hypnagogue said:
By first order judgment about qualia, I mean ascertaining the existence, type, quality, etc. of a given quale. First order judgments of this type are observational and apply only to qualia in themselves. "The sky is a rich shade of blue" would be such a first order judgment. A higher order judgment might include logical inferences and could apply to things other than qualia in themselves. "I ate pizza because I wanted to enjoy its taste" would be a higher order judgment about qualia; it is not restricted to the quale in itself, but rather uses subjective information to make inferences about non-qualitative phenomena (the causal process of physically eating the pizza). The speaker here cannot be wrong about his notion of what pizza tastes like to him, but he can be wrong about his logical inference.
I didn’t realize that’s what you meant by “judgment.” I suppose I thought you meant it figuratively. So to get more precise now, if we use the experience of blue, then I was referring to the specific moment of experience when blue information reaches consciousness and is experienced. We don’t need a word or concept to experience that, we need only be conscious. If a person were able (and some humans are), they could refrain from assigning interpretation or inference or a name to the experience and still recognize blue the next time it was experienced. So my argument doesn’t concern mental interpretations or logical inference unless you want to say recognition is a judgment. I am just pointing to what happens when consciousness desires experience and that consequently involves the brain and body.
hypnagogue said:
You hold, "if a person seeks a specific qualia experience and initiates mental and bodily action to attempt to bring it about, then consciousness has 'caused' physical effects." Ultimately, you want to assert the truth of the consequent, that consciousness causes physical effects.
Correct.
hypnagogue said:
If you . . . are simply listing correlated events . . .
Let’s get this out of the way first. I am not simply listing correlated events.
hypnagogue said:
The antecedent of your conditional is "people seek specific qualitative experiences and initiate action to attempt to bring it about." If you mean to imply a causal connection here from consciousness to brain, then you have begged the question by already presuming the existence of the 'downward' causation you wanted to demonstrate, and so the conclusion becomes vacuous.
It is hardly a presumption or a vacuous conclusion to suggest cause and effect after repeated observations of subjective longing (“I want”) setting the brain and body in motion. Just how prohibitive are you going to be about considering something a cause which obviously behaves as one?
I am going to quote others a bit, so I’ll make them the color blue so they are easily
recognized.
Rudolf Carnap points out, “From my point of view, it is more fruitful to replace the entire discussion of the meaning of causality by an investigation of the various kinds of laws that occur in science. When these laws are studied, it is a study of the kinds of causal connections that have been observed. The logical analysis of laws is certainly a clearer, more precise problem than the problem of what causality means.”
In other words, rather than speculate, let's look at how reality “works.” What does our experience with cause tell us? Consider the concept of causality as offered by physics Nobel laureate Max Born:
"1. Causality postulates that there are laws by which the occurrence of an entity B of a certain class depends on the occurrence of an entity A of another class, where the word entity means any physical object, phenomenon, situation, or event. A is called the cause, B the effect.
2. Antecedence postulates that the cause must be prior to, or at least simultaneous with, the effect.
3. Contiguity postulates that cause and effect must be in spatial contact or connected by a chain of intermediate things in contact.”
Of course, he is talking about physical cause and effect, but without the endless “what ifs” rationalists tend to attach to every question, the meaning of cause should seem clear to anyone interested in being practical. When one class of occurrence A is followed under the same conditions every time by occurrence B, and when there is an unambiguous connection between A and B, then we can assume A causes B.
In their book “Realism Rescued: How Scientific Progress is Possible” Aronson, Harré, and Way suggest, “The relative verisimilitude of laws can be thought of . . . as the degree to which the relationships between properties depicted in relevant theories resemble the actual relationships between properties in nature.”
They continue, “It is the method of manipulation. It is so commonplace that we are hardly aware of its ubiquitous role in our lives and practice. Every time we turn on the shower
and stand beneath it we are, in effect, using the unobservable gravitational field to manipulate the water. The way that Stern and Gerlach manipulated magnetic fields to manipulate atomic nuclei in their famous apparatus is metaphysically much the same as our everyday strategy of standing under the shower.”
John Sowa, whose pragmatic thinking influenced me in the past
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/, and whose view of causality guided my response here says, “As Peirce would say (:!) . . . love Peirce!), experience provides a pragmatic confirmation of the law of gravitation and its applicability to the event of taking a shower. But Peirce's view of law includes much more than the laws of logic and physics. In addition to the laws that make the shower work, he would include the habits and social conventions that
cause people to take a shower. Various formulas ‘to which real events truly conform’ can be observed, tested, and verified at every level from mechanical interactions to the conventions, habits, and instincts of living creatures.’”
In the case of consciousness causing brain and body effects, there is an unswerving relationship between consciousness seeking specific experiences, and brain and bodily activity. What possible reason is there to question the consistent response of brain and body in accordance with conscious intent? If I say lift your hand, and you will it, then hand lifts. You want water, you will your body to get water to drink, and it does.
You can observe your body responding to your will, I know mine does, and you can question billions of people who will report the same thing. If you suggest that because of conditioning, inattentiveness, daydreaming, etc., that consciousness isn’t always in control of one’s physical and mental faculties, I’d agree. But that doesn’t alter the fact that when an act of will is conscious, the brain and body respond (plus, try to remove consciousness entirely from brain and body, as when someone is in a coma, and see what can be willed).
When we observe the same consistency between two events in purely physical situations, science accepts that as an adequate indication of cause and effect. So is there a different standard of certainty required for the apparent cause and effect relationship between consciousness and brain/body?
To make sure it doesn’t seem I’ve wandered from my original argument, let me reaffirm that. I claim that because experience is what defines consciousness, when its intention/desire to stimulate a specific experience in itself results in brain and body involvement, those are instances of consciousness causing physical effects.
EDIT: I suppose to be correct I should say those are instances of consciousness
triggering physical effects. I am not implying that consciousness is handling the entire range of activity-movement of the brain and body. It appears conscious lives in the brain, and is able to affect it in what ever place it needs to for the brain and body to respond. The pathways for physical response are already set up and powered, ready to respond.
How is consciousness absent from the process of willing the intellect to learn something, willing the body to carry it out, so that consciousness can experience the qualia of that pizza?
.
i.e., that consciousness can physcially "cause").