Dennett's predecessor brings it all together...

Fliption

I haven't used any comments about you as a reason to make a conclusion about the issue we're discussing. I'm still looking for articles before I draw conclusions. So no Ad hominem here. I'll provide a link to definitions of these if you want to brush up on what they mean.


Don't waste your money because if they actually claim a reductive explanation, they are false advertising. It doesn't exists.

Les Sleeth

Not me!

"Anecdote" = strawman argument.

"Brainwashed" = your paranoia.

Besides, you didn't answer my complaint properly. You are the one making concrete statements about obective reality (that the non-physical doesn't exist). If you ever can demonstrate the physical is responsible for all, then you might be justified in your claim. That is not yet proven, so it is not illogical to hypothesize that those aspects unexplained by physical principles might have a non-physical source.

I and others are mostly saying that physical principles do not yet explain everything. It is the physicalists who have lost their objectivity because they assume a priori their lack of experience means there is no non-physical. Further, they fail to properly acknowledge the very real problem of trying to observe the non-physical using physical detection techniques.

So I still say, one's fetish shouldn't influence objective statements about reality.

hypnagogue

That's not at all what I claimed. I claimed that subjective experience cannot be observed objectively, but it can be observed (subjectively).

When I refer to subjective experience, I do not refer to my brain functions. The two may be tied in integral ways, but that is not the point. The point is that I am referring to a certain point of view. E.g., normally when I talk about water I am referring to my macroscopic point of view of water, and the thought of H2O molecules never enters my mind. Thus even though water and H2O molecules are the same thing, I can still refer to the concept of water from one point of view without referring to the concept of its molecules.

When I refer to subjective experience I refer to my qualitative experience of the world. This is a conceptual point of view quite distinct from the concept of brain activity. I am not adding anything unnecessary; I am very simply referring to something I directly observe. If anything, it is quite necessary for me to assert the existence of subjective experience if I am to be honest with myself.

Unproven? Subjective experience is perpetually proven to me, every instant that I am awake! You are speaking as if the 1st person perspective does not exist, and that there is only a 3rd person point of view. That is obviously false.

Zero

Actually, as I stated before, it is wholy possible for non-physical whatever to exist, although it escapes me as to how you would prove it. However, there is no logical reason to include it, either. Since you cannot detect, define, or measure the non-physical, there is no logical way to use it in a theory of anything. It is a fancy way of saying "I don't know", and then filling in whatever ideas make you feel warm and squishy inside.

And, Fliption, I know you dig having me around, don't fight the feeling![6)]

hypnagogue

I would agree that this critique applies to terms such as 'spirit,' 'life force,' etc.

However, it does not apply to subjective experience, because by definition we can detect it. No, we cannot detect it objectively, but we quite obviously observe it all the time subjectively. It is thus quite logical to speak of subjective experience-- any logical difficulties only arise when we try to combine our concept of the 1st person POV with our concept of the 3rd person POV.

Zero

Actually, I may have come up with a "reductive theory of consciousness", but I can't be sure, since I'm not a navel-gazer by trade or general inclination.

Zero

Actually, this could go somewhere. So, you don't buy into "spirit", "life force", etc, correct, at least for the sake of this argument?

hypnagogue

Correct.

Zero

And you claim that your evidence of "subjective experience" is the experience itself?

hypnagogue

Yes.

Zero

So, how do you know that you are percieving it correctly, in order to state that it cannot arise from the purely physical?

hypnagogue

It's not a question of 'correct' or 'incorrect.' I imagine you are planning to say that it could just be an illusion. But that would not get us anywhere, because then we would have the same problems explaining the illusion itself.

What is that problem? One way to phrase the problem is that subjective experience possesses intrinsic properties, whereas our physical theories speak only of extrinsic properties. The objective notion of length, for example, has no meaning if I do not have some reference marker with which to compare quantities of length. However, my subjective notion of 'redness' does not come by way of comparison or reference to other colors or concepts; it is self-defining, in a way, and so it is said to have an intrinsic quality.

For instance, suppose you are floating in the center of a large, uniformly lit (such that there are no shadows or gradations of color), atmosphereless white sphere with nothing in it but yourself. (You can survive because you are in a space suit, although you cannot remove any part of your suit.) Suppose that you and the sphere are stationary, so you cannot approach its edge. Can you tell how wide the sphere is? No, you can't, because you have no references with which to compare it. You cannot go up to it and measure its circumference with a tape measure, you cannot calculate how far its edge is from you by yelling and estimating the time delay of the echo, and so on. In the absence of a reference, the sphere's width is undefined to you; not surprising, since extension is an extrinsic property. At best, you know it is at least a bit bigger than yourself, but you only know that by way of reference to your own body's physical dimensions.

But you can perceive that the sphere is white. You do not have to compare its color to anything else to know this; you don't have to look down at your boot and say "OK, now that I see both my boot and the sphere, I can tell that the sphere is white." You simply perceive its white-ness, and even in the absence of any other reference colors, you know it is white. That is because your perception of the sphere's color is an intrinsic property.

So if subjective experience is to be physical, that is equivalent to saying that there must be some way to get intrinsic properties from extrinsic properties. But this is not possible. We cannot use a set of things that are inherently defined with respect to other things to create something that is entirely defined by itself. The best we can do from a set of extrinsic (relational) properties is create more complex chains of relations, but we can't somehow manipulate relationships to get something that is characterized by its lack of relationship with anything else.

Zero

"Redness" is referenced against the first imprinted "red" color, as it was explained to us. It is exactly the same as how a computer recognizes your passwords, only more subtle. The first red thing we identify as such is "red", and then all other "redness" is checked against it. The notion of "red" is absolutely measured against a reference. In fact, humans can detect huge variations of colors, based on comparing to stored data in the brain. I don't get your point, unless I am missing something.

hypnagogue

Even if I grant you that for the sake of argument-- what was the first experienced redness referenced against?

Besides, your counterargument might be valid for something like color recognition, which can be explained objectively (there is even a sense, objectively of course, in which a red-and-green pair of 3D glasses 'recognizes' certain colors)-- but at bottom it does not address how the extrinsic properties of the brain account for the intrinsic properties of experience.

A computer recognizes passwords, but does it experience passwords?

You are talking about objective 'recognition' or discerning of light wavelengths. Thus you are talking about the wrong type of phenomenon: objective and not subjective. I can build a machine that does exactly what you have described without expecting it to experience color, just like I do not expect that my computer actually experiences passwords. Moreover, it can be shown that both you and I can recognize color without experiencing it (eg with an experiment involving unconscious primes). So recognizing a color in this sense is not the same thing as experiencing a color.

edit: Or, to use a better phrasing: Recognizing a wavelength of light is not the same thing as experiencing a color.

Jeebus

One quick question about the computer. Couldn't a computer recognize from awareness of validity of the 'correct' password and the 'incorrect' password. Wouldn't this awareness be semi-synonymous with the term experience?

Zero

Yes it is...I just did it, to test myself.

Fliption

I always knew you believed whatever you wanted to regardless of the evidence. Thanks for the proof.