Can science explain consciousness?
The problem of consciousness, however, is radically different from any other scientific problem. One of the reasons is that it is unobservable. Of course, scientists are used to dealing with the unobservable. Electrons, for example, are too small to be seen but can be inferred. In the unique case of consciousness, the thing to be explained cannot be observed. We know that consciousness exists not through experiences, but through the immediate feeling of our feelings and experiences.
So how can we scientifically explain consciouness?
So how can we scientifically explain consciouness?
Comments (56)
Do you see the muddle? The standard for electrons is inference but your standard for consciousness is observation.
A scientific approach to consciousness is exactly analogous to any other subject of scientific study: you model the thing as best you can based on observations (not necessarily observations of the thing itself), you draw hypotheses from your model about future observations (prediction), then you make those observations (test), then go back and refine the model. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Models_of_consciousness?wprov=sfla1
To observe consciousness, directly or indirectly, you have to first robustly define what it is, and then determine differences in behaviour between something that has it and something that doesn't. This is difficult because people struggle to agree on what the thing is. It's even more difficult because people tend to insist that, whatever the scientific model of consciousness arrived at, there must be, as a matter of taste, a bit left over that is the bit we actually mean, whatever it might be (a la the hard problem of consciousness), and this bit can't be defined robustly in scientific terms (and therefore probably isn't real).
In our Philosophy of Science class, we have seen that Science focuses on the object, while the totality of reality is an interaction between subject and object. Looking at Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem, we could say that science is a closed system, and that a statement such as "I am conscious" is known to be true but cannot be verified within the scientific system.
Does it mean that science is not useful in some cases? or it is just a tool for modelling the observable world. Like any tool, it works best when used for its intended purpose.
Don't you think that we underestimate the challenge of understanding the nature of consciousness by being convinced that we simply need to continue to examine the physical structures of the brain to determine how they produce consciousness?
Thank you.
To explain an event, it is necessary to define the event exactly in observable terms and to deduce it from a set of general laws and factual circumstances. The explanation must then be tested by predicting the recurrence of the event in the context of these - or similar - laws and circumstances.
Science in its present state (neurology and psychology, basically) cannot explain the specific phenomena that are called consciousness. Science can determine the general framework in which the phenomena of consciousness occur, but it cannot predict them.
It is not easy to understand whether this inability is due to intrinsic difficulties of the phenomenon called consciousness or to the current state of science. Much hope was pinned on definitive and immediate progress in this field in the 90'. It has not been achieved. Given the implications of the problem I am not sure whether this delay and its possible blockage can be beneficial or pernicious for humanity.
Nevertheless, scientists continue to study the issue with partial success. It is to be hoped that such progress will serve to prevent certain mental and social illnesses and not to control other people's minds without their consent. Both are possible.
As for the subjective, it is neither good nor bad. It is the inevitable outcome of the current situation. If we do without it we will not understand anything of actual facts of consciousness. That is why the subjective element must be included in explanations of consciousness.
Actually, objective reality is a derived product of subjective construction. In essence, we trick ourselves into believing that the empirical entities we study as scientists can be focused on independently of the conscious process that constitutes them. But even though we are not aware of it, when we study an object ‘out there’ in the world , we are always implicitly studying consciousness. Studying consciousness is not a question of switching our gaze from the outer to the inner , but from the generic and superficial to the intricate. Phenomenology provides a method for doing this.
The empirical entities (phenomena) that science studies exist outside of scientific theories. It is another thing if the concepts that science uses to study them were absolutely objective, absolutely independent of the scientific theories that explain them. Concepts are a mixture of objectivity and subjectivity. Broadly speaking, we can say that some concepts are very objective or less subjective than others. We trust the objectivity of those concepts that have been repeatedly tested and distrust the objectivity of those that do not meet rigorous criteria.
If these things are not made clear, it seems that there is neither objectivity nor subjectivity. This is not true either.
If you take a look at e.g. the phenomenology of quantum mechanics, you'll see that science is already invested in this arena.
Quoting alphahimself
To say that science is not useful, e.g. in describing consciousness, is to posit the existence of a thing that leaves no discernible mark on the universe around it. But since such a thing could never make its existence known, it as, at best, a negligible thing. If consciousness does effect its environment, then it is amenable to scientific study.
Quoting alphahimself
Ah, well the technological viability of an experiment is a separate thing. It is perfectly possible that a scientific theory is only testable in principle, and that the technological requirements to perform the test will always be beyond us.
A more likely challenge for consciousness is probably ethics. Corpses don't have it, and we can't eliminate the possibility that only humans have a vital component of it. There might be experiments within our capability that we ought not to perform for ethical reasons.
Saying they are a mixture doesn’t make things clear.
Objectivity is a matter of intersubjective agreement on events which appear in different guises to each of us. We learn to treat our own vantage on an event as just an aspect of the ‘objective’ object , the ‘same’ object for all of us, when in fact it is never ‘same for all’ except as an abstraction, albeit a very useful abstraction. What is certain is that for each of us experience of that world is shaped by constrains and affordances such that some ways of interacting with the world are more useful relative to our purposes that others. The criteria of objectivity change over time as cultural an scientific practices change.
The issue of how consciousness can be physically modeled has been discussed at length by me and some additional posters to this forum, and I think we made some significant general progress. If you want a brief selection of casual reading material on the subject, look at my threads:
Qualia and Quantum Mechanics
Qualia and Quantum Mechanics, The Sequel
Qualia and Quantum Mechanics, The Reality Possibly
I'm turning into something of a quantum consciousness missionary lol Be interested to know what anyone thinks...anyone at all...(echo)
I think you got that backwards. You dont want to model subjectivity on the physical but show how models of the the physical emerge out of subjective
processes.
In my opinion, how models of the physical emerge out of subjective processes is simply the question of how unconscious aspects of mind give rise to the rational structuralizing of theory, which is a subset of the issue regarding how consciousness can be physically modeled. Did I grasp your meaning accurately?
I’m still working on my grasp of your grasp of my grasp of your grasp.
graspastic!
I think he had the general idea with his microtubule hypothesis, but my theory is that it is additive superpositions amongst the entangled wavicles of some incompletely known class of molecules, a kind of quantum resonance, that gives rise to qualia in the brain by a similar mechanism to additive properties of the visible light spectrum, and the electric field of the brain is this mechanism's signature, one form of a much vaster coherence field phenomenon that allows consciousness to exist beyond the realm of humanlike nervous tissue. You can read about it in the posts I linked to!
The first quote frames the problem in respect of modern scientific method, in particular:
[quote=Thomas Nagel, Pp35-6]The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. [/quote]
This basic idea was also the subject of Philip Goff's recent book, Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness (although I haven't read it.)
Nagel also presented a precis of his book in a New York Times OP.
Of course, none of this rules out a scientific account of consciousness, but both Phillip Goff and Thomas Nagel say that if this is to occur, it requires a re-definition of some fundamental axioms of scientific method, specifically, the axiom that such explanations can only be founded in objective terms. Because the cardinal issue of consciousness, is that in studying it, we are not apart from what we seek to know. This insight was also behind the origin of Husserl's phenomenological method, but it has been practically universally neglected in English-speaking philosophy since Ryle.
“Many philosophers have argued that there seems to be a gap between the objective, naturalistic facts of the world and the subjective facts of conscious experience. The hard problem is the conceptual and metaphysical problem of how to bridge this apparent gap. There are many critical things that can be said about the hard problem (see Thompson&Varela, forthcoming), but what I wish to point out here is that it depends for its very formulation on the premise that the embodied mind as a natural entity exists ‘out there' independently of how we configure or constitute it as an object of knowledge through our reciprocal empathic understanding of one other as experiencing subjects. One way of formulating the hard problem is to ask: if we had a complete, canonical, objective, physicalist account of the natural world, including all the physical facts of the brain and the organism, would it conceptually or logically entail the subjective facts of consciousness? If this account would not entail these facts, then consciousness must be an additional, non-natural property of the world.
One problem with this whole way of setting up the issue, however, is that it presupposes we can make sense of the very notion of a single, canonical, physicalist description of the world, which is highly doubtful, and that in arriving (or at any rate approaching) such a description, we are attaining a viewpoint that does not in any way presuppose our own cognition and lived experience. In other words, the hard problem seems to depend for its very formulation on the philosophical position known as transcendental or metaphysical realism. From the phenomenological perspective explored here, however — but also from the perspective of pragmatism à la Charles Saunders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as its contemporary inheritors such as Hilary Putnam (1999) — this transcendental or metaphysical realist position is the paradigm of a nonsensical or incoherent metaphysical viewpoint, for (among other problems) it fails to acknowledge its own reflexive
dependence on the intersubjectivity and reciprocal empathy of the human life-world.
Another way to make this point, one which is phenomenological, but also resonates with William James's thought (see Taylor, 1996), is to assert the primacy of the personalistic perspective over the naturalistic perspective. By this I mean that our relating to the world, including when we do science, always takes place within a matrix whose fundamental structure is I-You-It (this is reflected in linguistic communication: I am speaking to You about It) (Patocka, 1998, pp. 9–10). The hard problem gives epistemological and ontological precedence to the impersonal, seeing it as the foundation, but this puts an excessive emphasis on the third-person in the primordial structure of I–You–It in human understanding. What this extreme emphasis fails to take into account is that the mind as a scientific object has to be constituted as such from the personalistic perspective in the empathic co-determination of self and other. The upshot of this line of thought with respect to the hard problem is that this problem should not be made the foundational problem for consciousness studies. The problem cannot be ‘How do we go from mind-independent nature to subjectivity and consciousness?' because, to use the language of yet another philosophical tradition, that of Madhyamika Buddhism (Wallace, this volume), natural objects and properties are not intrinsically identifiable (svalaksana); they are identifiable only in relation to the ‘conceptual imputations' of intersubjective experience.” (Empathy and Consciousness)
I think all indications are that quantum biology will provide very effective physicalist models of subjective consciousness.
Quoting Joshs
My opinion is that an account of subjective consciousness based on quantum physics will not diminish the sense that subjective experience is real or important in any way because subjective experience is nonetheless a causal aspect of reality. If anything, it will dissolve the sense that mind is intangible and objects are tangible to create a synthetic concept of tangible substance as both mind and matter. It overcomes an antiquated philosophical duality that gives rise to our materialist/spiritualist divide, not the cognizance of causal multiplicity and separate theoretical/practical domains. If anything, it will be a cool additional facet of self-knowledge.
Are "things" observable?
If so, in what sense are they observable?
Indeed, but it is not simple intersubjectivity, a simple matter of perception. The general criterion is what has been called the "adversity" index. That is, the resistance that the world opposes to our desires and practices. If it were not for this resistance, everything would be subjective and we would live an existence in solitude. Other criteria that are commonly used are derived from this one. Intersubjectivity, repetition, prediction, quantification... etc.
I don't see what is confusing. The application of the criterion and the objects to which objectivity is attributed may vary with our knowledge of them. The criterion does not change. And neither does our confidence in the existence of certain common objects throughout history and the world. A stone is always a stone and it is there. It is an immediate fact that only a fool -or a philosopher- would question.
How does that have bearing on the OP?
If you would propose a theory of quantum consciousness can you explain why the observer effect in the double slit experiment occurs in response to experimental apparatus - as well as conscious observation. Inability to explain this would seem fatal to any such idea.
"Of course the introduction of the observer must not be misunderstood to imply that some kind of subjective features are to be brought into the description of nature. The observer has, rather, only the function of registering decisions, i.e., processes in space and time, and it does not matter whether the observer is an apparatus or a human being; but the registration, i.e., the transition from the "possible" to the "actual," is absolutely necessary here and cannot be omitted from the interpretation of quantum theory." - Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, p. 137
From what I've read, the observer effect is not initiated by human perception but rather the detection sensor placed at the slit. This dissolves the interference pattern and you get two bright bands on the florescent screen behind the slits instead. It seems that what is going on isn't an observer effect at all but rather decoherence induced by interaction of a thermodynamically complex device with the quantum process.
This is seen in cells also. The most studied example is probably enzyme catalysis (specifically hydrolysis by amino acid metabolizing proteases), shown by multiple sources of indirect experimental evidence to involve quantum processes, perhaps tunneling. The reaction is buffered from surrounding thermodynamic noise with its decoherence effects in order to reach extremely rapid rates, one of the functional roles of an active site. Any chemical process in nature that occurs too fast to be accounted for by diffusion alone probably has quantum features, but quantum weirdness can be dampened in large collections of particles.
Conversely, many circumstances exist where quantum processes trump thermodynamic entropy on the macroscopic level, an example being electrical conductance, where the electrons move as particles through a copper wire at 10% the speed of light but simultaneously transmit a signal via entanglement and tunneling at 90% the speed of light. This extremely rapid "flow" through naturally occurring matter has not been explained in total, though we witness it so clearly in some contexts that it is almost taken for granted.
My theory is that substance itself transcends the dimensionality of sense-perception, but in some specific circumstances that are found on Earth it becomes more parameterized, as four dimensional, three dimensional and two dimensional, with our sense organs and bodies tailored for especially salient instances such as electromagnetic radiation traveling through the atmosphere nearly as if in a vacuum, macroscopic objects subjected to gravity, molecules fitting together like a hand in a glove, etc. In these cases, our perception exaggerates the phenomena to an extent, just as vision enhances the contrast between light and dark, is fooled by shadows, and distorts lines and shapes depending on their surroundings. Our perception can create an illusion that makes us sense degrees of demarcation in nature which don't actually exist.
So supradimensionality flows into lower dimensional form within many conditions, sort of like a cloud of polarity with relatively more definite shape, and our bodies exaggerate some of these states to give us an experience of tangible or inert objects which do not actually exist. What fundamentally goes on is more resemblant of quantum physics than the classical physics that is like an optical illusion.
How could you possibly understand the concepts you're using, and not have heard of the observer effect? From someone who was really capable of understanding these concepts, I would have expected something along the lines of - "my theory of consciousness is not dependent on the observer effect. Rather, the quantum qualities of consciousness are ....blah, blah, blah." Instead, it's like you googled the observer effect, and quoted wikipedia. Who are you trying to fool? Yourself??
Sounds balanced.
Apparently he didn't learn any science from the 20th century. Objective spacetime has been dead for more than a century.
In the double-slit experiment its not an observer effect, its quantum decoherence induced by the experimental devices. Instrumentalism, not woo. Maybe a fallacious analogy is being made between the double-slit and something else that is an observer effect. Obviously qualia have causal influence in nature via the mind, maybe that's what you mean.
Werner Heisenberg thought a potential subjective interpretation of the observer effect in the double slit experiment relevant to address. Perhaps...
Quoting Enrique
...was what he meant! But my guess is Heisenberg says what he means, and uses intelligible language to say it, and jargon where unavoidable. You, on the other hand give me five paragraphs of unintelligible jargon, that don't answer the question I asked. What am I to infer? Did you download a quantum mechanics jargon generator?
Quoting David Mo
I looked up adversity index and couldn’t find anything about it. It sounds like you’re talking about the fact that our perceptions and cognitions are shaped by constraints and affordances offered by the world that we encounter. This is what keeps us from a radical relativism. Some ways of perceiving the world are more useful than others because of these constraints and affordances. But I don’t agree with the naive realist position that it makes sense to talk about an object as if those constraints and affordances are perceived identically by everyone , that is, that they are a pure function of objects in the world rather than a relationship between the knower and the known. This is not to say that we cannot achieve intersubjective pragmatic agreement on the objectivity of objects in order to do science but it is important to recognizes that the ‘same object for all’ is only a useful abstraction , and subject to change as science evolves.
Quoting David Mo
The other groups that would question the coherence of making subject-independent claims about objects are researchers in autopoietic self-organizing systems theory( Francisco Varela, Thompson) which includes biologists as well as psychologists, 4EA cognitive psychologists (embodied, enactive,embedded, extended and affective, Shaun Gallagher, Jan Slaby, Di Paulo, Andy Clark, Matthew Ratcliffe ) and workers in perceptual psychology ( Alva Noe ) and AI( Riccardo Manzotti:
https://res.mdpi.com/d_attachment/philosophies/philosophies-04-00039/article_deploy/philosophies-04-00039.pdf )
You should take a peek at their research.
lol, you could try reading about the terms I used. Was it "Earth" that threw you? Looking back at that I guess its kind of technical, but reading some articles about the terminology should be sufficient, the concepts are all drawn from books I've read by respected scientists. Deconstructing the history of quantum physics is beyond my ability. If some specific aspect of what I wrote is indecipherable to you at this point, I'll be more than willing to attempt a clarification if you want. I've been analyzing this topic awhile and maybe lost track of where earlier stages of comprehension are at.
Tell me how quantum mechanics explains how there's a 'something' looking out through my eyeholes.
What, in no more than a dozen words, is the relationship between the two?
Have you been watching too much MTV? lol Electric field of brain as registered by EEG interacts with quantum fields of entangled particles (qualia) in additive way (like wavelengths of the visible light spectrum), to produce qualitative experience (sounds, images, feels) in the head. Horribly verbose, I realize, but does that make sense?
So, here's my question: are you saying the electric fields of the brain are effected? Or is it the quantum fields that register changes? Or the entangled particles?
The field generated by massive electrical flux in the brain is the subjective medium, a binding agent for the mind's perceptual "space". This electric field mutually interacts with quantum fields of entangled molecules (qualia) by the same mechanism as additive wavelength to result in the substance of qualitative experience, what philosophy has traditionally referred to as "ineffable" (but not any more!).
The key points are that qualia can exist outside the brain, perception extends beyond the confines of the head, and qualia together with experiencing can be embodied in forms completely different than carbon-based tissue.
Why does entanglement generate qualia? This also exists in a laboratory and in a much purer form. And every high-voltage line generates more electric fields than a brain. Consequently, a laboratory that studies entanglement and is under a high-voltage line would have to have qualia.
I think it is fair to talk about a divide within theories of consciousness that runs parallel to that within cognitive science in general . On one side are those writers, like Daniel Dennett , who adhere to a representationalist or computationalist model of cognition. On the other are researchers in autopoietic self-organizing systems theory( Francisco Varela, Thompson) and 4EA cognitive psychologists (embodied, enactive,embedded, extended and affective).
The latter group abandons representationalism
and computationalism for a more radically interactionist foundation. Their inspirations are phenomenologists like Husserl , Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger , and Wittgenstein. This group doesn’t belei e that subjective experience is a causal aspect of reality because they reject the very model of causation that is implied by talking in this way about the relation between the subjective and the objective.
Heidegger pointed out that quantum theory rests on philosophical pre-suppositions that amount to a method originating with Galileo establishing what is knowable empirically as what is objective , and establishing objectivity on the basis of identities in motion within a time-space frame, a geometrical mathematical space. Even though what constitutes objective entities for physics has changed much since Galileo, the field has maintained these pre-suppositions , which is why almost all physicists today declare themselves to be realists, and many of them still believe that time is only a added human subjective dimension that isnt intrinsic to the physical world in itself.
key questions concerning what it is that consciousness does, what are its variations and its biological origins , how to understand pathologies of consciousness ( aphasia, autism, amnesia , etc) , how to model the relation between affect and cognition : these are all determined by which model of cognition one adheres to.
Penrose almost completely ignores the most vital and promising work by people like Damasio, Gallagher and Noe, which isnt surprising given that his background is not psychology. What we would end up in terms of a model of consciousness by following Penrose’s route is what we started out with , a quantum calculating machine.
From the vantage of enactivist thinking. , you cannot understand consciousness in all its richness without recognizing its bias in the dynamics of the self-organization of living systems , the fact that body-environment interaction has the feature of structural coupling in which the organism alters its world
at the same time that the world affects the organism. This reciprocity between inside and outside not only is key to understanding of consciousness but indicates that at some point physicists will find it necessary to alter their own models of the ‘physical’.
My preliminary guess is that additive wavelengths of entangled particles are qualia, existing everywhere, but usually flit in and out of existence so rapidly as matter moves that they don't get much perceived. It requires a higher order of organization such as that found in the brain to convert this into experience. The range of possible qualia is hugely vast, and the brain is tailored for responding to many specific kinds and tuning out the rest. The electrical field of a high-voltage line for instance must be mostly beyond the portion of the spectrum that registers and does not substantially disrupt perception.
Quoting Enrique
Molecules are two or more atoms. Does entanglement occur in molecules? I didn't know you could just hop over the quantum/macroscopic fence like that! That changes everything!!!
A constructive feedback certainly exists between physical modeling and introspective phenomenology: each new development in either domain gives its complement a better idea of what to look for on the psychological level. They should be collaborators, not rivals, and may one day merge.
Quoting counterpunch
If you're interested, you should look at the research on photosynthetic reaction centers, entanglement systems spanning many chlorophyll molecules which produce an emergent quantum architecture responsive to light. That's where I got the idea of additive wavelengths taking effect on a large scale in the brain.
Its not simply an utter dissolution of the quantum/thermodynamic barrier. Organisms as we know them are trillions of pockets of quantum machinery in a thermodynamic chassis saturated by nonlocal reality.
I do not understand the connection between additive wavelengths and the subjective impression of the smell of roses.
No one understands that yet, but additive wavelengths or "quantum resonances" must exist in ways that are not entirely visual, and that's the substance of our nonoptical sensations. Some of the quantum mechanisms involved are no doubt located in the sense organs themselves as in magnetoreception.
I certainly agree with that sentiment.
In response to a participant who denied the possibility of objective knowledge (in the case of consciousness).
In that case, the question is: Can consciousness be studied as an object (similar to a stone)? The answer is: obviously not. Where is the difference: the behaviour of a stone is predictable, that of a consciousness is not.
Can any objective - partial - knowledge about consciousness be obtained? The answer is yes. And the final question: how far does our objective knowledge of consciousness go? This is the question. All the rest is muddling along.
Yes, but not yet.
Prospects don't look much better for human beings. Also, what sense does it make to say that you are objectively explaining something subjective? Something's missing in that idea.
We understand what a nematode does in terms of the physiology of behavior, its simply stimulus and response between cells. What we don't understand is how or to what extent qualitative experience maps onto cells, what the mechanisms of subjectivity are. A vast spectrum of subjectivity must exist that corresponds to different arrays of nervous tissue within differing organisms and during discrepant cognitive states. Its all got to be molecular, but we haven't identified the correct molecules and their collective functions.
Maybe we should give mice LSD or shrooms and then study their brains, what do you think, good idea? lol
Ha. Maybe, I don't have any moral problems with that. :p
The issue, as I see it, is what does it even mean to say that an experience "maps" on to cells, or to brain matter even? Maybe an optimal science will say something like, the basal ganglia interacting with brocas area at time T3 causes the prefrontal cortex to activate in this specific pattern when it sees a Blue Jay.
Ok, fine. But the experiential quality of the blue jay is not explained by these types of brain experiments. When someone looks at a brain at T3, there is nothing blue about it, there isn't a bird inside and so on. Sure, it sounds silly, but that's the problem. It's like the difference between seeing a red rose and then speaking about light waves. Sure, light waves are involved in me seeing the rose, but they say nothing about that colour I see in the world, which we call "red".
Though to be fair, science can't explain gravity, it's a given. It's behavior is studied and predicted, but what it is, we don't know. From this perspective, it's all a mystery.
You know, I think one of the reasons the Dennetts of the world want to deny the reality of conscious experience, is BECAUSE it's a mystery. I mean, they sense that, deep down, their own being, their own mind, is actually very mysterious - and they hate that! That's why they're also 'evangelical atheists' - they want a world in which every little thing has a 'scientific explanation', it's what they think 'being rational' is. :wink:
But what if red isn't light waves bouncing off the rose, interacting with neurons (which are decidedly nonredlike), but rather light waves bouncing off a quantum wave rose, perturbing qualia waves in the brain, which are redlike! That's a profound difference. It smacks of a unified theory of reality, which is exciting. Sure, its not going to describe a form of experience that proves to be indescribable, but being optimistic, it might just explain EVERYTHING on some level!
Well, that would be an interesting option. How far would the qualia waves go? It's one thing to say that it is redlike would it also be roselike? Depending on how far this goes, you'd end up with the "two worlds" problem of naïve realism: a world "out there" and a similar one in my head.
It does sound much better than NCC though.
I think so too. I still have trouble believing that he (and the Churchlands', etc) actually think that consciousness is an illusion. It's a bit like insisting human beings are horses or something.
But then, what is the bottom line? For me, there was a good reason Wittgenstein both denied talk about ethics at the foundational level, yet posited divinity (admitting it was indeed odd to do so. Kierkegaard taught him how odd this was).
Rick Roderick turned to his psychiatrist once and asked, "Why are we born to suffer and die?" An excellent question, to which the psychiatrist replied, "?!#$%&&$#."
It is THE question of consciousness. All others "beg" this question implicitly, the question being, why bother at all even asking? Our metaphysical haunt is not, good lord!: Dualism or Monism or whether ideas subsist in the Real, or if human consciousness is reducible or derivative; it is value and its meta-value consummation. Buddhists essentially understood this long ago. I suspect the Hindus and their mysterious metaphysics, sans the mythology, were closer to the truth, though: there is much, much more to our consciousness, or if you like, to heaven and earth than in your philosophy, Horatio.
You seem to have hit the nail on the head there. Consciousness is, for each and everyone, wholly a first person experience, information gathered thence serving as a benchmark for deducing its presence beyond the self.
If so, the problem is are we sure that what we believe are the physical correlates of consciousness are really that? Does a man walking into a bar imply that he's thinking about having a drink? Not necessarily, right? If so, how deep does the rabbit hole go? If behavior can be incongruous with thoughts, can it also be that behavior can occur in the total absence of thought?
Are p-zombies possible?
I'm going to argue that they are and it goes like this: Take into account the fact that if the complexity of calculus is real and actual then the simplicity of arithmetic too is real and actual i.e. a certain level of complexity implies a lower level simplicity. Since p-zombies are simpler (they're lacking consciousness) than normal humans, they should be possible. It follows then that physicalism is false.
Since science, as of now, is limited to the physical, current scientific paradigms won't be able to explain consciousness.
Yea, but these are inseparably intertwined. Value isn’t an ineffable internality, it’s a function of intersubjective patterns of relation , and questions concerning dualism and monism, the real and the relative are directly relevant to questions of value.
But then, the "meta" end of value is just this ineffable "property" or as Moore put it, non natural property. Putting value into its contexts, theoretical, practical, invites discussion about everything BUT value. Is value Real? Then, what is real, and then follows the categorial move to "totalize" (Levinas borrowed from Heidegger, I think) which is away from the truly mysterious nature of value (that is, the pains, joys, miseries, celebrations, fascinations, interests, anxieties, terrors, and so on).
Perhaps value is effective in evolutionary accounts. No doubt. But what IS it that we are talking about that is so good for reproduction and survival? What are the descriptive features of, say, being tortured, qua the tortuous experience itself?
Value is not ineffable any more than the ‘objective ‘ is transcendentally true. Moore was a Kantian, still caught up in a subject-object , feeling-thinking split. Value cannot in any shape or form be separated from that which would supposedly be understandable or existent independently of it. The same is true of the relation between affectivity and intentional meaning, which is what we’re really talking about here anyway. Heidegger realized precisely this, which is why he didn’t think of ‘value’ as mysterious in some way that cognition or perception is not. Value is befindlichkeit, how we find ourselves in the world, how things have pragmatic meaning and significance for us.
I think it is right to say things are, as I take Heidegger to claim, of a piece: concepts, pragmatics, value, meaning (Dewey said the same); and it is not my intention to take metavalue as some kind of impossible ontology apart from all entanglements (which would the worst kind of dualism I suppose). I put matters of drawing ontological lines between things in suspension, but would like to take an analytical look at experience just to see what is there, plainly. Take a lighted match, apply it to the finger, and observe, apart from all presuppositions that would make a claim to it (which of course would remind one of Husserl, or perhaps of analytic philosophers' concept of qualia, or see Dennett's rather stark use of 'phenomenon' in his paper on qualia, and so on).
I mean, what is it As pain, and I care not at all how hermeneutically entangled it is otherwise, or whether belongs to a temporally structured event in which existence is predelineated, preconceptualized, or whether knowledge is inherently pragmatic. All off the board. It is the screaming pain I wish understand for what it is. I find this: When I break Wittgenstein's maxim to "pass over in silence" the whole affair, I find language that does not speak what value is any more than it can speak the color yellow as yellow. But there is one thing that does issue from the pain, and that is an injunction not to inflict this on to others nor myself. It is an injunction that is not contingent, as if "the world" were speaking, as if it were written on tablets by God.
I suspect this, contradicting myself from earlier, is the only Real ontology.
What is not beyond science is more constrained and formal approximations to consciousness.
We can develop an artificially intelligent life form. The goal would be to use the simple building block and parallelize enough neurons and various types of neural networks so that we can some day be asked the question from this being:
"What makes me conscious?" (or something to that effect)
Then we could answer at least at an empirical level that it's n^r of this neural net conjoined with this that and the other, but perhaps still not really know what it exactly it is in the formula that makes a being understand its own sentience.
When did you first ask yourself this question might be one question? As humans, I don't believe we know. The will to survive has been empirically shown to exist before a baby emerges from the womb (most graphically demonstrated in late term abortions). So it happens early and we don't remember how or why. Some of us believe it's a spiritual thing. Kind of like you are aware that you are part of the canvass of the universe and you have something to paint. I do feel the word 'connection' is ultimately vital to consciousness. That we are connected to something greater.
I'm not sure every human necessarily retains full consciousness to remain a "productive" member of society. Some of us kill our own consciousness at least to some degree, and reduce ourselves to be more like an algorithm. I think we can all relate to that on some level. Consciousness may be more of a degree than an absolute value. We should consider that too.
What do we even mean when we say the minimum threshold that constitutes consciousness?
That can be subjective too. A being can be self ware that it got bitten but not self aware it is sad. Or it could be self aware that its sad but not self aware enough to ponder what sadness is. Ultimately, I would consciousness is introspection which is essentially self evaluation of those parts of us we ourselves do not understand. The ability of a being to evaluate itself?
In attempting to define what is is, that's my answer for now. The degree of which a being can self evaluate it's condition, it's emotion state, what it knows and maybe more importantly evaluates what it doesn't know and can speculate on the unknowns of all these things.