Is the Hard Problem Just Silly?

[loseyourname]

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?

This isn't a matter of what a non-conscious being can "know." This is a matter of what a human can know.

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.

I'm suggesting that we have no idea what a physical description could or could not do with respect to subjective experience. Maybe the description alone, which may or may not be mathematical (depending on whether you adhere to sentential or tensor network theories of cognition), could tell you what the feeling was like. We cannot know because we cannot have perfect knowledge. The Mary argument relies on Mary's having perfect knowledge, but the only being that has ever been postulated to actually have perfect knowledge is God. In fact, this reminds of the atheist argument against the omniscience of God. It is stated that God cannot be omniscient because he cannot know what it is like to ride a bike, for instance, since he has no legs and cannot ride a bike. Theists will rightly refute this argument by saying that we have no idea whether or not perfect knowledge would entail experiential knowledge, even without the experience. We don't know because we have no idea what perfect knowledge would or would not entail.

 

[Hellburner]

so to me physicalist theory has a long way to go before it plausible as an explanation of all of existence

Given the alternatives... I guess Occam has no place in this discussion?

 

[Steve Esser]

Dear Les Sleeth. The comment was meant to be read straight. I think the topic of complex systems (including living ones) is one of the underexplained areas of science which has a chance of tying back in some way to the problem of first person experience. Other candidate areas would be the reconciliation of quantum mechanics with the rest of science, and the explanation for the asymmetric arrow of time.

 

[Les Sleeth]

Given the alternatives... I guess Occam has no place in this discussion?

It does when it is relevant, but not if it's going to just be an excuse to ignore a real problem.

The reason I have been less than enthusiastic about the "hard problem" as described by Chalmer's zombie analogy or the general argument that physicalness can't account for subjectivity is because neither are proof. Nonphysicalists cannot prove subjecitivty is non-physical (and likely never will given the requirements for "proof").

However, physicalists cannot (yet) prove it is physical either. So to me, that is where the debate is most dynamic. Regarding Occam's razor, I've objected to the tactic of "dismissing" what is needed for physicalism to work as a theory but is presently missing. If that razor is being used to eliminate anything that can't be studied reductively, then it isn't proper parsimony and instead is just what one limited perspective is using in order to maintain itself.

 

[Les Sleeth]

Dear Les Sleeth. The comment was meant to be read straight. I think the topic of complex systems (including living ones) is one of the underexplained areas of science which has a chance of tying back in some way to the problem of first person experience. Other candidate areas would be the reconciliation of quantum mechanics with the rest of science, and the explanation for the asymmetric arrow of time.

Sorry Steve, I think you lost me. Which comment?

 

[Fliption]

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'm not real clear on your position Loseyourname. You seem to acknowledge the issues around consciousness but then you reserve the right to be "unsure" whether a reductive theory can account for consciousness in principle. Your only basis for this seems to be because we just can't know everything. If this is your position then I think most people here would agree with you. I'm only making a conclusion based on the evidence and definitions we currently have. I don't make any claims about any future paradigms of physics. I only make the claim that the one we have now cannot reductively explain consciousnsess.

But if you are actually leaning toward the view that consciousness can be reductively explained in this paradigm simply because "we can't be sure", then I'm lost. Obviously, we can claim just about anything to be true using this tactic. If you do lean in this direction, I would expect to see some examples of exactly how consciousness can be reductively explained.

 

[loseyourname]

I'm not real clear on your position Loseyourname. You seem to acknowledge the issues around consciousness but then you reserve the right to be "unsure" whether a reductive theory can account for consciousness in principle. Your only basis for this seems to be because we just can't know everything. If this is your position then I think most people here would agree with you. I'm only making a conclusion based on the evidence and definitions we currently have.

Well, I don't think we quite have to know everything. But anyone that knows neuroscience knows that we know almost nothing. We're in the same position Newton was in before he came up with his mechanical laws.

But if you are actually leaning toward that view that consciousness can be reductively explained simply because "we can't know", then I'm lost. Obviously, we can claim just about anything to be true using this tactic. If you do lean in this direction, I would expect to see some examples of exactly how consciousness can be reductively explained.

I'm not leaning toward either view, although I'll generally talk more about physicalist models because I've studied neuroscience more than I've studied philosophy, to that's what I know. There are ideas on how subjective experience might be "reduced" to smaller component parts, but none is to be preferred over another at this point because there exists no theoretical framework of cognition in which to fit hypotheses. Until we have that, there is little to evaluate physicalist models. I still think it's worthwhile to conjecture, because without conjecture we'll never have such a theoretical framework, but no one here should take it too seriously.

Edit (in response to your edit): I really don't have an opinion on whether or not physical paradigms will need to be overhauled. We don't even have a neuroscience paradigm yet, so first things first. I'll contend that every argument I've seen that the physical paradigm we have cannot in principle explain subjective experience is just a variation on the lack of imagination argument, which is bound to fail because not everybody's imagination is as limited as the people making the arguments, and also because there is plenty that we now know to be true that would have been well beyond the imagination of people with less knowledge.

 

[Fliption]

Well, I don't think we quite have to know everything. But anyone that knows neuroscience knows that we know almost nothing. We're in the same position Newton was in before he came up with his mechanical laws.

Well you were quick to respond and I edited a bit above. I thought it would be clearer if I say that I don't believe consciousness can be reduced in the current paradigm. I won't guarantee what can happen in others.

I'm defining a paradigm as a set of assumptions about what is fundamental and what are the mechanics of how these things interact to create the diversity we see in the universe. I see neuroscience as a study of what brains do, assuming all the things we know under the current paradigm. I do not see neuroscience as a paradigm shifting exercise. I don't believe I've ever heard you or anyone else suggest that the brain is doing something beyond what we currently call the laws of physics.

So if you agree with what I've said above, then I don't see how neuroscience can reduce consciousness, in principle.

 

[Fliption]

Edit (in response to your edit): I really don't have an opinion on whether or not physical paradigms will need to be overhauled. We don't even have a neuroscience paradigm yet, so first things first. I'll contend that every argument I've seen that the physical paradigm we have cannot in principle explain subjective experience is just a variation on the lack of imagination argument, which is bound to fail because not everybody's imagination is as limited as the people making the arguments, and also because there is plenty that we now know to be true that would have been well beyond the imagination of people with less knowledge.

This edit would probably be your response to my last post. This is where we disagree. With the definitions in the current paradigm I see it as logically impossible to do what you're saying. If I gave you these assumptions

1) P = G
2) G < F

I would say it is not possible for you to come to this conclusion P = F.
There is no reliance on a lack of imagination as far as I'm concerned.

This is why I am open to new paradigms finding a place for consciousness because I realize I cannot imagine the possibilities. But in this current paradigm, it is not possible, by definition. To me, the arguments by Chalmers and others make this extremely clear. The fact that you disagree is evidence to me that we are all using different definitions. It is likely we actually agree on much of this.

 

[loseyourname]

So if you agree with what I've said above, then I don't see how neuroscience can reduce consciousness, in principle.

Just out of curiosity, how much do you know about neuroscience to be able to say that?

 

[Fliption]

Just out of curiosity, how much do you know about neuroscience to be able to say that?

Are you suggesting that neuroscience is open to the brain breaking current laws of physics?

 

[loseyourname]

This edit would probably be your response to my last post. This is where we disagree. With the definitions in the current paradigm I see it as logically impossible to do what you're saying. If I gave you these assumptions

1) P = G
2) G < F

I would say it is not possible for you to come to this conclusion P = F.
There is no reliance on a lack of imagination as far as I'm concerned.

This is why I am open to new paradigms finding a place for consciousness because I realize I cannot imagine the possibilities. But in this current paradigm, it is not possible, by definition. To me, the arguments by Chalmers and others make this extremely clear. The fact that you disagree is evidence to me that we are all using different definitions. It is likely we actually agree on much of this.

I don't know. I was careful to adopt the definition of physical that I thought Rosenberg to be using. Honestrosewater started a thread about Chalmers' arguments, and I've argued against them to some extent (although, granted, only the snippets that have been posted here, so excuse me if I don't address everything). I've read the arguments presented by Rosenberg as well, and do have responses that I don't think he addresses, but I'll save that for the discussion of his book.

Rosenberg talks about the arguments made before him, which he calls the "arguments from knowledge and conceivability." I think he knows that these kinds of arguments ultimately fail and that is why he goes a little further, but we ultimately run into the same problem. In reality, I think we run into a similar problem to the one we had with the logical empiricists. We have a group of people telling science what science does and what science can and cannot do, without enough regard for what science is actually doing.

Clearly under your set of axioms, we can never prove that P=F, but what is the analogue in the physicalist axioms that excludes subjective experience?

 

[loseyourname]

Are you suggesting that neuroscience is open to the brain breaking current laws of physics?

I don't know that anybody is expecting that, but all of science is open to the possibility that any of its theories and/or laws may be incorrect. There is also the possibility, that we see explicitly manifested in statistical mechanics, that known laws are really only probabilistic laws and not as absolute as is currently thought. The only thing I am actually suggesting, though, is that neuroscience strongly suggests that there exists no unified, holistic entity that can be called "subjective experience" that is any different from the unified entity we call "water" or "mountain." Unity at one level of observation is disunity at another. There seems to be a basic reliance by antiphysicalist philosophers on what they intutively "know" about their own experiences, but if the history of folk psychology has taught us anything, it is that what we think we "know" about our own minds is almost always a misperception.

 

[StatusX]

I think we may need to be clearer on the defintion of "explain." When we try to explain, say, matter, we reduce it to its fundamental constituents and try to find the most basic laws possible that these obey. But is this really an explanation? Why are these the constituents, and why are these the laws? We may be able to reduce the problem so that the new goal becomes explaining simpler phenomenon, but we can go no further. Likewise, with consciousness, you may or may not believe it can be reduced. But even if it can be, we still must explain the parts. Maybe the color red and a quark or photon (or string or whatever the most fundamental particles turn out to be) enjoy the same kind of fundamental, unexplainable existence.

 

[Fliption]

I don't know that anybody is expecting that, but all of science is open to the possibility that any of its theories and/or laws may be incorrect. There is also the possibility, that we see explicitly manifested in statistical mechanics, that known laws are really only probabilistic laws and not as absolute as is currently thought. The only thing I am actually suggesting, though, is that neuroscience strongly suggests that there exists no unified, holistic entity that can be called "subjective experience" that is any different from the unified entity we call "water" or "mountain." Unity at one level of observation is disunity at another. There seems to be a basic reliance by antiphysicalist philosophers on what they intutively "know" about their own experiences, but if the history of folk psychology has taught us anything, it is that what we think we "know" about our own minds is almost always a misperception.

I agree with much of this. But for neuroscience to strongly suggests that there exists no unified, holistic entity that can be called "subjective experience", it must be finding some non-holistic things that would explain the phenomenon. I'm not a neuroscientist and don't want to speak for one, but I don't think this has happened. So I'm not sure how neuroscience "suggests" anything when it comes to qualia. Especially when it doesn't even have a theoretical framework!

Also, I'll respond for Les. He would say that neuroscience isn't seeing this entity because it isn't looking for it. It's looking for brain activity.

 

[loseyourname]

I agree with much of this. But for neuroscience to strongly suggests that there exists no unified, holistic entity that can be called "subjective experience", it must be finding some non-holistic things that would explain the phenomenon. I'm not a neuroscientist and don't want to speak for one, but I don't think this has happened. So I'm not sure how neuroscience "suggests" anything when it comes to qualia. Especially when it doesn't even have a theoretical framework!

There are hints at it, in that different kinds of experience are hindered by different kinds of lesions. It is also the case that many types of perception can be carried out without the part of the brain responsible for verbal reporting being aware of it. It is clear at least that "subjective experience" may not be such a fundamental category of ontology as was previously suspected. Of course, "may not be" is far from conclusive. I'm not going to claim otherwise.

 

[loseyourname]

I think we may need to be clearer on the defintion of "explain." When we try to explain, say, matter, we reduce it to its fundamental constituents and try to find the most basic laws possible that these obey. But is this really an explanation? Why are these the constituents, and why are these the laws? We may be able to reduce the problem so that the new goal becomes explaining simpler phenomenon, but we can go no further. Likewise, with consciousness, you may or may not believe it can be reduced. But even if it can be, we still must explain the parts. Maybe the color red and a quark or photon (or string or whatever the most fundamental particles turn out to be) enjoy the same kind of fundamental, unexplainable existence.

I have no quarrel with this. In fact, Rosenberg has convinced me that this is where physicalism falls short. It can never given an account of the intrinsic properties of fundamental particles or "strings" of whatever the fundamental units of matter may be. He just hasn't convinced me that subjective experience is such an intrinsic property of fundamental units of matter.

 

[Fliption]

There are hints at it, in that different kinds of experience are hindered by different kinds of lesions.

Blind people don't see either. Perhaps the lesions damage a part of the brain responsible for collecting the sense data? There can be no experience if there's nothing to experience. Am I off base here?

It is also the case that many types of perception can be carried out without the part of the brain responsible for verbal reporting being aware of it.

I'm not sure what this means. Can you explain this one a little bit?

 

[loseyourname]

Blind people don't see either. Perhaps the lesions damage a part of the brain responsible for collecting the sense data? There can be no experience if there's nothing to experience. Am I off base here?

You're off-base in some cases, but not all. The first thing to consider is that perception can be cut off at many different points. If you want to use visual perception, this starts off with the eyes and ends (presumably) with the visual cortex. There is a difference between blindness and the inability to visually perceive, however. Note that, even with eyes closed, or while dreaming, a person can still perceive visual images. The ability to perceive can itself be damaged, but it is not always the case that the ability to visually perceive is completely inhibited. There may be only the inability to perceive certain colors, or certain patterns, or to recognize conspecifics, or to recognize written language. These are all inhibited by lesions of different parts of the brain, showing that visual perception is probably not a true category or perception. In fact, the ability to perceive language is not just inhibited visually by certain lesions. A lesion in the right location will inhibit the ability to perceive language in any way, whether written, spoken, or felt (in the case of braille). In fact, in the case of blindness, there are even instances of visual experience being induced by tactile sensations. The only conclusion we can come to so far is that perception in general is far more complicated than we think it is, built up from many small pieces to create a unified moment of experience that is in reality not unified at all.

I'm not sure what this means. Can you explain this one a little bit?

The classic example is split-brain patients, but sleepwalking, blindsight, and blindness denial might be similar phenomena.

 

[hypnagogue]

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.

The issue here isn't so much explanation as it is classification. Perhaps one could not explain why water is wet without an understanding of molecular properties, and then come to the conclusion that wetness must be an intrinsic property. But this essentially a kind of 'vitalism' about wetness (wetness-ism?), which I've argued is disanalagous from the situation with p-consciousness-- in this case, we cannot see how wetness could arise from structural/functional properties, so we posit an intrinsic property of wetness to do our explanitory work.

But in the first instance, wetness presents itself (aside from the subjective feeling of wetness) entirely in structural and functional terms. That is, the phenomenon as it is observed in nature presents us with no problems to solve but ones of structure (e.g. how beads of water tend to form, or how damp bodies tend to sag, etc.) and function (e.g. how wet bodies tend to be slipperier or cooler than when dry, etc). Subjective experience appears to present us with problems above and beyond just structure and function.

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.

I disagree. Subjective experience is the only phenomenon in nature that appears to present us with intrinsic properties directly. Observing an intrinsic property to exist is quite different from supposing an intrinsic property to exist, as one does in vitalism and in our examaple about wetness.

The only reason to do so is intuition, and intuition hardly constitutes proof.

I understand your concerns here, but I think you don't appreciate the depth of the problem.

Consider a subjectively experienced visual field whose only 'content' or property is a uniform and unchanging shade of red. What is structural or functional about this visual field? As it presents itself experientially, there is nothing structural or functional about it at all.

At this point, you will want to object that this may just be a misguided intuition; after all, it could be that this redness is actually some kind of emergent phenomenon and is really just a conglomeration of relational properties. But all other emergent phenomena of this type, such as liquidity, present themselves on the 'emergent scale' as a novel set of structural and functional properties, not as intrinsic properties. How can it be that redness, or subjective experience in general, is an exception to this rule? How can even the appearance of intrinsic properties arise from structural and functional properties alone?

 

[Fliption]

You're off-base in some cases, but not all.

In a sense much of this is a no-brainer hahaha. We already know there is a correlation between brains and consciousness. Lesions in the brain should impact how it operates, including it's relationship to consciousness. Does this necessarily say anything about whether consciousness emerges from brain processes or is a fundamental aspect of nature that simply manifest itself within this physical process? My friend comes over everytime I cook steak. Is my friend emerging from the process of cooking steak? I think so because whenever I don't cook steak, he's no where to be found! Obviously, from this behavior alone, all we know is that there is a correlation. We know nothing about what emerges from what.

These examples don't really tackle the problems that Hypnagogue is talking about. They simply draw a correlation between brains and consciousness and we already know they're correlated so we shouldn't be surprised. I'm still leaning heavily that neuroscience in this paradigm cannot bridge the gap.

 

[RingoKid]

just quickly, I'm with self adjoint on this one

I do think though that we have already made AI humans in the form of your average PC that mimic the prerequisites for solutions to the easy problems...

...as for the hard problem. We are to the computer what our mind is to our brain

I think ?

 

[hypnagogue]

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.

This is a conceptual mistake that seems to be common in materialist positions about consciousness. We analyze the brain, don't see anything that really seems to resonate with our first person experiences, and conclude that we should thus disregard that first person experience, as it is obviously shown to be flawed intuition, or pure illusion, or whatever.

But the task before us is to bridge the chasm between our understanding of objective nature and our understanding of subjective experience. It is no help to say that subjective experience simply is brain activity, if we don't show exactly how that stuff we look at with an fMRI is doing that stuff we directly experience. We cannot write the latter off just because it doesn't seem to jive with what we know about the former; in effect, that is nothing more than a distorted restatement of the hard problem. Likewise, we cannot grant the objective brain priveledged existential status over subjective experience, because then we wind up studying just the brain, rather than studying the nature of the relationship between the brain and subjective experience. A real solution to the hard problem will not deny subjective experience, but unify it with what we know about nature and the brain.

I'd like to quote a couple of lucidly written paragraphs here, taken from http://home.comcast.net/~johnrgregg/ :

Some people argue that what I call subjective consciousness is some kind of illusion. As attempts to dismiss consciousness go, this one does not stand up to much scrutiny. What is an illusion? It is something that seems one way but is really another. My claims rest on the observation that that red really seems red to me. The counter claim that this is an illusion boils down to, "red doesn't really seem red, it only seems that it seems red." But seeming, like multiplying by 1, is idempotent - inserting more "seeming" clauses into my claim does not change it one bit. Whether red seems red, or seems that it seems that it seems that it seems . . . red, the Hard Problem stands before us. The Hard Problem consists of the fact that anything seems like anything at all. If subjective consciousness is an illusion, then who or what exactly is the victim of that illusion, and how can it be such a victim without the Hard Problem being a problem for it?

My seeing of red is not a philosophy; it is not a way of thinking about or interpreting some theory or idea; it is not an abstraction; it is not an inference I have drawn or some metaphysical gloss I have put over reality. It is a brute fact about the universe, a fact of Nature. It is really, really there. It is not a theory - it is explanandum, not explanation. As such, it is incumbent upon our natural science to explain it. If my seeing of red is not amenable to the currently accepted methods of natural science, then so much the worse for the currently accepted methods. Those who deny the existence of qualitative consciousness remind me of the church officials who refused to look through Galileo's telescope because they did not want their neat and tidy theological world upset by what they might see.

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).

See my response to selfAdjoint's original post. Asserting that the hard problem cannot be solved by traditional scientific methods alone is essentially asserting that facts about structure and function can only entail further facts about structure and function, and that the facts about p-consciousness are not exhausted by structural and functional facts.

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?

Although such an AI would presumably represent a terrific solution to all the 'easy' problems of consciousness, it would not solve the hard problem. For one thing, we wouldn't be able to tell if it really was p-conscious in the first place. For another, even if we assume that it would be p-conscious, there is no guarantee that constructing such a thing would give us an understanding of the bridging principles between objective nature and subjective experience (for the same reason one could take apart and put back together a radio or somesuch without understanding how it works). The hard problem is about finding and understanding these bridge principles.

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?

You couldn't. If you could, the hard problem would not be so hard.

 

[loseyourname]

Subjective experience appears to present us with problems above and beyond just structure and function.

Subjective experience is the only phenomenon in nature that appears to present us with intrinsic properties directly.

I'm going to agree with you about this, but highlight the instances of the verb "to appear" and "to present." In these instances, all we can know is the way things seem to us. We have good reason to believe intuitively that subjective experience is not divisable, but it remains nothing more than an appearance. We can draw no deductive conclusions from this evidence.

Consider a subjectively experienced visual field whose only 'content' or property is a uniform and unchanging shade of red. What is structural or functional about this visual field? As it presents itself experientially, there is nothing structural or functional about it at all.

You see, this idea of the "content" of a visual field is a folk concept. Granted, we still have no theoretical framework in which to work visual perception, but the closest attempts I've seen to explaining such phenomena is the tensor network idea, which postulates such sensor input being represented in the mind as a vector, the dimensions of which are recognition factors (how many we have no idea). In the case of color perception, we have a pretty good idea that there are at least three different dimensions of perceptual recognition that go into the composition of any given color experience. There may be many others, not all of which are directly related to illumination or EM frequency. You take away any of these and you take away the experience of red, but if anything is left behind, there will still be experience of some kind.

At this point, you will want to object that this may just be a misguided intuition; after all, it could be that this redness is actually some kind of emergent phenomenon and is really just a conglomeration of relational properties. But all other emergent phenomena of this type, such as liquidity, present themselves on the 'emergent scale' as a novel set of structural and functional properties, not as intrinsic properties. How can it be that redness, or subjective experience in general, is an exception to this rule? How can even the appearance of intrinsic properties arise from structural and functional properties alone?

I'm again highlighting your own usage of language here. There must be some reason that you continue to say that experiences present themselves or appear to be a certain way. It is because you cannot be sure what they actually are. What we experience is not always in line with what exists in nature. Even feelings and beliefs that we are convinced we have are not always in line with the way feelings and beliefs manifest themselves in our actions and reasoning.

 

[loseyourname]

My seeing of red is not a philosophy; it is not a way of thinking about or interpreting some theory or idea; it is not an abstraction; it is not an inference I have drawn or some metaphysical gloss I have put over reality. It is a brute fact about the universe, a fact of Nature. It is really, really there. It is not a theory - it is explanandum, not explanation. As such, it is incumbent upon our natural science to explain it. If my seeing of red is not amenable to the currently accepted methods of natural science, then so much the worse for the currently accepted methods. Those who deny the existence of qualitative consciousness remind me of the church officials who refused to look through Galileo's telescope because they did not want their neat and tidy theological world upset by what they might see.

I'm going to run with this, because this is where I see John veering into messy territory. The assumption that our experience of "red" is unencumbered by theoretical abstractions is not necessarily true. There is strong evidence to suggest that all perception, whether it be of the intelligence of blondes with large breasts or simply of the color red, only obtains within a folk theoretical framework that is learned. This isn't to say necessarily that a newborn infant cannot experience red (although the possibility does exist), but there is evidence to suggest that the experience would not be anything like the experience we have aside from the fact that it is elicited from congruent external inputs.

Addendum: We seem to be at a bit of an impasse here, in that one camp is accusing its contrary of clinging to their notions of physical theory, while the other camp is accusing its contrary of clinging to folk intuitive notions of what subjective experience is. Nobody seems to be considering the possibility that maybe both sides are clinging a bit to frameworks that are not entirely true. When I say that a complete explanation of subjective consciousness is likely to be highly counterintuitive and difficult to grasp, it is entirely possible that both physicalists and antiphysicalists will need to budge a bit in their convictions. The simple fact is, when we approach such a hard problem, it is probably best to approach it with little to no convictions of any kind.

 

[Hellburner]

On subjective experience, it is the interaction of your objective environment seen through the lens of the synaptic weights imparted by the entirety of the time series representing your past.

 

[Nereid]

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

Out here, in orbit around Neptune, one has rather little human company, and - partly as a result? - one's attempts at humour are often misinterpreted (even to the point of upsetting the master of humour, tribdog ). Perhaps I should have "Les"?

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).

So, "show me", right? Hmm, I thought you lived in CA Les, not some state further east?

Mais oui, mon ami!

For the avoidance of doubt, allow me to clarify and repeat - unless and until a materialist, physicalist, scientist, reductionist, [insert your own favourite here] can, step by step show this, in excruciating detail, then the 'problem' remains a problem. Wrt 'life', Les has kindly described how high that bar is (for him); many have noted that life's origin is still far from being satisfactorily elucidated ...

So look at what I'm asking from the POV of a science junkie sugar daddy ... I'm dying to allow my ill-gotten squillions to be spent on research into the most challenging problems today, and this nonsense about spin-foams, Mbranes, etc doesn't turn me on (and being an ex-hippie, I have a jaundiced view about the importance of pseudo-problems of the New Age). So I've been convinced that there's a 'hard' problem of consciousness, and that its resolution will earn me - the generous benefactor of the key research - a place in history that my squillions won't. Being a businessperson, I think in terms of RFPs (request for proposal) ... come one physicalist, come all holists ... propose a research programme that will crack this nut!

 

[hypnagogue]

We have good reason to believe intuitively that subjective experience is not divisable, but it remains nothing more than an appearance. We can draw no deductive conclusions from this evidence.

I don't think framing the problem in terms of divisible or indivisible properties is the way to go. The important duality here is not divisible/indivisible, but intrinsic/extrinsic.

Note that these two are not equivalent. For the moment, lay down any potential objections and assume that redness is an intrinsic property. This implies that redness is not just a composite of relation properties, but it doesn't imply that redness is indivisible. Perhaps redness is in fact a composite of some more fundamental kinds of intrinsic properties that stand in certain relationships to each other.

You see, this idea of the "content" of a visual field is a folk concept.

I realize that the idea of contents of consciousness is not unproblematic, which is why I put it in scare quotes. I used it just to try to get the general idea across quickly. Replace it with 'characteristic' or 'quality' if you wish.

Granted, we still have no theoretical framework in which to work visual perception, but the closest attempts I've seen to explaining such phenomena is the tensor network idea, which postulates such sensor input being represented in the mind as a vector, the dimensions of which are recognition factors (how many we have no idea). In the case of color perception, we have a pretty good idea that there are at least three different dimensions of perceptual recognition that go into the composition of any given color experience. There may be many others, not all of which are directly related to illumination or EM frequency.

This is a structural/functional approach to visual consciousness, which will certainly have its uses, but still will only get us so far. Suppose that an advanced alien race were to study our brains to discover the nature of our subjective experience. Also suppose that these aliens do not have any kind of subjective experience analogous to human color qualia. What could these aliens deduce about human visual experience?

They would certainly be able to deduce that we process visual input from the environment along three main channels. From this and other information about the brain, they might even deduce that our perception of the visible light spectrum is not entirely continuous, but is divided into roughly seven discrete bands, each of which is represented in p-consciousness as a different quale.

Now, this is nothing to sneeze at, but so far our aliens have not cracked the hard problem; their understanding of our visual subjective experience is still limited to structural and functional terms. They would know that we do not see red and blue as continuous extensions of each other, as we do with (say) light and dark shades of red. They would roughly know the (fuzzy) boundaries along the spectrum of visible light where the visual 'continuity' of one color ends and a novel class of color begins. But this is just a relational account of differences and co-variances. What our aliens would not have the slightest understanding of is exactly what fills in the 'slots' of that relational structure in our own first person experience. They would know that we see 450nm-wavelength light as distinct from 650nm-wavelength light in a way entirely different from the way we see 650nm-wavelength light as distinct from 700nm-wavelength light, but they would not know that the qualia that instantiate this difference structure in visual p-consciousness look like this[/color] and this[/color].

They could not deduce this because their understanding is entirely in terms of structure and function. This understanding gets them to the point where they know that red and blue are perceived differently, and they have some clues as to how this difference compares to other differences that obtain in visual perception. From here, it's up in the air what kind of qualia actually instantiate these differences. If phenomenal redness and blueness were to be swapped, the situation would be no more and no less consistent with what the aliens could observe.

I'm again highlighting your own usage of language here. There must be some reason that you continue to say that experiences present themselves or appear to be a certain way. It is because you cannot be sure what they actually are.

I am using the word 'appear' so as not to write off your argument offhand. But at the same time, I must admit it would take quite a lot to convince me that subjective experience is not intrinsic in nature. To me there is very strong reason to believe it is, and little to no reason to believe it is not. I can appreciate that you want to be conservative and not label this an open and shut case, but I do not and have not seen much hope for the counterarguments.

By the way, I have not intended to use the word 'present' to imply a similar kind of hedging.

What we experience is not always in line with what exists in nature.

I agree, but there is a special qualification we must consider for subjective experience. This is where John Gregg's great comments about illusion and the idempotent nature of the verb "to seem" comes in. Let me expand a bit on what he wrote.

Our subjective experience serves as a kind of model or representation of the objective aspects of nature. In normal waking conditions, the brain constructus a mapping from various structural and functional phenomena in the environment onto p-consciousness. Illusions occur when this mapping somehow breaks down, and the properties of subjective experience do not agree with the properties of the objective environment. It is easy and uncontroversial to suppose that a model of some phenomenon that is exterior to/different from the model itself can be wrong in this way.

But can a model incorrectly model itself? This is essentially the kind of claim we make when we say that we can be illusioned about subjective experience, as opposed to being illusioned about (say) the physical dimensions of a room. Restating your above statement as it relates to p-consciousness, we get the claim, "What we experience is not always in line with what we experience." But that is no better than saying that one does not equal one. There is no room for illusion here because there is no room for an incorrect mapping.

 

[Fliption]

There is no room for illusion here because there is no room for an incorrect mapping.

This is exactly why I responded to Self Adjoints assertion that consciousness was an illusion by asking the question "Who is experiencing the illusion? Another Illusion?"

 

[selfAdjoint]

My last post before I go. I have already responded to Fliptions question, and I don't think its cricket for him to bring up his question as if I hadn't.

Hypnagogue's post is just a rehash of the usual arguments; those aliens are just another version of "what it's like" and Mary, that knowing how things work doesn't equal experience. But I assert the sum total of things working in our brains is the the experience.

So long, have a happy holidays, and I'll see you in January.

 

[Fliption]

My last post before I go. I have already responded to Fliptions question, and I don't think its cricket for him to bring up his question as if I hadn't.

I almost mentioned your response to my statement but my mother always said if I couldn't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. To be honest, your response sounded as if you didn't understand what I'm saying. Dennett's argument tries to eliminate the infinite regress of a viewer. You created an infinite regress by insisting consciousness is an illusion. So I'm confused as to how you think you have respond to this point at all.

Hypnagogue's post is just a rehash of the usual arguments; those aliens are just another version of "what it's like" and Mary, that knowing how things work doesn't equal experience. But I assert the sum total of things working in our brains is the the experience.

I can hear the faint echoes of a foot stomping. It's real easy to make claims. Backing them up is another story. And it is very "hard" to do. I assert that the sky is made of blue grass! STOMP!

 

[loseyourname]

I don't think framing the problem in terms of divisible or indivisible properties is the way to go. The important duality here is not divisible/indivisible, but intrinsic/extrinsic.

Note that these two are not equivalent.

Call it what you will. Intrinsic, fundamental, indivisable. I think they are basically the same thing. For instance, to say that a superstring is indivisable is not to state a relational property of a string; it is to state that the string is not the results of relational properties. In short, the property of being indivisable is an intrinsic property. There remains the possiblity that reducing qualia will only lead us to smaller, but nonetheless irreducable entities without a good explanation. I'll admit that much. This is part of the reason that I think Rosenberg is probably on the better track than Chalmers.

This is a structural/functional approach to visual consciousness, which will certainly have its uses, but still will only get us so far. Suppose that an advanced alien race were to study our brains to discover the nature of our subjective experience. Also suppose that these aliens do not have any kind of subjective experience analogous to human color qualia. What could these aliens deduce about human visual experience?

This is where we run into problems. As adjoint points out, this only a variation on the Mary argument, except this time you are appealing to aliens with no color qualia experience at all. For one thing, if Chalmers is right, then any alien with the information-processing capacity to understand the structure and function of human color perception will also experience color qualia. For a second thing, you run into the same problems that the Mary argument runs into. You're assuming to begin with that facts about structure and function - physical facts - are not enough to explain qualia and then using that premise to prove that physical facts are not enough to explain qualia. It's still a circular argument, no matter how many different spins you want to put on it. The argument form remains the same each and every time.

They could not deduce this because their understanding is entirely in terms of structure and function.

Here it is again. Facts about structure and function don't explain experience, therefore facts about structure and function can't explain experience.

Note that I'm not saying you are wrong, or that Rosenberg is wrong, or that Chalmers is wrong. I'm only saying that your arguments demonstrate nothing other than that you and they are very clever at concocting arguments.

But at the same time, I must admit it would take quite a lot to convince me that subjective experience is not intrinsic in nature. To me there is very strong reason to believe it is, and little to no reason to believe it is not.

Well, heck, it would take quite a lot to convince me too! It's also going to take more than circular arguments to convince me that a physical account must fail. For now, I'll keep my mind open to both possibilities.

But can a model incorrectly model itself? This is essentially the kind of claim we make when we say that we can be illusioned about subjective experience, as opposed to being illusioned about (say) the physical dimensions of a room. Restating your above statement as it relates to p-consciousness, we get the claim, "What we experience is not always in line with what we experience." But that is no better than saying that one does not equal one. There is no room for illusion here because there is no room for an incorrect mapping.

There are still assumptions being made here about the unity of self and indivisability of qualitative experience. There is also an implicit appeal to the idea of the Cartesian Theater. Gregg's argument rests on the assumption that the words "we" and "experience" are well-defined in the context he is using them and clearly mean exactly the same thing in each instance. Well, I'd say that this isn't quite so clear as Mr. Gregg believes.

 

[Les Sleeth]

Out here, in orbit around Neptune, one has rather little human company, and - partly as a result? - one's attempts at humour are often misinterpreted (even to the point of upsetting the master of humour, tribdog ). Perhaps I should have "Les"? So, "show me", right?

Snoop Dog has been a bit stressed lately, being oppressed by the gov’t and all. As for me, my attempts at humor are misinterpreted all the time too. (Did you see, right near your comment, Boulderhead thought I might be dissing selfAdjoint?) Our kind hearts usually pull us through our social faux pas, don’t you think? (HOPE? )

Hmm, I thought you lived in CA Les, not some state further east?

Actually I was raised near St. Louis (Illinois side), does that count?

For the avoidance of doubt, allow me to clarify and repeat - unless and until a materialist, physicalist, scientist, reductionist, [insert your own favourite here] can, step by step show this, in excruciating detail, then the 'problem' remains a problem. Wrt 'life', Les has kindly described how high that bar is (for him); many have noted that life's origin is still far from being satisfactorily elucidated ...

My sense of what you are implying there is that I am stubborn, and that the height of the “bar” I’ve set is unreasonable. (Even if you are not implying that, it gives me a chance to explain myself a little.) Here's something I don't feel I get enough credit for: I am not committed to any metaphysical position, spiritual or physicalist or any other. Hard to believe?

When I first started thinking about the nature of reality decades ago I was physicalist. I was in school at the time working toward a degree in biology, and very certain any and all spiritual notions were a combination of myth, wishful thinking, brain washing, and delusion. My faith in science and physical explanations was absolute (even though I didn’t know enough to make that judgment).

I remember the day my faith was shaken. What shook me was seeing for the first time the problem I am always arguing here, the lack of an organizing principle(s) that would explain the organization of life. It happened in a class on comparative anatomy. It was a great course, with the two women professors who ran the class considered leaders in the field. The class was talking about the cats we were all dissecting (sorry Math is Hard, that was before my pussycat sensitivity training ), and what different anatomies indicated about evolution. That somehow led to a discussion on how it all got started (life), and an in-depth debate of the abiogenesis explanation (supported as usual by the Miller-Urey experiment).

I went home that day very disturbed, not yet knowing why. Over the next few weeks my work suffered much as it slowly dawned on me what had bothered me. I’d learned enough about physical principles to know that the thus far observed self-organizing potential of matter fell way short of what was needed for it to explain abiogenesis. I eventually dropped out that semester, tried again the next semester, but found my heart wasn’t into biology any longer. (THEN I moved out of the Show Me state to sunny CA. Oh, and I wanted to say from the depths of sincerity, I feel really, really bad for all you guys freezing your tails off today while I’m sitting here in 65 degree flawless weather. )

In CA I began seriously exploring meditation, and through that was able to have an additional type of experience added to my conscious life. New information! That experience eventually convinced me there is “something more” behind the physical appearances of reality. My certainty about the “something more” is unshakable because I’ve experienced so often. In contrast to that certainty however is the fact that I don’t really know what role “something more” plays.

It seems to be an underlying foundation which all the physical stuff, and my consciousness, arises out of. And after studying others who’ve become proficient at the inner experience, my sense of it is consistent with what those experts reported. Even so, the realm the experience exposes isn’t one you can get at with tools or eyeballs to really see what is going on. So in terms of what/how the “something more” is actually causing, it seems that must remain mostly an impression.

My point is, my position today on how life and consciousness comes about is still one of trying to understand it. I am not like most of the people I debate who seem already committed to a position, and are looking for ways to justify and explain what they already believe. In fact, (and this might sound like--and maybe is--self-deception) but so far in my life I am the most objective person I’ve met. I honestly don’t care what the truth turns out to be. Why should I? There is nothing I can do about what it is. I mean, I will still exist, still be conscious, still get to live for awhile, still get to enjoy life as fully as I am willing.

Today I would be open to a physicalist explanation if it can show what it needs to for the theory to make sense. So far I don’t see it, plus I can see the a priori beliefs of the debaters here and what it is doing to their objectivity. I also have other information (i.e., inner experience) which indicates physicalists are modeling without a key component. Until physicalist theorists stop trying to gloss over the organizational problem and really work to demonstrate that is a real potential of physicalness, it is hard for me to either have much faith in physicalism, or confidence that physicalists are after the unvarnished truth.

So look at what I'm asking from the POV of a science junkie sugar daddy ... I'm dying to allow my ill-gotten squillions to be spent on research into the most challenging problems today, and this nonsense about spin-foams, Mbranes, etc doesn't turn me on (and being an ex-hippie, I have a jaundiced view about the importance of pseudo-problems of the New Age). So I've been convinced that there's a 'hard' problem of consciousness, and that its resolution will earn me - the generous benefactor of the key research - a place in history that my squillions won't. Being a businessperson, I think in terms of RFPs (request for proposal) ... come one physicalist, come all holists ... propose a research programme that will crack this nut!

You know, if it there is a non-physical component to life and consciousness, no amount of physical research is going to reveal it. It might just have to remain a mystery to science. But maybe on a personal level we can learn to develop our experiential capabilities. Now there’s a wild and crazy idea . . . prioritize exploring and developing our experiential potential right up there with exploring and developing the world! Maybe sense experience is just the tip of the experiential iceberg. Maybe the answer we are looking for is in the opposite direction we are looking, and not “out there” in the clutter of creation at all. . . Naaaaaaaaaaaaaa

 

[RingoKid]

where is this "something more" in the physical universe Les and if not then where in the non physical universe is "something more" ?

you know my answer. Now let's hear yours and apologies if you have already given it elsewhere

peace

 

[Les Sleeth]

where is this "something more" in the physical universe Les and if not then where in the non physical universe is "something more" ?

you know my answer. Now let's hear yours and apologies if you have already given it elsewhere

I don't mind answering it again since it is a simple concept. In case you've not see it before, I often suggest a type of monism would help explain some of the mysteries we face. The idea is that there is some basic stuff which has always existed, and always will, and which resides in an infinite continuum. That would be the "something more."

If so, then this physical universe might be seen as (theoretically speaking now of course) a compressed form of the primordial existential stuff, and radiation and the expansion of the universe, for instance, as decompression of the existential stuff. We too are forms of the stuff, both because of the biology we inhabit, and as consciousness. Physcial, then, is simply the existential stuff in a more dense condition (add: structure and oscillatory dynamics too). Once the stuff that is now forming physicalness is free of being tied up in that, it will return to being its formless self, or nonphysical.

So where is the "something more"? It is everywhere; in fact, according to monistic theory, there is no place it isn't. It is the fabric of space, of matter, of consciousness. We can't see it with physical devices or organs because it is too subtle. But (according to something else I've suggested) we can experience the essence of our own consciousness, which is that existential stuff, and thereby possibly experience its/our connection to the infinite continuum.

 

[RingoKid]

thanx Les

Could you please tell me more of this infinite continuum...How do you see that working in a physical universe or not ?

By physical i mean locked into a percievable 4d model.

 

[Les Sleeth]

thanx Les

Could you please tell me more of this infinite continuum...How do you see that working in a physical universe or not ?

By physical i mean locked into a percievable 4d model.

Your first question was simple, but this one . . . . . . you'll have to read my book (when it's done). Translating monism into a viable theory is not simple.

 

[Hellburner]

Levels of consciousness, few will argue a generally escalating consciousness with increasing brain complexity. Humans have cognition loops that extend worldwide via social, cultural, and of late technological extension of consciousness. Higher primates have repeatedly demonstrated some human-like social and cultural loops within their cohort and surrounding cohorts. Mammals and birds have various levels of volitional/non-autonomic communication and social behaviors. Reptiles, amphibians, and fish demonstrate rudimentary local communication with other organisms, the invertebrates have even lower level interaction with each other and their environment. I like to conceptualize these relations as involving increasing numbers and layers of nodes in a recursive neuralnet (NN).

The size and depth of the NN's start small at the lower level invertebrates, with things like basic photophobic reflexes emerging in earthworms and such. As the complexity increases to something like flies, you get a more complex sensorium and range of responses including an emergent ability to learn. The vertebrates expand complexity as the body gets more complex and the resolution of the sensorium increases. Learning ability rises, situational awareness increases, and discrimination/response based on environmental factors greatly expands. Warm blooded vertebrates, with the increased availability of energy and somewhat more complex bodies have an even greater perception/response repertoire, and behavior mostly recognized as volitional emerges. Adding on the next layer of neural complexity presents the higher primates and man. Recognition of self, and subjective experience emerges, is this emergent property really such a leap from volition emerging? We are on the cusp of adding another layer to our cognitive existence by way of integrating our technology with our brains and the global collective. Some call it the Singularity. Care to hypothesize on what will emerge from that? That's the "Hard Problem"