Is the Hard Problem Just Silly?

[selfAdjoint]

Is the "Hard Problem" Just Silly?

I have been reading Chalmer's "Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness", kindly linked to by hypnagogue. Starting out, Chalmers says:

The easy problems of consciousness include those of explaining the following phenomena:


the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
the integration of information by a cognitive system;
the reportability of mental states;
the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
the focus of attention;
the deliberate control of behavior;
the difference between wakefulness and sleep.

He says there are no deep problems, only technical ones, in the way of establishing these phenomena.

Then he describes the "hard problem": the feeling or experiencing of consciousness. He quotes Nagel's formulation: "There is something that it is like to be conscious". And goes on to suggest that this something cannot be expressed as a logical consequence of the "easy" phenomena above.

But suppose we built an AI that had all of the easy phenomena aced, and was recursive besides. By recursive I mean that it doesn't jus access mental states like retrieving data, but can create new mental states that have a subject/content relation to given existing mental states. Goedel created recursive relations when he mapped logic into arithmetic so that the arithmetic operations and rules faithfully mirrored the logical ones. Thus arithmetic had logic within it as an arithmetic content. And I visualize a recursive mental state having expressed within it as lower level content the reality of other mental states, be they feelings,memories, sensations or whatever.

Chalmers would agree that it is possible, even if technically difficult, to build an AI that manifests his easy phenomena, and it is a fact that recursive programs can be built, so I don't see any problem with stipulating that.


Now I say, pretty much echoing Dennet, the experience of being conscious, the something that it is to be conscious, is what that AI would itself experience while it was executing. And our experience of consciousness is what we experience when our a-consciousness runs on the wetware of our nervous systems. Call it emergent if you like; it's not a static logical consequent, but a dynamic activity of a recursive system.

Sometimes beginners on the physics boards complain that physics accounts for electromagnetism and gravity but it doesn't explain them. What they mean by explain, they can't explain (heh!) though they try mightily. But we all know what they mean: there is something that it is like to be heavy and gravity doesn't account for that. But that is just a beginner problem in physics. Could the hard problem be just a beginner problem in cognitive science?

 

[Fliption]

Call it emergent if you like; it's not a static logical consequent, but a dynamic activity of a recursive system.

I'm sure you'll get some good responses from this but I would like to ask a question. When I think of something emerging from something else, it outlines a causal relationship. This implies that this mechanism can be functionally described. Is this not correct? Correct me if you think my definitions are off. Chalmer's argument is that consciousness cannot be functionally described in principle. I just don't think I understand how we can have a causal relationship that cannot be understood in principle. It's seem unscientific to say that A leads to B by some magical principle that we cannot describe. It just "emerges" but the mechanism for that emergence is beyond explanation.

Given the problems of describing consciousness in any functional way, the emergence view seems like just another way of describing the view that consciousness is fundamental to nature.

 

[loseyourname]

I'm sure you'll get some good responses from this but I would like to ask a question. When I think of something emerging from something else, it outlines a causal relationship. This implies that this mechanism can be functionally described. Is this not correct?

It does imply a causal relationship, but it can be a very complicated relationship. The simplest example of an emergent property that I can think of is the surface tension of water. Even with this property, there are several levels of causation. The high electronegativity of the oxygen nucleus relative to the hydrogen nucleus causes the electrons to be near the oxygen end of the molecule more often than they are near the hydrogen ends. This causes the molecule to form a weak dipole with a positive end and a negative end. This, in turn, causes the molecules to attract each other. When a large collection of water molecules is placed near air, they are attracted to each other far more strongly than they are attracted to the air molecules. This results in surface tension.

A more complicated example would be the social behavior of colonial insects. This results from the complicated interplay of millions of genes and thousands of individual organisms, refined by billions of years of evolution. It would likely be impossible to describe the causation of an emergent property like this from first principles. Impossible in practice, that is, although it is certainly possible in principle.

Chalmer's argument is that consciousness cannot be functionally described in principle. I just don't think I understand how we can have a causal relationship that cannot be understood in principle. It's seem unscientific to say that A leads to B by some magical principle that we cannot describe. It just "emerges" but the mechanism for that emergence is beyond explanation.

That's where you seem to have a misconception of what an emergent property is. Emergent properties, as detailed above, can certainly be explained in principle, but sometimes the causation is so intricate that, practically speaking, it probably isn't going to happen, at least not without leaving a good deal out of the equation.

Given the problems of describing consciousness in any functional way, the emergence view seems like just another way of describing the view that consciousness is fundamental to nature.

There's another mistake. Emergent properties are anything but fundamental. They only exist because of the complex interplay between fundamental particles and fundamental laws. In fact, the electronegativity of the oxygen and hydrogen nuclei in water are themselves, strictly speaking, an emergent property, resulting from the chromodynamics of the quarks making up the protons and neutrons, which themselves may very well result from an even more fundamental set of laws that we have yet to discover.

 

[Fliption]

That's where you seem to have a misconception of what an emergent property is. Emergent properties, as detailed above, can certainly be explained in principle, but sometimes the causation is so intricate that, practically speaking, it probably isn't going to happen, at least not without leaving a good deal out of the equation.

You say I have a mis-understanding of what an emergent property is and I'll concede this may be true, but the words that follow don't explain what my misconception is. It actually says exactly what I agree with...

"Emergent properties, as detailed above, can certainly be explained in principle, but sometimes the causation is so intricate that, practically speaking, it probably isn't going to happen"

This is not inconsistent with what I think an emergent property is. It should be possible in principle to explain. The fact that it may never be possible practically speaking isn't relevant to the topic because that's not the argument that Chalmers makes about consciousness.

There's another mistake. Emergent properties are anything but fundamental. They only exist because of the complex interplay between fundamental particles and fundamental laws.

Sure it's a mistake. I'm claiming it's a mistake that self adjoint is making. I understand that a view of emergence would contradict one of being fundamental. My point was simply that the "emergence" view on consciousness does not meet the definition because it still cannot be explained in principle. This makes it a view closer to "consciousness being fundamental" that just happens to mis-use the term emergence.

 

[Doctordick]

I have been reading Chalmer's "Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness", ... the "hard problem": the feeling or experiencing of consciousness.

I had an extended conversation on this subject with Chalmer a number of years ago and (unsuccessfully) tried to convince him of this very issue. My position is pretty well expressed in some comments I made to a paper by Marion Gothier

http://home.jam.rr.com/dicksfiles/Marion/science.htm

I tried to reach her directly but have been unable to contact her. That is why I posted her paper with comments on my website (looking for interest). I think there is some serious things to talk about behind these phenomena.

Have fun -- Dick

 

[Les Sleeth]

Could the hard problem be just a beginner problem in cognitive science?

Pretty provocative thread title there SA. However, it doesn't quite beat out my thread title at the old PF "Why Materialists Can't Think Properly."

The hard problem could be a beginner's problem, as you say. It could also be that the objectivity of those who don't want to acknowledge just how "hard" the problem is are victims of blind faith in physicalism.

 

[loseyourname]

Sure it's a mistake. I'm claiming it's a mistake that self adjoint is making. I understand that a view of emergence would contradict one of being fundamental. My point was simply that the "emergence" view on consciousness does not meet the definition because it still cannot be explained in principle. This makes it a view closer to "consciousness being fundamental" that just happens to mis-use the term emergence.

Well, I'll leave adjoint to defend himself here, but I will say that the argument that something cannot be explained in a given way in principle is almost always a lack of imagination argument. Philosophers have been posing problems for thousands of years that science could not explain in principle that science nonetheless managed to explain, if only tentatively in some instances. adjoint doesn't seem to think, and I might agree with him (although I'm not as certain as he is) that consciousness could very well be just another one of these and that there is no special aspect to it that lies beyond the potential explanatory capacity of a physical theory. In fact, even attempting to spell out what might be the explanatory limits of physical theory is a dubious endeavor at best, because, practically speaking, we have no idea what a physical theory can or cannot explain in principle. The best we can say is that physical theory can only explain physical things, but I think you will agree that that isn't saying much.

I haven't read Chalmers specifically, and I'm going to have to get around to that, but as of now, every argument I've ever seen for consciousness being unexplainable by method x in principle (whether method x is physical theory or anything else) is just a variation on the lack of imagination argument. It's only a small step up from argumentum ad ignorantium.

 

[StatusX]

It is a contradiction in terms to explain a non-functional phenomenon. If our description is at all relevant to the phenomenon, it must have had an effect on our ideas and discussions. Truly non-functional facts can never be accounted for, at least by any method I can imagine. That is what makes this the hard problem, or in my opinion, a non-problem, because I don't believe that non-causal consciousness can be coherently talked about.

 

[Fliption]

Philosophers have been posing problems for thousands of years that science could not explain in principle that science nonetheless managed to explain, if only tentatively in some instances. adjoint doesn't seem to think, and I might agree with him (although I'm not as certain as he is) that consciousness could very well be just another one of these and that there is no special aspect to it that lies beyond the potential explanatory capacity of a physical theory.

I see this as simply accepting on blind faith that science will work a miracle here based on the past. Perhaps it is true, but it's not good rebuttal to the philosophical issues.

In fact, even attempting to spell out what might be the explanatory limits of physical theory is a dubious endeavor at best, because, practically speaking, we have no idea what a physical theory can or cannot explain in principle. The best we can say is that physical theory can only explain physical things, but I think you will agree that that isn't saying much.

I'm going to steer clear of the "physical" word. But I think it been observed that science doesn't tell us about intrinsic properties. If you disagree with this and believe this may change then that's that.

I haven't read Chalmers specifically, and I'm going to have to get around to that, but as of now, every argument I've ever seen for consciousness being unexplainable by method x in principle (whether method x is physical theory or anything else) is just a variation on the lack of imagination argument. It's only a small step up from argumentum ad ignorantium.

I don't agree with this logical fallacy label. The arguments supporting the hard problem are a bit stronger than simply having a lack of evidence. I would recommend reading Chalmers yourself.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Fliption, the philosophers in all ages have given themselves airs and tried to talk down to the scientists like this. But the scientists just go one discovering new facts that dissolve former philosophical arguments like acid. That' not magic, just the confidence that nature is NOT magical.

 

[Fliption]

Fliption, the philosophers in all ages have given themselves airs and tried to talk down to the scientists like this. But the scientists just go one discovering new facts that dissolve former philosophical arguments like acid. That' not magic, just the confidence that nature is NOT magical.

I'm just pointing out that you aren't dealing with the issues. To simply claim that all philosophers in the past have been wrong is a cop-out. On the contrary, if we've learned anything about science in the past it's that all your current notions are most likely wrong.

Also, I used the word 'magic' to descibe your theory. Not mine. When you claim that something can emerge this implies that a mechanism for emergence exists. Yet there are reasons to believe that this mechanism cannot exist, in principle. These reasons have not been dealt with here. Hence this emergence may as well be "magical".


Also, if someone wants to post examples of major philosophical issues that have been eliminated by science please post them. I'm drawing a blank.

 

[hypnagogue]

But suppose we built an AI that had all of the easy phenomena aced, and was recursive besides. By recursive I mean that it doesn't jus access mental states like retrieving data, but can create new mental states that have a subject/content relation to given existing mental states.

I'm not sure why you think recursitivity has to be added into a system that has a-consciousness down pat. Presumably, a system that executes the same kind of a-conscious information processing as a human brain will already have recursive mechanisms built into it, e.g. for implementing a representation of self that includes subject/content relations.

Now I say, pretty much echoing Dennet, the experience of being conscious, the something that it is to be conscious, is what that AI would itself experience while it was executing. And our experience of consciousness is what we experience when our a-consciousness runs on the wetware of our nervous systems. Call it emergent if you like; it's not a static logical consequent, but a dynamic activity of a recursive system.

You assert that an a-conscious system will automatically be p-conscious, but I don't see the meat behind this assertion. Certainly, there is no contradiction in assuming the opposite. Our AI bot could just as well be a zombie, could it not?

I don't know what you consider a static logical consequent to be, but at bottom, this is all about logical consequence. It's about seeing if Q follows from P. In loseyourname's example of water's surface tension, we see rather clearly that surface tension is a straightforward logical consequence of the structures and functions of water molecules and air molecules. The properties of the molecules are logically consistent with the macroscopic presence of surface tension, and logically inconsistent with the absence of surface tension (in ideal conditions, I suppose, which is all that's important to our discussion here).

Contrast this with the issue of consciousness. P-consciousness does not follow straightforwardly from a-consciousness. If we consider a physical description of an a-conscious system, we will find that it is logically consistent both with the presence and absence of p-consciousness. Therefore, we are not justified in saying that P logically follows from A; there is no logical consequence that implies one result and rejects the other. (If there is, please demonstrate it.)

At this point, one might object that although we cannot currently demonstrate such a logical entailment from a-consciousness to p-consciousness, we may be able to do it someday. But the core of the hard problem is the notion that the existence of p-consciousness cannot logically follow from any purely structural and functional account. Why not? The general shape of the argument is that any account of structure and function can only logically entail further facts about structures and functions, and that the facts about p-consciousness are not exhausted by structural and functional facts; therefore, not all the facts about p-consciousness can be entailed by structure and function alone.

Sometimes beginners on the physics boards complain that physics accounts for electromagnetism and gravity but it doesn't explain them. What they mean by explain, they can't explain (heh!) though they try mightily.

Let's abandon the ambiguity of 'explanation' for the moment and stick with logical entailment. Is the behavior of mass under the influence of gravity logically entailed by anything in the physical account of nature? Sure it is. If we take as axiomatic the propositions that mass curves spacetime in the way described by general relativity, and that bodies travel along geodesics, then (for instance) it follows as a logical consequence that the moon should move about the Earth in the way it is actually oberved to move around the earth.

One might object that spacetime curvature (or some deeper phenomenon underlying that) is not a logical consequence of anything else in the physical account (i.e. is taken to be fundamental), and thus is never explained. That is certainly a pertinent observation. But failure of explanation for those phenomena that are taken to be fundamental certainly seems to be entirely acceptable; after all, we must take at least some phenomena to be fundamental in our account of nature, lest we fall into an infinite regress.

So we should always expect, and even be comfortable with, the notion that fundamental things (for whatever is considered 'fundamental' at a given time) should go unexplained. But in the materialist/physicalist paradigm, p-consciousness is not taken to be such a fundamental phenomenon, but rather is regarded as existing as a consequence of brains, or certain kinds of information processing, or whatever. As such, the paradigm can certainly be fairly critiqued for not yet coming close to 'explaining' p-consciousness (that is, not yet showing how p-consciousness logically follows from brain activity, or information processing, or whatever, in the same way that surface tension has been shown to logically follow from the properties of water and air molecules). In short, complaining that physics does not explain gravity (or spacetime curvature, or whatever you take to be fundamental here) is not analogous to complaining that physics does not explain p-consciousness.

But we all know what they mean: there is something that it is like to be heavy and gravity doesn't account for that.

Nagel's "what it is like" only pertains to subjective experience. Unless you mean to imply that beginning physics students get hung up on the thought that there is some p-conscious, experiential aspect to heaviness that is not explained by physics, your analogy here fails.

 

[hypnagogue]

Also, if someone wants to post examples of major philosophical issues that have been eliminated by science please post them. I'm drawing a blank.

The popular example here is vitalism. It was thought at one time that life could not be accounted for in physical/mechanical terms alone, so some thinkers posited the existence of a special essence, an 'elan vitale,' to fill in the conceptual gaps. Of course, the elan vitale wound up becoming a sort of a God of the gaps, in that its supposed role in the function of life continually shrank as new scientific advances showed how physics/biochemistry alone could satisfactorily account for previously mysterious aspects of life (such as growth, reproduction, etc).

Materialists like to argue against the hard problem by drawing up an analogy with vitalism. They argue that subjective experience is just another elan vitale that will disappear as science continues to make progress in the study of the brain.

As Chalmers points out, however, this analogy is actually disanalogous. For one thing, the major problem faced by vitalists was how to account for certain structures and functions (relational properties). They couldn't figure out how life does the stuff it does. On the other hand, the hard problem is about how to account for intrinsic subjective experience, which cannot be characterized just in terms of structure and function. For this reason, we can expect the hard problem to be resistant to scientific investigation in a way that the problem of life has not been.

Additionally, the elan vitale was nothing more than an explanatory posit to try to make sense of unexplained phenomena. Vitalists observed life, could not make sense of it in just physical/mechanical terms, and said "well, if we suppose that this thing called the elan vitale exists, maybe that will solve our problems." The elan vitale was a sort of hypothesis to try to make sense of some data, so once better hypotheses were found to fit the data, the notion of elan vitale was easily discarded. In contrast, subjective experience is not an explanitory posit; it is the explanatory target itself! The existence of subjective experience is not a hypothesis, but rather, it is the raw 'data' that we start out with and try to make sense of. We cannot throw subjective experience out the window as was done with the elan vitale, because it is not a conjecture, but a given.

 

[Les Sleeth]

Also, if someone wants to post examples of major philosophical issues that have been eliminated by science please post them. I'm drawing a blank.

It’s interesting how fast a body begins to decompose after death. In a matter of hours it will begin to smell of rot. All the chemicals are there, but the body has plunged into a backward disorganizing descent that is nothing short of juggernautical. Was an unrecognized organizing force there before death?

Elan vital was brought into modern philosophical discussion by Nobel laureate Henri Bergson in his book Creative Evolution (which I’ve read and enjoyed). He introduced elan vital specifically to account for that upward organizing push behind the chemistry (and evolutive "upwardness") that physicalists have yet to account for. Bergson was no Biblical creationist, and was in fact greatly influenced by Darwin.

Despite Chalmers’ inability to recognize it, “livingness" is not explained by describing all the interactions between the parts. (He should be careful because functionalists are trying that tactic with consciousness, “dismissing” it as an illusion given by the brain.) Hey, great idea . . . if you can’t explain something, just dismiss it!

When someone can demonstrate the organizational quality which pulls all those chemicals together into functioning systems, then and only then is elan vital (or whatever one wants to call it) allowed to be "dismissed" as a concept. Until then that dismissal" seems like audacious territory-grabbing, or blind-as-a-batness caused by looking only at processes, and/or self deception by physicalist theorists.

 

[StatusX]

It’s interesting how fast a body begins to decompose after death. In a matter of hours it will begin to smell of rot. All the chemicals are there, but the body has plunged into a backward disorganizing descent that is nothing short of juggernautical. Was an unrecognized organizing force there before death?

Elan vital was brought into modern philosophical discussion by Nobel laureate Henri Bergson in his book Creative Evolution (which I’ve read and enjoyed). He introduced elan vital specifically to account for that upward organizing push behind the chemistry (and evolutive "upwardness") that physicalists have yet to account for. Bergson was no Biblical creationist, and was in fact greatly influenced by Darwin.

I'm no biologist, but I'm pretty sure the reason we decompose after we die is that the heart is no longer pumping blood and the cells starve and die. I don't see a need for a mysterious "elan vital," nor do I see how such an ill defined concept would be helpful even if there were a gap in the explanation.

Despite Chalmers’ inability to recognize it, “livingness" is not explained by describing all the interactions between the parts. (He should be careful because functionalists are trying that tactic with consciousness, “dismissing” it as an illusion given by the brain.) Hey, great idea . . . if you can’t explain something, just dismiss it!

Their idea is "we think with our brains." Whether you believe this or not, it's a logically conherent possibility. If it is true, then there would be two possible reasons we believe things. Either they are true, or, our brain is wired in such a way that we come to believe them. I don't think you are fully acknowledging the explanatory power of this point of view. You can feel whatever deep truths you want to when you reflect on yourself, I'm not denying that. But this theory says that is just your brain following the laws of physics. And that strong intuitive feeling that this isn't true: no different. Is this the only possibility? No. Is it logically flawed? No.

When someone can demonstrate the organizational quality which pulls all those chemicals together into functioning systems, then and only then is elan vital (or whatever one wants to call it) allowed to be "dismissed" as a concept. Until then that dismissal" seems like audacious territory-grabbing, or blind-as-a-batness caused by looking only at processes, and/or self deception by physicalist theorists.

You're looking for a purpose where there need not be one. Evolution and genes have organized systems to degress of amazing complexity. But just because it's complex doesn't mean the underlying rules aren't simple and copmletely understood, at least to any relevant level of detail.

 

[loseyourname]

The popular example here is vitalism. It was thought at one time that life could not be accounted for in physical/mechanical terms alone, so some thinkers posited the existence of a special essence, an 'elan vitale,' to fill in the conceptual gaps. Of course, the elan vitale wound up becoming a sort of a God of the gaps, in that its supposed role in the function of life continually shrank as new scientific advances showed how physics/biochemistry alone could satisfactorily account for previously mysterious aspects of life (such as growth, reproduction, etc).

Well, as you can see above, not everyone thinks like has been explained. Some people still insist there is a something that is life, an intrinsic lifeness above and beyond function that does not emerge from structural properties. This is the same thing with electromagnetism. We can explain the chromodynamics of quarks, but there are novices on PF that will continue to insist that there is something intrinsically electromagnetic that isn't being explained. Heck, there have even been threads questioning the isness of water and saying that physical accounts of molecular structure weren't enough.

The thing that people don't seem to recognize is that some intrinsic properties have been explained. The wetness of water, an instrinsicproperty of water, is explained by the relational properties of structural components that are not themselves water. Physicalists would seek an explanation of consciousness in the same vein. The intrinsic properties of subjective experience are thought to likely be the same as the instrinsic properties of any other explained holistic phenomena, emergent from the relational properties of structural components that are not themselves subjective experience.

Now there are intrinsic properties that cannot be explained as being emergent. There are fundamental intrinsic properties, fundamental in that they are not themselves emergent from any relational property because they are the intrinsic properties of the most basic components of material reality, whether they be quarks, strings, loops, illumination, whatever. This is what Rosenberg is getting at.

*Note: Organisms decay quickly after death due to the ceasing of metabolism. It takes an incredible amount of energy being constantly produced by a living body to resist the forces of entropy. As soon as the heart stops pumping blood to every part of the body, there is no longer oxygen to strip electrons from macromolecules in the mitochondrial matrix and no more energy is produced. It is amazing how quickly entropy goes to work and perfectly understandable that men would have thought elan vital was required to keep it at bay. Well, now we know that elan vital is nothing more than oxygen.

**Caveat: Obviously this isn't true of anaerobic life-forms that do not use the Krebs cycle or an electron chain.

 

[loseyourname]

A quick accounting of folk-theories displaced by science:

1. Elan vital
2. The ether
3. Phlogiston
4. Caloric
5. The demonic possession theory of mental illness
6. Animism
7. The geocentric universe (and the cosmic sphere)
8. Biblical creation
9. Praying for rain, castrating oneself to ensure a good harvest, human sacrifices to appease volcanoes, etc.

A good example of philosophical problems that were thought to be intractable are Zeno's paradoxes. For an example of the scientific method displacing common sense, "intuitive notions," I'll use the Aristotelian theory of motion:

Aristotle thought that force must constantly be applied to an object to keep it in motion. Projectile motion posed a problem for him because nothing was applying force to objects in the sky, yet they remained in motion. To explain this, he postulated what he called "impetus," an unidentifiable analogue of elan vital that applied force from the inside of an object. To account for the fact that objects did eventually fall, he said that impetus must slowly dissipate somehow. You can say there was a hard problem of impetus, in that some force clearly existed that was applied to a projectile to keep it in motion, but nobody could identify what it was or where it came from.

Well, 1500 years later Newton came along and overhauled the laws of motion and said that common sense intuition was wrong, that in fact, an object would remain in motion unless a force was applied to it. This seems obvious to us now, because it's been taught since childhood, but studies clearly show that most people still intuitively feel otherwise. We can only hope that the hard problem of consciousness doesn't take as long to solve.

 

[Les Sleeth]

Well, as you can see above, not everyone thinks like has been explained. Some people still insist there is a something that is life, an intrinsic lifeness above and beyond function that does not emerge from structural properties.

I don't want to argue this here, but you should know by now what I claim is missing. The day you or anyone else can demostrate simple chemistry and natural conditions organizing themselves with the kind of quality that leads to functioning, adapting, reproducing, metabolizing systems, then you've got my vote for a life model that doesn't require something additional to explain that organizational quality.

You've got the one-by-one chemical processes explained, you don't have the organizational properties of life explained by physical principles. Boy does it get frustrating to hear someone repeatedly ignore the stated problem of the physicalist life model, and instead cite again and again and again . . . that "we can explain all the physical processes." Well, fine, but that ain't what's in question!

 

[Les Sleeth]

A quick accounting of folk-theories displaced by science:

1. Elan vital
2. The ether
3. Phlogiston
4. Caloric
5. The demonic possession theory of mental illness
6. Animism
7. The geocentric universe (and the cosmic sphere)
8. Biblical creation
9. Praying for rain, castrating oneself to ensure a good harvest, human sacrifices to appease volcanoes, etc.

Feeling a bit condescending today are we? Elan vital is not a folk theory. Bergson's work was thought highly enough of to win him the Nobel prize.

And why do you think the idea of some sort of organizing force was "displaced" (whether it's called elan vital, as Bergson did, or whatever you want to call it)? Why it's due to an incestous agreement among physicalists who decided to "dismiss" elan vital and then replace it with a theory that doesn't explain life's organization either! Now there is arrogance if I've ever seen it.

 

[loseyourname]

I don't want to argue this here, but you should know by now what I claim is missing. The day you or anyone else can demostrate simple chemistry and natural conditions organizing themselves with the kind of quality that leads to functioning, adapting, reproducing, metabolizing systems, then you've got my vote for a life model that doesn't require something additional to explain that organizational quality.

If by "day" you mean hundreds of millions of years, we'll see. In order for it to not take as long as it took in nature, you must realize that some manipulation of the system is required, but I know you won't accept such a system as genuinely natural. Abiogenesis researchers are damned if they do, damned if they don't.

You've got the one-by-one chemical processes explained, you don't have the organizational properties of life explained by physical principles. Boy does it get frustrating to hear someone repeatedly ignore the stated problem of the physicalist life model, and instead cite again and again and again . . . that "we can explain all the physical processes." Well, fine, but that ain't what's in question!

I can explain how an individual organism becomes organized from the day of conception to the day of death. In fact, if you give me the time to do the relevant reading, I can explain it for any organism that has been looked at closely enough. The only thing that can't be explained is how the very first living organism came to be living. What we have done is produce mononucleotides, amino acids, and phosphate backbones from scratch, and in separate experiments, polynucleotides from mononucleotides. Furthermore, protobionts have been produced from introducing lipids and amino acids into an aqueous environment. There are several small steps from a protobiont to a living cell that have yet to be demonstrated, but as noted, given that it took hundreds of millions of years to happen in nature, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

But anyway, back to my original statement. I can explain exactly how an individual organism comes to have the organizational properties that it has from conception to death, without invoking anything vital.

 

[loseyourname]

By the way, we're kind of in the same boat here. We're just as frustrated by you as you are by us!

 

[Fliption]

The popular example here is vitalism.

Thanks for that. I knew about vitalism but I guess I didn't consider that philosophy. The topics that I studied in philosophy are the same topics being discussed today.

 

[loseyourname]

Thanks for that. I knew about vitalism but I guess I didn't consider that philosophy. The topics that I studied in philosophy are the same topics being discussed today.

It's a tough distinction to make when we look at history, because for thousands of years, science was more philosophy than science, even when it was called science.

 

[Fliption]

A good example of philosophical problems that were thought to be intractable are Zeno's paradoxes. For an example of the scientific method displacing common sense, "intuitive notions," I'll use the Aristotelian theory of motion:

Thanks for the examples. The reason I asked the question is because I couldn't think of any based on my study in philosophy. The things being mentioned in this thread are examples of science to me. Not philosophy. But this just could be semantics. I definitely agree that science has proved itself wrong many times in the past.

It's a tough distinction to make when we look at history, because for thousands of years, science was more philosophy than science, even when it was called science.

Yes I see that. I guess I'm making a distinction in my head about what is really philosophy and what is science. Self adjoints point was to ridicule philosophy at the glory of science so he is obviously making distinctions too. But interestingly enough, when I ask for examples, the distinctions just melt away.

 

[loseyourname]

The things being mentioned in this thread are examples of science to me. Not philosophy.

You think that Zeno's and Aristotle's physics were science? Or, for that matter, that biblical creationism was science?

If you want a more recent example, consider the early days of logical empiricism, the days of the Vienna group. The logical empiricists determined that science is a process of verification and formulated the deductive-nomological theory of explanation and the verification theory of meaning. Both proved to be irrelevant to actual science because that was never the way science worked. Scientific theories do not work by being verified; they work by resisting falsification. Furthermore, the process of falsification was not the straightforward deductive matter that the logical empiricists thought it to be. The Vienna group attempted to outline exactly what science could and could not do, all the while ignoring what science was actually doing!

 

[selfAdjoint]

You think that Zeno's and Aristotle's physics were science? Or, for that matter, that biblical creationism was science?

If you want a more recent example, consider the early days of logical empiricism, the days of the Vienna group. The logical empiricists determined that science is a process of verification and formulated the deductive-nomological theory of explanation and the verification theory of meaning. Both proved to be irrelevant to actual science because that was never the way science worked. Scientific theories do not work by being verified; they work by resisting falsification. Furthermore, the process of falsification was not the straightforward deductive matter that the logical empiricists thought it to be. The Vienna group attempted to outline exactly what science could and could not do, all the while ignoring what science was actually doing!

So where does that put you on the issue of the "hard problem" (scare quotes deliberate)? As far as science has only modest aims, you might support Chalmers, but as far as what counts as demonstration you might be on the Dennett side of the fence. Or is it "a plague on both your houses?"

 

[selfAdjoint]

Feeling a bit condescending today are we? Elan vital is not a folk theory. Bergson's work was thought highly enough of to win him the Nobel prize.

And why do you think the idea of some sort of organizing force was "displaced" (whether it's called elan vital, as Bergson did, or whatever you want to call it)? Why it's due to an incestous agreement among physicalists who decided to "dismiss" elan vital and then replace it with a theory that doesn't explain life's organization either! Now there is arrogance if I've ever seen it.

Conspiracy theory. Protocols of the Elders of Physicalism!

 

[selfAdjoint]

I'm not sure why you think recursitivity has to be added into a system that has a-consciousness down pat. Presumably, a system that executes the same kind of a-conscious information processing as a human brain will already have recursive mechanisms built into it, e.g. for implementing a representation of self that includes subject/content relations.



You assert that an a-conscious system will automatically be p-conscious, but I don't see the meat behind this assertion. Certainly, there is no contradiction in assuming the opposite. Our AI bot could just as well be a zombie, could it not?

I don't know what you consider a static logical consequent to be, but at bottom, this is all about logical consequence. It's about seeing if Q follows from P. In loseyourname's example of water's surface tension, we see rather clearly that surface tension is a straightforward logical consequence of the structures and functions of water molecules and air molecules. The properties of the molecules are logically consistent with the macroscopic presence of surface tension, and logically inconsistent with the absence of surface tension (in ideal conditions, I suppose, which is all that's important to our discussion here).

Contrast this with the issue of consciousness. P-consciousness does not follow straightforwardly from a-consciousness. If we consider a physical description of an a-conscious system, we will find that it is logically consistent both with the presence and absence of p-consciousness. Therefore, we are not justified in saying that P logically follows from A; there is no logical consequence that implies one result and rejects the other. (If there is, please demonstrate it.)

At this point, one might object that although we cannot currently demonstrate such a logical entailment from a-consciousness to p-consciousness, we may be able to do it someday. But the core of the hard problem is the notion that the existence of p-consciousness cannot logically follow from any purely structural and functional account. Why not? The general shape of the argument is that any account of structure and function can only logically entail further facts about structures and functions, and that the facts about p-consciousness are not exhausted by structural and functional facts; therefore, not all the facts about p-consciousness can be entailed by structure and function alone.



Let's abandon the ambiguity of 'explanation' for the moment and stick with logical entailment. Is the behavior of mass under the influence of gravity logically entailed by anything in the physical account of nature? Sure it is. If we take as axiomatic the propositions that mass curves spacetime in the way described by general relativity, and that bodies travel along geodesics, then (for instance) it follows as a logical consequence that the moon should move about the Earth in the way it is actually oberved to move around the earth.

One might object that spacetime curvature (or some deeper phenomenon underlying that) is not a logical consequence of anything else in the physical account (i.e. is taken to be fundamental), and thus is never explained. That is certainly a pertinent observation. But failure of explanation for those phenomena that are taken to be fundamental certainly seems to be entirely acceptable; after all, we must take at least some phenomena to be fundamental in our account of nature, lest we fall into an infinite regress.

So we should always expect, and even be comfortable with, the notion that fundamental things (for whatever is considered 'fundamental' at a given time) should go unexplained. But in the materialist/physicalist paradigm, p-consciousness is not taken to be such a fundamental phenomenon, but rather is regarded as existing as a consequence of brains, or certain kinds of information processing, or whatever. As such, the paradigm can certainly be fairly critiqued for not yet coming close to 'explaining' p-consciousness (that is, not yet showing how p-consciousness logically follows from brain activity, or information processing, or whatever, in the same way that surface tension has been shown to logically follow from the properties of water and air molecules). In short, complaining that physics does not explain gravity (or spacetime curvature, or whatever you take to be fundamental here) is not analogous to complaining that physics does not explain p-consciousness.



Nagel's "what it is like" only pertains to subjective experience. Unless you mean to imply that beginning physics students get hung up on the thought that there is some p-conscious, experiential aspect to heaviness that is not explained by physics, your analogy here fails.

Hypnagogue, I am going to respond to this thoughtful post, but probably not tilll tomorrow, I want to go over the Chalmers links you gave in more detail.

 

[loseyourname]

So where does that put you on the issue of the "hard problem" (scare quotes deliberate)? As far as science has only modest aims, you might support Chalmers, but as far as what counts as demonstration you might be on the Dennett side of the fence. Or is it "a plague on both your houses?"

I agree that the problem is hard in that it is a difficult problem to solve. I disagree with Chalmers or anyone else who attempts to say that this problem cannot be solved by physical theory in principle. I think Dennett cops out a bit, in the same way that Fliption has criticized your own characterization, because he simply hypothesizes that subjective experience emerges from the multiple drafts model without saying how this happens, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. It just means his being right would be as much a matter of luck as anything else. I wouldn't go so far as to say "a plague on both your houses." I think Dennett's approach is more fruitful initially in that it models what Chalmers would call a-consciousness very well, but since he stops at that and seems to have no interest in going any further, I doubt he will yield any further fruit.

 

[Fliption]

You think that Zeno's and Aristotle's physics were science? Or, for that matter, that biblical creationism was science?

The things you're mentioning are from a time when the distinction was not so clear. I'm not sure how self adjoint could be referring to these things if there is no distinction between science and philosophy. He is clearly making a distinction in his remarks. Also, If we are considering creationism to be philosophy then I agree with Self adjoint. But I don't think that's what people have in mind when they come to the philosophy forum.

 

[learningphysics]

Not sure if personal identity relates to this thread or not. But if personal identity arises from matter (person literally comes to exist from matter), then there's no way to distinguish these two situations:

Situation 1
Person A arises from body A.
Person B arises from body B.

Situation 2
Person A arises from body B.
Person B arises from body A.

But the two situations can be distinguished. The person in body A, knows that the universe would be different if he was in body B, and the other guy was in body A. Perhaps the situation is indistinguishable to the outside world, but not to these two persons.

The contradiction above leads me to believe, that the person must exist independently of the body (by body I include brain). The body may determine a person's behavior and the content of his experience, but the person is not the body itself.

 

[Steve Esser]

Hi to everyone. I think it is interesting how people have different intuitions on the “hard problem”. To me, it is clear that subjective experience is resistant to scientific explanation in a way different from loseyourname’s historical examples. The scientific method by design emulates a third person objective investigation into nature. The focus is on breaking down phenomena into differences and relations that can be agreed upon inter-subjectively. “What it is like” to have a first-person experience as a system in nature is not what science has been looking for. And yet the fact that we have subjective experience at all underlies and accompanies all we do.

Going back to selfadjoint’s first post, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that an AI creation which managed to replicate a-consciousness could also have some sort of p-consciousness. However, until we have a better understanding of how p-consciousness fits into nature, we wouldn’t be sure. And we won’t understand this, if we proceed under “business as usual” without appreciating how this problem is different.

 

[selfAdjoint]

The things you're mentioning are from a time when the distinction was not so clear. I'm not sure how self adjoint could be referring to these things if there is no distinction between science and philosophy. He is clearly making a distinction in his remarks. Also, If we are considering creationism to be philosophy then I agree with Self adjoint. But I don't think that's what people have in mind when they come to the philosophy forum.

From the time that modern mechanics was first adumbrated in the 14th century in the writings of Buridan, the scholastic philosophers in the universities despised it and fought it. They used their academic authority to ensure it was not taught and practiced history control to wipe out the memory of what Buridan had taught from scholarly consciousness. This is part of the reason a quarter millenium passed from Buridan to the maturity of mechanics with Galileo. For that matter what happened to Galileo was as much a philosophical atttack as a clerical one.

And I guess we all remember Berkley's haut en bas philosophical attack on Newton. Should I mention Hegel and the planets? His effusion turns out not to have been as bad as often represented, but still, it's pretty bad.

 

[Nereid]

I'd like to take a slightly different look at this, possibly more emphasis than anything else.

Could we ask 'what would a "physicalist solution" to the hard problem of consciousness look like?' Presumably, for those who consider it to be genuinely impossible, there is no answer to this question. However, for those who merely consider it hard, or are uncertain, how would you - speculatively - see it being solved? Of course, there may be quite a few ways, not all necessarily mutually independent.

By analogy, how did the philosophical question of vitalism fade, over time? If I recall some of the books I've read correctly, it didn't happen overnight - as the result of a single set of experiments - but was kinda gradual, 'physicalists' chipping away at the ediface over many decades (death by a thousand cuts?).

So, my guess on how the hard problem will be solved is 'it came to be seen as an ill-conceived problem - and several of the pieces to the 'solution' could have been barely guessed (at best) in the early years of the 21st century'

 

[hypnagogue]

Well, as you can see above, not everyone thinks like has been explained. Some people still insist there is a something that is life, an intrinsic lifeness above and beyond function that does not emerge from structural properties. This is the same thing with electromagnetism. We can explain the chromodynamics of quarks, but there are novices on PF that will continue to insist that there is something intrinsically electromagnetic that isn't being explained. Heck, there have even been threads questioning the isness of water and saying that physical accounts of molecular structure weren't enough.

The distinction between these cases and subjective experience is that we actually have first person evidence of the intrinsic nature of p-consciousness. Subjective experience directly presents itself as a phenomenon in nature in need of explanation, and further observation and reasoning reveals its intrinsic nature. For electromagnetism or life, there is no such analogue. In the case of electromagnetism, we need to explain the observed structural and functional properties of magnets, conductors, and the like; in the case of life, we need to explain the observed structural and functional properties of reproduction, growth, self-organization, etc. In neither case does observation indicate that there is something above and beyond issues of structure and function in need of explanation.

Whether or not one takes current physical theory to be an adequate account of such phenomena is irrelevant to the more important issue, which is just the classification of these phenomena as entirely structural/functional in nature. For example, even if Les doubts contemporary physics' capacity to account for biogenesis, he still casts the problem as one of accounting for a process of self-organization. Self-organization, in and of itself, is just a kind of functional process; there is nothing to self-organization beyond structure and function, regardless of whether or not one has to invoke something non-physical or intrinsic to account for the causal mechanisms of the process.

The thing that people don't seem to recognize is that some intrinsic properties have been explained. The wetness of water, an instrinsicproperty of water, is explained by the relational properties of structural components that are not themselves water. Physicalists would seek an explanation of consciousness in the same vein. The intrinsic properties of subjective experience are thought to likely be the same as the instrinsic properties of any other explained holistic phenomena, emergent from the relational properties of structural components that are not themselves subjective experience.

I'm not familiar with that use of 'intrinsic.' It's not the way I have been using the word, at least. I would claim that the wetness of water is not intrinsic, since there is nothing to wetness above and beyond issues of structure and function. Even without a modern understanding of molecular properties and how they account for liquidity and the like, one could observe that wetness refers roughly to the manner in which the 'parts' of a substance interact with each other and the environment. There is nothing to wetness above and beyond how a wet substance tends to behave and interact with other substances.

Actually, there is one aspect of wetness which transcends issues of relationships, and that is the subjective feeling of wetness itself. But, of course, this 'hard problem' of wetness is about a particular kind of subjective experience, not about properties of liquids in themselves.

 

[loseyourname]

I'm not familiar with that use of 'intrinsic.' It's not the way I have been using the word, at least. I would claim that the wetness of water is not intrinsic, since there is nothing to wetness above and beyond issues of structure and function. Even without a modern understanding of molecular properties and how they account for liquidity and the like, one could observe that wetness refers roughly to the manner in which the 'parts' of a substance interact with each other and the environment. There is nothing to wetness above and beyond how a wet substance tends to behave and interact with other substances.

Actually, there is one aspect of wetness which transcends issues of relationships, and that is the subjective feeling of wetness itself. But, of course, this 'hard problem' of wetness is about a particular kind of subjective experience, not about properties of liquids in themselves.

The thing is, if we weren't able to reduce water to a collection of molecules with certain properties, then we wouldn't be able to explain wetness as anything other than an intrinsic property. All we could say is that water feels wet, so it has wetness. I'll agree that this feeling depends upon interaction between water and human sense, but why should we consider subjective experience of anything to be any different? All experience is an interaction between the human mind and its environment, even if that environment is simply another part of the mind. I don't agree that there is anything about wetness that transcends relational description. There may be, but there doesn't have to be. The feeling of wetness, whether it be due to experience of water, hallucination, or daydream, only occurs when the brain is in a certain state and it can be fair to postulate that this brain state is all that the experience is.

Edit: I don't mean to word that so strongly. I'm not completely certain that subjective experience is just a brain state. I'm only saying that it can be. There is no reason to be certain that subjective experience is intrinsic in a non-reducable way any more than any other property that could be presumed intrinsic if not for reductive theory. The only reason to do so is intuition, and intuition hardly constitutes proof.

 

[loseyourname]

Could we ask 'what would a "physicalist solution" to the hard problem of consciousness look like?' Presumably, for those who consider it to be genuinely impossible, there is no answer to this question. However, for those who merely consider it hard, or are uncertain, how would you - speculatively - see it being solved? Of course, there may be quite a few ways, not all necessarily mutually independent.

By analogy, how did the philosophical question of vitalism fade, over time? If I recall some of the books I've read correctly, it didn't happen overnight - as the result of a single set of experiments - but was kinda gradual, 'physicalists' chipping away at the ediface over many decades (death by a thousand cuts?).

I'm going to run with this analogy. The idea of vitalism faded when we realized that life was not an indivisable entity. Life only came into existence when many different conditions obtained. Replicating molecules that can code and transcribe information are needed, along with a controlled environment contained by phospholipid bilayer membranes in which to do the replication and transciption. Enzymes are necessary for both of these processes, along with others, including both catabolic and anabolic processes that derive energy from the environment and then use it to build an organism against the forces of entropy. Once we realized that life was not a separate entity; that it was, in fact, nothing more than the sum total of all of these smaller phenomena, then the task of explaining became simply a matter of explaining these smaller phenomena.

I would imagine that, if there is to be a physicalist explanation of subjective experience, it would be similar. We would first come to realize that there is no one entity that can be called subjective experience, that subjective experience only occurs when many other conditions obtain, none of which are themselves subjective experience. If all of these conditions can be explained through physical theory, then we will have ourselves an explanation of subjective experience. It will likely be a difficult to grasp and counterintuitive theory, as evidenced by the resistance on imaginative grounds that are advanced by so many people. But if modern physics has taught us anything, nature is anything but intuitive and easy to grasp.

 

[hypnagogue]

By analogy, how did the philosophical question of vitalism fade, over time? If I recall some of the books I've read correctly, it didn't happen overnight - as the result of a single set of experiments - but was kinda gradual, 'physicalists' chipping away at the ediface over many decades (death by a thousand cuts?).

So, my guess on how the hard problem will be solved is 'it came to be seen as an ill-conceived problem - and several of the pieces to the 'solution' could have been barely guessed (at best) in the early years of the 21st century'

The problem with supposing that subjective experience will go the same route as elan vital is that the former is a 'given' phenomenon in nature, while the latter is an explanitory posit. One could side step a 'hard problem of elan vital' simply by dispelling the notion that it is really necessary to assume the existence of an elan vital in order to account for life. No elan vital, no problem.

One cannot make a similar move with the hard problem of consciousness without denying a manifest phenomenon in nature. And if we cannot simply ignore consciousness, then we must address the methodological and conceptual problems that make it unlike any other phenomenon heretofore addressed by physicalism. These methodological and conceptual problems suggest that a straightforward scientific approach will not be enough to get the job done. As Steve Esser has indicated, if we ever do get a solution to the hard problem of consciousness, in all likelihood it will not look like any other solution to any other problem of nature.

 

[StatusX]

I'm going to run with this analogy. The idea of vitalism faded when we realized that life was not an indivisable entity.

How would you divide red and explain its parts? Complex thought is divisible, but individual conscious experiences such as a pure color are not.

I would imagine that, if there is to be a physicalist explanation of subjective experience, it would be similar. We would first come to realize that there is no one entity that can be called subjective experience, that subjective experience only occurs when many other conditions obtain, none of which are themselves subjective experience. If all of these conditions can be explained through physical theory, then we will have ourselves an explanation of subjective experience. It will likely be a difficult to grasp and counterintuitive theory, as evidenced by the resistance on imaginative grounds that are advanced by so many people. But if modern physics has taught us anything, nature is anything but intuitive and easy to grasp.

I agree it may be possible that science may one day explain everything that accompanies conscious experience: why we talk about it, what our brain is doing when we look at a color and reflect on its intrinsic qualities, why we believe that we are conscious beings, etc. But is this all there is to consciousness?

Think of it like this. A blind person asks you to explain what the color red looks like. You can describe all the emotions and thoughts that you feel when you experience red. If you were a great poet, you might actually do a good job of conveying the feeling of red through words. Now, I don't argue that why you chose the words you did could be explained by tracing signals through the brain. But have you really explained the color red? Not at all. You only know what red is if you have experienced it. You can even functionally explain why I have this opinion, but this does not necessarily dismiss the hard question. I have been saying lately that non-functional consciousness is not possible, but once again, I'm changing my mind.

 

[loseyourname]

How would you divide red and explain its parts? Complex thought is divisible, but individual conscious experiences such as a pure color are not.

See, this is where we digress. I would agree that the experience of seeing red seems to be indivisable. That doesn't mean it is. This is why I said any physicalist model would be extremely counterintuitive and difficult to grasp. I would imagine there would be a great deal of resistance to it from philosophers like the ones one this forum. But that objection, and lack of intuitiveness, does not spell doom.

To answer your question, I have no idea how one would divide red and explain its parts. I'm not all that confident that it will be done any time soon, nor am I convinced that it is even possible to do it. I'm just not convinced that it is impossible to do it. I'm not going to step into a metaphysics forum and say what science can or cannot explain in principle on the basis of what I feel to be intuitively true.

 

[loseyourname]

Think of it like this. A blind person asks you to explain what the color red looks like. You can describe all the emotions and thoughts that you feel when you experience red. If you were a great poet, you might actually do a good job of conveying the feeling of red through words. Now, I don't argue that why you chose the words you did could be explained by tracing signals through the brain. But have you really explained the color red? Not at all. You only know what red is if you have experienced it. You can even functionally explain why I have this opinion, but this does not necessarily dismiss the hard question. I have been saying lately that non-functional consciousness is not possible, but once again, I'm changing my mind.

This is a variation on the Mary argument, and there are strong counterarguments to it. If you could give a person perfect neuroscientific knowledge, there is no telling what they could or could not do with it. If this blind person knew everything there was to know about the human brain (and assuming her eyes were the problem and not her capacity to envision) and you were able to tell her everything about the state of the brain that obtains when the seeing of red is experienced, there is no way to rule out the possibility that she might very well be capable of inducing what the feeling would be like. We have nothing even close to perfect knowledge to begin to imagine what might be or not be possible given it.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Here is my reply to Chalmers.

First, he does not anywhere that I have read prove that his "experience", otherwise known as phenomenal consciousness or p-consciousness, cannot be derived logically from the phenomena he agrees can be explained by reductive physical means. He waves his hands, tailors his definitions and talks in generalities, but he does not close with the necessary rigor to deserve the name proof. In a sense he is hoist with his own petard; he criticises physicalists for not providing a complete explanation and model of consciousness, but he does not himself provide a suffieciently detailed account of how they fail. In discussing various physicalist alternatives he adopts a cheap "Naw that ain't it" stance, acknowledging that various researchers and thinkers have made positive progress but insisting without details that there is still a gap.

Throughout, Chalmers relies on the immediacy and what I might call "presence" of our apperception of qualia as a wand to wish away physicalist explanations. Now in all the various criticisms of Dennett's book Consciousness Explained, I haven't seen much attentioned paid to the huge critical section of it. In this part, Dennett brings in tons of experimental psychology results to show that our apperceptions are an illusion, constructed by our nervous systems, that bear only a distant or analogous relation to the outside world. None of our qualia, not color or sound or even time, is a simple perception of reality. To try to erect this as a primary datum of science is like trying to base meteorolgy on fata morgana and mirages.

 

[Fliption]

Here is my reply to Chalmers.

Yahoo! I just won some money in Vegas. I bet you would have this opinion. Course it didn't pay very much

Dennett brings in tons of experimental psychology results to show that our apperceptions are an illusion, constructed by our nervous systems, that bear only a distant or analogous relation to the outside world.

Who is experiencing the illusion? Another illusion?

I would love to respond to your points myself but I must not be too bright because I don't understand most of it. You think you can state it in layman's english? To me, it reads more like a book review than a detailed argument.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Who is experiencing the illusion? Another illusion?

In Dennett's book he attacks the idea of the "homunculus", the "observer in the theater of the mind". He replaces it with a vast number of independent modules, no one of which is the master, which interact at various levels, inputting incomplete data from sense and memory and fresh created and competing to pass it on to other modules. This picture he bases on evolution; some modules will have a better chance of passing on their data than others, and the data will seldom or never focus down to a single transmission, but almost always retain a halo of the competing data, giving that feel of complex relationship that we associate with consciousness.

So the answer, Dennett's answer, to your question is that the highly processed descendents of the sensory data, fully tricked up to pretend to be direct apperceptions, will get into the area where it is tagged as "conscious experience" and stored in working memory. Just another set of modules blindly working away.

 

[StatusX]

[QUOTE='loseyourname]
This is a variation on the Mary argument, and there are strong counterarguments to it. If you could give a person perfect neuroscientific knowledge, there is no telling what they could or could not do with it. If this blind person knew everything there was to know about the human brain (and assuming her eyes were the problem and not her capacity to envision) and you were able to tell her everything about the state of the brain that obtains when the seeing of red is experienced, there is no way to rule out the possibility that she might very well be capable of inducing what the feeling would be like. We have nothing even close to perfect knowledge to begin to imagine what might be or not be possible given it.[/QUOTE]

Well maybe some kind of "science" we haven't yet conceived of will work, but how could math-based science explain a color? It can explain relationships between numbers, like velocity and spin number, but can you ever see the qualitative experience of color coming out of an equation? A computer can be made to "know" the laws of physics as they currently stand, but how can anything but another conscious being "know" a color?

Just to be clear, are you suggesting that there is no real experience, only the physical processes of our brain, or are you saying the experiences are real, but a description of these processes is sufficient to describe the experiences? I can see the first as logically consisitent, but not the second.
However, this is all just speculation. When you look at a color and think about it's intrinsic qualities, what is going on in your brain? Science will surely answer this question, probably within the next 50 years, and once it does we will be in a much better position to make arguments.

 

[Hellburner]

The "Hard Problem" is a large recursive multivariate nonlinear problem. If you do some hardcore real world work with ANN's you're often dealing with the same issue. The output makes sense and is explainable using accepted theories from the originating discipline, however a rigorous mathematical explanation of the results is so convoluted as to be preposterous. I could drone on ad infinitum about it until your eyes glaze over, that's not going to make you a believer.

 

[Nereid]

Thanks, and thanks too to loseyourname for having a go.

The problem with supposing that subjective experience will go the same route as elan vital is that the former is a 'given' phenomenon in nature, while the latter is an explanitory posit. One could side step a 'hard problem of elan vital' simply by dispelling the notion that it is really necessary to assume the existence of an elan vital in order to account for life. No elan vital, no problem.

One cannot make a similar move with the hard problem of consciousness without denying a manifest phenomenon in nature. And if we cannot simply ignore consciousness, then we must address the methodological and conceptual problems that make it unlike any other phenomenon heretofore addressed by physicalism. These methodological and conceptual problems suggest that a straightforward scientific approach will not be enough to get the job done. As Steve Esser has indicated, if we ever do get a solution to the hard problem of consciousness, in all likelihood it will not look like any other solution to any other problem of nature.

To expand a little: of course the 'same' way that vitalism shrivelled up won't work of p-consciousness - if it could've, it would've (a common approach in science is to apply tools and methods to new problems that have been successful on other problems). By analogy, I meant that there wasn't a brilliant 'Eureka' moment for some 17th, 18th, 19th, or 20th century scientist; rather it was a slow, mostly steady accretion of many little things.

So, re p-consciousness, it may also be seen - sometime in the future - as a slow, incremental path; a refinement of what 'subjective' is, a small change of scope/focus on 'phenomenon' and 'nature', a gradual but in the end radical new understanding of the nature of 'experience', ... who knows?

From what selfAdjoint wrote, it would seem that Dennett has started on the kind of path I envisioned ... a detailed look at what a subjective experience actually is, in terms of brain stuff, begins to make the hard problem look like an illusion.

But back to how might the problem be solved, or what might a solution look like?

I'm still curious to hear from those who think the problem is merely 'hard', or are uncertain ... any thoughts? (to repeat, if you, dear reader, feel it's impossible, then by all means tell us why ... but please also state clearly under no circumstances would you consider anything any physicalist - or scientist - could make or show as any kind of solution).

I like selfAdjoint's idea - at the start of this thread ... if an AI could be built that behaved just like a human, would that solve the problem? After all, the AI would state that it was conscious, and could hold a very 'human' dialogue with you about its subjective experiences. IIRC, this is quite similar to a 'zombie'. But if there were such a thing as a zombie, how could you - gentle reader - tell the difference between one and, say, Fliption?

 

[Les Sleeth]

By analogy, how did the philosophical question of vitalism fade, over time? If I recall some of the books I've read correctly, it didn't happen overnight - as the result of a single set of experiments - but was kinda gradual, 'physicalists' chipping away at the ediface over many decades (death by a thousand cuts?).

So, my guess on how the hard problem will be solved is 'it came to be seen as an ill-conceived problem - and several of the pieces to the 'solution' could have been barely guessed (at best) in the early years of the 21st century'

But see my friend, to me it seems you are predicting exactly what I fear will happen. Hypnagogue can’t see why I am so adamant about not letting vitalism be “dismissed,” but I see exactly the same fate in store for consciousness. Plus, it is being sped along because Chalmers and others are willing to let physicalists get away with it in an area they don’t care about (life). If we say it is fine to “dismiss” vitalism with the evidence physicalists now have, then when physicalists get that level of evidence about the brain, it won’t be long until consciousness is “dismissed” for the same reason.

This “chipping away,” what is it? It is a logical fallacy that physicalists won’t admit to or can’t see, and which they are now attempting to apply to the explanation of consciousness. It can be explained by the traditional complaint against reductionism, where by taking things apart, one loses the sense of wholeness previously present. The way I explain the problem is with what’s known as an “informal” type of fallacy called the fallacy of composition, where by analyzing the parts and their relationships one concludes it accounts for the whole.

So how did the chipping away proceed with vitalism?

First step. Explain all the parts and all the chemical processes; that is the goal, and the only goal of reductionist investigation. So of course, after completing (or nearly so) such a monumental task as explaining the components and processes of life, one is justified in being proud as well as certain of the empirical method one has relied on.

Second step. Since the goal all along was to explain the parts and processes, once it is completed all behaviors of the whole will be attributed to parts and processes. That is the perspective forced on one after doing nothing but that, going to school to learn it, and having one’s career advanced by doing it well.

Third step. Superficially account for, remain unaware of, or even ignore anything which doesn’t seem to quite be explained by the parts. In the case of vitalism, the organizing engine needed to get all those parts arranged into systems is missing. Is that important? It is not important to individuals trained in, obsessed with, and making a living at studying parts/processes, so it is given a superficial explanation using the Miller-Urey experiment and claiming “nature had a billions of years to achieve it, give us time” (even though life is believed to have appeared almost as soon as the Earth could accommodate it.)

So if it isn’t the slightest bit important to the reductionist world view, is it important objectively? I mean, does a life model really need an organizing principle more than reductionists can see or admit? Well, I’ve been claiming that if one isn’t already committed to physicalism or blinded by reductionist addiction, then that organizing quality should be looming large in one’s face. There is absolutely nothing like it known in the physical processes of this universe outside of life. It is so unusual and so effective at building adaptive, reproducing, systems that it should have been noticed. But no, getting a few amino acids to organize in a jar will do . . . let’s move on to the next thing we can disassemble and prove it is only physical: consciousness.

As I pointed out in another post, consciousness has that exact same organizing quality we need to explain how life processes got organized. We, as consciousness, are quite the creative little organizers. There is nothing built that “works” which doesn’t rely on that ability. Think about it, if consciousness could not organize both its thoughts, and the processes it works with in the world, nothing could be built. Creativity itself, in my opinion, is seeing a possibility based on one’s organizing skills. A great composer’s music is very much like that, where he “sees” possibilities based on his grasp of organizational steps leading to producing what he envisions.

Anyway, I’d be willing to bet that with the power science has in society today, if consciousness studies continues to try to fight functionalist/physicalist theories by talking about subjectivity, that too will be “dismissed” one day (which thinkers like Dennett already do) as the brain “parts” are better and better understood. Subjectivity, as well as all traits of consciousness not explained by part/process thinking, will be written off as epiphenomenal or illusory or as cascading data competing for the top spot or whatever else they can dream up to get it out of the way so they can take apart something new.

 

[Steve Esser]

Re: Selfadjoint’s discussion of Dennett. Dennett’s model is an interesting one of how what we experience as a stream of consciousness might emerge from various sub-modules. There are other good models of this out there as well, like Baars global workspace theory. These models suggest that what I would call our high-level reflective self-consciousness is a kind of construct which may indeed be misleadingly coherent.

But of course I would argue these models don’t address the “hard problem” of why there is any kind of first-person experience at all.

On the other hand, Selfadjoint’s and loseyourname’s criticisms of the types of arguments used by Chalmers do resonate with me. It has been 10 years since he wrote the paper and clearly his arguments (and others like them) have failed to convince those with more “Dennett-like” intuitions. A next step will need to be taken. My guess is that it will need to be shown that a theory which includes first-person experience as a fundamental feature of the natural world can do better than one that does not. And I personally think this can and will happen. (It may even have something to do with Les Sleeth’s argument for an organizing quality in nature – but I’m not sure of that).

 

[Les Sleeth]

I like selfAdjoint's idea - at the start of this thread ... if an AI could be built that behaved just like a human, would that solve the problem? After all, the AI would state that it was conscious, and could hold a very 'human' dialogue with you about its subjective experiences. IIRC, this is quite similar to a 'zombie'. But if there were such a thing as a zombie, how could you - gentle reader - tell the difference between one and, say, Fliption?

Lol, was that a shot? Fliption, I only think you vaguely resemble a zombie. Just kidding.

But here's my answer to your "what if." Do it, and then let's talk about it. Same with life. Demonstrate it, and then make the claim chemistry alone is responsible. It is science that requires sense observation, not philosphy. Anyone in the mode of being a philosopher gets to trust what one feels and experiences inside oneself, and not just what can be expressed as sense data and math (although I'd agree conclusion derived from the two modes shouldn't contradict one another).

Anyway, it is incumbent on science to demonstrate the corresponding reality a hypothesis predicts. Right now physicalists are making BIG claims. That's okay with me as long as everything claimed is properly supported by evidence. Is it? Heck no. There's lots of stretching and exaggerating and ignoring things that interfere with physicalist theory . . . so to me physicalist theory has a long way to go before it plausible as an explanation of all of existence.