The Flaw in the Definition of Consciousness

AI Thread Summary
The discussion critiques the traditional definition of consciousness as a state where "it is like something to be you," arguing it is flawed because it assumes a central self. This perspective leads to Cartesian dualism, which fails to explain consciousness adequately. The proposed new definition suggests consciousness is an advanced computational ability that creates the illusion of a singular perspective, rather than relying on a central self. The conversation also explores how subjective experiences, including feelings, can be perceived as illusions without a central self, raising questions about the nature of consciousness itself. Ultimately, the thread emphasizes the need for a more comprehensive understanding of consciousness that aligns with these insights.
  • #51
Originally posted by hypnagogue
"Alive" in the sense of the vital spirit is a notoriously shaky concept. The vital spirit cannot be observed at all, so how can we begin to talk about it?

Define "observe". If "observe" entails any kind of perception, then I can indeed perceive the vital spirit, because I can perceive that I am alive.

Besides, I wanted to drop the whole "vital spirit" part of that, and get to the more important matter: The vitalists only needed the vital spirit to explain something that didn't really exist in the first place[/color]. As it turns out, there is nothing special about "life". Indeed, "life" is an illusion, since there are no clear-cut definitions of what is and is not "alive" (as I have shown on many older threads). We have settled for the scientific approach, and dropped the philosophical notion that life is a product of cellular functions. Life is not a product of cellular functions, but is simply a word used to encompass all of those many functions, for convenience in communication. Nothing more.

It is my opinion (currently) that Chalmers has erected the same brand of straw-man by first postulating that there is such a thing as a Final Draft of "the actual (complete; indivisible) experience", and then trying to figure out how neuronal functions "give rise" to this thing that doesn't really exist in the first place. That's what a "straw-man" is, isn't it?

Subjective experience can very plainly be observed (from the 1st person view), so it immediately has credibility and calls for a legitimate explanation. Unlike the vital spirit, it cannot be written off or ignored.

Subjective experience can be plainly observed? How plainly, exactly? I never notice the constant saccades of my eyes or seperateness of the functions of my visual cortex (each function taking place on it's own, and never "meeting up" with the others). No, subjective experience is, indeed, observed in the 1st person, but it is a compactification of information that did not get processed at the same time, and did not arrive at some final destination. This compactification may be computed (in the brain) as "reality", but it clearly cannot be.

That's a strawman. "Cannot be imagined otherwise" is just another way of saying "logically entailed." From the definitions of H2O and spacetime, given materialistic assumptions, those phenomena are logically entailed by their prospective causes. It remains to be shown how the prospective cause of brain functioning can logically entail subjective experience even in principle using only materialistic assumptions.

From the definitions of H2O and spacetime, you are right, they are indeed the logical outcome of their underlying processes. But, have you ever read Consciousness Explained, by Dan Dennett? From the evolutionary innovations on the proto-human brain, it is the logical necessity that their be a brain that plays this constant trick on itself.

What is missing is experience!

No. What is missing is a complete experience. Sub-experience is all over the place, but that one thing appears to be missing. The reason, as I've stated before, that this thing is "missing" is because it doesn't really exist. You are looking for the "end-product" of an on-going process...that's not logically consistent.

You claim to know how the illusion of indivisible experience is formed, but you avoid the question of how any experience at all can be created by a bundle of neurons.

Any experience at all? You have, I'm sure, understood the ways I've explained the computation, memorization, and recall of the neocortex. From this, you have a workable framework for the processes by which the brain processes the world around it. With all of this information being processed, but never meeting up at any place in the brain (or anywhere else, for you Dualists :wink:), the question isn't "How do they every sum up to experience?", it's "Do they ever sum up to experience", and, "If not, what is the evolutionary reason for having a brain that convinces itself that they do?". These things are answered in the books I've mentioned before.

What is clear is that we have experience, regardless of how we wish to classify it as divisible or indivisible. What is not clear at all is how physics can entail experience of any kind.

No, no, no, if the experience is "divisible", then it is not a coherent picture of anything, but merely a set of "sub-experiences", which are the individual computations of different kinds of information, occurring in different parts of the brain (you couldn't expect "texture" to be processed right along with "color" or "shape", could you?), and you have no final product to explain/reduce. Chalmers is indeed asking for an explanation of that final, indivisble, "product" which I'm saying doesn't exist.

Ignoring the hard problem is not a satisfactory approach, however much more it might make consciousness amenable to scientific study.

Ignoring a problem is not - you're right - a satisfactory approach at all. But Dennett is not ignoring the "hard problem". He's examining it directly, and showing it to be a straw-man, with no substance at all (aside from those things which Chalmers refers to as the "easy problems").
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #52
Originally posted by Zero
I don't see what the difficulty is...Mentat is right, you guys need to just get in line!

Nice to know I have a fan :smile:.

If I'm not mistaken, M, the point you are getting at is that it is possible that the process is the experience, and that there is nothing else that needs to be explained?

Very close. The process is a set of "sub-experiences", or minor computations of different aspects of a stimulus. However, our brain has this little habit (extremely useful one, since we wouldn't be sentient without it) of looking back on previous sets of information (processed at different times, in different parts of the brain) as though they once formed a complete, indivisible, "experience" - even though they never really did.

So, you're pretty much right-on, Zero; the process is what we call the "experience", but they are asking for an explanation of an extra part of this process that doesn't really exist (IMHO).
 
  • #53
Originally posted by Mentat
Or, more to the point of the "liquid liquid" example, "You can discover the arrangements of particles that are necessary and/or sufficient for the substance to be a liquid, but can you really explain how that arrangement brings about it's 'liquidity'?".

Yes, you can. If I give you a certain set of general conditions C that are necessary and sufficient for a set of H2O molecules to be in a macroscopic liquid state, all I have done is given you necessary and sufficient conditions. Using this information, you can always determine whether or not a set of H2O molecules will be in a macroscopic liquid state based on a microscopic description, but you will not necessarily understand the underlying concepts of how the microscopic arrangement logically entails (accounts for) the macroscopic fluidity.

To make the macroscopic intelligible in terms of the microscopic, you need bridge principles connecting the two. You need to assert that water is composed of H2O molecules and then explain eg how electrostatic attractions between H2O molecules under conditions C allow them to 'roll over' each other without totally escaping each other, which allows for macroscopic properties such as taking the shape of the container. This is an explanitory step above and beyond simply stating necessary and sufficient conditions.
 
  • #54
Originally posted by hypnagogue
Yes, you can. If I give you a certain set of general conditions C that are necessary and sufficient for a set of H2O molecules to be in a macroscopic liquid state, all I have done is given you necessary and sufficient conditions. Using this information, you can always determine whether or not a set of H2O molecules will be in a macroscopic liquid state based on a microscopic description, but you will not necessarily understand the underlying concepts of how the microscopic arrangement logically entails (accounts for) the macroscopic fluidity.

To make the macroscopic intelligible in terms of the microscopic, you need bridge principles connecting the two. You need to assert that water is composed of H2O molecules and then explain eg how electrostatic attractions between H2O molecules under conditions C allow them to 'roll over' each other without totally escaping each other, which allows for macroscopic properties such as taking the shape of the container. This is an explanitory step above and beyond simply stating necessary and sufficient conditions.

But all you stated was more necessary conditions. How does the ability to take on the shape of the container you are in bring about liquidity? Of course, it doesn't; that's just part of the definition of "liquid" itself. However, the only reason I can say that with impunity is because nobody has postulated that there is anything else to it. Nobody has attributed any reality to the illusion that (for example) a liquid is a coherent "blob" of material, instead of a collection of very tiny particles whose own position is probabilistic in nature.
 
  • #55
Originally posted by Mentat
Nice to know I have a fan :smile:.



Very close. The process is a set of "sub-experiences", or minor computations of different aspects of a stimulus. However, our brain has this little habit (extremely useful one, since we wouldn't be sentient without it) of looking back on previous sets of information (processed at different times, in different parts of the brain) as though they once formed a complete, indivisible, "experience" - even though they never really did.

So, you're pretty much right-on, Zero; the process is what we call the "experience", but they are asking for an explanation of an extra part of this process that doesn't really exist (IMHO).
I'd say the "extra part" is either a flaw in reasoning or recollection. The reasoning flaw is in assuming the existence of something that is so far unproven, and unneeded to explain things. The other flaw is one of perception, in assuming that small bits cannot make up a bigger "whole"(although calling consciousness a "whole" is iffy at best). I'd describe it as similar to the way our brains interpret optical illusions, where we seek to fill in "gaps", even when there is no logical reason to do so.
 
  • #56
Originally posted by Mentat
Define "observe". If "observe" entails any kind of perception, then I can indeed perceive the vital spirit, because I can perceive that I am alive.

What does it mean to perceive that you are alive?

Besides, I wanted to drop the whole "vital spirit" part of that, and get to the more important matter: The vitalists only needed the vital spirit to explain something that didn't really exist in the first place[/color].

Quite right. But subjective experience obviously exists. I am experiencing the color black right now as I look at my keyboard; my experience of blackness exists self-evidently, and no amount of semantic obfuscation can force me to deny this. My metaphysical ideas of what accounts for this blackness may or may not be false, but it is not false that my experience of blackness exists.

It is my opinion (currently) that Chalmers has erected the same brand of straw-man by first postulating that there is such a thing as a Final Draft of "the actual (complete; indivisible) experience", and then trying to figure out how neuronal functions "give rise" to this thing that doesn't really exist in the first place. That's what a "straw-man" is, isn't it?

Chalmers does not postulate that something like a complete, indivisible experience exists. He only makes plain the observation that subjective experience of some sort exists, and proceeds from there.

Subjective experience can be plainly observed? How plainly, exactly? I never notice the constant saccades of my eyes or seperateness of the functions of my visual cortex (each function taking place on it's own, and never "meeting up" with the others). No, subjective experience is, indeed, observed in the 1st person, but it is a compactification of information that did not get processed at the same time, and did not arrive at some final destination. This compactification may be computed (in the brain) as "reality", but it clearly cannot be.

Ah, so saccades of the eyes are subjective experience as well? Come on, that's nonsense. The fact to be explained is not so much that you do not notice the saccades of your eyes as it is that you notice your eyes from a 1st person perspective to begin with.

Information does not get processed at the same time-- so what? The fact remains that I have subjective experience, and the fact remains that a good theory of consciousness should make it intelligible how that is so. By this criterion, the neural reductionist theory of consciousness, taken on its own without any further fundamental assumptions, is not a good one.

From the definitions of H2O and spacetime, you are right, they are indeed the logical outcome of their underlying processes. But, have you ever read Consciousness Explained, by Dan Dennett? From the evolutionary innovations on the proto-human brain, it is the logical necessity that their be a brain that plays this constant trick on itself.

Perhaps consciousness was necessary to help our ancestors survive, but this approach only begs the question. Evolution can only endow us with consciousness if consciousness is an ontological possibility in the first place. How is subjective experience ontologically possible? The reductionist approach makes it evident how cognitive functions are possible in the same sense that it makes evident how the functions of a pocket calculator are possible, but it so far has said nothing meaningful about subjective experience.

No. What is missing is a complete experience. Sub-experience is all over the place, but that one thing appears to be missing.

Explain what sub-experience is and how it is entailed by physics. If you define sub-experience as so many cognitive functions, however, you would be better served to simply call it sub-functions or functions. Experience implies feeling, and it is not clear how objective functions can account for feeling even in principle.

Any experience at all? You have, I'm sure, understood the ways I've explained the computation, memorization, and recall of the neocortex.

These are not experiences. These are functions. You can explain the functional workings of human memory, but in no richer sense than you can explain computer memory. The difference is that a human experiences memory while a computer (as we plausibly assume) does not. And precisely what you have not explained is eg the experience of memory.

From this, you have a workable framework for the processes by which the brain processes the world around it.

Agreed. But you do not have a workable framework for the processes by which the brain experiences the world around it.

With all of this information being processed, but never meeting up at any place in the brain (or anywhere else, for you Dualists :wink:), the question isn't "How do they every sum up to experience?", it's "Do they ever sum up to experience", and, "If not, what is the evolutionary reason for having a brain that convinces itself that they do?".

Simply saying "how does the brain convince itself that it is conscious?" begs the question. In order for the brain to convince itself of anything there must be a 1st person perspective for which the convincing is done. (This does not assume an indivisible self, only a certain perspective.) You have assumed the existence of the 1st person perspective when in reality the task is to show how it exists in the first place. You might as well try convincing a rock that it is conscious.

No, no, no, if the experience is "divisible", then it is not a coherent picture of anything, but merely a set of "sub-experiences", which are the individual computations of different kinds of information

Still haven't explained how computations can account for consciousness. For that you need an extra assertion such as "computation so and so is conscious in such and such a way as a simple fact of nature." That is an explanation, but not a reductive explanation.

Ignoring a problem is not - you're right - a satisfactory approach at all. But Dennett is not ignoring the "hard problem". He's examining it directly, and showing it to be a straw-man, with no substance at all (aside from those things which Chalmers refers to as the "easy problems").

Actually, Chalmers shows how Dennett's reasoning is flawed insofar as Dennett has a wonderful tendency to argue in circles.
 
  • #57
Originally posted by Mentat
But all you stated was more necessary conditions.

No, I explained how those conditions which we established at the start make it intelligible that the microscopic properties completely account for the macroscopic ones.

How does the ability to take on the shape of the container you are in bring about liquidity? Of course, it doesn't; that's just part of the definition of "liquid" itself.

Indeed.

However, the only reason I can say that with impunity is because nobody has postulated that there is anything else to it.

Because there is nothing else to it. Everything that calls out for an explanation has been explained.

Subjective experience is one such phenomenon that calls out for explanation. It is not postulated, but rather it self-evidently exists. And to this point it has not yet been explained.
 
  • #58
I think the point you are missing, hypnagogue, is that consciousness is computation, and that makes all of your speculation meaningless. Saying that the workings of the brain define subjective experience accounts for everything in a neat little bundle.
 
  • #59
  • #61
I love your style Zero. I knew I shouldn't have bothered with your attitude, but I won't make that mistake again. *plonk*
 
  • #62
Originally posted by hypnagogue
I love your style Zero. I knew I shouldn't have bothered with your attitude, but I won't make that mistake again. *plonk*
Nice...you don't have a leg to stand on, and you blame ME?!?
 
  • #63
Regarding the indivisible self, I can tell you for a fact that the self IS divisible. We on europa have a science that is far ahead of earth's. Medical experiments were done many years ago to not only separate the 2 halves of a brain, but transplant them into separate people. Yes, we did this to abducted humans but Earth science will soon be able to perform the same experiment and I am sure someone will somwhere as soon as nerve regeneration technology and a few small problems like rejection are solved. When half a brain is removed from someone and transplanted to another body where the original brain has been removed, two distinct and unique individuals are created. Experiments have also shown that there is no psychic link between them so the only conclusion that can be made is that the self is divisible. Earth science should be advanced enough to perform this experiment within the next 50 years or so.
 
  • #64
Originally posted by Jeebus
My question is … doesn't behavior, in a broad sense, of the neurophysical system of materialistic functions approach -- directly compatible or parallel to cognitive experience on the physical level without the reductive explanation?[/b]
Originally posted by hypnagogue
Can you rephrase this? I'm not sure from your wording exactly what you are getting at.

All right let me try this again. Thanks for the info by the way.

Do you think that behaviour, itself, is congruent to materialistic functions of physical compatability? And do you think that materialistic functions, in turn are directly compatible with the opinion of experience? I think the two: behavior and experience are directly parallel to one another. Meaning, if you are experiencing one, then the other must follow.
 
  • #65
Originally posted by Zero
I'd say the "extra part" is either a flaw in reasoning or recollection. The reasoning flaw is in assuming the existence of something that is so far unproven, and unneeded to explain things. The other flaw is one of perception, in assuming that small bits cannot make up a bigger "whole"(although calling consciousness a "whole" is iffy at best). I'd describe it as similar to the way our brains interpret optical illusions, where we seek to fill in "gaps", even when there is no logical reason to do so.

I think Daniel Dennett used a similar illustration, and it's a good one (IMO). Our brain is trying to make sense of all this data, while compactifying (I know there's a better word than that, used with regard to computers...compressing?) it all (and "filling in the blanks", as you put it) in order to make recall easier.
 
  • #66
Originally posted by Mentat
I think Daniel Dennett used a similar illustration, and it's a good one (IMO). Our brain is trying to make sense of all this data, while compactifying (I know there's a better word than that, used with regard to computers...compressing?) it all (and "filling in the blanks", as you put it) in order to make recall easier.
I think the best word would probably be "integrating"...we integrate partial data into "whole bits" for easier processing, including the "internal data" we call consciousness. It is conceptual shorthand, and useful most of the time.

I'm looking over at my BEAUTIFUL guitar, not 10 feet from me. Intellectually, I know it is made out of wood, metal, paint, etc. However, I never ever think of it as the sum of its components, I always think of it as being of a whole. "Consciousness" is really the same thing, except it is a collection of processes as well as physical parts.
 
  • #67
Originally posted by hypnagogue
What does it mean to perceive that you are alive?

I don't know really; I just know, at any given time, that I am alive.

Quite right. But subjective experience obviously exists. I am experiencing the color black right now as I look at my keyboard; my experience of blackness exists self-evidently, and no amount of semantic obfuscation can force me to deny this. My metaphysical ideas of what accounts for this blackness may or may not be false, but it is not false that my experience of blackness exists.

Your experience of the color black does exist, but as a convenient computational tool of the brain, to contrast one wavelength of light from another. My point is that the concept of a complete picture of a black keyboard (to stick to your example) must clearly be an illusion of compactification (and "filling in the blanks") as the part of the brain that processes "black" is not the same that processes the shape and texture of the keys, and that is not the same as the part that recalls previous such images, and these separate parts never meet up...meaning that there are separate computations occurring, and yet you are fooled into believing that there is one coherent image in your "mind's eye".

Chalmers does not postulate that something like a complete, indivisible experience exists. He only makes plain the observation that subjective experience of some sort exists, and proceeds from there.

Then define "subjective experience", in Chalmer's terms.

Ah, so saccades of the eyes are subjective experience as well? Come on, that's nonsense. The fact to be explained is not so much that you do not notice the saccades of your eyes as it is that you notice your eyes from a 1st person perspective to begin with.

Information does not get processed at the same time-- so what? The fact remains that I have subjective experience...

Is that fact - which you are defending - that you have subjective experience, or that you had a subjective experience. Because of processing outside information in terms of previously-processed information (which is part of Chalmers' "easy problem") is what you call "subjective experience", then we have nothing to debate.

...and the fact remains that a good theory of consciousness should make it intelligible how that is so. By this criterion, the neural reductionist theory of consciousness, taken on its own without any further fundamental assumptions, is not a good one.

It should make it intelligible how what is so? How a computer (organic or otherwise) relates new stimulus to previous stimuli?

Perhaps consciousness was necessary to help our ancestors survive, but this approach only begs the question. Evolution can only endow us with consciousness if consciousness is an ontological possibility in the first place. How is subjective experience ontologically possible? The reductionist approach makes it evident how cognitive functions are possible in the same sense that it makes evident how the functions of a pocket calculator are possible, but it so far has said nothing meaningful about subjective experience.

I ask again, what is subjective experience, in Chalmers' terms or in your own.

Explain what sub-experience is and how it is entailed by physics. If you define sub-experience as so many cognitive functions, however, you would be better served to simply call it sub-functions or functions. Experience implies feeling, and it is not clear how objective functions can account for feeling even in principle.

Unless feelings are physical functions, instead of being "accounted for" by them. Again, you're going on the assumption that (for example) an excitation of cells in my finger - due to being poked by a needle - "gives rise" to pain; whereas scientists seem pretty well content to say that the excitation of cells is pain, and thus one needn't account for pain "in terms of excited cells"...this would be a non-sequiter.

These are not experiences. These are functions. You can explain the functional workings of human memory, but in no richer sense than you can explain computer memory.

Why is that distinction so imporant?

The difference is that a human experiences memory while a computer (as we plausibly assume) does not. And precisely what you have not explained is eg the experience of memory.

The "experience" of memory, or the experience of a memory?

Agreed. But you do not have a workable framework for the processes by which the brain experiences the world around it.

What if "processing" = "experiencing"? What if all things that process must also "experience", since the two terms are synonymous? That is what Dennett would call the equivalence of content and consciousness (I think).

Simply saying "how does the brain convince itself that it is conscious?" begs the question. In order for the brain to convince itself of anything there must be a 1st person perspective for which the convincing is done. (This does not assume an indivisible self, only a certain perspective.) You have assumed the existence of the 1st person perspective when in reality the task is to show how it exists in the first place. You might as well try convincing a rock that it is conscious.

The brain has a 1st person view because of the evolved ability for self-recognition. An ape can show this by recognizing itself in the mirror. There is nothing special about this. It's a matter of degree that separates a dog's licking itself from a human's pondering about himself.

Still haven't explained how computations can account for consciousness. For that you need an extra assertion such as "computation so and so is conscious in such and such a way as a simple fact of nature." That is an explanation, but not a reductive explanation.

Unless I say "computation = consciousness, since consciousness is just another term for the complex computation of external stimuli that our mind does all the time".
 
  • #68
Originally posted by Zero
I think the best word would probably be "integrating"...we integrate partial data into "whole bits" for easier processing, including the "internal data" we call consciousness. It is conceptual shorthand, and useful most of the time.

I'm looking over at my BEAUTIFUL guitar, not 10 feet from me. Intellectually, I know it is made out of wood, metal, paint, etc. However, I never ever think of it as the sum of its components, I always think of it as being of a whole. "Consciousness" is really the same thing, except it is a collection of processes as well as physical parts.

Also a good analogy. Indeed, Broad would probably say that "guitar" is an "emergent" phenomenon from those materials that you mention - whereas a Dennett-like philosopher of guitars would simply say that "guitar" = "such-and-such material" and so it would be foolish to try and figure out how a guitar can "arise" from those materials, since it is those materials.

Now, I think hypnagogue would point out that a guitar is a bad analogy to subjective experience, since, when you take it from a microscopic perspective and build toward more and more complexity, the logical outcome is a guitar; whereas, when you build up from the cellular structure to the structure and function of neurons, the logical outcome is a brain...not subjective experience.

Then, I would say something like: "Subjective experience" is a vague term that is clouding the issue. You can build up from cellular functions into a machine that has an extension (the neocortex) which has no other purpose but to process/experience (synonymous terms, AFAICT) the world around it, and thus the logical outcome is a "subjective experiencer".
 
  • #69
Originally posted by Mentat
Also a good analogy. Indeed, Broad would probably say that "guitar" is an "emergent" phenomenon from those materials that you mention - whereas a Dennett-like philosopher of guitars would simply say that "guitar" = "such-and-such material" and so it would be foolish to try and figure out how a guitar can "arise" from those materials, since it is those materials.

Now, I think hypnagogue would point out that a guitar is a bad analogy to subjective experience, since, when you take it from a microscopic perspective and build toward more and more complexity, the logical outcome is a guitar; whereas, when you build up from the cellular structure to the structure and function of neurons, the logical outcome is a brain...not subjective experience.

Then, I would say something like: "Subjective experience" is a vague term that is clouding the issue. You can build up from cellular functions into a machine that has an extension (the neocortex) which has no other purpose but to process/experience (synonymous terms, AFAICT) the world around it, and thus the logical outcome is a "subjective experiencer".
Maybe, to extend the analogy, you describe the brain as a guitar, and "consciousness" as the music which emerges from it? We know there is nothing metaphysical about a G chord, but it an apt description, since there is a similar(if false) "non-physical" dimension to music and consciousness
 
  • #70
Originally posted by Zero
Maybe, to extend the analogy, you describe the brain as a guitar, and "consciousness" as the music which emerges from it? We know there is nothing metaphysical about a G chord, but it an apt description, since there is a similar(if false) "non-physical" dimension to music and consciousness

This is much like the old analogy of the steam engine vs. the steam that arises therefrom. Of course, the music is qualitatively different from the guitar itself, but can be reductively explained in terms of the vibration of the strings on the guitar...the problem would be with people who assume that the music itself has some separate existence, and must thus be explained completely separate from the functions which "give rise" to it.
 
  • #71
Originally posted by Mentat
This is much like the old analogy of the steam engine vs. the steam that arises therefrom. Of course, the music is qualitatively different from the guitar itself, but can be reductively explained in terms of the vibration of the strings on the guitar...the problem would be with people who assume that the music itself has some separate existence, and must thus be explained completely separate from the functions which "give rise" to it.
There's one in every crowd, isn't there? Of course, we both know that "music" is a purely physical phenomenon...
 
  • #72
Originally posted by Zero
There's one in every crowd, isn't there? Of course, we both know that "music" is a purely physical phenomenon...

As is every other one, IMO...which is why I have a problem with people saying that a physical explanation isn't good enough, but not providing a clear-cut alternative...of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I could just as easily be wrong as anyone else (in fact, being 15 years old, and having spent my whole life reading books instead "experiencing" life, there are some who'd say I have a much lesser chance of being right about this (think about it, how could I understand subjective experience as well as someone who's been "experiencing" so much more for so much longer?)), but I like my idea better, so I'm promoting it and seeing how well it holds up.
 
  • #73
Originally posted by Mentat
As is every other one, IMO...which is why I have a problem with people saying that a physical explanation isn't good enough, but not providing a clear-cut alternative...of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I could just as easily be wrong as anyone else (in fact, being 15 years old, and having spent my whole life reading books instead "experiencing" life, there are some who'd say I have a much lesser chance of being right about this (think about it, how could I understand subjective experience as well as someone who's been "experiencing" so much more for so much longer?)), but I like my idea better, so I'm promoting it and seeing how well it holds up.
Uh huh...the odd thing is that I am twice as old as you are, have had a lot of the experiences that would lead people to believe in pseudorational ideas, and yet I remain firmly grounded in materialism. I've done the OBE, estatic meditative states, the whole gamut of "mystical" experiences.
 
  • #74
Originally posted by Mentat
Your experience of the color black does exist, but as a convenient computational tool of the brain, to contrast one wavelength of light from another.

You have not illustrated any connection between computation and experience here. How can experience be derived from the axioms of materialism?

My point is that the concept of a complete picture of a black keyboard (to stick to your example) must clearly be an illusion of compactification (and "filling in the blanks") as the part of the brain that processes "black" is not the same that processes the shape and texture of the keys, and that is not the same as the part that recalls previous such images, and these separate parts never meet up...meaning that there are separate computations occurring, and yet you are fooled into believing that there is one coherent image in your "mind's eye".

This is really irrelevant to the central problem. Suppose I cut a red ping pong ball in half and place both sides over my eyes. What I see is a uniform red field with no other discernable visual properties. Now, what you need to explain is how it is that I experience this redness. If you tell a story about computation in my brain, it remains as mysterious to me as ever why these computations entail my subjective experience of redness.

This is the point where you say "subjective experience IS the computation." But from the purely physical definition of 'computation,' this does not follow. Such a relation cannot be logically derived from talk of physical functions; you need a fundamental assumption to the effect that it is just a brute fact of nature that computation has an experiential aspect to it. That's fine, and indeed it appears to be the route we must take; but such a route necessarily departs from materialism's viewpoint of focusing on only structures and functions.

Then define "subjective experience", in Chalmer's terms.

Feeling, in the general sense that any subjective experience is 'felt.' Or, 'what it is like to be,' although I know you don't like that one.

If I did not have subjective experience, I would not see 'redness' in the ganzfeld scenario above, even though my brain might still perform rich and meaningful computations on my visual input (as is illustrated in the case of blindsight).

At bottom, this is such a difficult issue because one cannot really define subjective experience without an appeal to it. It cannot be defined in terms of other things because it is fundamentally intrinsic and not extrinsic. ('Redness' for example is defined with respect to itself, whereas something like 'mass' is defined with respect to other distinct entities such as force and acceleration.) For all I know, you do not really have subjective experience and this is why you have no problem reducing it entirely to extrinsic properties. I doubt this, though.

Is that fact - which you are defending - that you have subjective experience, or that you had a subjective experience. Because of processing outside information in terms of previously-processed information (which is part of Chalmers' "easy problem") is what you call "subjective experience", then we have nothing to debate.

When I say I have subjective experience, what I mean is that while I am awake I continuously experience qualities such as 'redness' and 'softness.'

It should make it intelligible how what is so? How a computer (organic or otherwise) relates new stimulus to previous stimuli?

Makes it intelligible how it is that, eg, I experience 'redness' in the ganzfeld scenario rather than having no visual experience at all despite still being able to interact coherently with my environment on the basis of visual information, like a person with blindsight.

Unless feelings are physical functions, instead of being "accounted for" by them. Again, you're going on the assumption that (for example) an excitation of cells in my finger - due to being poked by a needle - "gives rise" to pain; whereas scientists seem pretty well content to say that the excitation of cells is pain, and thus one needn't account for pain "in terms of excited cells"...this would be a non-sequiter.

No, put away the 'gives rise' complaint, because I have already explained how it does not characterize my position. "Accounting for" as I am using it is not synonymous with "giving rise to." I accept that water IS a clump of H2O molecules, and yet I still can say that it is intelligible how the properties of H2O molecules can account for the properties of water (whereas it would not be coherent in this situation to say 'give rise to').

Why is that distinction so imporant?

The distinction between experience and function is not just important, it is critical. A function is defined in purely extrinsic terms, whereas subjective experience is defined in purely intrinsic terms. There are fundamental differences between the natures of these two things that cannot be ignored. Our task is to traverse those differences, not ignore them from the start.

The brain has a 1st person view because of the evolved ability for self-recognition. An ape can show this by recognizing itself in the mirror. There is nothing special about this. It's a matter of degree that separates a dog's licking itself from a human's pondering about himself.

By 1st person perspective I mean a perspective anchored in / defined by subjective experience. It does not automatically follow that a system computing information about itself has a 1st person perspective in this sense.
 
  • #75
Originally posted by Mentat
Also a good analogy. Indeed, Broad would probably say that "guitar" is an "emergent" phenomenon from those materials that you mention - whereas a Dennett-like philosopher of guitars would simply say that "guitar" = "such-and-such material" and so it would be foolish to try and figure out how a guitar can "arise" from those materials, since it is those materials.

Come on Mentat. Did you read the paper carefully? Or are you just inserting your own notions of what you think Broad must be saying based on the fact that he even mentions 'emergence' in the first place? By the definitions stated at the outset, a guitar is obviously what Broad would call 'mechanistically explainable' thing. Go check up on it.

I would also like to say that music from a guitar is a terrible analogy for what I am saying. Music in the objective sense is just pressure waves moving through air, and it is emminently clear that there is no problem in explaining pressure waves moving through the air using an entirely physical, reductionist explanation. Music in the subjective sense-- the music that we consciously hear-- is an entirely different story. But clearly the subjective experience of music is a problem of consciousness, not a problem of guitars.

Then, I would say something like: "Subjective experience" is a vague term that is clouding the issue. You can build up from cellular functions into a machine that has an extension (the neocortex) which has no other purpose but to process/experience (synonymous terms, AFAICT) the world around it, and thus the logical outcome is a "subjective experiencer".

If processing and experiencing mean the same thing to you, why is it that numerous brain processes do not reveal themselves in subjective awareness? You should say something like "certain kinds of processes are certain kinds of experiences."

Again-- I am not begrudging you this metaphysical assertion, but I am asking you to realize the consequences. Materialism describes a closed system of extrinsically related entities. The properties of subjective experience are intrinsic. Materialism cannot say anything about intrinsic properties by definition, and so what you wind up with is an ontological framework that is no longer materialism. Nor does this new framework contradict materialism-- it just adds to it.
 
  • #76
Originally posted by hypnagogue
You have not illustrated any connection between computation and experience here. How can experience be derived from the axioms of materialism?

The real question may be (in David Hume's terms), "What else is there to establish? If one wavelength has one effect on the visual cortex, then what's the point of establishing 'why' it has that effect? It just does."

This is really irrelevant to the central problem. Suppose I cut a red ping pong ball in half and place both sides over my eyes. What I see is a uniform red field with no other discernable visual properties. Now, what you need to explain is how it is that I experience this redness. If you tell a story about computation in my brain, it remains as mysterious to me as ever why these computations entail my subjective experience of redness.

This is the point where you say "subjective experience IS the computation." But from the purely physical definition of 'computation,' this does not follow. Such a relation cannot be logically derived from talk of physical functions; you need a fundamental assumption to the effect that it is just a brute fact of nature that computation has an experiential aspect to it. That's fine, and indeed it appears to be the route we must take; but such a route necessarily departs from materialism's viewpoint of focusing on only structures and functions.

Not necessarily. A materialistic paradigm could easily hold to the idea that all of computation is a form (however primitive) of "experience"; and that "experience" is nothing more than an irritating term that gets thrown around when one isn't satisfied with the idea that our brains our computational machines.

Feeling, in the general sense that any subjective experience is 'felt.' Or, 'what it is like to be,' although I know you don't like that one.

All subjective experience is "felt"...what is the meaning of "felt"?

If I did not have subjective experience, I would not see 'redness' in the ganzfeld scenario above, even though my brain might still perform rich and meaningful computations on my visual input (as is illustrated in the case of blindsight).

Sure enough, but that's the simple difference between an "impression" and an "idea" (in Hume's terms), and is dealt with in almost every theory that I've mentioned to you - in the end, the point is really just how much attention is payed to the stimulus by which parts of the brain.

At bottom, this is such a difficult issue because one cannot really define subjective experience without an appeal to it. It cannot be defined in terms of other things because it is fundamentally intrinsic and not extrinsic. ('Redness' for example is defined with respect to itself, whereas something like 'mass' is defined with respect to other distinct entities such as force and acceleration.)

And what is "force", and what is "acceleration"? If we really want to reduce to the most fundamental realm, we will fail, no matter what we are working at. However, I see no point in reducing "redness" (for example), since "red" is the way that that wavelength of light "impressed" itself (again, in Hume's terms...I have a new thread on this that you might enjoy Check it out.) on you in the first instance, and so it is how you remember it. I really wonder what a Chalmerean expects will happen to an advanced computational machine who's primary goal is interpreting/processing visual data (I'm speaking of the visual cortex, of course).

For all I know, you do not really have subjective experience and this is why you have no problem reducing it entirely to extrinsic properties. I doubt this, though.



When I say I have subjective experience, what I mean is that while I am awake I continuously experience qualities such as 'redness' and 'softness.'

When you say you have experience you mean that you experience? And you said Dennett was circular? :wink: (just joking, though I would like a bit of clarification).

Makes it intelligible how it is that, eg, I experience 'redness' in the ganzfeld scenario rather than having no visual experience at all despite still being able to interact coherently with my environment on the basis of visual information, like a person with blindsight.

"Interact coherently on the basis of visual information"...what exactly is "visual information" if not the "redness" you percieve?

No, put away the 'gives rise' complaint, because I have already explained how it does not characterize my position. "Accounting for" as I am using it is not synonymous with "giving rise to." I accept that water IS a clump of H2O molecules, and yet I still can say that it is intelligible how the properties of H2O molecules can account for the properties of water (whereas it would not be coherent in this situation to say 'give rise to').

I want to put away this complaint, but your reasoning here seems to depend on redundancy...if you say that P1 = water is a clump of H2O molecules, then P2 = properties of H2O molecules can account for the properties of water = properties of A equal properties of A = redundancy.

The distinction between experience and function is not just important, it is critical. A function is defined in purely extrinsic terms, whereas subjective experience is defined in purely intrinsic terms.

Maybe that's the problem. As I asked before, what does subjective experience look like from the 3rd person perspective? It must look like something from both perspectives, otherwise I (as the completely objective philosopher) have no reason to believe it exists at all (at least not as you define it).

By 1st person perspective I mean a perspective anchored in / defined by subjective experience. It does not automatically follow that a system computing information about itself has a 1st person perspective in this sense.

You use the term "subjective experience" too much without having properly defined it, IMO. Anyway, if a system is conscious, then it will be conscious in the 1st person - practically axiomatic - right?
 
  • #77
I feel like the non-materialist view of subjectivity is completely circular, in that non-materialists start with the premise that subjective experience cannot be due to purely physical phenomenon. However it is described, it always comes down to unfounded assertions in the premise, so the conclusion is logically unfounded.
Materialism describes a closed system of extrinsically related entities. The properties of subjective experience are intrinsic. Materialism cannot say anything about intrinsic properties by definition, and so what you wind up with is an ontological framework that is no longer materialism.
This, for instance, begins by assuming that subjective experience is outside the realm of materialism...based on what, exactly?
 
  • #78
Originally posted by hypnagogue
Come on Mentat. Did you read the paper carefully? Or are you just inserting your own notions of what you think Broad must be saying based on the fact that he even mentions 'emergence' in the first place? By the definitions stated at the outset, a guitar is obviously what Broad would call 'mechanistically explainable' thing. Go check up on it.

As I recall, Broad talked about composites (things that couldn't be explained without taking into account all of the active factors at once...as opposed to those things which could be explained by explaining one aspect at a time), and these seemed synonymous to "emergent properties" when I read it.

I would also like to say that music from a guitar is a terrible analogy for what I am saying. Music in the objective sense is just pressure waves moving through air, and it is emminently clear that there is no problem in explaining pressure waves moving through the air using an entirely physical, reductionist explanation. Music in the subjective sense-- the music that we consciously hear-- is an entirely different story. But clearly the subjective experience of music is a problem of consciousness, not a problem of guitars.

The point of the analogy was not to explain the music, or to explain the guitar, but to explain the music as a function of something done to the guitar (thus connecting a material function with an energetic one, but having no difficulty with it since sound is also physical, and is clearly produced by vibration which is what the guitar is doing...of course, if "consciousness" were clearly produced by discreet units of computation, firing synchronously, then we'd have no problem here either...as it is, the guitar may have been a bad analogy, but not completely "off-the-wall" either, since it would be nice (and may be possible) for consciousness to be thus explanable).

If processing and experiencing mean the same thing to you, why is it that numerous brain processes do not reveal themselves in subjective awareness? You should say something like "certain kinds of processes are certain kinds of experiences."

Ok, visual kinds of processing are visual experience (for one example). Does that help the "redness" question at all?

Again-- I am not begrudging you this metaphysical assertion, but I am asking you to realize the consequences. Materialism describes a closed system of extrinsically related entities. The properties of subjective experience are intrinsic. Materialism cannot say anything about intrinsic properties by definition, and so what you wind up with is an ontological framework that is no longer materialism. Nor does this new framework contradict materialism-- it just adds to it.

Materialism, at its core, simply states that all things are physical, and there is nothing else but the physical. In truth, consciousness must be a physical process (regardless of whether it has anything to do with the brain, or the neocortex, or anything else that Materialists like to think it's connected to), otherwise it would not be able to interact with physical beings, as the connection between them could neither be physical nor non-physical (this, btw, is not dealt with in the "Matrix"-type analogy, as this still requires a conscious brain, somewhere down the line of infinite regress...it's logically useless at explaining consciousness as it reduces ad infinitum).
 
  • #79
Actually, I have decided that the guitar analogy is better than I thought it was, since the way chords are put together is similar to the materialistic viewpoint of thought. A chord is a process as much as it is something with physical properties expressed as sound waves. A chord is made up of individual notes all played together simultaneously. If you break it down into individual notes, it is no longer a chord. In the same way, what we would consider to be a thought is a process of neurological functioning of the brain, but we cannot point to a single neuron's activity and say "aha! that's where the thought is!" Thinking is created by the synchronous activities of individual parts, acting in concert(slight pun intended), in the same way that a chord is the combination of string vibrations.
 
  • #80
Originally posted by Zero
Actually, I have decided that the guitar analogy is better than I thought it was, since the way chords are put together is similar to the materialistic viewpoint of thought. A chord is a process as much as it is something with physical properties expressed as sound waves. A chord is made up of individual notes all played together simultaneously. If you break it down into individual notes, it is no longer a chord. In the same way, what we would consider to be a thought is a process of neurological functioning of the brain, but we cannot point to a single neuron's activity and say "aha! that's where the thought is!" Thinking is created by the synchronous activities of individual parts, acting in concert(slight pun intended), in the same way that a chord is the combination of string vibrations.

But it is still logically coherent how the notes combine to make a chord, but not logically coherent how neural/computational processes combine to form an experience. Sorry, no analogy.
 
  • #81
Originally posted by hypnagogue
But it is still logically coherent how the notes combine to make a chord, but not logically coherent how neural/computational processes combine to form an experience. Sorry, no analogy.
Sure it is logically coherent...where's the flaw in it?
 
  • #82
Hypnagogue,

I see this thread treading dangerously into the useless areas of debate about what "materialism" means and what it means to be "physical". This is all a huge waste of time as many past threads have shown. Isn't the real question asking about the ability to reductively explain consciousness? And if this isn't possible then we need to consider adding consciouness as a fundamental property of reality? If this is the main point of discussion then what does it matter whether the resulting fundamental property is physical or not?

Even if your opponents here eventually agreed that consciousness is a fundamental element of nature(which is seems they are by simply asserting it is the process), they would still say it is physical. So the point about being physical or not doesn't seem relevant and just bogs down the real issue. I think your opponents here are getting sidetracked because of your use of the word "materialism". I had interpreted your use of that word merely as a way to describe the current view. Not that you were necessarily claiming a distinction between something physical or nonphysical.

Is my interpretation correct? If not then I fear we will have to revisit the whole physical/non-physical debate again. And if you think this discussion is difficult, wait until you have to explain what a non-physical thing is to someone who thinks physical means "everything that truly exists".
 
Last edited:
  • #83
Fliption, I would have to agree with your concerns. As far as the 'physical' thing goes, I have tried to make it explicit that physical processes cannot explain consciousness insofar as they are defined extrinsically whereas consciousness is defined intrinsically. I have also made arguments for why we cannot simply recast consciousness in an extrinsic perspective simply for the purposes of making it superficially transparent to reasoning based on extrinsic phenomena. For these reasons, I would contend that any phenomenon that could reasonably be called physical (extrinsic) could not be a suitable basis for a complete explanation of consciousness, even in principle.

In any case, I'm a bit worn out from rehashing the same arguments over and over-- it seems we're at a point where each side has said what they wanted to say, and no real progress is made in discussion because we hold different fundamental viewpoints on what subjective experience is. I hold that what is plainly apparent about subjective experience must be explained, whereas the reductionist tries to bypass this immense difficulty by paradoxically holding that what is apparent does not exist or is an illusion-- as if calling it an illusion frees us from any obligation to then coherently and completely explain that illusion. At this point it seems clear to me that we're just talking past each other, so the whole discussion might as well be shelved for now.
 
  • #84
Hypnagogue, I don't want to get side-tracked into analogies, or into that physical/non-physical debate, any more than you do. Perhaps you could just respond to my previous post (as there are a lot more questions than assertions in that one, and these questions need answering if I'm ever going to agree with you), please, and I'll try my best to see your side of it...

P.S., not the post above Zero's, the one that's two posts before it.
 
  • #85
Originally posted by hypnagogue
As far as the 'physical' thing goes, I have tried to make it explicit that physical processes cannot explain consciousness insofar as they are defined extrinsically whereas consciousness is defined intrinsically.

Seems I could have used you in those physical/non-physical defining sessions. :smile:

At this point it seems clear to me that we're just talking past each other, so the whole discussion might as well be shelved for now. [/B]

Well I can certainly understand where you are. The really depressing thing about it is that in a few weeks you'll see threads that will present the opposing view with almost complete certainty as if none of these issues were ever discussed and unresolved. I've seen it happen alot. But the good news is that I think you've raised the bar in the philosophy forum especially in this area. This topic wasn't getting anywhere near this kind of quality discussion before. Your patience is incredible and I've learned quite a bit from you, these dicussions and the various sources provided. That's what I try to keep in mind many times when I am engaged in what I know to be a useless attempt to get someone to see a certain view. That many people that don't feel so competent to particpate might be reading and learning. And perhaps even offer a unique perspective 20 pages later!
 
Last edited:
  • #86
At this point, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank hypnagogue, Canute, and Fliption for your patience with me. I can tell I'm probably rather irritating to you guys, but you've put up with me, and I am very grateful for that.

Of course, I hope you will listen seriously to my newer posts, as you have to the previous ones, but I can't blame you if you don't - you must be sick of this topic by now.
 
  • #87
OK Mentat, since you requested it here's my response to your post.

Originally posted by Mentat
The real question may be (in David Hume's terms), "What else is there to establish? If one wavelength has one effect on the visual cortex, then what's the point of establishing 'why' it has that effect? It just does."

I think the spirit of science is not just to catalogue a lists of causes and effects, but to capture a deep understanding of why things are the way they are. We cannot ask this question ad infinitum, since there are certain epistemic limits on how far we can go, but still we should not stifle our attempts to understand-- to answer the 'why' question. For instance, had certain questions not been posed in the 19th/20th century, we might be content to say that the regularities observed in the periodic table are just a brute fact of nature, and that there would be no point to trying to establish any deeper understanding of them-- when in fact, we can now explain these regularities using quantum mechanics, and thereby attain a deeper understanding.

This is a basic issue of how we go about understanding reality. I'm surprised you would so easily shrug off the question. By your reasoning, it would seem we could answer a child's question of "Why is the sky blue?" by saying "Well, whenever the sun is out, the sky is blue-- what's the point of establishing 'why' it has that effect? It just does."

Not necessarily. A materialistic paradigm could easily hold to the idea that all of computation is a form (however primitive) of "experience"; and that "experience" is nothing more than an irritating term that gets thrown around when one isn't satisfied with the idea that our brains our computational machines.

I don't think you are using the term 'experience' as it is normally used in philosophy of mind.

All subjective experience is "felt"...what is the meaning of "felt"?

At bottom, it can only be properly defined with an appeal to your own subjective experience, your own feeling. When you are awake and going about your day, those things of which you are directly aware are those things that you 'feel.' You are in a state of ongoing subjective experience. When you are in a dreamless sleep, you are not feeling anything-- you have no subjective experience. The difference should be quite obvious.

But I can't define subjective experience in such a way as to make it clear what it is even to someone who does not have subjective experience himself (aka a philosophical zombie), somewhat like I can't explain what 'red' is to a colorblind person. The definition of subjective experience is essentially just an appeal to what you know and see from your own 1st person perspective. This should not be regarded as dubious footing for my stance-- certainly it makes subjective experience harder to talk and reason about, but it should not give us humans who subjectively experience all the time reason to doubt its existence.

Sure enough, but that's the simple difference between an "impression" and an "idea" (in Hume's terms), and is dealt with in almost every theory that I've mentioned to you - in the end, the point is really just how much attention is payed to the stimulus by which parts of the brain.

But there is no logical connection between greater expenditure of computational resources and subjective awareness, as there is between, say, freedom of motion of microscopic molecules and freedom of motion of a macroscopic liquid. In order to establish such logical connections you need extra assumptions, and (as I have argued) for these assumptions to work, they must be such that they cannot be neatly fit into a materialist paradigm.

And what is "force", and what is "acceleration"? If we really want to reduce to the most fundamental realm, we will fail, no matter what we are working at.

Agreed.

However, I see no point in reducing "redness" (for example), since "red" is the way that that wavelength of light "impressed" itself (again, in Hume's terms...I have a new thread on this that you might enjoy Check it out.) on you in the first instance, and so it is how you remember it.

Then why is it that people with certain brain lesions can be sensitive to wavelength information from the environment without having visual awareness of color? Why is it that you yourself could be shown to be sensitive to such information without being aware of it, eg through a psychology experiment involving unconscious primes?

I really wonder what a Chalmerean expects will happen to an advanced computational machine who's primary goal is interpreting/processing visual data (I'm speaking of the visual cortex, of course).

Let's call your machine V. If V exists in a world that works precisely as materialism dictates it should, then V should compute complex input/output functions, but there should not be any experience. Why should there be? What logical reasoning starting from the axioms of materialism should lead one to suspect a priori the existence of subjective experience?

We don't have to imagine hypothetical worlds to get this result either. People with blindsight have advanced computational machines whose primary goal is interpreting/processing visual data, and on the basis of those computations on visual inputs they can even interact in coherent and complex ways with their environment, yet they do not have corresponding visual awareness in some (or in some cases, all) of their visual field.

When you say you have experience you mean that you experience? And you said Dennett was circular? :wink: (just joking, though I would like a bit of clarification).

Well, all definitions must be circular at bottom by necessity (as you seem to agree). But logical arguments that draw inferences from such definitions/axioms needn't, indeed shouldn't, be circular.

"Interact coherently on the basis of visual information"...what exactly is "visual information" if not the "redness" you percieve?

It is information encoded in patterns of neural activity. Again, blindsighted people display the ability to process visual information without any attendent subjective experience of it.

Maybe that's the problem. As I asked before, what does subjective experience look like from the 3rd person perspective? It must look like something from both perspectives, otherwise I (as the completely objective philosopher) have no reason to believe it exists at all (at least not as you define it).

Yes, I would agree that the completely objective philosopher should have no reason to believe in subjective experience at all. But in fact, such a philosopher is only denying the manifest, since he (you) knows in a very direct sense that subjective experience exists from his own 1st person experience of it. This is a philosophical conundrum to be sure, but still we must live with it-- there is no progress in denying what you know to exist. If anything I think it shows the completely objective stance to be an incomplete one. The objective model of reality does not cover all that there is to cover.

You use the term "subjective experience" too much without having properly defined it, IMO. Anyway, if a system is conscious, then it will be conscious in the 1st person - practically axiomatic - right?

Yes. The way I have been using these terms, they are basically equivalent.
 
  • #88
I'd like to add one more thing that bears mentioning. You have claimed that consciousness may be an illusion analogous to the illusion that the sun rotates around the earth. Scientific knowledge shows us that, in fact, the Earth rotates around the sun, and you propose that science may show us analogously that consciousness does not really exist as it appears to.

But we are not trying to establish in the case of consciousness if things are the way they appear to be; rather, we are trying to make it intelligible how things could appear the way they do in the first place. Given the heliocentric model, the illusion that the sun rotates around the Earth is debunked, but more importantly, it remains entirely intelligible why it appears as if the sun rotates around the earth. We do not flatly deny that it appears as if the sun rotates around the Earth to make our case here (as Dennett seems to flatly deny that we subjectively experience); indeed, it still appears this way, even given our superior knowledge. Rather, we show why this appearance nonetheless must logically follow from our apparently contradictory explanation. If our explanation had no recourse but to say the illusion did not exist (and the illusion obviously does exist), it would not be much of an explanation at all.

Analogously, any explanation of consciousness has to make it intelligible how it is that consciousness appears to be the way it appears to be, and I'm afraid any physically reductive explanation of consciousness will never make it intelligible why consciousness should have its apparent properties. Synchronous neural firings in IT account for 'redness'-- ok, but why should I be so compelled by this argument so as to have no recourse but to accept it? How is it that those neural firings logically necessitates consciousness the same way the heliocentric model logically necessitates the appearance of the sun rotating around the earth? You cannot answer this question without recourse to metaphysics. That is the explanitory gap. That is the hard problem.
 
  • #89
I was thinking about the flaw of consciousness and how subjectivity is one of the main goals for equipoise on both sides of the debate. And what I concluded through reading this thread over and over again was that it drifted off to—what was mostly the inference that we are confusing epistemic objectivity of scientific investigation with the ontological objectivity of each system. Are these two compatible? Maybe.

I think we might be on the right track if we can get this debate back on focus. Hypnagogue is stating the why of the argument or the computational methods that hone each mechanism of consciousness to its own patter of involvement in the subjective system. I believe this is the right track.

Although I'm a big fan of Dennett and I like some of Chalmers's work too, I think the main problem is that we can't just say: "it just does—that is how that system works." That, in itself is an invalid argument and a fallacy of choplogic. We need to focus on the neuropsychological standpoint of the argument and why this system works the way it does.

I think we should find a medium on the differing sides of what consciousness means, and once we find a somewhat agreeable base we should start this debate over; on a clean slate.
 
  • #90
Originally posted by hypnagogue
OK Mentat, since you requested it here's my response to your post.

Many thanks :smile:.

I think the spirit of science is not just to catalogue a lists of causes and effects, but to capture a deep understanding of why things are the way they are.

I hate to have to object so early in the post (I know you don't believe me, but I actually would like to agree with you), but my readings into the philosophy of science have led to quite a different conclusion. Of course, science is for more than just cataloguing causes and effects, but not much more. The scientific method allows for the questions: "What" are we dealing with? "How" does it work? "Where" is it found? "When" is it found? "How" can we reproduce it?

All of these can (in principle) be grouped into a system that simply catalogues cause and effect. To ask "why" is a non-sequiter in science, though it is welcomed with open arms in most other branches of Philosophy.

btw, I talked a lot about this point in a different thread (called something like "the difference between 'What cause' and 'What Purpose' questions").

We cannot ask this question ad infinitum, since there are certain epistemic limits on how far we can go, but still we should not stifle our attempts to understand-- to answer the 'why' question. For instance, had certain questions not been posed in the 19th/20th century, we might be content to say that the regularities observed in the periodic table are just a brute fact of nature, and that there would be no point to trying to establish any deeper understanding of them-- when in fact, we can now explain these regularities using quantum mechanics, and thereby attain a deeper understanding.

And yet, this is simply a "cause" of the afore mentioned "effect". There is still no knowledge as to "why" sub-atomic objects should behave as they do, because "why" (in this context) implies that someone/something purposed for things to be as they are and science cannot assume this.

This is a basic issue of how we go about understanding reality. I'm surprised you would so easily shrug off the question. By your reasoning, it would seem we could answer a child's question of "Why is the sky blue?" by saying "Well, whenever the sun is out, the sky is blue-- what's the point of establishing 'why' it has that effect? It just does."

Unfortunately, unsatisfying as it may be, that is science's answer to those kind of questions. Dawkins was quoted on another thread (I've no idea where) as stating much the same thing, and Stephen Jay Gould was very explicit about that in the video/documentary series "A Glorious Accident".

I don't think you are using the term 'experience' as it is normally used in philosophy of mind.

And how is it usually used? In my experience (which, I admit, isn't much), philosophers like to throw the word "experience" around without ever properly defining it.

At bottom, it can only be properly defined with an appeal to your own subjective experience, your own feeling. When you are awake and going about your day, those things of which you are directly aware are those things that you 'feel.' You are in a state of ongoing subjective experience. When you are in a dreamless sleep, you are not feeling anything-- you have no subjective experience. The difference should be quite obvious.

But I can't define subjective experience in such a way as to make it clear what it is even to someone who does not have subjective experience himself (aka a philosophical zombie), somewhat like I can't explain what 'red' is to a colorblind person. The definition of subjective experience is essentially just an appeal to what you know and see from your own 1st person perspective. This should not be regarded as dubious footing for my stance-- certainly it makes subjective experience harder to talk and reason about, but it should not give us humans who subjectively experience all the time reason to doubt its existence.

Some people constantly experience the "grace of God" in their lives, constantly helping them. Some people constantly experience the "energy fields" of other people. You cannot have a logical discussion with these people because they will always say something like "you can't understand it with your head, you have to just 'feel' it"...this is, to my mind, the death of logical reasoning.

But there is no logical connection between greater expenditure of computational resources and subjective awareness, as there is between, say, freedom of motion of microscopic molecules and freedom of motion of a macroscopic liquid. In order to establish such logical connections you need extra assumptions, and (as I have argued) for these assumptions to work, they must be such that they cannot be neatly fit into a materialist paradigm.

Greater expenditure of computational resources translates to more frequent re-stimulation of the areas that were stimulated when the thing was processed ITFP, which translates to re-experiencing. I don't see the gap.

Then why is it that people with certain brain lesions can be sensitive to wavelength information from the environment without having visual awareness of color? Why is it that you yourself could be shown to be sensitive to such information without being aware of it, eg through a psychology experiment involving unconscious primes?

Because the right parts of my brain (the ones that run "searches", perhaps) aren't being stimulated...besides, wavelength information is color, if I can tell you what color it was later then all that is lacking is speed on my part.

Let's call your machine V. If V exists in a world that works precisely as materialism dictates it should, then V should compute complex input/output functions, but there should not be any experience. Why should there be? What logical reasoning starting from the axioms of materialism should lead one to suspect a priori the existence of subjective experience?

I'll tell you: From materialistic assumptions, it can be allowed that V is an organic machine, born to other organic machines, who have evolved in a social environment. The constant socialization has given rise, over time, to more and more complex thinking ability. At its heart, the "thinking ability" is the ability to process input without the use of mathematics, but (instead) with the use of specialist sub-systems of its CPU. One sub-system is a specialist at processing audio input. It is logical, from a materialistic standpoint, that V would record and process the exact (or as close to exact as possible) sound that it hears ("that it hears" = "that enters its audio sub-system through a sensory organ/reciever), and that this "processing" is smeared out over smaller sub-systems that are subordinates of the full audio sub-system. (Still with me?)

I can now say that, since "experience" is undefined by the opposition (you), I can define it as I wish, and call the processing of this external sound, and the ability to repeat it (along with the melding, in retrospect, of the individual sounds into one noise) "conscious experience", and there should be no counter since you haven't defined "conscious experience" yet...I, at least, have something to explain.

We don't have to imagine hypothetical worlds to get this result either. People with blindsight have advanced computational machines whose primary goal is interpreting/processing visual data, and on the basis of those computations on visual inputs they can even interact in coherent and complex ways with their environment, yet they do not have corresponding visual awareness in some (or in some cases, all) of their visual field.

I know nothing about "blind-sight", so I can't rebut or accept.

Well, all definitions must be circular at bottom by necessity (as you seem to agree). But logical arguments that draw inferences from such definitions/axioms needn't, indeed shouldn't, be circular.

But you haven't even given a reasonable starting-point toward defining "experience", and yet you keep using the word...that's bad philosophy, AFAIC.

It is information encoded in patterns of neural activity. Again, blindsighted people display the ability to process visual information without any attendent subjective experience of it.

How do we know that they have no subjective experience of it? What is "subjective experience"?

This is not a moot point...we might as well subsitute "subjective experience" for "uxpjscciie reeentvebe", and kill off all explanations on the basis that they don't explain "uxpjscciie reeentvebe".

Yes, I would agree that the completely objective philosopher should have no reason to believe in subjective experience at all. But in fact, such a philosopher is only denying the manifest, since he (you) knows in a very direct sense that subjective experience exists from his own 1st person experience of it.

How do you know? Can you ever really prove to me that either of us have this uxpjscciie reeentvebe if it is undefined?

btw, to make sure it was appreciated, "uxpjscciie reeentvebe" only uses the letters present in "subjective experience"...so, it's the same letters, with the same amount of meaning :wink:.
 
  • #91
Originally posted by hypnagogue
I'd like to add one more thing that bears mentioning. You have claimed that consciousness may be an illusion analogous to the illusion that the sun rotates around the earth. Scientific knowledge shows us that, in fact, the Earth rotates around the sun, and you propose that science may show us analogously that consciousness does not really exist as it appears to.

But we are not trying to establish in the case of consciousness if things are the way they appear to be; rather, we are trying to make it intelligible how things could appear the way they do in the first place. Given the heliocentric model, the illusion that the sun rotates around the Earth is debunked, but more importantly, it remains entirely intelligible why it appears as if the sun rotates around the earth. We do not flatly deny that it appears as if the sun rotates around the Earth to make our case here (as Dennett seems to flatly deny that we subjectively experience); indeed, it still appears this way, even given our superior knowledge. Rather, we show why this appearance nonetheless must logically follow from our apparently contradictory explanation. If our explanation had no recourse but to say the illusion did not exist (and the illusion obviously does exist), it would not be much of an explanation at all.

Analogously, any explanation of consciousness has to make it intelligible how it is that consciousness appears to be the way it appears to be, and I'm afraid any physically reductive explanation of consciousness will never make it intelligible why consciousness should have its apparent properties. Synchronous neural firings in IT account for 'redness'-- ok, but why should I be so compelled by this argument so as to have no recourse but to accept it? How is it that those neural firings logically necessitates consciousness the same way the heliocentric model logically necessitates the appearance of the sun rotating around the earth? You cannot answer this question without recourse to metaphysics. That is the explanitory gap. That is the hard problem.

But it is a "why" question, at its heart, isn't it?
 
  • #92
Originally posted by Mentat
But it is a "why" question, at its heart, isn't it?
No. If it was a 'why' question science would ignore it.
 
  • #93
Originally posted by Canute
No. If it was a 'why' question science would ignore it.

Science does ignore it...read "A Universe of Consciousness", "Synaptic Self", "The Cerebral Code", "Bright Air, Brilliant Fire", etc...all by scientists (Edelmann and Tononi, LeDoux, Calvin, and Edelmann again respectively), and none of which address the "hard problem" as though it were a problem at all (indeed "A Universe of Consciousness" only ever addresses it to explain why it doesn't apply...their explanation, in a nutshell: it's a "why" question).
 
  • #94
Mentat,

I think you have committed the very sin you were trying to point out in your "what purpose" thread. When we say that science does not care about answering "why"questions, we are referring to the purpose for some thing's existence or function. But as I said in that thread and many others, people use the word "why" to begin many questions that do not refer to purpose at all. For example, I can ask the question "why is the sky blue?" and this question can be interpreted in 2 different ways. One of them is purpose, for which the answer may be "because it is God's favorite color".

But this question could also be asking "How" is the sky blue. Then a scientific explanation for "why" the sky is blue would suffice. It seems you have picked up on Hypnagogue's use of the word "why" and inserted purpose so that you can pull out this "out of scope" argument, when it is clear to all that the "gap" we are talking about is clearly an explanatory gap of "how" not "purpose".

Judging from the rest of your response I'd say that you aren't being very honest about this at all. I'm not sure how much longer this discussion can procede at this rate. When a child asks "why the sky is blue?" and science can only say "because that's the way is"? Surely you are not so dense that you think this is a question of purpose? How did we get so confused here?
 
  • #95
Originally posted by Mentat
I hate to have to object so early in the post (I know you don't believe me, but I actually would like to agree with you), but my readings into the philosophy of science have led to quite a different conclusion. Of course, science is for more than just cataloguing causes and effects, but not much more. The scientific method allows for the questions: "What" are we dealing with? "How" does it work? "Where" is it found? "When" is it found? "How" can we reproduce it?

I appreciate your desire to be rigorous, but I think you are being a little too pedantic here. I have been using "why" to mean more or less "how." Why is the sky blue = How is it that the sky is blue = What phenomena account for the fact that the sky is blue. Science can and does answer these questions.

And how is it usually used? In my experience (which, I admit, isn't much), philosophers like to throw the word "experience" around without ever properly defining it.

It is usually used as a reference to the 1st person perspective, the 'what it is like.' It cannot be adequately defined in purely objective terms.

Some people constantly experience the "grace of God" in their lives, constantly helping them. Some people constantly experience the "energy fields" of other people. You cannot have a logical discussion with these people because they will always say something like "you can't understand it with your head, you have to just 'feel' it"...this is, to my mind, the death of logical reasoning.

It is not the death of logical reasoning, although it is a considerable roadblock. I myself have had spiritual experiences involving an intense, 'god-like' feeling and I can most assuredly tell you that I could not adequately explain it to you in words, no more than I could explain redness to a colorblind person. Unfortunately we are in the business of discussing reality as it is observed to be, and not reality as it is most convenient for us to discuss it, so we cannot just ignore these things.

By the way, I think you are again making the mistake of critiquing inferences made from subjective experiences rather than the experiences themselves. For instance, I see no problem in asserting a divine feeling, but there are of course big problems with inferring from that feeling the existence of a god.

Imagine you are speaking with a colorblind person and you wish to have a discussion about the color red with him. You could perhaps speak in analogies and skirt around the perimeter of the issue, but really you could not ever get across to him what the subjective experience of red is. This is equivalent to saying that there is not an adequate definition of redness that is purely objective (ie, does not reference a subjective, 1st person perspective of redness at some point). Yet we still take it for granted that we see redness all the time; all we need to do is look at a firetruck or somesuch, provided we are not colorblind. This is a fundamental problem in how we can define and talk about redness, but this does not lead us to abolish our conception of subjectively experienced redness[/color].

Greater expenditure of computational resources translates to more frequent re-stimulation of the areas that were stimulated when the thing was processed ITFP, which translates to re-experiencing. I don't see the gap.

Why should those initial processes have been associated with the experience? You have only pushed off the problem here onto a different level of analysis without getting to the core of the issue.

Because the right parts of my brain (the ones that run "searches", perhaps) aren't being stimulated...

Why should those 'right' parts of the brain be associated with experience?

besides, wavelength information is color, if I can tell you what color it was later then all that is lacking is speed on my part.

The way you act can be influenced by color information contained in an unconscious prime without your being aware of it-- that's why it's called 'unconscious.' There would be discernable differences in your activity in the given task but you would not be able to say 'yes, I saw that little dot and it was green' after the fact.

I'll tell you: From materialistic assumptions, it can be allowed that V is an organic machine, born to other organic machines, who have evolved in a social environment. The constant socialization has given rise, over time, to more and more complex thinking ability. At its heart, the "thinking ability" is the ability to process input without the use of mathematics, but (instead) with the use of specialist sub-systems of its CPU. One sub-system is a specialist at processing audio input. It is logical, from a materialistic standpoint, that V would record and process the exact (or as close to exact as possible) sound that it hears ("that it hears" = "that enters its audio sub-system through a sensory organ/reciever), and that this "processing" is smeared out over smaller sub-systems that are subordinates of the full audio sub-system. (Still with me?)

You've explained an interesting computer, but I don't see anything in there that would lead me to say "Ah, yes! That's how experience comes about."

I can now say that, since "experience" is undefined by the opposition (you), I can define it as I wish, and call the processing of this external sound, and the ability to repeat it (along with the melding, in retrospect, of the individual sounds into one noise) "conscious experience", and there should be no counter since you haven't defined "conscious experience" yet...I, at least, have something to explain.

Oh, but I have defined it, and unless you are truly a philosophical zombie, you know exactly what I am talking about.

What you have described thus far is a zombie that is nonetheless indistinguishable from a conscious person from the 3rd person perspective. You have taken advantage of our inherent epistemic limits to pretend as if consciousness does not exist. In reality, for all I know, you aren't conscious; I simply choose to assume so. But I do know without a doubt that I am conscious, that I have subjective experiences, that I perceive qualities. What you have thus far expounded upon does not begin to elucidate me on how it is that this is so.

This should not be surprising, however, since what you have described is entirely consistent with the notion of a philosophical zombie. As such, you have not yet touched the core of the matter. (If I explain why the sky is blue and my explanation is consistent with the sky being green, then I have not yet done all the work I need to do-- I must explain why it is blue and not any other color.) A truly good explanation of consciousness should be able to discern between sentient beings and zombies-- it should be such that the system it describes is not consistent with being a zombie, but rather must logically entail a system that subjectively experiences.

I know nothing about "blind-sight", so I can't rebut or accept.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/blindsight.html

But you haven't even given a reasonable starting-point toward defining "experience", and yet you keep using the word...that's bad philosophy, AFAIC.

I have defined it, albeit not to your liking. Nonetheless, it is the only definition we can use if we are to talk about subjective experience. You use a different definition to try to sidestep our epistemic limits, but in the process you wind up talking about something entirely different from what I am talking about. You explain cognitive functions but you do not explain subjective experience.

How do we know that they have no subjective experience of it? What is "subjective experience"?

The subjective experiences of the patient are those things of which the patient is directly aware in which the patient perceives perceptual/emotional qualities such as redness or sadness.

This is not a moot point...we might as well subsitute "subjective experience" for "uxpjscciie reeentvebe", and kill off all explanations on the basis that they don't explain "uxpjscciie reeentvebe".

How do you know? Can you ever really prove to me that either of us have this uxpjscciie reeentvebe if it is undefined?

Subjective experience is defined, just not entirely from a 3rd person perspective. That is a fundamental limit we have to deal with, not a ticket to absolve us from explaining it in the first place.

edit: If you conceded that we could never explain subjective experience on the basis of such limits and left it at that, I would have much more respect for your position. As it stands, however, you are making the pretense of explaining subjective experience by redefining it into something that it is not, something more amenable to traditional scientific approaches. This is a sleight of hand approach that imagines it has explained something that it really hasn't, and this is really my primary objection to your approach.
 
Last edited:
  • #96
Originally posted by Fliption
Mentat,

I think you have committed the very sin you were trying to point out in your "what purpose" thread. When we say that science does not care about answering "why"questions, we are referring to the purpose for some thing's existence or function. But as I said in that thread and many others, people use the word "why" to begin many questions that do not refer to purpose at all. For example, I can ask the question "why is the sky blue?" and this question can be interpreted in 2 different ways. One of them is purpose, for which the answer may be "because it is God's favorite color".

But this question could also be asking "How" is the sky blue. Then a scientific explanation for "why" the sky is blue would suffice. It seems you have picked up on Hypnagogue's use of the word "why" and inserted purpose so that you can pull out this "out of scope" argument, when it is clear to all that the "gap" we are talking about is clearly an explanatory gap of "how" not "purpose".

No, I don't think he was asking a question about purpose. I hoped it wouldn't seem that way, but I guess it did. No, there are other kinds of "why" question, aside from the two I allowed for in the aforementioned thread...one of them is the kind that hypnagogue is asking, which is not a "what cause" or a "what purpose", but a "why not something else". It is the question of why things are the way they are when we can imagine them being otherwise. The scientific answer remains, "They just are", and philosophers can't give much of an improvement on this by giving their own opinions (regardless of experimental data) on the matter.
 
  • #97
Originally posted by Mentat
No, there are other kinds of "why" question, aside from the two I allowed for in the aforementioned thread...one of them is the kind that hypnagogue is asking, which is not a "what cause" or a "what purpose", but a "why not something else". It is the question of why things are the way they are when we can imagine them being otherwise.

"What cause" and "why not something else" amount to be the same question. If we explain properly the causes, and we take it as a given that the causes exist, then the explanandum should follow by logical necessity. If not, we have not answered the "what cause" question adequately, and consequently we can still meaningfully ask "why not something else."

For example, if we explain the fluidity of water in terms of the properties of its constituent molecules, we have answered both questions at once. We have explained what accounts for the fluidity, i.e. we have shown how fluidity is logically necessitated by molecules with certain properties. Since the fluidity is logically necessitated by the properties of the molcules, it is epistemically impossible for us to imagine that molecules with those properties should exist whose macroscopic description is not in agreement with our concept of fluidity.

That is, by explaining "what cause," we establish P->Q to be true. By simple logic, then, we cannot imagine P being true without Q being true as well-- thus we have answered "why not ~Q, given P." Conversely, if we cannot answer "what cause" adequately-- if we cannot establish P->Q-- then it is still logical to imagine P ^ ~Q.
 
Last edited:
  • #98
Originally posted by hypnagogue
I appreciate your desire to be rigorous, but I think you are being a little too pedantic here. I have been using "why" to mean more or less "how." Why is the sky blue = How is it that the sky is blue = What phenomena account for the fact that the sky is blue. Science can and does answer these questions.

Actually, as I implied in my response to Fliption, "Why is the sky blue" is more a question of why is it that way instead of some other way; which is not really the same thing as what phenomena account for the fact that the sky appears blue. The only difference being that a scientist may explain all of the fundamental (physical) qualities of the sky and still never completely answer the child's question of "why" all that stuff makes the sky "blue" instead of some other color.

It is usually used as a reference to the 1st person perspective, the 'what it is like.' It cannot be adequately defined in purely objective terms.

Doesn't that usually make a term logically useless? How can you know that something exists if it has no definition (and you can't just say "because I have it", because you can't logically know that you "have something" if you don't even know that that "something" exists in the first place - that would be a "looping" (or circular) explanation of the manner "How can you deny that there is a Creator, when you can see all the creation around you?", it assumes itself). Fliption should know what I'm talking about...this was his side in the whole "Why the bias against Materialism?" thread.

It is not the death of logical reasoning, although it is a considerable roadblock.

Hypna, something either is or is not logically reasonable. And it's not about whether someone could explain it to me in words, so much as they should be able to define all the terms they are going to use before entering them into a logical debate. If they can't define the terms then they need to question whether the concept they are trying to define exists at all.

By the way, I think you are again making the mistake of critiquing inferences made from subjective experiences rather than the experiences themselves.

What are the "experiences themselves"? Please try to understand that, until you can define the term, you are just using words, not concepts.

Imagine you are speaking with a colorblind person and you wish to have a discussion about the color red with him. You could perhaps speak in analogies and skirt around the perimeter of the issue, but really you could not ever get across to him what the subjective experience of red is. This is equivalent to saying that there is not an adequate definition of redness that is purely objective (ie, does not reference a subjective, 1st person perspective of redness at some point). Yet we still take it for granted that we see redness all the time; all we need to do is look at a firetruck or somesuch, provided we are not colorblind. This is a fundamental problem in how we can define and talk about redness, but this does not lead us to abolish our conception of subjectively experienced redness[/color].

This is exactly what Edelmann and Tononi were talking about, as I paraphrased in "Faulty expectations of a theory of consciousness". Science can explain how a phenomenon works, where/when it is found, and how to reproduce it, but you can't expect an explanation of a phenomenon to produce the phenomenon.

Why should those initial processes have been associated with the experience?

Who says they should? What is this "experience" that I should associate brain processes with?

Why should those 'right' parts of the brain be associated with experience?

Why should you talk about "experience" without the logical necessity for even postulating its existence: a definition of what "it" is ITFP.

The way you act can be influenced by color information contained in an unconscious prime without your being aware of it-- that's why it's called 'unconscious.' There would be discernable differences in your activity in the given task but you would not be able to say 'yes, I saw that little dot and it was green' after the fact.

I thought I explained that in terms of something's getting "more attention paid it", as can be reductively explained in terms of Calvin's "basins of attraction" (basically, they are algorithms, describing the force and constancy of success among hexagonal arrays).

You've explained an interesting computer, but I don't see anything in there that would lead me to say "Ah, yes! That's how experience comes about."

I don't see anything in anything you've written to date that would lead me to say "Oh, so that's what experience is". How can I explain the association of A with B, if I don't even know what B is?

Oh, but I have defined it, and unless you are truly a philosophical zombie, you know exactly what I am talking about.

"Oh, you know what I mean"...no offense, but that's not good logic.

What you have described thus far is a zombie that is nonetheless indistinguishable from a conscious person from the 3rd person perspective. You have taken advantage of our inherent epistemic limits to pretend as if consciousness does not exist. In reality, for all I know, you aren't conscious; I simply choose to assume so. But I do know without a doubt that I am conscious, that I have subjective experiences, that I perceive qualities. What you have thus far expounded upon does not begin to elucidate me on how it is that this is so.

You know that you have them...but you don't know what they are...you can't define them...you can't even be sure anyone else has them...I'm sorry, but this just feels like a top-bottom set of reasoning that is doomed to failure.

This should not be surprising, however, since what you have described is entirely consistent with the notion of a philosophical zombie. As such, you have not yet touched the core of the matter. (If I explain why the sky is blue and my explanation is consistent with the sky being green, then I have not yet done all the work I need to do-- I must explain why it is blue and not any other color.)

But any explanation (no matter how concise) of how the sky appears blue could be turned down by a stubborn person who perceives clearly that it is eulb, even if he can't define what it means to be "eulb".

A truly good explanation of consciousness should be able to discern between sentient beings and zombies-- it should be such that the system it describes is not consistent with being a zombie, but rather must logically entail a system that subjectively experiences.

And any discussion that is going to have the words "subjective experience" in it, must define them first, or else we will always be talking about different things (that's the purpose of definitions, to keep everyone "on the same page"). I don't recognize that a philosophical "zombie" can even exist, as I have no defined phenomenon that would be missing from such a being.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/blindsight.html

Thank you. I will read it tomorrow, if I can...but I must get off-line soon.

I have defined it, albeit not to your liking. Nonetheless, it is the only definition we can use if we are to talk about subjective experience. You use a different definition to try to sidestep our epistemic limits, but in the process you wind up talking about something entirely different from what I am talking about. You explain cognitive functions but you do not explain subjective experience.

You have defined "subjective experience" in terms of a feeling...that is so obviously circular that I wouldn't insult you by going through a total logical explanation; I'm sure you can see why explaining "experience" in terms of an "experience" just doesn't make any sense.

The subjective experiences of the patient are those things of which the patient is directly aware in which the patient perceives perceptual/emotional qualities such as redness or sadness.

Let me see if I understand what you are saying here: Subjective experience = those things of which the patient is aware...is not "awareness" alone synonymous with "subjective experience" in your paradigm? Thus, subjective experience = those things which a patient subjectively experiences...that's not much of a step toward defining it.

I'm not really asking that you do so in entirely objective terms, just in non-circular ones.

As it stands, however, you are making the pretense of explaining subjective experience by redefining it into something that it is not, something more amenable to traditional scientific approaches. This is a sleight of hand approach that imagines it has explained something that it really hasn't, and this is really my primary objection to your approach.

How can I "redefine" the undefined? I can't change your logical definition to fit my purpose, you don't yet have one.
 
  • #99
Originally posted by hypnagogue
"What cause" and "why not something else" amount to be the same question. If we explain properly the causes, and we take it as a given that the causes exist, then the explanandum should follow by logical necessity. If not, we have not answered the "what cause" question adequately, and consequently we can still meaningfully ask "why not something else."

There is no such thing as "logical necessity", surely you know that by now. A person can deny that the sky is blue, and hold that it is "eulb" long after you've explained everything that there is to explain about the sky.

For example, if we explain the fluidity of water in terms of the properties of its constituent molecules, we have answered both questions at once. We have explained what accounts for the fluidity, i.e. we have shown how fluidity is logically necessitated by molecules with certain properties. Since the fluidity is logically necessitated by the properties of the molcules, it is epistemically impossible for us to imagine that molecules with those properties should exist whose macroscopic description is not in agreement with our concept of fluidity.

I won't take my usual stance, but will instead (once again) mention the most embarrasing aspect of your argument: "Fluidity" is defined, "subjective experience" is not.

How could some physical property necessitate that "xxxxxxxxxx yyyyyyyyyy" come about? There is no definition, so there is nothing to explain.
 
  • #100
Originally posted by Mentat
The only difference being that a scientist may explain all of the fundamental (physical) qualities of the sky and still never completely answer the child's question of "why" all that stuff makes the sky "blue" instead of some other color.

This is a bad analogy because it involves a problem of consciousness. My fault. The water/H2O analogy is better for our purposes. If a scientist explains the properties of H2O molecules to a child, and the child understands them, then the child should see how they logically imply macroscopic fluidity. (Of course the process cannot go on ad infinitum, but we can do better than just stopping at the explanandum.)

Doesn't that usually make a term logically useless? How can you know that something exists if it has no definition (and you can't just say "because I have it", because you can't logically know that you "have something" if you don't even know that that "something" exists in the first place - that would be a "looping" (or circular) explanation of the manner "How can you deny that there is a Creator, when you can see all the creation around you?", it assumes itself).

Bad analogy. A better one would be "How can you deny that there are buildings, when you see all buildings around you?" Again we are not talking about inferences here, just observation.

Hypna, something either is or is not logically reasonable. And it's not about whether someone could explain it to me in words, so much as they should be able to define all the terms they are going to use before entering them into a logical debate. If they can't define the terms then they need to question whether the concept they are trying to define exists at all.

I have defined it, just from a 1st person perspective. I'm sorry if you cannot accept that.

This is exactly what Edelmann and Tononi were talking about, as I paraphrased in "Faulty expectations of a theory of consciousness". Science can explain how a phenomenon works, where/when it is found, and how to reproduce it, but you can't expect an explanation of a phenomenon to produce the phenomenon.

Of course an explanation of a phenomenon does not produce the phenomenon. If I explain what a tree is to someone (Bob) who has never seen one, a tree will not magically appear, but what will happen is that Bob will have a good understanding of what a tree is. If we could explain subjective phenomena (say, color) as well as we could explain objective phenomena (like the tree), then we might expect that I could explain color to a blind person (Jill) well enough that she would have a good understanding of what it is, even though my explanation would not magically enable her to see colors. But this is obviously not the case; no matter how I try, Jill will never have a good understanding of what color is, unless she is someday able to see.

What does this suggest? It suggests that one cannot have a good understanding of subjective experience without literally having it "produced" for them-- ie, one must already have directly perceived the type of experience in question in order to have an adequate understanding of it.

Why? A tree is defined at least partially defined extrinsically, that is, in relation to other things. So we can at least explain to Bob a tree's shape (the internal geometric relationships among its parts), its functions (its relationships with sunlight, soil, water, etc.), and so on. However, a subjectively experienced color is defined entirely intrinsically. I do not define my sense of redness with respect to my sense of blueness and vice versa; my sense of redness stands on its own. Because it is not defined extrinsically, there is no conceptual 'hook' that I can latch it onto in order to explain or describe it via its relationships with other things.

This is your primary objection, but it is something we must accept if we are to have a complete picture of reality. If you presented the wave/particle duality to Newton, with no means of supporting it empirically, Newton would reject your views immediately. But Newton would be wrong.

I thought I explained that in terms of something's getting "more attention paid it", as can be reductively explained in terms of Calvin's "basins of attraction" (basically, they are algorithms, describing the force and constancy of success among hexagonal arrays).

That can explain unconscious processes just fine, but not conscious ones.

I don't see anything in anything you've written to date that would lead me to say "Oh, so that's what experience is". How can I explain the association of A with B, if I don't even know what B is?

Go into a dreamless sleep. Then wake up and open your eyes. You will see visual images. That's what experience is.

"Oh, you know what I mean"...no offense, but that's not good logic.

Neither is P ^ ~P, but we seem to get along with quantum mechanics just fine.

And any discussion that is going to have the words "subjective experience" in it, must define them first, or else we will always be talking about different things (that's the purpose of definitions, to keep everyone "on the same page"). I don't recognize that a philosophical "zombie" can even exist, as I have no defined phenomenon that would be missing from such a being.

Yes you do, you are just unfortunately too stubborn to give up a completely objective worldview. Compare what it is like for you to be awake and what it is like for you to be in a dreamless sleep. The zombie would experience the same thing as you do in your dreamless sleep and still appear outwardly like you do when you are awake.

You have defined "subjective experience" in terms of a feeling...that is so obviously circular that I wouldn't insult you by going through a total logical explanation; I'm sure you can see why explaining "experience" in terms of an "experience" just doesn't make any sense.

We already established that all definitions must ultimately be circular. The difference is that things defined extrinsically have a much wider 'circle,' so their definitions take on the appearance of not being circular. But in fact anything you can define is just as circular as the definitions I have been using for subjective experience.

Let me see if I understand what you are saying here: Subjective experience = those things of which the patient is aware...is not "awareness" alone synonymous with "subjective experience" in your paradigm? Thus, subjective experience = those things which a patient subjectively experiences...that's not much of a step toward defining it.

Again, it must be circular. Any definition of physical reality you can think of would be just as circular, albeit in a wider circle of interlinking chains.
 

Similar threads

I Probability, observers and the multiverse
Replies
3
Views
2K
Epothilone B study connected to 'Hard Problem of Consciousness' Model
Replies
5
Views
2K
  • Poll Poll
Is Consciousness Beyond Physical Explanation?
5
Replies
246
Views
33K
Time and relationships (or, consciousness per Martin Heidegger)
5
Replies
212
Views
44K
Is Consciousness Simple or Complex?
2
Replies
62
Views
12K
Can there be Artificial Consciousness and Emotion?
Replies
20
Views
4K
Some more vague questions about consciousness.
Replies
5
Views
3K
Consciousness and the Perception of Time
Replies
21
Views
6K
My definition of consciousness - non recursive
2
Replies
68
Views
10K
How Do We Study Consciousness and Why Is It Important?
Replies
3
Views
3K

Hot Threads

Recent Insights

Back
Top