The Flaw in the Definition of Consciousness

[Mentat]

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?

 

[Canute]

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.

 

[Mentat]

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).

 

[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".

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?

 

[hypnagogue]

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.

 

[Mentat]

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.

 

[hypnagogue]

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.

 

[Mentat]

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.

 

[Mentat]

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.

 

[hypnagogue]

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.

 

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Mentat
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.

I get the feeling you are just being difficult now for the sake of it. There is logical necessity, otherwise logic would be meaningless. The laws of logic show that set X of H2O molecules under the proper circumstances must have macroscopic fluidity. Any person who actually follows the logic will not be able to logically assert that X should exist with some macroscopic properties in contradiction with fluidity (like solidity).

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.

I think it is rather quite embarrassing that you are denying the existence of something you know to exist!

 

[Fliption]

Originally posted by Mentat
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.

I think you are reading too much into what he means by that question. I interpreted it to be his way of defining what a proper explanation actually is. A proper explanation for why planets are round can logical show why planets are not square. All of this seems so simple to me. I have to believe you are just being obstinate and not really struggling to understand.

That also follows from the example of a blue sky. Yes, the subjective experience of the color blue calls up the consciousness problem and therefore was not the best analogy but it can quickly be corrected by saying that science does explain why the sky reflects a certain range of wavelength in the sprectrum. "It just does" is not sufficient. I am sure that science can explain why this is the case and this reason alone will logical explain why it is not otherwise.

Also, the idea that subjective experience has not been defined has been coming up more and more in each post. I'm not really sure I understand this position all that much but it seems that if we're going to deny the problem because we can't objectively identify it, all we're doing is using the hard problem of consciousness and the fact that it doesn't fit into the current paradigm to conclude it doesn't exists. All according to the rules of the current paradigm. Doesn't seem like very good philosophy to me. It's like a fish trying to suggest where it's fishbowl would look best in the room.

 

[Canute]

Mentat

Hypno said this about consciousness - "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."

You replied - "Doesn't that usually make a term logically useless?"

The answer is no, it makes it scientifically useless. You have hit the nail on the head. This is the hard problem.

"How can you know that something exists if it has no definition"

Consciousness has a perfectly good definition, and everyone can define it. If you won't accept that definition it's your problem. Are you really trying to tell us that because you cannot define your own consciousness it follows that you're not conscious? Can you really not see that this does not make sense.

"(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 ...snip"

But he does know, so this is irrelevant. I must admit I'm beginning to struggle to keep my posts to you dispassionate. You seem to uninterested in the facts.

 

[clicky]

Everything is an interaction because everybody indicates its existence by certain interaction.

Consciousness is expression of the fundamental property of everybody to be self-defined in a 3D-spiral way [1]. We self-define, i.e. study ourselves and the rest of the universe [1]. Mind is an outcome from the expansion of the all-building interaction [1].


Savov, E., Theory Interaction, Geones Books, 2002.

 

[Mentat]

Forgive the tardiness and necessary brevity of this post, but my access to the internet is not nearly as reliable as I'd like...

Originally posted by hypnagogue
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.

No, we are talking about bad definitions. Subjective experience cannot be defined without first appealing to it (just as "creation" cannot be logically defined without implying a "creator"), and so it is a logically useless term (that is, until you can define it in more logically tenable terms).

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

It's not about my acceptance. It's about the logical problem with looping definitions. It's about the fact that you are asking me to help explain a phenomenon that you can't even define. If you can't define it, how do you even know it exists? Is this not the fundamental aspects of a strawman?

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.

She will have as good an understanding as any of us non-blind people do? What do we really know of color anyway, which we can't explain to Jill? It is only having seen the color that is lacking (an "impression" that she cannot have, as Hume would put 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.

While I don't quite understand the analogy, I can say that there is a clear and inescapable problem with all you've said above: It relies on the existence of something that you cannot define.

How can you expect to have a logical conversation about "xxxxxxxxxx yyyyyyyyyy" if you haven't defined it?

What's worse, you then say that the materialists are "skirting around the issue" by "redefining 'experience'", they are the only ones that have given any meaningful definition to that which they are explaining.

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

What's the difference?

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

Not good enough, by any stretch of the imagination. First off, you can't have dreamless sleep unless your dead (you just might not remember any of them) - and that is not some irrelevant point, it is an important one since it shows that the processes of the mind are going on all the time, indicating that there is no special process which you keep seeking.

Secondly, when I awaken from dreamless sleep and open my eyes, what changes? I now have interaction between my retinas and the waves of light in the room, which I didn't have before.

Finally, one should not ask one to just "experience for themselves" what one is talking about as a way of escaping the logical necessity for defining all terms.

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

Yes that is good logic, as arkhron would testify in half a second in former times on old threads. But I don't need to defend quantum mechanics here; the reason "oh, you know what I mean" is not good logic is not because I don't like it or because it doesn't make sense, but because it doesn't make any use of reasoning whatsoever - it simply assumes that I know what you mean in order to side-step the necessity for definition.

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.

What do you mean "what it's like for you to be asleep"? For that matter, what do you mean by "what it is like for you to be awake"? What is it like to be asleep? What is it like to be awake?

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.

Wrong. If something can be defined to the level of semantics, then it has been defined well enough to avoid any logical circle. You cannot even define "subjective experience" in the most rudimentary of ways, but must instead hope that I know a priori what you are talking about.

 

[Fliption]

You're really stretching it here Mentat. Are you serious? If early man had approached their curiosities the way you are we'd still be in the stone age. Once again, you put far too much emphasis on language. Langauge has nothing to do with reality.

Originally posted by Mentat
No, we are talking about bad definitions. Subjective experience cannot be defined without first appealing to it (just as "creation" cannot be logically defined without implying a "creator"), and so it is a logically useless term (that is, until you can define it in more logically tenable terms).

All you are doing is taking the fact that the hard problem does not fit into the materialist paradigm and then concluding that it doesn't exists. You aren't addressing the issue at all. The whole point of these threads has been to argue that the hard problem with consciousness will not allow for an objective explanation/definition using all the conceptual tools in the materialists toolbox. All of you've done is change a few words and reverse the problem to argue it doesn't exists.

The whole point of the pursuit of knowledge is to explain what I(you)(we) experience and observe. I observe a difference in dreamless sleep and being fully awake. This should be explained. You deny that you feel it and think there's no difference because you can't find a word to communicate it?

Try to explain "love" to someone who has never loved. Are you going to stop loving people when you fail to explain it?

She will have as good an understanding as any of us non-blind people do? What do we really know of color anyway, which we can't explain to Jill? It is only having seen the color that is lacking (an "impression" that she cannot have, as Hume would put it).

Where is the curiosity? This sounds like a person in denial.

How can you expect to have a logical conversation about "xxxxxxxxxx yyyyyyyyyy" if you haven't defined it?

Insert "materialism" and you answer it. It's the exact same point I tried to make for months. The difference here is that no one has ever experienced "materialism".

What's worse, you then say that the materialists are "skirting around the issue" by "redefining 'experience'", they are the only ones that have given any meaningful definition to that which they are explaining.

That's because "meaningful" means that which fits into the current materialist paradigm. This isn't honest philosophy.

Not good enough, by any stretch of the imagination. First off, you can't have dreamless sleep unless your dead (you just might not remember any of them) - and that is not some irrelevant point, it is an important one since it shows that the processes of the mind are going on all the time, indicating that there is no special process which you keep seeking.

It is an irrelevant point. The point hypnagoue was trying to make was the experience of these things are different. There is an experience of dreamless sleep once you wake up from it. Whether it is truly dreamless or not isn't relevant.

Secondly, when I awaken from dreamless sleep and open my eyes, what changes? I now have interaction between my retinas and the waves of light in the room, which I didn't have before.

So every time you close your eyes, shutting off all light from your retinas you fall immediately asleep? There is no state where you have your eyes closed and yet you are not asleep? This is getting silly.

Yes that is good logic, as arkhron would testify in half a second in former times on old threads. But I don't need to defend quantum mechanics here; the reason "oh, you know what I mean" is not good logic is not because I don't like it or because it doesn't make sense, but because it doesn't make any use of reasoning whatsoever - it simply assumes that I know what you mean in order to side-step the necessity for definition.

I'd like to suggest that Mentat is a zombie and this explains why he isn't curious about how consciousness works. This whole conversation makes sense in light of this theory. I recommend that it be discontinued as it is impossible to explain consciousness to a zombie. That's what the hard problem is all about.

What do you mean "what it's like for you to be asleep"? For that matter, what do you mean by "what it is like for you to be awake"? What is it like to be asleep? What is it like to be awake?

That zombie theory is gaining strength.

Wrong. If something can be defined to the level of semantics, then it has been defined well enough to avoid any logical circle. You cannot even define "subjective experience" in the most rudimentary of ways, but must instead hope that I know a priori what you are talking about.

Wrong? Bold.

I'm not sure what the objective is here. There's been hints that this is just arguing for the sake of arguing. There's nothing wrong with playing devil's advocate but that doesn't mean it is an infinite process. Either you believe this stuff or you don't.

 

[Canute]

Mentat

One last shot.

Consciousness can be defined perfectly well. I don't know where you get the idea that it cannot be. It is generally defined in the literature as 'what it is like' or similar. No problem.

The fact that scientists do not like this definition is neither here nor there. Some things are beyond science, metaphysics for instance.

Also - if there is scientific explanation of everything then we know it must contain an undefined term, this follows from common sense, since a theory of everything must be circular, and Goedel, for as Stephen Hawking points out in 'The Death of Physics', the explanation must have a indefinable meta-system.

“…since every word in a dictionary is defined in terms of another word…The only way to avoid circular reasoning is a finite language would be to include some undefined terms in the dictionary. Today we must realize that mathematical systems too, must include undefined terms, and seek to include the minimum number necessary for the system to make sense.” Leonard Mlodinow

As for materialism it is unprovable. This is because it is false.

Its impregnability to disproof, plus its philosophical advatages, has attracted many philosophers to idealism. Indeed, nearly every significant philosopher from the late 18th century to the early 20th century has been a paid up idealist.”
David Papineau and Howard Selina

(Including Georg Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Henri Bergson, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell etc etc etc etc.)

“It is important to realize that what we know as the ‘scientific worldview’ is an image of the universe that rests on a host of daring metaphyical assumptions. These are often presented and seen as facts that have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt, while in reality they stand on very shaky ground, are controversial, or are inadequately supported by the evidence.” Stanislav Grof

As for consciousness not being definable then perhaps you'd better write to the scientific community and tell them that they're wasting their time. At the moment there are a huge number of scientists trying to explain what you say we can't talk about.

“It would seem reasonable to expect any conprehensive account of consciousness to accommodate two of its most fundamental attributes: that we have a self-centred sense of experience and that this sense is somehow linked to the conditioning of our physiology. Yet those conversant with post-Cartesian philosophy will know that time and again significant doubts have been raised about any apparently obvious link between mind and body. So of all of the questions implicated by the scientific study of consciousness perhaps the most pressing is to what extent, if at all, does our mental life correlate with bio chemical activity at the neuronal level? Until this is resolved we will be unable to reconcile the data gathered from phenomenological analysis of introspective experience with tha derived from neuroscientific analysis of brain behaviour. The infamous gap will persist.”
Robert Peperell ‘Between phenomenology and neuroscience’ A report of the ‘Towards a Science of Consciousness’ Conference, Prague, July 2003)

Please note the title of the conference here.

If you continue to ignore all the evidence, and all the advice you're getting here then one must conclude then you're a zombie. Please note that the rest of us have subjective experiences. I'm sorry that you don't but nothing can be done about it, they are incommensurable so we can't tell you what they are like and you will never know.

 

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Fliption
You're really stretching it here Mentat. Are you serious? If early man had approached their curiosities the way you are we'd still be in the stone age. Once again, you put far too much emphasis on language. Langauge has nothing to do with reality.

Let's stick to the issue at hand: you haven't defined your term, so I can't discuss it with you.

Define it, or at least make it intelligible, instead of obviously circular, and we will have something to talk about.

All you are doing is taking the fact that the hard problem does not fit into the materialist paradigm and then concluding that it doesn't exists. You aren't addressing the issue at all. The whole point of these threads has been to argue that the hard problem with consciousness will not allow for an objective explanation/definition using all the conceptual tools in the materialists toolbox. All of you've done is change a few words and reverse the problem to argue it doesn't exists.

I hope your joking, because I wouldn't like to think I've posted all that I have and it's just fallen on deaf ears. Please, pay attention to what I'm saying, not to what you think I mean: I don't care about materialism right now, I care about having a logical discussion. This completely precludes strawman arguments which use terms that are never even rudimentarily defined, but which one simply assumes the other will understand.[/color]

The whole point of the pursuit of knowledge is to explain what I(you)(we) experience and observe. I observe a difference in dreamless sleep and being fully awake. This should be explained. You deny that you feel it and think there's no difference because you can't find a word to communicate it?

What?! I don't deny that I observe a difference between dreamless sleep and being fully awake. I do indeed observe such a difference. What does that have to do with anything?

Try to explain "love" to someone who has never loved. Are you going to stop loving people when you fail to explain it?

If "love" had no definition, then I could never start "loving" in the first place. As it is, "love" is much more tenably defined than "subjective experience".

Where is the curiosity? This sounds like a person in denial.

I'm absolutely curious and interested in consciousness. I just happen to have no (current) interest in "subjective experience", because I don't know what it means. Please help me understand what it is, don't just write me off as a lost cause because I can't understand and accept this term a priori.

Besides, it appears to me that philosophers starting from the assumption that "xxxxxxxxxx yyyyyyyyy" exists have reached a cul de sac anyway, so why are you implying that curiosity naturally leads down that same path?

Insert "materialism" and you answer it. It's the exact same point I tried to make for months. The difference here is that no one has ever experienced "materialism".

You're dodging the issue, and dredging up an old debate. We can discuss materialism on another thread, and you can feel free to quote me there, but this thread is about consciousness and this "subjective experience" that everyone else seems to know about. What is it?

That's because "meaningful" means that which fits into the current materialist paradigm. This isn't honest philosophy.

"Meaningful" means definable without quickly falling into circular reasoning. "Meaningful" means definable without implying the phenomenon within the definition. Why is this so hard to understand for you, of all people? And why do you keep making it seem as though I'm trying to insult your philosophy? I'm not, you know, I'm just trying to make sense of it.

It is an irrelevant point. The point hypnagoue was trying to make was the experience of these things are different. There is an experience of dreamless sleep once you wake up from it. Whether it is truly dreamless or not isn't relevant.

I said it was relevant because it shows that there is an ongoing process, and that nothing special is added when dreams, or when one awakens...but we can drop that minor point if you want.

So every time you close your eyes, shutting off all light from your retinas you fall immediately asleep? There is no state where you have your eyes closed and yet you are not asleep? This is getting silly.

I didn't say that. I said the reason I start to observe something other than the blackness of sleep is because I can now see the inside of my room (i.e. light has entered my retinas).

Sleep is different from being awake because the brain is not paying nearly as much attention to what little data it is recieving (hypnagogue and I talked about the brain "paying more attention" to one set of stimuli than another, and yet this is still not what he means by "subjective experience"...can you now understand why I'm so confused about this term?).

I'd like to suggest that Mentat is a zombie and this explains why he isn't curious about how consciousness works.

I am curious about how consciousness works.

And I am a zombie.

This whole conversation makes sense in light of this theory. I recommend that it be discontinued as it is impossible to explain consciousness to a zombie. That's what the hard problem is all about.

Why is it impossible to explain consciousness to a zombie?

That zombie theory is gaining strength.

It is proven by my own testimony: I am a zombie.

Wrong? Bold.

My apologies. I only used it for the economy of words (instead of saying "there is something distinctly missing from what you have said" ).

I'm not sure what the objective is here.

Then I'll make it clear for you: The objective is to explain "subjective experience" to Mentat. If you cannot do this, then you should (for the sake of being reasonable) at least admit the possibility that it doesn't exist at all. Then, to continue on this path of "rationalism", you should think of how it is that something can be assumed to exist right from the start, without even a rudimentary definition that isn't logically circular, and yet the argument not be an empty straw-man.[/color]

Do you understand the objective now? It is to be rational about all things.

 

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Canute
Mentat

One last shot.

Consciousness can be defined perfectly well. I don't know where you get the idea that it cannot be. It is generally defined in the literature as 'what it is like' or similar. No problem.

First of all, I don't where you get the idea that I don't think consciousness is defined. It's "subjective experience" that isn't defined, "consciousness" makes perfect sense.

Secondly, consciousness is not defined as "what it is like", "subjective experience" is.

Finally, "what it is like" is self-assuming, ergo: circular. It assumes the experience of "being" right within the definition of "experience" itself. That is bad logic (and I am rather shocked that you don't see that).

Also - if there is scientific explanation of everything then we know it must contain an undefined term, this follows from common sense, since a theory of everything must be circular, and Goedel, for as Stephen Hawking points out in 'The Death of Physics', the explanation must have a indefinable meta-system.

What does this have to do with the subject at hand?

“…since every word in a dictionary is defined in terms of another word…The only way to avoid circular reasoning is a finite language would be to include some undefined terms in the dictionary. Today we must realize that mathematical systems too, must include undefined terms, and seek to include the minimum number necessary for the system to make sense.” Leonard Mlodinow

Quick question: Where are you quoting from? I really like Mlodinow's writing (I've recently read "Euclid's Window"), and would be happy to read anything by him.

As for materialism it is unprovable. This is because it is false.

Did I miss something?!? Why is everyone talking about Materialism now? When did I ever say the explanation had to be Material? I just want a simple definition with extra cheese, and a side order of logical consistency, to go please.

Seriously though, that's all I'm asking for. I don't want to change the world of philosophy, I don't want to prove Materialism (I don't WHY this keeps coming up!), and I don't even really want to explain consciousness right now (I'm holding off on that, because everyone seems to have taken of in a completely different direction than me, and I can't catch up if I don't know where you started from), I just want a definition that is logically consistent to some miniscule extent[/color]. Please.

As for consciousness not being definable then perhaps you'd better write to the scientific community and tell them that they're wasting their time. At the moment there are a huge number of scientists trying to explain what you say we can't talk about.

For the last time Consciousness is definable, it's "subjective experience" that has no meaning. These scientists that you mention are doing the right thing, I applaud them, it's the philosophers who are stuck on this horrendous strawman that I can't comprehend. Where exactly are they getting by assuming something undefined right from the start? How can you denounce Materialism for making "daring assumptions" while you yourself make an assumption that has almost passed into the realm of "completely irrational"?

Please don't take offense at anything I say here, just answer my simple question, please.

If you continue to ignore all the evidence, and all the advice you're getting here then one must conclude then you're a zombie. Please note that the rest of us have subjective experiences.

Are you sure? Please hear me out: How can you know you have something if you can't even define it? You don't even know what it is, and yet you insist that not only you, but everyone else, has it?

That sounds like some of the worst reasoning I've ever heard, but it's not you, there are soooooo many others making the same assumptions. What am I missing?

Yes, I'm a zombie. So what? If you can't explain "subjective experience" to me, who can you explain it to?

I'm sorry that you don't but nothing can be done about it, they are incommensurable so we can't tell you what they are like and you will never know.

There's an interesting statement. So, because I don't participate, myself, in this action/process that you insist all of you do participate in...while being unable to come up with the most simple of definitions - without being logically circular...you're saying I'll never understand because I didn't understand right from the start...hmm.

 

[Fliption]

Originally posted by Mentat
First of all, I don't where you get the idea that I don't think consciousness is defined. It's "subjective experience" that isn't defined, "consciousness" makes perfect sense.

Mentat, take a look at the title of this thread that you started. That's why people are saying "consciousness". Your first post is also littered with the word as well.

Secondly, consciousness is not defined as "what it is like", "subjective experience" is.

This isn't what you said in your first post.

Finally, "what it is like" is self-assuming, ergo: circular. It assumes the experience of "being" right within the definition of "experience" itself. That is bad logic (and I am rather shocked that you don't see that).

Ok, I don't understand this at all. Explain to me what this means AND why it is a problem. With my current level of understanding this seems like an irrelevant point that totally misses the point. You're nitpicking the phrase "what it's like to be". It feels like something to do the things I do. That better?

Did I miss something?!? Why is everyone talking about Materialism now? When did I ever say the explanation had to be Material? I just want a simple definition with extra cheese, and a side order of logical consistency, to go please.

The reason I brought it up, (since you asked) is because you keep saying things like "you of all people ought to understand this" based on my position in the materialism discussion. So I bring it up in this thread to show you that it is not the same thing. The rationale I used in that thread is consistent with the rationale in this one.

Are you sure? Please hear me out: How can you know you have something if you can't even define it? You don't even know what it is, and yet you insist that not only you, but everyone else, has it?

I defined it. But finding a materialist way to describe it to you doesn't mean it doesn't exists to me.

 

[Fliption]

Originally posted by Mentat
Let's stick to the issue at hand: you haven't defined your term, so I can't discuss it with you.

I have.

Define it, or at least make it intelligible, instead of obviously circular, and we will have something to talk about.

Explain why it's circular.

What?! I don't deny that I observe a difference between dreamless sleep and being fully awake. I do indeed observe such a difference. What does that have to do with anything?

Then you have observed subjective experience. You're saying you experienced it but you don't know what it is?

If "love" had no definition, then I could never start "loving" in the first place. As it is, "love" is much more tenably defined than "subjective experience".

Love is subjective experience.

I'm absolutely curious and interested in consciousness. I just happen to have no (current) interest in "subjective experience", because I don't know what it means. Please help me understand what it is, don't just write me off as a lost cause because I can't understand and accept this term a priori.

Ridiculous.

You're dodging the issue, and dredging up an old debate. We can discuss materialism on another thread, and you can feel free to quote me there, but this thread is about consciousness and this "subjective experience" that everyone else seems to know about. What is it?

I'm not dredging it up, you are. You're telling me I ought to think a certain way based on my view in that thread. So I'm showing why this isn't so. Stop saying that and materialism will not be mentioned.

I didn't say that. I said the reason I start to observe something other than the blackness of sleep is because I can now see the inside of my room (i.e. light has entered my retinas).

You just repeated what you said and to me it still reads like you think the difference between being asleep and awake is whether your eyes are open or not.

Why is it impossible to explain consciousness to a zombie?

It can be explained but never fully understood. If you have never been swimming then no amount of description or reseach will ever convey the feeling one gets when swimming.

Do you understand the objective now? It is to be rational about all things.

Could have fooled me.

The objective for the topic in this thread wasn't what I was referring to. I was referring to the few posts where you insinuate that you don't believe any of this necessarily, you just argue it for some other reason. I don't personally understand this(if I even believe it) and it doesn't do much for my patience because I feel like I'm particpating in someone's debating experiment.

 

[hypnagogue]

Mentat, here is another equivalent definition that you may like better.

Subjective experience refers to those phenomena that you can directly observe but which cannot be directly observed by other people observing you. One can observe your behavioral patterns or even your brain functioning, but one cannot observe the particular field of blueness that you observe when you look into the sky. Subjective experience is a private phenomenon, as opposed to any phenomenon that can be considered objective, or public.

 

[Canute]

Originally posted by Mentat
First of all, I don't where you get the idea that I don't think consciousness is defined. It's "subjective experience" that isn't defined, "consciousness" makes perfect sense.

Please explain the difference between subjective experience and consciousness,

Secondly, consciousness is not defined as "what it is like", "subjective experience" is.

They both are. If you don't agree then please write and tell and all those involved in consciousness studies so they stop using this definition.

Finally, "what it is like" is self-assuming, ergo: circular. It assumes the experience of "being" right within the definition of "experience" itself. That is bad logic (and I am rather shocked that you don't see that).

Of course the experience of being is 'within' the definition of experience. It should be obvious that it has to be. Are you seriously suggesting that it shouldn't be?

What does this have to do with the subject at hand?

An explanation of everything must have an undefined term in it. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the consciousness is it.

Quick question: Where are you quoting from? I really like Mlodinow's writing (I've recently read "Euclid's Window"), and would be happy to read anything by him.

That's where the quote came from.

Did I miss something?!?

No offense, but there's almost nothing you have not missed.

Why is everyone talking about Materialism now? When did I ever say the explanation had to be Material? I just want a simple definition with extra cheese, and a side order of logical consistency, to go please.

If you don't acknowledge the existence of subjective experience then you are a materialist/physicalist.

Seriously though, that's all I'm asking for. I don't want to change the world of philosophy, I don't want to prove Materialism (I don't WHY this keeps coming up!), and I don't even really want to explain consciousness right now (I'm holding off on that, because everyone seems to have taken of in a completely different direction than me, and I can't catch up if I don't know where you started from), I just want a definition that is logically consistent to some miniscule extent[/color]. Please.

You seem to completely miss the point here. There is no scientific definition of consciousness! (And IMHO there never will be one). This is because of the hard problem, which entails that science cannot prove the existence of consciousness (aka subjective experience).

However in consciousness studies the most widely used definition for consciousness (aka subjective experience) is 'what it is like'. These are brutal facts and there's really no point in continuing to deny them.

For the last time Consciousness is definable,

Not according to science it isn't. Perhaps you know better.

it's "subjective experience" that has no meaning.

So there is nothing that it's like to be you then? I don't believe a word of it.

These scientists that you mention are doing the right thing, I applaud them, it's the philosophers who are stuck on this horrendous strawman that I can't comprehend.

It's impossible that you can miss the point so completely and so consistently. People who take the trouble to think about consciousness and brains conclude there is a hard problem, some of them are philosophers, some of them are scientists and some of them are neither. Do you think science and philosophy are not connected?

Where exactly are they getting by assuming something undefined right from the start?

What assumption?

How can you denounce Materialism for making "daring assumptions" while you yourself make an assumption that has almost passed into the realm of "completely irrational"?

What assumption was that?

Please don't take offense at anything I say here, just answer my simple question, please.

How many times must I answer your simple question before you start listening? Do you argue that the Earth is flat as well, or do you specialise in consciousness studies?

Are you sure? Please hear me out: How can you know you have something if you can't even define it?

Yes - that nicely sums up the hard problem

Again, more slowly, consciousness (aka subjective experience) is 'what it is like'.

If there was a scientific defintion there would not be a hard problem - can't you see this? Why do you think Francis Crick argues that we should inefinitely postpone defining it scientifically?

You don't even know what it is, and yet you insist that not only you, but everyone else, has it?

I fear for your sanity if you think you're not conscious.

That sounds like some of the worst reasoning I've ever heard, but it's not you, there are soooooo many others making the same assumptions. What am I missing?

A heap of neurons and subjective experiences by the sound of it.

Yes, I'm a zombie. So what? If you can't explain "subjective experience" to me, who can you explain it to?

It is impossible to explain subjective experiences. This is why having sex explained to you is not as much fun as having it, and why it's no fun at all for a zombie.

There's an interesting statement. So, because I don't participate, myself, in this action/process that you insist all of you do participate in...while being unable to come up with the most simple of definitions - without being logically circular...you're saying I'll never understand because I didn't understand right from the start...hmm. [/B]

Frankly I have no idea why you don't understand it. You're the first person I've met who doesn't.

 

[Fliption]

Originally posted by Canute
You seem to completely miss the point here. There is no scientific definition of consciousness! (And IMHO there never will be one). This is because of the hard problem, which entails that science cannot prove the existence of consciousness (aka subjective experience).

If there was a scientific defintion there would not be a hard problem - can't you see this? Why do you think Francis Crick argues that we should inefinitely postpone defining it scientifically?

This has been exactly my point. I stated this several posts earlier and the response I got was "are you joking?" But this IS the issue we're having here. If we can only get more than 5 minutes of thought on it.

What's ironic about this whole thing is that Mentat is using the hard problem of consciousness and the fact that we can't prove he has subjective experiences to play dumb. He thinks he is proving it is logically inconsistent but the only thing he is doing is demonstrating the nature of the hard problem. Anyone can take advantage of the hard problem and deny they are conscious but this just seems so dishonest to me.

To define something means that we are trying to relate this thing to other words and concepts that we already have defined. This is why I used the term "toolbox" earlier to illustrate that there are only so many words that we have to describe something. In order for there to be a scientific definition, we would have to have a toolbox of scientific concepts that we could build into a definition that would represent consciousness. It seems you'd need a reductive understanding of consciousness to do this. This can't be done and it is exactly what the hard problem is. Hypnagogue has been arguing all along that the current paradigm, (the toolbox), needs additional tools.

 

[Canute]

Yes - completely agree. But Mentat isn't the only one to be 'playing dumb' in one way or another. Even now I don't think the scientific and academic community have really woken up to the implications of the hard problem.