is like to be,' although I know you don't like that one.

If I did not have subjective experience, I would not see 'redness' in the ganzfeld scenario above, even though my brain might still perform rich and meaningful computations on my visual input (as is illustrated in the case of blindsight).

At bottom, this is such a difficult issue because one cannot really define subjective experience without an appeal to it. It cannot be defined in terms of other things because it is fundamentally intrinsic and not extrinsic. ('Redness' for example is defined with respect to itself, whereas something like 'mass' is defined with respect to other distinct entities such as force and acceleration.) For all I know, you do not really have subjective experience and this is why you have no problem reducing it entirely to extrinsic properties. [6)] I doubt this, though.

Is that fact - which you are defending - that you have subjective experience, or that you had a subjective experience. Because of processing outside information in terms of previously-processed information (which is part of Chalmers' "easy problem") is what you call "subjective experience", then we have nothing to debate.

When I say I have subjective experience, what I mean is that while I am awake I continuously experience qualities such as 'redness' and 'softness.'

It should make it intelligible how what is so? How a computer (organic or otherwise) relates new stimulus to previous stimuli?

Makes it intelligible how it is that, eg, I experience 'redness' in the ganzfeld scenario rather than having no visual experience at all despite still being able to interact coherently with my environment on the basis of visual information, like a person with blindsight.

Unless feelings are physical functions, instead of being "accounted for" by them. Again, you're going on the assumption that (for example) an excitation of cells in my finger - due to being poked by a needle - "gives rise" to pain; whereas scientists seem pretty well content to say that the excitation of cells is pain, and thus one needn't account for pain "in terms of excited cells"...this would be a non-sequiter.

No, put away the 'gives rise' complaint, because I have already explained how it does not characterize my position. "Accounting for" as I am using it is not synonymous with "giving rise to." I accept that water IS a clump of H2O molecules, and yet I still can say that it is intelligible how the properties of H2O molecules can account for the properties of water (whereas it would not be coherent in this situation to say 'give rise to').

Why is that distinction so imporant?

The distinction between experience and function is not just important, it is critical. A function is defined in purely extrinsic terms, whereas subjective experience is defined in purely intrinsic terms. There are fundamental differences between the natures of these two things that cannot be ignored. Our task is to traverse those differences, not ignore them from the start.

The brain has a 1st person view because of the evolved ability for self-recognition. An ape can show this by recognizing itself in the mirror. There is nothing special about this. It's a matter of degree that seperates a dog's licking itself from a human's pondering about himself.

By 1st person perspective I mean a perspective anchored in / defined by subjective experience. It does not automatically follow that a system computing information about itself has a 1st person perspective in this sense.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
Also a good analogy. Indeed, Broad would probably say that "guitar" is an "emergent" phenomenon from those materials that you mention - whereas a Dennett-like philosopher of guitars would simply say that "guitar" = "such-and-such material" and so it would be foolish to try and figure out how a guitar can "arise" from those materials, since it is those materials.

Come on Mentat. Did you read the paper carefully? Or are you just inserting your own notions of what you think Broad must be saying based on the fact that he even mentions 'emergence' in the first place? By the definitions stated at the outset, a guitar is obviously what Broad would call 'mechanistically explainable' thing. Go check up on it.

I would also like to say that music from a guitar is a terrible analogy for what I am saying. Music in the objective sense is just pressure waves moving through air, and it is emminently clear that there is no problem in explaining pressure waves moving through the air using an entirely physical, reductionist explanation. Music in the subjective sense-- the music that we consciously hear-- is an entirely different story. But clearly the subjective experience of music is a problem of consciousness, not a problem of guitars.

Then, I would say something like: "Subjective experience" is a vague term that is clouding the issue. You can build up from cellular functions into a machine that has an extension (the neocortex) which has no other purpose but to process/experience (synonymous terms, AFAICT) the world around it, and thus the logical outcome is a "subjective experiencer".

If processing and experiencing mean the same thing to you, why is it that numerous brain processes do not reveal themselves in subjective awareness? You should say something like "certain kinds of processes are certain kinds of experiences."

Again-- I am not begrudging you this metaphysical assertion, but I am asking you to realize the consequences. Materialism describes a closed system of extrinsically related entities. The properties of subjective experience are intrinsic. Materialism cannot say anything about intrinsic properties by definition, and so what you wind up with is an ontological framework that is no longer materialism. Nor does this new framework contradict materialism-- it just adds to it.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
You have not illustrated any connection between computation and experience here. How can experience be derived from the axioms of materialism?


The real question may be (in David Hume's terms), "What else is there to establish? If one wavelength has one effect on the visual cortex, then what's the point of establishing 'why' it has that effect? It just does."


This is really irrelevant to the central problem. Suppose I cut a red ping pong ball in half and place both sides over my eyes. What I see is a uniform red field with no other discernable visual properties. Now, what you need to explain is how it is that I experience this redness. If you tell a story about computation in my brain, it remains as mysterious to me as ever why these computations entail my subjective experience of redness.

This is the point where you say "subjective experience IS the computation." But from the purely physical definition of 'computation,' this does not follow. Such a relation cannot be logically derived from talk of physical functions; you need a fundamental assumption to the effect that it is just a brute fact of nature that computation has an experiential aspect to it. That's fine, and indeed it appears to be the route we must take; but such a route necessarily departs from materialism's viewpoint of focusing on only structures and functions.


Not necessarily. A materialistic paradigm could easily hold to the idea that all of computation is a form (however primitive) of "experience"; and that "experience" is nothing more than an irritating term that gets thrown around when one isn't satisfied with the idea that our brains our computational machines.


Feeling, in the general sense that any subjective experience is 'felt.' Or, 'what it is like to be,' although I know you don't like that one.


All subjective experience is "felt"...what is the meaning of "felt"?


If I did not have subjective experience, I would not see 'redness' in the ganzfeld scenario above, even though my brain might still perform rich and meaningful computations on my visual input (as is illustrated in the case of blindsight).


Sure enough, but that's the simple difference between an "impression" and an "idea" (in Hume's terms), and is dealt with in almost every theory that I've mentioned to you - in the end, the point is really just how much attention is payed to the stimulus by which parts of the brain.


At bottom, this is such a difficult issue because one cannot really define subjective experience without an appeal to it. It cannot be defined in terms of other things because it is fundamentally intrinsic and not extrinsic. ('Redness' for example is defined with respect to itself, whereas something like 'mass' is defined with respect to other distinct entities such as force and acceleration.)


And what is "force", and what is "acceleration"? If we really want to reduce to the most fundamental realm, we will fail, no matter what we are working at. However, I see no point in reducing "redness" (for example), since "red" is the way that that wavelength of light "impressed" itself (again, in Hume's terms...I have a new thread on this that you might enjoy Check it out. (http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15734)) on you in the first instance, and so it is how you remember it. I really wonder what a Chalmerean expects will happen to an advanced computational machine who's primary goal is interpreting/processing visual data (I'm speaking of the visual cortex, of course).


For all I know, you do not really have subjective experience and this is why you have no problem reducing it entirely to extrinsic properties. [6)] I doubt this, though.


[:D]


When I say I have subjective experience, what I mean is that while I am awake I continuously experience qualities such as 'redness' and 'softness.'


When you say you have experience you mean that you experience? And you said Dennett was circular? [;)] (just joking, though I would like a bit of clarification).


Makes it intelligible how it is that, eg, I experience 'redness' in the ganzfeld scenario rather than having no visual experience at all despite still being able to interact coherently with my environment on the basis of visual information, like a person with blindsight.


"Interact coherently on the basis of visual information"...what exactly is "visual information" if not the "redness" you percieve?


No, put away the 'gives rise' complaint, because I have already explained how it does not characterize my position. "Accounting for" as I am using it is not synonymous with "giving rise to." I accept that water IS a clump of H2O molecules, and yet I still can say that it is intelligible how the properties of H2O molecules can account for the properties of water (whereas it would not be coherent in this situation to say 'give rise to').


I want to put away this complaint, but your reasoning here seems to depend on redundancy...if you say that P1 = water is a clump of H2O molecules, then P2 = properties of H2O molecules can account for the properties of water = properties of A equal properties of A = redundancy.


The distinction between experience and function is not just important, it is critical. A function is defined in purely extrinsic terms, whereas subjective experience is defined in purely intrinsic terms.


Maybe that's the problem. As I asked before, what does subjective experience look like from the 3rd person perspective? It must look like something from both perspectives, otherwise I (as the completely objective philosopher) have no reason to believe it exists at all (at least not as you define it).


By 1st person perspective I mean a perspective anchored in / defined by subjective experience. It does not automatically follow that a system computing information about itself has a 1st person perspective in this sense.

You use the term "subjective experience" too much without having properly defined it, IMO. Anyway, if a system is conscious, then it will be conscious in the 1st person - practically axiomatic - right?

[Zero]

I feel like the non-materialist view of subjectivity is completely circular, in that non-materialists start with the premise that subjective experience cannot be due to purely physical phenomenon. However it is described, it always comes down to unfounded assertions in the premise, so the conclusion is logically unfounded.Materialism describes a closed system of extrinsically related entities. The properties of subjective experience are intrinsic. Materialism cannot say anything about intrinsic properties by definition, and so what you wind up with is an ontological framework that is no longer materialism. This, for instance, begins by assuming that subjective experience is outside the realm of materialism...based on what, exactly?

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
Come on Mentat. Did you read the paper carefully? Or are you just inserting your own notions of what you think Broad must be saying based on the fact that he even mentions 'emergence' in the first place? By the definitions stated at the outset, a guitar is obviously what Broad would call 'mechanistically explainable' thing. Go check up on it.


As I recall, Broad talked about composites (things that couldn't be explained without taking into account all of the active factors at once...as opposed to those things which could be explained by explaining one aspect at a time), and these seemed synonymous to "emergent properties" when I read it.


I would also like to say that music from a guitar is a terrible analogy for what I am saying. Music in the objective sense is just pressure waves moving through air, and it is emminently clear that there is no problem in explaining pressure waves moving through the air using an entirely physical, reductionist explanation. Music in the subjective sense-- the music that we consciously hear-- is an entirely different story. But clearly the subjective experience of music is a problem of consciousness, not a problem of guitars.


The point of the analogy was not to explain the music, or to explain the guitar, but to explain the music as a function of something done to the guitar (thus connecting a material function with an energetic one, but having no difficulty with it since sound is also physical, and is clearly produced by vibration which is what the guitar is doing...of course, if "consciousness" were clearly produced by discreet units of computation, firing synchronously, then we'd have no problem here either...as it is, the guitar may have been a bad analogy, but not completely "off-the-wall" either, since it would be nice (and may be possible) for consciousness to be thus explanable).


If processing and experiencing mean the same thing to you, why is it that numerous brain processes do not reveal themselves in subjective awareness? You should say something like "certain kinds of processes are certain kinds of experiences."


Ok, visual kinds of processing are visual experience (for one example). Does that help the "redness" question at all?


Again-- I am not begrudging you this metaphysical assertion, but I am asking you to realize the consequences. Materialism describes a closed system of extrinsically related entities. The properties of subjective experience are intrinsic. Materialism cannot say anything about intrinsic properties by definition, and so what you wind up with is an ontological framework that is no longer materialism. Nor does this new framework contradict materialism-- it just adds to it.

Materialism, at its core, simply states that all things are physical, and there is nothing else but the physical. In truth, consciousness must be a physical process (regardless of whether it has anything to do with the brain, or the neocortex, or anything else that Materialists like to think it's connected to), otherwise it would not be able to interact with physical beings, as the connection between them could neither be physical nor non-physical (this, btw, is not dealt with in the "Matrix"-type analogy, as this still requires a conscious brain, somewhere down the line of infinite regress...it's logically useless at explaining consciousness as it reduces ad infinitum).

[Zero]

Actually, I have decided that the guitar analogy is better than I thought it was, since the way chords are put together is similar to the materialistic viewpoint of thought. A chord is a process as much as it is something with physical properties expressed as sound waves. A chord is made up of individual notes all played together simultaneously. If you break it down into individual notes, it is no longer a chord. In the same way, what we would consider to be a thought is a process of neurological functioning of the brain, but we cannot point to a single neuron's activity and say "aha! that's where the thought is!" Thinking is created by the synchronous activities of individual parts, acting in concert(slight pun intended), in the same way that a chord is the combination of string vibrations.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Zero
Actually, I have decided that the guitar analogy is better than I thought it was, since the way chords are put together is similar to the materialistic viewpoint of thought. A chord is a process as much as it is something with physical properties expressed as sound waves. A chord is made up of individual notes all played together simultaneously. If you break it down into individual notes, it is no longer a chord. In the same way, what we would consider to be a thought is a process of neurological functioning of the brain, but we cannot point to a single neuron's activity and say "aha! that's where the thought is!" Thinking is created by the synchronous activities of individual parts, acting in concert(slight pun intended), in the same way that a chord is the combination of string vibrations.

But it is still logically coherent how the notes combine to make a chord, but not logically coherent how neural/computational processes combine to form an experience. Sorry, no analogy.

[Zero]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
But it is still logically coherent how the notes combine to make a chord, but not logically coherent how neural/computational processes combine to form an experience. Sorry, no analogy. Sure it is logically coherent...where's the flaw in it?

[Fliption]

Hypnagogue,

I see this thread treading dangerously into the useless areas of debate about what "materialism" means and what it means to be "physical". This is all a huge waste of time as many past threads have shown. Isn't the real question asking about the ability to reductively explain consciousness? And if this isn't possible then we need to consider adding consciouness as a fundamental property of reality? If this is the main point of discussion then what does it matter whether the resulting fundamental property is physical or not?

Even if your opponents here eventually agreed that consciousness is a fundamental element of nature(which is seems they are by simply asserting it is the process), they would still say it is physical. So the point about being physical or not doesn't seem relevant and just bogs down the real issue. I think your opponents here are getting sidetracked because of your use of the word "materialism". I had interpreted your use of that word merely as a way to describe the current view. Not that you were necessarily claiming a distinction between something physical or nonphysical.

Is my interpretation correct? If not then I fear we will have to revisit the whole physical/non-physical debate again. And if you think this discussion is difficult, wait until you have to explain what a non-physical thing is to someone who thinks physical means "everything that truly exists".

[hypnagogue]

Fliption, I would have to agree with your concerns. As far as the 'physical' thing goes, I have tried to make it explicit that physical processes cannot explain consciousness insofar as they are defined extrinsically whereas consciousness is defined intrinsically. I have also made arguments for why we cannot simply recast consciousness in an extrinsic perspective simply for the purposes of making it superficially transparent to reasoning based on extrinsic phenomena. For these reasons, I would contend that any phenomenon that could reasonably be called physical (extrinsic) could not be a suitable basis for a complete explanation of consciousness, even in principle.

In any case, I'm a bit worn out from rehashing the same arguments over and over-- it seems we're at a point where each side has said what they wanted to say, and no real progress is made in discussion because we hold different fundamental viewpoints on what subjective experience is. I hold that what is plainly apparent about subjective experience must be explained, whereas the reductionist tries to bypass this immense difficulty by paradoxically holding that what is apparent does not exist or is an illusion-- as if calling it an illusion frees us from any obligation to then coherently and completely explain that illusion. At this point it seems clear to me that we're just talking past eachother, so the whole discussion might as well be shelved for now.

[Mentat]

Hypnagogue, I don't want to get side-tracked into analogies, or into that physical/non-physical debate, any more than you do. Perhaps you could just respond to my previous post (as there are a lot more questions than assertions in that one, and these questions need answering if I'm ever going to agree with you), please, and I'll try my best to see your side of it...

P.S., not the post above Zero's, the one that's two posts before it.

[Fliption]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
As far as the 'physical' thing goes, I have tried to make it explicit that physical processes cannot explain consciousness insofar as they are defined extrinsically whereas consciousness is defined intrinsically.


Seems I could have used you in those physical/non-physical defining sessions. [:)]


At this point it seems clear to me that we're just talking past eachother, so the whole discussion might as well be shelved for now. [/B]

Well I can certainly understand where you are. The really depressing thing about it is that in a few weeks you'll see threads that will present the opposing view with almost complete certainty as if none of these issues were ever discussed and unresolved. I've seen it happen alot. But the good news is that I think you've raised the bar in the philosophy forum especially in this area. This topic wasn't getting anywhere near this kind of quality discussion before. Your patience is incredible and I've learned quite a bit from you, these dicussions and the various sources provided. That's what I try to keep in mind many times when I am engaged in what I know to be a useless attempt to get someone to see a certain view. That many people that don't feel so competent to particpate might be reading and learning. And perhaps even offer a unique perspective 20 pages later!

[Mentat]

At this point, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank hypnagogue, Canute, and Fliption for your patience with me. I can tell I'm probably rather irritating to you guys, but you've put up with me, and I am very grateful for that.

Of course, I hope you will listen seriously to my newer posts, as you have to the previous ones, but I can't blame you if you don't - you must be sick of this topic by now.

[hypnagogue]

OK Mentat, since you requested it here's my response to your post.

Originally posted by Mentat
The real question may be (in David Hume's terms), "What else is there to establish? If one wavelength has one effect on the visual cortex, then what's the point of establishing 'why' it has that effect? It just does."

I think the spirit of science is not just to catalogue a lists of causes and effects, but to capture a deep understanding of why things are the way they are. We cannot ask this question ad infinitum, since there are certain epistemic limits on how far we can go, but still we should not stifle our attempts to understand-- to answer the 'why' question. For instance, had certain questions not been posed in the 19th/20th century, we might be content to say that the regularities observed in the periodic table are just a brute fact of nature, and that there would be no point to trying to establish any deeper understanding of them-- when in fact, we can now explain these regularities using quantum mechanics, and thereby attain a deeper understanding.

This is a basic issue of how we go about understanding reality. I'm surprised you would so easily shrug off the question. By your reasoning, it would seem we could answer a child's question of "Why is the sky blue?" by saying "Well, whenever the sun is out, the sky is blue-- what's the point of establishing 'why' it has that effect? It just does."

Not necessarily. A materialistic paradigm could easily hold to the idea that all of computation is a form (however primitive) of "experience"; and that "experience" is nothing more than an irritating term that gets thrown around when one isn't satisfied with the idea that our brains our computational machines.

I don't think you are using the term 'experience' as it is normally used in philosophy of mind.

All subjective experience is "felt"...what is the meaning of "felt"?

At bottom, it can only be properly defined with an appeal to your own subjective experience, your own feeling. When you are awake and going about your day, those things of which you are directly aware are those things that you 'feel.' You are in a state of ongoing subjective experience. When you are in a dreamless sleep, you are not feeling anything-- you have no subjective experience. The difference should be quite obvious.

But I can't define subjective experience in such a way as to make it clear what it is even to someone who does not have subjective experience himself (aka a philosophical zombie), somewhat like I can't explain what 'red' is to a colorblind person. The definition of subjective experience is essentially just an appeal to what you know and see from your own 1st person perspective. This should not be regarded as dubious footing for my stance-- certainly it makes subjective experience harder to talk and reason about, but it should not give us humans who subjectively experience all the time reason to doubt its existence.

Sure enough, but that's the simple difference between an "impression" and an "idea" (in Hume's terms), and is dealt with in almost every theory that I've mentioned to you - in the end, the point is really just how much attention is payed to the stimulus by which parts of the brain.

But there is no logical connection between greater expenditure of computational resources and subjective awareness, as there is between, say, freedom of motion of microscopic molecules and freedom of motion of a macroscopic liquid. In order to establish such logical connections you need extra assumptions, and (as I have argued) for these assumptions to work, they must be such that they cannot be neatly fit into a materialist paradigm.

And what is "force", and what is "acceleration"? If we really want to reduce to the most fundamental realm, we will fail, no matter what we are working at.

Agreed.

However, I see no point in reducing "redness" (for example), since "red" is the way that that wavelength of light "impressed" itself (again, in Hume's terms...I have a new thread on this that you might enjoy Check it out. (http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15734)) on you in the first instance, and so it is how you remember it.

Then why is it that people with certain brain lesions can be sensitive to wavelength information from the environment without having visual awareness of color? Why is it that you yourself could be shown to be sensitive to such information without being aware of it, eg through a psychology experiment involving unconscious primes?

I really wonder what a Chalmerean expects will happen to an advanced computational machine who's primary goal is interpreting/processing visual data (I'm speaking of the visual cortex, of course).

Let's call your machine V. If V exists in a world that works precisely as materialism dictates it should, then V should compute complex input/output functions, but there should not be any experience. Why should there be? What logical reasoning starting from the axioms of materialism should lead one to suspect a priori the existence of subjective experience?

We don't have to imagine hypothetical worlds to get this result either. People with blindsight have advanced computational machines whose primary goal is interpreting/processing visual data, and on the basis of those computations on visual inputs they can even interact in coherent and complex ways with their environment, yet they do not have corresponding visual awareness in some (or in some cases, all) of their visual field.

When you say you have experience you mean that you experience? And you said Dennett was circular? [;)] (just joking, though I would like a bit of clarification).

Well, all definitions must be circular at bottom by necessity (as you seem to agree). But logical arguments that draw inferences from such definitions/axioms needn't, indeed shouldn't, be circular.

"Interact coherently on the basis of visual information"...what exactly is "visual information" if not the "redness" you percieve?

It is information encoded in patterns of neural activity. Again, blindsighted people display the ability to process visual information without any attendent subjective experience of it.

Maybe that's the problem. As I asked before, what does subjective experience look like from the 3rd person perspective? It must look like something from both perspectives, otherwise I (as the completely objective philosopher) have no reason to believe it exists at all (at least not as you define it).

Yes, I would agree that the completely objective philosopher should have no reason to believe in subjective experience at all. But in fact, such a philosopher is only denying the manifest, since he (you) knows in a very direct sense that subjective experience exists from his own 1st person experience of it. This is a philosophical conundrum to be sure, but still we must live with it-- there is no progress in denying what you know to exist. If anything I think it shows the completely objective stance to be an incomplete one. The objective model of reality does not cover all that there is to cover.

You use the term "subjective experience" too much without having properly defined it, IMO. Anyway, if a system is conscious, then it will be conscious in the 1st person - practically axiomatic - right?

Yes. The way I have been using these terms, they are basically equivalent.

[hypnagogue]

I'd like to add one more thing that bears mentioning. You have claimed that consciousness may be an illusion analogous to the illusion that the sun rotates around the earth. Scientific knowledge shows us that, in fact, the earth rotates around the sun, and you propose that science may show us analogously that consciousness does not really exist as it appears to.

But we are not trying to establish in the case of consciousness if things are the way they appear to be; rather, we are trying to make it intelligible how things could appear the way they do in the first place. Given the heliocentric model, the illusion that the sun rotates around the earth is debunked, but more importantly, it remains entirely intelligible why it appears as if the sun rotates around the earth. We do not flatly deny that it appears as if the sun rotates around the earth to make our case here (as Dennett seems to flatly deny that we subjectively experience); indeed, it still appears this way, even given our superior knowledge. Rather, we show why this appearance nonetheless must logically follow from our apparently contradictory explanation. If our explanation had no recourse but to say the illusion did not exist (and the illusion obviously does exist), it would not be much of an explanation at all.

Analogously, any explanation of consciousness has to make it intelligible how it is that consciousness appears to be the way it appears to be, and I'm afraid any physically reductive explanation of consciousness will never make it intelligible why consciousness should have its apparent properties. Synchronous neural firings in IT account for 'redness'-- ok, but why should I be so compelled by this argument so as to have no recourse but to accept it? How is it that those neural firings logically necessitates consciousness the same way the heliocentric model logically necessitates the appearance of the sun rotating around the earth? You cannot answer this question without recourse to metaphysics. That is the explanitory gap. That is the hard problem.

[Jeebus]

I was thinking about the flaw of consciousness and how subjectivity is one of the main goals for equipoise on both sides of the debate. And what I concluded through reading this thread over and over again was that it drifted off to—what was mostly the inference that we are confusing epistemic objectivity of scientific investigation with the ontological objectivity of each system. Are these two compatible? Maybe.

I think we might be on the right track if we can get this debate back on focus. Hypnagogue is stating the why of the argument or the computational methods that hone each mechanism of consciousness to its own patter of involvement in the subjective system. I believe this is the right track.

Although I'm a big fan of Dennett and I like some of Chalmers's work too, I think the main problem is that we can't just say: "it just does—that is how that system works." That, in itself is an invalid argument and a fallacy of choplogic. We need to focus on the neuropsychological standpoint of the argument and why this system works the way it does.

I think we should find a medium on the differing sides of what consciousness means, and once we find a somewhat agreeable base we should start this debate over; on a clean slate.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
OK Mentat, since you requested it here's my response to your post.


Many thanks [:)].


I think the spirit of science is not just to catalogue a lists of causes and effects, but to capture a deep understanding of why things are the way they are.


I hate to have to object so early in the post (I know you don't believe me, but I actually would like to agree with you), but my readings into the philosophy of science have led to quite a different conclusion. Of course, science is for more than just cataloguing causes and effects, but not much more. The scientific method allows for the questions: "What" are we dealing with? "How" does it work? "Where" is it found? "When" is it found? "How" can we reproduce it?

All of these can (in principle) be grouped into a system that simply catalogues cause and effect. To ask "why" is a non-sequiter in science, though it is welcomed with open arms in most other branches of Philosophy.

btw, I talked alot about this point in a different thread (called something like "the difference between 'What cause' and 'What Purpose' questions").


We cannot ask this question ad infinitum, since there are certain epistemic limits on how far we can go, but still we should not stifle our attempts to understand-- to answer the 'why' question. For instance, had certain questions not been posed in the 19th/20th century, we might be content to say that the regularities observed in the periodic table are just a brute fact of nature, and that there would be no point to trying to establish any deeper understanding of them-- when in fact, we can now explain these regularities using quantum mechanics, and thereby attain a deeper understanding.


And yet, this is simply a "cause" of the afore mentioned "effect". There is still no knowledge as to "why" sub-atomic objects should behave as they do, because "why" (in this context) implies that someone/something purposed for things to be as they are and science cannot assume this.


This is a basic issue of how we go about understanding reality. I'm surprised you would so easily shrug off the question. By your reasoning, it would seem we could answer a child's question of "Why is the sky blue?" by saying "Well, whenever the sun is out, the sky is blue-- what's the point of establishing 'why' it has that effect? It just does."


Unfortunately, unsatisfying as it may be, that is science's answer to those kind of questions. Dawkins was quoted on another thread (I've no idea where) as stating much the same thing, and Stephen Jay Gould was very explicit about that in the video/documentary series "A Glorious Accident".


I don't think you are using the term 'experience' as it is normally used in philosophy of mind.


And how is it usually used? In my experience (which, I admit, isn't much), philosophers like to throw the word "experience" around without ever properly defining it.


At bottom, it can only be properly defined with an appeal to your own subjective experience, your own feeling. When you are awake and going about your day, those things of which you are directly aware are those things that you 'feel.' You are in a state of ongoing subjective experience. When you are in a dreamless sleep, you are not feeling anything-- you have no subjective experience. The difference should be quite obvious.

But I can't define subjective experience in such a way as to make it clear what it is even to someone who does not have subjective experience himself (aka a philosophical zombie), somewhat like I can't explain what 'red' is to a colorblind person. The definition of subjective experience is essentially just an appeal to what you know and see from your own 1st person perspective. This should not be regarded as dubious footing for my stance-- certainly it makes subjective experience harder to talk and reason about, but it should not give us humans who subjectively experience all the time reason to doubt its existence.


Some people constantly experience the "grace of God" in their lives, constantly helping them. Some people constantly experience the "energy fields" of other people. You cannot have a logical discussion with these people because they will always say something like "you can't understand it with your head, you have to just 'feel' it"...this is, to my mind, the death of logical reasoning.


But there is no logical connection between greater expenditure of computational resources and subjective awareness, as there is between, say, freedom of motion of microscopic molecules and freedom of motion of a macroscopic liquid. In order to establish such logical connections you need extra assumptions, and (as I have argued) for these assumptions to work, they must be such that they cannot be neatly fit into a materialist paradigm.


Greater expenditure of computational resources translates to more frequent re-stimulation of the areas that were stimulated when the thing was processed ITFP, which translates to re-experiencing. I don't see the gap.


Then why is it that people with certain brain lesions can be sensitive to wavelength information from the environment without having visual awareness of color? Why is it that you yourself could be shown to be sensitive to such information without being aware of it, eg through a psychology experiment involving unconscious primes?


Because the right parts of my brain (the ones that run "searches", perhaps) aren't being stimulated...besides, wavelength information is color, if I can tell you what color it was later then all that is lacking is speed on my part.


Let's call your machine V. If V exists in a world that works precisely as materialism dictates it should, then V should compute complex input/output functions, but there should not be any experience. Why should there be? What logical reasoning starting from the axioms of materialism should lead one to suspect a priori the existence of subjective experience?


I'll tell you: From materialistic assumptions, it can be allowed that V is an organic machine, born to other organic machines, who have evolved in a social environment. The constant socialization has given rise, over time, to more and more complex thinking ability. At its heart, the "thinking ability" is the ability to process input without the use of mathematics, but (instead) with the use of specialist sub-systems of its CPU. One sub-system is a specialist at processing audio input. It is logical, from a materialistic standpoint, that V would record and process the exact (or as close to exact as possible) sound that it hears ("that it hears" = "that enters its audio sub-system through a sensory organ/reciever), and that this "processing" is smeared out over smaller sub-systems that are subordinates of the full audio sub-system. (Still with me?)

I can now say that, since "experience" is undefined by the opposition (you), I can define it as I wish, and call the processing of this external sound, and the ability to repeat it (along with the melding, in retrospect, of the individual sounds into one noise) "conscious experience", and there should be no counter since you haven't defined "conscious experience" yet...I, at least, have something to explain.


We don't have to imagine hypothetical worlds to get this result either. People with blindsight have advanced computational machines whose primary goal is interpreting/processing visual data, and on the basis of those computations on visual inputs they can even interact in coherent and complex ways with their environment, yet they do not have corresponding visual awareness in some (or in some cases, all) of their visual field.


I know nothing about "blind-sight", so I can't rebut or accept.


Well, all definitions must be circular at bottom by necessity (as you seem to agree). But logical arguments that draw inferences from such definitions/axioms needn't, indeed shouldn't, be circular.


But you haven't even given a reasonable starting-point toward defining "experience", and yet you keep using the word...that's bad philosophy, AFAIC.


It is information encoded in patterns of neural activity. Again, blindsighted people display the ability to process visual information without any attendent subjective experience of it.


How do we know that they have no subjective experience of it? What is "subjective experience"?

This is not a moot point...we might as well subsitute "subjective experience" for "uxpjscciie reeentvebe", and kill off all explanations on the basis that they don't explain "uxpjscciie reeentvebe".


Yes, I would agree that the completely objective philosopher should have no reason to believe in subjective experience at all. But in fact, such a philosopher is only denying the manifest, since he (you) knows in a very direct sense that subjective experience exists from his own 1st person experience of it.


How do you know? Can you ever really prove to me that either of us have this uxpjscciie reeentvebe if it is undefined?

btw, to make sure it was appreciated, "uxpjscciie reeentvebe" only uses the letters present in "subjective experience"...so, it's the same letters, with the same amount of meaning [;)].

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
I'd like to add one more thing that bears mentioning. You have claimed that consciousness may be an illusion analogous to the illusion that the sun rotates around the earth. Scientific knowledge shows us that, in fact, the earth rotates around the sun, and you propose that science may show us analogously that consciousness does not really exist as it appears to.

But we are not trying to establish in the case of consciousness if things are the way they appear to be; rather, we are trying to make it intelligible how things could appear the way they do in the first place. Given the heliocentric model, the illusion that the sun rotates around the earth is debunked, but more importantly, it remains entirely intelligible why it appears as if the sun rotates around the earth. We do not flatly deny that it appears as if the sun rotates around the earth to make our case here (as Dennett seems to flatly deny that we subjectively experience); indeed, it still appears this way, even given our superior knowledge. Rather, we show why this appearance nonetheless must logically follow from our apparently contradictory explanation. If our explanation had no recourse but to say the illusion did not exist (and the illusion obviously does exist), it would not be much of an explanation at all.

Analogously, any explanation of consciousness has to make it intelligible how it is that consciousness appears to be the way it appears to be, and I'm afraid any physically reductive explanation of consciousness will never make it intelligible why consciousness should have its apparent properties. Synchronous neural firings in IT account for 'redness'-- ok, but why should I be so compelled by this argument so as to have no recourse but to accept it? How is it that those neural firings logically necessitates consciousness the same way the heliocentric model logically necessitates the appearance of the sun rotating around the earth? You cannot answer this question without recourse to metaphysics. That is the explanitory gap. That is the hard problem.

But it is a "why" question, at its heart, isn't it?

[Canute]

Originally posted by Mentat
But it is a "why" question, at its heart, isn't it?
No. If it was a 'why' question science would ignore it.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Canute
No. If it was a 'why' question science would ignore it.

Science does ignore it...read "A Universe of Consciousness", "Synaptic Self", "The Cerebral Code", "Bright Air, Brilliant Fire", etc...all by scientists (Edelmann and Tononi, LeDoux, Calvin, and Edelmann again respectively), and none of which address the "hard problem" as though it were a problem at all (indeed "A Universe of Consciousness" only ever addresses it to explain why it doesn't apply...their explanation, in a nutshell: it's a "why" question).

[Fliption]

Mentat,

I think you have committed the very sin you were trying to point out in your "what purpose" thread. When we say that science does not care about answering "why"questions, we are referring to the purpose for some thing's existence or function. But as I said in that thread and many others, people use the word "why" to begin many questions that do not refer to purpose at all. For example, I can ask the question "why is the sky blue?" and this question can be interpreted in 2 different ways. One of them is purpose, for which the answer may be "because it is God's favorite color".

But this question could also be asking "How" is the sky blue. Then a scientific explanation for "why" the sky is blue would suffice. It seems you have picked up on Hypnagogue's use of the word "why" and inserted purpose so that you can pull out this "out of scope" argument, when it is clear to all that the "gap" we are talking about is clearly an explanatory gap of "how" not "purpose".

Judging from the rest of your response I'd say that you aren't being very honest about this at all. I'm not sure how much longer this discussion can procede at this rate. When a child asks "why the sky is blue?" and science can only say "because that's the way is"? Surely you are not so dense that you think this is a question of purpose? How did we get so confused here?

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
I hate to have to object so early in the post (I know you don't believe me, but I actually would like to agree with you), but my readings into the philosophy of science have led to quite a different conclusion. Of course, science is for more than just cataloguing causes and effects, but not much more. The scientific method allows for the questions: "What" are we dealing with? "How" does it work? "Where" is it found? "When" is it found? "How" can we reproduce it?

I appreciate your desire to be rigorous, but I think you are being a little too pedantic here. I have been using "why" to mean more or less "how." Why is the sky blue = How is it that the sky is blue = What phenomena account for the fact that the sky is blue. Science can and does answer these questions.

And how is it usually used? In my experience (which, I admit, isn't much), philosophers like to throw the word "experience" around without ever properly defining it.

It is usually used as a reference to the 1st person perspective, the 'what it is like.' It cannot be adequately defined in purely objective terms.

Some people constantly experience the "grace of God" in their lives, constantly helping them. Some people constantly experience the "energy fields" of other people. You cannot have a logical discussion with these people because they will always say something like "you can't understand it with your head, you have to just 'feel' it"...this is, to my mind, the death of logical reasoning.

It is not the death of logical reasoning, although it is a considerable roadblock. I myself have had spiritual experiences involving an intense, 'god-like' feeling and I can most assuredly tell you that I could not adequately explain it to you in words, no more than I could explain redness to a colorblind person. Unfortunately we are in the business of discussing reality as it is observed to be, and not reality as it is most convenient for us to discuss it, so we cannot just ignore these things.

By the way, I think you are again making the mistake of critiquing inferences made from subjective experiences rather than the experiences themselves. For instance, I see no problem in asserting a divine feeling, but there are of course big problems with inferring from that feeling the existence of a god.

Imagine you are speaking with a colorblind person and you wish to have a discussion about the color red with him. You could perhaps speak in analogies and skirt around the perimeter of the issue, but really you could not ever get across to him what the subjective experience of red is. This is equivalent to saying that there is not an adequate definition of redness that is purely objective (ie, does not reference a subjective, 1st person perspective of redness at some point). Yet we still take it for granted that we see redness all the time; all we need to do is look at a firetruck or somesuch, provided we are not colorblind. This is a fundamental problem in how we can define and talk about redness, but this does not lead us to abolish our conception of subjectively experienced redness.

Greater expenditure of computational resources translates to more frequent re-stimulation of the areas that were stimulated when the thing was processed ITFP, which translates to re-experiencing. I don't see the gap.

Why should those initial processes have been associated with the experience? You have only pushed off the problem here onto a different level of analysis without getting to the core of the issue.

Because the right parts of my brain (the ones that run "searches", perhaps) aren't being stimulated...

Why should those 'right' parts of the brain be associated with experience?

besides, wavelength information is color, if I can tell you what color it was later then all that is lacking is speed on my part.

The way you act can be influenced by color information contained in an unconscious prime without your being aware of it-- that's why it's called 'unconscious.' There would be discernable differences in your activity in the given task but you would not be able to say 'yes, I saw that little dot and it was green' after the fact.

I'll tell you: From materialistic assumptions, it can be allowed that V is an organic machine, born to other organic machines, who have evolved in a social environment. The constant socialization has given rise, over time, to more and more complex thinking ability. At its heart, the "thinking ability" is the ability to process input without the use of mathematics, but (instead) with the use of specialist sub-systems of its CPU. One sub-system is a specialist at processing audio input. It is logical, from a materialistic standpoint, that V would record and process the exact (or as close to exact as possible) sound that it hears ("that it hears" = "that enters its audio sub-system through a sensory organ/reciever), and that this "processing" is smeared out over smaller sub-systems that are subordinates of the full audio sub-system. (Still with me?)

You've explained an interesting computer, but I don't see anything in there that would lead me to say "Ah, yes! That's how experience comes about."

I can now say that, since "experience" is undefined by the opposition (you), I can define it as I wish, and call the processing of this external sound, and the ability to repeat it (along with the melding, in retrospect, of the individual sounds into one noise) "conscious experience", and there should be no counter since you haven't defined "conscious experience" yet...I, at least, have something to explain.

Oh, but I have defined it, and unless you are truly a philosophical zombie, you know exactly what I am talking about.

What you have described thus far is a zombie that is nonetheless indistinguishable from a conscious person from the 3rd person perspective. You have taken advantage of our inherent epistemic limits to pretend as if consciousness does not exist. In reality, for all I know, you aren't conscious; I simply choose to assume so. But I do know without a doubt that I am conscious, that I have subjective experiences, that I perceive qualities. What you have thus far expounded upon does not begin to elucidate me on how it is that this is so.

This should not be surprising, however, since what you have described is entirely consistent with the notion of a philosophical zombie. As such, you have not yet touched the core of the matter. (If I explain why the sky is blue and my explanation is consistent with the sky being green, then I have not yet done all the work I need to do-- I must explain why it is blue and not any other color.) A truly good explanation of consciousness should be able to discern between sentient beings and zombies-- it should be such that the system it describes is not consistent with being a zombie, but rather must logically entail a system that subjectively experiences.

I know nothing about "blind-sight", so I can't rebut or accept.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/blindsight.html

But you haven't even given a reasonable starting-point toward defining "experience", and yet you keep using the word...that's bad philosophy, AFAIC.

I have defined it, albeit not to your liking. Nonetheless, it is the only definition we can use if we are to talk about subjective experience. You use a different definition to try to sidestep our epistemic limits, but in the process you wind up talking about something entirely different from what I am talking about. You explain cognitive functions but you do not explain subjective experience.

How do we know that they have no subjective experience of it? What is "subjective experience"?

The subjective experiences of the patient are those things of which the patient is directly aware in which the patient perceives perceptual/emotional qualities such as redness or sadness.

This is not a moot point...we might as well subsitute "subjective experience" for "uxpjscciie reeentvebe", and kill off all explanations on the basis that they don't explain "uxpjscciie reeentvebe".

How do you know? Can you ever really prove to me that either of us have this uxpjscciie reeentvebe if it is undefined?

Subjective experience is defined, just not entirely from a 3rd person perspective. That is a fundamental limit we have to deal with, not a ticket to absolve us from explaining it in the first place.

edit: If you conceded that we could never explain subjective experience on the basis of such limits and left it at that, I would have much more respect for your position. As it stands, however, you are making the pretense of explaining subjective experience by redefining it into something that it is not, something more amenable to traditional scientific approaches. This is a sleight of hand approach that imagines it has explained something that it really hasn't, and this is really my primary objection to your approach.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Fliption
Mentat,

I think you have committed the very sin you were trying to point out in your "what purpose" thread. When we say that science does not care about answering "why"questions, we are referring to the purpose for some thing's existence or function. But as I said in that thread and many others, people use the word "why" to begin many questions that do not refer to purpose at all. For example, I can ask the question "why is the sky blue?" and this question can be interpreted in 2 different ways. One of them is purpose, for which the answer may be "because it is God's favorite color".

But this question could also be asking "How" is the sky blue. Then a scientific explanation for "why" the sky is blue would suffice. It seems you have picked up on Hypnagogue's use of the word "why" and inserted purpose so that you can pull out this "out of scope" argument, when it is clear to all that the "gap" we are talking about is clearly an explanatory gap of "how" not "purpose".


No, I don't think he was asking a question about purpose. I hoped it wouldn't seem that way, but I guess it did. No, there are other kinds of "why" question, aside from the two I allowed for in the aforementioned thread...one of them is the kind that hypnagogue is asking, which is not a "what cause" or a "what purpose", but a "why not something else". It is the question of why things are the way they are when we can imagine them being otherwise. The scientific answer remains, "They just are", and philosophers can't give much of an improvement on this by giving their own opinions (regardless of experimental data) on the matter.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
No, there are other kinds of "why" question, aside from the two I allowed for in the aforementioned thread...one of them is the kind that hypnagogue is asking, which is not a "what cause" or a "what purpose", but a "why not something else". It is the question of why things are the way they are when we can imagine them being otherwise.

"What cause" and "why not something else" amount to be the same question. If we explain properly the causes, and we take it as a given that the causes exist, then the explanandum should follow by logical necessity. If not, we have not answered the "what cause" question adequately, and consequently we can still meaningfully ask "why not something else."

For example, if we explain the fluidity of water in terms of the properties of its constituent molecules, we have answered both questions at once. We have explained what accounts for the fluidity, i.e. we have shown how fluidity is logically necessitated by molecules with certain properties. Since the fluidity is logically necessitated by the properties of the molcules, it is epistemically impossible for us to imagine that molecules with those properties should exist whose macroscopic description is not in agreement with our concept of fluidity.

That is, by explaining "what cause," we establish P->Q to be true. By simple logic, then, we cannot imagine P being true without Q being true as well-- thus we have answered "why not ~Q, given P." Conversely, if we cannot answer "what cause" adequately-- if we cannot establish P->Q-- then it is still logical to imagine P ^ ~Q.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
I appreciate your desire to be rigorous, but I think you are being a little too pedantic here. I have been using "why" to mean more or less "how." Why is the sky blue = How is it that the sky is blue = What phenomena account for the fact that the sky is blue. Science can and does answer these questions.


Actually, as I implied in my response to Fliption, "Why is the sky blue" is more a question of why is it that way instead of some other way; which is not really the same thing as what phenomena account for the fact that the sky appears blue. The only difference being that a scientist may explain all of the fundamental (physical) qualities of the sky and still never completely answer the child's question of "why" all that stuff makes the sky "blue" instead of some other color.


It is usually used as a reference to the 1st person perspective, the 'what it is like.' It cannot be adequately defined in purely objective terms.


Doesn't that usually make a term logically useless? How can you know that something exists if it has no definition (and you can't just say "because I have it", because you can't logically know that you "have something" if you don't even know that that "something" exists in the first place - that would be a "looping" (or circular) explanation of the manner "How can you deny that there is a Creator, when you can see all the creation around you?", it assumes itself). Fliption should know what I'm talking about...this was his side in the whole "Why the bias against Materialism?" thread.


It is not the death of logical reasoning, although it is a considerable roadblock.


Hypna, something either is or is not logically reasonable. And it's not about whether someone could explain it to me in words, so much as they should be able to define all the terms they are going to use before entering them into a logical debate. If they can't define the terms then they need to question whether the concept they are trying to define exists at all.


By the way, I think you are again making the mistake of critiquing inferences made from subjective experiences rather than the experiences themselves.


What are the "experiences themselves"? Please try to understand that, until you can define the term, you are just using words, not concepts.


Imagine you are speaking with a colorblind person and you wish to have a discussion about the color red with him. You could perhaps speak in analogies and skirt around the perimeter of the issue, but really you could not ever get across to him what the subjective experience of red is. This is equivalent to saying that there is not an adequate definition of redness that is purely objective (ie, does not reference a subjective, 1st person perspective of redness at some point). Yet we still take it for granted that we see redness all the time; all we need to do is look at a firetruck or somesuch, provided we are not colorblind. This is a fundamental problem in how we can define and talk about redness, but this does not lead us to abolish our conception of subjectively experienced redness.


This is exactly what Edelmann and Tononi were talking about, as I paraphrased in "Faulty expectations of a theory of consciousness". Science can explain how a phenomenon works, where/when it is found, and how to reproduce it, but you can't expect an explanation of a phenomenon to produce the phenomenon.


Why should those initial processes have been associated with the experience?


Who says they should? What is this "experience" that I should associate brain processes with?


Why should those 'right' parts of the brain be associated with experience?


Why should you talk about "experience" without the logical necessity for even postulating its existence: a definition of what "it" is ITFP.


The way you act can be influenced by color information contained in an unconscious prime without your being aware of it-- that's why it's called 'unconscious.' There would be discernable differences in your activity in the given task but you would not be able to say 'yes, I saw that little dot and it was green' after the fact.


I thought I explained that in terms of something's getting "more attention paid it", as can be reductively explained in terms of Calvin's "basins of attraction" (basically, they are algorithms, describing the force and constancy of success among hexagonal arrays).


You've explained an interesting computer, but I don't see anything in there that would lead me to say "Ah, yes! That's how experience comes about."


I don't see anything in anything you've written to date that would lead me to say "Oh, so that's what experience is". How can I explain the association of A with B, if I don't even know what B is?


Oh, but I have defined it, and unless you are truly a philosophical zombie, you know exactly what I am talking about.


"Oh, you know what I mean"...no offense, but that's not good logic.


What you have described thus far is a zombie that is nonetheless indistinguishable from a conscious person from the 3rd person perspective. You have taken advantage of our inherent epistemic limits to pretend as if consciousness does not exist. In reality, for all I know, you aren't conscious; I simply choose to assume so. But I do know without a doubt that I am conscious, that I have subjective experiences, that I perceive qualities. What you have thus far expounded upon does not begin to elucidate me on how it is that this is so.


You know that you have them...but you don't know what they are...you can't define them...you can't even be sure anyone else has them...I'm sorry, but this just feels like a top-bottom set of reasoning that is doomed to failure.


This should not be surprising, however, since what you have described is entirely consistent with the notion of a philosophical zombie. As such, you have not yet touched the core of the matter. (If I explain why the sky is blue and my explanation is consistent with the sky being green, then I have not yet done all the work I need to do-- I must explain why it is blue and not any other color.)


But any explanation (no matter how concise) of how the sky appears blue could be turned down by a stubborn person who perceives clearly that it is eulb, even if he can't define what it means to be "eulb".


A truly good explanation of consciousness should be able to discern between sentient beings and zombies-- it should be such that the system it describes is not consistent with being a zombie, but rather must logically entail a system that subjectively experiences.


And any discussion that is going to have the words "subjective experience" in it, must define them first, or else we will always be talking about different things (that's the purpose of definitions, to keep everyone "on the same page"). I don't recognize that a philosophical "zombie" can even exist, as I have no defined phenomenon that would be missing from such a being.


http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/blindsight.html


Thank you. I will read it tomorrow, if I can...but I must get off-line soon.


I have defined it, albeit not to your liking. Nonetheless, it is the only definition we can use if we are to talk about subjective experience. You use a different definition to try to sidestep our epistemic limits, but in the process you wind up talking about something entirely different from what I am talking about. You explain cognitive functions but you do not explain subjective experience.


You have defined "subjective experience" in terms of a feeling...that is so obviously circular that I wouldn't insult you by going through a total logical explanation; I'm sure you can see why explaining "experience" in terms of an "experience" just doesn't make any sense.


The subjective experiences of the patient are those things of which the patient is directly aware in which the patient perceives perceptual/emotional qualities such as redness or sadness.


Let me see if I understand what you are saying here: Subjective experience = those things of which the patient is aware...is not "awareness" alone synonymous with "subjective experience" in your paradigm? Thus, subjective experience = those things which a patient subjectively experiences...that's not much of a step toward defining it.

I'm not really asking that you do so in entirely objective terms, just in non-circular ones.


As it stands, however, you are making the pretense of explaining subjective experience by redefining it into something that it is not, something more amenable to traditional scientific approaches. This is a sleight of hand approach that imagines it has explained something that it really hasn't, and this is really my primary objection to your approach.

How can I "redefine" the undefined? I can't change your logical definition to fit my purpose, you don't yet have one.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
"What cause" and "why not something else" amount to be the same question. If we explain properly the causes, and we take it as a given that the causes exist, then the explanandum should follow by logical necessity. If not, we have not answered the "what cause" question adequately, and consequently we can still meaningfully ask "why not something else."


There is no such thing as "logical necessity", surely you know that by now. A person can deny that the sky is blue, and hold that it is "eulb" long after you've explained everything that there is to explain about the sky.


For example, if we explain the fluidity of water in terms of the properties of its constituent molecules, we have answered both questions at once. We have explained what accounts for the fluidity, i.e. we have shown how fluidity is logically necessitated by molecules with certain properties. Since the fluidity is logically necessitated by the properties of the molcules, it is epistemically impossible for us to imagine that molecules with those properties should exist whose macroscopic description is not in agreement with our concept of fluidity.


I wont take my usual stance, but will instead (once again) mention the most embarrasing aspect of your argument: "Fluidity" is defined, "subjective experience" is not.

How could some physical property necessitate that "xxxxxxxxxx yyyyyyyyyy" come about? There is no definition, so there is nothing to explain.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
The only difference being that a scientist may explain all of the fundamental (physical) qualities of the sky and still never completely answer the child's question of "why" all that stuff makes the sky "blue" instead of some other color.

This is a bad analogy because it involves a problem of consciousness. My fault. The water/H2O analogy is better for our purposes. If a scientist explains the properties of H2O molecules to a child, and the child understands them, then the child should see how they logically imply macroscopic fluidity. (Of course the process cannot go on ad infinitum, but we can do better than just stopping at the explanandum.)

Doesn't that usually make a term logically useless? How can you know that something exists if it has no definition (and you can't just say "because I have it", because you can't logically know that you "have something" if you don't even know that that "something" exists in the first place - that would be a "looping" (or circular) explanation of the manner "How can you deny that there is a Creator, when you can see all the creation around you?", it assumes itself).

Bad analogy. A better one would be "How can you deny that there are buildings, when you see all buildings around you?" Again we are not talking about inferences here, just observation.

Hypna, something either is or is not logically reasonable. And it's not about whether someone could explain it to me in words, so much as they should be able to define all the terms they are going to use before entering them into a logical debate. If they can't define the terms then they need to question whether the concept they are trying to define exists at all.

I have defined it, just from a 1st person perspective. I'm sorry if you cannot accept that.

This is exactly what Edelmann and Tononi were talking about, as I paraphrased in "Faulty expectations of a theory of consciousness". Science can explain how a phenomenon works, where/when it is found, and how to reproduce it, but you can't expect an explanation of a phenomenon to produce the phenomenon.

Of course an explanation of a phenomenon does not produce the phenomenon. If I explain what a tree is to someone (Bob) who has never seen one, a tree will not magically appear, but what will happen is that Bob will have a good understanding of what a tree is. If we could explain subjective phenomena (say, color) as well as we could explain objective phenomena (like the tree), then we might expect that I could explain color to a blind person (Jill) well enough that she would have a good understanding of what it is, even though my explanation would not magically enable her to see colors. But this is obviously not the case; no matter how I try, Jill will never have a good understanding of what color is, unless she is someday able to see.

What does this suggest? It suggests that one cannot have a good understanding of subjective experience without literally having it "produced" for them-- ie, one must already have directly perceived the type of experience in question in order to have an adequate understanding of it.

Why? A tree is defined at least partially defined extrinsically, that is, in relation to other things. So we can at least explain to Bob a tree's shape (the internal geometric relationships among its parts), its functions (its relationships with sunlight, soil, water, etc.), and so on. However, a subjectively experienced color is defined entirely intrinsically. I do not define my sense of redness with respect to my sense of blueness and vice versa; my sense of redness stands on its own. Because it is not defined extrinsically, there is no conceptual 'hook' that I can latch it onto in order to explain or describe it via its relationships with other things.

This is your primary objection, but it is something we must accept if we are to have a complete picture of reality. If you presented the wave/particle duality to Newton, with no means of supporting it empirically, Newton would reject your views immediately. But Newton would be wrong.

I thought I explained that in terms of something's getting "more attention paid it", as can be reductively explained in terms of Calvin's "basins of attraction" (basically, they are algorithms, describing the force and constancy of success among hexagonal arrays).

That can explain unconscious processes just fine, but not conscious ones.

I don't see anything in anything you've written to date that would lead me to say "Oh, so that's what experience is". How can I explain the association of A with B, if I don't even know what B is?

Go into a dreamless sleep. Then wake up and open your eyes. You will see visual images. That's what experience is.

"Oh, you know what I mean"...no offense, but that's not good logic.

Neither is P ^ ~P, but we seem to get along with quantum mechanics just fine.

And any discussion that is going to have the words "subjective experience" in it, must define them first, or else we will always be talking about different things (that's the purpose of definitions, to keep everyone "on the same page"). I don't recognize that a philosophical "zombie" can even exist, as I have no defined phenomenon that would be missing from such a being.

Yes you do, you are just unfortunately too stubborn to give up a completely objective worldview. Compare what it is like for you to be awake and what it is like for you to be in a dreamless sleep. The zombie would experience the same thing as you do in your dreamless sleep and still appear outwardly like you do when you are awake.

You have defined "subjective experience" in terms of a feeling...that is so obviously circular that I wouldn't insult you by going through a total logical explanation; I'm sure you can see why explaining "experience" in terms of an "experience" just doesn't make any sense.

We already established that all definitions must ultimately be circular. The difference is that things defined extrinsically have a much wider 'circle,' so their definitions take on the appearance of not being circular. But in fact anything you can define is just as circular as the definitions I have been using for subjective experience.

Let me see if I understand what you are saying here: Subjective experience = those things of which the patient is aware...is not "awareness" alone synonymous with "subjective experience" in your paradigm? Thus, subjective experience = those things which a patient subjectively experiences...that's not much of a step toward defining it.

Again, it must be circular. Any definition of physical reality you can think of would be just as circular, albeit in a wider circle of interlinking chains.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
There is no such thing as "logical necessity", surely you know that by now. A person can deny that the sky is blue, and hold that it is "eulb" long after you've explained everything that there is to explain about the sky.

I get the feeling you are just being difficult now for the sake of it. There is logical necessity, otherwise logic would be meaningless. The laws of logic show that set X of H2O molecules under the proper circumstances must have macroscopic fluidity. Any person who actually follows the logic will not be able to logically assert that X should exist with some macroscopic properties in contradiction with fluidity (like solidity).

I wont take my usual stance, but will instead (once again) mention the most embarrasing aspect of your argument: "Fluidity" is defined, "subjective experience" is not.

I think it is rather quite embarrassing that you are denying the existence of something you know to exist!

[Fliption]

Originally posted by Mentat
No, I don't think he was asking a question about purpose. I hoped it wouldn't seem that way, but I guess it did. No, there are other kinds of "why" question, aside from the two I allowed for in the aforementioned thread...one of them is the kind that hypnagogue is asking, which is not a "what cause" or a "what purpose", but a "why not something else". It is the question of why things are the way they are when we can imagine them being otherwise. The scientific answer remains, "They just are", and philosophers can't give much of an improvement on this by giving their own opinions (regardless of experimental data) on the matter.

I think you are reading too much into what he means by that question. I interpreted it to be his way of defining what a proper explanation actually is. A proper explanation for why planets are round can logical show why planets are not square. All of this seems so simple to me. I have to believe you are just being obstinate and not really struggling to understand.

That also follows from the example of a blue sky. Yes, the subjective experience of the color blue calls up the consciousness problem and therefore was not the best analogy but it can quickly be corrected by saying that science does explain why the sky reflects a certain range of wavelength in the sprectrum. "It just does" is not sufficient. I am sure that science can explain why this is the case and this reason alone will logical explain why it is not otherwise.

Also, the idea that subjective experience has not been defined has been coming up more and more in each post. I'm not really sure I understand this position all that much but it seems that if we're going to deny the problem because we can't objectively identify it, all we're doing is using the hard problem of consciousness and the fact that it doesn't fit into the current paradigm to conclude it doesn't exists. All according to the rules of the current paradigm. Doesn't seem like very good philosophy to me. It's like a fish trying to suggest where it's fishbowl would look best in the room.

[Canute]

Mentat

Hypno said this about consciousness - "It is usually used as a reference to the 1st person perspective, the 'what it is like.' It cannot be adequately defined in purely objective terms."

You replied - "Doesn't that usually make a term logically useless?"

The answer is no, it makes it scientifically useless. You have hit the nail on the head. This is the hard problem.

"How can you know that something exists if it has no definition"

Consciousness has a perfectly good definition, and everyone can define it. If you won't accept that definition it's your problem. Are you really trying to tell us that because you cannot define your own consciousness it follows that you're not conscious? Can you really not see that this does not make sense.

"(and you can't just say "because I have it", because you can't logically know that you "have something" if you don't even know that that "something" exists in the first place ...snip"

But he does know, so this is irrelevant. I must admit I'm beginning to struggle to keep my posts to you dispassionate. You seem to uninterested in the facts.

[clicky]

Everything is an interaction because everybody indicates its existence by certain interaction.

Consciousness is expression of the fundamental property of everybody to be self-defined in a 3D-spiral way [1]. We self-define, i.e. study ourselves and the rest of the universe [1]. Mind is an outcome from the expansion of the all-building interaction [1].


Savov, E., Theory Interaction, Geones Books, 2002.

[Mentat]

Forgive the tardiness and necessary brevity of this post, but my access to the internet is not nearly as reliable as I'd like...

Originally posted by hypnagogue
Bad analogy. A better one would be "How can you deny that there are buildings, when you see all buildings around you?" Again we are not talking about inferences here, just observation.


No, we are talking about bad definitions. Subjective experience cannot be defined without first appealing to it (just as "creation" cannot be logically defined without implying a "creator"), and so it is a logically useless term (that is, until you can define it in more logically tenable terms).


I have defined it, just from a 1st person perspective. I'm sorry if you cannot accept that.


It's not about my acceptance. It's about the logical problem with looping definitions. It's about the fact that you are asking me to help explain a phenomenon that you can't even define. If you can't define it, how do you even know it exists? Is this not the fundamental aspects of a strawman?


Of course an explanation of a phenomenon does not produce the phenomenon. If I explain what a tree is to someone (Bob) who has never seen one, a tree will not magically appear, but what will happen is that Bob will have a good understanding of what a tree is. If we could explain subjective phenomena (say, color) as well as we could explain objective phenomena (like the tree), then we might expect that I could explain color to a blind person (Jill) well enough that she would have a good understanding of what it is, even though my explanation would not magically enable her to see colors. But this is obviously not the case; no matter how I try, Jill will never have a good understanding of what color is, unless she is someday able to see.


She will have as good an understanding as any of us non-blind people do? What do we really know of color anyway, which we can't explain to Jill? It is only having seen the color that is lacking (an "impression" that she cannot have, as Hume would put it).


Why? A tree is defined at least partially defined extrinsically, that is, in relation to other things. So we can at least explain to Bob a tree's shape (the internal geometric relationships among its parts), its functions (its relationships with sunlight, soil, water, etc.), and so on. However, a subjectively experienced color is defined entirely intrinsically. I do not define my sense of redness with respect to my sense of blueness and vice versa; my sense of redness stands on its own. Because it is not defined extrinsically, there is no conceptual 'hook' that I can latch it onto in order to explain or describe it via its relationships with other things.

This is your primary objection, but it is something we must accept if we are to have a complete picture of reality. If you presented the wave/particle duality to Newton, with no means of supporting it empirically, Newton would reject your views immediately. But Newton would be wrong.


While I don't quite understand the analogy, I can say that there is a clear and inescapable problem with all you've said above: It relies on the existence of something that you cannot define.

How can you expect to have a logical conversation about "xxxxxxxxxx yyyyyyyyyy" if you haven't defined it?

What's worse, you then say that the materialists are "skirting around the issue" by "redefining 'experience'", they are the only ones that have given any meaningful definition to that which they are explaining.


That can explain unconscious processes just fine, but not conscious ones.


What's the difference?


Go into a dreamless sleep. Then wake up and open your eyes. You will see visual images. That's what experience is.


Not good enough, by any stretch of the imagination. First off, you can't have dreamless sleep unless your dead (you just might not remember any of them) - and that is not some irrelevant point, it is an important one since it shows that the processes of the mind are going on all the time, indicating that there is no special process which you keep seeking.

Secondly, when I awaken from dreamless sleep and open my eyes, what changes? I now have interaction between my retinas and the waves of light in the room, which I didn't have before.

Finally, one should not ask one to just "experience for themselves" what one is talking about as a way of escaping the logical necessity for defining all terms.


Neither is P ^ ~P, but we seem to get along with quantum mechanics just fine.


Yes that is good logic, as arkhron would testify in half a second in former times on old threads. But I don't need to defend quantum mechanics here; the reason "oh, you know what I mean" is not good logic is not because I don't like it or because it doesn't make sense, but because it doesn't make any use of reasoning whatsoever - it simply assumes that I know what you mean in order to side-step the necessity for definition.


Yes you do, you are just unfortunately too stubborn to give up a completely objective worldview. Compare what it is like for you to be awake and what it is like for you to be in a dreamless sleep. The zombie would experience the same thing as you do in your dreamless sleep and still appear outwardly like you do when you are awake.


What do you mean "what it's like for you to be asleep"? For that matter, what do you mean by "what it is like for you to be awake"? What is it like to be asleep? What is it like to be awake?


We already established that all definitions must ultimately be circular. The difference is that things defined extrinsically have a much wider 'circle,' so their definitions take on the appearance of not being circular. But in fact anything you can define is just as circular as the definitions I have been using for subjective experience.


Wrong. If something can be defined to the level of semantics, then it has been defined well enough to avoid any logical circle. You cannot even define "subjective experience" in the most rudimentary of ways, but must instead hope that I know a priori what you are talking about.

[Fliption]

You're really stretching it here Mentat. Are you serious? If early man had approached their curiosities the way you are we'd still be in the stone age. Once again, you put far too much emphasis on language. Language has nothing to do with reality.

Originally posted by Mentat
No, we are talking about bad definitions. Subjective experience cannot be defined without first appealing to it (just as "creation" cannot be logically defined without implying a "creator"), and so it is a logically useless term (that is, until you can define it in more logically tenable terms).


All you are doing is taking the fact that the hard problem does not fit into the materialist paradigm and then concluding that it doesn't exists. You aren't addressing the issue at all. The whole point of these threads has been to argue that the hard problem with consciousness will not allow for an objective explanation/definition using all the conceptual tools in the materialists toolbox. All of you've done is change a few words and reverse the problem to argue it doesn't exists.

The whole point of the pursuit of knowledge is to explain what I(you)(we) experience and observe. I observe a difference in dreamless sleep and being fully awake. This should be explained. You deny that you feel it and think there's no difference because you can't find a word to communicate it?

Try to explain "love" to someone who has never loved. Are you going to stop loving people when you fail to explain it?


She will have as good an understanding as any of us non-blind people do? What do we really know of color anyway, which we can't explain to Jill? It is only having seen the color that is lacking (an "impression" that she cannot have, as Hume would put it).

Where is the curiosity? This sounds like a person in denial.



How can you expect to have a logical conversation about "xxxxxxxxxx yyyyyyyyyy" if you haven't defined it?


Insert "materialism" and you answer it. It's the exact same point I tried to make for months. The difference here is that no one has ever experienced "materialism".


What's worse, you then say that the materialists are "skirting around the issue" by "redefining 'experience'", they are the only ones that have given any meaningful definition to that which they are explaining.


That's because "meaningful" means that which fits into the current materialist paradigm. This isn't honest philosophy.



Not good enough, by any stretch of the imagination. First off, you can't have dreamless sleep unless your dead (you just might not remember any of them) - and that is not some irrelevant point, it is an important one since it shows that the processes of the mind are going on all the time, indicating that there is no special process which you keep seeking.

It is an irrelevant point. The point hypnagoue was trying to make was the experience of these things are different. There is an experience of dreamless sleep once you wake up from it. Whether it is truly dreamless or not isn't relevant.


Secondly, when I awaken from dreamless sleep and open my eyes, what changes? I now have interaction between my retinas and the waves of light in the room, which I didn't have before.

So every time you close your eyes, shutting off all light from your retinas you fall immediately asleep? There is no state where you have your eyes closed and yet you are not asleep? This is getting silly.


Yes that is good logic, as arkhron would testify in half a second in former times on old threads. But I don't need to defend quantum mechanics here; the reason "oh, you know what I mean" is not good logic is not because I don't like it or because it doesn't make sense, but because it doesn't make any use of reasoning whatsoever - it simply assumes that I know what you mean in order to side-step the necessity for definition.


I'd like to suggest that Mentat is a zombie and this explains why he isn't curious about how consciousness works. This whole conversation makes sense in light of this theory. I recommend that it be discontinued as it is impossible to explain consciousness to a zombie. That's what the hard problem is all about.


What do you mean "what it's like for you to be asleep"? For that matter, what do you mean by "what it is like for you to be awake"? What is it like to be asleep? What is it like to be awake?


That zombie theory is gaining strength.


Wrong. If something can be defined to the level of semantics, then it has been defined well enough to avoid any logical circle. You cannot even define "subjective experience" in the most rudimentary of ways, but must instead hope that I know a priori what you are talking about.

Wrong? Bold.

I'm not sure what the objective is here. There's been hints that this is just arguing for the sake of arguing. There's nothing wrong with playing devil's advocate but that doesn't mean it is an infinte process. Either you believe this stuff or you don't.

[Canute]

Mentat

One last shot.

Consciousness can be defined perfectly well. I don't know where you get the idea that it cannot be. It is generally defined in the literature as 'what it is like' or similar. No problem.

The fact that scientists do not like this definition is neither here nor there. Some things are beyond science, metaphysics for instance.

Also - if there is scientific explanation of everything then we know it must contain an undefined term, this follows from common sense, since a theory of everything must be circular, and Goedel, for as Stephen Hawkings points out in 'The Death of Physics', the explanation must have a indefinable meta-system.

“…since every word in a dictionary is defined in terms of another word…The only way to avoid circular reasoning is a finite language would be to include some undefined terms in the dictionary. Today we must realise that mathematical systems too, must include undefined terms, and seek to include the minimum number necessary for the system to make sense.” Leonard Mlodinow

As for materialism it is unprovable. This is because it is false.

Its impregnability to disproof, plus its philosophical advatages, has attracted many philosophers to idealism. Indeed, nearly every significant philosopher from the late 18th century to the early 20th century has been a paid up idealist.”
David Papineau and Howard Selina

(Including Georg Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Henri Bergson, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell etc etc etc etc.)

“It is important to realise that what we know as the ‘scientific worldview’ is an image of the universe that rests on a host of daring metaphyical assumptions. These are often presented and seen as facts that have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt, while in reality they stand on very shaky ground, are controversial, or are inadequately supported by the evidence.” Stanislav Grof

As for consciousness not being definable then perhaps you'd better write to the scientific community and tell them that they're wasting their time. At the moment there are a huge number of scientists trying to explain what you say we can't talk about.

“It would seem reasonable to expect any conprehensive account of consciousness to accommodate two of its most fundamental attributes: that we have a self-centred sense of experience and that this sense is somehow linked to the conditioning of our physiology. Yet those conversant with post-Cartesian philosophy will know that time and again significant doubts have been raised about any apparently obvious link between mind and body. So of all of the questions implicated by the scientific study of consciousness perhaps the most pressing is to what extent, if at all, does our mental life correlate with bio chemical activity at the neuronal level? Until this is resolved we will be unable to reconcile the data gathered from phenomenological analysis of introspective experience with tha derived from neuroscientific analysis of brain behaviour. The infamous gap will persist.”
Robert Peperell ‘Between phenomenology and neuroscience’ A report of the ‘Towards a Science of Consciousness’ Conference, Prague, July 2003)

Please note the title of the conference here.

If you continue to ignore all the evidence, and all the advice you're getting here then one must conclude then you're a zombie. Please note that the rest of us have subjective experiences. I'm sorry that you don't but nothing can be done about it, they are incommensurable so we can't tell you what they are like and you will never know.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Fliption
You're really stretching it here Mentat. Are you serious? If early man had approached their curiosities the way you are we'd still be in the stone age. Once again, you put far too much emphasis on language. Language has nothing to do with reality.


Let's stick to the issue at hand: you haven't defined your term, so I can't discuss it with you.

Define it, or at least make it intelligible, instead of obviously circular, and we will have something to talk about.


All you are doing is taking the fact that the hard problem does not fit into the materialist paradigm and then concluding that it doesn't exists. You aren't addressing the issue at all. The whole point of these threads has been to argue that the hard problem with consciousness will not allow for an objective explanation/definition using all the conceptual tools in the materialists toolbox. All of you've done is change a few words and reverse the problem to argue it doesn't exists.


I hope your joking, because I wouldn't like to think I've posted all that I have and it's just fallen on deaf ears. Please, pay attention to what I'm saying, not to what you think I mean: I don't care about materialism right now, I care about having a logical discussion. This completely precludes strawman arguments which use terms that are never even rudimentarily defined, but which one simply assumes the other will understand.


The whole point of the pursuit of knowledge is to explain what I(you)(we) experience and observe. I observe a difference in dreamless sleep and being fully awake. This should be explained. You deny that you feel it and think there's no difference because you can't find a word to communicate it?


What?! I don't deny that I observe a difference between dreamless sleep and being fully awake. I do indeed observe such a difference. What does that have to do with anything?


Try to explain "love" to someone who has never loved. Are you going to stop loving people when you fail to explain it?


If "love" had no definition, then I could never start "loving" in the first place. As it is, "love" is much more tenably defined than "subjective experience".


Where is the curiosity? This sounds like a person in denial.


I'm absolutely curious and interested in consciousness. I just happen to have no (current) interest in "subjective experience", because I don't know what it means. Please help me understand what it is, don't just write me off as a lost cause because I can't understand and accept this term a priori.

Besides, it appears to me that philosophers starting from the assumption that "xxxxxxxxxx yyyyyyyyy" exists have reached a cul de sac anyway, so why are you implying that curiosity naturally leads down that same path?


Insert "materialism" and you answer it. It's the exact same point I tried to make for months. The difference here is that no one has ever experienced "materialism".


You're dodging the issue, and dredging up an old debate. We can discuss materialism on another thread, and you can feel free to quote me there, but this thread is about consciousness and this "subjective experience" that everyone else seems to know about. What is it?


That's because "meaningful" means that which fits into the current materialist paradigm. This isn't honest philosophy.


"Meaningful" means definable without quickly falling into circular reasoning. "Meaningful" means definable without implying the phenomenon within the definition. Why is this so hard to understand for you, of all people? And why do you keep making it seem as though I'm trying to insult your philosophy? I'm not, you know, I'm just trying to make sense of it.


It is an irrelevant point. The point hypnagoue was trying to make was the experience of these things are different. There is an experience of dreamless sleep once you wake up from it. Whether it is truly dreamless or not isn't relevant.


I said it was relevant because it shows that there is an ongoing process, and that nothing special is added when dreams, or when one awakens...but we can drop that minor point if you want.


So every time you close your eyes, shutting off all light from your retinas you fall immediately asleep? There is no state where you have your eyes closed and yet you are not asleep? This is getting silly.


I didn't say that. I said the reason I start to observe something other than the blackness of sleep is because I can now see the inside of my room (i.e. light has entered my retinas).

Sleep is different from being awake because the brain is not paying nearly as much attention to what little data it is recieving (hypnagogue and I talked about the brain "paying more attention" to one set of stimuli than another, and yet this is still not what he means by "subjective experience"...can you now understand why I'm so confused about this term?).


I'd like to suggest that Mentat is a zombie and this explains why he isn't curious about how consciousness works.


I am curious about how consciousness works.

And I am a zombie.


This whole conversation makes sense in light of this theory. I recommend that it be discontinued as it is impossible to explain consciousness to a zombie. That's what the hard problem is all about.


Why is it impossible to explain consciousness to a zombie?


That zombie theory is gaining strength.


It is proven by my own testimony: I am a zombie.


Wrong? Bold.


My apologies. I only used it for the economy of words (instead of saying "there is something distinctly missing from what you have said" [;)]).


I'm not sure what the objective is here.

Then I'll make it clear for you: The objective is to explain "subjective experience" to Mentat. If you cannot do this, then you should (for the sake of being reasonable) at least admit the possibility that it doesn't exist at all. Then, to continue on this path of "rationalism", you should think of how it is that something can be assumed to exist right from the start, without even a rudimentary definition that isn't logically circular, and yet the argument not be an empty straw-man.

Do you understand the objective now? It is to be rational about all things.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Canute
Mentat

One last shot.

Consciousness can be defined perfectly well. I don't know where you get the idea that it cannot be. It is generally defined in the literature as 'what it is like' or similar. No problem.


First of all, I don't where you get the idea that I don't think consciousness is defined. It's "subjective experience" that isn't defined, "consciousness" makes perfect sense.

Secondly, consciousness is not defined as "what it is like", "subjective experience" is.

Finally, "what it is like" is self-assuming, ergo: circular. It assumes the experience of "being" right within the definition of "experience" itself. That is bad logic (and I am rather shocked that you don't see that).


Also - if there is scientific explanation of everything then we know it must contain an undefined term, this follows from common sense, since a theory of everything must be circular, and Goedel, for as Stephen Hawkings points out in 'The Death of Physics', the explanation must have a indefinable meta-system.


What does this have to do with the subject at hand?


“…since every word in a dictionary is defined in terms of another word…The only way to avoid circular reasoning is a finite language would be to include some undefined terms in the dictionary. Today we must realise that mathematical systems too, must include undefined terms, and seek to include the minimum number necessary for the system to make sense.” Leonard Mlodinow


Quick question: Where are you quoting from? I really like Mlodinow's writing (I've recently read "Euclid's Window"), and would be happy to read anything by him.


As for materialism it is unprovable. This is because it is false.


[o)] Did I miss something?!? Why is everyone talking about Materialism now? When did I ever say the explanation had to be Material? I just want a simple definition with extra cheese, and a side order of logical consistency, to go please. [:D]

Seriously though, that's all I'm asking for. I don't want to change the world of philosophy, I don't want to prove Materialism (I don't WHY this keeps coming up!), and I don't even really want to explain consciousness right now (I'm holding off on that, because everyone seems to have taken of in a completely different direction than me, and I can't catch up if I don't know where you started from), I just want a definition that is logically consistent to some miniscule extent. Please.


As for consciousness not being definable then perhaps you'd better write to the scientific community and tell them that they're wasting their time. At the moment there are a huge number of scientists trying to explain what you say we can't talk about.


For the last time Consciousness is definable, it's "subjective experience" that has no meaning. These scientists that you mention are doing the right thing, I applaud them, it's the philosophers who are stuck on this horrendous strawman that I can't comprehend. Where exactly are they getting by assuming something undefined right from the start? How can you denounce Materialism for making "daring assumptions" while you yourself make an assumption that has almost passed into the realm of "completely irrational"?

Please don't take offense at anything I say here, just answer my simple question, please.


If you continue to ignore all the evidence, and all the advice you're getting here then one must conclude then you're a zombie. Please note that the rest of us have subjective experiences.


Are you sure? Please hear me out: How can you know you have something if you can't even define it? You don't even know what it is, and yet you insist that not only you, but everyone else, has it?

That sounds like some of the worst reasoning I've ever heard, but it's not you, there are soooooo many others making the same assumptions. What am I missing?

Yes, I'm a zombie. So what? If you can't explain "subjective experience" to me, who can you explain it to?


I'm sorry that you don't but nothing can be done about it, they are incommensurable so we can't tell you what they are like and you will never know.

There's an interesting statement. So, because I don't participate, myself, in this action/process that you insist all of you do participate in...while being unable to come up with the most simple of definitions - without being logically circular...you're saying I'll never understand because I didn't understand right from the start...hmm.

[Fliption]

Originally posted by Mentat
First of all, I don't where you get the idea that I don't think consciousness is defined. It's "subjective experience" that isn't defined, "consciousness" makes perfect sense.


Mentat, take a look at the title of this thread that you started. That's why people are saying "consciousness". Your first post is also littered with the word as well.


Secondly, consciousness is not defined as "what it is like", "subjective experience" is.


This isn't what you said in your first post.


Finally, "what it is like" is self-assuming, ergo: circular. It assumes the experience of "being" right within the definition of "experience" itself. That is bad logic (and I am rather shocked that you don't see that).


Ok, I don't understand this at all. Explain to me what this means AND why it is a problem. With my current level of understanding this seems like an irrelevant point that totally misses the point. You're nitpicking the phrase "what it's like to be". It feels like something to do the things I do. That better?


[o)] Did I miss something?!? Why is everyone talking about Materialism now? When did I ever say the explanation had to be Material? I just want a simple definition with extra cheese, and a side order of logical consistency, to go please. [:D]

The reason I brought it up, (since you asked) is because you keep saying things like "you of all people ought to understand this" based on my position in the materialism discussion. So I bring it up in this thread to show you that it is not the same thing. The rationale I used in that thread is consistent with the rationale in this one.


Are you sure? Please hear me out: How can you know you have something if you can't even define it? You don't even know what it is, and yet you insist that not only you, but everyone else, has it?


I defined it. But finding a materialist way to describe it to you doesn't mean it doesn't exists to me.

[Fliption]

Originally posted by Mentat
Let's stick to the issue at hand: you haven't defined your term, so I can't discuss it with you.



I have.


Define it, or at least make it intelligible, instead of obviously circular, and we will have something to talk about.


Explain why it's circular.


What?! I don't deny that I observe a difference between dreamless sleep and being fully awake. I do indeed observe such a difference. What does that have to do with anything?


Then you have observed subjective experience. You're saying you experienced it but you don't know what it is?


If "love" had no definition, then I could never start "loving" in the first place. As it is, "love" is much more tenably defined than "subjective experience".

Love is subjective experience.



I'm absolutely curious and interested in consciousness. I just happen to have no (current) interest in "subjective experience", because I don't know what it means. Please help me understand what it is, don't just write me off as a lost cause because I can't understand and accept this term a priori.


Ridiculous.


You're dodging the issue, and dredging up an old debate. We can discuss materialism on another thread, and you can feel free to quote me there, but this thread is about consciousness and this "subjective experience" that everyone else seems to know about. What is it?


I'm not dredging it up, you are. You're telling me I ought to think a certain way based on my view in that thread. So I'm showing why this isn't so. Stop saying that and materialism will not be mentioned.


I didn't say that. I said the reason I start to observe something other than the blackness of sleep is because I can now see the inside of my room (i.e. light has entered my retinas).

You just repeated what you said and to me it still reads like you think the difference between being asleep and awake is whether your eyes are open or not.



Why is it impossible to explain consciousness to a zombie?


It can be explained but never fully understood. If you have never been swimming then no amount of description or reseach will ever convey the feeling one gets when swimming.


Do you understand the objective now? It is to be rational about all things.
Could have fooled me.

The objective for the topic in this thread wasn't what I was referring to. I was referring to the few posts where you insinuate that you don't believe any of this necessarily, you just argue it for some other reason. I don't personally understand this(if I even believe it) and it doesn't do much for my patience because I feel like I'm particpating in someone's debating experiment.

[hypnagogue]

Mentat, here is another equivalent definition that you may like better.

Subjective experience refers to those phenomena that you can directly observe but which cannot be directly observed by other people observing you. One can observe your behavioral patterns or even your brain functioning, but one cannot observe the particular field of blueness that you observe when you look into the sky. Subjective experience is a private phenomenon, as opposed to any phenomenon that can be considered objective, or public.

[Canute]

Originally posted by Mentat
First of all, I don't where you get the idea that I don't think consciousness is defined. It's "subjective experience" that isn't defined, "consciousness" makes perfect sense.
Please explain the difference between subjective experience and consciousness,

Secondly, consciousness is not defined as "what it is like", "subjective experience" is.
They both are. If you don't agree then please write and tell and all those involved in consciousness studies so they stop using this definition.

Finally, "what it is like" is self-assuming, ergo: circular. It assumes the experience of "being" right within the definition of "experience" itself. That is bad logic (and I am rather shocked that you don't see that).
Of course the experience of being is 'within' the definition of experience. It should be obvious that it has to be. Are you seriously suggesting that it shouldn't be?

What does this have to do with the subject at hand?
An explanation of everything must have an undefined term in it. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the consciousness is it.

Quick question: Where are you quoting from? I really like Mlodinow's writing (I've recently read "Euclid's Window"), and would be happy to read anything by him.
That's where the quote came from.

Did I miss something?!?
No offense, but there's almost nothing you have not missed.

Why is everyone talking about Materialism now? When did I ever say the explanation had to be Material? I just want a simple definition with extra cheese, and a side order of logical consistency, to go please. [:D]
If you don't acknowledge the existence of subjective experience then you are a materialist/physicalist.

Seriously though, that's all I'm asking for. I don't want to change the world of philosophy, I don't want to prove Materialism (I don't WHY this keeps coming up!), and I don't even really want to explain consciousness right now (I'm holding off on that, because everyone seems to have taken of in a completely different direction than me, and I can't catch up if I don't know where you started from), I just want a definition that is logically consistent to some miniscule extent. Please.
You seem to completely miss the point here. There is no scientific definition of consciousness! (And IMHO there never will be one). This is because of the hard problem, which entails that science cannot prove the existence of consciousness (aka subjective experience).

However in consciousness studies the most widely used definition for consciousness (aka subjective experience) is 'what it is like'. These are brutal facts and there's really no point in continuing to deny them.

For the last time Consciousness is definable,
Not according to science it isn't. Perhaps you know better.

it's "subjective experience" that has no meaning.
So there is nothing that it's like to be you then? I don't believe a word of it.

These scientists that you mention are doing the right thing, I applaud them, it's the philosophers who are stuck on this horrendous strawman that I can't comprehend.
It's impossible that you can miss the point so completely and so consistently. People who take the trouble to think about consciousness and brains conclude there is a hard problem, some of them are philosophers, some of them are scientists and some of them are neither. Do you think science and philosophy are not connected?

Where exactly are they getting by assuming something undefined right from the start?
What assumption?

How can you denounce Materialism for making "daring assumptions" while you yourself make an assumption that has almost passed into the realm of "completely irrational"?
What assumption was that?

Please don't take offense at anything I say here, just answer my simple question, please.
How many times must I answer your simple question before you start listening? Do you argue that the earth is flat as well, or do you specialise in consciousness studies?

Are you sure? Please hear me out: How can you know you have something if you can't even define it?
Yes - that nicely sums up the hard problem

Again, more slowly, consciousness (aka subjective experience) is 'what it is like'.

If there was a scientific defintion there would not be a hard problem - can't you see this? Why do you think Francis Crick argues that we should inefinitely postpone defining it scientifically?

You don't even know what it is, and yet you insist that not only you, but everyone else, has it?
I fear for your sanity if you think you're not conscious.

That sounds like some of the worst reasoning I've ever heard, but it's not you, there are soooooo many others making the same assumptions. What am I missing?
A heap of neurons and subjective experiences by the sound of it.

Yes, I'm a zombie. So what? If you can't explain "subjective experience" to me, who can you explain it to?
It is impossible to explain subjective experiences. This is why having sex explained to you is not as much fun as having it, and why it's no fun at all for a zombie.

There's an interesting statement. So, because I don't participate, myself, in this action/process that you insist all of you do participate in...while being unable to come up with the most simple of definitions - without being logically circular...you're saying I'll never understand because I didn't understand right from the start...hmm. [/B]
Frankly I have no idea why you don't understand it. You're the first person I've met who doesn't.

[Fliption]

Originally posted by Canute
You seem to completely miss the point here. There is no scientific definition of consciousness! (And IMHO there never will be one). This is because of the hard problem, which entails that science cannot prove the existence of consciousness (aka subjective experience).

If there was a scientific defintion there would not be a hard problem - can't you see this? Why do you think Francis Crick argues that we should inefinitely postpone defining it scientifically?


This has been exactly my point. I stated this several posts earlier and the response I got was "are you joking?" But this IS the issue we're having here. If we can only get more than 5 minutes of thought on it.

What's ironic about this whole thing is that Mentat is using the hard problem of consciousness and the fact that we can't prove he has subjective experiences to play dumb. He thinks he is proving it is logically inconsistent but the only thing he is doing is demonstrating the nature of the hard problem. Anyone can take advantage of the hard problem and deny they are conscious but this just seems so dishonest to me.

To define something means that we are trying to relate this thing to other words and concepts that we already have defined. This is why I used the term "toolbox" earlier to illustrate that there are only so many words that we have to describe something. In order for there to be a scientific definition, we would have to have a toolbox of scientific concepts that we could build into a definition that would represent consciousness. It seems you'd need a reductive understanding of consciousness to do this. This can't be done and it is exactly what the hard problem is. Hypnagogue has been arguing all along that the current paradigm, (the toolbox), needs additional tools.

[Canute]

Yes - completely agree. But Mentat isn't the only one to be 'playing dumb' in one way or another. Even now I don't think the scientific and academic community have really woken up to the implications of the hard problem.