Heterophenomenology

Tournesol

I didn't say that. Consciousness can cause does not mean "there is nothing
more to consciousness than its causal role". And "consciousness can cause" includes qualia.

StatusX

It seems silly to have the same argument in two different threads, so I'll respond to this point in the other thread.

Mentat

But just because you don't like the logical conclusion of a certain line of reasoning, doesn't mean that that line of reasoning is wrong.

Belief, as I've stated before, can be (and has been; numerous times, numerous ways) explained in terms of a neural activity. Thus, "belief" would fall into the realm of "a-consciousness", and we would be able to believe that we had "p-consciousness" even if we were zombies.

The fact that the same thing can occur (a flash of light, photons entering the retina, etc), without the subject claiming "conscious experience" of it, is indeed relevant.

But is "paying attention" a vital part of conscious "experience"? If not, then why was it the deciding factor in this experiment (as to whether the flashes were "consciously experienced" or not)? If so, then it is indeed a relevant prediction.

That's self-referential nonsense, Canute (no offense). How can you expect anyone to argue with a "bligs are something we blig, of course" argument? Or to even take it seriously?

This is, once again, indicative of your misunderstanding heterophenomenology. Heterophenomenology does not explain "in what manner experiences exist", it is a method for scientific understanding of verbal reports about consciousness.

Well, no one's going to stop you, but I would very much prefer it if you didn't leave just yet. If you do, it will certainly not be the first time that you've done that (on one of my threads, no less), and I find it to be as insulting as it is unfortunate. If you're not going to fully flesh out your arguments (and the arguments of others), why even begin discussing?

StatusX

I just came up with a thought experiment that might help demonstrate the point. Let me know if this is helpful to anyone: (by the way, this is sort of a continuation of the Mary character used by Jackson, but I have only heard that argument second hand, so I apologize for any inconsistencies)

Mary, the famous neuroscientist who only saw red when she was an adult, has had a child, Michael. Being so deprived her whole life, she has become bitter at the world, and has taken it out on her son - she doesn't let him see any colors, just like her. She tells him about the colors, about how the sky is blue and bananas are yellow. But she purposely tells him nothing about the colors red and green; she wants them to be a suprise.

Then one day, she decides it's time for Michael to learn about these colors, but she reveals them to him in a peculiar way. She has prepared a room with a white floor and ceiling and walls of alternating vertical red and green stripes. She brings Michael into the room and lets him look around for a few minutes, telling him the names of the two colors, but not which is which. Then she brings him back to their discolored home.

Now we subject Michael to a heterophenomenological examination. What will we find? He knows red and green are different. Is that it? If you showed him a red slide, could he tell you which it was? No. If you asked him which is the color of an apple, could he answer? No. If you asked him which color was warmer, could he say? This is harder, since it is possible we have innate responses to colors, but assume for simplicity Michael has no such inborn traits. If so, then no, since he doesn't know what colors tend to accompany heat.

So all he knows is that they're different. What about his behavior? If shown one of the colors and asked a question, is there any possible way he could give an answer that depended on which color was being shown? Is there any way his behavior in general could be different as a result of which color he was seeing (again, assume he has no innate response to colors)? Presumably not, which means the colors play the exact same functional role.

All we have found is that a) he knows red and green are different and b) they play the same causal role. In other words, heterophenomenology has told us they are completely symmetric, according to Michael.

Now Michael is finally let out into the colorful world. According to the model we have just made of "the world accornding to Michael", we could switch every instance of red and green and absolutely nothing would be different to him. But cleary, something is different. What has changed? The experiences are different. The experience that he calls "red" in the red-green world corresponds to "green" in the green-red world. There is clearly a natural difference to Michael between the two worlds, but heterophenomenolgy completely fails to account for it.

Mentat

StatusX,
Michael can only tell you that "red" is different from "green", in the first place, because he knows that there are two colors, and he knows that their names are "red" and "green". Unless he were capable of physically distinguishing between the two, he would have to disbelieve his mother about there being two colors. As it is, he can physically distinguish between the two colors (though not knowing which is which), and so he agrees that there are indeed "red" and "green" stripes.

Now, when he gets out into the world, and see the colors for himself, he will still be able to distinguish between them. He won't know which is which (but then, he didn't know that to begin with...and neither did you, until someone told you), but the process of distinguishing and categorizing is merely a process of computation (no "extra ingredient" required).

StatusX

That was my point. A computational model of his brain will only capture the fact that he distinguishes them. So according to this model, nothing would be different to Michael if when he walked out into the world, it was a normal one, or if it was one where stop signs are green and grass is red. The model would predict his inner subjective world would see the two identically. But clearly this isn't true, because his experiences of what he calls red and green would be switched.

If you want to preserve the completeness of heterophenomenology, you have to either claim there really is no difference to Michael between the two worlds, or offer a way heterophenomenology could account for a difference, by finding some asymmetry in the functional role of the colors.

selfAdjoint

I don't get this. Michael can ask around and find out which of the two shades he can distinguish is generally called red and which is called green. Asking around doesn't strain the computational-described brain at all, does it? This is how we learn colors ourselves; our brains provide us with distinguishable, recallable entities (congeries of neural activity) and we learn to give these names by social interaction.

Computer/software systems alreay can do what I have described here.

StatusX

I admit, it isn't worded very clearly. I meant if you had put him in an inverted red-green world instead, where everyone still calls grass green, etc, it would be no different to him than if you had put him in a regular world.

Maybe it's more clear if instead, you put him in a normal world for a day, erase his memory, and then put him in a red-green inverted world. Of course he won't notice a difference, but is it still a meanigful question to ask if there is one? (this subtlety is part of the reason I didn't go with this scenario first) And if so, is there a difference?

loseyourname

The ideal heterophenomenological neuroscientist (which can exist, since this is only a thought experiment) would look for the neural response that accompanies the human experience of "green" and "red" and be able to identify them in your hypothetical Michael. Even if he didn't know what they were, the ideal neuroscientist would. That is precisely why heterophenomenology does not restrict itself to using only verbal and behavioral reports as primary data.

Let me reformulate your thought experiment. Imagine Michelle, Michael's sister. She has been raised completely without any knowledge of geometry. One day, after turning 10, Michelle is shown a sheet of paper with two figures on it, a circle and an ellipse. When the heterophenomenologist asks Michelle what she sees, she cannot answer. She doesn't know the words "circle," "ellipse," "flatter," "round," or any other word that refers to traits of conic sections, nor has she ever seen any of these things (just as Michael doesn't know "hue," "warmth," etc.). When formulated thus, do you still think this is a failing of heterophenomenology?

StatusX

Yes, but does heterophenomenology include the specific neural responses as part of that set S of subjective data? Michael doesn't know what his neurons are doing, so how could that be considered part of his subjectivity?

Just because she doesn't know those words doesn't mean she couldn't explain the difference. She could motion with her fingers, or draw them. But there is no way to explain colors besides identifying them with objects (red is the color of a stop sign) or by words we've associated with certain colors (red is the warmest color). That is precisely the trouble that expereinces present, because they can't be defined completely in terms of structure or function. While two shapes with the same structure necessarily are identical, two colors with the same structural and functional roles (red and green in this example) are not necessarily identical.

loseyourname

Heterophenomenology considers all relevant data, including neural responses, behavioral responses, and verbal reports.

If Michelle can draw another circle and another ellipse to explain the difference between a circle and an ellipse, then Michael can paint one sheet of paper green and the other red to explain the difference between green and red. Either way, they're just referring to what they've seen by relating it to something else they can see. This experiment can be twisted to include any manner of objects or qualities that a human can visually perceive.

By the way, what makes you think that the colors green and red have the same structural/functional roles and more than circles and ellipses do? Green and red result from different wavelengths of light and evoke different nervous responses. I've never understood why antiphysicalist arguments are so obsessed with color.

Tournesol

I can write down the mathematical formulae for a cricle and an ellipse.
I know of no such formulae for the way-red-seems and the-way-green-seems. Do you ? (NB-- not talking wavelengths).

StatusX

This experiment is ideal, and I'm saying that the functional roles of red and green are identical. That means that the neural circuits that cause red reactions and the ones that cause green reactions could be interchanged, and Michael would still behave the same. Whether his experiences would be the same is a further question, and to even ask it would be to assume the incompleteness of heterophenomenology.

How could you meaningfully replace circles and ellipses for red and green in this experiment? That would mean you'd have to create a world where circles and ellipses are switched, but every structural and functional property is unchanged. That is logically impossible.

In general they don't. But the point of this experiment was to point out that heterophenomenology says that the only reason we see red as different than green is because they have different functional roles. If their functions were identical, they would be interchangeable. But we (or at least I) know from experience that isn't true, that red and green are different because they look different. In other words, heterophenomenolgy is built from bare differences, and experiences are not.

selfAdjoint

To Dennett's CADBLIND machine, which can input frequency information from a screen and store it internally as numbers, the red and green in the example would be two different numbers. It compares by subracting the numbers; if it gets a nonzero difference, they are different. The machine could answer the question that they are different, and the only thing it would need to answer more questions is a vocabulary. Function has nothing to do with it. Apples of identical shapes might be red or green.

loseyourname

So you start off with an impossible situation. Okay, let's see where you're going.

Why? Where is the contradiction in saying that Michelle's neural circuits can't be switched so that every time she is shown a circle, she sees an ellipse? She would still behave the same, and you'd still have the same problem.

No it doesn't. Heterophenomenology says that we should remain neutral about whether our subjects beliefs about their experiences are correct until their claims can be verified in some way. It isn't a model of consciousness or cognition; it's just a methodology.

Please rephrase that. I have no clue whatsoever what you are trying to say here.

loseyourname

Can you write down formulae for the way an ellipse seems or the way a circle seems? You completely missed my point anyway. It was only that if Michelle had no concept of these things (she doesn't know any geometry and can't write formulae), they would be foreign to her and she would have no way of describing the difference between a circle and an ellipse, any more than Michael could describe the difference between green and red.

StatusX

Please explain which part of it is impossible. If you really think this is true, you shouldn't have tried to see where I was going, you should have stopped right here and explained why the premise is flawed.

How could she be made to respond to circles in the same way she responds to ellipses? They have different structures. A simple explanation of what an ellipse is could verify that her perception is wrong. With colors, there is no way to determine that what Michael is seeing is really red, or if he sees it as green but calls it red.

Of course, a heterophenomenologist would probably say there is no meaningful distinction here. But this experiment, just like any other argument to take the hard problem seriously, can only help us look to our own experiences for evidence. We know that red looks like something, and could logically imagine it looking like something else, or nothing at all, and still filling the same causal roles. All I can do is point out exactly what you're denying when you say heterophenomenology is complete. A perfectly consistent theory could probably be constructed that ignores experience and explains all behavior, but it would be wrong, or at least incomplete.

Again, the argument is about whether heterophenomenology is capable of completely decribing the mind. You keep going back to the claim that heterophenomenology is neutral, but we aren't talking about that. I'm saying there are real phenomena it will never be able to account for, whether it makes a judgement about their existence or not.

We don't just know that red is different than green, or that red is the color these things are, and green is the color those things are. We know what they look like. Rosenberg talked about this. Of course, you can deny this and still produce a perfectly consistent theory. If we ignored high speed objects, Newtonian physics would work fine. But ignoring data to preserve an ideology is not something I want to do.