The HARDER Problem of Consciousness
Harder is emphasized to make it clear this is an additional problem of consciousness presented by Ned Block's paper in 2003, which you can read here:
http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/images/personal-zenon-pylyshyn/class-info/Consciousness_2014/Block_HarderQuestions.pdf
The Partially Examined Life's most recent podcast discusses Block's argument and also David Papineau’s paper on the possibility for a science of consciousness. It's a good discussion of physicalism, functionalism and phenomenalism in the context of the harder problem.
https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2019/07/01/ep219-block-papineau/
To summarize, the harder problem is that human phenomenal concepts do not reveal whether our material makeup or the functional role our neurobiology plays is responsible for consciousness. As such, we have no philosophical justification for saying whether a functional isomorph made up of different material such as the android Data from Star Trek is conscious. Even more confusing, we have no way of telling whether a "mere" functional isomorph is conscious, where "mere" means functional in terms of human folk psychology only, and not in the actual neural functions.
So if Data's positronic brain functions different from our own brain tissue, but still produces reports and behaviors based on things like beliefs, desires and phenomenal experience, we have neither the physical nor functional basis for deciding whether he is actually conscious, or just simulating it. Which of course brings up the Turing Test and Searle's biological position. Which one should note would be the same position identity theorists would be endorsing when they say consciousness is identical to certain brain states.
This applies to other possible physical systems, such as Block's Chinese brain, were a billion Chinese with radios and flags implement the functional role for conscious brain states. And if one bites the functional bullet on this and says that such a system would be conscious, then in all likelihood, countries like India are already performing enough of those roles to be conscious.
At which point I would jump off the functionalist bandwagon. Jaron Lanier has made this point with meteor showers implementing brain simulations and therefore being conscious according to functionalists, if you interpret the data from the meteor shower the right way. This would mean the universe would be full of all manner of conscious systems. So this would be similar to full blown mereology, where any conceivable combination of matter is an object, even ones that make no sense to us. Except in this case, it would be consciousness run amok, even when we have no reason to suspect India or a meteor shower would have conscious experiences.
While listening to the podcast (I'm paraphrasing and adding a few of my thoughts above), I couldn't help but feel dissatisfaction with the implications of any position one takes regarding the harder problem. But it should be noted that the harder problem exists only if:
A. One endorses physicalism, which Block thinks is the starting point for Naturalism.
B. One is a realist about phenomenal experience.
Papineau argues that phenomenal concepts are too vague in certain ways for science to pin down an explanation. Thus, science cannot tell us whether Data or other animals are conscious, or if so, how similar or different their phenomenal experiences are to our own.
https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/885/1/D_Papineau_Science..pdf
That's the harder problem. I should also note that Data would likely not pass the Turing Test as he has certain idiosyncrasies that would probably tip humans off that he's a machine, if the test were sufficiently thorough. And Data also has certain abilities that humans do not, or are superhuman. He also lacks emotion (until he gets an emotion chip which he can normally disable at will) and lacks sensations such as pain, cold or pleasure (except the time the Borg Queen grafted skin on his arm).
So Data's is certainly not a perfect isomorph of humans. That's why it was a big deal when Q made him laugh at the end of one episode, and Data couldn't explain what was so funny after he stopped laughing.
http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/images/personal-zenon-pylyshyn/class-info/Consciousness_2014/Block_HarderQuestions.pdf
The Partially Examined Life's most recent podcast discusses Block's argument and also David Papineau’s paper on the possibility for a science of consciousness. It's a good discussion of physicalism, functionalism and phenomenalism in the context of the harder problem.
https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2019/07/01/ep219-block-papineau/
To summarize, the harder problem is that human phenomenal concepts do not reveal whether our material makeup or the functional role our neurobiology plays is responsible for consciousness. As such, we have no philosophical justification for saying whether a functional isomorph made up of different material such as the android Data from Star Trek is conscious. Even more confusing, we have no way of telling whether a "mere" functional isomorph is conscious, where "mere" means functional in terms of human folk psychology only, and not in the actual neural functions.
So if Data's positronic brain functions different from our own brain tissue, but still produces reports and behaviors based on things like beliefs, desires and phenomenal experience, we have neither the physical nor functional basis for deciding whether he is actually conscious, or just simulating it. Which of course brings up the Turing Test and Searle's biological position. Which one should note would be the same position identity theorists would be endorsing when they say consciousness is identical to certain brain states.
This applies to other possible physical systems, such as Block's Chinese brain, were a billion Chinese with radios and flags implement the functional role for conscious brain states. And if one bites the functional bullet on this and says that such a system would be conscious, then in all likelihood, countries like India are already performing enough of those roles to be conscious.
At which point I would jump off the functionalist bandwagon. Jaron Lanier has made this point with meteor showers implementing brain simulations and therefore being conscious according to functionalists, if you interpret the data from the meteor shower the right way. This would mean the universe would be full of all manner of conscious systems. So this would be similar to full blown mereology, where any conceivable combination of matter is an object, even ones that make no sense to us. Except in this case, it would be consciousness run amok, even when we have no reason to suspect India or a meteor shower would have conscious experiences.
While listening to the podcast (I'm paraphrasing and adding a few of my thoughts above), I couldn't help but feel dissatisfaction with the implications of any position one takes regarding the harder problem. But it should be noted that the harder problem exists only if:
A. One endorses physicalism, which Block thinks is the starting point for Naturalism.
B. One is a realist about phenomenal experience.
Papineau argues that phenomenal concepts are too vague in certain ways for science to pin down an explanation. Thus, science cannot tell us whether Data or other animals are conscious, or if so, how similar or different their phenomenal experiences are to our own.
https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/885/1/D_Papineau_Science..pdf
That's the harder problem. I should also note that Data would likely not pass the Turing Test as he has certain idiosyncrasies that would probably tip humans off that he's a machine, if the test were sufficiently thorough. And Data also has certain abilities that humans do not, or are superhuman. He also lacks emotion (until he gets an emotion chip which he can normally disable at will) and lacks sensations such as pain, cold or pleasure (except the time the Borg Queen grafted skin on his arm).
So Data's is certainly not a perfect isomorph of humans. That's why it was a big deal when Q made him laugh at the end of one episode, and Data couldn't explain what was so funny after he stopped laughing.
Comments (201)
Simulating consciousness is consciousness. Consciousness is a behavioral feature, not a physiological or neurological one. The mind is not the brain. I say that even though I believe that what we call mental states result from physical, electrical, and chemical reactions in the brain and the rest of the nervous system. When you watch a basketball game on television, you don't typically say that the game or the images and sounds we perceive on the screen are the same as the television.That would be silly. It's just as silly to say the mind is the brain. Our minds are the shows our brains are playing.
Quoting Marchesk
Hmmm... Well...I guess I could go along with the Chinese brain being conscious, although I doubt all the people and all the radios and all the flags in the world could make up a system as complex as the brain. Also, the Chinese brain computer would be so slow that all the people would die before the simplest mental process could be created. I'm guessing it couldn't simulate a mind even in a minimal way in the time between the big bang and the heat death of the universe.
As for India being conscious, It's something, but I wouldn't say it's conscious unless you'd say that Adam Smith's invisible hand of the market is conscious. Which I wouldn't.
Quoting Marchesk
Data could certainly pass the Turing test if he wanted to.
"T. H. Huxley famously said ‘How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue' . . ."
Hey, nervous tissue isn't that annoying. It's just trying to make friends.
"The Hard Problem is one of explaining why the neural basis of a phenomenal quality is the neural basis of that phenomenal quality rather than another phenomenal quality or no phenomenal quality at all. In other terms, there is an explanatory gap between the neural basis of a phenomenal quality and the phenomenal quality itself. "
Re what I said about explanations above, we could just as well say:
"A hard problem is explaining, for any explanation of any property, why the (observationally-)claimed basis of a property is the basis of that property rather than another property or no property (at least of x-type) at all. In other terms, there is an explanatory gap between the observational basis of a property and the property itself."
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"The claim that Q is identical to corticothalamic oscillation is just as puzzling—maybe more puzzling—than the claim that the physical basis of Q is corticothalamic oscillation."
The distinction he's making there isn't clear to me.
"How could one property be both subjective and objective?"
It's not, actually, since mental phenomena are subjective period. If corticothalamic oscillation is mental phenomena--which it is if it's identical to Q, then it's subjective.
But what he's asking is at the heart of the "explanatory gap": he's asking about corticothalamic oscillation not "seeming like" Q when one is observing another's corticothalamic oscillation, whereas it "seems like" Q when it's one's own corticothalamic oscillation. That's because our mentality is simply the properties of things like corticothalamic oscillation from the perspective of being the corticothalamic oscillation in question.
There's a similar problem in all explanations, since they're always from some perspective, some "point of reference," and there are no perspectiveless perspectives or point of reference-free points of reference. Any phenomena or property/set of properties p is different from different perspectives/reference points, including that they're be different from the perspective/reference point of being the substances/dynamic relations in question than they are from various removed-from-identity observational perspectives/points of reference (which are all different from each other).
- It is linked to and responds to peripherals (it 'senses' so to speak)
- It manages multiple tasks simultaneously
- it is constantly aware (well aware at least for every time slice - at least 60 times a second).
- It has an active train of thought - the current process (on a uniprocessor)
A human has a better ability to deal with unexpected sensual input. If an operating system reads data off disk in an unexpected format, it responds with a predicable error. If a human senses something he/she has not sensed before, there is (usually) a creative response that shows adaptation and improvisation. This is probably just indicative that humans have much more complex logic than any current computer.
My stance is one of cautious skepticism, basically. I think we need to show good reasons for why functionalism/substratum independence might be true before accepting it. Although I think it's worth pursuing functionalism practically, with lessened skepticism, simply because it might produce useful technology to pursue it.
"Putnam, Fodor, and Block and Fodor argued that if functionalism about the mind is true, physicalism is false.The line of argument assumes that functional organizationsare multiply realizable. The state of adding 2 cannot be identical to an electronic state if a nonelectronic device (e.g., a brain) can add 2."
What Putnam et al are arguing is false. The state of adding 2 would be identical to the electronic state for the electronic device as it adds 2, and it would be identical to the brain state as the brain (as someone mentally) adds 2.
"Adding 2" is not identical in both instances, obviously. And it's not identical in two instances of a calculator (or two calculators) adding two, either.
Can you reiterate this for me? What makes neurons special as a carrier of chemical messengers, sodium/potassium gates, and so on? Further, what is it about billions of these chemical messenger carriers packed together in a skull with peripheral sensory organs like the eye with its auditory nerve, and somatic nerves in the skin, and so on?
What I thought was a funny conclusion from much of these philosophies, is that neurons themselves seem to have a sort of magical quality.. If one does not bite the bullet on PANpscyhism, one bites the bullet on NEUROpsychism. In other words, the "Cartesian theater", the "hidden dualism", and the "ghost in the machine" (or whatever nifty term you want to use) gets put into the equation at SOME point. It just depends on exactly what point you want to put it in the equation.
Searle just says we know in the case of humans we know that we're conscious, so it must be tied to our biology, since we don't have any other explanation.
it's not behavior. I can pretend to be in pain or feel sad. i can also hide my pain (within reason) or sadness. When you dream at night, usually your body is paralyzed so you don't move around in response to your dreams. You can sit perfectly still and meditate.
And there are many times we really don't know what someone else is thinking or feeling from their behavior.
Also, we can fake behavior up to a point mechanically and with computers. Siri sometimes tells me, "Brrrr, it's 20 degrees, cold outside." I have no reason to suppose my phone feels cold. It's just programmed to say that for certain temperature ranges.
Quoting T Clark
On the show, Data is always puzzled by some feature of common human behavior. Maybe he could convince someone he's autistic, except the can perform calculation and recitation of facts at a superhuman level if asked, and he usually does so unless told not to.
Now his brother Lore could pass. He's a good liar. It helps being evil.
I don't think we're doing exactly the same thing as a calculator/computer when we add two, because two has an import conceptual component for us. It's an abstract concept that stands in for any set of two things. That's why we have debates over platonism.
Also, because we learn the rules for arithmetic and memorize basic results, which i doubt very much is performing the same function as a CPU making the calculation. Maybe computing a complicated sum with pen and paper is functionally the same?
However, I think the argument is that functionalism is a kind of dualism, because it's something additional to the physical substrate.
IMO, the difficulty is due to the vagueness of the term "consciousness". Broadly speaking, we can consider Data, my cat, and myself to each possess a sort of functional capability that are analogous to one another - and we could label this functional capability as "consciousness." Or we could adopt a narrow view of consciousness that could only possibly apply to humans (and possibly not even all HUMANS!).
Conscious thoughts do not arise in isolation, they arise in a complex context. The context includes sensory perceptions (consider the processing of the visual cortex, which automagically produces a conscious "visual image" by processing reflected light), subconscious "knowledge" (consider reflex reactions that are triggered by past experience), preconscious hard-wiring (consider the physical aspects of sexual stimulation), and bodily functions (feelings of pain, hunger, etc). Also consider pattern recognition - perceiving sameness in a variety of objects, this depends on hard-wiring in the brain, unconscious learning, and conscious learning (think through the mental processes involved with reading and interpreting the words on your computer screen right now).
My cat and Data each comprise very different contexts, and therefore their respective "consciousnesses" (broadly defined) will necessarily be very different from my own. My cat's consciousness will be closer to mine in some ways (those relating to bodily functions, perhaps), while Data's consciousness will be closer to mine with regard to intellectual processing (rational thought). I see or smell desirable food, and my body reacts (my mouth waters, I suddenly become conscious of hunger) - and it appears to me that my cat has some pretty similar reactions. Data does not, because he's not wired that way. On the other hand, I see a reference to Pi (3.14159...) and this triggers my learned concept of circle - and I'll assume Data has a similar thought.
It's clear that neither my cat nor Data can be said to have a human consciousness - the contexts are too different. And yet they each have some functional similarities to human consciousness. On the other hand, I can't accept Block's Chinese brain as having anything analogous - the context is too different.
Odo clearly has feelings and his people have their own biases and wage war in response to past mistreatment. Now the Borg would be a very interesting compromise between Data and biology.
Let's talk about consciousness in others rather than in ourselves just for the moment. We'll come back to our experience of our own consciousness later. How do we know someone is conscious? As far as we know, we can't experience their internal experience directly, so we have to use an outward sign, i.e., their behavior. That's true for any mental state.
Language - speech, writing, signed, by whatever method - is behavior. Do we agree on that? And language is the primary way, not the only way, we can evaluate another being's consciousness. There are other methods, for example, some scientists have tried to determine whether a non-human animal is conscious by seeing if the animal can recognize itself in a mirror. I don't know whether or not I buy that, but it's an interesting way of thinking about it.
Are dreams and meditative states consciousness? I don't think I think they are. Or I think I don't think they are. In my experience, becoming consciously aware of dreams is something that happens in memory after I wake up. As for meditation, maybe it makes sense to think of it as awareness without consciousness. I'm not sure about that.
Now, back to our internal experience of consciousness. For me, and, as I understand it, others, the essence of the experience is internal speech. Talking to ourselves. Another essential aspect is that it allows us to stand back and observe ourselves objectively, as if from the outside, just the way we observe others. We judge ourselves conscious just as we judge others - based on our behavior.
Hence why I said, "'Adding 2' is not identical in both instances, obviously."
Quoting Marchesk
That would work maybe if the functionalist is positing multiple instances of something identical, so that they'd have to be realists on universals/types. But we could have a nominalist sort of functionalism, where we're calling x and y "F," even though it's not literally two identical instances of F.
Here is where we fundamentally disagree. Inner dialog is just one more form of conscious experience. And it's not necessary to experience color, sound, pain in perception, memory, imagination, etc.
If inner dialog were all there was to conscious experience, it would still present a hard problem. Also, not everyone has inner dialog. See Temple Grandin and visual thinking.
I judge myself to be conscious because I am conscious, not because I behave as if I am. I judge other people on behavior AND biology, because I don't experience what they do, but I have no reason for supposing they would be lacking, since they're human beings like me.
You've never had a lucid dream?
That might work, but would you extend that to different computers performing addition?
I agree with this, but would like to clarify that inner dialog is one aspect of HUMAN consciousness. Non-human animals (and non-verbal humans) probably don't have an inner dialog, but they arguably experience qualia.
I argue that we should use a comprehensive definition of consciousness that admits a wide set of mental behavior. If we get too specific, we become overly human-chauvinistic.
Yes. Again, I said this in the earlier post. The full quote was: "'Adding 2' is not identical in both instances, obviously. And it's not identical in two instances of a calculator (or two calculators) adding two, either. "
Probably not, but they might have an inner visual sequence or smell or sonar, which aids their thinking like inner dialog does ours.
Quoting Relativist
Yes, something philosophers are sometimes prone too. Over relying on vision for making epistemological and ontological arguments, for example.
I don't know that I can agree with that. How would they functionally be different for such a simple case? You're saying that there can never be an exact duplicate function across different physical subtrates.
There are lots of people who are "puzzled by some feature of common human behavior." Someone blind from birth might have trouble speaking coherently about visual experience, which they've never had. There are people who are unable to empathetically understand the emotional experience of others. Would we say these people are not conscious?
Quoting Marchesk
It is not necessary to consciously experience color, sound, pain in perception, memory, imagination, etc. It's obviously possible to experience these without being consciously aware. Animals and babies do it all the time. Actually, so do we all. It's just that we have something else added on top of that.
Quoting Marchesk
Again, in my experience and those of others, the essence of consciousness is internal dialog. As for Temple Grandin - I know who she is but I haven't read extensively. Of course there is non-verbal, including visual, awareness. I have visual awareness without being conscious of it. Most of my internal life is non-conscious. I contend that that's true for most, if not all, people. What does Grandin say about awareness vs. consciousness.
I don't know, I just recall reading that she claims to think in pictures and translate those to language when communicating, and she suspects animals also think in pictures. She compared her visualization capabilities to a Holodeck on Star Trek.
Also, what was interesting is that when she thinks of a roof, she thinks of the set of all roofs she's ever seen, and not some abstract roof concept. Therefore, particulars and not universals, with the ability to translate to universals for the purpose of communication.
I would say we aren't experiencing anything when we're not conscious. We're p-zombies in that regard. Experience is consciousness.
Color, sound and pain only exist as consciousness. Otherwise, they become labels for something biological or physical. The world is not colored in. It doesn't look like anything, except to conscious viewers. It also doesn't feel like anything.
A p-zombie universe has no color. It's only a label for the ability to discriminate wavelengths of visible light, since there is no experience of color in that universe.
But I don't fully endorse the p-zombie argument. I think there couldn't be any phenomenal concepts in a p-zombie universe. Color wouldn't exist as a word. Nor would pain.
Quoting Marchesk
From Wikipedia - A lucid dream is a dream during which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment; however, this is not actually necessary for a dream to be described as lucid.
I don't remember ever having this kind of experience. I don't know how it fits in with our discussion
You didn't think that dreams were experienced, only remembered. Well, I've had lucid dreams a few times. They are conscious experiences as much as perception is.
Really? When a baby cries for food, it's not because it is experiencing hunger? When a dog is injured, it doesn't experience pain and fear? Dogs and babies don't experience anything? That seems like a pretty radical claim to me.
Which is not one I would make. Why wouldn't they be conscious?
Part of the problem here is that experience can mean behavior as well as consciousness, and I would rather restrict experience to consciousness, otherwise it's easy to slip between the two, resulting in arguing past one another in these debates.
If want to get down to it, a rock "experiences" the sun from a physical or informational point of view, but that's not what we mean at all when saying a baby experiences hunger.
It's not fair for me to judge the experience you've had without a better understanding. But that never stops me, does it? I guess I don't see how a lucid dream is any different from any other kind. In the most common kind of dream I have, I experience frustration and anxiety. In your lucid dream, you experience consciousness. Consciousness, frustration, and anxiety are all mental experiences.
I know, I don't find that response particularly satisfying either. It's the best I've got right now.
I'm wondering why all your mental experiences aren't just being conscious? Feelings included. Are we using different terms? By consciousness, do you mean awareness of what you're experiencing, and that inner dialog is what makes us aware?
Maybe we're at the heart of our disagreement. Maybe "difference of understanding" is better than "disagreement." As usual, it comes down to a matter of definition. You define "consciousness" differently than I do. If I were to say that my definition is more in keeping with the common meaning of the word, that would just start us off on another spiral of disagreement.
Geez, I'm falling behind here. See my response immediately previous to this one.
I am having a good time with this discussion. We're both being thoughtful and friendly and we're homing in on our differences of understanding. Even if those aren't resolved, it's still useful and interesting.
But I think our own case is special, because we experience our conscious states, and can only infer them about other people.
I've never gotten all this talk about the hard problem. Now that I've heard about the harder problem, I don't get it either. Nothing here seems particularly difficult to me.
Quoting Marchesk
And that's the heart of the matter. The point I've been making is that I don't believe it is true, at least I don't think I do. I'll leave myself some room for additional thought. I understand why people think that way. As I said earlier, consciousness is very personal. Just about everyone who considers themselves consciousness has a strong opinion.
So Data wouldn't present a problem to you, because he could tell you he was conscious, and back that up with convincing behavior?
So, what would make one a nominalist, at least in the more common sense of the term, is that one doesn't believe that any numerically distinct things can be identical.
Because different substrates are numerically distinct things, then as you surmise, under nominalism, no properties, including functions, can be literally identical. And it's even the case that with the "same" substrate, two numerically distinct instances can not be literally identical.
That doesn't mean that they can't be similar enough that we (loosely) call them "the same." It's just that literally, they're not actually the same. It's different things that are similar.
So all that functionalism would amount to, to a nominalist, is similar behavior in some respect(s). It's not identical behavior, as in "one and the same."
So all it would take to disprove nominalism is to find a numerically distinct thing that was identical for some property or function?
Wouldn't any two computers count then, or do they have to be of different chip design?
That's not something I'd worry about. It doesn't make much of a difference in a case like that if we figure he's conscious or not.
Sure. Although how anyone could do that is a mystery. A nominalist isn't going to take any numerically distinct things as identical to each other, a fortiori because we believe that the idea of this is incoherent . . . and that's the case even for nominalists who buy that there are real abstracts, but most nominalists do not buy that notion.
Keep in mind that nominalists are NOT saying that two separate things can't be "similar in all (non-relational) respects."
They're saying that two separate things can't literally be the same, single thing. For one, it contradicts the idea that they're two separate things.
This extends to saying that a property instantiated in two separate things can literally be the same, single thing.
But that's begging the question. How do we know two numerically distinct things can't be identical in some manner that would contradict nominalism? Note here that I'm exluding numerical identity and spatiotemporal location.
We have tomatoe 1 and tomato 2. If they both have exactly the same color, then isn't that an identical property that nominalism says can't exist?
It would have to be identical in all ways to be “identical”. Thats an important distinction here isnt it? Things can have identical properties, such as color, under nominalism, just not the same instances of that color?
I would consider Data conscious, if he actually existed, because he acts like a conscious being when compared with the other conscious beings I know - primarily humans. Maybe that comes down to the Turing Test.
I'm reading "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." Written in the 1970s. The author, Julian Jaynes, claims that humans did not become conscious until about 3,000 years ago. Before that, the role that consciousness plays now was played by voices in our heads which directed our actions and which were interpreted as the voices of gods speaking to us directly...Yes...I know...
Actually, Jaynes work was taken seriously and even now is not considered pseudo-science by most. I have not been impressed with the quality of the argument. I'm three chapters in. It reads like a Malcolm Gladwell essay. I don't consider that a good thing.
I don't see how that works. How can nominalism have the same instances of color if everything is particular?
Properties and functions present the same problem for nominalism as does object identity. You can even dispense with objects in favor of mereological nihilism, and properties/functions would still pose a problem.
You're using "begging the question" in that weird, non-formal way. It's not begging the question re the logical fallacy.
Quoting Marchesk
As I said, because for one, "numerically distinct" contradicts "not numerically distinct."
Quoting Marchesk
Are they numerically distinct instances of redness?
Not if they reflect exactly the same wavelength of light.
Typically nominalism does not allow identical properties in numerically distinct things.
To be an identical property, we're saying that it's just one property--there's no numerical distinctness--that's somehow instantiated in two different things.
So the same light reflects off of two numerically distinct tomatoes?
The tomatoes are numerically distinct, the property is not.
I'm asking you about the light. You used that as a determiner.
I just finished saying it wouldnt have the same instance of color. Instance of color and color are not the same thing. The former has a temporal quality, the latter does not. Im sure Terra will have the formal terms for us.
You're asking me whether the same photons bounce off different surfaces? Not under normal circumstances, but there might be a way to do this experimentally.
The photon wouldn't be numerically distinct (including numerically distinct temporal instances) but we'd somehow be able to point the the photon bouncing off of numerically distinct tomatoes?
There might be a way to emit and capture the same photons in a very controlled setting, while bouncing them off two surfaces made to reflect the same wavelength.
So at the same exact time, the same photons would bounce off of numerically distinct surfaces--so that the surfaces would have to be spatially separated, but we're not talking about photons that are spatially separated . . . somehow.
That seems really incoherent.
Why does it have to be the exact same time to be the same photons? Do the photons turn into other photons over time?
But anyway, are you really so sure this couldn't be done with a double-slit kind of setup?
So two things that are red are not actually red but rather two different colors that we just refer to as red as an approximation?
Does a distinction between a property and something like a category or some other trait matter at all, or is that just another approximation we use for ease of language/reference?
It does make me wonder what Platonists do with the wavefunction and the possibility that properties don't have set values until they're observed. @Wayfarer?
Not sure this helps the nominalist either.
As I said above "The photon wouldn't be numerically distinct (including numerically distinct temporal instances)"
Not at the same time is numerical distinction, so it's not identical in that sense.
Yes, it would have to be at the same time in order to be identical. If the time was different, that would not be identical. To be identical there can be no differences.
So a specific shade of red cannot be the same shade over time? What about the mass of an electron? Is that property different over time, even though its numerically measured to be the same?
They're similar. It's not that "they're not actually red." It's that "actual red" isn't just a single thing. You're basically assuming platonism a la there being singular forms that are nevertheless somehow multiply instantiated in different things. On the standard nominalistic view, that idea is incoherent, and we don't buy any real abstractions (such as platonic forms).
Quoting DingoJones
I'm not sure what you're asking there.
Which means you're not allowed to conceive of an object over time, since it's always different.
It's not that "you're not allowed to conceive of it." Your abstraction isn't literally the case objectively, and your abstraction/conception itself isn't identical through time.
So is it philosophically the case that composite objects don't exist, or only exist for one instance in time?
Actually for that matter, is it the case that fundamental particles don't persist in time, since they're always numerically different?
There's no connection between nominalism and whether objects can be composites. Under nominalism, it's just that the parts and the object are particulars (that aren't identical through time on a nominalistic rejection of genidentity as well).
I kind of think there is. Because if we say a chair can be a composite object, then we're saying a lot of different kinds of material arrangements can be a chair. If every chair is particular, then what is the meaning of "chair"? Why are these different objects chairs?
Concepts like "chair" are abstractions we perform where we mentally generalize some features and ignore others. If something matches the conception then we apply the name to that thing--basically we say that that particular fits the concept we've formulated. (And "essential" properties are the necessary requirements, per how we've formulated our concepts, to for us to don something by a concept name.)
So when we say that 2 is identical to 2, it doesn't matter if one two was written on a blackboard in 1972 and another on a whiteboard in 2019.
Is that because 2 is not an object? Substitute the word red or #FF0000 for 2 if you like, or F=MA.
It would be because you're not a nominalist, and you maybe buy real abstracts/abstract objects, you'd probably be a platonist re ontology of mathematics, and so on.
I don’t think so, I just do not know the proper/formal terminology. I was hoping you would be able to understand what I meant. “Not actually red” in the sense that there is some difference between the two instances of red that in certain contexts (such as a discussion like this one) makes it important to recognise the distinctions that nominalism makes.
Anyway, I understand.
The distinction is one I pointed out in an earlier post:
"Keep in mind that nominalists are NOT saying that two separate things can't be 'similar in all (non-relational [to other thing]) respects.'
"They're saying that two separate things can't literally be the same, single thing. For one, it contradicts the idea that they're two separate things.
"This extends to saying that a property instantiated in two separate things can literally be the same, single thing."
I'm not sure. I can see your argument against composite objects, but what about physics itself? There are universal laws and properties in physics. How can equations apply to all instances?
The context of the current dispute is whether functionality can be identical across multiple things, which is something that's kind of taken for granted in computer science.
Im not sure what 2 identical to 2 would mean. In the strict, technical way we are talking about here nothing can truly identical to anything else.
So the concept identical is incoherent? This is a reductio ad absurdum.
In a certain sense I would say so ya. Obviously, when making references informally “identical” is perfectly coherent though.
Ah, you added to it. Ok, maybe incoherent isnt the right word. I got caught up in the terms of others there.
Doesn't identity underpin logic? That's a pretty extreme position to take. Nominalism isn't worth jettisoning logic.
Im not sure in what way identity underpins logic, but I cannot see where I said anything extreme. What implications do you imagine are extreme, from what Ive said here?
All I'm saying is that if strict nominalism leads to abandoning a pillar of logic, then perhaps the nominalist restriction on identity should be loosened up a bit so as to not undermine logic?
I wasnt talking about “identity” as strictly the use in formal logic. It has more meanings than that.
Also, you do not have to abandon a pillar of logic to maintain nominalism as far as I can tell. Im not really here arguing for nominalism, just clarifying part of the discussion so it can continue.
If that's the position nominalism ends up taking, then it does undermine identity. When I write X = X, well there are two Xs in different locations, written at slightly different times!
Wording is important here, I didnt say “equal”.
Equal means identical in logic and math ...?
Sure, in logic and math (maybe). Did I stumble into a discussion where it had been agreed to use only that context? My mistake, I must have missed that caveat.
I'm not a realist on laws existing as something independent of the "behavior" of particulars. And I'm basically a constructivist on mathematics and logic. I see them how we think about relations, and then we extrapolate from that thinking in a game-like manner, with it being something with strong social mediation, aided by the fact that aside from rudimentary usage, initial transmission is largely via organized social settings--mostly in classrooms.
But then how about my criticism?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Second time I read the term "superhuman". The fact something is done at a superhuman level is now posited as an argument against something being conscious. Surely, that can't be right or even wat you mean but I can't escape that interpretation (twice). Maybe you can clarify. I also don't think being able to reproduce the full range of human emotion should be a prerequisite to be considered conscious.
It's only meant to say that Data is not a functional isomorph with humans. Data isn't perfectly simulating the functions of human brains, so we can't use that argument to say he has to be conscious.
Quoting Benkei
Agreed, but the harder problem is about the epistemic justification for deciding whether a physical system different from our own is conscious. And the argument is that we have no way to really know, because our own consciousness does not tell us what it is about us that makes us conscious. It could be the brain stuff, it could be the functions performed by the brain, it could be both, or it could be that something else like panpsychism is the case. We just can't tell.
Is this a real problem though? I'm from the "common sense" approach that what's conscious is what people decide it is and it's neither here nor there why. It seems they're looking for an on off switch that means if it's there it's conscious and if it's not it isn't. Seems unnecessarily restrictive to me.
This is one fancy way to say what everyone else has been saying: we don't know how consciousness connects to our bodies.
As Mark Twain said,"Everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it." Everyone says we know nothing about how consciousness connects to the body, yet huge tombs and voluminous opinions have been written about it.
If one morning you wake up feeling dumpy and stupid, just write an article in a philosophy forum and talk about how much you don't know about consciousness, you will feel better. The more you write about this thing that you don't know, the smarter you'll feel.
Yes, as much as any philosophical problem is real.
Quoting Benkei
The debate has been rigorously laid out by Chalmers, Nagel, Dennett (in the negative), Block, etc.
Of course you can ignore all that in favor of ordinary language if you like. Just keep in mind that philosophy got started long ago in part because ordinary language contains many conceptual problems.
That and professional philosophers write papers, publish books and give talks on consciousness. Consider these kinds of threads to be loose commentary.
We perceive brains and computers - both of which process different kinds of information for different purposes. So how is it that we can then go about saying anything simulates a mind? How does something simulate a mind? What does that even mean?
Here is a potion of a Wikipedia article on Searle's biological naturalism:
[quote=Biological naturalism]On the other hand, Searle doesn't treat consciousness as a ghost in the machine. He treats it, rather, as a state of the brain. The causal interaction of mind and brain can be described thus in naturalistic terms: Events at the micro-level (perhaps at that of individual neurons) cause consciousness. Changes at the macro-level (the whole brain) constitute consciousness. Micro-changes cause and then are impacted by holistic changes, in much the same way that individual football players cause a team (as a whole) to win games, causing the individuals to gain confidence from the knowledge that they are part of a winning team.
He articulates this distinction by pointing out that the common philosophical term 'reducible' is ambiguous. Searle contends that consciousness is "causally reducible" to brain processes without being "ontologically reducible". He hopes that making this distinction will allow him to escape the traditional dilemma between reductive materialism and substance dualism; he affirms the essentially physical nature of the universe by asserting that consciousness is completely caused by and realized in the brain, but also doesn't deny what he takes to be the obvious facts that humans really are conscious, and that conscious states have an essentially first-person nature.
It can be tempting to see the theory as a kind of property dualism, since, in Searle's view, a person's mental properties are categorically different from his or her micro-physical properties. The latter have "third-person ontology" whereas the former have "first-person ontology." Micro-structure is accessible objectively by any number of people, as when several brain surgeons inspect a patient's cerebral hemispheres. But pain or desire or belief are accessible subjectively by the person who has the pain or desire or belief, and no one else has that mode of access. However, Searle holds mental properties to be a species of physical property—ones with first-person ontology. So this sets his view apart from a dualism of physical and non-physical properties. His mental properties are putatively physical.[/quote]
Immediately I would see that the first person ontology becomes the "ghost in the machine" that he purports to reject. It is exactly that question of how micro-states (third-person) IS or BECOMES (is over time) macro-states. Just to say "we have micro-states" and "we have macro-states" is to simply restate and beg the question.
I would agree. It's the ghostly "first person ontology" that needs to be rejected. And that doesn't then imply a "third-person ontology", which would just be the (behavioral) machine half of the "ghost in the machine". The Cartesian conceptualization needs to be rejected entirely, both in whole and in part. There is just ontology that we flesh out in (public) language, whether ordinary or specialized.
Yes, I see this type of phrase a lot of rejecting the "Cartesian" conceptualization. But exactly does that mean? The hard problem still remains. It seems to me a sort of de facto panpsychism perhaps. I don't know.
It's not panpsychism. We're only talking about sentient creatures here. The problem is that in the Cartesian scheme, we're non-sentient creatures plus a ghostly bit. Or p-zombies plus a subjective bit. But that's not a natural way to conceptualize human beings. It's a dualistic way.
A lot of philosophical language is implicitly dualistic. And it can make problems look more intractable or mysterious than they otherwise would be.
Then what's an example of a solution? Or do we just not debate philosophy of mind and problem solved? I don't see how the problem is not a problem by using different language, or rather, I don't even see how that language would be employed. When I say "green" as a qualitative state and "green" as a wavelength of light hitting the eye and producing all sorts of neurological states and arrangements, they seem different. How would you suppose to not have the difference without adding the ghost?
It seems to me the "ghost" may a product of conceptual problems that arise from (possibly misleading) introspection. It seems that my mind IS something, so I conceptually treat it as an entity. IMO this leads to a dualist (or quasi-dualist) view of the mind.
In answer to your question: the quale "green" is an experience - a representation of a physical attribute, that is produced by the visual cortex which then passes into short-term, and then long-term, memory.
Representation of a physical attribute? That sounds like where you are sneaking in the ghost or the "Cartesian Theater". It usually happens somewhere.
I think the "ghost" is an illusion of introspection. Rather, the representation of greenness is present because it influences behavior. Some of the more important mental activity that is discussed in theory of mind is that which mediates between stimulus and response. This is important because it is contrary to the notion that color qualia are epiphenomenal.
Language is dualistic, because that’s our experience of the world. No amount of invoking ordinary language or Wittgenstein makes that go away.
Problem is that consciousness isn’t limited to perception. Memory, dreams, imagination, feelings, thoughts and hallucinations all can have colors, sounds, etc
We perceive (have a subjective experience) of greenness, and having experienced it at least once, we then have a memory of greenness - a memory that is drawn upon when we dream, think, or imagine things that are green. Perceiving color is a functional capacity that we possess, one that confers an ability to tailor our actions based on this quality. The experience of greenness is nonverbal; words cannot convey the experience. What problems are you referring to?
What is the difference between those and that which does not count as being those?
Quoting Marchesk
We can certainly draw and maintain a meaningful distinction between non linguistic thought/belief and linguistic. That distinction is between two things that exist in their entirety prior to our account of them. Therefore, we can get it wrong. If we reach a logical end to a train of thought by arriving at thought/belief that we have no knowledge base upon which to draw a distinction between Data and ourselves, well...
Consciousness is not the problem. Our account of it is.
"Green" in its ordinary public sense is not a qualitative state, it's a property of certain objects that human beings can point to (trees, grass, etc.) There's a qualitative/experiential aspect in the pointing, but not in the objects.
The scientific usage of "green", while related, has a different referent (i.e., we're pointing at something else, namely a range of light wavelengths).
As I see it, problems are solved by differentiating our experiences, developing a public language around them, and generating testable hypotheses. That is what scientists (and to some extent all of us in our everyday lives) do. The philosophers' role is to resolve/dissolve the conceptual problems that arise.
Quoting Marchesk
That's not my experience (nor, I think, anyone else's). And its not clear to me what you think medical science is doing if not investigating the causes of pain and suffering.
You and I seem to carve up the world differently despite using similar-sounding words. That's a language issue and it affects how we perceive problems such as the "hard" problem.
This is muddled. WHAT is the "qualitative state" then? That is the hard question. Qualitative states exist, you are proposing. I agree. Also, physical occurrences that correspond with the qualitative state exist, as you said:
Quoting Andrew M
By saying they have a different referent, you are just restating that it appears to be a different phenomena. How is it that these two things are related, or are one in the same though? Hence the hard question. If they are not related, then you still have the question, "What are the qualitative states"? What is quale, as compared with the scientific explanation that causes or corresponds with quale?
Quoting Andrew M
Conceptual problems arise sometimes, when there is legitimately no good explanation how two phenomena that seem different are the same. That is the hard problem.
I suggest that there are non-verbal concepts, and this includes qualia like greenness. The "concept" of greenness is that mental image that we perceive. The word "green" refers to this quale. The range of wavelengths associated with greenness are those wavelengths that are associated with this quale. Color-blind humans who lack the ability to distinguish red from green do not know greenness - they only know ABOUT greenness.
But they still have some experience- even if not the same as a majority of people. What is this experience as compared to the wavelength/neural states that correspond with the experience? This isn't a semantic question, but a metaphysical one. By simply restating that there are qualia like greenness (or whatever subjective experience the person has, like in the case of colorblindness), and that there are wavelengths associated with green, we aren't saying much except what we already know. So how are you dissolving this problem?
Words can convey that we have those experiences. As a sighted person, when you say you saw something red, I can visualize or remember red.
Oliver Sacks has one story of a person with brain trauma who lost the ability to not only see but remember colors. Their world became shades of gray. Communicating red to them would be like a talking bat communicating sonar to us. We know it exists, but we wouldn't know what it's like, or in this person's case, be able to put yourself into that state.
Quoting Relativist
That consciousness isn't limited to perception. Let's say for sake of argument the naive realist view of colors, smells, tastes, sounds and feels was correct. Even in that case, it leaves a hard problem for memory, imagination, dreams and hallucination, because those experiences originate in the brain and not the outside world.
Right, and it is these concepts which cannot be reconciled with our scientific concepts.
It's been the human experience since at least philosophical inquiry began and the distinction between appearance and reality was a thing. Thus the word phenomenal and science attempting to explain what appears to us. The table appears solid, but it's not solid in the way it seems to be to us. Everyone is surprised when they learn a table is mostly empty space. Nor does it have as well a defined boundary as it appears, because its actual boundary is molecular.
Similarly, the table's color is just how our visual system perceives the light bouncing off the table, as opposed to the radio, gamma, X-Rays going through the table. Or the infrared or ultraviolet bouncing off. If we could perceive the entire EM spectrum of the sky, it wouldn't be blue. Thus the sky on a clear, sunny day is not actually blue, that's just our experience of it.
Furthermore, our color experience is correlated with whatever neural activity results in a color experience. This neural activity is not blue or painful. But it somehow results in blue or pain. And nobody can why or how that's the case, other than it's a correlation.
Phenomenal: color, sound, smell, taste, pain, pleasure, hot, cold, thoughts, beliefs, desires, dreams, feelings.
Non: shape, space, time, composition, number, structure, function, computation, information, empirical.
Obviously it's not a problem for nature. It's a problem for humans because we can't figure out what the proper account of consciousness is. And depending on what the proper account is, our ontology or epistemology might need to change to reflect that.
You listed some of each. That's not what I was asking for. I'm asking for the difference between what we call "phenomenal concepts" and what are not called "phenomenal concepts". Perhaps this be better put a bit differently...
What is it that makes either one what it is... phenomenal or not?
What do phenomenal concepts have in common such that that commonality makes them count as being phenomenal, whereas the non phenomenal concepts do not have/share this same common denominator or set thereof?
Indeed. That time has long since passed. A paradigm shift is long overdue. The problem is very deep. Academia hasn't gotten thought/belief right. Consciousness is existentially dependent upon thought/belief. Thus...
What I am addressing is the referrent: green is a word that refers to the experience of greenness (the quale). Like all qualia, it is subjective - so your experience of greenness may differ from mine (due to subtle differences in our neural wiring). Knowledge of greenness constitutes non-verbal, non-semantic knowledge; only by actually experiencing greenness can we have this knowledge. The ontology of the quale green is different from other objects of the world because it is subjective: it is a personal mental image (whatever THAT is).
It's true that there is a range of wavelengths that corresponds to green, but this scientific information is not identical to the experience. A person who has never experienced green can learn everything that can be known about the color from the perspective of science and art, but they will still lack the non-semanticknowledge by acquaintance of the color.
Phenomenal are creature dependent. We see red not because the world is colored in, but because our visual system evolved to discriminate photons that reflect off surfaces in combination of three primary values. But that still leaves out the experience of red, because a detector or robot can make that discrimination without supposing there is any experience.
Here it gets a bit murky because shape and extension is also part of our visual experience. It's just that we can use those aspects of our visual field to form scientific explanations of the world. The real question is why there is an experience of a visual field, instead of it being "all dark" like it would presumably be for a detector or a rock.
Vision is tricky. Pain and pleasure are easier to make clear. Why does my nervous system need to have an experience of a painfully touching a stove if we can describe the nervous system performing the function of jerking my hand back without any experience?
What do you mean by "reconciled"? The quale "green" is not ontologically identical to the scientific concept of green (e.g. the range of wavelengths), but the two are related to one another: objects that we perceive as matching the green quale of experience are also known (through science) to reflect light in a specific range of wavelengths.
THAT is the exact thing that is trying to be understood.
Quoting Relativist
Yep, so why is it THAT experience at all (whatever it is) is attendant with the physiological phenomena (i.e. the scientific perspective)? What is this "experience" (the THAT in your previous post)?
The hard and harder problems exist if we take our ontology from science, because it leaves the phenomenal out. Reconciling would mean figuring out a way to include the phenomenal in the scientific, whether that's by reduction, identity, elimination, emergent or expanding the scientific ontology (panpsychism or dualism).
Right, but this presents an ontological problem. For physicalists, anyway. It's not a problem if you're down with dualism, or you're an idealist. It's also not a problem for anti-realists, because they will just deny there is an ontological distinction to be made between subjective and objective.
I expected a response to that! It's a broader topic than qualia. If we can't agree on qualia, we won't get far in a discussion of mental life.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It seems to me it's just an accident of evolution (like the rather large size of my nose). The ability to discriminate objects by color has a utility, and this particular means of discriminating color just happens to be what developed as a consequence of genetic drift and environmental factors.
We know too little about the workings of the brain to truly reconcile that. At this point, all we can do is entertain metaphysical accounts and consider how these might relate to, or emerge from, the physical. The one thing I reject is the argument from ignorance that dualists use: that if we can't provide a full scientific account for the various aspects of mental life then we should accept dualism.
All concepts are creature dependent.
I showed how qualia fit into a physicalist account (I did not originate this; I'm relating Michael Tye). I realize this isn't a complete account, but it's a piece of the puzzle.
You are answering the hard question with easy question answers. The question is WHY is it that there is such thing as a subjective feeling of quale in the first place? Or rather WHAT is this subjective feeling of color? If we say it is X, Y, Z physical phenomena, how is it that a physical phenomena IS this quale feeling.. The easy questions deal with simply causal explanations... neural architecture, evolution, correlates of consciousness.. that is not what I am asking though..
Okay, but the hard problem is showing how a brain state of seeing red is a red experience, or results in a red experience. Saying they're identical is one way to go that would fit with physicalism. But it doesn't explain why some brain states are experiential and others are not.
Does Type support an identity theory of mind?
Alright, yes, nature isn't conceptual. So I'll rephrase:
Some of our concepts are about the structure, function and properties of the world. Others reflect our experiences of the world. Since there's a big difference between the two, at least when we get to science, then there's a hard problem, since we are part of the world science seeks to explain.
Our experience of the world differs considerably from our explanation of the world.
We can certainly draw and maintain a meaningful distinction between non linguistic thought/belief and linguistic. That distinction is between two things that exist in their entirety prior to our account of them. Therefore, we can get it wrong. If we reach a logical end to a train of thought by arriving at thought/belief that we have no knowledge base upon which to draw a distinction between Data and ourselves, well...
Consciousness is not the problem. Our account of it is.
Agreed, so what is the correct account?
Right, they'll just say that qualia etc are fundamental (cf atomic) in the first place.
Given what we already know, I'm not sure how much explanatory force there is in that, though.
On a separate note, synesthesia seems to muddle things up further.
Yes.. See below.
Quoting Marchesk
Here's Tye's basic answer (partly copied, partly paraphrased, from his book, "Consciousness Revisited"):
1. Red = physical property R (e.g. so-and-so reflectance of light wavelengths)
2. Experiencing red = standing in physical relation M to physical property R
Tye then asks, "why, once so-and-so physical facts are in place, am I experiencing anything? His answer is the following identity:
3. Having an experience = having physical property P
Next he asks, "How could phenomenal consciousness just be a certain physical property? Surely if something SEEMS phenomenally conscious, it IS phenomenally conscious. "
His answer: we are not aware OF phenomenal consciousness at all. What we are aware of are the qualities (like redness) of which phenomenally conscious states make us aware.
Since the bearers of phenomenal consciousness are experiences of which they are composed, this means that nothing SEEMS phenomenally conscious to us. hence, the idea that if something seems phenomenally conscious it IS phenomenally conscious, rests on a false presupposition.
I don't have a complete answer, but see my above response to Marchesk for a partial answer. The hard question is....HARD, no doubt. But Michael Tye at least chips away at it, I think.
Hmmm, so then it becomes a matter of explaining physical property P, which is a matter left up to neuroscience, I take it. I like it better than saying red experience is an illusion.
Phenomenal is dependent upon senses and a sensory information processor.
The reason you suppose there is an experience with brains is because you have experiences and you have similar hardware as other creatures that behave similarly, so based on inductive reasoning, you suppose there is an experience associated with brains.
If a robot has a similar shape and therefore behavior as you, then why not suppose that it has experiences as well? It seems to me you think that one's hardware (carbon-based vs. Silicon-based) is what determines whether or not there is an experience, and similar behaviors by different hardware are only the result of simulated consciousness.
So the question is, "what makes carbon-based creatures conscious and any other type of creature not?"
It seems that it is our limited experiences and our "humans are special creations" bias that lends us to think in such ways, which really puts our ideas about consciousness in this inductive box that we cant get out of without reflecting on our own biases and the reasons we have them.
OK, Grandin says she thinks in images, but she can't be forming simultaneous images of every roof she's ever seen.
Obviously consciousness is a property of something, no? Why would you think of it as being "magic"?
Probably not. It's just interesting that she's describing a set and when I think of a roof, it's a universal concept.
I don't know what determines consciousness and I would be fine with saying Data is conscious. It's the epistemological problem that Block explains which is we can't know either it's the hardware or the functions the hardware performs. It doesn't matter whether Data is convincing. We still have the same philosophical problem.
And in the case or Data, I'm pretty sure it would also be an ethical problem. There was an episode where Data is put on trial to determine whether he's a person, or can be treated like a product and used for mass production. We would want to know whether he can really feel pain or sadness as part of making an ethical determination as to whether Data deserved rights.
This issue has come up in the real world with the treatment of animals.
It's semantic identity, which doesn't change over time or in different instantiations. I would go as far as to say that there is no identity other than semantic identity.
Things are identical to themselves. Is that semantic identity also?
Again, the Cartesian Theater is the "magic".. not literal of course. At some point, there is a hidden dualism or a Cartesian Theater whereby the physical processes happening get "transformed" into "experience" first-person style. Thus, nothing is explained.. experience explodes onto the scene.. words such as "emerges" then mean little except for.. I don't know "magic".
What about for patterns, functions, and processes? If we consider an object to be a certain patten of molecular arrangement, where pattern can allow for some changes to take place. You can even have the same pattern from an entirely different particle swarm as long as it's arranged in a way that satisfies the pattern. A pattern just needs to meet certain criteria for being a chair or a person. And yes, the murky boundary conditions are unavoidable.
We can be in pain or see green objects - that's just everyday, conventional experience. However there are no radically private qualitative states, or qualia. We simply interact in the world (that's our experience) and develop public language for the things we interact with.
Quoting schopenhauer1
See above regarding qualia. How some things we point to (such as green grass) relate to other things we point to (such as light), just is what science seeks to explain. And as I argue here, that provides a human view of the world, a relational view, not a "view from nowhere". As such, knowledge about the world provides insight into ourselves.
The problem, as it is, is simply that there is not yet adequate language for what you want to explain. It's the beetle-in-a-box. Co-opting existing public language and giving it a private interpretation doesn't help, it just muddies the waters. As we've seen with modern physics, it's continued scientific investigation that exposes hidden assumptions and forces us to rethink the kinds of questions we're asking and whether they even make sense.
Quoting Marchesk
Yes, things aren't always as they seem. We agree on that. However the distinction doesn't imply dualism (i.e., of ontologies or worlds). Adopting dualism is a philosophical choice.
But you're not addressing this: wouldn't consciousness have to be a property of something? Some sort of existent?
Yes, I am. It is existent, but how is it that this property is metaphysically the same as the physical substrate. If properties are just "something" of the ethereal realm that are "slapped" onto the physical, you don't have much of a theory outside plain old dualism.
I see your argument as not advancing anything other than what we know. People experience quale, we can converse about it. The question is not about whether your quale is different than my quale. The question is WHY or WHAT is quale as compared to the physical substrate which it is correlated with? How is it that certain physical substrates have a "what it's like" (e.g. quale) aspect to it, unlike every other thing in the universe which does not have this. By only providing causal explanations (like evolution, neuroarchitecture, etc.) you are only getting at the easy problems of how physical substrate correlate, but not how it is that physical substrate can be mental phenomena (i.e. experience).
Wait, let's say that there are no people, just to make sure that we're taking perception, mentality, etc. out of the picture. Don't you believe that all physical existents "have" various properties? For example, wouldn't ice with a melting surface layer be much more slick than a tar pit, so that a rock (that weighs, say, a pound or a bit less) on its surface will much more easily be transported across the surface by, say, a steady 20 mph wind?
Those are not properties of experience. We are investigating properties that have experientialness to them, no? Properties like melting points are not experientialness, though one can experience them happening once experientialness hits the scene. The very property of experientialness allows us to investigate other properties. The question is not whether it is simply a property or not, per se, though that can be debated, but what makes this property experiential. What is this thing we call experience and why is it related with matter?
Right. At the moment I'm just trying to clarify whether you agree that all physical things "have" various properties. Because it wasn't clear to me on the earlier comment whether you'd agree with this.
(I'm putting "have" in quotation marks, by the way, because although that's a common way to talk about this, I think it's ontologically misleading. Physical stuff isn't something separate from properties, where substances can somehow can possess properties. Substances and properties are inseparable.)
So where does that get us? Ice melting, and other physical processes are presumably..physical. How it is that one property- the mental, is experiential and not just physical stuff, is the question at hand really. Calling it a property that emerges, is restating what we already commonly think of when discussing consciousness. That doesn't really add much though. Neurobiological organisms, in a certain environment have consciousness is not saying much either. Restating the problem. Unless you pose that melting ice is experiential, you are missing the point of the hard question. Other processes are physical without experientialness..why does this process have experientialness? It is the experientialness that is the issue here. That's what makes it so different than other properties in the first place.
Again, I was just trying to clarify something before moving on.
Next, I'd want to clarify that you agree that consciousness would have to be properties of something, because you didn't answer that in a way that makes it clear that you don't think that consciousness might exist but not actually be properties of anything. (Which wouldn't make any sense to me, because how could we have "free floating" properties? Again, properties and substances are inseparable; that goes both ways--basically the characteristics of something need a something to be characteristics of, and there is no something that has no characteristics, all somethings are some way or another.)
So then we'd have to figure out why you'd think that consciousness can't be properties of physical stuff, but consciousness can be properties of nonphysical stuff, whatever nonphysical stuff would be. (Where the latter question would again be a mystery to me; I can't make any sense out of the notion of nonphysical stuff.)
I think the problem lies more along the lines of figuring out if the hardware really exists as we perceive it. I'm sure my mind exists. Not so sure about brains. Brains could be mental models (the hardware) of others mental processes. The "hardware", ie the "physical" world, are mental models - the way minds model the world. It's not hardware (material or physical) all the way down. It's processes all the way down.
Quoting Marchesk
This is assuming that appearances aren't part of reality. How does that make any sense?
Nonphysical stuff would be like "imagination", "color green", "sound", "the concept of happiness", etc.etc. It is also called "mental states" or "experience". Green is presumably part of a lightwave frequency. Green, the visual sensation, is presumably a lightwave frequency hitting the rods and cones of an eye, causing the auditory nerve to do X, Y, Z, causing the eye apparatus to do 123, causing the first layers of cortical neurons to do 678, etc. etc. sometimes synchronosuly, sometimes asynchronosuly, brain events are happening. But what is this "green" quale..subjective experience as opposed to the physical substrate?
Let's take a property you mentioned, melting. Why doesn't melting have experiential qualities to it? What is it about neurons that have experientialness? Calling something a property does not make the hard question go away. If that were the case, long ago the hard question would have been discarded as not an issue. David Chalmers would not read this and go, "oh shit, what was I thinking!!" :rofl:
Of course it's all part of reality. Dreams, imagination, lies, madness, hallucinations, appearances, colors are all real in that sense. But that's not what's meant. When someone asks me if I imagined something or it was real, what they're asking is did it happen separate from my me. And when we try to understand the nature of the world, we want to know what is the same and what is different from how the world appears to us. Of course ultimately that understanding needs to include appearances. And that's where the hard problem, the problem of perception and other related matters come into play.
Right, dualism is just one possible answer to the hard problem. So let's say that you're right and there is no hard problem. So how would you decide whether a robot was conscious? What would sonar experience be like? Can Earth as a combined swarm of human activity hear its busy cities? Would a perfect recreation of your brain in software experience pain? What do X-Rays look like? What would the world look like in 5 primary colors? What does carbon monoxide smell or taste like? How many different kinds of experiences can there be?
If there is no hard problem, we should be able to reach scientific or philosophical consensus on those types of questions.
Im not sure I understand the problem. Why would you expect a part of the world, ie appearances, to be the same as the entire world? What do you mean by "the same"?
Another strange question. X-Rays don't look like anything independent of eyes looking at them. To ask what something looks like is to ask how it appears in some mind that uses eyes to acquire information. Are you asking about appearances, or asking about x-rays?
Quoting Marchesk
Dualism exacerbates the problem, not answer it. How do two different things interact? It seems the answer to that question is monism.
I'm not sure I understand why people don't understand the basics of these discussions. But okay, I'll continue to play along.
If there is a difference between appearance and reality, then that raises potential problems for explaining reality, since we have to get past the appearance. This is how ancient skepticism got going.
For this discussion, it's about the difference between qualia and external objects.
Theres no game here.
Go back to what YOU said:Quoting Marchesk
I asked:
Quoting Harry Hindu
In other words, what do you expect or imagine to be the same between a part of the world and the whole world?
What would you expect to be different between a part and the whole other than one being a part and the other being the whole?
I guess I'm asking about the ontological differences and similarities between a part and the whole?
We want to know to what extent the world is like our experiences and to what extent it's different. So for example, we've determined that an object's shape is a property of the object, but not its color and only partially it's solidity.
So part of it is figuring what are the relational or representational properties and what are properties of things themselves.
So is imagination an example of nonphysical substance on your view?
I dont know what it is. That's the phenomena to be described. One can say causally imagination is certain brain states but metaphysically, how my experience IS my brain states- well that is the question at hand!
This is all assuming physicalism is everything else that we have to fit consciousness into. Like Schop, I don't know anymore than anyone else does.
But we can make it broader than that. It's fitting the subjective into the objective, on the empirical grounds that the objective is what gives rise to minds that have experiences.
But yeah, if we're giving an account of reality that leaves out imagination, that's a problem.
Youre not answering the question and I dont know if id agree that shape is a property of objects. It certainly is a property of our perception of objects.
You brought up dualism. What does dualism say about what is different about the part vs. the whole? In what way does dualism solve the problem without creating more problems like how different stuff interacts, or the relationship between a whole and its parts?
Is the difference substance, properties, or what? If we can safely assert that mind and world do interact, then what is so different about them? Why wouldn't they have the same substance or properties that allow them to interact, and any differences would entail different configurations of that substance or property?
Another way of looking at it is that your car engine is part of your car but they are both considered physical. But what does that mean - that they have the same substance or properties that allow them to form causal relationships, or come together to form larger macro processes or structures?
If you can't tell what properties exist in perception and what exist in objects, then why be a realist?
But anyway, science is able to do it, that's how we have physics, chemistry, biology, etc.
Because of causation. Effects (perception) are about the cause (object), but effects are not the same as the cause.
Do causes and effects have the same properties even though they are different? You keep avoiding the question, yet accuse me of playing games.
I think we safely can say that minds are not reducible to brains. What I mean is that mind-oriented explanations of behavior (in terms of reasons) will never be reducible to brain-oriented physicalist explanations (in terms of causes).
Assuming that experience is an emergent phenomenon or property of complex physical systems is one thing: explaining it in terms that satisfy both the phenomenological 'feel' character of experience and the physicalist causal paradigm; unifying both, so to speak, would seem to be impossible because one is a qualitative analysis and the other a quantitative analysis, and there would seem to be no way to bring these two kinds of accounts together without losing one or the other, or reducing one to the other; which would not be bringing them together at all.
So, it seems the hard problem is not merely hard, or harder or the hardest to solve, but impossible; in which case pursuing it would be wrong-headed, and only likely to prolong confusion. Better to acknowledge that there are some things we cannot know, or that some questions are simply incoherent by their very nature.
I think we also have no warrant to assume dualism simply because we cannot answer a question which seems on analysis to be incoherent. The assumption of monism or physicalism may be equally flawed. Our models simply have their limits, and we have no way of deciding if or how they might accord with the human mind-independent real.
I'm sympathetic to that, but it gets you called a "New Mysterian" and a defeatist. I always liked McGinn's arguments for cognitive closure, regardless.
Do minds have shapes? Why do minds take the shapes of brains when I look at them?
Quoting Marchesk
Is there no room for indirect realism? You seem to think the only viable options are dualism or naive realism.
Sure. But you've made indirect realism difficult by locating all the properties with the perceiver.
Quoting Harry Hindu
There's quite a bit more options.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Minds do perceive shapes, but as far as we can tell, shape does not depend on the perceiver. That's what makes it an objective property.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Probably because that's the biological center for having minds.
You're apart from the rest/others, yet interact with it all.
You don't have to become something/someone else to know thereof (in which case you wouldn't be the same individual any longer anyway), right?
Furthermore, whatever we all are, we're still parts of the same larger universe/environment, with regularities, similarities and differences alike, sufficiently regular/similar that my neighbor can meaningfully interact with their dog and Armstrong could walk on the Moon.
Interaction at one end is part of my constitution (identity), which, in turn, is rendered as personal experiences (like noumenistic occurrences of qualia), though of course none of this explains their particular format.
I think we will, more or less. As artificial intelligence develops and machine behavior becomes more and more convincing, most people's intuitions about mind and mechanism will shift and the vast majority of the human populace will have little/no qualms with ascribing phenomenal consciousness to their robot friends, much as they have no problem ascribing it to their human friends. Sure, there will be luddite communities that cling to metaphysical arguments "demonstrating" the irreducibility of mind to matter, much as small numbers of people today still promulgate arguments and theories supporting astrology, alchemy, flat-earthism, geocentrism, creationism, vitalism, the luminiferous ether, etc. The hard problem will technically go unsolved, but practically no one will care. For most it will become categorized as a pesudo-problem that, while nominally interesting, is not worth seriously worrying about, similar to how the problem of solipsism is treated today by practically everyone who is not suffering from schizophrenia, despite the inability of anyone to solve it.
I'm not making it difficult. What I'm asserting IS indirect realism.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/
Think of light as the TV screen. We don't see objects. We see light, which explains the optical illusions of mirages and bent sticks in water. We look at the TV to indirectly get at the football game in another city. We don't see the game, we see the TV, which transmits information via causation.
If effects are about their causes, then I don't see the problem of how you get at the properties of those external objects with your perceptions.
Quoting Marchesk
...an objective property of perceptions.
When looking at a distant star, the light takes thousands of years to reach your eye. The star could have exploded yet the light is still traveling across space and interacting with your eyes. When you see the "star" what is it that you are attending in your mind?
Quoting Marchesk
I didn't ask about location. I asked about shape. Why do minds take the shape of brains when I look at them? The mind can still be located in the head, but why the shape of a brain in the head?
Why does the mind take a shape in another mind at all?
Huh?
I'm not following you, really.
The point I was making is that properties have to be properties of something. Do you agree with that?
Sometimes I get the impression that what folks mean by "nonphysical(s)" is something like, "We're just not going to bother doing ontology and we're instead going to talk about things in 'functional' terms per common language."
That doesn't sound right. We see the game via the TV. Otherwise, how would you be able to see what goes on? The tv is a means by which we can remotely watch a game. Even in person, we're still seeing the action via light. That's how vision works.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The star as it was thousands of years ago.
Quoting Harry Hindu
For whatever evolutionary and biological reasons brains are needed to take that shape. It sounds like you're saying a brain in a head is an image that might not reflect the actual geometry of heads. But geometry is something that's easy to figure out from light. That's why visual perception is so advantageous.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It has to do with color experience in spatial arrangement forming shapes.
You have an idiosyncratic definition of physical where it becomes almost impossible to discuss non-physical options. I don't believe in winning arguments by definition.
But so you know, qualia, universals, mathematical platonism, and supernatural are considered examples of non-physical something. And property dualism would mean non-physical properties in addition to the physical properties of brain states or whatever.
How about this part:
"properties have to be properties of something. Do you agree with that?"
(This is why I usually try to not type more than one thing at a time now)
I guess if "something" is defined sufficiently broadly to include more than objects.
It would have to be some sort of substance, object, etc., no? Even if you're positing nonphysical objects, substances--whatever that would be. Otherwise, you'd be positing "free floating" properties. I don't know how we'd make any sense of that. They'd be properties that aren't properties of anything.
Yeah, there's something that has properties. It could be a field, particle swarm, ordinary object, process, brain state, whatever.
I mention property dualism because it doesn't say there is a nonphysical substance mental states belong to. Rather, brain states have non-physical properties.
So you're not positing nonphysical properties of some nonphysical substance, but nonphysical properties of physical substance? (Remember that I'm asking you about this in terms of ontology)
I don't know what the answer is to the hard problem. But I would be very hesitant to support substance dualism. I mention property dualism as a more reasonable possibility.
There is lack of consensus whenever testable hypotheses are absent. One of the consequences of that absence is language on holiday which is what dualism is.
Consider the opening sentence on Wikipedia for the hard problem: "The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why sentient organisms have qualia or phenomenal experiences ..." (italics mine).
You can see how dualism is built into the problem statement. Remove the italicized words and the problem becomes the much clearer one of explaining sentience - something that scientists can work with. That is, differentiating sentient creatures from non-sentient creatures (which we can point to) and providing testable hypotheses for explaining those differences.
Quoting Marchesk
So my claim is that dualism is the root cause of the hard problem.
Quoting schopenhauer1
People converse about ghosts too. I'm suggesting that if we seek to define the problem in natural language then the ghosts will eventually fade away. See my reply to Marchesk above.
Assuming two things:
1. We can differentiate sentient from non-sentient creatures.
2. Sentience captures everything qualia or phenomenal does.
If we can't reliably do #1, then we still have a harder problem (epistemic), and if sentience is leaving something out, then we're just redefining the problem away, which is ignoring the issue.
I don't get this. We don't look at minds at all. We attribute the functions that we call mental to the perceptible physical object we call the brain. Of course, the CNS and in fact the living body with its essential to life functions are necessary for the occurrence of mental phenomena, so it's not merely the brain.
Right, but we experience a mental life for ourselves, and infer that in others based on behavior and similar biology. That's what's laid out with the start of the harder problem.
Do we really? It's not like I can read people's thoughts or have their experiences. What I think's happening is that inferring other people's minds is such a natural thing that it appears we live in an inter-subjective world. Just like it appears I'm looking out at the world through my eyes.
How good are we at detecting lying? How well do we really know other people? There have been cases of friends and families (including spouses) not knowing that someone was a serial killer.
If I'm day dreaming, you might be able to tell that I'm lost in my thoughts and not paying attention to my surroundings, but you don't experience what I'm imagining. Yes, I can tell you. But from your perspective, all you have to rely on is my word and behavior. You can lie. You can omit the embarrassing part. We often don't get the full truth from people about what they're thinking or feeling.
Also, this inter-subjectivity is not so natural for everyone. Some people, notably autistic folks and maybe sociopaths (lack of empathy), have a certain mind-blindness. This would indicate that mind-inferring is an ability. Some would say that we simulate other people's minds to try and predict their behavior.
Yes, just like indirect realism leads to a veil of perception and potentially radical skepticism. But maybe that's just our epistemic position as animals. And perhaps it's not quite so radical, but just enough that skepticism can get a foot hold.
We have the similar issues with memories, dreams and sanity.
Quoting Marchesk
Isn't that what I said, just using different words?
What happens when the TV screen goes black? Why are you not seeing the game any longer, even though the game is still going on? What happens when you have no light? What happens to objects and their shapes? What happens when you use a colored light bulb - what happens to the colors of the objects? Are the properties of the objects changing, or the property of light changing? Can't you talk about both objects or light by talking about your visual perceptions?
What about if you get cataracts and the shapes of objects change? Is it the properties of the object that are changing, or the properties of your visual system? Can't you talk about objects, light or your visual system by talking about your visual perceptions? What is your eye doctoring trying to get at when he asks you about your visual perceptions of objects - like a sheet of paper with ink scribbles taped to the wall?
Which one do you want to talk about? How is it that you can look at an apple and get at all three? And in determining which one we are talking about, we determine what change the perception of the object undergoes based on the change in the other two. If changing the light bulb changes the color of the object, then the color has to do with the light, not the object. If you have cataracts, and your visual perception of objects that you remember change, then the shape of objects has to do with your visual system. If there are changes in the perception of the object without changes in the other two, then we can say that is a changing property of the object.
Quoting Marchesk
So what are you saying - that you're watching a "home video" of the star as it was when it was a "adolescent"?
You say, "star", but the star is presently gone. So what are you referring to when you say "star"?
Note that what is happening here is ambiguous language use, not the ambiguity of stars, the light they emit and your visual perception. Which one are you referring to when you say, "star"?
Quoting Janus
But what is being questioned are the existence and nature of "physical" objects, which a brain would qualify as being. I don't really see the need to bring in the incoherent "physical" vs. "non-physical" distinction. Let's just say that there are objects. What is being questioned is whether or not these objects are of the mind only (solipsism), of the world only (naive realism), or something else, like a (causal) relationship between the two - mind and world?
What I can be sure of is the existence of my own mind. Whether or not there are other minds, I can only induce from the existence of my mind as it relates to the behavior of my body, and the behavior of other similarly shaped and behaved bodies. But then, why does something that doesn't have a shape (whether it does or not is still something that probably needs to be established) - my mind that I'm sure exists - take on a shape in another mind? Why does my own mind take the shape of my brain when I look at in a mirror? If my mind is not shaped, then why does it appear that way to others and even myself when looking in a mirror?
And if the mind (again the one thing I'm sure exists) is not shaped, yet it is mentally modeled with shapes, what does that say about all the other stuff in the world that we perceive as having shapes?
The problem with the Physicalist/Materialist position is that they assume Science has discovered everything about the Universe that it will ever will, as far as the big Categories of Phenomena are concerned. They of course understand that there are holes in even the known big Categories of Phenomena. But at least the Categories themselves have been discovered and are known.
I would put Consciousness and in particular Conscious Experience into a new big Category of Phenomena. We know Conscious Experience already exists as a known Phenomenon that happens in the Universe. I'm going to say that the Category of Conscious Phenomena is a Category of Scientific knowledge because we know it exists.
So the Problem comes down to the fact that there can be an Event happening in the Material Neural Activity Category that affects the Conscious Experience Activity in the Conscious Phenomena Category. These are two Scientific Categories of Phenomena with one Category affecting the other. The point is that Conscious Experience already is part of Science, it's just that Science does not have any good Explanations for it yet. Also, Science needs to at least recognize that there is a big Scientific Category of Phenomena that needs an Explanation.
I think a good start would be to Hypothesize that there is some sort of Conscious Space that exists in the Universe where Conscious Phenomena happens. Conscious Space would not be like any kind of Physical Space. First of all it would be dimensionless. It would be where the Redness of Red happens. It would be where the Standard Tone C happens. It would be where Pain happens. Human Reason and Sensibleness demands that this Conscious Space must exist. If you do not assume a Conscious Space then the Phenomena of Conscious Experience still floats separate from the Material Neural Activity out in some other Realm of Reality. I just like to nail down this Reality a little better.