Are Qualia Real? Debate & Discussion

[Les Sleeth]

I think we are in agreement. The Buddhist concept of "no-self" is mainly what I was thinking of when I mentioned people who'd say there was no being. Also Hume.

Their argument seems to be that within the content of experience there is no being that is seen, or at least nothing that can be called "self". If the self is not within sense-data then how do we know it exists? (This is not me asking, but the type of argument I've seen put forward).

It seems obvious to me that experience necessarily has a subject, because of the "nature" of experience. And it obviously cannot be within sense-data because it is what is experiencing the sense-data. There are things we can be certain of, even if they are not "sensed".

Nicely reasoned. I'd add that those who ask the question "if the self is not within sense-data then how do we know it exists" do so because they've not explored the consciousness potential of inner experience. If they have success with that, then they will know that experience isn't dependent on the senses.

 

[StatusX]

Here's a test for those of you who don't believe in qualia, related to what I said before about reincarnation.

The most likely way a teleportation device would work would be to scan every atom in our body, destroy us, and create a physically identical body at another location. I, for one, would never use such a machine, and I doubt many would. But if you really believe we are nothing more than our physical bodies, then you should have no qualms about being destroyed and recreated. Where as I would be afraid that I'd no longer be "looking out through the eyes" of this new body (think about what would happen if the original body wasn't destroyed), such a fear would be absurd and meaningless to you. So, would you do it?

 

[learningphysics]

Here's a test for those of you who don't believe in qualia, related to what I said before about reincarnation.

The most likely way a teleportation device would work would be to scan every atom in our body, destroy us, and create a physically identical body at another location. I, for one, would never use such a machine, and I doubt many would. But if you really believe we are nothing more than our physical bodies, then you should have no qualms about being destroyed and recreated. Where as I would be afraid that I'd no longer be "looking out through the eyes" of this new body (think about what would happen if the original body wasn't destroyed), such a fear would be absurd and meaningless to you. So, would you do it?

Actually it seems that if you believe we are no more than our physical bodies, you'd be even more afraid of going into a transporter. Since it is definitely a new physical body, not the same one as before... then by definition (if we define a person as the physical body) the original person is destroyed (original physical body is destroyed) and a new one is created (new physical body with new atoms).

 

[StatusX]

Actually it seems that if you believe we are no more than our physical bodies, you'd be even more afraid of going into a transporter. Since it is definitely a new physical body, not the same one as before... then by definition (if we define a person as the physical body) the original person is destroyed (original physical body is destroyed) and a new one is created (new physical body with new atoms).

If an exact copy is created, nothing will have changed except your position. There is no meaningful physical difference between two identical atoms. What would they have to be afraid of, if they were guaranteed everything would go as planned? On the other hand, if you believed there was some non-physical essence that wasn't being transferred, you would be afraid to use it.

 

[learningphysics]

If an exact copy is created, nothing will have changed except your position. There is no meaningful physical difference between two identical atoms. What would they have to be afraid of, if they were guaranteed everything would go as planned? On the other hand, if you believed there was some non-physical essence that wasn't being transferred, you would be afraid to use it.

What if an exact copy was created and the original wasn't destroyed? If there is no non-physical essense, what happens?

 

[StatusX]

What if an exact copy was created and the original wasn't destroyed? If there is no non-physical essense, what happens?

I don't know, but how does this affect the question? The point is that if a person is no more than their physical body, then there is nothing wrong with destroying that body and then recreating it exactly as it was before. The person would not report any changes, except that they are now in a new location. Heterophenomenolgy would have to say this is the same person. A physicalist should have no problem using a teleporter.

 

[loseyourname]

Here's a test for those of you who don't believe in qualia, related to what I said before about reincarnation.

The most likely way a teleportation device would work would be to scan every atom in our body, destroy us, and create a physically identical body at another location. I, for one, would never use such a machine, and I doubt many would. But if you really believe we are nothing more than our physical bodies, then you should have no qualms about being destroyed and recreated. Where as I would be afraid that I'd no longer be "looking out through the eyes" of this new body (think about what would happen if the original body wasn't destroyed), such a fear would be absurd and meaningless to you. So, would you do it?

I wouldn't have any trouble doing it. Even if you believe, as you do, that consciousness is somehow linked to the intrinsic base of the physical, why should you have any qualms? Intrinsically, the physical stuff should still be the same as well, and hence you should continue to be the same experiencing subject, whether you are a physicalist or not. The only hypothesis that would have you as a potentially different person is the soul hypothesis, which you've never seemed to subscribe to. (Although it is worth pointing out that, even under the soul hypothesis, your soul can presumably find its way back to your physical body in the same manner it found its way there in the first place.)

 

[StatusX]

I wouldn't have any trouble doing it. Even if you believe, as you do, that consciousness is somehow linked to the intrinsic base of the physical, why should you have any qualms? Intrinsically, the physical stuff should still be the same as well, and hence you should continue to be the same experiencing subject, whether you are a physicalist or not. The only hypothesis that would have you as a potentially different person is the soul hypothesis, which you've never seemed to subscribe to. (Although it is worth pointing out that, even under the soul hypothesis, your soul can presumably find its way back to your physical body in the same manner it found its way there in the first place.)

The problem I have, as mentioned above, is what would happen if the original wasn't destroyed? There is no reason you would stop experiencing from the original body and switch over to the new one. So why should you switch when the original is destroyed. Of course, this presupposes the existence of an inner experiencing being. But it's interesting to note that the mind-body problem could actually have some practical applications. We'll want to know exactly how our experiences ground themselves in our physical brains before we hop in a teleporter.

 

[Tournesol]

I don't have much hope we will ever agree mainly because of your above view, which seems to be that mentality and experience are the same thing (I've admitted mentality is an experience). I'll make one more attempt to argue they are entirely different.

I am not arguing that phenomenallity and cognition and consciousness are
all identical; I am trying to urge against characterising qualia in terms of absolutes
(absolutely ineffeable, incorrigible, private, etc) since a) it's not true and b) it plays straight into
the hands of qulai-denyers like Dennett.

It is true that when you imagine or think, you have an experience because not only is a thought or image present in your mind, you are also aware there is an image there.

Or at least there is some awareness.

It's the "you" that makes it a conscious experience.

Or the experience itself.

If there was no internal "subject" to be aware the image -- like, say, the way a television has an image -- then it isn't conscious.

This 'homuncular' or 'Cartesian Theatre' image is also a) ill-supported and b) a gift
to consciousness-denyers.

I have a little theory that one reason for the differences you and I are having is due to what kind of experience we each rely on most to know reality. If one relies primarily on the intellect, what is the primary source of one's experience? It is the intellect, which has been conditioned, can't stop thinking (i.e., and so is not under control), full of bias and opinion . . . In my view that person is not spending enough time viewing reality without the intellectual filters.

Well, if the metaphysics of mind is such that thoughts and ideas are barriers
to awareness, and without them we become omniscient, then that might work.

OTOH, if the metaphysics of mind is such that thoughts and ideas are all we have to work with and without them we are as helpless as newborn infants, then it won't.

Another option for experience is to just be in the moment of reality, and to keep one's mind more quiet so one can experience reality as it is instead of how one's mind wants to present it.

And this allows one to experience reality as it is in itself...or is one just experiencing one's own experience.

So who is better set up to know reality? The person devoted to experiencing his own mind, or the person devoted to experiencing reality as it is and keeping mind out of the way?

Or the person experiencing whatever their limited, finites self is capable of experiencing, and making the bold, if unconsicous, assumption that they are in possesion of the complete picture.

 

[learningphysics]

I don't know, but how does this affect the question? The point is that if a person is no more than their physical body, then there is nothing wrong with destroying that body and then recreating it exactly as it was before. The person would not report any changes, except that they are now in a new location. Heterophenomenolgy would have to say this is the same person. A physicalist should have no problem using a teleporter.

Well, I'd think there were some physicalists who would hold that one atom "is" significantly different from another.

Anyway. It seems like there are a variety of positions. From the thread and off the top of my head:

A. No experiencing beings.
Impossible to create or destroy anyone. However, for me anyway, it contradicts my primal intuition of experience.

B. There is an experiencing being
1) The being is something physical.
a) The being is literally his atoms. Any change in the set of atoms
yields a new person. With this view, a transporter recreation would
be a new person. Copying yields no paradox. However, this view
implies that persons are continually destroyed and created as atoms
are replaced.
b) The person arises as a result of some physical process - an
epiphenomenon of some type. As long as the process remains, the
person remains. Transporter recreation would be the same person.
Copying yields a paradox.
2) The being is non-physical (soul), linked to the physical body. Here it is
unknown what will happen when you destroy and recreate the physical
body. If the link is reestablished, the person is resurrected in the new
physical body. Copying presumably creates a new person with the new
body linked to a different soul. Or maybe it is a physical process in the
body that creates the link. If two bodies have identical processes maybe
they share the same soul, like a time-sharing process in a computer
network.

 

[Billy T]

I wouldn't have any trouble doing it. Even if you believe, as you do, that consciousness is somehow linked to the intrinsic base of the physical, why should you have any qualms? Intrinsically, the physical stuff should still be the same as well, and hence you should continue to be the same experiencing subject, whether you are a physicalist or not. The only hypothesis that would have you as a potentially different person is the soul hypothesis...

Not true that the soul is the only reason why one should hesitate before stepping into the teleporter. I am referrring to my concept (attachment to post 1 of thread "What Price Free Will") of what i am am. Namely informtion, not matter, in a parietal simulation. The matter pass thru the teleported, ok, but what about the information. This information is not the nature and location of each atom, not even the individual barrions and leptons. Let me give you an example: Let's teleport a computer, not one just out of the box, but one that is currently busy processing "information". Most of it will get thru fine, with each transistor in an off or on state (assuming it has only two states) but what about the current (rate of electron flow) in some of the wires that are being charged up to inititiate the state change of a transistior they will soon switch. (If you must think in terms of a clocked computer, consider that the next clock cycle is just starting, but no transitor state has yet changed and no two change at exactly the same time within the clock cycle.) That is your teleport must not only get every material object (electrons, etc.) correctly located, but also repoduce their speeds down the various printed circuity "wires."

In the attachment referred to, (and the original JHU paper on which it is based) I postulate a "biological uncertainity principle" which in essence states that the more precisely the state of brain cells are measured, the more the results of the measurement have changed the premeasurement state. If this is true (and hard to imagine it is not in brains even a small fraction as complex as human ones) Then your physical body is going to teleport just fine, but you will be modified in the processs, even if every barrion and lepton is in just the correct place.

PS to Tournesol: I not sure I fully uderstood your Post 99, but think there I agree with you. We have been going at it so strongly in the "Time does not exist - Math Proof" thread that I thought I should say this. Also note it is not fair to use my above reference to time against me there.

 

[loseyourname]

Not true that the soul is the only reason why one should hesitate before stepping into the teleporter. I am referrring to my concept (attachment to post 1 of thread "What Price Free Will") of what i am am. Namely informtion, not matter, in a parietal simulation. The matter pass thru the teleported, ok, but what about the information. This information is not the nature and location of each atom, not even the individual barrions and leptons. Let me give you an example: Let's teleport a computer, not one just out of the box, but one that is currently busy processing "information". Most of it will get thru fine, with each transistor in an off or on state (assuming it has only two states) but what about the current (rate of electron flow) in some of the wires that are being charged up to inititiate the state change of a transistior they will soon switch.

Current is only a matter of the sum properties of individual electrons, all of which is preserved in an exact copy. If the copy is indeed exact, then it should be dynamically exact, not statically exact, and any information should be preserved.

To StatusX, I don't see a paradox. There would then be two of you. Each has an equal claim to the name and past of one StatusX. That doesn't mean they will share the same future of the same future experiences, but they will have exactly the same past. One person split into two. What's the big deal?

 

[StatusX]

To StatusX, I don't see a paradox. There would then be two of you. Each has an equal claim to the name and past of one StatusX. That doesn't mean they will share the same future of the same future experiences, but they will have exactly the same past. One person split into two. What's the big deal?

I know we don't see eye to eye on qualia, but I think you are underestimating the problem here. Imagine it is done this way. First, an exact copy of you is created, but you aren't told. For all you know, this could have already happened; there is no reason to believe it would affect your experience in any way. Now you are destroyed. What happens? You die. There is no teleportation. There is a copy that goes on to live your life, and you just die. You would really have no problem with this?

This, reincarnation, the "Why am I me and not someone else?" problem. They are all very similar. They refer to the existence of an inner experiencing being that could logically (ie, it is a priori conceivable) inhabit different bodies. Basically a soul, without the religious connotations. Do you find any of these ideas coherent? I'm not sure if this is the same as the qualia problem. Maybe someone who knows more about this can offer a better explanation of what I'm talking about.

 

[Steve Esser]

Sorry for the late response to the original question. I'll try to catch up the recent posts soon. But, FWIW:

With regard to qualia: I vote no, but for a different reason than others. After all, I believe first person experience is a fundamental part of nature, which is not completely reducible to a third-person account of the concurrent brain states. However, describing the contents of experience as qualia only seems to lead to confusion. It continues a long tradition of separating thing into the ways they seem to us and the way they really are, implicitly adopting a Cartesian split into two substances. It inappropriately implies a static notion of what is actually an activity. Our experience is a process of direct engagement as a system embedded in its environment. While humans have developed a cognitive capacity to reflect on our experiences, this often leads to a misleading account of them (other examples abound, including the Libet experiments in the other thread).

 

[learningphysics]

Current is only a matter of the sum properties of individual electrons, all of which is preserved in an exact copy. If the copy is indeed exact, then it should be dynamically exact, not statically exact, and any information should be preserved.

To StatusX, I don't see a paradox. There would then be two of you. Each has an equal claim to the name and past of one StatusX. That doesn't mean they will share the same future of the same future experiences, but they will have exactly the same past. One person split into two. What's the big deal?

Is there a being having an experience? After the split, where is this being?

Bodies can split into two... matter can split into two... but the experiencing being... how can it split into two? It appears to me that if neither of the two beings after the split is the original being, then the original is dead.

 

[Les Sleeth]

However, describing the contents of experience as qualia only seems to lead to confusion. It continues a long tradition of separating thing into the ways they seem to us and the way they really are, implicitly adopting a Cartesian split into two substances.

I don't see your point at all about the Caresian split. How are two substances implied? It seems to me that a process and a quality are implied: the process of simple detection (the easy problem), and then a more internal qualitative sense/awareness of what was detected (the hard problem). Because both detection and qualitative experience are aspects of human sensitivty, it therefore does not suggest substance dualism but rather the specialization of consciousness.

 

[Les Sleeth]

I am not arguing that phenomenallity and cognition and consciousness are all identical; I am trying to urge against characterising qualia in terms of absolutes (absolutely ineffeable, incorrigible, private, etc) since a) it's not true and b) it plays straight intothe hands of qulai-denyers like Dennett.

Qualia are absolutely private, period. If you can make one an external thing, please do so and show it to us. And who cares who’s hands it plays into. Is the consciousness question a game or are we after the truth. Let consciousnes be whatever it turns out to be, whether it’s Dennett’s version or Chalmers’ or something entirely different.

This 'homuncular' or 'Cartesian Theatre' image is also a) ill-supported and b) a gift to consciousness-denyers.

There’s nothing homuncular in suggesting a subject is present. Why else have we labelled the experience “subjective”? It is because a subject is present. And by the way, just because functionalists have decided to “dismiss” the homuncular model doesn’t mean it doesn’t have relevance.

I don’t know about you, but as for me I am quite certain there is a “me” in here using my intellect, imagination, emotions. Of course, if one doesn’t have enough control of those functions to bring them to rest, then one might just believe that his make up is some combination and activity of those things. I will explain more below.

Well, if the metaphysics of mind is such that thoughts and ideas are barriers to awareness, and without them we become omniscient, then that might work.

OTOH, if the metaphysics of mind is such that thoughts and ideas are all we have to work with and without them we are as helpless as newborn infants, then it won't.

I wasn’t trying to say “thoughts and ideas are barriers to awareness,” I was saying that if one cannot stop the thinking process, then one hasn’t full control of the mind, nor can one fully know what consciousness is. Thoughts and ideas are not all we have to work with, but you may know nothing about this particular human potential. More below.

Another option for experience is to just be in the moment of reality, and to keep one's mind more quiet so one can experience reality as it is instead of how one's mind wants to present it.

And this allows one to experience reality as it is in itself...or is one just experiencing one's own experience. . . . . Or the person experiencing whatever their limited, finites self is capable of experiencing, and making the bold, if unconsicous, assumption that they are in possesion of the complete picture.

If you cannot make your mind be still, then how do you know if it has a nature that only shows up when it isn’t moving? An analogy I’ve used before is to imagine consciousness is a barrel of water in the back of a pickup truck that is rolling along a rough country road. If all that conscious water had ever known was the sloshing, bouncing, vibrating, etc., that occurs on its surface, it might come to believe its nature is all that surface movement. But once the water becomes perfectly still, it sees it actually has depth, and that water, rather than movement, is its “essence.”

Of course, since you can’t stop your mind, then you can’t know if what I say is true or not. Even if I tell you that for thousands of years people have known about his human potential, and have spent their lives developing it, you still won’t know until you experience it yourself.

So my objection to all these debates about the nature of consciousness is that no one is even looking at what it IS; they keep looking at what it does, and that is characterized by activity in the non-stop thinking mind. In case you might be interested, I developed this idea in an earlier thread here where I created an imaginary debate between Dennett and the Buddha.

 

[Steve Esser]

I don't see your point at all about the Caresian split. How are two substances implied? It seems to me that a process and a quality are implied: the process of simple detection (the easy problem), and then a more internal qualitative sense/awareness of what was detected (the hard problem). Because both detection and qualitative experience are aspects of human sensitivty, it therefore does not suggest substance dualism but rather the specialization of consciousness.

I’m giving a different account than yours to try to make a point. Let me know if it gets any clearer.

I say the process itself gives rise to the raw qualitative what-it-is-like of experience which in turn constitutes the hard problem. This is a pre-reflective experience. But when we enter what I call the introspective or reflective mode (your “qualitative sense/awareness") and cogitate on our experiences, we end up creating new categories of things: sense-data, representations, qualia. These things are misleading: experience is an activity, not a collection of things – it is a direct engagement with the world.

Looking at your last post, Les, I guess I might have a very different view than yours, given that I think the activity of experience is what is primary, and introspection is derivative. I think process or event ontologies do a better job. On the other hand, we may be considered closer in views, if you allow that if we could dissolve our higher cognitive functions (including the construction of the higher-order self) we would still be left embedded in the network of activity in the world – an activity which necessarily gives rise to experience.

 

[learningphysics]

I’m giving a different account than yours to try to make a point. Let me know if it gets any clearer.

I say the process itself gives rise to the raw qualitative what-it-is-like of experience which in turn constitutes the hard problem. This is a pre-reflective experience. But when we enter what I call the introspective or reflective mode (your “qualitative sense/awareness") and cogitate on our experiences, we end up creating new categories of things: sense-data, representations, qualia. These things are misleading: experience is an activity, not a collection of things – it is a direct engagement with the world.

Yes, but "what" is engaging with the world?

 

[learningphysics]

you might be interested, I developed this idea in an earlier thread here where I created an imaginary debate between Dennett and the Buddha.

That was fun to read!

But I think many Buddhists would strongly disagree with the position that you attribute to Buddha. They'd call it more Hindu than buddhist, particularly the reference to a "foundation".

Good stuff.

 

[Les Sleeth]

I say the process itself gives rise to the raw qualitative what-it-is-like of experience which in turn constitutes the hard problem. This is a pre-reflective experience. But when we enter what I call the introspective or reflective mode (your “qualitative sense/awareness") and cogitate on our experiences, we end up creating new categories of things: sense-data, representations, qualia. These things are misleading: experience is an activity, not a collection of things – it is a direct engagement with the world.

Looking at your last post, Les, I guess I might have a very different view than yours, given that I think the activity of experience is what is primary, and introspection is derivative. I think process or event ontologies do a better job. On the other hand, we may be considered closer in views, if you allow that if we could dissolve our higher cognitive functions (including the construction of the higher-order self) we would still be left embedded in the network of activity in the world – an activity which necessarily gives rise to experience.

Yes we do have different views, but you should know that mine is being taken from the sort of experience I cherish. You say experience is "a direct engagement with the world," but I know for a fact that experience does not require engagement with the world.

Because I have practiced mediation daily for 30 years, I can speak of what it is like to still the mind. In my practice, one withdraws from the senses, turns one attention around 180 degrees, and learns to "merge" with something utterly still inside. In that there is no external world necessary to be absorbed into a deep experience . . . one needs nothing but one's self.

Now when after practicing I open my eyes and engage the world, just as I did this morning, for awhile at least I am able to keep my mind still. If "experience" is the result of activity, I cannot see what that activity is. Whether info from the "world" strikes my consciousness or not, I am still experiencing my self in that stillness; in fact, the stillness creates the most powerful experience of self I know.

You spoke of the ability to "dissolve our higher cognitive functions," but I am not so sure that cognitive functions are "higher" than the pure experience of consciousness (i.e., still, inactive, but fully present). I seem to perceive and understand more when my mind is still than when the damn thing refuses to shut up.

So like the link to one of my earlier threads I referenced in my last post, I don't believe as many functionalists do that consciousness arises from activity, but rather consciousness is diminished by it when one cannot control that activity enough to stop it and view reality, and oneself, without the filters incessant mentality creates.

 

[Les Sleeth]

That was fun to read!

But I think many Buddhists would strongly disagree with the position that you attribute to Buddha. They'd call it more Hindu than buddhist, particularly the reference to a "foundation".

Good stuff.

Thanks LP. I'm glad you appreciated it.

Just a note though. You are probably right that many "Buddhists" might disagree with the foundational concept, but I quoted the Buddha himself (the long discourses found in the Digha Nikaya) when I said, “There is, monks, that plane where there is neither extension nor motion. . . there is no coming or going or remaining or deceasing or uprising. . . . There is, monks, an unborn, not become, not made, uncompounded . . . [and] because [that exists] . . . an escape can be shown for what is born, has become, is made, is compounded.” If that's not a "foundation," I don't know what is!

 

[Steve Esser]

Yes, but "what" is engaging with the world?

I didn't mean to be unclear, and was referring to a human. The idea is that a human is a natural system whose interaction with its environment gives rise (necessarily) to experience.

Moving into my speculative panexperientialist mode, I would extend this to say what defines distinct systems throughout nature is a (heretofore unacknowledged) aspect of causality which provides a coordinating or binding function. In us, this aspect is felt as experience.

 

[Steve Esser]

Yes we do have different views, but you should know that mine is being taken from the sort of experience I cherish. You say experience is "a direct engagement with the world," but I know for a fact that experience does not require engagement with the world.

Because I have practiced mediation daily for 30 years, I can speak of what it is like to still the mind. In my practice, one withdraws from the senses, turns one attention around 180 degrees, and learns to "merge" with something utterly still inside. In that there is no external world necessary to be absorbed into a deep experience . . . one needs nothing but one's self.

Now when after practicing I open my eyes and engage the world, just as I did this morning, for awhile at least I am able to keep my mind still. If "experience" is the result of activity, I cannot see what that activity is. Whether info from the "world" strikes my consciousness or not, I am still experiencing my self in that stillness; in fact, the stillness creates the most powerful experience of self I know.

You spoke of the ability to "dissolve our higher cognitive functions," but I am not so sure that cognitive functions are "higher" than the pure experience of consciousness (i.e., still, inactive, but fully present). I seem to perceive and understand more when my mind is still than when the damn thing refuses to shut up.

So like the link to one of my earlier threads I referenced in my last post, I don't believe as many functionalists do that consciousness arises from activity, but rather consciousness is diminished by it when one cannot control that activity enough to stop it and view reality, and oneself, without the filters incessant mentality creates.

Thanks Les. I'll think about what this implies about the way I've been approaching things. Off the top of my head, I would think that a person's engagement with the rest of the world could be seen as continuing in meditation - but only at a micro-level.

 

[learningphysics]

I didn't mean to be unclear, and was referring to a human. The idea is that a human is a natural system whose interaction with its environment gives rise (necessarily) to experience.

Moving into my speculative panexperientialist mode, I would extend this to say what defines distinct systems throughout nature is a (heretofore unacknowledged) aspect of causality which provides a coordinating or binding function. In us, this aspect is felt as experience.

And by human, are you referring to the matter that composes the human body? The physical atoms themselves? Just want to get as specific as possible, as to what exactly is having the experience.

 

[Tournesol]

Qualia are absolutely private, period.

But I can tell what qualia you are having by examing their neural correlates,
and I can tell what they are like on analogy with my own.

If you can make one an external thing, please do so and show it to us.

Your qualia are already external to me.

And who cares who’s hands it plays into. Is the consciousness question a game or are we after the truth. Let consciousnes be whatever it turns out to be, whether it’s Dennett’s version or Chalmers’ or something entirely different.

But you yourself are dead against Denett's version. Is that becuae you
think it is untrue, or what ?

There’s nothing homuncular in suggesting a subject is present.

There is nothing homuncular in suggesting you, Les are present
in a room. There is something very homuncular about suggesting there
is a mini-Les inside Les's head, watching the world on a kind of TV.

Why else have we labelled the experience “subjective”? It is because a subject is present.

A subject or a subject-in-a-subject ?

And by the way, just because functionalists have decided to “dismiss” the homuncular model doesn’t mean it doesn’t have relevance.

Just about everybody has dismissed it , and for good reasons.

I don’t know about you, but as for me I am quite certain there is a “me” in here using my intellect, imagination, emotions.

So in addition to Les's intellect, imagination, emotions, there is a little Les
using them all ? But how could little Les use them without thoughts and desires of his own. Wouldn't it be simpler to say that your intellect, imagination, emotions are interacting with each other, and the total
process constitutes "you".

So my objection to all these debates about the nature of consciousness is that no one is even looking at what it IS; they keep looking at what it does, and that is characterized by activity in the non-stop thinking mind. In case you might be interested, I developed this idea in an earlier thread here where I created an imaginary debate between Dennett and the Buddha.

You still haven't made it clear whether this knowledge of "what consciousness
IS" is supposed to be able to answer the Hard Problem.

 

[Tournesol]

If you cannot make your mind be still, then how do you know if it has a nature that only shows up when it isn’t moving? An analogy I’ve used before is to imagine consciousness is a barrel of water in the back of a pickup truck that is rolling along a rough country road. If all that conscious water had ever known was the sloshing, bouncing, vibrating, etc., that occurs on its surface, it might come to believe its nature is all that surface movement. But once the water becomes perfectly still, it sees it actually has depth, and that water, rather than movement, is its “essence.”

So you say. But one of the ways one would tell a real pond from a fake
pond made of glass, is that the real pond can slosh.

The people you call functionalists think consc. is all sloshing -- behavior. They cannot see the Hard Problem, because behaviour is readily explaiend physically.

I think the sloshing and stillness -- behaviour and experience are both
part of consc. so for me there is a Hard Problem.

You think consc. is all stillness and no sloshing. Does that mean you can solve the HP, or that for you there is no HP because consc. has nothing to do
with matter or the physical implementation ?

 

[Steve Esser]

And by human, are you referring to the matter that composes the human body? The physical atoms themselves? Just want to get as specific as possible, as to what exactly is having the experience.

Hello learningphysics (my name could be "neverlearnedenoughphysics").

I definitely wouldn't use the terms matter or material (what are they, anyway, given what we know of physics?). Atoms come and go from our bodies. An individual human is a system or a network of interactions. To make sense of such a system being distinguishable within the larger network of the world, we must supplement our usual notion of micro-level physical causality (one billiard ball effecting the next) with another aspect of causation -- a binding or coordinating aspect. With this new fuller concept of causality in place, I then speculate that to the human system in question, this coordinating aspect of causality is felt as experience.
(Am I far out enough on a limb now?).

 

[learningphysics]

Hello learningphysics (my name could be "neverlearnedenoughphysics").

I definitely wouldn't use the terms matter or material (what are they, anyway, given what we know of physics?). Atoms come and go from our bodies. An individual human is a system or a network of interactions. To make sense of such a system being distinguishable within the larger network of the world, we must supplement our usual notion of micro-level physical causality (one billiard ball effecting the next) with another aspect of causation -- a binding or coordinating aspect. With this new fuller concept of causality in place, I then speculate that to the human system in question, this coordinating aspect of causality is felt as experience.
(Am I far out enough on a limb now?).

Hi Steve. Yes, I think my name should also be "neverlearnedenoughphysics".

I have a problem with saying that a "system of interactions" is having an experience. An "interaction" is not a substance of any kind. It is a relationship between a cause and an effect. There is no "thing" that is an interaction, it is purely informational. For example, if I push a table forward... there are two substances involved (we could get into the details of what happens on an atomic level... but I won't go there). The one substance is myself. The other is the table. The "push" is not a substance. Would it make sense to say that the "push" is having an experience?

A system of interactions, is just a system of relationships. There is no substance anywhere here either. There is no "thing".

It would be like saying the "arrangement" of books on a shelf is having an experience, whereas none of the books themselves are experiencing anything.

Am I a substance? Am I a thing of some kind? Yes, I'm certain of that. Every experience shows that I'm some "thing".

 

[learningphysics]

So in addition to Les's intellect, imagination, emotions, there is a little Les
using them all ? But how could little Les use them without thoughts and desires of his own. Wouldn't it be simpler to say that your intellect, imagination, emotions are interacting with each other, and the total
process constitutes "you".

No. This is simply ignoring the nature of experience itself. There is something that is having an experience. That something is the person. It doesn't make sense to talk about emotions, desires or intellect, if there isn't something that is "experiencing" emotions, desires or intellect.