Because qualia: THIS! What does it mean?
Lately I've been becoming more and more convinced by panpsychism. The idea that experiences isn't dependent on brains or "information processing" in general which seems to make some speculate that even computers have some sort of experience (which panpsychism wouldn't be against, but not because a computer processes information), but that experiences is integral to matter itself. In that way our experiences wouldn't be a new phenomenon fabricated by our brains but fundamental to the universe itself. A year ago or so I probably would have considered it silly, as most people I talk to seem to think it is when I try to bring it up now :D
I can see why it seems silly, it does feel intuitively silly. But the popular view of panpsychism, or at least my own (!), isn't that tables and chairs experience things as unified objects, but that their constituent individual parts do. I can't say where the line is drawn but perhaps at the level of atoms.
And it doesn't mean that I believe that individual atoms are having complicated experiences as we do. But that different atoms, just as they have different measurable chemical properties they might also have different types of experiences. It sounds completely nuts, but maybe some type of atom (let's say all carbon atoms) just experiences the color green, and others experience what we identify as pressure, another as what we identify as warmth.
This is such a complicated subject and it's easy to think that "Hey no, what, photons are colors and temperature is just vibrations, what's he talking about." and that's a mistake I make if I'm not careful. It's of course true that photons of different wavelengths are tightly and reliably coupled to our experiences of color, but we never actually experience the photons that create the experiences, they simply start the process that culminate in the experience, just as the experience of warmth and cold in my fingers isn't the actual experience of vibrations in the atoms in the cells in my fingers, but is simply what activates the neurons in my fingers which passes along signals to my brain that somehow uses the experience of temperature to represent what is going on in my fingers.
There's a few arguments for panpsychism but just like their alternative theories of mind it all seems to boil down to "what feels right". Like how:
- if you don't believe that consciousness is an integral part of matter itself but only a property of brains (or computers), and you only believe in a material world, then you have to see consciousness as an entirely new phenomenon which is also material in nature but can only be created through specific interactions between other material objects. Which leads to fun questions such as what type of material interactions result in conscious experiences? Maybe I'm misrepresenting but that's at least how I would express it if I had been forced to express my views a couple of years ago, and that might have "felt right" to me then, but now it doesn't. Now it feels more right that consciousness is part of matter, or is matter itself.
That's not really what I want to talk about though. The route I want to take is through consciousness. I don't know exactly how, but there's "something" there, an obvious and seemingly trivial fact that I don't think is quite so trivial but I can't express how, and that's what I want to ask you about...taking a long time to get to it but I thought it was relevant to have a little background.
I'll just explain how I view consciousness.
It's clear to me that there's no processing in consciousness. (after a whole lot of introspection and podcasts and articles, this is almost a fact to me)
From my view consciousness is like the computer-screen that I'm writing on. Funny enough, in a way my computer-screen substitutes for my internal voice as I'm writing right now, and I'm only finding out what I'm saying as the words appear on the screen. Just like my internal voice just appears. Everything just appears, and I might think "Hey, no, I can control things. I can snap my fingers anytime I want." But those words also just arrived.
Anyway, consciousness is like the computer-screen. It has no control over what will enter it and become a part of it. What enters consciousness is a result of processes happening behind the scenes of which consciousness has no direct experience of, unless the reasons behind the conscious experiences are asked for afterwards "Why did I do that?", and not asked for by consciousness, but of the processes themselves. The question just appears, and then an answer comes in, or a failure in finding an answer. And then another question "Am I stupid?" followed by "Oh come on, get a hold of yourself.".
So if that's true, then what's the point of consciousness? I think it's a way of integrating different types of information in order to better make decisions, and this information is represented in experiences.
That's cool. But it doesn't really get at the issue.
...and this is where it gets really weird and interesting, at least to me. And where my confusion will be more apparent.
Why is consciousness conscious? Is experience conceptually necessary to represent and integrate information? Why if consciousness is just a container of information is it conscious? Why is the information aware?
Conceptually I want to make a division here. Into the material consciousness and the experiential consciousness. Let's call it MC and EC. (maybe there's terminology for it already, I'm such a noob).
Now MC would be whatever material substance you can imagine that might exist in the brain, neurons, molecules, atoms, synapses, signal transmitting molecules, the ions responsible for generating the electric potential, the electric potential itself, the calcium-ion waves in the astrocyte networks. Anything material in the brain which could give rise to our conscious experiences, and could be used to represent and integrate various information. (as has been the proposed function of consciousness (at least that was some of my take from this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4122207/)).
EC. Our conscious experiences. The qualia. Whatever it's like to be us. I could just call it qualia I suppose and not appear pretentious, but I'm trying to make a distinction here between what might give rise to qualia and qualia itself. Which might already be what qualia means.
I've heard this idea before. That conscious experience could just be a side-effect, like smoke rising from a train-engine and which has no bearing on the train itself. The train in this case would be MC and the smoke would be EC. But this idea seems intuitively and I think, as close as we can get to certainty, wrong.
First of all, why in the world are we making such a big deal out EC if it's just a side-effect with no bearing on the underlying processing which is causing me to write these letters (what the hell is MC doing in that case?)? Why has my processing-powers for the last two hours been pushed to their limits just trying to make sense of it, instead of doing something evolutionary relevant like finding a girlfriend? Why would I even be making a distinction between material substrate of consciousness and qualia?
Secondly, if EC is just a side-effect and we're just a long for the ride, then why do experiences so reliably match with reality? It seems at least like it wouldn't be a requirement, but a happy coincidence in that case that we're not just experiencing random noise (or constant pain).
I think the "first of all" is the most important one. And there is the obvious and seemingly trivial fact that I was talking about. Consciousness, awareness, experiences, qualia, have an impact on the material world. Because I experience experiences I will now snap my fingers.
I did. It was very dramatic.
And finally. Here comes the first non-rethorical questions, but feel free to comment on whatever you want of course. But here's what I'm mostly curious about.
Are you convinced that qualia can affect the world?
If so doesn't that say something significant about the nature of reality?
What do you believe it says?
Side-note:
Still seems very strange to imagine how if conscious experience resides in individual atoms these can somehow be communicated to other atoms and in turn result in my communicating them here. Maybe not conscious atoms then. Or who knows.
Comments (26)
EDIT: I'm not a fan of the word 'qualia' as it makes it seem like experience has weird ectoplasmic extra bits called qualia. I know that's probably not how many mean the term, but I think it's best to avoid using it otherwise people get sidetracked into tedious arguments about exactly how real they are and what they refer to, if anything, blah blah. Best to stick to 'phenomenal experience' or something everyone can get on board with.
Oh and also:
Quoting TheHorselessHeadman
"Phenomenal consciousness" (the experiential stuff everything has) and "access consciousness" (the functionalist stuff only some things like humans have) is the usual terminology.
All that seems to have happened here is a broadening of the use of experience to include stuff that it would not normally include. So sodium experiences light at 589nm says no more than that it absorbs light at that frequency.
If you cannot know what Fred, standing next to you, is experiencing, you are also not going to know what sodium experiences.
That is, it looks to me like no more than a misuse of an expression.
I don't know how many kinds of stuff there are, in your way of talking. But it seems to me that what we have here are two ways of talking about how things are, rather than two ontologies. Basically, what looks like "material consciousness and the experiential consciousness" is just the third person and first person grammars.
It seems to me that a constituent part is not conscious unless it is connected to the whole, in which case the whole would be conscious, not the part. It cannot be said that dead skin still experiences touch when it falls from the body. Does that make sense?
I only mention dualism to dismiss out of hand view that hold that minds are immaterial substances, and bodies are material substances, and somehow or another those two kinds of object interact with each other (or don't, on some accounts). Like Descartes believed. In the essay preceding that one I already laid the ontological groundwork that rules that out, so I'm just mentioning that at the start to say why I don't even bother considering that option.
OK. I found the distinction somewhat opaque. Nor did a google search for access consciousness offer much help. It's not a common philosophical term.
Anyway, I thought that you were saying that "experiential consciousness and material consciousness" made sense to you as the difference between first and third person (which is the same way I take them), and that you were confusing my mention of dualism in my essay with that distinction. I'm just clearing up that those are two different distinctions: ontological dualism like Descartes' is what I reject briefly at the start, and the two different (first-person and third-person) ways of looking at ontologically monist consciousness are what I spend the rest of the essay discussing.
And here it is apparently distinguished from "what it's like-ness", and hence presumably also distanced from qualia.
SO I guess a thermostat is access-conscious of the temperature, without being experience-conscious?
Yes, "what it's like-ness" and qualia are matters of phenomenal consciousness instead.
Quoting Banno
Unless you're a panpsychist, like @TheHorselessHeadman and me, in which case everything is "experience-conscious" (phenomenally conscious, in Block's terminology), and consequently that doesn't really mean anything of importance. (I explained my view on what that means and why it's trivial more succinctly in this post in another thread recently. I have a note to integrate that shorter explanation into my essay I linked earlier).
Also the thermostat may not be access conscious either, depending on exactly what kind of reflexive informational functionality you take to be necessary to constitute access consciousness. I don't think thermostats are access conscious, because their functionality doesn't fit the criteria I described in that essay I linked earlier.
Do you think that the atoms of a dead human body have these experiences? Such experiences probably exist on the level of neural structures, not atoms, and can be temporarily switched off by general anesthesia.
Quoting TheHorselessHeadman
Yes, we can act intentionally only when the intention pops up in our mind. If nothing pops up, tough luck. So much for libertarian free will. On the other hand, if we are lucky enough and the intention appears, it often seems to have causal power that drives our intentional actions. Maybe consciousness is a particular causal mechanism.
Quoting TheHorselessHeadman
Or it could be like the engine itself. Consciousness could be a particular kind of matter, or both consciousness and matter could be particular kinds of "stuff", for lack of a better word.
How do you know it is consciousness that is switched off, rather than unitary identity that is disrupted?
I am not sure what you mean by unitary identity, but I think my consciousness was switched off during general anesthesia because I don't remember any experiences from that time. I guess I can't rule out that I actually experienced the pain of a lancet cutting into my body or a fantastic orgasm or whatever and then forgot it, but that kind of begs the question.
But who then experienced the pain? Are we not talking about the same thing?
To put it another way: the anaesthetic destroys the person, not the consciousness. It doesn't destroy the person legally, of course, just metaphysically.
Quoting litewave
I'm not convinced that individual atoms can have those experiences, in a way it sounds wrong to isolate experiences to the inside of individual atoms (as we would isolate our consciousness to the inside of our heads), as it appears necessary that experiences on whatever level they exist to be able to be unified and communicated. At some point along the way at least from my conscious experience to me pressing the keys of my keyboard there must (I...think) have occurred a communication of sorts between conscious experience and matter, and if conscious experience is contained within atoms I don't know how this communication would occur, or how we would have this unification of different experiences which we appear to have in consciousness. But this is a larger issue I think, and I'm not sure how, but it makes me lean towards the idea that matter and experience is even more tightly linked and maybe even is the same thing. Then there's just the question of why we don't experience everything all at once then, why my consciousness doesn't stretch to include the rest of my brain, and out through my skull, into the air and across the globe and include yours as well ;D So it appears that there are some boundaries.
Either way it seems arbitrary to me to confine experiences to neural structures, which in the most general reductionist sense is just a certain configuration of atoms. I'm sorry I can't express myself in any better way, but it just "seems strange to me", that an entirely new phenomenon could arise in the universe, (suddenly blue exists), because atoms acquired a certain combination of molecules and ions in the brain. In a way it doesn't seem much different from panpsychism, it seems to be more a question of scale (how many atoms and how should they be organized for conscious experience to arise?).
I'm not denying the connection between our own brains and our conscious experience, I can't see how our conscious experience could be so reliably influenced through our brain if it wasn't tightly linked. I used to see the brain as generating the experiences of consciousness, that colors and experiences did not exist anywhere outside of our brains, but now I view it more as an organizing structure which uses already existing properties of matter to represent information. So in the example of general anesthesia I would probably view it in the same way as @bert1 expressed, as the anesthesia disrupting the unification of the experiences, and maybe pain as an example isn't a fundamental conscious property but an amalgam of different kinds. Buddhists at least with a lot of mindfulness training seem to be able to experience pain as something very different, perhaps separating the experience into its individual components.
Why stop at atoms? Atoms consist of electrons, protons and neutrons, and protons and neutrons consist of quarks...
Quoting TheHorselessHeadman
In my view, the new phenomenon is the combination of atoms, molecules, cells etc., and so it is necessarily there if the atoms, molecules and cells are there. It may seem strange to regard a combination of objects as an object in its own right; if somebody showed you an apple and an orange and asked you how many objects there are, you would probably say two, and not three, where the third object would be the combination (or collection) of the apple and the orange. But then again, apples and oranges are combinations too, because they consist of atoms, and atoms consist of subatomic particles, etc. It seems tempting to conclude that the only "real" objects are the smallest, indivisible objects at the bottom and everything else is "just" combinations of them without any new intrinsic or uncomputable properties. But why would it be so? There are actually also holistic views of the universe - for example a version of panpsychism called cosmopsychism - according to which the universe as a whole is the only "real" object, and everything else is "just" de-combinations from it. These two views seem to be special cases of a more general view according to which all combinations (collections) are "real" objects, not just the empty combinations or an all-encompassing combination.
Quoting TheHorselessHeadman
Yes, but if the anesthesia disrupts the unity of human consciousness, then the specific combination of neurons we experience as pain no longer exists, and so there is no consciousness of pain.
Now let me return to something you said earlier:
Quoting TheHorselessHeadman
On the basis of study of neural correlates of our consciousness it appears that the "intensity" or "level" of consciousness possessed by an object is positively correlated with organized complexity of the object. High organized complexity means that the object has many different parts which are also richly integrated/connected (as opposed to high unorganized complexity, which means that the object has many different but independent parts). General anesthesia usually seems to reduce organized complexity of brain processes by disrupting their connections, thus reducing consciousness of the brain to a negligible level. On the other hand, when a person is in a deep, dreamless, natural sleep, organized complexity of brain processes is reduced by the presence of long delta waves that homogenize the brain processes, so there is too much connection and too little differentiation in the brain. Similarly, loss of consciousness during an epileptic seizure correlates with increased synchronization of brain waves. The cerebellum has four times more neurons than the cortex, but damage to cerebellum, unlike damage to cortex, has practically no impact on consciousness; it turns out that while there is rich differentiation and interaction in the cortex, the cerebellum has many small modules that process information locally, without much interaction with other modules. Giulio Tononi has proposed a measure of organized complexity for the determination of the level of consciousness called "integrated information."
I think the IIT theory might be a very good theory of identity - every system that integrates information is a conscious individual. But as a theory of consciousness I think it fails, as it gives no reason to suppose that the integration of information couldn't happen, as it were 'in the dark'.
I don't know whether Tononi's specific approach to quantifying the intensity of consciousness is correct but the general idea of associating the intensity of consciousness with organized complexity is supported by neuroscience and also seems to make intuitive sense to me. More specifically, it is organized complexity in a dynamic form, based on processes of differentiation and integration, or repulsive and attractive forces between the parts of a whole. Intrinsic properties of parts are "subsumed" in the intrinsic property of their whole (collection). Differentiation of parts may intensify the intrinsic property of the whole by giving it different contributions but may also weaken the intrinsic property of the whole by fragmenting it. Conversely, integration of parts may intensify the intrinsic property of the whole by concentrating them but it may also weaken the intrinsic property of the whole by losing their different contributions. So there would be intrinsic properties of different intensity on different levels of composition of structure: for example, there may be weak intrinsic properties on the level of atoms, intense intrinsic properties on the level of neural networks, and weak intrinsic properties on the level of a group of people. By intrinsic properties I mean non-relational, non-structural, monadic, qualitative properties, some or all of which may be identical to qualia of consciousness.
I'm still developing my own position on the controversial concept of Consciousness. It begins by noting that Consciousness is an abstract quality, not a concrete thing. It's what you do, not what you are. Consciousness is a functional attribute of brain quality, not the substance of neurons in any quantity. In a computer metaphor, it is the property of processing Information at a high level of through-put, but in the sense of Quality, not Quantity. Faster is not necessarily better.
Consciousness seems to be a natural emergent property of integrated holistic systems, not an add-on Soul. So, the point-of-emergence (so to speak) lies on a continuum from space-time Physics to indeterminate Metaphysics. Yet, even Tononi hasn't been able to define the crossover point from non-conscious to Conscious. It defies quantification.
The ultimate answer to your question lies in the inscrutable intention of the Eternal Enformer. Sorry! :joke:
Consciousness : http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page32.html
If panpsychism was true then would not you expect that the lowest forms of animals with brains would share very similar abilities of MC/EC as do humans b/c they all have practically the same hardware (neurons, nerves, connectivity, etc.)? However, we already know that few animals are even self-aware (e.g., few are able recognize themselves and ID their own agency) let alone having EC.
panpsychism supporters should start by experimentally making the above case before going to untestable near supernatural theories of quantum/atomic sources, etc..
What constitutes an "experience?"
And do not most people consider an "experience" as something they can reconstitute in some form and reflect upon?
Absent some sort of acknowledgement of experience as constituted by some communicable post hoc assessment capable of carrying or conveying meaning, are you not risking the rendering of the idea of "experience" as something "meaningless?"
I don't want to misunderstand you. Is the argument that there are abilities that humans possess which does not appear to exist in "lower animals" such as being able to recognize themselves in a mirror, and that these abilities require a more complicated consciousness, which points towards a connection between complexity of brainprocessing and consciousness and which would place the phenomenon of conscious experience outside the realm of atoms?
I also believe there is a connection between brain-processing and the contents of consciousness. But I see it more as a matter or organising what was already there (conscious experience) into different shapes through brainprocessing rather than complicated networks of neurons producing something entirely new. For instance when we receive stimuli from the cells in our eyes about various wavelengths of photons emitted from surfaces outside of ourselves, we use the information coming from the neurons of our eyes to construct an internal representation of the world outside. We have an experience of this internal representation of the world as colors, light and shadows, but the experience of colors could have existed before there were eyes with which to receive information, and a brain with which to organize the experience of colors into the mental representation. Perhaps red and blue is a more fundamental property of matter itself and is something that the brain uses and organises to represent information rather than creating it. With that alternative of creating it presumably being also from matter but MORE matter and organised in a particular way to create some phenomenon which is also material in nature and for which we have no candidate for explanation except to simply say "information processing" which doesn't say anything about what it actually is. I'm at least unaware of any property of matter which is available at the level of neurons which could explain consciousness which does not already exist at the level of atoms or molecules. No matter which way you attempt to explain consciousness Quoting Sir Philo Sophia seems to be where we end up.
I think the idea of experience being fundamental seems more rediculous and "supernatural" partly because we as animals are used to identifying our experiences with what it is used to represent that we can't imagine the experience of colors, touch, warmth or sound as something fundamental. "What is the use of a stone experiencing warmth?" None and I wouldn't say that a stone as a unified entity would experience it. But maybe that too, I wouldn't rule out the possbility! Because I am also not aware of any particular force which could possibly explain the unification of the multitude of different conscious experiences into the consciousness I experience. But the stone, or the atoms of the stone would just be or experience the sensation of warmth, and just that, and not reflect on it in anyway because it can't process what it experiences.
I also think it's difficult to know what role consciousness plays in brain function. It seems to me at least -- from the personal experience of the consciousness which is aware of typing these words, that I am not aware of the brain-processing which is deciding what words to put here. They simply appear, as suggestions from some unknown, and then decisions are made on whether or not to put the words down or not, and the decisions themselves also appear from that same unknown. From my point of view, consciousness just seems to be aware of things appearing in it and leaving it. Like it was a screen with an unknown producing it, and an unknown watching it and deciding what to to put there next.
But at least it must have some effect on the world outside of itself because otherwise we wouldn't be able to talk about it in the way that we do I think. To discuss the possibility of your experience of red being different from mine. Which seems to rule out the possibility that consciousness is "just along for the ride" and seems to put experience itself into the "processing-machine".
I find it great that you are struggling at this hard topic with critical thinking and points. I'll address various highlights you pose.
Quoting TheHorselessHeadman
That is not realistic, b/c we know that things like multitude of tastes we have for detection of various molecules are completely made up. e.g., nothing about the hydrocarbon chain of sugar contains the already existing taste of sweetness. Moreover, the only reason we are programmed for sweetness to be a pleasure experience is b/c we need it for survival vs bitter tastes that we associate with molecules that tend to be toxins to us.
Quoting TheHorselessHeadman
I cannot imagine any evidence or plausible physical mechanism supporting such an idea. However, I wondered about a human version of that idea that I proposed (on another thread) as a way to test towards a genetic programmed 'color' mental object hypothesis:
One Possibility: the 'red' category of color that (most) humans are pre-wired to have the qualia sense of red color that mayexist in the person's cognitive world as a visual object. There are color blind people who see no red. There are also synesthesia people who experience other senses as (e.g., red) color. So, I figure if we had research evidence of color blind people who later gained color vision, saying they experience the qualia of 'red' color prior to gaining color vision, then that might evidence that the cognitive 'red' category does exist at birth. Or if a color blind synesthete 'saw' qualia colors that would also be strong evidence. I've never come across of such experiments or lines of investigations, but if anyone knows anything about that, please post it here b/c it should be quite instructive metaphysically as well.
Quoting TheHorselessHeadman
Unlikely b/c the color conversion and information signals creation all happen in the eye and the optic information (color/shape representation) signals are transmitted through the optic nerve to the back of the brain where they are spatially remapped on the surface of our brain. The optic information optic nerve has no intrinsic “fundamental property of matter itself”, it is just info processing sent to the brain in a pseudo-interpreted form.
Quoting TheHorselessHeadman
That is well modeled to be the unconscious mind, and decisions and confidence feelings are well documented (by NCC) to be made when certain neuron firing thresholds are passed triggering neural network cascades to avalanche into the action/feeling/perception.