How to answer the "because evolution" response to hard problem?
So when presenting someone not familiar with the hard problem, or even has really grasped it (and is not of a mystical bent), they will quickly answer: "Because evolution has created it!" when asked, "Why is it we have sensations, thoughts, feelings associated with physical processes?".
How does one actually get the point across why this is not an acceptable answer as far as the hard problem is concerned? Can this be seen as answering it, or is it just inadvertently answering an easier problem? If so, how to explain how it isn't quite getting at the hard problem?
How does one actually get the point across why this is not an acceptable answer as far as the hard problem is concerned? Can this be seen as answering it, or is it just inadvertently answering an easier problem? If so, how to explain how it isn't quite getting at the hard problem?
Comments (218)
I've actually never grasped the problem others have tried to convey since I cannot identify anything unexplainable by natural means. So explain the problem to me, since I apparently don't see one.
I read the problem Chalmers presents as a problem of building models.
Can there be a completely 'objective' model that explains the experience of consciousness? The experience is presented as a phenomena, one of the things that needs to be explained.
From that perspective, evolution is not an explanation.
This is exactly the thing I am asking for you all to help with! :razz:
Evolutionary theory can be a step in the direction of dissolving the hard problem , but only if we go beyond classical darwinism and conceive of organic processes not in terms of causal concatenations and re-arrangements of elements under external pressure but in terms of a more radical notion of reciprocal differences of forces.
The thing of the inner sensations of "what it's like" is the thing to be explained. Evolution giving rise to "what it's like" doesn't explain why there is a "giving rise to what it's like", only the advantages to an organism for having it.
You must explain these neologisms but without using other neologisms.
Maybe tell them about how ancient reptiles' jaw bones evolved into the inner ear bones in modern mammals. The study of evolution tells us that it happened, but you need to study the anatomy and physiology of the ear to understand how it works.
There are lots of things evolution created that we cannot answer in the same way as you describe above. I don’t see why consciousness is a special case.
Just because we cannot identify that “why” doesnt mean evolution isnt the answer. The way we find out is through science. Thats our go to for answers, reliable as it is.
Isnt the question why wouldnt evolution be the answer? It has been reliable and good enough for every other trait the human body has, why not that one?
There is the question of how having consciousness is an advantage but being able to say how it happens as a process we can recognize through scientific inquiry is another matter. Being able to see it as a result of development does not mean we understand it as such.
To me all knowledge seems to be part of the same "hard problem": how to explain things outside human congnitive faculties, using the very same faculties. That's nothing but magical to me. So explaining these faculties is not really any different. It's all magic.
But then you’d understand it.
He says
But, he says
----
Quoting schopenhauer1
That passage from Chalmers mentions Nagel. And indeed, Nagel addresses the problem in more detail in his 2012 book Mind and Cosmos, where he says:
[quote=Thomas Nagel]We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe [i.e. the one so successfully described by science], composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.
However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.
So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory.[/quote]
But, all that said, many will basically shrug it off. At which point, one smiles and walks away. :-)
"Because evolution!" is simply a non-sequitur.
Suppose we discover an animal which levitates.
"How does it levitate?", we might ask.
"Because evolution!"
"Uh, yes, I agree, it evolved. But again, how does it levitate?"
And rightly so. Both Chalmers and Nagel show the obvious. Nothing new is said. Just an awe for science is expressed. Chlalmers even suggested a most horrific and scary mental experiment. To replace the neurons one by one with a tiny computer structure... Yeah...Alright. smile and walk away.
During evolution it discovered repulsive gravity.
Looks like a problem of ‘why’ and ‘how’. Meaning we can fairly confidently state that consciousness has arisen through evolutionary processes of some sort (the ‘why’ of consciousness) but we cannot address the intricacies of the process or get to grips with demarcating what exactly is meant by ‘consciousness’ (the ‘how’ of consciousness).
Chalmers philosophical zombie is one of those hypotheticals that many misrepresent/misinterpret. He merely states that it is not hard to imagine creatures on another world living as we do today and doing what we do yet having no consciousness whatsoever (there are no known rules of physics that state this could not be possible). From there it is then a question of asking what is the difference between us and them.
That is the simplest way I know of that outlines the so-called hard problem of consciousness so tell them that. If it doesn’t interest them it doesn’t interest them. The common entrenched reactions of many in my experience on forums like this is to shout ‘fantasy’ and walk away … let them walk away.
Evolution, from the givens, lacks a goal - it would sooner produce a brainless critter than a lifeform with a gigantic brain.
Brains/minds seem goal-oriented. They have this sense of direction in that they have a vague idea of where they want to be in the future.
True that at the moment the overal objective of brains/minds seem aligned to that of evolution (endless mode/survival game mode), but if you look at some ideas that are doing the rounds in philosophical and other circles e.g. antinatalism, Buddhism, negative utilitarianism, sepukku/harakiri, we see that a split has occurred.
[quote=Eep]Living doesn't mean not dying, dad.[/quote]
Whether this is just a case of an evolutionary Rube Goldberg machine is anyone's guess. I dunno!
Another way is perhaps to focus on the how. Evolution might explain why consciousness evolved, presumably because it confers some functional benefit. Evolutionists about consciousness (emergentists) must start with something they think isn't conscious, say simple organic chemistry sloshing about in a puddle to something they think is conscious, say human beings, and get them to talk about how that transition is accomplished, is it sudden, gradual, exactly what physical systems are relevant, what do those systems have to do to be conscious. When they've answered those questions, ask, "OK, but why can't all that happen anyway without any experiences?"
So can you explain?
The hard problem is due to a seemingly irreparable split between dead matter and subjective consciousness, the ‘feeling of what it is like’ to experience dead matter. I think the root of this split , which can be blamed on Galileo , Descartes and other progenitors of modem science , is the difficulty philosophers have had with modeling movement and change. The way our language is structured inclines us toward giving preference to nouns over verbs, identity over difference. As a result , movement and change are explained by deriving them
from stasis and identity. This worked ok when modeling physical processes, which lend themselves (imperfectly) to description as self-identical entities with properties and attributes. But it was apparent that subjective awareness involved some kind of energetic dynamism that resisted this kind of description. Having no other way to depict identity and change, consciousness was typically treated as a special kind of object or substance, something mysterious and ineffable. Others tried to pretend that it simply didnt exist, and was just a kind of illusion that could be reduced to good old fashioned physical processes.
The first incarnations of evolutionary theory, while giving much greater importance to transformation than pre-Darwinian thought, also derived change from the rule-governed causal behavior of static objects, and so the hard problem remained.
But with approaches in philosophy such as poststructuralism and phenomenology , it became possible to understand the relation between identity and difference in a fresh way. In short, they reversed the priority of identity over difference, arguing that all
processes in nature generate identity as a derived product of differentiations. The static thinking of objects with assigned properties was now recognized to be the illusion.
The upshot here is that the mysteriously inner , ineffable quality we associate with consciousness is nothing inner. It is the experience of differentiation upon differentiation upon differentiation. Neural changes coordinate with bodily processes , which are inextricably embedded within environmental interactions. There is nothing but incessant change and transformation here. More importantly, this holistic dynamism is not confined to living processes, but characterizes what had formerly been thought as as the dead world of physical entities. Objects with properties are only probabilistic extrapolations from continuously differentiating multiplicities. So in a sense , we must trace back the ‘feeling’ dynamism of consciousness to the dynamism of pre-living processes. Subjectivity and perspective are necessary grounds of the physical.
Maybe we could rephrase the question this way: "Why are there non-structured stuffs associated with structures of (causal) relations?" And then the answer might be: "Because the relations are between those stuffs." So, stuffs and relations between them are inseparable. Evolution creates causal structures of high organized complexity and these structures contain stuffs such as the qualia of our consciousness, for example (the feeling of) redness or sweet chocolate taste.
There is an easy answer to your excellent question. The evolution approach to the hard problem in consciousness states the obvious. Consciousness evolved. Right. We know that. But did it evolve in order to propagate genes or memes, as Dawkinskians put it? Is it a sign of fitness?
The view on evolution is based on dogma. All books Dawkins wrote, all approaches to features of life, be it a dream, ethics, sex, even death, are based on
The CENTRAL DOGMA of molecular biology
Dawkins is the modern preacherman of the New Dogma.
Dawkins is the Old Dogma. Steven Rose is the New Dogma.
https://youtu.be/QceGqKZMqIM
The distinction between stuffs and relations is the root of the problem , and is what is driving the Hard Problem.
In order to get past this dualistic thinking it is necessary to deconstruct the notions of identity, substance, qualia, inner feeling, intrinsicality and inherence grounding the idea of ‘stuffs’.
Dunno. Already in electron there is a distinction. The electron contains charge (mind) and couples ti the virtual photon field, to reach out for other electrons or other charged particles. The interaction with other particles is an expression of charge, mind. The nature of charge isn't explained though. Only the electron knows. We could imagine to be one, I guess. Just close your eyes. You're an electron with a face, arms, legs, and charged with a mind!
Is the charge pre-assigned to the electron as a property? Or is the charge created by the interaction?
Actually, I would say that the root of the hard problem of consciousness/qualia is an ontology that focuses on relations inspired by the success of mathematics in science. All mathematics can be reduced to structures built on the set membership relation, which is a composition relation between a part and a whole, where the whole is a set/collection/combination of parts. But when people look at the scientifically successful mathematical equations they may wonder: "Where do they include stuffs like redness or pain? How do such stuffs fit into the equations and why would such stuffs even exist?" But when we realize that the equations describe composition relations between stuffs then it becomes clear that the existence of stuffs is not only natural but also necessary for the existence of any relations.
Not easy, not easy at all.
The subject-object dichotomy is what the Oracle is referring to. We (our minds) seem more outward-directed (other-aware) than inward-directed (self-aware). We appear to have got the hang of the external world - we know how to make nature reveal her secrets to us that is - but of the internal world (our minds), we know very little, and we've only just begun to get a handle on the basics and that's being charitable.
In a sense, if a psychiatrist took a look at the human race as a whole, we're kinda insane (we lack insight into our own condition). The Orcale of Delphi & Socrates were alerting us to the possibility that we could be cuckoo!
[quote=Socrates]The unexamined life is not worth living.[/quote]
In pure set theory (a foundational theory of mathematics) every stuff is structurally a set whose identity is completely defined by its composition, that is by other sets (members) that compose the set. So two electrons are two sets and any relations between them are established by the properties of the compositions of the two sets. Electric charge would be one of the properties of the composition of the electron and electric force would be a (causal) relation between two electrons. Note however that electric force cannot be just a relation between two electrons but also between other sets that compose the structure of a set called spacetime.
The charge is assigned. It's an inherent property. It's the mental load, so to speak. And this charge couples to "virtual" (they're not really virtual) particles (electric charge couples to "virtual" or real (which are just time extended virtual photon) photons).
So the mindcharge reaches out to other mindcharge. Which looks like two material particles interacting.
In QFT, charge is the generator of the A field. Which is kind of misleading as photons sre not generated by charge. Charge couples to already existing virtual photons, which is wrongly pictured as a photon being emitted.
This is the wrong way round.
This sounds like it’s leading toward a kind of panpsychism in the vein of Chalmers: all matter is composed of stuffs just as the psyche is composed of felt stuffs. But this elevating of stuffs to the position of fundamental basis of matter reifies rather than dissolves the hard problem.
There are no such things as stuffs , either in the form of subjective qualia or objective matter. Stuff is a derivative abstraction that has convenient uses in the sciences.
Why? It actually seems consistent with what you wrote here:
By "stuff" I mean something that is not a relation. Are you saying that only relations exist? Or what exists?
Yes! You're right. I thought you see the interaction as a first, from which charge is derived. But they are a simultaneity, a contemporary.
As something different from the answers already provided, that biological evolution has taken place in no way specifies what does, and does not, have consciousness. First off, we know we have consciousness because we experientially know we are conscious (and not because biological evolution tells us so). Secondly, we infer that we acquired the specific forms of our consciousness via evolution. To which I say of course. But how can evolution explain if nematodes (which have a nervous system) have, or don’t have, consciousness? The same question can be asked of any other non-human lifeform, ameba included. Note: all I mean by “consciousness” here is “firsthand experience”.
The occurrence of evolution no more explains the occurrence of consciousness than does the occurrence of change: as in, consciousness occurs because change occurs. Which is to say, it holds no satisfactory explanations regarding the matter. Because it does not explain what does, and does not, have consciousness, it does not explain why consciousness is nor how consciousness comes to be wherever it does.
And when linked to the idea of p-zombies, it may not be a necessity to have "what it's like" aspects to processes.. It is conceivable that animal processes (like nervous systems) can do the exact same things we can measure now, but WITHOUT the attendant "what it's like" inner aspect to it. Of course that is debatable. If it IS a necessity, then we must understand WHY they are intrinsically linked. THAT is the question at hand.
I think the 'what is it like' concept is either incoherent or meaningless. From Nagel's paper, the concept he tried to explain does not really make sense.
P-zombies would be like relations without stuffs, which seems inconceivable to me. Relations alone would be relations between what? Between nothings? Granted, there are relations between relations but if they are not ultimately grounded in stuffs (non-relations), they seem undefined, meaningless.
Why do you think that is the case?
It's all saying the same thing.. which is basically..
X (object process) from the "inside"/metaphysical is experiential and outside is "objectified"/viewed/measured/epistemological thing.
Nagel asks, What is it like to be a bat?
What is it like to be me? I am the things I do and think about. What's the mystery?
Nagel thinks bats are so different from humans that we cannot understand bats. But do we know what is like to be a human; to be what one is? No, not any better than what it is like to be a bat.
Yes, from the "inside" it is the stuff it is, and from the "outside" it has relations to other stuffs. (some of the other stuffs can be regarded as "correlates of consciousness")
I don't think that was his main point that we can't know what it's like to be a bat. Rather it is the idea that there IS a "what it's like to be a bat", EVEN if we don't know exactly what that means. We can sort of speculate (sonar-based, etc.) just like dogs are more smell-based, etc. We can speculate they don't have conceptual thinking etc. but there IS an inner aspect. What is THAT inner aspect? That is the thing to be explained in consciousness.
That is what I am disagreeing with. I don't know what it's like to be the person standing in front of me at the bank, either.
But of course, this doesn't explain much either. It just posits that the "inner aspect" is spread around to everything. It is a position.. an Idealist or Panpsychist one.. but as far as we know, only nervous systems would seem to be correlated with an "inner aspect". Doesn't mean it's true but it does seem odd to say that this dirt or that plant has inner aspects to it. But anything is possible I guess when discussing metaphysics.
Yes, exactly what I am disputing.
Ok, but that isn't his main point.. THAT there is an inner aspect is the problem at hand, not "How is this inner aspect different than mine". The difference of inner aspect doesn't discount that there is an inner aspect.
Again, do not agree. My point is that "inner aspect" is vague or incoherent.
Nagel's point is that a human can know what is like to be a human but not a bat. I do not agree.
It's the most immediate thing.. Unless you ARE a zombie.. you DO have "what it feels like" aspects (tastes, colors, thoughts, emotions, motives, goals, imagination etc.).
I see red. I don't feel myself seeing red.
"I" see red. That's all you need in my book to confirm an inner aspect (other than me actually getting inside your head).
Assuming that a dolphin has firsthand experience of its species-specific senses, what is it like for the dolphin to perceive its surroundings via echolocation? Or for the homing pigeon to perceive the skies via magnetoception? And so forth. It converges the experience of sense-dependent phenomena we ourselves do not experience with the experience of understanding these phenomena in manners that allow the organism to function. This as occurs in firsthand experience.
That’s my understanding of the phrase.
For instance, assuming that a homing pigeon has firsthand experiences of the world, I have no idea what a homing pigeon's awareness of the Earth's magnetic field is like. But I know it wouldn't be visual in the way that I visually perceive the world - for I don't have perceptual awareness of the Earth's magnetic field, be it visually or in any other manner.
Sorry, I don't follow. The designations of inner and outer do not seem correct.
This is, again, confusing the how with the why question by those who answer the question that way. They're answering the how thinking they're providing the why answer. Philosophically, we cannot answer why humans have sensations, consciousness, and feelings. We can only answer the how humans became this way -- through mutation, evolution, etc.
Then this is foolish. The fact that you "see" a color is the question. Why is there "seeing of color", and not just neurons firing and wavelengths of light being filtered etc.? The processes have a "feels like" or "inner aspect". You can say THAT "seeing red" IS the process but then the question is why is THAT process one that has a "sees red" aspect and not other physical processes?
Yep, I agree.
Seems rude.
It seems foolish to say there is no "inner and outer" but maybe prove me wrong. It's as if someone said, "I do not see colors" when they clearly show evidence they do.. Thus misconstruing perhaps what I am asking.. and if evaluated further would realize, "Oh yea, I see this red color when I look at X thing (apple, fire truck, etc.).
It just seems like an incoherent position to me that there could be relations without non-relations (stuffs, or "inner aspects", as you call them).
Yeah but why are non-relations necessarily experiential, other than we know that experience exists in animals?
Yes, only relations exist, and every relation is the creation of a new differentiation.
This thinking is the basis of not only a host of postmodern philosophies but of newer thinking in the cognitive sciences , and perhaps physics.
“...the identity of the thing with itself, that sort of established position of its own, of rest in itself, that plenitude and that positivity that we have recognized in it already exceed the experience, are already a second interpretation of the experience...we arrive at the thing-object, at the In Itself, at the thing identical with itself, only by imposing upon experience an abstract dilemma which experience ignores(p.162).”
(Merleau-Ponty)
You do both simultaneously:
“Although these two sides can be distinguished conceptually, they cannot be separated. It is not as if the two sides or aspects of phenomenal experience can be detached and encountered in isolation from one other. When I touch the cold surface of a refrigerator, is the sensation of coldness that I then feel a property of the experienced object or a property of the experience of the object? The correct answer is that the sensory experience contains two dimensions, namely one of the sensing and one of the sensed, and that we can focus on either.”( Dan Zahavi)
We also can distinguish the mode of givenness of a perception. We can tell whether it is actual , a recollection or something we imagine.
What about the Einzelgänger, who has moved away from any sort of relation? Will he get lost in space, diluted into oblivion, like a single particle in the empty void, only the virtual in the vacuum to play with?
Relations between what?
Maybe I'm misinterpreting or else missing something. So I'll ask: How can the mechanics of biological evolution explain how consciousness comes about when it cannot provide an explanation of what does and does not have consciousness?
Relations between relations. To exist is to make a difference. Deleuze is one of the philosophers articulating this idea:
“ Normally we think of difference as an empirical relation between two things that have a prior identity (‘x is different from y’), but Deleuze takes the concept of difference to a properly transcendental level: the differential relation is not only external to its terms (Bertrand Russell’s empiricist dictum), but it also conditions or determines its terms. In other words, the differential relation becomes constitutive of identity: difference becomes productive and genetic.”
What does and does not have consciousness is an inter-disciplinary topic covered by biology, psychology, and specialized areas such as neurology. Of course, different levels of consciousness exist among living beings. But human consciousness is the most understood -- so I only referred to human consciousness.
And your question has been answered. It's hard to have a discussion when one starts with "what does and does not have consciousness", because we know humans have consciousness.
You're not mentioning philosophy, which I think is of greater importance than the disciplines you've mentioned. The cogito comes to mind on one side of the spectrum. Philosophies such as that of autopoiesis in respect to non-human minds on the other.
Quoting L'éléphant
Sure, but we don't know this via our inferential knowledge of biological evolution, right?
This has to do with the limitations of biological evolution as a system of explanation, and not with our firsthand experiential knowledge of so being conscious.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Long story....
Hegel defined ancient greek metaphysics as natural consciousness and modern (Christian) as self consciousness. I think he is correct. Reading Aristotle one does not see discussion of 'my experience', or subjectivity.
Self consciousness is a form of subjectivity. Why did not Aristotle talk about consciousness--is it a new part of the brain? No.
So I think self consciousness is just a form of consciousness. The "self" is just the modern emphasis on the individual. "I see red" and "I know myself as seeing red" are rhetorically different, but logically both mean, "I see red."
Except such a difference is undefined and therefore doesn't exist. Its supposed definition refers to other definitions that refer to other definitions etc., thus the initial difference is never defined. A difference between differences between differences etc.
Oops, actually, I meant to include Philosophy there. I didn't review my post. But yes, I agree.
Quoting javra
Uhm, yeah that's what I meant -- we do know through the inter-disciplinary studies. Tests and studies show this.
Quoting javra
They do. Let's cite some studies from the medical community. For example, the consciousness of babies is defined as that recognizing the mother's voice and face, then later awareness of body parts, etc. As adults we are aware of our own mortality and what is death. So, we are aware of the future and what happened in the past.
Tell me, what is it that's inadequate as explanation in your opinion? Let's start there.
That’s where probabilistic description comes into play.
‘Postmodern’ quantum mechanics is different so f ways to model how ‘stuffs’ are made from differential relations.
Probability is reducible to well-defined pure sets too, so there is nothing undefined ontologically. Something either exists exactly as it is or it doesn't exist. Probability is just a tool to quantify our epistemic uncertainty.
What you provide is not an explanation of how consciousness comes about via the mechanisms of biological evolution - in brief, natural selection acting upon mutations.
It is of course adequate as an explanation. But, again, it is not an explanation via biological evolution. Biological evolution does not address at which stage of an embryo does the species-specific consciousness takes hold. Nor does it address if gametes are themselves conscious But note that a sperm is well recorded as recognizing direction toward the egg and, furthermore, contact with the egg, at which point the sperm attempts to penetrate the egg. Whether or not this evidences some degree of consciousness on the part of sperm is again not something that biological evolution in any way addresses, much less explains.
Whether all life requires some degree of consciousness (firsthand experience) in order to function or else whether consciousness appears at some point in life's evolution is not something that evolution of itself explains.
Again the issue I'm addressing is biological evolution explaining the how of consciousness. Just that.
Let’s see if you agree with this: I dont go along with writers like Nagel who want to establish some sort of self-identical ‘I’ that accompanies every perception and infuses it with some sort of special feeling of me-ness.
Instead, I think the self is contingent, and constantly changes along along with other aspects of our experience. But I think it’s important to recognize that when we perceive a sound or color or touch sensation , we are not just passively receiving data. What we experience in its actuality is a synthesis that includes our expectations derived from prior experience. That is why two people receiving the same ‘data’ from the world will experience it in slightly different ways. So the feeling of what anything is like will always differ from
person to person. But by the same token, the ‘self’ that projects the expectations which enter into what a sensation is for each of us is always changing. Therefore , what it is like for me to experience the ‘same’ color over time is never the same for me, because I am never the same ‘I’.
No I have not provided you with the how. I've only been talking about examples of consciousness. So, we can proceed then to discuss how biology is the reason why consciousness exists -- as a start.
I've missed our agreed upon definition of consciousness. By common standard, it can be deemed equivelent to awareness, hence to a first person point of view, hence to firsthand experience.
Is this something we agree upon?
BTW, my personal take - which I find not possible to definitively prove - is that consciousness is a staple factor of all lifeforms.
This is a significant change in argument. The OP, to which I responded, addresses evolution as explanation for consciousness - not biology. There's a very distinct difference between the two.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12484/the-decline-of-intelligence-in-modern-humans
I need to revisit those articles, as I'm not sure if they're adequate as sources of how intelligence (hence consciousness) developed.
Biology, evolution -- whatever it takes.
OK. Yet one can have intelligence in the absence of consciousness. Current AI as example. They're not the same.
Is ontological definition the same as determinism? Can a non-deterministic world be defined in the way you describe?
He says in What is it like to be a bat: Therefore the analogical form of the English expression "what it is like" is misleading. It does not mean "what (in our experience) it resembles," but rather "how it is for the subject himself." (footnote 6).
Nagel really never explains what this means and I think the concept is incoherent.
Agree.
Yes. A trained artist literally sees colors other do not. They can, but is a learned skill.
I agree. As different examples, plants and even ameba exhibit intelligent behavior. Are they intelligent? They are alive; and some, such as myself, deem them to have awareness, hence some measure of consciousness.
At any rate, I still hold these questions to not be answerable via biological evolution per se.
Maybe we can agree to disagree ... this with gratitude for your answers.
No, but I think AI will be a different kind of thinking and not merely computing.
Until then, let's stick to reality.
Dan Zahavi has spent his career meticulously defining ‘the feeling of what it is like for me’. I dont happen to agree with him; too Kantian for me.
You can't talk about evolution without the biology. That's what evolution explains -- the biological changes in humans.
Fuck Kant. I think he is a dope. And I read the Critique of Pure Reason entirely in grad school.
No idea what that means.
I do not think we know what human intelligence is. So, AI is as good a form of intelligence and any other. AI is not trying to imitate the human mind.
Hey, never claimed you can. But evolution is what happens to biological beings. They're not the same thing.
I'm linking a thread here where there are articles linked to support biological changes leading to intelligence of humans.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12484/the-decline-of-intelligence-in-modern-humans
First, I never read links.
Second, I do not see how my comment led to you talking about biology.
To be clearer:
evolution: natural selection upon mutations ... and further details related to this
biology: the study of life
If the argument is that the occurrence of life explains the occurrence of consciousness ... I'll be parting from the debate. My intuitive gut belief is that life and consciousness are correlated. But I can't provide you with a proof of this.
Non-deterministic traditionally means involving absence or incompleteness of causal relations, meaning that future events cannot be logically derived from prior events and laws of physics. That doesn't mean that the future events are not well defined; we just can't predict them. This applies to quantum mechanics too; it limits prediction of future events from prior events and laws of physics (only probabilities of possible outcomes of measurements can be predicted), but the mathematics (structure) of quantum mechanics, or of the quantum-mechanical world, is reducible to well-defined pure sets, just as all mathematics is.
The model of well-defined pure sets is perfectly suited to a philosophical grounding of the real in terms of the empirical object , and this in turn makes use of assumptions from logic concerning the definition of identity.
Continental Philosophy in the 20th and 21st centuries has set its sights on critiquing traditional notions
of identity.
As Dan Smirh writes :
“Classical logic identified three such principles: (1) the principle of identity (which says that ‘A is ‘A’, or ‘A thing is what it is’), (2) the principle of non-contradiction, which
says that ‘A is not non-A’ (‘A thing is not what it is not’), and (3) the principle of the excluded middle, which says that between A or not-A, there is no middle term). Taken together, these three principles determine what is impossible, that is to say, what is unthinkable: something that would not be what it is (which would contradict the principle of identity); something that would be what it is not (which would contradict the principle of non-contradiction); and something that would be both what it is and what it is not (which would contradict the principle of the excluded middle). By means of these three principles, thought is able to think the world of what is possible (or what traditional philosophy called the
world of ‘essences’). But this is why logic does not take us very far.”
Common to Wittgenstein , phenomenology and various postmodern strands of thought is a re-thinking of the relation between identity and difference. Difference is not added onto , as the interactive behavior of, defined objects, but the precondition of identity.
That's what we're trying to answer. Because humans evolved from animalistic awareness to intelligent humans. For example, homo sapiens?
If they reject the principle of identity (or non-contradiction, or excluded middle) then I don't know what they are talking about. A circle that is not a circle? What would that be? Even in the relations-only ontology I suppose that every relation is what it is and not some other relation.
Quoting Joshs
Sure, difference between objects means that they have different identities. In general, every two objects have some different properties and some same properties and thus there is a particular difference (or similarity) relation between the two objects.
Evan Thompson, in Mind in Life , offers the new vision of objective science:
“In the context of contemporary science … ?nature does not consist of basic particulars, but fields and processes … there is no bottom level of basic particulars with intrinsic properties that upwardly determines everything else. Everything is process all the way down and all the way up, and processes are irreducibly relational—they exist only in patterns, networks, organizations, configurations, or webs…. There is no base level of elementary entities to serve as the ultimate emergence base on which to ground everything. “(Thompson 2007: 440-1)
And yet those fields and processes have a mathematical description and all mathematical descriptions are reducible to pure sets.
Are pure sets transcendent foundations in math, like platonic essences? The statement that “all mathematical descriptions are reducible to pure sets” sounds very final and eternal, as if it must always be thus.
"The hard problem" is a pseudo-problem due to assuming an unwarranted confusion / conflation of an ontological duality with semantic duality compounded subsequently by observing that polar opposite terms "subjectivity" and "objectivity" cannot be described in terms of one another, which amounts to framing the "problem" based on a category mistake. There isn't an "hard problem" to begin with, schop.
Saying "evolution" (empirical model) doesn't even address the alleged philosophical issue at hand (conceptual incoherence).
"The hard problem" is not only a real problem, but even extremely important. If you see animals as non-sentient machines, there is no reason at all for animal welfare for the sake of animals, and you could recycle the animals as we do with plants
It is part of the "hard problem" whether animals have sentience or not. So much would be easier if they didn't have any. And if human political opponents didn't have sentience either, then you could dispose of them without a guilty conscience.
Why is that framing the problem based on a category mistake? There exists qualitative aspects to things. This exists in what we know (ourselves), more broadly (humans), and even more broadly (other sentient life forms). How is it that that phenomena fits into the structure of material processes?
Really, I see the hard problems as a direct critique at Materialism. Materialism proposes that everything is material or abstractions of material. There is no room for "inner aspects" because that itself is not material. The map becomes confused with the territory. Or perhaps, the territory has no room for the specific kind of territory and we are back to square one.
If you go and say "but material can be inner aspects" the question is "how". If you say "illusion" that has to be accounted for. If you say that physical is qualitative, then you become a sort of panpsychist or idealist and no longer a materialist. It's more tricky than you are letting on.
Pure sets are collections built up from non-composite objects called empty sets. Collections can be concrete or general (Platonic), same difference as between concrete trees and a general (Platonic) tree. General tree is a property of concrete trees. Mathematical objects can be expressed by both concrete and general collections.
Quoting Joshs
Pure set theory is regarded as a foundation for mathematics because all known mathematical objects can be expressed as pure sets.
Regarding Quote 01 above, do I correctly characterize it as a description of the behaviorism resultant of high-level, automatic, chemical-mechanical processes?
Quoting I like sushi
Regarding Quote 02 above, I answer by declaring we humans, unlike the automatons, possess a self who, described functionally, maintains a personal POV of events as reported via the senses & the cogitating mind.
This leads me to my approach to The Hard Problem.
How does our scientific process, based mainly within objectivism, render an objective profile of subjectivity? In facing The Hard Problem, have we arrived at the limit of scientific objectivism?
Speaking traditionally, is not the academically objective rendering of subjective experience normally handled by denizens of the literary components of English Departments i.e. by the novelist?
The novel, however, does not normally delve into the how of rendering subjective experience objectively, or does it?
Disciplines such as structuralism & semiotics, derided by many as false scientification of the humanites, as I'm seeing them just now in context of this discussion, lean towards an objective assessment of subjectivity.
One of the pillars of the objective assessment of subjectivity is self-reference & self-referentiality.
If cognitive science has ascended to the level of analyzing the second-order feedback looping that substrates a self regarding first-order baseline feedback looping, then self-referentiality is now in the crosshairs of scientific objectivism.
What about the consciousness that comprises the inner, emotional life of the experiencing self?
Can that consciousness be objectified without it turning its observer-receiver into a clone of itself?
Must the individualized self soldier on through life in its unique & solitary bubble of selfhood?
That is the problem. Where is the physical evidence for consciousness? What does ‘consciousness’ do? This is in light of understanding that it is perfectly for a philosophical zombie to exist (without disrupting our understanding of nature).
This and what you say after leads directly to Husserl:
Quoting ucarr.
Generally there are attempts made by cognitive neuroscientists adopting phenomenological approaches (Husserl’s phenomenology). I believe Husserl was on the only rational track but it by no means extinguishes the Hard Problem just frames it in a different light that allows some form of possible approach to aspects within it or related to it.
My personal view is that it is more likely a problem of definitions and/or category errors. Subjectivity can not be ‘given’ to another as someone else cannot be someone different. Piecing together the intersubjectivity does allow us to shed some light but I think it is ridiculous to believe we can ‘know’ in any complete sense and so the Hard Problem is more or less an extension where epistemic questions can play around.
I've already stated my response to your questions above. Here they are again.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting I like sushi
We're on the same page here, as I've also said something similar,
Quoting ucarr
Quoting I like sushi
Our fellow member Joshs is pushing hard along this line of attack upon The Hard Problem.
Quoting I like sushi
Yes. The intersubjectivity of the subjective/objective divide sounds to me like a gnarly paradox. However, ascension to a 4D selfhood might enable the effecting of some type of Vulcan mind meld (don't laugh too loudly!)
The point of the hard problem is to call attention to the fact that the subjective aspect of consciousness needs an explanation.
It may be that it's a result of evolution. We first need to understand how it works, though. After that we can work on how evolution is involved.
It's not opposed to materialism. It's a call for an expansion of what counts as material.
What is that expansion?
Here's my conjecture,
Quoting ucarr
Afraid I did not understand that. Could you expand a little?
A feedback loop is a physical-material memory structure of the brain. At the first order level of feedback looping, you get the behaviorism that Chalmers uses as evidence that neuro-science hasn't created a material model for the self.
I'm theorizing that the self, by definition self-referential (please bear with the circularity here, as circularity lies at the heart of memory functions), doesn't appear in a materialist-objectivist model until the second order of feedback looping that, in a vertical structure, rides atop first order feedback looping. In short, the self is the reflection of the first order behaviorist automaton, and thus this automaton individualizes over time as it examines ever more thoroughly the reflections of its automaton self.
This tells us that philosophy, which promotes self-examination, culminates in the individual, the apotheosis of human identity, according to western-hemispheric culture.
Thanks, that helps. I did not get the second part about the feedback loop and connection to individualism and Nietzsche.
As pointed out
Quoting 180 Proof
I don't understand the question.
As a pseudo-problem it fails as a "critique".
What do you understand "material" means in "materialism"?
What does "inner aspects" refer to? Are you implying that these "inner aspects" do not affect the "material"? If so, then they are also material; if not, then "inner aspects", with respect to the "material", are a distinction without a difference, no?
At most (if your terms are coherent), a scientific problem and not a philosophical question.
See previous reply.
Incoherent muddle. "Physical" =/= "material" (i.e. event-patterns =/= events).
Quoting ucarr
:cool: This reminds me of Damasio's "core self" and Hofstadter's "strange loop".
Obviously, it's not a bogus problem because it affects people's behavior, one is an animal rights activist, another is an animal abuser, the next doesn't care.
The hard problem of consciousness is, in question form, can science (ever) explain consciousness?
"Because evolution created it."
:roll:
This puts a moral frame around it. That works.
Well yeah, obviously this is a main question and what I meant by:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting 180 Proof
If it is, then scientific methods have set up inquiries into why qualitative things like "seeing red" are one and the same with the physical substrates/processes whilst not ADDING IN the consequent in the premise. That is to say, not commit the homuncular fallacy
Quoting 180 Proof
I'm not implying that. I'm only saying there is an inner aspect and what is the nature of "inner aspect" as opposed to things that do not have an inner aspect. That is to say, does a plant have an inner aspect? Why not? Does a primitive animal have an inner aspect? Why? If it does, what about that phenomenon makes it have the nature "inner aspect" as opposed to other processes. If you read that correctly I am not saying what processes are indicative of the inner aspect (i.e. these features means consciousness is present) but rather why those features have inner aspect phenomenon while others do not.
Your question oddly presupposes panpsychism.. as you almost assuming that material MUST have inner aspect.
Quoting 180 Proof
Don't know how to read this other than you hold some view of events that is supposedly outside the scope of the hard problem, but probably is anyways.
True enough, but then we would come to conclusions like panpsychism which normally isn't considered materialism.
The old materialism will fall by the way. A new one will take its place.
Most panpsychists criticize physicalism.
NB: Apologies for the typos in my previous post; I've been sleep deprived lately.
You said:
Quoting 180 Proof
You are the one who seems to be saying "material" has "what it's like" (inner aspect) qualities. I am only working with what you are giving. My guess is anything else you might provide (illusion, map not the territory) has been addressed, but go tell me how I'm not getting something you are saying... Again, working with the responses you are giving me.
Right, which is why I said it was odd he seemed to be providing this claim (that matter has inner aspects/conscious aspects). We know inner aspects exist NOT that material thus has inner/conscious aspects. That is jumping to the conclusion before explaining how. At least in @180 Proof debate with me here.
So what would you say instead? We don't see red? We don't have emotions? Why would you deny that we have "inner aspects" of "what it's like to be..."?
This is similar to saying that there is a relational aspect to things. Saying it like this closes the divide between physical and mental things. The hard problem is only a problem for dualists and physicalists, or those that believe the world is composed of a quantity of static objects independent of other things and then try to reconcile that with the qualitative aspect of the perception of quantities of static objects.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Things "relating" to one another does not entail qualitative aspects, unless from the start, that is your metaphysics.. aka panpsychists. That is fine, but that is basically what it is. If all relations have a qualitative aspect, then ok, that's your position. If only some relations have a qualitative aspect, then it is that which still has to be explained. You cannot get around this. Whether "process", "event" or "object" or combination thereof.. the problem remains as none of that entails qualitative aspects. It is not WOO either. I already mentioned the problem earlier and you are not refuting it:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Chalmer's work does not insist upon figuring out the limit of the physical but is interested in building models where consciousness is the function of something we are given phenomena to explore. The 'physical' is not a given packet of phenomena.
The problem is 'hard' because of correspondence. The success of scientific methods is that models fit the objects being pursued by restricting what is counted as an event. Our given experience of being conscious beings is an event. Can it be understood in the way other phenomena are understood? Or attempted to be understood?
This may be why it is hard, but it is a problem in the first place not because the model is restricted to physical objects and excludes subjective events, but because the model understands the physical object in a limited manner which prevents it from unifiying the objective and the subjective.
The phenomena must be measurable, and events must be repeated to check models for viability. That such phenomena yield results of this kind is no promise of a clear separation between 'subject and object'.
And if the process of investigating this issue doesn't help separate the two qualities, it won't help us unify them either.
Our brain includes many different parts. Some of those parts need to compete with each other; some have no need for competition. For example, a beating heart is always superior to a non-beating heart. So our brain does not bother to give us conscious control over our heartbeat.
Other areas of the brain need to compete with each other. Fear and hunger, for example. Sometimes the best strategy for life is to eat a slice of pizza. At other times, the best strategy for life is to run from a Grizzly bear. If our brain cannot sustain fear and hunger at the same time, then how does it break the tie? What does our brain use to settle these competing urges?
One solution would be an administrative center to the brain (our consciousness). Let's say you are having a picnic. Eating a slice of pizza alone in the woods, as one normally does. The pizza is satisfying your hunger when a Grizzly bear walks out from behind the bushes. All of a sudden you have lost your sense of hunger. Your consciousness is reprioritizing different areas of the brain. Your fear center is being amped up and made more active. The area that controls hunger is being inhibited and put on a back burner. If this reprioritization helps you survive, then the conscious brain has proven its evolutionary worth.
The hard problem could be summarized by asking: "Why doesn't this administrative reprioritizing of different brain areas happen in the dark? Why can it be experienced?"
I would have two responses to that question:
1) You could say it does happen in the dark. The world does not experience your consciousness. As humans, we spend our entire lives struggling to guess what kind of conscious thought patterns are bouncing around in someone else's head. We do not get a chance experience the conscious thought of others firsthand. In that sense, the conscious mind is carrying on in the dark without anyone taking notice.
2) Why can't an administrator have a larger image of all the tasks taking place, if said image helps them better complete their work? As individuals, each one of us is one of those summarized images. A centered perception sensing communication from other areas of the brain. An area of the brain whose purpose it is to see the brain itself. If the brain functions more efficiently when it sees itself, then the assumption that it should "take place in the dark" is incorrect. Maybe there was no hard problem thousands of years ago. But the human brain tried looking in a mirror once, and things have worked out better ever since. We experience our consciousness because not every kind of brain function can take place in the dark. How exactly do you propose that the conscious center of the brain be aware of other areas of the brain without becoming conscious in the process? What is the obvious alternative version of inter-brain awareness, if you are not in favor of the strategy that nature has chosen in this instance?
It makes you wonder ... are you the only conscious process taking place inside your brain? Maybe there are more consciousnesses happening in other areas of your brain. They could have been there your entire life. You, blissfully unaware of the other yous; and them, blissfully unaware of you. Each consciousness assuming themselves to be in the driver's seat, yet curiously lacking in total self-control.
From the logic there is no experiment to separate subjective from objective. We only have a "similarity principle", which says that what is objectively more similar to us, is also subjectively more similar to us.
Monism and dualism share the same problem. They have to determine the limit above which complexity subjectivity arises.
To answer your question, you should answer 180's.
My answer to 180's question would be a type of relation composed of sensory information. Sensory information is a relation between perceiver and perceived. Not all relations are composed of a perceiver and perceived. Rocks do not have eyes, ears and a working memory, therefore it is not possible for a rock to be a component (the perceiver) of a qualitative relation. It can only participate in a qualitative relation as what is perceived by a perceiver.
That is not true. A rock absorbs sunlight, heats up on this side and processes this information through heat conduction. How do you know it doesn't feel that?
Unification in the case of the subjective and objective aspects of experience does not mean combination, it means inseparability. I follow writers like Dan Zahavi here:
“Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.”
I agree that making a neat distinction is impossible. The question I hear Chalmers asking is how does one practice science in this environment. The use of models presumes the presence of beings that function according to their nature. There is value in the distinction, even if it does not unlock the secrets of all creation.
Or a model can allows us to pragmatically anticipate the future course of events that never duplicate themselves but nonetheless change in ways that can reveal a certain inferential compatibility (the way a thing continues to be the ‘same’ differently). No notion of fixed kinds, beings or natures is necessary in order to do this.
What reason would there be for a rock to feel that? Rocks don't possess goals of seeking out a nominal temperature, therefore there would be no reason for it to feel hot or cold.
Humans do have goals of survival and achieving homeostasis, therefore it would need to be able to use information about it's body's temperature (feel hot or cold) to then be able to engage in behaviors that achieve such goals of homeostasis or nominal body temperatures.
You don't need to necessarily feel hot for your body to sweat. Sweating is an involuntary reaction to high temperatures, but sweating will only go so far in solving the problem. Being able to react by moving into the shade, or getting out of the kitchen, could be more useful but would require one to feel the heat to then produce behaviors to remove one from the hot spot.
Instead of marching forward with our understanding of the human brain, some people refuse to go further. So why did they stop and have a philosophical debate if they merely wanted to keep learning more?
Can you explain this sentence a bit more?
The logic behind questioning the hard problem is something to the effect of:
"This has no reason to be here (experiencing consciousness). And yet, it is here anyway. How can this be?"
The crux of the whole issue is the assumption that "this has no reason to be here". If you can imagine a good explanation as to why the brain benefits from the experience of consciousness itself, then it is no longer mysterious and in need of explanation. The hard problem only exists as long as you declare the experience of consciousness to be unnecessary.
That is confusing. I would think it is the other way around.
The hard problem is certainly trying to come from the position of neutrality. But It's impossible not to have preconceived notions about how the human brain should work. So if perfect neutrality is impossible, then I think we need to keep looking at the problem from different angles until things start to make more sense.
It's like suggesting that the experience of human vision isn't necessary in order to sense changes in the amount of light around us. No, it's not necessary. There could be other ways to do it. A different kind of functionality that takes place "in the dark". But vision is how our brain organizes all the different changes in light that we sense.
Imagine trying to keep track of every single rod and cone signal in your eye without the sensation of vision. It seems like the human body summarizes information whenever possible, and I don't disagree with the use of that technique. If that's the case, then we are one of those informational summaries.
It is the nature of a summary to be aware of the whole of the literature, while still being a different set of words on its own. We can't be a summary of the brain without having some awareness-of (connection-to) other parts of the brain. Yet at the same time, the summary itself is not merely a collection of all the other parts. The summary doesn't exist in those other parts of the brain. I think this discrepancy is a large part of why we find consciousness to be confusing: it is existing everywhere in the brain, and nowhere in the brain, at the same time. It seems out of place.
Consciousness is just thought and awareness. I think it's a fake problem.
Kierkegaard said Christianity invented inwardness, or subjectivity. It strikes me that trying to explain consciousness is based on this error.
Quoting Jackson
Self-consciousness would simply be thoughts of the self.
The question is what are thoughts composed of, or what forms do they take? What makes a thing a thought as opposed to not a thought?
The hard problem is asking why do the thoughts of others take the form of the visual of their brain/neural activity, while our own thoughts take the form of sounds, feelings, colors, shapes depth, etc. All descriptions of mental activity from a third-person scientific perspective are actually first-person visual subjective descriptions of other's mental activity. You never experience your own mental activity the way you experience others' mental activity.
A hard cutoff point for "thought" assumes that the definition shouldn't take place on a gradual scale. Instead of "thought" and "not a thought", couldn't it be defined as "more conscious" and "less conscious"? Why does a paramedic wave a flashlight in your eyes and ask you pointless questions? They are trying to measure how much consciousness you are currently experiencing.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Which is why you could categorize it as taking place "in the dark". It's like a TV show that never gets more than one viewer. Maybe your subjective experience is not really a valid experience of the objective world. Maybe it's more like we are each hallucinating our own existence. In a way, death proves that consciousness never existed to begin with (unless your personal beliefs declare the exact opposite, of course).
Quoting Harry Hindu
True these days. But in a distant future, maybe surgeons will be sewing brains together. Millions of engineered connections created between two cerebral cortices. All of sudden, you would have access to another person's memories. Maybe your inner dialogue could have a conversation with another inner dialogue. I never thought it would literally be possible to prove that the consciousness exists; but maybe that first silent discussion between two minds will be the last day we wonder if our conscious experience is real.
How do you experience another person's mental activity?
By looking at their live brain scan - just as any neurologist would. But do you need to look at your brain scan to experience your own mental activity? Do you even need to know you have a brain to know you have thoughts and experiences?
Sorry, I just don't know what you're talking about anymore.
Goodbye.
Quoting Jackson
Well, there's proof that p-zombies would have no idea what a human is talking about when it comes to the mind and consciousness.
It doesn't necessarily assume that there isn't a gradual scale, but if there is no cut-off then you're implying that everything has some degree of consciousness.
There are degrees of pain, but there is also no pain, so implying a cut-off doesn't necessarily imply that there isn't a gradual scale where describing your level of pain on a scale of 0-10 where you feel pain and a 0 would be that you feel no pain.
Quoting Bird-Up
In conversing with you on this forum, would I be hallucinating your existence? The point was that we both experience our own and each other's existence very differently. If consciousness is an illusion, then everything I experience, which includes your posts on this forum and your body and behaviors, would be an illusion. This also means that neurologists' experiences of other people's brains and all their scientific descriptions of such would be an illusion too.
All forms of life respond to sensory information. A plant may reach around a corner when it senses sunlight. But the plant is unlikely to be conscious. An insect may scurry away when it senses you walking towards it. Is it feeling fear? Maybe not, but it is a better candidate for consciousness than the plant. What about the dog looking up at your face and wagging its tail? Seems like a plausible case of consciousness to me.
Life experiences sensory information with differing levels of nervous-system complexity. These nervous systems could be ranked on a gradual scale, with humans fancying themselves to be at the top. The more complex and extensive the nervous system is, the more likely it is to be conscious. So where along that continuum do you mark the first real consciousness? Sounds like an opinion that is up for debate. This could lead to the realization that there is no definition of consciousness. Consciousness merely describes a set of characteristic traits that a nervous system could have. The more boxes they check, the more conscious they are considered to be.
But why that special designation of "conscious"? Couldn't I just say: "My body has nerves."
What is our motive behind creating the superfluous "conscious" label?
Quoting Harry Hindu
I didn't mean literally hallucinating the content of your existence, I meant we could be deceived that our conscious experience is more than just electrical signals bouncing around in our heads: "Whatever this sensation of consciousness is that I'm experiencing, it is something more!"
Are you sure about that? Maybe it only seems that way from our point of view.
The hard problem is a strange question to answer. You acknowledge the existence of conscious experience by emphasizing how it isn't really there to begin with.
I agree with that. The idea of the "hard problem" just makes a fetish out of consciousness.
Do you not have the experience of being stuck with yourself? Your life and your death are yours alone, no matter who grieves or not after your end. The singularity of your experience is that nobody else will witness it as you do.
Is that not a phenomenon that should be looked into?
It would work just as well to call it the hard problem of awareness.
This sounds like Dennett’s ‘explanation’ of consciousness. But while it can be said that consciousness is a graded phenomenon of organismic complexity, if we were to assume that it is nothing but an arrangement of physical
processes, we run the risk not simply of missing something more that is unique to consciousness , as if there is some inner , ineffable substance in the world called subjective experience to be laid alongside physical objects. What we risk missing is a dimension of what we call material or empirical reality that subjective experience
is trying to cue us into. Put differently, what we call subjective, phenomenal or inner isn’t another entity in the world to be added to physical things , it is the condition of possibility of notions like physicality, materiality , objectivity. The latter is what we end up with when we conventionally strip away what makes any concept of the object coherent.
But that is the question the hard problem shines a light on - how does electrical signals bounding around in our heads deceive our heads? In essence the brain is fooling itself into believing that it is not a brain. Why would it do that? What evolutionary problem would that solve (ie why would such a thing evolve in the first place)?
Wrong. The hard problem exposes the fetish of physicalists with their naive realism and dualists with their inability to explain how two opposing substances can interact.
The hard problem is resolved by a monistic view that information or process is fundamental - not matter and/or mind.
I am correct. Good day!
Saying so doesn't make it so. Do better.
This does not explain why information-processing organic matter has feelings and information-processing inorganic matter does not.
I would argue that the experience of consciousness does solve a practical problem. But it's mostly about making the brain more efficient, not about giving the brain an entirely new ability. I think that is why people find it confusing; it seems like a whole lot of work just to make the brain faster. Using conscious experience is like chalking the end of a pool stick; you could still hit the ball without it.
If your conscious brain making decisions is like walking the paths of a park, then conscious experience would be like looking at a map of the park. You could discover all the paths eventually if you walk around long enough, but the process goes a whole lot faster when you are using the map to make decisions. Some would also be quick to point out the deceitful nature of your strategy: "You fool, that is just a piece of paper with lines drawn on it; it is not actually the park!"
But does that mean it isn't useful?
Instead of trying to imagine why the human brain is using consciousness, it might be easier to imagine how difficult it would be without conscious experience.
Information-processing is taking certain inputs, manipulating them in some way based on the instructions of some program to produce certain outputs. What follows is that the types of inputs and the type of program can produce different outputs. Think of organic matter and inorganic matter as different systems, or instructions in a program, that take in different inputs and produce different outputs. So it stands to reason that one will produce outputs that the other does not.
Rocks do not have the same inputs and the same instructions as an organisms does, so how it reacts to temperature changes will be different than an organism.
Think of the conscious mind as one layer of fault-tolerance where the information that appears in consciousness (like feeling hot or cold) is then used to fine-tune behaviors, especially fine-tuning instinctive behaviors in social environments. Sensory information passes through different layers of processing in the brain and the conscious part is just on of those layers.
I can imagine. We can also observe blind-sight patients and understand that while they may be able to navigate around objects they cannot see, then cannot describe the object in any detail. So if consciousness provides more detailed information about the world.
Quoting Bird-Up
This still doesn't explain how a brain can create an experience of not being a brain. It doesn't get at the problem of explaining why I experience my mental processes differently than how I experience everyone else's.
Quoting Bird-Up
Right, so how do we know that the brains that we associate with other people's mental processes aren't just part of the map and not actually reality? How is it that the mind that I experience as my own is the illusion but the brains that appear in my mind (like when I look at your brain scan while you are inside an MRI) when looking at your mental processes isn't an illusion? Neurologists seem to think that they have direct access to the park when observing the brains of others - as if they don't have a map at all - but see the world as it truly is with brains in skulls.
But nowadays artificial neural networks do the same. Can a feeling also develop on the layers of an artificial neural network?
The scream of pain when slapped across the face is simply an extension of the sound the slap itself makes when the open hand connects with the cheek! :snicker:
I would say that both objective and subjective experiences are an authentic version of reality. One is an accurate assessment of what it looks like from outside the head, and one is an accurate assessment of what it looks like from inside the head.
Using your analogy, I would say that your conscious experience does show up on the MRI that the technician is looking at. Current medical technology is crude, low-resolution stuff. But imagine a snapshot of the brain that did capture everything. Every electrical signal jumping across each neuron.
It is like the relationship between a program and its code. Nothing will happen until you start running the code. And the entirety of the program is expressed somewhere in the code (physical brain). At the same time, the experience of interacting with the program (conscious experience) is not described directly anywhere in the code. The code never mentions "yellow", but it does say: red intensity is 255, green intensity is 255, and blue intensity is 0. Could you imagine such instructions leading anywhere else but "yellow"? "Yellow" is clearly nowhere to be found, and "yellow" is also undoubtedly the only possible result.
I think it is an error in logic to attempt to unify subjective experience with the objective world. Yes, all the underpinnings of conscious experience can be found there, but the objective account itself will not directly show you subjective experience. Two different views of the same object can both be 100% correct.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I think you could experience someone else's consciousness (in the future) if you were methodical enough. But then you would also believe yourself to be that person, based on the memories you are experiencing. You would forget that you ever had a previous identity.
So maybe the greatest hurdle of conscious experience is finding a reliable way to prove your existence to someone else. But you are already thinking-therefore-you-are-ing on your own. If only someone else knew.
I don't see why not. Feelings are just information, and information takes the form of the relationship between cause and effect. As such feelings are the effect of prior causes and the cause of subsequent effects, like your behavior that results from your feelings. One might define feelings as any information that is processed within a neural network. "Artificial" and "natural" are useless terms here.
I don't know what a view from outside of a head would look like. It's an impossibility. Third-person views are simulated first-person views.
Quoting Bird-Up
But that is what I'm getting at - why does someone else's conscious experience appear as a brain, but my own conscious experience does not include a brain, or neurons, or electrical signals. My conscious experience is composed of shapes, colors, sounds, feelings, visual, auditory and tactile depth, etc. of which my view of other people's brains and their neurons are composed of. I don't experience my own consciousness as a brain with electrical signals. That is only how I experience other people's conscious experience, and only via my own conscious experience, hence defining my own conscious experience as an illusion just relegates my view of other people's conscious experiences as brains to an illusion as well.
Quoting Bird-Up
This just expands on the problem I mentioned above. Naive realism suggests that we see the world as it truly is - as if we are merely looking through the windows of our eyes. Science has suggested otherwise - that we don't see the world as it truly is. So what does that say about how we see brains and computers? If we posit the world being composed of information rather than static objects, then we resolve the problem of dualism and the static objects become mental models of what the world is really like, not the way the world actually is. The world is more like our minds, but that is not to say that mind is fundamental. Mind is just a particular type of arrangement of information.
Our minds operate at a certain frequency relative to the frequency of change of other processes we might observe. Our mental state can have an effect on the speed at which our minds process information about other processes and the relative change, or frequency, between the mind and other processes can skew the appearance of the other processes making slow processes appear as static objects while faster processes appear as actual processes or as a blur of change. Think of the difference between how see view water in all of its states - solid, liquid and gas with each being composed of slow vs fast moving molecules relative to the speed at which our minds process the information.
Quoting Bird-Up
I'm not sure if this makes sense. I can have a view of your body and it's behavior and deduce that you have experiences that are the causes of your behavior. But can I view my own view? Does that make sense? It might if we think of our view like the camera-monitor system where the camera represent the focus of attention in the mind while the monitor represents the information the camera (attention) is focused on. When the camera is looking outwards, focusing the mind's attention on the world, what appears on the monitor is a representation of the world relative to the camera's eye. When the camera turns itself to look at the monitor, it creates a visual feedback loop - like the kind that occurs when you "observe" your own mind. With our attention, we can create an informational feedback loop of thinking about thinking, knowing that we know, being aware of awareness, etc.
"Simulated first-person views" sounds like a valid definition of the objective world. I've always thought of objectivity as an abstract model that we use to understand the world. Whatever the case, I'm just saying that two languages can describe the same thing; even if they use a different vocabulary. Subjectivity is the first language. Objectivity is another language.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The physical brain has developed an awareness-center so that it can obtain decision-making functionality. The shapes, color, sounds, etc would be the "summary" or "map" that our subconscious brain presents us with for the purpose of deciding. The "summary"/"map" is a secondary creation that does not represent the whole of the human brain with complete accuracy. The "summary"/"map" part is you.
There are two ways to look at this awareness-center in the brain:
Either way, conscious experience is the awareness-center doing its job.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I assume this was a rhetorical question, but I think "yes" is the answer. You can view your own view. Not with the default tools that mother nature provided, but I think it would be possible. Reminds me of a memorable scene from Westworld where a character views her own consciousness. Her reaction was disbelief paired with an overwhelming identity-crisis.
But we can speak objectively about subjective experiences. Is it not objectively true that you have subjective experiences, or that you feel a certain way, or that you perceive things a particular way? The problem with subjectivity is trying to determine what part of the experience is about the object perceived vs the object doing the perceiving.
Quoting Bird-Up
You still don't seem to be getting at what the point I'm trying to make. How does a "physical" brain create the feeling of visual depth perception? How do neurons generate the feeling of empty space between me and the other objects in my vicinity? The empty space is not made up of neurons. It is made up of information about location relative to my eyes.
Quoting Bird-Up
What about how I described it using the visual feedback created by a camera-monitor system? In effect, you are not viewing a view. You are simply turning your attention back on itself.
The thing that I find basically materialism is always in danger of doing is committing the homunculus fallacy.
I'd say the human experience is 0% objective and 100% subjective. We are completely dependent on the information being supplied to us by our brain. That's why I consider objective reality to be an abstract idea. The best we can do, is to gain consensus about what is real by comparing our experience with others. But we can never truly prove that objective things actually exist. We strongly-suspect objectivity.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The sensation of depth perception would be the "map" your brain has given you so that you can be aware of your position in 3D space and make split-second decisions related to that. It is not the neurons in your optic nerve, but it is the neurons in the conscious part of your brain. The information from your optic nerves has been compounded into a more-useful form of information that is intended to be used for navigating by your attention. You are the attention. You are the navigating being performed.
What is the roadblock you encounter with conscious experience? What is the exact point at which something leaves the domain of regular brain signals and enters the domain of something beyond that? What specific characteristic makes it too much to be regular brain activity?
Fair enough. But which one of us is going down the rabbit-hole of the homunculus fallacy? Both of us?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Something like this could be construed as a sort of homuncular fallacy. There is a sort of "magic" point (usually involving some kind of "integration") whereby things just "happen" and subjectivity (sometimes referred to the illusion of) becomes a thing. Or like here, if you just redefine it as "information", then somehow this confers powers of subjectivity. Information would then have to be explained for how it can "generate a feeling" of subjectivity.
What is subjectivity if not information about location relative to some other location - like your head?
Youi just explained how the world is for "we", as in more than just you. You just explained a state of the world in objective terms. How could you ever know what it is like for others if you are stuck in your subjectivity?
Also, is your mind part of the world? Do you have direct access to your mind and can communicate to others the states of your mind? And is your description factual despite what others might believe? In describing the state of your conscious mind, you are describing an objective state-of-affairs of the world - no different than describing any other state-of-affairs. We are able to get at actual states-of-affairs in the world (objectivity) via our subjective information. We just have to separate the information about ourselves from the equation.
Quoting Bird-Up
There you go again describing the world in an objective manner - as in the state-of-affairs that is the case not only for yourself, but for me and everyone else too. How did you come to acquire this objective information if not subjectively?
How do neurons create sensations in the first place? You keep talking about neurons and optic nerves, but you only experience those things in observing other people's mental states, not your own. Do you need to look at an MRI scan of your own brain to know your mental state? Why or why not?
This isn't answering the question:
Quoting schopenhauer1
More precise how it can BE a feeling. Equivalent not just causation. How are sensations the same as their substrates.
Information doesn't generate anything but more information via some process of causation. So the feeling is just information, as feelings inform you of something. The feeling is subjective because it's a relation between you and what the feeling is about. The feeling would be objective if it didn't include information about yourself in some way. Every feeling or sensation includes information about you and about what you are observing, which makes it subjective. This fits with how we define objective views as being a view from nowhere, or a view independent of some observer, or information independent or absent of information about the observer.
Then when you look at other people and see bodies and brains (via their MRI brain scan) then bodies and brains are part of the map, not the territory.
I can only see where you are coming from if the subjectivity is inherent to all information and not just neural activity. If it is only confined to neural information than you have not answered anything but simply used different terms. So instead of neural activity, you said information, and like water into wine this terminological change is supposed to convey subjective experience. I don't buy it. But if you are saying ALL information is subjective, I can at least accept this as a sort of proto-panexperientialism. I don't necessarily agree with that either, but it would be more consistent.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You are unintentionally putting the "little man" (homunculus) back into the equation when you use "yourself" here as there is no "yourself" above and beyond the activity in question (information). There is still some Cartesian thinking here where there is "yourself" "feeling" something that IS the thing to be explained.
It looks like you have misunderstood most of the metaphors I threw out there. I was illustrating a different concept than the one you were thinking about. Probably my fault. It gets blocked up in my mouth. I don't say it no good.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It does answer the question, by pointing out that the hard problem doesn't exist to begin with.
Do you believe that the hard problem does exist, and that it isn't being addressed properly?
Consciousness came about through evolution. That doesn't explain why consciousness is the same thing as neural/biological activities.
Why do we need to separate consciousness from neural/biological activities? What characteristic prevents us from grouping them together in the same category?
Why does an organism with a brain have consciousness and not a single cell or a plant or a blade of grass. The kind of substance and the form of material doesn’t get at it. You take for granted we already know consciousness must pop out of the equation perhaps. Also, adding a sufficient amount of complexity doesn't just magically turn the water into wine either. Oh you see the eye does X, Y, Z.....The cortical layers of blah blah does X, Y, Z....The peripheral nervous system does X, Y, Z... Calcium and sodium ion gates, action potentials, do X, Y, Z... Keep heaping as much as you want.
As grass has proven, consciousness isn't strictly necessary for survival. So isn't a larger brain part of the substance and form? Couldn't it be possible that a brain past a certain size will inevitably spend more of its processing power on abstract thoughts (conscious sensations)? All the most simple and important functions could have been accomplished with a smaller neural network. In general, I would say you can estimate how much consciousness a creature possesses by looking at the size (or number of connections) of their brain.
I think that shows how nature considers abstract thought to be an expensive luxury of sorts. Does consciousness keep you alive a little longer? Yes. But is it worth the expense of more brain cells? No; according to the number of simpler organisms on this planet.
What if we discovered an animal that had twice as much processing power as a human. It would have to be using those larger neural-networks to accomplish something. I would expect such an animal to experience a deeper, more vivid sense of conscious existence compared to us.
Don't you think brain-size matters? Do you think it's physically possible for an animal to have a large brain, yet avoid experiencing any level of consciousness?
These are easy questions of consciousness. Not the hard question. So you are not asking the right question(s). You can point all day to brain sizes, neural activity, and information processing, and you will still not get at it. How is it that this is one and the same as subjective experience.. not the correlations of the substrate.
But by looking somewhere else for an explanation, you have already disqualified neural activity as one of the candidates.
You pointed out that not all lifeforms experience consciousness. So I pointed out that something like a plant lacks the cluster of nerve cells that we call a brain.
What if we limited the discussion to humans? What specifically disqualifies a human's conscious experience from being explained entirely by neural activity?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Why can't the experience that we feel correlate to the substrate? The question assumes that conscious experience has already done something to distinguish itself apart from the substrate. What is that specific quality? (Other than to say it seems strange.) It's not that I don't see the question, but that I think the basis for asking the question is flawed.
You could say that consciousness is many steps removed from the raw input of our senses. So you are right to emphasize the distance between the two. But dramatically-different brain-activity still falls under the category of brain-activity. Unless there is a specific reason why it couldn't fall under that category?
Another way to look at it:
Is it right to assume that a system of awareness shouldn't experience consciousness? Isn't the side effect of consciousness unavoidable when you have a system juggling many different inputs and deciding between them? Chalmers' assumption that awareness should take place "in the dark" makes less sense the longer you think about it.
I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm saying that simply correlating X neural activity with Y subjective experience isn't the hard problem anymore. That is part of the easy problems. Rather, how is it that neural activity is one and the same as subjective experience is what is to be explained.
What a shame. Your own existence demanding explanation. Neural activity can be one and the same without your blessing. What made you ban your subjective experience from the realm of reality? When did it become something less? Something that needs an excuse in order to exist?
You haven't illustrated much about human existence. But you have have illustrated the endless tunnel of human guilt. Or maybe a lack of imagination? Which sin has your reality committed? Why has your existence incurred a debt so quickly? Rest assured, you can see whatever you need to for as long as you want. If nothing else, you are confident that your sensation of reality is untrustworthy.
The hard problem no longer exists without guilt. Who told you that the physical brain alone was not enough? How does the hard problem help you sleep at night? What more do you want to be?