How to measure what remains of the hard problem
Let's say that there is a theory that explains consciousness in a computational way that relies entirely on physical phenomena using the science that we have today. It explains the outward behaviour of conscious beings, the inner state of the mind and the computational processes that operate against those states. Importantly, it explains in a computational way, why the being is aware of their own thoughts, the boundaries of those thoughts (ie: what can be represented in them vs not), and the processing steps involved to conclude consciousness.
However, the theory simplifies the whole thing to just data in, data out, and processing logic. It could be emulated entirely on a computer CPU -- not "human" consciousness itself, with emotions and the human level of intelligence, per se, but the same mechanics in a scaled down way.
Yet, when we now consider that explanation, we still think there's something missing. We think that a scaled up version of that theory would merely produce a sort of 'unconscious processor' that produces all the same behaviours, both externally and internally, as a human, but does not have phenomenal experience. Basically a specific kind of p-zombie.
In summary, we (well, some) think that human experience includes an extra phenomenal experience that is beyond the computational mechanics. Even if all of the data representations of a human concluding themselves as conscious can be emulated, we still think there is some other aspect to our experience that isn't represented as a 'data state' or a 'data input'. There's a gap - something that we aren't measuring in our computational analysis.
I'm wondering what theories there are that specifically address the question of measuring this gap.
However, the theory simplifies the whole thing to just data in, data out, and processing logic. It could be emulated entirely on a computer CPU -- not "human" consciousness itself, with emotions and the human level of intelligence, per se, but the same mechanics in a scaled down way.
Yet, when we now consider that explanation, we still think there's something missing. We think that a scaled up version of that theory would merely produce a sort of 'unconscious processor' that produces all the same behaviours, both externally and internally, as a human, but does not have phenomenal experience. Basically a specific kind of p-zombie.
In summary, we (well, some) think that human experience includes an extra phenomenal experience that is beyond the computational mechanics. Even if all of the data representations of a human concluding themselves as conscious can be emulated, we still think there is some other aspect to our experience that isn't represented as a 'data state' or a 'data input'. There's a gap - something that we aren't measuring in our computational analysis.
I'm wondering what theories there are that specifically address the question of measuring this gap.
Comments (97)
(Given I’m responding to your second good post, I should say welcome to the chat. :up: )
Anyhow, you could say that computer science kind of does measure this. And what it has discovered is that all the talk about representation and data was the wrong way to go about getting anything resembling biological intelligence.
Neural network or Bayesian Brain architectures start to approach the issue in a more biologically realistic and ecologically embodied fashion. The gap then begins to measureably close.
So in a negative fashion perhaps, computer science does point towards the need to understand biology as something inherently intelligent and purposeful.
You can’t start off with what seems the “output” - a mental “representation” - and implement that in some simplistic computational fashion. You have to keep heading in the direction of biological science to have a hope of getting to the root of this question.
I suggest that this element is what is designated by the term 'being' in the compound word 'human being'.
But it's a mistake to say that it's 'phenomenal'. 'Phenomenal' means 'what appears', whereas 'being' is what appearances appear to. 'Beings' appear to us as 'other beings', however both their being and ours is not 'what appears', as such. Likewise, being is not 'an experience' but 'the capacity for experience'; 'beings' are 'subjects of experience' but they're not themselves only experience, as they also comprise the elements that order and interpret experience (per Kant).
Quoting Malcolm Lett
This is referred to as the 'explanatory gap'.
Ask yourself what 'an explanation' provided by computational analysis would comprise. With scientific hypotheses, generally, and at a high level, there is the left-hand side - which is the equation or prediction - and the right-hand side - which is the observation or result. Scientific method demands that the prediction or equation be validated against the result or observation.
However, in this case, the object of analysis is also the subject doing the examining. It's precisely because you can't stand outside or, or 'objectify', the object of analysis that is the cause of both the 'hard problem' and 'the explanatory gap'. This is why it is in principle outside the scope of empirical analysis, and why, for example, accounts such as Dennett's must insist that it be eliminated altogether.
Quoting Malcolm Lett
It's only 'a gap' by way of analogy; in actual fact, it's more an incommensurability between the methods of scientific naturalism and the subject of the analysis.
(See It is never known, but it is the knower, Michel Bitbol.)
I'm afraid no computer will ever qualify as a p-zombie. The idea of a p-zombie is that it has to be physically identical to a human and no computer is or can be such.
That said, there's no reason to believe consciousness isn't replicable on another kind of substrate, something non-biological. I say this because consciousness, to me, is simply data processing and anything capable of handling data is, in principle therefore, also capable of consciousness.
My iPad handles data. So that doesn’t feel particularly convincing.
Why not reserve your admiration for a system that shows itself capable of handling the world?
Well, what is consciousness if not data processing? Think of the times when we all agree that a person is not conscious e.g. when sleeping or when s/he has fainted or when s/he's dead. These three states of unconsciousness have one thing in common - the absence of thoughts and what are thoughts but data being processed?
If it ain’t data processing then it ain’t data processing.
The question is why you would think it was?
Quoting TheMadFool
There is thinking - of a desultory and ruminative kind - even in deep sleep as it happens. It is just unremembered and disconnected.
But the real issue here is in what sense do you think that the brain does “data processing”?
That is fine as a vague metaphor. But the brain isn’t designed to be a Universal Turing Machine - the standard formal definition of data processing.
If you have some other precise definition of data processing, now is the time to reference it.
Computers, quite literally, move these patterns from place to place in different physical storage areas etched into electronic components. Sometimes they also copy the patterns, and sometimes they transform them in various ways – say, when we are correcting errors in a manuscript or when we are touching up a photograph. The rules computers follow for moving, copying and operating on these arrays of data are also stored inside the computer. Together, a set of rules is called a ‘program’ or an ‘algorithm’. A group of algorithms that work together to help us do something (like buy stocks or find a date online) is called an ‘application’ – what most people now call an ‘app’.
....I need to be clear: computers really do operate on symbolic representations of the world. They really store and retrieve. They really process. They really have physical memories. They really are guided in everything they do, without exception, by algorithms.
Humans, on the other hand, do not – never did, never will. [/quote]
Remainder here
This is self-contradictory. How do you know you were thinking "even in deep sleep" if you don/t/can't remember it?
Quoting apokrisis
Data processing in the sense that we play with ideas - explore associations, logical connections and possibly other things I can't think of right now.
Quoting apokrisis
Well, the way I see it, all that needs to be done is, like the brain, we need to have in place hardware capable of logic and memory. After that, consciousness is simply a matter of feeding such a system with data.
You can catch it just as it fades if you are awake quickly enough and are primed to make the effort.
This was discovered in experiments where subjects were woken in slow wave sleep and asked the question. You can notice it yourself but it takes a little practice.
A memory has to be moved from working memory to get fixed as a long term memory. So that is the step that gets shut down during sleep.
Quoting TheMadFool
Well that is describing the brain in computational jargon. A neurobiologist would want to put quotemarks around all those terms for good reason. They are fundamentally misleading once you pursue the metaphors any distance at all.
Well, prima facie this means thinking equated to data processing alone is not sufficient for consciousness but take a close look at what's missing - awareness of self, of thinking - and these are, if you really give it some thought, just a different level of data processing. Meta-thinking, if you will.
Ever head the saying ‘forgetfulness of being’? It’s associated with some German philosopher. Anyway - you’re evincing it (and not often I get to use that word!)
I'm not saying brains are computers jot and tittle. I made it clear that working from the fact that consciousness seems to result from logic being applied to ideas, abilities computers possess, there doesn't seem anything undoable about consciousness.
Sorry but I didn't get the "forgetfulness of being" part. :chin:
The problem is that data processing is a completely mechanical way of looking at it. The Chinese Room argument blows that out of the water.
The best general theory of mind and life is that it is a semiotic process. A modelling relation.
So there is good news. There is a decent answer now. We don’t have to keep searching or trying to make bad metaphysics fit the known neurobiology.
Funny that you should say that. Reminds me of speciesism and racism. What should we call this brand of discrimination? Beingism?
To be frank, I'm not saying anything that isn't mainstream science. Astrobiologists are known to entertain the possibility of non carbon-based life with consciousness not being ruled out in any such imagined scenario. The opinion I express here is just a natural extension of this.
Quoting Wayfarer
:up: What exactly is this "something fundamental about the nature of being" that I don't see?
All this reminds me of Leibniz's principle of identity of indiscernibles. If we can't tell apart a person who can speak Chinese and a Chinese Room in the thought experiment then they must be identical, no?
Reporter (to Louis Armstrong): ‘What exactly is jazz?’
Armstrong: ‘Lady, if you don’t know, I can’t tell you.’
Sounds legit.
Computers: a priori
Consciousness: a posteriori and synthetic a priori
The problem:
1. X = Native Chinese Speaker
2. Y = Chinese Room with a person who doesn't understand Chinese following mechanical linguistic rules
3. Me, conversing with X and Y
I can't tell the difference between X and Y. Either X doesn't understand Chinese OR the Chinese Room understands Chinese. We're certain that X understands Chinese. It must be then that the Chinese Room understands Chinese.
:chin:
:rofl: :chin: Deepity :smile:
So this thought experiment proved to you that the room understands rather than that the person outside the room had a false understanding that the room understands.
Go for it!
This is pretty much my view too. Almost Dennet-like, I suppose. That in the long run we'll figure out the mechanisms and we'll see all of consciousness as a mechanical process. But I also see the explanatory gap as needing explanation.
I'm reading through Michel Bitbol's It is never known, but it is the knower (thanks @Wayfarer). He claims that scientists naively infer from our past scientific successes that we'll also succeed in explaining consciousness through physical mechanistic principles. I disagree. I think we will eventually explain it as a physical mechanistic process because the majority of evidence is that everything physical in the universe is a physical mechanistic process, and the majority of evidence is that we are physical.
But to my mind, current theorists who propose a mechanical process and claim that it explains everything about consciousness are indeed naive. There is definitely a something needing explaining. Like Bitbol's thesis on the importance of taking subjectivity seriously, any theory on the mechanics behind a subjective conscious experience is incomplete until it explains how the objective mechanics produces the subjective.
Ultimately, like for much of scientific discovery, we'll improve our understanding of "mechanical process" while taking the path towards the nirvana of understanding consciousness.
(BTW, I'm not quoting you because I assume you think that's all there is. It was just a convenient starting point for making my own point)
The problem is the assumption that 'understanding' is binary.
A calculator understands maths in much the same way as the room in the Chinese Room analogy understands chinese. It has some non-negligible understanding of the maths that it's programmed to work with. If it had no understanding, then it wouldn't suffice as a culculator.
We take say that humans "understand" a concept because we build detailed models around that concept. We model not just the end result of how to apply a concept, but also layered theories and explanations. We attach all sorts of context to the concept: how we "feel" about that concept, when/when not to apply it.
All of that can be explained using the same underlying computational processes that the calculator uses.
Is there something 'special' about the human understanding vs the calculator understanding that isn't just a matter of degree? Well, I personally think not, but I'll leave that as an open question for now.
What I will suggest though, is that the word "understand" is socially understood to mean a certain thing only because that's our human-centro definition of it.
The explanatory gap is what a mechanical conception of nature creates. So “more mechanism” is never going to bridge that gap.
Hence why biologists and neuroscientists are arriving at semiotics as an alternative conception of nature.
I don't think there can be evidence for that. It's a metaphysical attitude, or rather, a methodological postulate that is then interpreted as a metaphysical principle. Modern science has tended to want to see 'everything in the universe' as physical, because physical objects are amenable to the precise objectification and quantification that is central to its method. That was part of the conceptual revolution introduced by Galileo, Newton, and Descartes, among others, at the advent of modern science.
Quoting Malcolm Lett
Well, an obvious philosophical criticism of that endeavour, is to point out the sense in which subject and object are mutually dependent. It is grounded in what Kant termed his 'Copernican revolution in philosophy', that 'things conform to thoughts rather than thoughts to things' It is often waved away as 'idealism', except for the inconvenient fact that physics, again, has had to included a reckoning of 'the role of the observer' in its calculations. We've had several discussions on this forum about Wheeler's idea of the participatory universe. Likewise Arthur Eddington's popular science book from between the wars, The Nature of the Physical World, was generally idealist in its orientation. There's an identifiable strain of idealism running through a lot of 20th century physics - Heisenberg, Bohr, Wigner and Schrodinger all wrote about it at some stage in their career. (Bitbol's exposition of Schrodinger's philosophical texts is also good.)
???
Quoting Wayfarer
What on earth? Matter is what we find existing, this is not an "attitude," or "postulate."
Quoting Wayfarer
Did you happen to have an alternative?
I wasn’t talking about ‘matter’ but about the postulate that ‘everything is physical’ which is physicalism or scientific materialism, depending on who you talk to. I mean, saying ‘everything in the universe is a physical mechanistic process’ is problematical in light of the hypothesis that what is understood by physics only comprises 4% of the totality of the cosmos, the balance existing in the form of dark matter and energy, about which nothing is known (see Hempel's Dilemma). I simply think science itself has shown materialism to be untenable, but the wider culture hasn’t caught up with that yet.
Quoting Wayfarer
I am aware, you are talking about a postulate not reality. This is a sophistical game. It's leveraged on the idea that one is making a formal claim about the nature of reality, you then seek to rightly point out the unsustainable absolutism of the claim. All good and well. When I make this argument you are free to counter it as you see fit, but you will not be assigning it to me. What you are here using as a your leverage is the refutation of an abstraction, not reality.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, you seem to know a lot about it. Never mind your Fairy-Dust-of-the-Gaps argument here, what specially was your alternative to matter?
Yes. That looks promising. I think it offers some useful tools for "measuring" more of the explanatory gap.
Biosemiotics basically says three things:
1) it is not sufficient to define the living world via its physical mechanisms,
2) you also need to consider the 'data' that the mechanisms produce - aka symbols,
3) and the two are intrinsically linked because, as it happens in all dynamic living systems that we are aware of, you cannot have one without the other and still produce the kinds of behaviours that we expect of a dynamic living system.
But what's most useful from that is that it provides a framework for measuring the effectiveness of a system to produce self-referential conscious-like processing capabilities, and its efficiency.
It occurs to me that one way of using semiotics is kind of similar to Tononi's Phi theory, in that it provides a way of characterising different systems - how well does the system follow the circular process of physical mechanics interpreting symbols and creating more physical mechanics from those systems.
In another view, it's a kind of (slightly open ended) anthropic principle applied to the underlying mechanisms of living organisms. In The Necessity Of Biosemiotics Matter-Symbol Complementarity, Pattee explains that living organisms on earth use the particular DNA/RNA processes that they do, because that's what works.
That's a nonsense question, although 'alternatives to materialism', is not - but I don't want to derail the very interesting conversation that is developing here about biosemiotics, about which I am keen to learn more.
It is indeed a strange event when the agent's imagination tries to negate its being.
I see only two rational possibilities:
1. everything is physical
2. everything is metaphysical
Modern science takes #1 as assumed and tries to slowly eat away at the unknown, finding physical explanations, under the assumption that eventually (at the point of infinity) all previously unknown will be explained through the physical.
Alternatively, given the inherent difficulty with the unknown, many assume that there must be some additional non-physical aspect that is necessary to explain everything. But I find this dualistic (or is it trialistic?) theory irrational -- though I'll find it hard to verbalise why.
Rather, I think the more rational alternative is that everything is metaphysical, and that the physical world is just 'imagined'. For example, as one interpretation of Descartes ideas: the only thing that exists is the subjective "I", and I'm merely imagining the rest of you. Though I'm not presupposing a particular outcome of whether we all exist as our own subjective meta-physical beings vs. there's only just me.
But I tend to fall back into a position of preferring #1 because the physical world is just better defined than the metaphysical one - at least according to society's current understanding.
The way I see it, this all speaks to the same finality: the environments through which human systems pass are essential to the realization of their quality. What is missing from this awareness is that all of the qualities contained in the premises are actually references to social products.
Superb job on expressing your ideas friend.
Cheers. Appreciated.
Summary of the book
'The Feeling of Life Itself'
Physics describes but extrinsic causes,
While consciousness exists just for itself,
As intrinsic, compositional,
Informational, whole, and exclusive,
Providing distinctions toward survival,
But causing nothing except in itself,
As in ne’er doing but only as being,
Leaving intelligence for the doing.
The posterior cortex holds the correlates,
For this is the only brain region that
Can’t be removed for one to still retain
Consciousness, it having feedback in it;
Thus, it forms an irreducible Whole,
And this Whole forms consciousness directly,
Which process is fundamental in nature,
(Or the brain’s private symbolic language).
I understand what you're saying. But allow me to suggest this is a 'post-cartesian' analysis. When you divide things up that way, I think it's because you're basically echoing the Cartesian division of the world into res cogitans and res extensia. The material, the physical, that which can be made an object of scientific analysis, seems tangible, real, undeniable, whereas res cogitans seems to us now like 'the ghost in the machine' which was Gilbert Ryle's famous dismissal of Cartesian dualism.
Quoting Malcolm Lett
As I suggested, there is an intrinsic difficulty with attempting to treat the subject - the thinker, the agent who is writing and speaking - as an object of scientific analysis. This is why 'eliminative materialism' - Dennett, Churchlands, Rosenberg, et al - insist that the mind cannot be regarded as real at all, and must be eliminated from the reckoning as a matter of principle. Everything that exists, they say, must be ultimately intelligible in terms of the objective sciences.
This is what Michel Bitbol is saying is 'the blind spot' of science. It's inherent within scientific method. But notice the subtle sleight of hand here. The very kinds of criticism that are suggested by Michel Bitbol or David Chalmers are dismissed by eliminativism as not being scientific! As indeed they're not. But then, neither is eliminative materialism itself, as it is the attempted application of scientific method to a subject matter outside its jurisdiction. Whereas you're suggesting that nothing is outside its jurisdiction.
We simply must know, how then should the subject be "treated?" I think the problem may be the use of the term, "scientific analysis." It's possible to use this concept in such a rigid way that one essentially creates a kind of straw-man, which is to say, one refutes a kind of fundamentalism in science, fallaciously believing it to cover thought in general. All of this seems to me as so much sophistry, it is clear that you are trying to leverage the conversation in the direction of some kind of mysticism, and you are trying very hard indeed.
How to measure what remains of the hard problem. Maybe by using the upper left side of a measuring stick that is fit for the task but has yet to be discovered?
The framing, after all, presupposes that consciousness is something measurable and therefore quantifiable. For if it isn’t quantifiable than it can’t be measured. And if it can’t be measured than it can’t be properly termed scientific – most vexing for those who equate that which is real strictly to that which is physical and thereby amiable to quantification by the sciences.
As to the magnitude (as in lesser or greater) of, for example, a particular conscious desire - wherein the difference between slightly wanting and desperately wanting some given X ought to be measurable to the minds of many - there of course is the option of decrying “desire” to be a false concept upheld by the stupidity of folk-psychology (often interpreted by the masses as plain commonsense) that must thereby be fully eliminated from the equation of what is real (equations being quantitatively computable, as is any materialist reality) or, alternatively, there’s always the search for that elusive, magical measuring device, previously alluded to, by whose use all aspects of consciousness can at last be scientifically quantified through and through.
Intensities of happiness and suffering, of beauty and the grotesque, of our sense of justice or injustice, even of our awareness of good and bad, these are all mathematically computable states of conscious being after all, right? No more and no less. We just need to find the correct means of measuring their quantitative, and therefore computational, nature, that’s all. But when we do, the gap will at long last be resolved.
And all this would be upheld by principles other than that of a blind metaphysical faith in what is – one that is on par to that maintained by any opposing party, even that of (heavens forbid) anything one can deride as mysticism.
For one can in practice prove that everything, including consciousness, is quantitative.
----
If anyone’s reading, don’t mind me too much in all this. Tis a post intended for no one in particular. And if I’ve unintentionally made a strawman of anyone’s position, please feel free to elaborate on how. Was just passing through as someone who’s a stickler for the notion that not all aspects of what is real are measurable in principle, much less in practice. And yes, to me consciousness, as in "that which is conscious of", serves as one example of something immeasurable - despite admitting to different magnitudes.
Precisely.
If science was truly restricted to what we understand then we never would have got to where we are today. The reality is that people aren't restricted to the particular definition of a word on the day. All words are a post-hoc approximation of the reality or concept that we intuitively perceive. It helps to agree on meanings so why have a common language, but it's a problem when those agreements of definition hamper the ability to think further.
Sorry. I feel that's a rant off topic.
Quoting Wayfarer
There is indeed some difficulty associated with the subject trying to objectively analyse themselves, or a researcher attempting to analyse the subjective experience of another. There are definitely sizable barriers there - otherwise we would have known a long time ago what kind of conscious experience animals have.
But it isn't insurmountable, and it can be done, so long as one is aware of the limitations. This is obvious due to the amount we have learned about the brain and our subjective from fRMI and the like.
There's an important but not so obvious other path of investigation. I'm quite sure that the content of our conscious experience is a representational model. A 'summary', if you like, of a certain subset of data flowing through the brain. One can argue that this means we cannot introspect anything about the mechanisms behind our subjective experience, because we are confined to this representational model, and we must inherently distrust the accuracy of this model.
But software development uses models too, usually referred to as an abstraction. And every software engineer knows that abstractions leak details of the underlying implementation.
The representational model leaks too. For example, what we are /are not conscious of is very informative. The fact that, on close inspection, we don't actually experience our senses directly, but that they are always preprocessed with meaning attached. Eg: the parsing of words heard in audible speech.
There's a lot more to that than fits in a comment, but my point is that the subject can learn a lot about their internal workings from their own subjective experience.
So, you're running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Acceptable, given that the jury is still out on the issue.
What I'd like to know is what you mean by: the problem is the assumption that 'understanding' is binary?
To be honest, I've heard people say "I half-understand what you mean" but to the extent that I'm aware, in such incidents, the person means s/he understands only parts of what is being said and not the whole. As an example, take Theism. Someone can understand why god is so important but not understand the proofs that are supposed to demonstrate god's existence. This someone has warrant to say "I half-understand Theism" because s/he understood only parts of it. However, notice that this someone actually understands or doesn't understand - in binary fashion - the component ideas of Theism. It appears then that the notion of degrees of understanding is flawed or completely erroneous.
Something must give. Would you rather believe that X, the native Chinese speark, doesn't understand Chinese? Where does that lead to?
The way I understand subjectivity as it relates to consciousness is that it's a private i.e. inaccessible by anyone else. In my humble opinion, those who maintain there's a subjective component to consciousness are guilty of trying to have it both ways. First, they hold the view that consciousness is objective and then they claim that there's something subjective about it.
Perhaps you can expand on it a bit for my benefit. Thanks
This is precisely the vocation of thought.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is exceedingly suspect, further, you did not answer my last valid question for which you bear the burden of proof. What I mean about this being suspect is that it's exceedingly clear to me that you are trying to create a gap that you can fill with mysticism. The statement "not all-knowing," reminds me of God-of-the-Gaps reasoning. You are searching for a hole, why? Be transparent. It's hard to see that you are simply trying to follow noble thought where it leads in this sense. For my part, I would never argue that science is all-knowing, is this really a valid premise of science or a straw-man?
You haven't proved that consciousness isn't just data processing. Of course I haven't proved that it is but that's the point isn't it? We don't know what consciousness is.
As I understand it, action comes before perception. If this is the case consciousness is not merely an image but an inter-working and synthesis of environment... it also means more than this, I cannot draw it all out. But think of this for a moment, there is no such thing as a computer without a long historical material process, the fact that one wants to separate the quality of the computer from this process, gathering of raw materials, creation, assembly, etc., only serves to manifest the limitations and distortions (obliviousness) of the one who artificiates the divisions. We are not talking about the fully developed being of a thing that miraculously popped into existence, we are, whether one likes it or not, talking about a historical process, social activity. Therefore, the mechanisms that account for this process are both historical and material. To say we are confined to representations seems to overlook the very real material process. I am not dogmatic here, but this seems like a gigantic, ignorant gap in the thinking.
That’s easy for you to say. :wink:
I'm thinking of the sort of low-level detail that Pattee goes into with his analysis of the DNA/RNA mechanisms behind cell replication, but applied to a neural network (of undefined physical nature) that computes. I'm also thinking that the idea of a semiotic closure could apply to a system that is aware of itself.
I'm not ignoring all the history of how humans came to be. I was focusing on a particular behaviour to highlight that we can introspect ourselves - ie: the subject making objective measures about itself.
I was responding to comments by @Wayfarer, which I took to be a reference to the suggestion that we cannot learn anything about the mechanisms behind our own consciousness because we can't use that consciousness to examine itself (like how an eye cannot see itself). I'm aware of that viewpoint but I want to free any beholders of that view from their shackles, because we can achieve so much more than that.
(Edited, because I originally mistakenly attributed some comments to MadFool instead of Wayfarer)
You have my full attention. I have truly enjoyed reading your posts, and I don't think I'm the only one.
:vomit:
Quoting Malcolm Lett
I'm sorry, but I see this as inhumane. Scientific methodology deliberately brackets out or relegates the qualitative aspects of being (hence the jargon about 'qualia' in journals about this issue.)
But what David Chalmers somewhat awkwardly refers to as 'what-it-is-like-ness' is nevertheless fundamental to identity, to one's sense of being. And that is exactly what is left out of the picture by quantitative methodology. So, how could the meaning of a state of being be something that is ever going to be revealed in an fMRI scan? It’s not objective, by definition. ‘Oh, never mind, the Doctor knows.’
I do realise this might strike you as annoying, obscurantist, and even 'mystical' as has already been suggested. But I feel strongly that what is at stake here is of fundamental philosophical importance. fMRI scanners are perfectly sound as therapeutic and medical devices, which is there intended use, but this is issue of a different kind. ( See Do you believe in God, or is that a software glitch? )
Quoting Malcolm Lett
Of course. But that is not the point at issue.
I'm simply referring to the fact that different systems/individuals can have differing degrees of understanding. eg: my calculator has zero of understanding of chinese; I understand about enough to sometimes recognise chinese characters vs not chinese characters; which is significantly less understanding than someone who can read chinese characters.
It is indeed becoming more clear, this is not simply your attempt at noble thought. You really should be transparent, do tell us what is at stake and is of fundamental importance? If your answer is God then we have a problem, but if it's something about human rights or human dignity, this is a different matter. I am curious, but I suspect you're probably a Christian steeped in Norte Dame idealism. They have been pumping out tons of analytical mystics into society through their abstract propaganda. I honestly hope your answer is something better than monotheism.
Likewise. I'm equally annoyed by those who claim conscious experience isn't something of importance, just because they can't measure it or account for it in their theories. Hell, I can't account for it in my own theory, but I still think it's important - if for nothing else than the fact that it's the single biggest reason why my theory may be completely bonkers.
But regardless, I suspect we may fall on different sides of a proverbial line.
Quoting Wayfarer
Hmm. Yes, I was being a little vague. There's just too much to try to put into text. But let me circle round this topic for a minute.
Could fRMI reveal the meaning of a state? Maybe. Quite probably, after sufficient technological advances. If it is correct that all conscious state is a result of neuronal firings.
Is that inhumane? Forgive me if I'm reading too much into your statement, but I felt like you were coming from a perspective of hoping/assuming that there is something more to our existence than just the physical/material structures of brain/bones/blood/neurons/etc. As inhumane as it feels to many, and to myself, I've slowly come to think that there isn't any inherent meaning to life beyond the physical. So, yes, I suppose it is inhumane. But no more so than anything else.
At this stage, fRMI doesn't reveal much about the inner workings of the mind. But I do think that all of our conscious experience will ultimately be explained through the processes of electrical firings of neurons.
Because, after all, how we measure what we know / don't know, about anything, is explanatory power.
If we have a model of consciousness, what questions can be unambiguously answered by reference only to the model?
There are hundreds of questions we can ask about consciousness. To give a simple example, let's talk about physical pain.
Doctors would like to know exactly what pain is, and how to quantify it. Quantifying pain numerically may never be possible, but we can at least agree some pains are worse than others...what determines this? And do we experience pain as soon as we have a nervous system, or is it something that requires development in the brain? Can you be a pain p-zombie?
Less usefully, but still interesting: what's the worst pain a human brain could experience? Note: this does not mean what pain the human nervous system can relay, or the most pain a human has experienced; it means what is the limitation of the brain itself?
Right now it's pretty clear the explanatory gap is still big.
Yep.
Quoting Malcolm Lett
Surely not.
Quoting Malcolm Lett
Why ever not?
Quoting apokrisis
Couldn't it just be what a wrong conception of consciousness creates?
Quoting apokrisis
Great, but have they seen the difference between syntax (automatable) and what Searle (somewhere) calls a "proper" semantics: the ability to follow and predict the entirely pretended and conventional connections between words and actual things?
Or are they (or you) mistaking an efficient, automatic, syntactic correspondence (e.g. of proteins with DNA sequences) for the other, far more sophisticated social game?
A way to think about is is that semiosis is a series of levels based on coding mechanisms. So life is semiosis based on DNA. Then neurosemiosis would be based on neural encoding. And humans then of course add linguistic encoding on top of that. We have a socially constructed level of “mindfulness” because of language and cultural semiosis.
The key thing to understand here is that semiosis - as I am using the term - is all about information regulating physics. So that is why it is not something you would implement on a computer. A computer, by design, has no clue about its hardware. Life and mind are all about managing the world in a way so as to sustain the physical flows that create their hardware.
Chalk and cheese. But neural network inspired computer architectures are at least trying to create machines that can learn about their worlds to the degree they can predict their “sensory” inputs and so simulate the behavioural habits of organisms with nervous systems. And the Friston article gives a good summary of that (although he skips Stephen Grossberg’s adaptive resonance approach).
Another thing to watch out for is that in linguistics and continental philosophy, semiotics is usually understood to mean Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiotics - a dyadic model. I am talking of the triadic semiotics of CS Peirce. That is the cognitively relevant one as a “science of meaning”.
Interesting. You don't think that term is suitable for generalising into the virtual? ie: simulated physicality?
Could fMRI reveal the meaning of a sentence? I suggest not. One of the dogmas of materialism is that 'brain states' purportedly 'correspond' or 'correlate' with 'states of being'. But this can be shot down in terms of semiosis. All kinds of strings of characters, represented in different types of media, can represent the same things. So there is no 1:1 correspondence between 'states' and 'meaning'. Materialism doesn’t see this.
I think it's the physicalist that is 'hoping and assuming' - hoping and assuming that science can solve the unbearably pressing mystery of being. We would love to outsource that to some expert, then we wouldn't have to bother with the underlying ambiguity and dread.
Quoting Malcolm Lett
In that case, what does it matter what you write? If nothing has meaning beyond the physical, what does your writing mean? Might as well bark or shout.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Do you know Thomas Nagel?
I have transcribed what I consider to be an important essay of his, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. Have a read of that, it's only about 5,00 words. The passage on the fear of religion is particularly relevant to you, I feel.
Yes, I know who Nagel is. I cannot look at this until tomorrow, but am honestly looking forward to it. Credentials do not make the man, thought makes the man.
I gave this detailed account of how life closes its own “explanatory gap” - https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/105999
The mystery for biosemiosis is how the information - stuck in its virtual world - could in fact control physical processes. The mind-body problem in a nutshell. It is only in the past decade or so that biophysics and the science of molecular machinery has been able to deliver the surprising answer.
The key is making the physics so finely balanced that “immaterial” information can muster just enough of a nudge to switch it one way or the other.
Grasp this as also the fundamental principle of cognition and how “minds” can causally connect to the world is easy to see.
Don't be too sure... :smile:
In what sense are you using "degrees" here? In a fuzzy logic sense where a continuum of values exists OR in a discrete sense in which case the notion of "degrees" is a category mistake?
I assumed this was in HTML. I was not able to read it. Nevertheless, I don't think it will lessen the weight of what is happening here. Your position is becoming quite clear. You are not simply on a quest for truth, you are on a quest for God. You can deny it all you like, but this is the conclusion of your position. This would be fine and well if you had a valid approach, but your approach is the same moth-eaten attempt, "science cannot explain everything, therefore God must stand in the gap." I have no doubt you resent a thinker like myself putting it in such clear terms. You are very good at framing your theism, but it doesn't matter, at the end of the day the result is the same impossible leap: use a standard of radical skepticism to attack positive knowledge, and then assert your God into the gap created by the skepticism. The problem with this, as is always the problem, is that you try to exempt your own positive knowledge from the standard. This is why you did not answer my questions, even calling them "nonsense," namely because you cannot pass the test of your own standard. This is dishonest and hypocritical.
The document I linked to is a PDF but the passage it contains which I feel is relevant to you is an often-quoted passage where Nagel, who is a professed atheist himself, describes 'the fear of religion':
[quote=Thomas Nagel]In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper - namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself. I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that!
My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the nonteleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed. [/quote]
This is writ large in virtually everything you have said since you joined up with this forum. It would be worth your while to read the rest of that essay.
Thank you for extracting the citation. I am not interesting in derailing this thread, but I cannot stand idly by while you try to sneak in some kind of theism, so I will call it out.
I agree that I don't want the abominable Gods of Christianity or Islam to be true, this would be quite horrific, nevertheless, if either of these deities really do exist then I will swallow the bitter reality whole. As a serious thinker I am not concerned with comfort, I am concerned with comprehending reality, and if that means comprehending the existence of a real God, so be it!
I don't have a problem with deism, pantheism or other kinds of vague theism, just so long as they are not false postures for monotheism or organized religion. If one is a consistent deist or pantheist they are not and cannot be a Christian or Muslim. Deists, Pantheists and Atheists all live in the same world.
I think I agree with this, but that also depends on what one tries to do with the premise.
This is exceedingly poor reasoning. Nagel is defending delusion in place of reality. This merely shows that he's the kind of thinker who is seeking comfort as opposed to truth. The so-called, "elimination of purpose, meaning and design," of which he here speaks "as fundamental features of the world," are in fact delusions that man projects onto the world. These metaphysical constructs are just that, man's constructs, the real error arises when people like yourself then jump to the conclusion of Nihilism. The absence of these constructs doesn't eliminate value! This Nihilism is itself generated by the false premise that claims these constructs are necessary for the cultivation of quality. This is a lie of idealism!
I think your atheist convictions are so overpowering as to make discussion with you pointless. Life is to short.
Which, of course, presents a problem for materialism. Eventually, this lack of progress will doom materialism/physicalism. The problem is immediately solved if one ditches the supposition that physical matter exists and sticks strictly with reality "building blocks" that are known to exist for certain: mind and thought.
There's already a giant hole: how does consciousness arise from matter? If materialism/physicalism can't answer such a fundamental question, people will eventually turn to other "isms". That's not mystical, it's logical. If one has adopted a certain foundational viewpoint/axiom (e.g., physical matter exists and consciousness comes from it. Somehow), and one keeps running into a brick wall trying to explain something, then the foundational viewpoint/axiom will eventually be questioned.
I'm pointing this out to you not because you don't know it (you obviously do), but because you have interesting ideas, however your tangents into other posters' belief systems (or, more accurately, what you assume their belief systems are) is very oft-putting.
Perhaps you are not stopping long enough to understand what is being said here.
@Wayfarer is correct to point out that "the physical" is itself a socially constructed term. It posits certain metaphysical commitments. We never get to see the world "as it is". We only construct an understanding based on the models that seem to work.
So science took a big turn towards a certain notion of the physical when it moved from an Aristotelean doctrine of substantial being and adopted a view based purely on material and efficient cause. The new idea of brute matter in an a-causal void was formed. And to go with that re-purposing of ancient atomism, there had to be a rather religious take on the accompanying "mathematical laws of nature" that now animated this "base matter".
Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, etc, could only posit immutable and universal laws as the complement to brute material being because that made sense in the context of a creating God. Everything could only be controlled and regulated if there was a divine mind acting behind the scenes to give physical reality its mechanical form.
It is the big irony of the Scientific Revolution. Organised religion made uber-materialism thinkable because the whole question of what moves dumb matter could be shoved into the cupboard marked "mathematical necessity".
It was only with time that the divine mind underpinning this new metaphysics got side-lined. Scientific materialism then became the sound of one hand clapping so far as metaphysics went.
But of course, scroll forward to the various shocks and revisions of 20th C physics, and even materialists have stopped thinking of matter being so material. Matter is energy. Energy is spacetime curvature, quantum temporal uncertainty, information entropy, or some other "shit" now.
Aristotelean form and finality are causes having to be smuggled back into the scientific discourse.
However anyway, you went off at the deep end without seeming to think that @Wayfarer might be doing his usual thing of criticising Scientism - a particular brand of scientific metaphysics which wants to reduce reality to just material/efficient cause.
Quoting JerseyFlight
This seems like a vote for the more Aristotelean brand of physicalism then. Immanence rather than transcendence.
@Wayfarer likewise is always citing Buddhism, never Christianity, as far as I remember. So I think you have read his own metaphysical commitments quite wrong - even if I would place him on the idealist side of the immanence camp.
I would say that you also immediately tried to pigeon hole me the first (and only) time I replied to a post of yours. I don't mind that. It was funny. But it might be worth knowing just how far off the mark you seem to be in guessing people's backgrounds and hobby horses.
It's no coincidence, for instance, that the main public face for materialist theory of mind, Daniel Dennett, is also an evangelical atheist. (And that's no straw-man accusation.)
Ultimately, I fault ecclesiastical religion for this - the emphasis on orthodoxy, on 'right belief', and the way heretics were treated, is what drove the dichotomy between faith and science in the first place. In other words, religious dogmatism drove the secular backlash that is one of the major strands of Enlightenment thought.
But it's a very deep and many-sided story, and from a philosophical perspective you have to consider the whole issue in the light of hermneutics and history of ideas - the symbolic meanings encoded in religion, for instance - which is not at all the same as simply swallowing religious dogma.
That is the perspective I try and bring to it.
Quoting apokrisis
Great point. This is all grounded in the history of philosophy in the West. Early modern science, as a commitment to the discovery of universal truths, was very much a product of the monotheist tradition, which, in some ways, it wants to replace - hence the 'religion of science'. It still has some proponents, particularly in popular culture, but as you point out, there are alternative models, and besides many actual scientists never really bought into it - they're a diverse group with a huge range of ideas and perspectives.
On the contrary, I will not assume your metaphysical categories as default reality, if you want them you will have to defend them.
Look at what Nagel is saying, think about it.
Here Nagel is assuming too much. To begin with, he is referring to idealist categories, this is why they are mentioned in contrast to physics. I do not believe Nagel can sustain the ideas he here puts forth. It matters not, the point is that we don't get to pick and choose the nature of reality (the same point I was making above about God). If observation leads to the conclusion that there are no grand metaphysics, this does not make our observation false, but it does tell us a great deal about thinkers like Nagel. I don't see how he can escape the charge of Nihilism, precisely because he seems to be demanding an absolute negativity in the absence of his positive categories. This is simply an admission that one cannot handle reality without delusion.
Peter Harrison wrote this great summary...
https://www.academia.edu/16420900/The_development_of_the_concept_of_laws_of_nature
His account shows just how socially constructed our notions of reality are - even as "objective science". And exactly where immanence got replaced with transcendence.
If there is an admission of construction, then how do you get from this to transcendence? If you are arriving at it through construction then please demonstrate the process. Seems to me you begin with it as an emotive premise.
apokrisis is desperately trying to save you from your own dogmatism, he thinks you might be a Buddhist. My hunch is that you are an undercover Christian. What's clear is that you have tried to pretend to be concerned with truth since the beginning of this thread, as time went on it became clear that you are an undercover metaphysician. Are you a Christian?
"...whoever shall deny Me before men, I also will deny him before My Father in the heavens." Matt 10:33
I've noticed Peter Harrison's books, he seems a good scholar, and that is a very interesting passage. I've got a book from Amazon on Kepler that I've never got around to, might find time for that.
Your ad hominem is but another desperate attempt at evasion.
Strange you will not tell the truth here. I am indeed an atheist. But you know the moment you confess to your Christianity you are in a bit of a dilemma. Your dishonestly and secretiveness is disappointing, it is not conducive of intellectual integrity.
There is something else that must be said here to clarify the context of what's going on. Where you have the upper intellectual hand against your opponent, you would no doubt pounce on his ignorance. This is not deserving of respect, it is the technique of all Christian apologetics. However, you no doubt find it very hard to pass off your idealism on a thinker like myself, and this is because I can discern that the polemic you leverage is itself constructed of sophistical, abstract precepts that merely give the appearance of progress in the direction of mysticism, but in reality, it is just a special pleading exercise in the absolute negative. Your own fantastical precepts, as an anti-philosophical tactic, are not even disclosed, and even if they were you would fallaciously exempt them from your negative criteria. This is not philosophy, this is modern sophistry.
What kind of a question is that? Immanence and transcendence are logically derived as the dichotomous alternatives. Either the causes of being are internal to that being, or they are external.
A choice of views that are arrived at by reasoning and not due to some emotional attachment.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Someone's not taking their meds again. :razz:
This is very close to an argument from ignorance. Further, it is a mere assertion, you are simply demanding that you have the right to invent transcendence and assign being to it from the premise of matter. Where then does such a logic end, how does one deny the existence of the most fantastic antithesis? The dichotomy here is false, a mere abstract derivation, it is not found in nature.
The point I made was based on your own premises. If you accept the premise that reality is constructed, then you must submit to the conclusion that your idea of transcendence is a construction, which negates its being. To avoid this conclusion I offered you the chance to connect the dots and show how you escape the dilemma of your own logic. Your reply was merely to appeal to idealism, this is not a solution.
It is nothing like that.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Nothing like what I said.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Right. That is why I say it is a way to sharpen our models of nature in a rational fashion. If we don't set up our arguments counterfactually, they can only ever produce vague conclusions - no matter how decisively we may reject or accept either alternative.
You seem to have an awful lot to learn about epistemology.
Quoting JerseyFlight
You seem to have an awful lot to learn about reading comprehension. I never said reality is constructed. I said our models of reality are socially constructed.
Are you that unfamiliar with epistemology?
Quoting JerseyFlight
Again, I never said anything remotely like that.
You are dealing with the figments of your own imagination as seems to be the usual case.
What makes the supernatural, religious dichotomy, which you have admitted is just a technique, an actual alternative?
Quoting apokrisis
One can produce all the models they want, but models, abstractions, only matter insofar as they can be tested or verified, otherwise they never make it past the level of speculation. So how do you go about verifying or testing your so-called, transcendent models?
It will be one of the most bizarre things I will have ever heard if you try to tell me that precision is the result of the projection of spiritual being, which it sounds very much like you are saying? My understanding is that it's the result of empirical observation coupled with dialectical comprehension. The interjection of supernaturalism into the process is unnecessary.
You're speaking gobbledygook.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Try focusing on the fact that my commitment is to an ontology of immanent causality, not a transcendent one. I'm not another of your closet god-botherers that you seem so curiously desperate to confront.
I believe transcendence fails, for a wide variety of reasons. And I am impressed by how well immanent approaches are doing.
And the fact that we can say anything meaningful at all about Being is the surprise here.
But just because one can promote the success of one's ontology, doesn't mean one fails to recognise the epistemic fact that one is always "just modelling".
Is this all too complicated for you?
Quoting JerseyFlight
Nothing like what I was saying.
Quoting JerseyFlight
So why do you keep interjecting that hopefully into every discussion?
There is no disagreement between us here.
Quoting apokrisis
Well, one is, as a matter of fact, not "just modeling," correct? There are empirical considerations. The problem I have with this way of speaking is that you make it sound like all approaches are equal, they are not. Some do their best to draw from reality others do their best to impose on reality. One cannot say that all models are equal, I understand that you did not specifically say this, but this would seem to be a possible implication of your statement. "Success" is not the same as failure. Success in this context implies an advantage in accuracy... I just want to be clear, you are not saying we should "recognize" the validity of all models? You agree that some models are so divorced from the premises of reality that they offer no value to reality? In fact, some models are so abstract that they actually serve the purpose of negating reality.
Maybe it would have been better to draw your implications from what l did say rather than what I didn’t?
Even if I had been favouring transcendence over immanence, the implication would have to be that I had reason to find one model better than another.
Quoting JerseyFlight
I’m a pragmatist. So theories are free constructions. What matters is they are definite enough to be tested.
That is an obvious problem with a theistic theory that says whatever happens, it was god’s will. The worst kind of theory is one that isn’t even wrong.
But any theory that is posed with counterfactual force is then fine as it can be found wrong. It can fail.
So it is not that the premises have to be “real”. That smacks of naive realism. And all models rely on abstraction - some kind of construct that allows acts of measurement.
Thus my initial comment. A materialist conception of reality is a social construct. Harrison’s account of the history of science clearly illustrates that.
Could it be that you claim to be a supporter of immanent metaphysics, but are using as your prime bit of evidence a physicalism that is in fact based on a transcendent notion of mathematical law? That would be ironic, wouldn’t. So how do you answer?
If by this you mean for theoretical purposes then I can understand it. I do not believe I am equivocating here but it seems you are going back and forth between concretion and abstraction. Of course a model would rely on abstraction, I am not attacking this claim, I was distinctly addressing your use of the term, "just modeling." My point, which it is clear we agree on, is that theistic models are not definite enough to be tested.
Quoting apokrisis
I have no problem with this, it's hard to see how it could be anything else. However, as long as one does not conclude from this that reality is a construct, mere abstraction, there is no tension between us. We do in fact shape our view of reality through reality, but I think you will agree, this is very different from equating a materialist conception with a theistic conception. While both are social constructs this does not make them equal. Why do I bring this up, simply to clarify that you are not making false room here?
Quoting apokrisis
I assuredly agree.
Quoting apokrisis
I am neither a pragmatist nor an idealist. I am a supporter of thought making comprehension gains by observing reality through the medium of a dialectical awareness (and here dialectic is not a reference to the error of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis).
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
I’m always arguing that metaphysics relies on dialectics. So we could be on a similar tack here. Especially if it is not the standard misrepresentation of Hegelianism you mention.
What about general anesthetic? I admit I haven't researched it but it appears to be a complete utter blank in that case.
I recall Hameroff was particularly interested in it the other year because he believed it worked at the microtubule level or there had been some evidence of this. That was just a youtube recommended video though :D
And awareness with paralysis can happen. Awareness with just forgetting is what light anaesthesia is about by design.
Interesting, makes me wonder what the usual number is for deep sleep.