Emphasizing the Connection Perspective
The Scientific and Physicalist view is that Consciousness is somehow located in the Neurons. It is a reasonable assumption given that Conscious Activity is Correlated with Neural Activity. But Science has no Theory, Hypothesis or even a Speculation about how Consciousness could be in the Neurons. Science has not been able to show for example, how something like the Experience of Redness is some kind of effect of Neural Activity. In fact, the more you think about the Redness Experience and then think about Neural Activity, the less likely it seems that the Redness Experience is actually some sort of Neural Activity. Science has tried in vain for a hundred years to figure this out. If the Experience of Redness actually was in the Neurons, Science would have had a lot to say about it by now. Something has got to be wrong with their perspective on the problem.
The Inter Mind Model can accommodate Consciousness as being in the Neurons, but it can also accommodate other concepts of Consciousness. The Inter Mind Model is structurally a Connection Model, in the sense that the Physical Mind (PM) is connected to the Inter Mind (IM) which is connected to the Conscious Mind (CM). These Connections might be conceptual where all three Minds are actually in the Neurons. But these Connections might have more reality to them where the PM, the IM, and the CM are separate things. I will Speculate that the situation is more like the latter than the former. In that case the PM, which is in Physical Space (PSp), uses the IM to create a Connection to the CM, which is in Conscious Space (CSp). The important perspective change here is that the PM is Connected to the CM, rather than assuming that the PM contains the CM as part of the PM. This allows the CM to be a thing in itself existing in it’s own CSp.
The inability of Science to solve the problem of Consciousness is the main driver for looking at other perspectives. Insisting that Consciousness is in the Neurons and is just some artifact of Neural Activity is getting us nowhere. Not only is Science unable to Explain Consciousness as Neural Activity, it is also unable to provide the first clue as to what something like the Experience of Redness actually is. Things like Redness, the Standard A Tone, and the Salty Taste, are Conscious Experiences. These kinds of Conscious Experiences are some sort of Phenomena that exist in the Reality of the Manifest Universe. They are in a Category of Phenomena that Science cannot explain. It is therefore Sensible and Logical to Speculate a place for them to exist. This of Course is CSp.
At the developmental level we now will have the PM developing in PSp and a separate CM developing in CSp. There is also an IM which is developing the Connections between the PM and the CM. The CM is no longer trapped in the PM which is in PSp. The CM now has a separate development and existence in CSp.
We can make some statements about things that are in the CM and things that are in the PM. For example, the CM is where the Experiences of Redness, the Standard A Tone, and the Salty Taste are located. The CM is also where the Conscious Self is located. Examples of things that are located in the PM are Memory, Pattern Recognition, Eye Convergence/Tracking, and Balance.
This separation provides a new perspective for thinking about the effect of Anesthesia. With the old perspective the reasoning was like this: The Neural Activity was halted and Consciousness seemed to also be halted so therefore Consciousness must be in the Neurons. With the new perspective the reasoning would be: The Neural Activity was halted and Consciousness seemed to be halted so therefore the Connection must have been interrupted. With this new perspective Consciousness itself was not halted but rather the Connection from the PM to the CM was interrupted. We don't know what the CM does during an interruption, but since Anesthesia can halt Memory operations the CM will not have any access to Memories of the Interruption after the Connection is reestablished.
It is time for Science to think more outside the Box with regard to Consciousness, and hopefully this Connection Perspective will inspire Research in new directions that might someday solve the Problem of Consciousness.
The Inter Mind Model can accommodate Consciousness as being in the Neurons, but it can also accommodate other concepts of Consciousness. The Inter Mind Model is structurally a Connection Model, in the sense that the Physical Mind (PM) is connected to the Inter Mind (IM) which is connected to the Conscious Mind (CM). These Connections might be conceptual where all three Minds are actually in the Neurons. But these Connections might have more reality to them where the PM, the IM, and the CM are separate things. I will Speculate that the situation is more like the latter than the former. In that case the PM, which is in Physical Space (PSp), uses the IM to create a Connection to the CM, which is in Conscious Space (CSp). The important perspective change here is that the PM is Connected to the CM, rather than assuming that the PM contains the CM as part of the PM. This allows the CM to be a thing in itself existing in it’s own CSp.
The inability of Science to solve the problem of Consciousness is the main driver for looking at other perspectives. Insisting that Consciousness is in the Neurons and is just some artifact of Neural Activity is getting us nowhere. Not only is Science unable to Explain Consciousness as Neural Activity, it is also unable to provide the first clue as to what something like the Experience of Redness actually is. Things like Redness, the Standard A Tone, and the Salty Taste, are Conscious Experiences. These kinds of Conscious Experiences are some sort of Phenomena that exist in the Reality of the Manifest Universe. They are in a Category of Phenomena that Science cannot explain. It is therefore Sensible and Logical to Speculate a place for them to exist. This of Course is CSp.
At the developmental level we now will have the PM developing in PSp and a separate CM developing in CSp. There is also an IM which is developing the Connections between the PM and the CM. The CM is no longer trapped in the PM which is in PSp. The CM now has a separate development and existence in CSp.
We can make some statements about things that are in the CM and things that are in the PM. For example, the CM is where the Experiences of Redness, the Standard A Tone, and the Salty Taste are located. The CM is also where the Conscious Self is located. Examples of things that are located in the PM are Memory, Pattern Recognition, Eye Convergence/Tracking, and Balance.
This separation provides a new perspective for thinking about the effect of Anesthesia. With the old perspective the reasoning was like this: The Neural Activity was halted and Consciousness seemed to also be halted so therefore Consciousness must be in the Neurons. With the new perspective the reasoning would be: The Neural Activity was halted and Consciousness seemed to be halted so therefore the Connection must have been interrupted. With this new perspective Consciousness itself was not halted but rather the Connection from the PM to the CM was interrupted. We don't know what the CM does during an interruption, but since Anesthesia can halt Memory operations the CM will not have any access to Memories of the Interruption after the Connection is reestablished.
It is time for Science to think more outside the Box with regard to Consciousness, and hopefully this Connection Perspective will inspire Research in new directions that might someday solve the Problem of Consciousness.
Comments (334)
This is not true. There is a well-developed branch of cognitive science which studies the biological and neurological basis of consciousness. They have developed models that describe plausible mechanisms for the manifestation of consciousness.
Quoting SteveKlinko
This is a false problem caused by an unwillingness or inability to imagine consciousness as just another process. I can certainly understand that. It takes a conceptual leap and a realization that our precious sense of self is nothing special. People, including scientists, used to believe that biological life could never arise out of physical mechanisms. They sometimes hypothesized undetectable vital forces that brought matter to life. Consciousness is not different. There is not hard problem of consciousness, just a lack of awareness.
Quoting SteveKlinko
I did read the "Inter Mind Model" section of the article you linked. I didn't find it convincing and I didn't see any evidence for the IM concept.
True, but probably because the private realm is near impossible to get at from the public realm.
I'm not sure it helps to move the mysterious explanatory gap to another processor with special power, as there is still the gap.
Some have it that the dispositions underlying reality are occasions of experience, yet, our instruments seem to detect waves, as ubiquitous in nature even.
Would you say the self is an illusion, or a bi-product of brain activity?
Both, in different ways.
Our experience of the world is a manifestation of brain activity. That manifestation, whatever you call it, the mind I guess, is different from brain activity in the same sense that life is different from chemical and biological activity.
Our awareness of our self is an illusion as described in eastern religions. In a sense, we are one with existence, the Tao. In another sense, we have separated the world into pieces - things, concepts, words, our selves. All of those are illusions.
I agree with everything you said but I am having a bit of trouble with this sentence. How is the mind different? Our perception of the self as a disembodied separate entity is an illusion, but how does it then become different than the processes? I guess just because it is the amalgam of those processes, and not the processes in and of themselves? Help me out?
First, I don't know if this lead to any misunderstanding, but my quote isn't right. It should read "chemical activity," not chemical and biological. Biological activity is life.
Now, back to consciousness. Consciousness is a mental process. It is my understanding that mental processes develop out of biological processes in a manner analogous to how life develops out of chemical processes. I have been working to avoid the word "emergence" because that always leads off at odd tangents that are often not helpful to the discussion.
But do you believe what we perceive as consciousness is something different than the sum of its biological parts? Or is it just the sum of all the biological activity, thereby, not making it any different, just seeming to be different because of how it "appears to us"?
Mental processes are different in kind from biological/neurological processes in the same way biological processes are different from chemical processes.
Looked at this way, the whole 'problem of consciousness' arises from a flawed perspective, specifically, that of treating the subjective reality of experience as something objective. Mind is not objectively existent, but (as Husserl points out in his critique of naturalism) it is what discloses or reveals anything objective whatever; it is the condition or foundation of objective knowledge, while itself not being an object of knowledge.
If you can see that, you save yourself a lot of needless bother.
So seemingly real as an illusion such that a difference that makes no difference is no difference?
(The message remains, regardless of the implementation/messenger.)
Consciousness is ever a subject and never an object, yet still a process?
At the risk of splitting hairs, but in aid of countering all of the witting and unwitting dualistic woo flying about...
Mental processes are different in kind from information-technology processes (and will be re-conceived as, I dunno, social-semiotic processes) in the same way that vital life force processes are different in kind from chemical processes (and have been re-conceived as bio-chemical processes).
Late edit:
I mean that "mental" processes need re-conceiving in (something like) social-semiotic terms, so that we don't have to regard them as fundamentally different in kind from IT processes, even though we should beware of underestimating their complexity relative to ordinary (and of course non-mental) IT processes.
In the same way, vital life force processes were eventually re-conceived as bio-chemical processes, so that we don't have to regard them as fundamentally different in kind from chemical processes, even though we are well aware of their complexity relative to non-biological chemistry.
The brain perceives its objects/results via the consciousness brain process as a kind of sixth sense?
I don't know what that means.
I don't understand. My way of saying it sure seems simpler.
Yes, you can get behind it or outside it to see what it is. The confusing difference is that you can also see it, feel it from the inside. That confuses people into believing it doesn't fit in with the rest of the world, but it does.
Yes, but you're encouraging a fair deal of witting and unwitting dualistic woo.
The message remains the same no matter the implementation/messenger, such as music is still music, whether live or via some other implementation, like an MP3 player.
No, via introspection.
Interesting fact: one of the founders of psychology was a German-American scientist called Wilhelm Wundt. He migrated to the states in the late 19th c and practically established psychology as an academic discipline. And his whole methodology was based around systematic introspection - subjects' self-reporting of their own mental states.
However over time his methodology fell out of favour, because it was impossible to apply any kind of real empirical rigour or discipline to the process of self-reporting. And you can kind of see why it wouldn't be regarded as scientific.
Quoting T Clark
I think we're confused about it on many levels.
The hard problem of consciousness is WHY is there such a manifestation? Why couldn’t all the brain processes be happening “in the dark” so to speak.
Quoting T Clark
But “life” is an abstract concept. It doesn’t actually exist. Can you point at “life” directly? Not an instance of a living thing but “life” itself. Obviously not, the request doesn’t even make sense. On the other hand, consciousness is a very real experience, not just an abstract property.
Quoting T Clark
How can one’s consciousness be an illusion? How can you think you’re conscious but you’re actually not? If there is a “you” to think, then you’re obviously conscious.
Seems obvious to me too....
As with all other things in the world, just because. That's how it works. No mystery. You put all that stuff in a jug, shake it up and down, pour it out, and that's what happens. It's the world. It's how things are. Why is that so hard to understand?
Quoting khaled
I don't see why consciousness is any realer than life. Seems to me that the only reason you do is because you can't separate your experience of consciousness from the rest of what makes it up.
Quoting khaled
The "you" is also an illusion. This is not a novel idea. Are you familiar at all with eastern philosophies?
Quoting T Clark
So are you saying that conscious experience arises out of the mere fact that chemical actions are happening there? So is my Soda bottle conscious? The question is: what specific properties in my brain make it conscious? That we don’t know. Is any chemical interaction conscious? Does consciousness only arise after a certain amount of complexity? Etc. The thing that makes answering this hard is that you can’t actually tell if anything else is conscious other than yourself. So you can’t systematically test for consciousness.
Quoting T Clark
No not really although I heard the “you is an illusion” thing before. It doesn’t make sense to me. I thought what that meant was that there is no real “identity” to a person and that they’re just an amalgamation of their previous experiences, nothing more and nothing less. That I agree with, but it doesn’t explain why there’s an observer there in the first place. So what happens after I get rid of this “you” illusion? Do I just stop being conscious?
Quoting T Clark
Forget about this point then
What I said previously is that it is my understanding that mental processes are a manifestation of biological processes and biological processes are a manifestation of chemical processes. It's not the mere fact that there are chemical processes, it is the specific chemical processes that are present. It's not the mere fact that there are biological processes, it is the specific biological processes that are present.
Quoting khaled
I have been talking about mental processes in general, not consciousness specifically. Consciousness seems to me to be a run of the mill mental process. Just one among many. Not a big deal. Nothing to get excited about.
Given that, yes, it seems likely that a certain level of complexity is probably required for mental processes to arise out of biological processes.
How do you know that? You have a sample size of 1. That’s not enough to make a general theory
Quoting T Clark
Again, how do you know that? You have a sample size of 1. Another equally likely theory is that everything is conscious. Why would that not be the case? That’s why the problem is called hard. Because you can’t scientifically test for if something is conscious or not.
As I have said, there are theories of the biological nature of mental processes backed up by scientific studies. To a certain extent, that's beside the point. There is nothing I see that indicates there is any reason to look outside everyday reality - what we observe on a day to day basis with our senses and those senses extended by technology. I can't see any reason to start looking for magic.
Quoting khaled
I certainly don't know for sure, although the only way everything could be conscious is if we drastically change the meaning of the word "conscious." As I said, I don't think the hard problem of consciousness is hard. I don't even think it's a problem.
Quoting T Clark
When did it seem to you like I was. It is still the case that we cannot answer "Why is there such a manifestation at all" with a sample size of 1.
Quoting T Clark
How about changing it to "has mental experiences"
Quoting T Clark
Alright then. Why are you conscious. Please give me the theory of consciousness that will explain whether anything is conscious or not definitively
After four or more levels of neurons (Damasio?), consciousness forms.
A brain process perceives its qualia, a brain-invented language of self-referencing symbols, along with it going into memory as qualia, with other brain area alerted but the global qualia result, which can attend to it further. Simple. No big problem.
Consciousness is a mental process, one among many. Mental processes are manifestations of biological processes. Those processes have been and are being studied by cognitive scientists. They have developed theories about how mental processes in general and consciousness specifically develop from biological processes.
I don't know what else to say. My forays into cognitive science are limited, so I can't give you much more detail.
True
Quoting T Clark
You don't know that. We know that our biological processes result in mental processes. That doesn't mean mental processes are always manifestations of biological processes.
Quoting T Clark
I would like to see those theories. Because most of the ones I've heard of make an unhealthy amount of assumptions. Like for example: that biological processes are necessary for mental ones.
Now matter which way you look at it, you can't extrapolate a definitive theory from a sample size of 1
How did they test this?
How did they measure consciousness and rule it out where there are three layers`? or anywhere.
It is my understanding of how things are based on 1) a limited amount of specific reading on the subject and 2) my underlying belief in the way things work. What we see in the world is what we get. There aren't any places where secret knowledge is hidden.
Quoting khaled
I'm not the right one to have a detailed discussion of the state of cognitive science. If you want to know more, you'll have to do some research.
Quoting khaled
I guess I would turn it around. What is the evidence that mental processes come from anywhere other than biological processes?
Now don't get me wrong, basing conclusions on intuition is something we all do, but I think that needs to be up front.
I don't understand how this is a reply to what I'm saying. All I said was that we know that biological processes are sufficient for consciousness, from that we can't claim that they're necessary for it. In order to show they're necessary you'd need to first find every instance of mental processes in the universe (impossible because as I said you can't detect mental processes in anyone but yourself) and then show that all of them require biological reactions (which isn't guaranteed even assuming you managed to do the initial impossible task somehow)
Quoting T Clark
None. What evidence do you have that anyone other than yourself has mental processes at all? None. That's the point. We can't "detect" mental processes in anyone but ourselves. So it makes no sense to claim from there that every form of mental process has the properties that our brains happen to have.
Also this
Quoting Coben
Thanks you saved me from typing that
Unless I have misunderstood him, he does believe that mental processes come from other than merely biological processes. If that's true, he should provide the evidence. If I'm wrong about what he believes, let him tell us so.
Quoting Coben
Here's what I wrote:
Quoting T Clark
That's more than intuition and less than specific evidence. It's the best I can do right now and I'm comfortable standing behind it.
I don't. I contend with saying I have no idea what they come from.
Quoting T Clark The conclusions are intuitive, even if they are in reaction to some evidence you have read, and interpreted the way you have.
But my point was you had judged yourself the wrong person to show why these are good conclusions. Your own estimation and in response to him saying you don't know that. I think that's a fair statement on his part giving what you said in response and what you say here. You don't know that. You do not consider yourself someone who can make the position clear and demonstrable. Your estimation. You think it, sure. It's your opinion.
and see above... he does not have the position you are arguing. He has not gained some onus to demonstate his position.
Yes.
I wasn't aware that you had said that. I must have misunderstood.
Quoting khaled
Sure, although trivial. We're only talking about one particular type of mental process - those that are manifested in people. Us. Here. Now. There's lots of talk of non-biological mental processes, e.g. artificial intelligence. I didn't think that's what we were discussing.
Quoting khaled
That is completely untrue. I have all sorts of evidence of mental processes in other people. I talk to them and they describe their experiences. I see them solve problems. I watch their behavior and recognize patterns that are consistent with my own behavior when I have specific experiences, e.g. I see mother's hold and touch their babies and I understand that as evidence that they love their children as I love mine. They say "look at the red light," and, when I look up, the light is red.
Calling my conclusions "intuitive" doesn't mean anything. If you want to say that you don't agree with them without additional evidence, fine. That's a reasonable response. I don't have more to offer, so we'll have to leave it at that.
Quoting Coben
If all this is is my misunderstanding of what @khaled has said, then I guess we're done.
Is it not true though?
P1: When these neurons turn off I stop being conscious
C1: these neurons are sufficient for me being conscious (logical)
C2: these neurons are necessary for me being conscious (not logical)
You're claiming C2 and I'm claiming it doesn't follow from the evidence
Quoting T Clark
It was. The original "hard problem" I posed was "How does consciousness arise?". You answered with "through biological processes" and now I'm showing that that's a sufficient not necessary condition and therefore doesn't satisfy as an answer to the hard problem.
Quoting T Clark
NONE Of this couldn't have been done by a very advanced chat bot. Mental processes are not actually necessary for anything you're describing here.
I believe that biological processes are sufficient to explain human mental processes. Nothing else is required.
Quoting khaled
I think you have your logic backwards. I'm just talking about people now. I'm not talking about other ways that consciousness might arise, only how it has in people. There is no hard problem.
Quoting khaled
So, the world is full of very advanced chatbots. Is that correct? I started a new Tai Chi class today with about 15 people I'd never met before. They were all robots. Is that correct. My mother was a robot? My wife is a robot. Everybody but me is a robot. Do you expect me to take this seriously?
But that doesn't answer the original question though does it? "Biological processes are sufficient to explain human mental processes" doesn't answer "Why do mental processes arise" does it? That would require finding necessary not sufficient conditions
Quoting T Clark
I am. The question was "Why does consciousness arise?" Not "what is necessary for consciousness in humans". The former is the actual hard problem.
Quoting T Clark
Of course not. I'm just showing that what you presented isn't scientific evidence, it's opinion. Granted, an opinion we all share (except solipsists), but still an opinion.
We're not getting anywhere. I'm think we've taken it as far as we can.
Quoting khaled
There are no answers to why questions, at least not in science. Sometimes we can figure out how. As for how do mental processes arise, I believe it is through the action of biological processes in the brain and elsewhere in the body.
Time for me to go to bed.
And that's why the problem is hard. Lol.
Quoting T Clark
Yup. We can agree those processes are sufficient for mental processes to arise.
You are here applying a binomial distinction to a continuous variable. Justification is not a property of propositions, it is a state of mind of those hearing them. The fact that T Clark finds the existence of scientific conclusions about consciousness to be sufficient to justify his position and Khaled doesn't, does not make T Clark's position unjustified, simply not justified to Khaled's satisfaction.
Consider a person who believed the entire scientific community were lizardmen from Mars and lied continuously. We could present such a person with absolutely unequivocal scientific evidence of some proposition and yet they would remain unconvinced. Does that make our position unjustified?
Given the very complex nature of most modern scientific investigations, and the fact that we cannot all become experts in every field, it is a perfectly rational justification to say that scientists have concluded such and such and rest your case there.
The alternative is the type of argument we've already heard here which amounts to "I don't understand what the neuroscientists are telling me about consciousness, therefore I'm going to conclude that they don't have a clue what it is from a neurological point of view"
If we are to discuss matters whose conditions rely on scientific facts, we either simply trust that what a critical mass of scientists say is at least plausible, no matter how confusing their conclusions may seem to us, or we become experts in that field ourselves. I don't see any alternative.
Quoting khaled
You are mixing logical with inductive reasoning here. Sufficiency and necessary causes are statements of logical propositions. Logical propositions do not submit to evidence, they are propositions of tautology. So, a conditional is a necessary cause if, when it is true, the conclusion must be true. The theory that consciousness is a necessary consequence of (certain) neurons in a certain state is a belief, not a tautology of logic. It is a belief based on evidence. there's no logical work that can be done to undo it.
But that's simply not the case. The evidence does not make "much more sense in light of the evidence". It may do to you, but the making of sense and the garnering of evidence is not a logical matter and so is not subject to logical propositions.
To take your ball example. If the only situations in which we had ever seen a ball move were those where it is dropped from a high altitude, then it may be entirely adequate for some people to believe that being dropped from a high altitude is necessary for a ball to move. Others may imagine other possible ways a ball might move and determine that being dropped from a high altitude is not necessary, merely sufficient. Whether each person is satisfied with their conclusion is entirely subjective, it has no bearing on the logical ascription of 'necessary' or 'sufficient' to the antecedent.
That's not the case. I said you only ever saw one ball fall and it did so from a high altitude. Let's also add that you saw the ball on the ground not moving once as well. It makes much more sense to say it is a sufficient condition then does it not? It requires much more evidence to claim something is a necessary condition. You'd need to have good reason to believe you've uncovered much of the cases in which the ball moves.
Quoting Isaac
I know. My bad for writing it like a syllogism. But it is a statistical matter.
No, it wasn't justified in T Clark's own estimation. He told Khaled that if he wanted answers he would need to talk to someone else. Which means that he cannot justify his own conclusions to himself. Further he responded to Khaled's saying 'you can't know that' when he said that. It would have been easy for him to say, that's right, I don't. It's my guess. But he tried to make it sound like the science was out there and some other person could justify it for Khaled. But this included a self-estimation that he himself could not justify it.Quoting Isaac
This is utterly strawman.Quoting Isaac
That't not a case. And until I find scientists presenting what consciousness is and the mechanism for its appearance, I don't see why I should take another lay person's conclusion that we know the source of consciousness and that it is limited to X or caused by X and that science shows this. Especially when this lay person is saying they haven't read much and that they think someone else would be the right person to help someone draw a conclusion. Well, how did he draw a conclusion he feels strongly about enough to not agree he does not know? Why does he trust his own conclusion, if he does not think someone else should trust it? Quoting IsaacIt's a philosophy forum. We are discussing ideas and from perspectives that sometimes scientists are not the only ones equiped to look at, and often also do not have the philosophical tools to see their own assumptions. Up into the 70s in consensus science it was taboo to talk about animals as having consciousness, intentions, emotions, and so on. While lay people like pet owners and animal trainers knew animals had these things. There were paradigmatic limitations within science then. It was actually professionally dangerous to start talking about animals as experiencers. Nevertheless rational non-scientists could mount arguments- which are now part of scientific consensus-about animals that were at that time and before taboo in science.
I don't see how a philosophy forum benefits from people saying 'consensus science believes X' conversation over. And this would be a lay person analyzing science, and in the specfiic case of T. Clark above, saying that he can't remember that much and hasn't read that much.
Really? we should stop the discussion there?
And again, he said this without admitting that he didn't know. What a simple thing to say? You can't no this? No, you're right Khaled, it is my impression from what I read, though it was not a broad reading of the relevent research.
And now you are entering this particular exchange and making it seem like that's a stopping point.
Again, justify is a subjective state. The fact that one person (requiring more information) is redirected by another only demonstrates that that second person does not have information sufficient for the first. It does not tell us anything about whether they have information sufficient for them.
Quoting Coben
Yes, because the science is indeed out there, and the estimation included was that he could not justify it to Khaled's satisfaction. As I said before, justify is not a binomial state. It is measured in degrees.
Quoting Coben
Your not "taking" their conclusion, and your claiming their conclusion is not justified are two different things. You may not belive T Clark when he says he has read such conclusions. That is a matter of trust, not logic. In a situation like this, I can't think of any reason why he might lie. And to be clear, he was being asked to actually explain the science, not merely name some scientists. What if explaining the science is beyond his ability (apologies if it isn't, consider this hypothetical)? Does that make it impossible for him to hold any justified beliefs? I sincerely hope not or else we're all screwed in that respect.
If we want to know why consciousness arose, and by 'why' mean to find a necessary and sufficient set of causes, then we must look to physical chains of events and eliminate each until the phenomena is no longer present. That is an empirical investigation, not a philosophical one.
If, rather, we want to know which concepts about why consciousness arise are internally non-contradicory and consistent with what empirical evidence we have, then such is an ideal task for amateur philosophy to be engaged in. But by that standard, T Clark's position is as good as any other. It is not internally contradictory, and it is not overwhelmingly contradicted by empirical evidence.
In humans, it’s a [I]meaning [/i] process. That’s what makes human consciousness different.
In other words, from outside.
Good luck with that!
Yes, from outside. If other people are conscious then we can examine their consciousness from outside of it.
Mind explaining?
Why do you think that’s impossible?
The language (it seems to me) is as if there were an already existent thing "self-awareness" and we're surprised to discover that the experience humans have falls into that category "why would it do that?" being the question.
But that's not how language and concepts work. We first experience a thing which we determine, entirely subjectively, to be separate enough from other things to have its own name. We then call that thing "self-awareness". So the question "why are we self-aware? " makes no sense at all. We are "self-aware" because 'self-aware' is the word we decided to give to the thing we are.
There's nothing pre-existantly surprising about the way we are, there is not a pre-existing probability space of "ways things can be" such that it would be surprising to find that a thing that is the way we are. At the risk of having taken a long-winded route to T Clark's jug analogy, we are the way we are because that is one of the possible ways to be. Its like being surprised the dice lands on a six, its one of the faces to land on, it's only a surprise in need of explanation if we have some reason to doubt that it was one of the possible ways to be.
I was responding to T. Clark's statement that 'consciousness is a mental process'. What I said was kind of a play on words, but makes a serious point: that as language-using beings, we see the world through meanings. We couldn't even be having this discussion otherwise. Meaning is thoroughly embedded in consciousness, and vica versa; whenever we speak or discursively analyse, then we're implicitly or explicitly drawing on our understanding of meaning. And the reason that is different in humans, is that we do speak, think, tell stories, and so on - we don't simply respond to stimuli or act instinctively, as do non-rational creatures; we weigh things up and say 'well, what I mean is....'
Quoting Isaac
But that is cognitive science, not philosophy as such. When you study consciousness as a function of behaviour and so on, you are studying it, as it were, a step removed. And it's a big step!
Quoting Isaac
We don't experience self- awareness. Awareness is the condition for any kind of experience. The hard problem is precisely that the 'experience of awareness' is never an object of awareness - although that is not the way that David Chalmers puts it, unfortunately. Instead he engages in the circumlocution of 'what is it like to be....'.
Yes. That was the point I was making.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, I don't agree with this. You are not studying your own consciousness, you're studying someone else's. We don't have any problem studying the phenomena of rain simply because we are not ourselves rain. Why should consciousness be any different?
Quoting Wayfarer
Again "awareness" is a word. We apply the word to some thing. The concept of 'awareness' didn't pre-exist for us to discover, to our surprise, that our experience required it as a condition.
Using your definition (and it us just your definition, not the definition), it is the name given to a phenomenon you posit the existence of as part of your theory. It doesn't exist outside of your theory such that those who posit a different theory have made a mistake by not accounting for it.
Because rain (etc) is 'other' to us. Phenomena are 'what appears'. The subject is what (actually who) phenomena appear to.
Awareness obviously must exist before any theory. One cannot theorise when unconscious.
They study the Neural Correlates of Consciousness. They have no idea How something like the Experience of Redness happens.
Quoting T ClarkBiological Life is made out of matter so it is only Logical that it arose from Physical Processes. Sit down, relax, and think more Deeply about the Redness itself, as a thing in itself. After that you might begin to understand the magnitude of the Gap that there is between anything we know about Neurons and the Experience of Redness. Science does not know how the Redness can come from Neural Activity. I can tell by this post that you really do not understand the Hard Problem of Consciousness.
Quoting T Clark Thank You for reading the article. The Arguments sections that follow provide the evidence.
This is because the Gap might more specifically be a Processing Gap rather than being a general Explanatory Gap.
Yes, and if we're studying someone else's consciousness they are 'other' to us and we are not the ones to whom the phenomena in question is appearing, so studying someone else's consciousness meets both of your criteria.
Quoting Wayfarer
How can awareness possibly exist before any theory, there must first be a theory as to what 'awareness' is in order for us to name it thus.
I believe you are saying that the Flowed Perspective is thinking that there even is such a thing as Consciousness. If I could only ignore myself then everything would become clear to me. Ok I'll try that ... Sorry that didn't work. I need a better Premise than that.
You said: "As I said, I don't think the hard problem of consciousness is hard. I don't even think it's a problem".
Speaking of logic, how do you explain that consciousness defies the law of excluded middle (our ability to do two things at once-conscious and subconscious cognition) ?? Is there an exceptional formula that explains that phenom? Or is it existential and just is.
I don't think we do agree. I don't think biological processes are either necessary or sufficient for mental processes to develop. Unless you believe that all living things have mental processes, which I don't, there are lots of biological processes that don't lead to mental processes. So it's not sufficient. Also, I think it's possible that mental processes can develop without biological processes. One possible candidate would be AI. So it seems likely to me it isn't necessary either.
My bad. I meant the particular biological processes we have, not just any
Also, I'm eating my first bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches of the season with tomatoes from our garden. I may be delayed a bit as I wipe tomato pulp, mayonnaise, and bacon grease from my keyboard.
Quoting Coben
Apparently you and I have different understandings of what it means to justify something. Here are some from the web:
It seems clear to me that justification doesn't have to mean absolute certainty. That's not possible. There will always be uncertainty. I would go further. I think the level of justification required varies from situation to situation based on the consequences of being wrong. If people will die if I get things wrong, I need much stronger justification than I will if I'll fail to convince someone on a philosophical forum.
On that basis, I am satisfied that the level of justification I've provided is acceptable. I have been very up-front about the amount of uncertainty involved in my opinion. That gives others the information they need to evaluate what I have to say.
Quoting Isaac
Yes.
Not to be flip - ok, ok, to be flip - I think there is pretty good scientific evidence that all the people in the world are not chatbots.
Quoting khaled
You and I seem to be disagreeing on something, but I want to make sure I know what it is. We've agreed that biological activity in the human nervous system, including the brain, is sufficient to explain how mental processes, including consciousness, arise. Is that correct? That means there are no additional factors that have to be taken into account.
If what I've said in the above paragraph is correct, where do we disagree? What is the hard problem?
Quoting Coben
You're misrepresenting what I said, putting words in my mouth. Bad boy!!.See my previous response:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/320986
Quoting Coben
Quoting Coben
Again, picking on me behind my back. Boo hoo. And again, misrepresenting what I said. Everybody hates me except @Isaac. I didn't say anything about the consensus of science. I only responded to a specific statement by SteveKlinko:
Quoting SteveKlinko
In response I said "That is not true." In order to justify that statement, all I have to show is that "science" has theories, hypotheses, and speculation about it. I propose all I have to do is show that at least one reputable scientist has. The book I read is "The Feeling of What happens," by Antonio Damasio. Whether or not he is correct in what he thinks, he is a reputable scientist with theories, hypotheses, and speculations. It is my understanding he is not the only one. Again, I am not qualified to give a scientific review of the book, but Damasio's ideas seemed plausible.
Quoting Isaac
No apology needed. The explanation provided in Damasio's book was not difficult and I think I understood it, but I can't present it here off the top of my head.
Quoting Coben
As I've claimed, I believe I am justified in saying there is credible scientific work being done to establish a biological basis for mental processes. I can understand that philosophy may have a role in judging whether the conclusions of that work are adequately justified. Other than that, what role does philosophy have in the process?
Quoting Coben
Oddly enough, I welcome Isaac's input. Just because he suggests we may be at a stopping point, that doesn't mean you have to stop.
I don't see any reason to believe that human consciousness is any different from any other mental process. Meaning isn't something inherent in mental processes, it is created by them.
I can juggle and whistle at the same time. Does that violate the Law of the Excluded Middle? Actually, I can't juggle. Also, LEM applies to propositions, not the physical world.
Are all of you as tired of my responses as I am of writing them?
I agree with what you've written, but I think you and I are missing something that bothers @khaled and others. Apparently it's the jump between biology and mentality. They seem to think there's another step required. I don't understand why that would be so. Seems like you don't either.
By the way, I think I'm all caught up. If anyone wants to respond, it's all clear.
LOL! Ok I'll offer two different examples/ propositions viz. our consciousness and maybe you'll be able to answer them:
The ball is red and the ball is green. Is that logically impossible?
Love is an objective truth. Is that a true statement?
This statement is a lie. Is that true or false?
I don't really want to get in a discussion of LEM unless it has something to do with the issue being discussed, which is....something to do with consciousness or whether I'm justified in saying something about consciousness or something.
I think the discussion has run out of steam, at least for me.
Ok no worries. You came across as if there were no mysteries or using your words "no hard problems" associated with our consciousness. I just wanted you to support your belief.
That would be whether or not the hard problem is hard
Quoting T Clark
Agreed. Except the hard problem asks what are the necessary conditions not what are the sufficient ones. Answering that is pretty hard
But only if you make certain assumptions which are not necessary. Conditions which are necessary for consciousness appear to be located in the brain, and for evidence of this we have the fact that what we recognise as consciousness in others stops when brain activity stops. It's only a problem if you then go on to make the unwarranted assumption that what we recognise in others a signs of consciousness are, in fact, not exhaustive signs. But why would you presume that?
So long as we have defined consciousness as "that which causes us to...", then we can easily find necessary causes by examining common traits in those with and without consciousness. Indeed some really interesting work is being done at the moment by Susan Greenfield examining people as they wake from sleep and anaesthesia identifying the brain patterns associated with gaining consciousness.
If, rather, you want to define consciousness as some mystical woo, then it's hardly surprising that science can't find it's necessary causes, it never will, but that's to do with your definition, not consciousness.
Sufficient*. Just because brain causes consciousness doesn’t mean brain is necessary for consciousness. You’re claiming the brain is necessary and sufficient for consciousness, I’m claiming it’s only sufficient so my hypothesis makes fewer assumptions
Quoting Isaac
Claim: when “is conscious” is false, “certain brain activity is occurring” is false
You can’t go from that to saying that when “is conscious” is true, “certain brain activity is occurring” must be true. Because you have to show that the ONLY way consciousness can occur is through certain brain activity. What the statement above shows is that certain brain activity occurring is sufficient for consciousness, not that it isn’t necessary.
In other words, you made a claim and assumed its inverse is true. Which is not always the case.
Quoting Isaac
Why would you presume they ARE exhaustive. Unlike length and weight, you can’t “measure” consciousness. That we all assume others are conscious is great and all, but let’s not make the further assumption that the only consciousness possible is human consciousness unless we have some reason to believe our brain is NECESSARY not sufficient to cause consciousness.
Quoting Isaac
I don’t think anyone here defined consciousness that way. Usually people define it as “is there an observer there/ is there something that has experiences there”
Ah. So you'd also describe the 'hard' problem of rain (just because we only see rain when there's clouds doesn't mean that clouds are the only way rain can form), the 'hard' problem of gravity (just because we only see matter in motion without other force in the presence of gravity, doesn't mean that's the only other force), the 'hard' problem of death by jumping off a cliff (just because the only outcome we've ever seen from jumping of a 600m cliff is death, doesn't mean that's the only outcome).
Basically, every scientific investigation whatsoever becomes a 'hard' problem because we cannot be certain that our experimental conditions cover all possible conditions. Fine, science is hard. so why is consciousness special?
Correct. Any source of dripping water can be described as rain. Clouds aren’t necessary for rain. Though it’s safe to assume no one is artificially making rain.
Quoting Isaac
Correct. But in physics you can add up forces so if you call the net force on this object in question “gravity” then it would be the only force.
Quoting Isaac
Correct. Theoretically you can survive with enough things in the way.
Quoting Isaac
No. Science makes assumptions like these all the time. And most importantly it never claims to be correct, it just claims to be able to describe the patterns what we see. Did newton say that the gravitational force is the only possible force upon discovering it? No he didn’t. But you’re doing something akin to that. You’ve discovered a way consciousness arises them claimed it is the only way.
Quoting Isaac
Because you can’t measure it. You can’t tell for sure anything else is conscious other than yourself. So it’s especially hard. Imagine trying to make a theory of everything in physics with your data being a ball falling from 2m and that’s it. Just a single data point.
Consciousness is whether or not there is an experiencing subject for the object in question. Whether or not there is an experiencing subject for the object in question says nothing about the properties of the object in question. We can reasonably assume that since consciousness comes and goes based on certain properties of a certain conscious object that those properties are sufficient for consciousness. But we cannot assume, based on that, that no other objects have experiencing subjects nor can we assume that if another conscious object is discovered that it would share properties with the one we know.
I think we might be talking past each other here. The "unwarranted assumptions" I'm referring to, as I tried to explain to Wayfarer, are about the very fact you're using to determine what science cannot say about consciousness.
Let me try it like this. You claim that because consciousness is X, science cannot say Y about it with any degree of certainty.
But in order to make such a claim, you have to say X about it with absolute certainty.
In order to make a claim about how the nature of consciousness makes it difficult for science to investigate, you have to first make a claim about the nature of consciousness, the one thing you've just argued cannot be done with any certainty.
X is “cannot be measured” and Y is “needs the specific mental processes in our brain”
Quoting Isaac
Yes. I am absolutely certain we don’t have a consciousness-o-meter that detects subjective experiences. Note how I didn’t claim such a device is impossible (though I cannot fathom it), just that we don’t have it.
Quoting Isaac
When did I say we cannot make any claims about the nature of consciousness? I said science cannot make the claim that our specific mental processes are necessary for consciousness as it doesn’t have the evidence to say so. You’re conflating that with me saying “consciousness is voodoo magic we can’t know anything about”.
Is it or is it not true that we have no way to detect consciousnesses?
If so, then how can a scientist make a theory of consciousness with only one data point? A scientists has one test subject he knows displays the property of consciousness: himself. He can’t make a general theory out of that.
And even if the scientist assumes all humans are conscious, he cannot then make the further assumption that humans are the only thing that is conscious. That’s a bit too unscientific no? There is absolutely no evidence to support either of those assumptions. I’ll let one slide but not the other one.
That's not true. The question isn't "Why does the word 'self-aware' apply to us?" but "Why do we have the property that the word 'self-aware' refers to?", and to question that property isn't any more absurd than to question any other property of us. Neuroscience doesn't have an answer to the hard problem of consciousness and it can't be proven that any people have any more consciousness than a chatbot - in fact, it should first be proven that any living creatures are conscious before any theory of ts emergence can be claimed to have any reputability.
Depends entirely on your definition of consciousness, which constitutes a listing of its properties. Under some definitions, yes, we do have a way to detect consciousness. Most neuroscientists in the field detect consciousness by patient reports of sensory stimulation, ie awareness sufficient to log memory of the fact that a sensory stimulation occurred. Some prefer to use electrical signals of wakefulness, others rely on historical patient reports to highlight areas of the brain in fMRI scans and then continue to use those as a proxy.
Quoting khaled
They don't have only one data point. That's only the case if you define consciousness as being the feeling you have. If you define consciousness as the term for the collection of phenomena we see displayed in others, then we have more than one data point.
Quoting khaled
Of course he can. If absolutely nothing else shows the same set of phenomena we have just previously determined constitute our definition of consciousness, then that is exactly what he can assume. That's how assumptions in science work. We don't test every single day that gravity is still working, we don't say that we can't make any assumptions about things falling at 10m/s/s until we have tested every single thing. We make such assumptions all the time, it's a normal part of knowledge, there's nothing special about consciousness in this regard.
And what is the property that 'self-aware' refers to?
Quoting BlueBanana
You can't prove nothing is conscious. conscious is just a word, it applies to a set of phenomena. If no such set of phenomena existed we wouldn't have a word for it would we? We can prove that consciousness isn't what we thought it was, but we can't prove it doesn't exist. You're making the same mistake that Wayfarer made - presuming that the concept 'consciousness' exists objectively and then trying to match stuff to it. That's just not how language works, concepts don't pre-exist language, there isn't a whole set of fully formed real concepts out there which we gradually find and give names to. We create them by language use.
No, awareness is pre-theoretical. Animals and insects possess rudimentary awareness, and they're certainly not in possession of any kind of theory. Human cognitive capacities are plainly well in advance of theirs', but even so, awareness or consciousness is necessarily pre-theoretical, in the sense that you have to be aware/conscious to even begin to theorize. You can be a conscious, aware, sentient being without having any 'theory of consciousness' whatever.
Quoting Isaac
You're still not responding to my point, which is central to the so-called 'hard problem'. If we study consciousness as a phenomenon - how it appears in others - then we're still basically in the domain of cognitive science, of seeing how conscious beings act and react. But knowledge of our own awareness or consciousness is of a different order to that, because we ourselves are that which is aware. Again, we're the subject of experience, so in that sense, we can't stand outside ourselves and examine consciousness from an objective perspective. It doesn't appear to us as an object, unlike bats, balls, mountains, galaxies, chairs, apples, airplanes, and practically everything else in the encyclopedia. :-)
Quoting Isaac
Right - that is the claim that I'm making. And it's also very closely related to, or even the same as, what David Chalmers says is the 'hard problem of consciousness'. As a matter of interest, are you familiar with that argument?
I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall here. 'Awareness' is just a word. You cannot say animals possesses awareness without first knowing what awareness is to claim they possess it. You can't say that you have to be conscious in order to theorise without first knowing what consciousness is in order to determine it is necessary.
In order to make these claims about what science can and cannot do with consciousness, you have to know the properties of consciousness. The very thing you're claiming it to be impossible to do.
Quoting Wayfarer
But that's only relevant if you assume that the subjective experience we have is something other than the internal feeling associated with the phenomena we observe externally in others. Why would you assume that when there's no cause or evidence to suggest it might be?
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I am familiar with the basics of it.
Yes you can. Some things work like that. Other examples include: shape, space, time. All of these things you know before any theories about them have been developed. Some words don’t need definitions
Well, I'm not buying that just on your say so. How do we just know? What evidence do you have to justify that proposition? Are you suggesting there's absolutely no disagreement whatsoever about what 'awareness' is? If there is disagreement then what happened to the people who are wrong to make them that way?
The wall is all yours. 'Awareness' is demonstrably possessed by sentient creatures, so you can't say it's 'just a word' and dismiss it on that account. It is a word that has a meaning, and the meaning is directly relevant to the issue. The fact that it's difficult or impossible to define has no bearing on that. You're not going to theorise if you're unconscious, obviously.
Quoting Isaac
Because, if something hurts me, then that experience has a vastly different quality to something happening to another. There is the first-person experience of pain, which can't be reduced to an objective description, even though, objectively, an account can be given of the physical systems that are involved in such an experience. The first-person nature of the event is significant.
Quoting Isaac
Right - you have to define it, make it an object of analysis, which we can't do, for the same reason the eye can't see itself or the hand grasp itself.
What are the paradigmatic objects of the hard sciences? Why, they're objects. They're objects that can be perfectly described and understood in terms of the dimensions of theoretical physics - mass, energy, velocity, position, momentum, and so on. Modern science relies on objectification and quantification - it is built on that from the ground up. And we're so immersed in that, so embedded in that framework, that we can't see what it can't see - which is the blind spot.
Something is conscious if it has subjective experiences.
Quoting Isaac
Are subjective experiences necessary for a report of subjective experiences to be made?
Quoting Isaac
Are these electrical signals necessary for consciousness not just sufficient?
Quoting Isaac
Yes they do. That’s why solipsism is uncounterable. It is the case that a world where there are no other subjective experiencers other than yourself is possible. And our world could very well be that world.
Quoting Isaac
What are these phenomena? That subjective experiences are occurring there? Again I ask, how can we detect subjective experiences. Reports of subjective experiences hardly constitute evidence for actual subjective experience do they? If we’re being honest. And if reports are everything to go by would you believe your toaster if it played the message “I am conscious”?
Quoting Isaac
That’s not what I’m proposing we do. I’m proposing we don’t arbitrarily decide “yup, gravity is the only force” upon discovering it.
All we can say about consciousness is: we have found a way in which consciousness arises in humans
That doesn’t imply: this is the only way consciousness can ever arise
That if every single thing required a definition or a theory and made no sense without it that nothing would make sense. Because you’d be defining words ad infinium.
Quoting Isaac
There is disagreement about what the word should indicate. There is no disagreement about the things being indicated. An easier example: the word “tree”. When you teach a child what a tree is he might misunderstand and call broccoli a tree. In that case there is disagreement between you and the child about what a tree is, but the tree outside your house is not affected by this disagreement.
I’m saying we all have “packets of sense” we start with that we use to reason with. We can slice these packets up in different ways and put different words on them but that doesn’t change the initial packet. In other words, I’m saying disagreements about awareness are a product of language not a product of people having different awarenesses.
Some things that are in this packet of sense are concepts like: shape. Try to define: shape
Great, well lets have the demonstration then. What properties does awareness have which sentient creatures demonstrate?
Quoting Wayfarer
Not by my definition of unconscious, no. But my definition is related to self-reported memory logging of sensory inputs, so It's clear to me that I can't theorise without being able to log sensory inputs. What I don't understand is how, with your voodoo version of what this mysterious consciousness is, you can say that I can't theorise without it. Maybe I can. How would you go about proving I can't?
Quoting Wayfarer
Why not? What is preventing your experience from being objectively described?
Quoting Wayfarer
I thought you just said we could define it?
Quoting Wayfarer
Well that's perfectly possible, but if we can't see things which are not themselves objects in some way (though science has no trouble with gravity, which is not an object, so I'm not sure what you're saying here), then what are we to do. That turns the 'hard' problem into the 'impossible' problem.
Poke them, and they respond.
Quoting Isaac
You’re doing a great job of making my case here.
Circular reasoning. If all humans are p-zombies with no experiences, we'd indeed have the word for it merely because humans under determinism would have said it.
Quoting Isaac
What is the alternative? That things pop into existence when words are invented for them? No, what symbols refer to exist before symbols for them are made up.
Quoting Isaac
Behold: a conscious AI.
What are 'subjective experiences'?
Quoting khaled
Depends what 'subjective experiences' are.
Quoting khaled
Yes, if you define consciousness as the property indicated by these electrical signals.
Quoting khaled
The full quote of mine is
Quoting Isaac
Please don't respond to partial paragraphs out of context, it's complicated enough as it is to keep everyone's line of argument in mind. I said they don't only have one data point...if... The 'if' is important.
Quoting khaled
Whatever we decide they are. That's how language works. Consciousness is the property defined by whatever phenomena we decide define the concept. The 'correct' collection of phenomena does not pre-exist the term for them.
Quoting khaled
Again, it depends entirely on what 'subjective experiences are.
Quoting khaled
No it's not. We could say "this thing we've found arises in humans in this way - we'll call that consciousness. Anything similar we find elsewhere at some later date, we'll call something else"
There is no 'tree' outside my house prior to me defining it. There is an entirely seamless continuum of atoms. I decide that some of them together are a 'tree'.
Great. So responding to being poked is what awareness is. Everything which responds to being poked is aware. Now we can test whether things respond to being poked with certain types of brain damage, under certain brain states and find out what causes awareness.
Yes. That is exactly the alternative. The world is seamless sea of atoms (or waves, whatever) along what lines it is carved up into individual things is entirely arbitrary human invention.
But the ability to print the words 'I am conscious' isn't one of the things we ask patients to report, so why would that be indicative. I've already explained, we ask them to report the logging to memory of responses to sensory stimuli.
Damasio says things like "A feeling arises when the organism becomes aware of the changes it is experiencing as a result of external or internal stimuli". That's no Explanation for the Feeling itself. If we ask the question: "How does Neural Activity produce the Experience of Redness?, Damasio has no answer.
Still, the objects that the concepts refer to are real. Their existence comes first, second comes humans making up their concepts, and last humans making up words to refer to those concepts.
But nevertheless, how is that relevant? We can ask questions about and discuss these things and their reasons for existence even if your way of viewing this is in any way more correct than mine. You don't answer "why does this chair I'm sitting on exist?" with "the question is meaningless because the chair doesn't exist, it's a concept that exists because you named it; the answer is 'because you call the thing you're sitting on right now a chair'."
Quoting Isaac
The actual words don't matter, the point is that patient reports are not trustworthy because a p-zombie would lie and say anything to make it seem like they're a conscious being.
Besides, is that indicative of consciousness? AIs can response to stimuli and have a memory.
So you're honestly saying we have no way of knowing what is the difference between an aware being and an object?
Quoting Isaac
So, you don't recognise anything that could be called 'an ontology'.
Wise old sage has advice: when in hole, stop digging. :wink:
You know what subjective means.
You know what experience means.
I don’t see the issue.
Subjective experiences are what you’re having right now (assuming you’re conscious). They’re kind of like “shape” in which they are a self evident concept that no one asks for definitions for seriously.
Quoting Isaac
But that’s not a definition anyone is using
Quoting Isaac
My bad. But I don’t define consciousness as the feeling I have per se. I define it as the capacity to have a feeling
Quoting Isaac
Well, if the definition of consciousness literally includes “arises in humans” then obviously being human would be a necessary condition.Quoting Isaac
I was calling them the same. So what name do you propose for this thing? Not-human-consciousness? That seems too long for me. Why are we making a destination when finding the same property in something else?
Yes, but your decision did not impact the atoms in any way. That’s what I’m saying. Disagreements about concepts don’t change the world. Would be a big problem if it did.
Woody Allen said "I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia." Why did I think of that when I read your post? (That's for you, @Serving Zion - a rhetorical question. We'll see how well it works).
Quoting SteveKlinko
We clearly are not convincing each other. I don't think we will. I'll give my understanding one more time.
Human mental processes develop directly out of human biological and neurological processes. There are no intermediate steps or additional explanations or factors. None are needed. In my opinion, the hard question of consciousness is an illusion brought about by an inability or unwillingness to accept that our experience of ourselves is nothing special.
I've taken my best shot. I'll leave the last word to you if you'd like it.
I've been thinking of bringing this up, i.e. that human consciousness is not just internal experience. It also manifests as observable behavior. I think it's fair to say that consciousness primarily manifests as observable behavior. Only one seven billionth of our evidence for consciousness comes from introspection.
Based on what I read here, your understanding of the nature of reality and consciousness's role in creating it is the closest to mine I've encountered on the forum. From your point of view, I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. It's a hard sell to others, though. It just doesn't work well with the way people see existence, being, reality.
Although I come from science and engineering, I got to my understanding with some help from Lao Tzu. Any eastern philosophy in your porfolio?
This all arose from your statement.
he is asking you for more information about your position and instead of going into that, you 'turn it around'. That's not really relevant. It is as if his response to this request would somehow fill in for his request. But since you both could have faulty positions on the issue or faulty reasoning it is beside the point in the context of his questioning.
I never said anythign about absolute certainty or certainty.Quoting T Clark
Isaac, or whoever it was, the person I was responding to, did say something in that vein. I was responding to the way he framed your response in a post aimed at him and his post.
Quoting T ClarkIt's odd that you welcome someone's input who is defending your position?
Yes, I know. I hope I didn't come off as a victim, but rather as someone critical of what he seemed to be suggesting.
Here's the original post I jumped into as a third party...
[b][i]You don't know that.
— khaled
It is my understanding of how things are based on 1) a limited amount of specific reading on the subject and 2) my underlying belief in the way things work. What we see in the world is what we get. There aren't any places where secret knowledge is hidden.
I would like to see those theories.
— khaled
I'm not the right one to have a detailed discussion of the state of cognitive science. If you want to know more, you'll have to do some research.
Like for example: that biological processes are necessary for mental ones.
— khaled
I guess I would turn it around. What is the evidence that mental processes come from anywhere other than biological processes?[/b][/i]
Upon third read, now, it seems less cagey then when I first read it. But what got me into it was: he says you don't know that and I felt like that was a simple thing to acknowledge. You do present quite honestly where your understanding, as you put it, comes from. And kudos. It was a very honest, for philosophy forums and probably discussion forums in general, way of describing your justification. However I think it sidestepped the direct response to him saying 'you don't know that' though it is in a sense implicit.
IN the middle of this honest response you say that you are not the person to have a detailed discussion of cognitive science. To me this also felt evasive. That was not what he asked for. He asked to see those theories. This is a request to see the theories - writing by experts that convinced you - or research - that you did read in your limited reading. He's asking to see what your sources are.
You said :His question is not odd after reading that. It makes sense to ask you. Your response makes it seem like he was asking for you to walk him through cognitive science in relation to consciousness. He wasn't. He wanted to know what you based your conclusion about theories on.
Your response raises, for me, begins to raise the question of why you believe what you believe. If you're not the right person to show him on whose work you are basing your ideas, why would you trust your on conclusion and call it an understanding.
Isaac came in not to much later and gave me an utterly strawman situation where someone denies, when presented with the research by scientists, something that has overwhelming consensus in the scientific community. But that's not what happened here. What Khaled got was that you've read some stuff and it is your impression that the scientific community has concluded something.
You appreciate what Isaac contributed, but to me he reframed the issues in a way that made it seem like something else happened. Something which might have happened if you'd answered his question.
Of course, maybe you don't remember, don't want to spend the energy trying to find out who it was you read, etc. But that would have been a real answer. You reframed his question to make it into something else, which affects my posts, and affects Isaac's posts.
As far as philosophers engaging in these issues, that's a complicated issue and this post is huge. I am going to leave this here because it involves four people and has strained my mind to it's limits. Context is everything and, even if you still think my posts were off or unfair, I hope perhaps you got a sense of what I was reacting to.
Take care, see you in here elsewhere.
In case you haven't seen it, in another response I told Khaled that my primary source was "The Feeling of What Happens" by Antonio Damasio.
I don't see how (insofar as 'real' means something like 'outside of subjective artifice).
Quoting BlueBanana
Exactly. So how does the concept of a thing called 'consciousness' which we cannot properly identify/do not understand, make any sense at all. If we cannot identify it, it doesn't exist, things only exist because we've identified some pattern in reality which we think deserves a name. If we cannot understand what it is, then what is it we are we giving a name to?
If we look at empirical knowledge, when we say we don't 'understand' some force, we mean something like that we can see x causes y, but we don't know how. What's being argued here is that there exists some thing 'consciousness', but we cannot identify it such that we can correlate its presence with brain states. That seems to me putting the cart before the horse. If we cannot identify it, how do we know there is even anything there to be named?
Quoting BlueBanana
Again, you're presuming hat consciousness is a thing this p-zombie could potentially have and yet claiming that there is no phenomena there for us to identify. Either consciousness is the name we give to some phenomena we observe in others (in which case we can identify it by those phenomena), or it is the name we give to the way we, and only we, feel. Which, being entirely subjective cannot be discussed at all. How would you even know my 'consciousness' was the same as yours when we use the term in an exchange of sentences. See Wittgenstein's private language argument.
Quoting BlueBanana
The question makes no sense. It still presumes there exists a thing called 'consciousness' and then seeks to ask how we might identify it. If we can't identify it, how do we know there is even a thing to be named?
No. I'm saying there is no such thing as an 'aware' being prior to us defining the characteristics which identify 'aware being' and saying "well, that is one of those things". Responds when poked with a stick is a good start.
Are you that convinced that what you personally mean by 'experience' is the same thing everyone else means by it?
Quoting khaled
This sort of nonsense only ever seems to get by in philosophy. Do you realise any contradiction at all in you explaining to me a concept which is self-evident?
Quoting khaled
That's even worse. How do you identify the capacity to have a feeling without actually having a feeling? Quoting khaled
I'm not sure what this is aimed at. I didn't say that disagreements about concepts do change the world, so I'm not sure why you would be refuting it.
Yes, for a concept that is being painted as entirely internal and one which we have no idea that other people share, there isn't half a lot of 'sharing' going on. One wonders why we fill entire bookshelves talking to each other about a concept that we apparently have no reason to believe anyone else shares.
Quoting T Clark
Not really, not as much as I'd like.
I suggest you take a look at the Tao Te Ching. You can read the whole thing in an hour and it's broken up into 80 short verses. Free on the web. Look for Stephen Mitchell's translation. It's very American.
First verse:
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
Thanks. That's jumped the queue on the reading list. I like stuff that's short, can't stand philosophers who take half a page to say something three well-chosen lines would have got said.
Pretty sure yea. I'll take ANYTHING as long as it can be labeled "experience" in some reasonable manner
Quoting Isaac
There would be a contradiciton had I attempted to explain it.
Also I don't think this is a philosophy only thing. What would you tell someone if they asked you to "prove" that if A=B and B=C that A=C. Every field has to start with certain "packets of sense" like these.
Quoting Isaac
Uhhhhh wot? I have feelings very much T.T
Quoting Isaac
Nevermind then. Must have misunderstood you somewhere
But what I take to be an 'experience' is the logging of some sensory input into memory, but you've dismissed that as not constituting 'experience'?
Quoting khaled
I think we've misunderstood one another here. I'm referring to the argument you are currently making which involves telling me stuff about conscious experience that you apparently think I don't know. I'm struggling to marry that with the idea that all this is self evident.
Quoting khaled
Those are just rules of logic, deduction is tautology, it's not the same as induction. Ramsey wrote an excellent paper showing how we can benefit from looking at things this way, I will dig out a reference for you.
Quoting khaled
I think what you've referring to here is more like Wittgenstein's hinge propositions, or (coincidentally) Ramsey sentences, but nothing here makes the packets 'sense', they're just axioms.
Quoting khaled
I wasn't asking if you had feelings. I was asking how you identify the capacity to have feelings distinct from feelings themselves (which you already dismissed as your measure).
The capacity to do X is distinct from X. If something has a feeling, it obviously has the capacity for feeling right? My capacity to raise my arm is distinct from the experience of raising my arm for example. But if I raise my arm I have demonstrated the capacity to raise my arm.
Quoting Isaac
“Hinge propositions” certainly sounds like it but I’m not familiar with them exactly. I’ll look it up later.
Quoting Isaac
Do you feel anything when the information is being logged that is caused by the logging of the information? I say no, an example would be sleep (logging short to long term). The logging of information can happen without any feeling involved.
Yes I understand that, but in our discussion we when I referred to your having feelings, you dismissed that as being incorrect as a means of identifying consciousness, instead you said it was more like the capacity to feel. If the capacity to feel is only identifiable by having feelings then the identification of feelings remains the main criteria, so I'm confused as to why you dismissed it.
Quoting khaled
The key thing about hinge propositions, or similar concepts, so far as this discussion is concerned with is that they are not "sense, they are nit right or wrong and do not have any bearing on what is 'real'. They are just propositions we have to agree on in order to be able to talk, do science etc.
Quoting khaled
I would say that the 'feeling' something is what the logging is, that process is what I'm describing when I say I 'experienced' a piece of music, the complex logging and filing of the sensory inputs into various parts of my brain (and the various further memories and imagined senses that process might trigger). That is the sum total of what it is to 'experience' something as far as I'm concerned. As yes, I'd say I 'experience' my dreams.
Well that's the thing, we can't, thus the argument that everyone else might not have a consciousness. I suppose people assume the existence of other people's consciousness partly due to Occam's razor, partly due to everything observable about humans having such similarities that it is natural to assume likeness to one another, partly due to that the same parts of our minds that others can't observe are the ones we don't observe in others, and partly due to the fact that without doing so discussing the whole topic is impossible so the assumption is taken as a premise within the framework of which the discussion is had.
Quoting Isaac
It seems you accept that the patterns that we refer to and the concepts refer to exist (because how could we identify a pattern and give it a name if the pattern didn't exist beforehand). I see it as the pattern that defines the existence of a thing. For example, there's a lamp on the table next to me that exists, but also its left half together with 10cm of air to its side is a pattern that's a part of reality and exists, despite not being seen as any coherent thing by an observer.
Quoting Isaac
I just disagree on whether consciousness is that hard to define. It's the part of mind that gives it subjective experiences and isn't directly observable by an outside observer. We know its existence, or at least a single instance of it, from a direct observation of it and the observation of the observation itself.
Then again, that does hold true for all the words. The difference is merely whether they can be given clear definitions afterwards.
The topic reminds me of that one quote of Kierkegaard: “The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self.”
I think this should be the other way around. From everything that has been observed biological processes appear to be necessary for consciousness. From that it does not follow that they are sufficient.
Of course awareness exists before theories about it. Perhaps you mean instead the idea of awareness, but even then the idea exists before any theory to explain it does.
Did I? My bad then
Quoting Isaac
And I’m saying that from there, you cannot say that the only way to feel something is through the logging
How has this been observed? What HAS been observed is that, when consciousness arises, certain biological processes are required. This does not imply that those processes are necessary for consciousness to arise
Claim: When certain biological processes are occurring, something is conscious
You can’t go from that to:
When those biological processes are not occurring, something is not conscious
The inverse of a true statement is not always true
Quoting Janus
When I say “biological processes” I’m referring to the ones we suspect cause consciousness not just all biological processes.
Quoting khaled
What has been observed is that biological processes are always present wherever consciousness is to be found. This shows that biological processes appear to be necessary to produce consciousness. It does not show that biological processes are sufficient to produce consciousness; there might be something else in play that we are not aware of.
Right. So if all that can be taken as a presumption for further philosophical investigation without even mentioning the caveat, why is it then considered such a massive error when scientific investigation presumes the same starting point? Apparently science can't know anything about consciousness because it can't identify it because of those very assumption. So if philosophical investigation can be of use based on those presumptions, why cannot scientific investigation?
Quoting BlueBanana
Yes. That is how I see things too. So for there to be a thing in our realm of concepts which we believe to be part of reality, it can only be so on the basis of some such pattern and nothing else. This makes the idea of there being some real phenomena, but one which we can't identify, incoherent.
Quoting BlueBanana
Again, you're presuming that such a part exists without any evidence of it's doing so. your naming a part of reality (a pattern) without having observed any actual pattern to name.
Quoting BlueBanana
You'll need to be more clear about this, I don't understand the metaphor (obviously you don't mean observation literally - seeing with our eyes) but I'm not sure here what sense or detection it is standing in for.
Really? That's your experience of the philosophical debate around consciousness? Form people like Dennet and Hood considering it to be little more than an illusion, through the pan-psychics, to the Berkeleian idealists considering it to be the essence of the whole of reality in the mind of God. You think people are all using the word consistently?
For a start, I didn't say a theory that explains it, I said a theory concerning what it is. They key is identifying it, not explaining it (by which I would mean, being able to make some predictions about it).
Taking Wittgenstein's private language argument, we cannot privately identify a concept in any reliable sense, we have no way of knowing if we're identifying the same concept today as we did yesterday, so the identification of it becomes meaningless - why would we refer to it rather than simply identify all over again? So 'awareness' is just a pattern that is referred to to bring it to the attention of others, who, in doing the same, gradually refine just that pattern which the word is referencing among all the other possibilities.
So it is not possible to say that some thing, some particular pattern, existed as distinct from all the other patterns prior to us circumscribing it by language. It's like saying a wave exists prior to us having a concept of waves. All that exists is sea, what shape it is in is irrelevant until we make it so.
Then I think you use the term "theory" inaptly. A better way of saying it would be " an idea of what it is".
Quoting Isaac
I have no clear idea what you are trying to say here. Why can't we know if we are identifying the same concept from one act of identification to another. Are you claiming, for example, that the concept
Quoting Isaac
So, from this does it follow that the sea (or anything else for that matter) did not exist prior to our having a concept of it?
I meant in colloquial usage, but yes, even in philosophical discourse, wildly different theories about something doesn't necessarily imply that it's not the same thing people are talking about.
It doesn't take the same starting point. Science looks at things associated with consciousness, like brain activity, or in psychology for example, behaviour. Until it's possible to cause identical observations with identical qualia in different people and science is done by experiencing those experiences directly, it's not correct to say that any branch of science is dealing with consciousness directly.
Quoting Isaac
"Can't identify" as in can't, in practice, so far as we know, identify, and so far haven't, or as in are fundamentally impossible to be identified?
I'm not talking of existence in our realm of concepts, I'm talking of objective existence in which the patterns exist before we recognize them as such. If such objective reality exists, things in it can be referred to by other means than exact descriptions of structure, such as by their relationships with other, more recognized, patterns.
Quoting Isaac
How do you know you have a mind? When you perceive something about the reality, how do you know you've made that perception? English isn't my first language so I'm sorry if observation isn't the best word for what I mean, but anyway, the feeling/experience/perception/observation by which that knowledge is gained is what I was referring to.
Fair enough, a poor choice of expression. I shall remedy in future.
Quoting Janus
Have you read Wittgenstein's private language argument? I don't want to repeat the whole thing if you've actually read it but just disagree. We might as well jump straight to the disagreement if that's the case. Notwithstanding that, it's not that we can't know if we're identifying the same concept (we can't of course because our memories are flawed), but it's that we'd have nothing to check it against but our current identification of the concept. Which means we are not creating a consistent demarcation of the world, but rather re-interpreting it continuously.
So, with your example of
Which you choose will affect what you can do with it mathematically, but when you come to determine if something is
Quoting Janus
Yes, to mix metaphors slightly, the sea (as opposed to the land) is just one pattern of changing material and form among others we could equally have chosen. How far one takes this concept depends on one's fundamental principle. I don't believe it is possible to devise a philosophy using rationality alone. One must start from some axiom which is unsupported. Mine is that there is an external reality. For others, I suppose, they might go to saying that even internal/external is just a pattern dividing thought and so doesn't exist until we define it.
No. Consciousness has never been found. It has been assumed so far. We don't have a consciousness-o-metre. What has actually been observed is that (assuming humans are conscious), whenever a human was conscious, there happened to be certain biological processes at play.
and even if we take your statement as true.
Quoting Janus
This is still an incorrect inference. "It has been observed that whenever a box moves, it is at a high altitude. That means that a high altitude is necessary for a box to move" (assuming we actually never see boxes move in any other cirucumstance) would be wrong
If A causes B. A is sufficient for B
If !A means !B. A is necessary for B
So far we know that certain mental processes cause consciousness (A causes B)
We do not know that not having those mental processes results in no consciousness (!A means !B)
Why do we not know this? Because we have no actual measure of consciousness
But you just said that consciousness can be identified in philosophy by presuming the experiences of others are the same as ours, that's how we can talk to each other about the topic. So why can't science presume that when people say they're experiencing something, they are experiencing what we experience, and call the same thing? If science can't make that presumption (and still claim to be investigating 'consciousness'), then how can philosophy claim to be talking about 'consciousness with other philosophers without having the same identification problem?
Quoting BlueBanana
Yes, but "so far haven't" doesn't even make sense here either. What I'm asking is how can there possibly be coherently a concept which we presume is there but can't properly identify. On what grounds do we presume it's there other than having identified some pattern which we wanted to give a name to?
Quoting BlueBanana
I agree, but where I disagree is in saying that if some pattern in reality exists but we can only identify it by it's relation with other patterns, not by its structure, then it's relationship with other patterns is all it is. That is what we've identified and given a name to, so that is what the name refers to and nothing more. It doesn't then go on to refer to some imagined structure which we simply presume is the way we imagine it to be.
So to dial back the metaphors a bit. If 'consciousness' refers to the posited cause of certain phenomena, but not an identified phenomena in itself, then what 'consciousness' is is a posited cause of phenomena. It is a placeholder in our minds not a thing itself. Personally I don't think that's either an honest, nor a useful definition, but it's at least consistent.
What I'm arguing is impossible, or incoherent, is a clear definition in philosophy objective enough for us all to somehow identify with sufficient consistency to discuss the matter with each other, but that such a definition is then somehow out of the reach of science to say whether some material activity correlates with it.
Also part of the context was T Clark saying: you can't know this. I think the answer for most of us would be, no, I don't. But here's why I have this belief. Perhaps he meant the response to implictly acknowledge this, but I don' t think it's clear.
Quoting IsaacHe couldn't know that yet. So his, yes, honest self-evaluation, seemed to me a general one. I cannot satisfy interlocuters. And even telling you which theories I read would not do it, so find someone else. I am taking his demurral in this context. He doesn't even get Khaled up to speed on which theorists he means. Perhaps he forgot them.
But then one wonders why respond. What is the substance of his previous post. I read some stuff and it satisfied me that the issue is resolved as X. But if you want to know anything further I am the wrong person. That makes it seem like a poll. IOW that doesn't seem to me like an adequate response as if one is countering the other person's arguments. Of course we can all weigh in with opinions, but I think it should be made clear that the role of the posts is not to justify, but rather to just put forward one's take.Quoting IsaacI never even considered that. I did think that it was possible that whatever theories he had read might not actually cover the issue the way he presented it. And that whatever research he read did not actually have as its conclusions what he was saying. That would be my interest in relation to Khaled's request for which theories. Is it a mere impression that that's what they meant? Did they come out and say it in the conclusions of their peer reviewed paper? Who are these people? What kinds of documents were they? There are models out there which carry the presumptions of many scientists but even by the scientists themselves may not be considered the justified conclusions of repeated testing.
Perhaps that discussion would be beyond T Clarks abilities. Peachy and understandible. But that wasn't even on the table. We don't even know what his justification was and he doesn't know if it would satisfy Khaled. Khaled didn't get to see whatever it was. And that was not even an issue.
So the issue of justification being subjective seems not on the table to me. It was a non-issue whatever degree would be necessary. Which is why I raised the issue of why he is himself convinced. I think I framed it as a question.Quoting IsaacSure, but often people conflate for example memory and consciousness. So if someone does not remember it is assumed that this means they were not conscious. I have seen this in discussions led by scientists and by lay people and by philosophers (overlapping groups). Philosophers can have a role in sorting these things out. Philosophers can also look at what the research actually shows and what is being concluded because it fits with current models. Philosophers could also look at paradigmatic bias. As I said somewhere in here scientists did not consider animals conscious or subjects. They were considered automatons, or perhaps better put, it was considered the best default position to consider them like this and professionally dangerous to do otherwise certainly upinto the 60s. I think that was a philosophically poor default choice. And I am not just hindsight backseat driving. I was alive then and challenged the idea then. There has always been a bias to consider things like us to have consciousness. Right now plants are moving into a grey area against default resistence. This is based on philosophical ideas that are not clearly to my mind justified. One common one is that complexity is necessary for consciousness. I have all the sympathy in the world for why this seems like a good default, but I don't think its justified. All sorts of cognitive abilities absolutely are dependent on complexity. I have no doubt about that. The question is whether consciousness is in the same category as those cognitive abilities. And since we know that many extremely sophisticated cognitive abilities can be handled without consciousness I think it would be best not to assume they are the same or have the same cause or are facets of the same 'things' or processes. I am sure there are other roles philosophers can have, or really intelligent non-scientists cna have.. And I would point out that your description makes assumptions. Like that consciousness is best sesedescribed as an effect rather than a facet, say.
Quoting IsaacBut his post was not a position, or not just a position, it was a response or presented as a response. And when taken as a response, a critical arguement is, and fairly basic things were asked about it, I don't think it held up as a counterargument or response to the post it was responding to. Yes, he presented his opinion. It's a discussion forum. I thought it was an odd response to be questioned about it in that context, however much I truly do admire his open and humble explanation of why he draws the conclusion he does.
I understand your position but there's a quite understandable reluctance on forums like this this to engage on constructive theorising because virtually nobody here has any genuine interest in such a process. T Clark has been here way longer than me, but even I am already weary of the "what are your sources" > "oh, those sources are flawed" dance, hence my sympathy with T Clark's position.
I think there's a facade of enquiry, but what's really going on is an attempt to reinforce ideas by pitting them against detractors (often with a stacked deck too) and construct a stronger defense in doing so. In this scenario, the presentation of one's sources to one's opposition is a favour to them, not a requirement of participation. I'm sorry if that sounds cynical.
Quoting Coben
As I've said to virtually everyone else in this discussion, but to poor reception, one cannot conflate anything with consciousness unless the definition of consciousness is sufficiently clear as to eliminate or extend beyond the thing being conflated. If it were so, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. If it is possible to conflate memory and consciousness, then it follows that it must be possible to conceive of a concept of consciousness which has just those properties of memory. It follows then that either we have some identifiable factor which yet requires a name, or it might be that's just what consciousness is.
Quoting Coben
Again, what measure would the threshold for what is 'justified' be on?
Quoting Coben
How can we possibly know this without knowing whether a subject is conscious or not? If we know whether a subject is conscious or not then we can correlate physical states with it.
The whole argument so far has been a lot of "we know consciousness can't be..." followed by "Science doesn't have any means of identifying consciousness". Well if science doesn't, how come random amateur philosophers know so damn much about it?
I've mostly dropped out of this discussion because I think I've probably said all I have to say without repeating myself. I have dropped in from time to time just to see if anything interesting was happening. Now, here, I find my name being bandied about and my words being misrepresented again.
Let's go back to how this started:
We discussed my justification. I thought we'd agreed that it is acceptable given the limited nature of what I was trying to show. I gave you the name of the primary source of my understanding. I thought we'd agreed that, without going into the details of the subject, that source was adequate, again, given the limited nature of what I was trying to show and the small consequences of me being wrong.
I don't remember ever questioning @khaled's justification. Did I? What I do remember questioning is the necessity for some intermediary process between biological and mental processes. I tried to make it clear that I don't think such an intermediary is needed. To me, there's no mystery. I think biological processes in the human nervous system are enough to explain mental processes, including consciousness. As I said previously, I think the reason that's hard for some people to swallow is that they see consciousness as something special, fundamentally different from other phenomena. I don't see it that way.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, this is exactly the reason I didn't want to get into specific sources. My point was that the theories, hypotheses, and speculation exist, not that they are necessarily correct, although I did say that Damasio's explanations seem plausible to me.
Now, hows about we leave T Clark out of the mix from now on. At least use the @ function so I know my name is being used in vain.
My familiarity with the private language argument is minimal, and from how I interpret it I can't see any connection to the question about whether we are identifying/using the same concepts across time.
If our memories are flawed, then there would seem to be an insuperable difficulty involved in knowing that they are flawed, when they are flawed and the degree to which they are flawed. We would not even be able to carry on a sensible discussion from day to day, from hour to hour or even from minute to minute if all our concepts are constantly morphing. I do agree that, in a sense, we are constantly re-interpreting things, but if we should not have any faith in the consistency of our re-interpretations across time, then we cannot have confidence in any of our thought and any discussion would be moot.
Quoting Isaac
I agree that we all start from rationally unsupportable presuppositions. If yours is that there is an external reality, and following on from what you have said about concepts not being the same from one iteration to the next, then how do you know that presupposition of an external reality is the same each time you think it?
So what does the idea of an external reality mean, if its meaning is always changing? Is there a kind of Wittgensteinian range of meanings which have "family resemblances"? But then, how could we even know that if our memories are flawed?
This is not true. At the very least we each find our own consciousnesses, and we know that biological processes are always present in that discovery. The fact that I can say we all find our own consciousnesses means that I know others are conscious, and that when I observe behavior that shows consciousness, consciousness has been found. This is not a matter of "absolute certainty", but a matter of having no good reason to think that consciousness is not to be found in great profrusion across the animal and human domains.
Your "box" analogy is kind of weak and seems inappropriate because we observe boxes moving lots of places not just at high altitudes.
The salient point is not a deductive one that says that because consciousness has only been found in organisms, biological processes therefore logically must be necessary for consciousness to exist, it is an inductive argument that says that because consciousness has never been found anywhere other than in organisms it is reasonable to conjecture that organic processes are necessary for consciousness to exist.
But never someone else’s. Which means you can’t assume WE find our own consciousness. You do (hopefully) and I do (definitely)
Quoting Janus
You can’t say that though. How do you know others have found their own consciousness. I’m not implying solipsism here, just pointing out that we actually don’t have a way to measure consciousness. We assume everyone else is conscious for social reasons
Quoting Janus
What is that behavior exactly? And, again, we have no evidence such behavior is necessary for consciousness. Such behavior could be possible without consciousness. And consciousness could be possible without such behavior. There is no reason to assume that having subjective experiences necessitates certain behavior
Quoting Janus
I said in parenthesis “assuming this is the only instance of a box moving that we do see” didn’t I (or something to that effect)
Quoting Janus
Again, it hasn’t been found in organisms either. It has been assumed to exist. If rocks were conscious would we have found a way to detect it? That’s my point.
So, we cannot be absolutely certain that solipsism is not the case, sure, but I think that fact is trivial and irrelevant, and warrants nothing more than a "So what?". We have every reason to think, and no cogent reason not to think, that other humans and animals are conscious, and that their behavior manifests their consciousness.
So, as I see it, for all intents and purposes, consciousness has been found in organisms, but never in, to refer to your example, rocks. We thus have no reason to think that rocks are conscious, because we have never observed them to behave in any of the ways we associate with being conscious.
Language, is pretty much the answer to your whole post. We talk to each other. That's how we obtain enough certainty about the consistency of our concepts to make use of them. We give them words, we talk to other people about them, we make use of them in our forms of life, communication works and as long as it works we must be getting the concepts at least broadly right. That's the point of the private language argument (or at least the point in the context of this discussion).
Where this system goes wrong, the problems of philosophy Wittgenstein was trying to dissolve, is when people reify words. They make a word (like consciousness) and then say because we have that word, there must be an accompanying concept. They search for the pure concept attached to the word, but there is none, the word was just doing a job, and a different job in different contexts. There's no sublime concept attached to it. It's what leads to nonsense philosophical dilemmas like...
Quoting khaled
Yes, that's it. The reason I brought it up has got somewhat lost because I don't think I've explained it clearly enough for the people I was talking to to understand, but it was that last quote I added (and others like it), that I raised the issue to counter. The subliming of a word into an as yet unidentified concept is incoherent.
I think the argument for the particular nature of human consciousness comes from observing the nature of meaning. That's obviously an extremely broad kind of statement, but the ability to grasp meaning is basic to language, logic and abstraction. That is something that I am doubtful there is a biological account of. The way I put it is that, yes, humans evolved to have the capacity for language and abstraction, but those capacities can't be reduced to or understood in biological terms.
And co-incident with that - maybe a cause, maybe a consequence - is self-awareness, self-consciousness, the awareness of oneself as a separate being with his/her own identity.
Quoting Isaac
And that claim is that 'the nature of consciousness is ineluctably subjective, and comprises 'an experience of being', hence, can never be satisfactorily understood or described in objective terms. The hard problem in a nutshell.
That's not a claim, that's just word-salad. What does any of that mean?
"The nature of consciousness is ineluctably subjective" - for subjective, my dictionary gives me
"influenced by or based on personal beliefs or feelings, rather than based on facts:" So you're saying that consciousness is a personal opinion? Doesn't sound right. I've heard subjective used in terms of "mind related activity, as opposed to external to the mind". Could be that, but neuroscience deals with stuff that goes on in the mind, so can't see the problem there.
"...comprises 'an experience of being'" I have no clue on at all. being I can only get to equate to something like existence, but experience, we've already talked about, can perfectly legitimately be parsed as the logging of sensory inputs to memory. So we get that consciousness is to do with the logging to memory of the sensory inputs relating to being alive. Still not seeing why that means neuroscience can't investigate that.
Because it’s not right. The nature of consciousness is first-person, and can generally be described as ‘subjective’ in a certain sense. It’s not ‘subjective’ in the everyday sense of the word, but in the sense of being ‘a property of a subject’. It is first-person in the sense described by Chalmers’ well-known essay ‘Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness’.
Quoting Isaac
I guessed not. There’s a pretty good answer given by Thomas Nagel in his NY Times OP that lays out a summary of the argument in his book, Mind and Cosmos:
That’s nearer in meaning to what I wanted to convey with the term ‘subjective’.
But none of that provides an argument, in the normal sense of the term. All he's said is "...they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view.", which is just the unsupported conclusion we're examining here.
He hasn't given any reason why they cannot apart from the fact that he thinks they're different.
"... such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.", is not an argument. Why will it leave it out? What is preventing science from describing subjective experiences in material terms? What on earth is the" Subjective essence of the experience "?
This isn’t the same degree of uncertainty we’re talking here. We’re talking “let’s make an entire scientific theory about the necessary conditions for something we cannot confirm is there”. Find me one other situation where that would be acceptable scientifically. The problem is, consciousness doesn’t have any logical impacts on the world. By that I mean, a rock may or may not be conscious and not display any change in behavior (or lake thereof). That’s why we can’t detect it.
No “let’s make a scientific theory about the sufficient conditions for something to be there, and we’re gonna reasonably assume it’s there” seems much more modest but it doesn’t then imply that the only way said thing can arise is through said sufficient conditions (because that’s what a sufficient condition means)
Quoting Janus
But we have no reason to think, based on that, that rocks aren’t conscious. We have “found” (assumed) a way in which consciousness arises. We cannot go from that to saying it’s the only way
Quoting Janus
If you’re going to define consciousness behaviorally then you’ll obviously only find it in organisms. But that will be a definition that has nothing to do with what most people think of consciousness which is “can this thing have subjective experiences”. The problem is, whether or not it can has nothing to do with its behavior as far as we know. In other words, if panpsychism was true, you wouldn’t notice any difference than if it wasn’t.
Quoting Janus
Again, we have found that certain chemical interactions cause consciousness
We cannot go from there to saying that they are necessary for consciousness, we can say they’re sufficient
Other examples include: if we find that kicking a box leads to it moving it is reasonable to assume that the kick is sufficient to produce movement, but not that it is necessary. To confirm whether it is necessary, we would have to have good reason to believe that we have seem most of the ways a box can move AND see most of them begin with a kick.
We have no good reason to believe we have seen most of the ways consciousness can arise, because we haven’t actually seen it arise with the same certainty required to make a scientific theory. We have no measure of whether or not something is having a subjective experience.
I gave a very simple definition though right? “Something is conscious if it has subjective experiences”
Quoting Isaac
First off, nothing about this claim is philosophical, it is empirical. Also nothing about it suggests a dilemma (obviously I meant consciousness hasn’t been found by me except in me).
Second, can you say someone else is conscious with the same degree of certainty you can say the length of a 1 m long rod is 1 m? Where is your measuring instrument?
As I've said, I disagree with this statement.
I think this is a pretty good description of the impasse we find ourselves at. All I can say is "I don't get it." Biology doesn't describe subjective experience, that's what psychology is for.
No. That is an extremely complicated and vague definition. What are 'subjective experiences'? You've replaced one vague term with another.
Quoting khaled
As I've said a dozen times now, it can't possibly be empirical, as 'consciousness' is a word, not an empirical fact. If I say, "no one has yet identified hjyhfdrddf" is that an empirical claim, or nonsense?
Quoting khaled
Yes, nearly. By defining consciousness as a set of observable phenomena and then observing those phenomena.
Exactly.
This is an odd phrasing. What would “subjective experience” stand in contrast to? “Non-subjective experience” comes to mind, but this would be a semantic quagmire at best.
I’m preferential to using “the property of being aware” instead. This since awareness and consciousness are synonymous in most, if not all, ways (save for ocasions when consciousness, unlike awareness, connotes an entailed ability to be aware of awarness).
Quoting khaled
Were one to ascribe the capacity of will to consciousness—this as per common sense understandings—then the issue would be resolved for all intended purposes. That which exhibits actions and reactions relative to environmental stimuli will be endowed with consciousness. This because it exhibits both an ability to be aware and an ability to will.
As to strenght of certainty that something which looks like, sounds like, and moves like a duck is in fact a duck and not a robotic decoy, I will grant that the degree of certainty is lesser than that which I hold that I myself am not a robotic decoy. Nevertheless, until evidence emerges that might sugest otherwise, when I will witness something that looks like, sounds like, and moves like a duck, I will remain psychologically certain that it in fact is a duck. For emphasis, this yet remains a type of certainty—rather than an uncertainty or doubt.
It's a word describing a phenomena we're looking for. Quoting Isaac
If hjyhfdfddf is a phenomena with a specific definition it's an empirical claim.
Quoting Isaac
But that's not the definition most people you disagree with are using
Quoting Isaac
What you're having right now. (Assuming you are conscious) Also you seem to know what it means considering this:
Quoting Isaac
You wouldn't have replied "exactly" unless you knew what subjective experience meant
Not having it
Quoting javra
Sure
Quoting javra
Yes, but I don't think ascribing will is per common sense understanding. That's the point
Describing means to put into other words to make more clear. At the moment we've been give 'subjective experience which is no more clear.
Quoting khaled
That's not the point. Your argument is that science cannot say what it says about consciousness. Not that it doesn't identify a phenomena you personally feel should be there.
Quoting khaled
I know what I think subjective experience means, and I've said as much many times. For me it means something like the logging to memory of sensory inputs. I've been told that doesn't cover it.
I realize this is dependent on a number of the terms you used, so I'm probing.
I wonder if some kinds of genetic and epigentic process might also be covered by that description also.
I think what you're missing is the role of the subject in interpretation and integration of meaning. The subject makes judgements - not simply conscious judgements, but continuously, from a subliminal level up to the conscious level. That is intrinsic to the nature of intelligence - the word itself is derived from 'inter-legere' meaning 'to read between'. That is the human intelligence at work. At it is really a marvellous thing. But we never actually see it working, because we're never outside of it - we only ever look through it, and with it, but not at it.
We don't notice that, and we don't usually need to notice that - but when we're discussing 'philosophy of mind' (as distinct from cognitive science or even psychology) then we had better notice it - otherwise we're not really coming to grips with the nature of the subject.
Often a problem with this format. Terms are disputed so I try to replace them with definitions using less disputed terms, but those definitions are long and I get lazy typing them and increasingly miss out qualifying elements. In this case, the distinction I missed is that the logging is of the fact that some logging of sensory data has occurred. Ie logging the logging event. If a computer did that, then, yes, I would say it was self-aware. If it could make use of those logs in its computation I would say it was conscious. I'm not precious about the term being restricted to living things.
This doesn't make sense. If it is a facet of the human brain then we can get 'outside' of it by observing other humans. We can see judgements being made, we can observe and record the evident results of those judgements. There's nothing in there an empirical investigation can't get at.
Uh huh. I don't agree with you so I must not understand. Such clichéd response.
Well, it's me who should apologise if I haven't explained my terms clearly enough. Unfortunately 'logging' to memory is not a simple process to explain. Despite the convenient shorthand, we don't really have a 'memory' like a hard drive part of our brain, but rather memory is like the strengthening or weakening of neural networks, such that certain inputs are more likely to trigger certain responses next time. We usually experience this as recollection..
Anyway, so what I mean by logging is capturing the relationships by strengthening the network connections in this way.
Is that any clearer now?
So my computer logging the keyboard inputs into temporary memory then reproducing them on the screen makes it conscious? Also, if someone lost the ability to store short/long term memories that makes him unconscious? I doubt either of those statements are true.
Quoting Isaac
The evidence we have is that consciousness arises when certain biological processes are present
We don't have evidence it ONLY arises when certain biological processes are present
Quoting Isaac
I've already told you that consciousness and "subjective experience" are things you can't define further. I ask you to define the word "Shape" for example. You understand as well as I do what subjective experiences mean (hopefully), it's what you're having right now. What you're having right now may be caused by the logging of memory or whatever but that doesn't mean it is the only way it can arise.
Please see my response to Coben above to save me rewriting the same response. I'm getting lazy writing out the full description of what I take conciousness to mean and have ended up confusing people. My apologies for that.
Quoting khaled
Logging and storing are two different things. Memory is not like a hard drive. A lot of the confusion around consciousness, I think, arises from this. The human brain is really, really complex, more than we might even be capable of ever grasping, but this doesn't mean that something non-physical is going on, nor that we can't generalise.
Quoting khaled
No, nor can we ever possibly get any such thing. There's nothing special about consciousness in that respect. Any time we notice any causal correlation with anything else, we can't determine that it is not also causally correlated with some other thing. Not without having tested all things.
Quoting khaled
But it's easy to define 'shape'. I use the word in a consistent enough set of real word circumstances for you to understand the 'rule' about what the word does. It's you here who is trying to use the word 'consciousness' outside of an actual need to describe something.
Granting for the sake of argument that we do not notice that "we never actually see it working, because we're never outside of it - we only ever look through it, and with it, but not at it." Are you saying that we cannot notice it? If we can notice it, how would we know we are really noticing it and what would noticing that tell us?
If we can notice that we simply cannot notice the working of intelligence there is one explanation that seems to be most plausible: if, ontologically, the working of intelligence is the neural activity of the brain, and we obviously cannot notice neural activity; then why would it be a surprise that we cannot notice the working of intelligence?
On the other hand, if the working of intelligence ontologically consists in thoughts and associations, processes which we can notice, then what would it mean to say that we cannot notice the working of intelligence? That would then be a false statement, no?
So, what is it according to you: the "working of intelligence" consists in neural activity which we obviously cannot perceive (notice) directly in vivo, or it consists in thoughts and associations, which we often don't, but can if we try to, notice?
If, according to you, it is neither of these, but something else, then what could this "something else" be? And what use could it be, and what conclusions could we draw from it, if we cannot even notice it and examine it?
"Pouring from the empty into the void"?
I read that already. So if I made a self teaching AI that keeps strengthening the chances it does a certain action based on a past history of whether or not that action succeeded that AI is conscious?
So all deep learning AI is conscious?
Quoting Isaac
No one has suggested something non physical is going on in the brain.
Quoting Isaac
But in other areas of the sciences we have tested MANY MANY things before we said something is necessary for something. In the case of consciousness, we haven’t tested anything (unless you define it as strengthening of neural networks but as I’ve said no one defines it that way)
Quoting Isaac
Could you please do so then?
Quoting Isaac
I do the same with “subjective experiences” or so I hope.
Quoting Isaac
I am describing the property of having subjective experiences... I don’t get why you keep accusing everyone who disagrees with you with implying something mystical or sublime or anything like that. You and I both know what subjective experiences are. You contend that they ARE the logging of memory which I very much disagree with. I think they may be CAUSED by the logging of memory not that they are it. I don’t understand how it makes sense to say they are it.
Consider the amount of work Kant had to do, to arrive at his conception of 'the nature of reason'. A great deal of that work was in determining, by reason, the constituents of conscious experience, which as we both know, entails a great deal of detailed and demanding argumentation, and which hitherto had never really been stated or made explicit in the Western philosophical tradition. Something similar could also be said about Husserl's phenomenology 'which is based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events ("phenomena") as they are perceived or understood in the human consciousness, and not of anything independent of human consciousness.'
So the fact that 'we don't or can't notice' the role of the subject in the foundation of experience, and the significance of that, is actually not a trivial matter. I mean, it's not obvious, and stating it is not stating a truism.
Now you might not have been paying attention but what lead to the comment of mine that you're criticizing, was this:
Quoting Isaac
We have had a back and forth since then - I have been arguing, along the lines of the Chalmer's 'hard problem', that consciousness has an ineluctably subjective aspect which can never be satisfactorily accounted for in purely objective terms. I also introduced Nagel's argument which elaborates a similar point. But the response to these was that: these are not arguments, this is 'word salad', this makes no sense. Which kind of supports my point, I would have thought.
[quote=Arthur Schopenhauer]Everything objective, extended, active, and hence everything material, is regarded by materialism as so solid a basis for its explanations that a reduction to this...can leave nothing to be desired. But all this is something that is given only very indirectly and conditionally, and is therefore only relatively present, for it has passed through the machinery and fabrication of the brain, and hence has entered the forms of time, space, and causality, by virtue of which it is first of all presented as extended in space and operating in time.[/quote]
Whereas, most modern realists presume that the reality is already existing or present in the so-called 'external domain' and that we are merely the consequence of some physical process that exists within it.
Let me throw out a couple of cautions in response to the above, not that I fully understand logging. First I'll start off with a specific. I find most people talk about neural networks and it seems to be at least a lay assumption that it is in these that consciousness arises or that consciousness is a facet of these. In the 90s and then more in the 2000s neuroscientists began to find that glial cells were more than structural and now seem to play a role in intelligence. A kind of slower parallel system to the neurons. Perhaps consciousness arises there. Who knows. Perhaps the patterns in the neural networks affect content, part of content, cognitive functions, but it's glial cells or glial cells, or, well, something else that causes or is consciousness.
I think there is often a conflation of cognitive functions and consciousness. Sometimes it is thought that consciousness is one function of brains (often neuronal networks). But perhaps it is not a function.
Humans have a history of granting consciousness (and various functions) to life forms that are like is, and this only after great resistence. Up to the 70s granting animals consciousness was actually dangerous for your career in science. We had it and for all we knew animals were machines. Then slowly - and I have wondered if perhaps having more women in science was a factor - the default position shifted to where it ought to have been, that they were conscious - perhaps not to the same degree (I think it might be a category error to think of consciousness in terms of degree) or kind. If one looks into the research into plant intelligence you can see that there is a cusp phenomenon, that some scientists are starting to think plants may be or are conscious - they should nerve system like responses, they learn, they adapt, they communicate with each other, they make choices (or they 'make choices') but all at rather complicated levels, though often, but not always, slower than us. (note much of this would be cognitive functions, if they are, but might have nothing to with consciousness. Intelligence and consciousness might not even correlate.)
Given that we know about the huge bias we have had and of course it is easier to study consciousness in creatures that can give verbal feedback I think we should be cautious about assuming we know where consciousness arises and does not, cautious about the conflate of cognitive functions and consciousness, and cautious about assuming that complexity is necessary for consciousness. That it is necessary for cogntive functions seems a much stronger conclusion. For example consciousness could simply be a quality of matter, but organizsations of matter and certain kinds of complexity give rise to cognitive functions, and so some matter acts in the world, has goals and reactions, memory, rationality, learning processes, etc.
So despite not yet getting your logging based explanation, I am poised (lol) to throw out my cautions.
Probably, yes. As I've said a dozen times, it depends on your definition of consciousness. Your definition seems to be "has a property which I personally feel but which cannot be measured in others"
By that definition we can't possibly know if a computer is conscious. We can't possibly know if my own fingernail is conscious, we can't know if anything is conscious because our inability to know is built into the definition. That we can't know is not inductive knowledge, it is etymology.
Quoting khaled
Of course we've tested hundreds of things, using the extremely common definition of consciousness that is something like "responds to stimuli in such a way as to give the impression that the response itself is being sensed, rather than just the initial sensation". In humans we use self-reporting to verify this, in other animals, or AI we might use observation of behaviour. I don't understand why you seem so sure that everyone just has your personal feelings about subjective experience, but hasn't a clue what's going on when observing others.
Quoting khaled
Not all definitions are verbal. I would have to give you a number of examples of where I use the word shape and eventually you would pick up the 'rule' as to how it's used. It is evidently a perfectly good method because we all use 'shape' in a reasonably well understood manner. It has not worked with 'subjective experience' or consciousness' , otherwise we would not be having this discussion, Dennet would not have written his book, Nagel would not have written his book. Have you noticed the distinct lack of books about what 'shape' really is, and mysterious a topic is captured by it?
Quoting khaled
You are describing something which you claim cannot be measured, nor that we know the cause of. That is practically the definition of 'mystical'. You are describing something, the word for which, is the only unifying thing in this whole discussion. That is the definition of sublimation. I can't see how I could have reached anything other than those two conclusions from your definitions.
Quoting khaled
You've just contradicted yourself literally with neighbouring sentences.
We have a huge amount of work to identify consciousness in anything like an accurate neural correlate, but the idea that consciousness is related to the neural network is certainly not a 'lay assumption'. See the work of Susan Greenfield, or Patricia Churchill, both of whom have done considerable research in this respect and yet are of this opinion. Hardly 'lay' people.
Quoting Coben
That is up to us. "Consciousness" is whatever we use the word for in a manner whereby we can be understood. You are subliming the term.
Quoting Coben
I quite agree. So what is the best way to ensure this caution. Is it to have a series of peer-reviewed controlled trials testing each aspect with strictly defined correlates to see which show some statistically significant link? Or is it for a group of complete lay people who may know as little as nothing whatsoever about the physical brain write entire books about what they reckon consciousness is, and we sit here and discuss it as if it were fact.
We're talking philosophy, not empirical science. To presume that you can identify a causal link between neurological activity and rational thought, already presumes a certain philosophical stance.
[quote=Ed Feser]Brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, the motion of water molecules, electrical current, and any other physical phenomenon you can think of, seem clearly devoid of any inherent meaning. By themselves they are simply meaningless patterns of electrochemical activity. Yet our thoughts do have inherent meaning – that’s how they are able to impart it to otherwise meaningless ink marks, sound waves, etc. In that case, though, it seems that our thoughts cannot possibly be identified with any physical processes in the brain. In short: Thoughts and the like possess inherent meaning or intentionality; brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, and the like, are utterly devoid of any inherent meaning or intentionality; so thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes.
You can look at this as just a “puzzle” for materialism – one which might be solved by developing a complex functional analysis of mental states, or by framing materialism in terms of the concept of “supervenience” rather than identity or reduction, or whatever. Or you can see it as a very simple and straightforward statement of an objection that, while it can also be formulated in much more sophisticated and technical terms and in a way that takes account of and preempts the various objections materialists might try to raise against it, nevertheless goes to the core of the problem with materialism, and indeed shows why materialism cannot be true.[/quote]
These arguments are not 'lay arguments', and the subject under discussion is not necessarily one in which neuroscience must have the right answers.
This objection also applies to the attempt to find 'correlations' between neural data and rational thought; because the very attempt to say what neural data means, requires an act of interpretation, which is obviously not something present in neurological data as such. The specialist has to say what these patterns mean, and that act of interpretation is not an empirical judgement, but a rational argument.
And besides, there's also the replication crisis, which is particularly acute in just these kinds of subject matter.
And to presume you can't already presumes a certain philosophical stance. So what are we to do? Ignore each other and hope we go away? Or accept that we're going about the investigation from the basis of our presuppositions and not start telling the other side that they've got it wrong and don't understand the issue?
Quoting Wayfarer
They are lay arguments. The people writing them are not experts in any field, that is the definition of 'lay'.
Quoting Wayfarer
You're making assumptions about what it is to 'mean' something. Where's your evidence that 'meaning' is a rational judgment?
Yes, probably so, but if peer-reviewed, controlled, statistically constrained investigations are going to be taken with a pinch of salt because of their potential paradigmatic bias (something I agree with entirely), then the uninformed ramblings of some philosopher are somewhere between gossip and fairy-tale in the order of how much salt to take them with.
That's what you seem to have been doing. You've yet to respond to (as distinct from merely dismiss) anything I've presented.
Quoting Isaac
What else could it be? Can your dog do 'brain science'? Can a cow? An elephant?
Your condescension is amusing. It's as if you naturally know that whatever kind of question this is, then it *must* be a scientific question - otherwise, how can it even be taken seriously? How could philosophy presume to put forward an argument that a scientist couldn't analyse? There must be something wrong with the argument! The hide of them, to think they could entertain a perspective that empiricism can't comprehend! :wink:
and let's go back to the two experts you brought up: Patricia Churchland and Susan Greenfield. The first is a philosopher. You can imagine how her ideas would be listened to where they do not line up, or seem not to, with scientific consensus, because to them she is a lay person. Then with Susan Greenfield, a scientist, she got lambasted for her work on cellphones. And why? because money didn't like her conclusions. She got treated by some experts in her field, some no doubt brought in by the affected industries, and by experts or at least public talker types in other fields, as if she was a biased non-scientific idiot.
I can remember as a teenager trying to understand the psychiatric and medical treatement of a relative with emotional challenges. I did lay research into the physchiatric approach, found what I thought were philosophical biases and problematic ones.
One simple one was that the drug this person was given was given to this person in the context of 'this person has a chemical imbalance which leads to what I am calling here emotional challenges. I actually researched the tests they did to find this drug. Tests on both animals and humans. The testing presumed post-traumatic stress. The animals were tortured in a Pavlovian way, so that the trigger could be used to test the effectiveness of the drug. And it lowered anxiety. Ironically it also reduced the animals avoidance of the torture - which was no longer used in that stage of the testing. It would have hopped off the electified floor without the drug even though only the bell sounded.
Imagine what poor consequences that might lead to in a woman who had been raped. But that's a digression.
The drug was intended as a long term solution, not as, say, a stop gap, where the trauma was dealt with and the need for the drug might be eliminated.
I presented this via the relative to the psychiatrist and even contacted the scientists who developed the drug. (I was a precocious curmudgeon).
Needless to say my input was not respected. And yes, I understand that chemical imbalances and PTSD are not mutually exclusive, however given the treatment was as if the issue was all nature and we knew there was a nurture issue, and the drug was marketed as a treatment for nature problems, but was tested on a nurture problem and in the case of my relative it was definitely at least also a nurture issue, there were problems. And not only would different framings of the problem have different effects, but also treatments themselves should probably include different approaches.
Sure, there are people who leap to all sorts of conclusions online. But there are biases out there that intelligent people from outside a field can sometimes see. Hopefully they have some caution around being sure, unless they have stumbled upon some smoking philosophical gun.
But, no, I really don't give a rat's ass about their expertise. I tend to presume that peer reviewed results that are found to be the results in other peer reviewed research stand up just peachy. But I have often seen how the steps from the results to conclusions are often quite faulty, or fit with current models, or even outdated models.
And then when they filter into philosophy forums, people who relay 'what science shows us' add another layer that can include biases.
We are generally not communicating here with neuroscientists, say, but with people who have read some neuroscience, think they have a good sense of it and then relay that as if that must have the weight of authority.
Another example, here from physics is people who will use materialism or physicalism to rule out what gets called supernatual phenomena. IOW deduction eliminating the possilbility of certain phenomena because they are not physical. But then the word physical is a word that covers an expanding set of qualities and lacks thereof. It is not some stable set of things that are physical, nor is the quality stable, in the history of science. So what they present as deductive and to them a simple one includes for me speculation and also a lack of a perspective within the history of science. Hence I am wary of lay people's appeals to authority in relation to me another lay person, especially if it is a field I have done a lot of lay research in AND spent time mulling philosophically.
I think too often there is an undercurrent of, we must stop the barbarians who want to overthrow science or make up a bunch of poop and swing us back to the Dark Ages. Here's what science says. For me that instance when two lay people meet, and even when a scientist or other expert meets a lay person,is vastly more complicated - in part, but not only because scientists are generally not philosophers - but also because what I called a false dilemma on you part above actually can be a wide range of possible scenarios.
man I do go on these days, apologies.
It’s more “the property to be able to personally feel, which cannot be measured in others for now”
Quoting Isaac
No because the statement “cannot be measured in others” doesn’t express a property of consciousness, there may come a day when we can, we just don’t have the consciousness-o-meter yet. It’s just an observation not a property of consciousness
Quoting Isaac
I have no idea what that even means. “The response is being sensed”. Can you define “sensed”? Because it seems to me like “sensed” = “has subjective experience” which is a phrase you refuse to acknowledge you understand yet I keep seeing you use it
Quoting Isaac
So why were you repeatedly asking for a definition of “subjective experiences” when I know you know what that means (unless you’re not conscious).
Quoting Isaac
Has it not? You haven’t even tried to have a discussion of it without a verbal definition. Imagine if a person refuses to take geometry class until the teacher defines what “shape” means verbally.
Consciousness can be said to be the capacity to feel something if you really want a verbal definition. Can your couch feel something? Can your phone feel something? Can AI feel something? These are questions we cannot answer unless we have a way to directly measure subjective experiences which we don’t. I can’t actually know if you feel something. Because you feeling something has no logical implications on your actions.
Quoting Isaac
No, I’m describing something and then saying we cannot measure it. It is not a property of said thing but an observation. It is you who chooses to read anything I say as mysticism because I don’t agree with you.
Quoting Isaac
True that, excuse my silliness. What I meant was, you and I both know what consciousness feels like but not how it comes about. You contend it doesn’t “come about” of anything and IS literally the chemical reactions in your brain. I say it is a RESULT of said reactions. I cannot see how consciousness IS a chemical reaction. What is said reaction?
Chemical A (aq) + chemical B (aq) -> consciousness(?)
My response is that I don't agree. I don't agree because I think you've sublimed the term "consciousness" where it is not warranted by any real phenomena. Your response to that is just that I don't understand.
Quoting Wayfarer
What? My dog can't do brain science therefore meaning must be a rational judgement? I've heard some bullshit arguments before, but you've won the prize there.
Quoting Wayfarer
Your condescension is amusing. It's as if you naturally know that whatever kind of question this is, then it *must* not be a scientific question - otherwise, how can it even be taken seriously? How could neuroscience presume to put forward an argument that a philosopher couldn't analyse? There must be something wrong with the argument! The hide of them, to think they could entertain a perspective that spiritualism can't comprehend!
So are you saying that Kant was able to "notice the workings of intelligence"? Or rather is it not that he merely thought long and hard about experience and judgement and worked out the forms of experience and the categories of judgement by noticing what they necessarily appear to logically involve? In other words a process of analysis, surely based on, but not merely consisting of, "noticing".
Quoting Wayfarer
It doesn't sound like you've actually studied Husserl. Otherwise you would know that the basic modus operandi of Husserl's phenomenology is his epoché, which is a bracketing of the question of the existence of any "external reality". If you think Husserl claimed that reality "consists of objects and events ("phenomena") as they are understood in the human consciousness, and not of anything independent of human consciousness" then you have totally failed to understand what Husserl was on about. He was concerned with understanding human experience and consciousness, not with the ontological question of what is ultimately real. It is really poor form to distort and co-opt the thoughts of canonical philosophers to attempt to provide confirmation for your own biases.
So, you haven't answered the question: can we notice the working of intelligence at all, or is it just that we can notice that we cannot notice the working of intelligence? If the former, then how do you think we can do that, and how would we know we had done it? If the latter, then what would be the source of information that enables us to say anything at all about the "working of intelligence"?
Yes, that's one of the imaginable possibilities, and many think it is the most plausible one. You may favour the idealist possibility, but that is nothing more than a personal preference. Personally I am neutral on the issue, but I will say that from that position of neutrality the realist option certainly looks the more plausible to me, but I acknowledge the "to me" and that I may not be as unbiased as I like to think. Having said that, I would actually prefer to think the idealist option, since it is a hell of a lot more comforting, so I doubt that I am biased towards realism.
You, on the other hand, seem so biased towards the idealist view, you so much want it to be the case, that you take it for granted that those who disagree with you simply fail to understand. If that is your attitude you should forget about philosophy, stop worrying about the impossible task of rationally justifying your biases, and just commit to your Buddhist practice and see what unfolds for you.
All our practices and ideas give us different ways of knowing the world, with any one of them we know things we could not know with any of the others. So, for me knowledge is a kind of democracy; there is no hierarchy of knowledge; there is just different knowledge in different domains.
I do make an effort to answer your questions. Broadly speaking, I'm referring to the 'blind spot' argument, which I think has been amply illustrated in my interactions with Isaac. I'll leave it at that.
There is speculation and then there is empty speculation. Any speculation which does not take into account the latest scientific results and understanding is empty speculation.
Empirical science cannot answer all questions; particularly when it comes to complex human, and even animal, behavior, but it can, and should, certainly inform more creatively imaginative understandings. Reliable predictability is possible only with subjects that are reducible to math and measure.
Quoting Janus
Your qiuestions are simply too tedious and often accusatory. I try and spell things out, and then I'm constantly accused of 'not answering the question' or 'changing the subject'. Life's too short. Besides the issue in this thread is black and white, and if you can't see it, it's because you're only interested in taking shots at me. Anyway. the work week begins, have a good one, I'll log out for the day.
That's a complete misrepresentation of physicalism. It does not deny the existence of emotion and creativity. The physicalist philosophers are not as stupid as you think they are; and you would discover that if you actually read their works instead of polemical reviews of them.
I'm not interested in :taking shots at you" just for the sake of it, but in order to "wake you from your dogmatic slumbers".
In this thread, I have been responding to a position which says that. You're only reading half the conversation. Read what I was responding to.
Quoting Janus
The top paragraph of the SEP entry on phenomenology is:
Which is exactly how I understand it, and the basis on which I'm arguing.
A position which says what? I have read the whole conversation; what part do you think I have missed?
Quoting Wayfarer
And which is about consciousness insofar as it is experienced and analyzed, and says nothing at all about what reality consists in.
Quoting Isaac
So - this is a basically physicalist account, is it not? Would you agree with it? The objections I brought up were based on David Chalmer's 'Hard Problem' paper, Thomas Nagel's 'Mind and Cosmos', and generally from other sources, such as Kant and Schopenhauer. The response to that, was that none of this constituted an argument, that it was meaningless 'word salad', that 'the ramblings of philosophers' have no relevance to the problem, which can only be solved by scientific means, within the physicalist frame of reference.(Furthermore, none of those responses conveyed any familiarity with the topic, or with the sources I mentioned.) From your previous remarks, I don't think you do agree with the physicalist approach, but that when I criticize it, you take the opportunity to criticize my posts. Fair enough?
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't see how a physicalist account could detail precisely how conscious experience arises from neural activity. We have no way of examining first person experience from a third person perspective in anything like the kind of way we can examine sense-phenomena. There are some things which just may be beyond the grasp of rational explanation, because they are too indeterminate. I think first-person experience is arguably one of those things.
So, not everything can be explained in physicalist terms. For example, biology cannot be adequately explained in terms of physics and yet both are naturalistic disciplines, so the inability to explain everything in terms of physics is not an argument against the philosophical idea that everything is physical in nature, and nor is it an argument for anything supernatural.
On the other hand any plausible theory as to how or why consciousness arose would need to be evolutionary in scope, since all the evidence points to consciousness being an evolved phenomenon.
What I criticize is your biased assumption that naturalistic explanations "miss the point" or embody "blind spots", and more particularly so since you are apparently unable to even imagine what any alternative theory would look like, let alone propose one. Remember theories must be inter-subjectively testable; anything which is not testable does not qualify as a theory.
So, in short what I am critical of about your approach is that you simply assume that any physicalist account must be incoherent. You don't read the actual physicalist philosophers, you just assume, based on your own prejudices and polemical reviews that usually don't present any cogent arguments against physicalism, that they are talking shit.
I don't expect you to agree with physicalism, but to be open-minded enough to grant that, from an unbiased perspective, it is at the very least as coherent a philosophy as any of the alternatives you favour. Then I would like to see you try to provide a cogent alternative account, if you have one, complete with explanations and arguments to support it. That is what I never see you doing.
Not fair. In this case, and in other cases, I'm taking issue with posts that exhibit the very point of the 'blind spot' argument. There was another poster, in another thread, who at least understood the counter-arguments well enough to advocate them, but that has not been the case here. ':
Quoting Janus.
Which is *exactly* what I said, which was then dismissed with 'that's not even an argument, it's just word salad'. And yet somehow from this, it's me who is "exhibiting bias"??
Quoting Janus
How do you know? I passed two years of undergraduate philosophy and an MA in a related subject. I don't have to recite passages of Das Kapital to express views critical of Marxism.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, well we do agree on that much. Are you quite sure that what was being dismissed as "word salad" was precisely and only the point that science cannot examine the first person perspective from its "third person" vantage point, and was not some further claim or conclusion derived from that, which you were forwarding?
Also, as I have said, I think it is unarguable that science cannot currently do that, but it is not a foregone conclusion that it will never be able to, or that it is impossible in principle (although I do tend to think it is impossible in principle, but I certainly don't insist on that being the only coherent view).
The further point is that even if it were granted that it is impossible in principle, that doesn't tell us anything positive about the ontological status or nature of reality. It's just like how it's impossible in principle to see what's behind a large rock when I remain stuck in front of it; my vantage point simply doesn't allow it.
I admire the spirit of science, and I think it is equally valuable in philosophy; the guiding principle is that if you have a theory, you should do everything in your power to criticize it, and falsify it, rather than doing everything in your power to confirm it. The former approach leads to robust conjectures and theories and the latter leads merely to confirmation bias.
Sure. But then even that is ok. Especially in the context of the post I was responding to and the one it was.
It might! That's one of Nagel's points in Mind and Cosmos. Heard of the 'third way' movement in evolutionary theory? (https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/) There's a lot of those writers I really like, especially Steven Talbott (most impressed Pierre Normand when I pointed it out to him.) But, honestly, it is still regarded as too alternative/fringe/countercultural by the mainstream, which is still committed to an explicitly materialist paradigm. (But the times are a'changing, that is obvious.)
What I am saying is very much in keeping with the 'blind spot in science' article which was not (contrary to the criticisms of it) 'anti-science'. What this article is trying to do, is to point out some deeply-embodied assumptions about nature, science, reality, the way things are, that are at once cognitive AND culturally-constructed. The reigning paradigm based on Galilean-Newtonian-Cartesian science is ineluctably materialist. But it is changing, mainly by virtue of things like biosemiotics.
Quoting Janus
Here are some of the comments I made:
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
Now you've already said that you basically agree with these kinds of statements. And they pretty much in keeping with the approach of phenomenology, right? Yet the response was that they don't amount to an argument - they're meaningless, or the 'ramblings of amateurs'.
Now - fair enough! I get that there are plenty of people who don't want to go down this route. Notice I haven't been super-engaged with trying to press my point. But then I don't really see why you parachuted into the middle of it and started lobbing grenades .( No hard feelings, or anything. :-)
Quoting Janus
Bravo. I perfectly accept science, liberal democracy, the spirit of progress, and the associated values. But this is a philosophy forum, and my stock in trade is 'criticisms of scientific materialism'. Even that is usually taken the wrong way - like, I'm accusing someone of something. What I'm pointing out, is that there is a kind of presumption of materialism, and it's perfectly normal in our culture, as it is thought to be a secular philosophy. But when you treat it as a kind of humanistic philosophy or account of human nature, it's reductionist, and this has many ramifications.
But in the context of my remark to someone else, my point was 'what is the risk?' I was responding to someone who couched the options in utterly binary terms.
There is a lot of middle ground between those options and that middle ground actually occurs here and elsewhere.
i point out why I think there is middle ground from personal experience. They Wayfarer makes a point in support of this, and then I, basically say, and what is the big threat if we do have some mere speculation?
Now you are coming in and saying mere speculation is not as good as informated speculation. Well, sure. I haven't said anything otherwise.
I just don't understand why the issue has to be couched in binary terms, what the great threat is of mere speculation, since, for example here, there are people who will critically work on that when others post it.
There seems to be some underlying panic that may be correct when looking at the world as a whole, but is being used here, it seems to me to paint view critical of mainstream science or even potentially so, or exploratory
as something dangerous.
As Wayfarer pointed out there are science forums.
And also, here, we can deal with individual posts that show varying degrees of being informed and that includes many of the posts that are posted in support of mainstream science. IOW these are often speculative and misinformed and certainly not using the latest research.
Some mere speculation here will not end peer-reviewed journals. Now I know you are not saying that it will, but that might give an indication of what it feels like when you tell me that informed speculation is better than mere speculation.
I brought Up Patricia Churchland specifically because she is a philosopher. There seemed to be some suggestion that the 'thoughtful' philosophers could see beyond the short-sighteded and narrow views of the scientists. Patricia Churchland bases her views on scientific research and, despite being a trained philosopher, still reaches the same conclusions about consciousness that have been dismissed here as "not understanding the issue".
Quoting Coben
I don't understand what this has to do with the issue I raised. You understand how peer-review works, right? Scientists do not get to publish just any old crap that they 'reckon' might be true. Their papers are subjected to stringent peer-review, so what Susan Greenfield may have said in other areas does not affect her work in consciousness because her work in consciousness has passed peer-review, ie her conclusion are indeed related to her evidence buy a statistically significant margin. If you don't like Susan Greenfield, you could try Anil Seth, Bruce Hood, Vilynor Ramachandran...
Quoting Coben
Drug companies have a huge financial interest in promoting their drug, it's not the same thing as research scientists who have no interest other than knowledge acquisition. Notwithsatnding that, I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with the fact that scientists are biased. I'd go even further and say that the vast majority are seeking evidence to support a personal world-view. I bolded that because there seems to be some degree of ignoring my comments in this regard so that I fit better into the 'rampant materialist' caricature that's been painted for me. The point is, they are seeking such evidence using a system which is designed to falsify their pet hypothesis, a system which employs other experts to check and double check that the evidence they find is statistically linked to their conclusions, a system which uses the same empirical inputs as everyone else in the field has access to and can repeat for themselves. As a system for finding evidence to support a world=view, it's about the best we've got at not letting people get away with bias.
Quoting Coben
But that's not what's happened here. Read the posts. Have the posts from the non-physicalists been speculative? Have they presented their position as a possible alternative story? Have they referred at all, even erroneously, to the actual empirical evidence, in an attempt to ensure their thoeries are not overwhelmingly contradicted by it? No, they have consisted almost entirely of a long-winded version of "David Chalmers says its a hard problem, so it is"
Yes, but the point is it is a property which you 'feel' you have, not one you can demonstrate to others that you have. You have defined the term by something which is known only to you. So what use is the term as a means of communicating with others? Your pain cannot ever be known to me in terms of what you feel, but the word 'pain' is used when people show external signs of being in pain (or give verbal indications that they are. The fact that we then have to translate the term back to our own memories and hope that we have a joint understanding, does not prevent us from using the word. Nor does it prevent a huge amount of very good research helping people understand pain and devising therapies to reduce pain. No-one (thank goodness) has taken your approach and said that pain is first-person experience and therefore we can't identify it in others, let's not bother.
Quoting khaled
Yes, but your observations about consciousness depend on your definition of it, they depend on what you're looking for to observe. You are looking for a felling which only you can be sure to have, that is part of your definition of consciousness, that it is "that feeling that only you can be sure to have". If that's what you're looking for, then it is self-fulfilling that you will not find it having been measured.
Quoting khaled
Sensed means that one of the sensory inputs is stimulated. For us, we form a picture in some way of the world (sound, shape, colour...). For neuroscience they only need see the known parts of the brain active as previous experiments correlating with patient reports, as well as brain damage studies, have shown which areas off the brain are generally responsible for this.
Quoting khaled
I don't know what it means. You continuously repeating that I must know doesn't make me know any more. I have no idea what you might be referring to with the term 'subjective experience' that is not covered by the logging to memory of the fact that as sensory stimulation occurred.
Quoting khaled
Great. So anything with the appropriate neural and chemical correlates with emotion can be conscious. Job done, can we go home now? Or did you sneak in another vague term 'feel' and thereby move the description no further at all?
Quoting khaled
Yes, but read back over the posts where I've tried to get you to give a deeper explanation of what it is you're describing. A part of your actual description includes that it is the thing that cannot be measured. Your saying "things that can't be measured, can't be measured", you're using its immeasurability within your description by saying that consciousness is not the set of phenomena we observe in other, but the thing that only we feel.
Quoting khaled
Yes.
What feature of the world is preventing that from possibly being the case?
1. Note the 'if', 'and' and 'then'. I've bolded them because you clearly missed them last time. My statement is just a deductive one (not that that makes it immune from error, of course). I'm not in any sense saying that this is how we must proceed, we need not accept the 'ifs', only that, were we to accept them, the conclusion rationally follows.
2. Quote me, or link to, where you have been arguing "that consciousness has an ineluctably subjective aspect which can never be satisfactorily accounted for in purely objective terms". I've read dozens of posts that consist of you repeating that conclusion as if it were fact, but I must have missed the posts where you argue that it is the case. Where have you taken some prior axiom and in applying rational deductive steps reached this conclusion. Let's start with what the prior axiom is. Before you reach the conclusion that "consciousness has an ineluctably subjective aspect", what position did you start from and what rational steps did you take from there to reach this conclusion?
Firstly, the 'word-salad' was related to this below (and at no point did I say it was "meaningless", I asked what it meant)
Quoting Isaac
Secondly the 'ramblings of philosophers' was related to a comment Coben made about having to take scientific conclusions with a pinch of salt, it was not a commentary on the entire subject matter.
Thirdly, you use the word 'solve'. Yes If we ever 'solve' the problem it will probably be by empirical means because we all experience the same empirical reality, conclusions therefrom are inter-subjective and so may reach the status of a widely (or even universally) accepted account.
It is almost impossible for philosophy to 'solve' a problem relating to the nature of some real experience. Philosophy relies on rational arguments from presuppositions which may or may not be agreed upon. There is no way to prove a rational argument 'right' (other than self-referentially by further rational argument) and we widely disagree on the presuppositions. We widely agree, however, on the existence of external objects of reality and on the effect they have on us in terms of sensory stimuli. It is no surprise that the idea that world is round gained has almost universal agreement, but the idea of Platonic Forms is still almost a 50/50 split among philosophers 2000 years after it was first brought up.
Thanks! Revealing comment. I have high regard for Plato as a seminal figure in the foundation of Western culture and indeed science itself, although it is common nowadays to relegate his contributions to the antiquities department.
Quoting Isaac
Nagel's argument summarised in this post makes this point and is an argument. He says:
I take it from your comments that this is your view. However, he goes on to say:
So, I don't see how that is not 'an argument', and, furthermore, an argument against the very principles that you were advocating. You say that 'he hasn't given any reason why subjective experience is different to the objects of the natural sciences', but he does this.
The whole argument hinges around the contribution 'the observing subject' makes to knowledge acts - even scientific knowledge. We are nowadays accustomed to accepting that science presents us with a view of reality as it is in itself, irrespective of any contribution of the observer. In fact, one of Nagel's other books, The View from Nowhere, is about this very point.
But before we go further - do these names, like Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, Edmund Husserl - mean anything to you? Have you studied philosophy, or philosophy of mind? Because from what you write, your approach seems to be that all of these issues are basically science's problem to solve, and that there's nothing to be gained from study of the philosophy.
Quoting Isaac
The observation that 'the mind' is something that never appears to us as an object, or even an objective reality. That is why behaviourism and eliminative materialism are the most honest empirical philosophies of mind: they recognise that mind is fundamentally unknowable, and start from that premise. But again, that is a 'philosophy of mind' issue, not a scientific issue, per se.
Wow! Yes, we can do what you say, of course. But what, and how much, will we learn? Your approach will give us what an alien (say Mr Data) could learn if they observed us carefully, in the long term. But will it give us any understanding at all of what it's like to be a conscious human being? What can we learn "from outside", when consciousness is an 'inside' phenomenon? :chin:
Let's take its premises and steps then.
1.. Here he summarises the conclusion he is about to reach.
2. . Here he is providing us with our first empirical fact. A
3. . Here he is making a claim. There is no "because...", no "therefore..." nothing at all linking this claim to the preceding premises.
4. . Another statement of fact. B
5. . Another claim, again with no "because..." no link to the facts A and B that are the only facts he has provided us with thus far.
So where in this statement consisting of a summary, two empirical of facts, and two claims unrelated to those facts, is the argument you're referring to?
Quoting Wayfarer
Funny, you're the second person to ask me about my academic background and yet I don't know that of any other poster here. I'm not about to list my CV in the absence of any protocol to do so, but I have already said elsewhere I have an academic background mainly in social psychology, but also partly in philosophy, specialising in ethics, including some professional work in the field. Yes, I am familiar with Chalmers and Dennet, I have read only summaries of Nagel and Husserl.
Now,what background have you got in neuroscience from which to dismiss its findings?
Quoting Wayfarer
Pain doesn't appear to me as an object either. Neither does sadness, nor hunger. Are you saying that faced with a starving child you would treat it as if you could not possibly know if it were hungry?
You're presuming it's 'like' anything at all. In my lexicon, 'like' means similar to, but you're using differently here to mean, what exactly? What, even in theory, would an answer to that question sound like (meaning here, a description which would be similar, but not necessarily identical)? Also, looked at the other way, what is the barrier in the way of the alien's observational data giving us any understanding of of what it's like (here 'like' meaning similar feelings we've had). When you read a harrowing story, they consist entirely of accounts from the 'outside'. Are you saying that it gives you no idea what it was 'like' for the people involved?
Welll, it's a short abstract from an entire book, but the ground-and-consequent nature of the argument ought to be clear. It was a controversial book, and elicited considerable hostility from academia. One would think that would not had occurred, had it not presented an argument.
Quoting Isaac
As I said before, sign on the door says 'philosophy forum'. If I wanted to talk about neuroscience, I would join a neuroscience forum. But I maintain that the fact you can't necessarily draw conclusions about the nature of, say, reasoned inference from neuroscience, is not a matter over which neuroscience has jurisdiction. Whereas you say unless it has been proven by a peer-reviewed neuroscience paper, then it is the 'ramblings of amateurs'.
I'm not asking you about your academic background but whether you know anything about philosophy of mind, because you don't appear to. And I'm really not meaning that as a pejorative, but simply because of the way that you dismiss the arguments without responding to them.
Quoting Isaac
That obfuscates the point. As a practical matter, obviously we behave as living beings ought to behave in such cases. But it's not really connected with the philosophical point at issue, which, again, I don't think you're seeing.
But, thanks for engaging in such a courteous and measured way, it's a vexatious question, for reasons which, again, are probably hardly worth discussing. :wink:
Quoting Janus
Not 'everyone', right? Do you see my point yet?
Great, then provide a short summary of it, not the two claims which you quoted. An argument is in the form - axiom, rational step(s), conclusion. All you're presenting so far is conclusions, simple statements about a state of affairs that are purported to be the case. I'm asking you about the argument - one step leads to another, if A and B then C, X causes Z we have X therefore Z... That kind of thing.
Quoting Wayfarer
How do we behave as living beings ought to behave in such cases. We haven't (apparently) got the faintest idea whether the child is hungry. We only know what hunger is to us. We can see that lack of food causes the symptoms of hunger in others, but we cannot ever know if it actually is hunger. According to your argument it is no more likely that a child showing the external signs of hunger is experiencing the unpleasant sensation we do, than it is that they're enjoying it immensely. We cannot tell what it is like (for another person) to go weeks without food. The extreme similarity of their external signs to he signs we show when experiencing hunger are apparently not sufficient to conclude anything from.
This is what it's like to be a philosopher?
You're claiming ignorance of a well-known English idiom. Perhaps you're American? :razz:
Yes, and "what it's like" there is doing the job of "similar but not necessarily identical". So the meaning of your expression might be something like "being a philosopher is similar to, but not identical to, the experience we've just had".
That doesn't help me understand what it is doing in "understand what it is like to be conscious", if it was playing the same role, it would parse as something like "understand which of our experiences was similar to, but not necessarily identical to, the category of 'conscious'. But that would not be consistent with your assertion that an external analysis of our situation could not yield such an understanding.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
How dare you!
We seem to be talking past each other. I like her very much and agreed with the work that got lambasted. I had another point entirely, that seemed ironic in context, but I'll skip going over it again.Quoting IsaacYeah, I just don't think I am treating you like a rampant materialist. The point of my story was that as a lay person I could see things that the relevent scientists - the researchers who developed the drugs were scientists and the relevent experts (psychiatrists) either could not see or would not admit to seeing. IOW that a philosophical approach can come to useful conclusions in other fields.
My main reaction was in the binary presentation of go with what scientists are saying or allow for anyone to just say anything. That's not how you worded it, but I reacted both times to it as a false dilemma. There is a range of being informed amongst philosophers and other non-scientists. It's not binary, it's a spectrum. I hadn't drawn any conclusions about you as a materialist. I did react to those binary presentations. And there is also a range of being informed by those who think they are supported scientific positions. Here, these are generally also lay people.Quoting Isaac
Well, you're talking to me. I am not going to go back and read the other exchanges. It seems like you are saying it is binary. Well, I don't think I fit your binary chart. Maybe some others do. If you think it is the binary set up you mention perhaps you will see it only in extremes and even if they are doing some of the things you are saying, they still fall somewhere in the middle. Honestly it feels like you have a bone to pick. Perhaps this is response to them, but it seems to bleed into your response to me. Now I could go and read, for example, you interaction with Wayfarer, to see if that interaction fits your binary chart. But that's a morass I want to avoid.
And now I have Janus telling me that informed speculation is better than empty speculation.
??
I wasn't following this discussion, but "what it's like" refers to the qualities of something from an experiential/subjective perspective.
If @Pattern-chaser is confused by my expression, I've no doubt he'll ask. I'll try to do better than "read what I wrote" in increasingly shrill tones as a response. In the meantime, not sure why it's bothering you if you haven't actually followed the thread, but...
What words would you use to answer the question "what is pain like?". In my experience questions like that have been answered by providing similar but not necessarily identical experiences, or metaphors. I'm not sure I can think of a way to answer the question that would not ultimately consist of relating pain to things which are similar but not identical.
RE: (neuro)science, thoughts, and philosophy. Not intending to stay long in this discussion, but, as an observation:
The actualization of thoughts is not possible in the complete absence of laws (principles) of thought. Things such as the law of identity and that of noncontradiction. At best, a ubiquitous chaos would result in the complete absence of such principles.
I find it indisputable that the study of neuroscience, and the like, benefits us in very many ways. But empirical science is not even close to specifying how laws of thought come about, not to mention what they are. To state the obvious, laws of thought are a priori to thoughts about the empirical sciences and the implications of respective data.
To be explicit about the conclusion: The empirical sciences cannot fully address everything that mind entails (such as its laws of thought). Philosophy as its own branch of study is required if we are to hold any hope of so doing.
I don't think that laws of thought do "come about". I follow Ramsey in considering laws of thought to be habits we develop to better achieve our ends. To say they "come about" as some natural phenomena that any investigation might yield up would be, for me, like asking how "dog" came to mean the hairy four-legged creature.
Why do you think that the laws of thought "come about" in that way?
Supplementary question: if the empirical sciences cannot address laws of thought (whatever they turn out to be), then how would philosophy have a better chance? Empirical science's measure of rightness is predictability, what would philosophy's be?
Trick question. I don't. I believe they're a deterministic aspect of sentience endowed existence, i.e. any conceivable existence wherein sentience dwells. However, I also do very firmly uphold the reality of biological evolution, wherein many aspects of mind evolve over time.
To the physicalist, or to those empathetic of this view, it would, imo, only be logical to claim that laws of thought should have evolved together with sentience-endowed organic matter.
That's actually what I meant by "come about", I should have been clearer. I meant to distinguish it from my understanding that such laws are made-up, like maths. I don't believe laws can evolve. I don't really believe in laws at all, other than as a human-constructed convenience.
I would just describe it as best as I can, while stressing that one needs to experience whatever it is to really know what it's like for oneself. Words can't capture experiences.
Yes, but what expressions would you use to do so. My guess is that they would be similies and metaphors, ie things that are similar but not identical.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I think they can, but it might take something more like poetry. I don't think, though, that anyone could demonstrate that they had.
When it comes to an understanding of 'the nature of being', Nagel's argument, in brief, is as follows:
1. Science has given rise to extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature.
2. However it is dependent on a crucial limiting step at the start, specifically, subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose.
3. We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of the universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else.
4. However, a purely physical description of the neuro-physiological and other physical processes that give rise to experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, will therefore omit the subjective essence of the experience without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.
So the argument is that the objective science - neuroscience being one - will always be deficient in respect of providing an account of the nature of experience.
Agree or disagree, but don't pretend it's not an argument.
So, science relies on mechanical models for the "exact sciences", and the only way to model complex systems is statistically and/or algorithmically; and the latter kind of modeling does not constitute exact science in the sense that physics might be thought to be an exact science.
So, the things you say science "extracts" from its investigations are the things which cannot be mechanically modeled, like "consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose". Individual instantiations of these things cannot be modeled, but their manifestations in populations can be, with some accuracy, statistically modeled and predicted. But again it is not an exact science like physics.
Perhaps only chemistry and cosmology can be understood purely in terms of physics, and the more a science deals with complexity, the less possible it is to understand in terms of physics. So, of course
Quoting Wayfarer
this is self-evident, although I would rather say "the subjective aspect of the experience" because I don't think talking in terms of essences is helpful on account of its undesirable tendentiousness.
So, I have said all of this "argument" is self-evident, which means that it is true on account of the definitions of the terms, and the investigable scope of the terms that those definitions allow. In a way then, this is all just tautologous, and doesn't constitute a cogent argument at all.
Even if it were granted that this is an argument, though; it seems incomplete. What further conclusions are we to draw given acceptance of the veracity of this argument? Are we merely to conclude that physical science cannot explain everything? That would not seem to even be controversial, though; except among adherents of scientism. Where else does this argument lead, beyond being merely a bridle to curb scientific hubris?
Perhaps reading the book, or the remainder of the column from which the argument was summarized, might answer that question.
Quoting Janus
Do you agree with the claim is that 'the nature of consciousness is strictly a matter for neuroscience'? If not, then I'm probably not addressing your position.
Yes, for the public account can't show the private experience, this ability appearing to be impossible.
We might work toward a consolation prize by trying to surround and coral experience to be in the brain, or at least get closer to this.
I'd prefer to hear what you have to say about it.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think the only possible inter-subjectively testable investigation of consciousness would be, just as with all other things, an empirical investigation and/or a philosophical investigation based on empirical findings. But of course such investigations will not be examining what subjective experience is like for each of us; we must do that for ourselves if we can, and what we may find cannot be inter-subjectively tested beyond talking with one another and agreeing or disagreeing about what we think we have found; in other words it will be a phenomenological investigation.
Too bad I'm dogmatically slumbering, then. :razz:
Laws being "human-constructed" is, to me, a very clear means of saying that they "come about". So I'm not very certain of your stance in terms of opposition to the "coming about" of laws of thought. If they evolved to so be, they came about - holding presence after a timespan in which they did not. If they are a byproduct of human society, they likewise came about. Etc. Until you can better clarify you stance, I'll use the terminology as I best understand it.
As to natural laws, here including laws of thought, being non-constructed:
First and foremost, let it be presented that the presence of being is (in the strict philosophical sense of the term) 100% absurd. Absurd because it is, and can only be, arational (meaning beyond the scope of reasoning (and not irrational, i.e. erroneous reasoning)). There is no possible sufficient reason for why there is being rather than ubiquitous nonbeing. Being just is.
That said, laws of thought can either a) emerge somewhere in the course of being (i.e., "come about") or b) they are as ubiquitous to being as is being itself (i.e., they're a (pre)determined aspect of being). Take the law of identity. One imperfect variant of its expression that to me seems adequate: "No given shall be other than itself at any given time". Again, either this property of being developed during the course of being or, else, it always was and always will be in time-invarient ways. Were it to have developed over time, hydrogen atoms might have been other than hydrogen atoms long before helium atoms came about - and so might have helium atoms, etc., till the law of identity presented itself within being. If one cares to argue for this, one will, I believe, quickly slip into nonsense - at the very least, when addressing the history of physical reality (which we address and know of via thought). If, however, the law of identity holds presence in time-invariant ways, then it is a deterministic aspect of being. And no quantity of empirical science can explain why it is present to being:
One does not first learn of laws of thought prior to applying them (children, for instance, utilize laws of thought prior to being aware of them). Rather, our knowledge of laws of thought stem from introspective observation of referents that are, at least in one sense, immutable. One cannot do without the law of identity and remain cogent, to not address mentally healthy. This can be paralleled to our knowledge of the law of gravity. We still don't know exactly what gravity is, but it is immutable, and to jump off of a tall building in the belief that gravity is not ubiquitous is to shortly thereafter no longer be. The referents which we address as "laws" are immutable aspects of being - hence the term we provide them of "laws". Our knowledge of them, however, is less than perfect. Here, I'm thinking of laws of thought in a Kantian manner, as per his categories.
If laws of thought are an innate aspect of being, and if the presence of being is (technically) absurd, then the best and only thing we can do to better understand them is enquire into them via philosophy. The empirical sciences is the cart that is guided by the horse which pulls (the latter here representing laws of thought). For the former to address the latter in non-philosophical manners is for the horse to be guided and pulled by the cart.
Quoting Isaac
If it were easy, I suspect it would have already been done. Philosophy too is driven by the same laws-of-thought horse, so to speak. But to address the second question: Firstly, science's measure of rightness consists of far more than predictability (unless one obfuscates the two separate fields of technology and science); it also consists of the replication of data, it consists of fully falsifiable hypotheses that are tested, as well as many of the same principles that generally guide (or, imo, should guide) the measure of rightness in philosophy: parsimony (such as Occam's Razor), consistency (e.g., no contradictions), and explanatory power (how much is explained by the addressed given). One big difference between philosophy and the empirical sciences is that the former can and does address that which is not observable via our physiological senses (visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, etc.). Maybe ironically, thoughts, emotions, intentions, awareness, and will, among other aspects of mind, are not givens that can be observed via our physiological senses. Science, after all, is founded upon philosophy, namely the philosophy of science. And not the other way around. So, for example, that "all humans have thoughts" is not philosophy-devoid science. Rather, to the extent this trivial fact might be scientific, it is science built upon a foundation of philosophy.
Hope I've address the most pertinent parts of your questions.
Do we have evidence that it "arises" at that point? This seems to imply that it wasn't there before the arising. Perhaps it is more a matter of elements of the world becoming so organized and integrated that they, as a system, become capable of articulating and reporting the otherwise less organized consciousness that is always already present.
If you seem to arise from unconsciousness in waking in the morning, emerging from anaesthesia, and so on, this doesn't prove that no consciousness was there in that state. Maybe you are just unable to remember and report what it was like. To be able to remember and report something has a lot to do with what information you have access to. And maybe nothing was recorded. But that doesn't mean nothing was experienced!
Suppose we temporarily render you paralyzed and also unable to retain memories for longer than a minute and then give you all sorts of experiences. When we release you from this condition, what will you report as your condition during that time? Unconsciousness? You will likely draw a blank about that time. But does that show that there was indeed no experience?
If there is a drug that truly turns off your capacity for experience and another drug that merely paralyzes you and renders you unable to remember experiences had under the drug's influence, how would we tell the difference?
I worry sometimes a little that our anaesthetics really don't save people from the tortures of surgery! Maybe they really don't! How would we know?
What is death but a form of amnesia? After all, isn't matter as it persists and carries information about past states something of a form of memory? The body persisting over time in a state of some similarity to earlier states seems rightly regarded as a kind of memory.
This is the exact claim we are arguing about and no argument is forwarded in it's support, it is merely claimed as if it were fact. I'm beginning to think there is no argument in favour of this position and it is simply taken as dogma, but in the spirit of charitable interpretation, I'll ask one more time. Do you have an actual argument supporting the claim that the science cannot/does not study anything mental?
I think the central claim is a matter of common knowledge: that at the formation of modern science, a conception of nature was formed that excluded from the physical world as an object of study everything mental - consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose'. You don't think that is so? Or, you don't think it's meaningful?
I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about here. I don't recognise a thing 'being' to say whether it's presence is absurd or not, I don't know what 'being' is. This makes it rather difficult to understand your following paragraphs fully, but I'll try to interpret them as best I can.
Quoting javra
How does a human way of thinking affect physics? There's no such thing as hydrogen atoms, there's no such thing as helium atoms, these are both human constructs, there is only stuff (presuming you are a realist about the external world at all). A sea of heterogeneous stuff. It is is human who decide this is a hydrogen atom, this a helium atom. Where does the hydrogen atom end and the stuff surrounding begin - we decide that. Our laws of thought are about the way we've decided to break up the world, so they're an entirely human invention too (although I think some animals may we have evolved the same or similar tactics). As Wittgenstein said "if a lion could speak, we could not understand him." What he meant was that the way a lion constructs the world and the laws of though a lion needs for it's form of life would not necessarily be the same as ours. Lions may not have atoms even if they became as advanced scientists as we have, they may simply have constructed the world completely differently.
Quoting javra
The evidence (which I know is unpopular around these parts) contradicts this idea. Very young children do not necessarily display an innate understanding of the law of identity, nor of object permanence, nor theory of mind. If I were to take a stab at summarising a massive field of research into a single sentence it would be that very young children seem to innately be solipsists. They're initial outlook and approach to the world treats it without much of an internal/external divide and as far more malleable than it turns out to be.
Quoting javra
I don't follow this line of argument. Are atomic forces not an innate aspect of being? I mean life would be impossible without them. We also have no idea why atomic forces came to be so. Does that mean that atomic forces should be studied by philosophy also?
Quoting javra
The fact the it talks about it is not evidence that it addresses it. Otherwise the same is true of psychology. It definitely talks about "that which is not observable via our physiological senses", so why does philosophy get the honour of 'addressing' the problem?Quoting javra
Agreed. Science needs philosophy to both guide its methods and to interpret its results. I don't see this as mutually exclusive groups, and a lot of scientists are perfectly adequate philosophers. The thing about philosophy is that there is no body of knowledge. Absolutely every position is it possible to hold is held by some philosopher somewhere, and on most matters there is still widespread disagreement. Philosophers must defer to scientists about the facts of the matter, but scientists do not have to defer to philosophers about the methodology or interpretation because they are just as capable of thinking as the next man.
Well obviously not. What do you think psychology is the study of? Neuroscience? Sociology? Psychiatry? - These are all fields of science studying mental phenomena. they do so by assuming that the external signs of such phenomena that we observe in others indicate the same mental events which we experience when we display those signs. The exact same assumption we all engage in every day every time we talk to other, treat people in pain, feed the starving child...
Are they assumptions? Yes.
Are they justified assumptions? Absolutely. They're not shaky assumptions that could come crashing down any minute, they are the assumptions upon which the whole of human interaction is built. You can knock them down if you want to, all assumptions can be taken away, because none have any foundation beneath them (that's the point). But I'm frankly terrified of your world in which we can't assume that a child in pain is having the same experience I'm having when I show those external signs.
Not relevant to the issue at hand. Remember what we're discussing: Patricia Churchland (and her husband, Paul) are both advocates of strict materialist philosophy of mind. Their view (and yours from what you have said) is that the mind is the output of the brain, and that therefore understanding the mind is a matter for neuroscience. That is what is being discussed. Again this is a philosophical issue.
Quoting Isaac
We're 'beings', and objects are not 'beings'. That is an ontological claim. Philosophers have traditionally been rather interested in the question of 'the nature of being'.
Quoting Isaac
You shouldn't be. This is a philosophy forum and the purpose of it is to discuss just these ideas, which you're not going to encounter elsewhere.
There's nothing I have said that can remotely justify this claim, although why you think that is interesting.
You asked me if i agreed that science had removed everything mental from it's field of study. The answer is emphatically no. How's that not relevant?
Quoting Wayfarer
I simply don't believe that. People's actions are very much tied to their world-view. The story they construct for themselves about how the world is - a necessary step before the eternity of heaven, a brutal competition for resources, an opportunity for happiness... these all massively affect the world we live in and even people reading this will be affected by the world-views espoused here.
Quoting Wayfarer
Central to the claim that science cannot study mental events is that mental events are subjective, first-person and cannot be understood by their external manifestations alone. Otherwise as study of the symptoms of pain is the same a s a study of pain, a study of the symptoms of consciousness is the same as a study of consciousness. To separate them out requires that you undo that common understanding that we can identify those experiences in others.
Because it's a philosophical discussion of the relationship of mind and matter. Of course there is 'psychiatry' - but some psychiatrist might be a materialist, i.e. believes that mind is ultimately reducible to brain, and another might believe something very different. And that difference is not a matter for psychiatry! As for neuroscience, central to the philosophical issue is the truth of the Churchland's claim that 'mind is what brain does'. But that's not an issue for the science of neuroscience (although the studies of Wilder Penfield is interesting in this regard - don't know if you're familiar), as science's aims are predominantly medical and scientific, and have produced countless and inestimable goods in that regard.
Secondly, Thomas Nagel is speaking about something very specific, but also widely understood: that modern science was founded on the presumption that objectifiable, material phenomenon were the proper object of study for science, and that the notion of the mind was relegated to the domain of 'secondary qualities'. That doesn't rule out the 'study of the mental' but it generally supposes that 'the mental' supervenes on, or is a product of, physical processes - which is the underlying conviction of much modern science. (However, again, that's not to denigrate methodological naturalism, if you can appreciate the distinction.)
Quoting Isaac
Well, they can't be! You might or might not recall that the publication of DSM IV, the 'handbook for diagnosis of mental diseases', was embroiled in a years-long controversy about what constituted a mental illness. Mental conditions and the mind, generally, are categorically different to the study of physical entities, of which physics is the paradigmatic example. So too are the social science, psychology, sociology and the like; it's not coincidental that the so-called 'replication crises' in scientific method are often associated with these kinds of subjects.
Sorry, I don't think it is. I know I didn't use it to convey that meaning. :razz:
Full dictionary entry here.
And who pays the wages of these pure and unbiased scientists? Oil companies; tobacco companies; pharmaceutical companies...? Do you think they would carry on paying if the results (of the scientists' work) went against their capitalistic needs? :chin:
No, it's not an issue for anyone. What started this whole line of argument was the assertion from philosophy that neuroscience couldn't adequately describe/investigate consciousness. Not the assertion from neuroscience that philosophy couldn't.
Whether mind is what brain does, is not a matter for scientific investigation. It is not a matter for any investigation whatsoever. It is a fundamental belief about the type of thing one is attributing the word "mind" to. There is no right answer to that because humans invented all such linguistic classifications. It would like trying to answer what the 'right' properties of a unicorn are.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not disagreeing with this, but you can't go from a statement of fact here to a conclusion that it is therefore missing something. You have to first prove the 'something' exists. Physics doesn't deal with ghosts, but that's not a problem unless ghosts exist. Nagel doesn't prove that first-person subjective experience exists (in any sense that can be investigated) so he cannot then say he has argued that science is missing something, one cannot miss something which never existed.
Quoting Wayfarer
Again you're just repeating the same assertion that is supposed to be the very matter we are discussing.
Oh, well that clears that up to everyone's satisfaction then. What exactly did you mean by it?
Quoting Pattern-chaser
I wasn't querying the epistemic element of the expression. Note how they put the word 'like' in brackets, the very word I queried the meaning of isn't even necessary to the sentence you've given as an example of its use.
I'll ask you the same as I asked TS, in clarification. What words would you use to answer "what is it like to be conscious?"
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Well, in my country, the government, charities, and university fees. Private companies are only one of the possible sources of income and they generally do not fund the peer reviewers if they've also funded the research programme. There are, of course, numerous cases where the system has been abused, (and whole fields such as medical science) but that's no reason to dismiss the whole process, that would be childish.
Quoting Isaac
I would love to have words to answer that question. So would many other philosophers. We've been trying to answer this since at least Hume, if not before. :chin:
Then if you don't have the words to define it, how do you determine that the words neuroscience uses aren't it? What measure are you comparing potential descriptions to that those of neuroscience fail to meet?
"‘Like’ isn’t a lazy linguistic filler – the English language snobs need to, like, pipe down"
Like has many uses, listed in many dictionaries. Look here, and see how many different uses the Cambridge English dictionary lists.
I may be autistic, but I am pretty convinced you're just being awkward because you misunderstood a simple and common English idiom, and you're embarrassed, and this has made you annoyed. :chin:
Well, that's a great start. Which of those definitions did you mean when you said "will it give us any understanding at all of what it's like to be a conscious human being?"
Being can be expressed as the generalized notion of "anything which was, is, or will be", although as @Wayfarer noted, in many philosophies it is more typically expressible as "any awareness which was, is, or will be". Either way, I stand by my claim that it is 100% absurd - due to its presence being arational.
Quoting William James quoted on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being
Quoting Isaac
Hold on a minute. This to me sounds like a confusion between the epistemic and the ontic ( -ology is usually added to indicate "the study of"). (BTW, I was addressing the known beginnings of our physical universe after the Big Bang.) We can only use the epistemic to reference the ontic. Much of the human epistemic can be well argued to be a human construct - but not the ontic which it references. There are such things as hydrogen and helium atoms - even if our knowledge of them is imperfect and perpetually improving. You do not agree?
Quoting Isaac
I'm very on board with lesser animals using the same pivotal laws of thought we ourselves use. But - to keep things more concrete - the law of identity is something that we've invented??? When do you suppose this invention occurred?
For the record, my previous post was an attempted argument for pivotal laws of thought, such as that of identity, being time-invariant givens that are thereby non-invented/created - but which instead just are - so I naturally disagree with your current stance.
Quoting Isaac
First off, I said "children" (which can include at least young adolescents) and not "infants" or "toddlers" - only the latter do not exhibit mastery of object permanence (and, possibly, if young enough, of a theory of mind). But please explain how any of the aforementioned do not exhibit use of the law of identity.
Quoting Isaac
Atomic forces are not blatantly arational. We thereby hold the capacity to obtain sufficient reasons for them. As to your concluding question: Why not? As you've mentioned toward the end, philosophy and science are not "mutually exclusive". They rather benefit from each other.
Quoting Isaac
I've had the privilege of doing some research in cognitive science psychology as well as in neuroscience. Cog Sci had far less confounding variables and biases of measurement than did the neuroscience research I was exposed to (in other words, cog sci was a "harder science" than neuroscience - this in my particular exposure to both). That mentioned for balance, when it comes to psychology as per Freud, Jung, and others: how is this type of psychology more science than philosophy? I find it to be rather the opposite: it is more philosophy rather than an empirical science. Hence, it is yet philosophy that 'addresses' the problem (as best it can).
BTW, in science, testable hypotheses are basically the testable presumption of a given set of scientists' philosophy regarding a certain topic. Again, philosophy and science are by no means mutually exclusive.
Quoting Isaac
But there are common bodies of knowledge in philosophy - its just that these are not always (especially not historically) obtained via the empirical sciences' peer review method. A ubiquitous and thereby trivial example: all philosophers agree that being holds presence. How is this not knowledge?
I could expand a bit, but have written enough as is for now.
EDIT: I forgot to ask somewhere along the way: How can the empirical sciences discover, for example, what knowledge entails? Is this aspect of mind not the proper subject for philosophy?
How are you concluding arationality? Rationality is a property of an argument, or a chain of thought, how is it a property of a notion? Things clearly do exist, we interact with them all the time, and some of those things appear to be aware of their own responses. So how is it absurd? Are you saying it's absurd that we have a word to describe such a state of affairs, or that it is absurd that such a state of affairs should be the case? What would the alternative be, what state of affairs would you rationally expect to be the case?
Quoting javra
No. There are no such things as hydrogen atoms, there is only stuff. It is humans who decided that where weak nuclear forces become insignificant we will call it the end of one thing and the start of another. There is no universal law as to where one thing ends and another begins, we make that up.
Quoting javra
Yes. I don't know when we invented it, but if we didn't invent it then where was it before we evolved to think it?
Quoting javra
You said you've some background in psychology (my academic background also). You'll be familiar with the work of Jean Piaget and later Margeret Donaldson or Alison Gopnik? Basically there's little evidence that very young children even recognise object properties such as extension and positional relation. They do not respond as if they expect objects to retain the extension they occupied before. You'll no doubt have heard it describedas as an "acid-trip soup" of sensory stimuli.
Quoting javra
Do they? What leads you to that conclusion? (and you'll have to explain what on earth "being holds presence" means).
Firstly, science is always more focused on provably factual information than philosophy due to its nature. Philosophers are allowed to make more speculations than scientists.
Secondly, is that even the case? Science does make this assumption of consciousness in psychology and sociology, for example, but can't make it in the research of consciousness itself. The same does hold for philosophy - we make the assumption that other living beings are conscious in ethics, but when it comes to discussing the very nature of consciousness, Descartes' cogito, ergo sum is almost universally accepted.
Quoting Isaac
Sorry if I'm repeating myself or forgetting something's that already been said, but on what grounds are you saying the pattern of consciousness can't be identified? If you by identifying its pattern mean recognizing it and being capable of naming it, that's trivial just by being conscious. However this structure seems not to be one that one can put into words beyond naming it, making it merely ineffable, which is not the same thing as to say that we can't identify the pattern at all.
Quoting Isaac
Why? Words can be defined to mean anything, they can be symbols that refer to anything. Why couldn't a word refer to a thing that has certain relationships with other things, rather than the relations themselves?
Human beings exist. The nature of human existence, the kinds of problems we experience, the meaning of existence, the meaning of experience - these are all the subjects of philosophical discourse. You believe that philosophy is a disconnected mishmash of ideas, the irrelevant ramblings of amateur thinkers that can say nothing coherent, but you demonstrate no grasp of the discipline or its history and any attempt to explain it meets with derision and scorn, based on your assumption that it's a meaningless subject.
Furthermore if, as you say, the meaning of words is fixed solely by convention, and nothing has inherent meaning, then science itself would be impossible and nobody would ever communicate anything. But that, of course, is another philosophical matter, and so probably, in your book, unable to ever be satisfactorily explored.
What do you understand the law of identity to be?
I don't understand what either of these points have to do with the argument. You said "Until it's possible to cause identical observations with identical qualia in different people and science is done by experiencing those experiences directly, it's not correct to say that any branch of science is dealing with consciousness directly." From which I took that because science could not ensure that the qualia in different people were identical, it could not proceed to investigate consciousness. I argued that the identicalness of qualia in different people needs to be assumed on the basis of external indications otherwise we could not even talk about them, could not even give them a name (language is a communal activity). You've then responded with this, which I don't see how relates to that line of argument. Are you saying that philosophy can guess that qualia are probably similar enough to talk about, whereas science needs to be more accurate? If that's the case, and the similarity is philosophy's most common guess, then philosophy cannot also dismiss scientific investigation on the exact opposite ground (that qualia are not similar between people). It must, to be consistent, guess that science probably can investigate because qualia probably are similar enough.
Quoting BlueBanana
So, how come we're having this discussion then? How come the likes of Dennet, Hood, Churchland, Ramachandran, Seth all write what they do about consciousness and the likes of Chalmers, Nagel etc disagree? Are the former group lying? I've already stated that, in common with many of the former group, consciousness is, for me, the logging to memory of sensory stimulation events. I've been told that's wrong. Is there something wrong with my brain then, that I cannot see this obvious thing that consciousness is, that everyone else can?
Quoting BlueBanana
I'm not saying it can't, I'm saying we can't then sublime that word to a concept which has other properties we simply imbue it with. If a word is used to describe some relationship among patterns, then "some relationship among patterns" is what that word refers to and nothing more. If consciousness refers to the relationship between phenomena we observe (but is not itself observable), then that is all it is. It is does not then magically become a thing which we can search for, just because we named it. Personally, I'm happy with my definition, but I'd be equally happy with a more nebulous definition to do with describing our feelings about sensory stimuli. What I object to is a nebulous definition describing our feelings, which is them magically sublimed into an objective concept but one which only philosophy can find out more about.
The very act of any investigation (of the sorts we're talking about here) is a communal one, we speak to others about it. We cannot communicate to others and yet use words whose terms refer to a different thing for each different person, the thing the term refers to must be shared. All shared things are identifiable by external perception/description (otherwise it would not be possible to agree on them - we cannot do telepathy), therefore all such investigation is at least amenable to science. That's not to say science mightn't have anything to say on the subject, but I just can't see the argument for ruling it out from the start.
Where have I made such a statement?
Quoting Wayfarer
How so? This doesn't follow at all as far as I can see. Why would the communal agreement on terms make science impossible?
Simply that a thing must be identical to itself - but... In order for the proposition to not be a tautology, the thing referred to must be a specific and the referring must be general. This requires object permanence which children (very young babies) do not seem to have. Without object permanence one cannot identify that X is X. The two Xs must be specfic/general, otherwise the statement is tautologous and trivial. If we treat X as a state of affairs at T0, then to say that the state of affairs at T0 is the state of affairs at T0nis tautology. To say that the specific, the identified subset of the state of affairs at T0 is the same subset we're referring to when identifying it at T1, is the law of identity. It only applies to logic because only logical objects can be said to have this permanence, unless you're a realist on forms (which is far from an agreed upon position among adults, let alone babies). There's no evidence at all that babies treat logical objects any differently than they do extended ones.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
There’s a sample.
A sample of me saying...
Quoting Wayfarer
... was what I asked for. Not a sample of me talking about the arguments being presented here.
Quoting Wayfarer
Ah, and we're back to the classic "if you don't agree with me, it's because you don't understand my argument". What fact of the world is preventing it from being the case that your argument is wrong or incoherent? Are you familiar with Peter Van Inwagen's argument about epistemic peers? You do not have more knowledge than me, you have a human brain like mine, and yet you claim I don't understand. That proves that it is possible for someone with your knowledge set and brain power to not understand. Given that we have proven that, how do you know it's not you who doesn't understand?
This, then, is an important point of divergence. Now, I acknowledged the possibility of my being wrong, so I’ll ask you to reference where you obtain the affirmation that the law of identity specifies T0 = T1 in reference to X, or else that it necessitates a specific/general dichotomy.
Alternatively, explain these two points:
1) Given any semblance of process theory – wherein at least everything physical is in perpetual change (things such as laws of thought not being physical) – how can any physical given X be identical at two different times?
Object permanence, after all, basically has it that objects don’t miraculously appear and disappear out of / into thin air. It does not specify that physical objects do not change over time.
This issue doesn't have to do with cherry-picking properties (what you've termed subsets?) of objects to compare at different times - e.g., the green of a apple tree leaf is as green as that of a ripe apple on the tree, so, therefore, the green is identical. It has to do with the entire physical object itself.**
2) How can one arrive at the conclusion of T0 = T1 in reference to X in the complete absence of the conclusion that T0 = T0 in reference to X, as trivial and tautological as the latter might be?
Given examples such as (1) just aforementioned, it seems to me that T0 = T1 in reference to X does not hold a mandatory ubiquitous application (a newly bloomed flower is not identical to a wilting flower) **. Whereas T0 = T0 in reference to X does seem to hold a mandatory ubiquitous application, thereby having the latter being properly termed a law of thought. But not the former.
** Please note, we have been addressing laws of thought - and not metaphysical issues of what identity (as in sameness) is - which are still much contested among philosophers (not so much scientists). But such metaphysical enquiries into what identity consists of, after all, require laws of thought in order to proceed - and among these is the law of identity (A = A).
You have to hand it to "consciousness", though... it keeps getting up and distinguishing itself from near-synonyms.
How about glossing it as "somebody-at-home-ness"? And unconsciousness as "nobody-at-home-ness"?
As a way of reassuring the dualists (who are legion) that we (if you can excuse the presumption) do at least share their intuition of something going on, something deserving of proper description and explanation. And of that thing not going on, crucially, with rocks and calculators.
(Even if we can't yet define what is going on precisely and uncontroversially. And even though we shall decline the invitation to dualism which is implicit in these glosses.)
I appreciate that users of self-aware might complain they already had this idea. But I tend to think that version fails, since I can easily enough imagine calling a thermostat aware and a larger system containing it self-regulating or (at a pinch) self-aware, even though I also see both as unquestionably unconscious (i.e. clear cases of nobody-at-home).
As regards attempting to define the something-going-on more precisely... I love this,
Quoting Isaac
... but mainly because of this,
Quoting Isaac
Me too. (And ideas aren't inner words or pictures...)
Still, you set the bar too low, for me. I can easily believe that nobody is at home in any state of the art neural network. I'm waiting for them to start playing the social game of pointing (actual) words and pictures at things in the real world, and I assume that will be a long time coming, e.g. well after they've started playing at pointing sticks and balls at things in the real world.
Firstly, this is a really weird way of putting it that makes me wary of continuing, but as I've not read many of your posts, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The weirdness though - you're asking me for a reference which affirms the nature (or in this case that which is not the nature) of a law of thought you're claiming even 1 year old babies have. Did I miss the bit in my theology class where Aristotle created the world? I don't personally agree with the distinctions, but if a feature is a law of thought a priori, then it does not require an authority to affirm what it is or is not, that would be a posteriori synthetic by definition.
I'll presume for now you mean to ask if there's any writer who goes into my argument in more detail. If so, then to be honest most seem to, but I'm no Aristotle scholar, I've read mainly Ellwood Wiggins.
As to the general specific distinction, that's from Moore's objection. "When we say, ‘This is identical with itself’, the truth of which we are thinking seems to belong to the class of truths of which the general form is, ‘This is identical with that’, and it seems as if in all such cases ‘this’ and ‘that’ must have some difference from one another, and therefore that, in this case, the thing must be different from itself in order to be identical."
Quoting javra
It can't. Not literally. That's why the law of identity is a rule by which we think efficiently, not a fact about the way the world is. Nothing can be identified at all because of process theory, we treat objects as discernibles for pragmatic purposes, not because that's what they are.
Quoting javra
We don't need to. As I said, the conclusion that T0=T0 is a rule by which we think. It's a very popular rule because it woks pragmatically well, as in the example you give above, it would be difficult for me to talk about anything T0 is equal to without assuming it's equal to itself (has some properties which discern it and no other), but that doesn't mean that such laws exists outside of our making them up. That the identification of objects (including objects of thought) is a useful prerequisite to forming any theories about those objects is one of the first things we learn as very young children, it may even be hard-wired into our brains. There's no reason at all to believe it exists prior to us learning/evolving it.
Quoting javra
I'm still, to be honest, struggling to see the distinction you're making here. All of my reading about the law of identity has been around objects (even if they are objects of thought). To say A=A is to instantiate an object 'A'. The law of identity relies on the concept of objects.
That people can distinguish it does not mean it is distinguished in reality (by which I mean all that is actually the case). People can distinguish unicorns, or different varieties of dragon. To be honest, I think you're pretty close to the mark with "somebody-at-home-ness" being the feeling most people want to defend when they fear neuroscience investigating the issue. I think "somebody-at-home-ness" is an entirely fabricated story we tell ourselves post hoc to string together our disparate desires and actions into a coherent whole, and people are (perhaps quite rightly) frightened that neuroscience will find this out.
Quoting bongo fury
Why? Apart from prejudice against non-humans (or non-living). Are you not falling into the trap of presuming that what you can or cannot imagine is an adequate guide to what is actually the case. You've no reason to believe it is, and in fact, if the history of our advancing knowledge has taught us anything it might well be that the exact opposite is true.
Quoting bongo fury
Here is the issue that Wittgenstein raised about forms of life, which I have already mentioned. You're describing a human 'form of life', and your definitions of things like consciousness necessarily are embedded in that, they can't not be. But if we allow a definition of consciousness to be so embedded in human forms of life, then we cannot imbue with any awe the revelation that is is unique to humans (or similar animals). Afterall, we have just defined it thus.
No, sure. Do you think there is anything to be distinguished, however vaguely? I might have lost track and missed that you are a zombie-denier / pan-psychist? So that you think that the "suffering" of an overheating thermostat circuit deserves some (presumably tiny but non-zero) degree of human sympathy?
Please excuse the incredulity and name-calling, but I guess my suggested glossary is intended to establish common ground by excluding zombie-denial as well as consciousness-denial. If we (or anyone) can agree some clear cases of zombies as well as of consciousness then our discussion of how to characterise the transition is less likely to polarise and end in mutual incredulity. Is always my hope.
I had assumed we had that common ground, but maybe not. So... do you see any clear cases at all of nobody-at-home?
Quoting Isaac
Yep, and the danger is that dualists would sense mockery in this glossary. But maybe the eventual scientific story (e.g., dare we suppose, yours about logging of logging, or mine about pointing at pointing) needn't simply disappoint, and 'find us out' to be zombies. It could explain our conscious states so that we understand our experiences more exactly.
Not in terms of homunculi, obviously. And I guess most people have always sensed the potential absurdity (as well as the genuine puzzle) of the somebody-at-home talk, anyway. So they wouldn't be in as much danger of disappointment as you (perhaps) suggest. I.e., we aren't necessarily beholden to a persistent error or illusion. That (alienating and polarising) assumption is unnecessary. Haha, sorry if that is holier than thou. I can't help spreading peace and goodwill. :Saint Homer of Hippo:
Um, no. I was asking you to reference the bit about the law of identity being what you've purported it to be.
I'll agree to disagree at this point.
Hard to get the drift of a lot of what you're saying I'm afraid, but I'll have a go.
Quoting bongo fury
Yes, there must be something to distinguish, otherwise we'd have to argue that all that is the case was completely homogeneous and and I can't reconcile that with the consistent role symmetry breaking seems to have in physical process. The point is two-fold. Firstly, the thing we actually do distinguish is not thereby any more real than alternative options we've chosen to overlook. Secondly, saying something is not the same as having a referrant for that something. We could both agree now to include the word 'Jabberwocky' in numerous conversations. We'd both be using the same term but it would be without an agreed referrant.
Quoting bongo fury
I'm not sure why "suffering" has crept into this. Suffering seems to be about pain, the anticipation of pain and perhaps the recognition of cause. None of these things are attributable to a thermostat, but if they were I'd have no problem with describing it as 'suffering'.
Quoting bongo fury
I'm not sure what you're referring to by zombie-denial. If you're referring to p-zombies, then their only distinguishing feature is consciousness. If we can neither define consciousness, nor be sure that it is unrelated to other observable signs, then we cannot say whether p-zombies could exist or not.
I think I meant the one that any accomplished English speaker would understand from my words, unless we alerted them to look for hidden alternative intended meanings.
Great, well, you've got the dictionary right there (literally the compendium of accomplished English use), so indulge my lack of linguistic accomplishment and let me know which of the uses listed was the one you had in mind.
Quoting Isaac
In this case, "to be familiar with how it feels to be" "a conscious human being", as I said.
Right. Which brings us back to the beginning of our conversation. My comments (which you responded to) were about the meaning of the word 'like'. The word whose inclusion in the sentence you're referring to has so little effect on its meaning that it is in parenthesis. So I'm struggling to see how your objection to my definition of a word can be evidenced by a sentence in which the word plays no semantic role whatsoever.
Furthermore, the expression in question was "will it give us any understanding at all of what it's like to be a conscious human being?"
So presuming 'know' and 'be familiar with' are synonymous here we can directly transpose the remaining terms. This gives us "will it give us any understanding at all of how it feels to be a conscious human being?"
I can't make any sense at all of understanding how it feels. Your dictionary only gives either - "knowledge about a subject, situation, etc. or about how something works", or an unspoken contract. How do either of those things apply to a way something feels?
When said by a third party, this is an empirically verifiable and empirically contingent proposition - for the loss of consciousness in a third party has a behavioral definition.
But what about in my own case when I take the drug? Here, I do not have a behavioral definition for loss of my own consciousness. All i can have in this case, is a wakeful sense of amnesia in relation to memories I have of previously ingesting the anesthetic.
Here, to refer to my sense of amnesia as being equivalent to an earlier loss of my own consciousness would be a tautology.
Yes. And yet, couldn't someone have understood all of that perfectly well, and still wanted to ask whether you saw any use in the "conscious/unconscious" distinction: a division, however vague and provisional, among all of the potential (but actual, factual) referents of our discourse that are to be found moving about on the surface of our planet?
I suppose it's clear to me now (but do correct me) that your answer to that person would be no, unless the supposed distinction were reformed by smearing it out into a spectrum, a gradual scale of increasingly vivid consciousness, going by degrees from barely conscious at all at one end of it, along and up to (at least) the full consciousness of, say, a young adult human after morning coffee at the other end. My slight disappointment (though not total surprise) is that you would have the 'lower' end of the spectrum reach so close to my thermostat circuit as to virtually include it, and thereby undermine any clear intuition of complete unconsciousness, or zombie-ness, or nobody-at-home-ness. There would be no clear cases of such a state, as is indicated by your cheerfully feeble assurance about the thermostat:
Quoting Isaac
Well I think I could persuade you that they are. Don't you think I could? (The circuit anticipates and conveys pain in the sense of being 'triggered' to send signals about damage and the cause of it, doesn't it?)
Or perhaps I couldn't, and your intuition of complete unconsciousness is firm after all. By the same token, your intuition of where consciousness begins, or what kinds of things (e.g. what kinds of feedback circuits or logging circuits) to call conscious in a minimal degree, will then also be relatively clear and informative.
What is the use of any such clarification, though? As you point out, things are looking circular...
Quoting Isaac
So I won't be surprised if your assurance about the thermostat was disingenuous, and you soon admit that you don't really care whether we call it conscious or not.
I, on the other hand, don't see the clarification as arbitrary, such that it might as well show consciousness beginning anywhere, or indeed nowhere and be just an all-inclusive spectrum. I share with many ordinary folk and dualists too the assumption that ordinary usage of "conscious" correlates with other important distinctions, one such being the question where to and where not to strive to prevent suffering - the answer being, usually, where the suffering would be conscious suffering, and not where it wouldn't. Obviously a car in a crusher suffers catastrophic damage, and quite possibly processes "pain" signals about this; but just as obviously (to some of us) it doesn't suffer consciously (nobody is home), and so it isn't a cause for ethical concern.
Since your intuition of nobody-at-home-ness is so fragile you may want to question my carelessness about the car's plight. On the precautionary principle I may concede. If I resist, though, and get involved in a tug-of-war about whereabouts on a rough scale of processing-complexity we can surmise that consciousness begins, it won't be for lack of sympathy towards lower creatures but because, unlike you, I take ordinary usage of "conscious", aided and abetted by near-synonyms, to be capable of marking important distinctions in human psychology: so that defining consciousness isn't an arbitrary matter.
Searle's Chinese Room, for example. For you (but correct me?), it's an arbitrary matter, merely one of definition, whether the Room is conscious, depending simply on whether or not consciousness is so defined as to apply in that case. For me, we learn from the example that language use can be conscious, as for us, or unconscious as for the Room (despite Searle's role as syntactic clerk). So the example serves by requiring a refinement of the supposed model of conscious processing. (To have it include a genuine semantic component.)
I generally expect to find unconscious as well as conscious examples of all manner of cognitive and behavioural tasks. And I assume the contrast will point in the direction of useful theoretical revision. I don't think I could have any such expectation if, as you apparently do, I found the very idea of a sophisticated but completely unconscious machine to be problematic.
"Useful"? - yes.
But no one here was arguing about 'useful'.
The claim was that neuroscience could not fully investigate consciousness, at all. Not that neuroscience is using one definition but other definitions might prove equally useful. That is a claim I would entirely agree with.
Quoting bongo fury
Yeah, we've seen this crop up a disappointing number of times in the forum recently. "Clear intuition" is just a cover for "I really feel strongly that this is the case, but need a better sounding argument than 'I reckon'".
Quoting bongo fury
Yes, that is correct. I don't care if we call it conscious or not. I don't see why that makes my claim that it doesn't seem to suffer pain disingenuous. I know what pain looks like when expressed by myself and others. The thermostat doesn't seem to express that, nor can I think of any reason at all why it should.
Quoting bongo fury
But this is begging the question. If the purpose of ethical action is to avoid some category of suffering (what you're calling 'conscious suffering') then it is an ethical duty to correctly assign incidents of suffering to that category. Yet you're saying we trust our (clearly disputed) instincts as to what does and does not belong in that category for... What reason? Is it ethical that we invent a sub-category of suffering simply because it would be inconvenient to prevent all suffering and we have to narrow it down a bit?
Quoting bongo fury
You're conflating 'sophisticated' with 'conscious'. I would not. For me, consciousness is simy a specific type of self awareness, the logging to memory of mental events for future use, the identification of a single processing unit with a history, and properties which apply to it rather than it's parts. That requires a great deal of 'sophistication' but it is perfectly possible to have even greater sophistication without introducing that particular aspect.
You are human, as most of us are. You are mostly conscious, as most of us are. Having experienced consciousness for yourself, you have an understanding of what it is like (i.e. how it feels).
The only thing I've experienced is my life. I've just experienced eating an apple, which involved tastes, memories, me being aware that all that's going on, all sorts of automatic actions, and probably quite a lot of stuff I haven't even registered.
Nothing tells me which of that lot is 'consciousness'. We decide that when we use the word. I'm simply asking which of those aspects you're referring to when you use the word 'consciousness'.
Edited to add:
Quoting Isaac
This is probably the important bit. The bit we're not conscious/aware of. Current understanding is that unconscious processes are at least as significant as conscious ones.... So although the topic is consciousness, I don't think we should let it stray too far from its own context, and its intimate connection with our unconscious minds (not with "unconsciousness" :smile: ).
That's the 'part'. Someone watching you eat the apple, say. They would be aware of other things, like some guy eating an apple. But not the taste of the apple. So, all the stuff the third party might guess at, if they've had the same experiences, but wouldn't experience. Sure, you and they might see your hand move, but from a different angle.
And someone watching the guy watching you....
Nice. :up:
Two views of consciousness:
Only the second view includes what's it's like to be a conscious human.
OK, but none of that is 'spooky' stuff. Me being aware of the fact that my taste receptors have just started neural chain reaction is no less a sensory stimuli response than the apple tasting. Its just the stimuli I'm sensing is my brain working.
If I log the image of a red square to memory, how come me logging the fact that I just logged a red square to memory suddenly becomes deeply mystical and inaccessible to science? Or are you guys trying to argue that neuroscience can't really study the brain at all?
I think you are simply confusing my posts with other people's? Not sure who's.
Quoting Isaac
Good. I think they should use mine. :wink:
Are they using yours? Links welcome.
Quoting Isaac
Or just checking agreement of premises / what we reckon.
Quoting Isaac
No, I'm just hoping some cases are clear and undisputed, as premises / what we reckon.
Quoting Isaac
I don't know, but I don't think we invent it. We find it delineated (vaguely, but with clear cases) in common usage.
Quoting Isaac
I know, and I'm interested. And if "awareness" and "mental" don't beg the question but cover unconscious as well as conscious processing, then I can imagine you turning out to be right. One test would be whether your recipe can produce processing that we think could easily be unconscious. If so, then more work to do.
You see it differently, I appreciate that.
Or perhaps that neuroscience can't really study the mind at all? :chin:
No, not "at all". But I can see difficulties....
I've come in the middle. I don't know what 'spooky' means or doesn't mean. There is something that third parties cannot see happening. They can see all sorts of chemical reactions. They can't see that awareness. I am not claiming that is spooky.
Yes, there is a certain amount that a third party can see from the outside, but there is more that can only be appreciated by doing it: by being a conscious human being. And I agree it's not 'spooky'. :up:
Maybe, it's a long thread with a lot of transgressions. We were talking about defining consciousness, right? So that whole sub-thread came about because the subliming of the term was my primary objection to those claiming consciousness could not be investigated by neuroscience. If you're making only the claim that there are alternative working definitions, then I agree.
Quoting bongo fury
By and large in my reading neuroscientific investigation into conscious use verbal reports of brain activity as the measure of consciousness. Ie, Tey use the fact that the subject has a memory of the actual mental activity on which they can draw to produce an account. There are other definitions (such as performing purposeful actions, but these are less well used). As for links, just look up 'consciousness' on Wikipedia, it should give a reasonable overview.
Quoting bongo fury
Again, I'm happy that we have a fuzzy definition of consciousness which we can't always mark the boundaries of, but feel we know the centre point. What I was arguing against originally was the idea that this was not inter-subjevtive in any way, that scientist A could not see signs of consciousness in patient B and say to himself "oh, I know what this is". I think he could, others here seem to think he could not.
I can see difficulties too, so can almost all of neuroscience, I'm sure. The claim made here (which is the only one I'm arguing against) is that neuroscience cannot investigate consciousness in a way that philosophy can. If neuroscience can investigate anything at all, it does so by use of an assumption that verbal reports or external signs are an indicator of the same internal processes that we personally experience when we exhibit those signs or would use those words to describe it. Any investigation involving language must make this assumption otherwise language is impossible. We cannot even use the word "pain" without making the presumption that what I feel when hopping up and down saying "ow, my foot!" is the same thing another person feels when doing the same. That goes for neuroscience in no less a way than it does for philosophy.
By 'spooky' I mean non-physical, it's an expression I picked up from physicists talking about the way woo-merchants misuse quantum uncertainty as if it were evidence for their latest product (be that God, free-will or new-age spirituality). I thought the term was more commonly understood than it evidently is.
Third parties can see the stuff happening. In the same way you can see the sun.
As far as 'spooky', well if its spooky from physics, that came from Einstein who was not talking about woo-woo merchants but the conclusions of other physicists, conclusions that still seem to be the case, or are at least considered to be the case by many physicists, despite their no doubt incredibly deep respect for Einstein. And please don't take my pointing this out to mean that qm proves new age beliefs. But they do sure shake up common sense and we don't know what the implications are.
But I maintain that they can see all this, in the same way as you can see the sun. When you look at the sun, you're not seeing it at all, you're seeing it's effects, you're seeing the light that came from it 8 minutes ago and using that information to inductively assume that the sun is there. You've no direct evidence that it is there at all, you just presume it is on the basis of the effects it has. The same with temperature (you can't actually see the vibrating particles), responses to stimuli in others (like bright light, or noises)...we just assume all these things on the basis of the effects they have on the world which we can observe. This causes us no hand-wringing consternation whatsoever, we just get on with science and our daily lives quite happily with this level of uncertain induction. So why is consciousness any different?
And if it is so different, what is it about philosophy which suddenly makes it able to investigate, to talk about these things without running into exactly the same problem?
This can be tested. People look at other people and see if they can tell what they are experiencing. The experiencers think about different things, get prodded, out of sight, by a needle and so on. And we can see if they can see these things.
I feel like we must be talking at cross purposes here. We can't see the qualia, to put it one way, that others experience. Sometimes we can see their emotional state, but often not. I can't see if they are thinking about their third grade teacher or an avacado. Etc.
Quoting Isaac
I don't have any hand-wringing consternation regarding consciousness. I don't think we know why it occurs, why there is this facet to at least certain matter. But I haven't expressed any particular emotional reaction to this. Quoting Isaac
Different from what? From the Sun`?
Quoting Isaac
It seems to me philosophy can talk about the science related to the sun, if there were some specific conclusion that, for example, the induction did not really support or if there were paradigmatic issues that a philosopher thought was skewing some conclusion or precluding something unnecessarily.
One uniqueness to consciousness in relation to science is: let's say we compare it to the study of the Sun. No one is priviledged. We could all use telescopes, we could all be trained to go through the experimental procedures - yes, intelligence might play a role in understanding how scientists got from A to hypothesis C and then texting X....
But basically a wide variety of people each have the same access to studying the sun and moving towards conclusions.
With my consciousness, what I am aware of, I have both advantages and perhaps disadvantages. A scientist studying my consciousness, what I am aware of moment to moment cannot have the same access I do. If we are both scientists and what we want to study is my consciousness, we have quite different access to it.
If we are both astronomers, we can both study our sun and have precisely the same access to more data in the exact same ways. There is no phenomenon - in any case, that we are aware of now - that would make that study different for either one of us. We can trade off the same tools, computer programs and so on.
But if we decide to study my consciousness, what I experience, it is not the same.
Yes, we could each study our own consciousnesses, now again on even ground. But there is not parallel contrast with stars. This is my star and I can study it in ways you cannot.
Note: I am not saying that the access I have to my consciousness means I will be right in my conclusions (all the time). It might make me reach false ontological conclusions. But it sure gives me a radical advantage over someone else when studying what I am aware of now, and now, and now......And it also gives me an advantage regarding what these experiences are like.
If the Sun is conscious, well, then it would have a different access to one facet of itself than the astronomers.
Yes, and we can. With the addition that we ask the experiencers what they just experienced and they report it to us. Which is exactly what happens in neuroscience. They say "I felt a sharp pain in my back" and we think "I know what sort of feeling I would describe as a sharp pain in my back, I'm going to work on the presumption that's what they're feeling, otherwise language stops working altogether if we go around having our own private meanings for words".
Quoting Coben
Different from all the other things scientists routinely investigate (with great predictive success) despite the fact that they are relying on verbal reports of qualia.
Quoting Coben
Yes he can, you can tell him, in words, what you're aware of, and, presuming he understands the words and has experienced something he too would use those words to describe, then he now knows what you do (or close enough to it to yield useful investigative results).
Quoting Coben
No, it's no different (or at least, not different enough to justify the claims being made here). If you report to me that you saw the sun pass by Neptune (or whatever, astronomy is not my field), then in order for me to make any use of that information, I must presume 1) that the things you mean by those words are the same things I do, and 2) that your 'seeing' indicates the same external world activity as my 'seeing' would. If I don't make those presumptions then I'm just as trapped in my own little world of sun observation as you suggest we are with consciousness.
To investigate your consciousness, I ask you what you are experiencing (in response to my various test environments) and then, when you tell, I presume, from our joint experience of the world, that I know what the words mean (at least well enough to be getting on with). I do this with a few thousand people to average out any idiosyncratic language use and I have me some useful scientific knowledge about consciousness.
It's no different to the presumptions about shared meaning I have to make when I speak with my fellow sun observer about his measurements.
And then we have to wonder how much is lost in the translation, but sure, we do that. Then we have a much harder time with animals. OK, what I notice in the way you frame the issue above is. You say we can ask, which is true, and then you talk about what we assume - we tend to assume that what they say is something we can understand via thinking of what it would mean if we say it.' And they you say if we don't work with that presumption language stops working altogether. That's a false dichotomy. It might be wrong to varying degrees regarding various experiences. We do not deal with that kind of individual to individual various and mediation through language with any other study of a scientific object or phenomenon. Quoting Isaac
that is not the same access. And with most phenomena we are not going qualia to language to qualia. That is a difference.Quoting IsaacIt's different. I don't really care about the othe claims.Quoting IsaacAnd with other phenomena, regarding stars, we do not have the stars ability to introspect involved. We have no individual experiential past/culture on the part of the test subject that affects interpretations, use of language.
This means that there is an extra layer, at the very least, of a different kind. We do not have to worry about the cultural biases of a star.
Because our data is mediated by another consciousness, not just our own. We are playing that children's game with it: telephone.
This does not mean that we cannot study it or come to great conclusions.
But it means that in this way it is not like other phenomena.
This does not prove there is a God or dualism. But it is a difference.
Which is not the case in any other research of any other object of research. And in no other research can the culture, upbringing, self-knowledge, language use, introspective ability of the subject affect the data IN ADDITION to the how the thinking of the research(s) might affect the data. We do not play telephone via another person with any other object of research. We look at the heart of a person and we do not have to think that perhaps the way their parents treated them or that they grew up in Malawi is affecting what we see in the microscope. Nor with the sun.Quoting IsaacThis is a false dilemma. Either we accept it or language stops working. When in fact we are dealing with degrees of distortion or, in fact, possibly use of the same words for different experiences, that are regularly experienced differently. They smell something quite different when they smell coffee, but since there is consistancy on boht sides, the use of the phrase smell of coffee works, except when one person thinks their dog smells like the coffee after the dog gets wet. And we get a hint they might be having quite different qualia. And that happens. God knows how much it happens with emotions.
No other objects of study do we play this kind of telephone game with. Where even the motives and concerns of the one with the consciousness being studied might affect their honesty, consciously or otherwise. Along with all the other filters mentioned above.
You almost acknowledge the difference....
Quoting IsaacI don't care about their claims. It seems to me here you are indicating motive not to accept any difference since this might encourage 'them'.
.Quoting IsaacOf course it is different. You didn't both have to wonder if the sun is withholding information, if the sun means the same thing either or both of you would mean by it. You don't have to wonder if the sun's culture being the same as yours, as opposed the Alpha Centauri's culture, is leading you to make false generalizations about minds, when in fact it is only certain minds. You don't have to wonder if when the Sun says coffee - see above.
You do not have a broad set of new factors to consider that are not like any other factors in any other scientific exploration.
Geologists don't have to wonder about the motives of mica.
It seems like I am getting caught in the crossfire between those you see as conclusing things without foundation and you who it seems to me wants to say it is just like everything else. It may be to some objective observer, but for us in situ, it is a different kind of object of study because the access is mediated by other people. And I know stuff about my consciousness or awareness that you cannot know, even if I use words to describe it. Even if I do this well and honestly. There will be a huge asterisk next to what goes through your mind as being the same as what went through mine.
I sense motives. I could be wrong. But I sense in this interaction a very strong motive, perhaps connected to the hand-wringing you see in others, to have no difference. Just as you see strong motive to see different in those with agenda in the other direction.
I have to say I am getting tired of this, which means I am getting tired of internet philosophical discussions. They feel part, always, of ongoing culture wars with little curiosity.
I'm gonna leave this here. There are still a few places in these forums where people actually explore.
Consciousness is a metaphysical invention of philosophy. Even if philosophy itself, and therefore it’s inventions, must be derivatives of the brain, science is still require to test in accordance with natural law, of which a mere invention of thought can never show.
Science can show the brain mechanics from which the thought of consciousness is derived, but can never show consciousness as it has been thought, in the same way that science can show that it is the sun I’m thinking about, but absolutely cannot show my consciousness of the object “sun” of my experience.
Pretty simple really. Just because science can figure out where to look to see me being conscious of an object in particular does not tell it where to look to see my consciousness of objects in general.
I am not sure what you mean here. I assume you don't mean that philosophy invented the awareness and presumably animals experience. But I am not sure what you do mean.
No, philosophy doesn’t invent the fact of experience, even if it makes assorted attempts to identify the quality of it.
I guess, simply put, I reject that science can test for an abstraction of pure reason. I mean.....where would it look for it, exactly, within the proverbial 8lbs of wetware, and what would it look for, exactly? If it doesn’t know these things, how would it ever possibly know it found it?
Which sorta demonstrates the whole point: the methodology of physical science is not impeded in its investigation of physical objects, but it is certainly impeded in its investigation of abstract objects.
Like looking in a cupboard: this is where a “2” will be found, but when the door is opened, there’s nothing there. This tells, e.g., where in the brain the thought of “2” manifests, but nothing like a “2” as it is thought, can be shown on a screen.
I understand the various technical details of neurocognitive investigations, insofar as one might say a certain ion potential across a certain synaptic gap is a direct correlation to the thought of “2”, or some such. But that pathway is not what I see in my head.
If we allow that philosopher(s) can examine themselves, their own minds and consciousness, as well, then they can achieve more than science can by the exclusive use of external, maybe impartial, observers. Who can do better depends on who is able - according to the rules of the discipline they practice - to see the most, from the greatest number of (metaphorical) vantage points. If the philosopher is permitted to make the observations the scientist can make, and also add self-observation, then the philosopher has more data to analyse. This might well give the philosopher the lead.
But this would not be down to any superiority on the part of philosophy. The rules of scientific observation don't allow self-observation by a partial observer. If that wasn't the case, there would probably be nothing to choose between the two.
What do you think? :chin:
Isn’t it experience itself that is an abstraction? Whether the external object affects the brain and the corresponding state of the brain at that time represents the object, or, the external object affects the mind and the corresponding state of the mind at that time represents the object......the representation is nonetheless an abstraction of the object.
Science just wants the physical brain state that represents the object to be entirely sufficient to identify it. Which is fine, it can certainly do that, but that in itself doesn’t necessarily relate to how the human thinks about the object. The human brain acts according to brain states, but the human reason of which consciousness in an integral constituent, doesn’t think in accordance with the way the brain acts.
—————-
Addendum:
I edited eliminative materialism out, because it is absurd, and as soon as I wrote it, I realized it didn’t belong here. Sorry for throwing a curveball at you.
I think the strong position of eliminative materialism is absurd.
Ahhh...I see what you mean. Yes, the concreteness of brain activity gives us the basis of understanding, agreed. But I maintain that the basis for, is not the same as the experience of.
my LOL above it not at you, it is at the toughness of discussing this, at least sometimes. It is so easy to talk past each other.
Oh. Sorry. You said the most concrete thing is our experience-ING, and the only aspect of experiencing that can be concrete, is the effect of objects on brain activity.
The ambiguities of language, perhaps? Your “right now I am experiencing the letters...” would be my “right now, my experience of letters...”. I consider experience as an end, rather than experiencing as a process. Probably because I consider reason itself as the process, with all its components, culminating in experience.
But that’s not the only way to approach the subject, I suppose.
We already allow such a thing in science by necessity. A scientist investigating pain must ask his patient about the pain they're feeling, he cannot measure it directly. The patient will respond in words (or maybe just actions if they're in a lot of pain) and the scientist uses their self-examination, their own experience, to understand what those words or actions might mean in terms of experience. Otherwise the experiment is pointless. Just to check which areas of the brain are associated with pain, for example, the results aren't "the thalamus shows increasing activity when the patient is writhing around yelling 'ow', but I've no idea what might be happening". The results are "the thalamus shows increasing activity when the patient is in pain (a fact I deduced from their writhing around and yelling 'ow' because that's what I do when I'm having one of those experiences, we're all human, it's a pretty safe bet for now that it's the same thing)". It is the scientist's own introspection about their subjective experience which allows them to interpret the external signs the patient shows as internal experience.
A doctor may be scientifically-trained, but her methods are not those of a scientist. There is good reason for this. Her subjects are humans, so there's a lot of subjective communication, and a lot of partiality, going on. That is entirely correct and appropriate for a doctor. But it goes against science as it is practised. For as long as science continues to worship impartial and external observation, it cannot investigate any human-related matters like this one. And so it will be inferior to another discipline that is able to do more than the scientist.
This isn't the fault of the scientist, or of science. It's down to how science works. We might just as well complain that trees don't grow fur instead of leaves. Science is constrained. This is one price it pays for the investigative power it wields. Philosophy is a Swiss Army knife; science, in contrast, is a stiletto*. If stabbing is what you want, science is your best option. But for other cutting-related stuff, you may do better with philosophy. :up:
* - I.e. it is very highly optimised. That's what gives it its power.
That may not be what you are getting at. But it is what first struck me.
For each of us, we arise into existence, experiencing. In the process of experience. We learn words via this experiencing and their meanings connect to experienced contexts and sensory qualities. When we encounter ideas we then 'check them' against records of experiences and meanings that are built up around experiences and are internally experienced. So, for me experience is the basis or most concrete. I realize we tend to attach concreteness to things: like the chair is made out of oak. But to me chairs and oak, the concrete portions of that assertion, are, in each of us, based on experiencing - experiences of chairs and woods. And the meaning is harking back to those experiences. Not to the ding an sich.
I can agree with that. But perhaps you would agree that only works by using experience to qualify what you know to be the case presently. If you are met with a completely new event, all experience will tell you is what the new event isn’t, but cannot tell you what it is.
And yeah......the “ding an sich” has no bearing or import with respect to the common understandings of Everydayman.
So in the new event, yes, I have no prior experience of the gremlin, let's say. But right then I am having an experience of what I don't know is a gremlin. I have no memory to experience it via. But I do have memories of colors and shapes. And in this case, it would have facial features, so I will place it in the category living thing. I might also go for hallucination.
Now let's say it shared nearly nothing with anything I had experienced before. I am still experiencing it. That is concrete. That's as concrete as it gets, just as a baby's experiences are really concrete never having seen thigns before.
So their is experience 1 as the history I have of experiencing different things - memory and a kind of template to take in new experiences.
2 - And Experience meaning 2 - as the process of being a subject experiencing things now.
I am saying that the process of experiencing is concrete. So this would include experiences fo new things also. Even if I don't know what the thing is I am experiencing. Even if I have no prior experience of it.
When I use the word experience, I am thinking of lived experiencing. And then there are records of this, so to speak,in the mind, that we can pull up and experience again. Not thatt his is quite the same, but it is also concrete.Quoting MwwI just meant that often we think of concrete as the object. But I think the experience is concrete and the object is for us more of an abstraction. for us. Not for it, especially it if is a sentient being.
All good; nothing in there I would argue against, even if there are a plethora of finer points I might quibble over. And even if I did, nothing I would say would necessarily contradict what you’re saying. Just the perils of cognitive reductionism run amok, to be sure.
Oh poop.
:joke:
Careful what you wish for. I’m retired and pretty lazy to boot, so I got all kinds of time to occupy myself with this stuff.