Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
I'm feeling slightly sorry for @Nickolasgaspar (sort of) as he's had a bit of a bashing for evangelising about methodological naturalism and neuroscience and being off topic.
So here's something for him, and anyone else who's interested.
Neuroscience has nothing to say about phenomenal consciousness. It is important to distinguish a few definitions I suppose. Neuroscience has plenty to say about other concepts of consciousness, the difference between being awake and asleep, various arousal levels, identifying neural correlates of particular experiences (although still nothing to explain how a particular function correlates with the smell of a rose instead of the smell of shit), how the brain makes models of the world which we use to make predictions, the difference between being alive and dead, the integration of information (IIT theory), how it generates a global workspace, what behaviour we are going to take as defining a conscious state in medical contexts, and so on.
Not that I'm remotely well educated on this stuff, I've watched a few vids and read a few things, but nowhere do I see any answer to the question "That's all fab, but why can't that happen in the dark? Why does any of this constitute or necessitate subjective awareness. or consciousness, or the capacity to experience?"
The scientific theories of consciousness often seem to be functionalist theories, that is consciousness, or particular experiences, are equated with particular brain functions. One analogy @180 Proof like to use is the analogy with walking. Walking is something legs do. And consciousness (or minding) is something brains do. But the reason this is a poor analogy is that one is a definition and the other is a theory. Walking is just defined as the particular action of legs. That's all we mean by it. But consciousness is not, at least pre-theoretically, defined as such and such brain function. Walking just is legs doing such and such, by definition. 'Consciousness just is such and such brain function' is not true by definition. If it is true it's true by virtue of the way the world is. Sometimes functionalists try to suggest that it is true by definition, that consciousness is something brains do, and that's what we mean. But I don't mean that at all. It's just wrong - it doesn't capture most usage. Some scientists might mean that, but people who use words as observed by lexicographers don't generally mean brain function. Consider this definition from an online dictionary:
"the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world."
No mention of brains. It's reasonably theory-neutral. It might be that minds are brains or brain functions, it might not, the definition doesn't specify. So we need more than definition to connect consciousness, in this phenomenal sense, to brain function.
So, why can't brains do all their stuff without consciousness?
And why isn't a running internal combustion engine conscious?
So here's something for him, and anyone else who's interested.
Neuroscience has nothing to say about phenomenal consciousness. It is important to distinguish a few definitions I suppose. Neuroscience has plenty to say about other concepts of consciousness, the difference between being awake and asleep, various arousal levels, identifying neural correlates of particular experiences (although still nothing to explain how a particular function correlates with the smell of a rose instead of the smell of shit), how the brain makes models of the world which we use to make predictions, the difference between being alive and dead, the integration of information (IIT theory), how it generates a global workspace, what behaviour we are going to take as defining a conscious state in medical contexts, and so on.
Not that I'm remotely well educated on this stuff, I've watched a few vids and read a few things, but nowhere do I see any answer to the question "That's all fab, but why can't that happen in the dark? Why does any of this constitute or necessitate subjective awareness. or consciousness, or the capacity to experience?"
The scientific theories of consciousness often seem to be functionalist theories, that is consciousness, or particular experiences, are equated with particular brain functions. One analogy @180 Proof like to use is the analogy with walking. Walking is something legs do. And consciousness (or minding) is something brains do. But the reason this is a poor analogy is that one is a definition and the other is a theory. Walking is just defined as the particular action of legs. That's all we mean by it. But consciousness is not, at least pre-theoretically, defined as such and such brain function. Walking just is legs doing such and such, by definition. 'Consciousness just is such and such brain function' is not true by definition. If it is true it's true by virtue of the way the world is. Sometimes functionalists try to suggest that it is true by definition, that consciousness is something brains do, and that's what we mean. But I don't mean that at all. It's just wrong - it doesn't capture most usage. Some scientists might mean that, but people who use words as observed by lexicographers don't generally mean brain function. Consider this definition from an online dictionary:
"the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world."
No mention of brains. It's reasonably theory-neutral. It might be that minds are brains or brain functions, it might not, the definition doesn't specify. So we need more than definition to connect consciousness, in this phenomenal sense, to brain function.
So, why can't brains do all their stuff without consciousness?
And why isn't a running internal combustion engine conscious?
Comments (766)
There is some truth to this post, no doubt. Especially when one considers the sheer amount of books on the neurophysiology of consciousness, which tell you... very, very little about it.
But certainly not in principle. Consciousness is a phenomenon of the brain, which needs interaction with the environment to awaken its dispositional knowledge, which, if absent, doesn't lead anywhere.
If we had a much more sophisticated and intelligent cognitive system, we could discover how it is that brains produce experience. But we don't, so we are going to remain puzzled about how this phenomenon could ever arise from such an organ.
I'll ask you the same as I ask everyone who asks this question...
Quoting bert1
... What would an answer look like? Give me an example answer. It's doesn't have to be the right answer, just an example of what sort of thing would satisfy you.
Like if I said "no one has yet answered the question of what is 567,098,098 * 45,998,087" I could clearly tell you what sort of thing I would accept as an answer - I'm expecting some big number - even though I don't know what that number is. Without that framework, I don't see how I could possibly claim that no-one's answered the question yet.
So what's the sort of thing you'd be satisfied with? If I went into my lab tomorrow, had a really good look at some brains, and came back to and said "Brain activity requires consciousness because..." What would you accept?
Are you sympathetic with Colin McGinn then? Consciousness is in principle comprehensible, but not by us at the moment? Is this because we lack the concepts we need, perhaps? Perhaps we have mental concepts and physical concepts, but we lack a third kind that relate the two?
This is a great question, and I'm sorry to say I can't even give you an example bare-bones answer. Absolutely no idea.
@apokrisis suggested a switcheroo, which was quite interesting, basically saying that the burden of proof not on the neuroscientist to say why some or their function of the brain is consciousness, but on the neuro-skeptic to say why it isn't.
The potential problem here is that if there is such a thing as first person consciousness, and if first person consciousness is essentially private, then by necessity there cant be any sort of public, scientific evidence of or explanation for it.
Very much so.
Him and Chomsky, whom McGinn got the idea from.
If we are to make headway on the problem of consciousness where do you think it might come from if not cognitive science?
I won't attempt to give a scientific answer to what is essentially a metaphysical question. But I do think the form of an answer will necessarily have something to do with Function. The purpose of a thing is not inherent in the thing, but is assigned to it by a user or observer. For example the function of an automobile is relative to the driver. The driver wants to move from here to there, and makes use of a mechanism, horse powered or ICE powered, to serve his need for conveyance. For the driver, the source of motive power -- and the details of its internal mechanism, organic or inorganic -- is irrelevant to the transportation function. The horse may be conscious, but its own needs are subordinate to the driver's.
Likewise, the function of a human brain is to collect incoming sensory data, then convert it into concepts & meanings that will serve the needs of the body, for survival and for thrival. According to Don Hoffman, the neural system of the brain processes incoming physical information, and transforms it (by magic?) into the metaphysical meanings that some call "consciousness" and others label "illusions". Those mental models are not real. but ideal. However, the serve the purposes of the Self by creating maps of reality for us to navigate by. A tangle of neurons will not serve as a map of the world. Even though the meta-physical map is not the territory, it serves the function of navigation*1 through the real world.
Service of needs & desires is also the Function of Consciousness : to make meanings that serve the intentions of the meta-physical Self (a mental model of the body/mind system). Therefore, like an engine on the garage floor, a brain in a vat, serves no transportation purpose, and being disconnected from the Self-system, is not functionally conscious. The neurons may continue to do "their stuff", but not the intentional stuff of the Self. :smile:
*1. Navigation : the process or activity of accurately ascertaining one's position and planning and following a route.
It is arrogant of me to suggest this. But I think self relation, or self modelling, is a good candidate for what would count as an answer. I'm not saying it's correct. I think it counts as an answer because it explains a few things:
( 1 ) It has an answer for where the "first person" aspect comes from; modelling of "internal state" variables. This is like proprioception ("this body is mine and here in space").
( 2 ) Prediction using previous projections ("what body's modelling expects a given action to do") gives a sense of progression and history in experience, rooting the experience of time and coupling it with the specificity of your actions. This counts as "mine" because your [hide=*](as a reference to you, without reference to a subjectivity)[/hide] retrojections inform your predictions.
( 3 ) The role of intentions - they're explainable as a continuity between your past (as a model), your current needs (as internal states), and what you're going to do to satisfy them (as predictions of environmental effects of actions).
( 4 ) Memory and narrative - memory as informational summary of previous states. Narrative as the sequence of those informational summaries. Like I may remember "the time I saw a parasite crawl out of a slug", but I won't remember everything I experienced at the time, just a memory.
( 5 ) Reflexivity - model update procedures (current state -> new summary -> new summary as past state -> past state as informer of new predictions -> predictions -> new current state) act as a nexus of memory, narrative, time, intention, and render them perspectival to you.
( 1 ) demands an explanation of perspectivality, that experiences are mine.
( 2 ) demands an explanation for continuity in time, that I am ongoing.
( 3 ) demands an explanation for intentions, that I am an agent capable of recognising and realising goals.
( 4 ) demands an explanation for self narrative, that I am an agent capable of creating my history and future.
( 5 ) demands an explanation for the integration of my processes, that I count as a whole composed of parts which draw from and influence each other and the environments I find myself in.
If you take a less functional perspective, you might need there to be a ( 6 ):
( 6 ) What it feels like to be in a reflexive, ongoing, intentional, historicising, projective, story telling and unitary affective state. What is it like.
I imagine much of the dispute regarding whether neuroscience and its philosophical analysis suffices for an explanation concerns whether ( 6 ) should be included in the list.
-you don't say.....
-"but nowhere do I see any answer to the question "That's all fab, but why can't that happen in the dark? Why does any of this constitute or necessitate subjective awareness. or consciousness, or the capacity to experience?""
-oh....ok Why questions again....and its science's fault for not being able to answer your fallacious question.
Sure Bert...keep feeling sad for me I guess.lol
Are you familiar with the the role Ascending Reticular Activating System and Central Lateral Thalamus?
Quoting Manuel
-Do you really thing that's the main issue? How about the complexity of organ and its functions?
What percentage of books and publications have you studied in order to arrive to that conclusion? Are you sure that we haven't pin point the responsible mechanisms for conscious experiences.
https://neurosciencenews.com/?s=brain+consciousness
There are many papers that beg to differ.
I can get rid of the 'why'. I think this may be a language barrier. 'Why' isn't always meant in a teleological sense, it often, perhaps usually, meant to elicit an explanation of whatever sort. "Why is the engine making that noise?" for example is not about ascribing intentions to the engine.
So, to rephrase:
"How does brain function necessitate consciousness? What is it about brain function that means it can't happen without consciousness also happening?"
Great post in general. Responding to what we might both see as the crux, this tricky number 6.
As I see it, there's a weird logical blind spot in the hard problem of consciousness singular. There's a covert assumption that there's one way that it feels like to be or tell such a story. But those who believe in something like a 'pure mentality' (and its shadow, the thing-in-itself) tend to take theirs radically private. Why don't they all have their own personal hard problem of consciousness ? I think Wittgenstein has already answered this, but I also think his beetle analogy and other hints are not so easy to grok.
The issue is not one of not being able to find neural correlations, or not being able to form theories, whether that of embodied cognition or computational approaches, or whatever else is fashionable.
It's much simpler than that: we don't understand how matter can think. We simply lack an intuition of how the stuff we see in the world, could, in certain combination, lead to experience.
There is no doubt neuroscience is very useful. But I doubt we will understand how matter can think, we only know it is so in our own case.
We are in a strange situation. I'll give you that. But we do attribute thoughts and sensations to certain animals, and we do tend to agree that their nervous systems make this possible.
I think it's natural to ask whether silicon will work if the proper organization of signals is achieved. But work how ? I don't think we know very well what we mean by 'consciousness' in a metaphysical context. Nor do we know what we mean by 'things as they are independent of human inquiry.' It's as if we are taking a flexibly blurry practical distinction and stretching it into a dualistic metaphysics.
Have you given Robert Brandom's work much of a look ? He offers the best theory of the self that I can think of.
In short, the self is something like a self-referential system of concepts that is stretched out temporally by its responsibility for the coherence of its claims. This includes things like integrating the implications of one's current beliefs into that system when those implications become obvious (which can take time.) Each self is a like a player in a game of coherent expansion with pruning. A belief that's not 'forbidden' for you might be 'forbidden' to me because it contradictions something else that I have claimed and you have not.
The idea is that the philosophical context is itself made explicit. It's what we have been doing all along, scorekeeping coherence.
-That's better.
Well its turns out that being conscious offers survival advantages, so the brains that could reflect upon the environmental and organic stimuli, comprehend the meaning and implications of i.r. a tiger silhouette and the feeling of being cold or hungry and construct a plan how to deal with these problems were those that managed to pass their genes to the next generation.
How it is achieved?
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/neurobiology-of-consciousness-study-explained
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-brain-generation-loss-13009/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3722571/
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/tiny-brain-area-could-enable-consciousness
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-brain-mapping-21146/
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-brain-network-17491/
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-conductor-16352/
https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-organization-consciousness-15132/
https://neurosciencenews.com/l5p-neuron-conscious-awareness-14997/
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-brain-patterns-10756/
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-brain-patterns-10698/
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-neuroscience-7189/
https://neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-time-slices-4034/
https://neurosciencenews.com/how-the-brain-loses-and-regains-consciousness/
https://neurosciencenews.com/math-models-brain-state-22789/
https://neurosciencenews.com/eyes-consciousness-22032/
https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/news/news-stories/2017/june/brain-decoding-complex-thoughts.html
https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8121175/
Actually we understand how matter can think....through specific structures of matter with specific functions.
"intuition"? I don't think we can trust Intuition. What we need is to study and gather more knowledge and construct more detailed models.
We don't fully understand many things in nature i.e. organization,electricity, gravity, light, life, quantum behavior etc etc but that doesn't mean we haven't identify the responsible mechanisms for them and use this knowledge to come up with predictions and applications.
I get what you mean but these type of statements look more like an excuse people give to avoid doing the hard work (studying the actual science of the field). They sound more like a "why "question (why matter can do that) highlighting our surprise for being possible.
The blind spot is a great subject of study. It is grounded in the Upani?adic philosophy, 'the eye cannot see itself.' Google The Blind Spot, Michel Bitbol.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
However, human beings are past the point of doing what every other creature does - the four F's of feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. Human beings actually stop and ask the question: WHY AM I DOING THIS? And for that matter, what am I? What is this thing that thinks?
Because of the cultural role of science, Darwinism has tended to fill the vacuum caused by the collapse of religion in secular culture. But evolutionary theory may not be up to the task, simply because it was never intended as a philosophy as such, or the basis for an epistemology and metaphysic. And if you try to adapt it to that purpose, it's very hard to avoid something like social darwinism or scientism.
By the way, in return for all the neuroscience articles, I will offer only one, a NY Times review prompted by the replication crisis with a particular eye on fMRI scans, Do You Believe in God, or is That a Software Glitch?
As I see it, you would talk of blind spots, if you knew what I was getting at.
You say 'the eye cannot see itself.' You assume simultaneously that there is a singular way of seeing which cannot catch itself seeing. Yet, typically at least, this seeing is understood in terms of a radical privacy that should make such ambitious theorizing impossible.
If everyone has a box that no one can look in, that's already saying to much, unless the box has a visible outside. The methodological solipsist violates his method with his first statement about the eye or the mind.
I think this happens to easily to us because thinking is not essentially the function of a single mind but rather of tribal linguistic software that runs on individual brains. We are so wired to communicate that we can't remember to be methodological solipsists for 5 seconds.
:up:
And discuss concepts !
You will be surprised by the actual number of humans who do just that and don't ask questions. But I agree our Symbolic language does allow us to form complex concepts and questions and even ask things that have no meaningful answers. "
Quoting Wayfarer
- you clearly don't understand Evolution or Science so I will not even try to comment or correct the misconceptions in that paragraph...
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure studies do go wrong....and this is why meta analyses are far more important.
The important thing with our findings in neuroscience is not to learn people's beliefs but to inform our technical applications (real life evaluation of our findings).
Sure. I don't see any a-priori prohibition as to why silicon could not produce consciousness.
But since we don't understand it very well in our own case (human beings), and cannot prove other animals are conscious, to say that an AI has experience can be misleading.
We assume (and I think with good reasons) that other animals are conscious, but since we cannot get inside other species heads (or nervous system), there will remain some doubt about this.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
There is nothing here with which I disagree.
The puzzle, for many people, and I assume even some scientists is the why question. And there should be space for surprise. There seems to be nothing in the "physical stuff" of nature which could lead one to conclude "consciousness comes from that". If there were, then, it wouldn't be surprising.
However, I don't see why this would entail people giving up on neuroscience at all. There is plenty of good research being done in the field with all sorts of practical applications. Some of it can have bearing on practical stuff concerning experience, such as the Libbett experiments, which have to do with will and when we become aware of us making a decision.
Or the work of Stanislas Dehaene, or Thomas Metzinger. Plenty of interesting material.
So you don't accept that science has a cultural role? That evolutionary theory is often used as a guide to how we should think or what we are? Have you ever studied philosophy of science? Do the names Kuhn, Feyerabend, Polanyi mean anything to you?
Its one thing to not understand the details of how conscious states emerge/are sustained and another to talk about other people/animals ability to be conscious.
Actually we are very good in identifying conscious states of other people or species. Our survival used to depend on that ability.
In my opinion we don't have to "prove" it, because its not a mathematical problem.
Other animals are conscious not just because they behave exactly how conscious agents are expected to act, they also share the same hardware function and patterns with ours.
If we are going to question the ability of animals to be conscious of their environment, needs and urges then I don't know what the word "conscious" means.
Quoting Manuel
The same should be true about Metabolism, constipation, mitosis, memory, photosynthesis, conductivity, liquidity, fluidity, replication, organization, emergence etc. As a scientists we should ignore the "why" questions and try to answer the how and what questions.
Quoting Manuel
Agreed.
I accept the cultural role of science. I rejected you paragraph for the nonsensical statement on evolution ("But evolutionary theory may not be up to the task, simply because it was never intended as a philosophy as such, or the basis for an epistemology and metaphysic. And if you try to adapt it to that purpose, it's very hard to avoid something like social darwinism or scientism.").
Evolution IS a theory so by definition its a philosophical narrative (natural philosophy)about observable facts. As a theory Evolution is part of our epistemology and it is used to inform our metaphysics.
The last part is even more weird. ITs not the theory's fault when people use it inappropriately. A theory has a specific place in science....its not for boosting our petty agendas
Yes I know those names but I prefer Hoyningen and Sanders.
But it doesn't provide criteria for judgement of epistemelogical or existential or metaphysical questions, because that is not the problem it is addressing. It is addressing the issue of 'how species evolve'. And it does so quite successfully, although it is continually being modified to deal with varoius evolutionary facts.
But the bottom line of evolutionary biology has to do with survival, reproduction, mutation and evolution.. When those criteria are applied to the use of reason, then it's reductionist, because it is reducing reason to an adaptation for the purposes of survival (when the vast bulk of evolved species have gotten along perfectly well without it.)
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Indeed - but that's pretty well all you do here. You basically barge into every philosophical discussion with Look! Science! Can't you see, fools! That's exactly how you responded to me.
I won't quibble with the comments about animals, it's a matter that won't get us far, since we agree on the practical considerations.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
And it is a very good list, and I agree that all these things are quite baffling, as I think existence should be.
I am surely not going to get in the way of a scientists and suggest them what they should, or should not do. Science has been a spectacular success story since it lifted off in the 17th century and it should continue as far as it can.
Nevertheless, in a philosophy forum, one that features people interested say in Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein and so on in the tradition, it is quite important to deal with these why questions, to differing degrees and with different perspectives in mind. It's built into the fabric of the discipline.
But on the practical dealings of the experiments, and data collection and theories, that's mostly up to the scientists.
Now, if a scientists were to say, that free will is an illusion or that we don't actually perceive colour, we only think we do, then the philosophers can have say, and rightly so, in my opinion.
- Well evolutionary principles do provide answers to our hypotheses or questions. So by default the theory has the epistemic power to provide answers to our metaphysical questions (by metaphysical I mean beyond our current knowledge /classical definition) Since evolution deals with the diversity of life, ontology is the main focus of the theory.
Quoting Wayfarer
That is the main characteristic of science. Its call learning.
Quoting Wayfarer
Or better....changes in allele frequencies over time.
Quoting Wayfarer
No you are wrong. It reduces nothing, and reason was not the mind property in question here.
People tend to confuse different mind properties as if they are one.
Reason, memory , awakeness , awareness, pattern recognition, intelligence etc etc are different properties of the mind.
Quoting Wayfarer
You can not do science without philosophy and you can not have philosophy without science...well you can but it would be pseudo philosophy (Epistemically ignorant theoretical models).
Now, you are confusing politics (social Darwinism ), an irrational belief (scientism) with the act of using credible knowledge (science) to produce wise claims about the world (philosophy).
Your claims are all over the place. Revisit your thoughts pls.
You will always reflexively equate philosophy with naturalism.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I mention it because of the very well-known arguments about the apparent conflicts between Darwinian naturalism and the faculty of reason, although if you're not familiar with them, I won't go to the trouble of trying to explain them.
I don't disagree with the traditional aspect of it. I (and I can only speak for myself) find it a waste of time trying to address unanswerable "why" questions. Its feels like all philosophers are in a race to produce the most unanswerable question in order to guarantee the immortality of their names in the Academia.
The bigger issue I have with this discussion is that most Philosophers are more interested in chronicling "who said what and when" than studying the latest breakthroughs of the respective scientific field.
Quoting Manuel
Its good to know that you also feel baffled by the properties of matter in general. ITs sad to see most people ignoring the real "magic" in our world.
Quoting Manuel
-They can and should have a say, but only after justifying their conclusions in relations to the facts made available by scientists.
It depends from the type of naturalism .If you are referring to Philosophical naturalism, then you are wrong.
I am a Methodological Naturalist, so Philosophy for me has to remain metaphysically neutral
.Quoting Wayfarer
Now we are on a different topic without making any acknowledgements for the previous theses....
BTW there aren't any real conflicts between Darwinian Naturalism and reason.
That's what I meant.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Have you ever read anything about that topic? Because it seems to me closely connected to the hard problem argument.
If the conflict is closely related to a made up "hard problem" based on ''why'' questions, things don't look promising.
Can you define what Darwinian Naturalism means to you ,because I had problems in the past to agree on a definition.
:roll: I can think of several significant cognitive neuroscientists who have plenty to say which is informed by observational data on this topic, unlike philosophers who only speculate about their anecdotal, folk ideas of "phenomenal consciousness". Maybe you should read some of the relevant scientific literature, bert.
Hi. If consciousness is understood as an immaterial ghost in the machine which is invisible to all scientific instruments, we'd have no way to verify that consciousness ever happened along with brain function -- except possibly in our own case, though even here there are semantic issues.
What can we safely claim here ? There are living people who tend to have brains and tend to be taken as conscious in the everyday sense. But they are given general anesthetic for certain surgeries, and we bury them when they are dead because we don't think they will mind -- are no longer 'conscious.'
Descartes helped get people thinking there was an immaterial stuff haunting their skull, because they could think without making much noise. But it's not as private as you and I would like to be in there...
https://news.mit.edu/2018/computer-system-transcribes-words-users-speak-silently-0404
I don't see why more and more powerful models couldn't get better and better at predicting this or that person's next speech act (including muffled/concealed speech in the throat or even the brain.)
Of course, and philosophy wouldn't be nearly as interesting if we all agreed. I find unanswerable questions - especially in the pursuit of the thinking that leads to it, to be quite exquisite reasoning and I admire that process because I find a certain beauty to it and it leads to epistemic humility (not addressing you in any way as arrogant or anything remotely like that, just to be clear.)
However, I completely understand with, sympathize and enjoy people who think this specific aspect of philosophy to be a waste of time. It can be, if you don't find it interesting, it is.
As for the last part, sure, they need to present the relevant evidence for big claims, but I do believe there is a rather nebulous territory in which some scientific arguments can clash productively with philosophy. But some areas not, like, it would be silly to deny QM because you don't think it's coherent, or that someone would dispute that the amygdala plays a role in anxiety.
So, it's complex. :)
I'm a bit late to this party, but I have quickly read through the posts. First, I appreciate you've avoided the cliche term usually used for this issue, although others have used in this thread. It is generally used to avoid having to actually define what the issue is.
You give a long list of conscious processes where cognitive science is relevant. Chalmers has a similar list:
Quoting Chalmers - Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness
But:
Quoting bert1
Here's what Chalmers has to say about what he calls "experience" and what you call "phenomenal consciousness:
Quoting Chalmers again
It doesn't seem objectively unreasonable to me that physical processing should give rise to a rich inner life. It seems clear to me that it can and it does. Note I said "clear," not "obvious" or "established." I certainly could be wrong. I look for reasons why it should seem unreasonable to others and I can come up with two answers. 1) Cognitive scientists seem to be a long way from identifying the neurological mechanisms that manifest as experience. I'm not really sure how true that is, but I don't think it's a good reason. 2) People just can't imagine how something so spectacular, important, and intimate as what it is like to be us could just be something mechanical.
And of course the mind, and in particular experience, isn't just something mechanical, just the operation of the nervous system, any more than life is just chemistry. The mind emerges out of neurology. The mind operates according to different rules than our nervous system. We call the study of the mind "psychology." I don't have any problem conceiving of that, even though I don't understand the mechanisms by which it could happen.
If there are other reasons for rejecting a neurological basis for phenomenal consciousness, you haven't provided it. You've only really found fault with reasons why scientists say there is one. Your argument is primarily a matter of language, not science.
As for the function issue, we're not really talking about brain function, we're talking about mind function. I'm positing that not neurological function but neurological mechanism and process are the basis of mind function. I think most would agree that phenomenal consciousness is a valuable mental resource and capability.
Consciousness is basically a behavior. The only reason it feels special is because it seems, as you note, private. But it's not really. We see the results of it in other people all the time, in their public behavior and communication. It is completely common in science, medicine, and everyday life to draw conclusions about things we can't see directly by observing external signs. With humans above a certain age we have the added advantage of being able to communicate directly with the person using language.
Then how do you know that the answers given so far are unsatisfactory. If I went into a room searching for something and you asked what it was I was looking for, if I said "I don't know", you might reasonable ask "then how do you know you haven't found it yet?"
The standard answer has already been given by (albeit with considerably more confidence than I would have given it). There's some evolutionary advantage - where "some" has been expounded at length by various authors, not all agreeing.
It's the standard answer to why we have any feature we have. either random mutation that was simply 'not so bad as to get in the way', or one which conferred an actual advantage (either niche or sexual section).
So perhaps it might trigger something for you to say why that answer isn't an answer for you.
Quoting Michael
I'm not seeing how that follows. I can see how, if a thing were inherently and unassailably private we couldn't publicly discuss what is is, but I don't see how we couldn't publicly discuss how it came about or what purpose it might serve.
If there were some completely secret contents of a black box but if every time I added a coin to that box it spat out a can of beer, I don't need to know what's in the box to have a reasonable scientific theory that the box is designed (evolved, if natural) to vend beer, and that it does so in response to money being placed in it. I could experiment with different coinage, different currencies. See if there's a relationship between coin and beer type... I could develop a dozen perfectly valid, sound theories about this box, how and why it works, all without having a clue what's in it.
Jokes aside , if we look closer in what motivates people to come up with this type of questions we will find our epistemic and existential anxiety pulling all the strings (Terror Management theory). This is why we don't find "unanswerable question" on digestion or bowel movement but on things that allow ideas like immortality or special nature to sneak in.
So I also appreciate these type of "question" for a different reason! They reveal more things about our psychology than the actual phenomenon in question.!
We place mysteries where answers are a threat to the "magic" of our existence. We avoid linking our mental existence with biology and the expiration date it comes with at any cost.
The main issue I have with these questions ( "hard problem" of consciousness) is that they are based on what people personally find unreasonable or impossible to be caused/produced by physical means(argument from ignorance fallacy), while others look at it and say "Cool, lets find out what makes it possible!"
Don't get me wrong. Symbolic language/ thinking always puzzled me because it is the main reason why our conscious experiences feel the way they do(nobody talks about it though), but after studying and learning about the brain mechanisms responsible for it you can see how it emerges and the survival advantage it provides to a species.
You asked for evidence, not theories. So assume you have two theories to explain how and why it works. What evidence would prove which one is correct, assuming you can never look inside the box, and that both always correctly predict the box's response?
We might be able to do that, but I read bert1 as arguing that neuroscience fails in any attempt to show that consciousness just is brain activity.
So it might be that we can explain how consciousness came to be, and the purpose it might serve, but also that consciousness is some non-physical supervenient phenomena which, like the contents of your black box, cannot be directly measured (except by the person whose consciousness it is).
That's one theory. I wouldn't take it as a given.
Quoting T Clark
I can think things and yet not tell you or anyone else what I am thinking. There's more to consciousness than just public behaviour.
That consciousness drives behaviour isn't that consciousness is behaviour.
The problem with Bert's and the hard problem approach in general, is that they don't even attempt to enter the room because finding anything appears to be impossible.
Chalmers's hard problem is based on what people find reasonable or possible. T Clark's statement verifies this position , I quote:"It doesn't seem objectively unreasonable to me that physical processing should give rise to a rich inner life.
- I think that phenomenal consciousness is the last desperate attempt by philosophers to keep consciousness in their curriculum.
Quoting Michael
In my opinion this is a failed attempt to hide behind the subjective aspects of the phenomenon.
By first person consciousness you refer to the subjective content of a conscious experience and because we can not share the exact same experience, your claim is that it makes it inaccessible to science.
Well recipes, medicines, brain surgery protocols and marketing exist because we are able to understand people's subjective experiences.We know how specific things feel and we try to make money out of it.
We even have the technology to decode complex conscious content of our thoughts by just reading brain scans with 85% accuracy! (far higher than the ability a married couple has to communicate to each other lol!)
Just because a phenomenon has a subjective aspect that doesn't mean we are unable to objectively study it (fallacy of ambiguity). Thousands of papers are published every year on the subject. New findings allow new techniques and treatments that can improve the quality of our subjective conscious states. We are able to identify pathology, physically alter a brain and satisfy the expectation of our patient by altering his subjective experience.
For me its' dishonest to pretend that we have no clue how subjective conscious states feel like especially when the free market is making big money through this knowledge.
Brain function, previous experiences and our biological setup are Necessary and Sufficient explanations for the subjective nature of our conscious experiences.
i.e. The number of taste buds on human tongue and previous experiences will "decide" whether one will enjoy the experience of a spicy food.
There is no need to imply undetectable dimensions and magical sources. The facts alone explain why experiences are subjective and why we can understand them enough so that we can produce accurate Diagnoses and Technical applications.
Not exactly. I'm only saying that if it is inaccessible to science then there cannot be any scientific evidence of it.
For the inaccessible aspect of consciousness.
I don't know why you find it so important not to be able to replay from a first person view. Why do you think this is a problem?
Except in reflection!
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Thankfully, those involved in REAL scientific research, tend to do exactly as you suggest and leave the 'why' aspect of any of the current 'big questions,' as something in the range of personal entertainment to personal psychosis, via their own personal ruminations of such 'why' questions. Be they Philosophers, (who can actually make useful contributions to the ensuing discussions) or theists/theosophists (who offer nothing but woo woo.)
Quoting Wayfarer
And what do you think others would say about, 'pretty well all YOU do here?' as you type from your glass house.
Neuroscience is very young indeed! Consider the beginning, as described on Wiki:
[b]"The earliest study of the nervous system dates to ancient Egypt. Trepanation, the surgical practice of either drilling or scraping a hole into the skull for the purpose of curing head injuries or mental disorders, or relieving cranial pressure, was first recorded during the Neolithic period. Manuscripts dating to 1700 BC indicate that the Egyptians had some knowledge about symptoms of brain damage.[10]
Early views on the function of the brain regarded it to be a "cranial stuffing" of sorts. In Egypt, from the late Middle Kingdom onwards, the brain was regularly removed in preparation for mummification. It was believed at the time that the heart was the seat of intelligence."[/b]
and also from that same wiki article:
"The first freestanding neuroscience department (then called Psychobiology) was founded in 1964 at the University of California, Irvine by James L. McGaugh. This was followed by the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, which was founded in 1966 by Stephen Kuffler."
Philosophers and theists have had a lot longer at musing on consciousness, than neuroscientists. Perhaps we should give neuroscientists at least another thousand years of rigorous, reliable, scientific investigation, before any 'philosopher,' or 'pseudo-science fan,' even dares to claim that neuroscience and neuroscientists, are not up to the task of understanding the source and workings of human consciousness.
I'm not saying it's important or a problem. I'm just saying that if the subjective aspect of consciousness is inaccessible to science then nothing would count as evidence that the subjective aspect of consciousness is reducible to some physical phenomena like brain activity.
-Wow that is a huge leap you made there. First of all you are setting a false relation (absence of direct observation-zero evidence).
"Forensic" methods is how we get to know things of events that we can not detect(directly). Its nothing new in Science. From cosmology, evolution to..... quantum fluctuations , we puzzle facts from different aspects and we construct credible models that are able to produce meaningful Descriptions, Accurate predictions and Technical applications of the phenomenon in question. This is also true with Consciousness.
So we don't really need to be present in a murder in order to identify the murdered.
This is a non sequitur objection.
Now when we verify causal mechanisms , we don't reduce the nature of a phenomenon.We identify the Necessary and Sufficient causes for its emergence. Whether our efforts point to physical mechanisms , that either means the phenomenon IS PHYSICAL or that we don't need to make up additional entities to explain it (parsimony).
After all we have no way to falsify unnecessary and unobservable causes so we will poison our hypotheses without reason.
Describing a phenomenon is not necessary an act of reduction, plus in the case of Conscious States we deal with emergence, which means that Complex Science, not reductionism, is the proper tool for this description. In addition to that we don't know the actual ontology so how one can even accuse as for reducing it??? Explaining things with what are available to us is a Pragmatic Necessity not a biased choice.
How so? If the subjective aspect of consciousness is inaccessible to science and brain activity is accessible to science then ipso facto the subjective aspect of consciousness isn't brain activity.
If it exists but isn't physical then any theory that reduces the mental to the physical is wrong and doesn't explain consciousness at all.
Correct, why questions are a slippery slope for...getting back in bed with Aristotelian teleology and enabling the pollution of our epistemology.
:clap:
First of all ,we have access in the evaluation of the subjective aspect of an experience. We have metrics for profiling blood, brain scans, behavior analysis, interviewing.
We can change the stimuli, or the biological setup and observe changes in behavior, in brain patterns in blood metrics. We can create the experience by stimulating the suspected brain area and observe changes in our blood profile, behavior , brain patterns etc.
We construct Strong Correlations between the phenomenon and the necessary/sufficient mechanism. Warning! Strong Correlations in Science have nothing to do with the correlation-causation heuristics. Its a systematic construction of a case through methodologies on high standards.
Strong Correlations is the threshold used by Science.
What does that have to do with consciousness? You can have evidence that stimulating certain nerves in certain ways causes the subject to flinch and say "that hurts", but that isn't prima facie evidence of consciousness, and certainly isn't evidence that consciousness just is some physical phenomena like brain activity.
So, for you, what is your example above, evidence of?
That stimulating certain nerves in certain ways causes the subject to flinch and say "that hurts".
What would you choose as your label for this phenomena, and all it's demonstrable variations?
Bodily behaviour?
In science labels are NOT existential claims. We address processes.,we don't assume invisible entities(as long as there aren't any evidence for them) . We learned a lot since the era of Phlogiston, Miasma, Orgone Energy etc.
I will take a guess and say that for you consciousness is like an invisible reel/film, an entity that's is only compatible with the observer's apparatus. This is why science's inability to direct observe this movie is a deal breaker for you....Am I right? I am not trying to straw-man you, only to understand your claim.
Again " prima facie evidence of consciousness. " is not something that science has to provide, because an observable process is the evidence. A subjective aspect of it isn't enough to justify a witch hunt.
My claim is exactly what I've said: if the subjective aspect of consciousness is inaccessible to science then ipso facto the subjective aspect of consciousness isn't identical to brain activity, and so nothing could be evidence that the subjective aspect of consciousness is identical to brain activity.
Aspirin and dosage recommendations exist because we have ways to understand and study the subjective aspect of a conscious state.
It seems like (maybe I am wrong) that Philosophy is using the same practices with those used by religion and spiritual ideologies in an attempt protect their claims from science.
There is no huge leap.
If A is inaccessible and B is accessible then A isn't B. It's very straightforward logic.
If subjective experience is inaccessible and brain activity is accessible then subjective experience isn't brain activity.
So no brain activity involved?
The brain is part of the body, so it's involved.
We can show pictures of people to a subject and easily find out whether he hates, loves, respects or he is in a romantic relationship by just watching his brain patterns.
We can analyze his blood profile and learn whether he is a risk taker, bulimic or in love.
We can observe his physical reactions and understand his physiological state under a stress stimulous.
Quoting Michael
It's very straightforward logic...and its susceptible to the GIGO effect. When we feed garbage dataa we receive garbage results.
Please do not go to abstract language where the specifics information of the subject are lost in vague generalizations. They are not helpful and its a plague for Philosophy!
We are talking about specific processes and phenomena with specific characteristics.
Quoting Michael
i.e. A(consciousness) is not an entity and it isn't inaccessible.Only a specific aspect of it isn't accessible in real time. We have the tools to investigate the impact of an experience, compare it to other people's experience and understand it the causal relations to the responsible mechanisms.
I suspect that you are NOT wrong here but I would probably type 'some who philosophise,' in place of 'Philosophy.'
And so that specific aspect of it isn't identical with brain activity, which is accessible in real time.
So, if you agree the brain is 'involved' then what do you find objectionable, when I claim that it's therefore valid and appropriate to use the label 'human consciousness,' to label the phenomena you exemplified?
Quoting Michael
But you just agreed that in your exemplar, the brain was involved. Was that a subjective opinion?
Your above quote, seems to be invoking a high personal credence level that you hold towards the above quote, but you have not provided much evidence to support it.
Do you think that's wise?
Because there might be more to consciousness than just that brain activity.
Quoting universeness
I don't understand your question. That the brain is involved isn't that only the brain is involved.
First of all I don't know what you mean by the term "identical". Brain activity enables conscious experience and previous experiences with different biological setup enable the subjective quality of them.
Arguments from ignorance isn't the best way to understand something. We only know that the we can not share our mental experience on real time. That doesn't imply that brain activity is not responsible for it when we have already demonstrated its Necessary and Sufficient role
I'm not saying that brain activity isn't responsible for it. I'm only saying that if there is some non-physical aspect to consciousness then there can be no physical evidence of this non-physical aspect.
I would have thought this a quite obvious truism.
Ok, that's fine, so we now need very strong evidence, that more than the brain is involved. As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
What is the current proposal, that you personally, assign your highest credence level to, as 'vital,' to what we observe as the effects and affects of human consciousness? Do you, for example, assign a high credence level to Rupert Sheldrakes morphic resonance and morphic fields?
I'm not arguing that something else involved. I'm only arguing that if something else is involved then we can't have scientific evidence of it (or against it).
Rupert Sheldrake is a scientist. and he claims to have scientific evidence of 'telepathy' in humans and animals via morphic resonance and morphic fields. In what way are you suggesting his evidence is not scientific? Morphic resonance would be an example of something other than brain activity being involved in the AFFECTS of human consciousness.
Sure, but "ifs" need to be demonstrated not assumed.
From your statement I see that you accept the Necessity of brain activity but not the Sufficiency to describe the phenomenon.
Do you have facts that support your claim?
The moment to argue for an if claim is only after our current descriptions are proven Unnecessary and Insufficient while having observations pointing to mechanisms that can be also be evaluated for their necessity and sufficiency.
What we currently can say is that we don't know everything so we need to exhaust our available resources. Lets keep the blame on us for now before opening the gates to additional dimensions and ontologies that we are unable not investigate, test or verify!
We did the same mistake in the past allowing gods, substances and agents in general to pollute our epistemology. Only after imposing Methodological Naturalism, we were able to experience a run away success in knowledge and in real life applications....because we can not make predictions by assuming the act of an invisible agent.
Methodological Naturalism doesn't claim that non natural causes do not exist. What it does is to exclude them from being used in our explanations because we don't have ways (methods) to verify or falsify , to quantify and or make predictions. They don't offer any answers since they are nothing more than saying "magic did it". The Statement "we don't know" with "something non natural is the cause" are identical epistemically wise.
I'm not suggesting anything about him or his theory.
-Only if that "something else" is ''designed" to leave no traces for our scientific methods to find. In that case that untraceable "something else" is indistinguishable from something that doesn't exist! So why even talking about it?
what is the need, to avoid admitting "we don't know"?
I'm not assuming anything. My argument is only that if there is some non-physical aspect to consciousness then there cannot be any physical evidence that this non-physical aspect doesn't exist.
I'm not arguing that there is some non-physical aspect to consciousness.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
It doesn't then follow that it doesn't exist.
If it does exist then any explanation of consciousness that doesn't include this thing doesn't (exhaustively) explain consciousness at all.
If you are not willing to offer useful answers, to my main questions then there is nowhere to take this exchange between us. Thanks for the small insight you did offer me, into your thought processes.
Sure, but I don't see the Philosophical usefulness in that statement, meaning that you introduce an additional bigger mystery(non physical-whatever that is) in an attempt provide an answer to a "begging the question fallacy" (if there is a non physical aspect).
What makes you talk about that if? And what indications you have for non physical aspects existing in our cosmos.
You accused of something I didn't do. I'm not sure what kind of answer you expect from me.
Because of Isaac's question to bert1. I understood it to be asking what would count as evidence that consciousness is entirely physical. I think his question is problematic, because if consciousness isn't entirely physical then nothing would count as evidence that it is entirely physical.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
It could be that I don't find any purely physical explanation of my first-person consciousness convincing. And if there is some non-physical aspect to my first-person consciousness then it isn't surprising that I'm unconvinced by a purely physical explanation.
-Ok, it took me some time but I think get what your goal is.
You are not looking for statements that will allow you to understand the phenomenon. What you are doing is entertaining 'ifs' and you justify their "possibility" by pointing to things we currently don't know or lacking the means to observer directly?
Am I right?
Quoting Michael
If you are not willing to comment on 'theories,' that may evidence aspects of consciousness that exist outside of the physical borderlines of the human being/other lifeforms, then you come across as 'reluctant' to defend your own side of the debate. You come across as if you only want to throw stuff at my side of the debate, ineffectually, from a 'safe distance. That very quickly, becomes quite boring.
I'm just pointing out the problem with Isaac's question (as I understood it).
It's like asking "what evidence would prove that a non-interventionist creator deity doesn't exist?" Well, nothing would.
And so by the same token, if consciousness is non-physical then no evidence can prove that consciousness is physical.
I don't understand what his theory is, or what "morphic resonances" are. Are they a physical thing? Then it has nothing to do with what I am saying. Are they a non-physical thing? Then I wonder in what sense he can be said to have scientific evidence of it.
If you want me to address it then you're going to have to explain his theory in detail.
Sure. And some aspects of other biological organs are also quite puzzling, baffling even.
So, we have this thing in our head that produces thoughts, it has many neuronal connections and many connecting regions which cohere in very subtle and complex manners that lead to our experience.
But then we also have "the gut brain", which has hundreds of millions of neurons and can apparently suffer from Alzheimer among other diseases. Why aren't we conscious of it the overwhelming majority of the time? Why isn't it conscious itself?
https://academic.oup.com/acn/article-abstract/37/3/595/6535686?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Could nature have found a more efficient way for organisms to get rid of waste that did not include going to the bathroom, as it were?
So, one can be confused at these too, but, as you say, certain very curious psychological mechanisms apparently determine what we find baffling, and what we don't. There is only so much we can focus on at a given time, so I guess it makes some sense.
Why not say that you are not familiar with Sheldrakes work, in your first response to me after I mentioned it? Would have saved some time. If you want to and you can find the time, then watch:
2,5 hours, but worth the time investment. If you don't have the time to invest, then I am happy to drop Dr Sheldrake's evidence in support of panpsychism.
My response was fine. You accused me of saying something about his work. Given that I never mentioned him or his work, your accusation was wrong, which was my response.
And no, I'm not going to watch a 2.5 hour video on a pseudoscientist.
if you are making the same statement used by supernaturalists then your argument is over and Isaac's question is correct.
The goal of philosophy is not to find "safe spaces" for ideas with a huge baggage.
I can understand you intention to entertain metaphysical ifs but to use an unfalsifiable claim (that also lacks any epistemic or philosophical value), as ''tool'' capable to finds problems in Isaac's question, that is alarming!
IT shows that you down really respect the basic rules of logic (Parsimony, Demarcation,Burden, Null Hypothesis, logical fallacies).
Your "if" hiding in a safe space while wearing a falsifiability proof vest is already in trouble with zero philosophical value.
It has philosophical value if it's true.
No, your response was one of stealth, and I stand by my accusation. I am not surprised that you would respond with indignance however, as you have also accused a scientist who is well respected within the scientific community, of being a pseudo-scientist. His arguments in support of panpsychism are not considered any more fringe, than Roger Penrose's arguments regarding the source and mechanisms of human consciousness. Do you also consider Penrose a pseudo-scientist?
Sheldrake has worked as a biochemist at Cambridge University, Harvard scholar, researcher at the Royal Society, and plant physiologist for ICRISAT in India.
I am personally not convinced regarding morphic resonance or morphic fields as true existents but I certainly would not call Sheldrake a sophist.
I'm just going by his Wikipedia article.
Yeah, you are often rather 'knee jerk!'
You need to make up an undetectable realm with a specific entity conveniently having the properties of the phenomenon we are trying to explain.
That entity needs....somehow to interact with our brain (since you accept brain activity as necessary) produce the phenomenon and somehow remain undetectable.(Magic)
Your ifs also have to ignore our current epistemology and to poison the well by constructing a mystical image of our personal experiences.
Lets say we see the same thing, we experience the same thing, but since my biology and previous experiences produce a personal take on it ...that's non physical?
That's not Philosophy.
There's just one if, and that is: if consciousness is non-physical then nothing is evidence that consciousness is physical.
It will have epistemic value if its proven to be true , but currently its a product of pseudo philosophy. (the statement ignores all our epistemology, Basic logic(unparsimonious,unfalsifiable, Argument from ignorance fallacy, poisoning the well) and has the role of a Trojan horse for supernaturalism.
When you say non-physical, are you also invoking 'immaterial?' and if so, do you associate the word immaterial, with science or pseudo-science?
If your use of 'non-physical' means a phenomena, undetectable by any current or future scientific endeavour, then is that not your own personal appeal to pseudo-science?
I'm not assuming that it's non-physical. I'm saying that if it is non-physical then...
It's not pseudo-science because it doesn't claim to be scientific at all. It's just not-science.
To many to have any philosophical value.
So does that not mean that your proposal is not EVEN at the level of pseudo-science?
You have hand-waved away Dr Rupert Sheldrakes efforts, at what you have accepted, via a sentence on wikipedia, as pseudo-science, yet you seek consideration for a proposal, which is lower than even that limited standard for evidence? Really? Again I ask, is that wise?
One if, no assumptions.
Again too many ifs and assumptions. There is not any reason to assume that conscious states are non physical, we don't know if non physical things are possible, we don't know if non physical things can interact with physical structures and we don't know if they can do it without leaving any traces.
To many to have any philosophical value.
You can keep repeating this, but it's still wrong. I haven't made any assumptions, and there's only one use of the term "if" in my claim.
If consciousness is non-physical then there is no evidence that consciousness is physical.
Do you consider dark energy, physical? Or, immaterial?
Dark energy is just a 'rushed' probably poorly conceived, placeholder label, but it's existence is very strongly 'implied.' Do you agree?
of course you have.
You state: " if an aspect of consciousness is non physical"
A.You assume that non physical things exist and b. that consciousness can be a non physical due to a category error.
you state:"science can not detect conscious experience because its non physical".
So you have to assume that non physical things can interact with physical structures (brains) and those interactions don't leave traces.(which is in direct conflict with Nobelist Frank Wilczek's Core theory).
The issue here is not how many times I will need to repeat these facts but how many times you are going to refuse correcting it ( that is also an indication of pseudo philosophy).
No I don't.
No I don't.
Given that I'm not begging the question, as you seem to be, and assuming from the start that consciousness cannot be non-physical, that is correct.
Although strictly speaking, my actual claim doesn't assume this.
This isn't difficult Michael..You are suggesting an ontology. This ontology needs to be assumed by definition. The same is true of its qualities.
You can not escape from those underlying assumptions!
If you give me £1,000,000 then I will quit my job.
Am I assuming that you have given me £1,000,000? No. Am I assuming that you can give me £1,000,000? No. Am I assuming that someone has given or can give me £1,000,000? No (although, incidentally, there are people who can).
If consciousness is non-physical then there is no evidence that consciousness is physical.
Am I assuming that consciousness is non-physical? No. Am I assuming that consciousness can be non-physical? No. Am I assuming that something is or can be non-physical? No.
Do you just not understand what "if" means?
Micheal focus! You say "if consciousness is non physical....". That statement can only be meaningful if non physical is considered to be an available option for the ontology of consciousness. Obviously you are suggesting an option without even knowing if it is possible.
ITs the Alchemists and chemical transmutation all over again.
If you are not suggesting this specific options then you are just offering useless tautologies like the following. We don't need Philosophy to arrive to tautologies.
Quoting Michael
No it doesn't.
If God is real then...
If ghosts are real then...
If magic is real then...
If parallel worlds are real then...
I'm not assuming anything about what's possible.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Correct.
I don't know if it's possible. I also don't know if it's impossible. Unlike you I'm not going to beg the question and assume that materialism is the case that everything, including consciousness, is physical.
Maybe consciousness is physical. Maybe it's non-physical. And if it is non-physical then...
-So you are recycling hot air?? You are defining conditions in scenarios without knowing the real properties of the interacting concepts!
This is the problem with this type of "Philosophy". Brain power and time wasted for tautologies and made up dichotomies. Its an empty logical equation parading as philosophy.
Quoting Michael
-So why are you doing this? There are far more meaningful scenarios to apply your '' ifs''on. Why insisting in its "philosophical value" when your statements demand way to many ifs to be proven true first before your statement finally acquires its philosophical validity..?
Because the purpose of this discussion is to assess the evidence either for or against the neuroscientist's claim that consciousness can be exhaustively explained by brain activity (or other physical phenomena). It is perfectly correct not to beg the question and assume either materialism or dualism from the start.
You really do sound like some kind of evangelist. It seems @bert1 was right about you in the OP.
First of all this is not the claim made by neuroscientist's. This is the goal of Neuroscience based on the the limits and nature of our methodologies . Its a Pragmatic Necessity , not a personal preference.
Secondly nothing in your "if" statement takes our current scientific evidence in to consideration!
It introduces unfalsifiable realms as options in our syllogisms.
Quoting Michael
ITs more reasonable to reject all metaphysical worldviews and proceed with what we can actually investigate and verify.
In science and in Natural Philosophy, supernatural realms are not used as excuses for our failures to figure things out.
Obviously, that's the point. If some aspect of consciousness is non-physical then there can be no scientific (physical) evidence of it.
Arguing that because there is no scientific evidence for it then it doesn't exist is to beg the question and assume that if something exists then there is scientific evidence for it.
:100: :clap:
In essence you skip the hard part of philosophy (evaluation of available epistemology) and you diplomatically introduce your worldview while trying to avoid the burden of your claim.
It's not a bad excuse.
The argument is:
1) all physical phenomena is susceptible to scientific analysis
2) we have first-person experience
3) some aspect of first-person experience is not susceptible to scientific analysis
4) therefore, some aspect of first-person experience is not a physical phenomenon
The argument is valid, and so to reject the conclusion you must reject one of the premises. But you've previously accepted premises 2) and 3), and I assume you also accept 1), so it's irrational to then reject 4).
Well the argument is unsound. You have a huge error in your third premise.
First of all we not only analyze first person experience, we are also affecting it with technical applications.
The other problem with your claim is that a personal experience....is a personal experience! So accusing science for not being able to experience "your experience" is like accusing a tuna sandwich for being slow in a 100m race.
Our analysis verifies the physical nature of the phenomenon independent of its subjective quality.
No 4 is also false. The phenomenon is mental but it is physically induced. So its natural and can be investigated by the methods of science.
If the phenomenon is mental, and if the mental is non-physical, then the phenomenon is non-physical.
That it has a physical cause isn't that it, itself, is physical.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I don't know what you mean by science experiencing something.
Either my first-person experience is susceptible to scientific analysis or it isn't. So which is it?
If it isn't then either a) my first-person experience isn't a physical phenomenon or b) some physical phenomena are not susceptible to scientific analysis. So which is it?
Historically speaking there is a pattern with philosophers and early scientists where when they reached the limits of their contemporary knowledge, they "blamed" the supernatural for keeping secrets from them. (Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, the early fathers of QM.etc).
Well it depends form the meaning of the word. This is why I always use the term "natural".
Quoting Michael
IT is physical since the mechanisms are physical, the emergent property is Natural (mental property).
Quoting Michael
This is what you demand from scientists and any third person to do....to experience your experience.
Quoting Michael
Of course it is, just look at the huge bibliography on the phenomenon...Scientific books and papers can not be written without analyzing the actual phenomenon.
What's the difference between "natural" and "physical"?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
So are you arguing for property dualism?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
There are lots of scientific papers on brain activity and behavioural responses. This does not prima facie say anything about first-person experience.
Much of the science on first-person experience depends on taking for granted what people self-report, which is why the issue of animal consciousness is problematic (they can't tell us anything). But someone saying "I am in pain" is not the same thing as that person's first-person experience of pain, and so that there is scientific evidence of the former isn't that there is scientific evidence of the latter.
They are the same. The word "Natural" can be used as an umbrella term when we want to make a distinction between mental and physical properties of matter.
But again they are the same. i.e. a physical injury (or pathology) in a specific physical area of the brain affects the mental property of memory.
Quoting Michael
No,its an observer relative term. We classify them base on their differences. Its not an ontological questions. Both emerge from physical structures.
Quoting Michael
There are many papers that explains how personal experiences arise from brain function, how pathology, physical injury and intoxication/physical condition can affect their quality and how we are able to diagnose and repair problematic states of consciousness.
Quoting Michael
That's one out of many tools available to us.
Quoting Michael
Of course there is evidence, through establishing strong correlations between the claim and the phenomenon in question, by analyzing brain scans, blood profile (elevated hormones), behavior and interview. Sure we can not experience their experience of pain in real time but this is not an issue. Forensic methods are present in all disciplines of science.
Its like saying there aren't any evidence for cosmology, evolution because we don't observe a phenomenon in real time. Lets be serious.
If there's a distinction between mental and physical properties then you accept that a) the mental is non-physical, that b) mental things exist, and so that c) non-physical things exist.
This goes back to @Isaac's previous question:
Quoting Isaac
I classify phenomenal consciousness as a mental process. That's the kind of a thing I say it is. The category I say it belongs in. One of the characteristics of a mental processes is that they are behaviors or at least that they manifest themselves to us as behaviors.
If it's not a mental process, what kind of a thing is it? What category does it fit in?
Quoting Michael
Consciousness doesn't just manifest itself as language, it also shows itself in our other behavior. We know by analogy. We know what our experience feels like, how it makes us act. It would be silly for us not to interpret other people's similar behavior as something other than the same type of experience we have.
Quoting Michael
Much of our behavior, I would say most, is not driven by consciousness.
I think the problem is here. It's not clear what is meant.
You say we have first person experience, but (private) first person experience cannot be used to give 'first person experience' a definite content.
Imagine replacing this premise with 'we all have a metaphysical lockbox that only we can see and look into.' How can that be a public (rational) premise ? How could one be sure of what was referenced ? Without merely assuming some strange and elusive entity that is essentially the same in all of us ?
Depending on your answer to my question, the other points are irrelevant. Almost nobody denies the causal relationship between brain activity and mental phenomena. It's accepted that we feel pain because of such-and-such brain activity, and so can infer how someone feels by examining their brain and other bodily functions.
That the neuroscientist can explain that such-and-such brain activity causes the first-person experience of pain isn't that he can explain how or why it does so, or the nature of first-person experience itself.
That is indeed what we assume. Whether or not it's reasonable is a separate issue. The skeptic who questions the existence of other minds might argue that such an assumption is unreasonable.
Ive never seen a conscious brain and nervous system. And if I ever saw a brain and nervous system, perhaps in a jar or something, Id be hard-pressed to describe it as conscious.
Thats because consciousness is a property of organisms, which are a great deal more than brains and nervous systems. Sapiens, for example, have digestive, endocrine, skeletal, respiratory and other systems. Each of these are required for human consciousness.
Neuroscience has a great deal to say about consciousness, but it is not the full story.
As I noted:
Quoting T Clark
Quoting Michael
If I say that all apples are fruits, the fact that all fruits are not apples does not prove I'm wrong.
I'd say that your interior monologue is still bodily. Technology is being developed that can read your thoughts by little motions in the throat, etc.
Just to be clear, I'm not talking about this kind of skepticism. Instead I'd carefully distinguish between ordinary language that involves consciousness and philosophers' less sensible dualism.
There are studies that show that decision-making is unconscious, and that conscious decision-making is post hoc. So it could be that the technology you reference is reading that pre-conscious decision-making, not consciousness itself.
My central point is that 'metaphysical' consciousness is semantically indeterminate and even paradoxical. The famous beetles and boxes passage suggests why. 'Consciousness' refers to a box that could contain anything or nothing. Or it says what it should not be able to say.
Something like Wittgenstein's argument against a private language? I'm not convinced by it. I made a passing comment about it here.
No and no. There isn't any ontological distinction. Its like attributing a different ontology for the property of color and the property of hardness displayed by a rock.
Mental is just a label we place on properties produced by specific physical processes in the brain.
I think we are largely on the same side on this issue, but I'd say let's not forget that 'mental' is a great word in ordinary talk, same with 'physical.' As I see it, the problem is assuming some kind of a dualism and then 'deriving' some limitation of science. Dualistic assumptions lead trivially to the socalled limits of science. But such assumptions are never justified or even clarified.
Yes, I think you are probably right about that. From what I recall, Dennett and a few others (forget their names) give accounts of 1-5 and then say "That's it, we're done, there's no extra bits left." And woo-mongers (like me) say "Actually I'm not really talking about 1-5, I'm only really interested in 6, the subjectivity, the first person perspective, the experience, the what it's like to be me, etc."
From my perspective, I'm actually quite happy with a functionalist account of self, your 1-5. For a while now I've made a distinction between self and consciousness:
Self is sufficiently complex to be vague, and have permeable borders. Memories come and go, atoms in our bodies get replaced, values and beliefs change over time, when I stop and the rest of the world starts is a vague matter. Consciousness does not seem to be a vague matter.
In ordinary talk we speak of 'losing consciousness' during sleep or anaesthesia. I think that is strictly inaccurate; what changes is the boundaries of self. When I 'lose consciousness' bert1 ceases to exist for a while as a functional unity in terms of your 1-5. The total consciousness, I suggest, remains. Just as the total mass an energy remains.
Yeah, I'm not going to read all that. I've read things people have suggested before on consciousness and it hasn't helped. Most notably Tononi on the IIT theory, which is just another kind of functionalism. It's interesting but irrelevant. Please would you:
1) Select two of those that you think are most relevant and I'll have a look
2) Summarise in your own words 'How it is achieved'
I think this is muddled. It's not consciousness that ceases, but the self.
Its not a case of assuming dualism, just as its not a case of assuming materialism on the other side.
Its the case that either one finds a physicalist account of ones first person experiences convincing or one doesnt. And Im not convinced by the claim that my first person experience of pain just is some particular arrangement of atoms (and other particles).
It might be that my first person experience of pain depends on and is caused by such an arrangement of atoms, but it doesnt then follow that they are one-and-the-same.
Neither am I. I don't think 'pure' matter is anymore intelligible than 'pure' mind.
We live together in something like a lifeworld with includes claims about that world and norms for rational discussion. I suggest that first-person talk be examined in the light of the social role it plays.
Also, how do primates generate a complex language from one that is less complex ? Etymology suggests that metaphors became 'literalized' (as if lifted up to an 'immaterial' abstraction) so that concepts like causality and sensation and soundness were added to our system.
If your pain is radically yours, radically private, then I cannot 'rationally' comment on it at all. It's like talking about a private ineffable walk with God. It's 'designed' to slip like wind through the nets of every inquiry.
Perhaps you are implicitly assuming that I have the same pain beetle in my box, but assumption is parasitic on ordinary criteria for being in pain, such as talking about it or taking aspirin. The pain itself is like the hole in a donut. It plays and can play no role in a public concept.
So the dead do or do not have consciousness ?
I can be in pain without talking about it or taking aspirin. I assume you can too. Maybe Im wrong, but the idea that I cant talk as if Im right just makes no sense to me.
Yes, that's part of the grammar of the word. And I 'know what you mean.' For me the lifeworld does not exclude that kind of thing. So it's not about denying consciousness but tying everything together. A certain kind of 'materialism' (whatever you want to call it) says that the world is not really colored and does not really smell like anything, etc. But I don't agree with that. The scientific image is a map that depends on the lifeworld for its intelligibility.
Perhaps there thereness of the world is what some people mean by 'qualia.' We can see that the rose is red and say that the rose is there.
It doesnt have anything to do with grammar. I can be in pain even if I dont have a language. Its not as if pre-linguistic humans never had headaches.
I really dont understand this devotion to Wittgenstein and this obsession with language. It just has nothing to do with whether or not there are private, first-person experiences (or whether or not the external world is coloured).
But, respectfully, philosophy isn't the study of your private sensations. It can't be. What you want to say, I think, is that we can be in pain without language. That is of course quite plausible, but you are assuming a referential semantics. You are assuming that 'pain' is like a label somehow pinned on something simultaneously understood to be radically elusive and ineffable. You seem to ignore the difficulty of fixing meaning in a (private) dualistic framework and lean on the ordinary, successful use of the word in practical affairs.
Quoting Michael
Wittgenstein is just one of many excellent thinkers on this. Ryle is another obvious choice, especially since he presents his points more directly. Personally I'd stress de Saussure's structuralism. Imagine that we only had 26 symbols to send over the wire, back and forth. How would those 26 symbols refer to otherworldly radically private stuff ?
The 'obsession' with language is just caring whether we know what we are talking about. What was Socrates up to ? It can also be framed as an obsession with concepts. Painters take care of their brushes.
Its hardly elusive. When Im in pain its pretty obvious. I have a private experience which is immediately apparent to me and I refer to it using the word pain. I then assume that theres nothing special about me and that you experience something much the same, and refer to that experience using the same word.
Now its entirely possible that there is something special about me, and that whatever you feel when you burn yourself is nothing like the pain I feel when I burn myself, in which case you dont feel pain (as I understand it) but instead feel something else that you happen to also call pain. But that its possible isnt that its true, and if its not true then it is both the case that I can talk about and understand your pain and the case that your pain is private to you.
What he attempted to do was to straighten out the kind of confusion we see here. A parent attending to a child with an ear infection understands pain better than someone enchanted by and entangled in free floating reasoned argument abstracted from experience.
Wittgenstein says:
By philosophy he does not mean the kind of conceptual confusion philosophers get themselves into, but rather what he does to disentangle the knots they get themselves into. But too often readers get tangled up by the moves he makes to untangle the knots.
Another apt quote from him:
I think this is a motte and bailey situation, where the motte is the ordinary use of 'pain' and the bailey is the dualistic metaphysical version.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
Quoting Michael
Let me try to paraphrase this. If 'pain' does not refer to different private experiences but rather to the same private experience, then I can sensibly talk about your pain, because it's the same as my pain.
How is this not a version of : if I happen to be right, then I happen to be right ?
For what it's worth, I'm not trying to deny something like raw feels but to make vivid how semantically tricky they are. The OP wants to exclude neuroscience from being able to help here. Pain and redness and maybe the meaning 'in' words and 'pure information' are all put inside the ghost that wears the machine. Both the ghost and the machine, removed from their complement, lose intelligibility, it seems to me. Radically private immaterial pain. Radically hidden reality-in-itself. Each the shadow of the other.
I don't quite understand the question.
Consider this statement: your brother is older than you.
If you happen to have a brother then I am talking about him, and if he happens to be older than you then what I say is true.
I don't need to know that something is the case to talk about it, or be right about it.
So by the same token, even if I don't know that you experience something like my pain, if you do then I can (truthfully) talk about it.
Quoting green flag
If something like dualism is true and the pain I feel is some essentially private thing then there is no distinction between the "ordinary" use and the "dualistic metaphysical version". The "ordinary" use of pain is to refer to that private, mental phenomena. So this accusation seems to beg the question.
That's a nice question. Lets add it to the others that haven't been answered.
It does not matter if it is the same or not. What matters is what caused it and how to alleviate it.
If that is so, and I pretty much agree, then it's because concepts are public and their applications are governed by public norms. Brandom's inferentialism is good on this. Sellars makes a distinction between thermostats and parrots on the one hand and philosophers on the other. To use a concept is not like emitting a beep or a recorded sound. It's to operate in the space of reasons. To use the concept red involves understanding (for instance) that red objects are also colored objects. To use the concept 'pain' involves understanding that animals avoid it (their own). The idea is that it's impossible to understand one concept without understanding many, because concepts are inferentially related.
Here's what doesn't make sense : "It really hurts to chew broken glass, so he stuffed another handful in his mouth."
"Private experience" has its own curious role in the system. "You can't know if my red / pain is your red / pain because seeing / hurting is private experience."
The dead don't exist any more. But as a good panpsychist I think that the rotting corpse is conscious. Just not conscious of very much.
I would like to emphasize that you seem to be quoting my paraphrase of another poster in order to correct me. (?) I offered that paraphrase in order to criticize it.
I'll be glad to discuss this issue with you if you can get a sense of where I am coming from (later Wittgenstein, early Heidegger, Ryle,...)
OK. How conscious are the latest famous bots ? Do they have selves ?
Just want to note that these are nice everyday concepts. 'Conscious' appears as both motte and bailey.
Which is true. I know for a fact that the term "red" covers a variety of different shades. I don't know that what I see to be one shade of red is what you see to be another shade of red.
And by extension, I don't know that what you see to be shades of red is what I see to be shades of orange, or green, or blue.
Ambiguous use of the word "sense" here. The sentence is meaningful and internally consistent, even though we might not understand the motivation of such a person (maybe he's a masochist, or filming a new season of Jackass).
I agree that it's private and mental in a certain ordinary sense. But I insist that we have public criteria for when it's correct to assert someone is in pain. We would not believe someone who was smiling and laughing and telling us how excruciating their migraine was just then. We'd say they didn't know that pain was, didn't know what 'pain' meant. But on your view we couldn't say that. Because your view allows for that person's pain to be what we call ecstasy. Ryle gives other examples like this.
I agree you could come up with some context where it makes sense like that , but hopefully you see the point. There's an average kind of use.
I took it to be in accord with your earlier claim:
Quoting green flag
Your use of paraphrase is suspect. Several times you attribute something to what was said that was not. In this case that it is "the same pain", which can cause all kinds of mischief and misunderstanding
Elsewhere:
Quoting green flag
Quoting green flag
Quoting green flag
Most of us have experienced something we call pain. Pain is "radically private" in that when I am in pain it does not hurt someone else. Pain is public in that we know from our own experience what it means to be in pain.
This is misleading phrasing. "Correct" in this sense means "appropriate" or "justified", not "true".
Quoting green flag
Not really. If someone feels what I call "ecstasy" in response to cutting or burning their hand, they'd never learn to use the word "pain" to refer to it. If such a child burns their hand and laughs, they won't be told by their parents "you must be in pain", they'd be asked "why are you laughing?".
It's the grammar of 'pain,' yes, that it tends to belong a particular person.
But we don't know from our own experience what it means to be in 'pain.'
In other words, the concept is conventional and public.
You seem to be hinting at truth apart from language, but to me that's a round square. Statements are true sometimes. Or we take them to be true...to express what is the case, etc.
Inferentialism is a semantic theory. Meaning is normative. That's the idea. So a statement can be true in the first place because it's meaningful within a community. I don't believe that words are connected independently to some divine mind. The tribe's tongue is fundamental software.
If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?
Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.
That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.
***********************************
https://web.stanford.edu/~paulsko/Wittgenstein293.html
'Pain' is not (does not make sense as ) the name of an invisible beetle. It's the name for a situation approached with aspirin and Novocain and hugs.
Can I deny 'Inner Experience' ? Probably not, because I don't know what I am supposed to mean by it.
The grammar is based on the fact that I don't feel someone else's pain. It does not "tend to" and does not "belong" to a person. It is not a possession.
Quoting green flag
Of course we do. Imagine a tribe where no one feels pain. The would have no idea what you are talking about.
Quoting green flag
It is, but only because we experience pain. There would be no conventional and public concept of pain in a tribe where no one experiences pain.
I'm frankly surprised to hear that claim from you. I thought you were down with Wittgenstein.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't think you've understood the beetle and box analogy. Do you believe in demonic possession too ? Phlogiston ? See what I mean ? Talk alone is not a case for the existence of something mysterious.
I suppose those born blind don't know anything about color ? Let's ask the latest chatbot.
Not really. I'm simply saying that it can be appropriate to say one thing, given the evidence available to us, even though that thing is false.
If someone is crying it is appropriate to say that they must be sad. But we're wrong, because they're just acting.
Oh, well yes. I agree that we can have warranted beliefs that turn out to be incorrect.
You mean like ChatGPT? Not sure. It's a good question. I think probably not, although the matter in the chips that run the program is.
There are two issues here, though. Imagine a person is not acting and still insists, while smiling and laughing, that they are suffering 'excruciating pain.' If they 'have' to be acting or not understanding English, that just supports my point.
Yes. OK, so the matter but not the bot.
I don't see how it supports your point. As I said before, nobody would ever learn to associate the word "pain" with the feeling that causes them to smile and laugh. If anything our common use of the word "pain" supports my assumption that other people feel the same thing I do, and is how I am able to talk about and understand their private experiences. Even though they're radically private, they're not radically different.
Although I admit it might not be evidence that they feel the same thing I do; it's only evidence that what they feel causes them to react in the same way as me.
******************
What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'."Well, let's assume the child is a genius and itself invents a name for the sensation! But then, of course, he couldn't make himself understood when he used the word.So does he understand the name, without being able to explain its meaning to anyone?But what does it mean to say that he has 'named his pain'?How has he done this naming of pain?! And whatever he did, what was its purpose?When one says "He gave a name to his sensation" one forgets that a great deal of stagesetting in the language is presupposed if the mere act of naming is to make sense. And when we speak of someone's having given a name to pain, what is presupposed is the existence of the grammar of the word "pain"; it shews the post where the new word is stationed. 258. Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign "S" and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation.I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated.But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition.How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensationand so, as it were, point to it inwardly.But what is this ceremony for? for that is all it seems to be! A definition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign.Well, that is done precisely by the concentrating of my attention; for in this way I impress on myself the connexion between the sign and the sensation.But "I impress it on myself" can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connexion right in the future. But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about 'right'. Are the rules of the private language impressions of rules? The balance on which impressions are weighed is not the impression of a balance.. "Well, I believe that this is the sensation S again."
...
What reason have we for calling "S" the sign for a sensation? For "sensation" is a word of our common language, not of one intelligible to me alone. So the use of this word stands in need of a justification which everybody understands.And it would not help either to say that it need not be a sensation; that when he writes "S", he has somethingand that is all that can be said. "Has" and "something" also belong to our common language.So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.But such a sound is an expression only as it occurs in a particular language-game, which should now be described.
Wait a minute, though. So they learn what 'pain' means from other people ? But haven't you been saying (basically) that it's a label on something immaterial and internal ? That it refers to some state of an immaterial ghost ?
But how could a parent ever check if the child was labelling states of that ghost correctly ? The whole theory of the ghost as the ground of meaning is like the idea of phlogiston or the ether. It plays no real role. 'Pain' is a mark or noise that a little talking primate might make to be comforted or medicated. We should imagine how meaning could evolve and develop on the outside, between cooperating members of a group, and then 'into' the personality.
I burn my hand. I feel pain. I am told by my parents that I must be in pain. I learn to associate the word "pain" with the feeling.
I don't understand what's difficult to understand about this.
Bornblind people can tell you that an object can't be all red and all blue at the same time. We live in the age where chatbots are becoming able to explain jokes.
Saussure's structuralism is decades old now. I'm not saying anyone has a final answer, but the interpretation of meaning in terms of attaching labels to secret immateriality (Locke?) has been pretty well debunked, it seems to me. It's hard to see, given the motte and bailey entanglement. I'd say read Ryle's The Concept of Mind and see if you don't change your mind.
It is the name of something felt, the name of something that leads us to reach for aspirin and Novocain.
Quoting green flag
He is not proposing a theory of pain. He asks us to look at what actually happens. This is why I said that a concerned parent has a better idea of what pain is than someone whose concern is conceptual.
Quoting green flag
Unlike the beetle in a box we do not know what pain is only from our own experience. Why would anyone not confused by philosophical confusion think otherwise?
Quoting green flag
If everyone in the tribe was blind what would they know about color?
OK? I can tell you that a particle can't be both positively charged and negatively charged. It doesn't mean that I know what either of those things mean. They are quite literally meaningless terms for me. I just know of them, and that, whatever they are, they're incompatible, because that's what I've been told.
Repetition of facts isn't real understanding.
Assuming a tribe could survive without eyesight (maybe they live in a system of caves), I don't see why they should have a problem learning about the color concepts in the English language. They could understand that a man got a ticket for running a red light.
We can also use aliens without noses here. They could infer that one character in a play was frowning because another farted.
The latest chatbots know more about color than either of us.
I'd say that learning about what they mean would be learning more structural facts like the one you do know. I started a thread on the being of meaning because I think it's deep endless question. If structuralism is true (which I think it mostly is), then meaning is not concentrated in a single term. Nor is it directly Present to some Inner Eye or intuition. The idea of 'mental experiences...which are the same for all' is arguably the foundational myth or superstition of philosophy. It's a generalization of platonism , probably a necessary theory or stepping stone. The assumption was that one could work from the inside out. But we primates are trained from the outside in. 'I' am mostly inherited software. Monkey hear monkey say. I am thrown into the world and learn how to join the dance which will outlive as it preceded me.
Let's ask:
Also discussed extensively in Pierre Normand's thread on GPT4.
It's not unreasonable to assume that there is some organism in the universe that has some sense that we don't.
How would you go about learning what it's like to have such a sense? Is being told that apples are X and bananas are Y going to help you know what it means to be X or Y, and what it's like to experience X-ness and Y-ness?
I certainly don't think it would help me. I'd just know to repeat the supposed fact that apples are X and bananas are Y, which I think is all that ever happens in the case of the blind describing colour. They're told facts about colour by the sighted and repeat them. Much like me repeating facts about science that I don't actually understand at all.
Real understanding requires actually having such a sense.
Or to give a more grounded example, I don't know what it feels like to lose a child because I've never lost one (or had one). I've seen (on TV at least) people who have lost a child, and the public expression of their grief, but the claim that I therefore know how they feel is ridiculous, because I don't. And I never will unless I lose a child.
Yeah, you sometimes wonder what it would be like to be a bat.
If you ran a simulation of kidney function on your cloud computer network, would you expect it to produce urine?
Of course neuroscience or even its crude implementation falls short of understanding the true nature of consciousness. I think youve hit the nail on the head there. (No pun intended)
Your opening post clarifies the distinction between the mind body dualism.
For me the whole thing is holistic, despite the clever words we may use such as quantum consciousness etc.
Artificial intelligence (slightly off topic here) will always fall short as machines are silicon based whereas we as humans are biological entities and carbon based.
What is awkwardly referred to as 'what it is like' is actually just describing 'being'. It is what 'being' refers to, when we use the term 'human being'. The human being is the subject who makes judgements, conducts scientific experiments, devises hypotheses and so on. But at the same time, the subject is never within the frame, so to speak, on the obvious grounds of not being among the objects of analysis. This was the basic thrust of Husserl's critique of naturalism, and one of the reasons phenomenology is most often cited as the basis for an alternative approach to objective analysis.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
You have a blind spot in respect of the issue at hand. 'Facing up to the hard problem of consciousness' is not trivial or redundant, but a statement about the inherent limitations of objective, third-person science with respect to the nature of first-person experience.
There's some scientific validation of the fact that this really is a hard problem. As it is relevant to the topic, I'll quote at length from The neural binding problem(s), Jerome Feldman. There's a section on 'the subjective unity of perception' which begins as follows:
The reference to Chalmers is to the 'facing up to the hard problem' paper. He continues:
So, contrary to all of the journal articles that you continue to cite, the subjective unity of perception, which is a major aspect of the 'hard problem', remains unexplained, and indeed inexplicable, according to this paper, which essentially provides scientific validation for the argument made in Chalmer's original article.
Essentially your approach is both 'scientistic' and positivist. You claim that if something cannot be made subject to scientific analysis, then it amounts to 'special pleading' or 'making excuses' or 'introducing red herrings'. But many of the philosophical objections to scientism - which is basically the belief that all that can be known, can be known by means of science - are cogent and well documented. If you spent a bit more time reading philosophy, and a bit less evangalising neuroscientific reductionism, you might begin to appreciate that.
What do you think of Tononi's IIT? I read that one. He's a neuroscientist.
Can you state in you own words how the brain generates consciousness?
I think I know what you are trying to get at, but in an important sense the subject is very much inside the frame. Reputation, peer review, coherence of claims. Brandom has an impressive theory of exactly the subject who makes judgements, etc. This is largely what philosophy obsesses over, this subject and the norms governing this subject. Heroic Socrates, getting to the bottom-most bottom of X.
There is something else, but it seems very close to Heidegger's beingquestion and Wittgenstein's talk of our wondering at a tautology. There is a here here. It am what it am. It's not how but that the world exists that is the [s]mystical[/s] wonderful. Sartre's Nausea also says it. We have various versions of [s]Being[/s] is not a being. The 'light' that discloses objects is not itself an object. So it's not the epistemological subject, the normative subject who is responsible for the coherence of their claims. It's the most abstract and yet most concrete question: what is being ? It is maybe the stupidest and maybe the most profound question. I go on in such detail because there may be common ground in this neighborhood. But the 'blindspot of science' is also the blindspot of metaphysics, it seems to me. But maybe there's nothing to find but the nothing. A tautology is.
Address my question, Nick.
Silicon bots, just like the carbonbased kind, tend to believe what they are told. For now they'll say as they've heard (read), just as we all do most of the time.
If we want some serious bot conversation, we need to form a small town of these things and let them talk as fast and as much as possible. We should probably also use atmospheric noise to feed in some random numbers to help with creativity. They should also compete with one another for attention.
This should not be skipped over. There would be no public expression of pain. But there are public expressions of pain. And when someone expresses pain we know that they are in pain, unless they are faking. But there could be no faking if we did not know what it was for someone to be in pain.
Quoting green flag
Wittgenstein's thought experiments using tribes assumes isolation.
Quoting green flag
They might understand that there are others who see something that they do not. Something they call colors, and that they are able to distinguish differences between them. The one they call red means stop and that a man who did not stop got a ticket.
I am going to leave it here.
Yes, leave it there. Good choice!
I think there are historical reasons that lead us to conclude that consciousness is a property of matter. But it also depends on what you think matter (or more broadly "the physical) encompasses.
Quoting Bylaw
I agree. We do not know if experience is limited to brains. It could be the case that panpsychism is true, or a variant of the idea that some kind of proto-life is found in all the universe.
It could be. But it could be wrong. We don't know enough to be sure about this.
No. I asked for answers.
I'm asking what kind of answer would be a satisfactory one. Just an example.
Like if someone asked "why do cars have wheels?" I can say that the kind of answer I'm looking for would be something like a rational reason the engineer designed wheels. It would relate the purpose of the car to the physics of the wheel.
The answer might be completely wrong, or have no evidence at all. It's not about the evidence, it's about the form an answer should take.
"Why did you do that?" - list of motives
"Why is the sky blue?" - physical cause of 'blueness'
"Why did the chicken cross the road?" - surprising answer (or non answer) designed to amuse
"Why do humans have noses?" - evolutionary (or developmental) advantages of the nose...
"Why do we have consciousness?" - ...
... what's the kind of answer that goes there?
Historical reasons are behind ideas pointing to "magical sources" of consciousness.
35 years of Scientific reasons point to our biology and a specific organ.
Quoting Manuel
Definition: "Consciousness as used here, refers to the private, subjective experience of being aware of our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, actions, memories (psychological contents) including the intimate experience of a unified self with the capacity to generate and control actions and psychological contents. "*
So with the above definition in mind our understanding is that the conscious awareness of experiences is something we see in biological organisms with brains. We(as biological organisms with brains) can and are conscious of our thoughts, feelings, memories and we have the capacity to control actions etc.
The Null Hypothesis "forces" us to reject any claim pointing to ideas like panpsychism and proto-life until objective evidence is able to falsify our initial rejection. This is why science doesn't accept such claims until relative indications become available.
Quoting Manuel
-Actually we do know enough about the phenomenon to be pretty sure (beyond any reasonable doubt) that the conscious awareness of experience is limited to biological brains.
Its an expensive trait serving a cause that is valuable for biological organisms. Its a higher level feature with observable downward causation over the lower level parts of the system responsible for its emergence.
Not only we don't observe those characteristics in brainless non biological systems, but they are also useless and expensive to systems without any "interest" in survival.
*Giving Up on Consciousness as the Ghost in the Machine
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8121175/
Well neuroscience can only describe the brain mechanisms responsible for creating the subjective experience of being aware of our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, actions, memories (psychological contents) including the intimate experience of a unified self with the capacity to generate and control actions and psychological contents.
If the statement " Neuroscience has a great deal to say about consciousness" you mean the above property of mind then yes, it has the great and its the only systematic and methodical way we have to investigate this phenomenon.
Sure the full story also includes how all those thoughts, feelings, actions memories etc are made available to the mechanism of consciousness. This is why Cognitive Science is our interdisciplinary approach to those questions.
It appears to be a veiled attempt for a mathematical pretext for panpsychism.
The GIGO effect is present in this speculation.
Quoting bert1
I have done it many times....
I will include a description of the phenomenon and point to our current understanding of the responsible mechanism.
"Consciousness as used here, refers to the private, subjective experience of being aware of our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, actions, memories (psychological contents) including the intimate experience of a unified self with the capacity to"
We know that our brains produce feelings, can store memories, recognize patterns,process biological signals(homeostasis) etc. Injuries and pathology in specific areas of the brain can render some of the above unavailable to the mental state to our conscious awareness.
So consciousness (conscious awareness of experiences) is nothing more than the physical ability of the brain to connect ALL those different areas of the brain in an active state where our symbolic language is able to introduce meaning and create an amazing narrative of that specific moment which includes our self and our environment.
There are many mechanisms like the Central Lateral thalamus that enable those states but the complexity of the brain guarantees years of investigation to understand the full picture.
First of all,made up pseudo philosophical ''why" problems are not "hard problems". The Evaluations of the quality of an experience is not a problem from our objective investigation of the mechanisms responsible for our ability to be conscious aware of our experiences.
i.e. we know that memories are stored in specific areas of the brain and we can become consciously aware of them (experience them) through the ability an extended brain mechanism to bring them "online"( connect them with others areas where Symbolic language, pattern recognition etc are store) and produce a meaningful experience of "remembering something" conscious state.
The ACTUAL content of that memory(conscious state) is IRRELEVANT to our investigation and understanding on how the brain does it.
Subjective is only the quality of the experienced state by an individual. The study of the mechanism responsible for retrieving "material" from a specific mental property (memory, old thought,biological stimuli (pain, thirst hunger),pattern etc) and sharing it with the rest of the stored properties in order to produce an experience is OBJECTIVE. This is why we found thousands of publications on mechanisms responsible for specific functions in a mental state.
The great thing is that we already have the technology to decode the content of an active conscious state allowing us to compare and identify common mechanisms in brains.
Jerome Feldman isn't a Neuro or Cognitive scientist and even if he was his ideas would never render "why" questions on the quality of our subjective conscious awareness of our experiences a problem for our Objective study of brain mechanisms - enablers of the conscious awareness of our experiences.
Quoting Wayfarer
No it doesn't. Chalmer's asks Why questions. ITs like asking "why the intense wobbling of molecules is perceived as heat by our brains"....the answer will always be "BECAUSE"....... and Marc Solms through his new Theory on Consciousness will add "because it has evolutionary advantages to feel uncomfortable when your biology is exposed to a situation that has the potential to undermine your well being and your "being".
Chalmers's focuses on the wrong aspect of the problem. Anil Seth explains in detail why there is no value in trying asking "why" questions on the quality of the phenomenon. Its far more useful to find the mechanisms responsible and the "forces" that shaped their functions.
This is the only way to find how conscious states emerge, how they are affected and how we can improve them.
We have being doing it for decades, this is why we have Medications on psychopathology, this is why we have Brain Surgery protocols for different pathologies and this is why we can make Diagnosis (predictions) based on the physical condition of the organ (brain imagine).
The debate is over.....and philosophers didn't get the memo
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8121175/
It cant.
Quoting Review of Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
If you want to criticize something, you first have to demonstrate that you understand it.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I have had near and dear relatives saved by neuroscience, for which I am eternally grateful, but that doesn't have any particular relevance to philosophy of mind.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Makes no difference to the facts presented.
It depends from the definition. If we
AI "consciousness" is based on the algorithmic process of data feeding prioritizing those which are beneficial or detrimental for the predefined goals of the program.
Biological consciousness mainly deals "finding" meaning in feelings. Stimuli produce emotions that exceed the threshold of intensity and become the content of a conscious state where they are analyzed for their meaning in relation to the current condition, state, intersts and needs of the organism.
As stated in that article, there is no scientific account for the subjective unity of experience. If you go back and check it, that claim is thoroughly validated by the references in that paper, and is central to this whole argument. Just to re-state, Feldman shows that science has no account of which specific brain function gives rise to our sense of the experience of world as a unified whole. It can certainly help when something goes wrong with neural functioning and people mistake their wives for hats, and so on. But about why we experience the world as a unified whole, there is no current theory:
Quoting Wayfarer
Did you on purpose left the rest of my statement out? I hope it wasn't a dishonest practice but a decision of "economy of word".
My actual statement was:"Well neuroscience can only describe the brain mechanisms responsible for creating the subjective experience of being aware of our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, actions, memories (psychological contents) including the intimate experience of a unified self with the capacity to generate and control actions and psychological contents."
And the answer is "this is what it doesn't ". It verifies the Necessary and Sufficient role of a mechanism in the emergence of a mental state with specific characteristics
Quoting Review of Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience
The dude who wrote the above doesn't understand the role of cognitive science and neuroscience....or he is trying to make a strawman for his ideology!
It's one thing to identify the responsible brain function for a mental state (this is what neuroscience does) and another to replace the wide range of psychological explanations with
the a dry anatomy of brain function.
There is a huge number of cases where Neuroscience identified specific mechanisms in areas linked to specific psychopathology and we now have technical solutions(treatments).
There is a reason why neuroscience is one discipline out of many in our attempt to decode the human brain.
The same is true for the rest of that article.
It a game of words and ambiguities.
Quoting Wayfarer
Not my fault for your inability to understand the issue with "why" questions.Quoting Wayfarer
And the philosophy of mind you are referring to has nothing to do with the actual science and the real problems we have to map the functions of the brain.
Quoting Wayfarer
I start to believe that "cutting" parts of my post is what you do on purpose.
My actual statement was "Jerome Feldman isn't a Neuro or Cognitive scientist and even if he was his ideas would never render "why" questions on the quality of our subjective conscious awareness of our experiences a problem for our Objective study of brain mechanisms - enablers of the conscious awareness of our experiences."
So It does and I explained why these facts are baloney.
You need to be honest if you want to earn my time sir. Two red flags for answering a distorted statement of mine.....one more to go.
Maxwell Richard Bennett is an Australian neuroscientist specializing in the function of synapses. He has published a large number of text books and journal articles on neuroscience.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
You don't demonstrate any understanding of philosophy.
Why should we accept that definition for machine consciousness? It's not the same thing as qualia. You just created an arbitrary definition and assigned it to 'consciousness'. It doesn't answer the question of whether a machine can have qualia.
That's a just-so story. How did evolution produce conscious experiences?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
It's not over because you declare it over. We're having the debate write now in this thread. Seems like you've failed to convince people for the first 8 pages. Maybe over the next 8?
IS it really? You do understand that conscious states shuffle stimuli giving the illusion of unification through the property of memory?
He needs to update his science mate!
Australian(something is wrong with the water down there). Well he needs to do a better job. He needs to stop Strawmaning and understand the role of Neuroscience in our interdisciplinary study of the brain. Better he needs to keep his pseudo philosophical views outside his lab and stop making up excuses out of ignorance to bring them in. (If and only if you reproduce his statements correctly).
Quoting Wayfarer
No for the type you are practicing. My philosophy is ALWAYS based on the latest scientific epistemology and on the actual goals of science....not on made up "problems".
If that's the case, then we can rule out machine consciousness, and consciousness arising in other non-biological systems, like meteor showers that just happen to be instantiating a simulation of conscious brain function.
You make my point for me.
Depends on whether we are cognitively capable of providing an answer. Can we answer all questions? Some philosophical questions have remained unanswered for millennia, despite much debate and scientific progress. Why does anything exist?
But of course we can speculate on an answer. Maybe when the right sort of material arrangement happens, consciousness also occurs. It's just the way nature is. Or maybe physicalism is wrong, because it's an abstraction from intersubjective experience. We can't really say what nature is other than something that gives rise to both the material and mental.
We can just invoke Kant at that point. The mind makes the world appear material to us.
We don't even really know what 'matter' is. Could be quantum fields or vibrating 10 dimensional strings. Or maybe everything in physics is a kind of analogy, limited by human cognition and technology. Maybe we can't get at what reality fundamentally is.
Evolution doesn't "produce" our conscious awareness of our experiences. Evolution describes the conditions and facts under which specific biological traits provide survival advantages to biological organisms and thus make it to the next generation.(through changes in allele frequencies).
It turns out it is helpful for organisms who don't acquire nutrients, protection and mates through root in the ground, thorns/toxic substances and airborne pollen......to be able to be aware of their needs and environment and to be conscious of which action and behavior in order to will allow them to acquire food, shelter, avoid preditors and find mates.
No I am not. You are doing Chronicling (that dude said that once). I reflect on the available knowledge and come to conclusions which happen to be in agreement with the field. I don't hide behind arguments from ignorance (there is no scientific account for the subjective unity of experience).
Even if we didn't have a "scientific account" and it isn't answered by what we already know on how conscious states emerge.....what makes you think that we won't have one in the future, IF and only if it is a actual thing.
Ok you jump from the underlying ontology of matter...to reality. From a intrinsic feature of the cosmos to an abstract concept . Reality is an observer dependent term which is defined by our ability to interact and verify with things in existence. A fundamental nature of reality will never change our descriptions and narratives on how reality interacts with us and vice versa.
This is the problem when general terms are used instead of specific.
Quoting Manuel
Instead of using the term Brain (material structure) Manuel used the word "matter"....and the conversation rolled down the hill reaching "quantum levels" rendering the conversation irrelevant to the biological property of consciousness.
And subjective experience is necessary for that? How do organisms without nervous systems survive? Are all living nervous systems conscious?
This is why I opened my post by saying "it depends on the definition".
I distinguished the two types of "consciousness"based on the underlying driving mechanisms.
What you label "experience" is similar to what the machine is working on that exact moment (sensory input and processing). The difference is that your experience is "polluted" and evaluated by your feelings, custom nature of your biological apparatus and what it means to you. The machines don't have feelings and they are not guided by meaning. They have an algorithm to execute in relation to their defined goals.
Well if nature is fundamentally physical, then subjective experience doesn't conceptually fit. The biological level is still function and structure.
I find this kind if thinking really insulting. Neuroscientists are clever enough people, their intellectual capabilities should not be in question.
As such they are as capable as any other human of thinking about their methodology and how it fits with psychology and any metaphysical questions they think are appropriate.
Philosophers are not magic, nor do they have access to a set of data unavailable to ordinary people. There is not a corpus of facts to be 'understood'. There is a range of viewpoints to be read about, or not, as each person sees fit. And each viewpoint arrived at by any given philosopher (or scientist) on the subject matter of philosophy is equally accessible, merely by thought, to any sufficiently intelligent human on the planet, including neuroscientists.
The idea that somehow all neuroscientists do is examine brains and never think of anything else is grossly offensive caricature.
Scientists think about other stuff, including (quite popularly), science itself. All philosophers do is think. Everyone can think.
If, as a result of this thinking process, a philosopher and a scientist disagree about the meaning or significance of a scientific theory, the philosopher has no claim to any authority, he just used his mind, same as the scientist.
I more that if no one can put in even an example answer, they type of thing expected, then I don't see how anyone can support the claim that no satisfactory answer has been given.
If I don't even know what I'm expecting, I can't claim to not have it.
If? what do you mean if? the physical reality is all that we can observe and work on. Why poisoning the well?
-"then subjective experience doesn't conceptually fit."
Well It depends on what you mean by that term, but why? Is it in conflict with your opinion on what all should look in a physical world? My subjective experience of Nature doesn't find any "fitting" issues.
Brains have the ability to gather stimuli and use feelings, memory, symbolic language, reason, etc to introduce content in an experience.
Small differences in the input of a stimulus (our biological setup) , in memories , on our understanding of symbolism make these experiences subjective.
There is nothing mysterious or magic there.
I thought I was the only one who finds his statements condescending and insulting....good to know.
I am starting to think that subjective experience means something different to you!.
First of all when we talk about conscious states the term "subjective" is redundant. All conscious states have a subjective quality. We have different biological setups so our sensory system will register the same stimulous with small differences. Then our past experiences differ. So i.e. one might enjoy spicy food (because of a small number of taste buds on his tongue and a happy memory from his first date with a girl) but others might suffer (super tasters).
We are left with the word "experience" and I will add the important term Conscious Experience.
So your question sound sound like"why being able to consciously aware of an experience is necessary for survival." Because it allows you to acknowledge your feelings(the condition you want to avoid and identify your goal)make judgments, take decisions based on previous knowledge, take in to account the present data and inform your actions."
-"How do organisms without nervous systems survive?"
-Mutations that turn out to be beneficial (thorns, toxicity),Mechanical and Chemical processes that allow plants to "react" to external stimuli.(sun light,shade, strong wind,) successful type of reproduction (pollination, vibrant colors,germination etc).
-"Are all living nervous systems conscious"
-No , if you mean that all nervous systems are able to produce mental conscious experiences. A central nervous system is needed(Brain).
It is an unfortunately pervasive attitude, ignoring the difference between disagreeing and misunderstanding.
That one does not agree with a conclusion, or an interpretation, does not mean one has not 'understood' it. A mistake @Wayfarer seems uncommonly prone to.
I was replying to his specific claim that we don't know if matter can be conscious. I think it can, when so modified in specific configurations leading to brains. Brains are molded matter. But I make no reference to the quantum properties of the universe to explain experience, so biology very much matters.
Yet I don't think we can rule out panpsychism, or even the possibility that consciousness could arise in other types of material, such as silicon and metal.
I don't personally believe in either of the abovementioned options, but I can't rule it out.
Now ,we can rule out panpsychism or consciousness in structures without similar biological gear, because such structures lack sensory systems(no input) or a central processing units capable to process drives and urges (which are non existent),emotions, capability to store info (memory), to recognize pattern, to use symbolic language, to reason, etc etc.
The term Consciousness may be one word, but the things needed for such a state to emerge are so many and advanced that only complex systems (like brains) have the hardware and function to achieve it.
Thanks, that's interesting. I've taken the liberty of bolding a few of the words in there. I want to make a list of verbs that have been used to characterise the relationship between consciousness and a physical system. Perhaps as the basis for another thread, I could do a poll maybe.
As to the substance of what you say:
1) This perhaps is related to arguments from ignorance. I've been told that's what I'm doing several times, and that might be right. Maybe I just haven't read enough neuroscience. Maybe I lack faith in the scientific method which, after all, is easily the best method we have had so far in our history at arriving at reliable/true/useful theories about the world. Philosophy, which again has been pointed out to me many times, it completely fucking hopeless by comparison. Having said all that, the issues seem to me to be conceptual rather than empirical. Sometimes scientists need philosophers to help them out a bit with the concepts (yeah that's patronising, I don't care. Just as philosophers are often shit at science, scientists are often shit at philosophy too). One example of an important conceptual matter is the idea that consciousness does not, conceptually, seem to admit of borderline cases. Another example is the separation of different senses of 'consciousness', which Chalmers apparently does as you've quoted. Lexicographers also have a role to play here in clarifying what it is people actually use the word for. Maybe hard-bitten neuroboffins on the one hand and fairy woo-mongers on the other are talking about different things and are failing to actually disagree.
2) That may be true of some, but I don't think it's true of many philosophers. People like Brian Cox and Dawkins make much of this point - going on and on about how the wonders of the natural world are not diminished by their physical basis. I think it basically a straw man, no serious woo-mongers actually make this point.
(Collecting my list of verbs again) OK, so you're a non-reductionist about the mind. That's obviously fine but it creates a problem. If mind isn't just the operation of a nervous system, what is it? A simple unsophisticalted identification (the simplest way to be a physicalist) between neural activity and consciousness is no longer an option. One option is to take a hierarchical systems approach, saying that whole systems and sub-systems have properties unique to each 'level' and these have upward and downward causation powers, and that various components of mind, including consciousness, is somehow captured with these concepts. I think @apokrisis thinks something along these lines (no doubt I have got it wrong somewhat wrong).
Sure, but it depends what you're looking for. I don't have a falsification. For example, I can't take @Nickolasgaspar's theory, use it to make a prediction, and then make an observation that falsifies that prediction. So if that's what you want from a critique, I can't offer that. One thing philosophers can offer is a mapping of the theoretical landscape, so the broad options are all clearly visible, and the pros and cons of each laid out. Then we can provisionally pick one as a result of an abductive inference. The joke I don't get tired of repeating is taken from Churchill: "Panpsychism is the worst theory of consciousness apart from all the others." The idea here is roughly that one of three options must be true: eliminativism, panpsychism or emergence. We pick the least problematic.
Don't quite follow that bit.
Sure, absolutely. As a panpsychist I go much further, and assert that any behaviour at all, including the behaviour of atoms, is valuable for the mind of the atom. Everything happens because of consciousness. I've been toying with the idea that all causation is actually psychological. We move about and do things because of how we feel. So do atoms and molecules and everything else. That's not to say mechanism doesn't exist. Just to say that mechanism is derivative of will, and a macro-effect supervening on lots of things all doing what they want. @Banno mentioned the difficulties with the concept of physical causation and linked to the SEP article, for which I was grateful. I need to read that more and reflect. The whole idea is a bit of a switcheroo.
Have to stop there, back to work for me. Thanks for interesting post.
A couple thoughts here:
I will grant you that there is a prima facia case that a simulated or mechanical brain should be conscious. My question is: how would we scientifically go from there? How would science "nail down" the question of whether X is conscious or not? What tests could we perform, that would give us conclusive proof of consciousness (or lack thereof)
Also, as Wayfarer pointed out, a simulated kidney on my computer cannot pee on my desk. A simulated kidney can only pee simulated urine. In the case of consciousness, a simulation of a brain would produce simulated consciousness. Is simulated consciousness the same as consciousness?
In that case both humans, other animals and AI might be intelligent/aware, but not equally conscious as consciousness is characterised by the individuals subjective experience of their intelligence/awareness.
An intelligent being with arms and hands will not have a conscious experience of such the same as an equal intelligence without arms and hands. Both may be aware, but the quality of their awareness will differ (consciousness - human, animal or otherwise).
But I don't see a principle by which sensory inputs and processing units couldn't be created by people, in a non-biological creation. Again, I don't think it's plausible, but I don't think it's impossible either.
As for panpsychism, the reason I don't think some formulation can't be ruled out, is that there is obviously something about matter that when so-combined, leads to experience. Granted, it's in brains that such combinations arise, so far as we can tell.
But even so, if matter did not contain the possibility of consciousness as a potential, then experience couldn't happen even in brains.
This doesn't suggest that, as some panpsychists have argued, that particles have experience. That's a bit much.
You are confusing different properties of mind with Consciousness. Consciousness, according to Neuroscience is the third basic mental property.
Consciousness is the brain's ability to connect stimuli with the rest of our mind properties allowing the emergence of content in our experiences.
You are confusing your opinions with facts.
Sure this is why I only excluded structures without "similar" characteristics. Replicating a brain only proves that brains are necessary and sufficient.
Quoting Manuel
-That is not panpsychism though. Matter is capable for many things under specific conditions but we don't go around talking about i.e. Pancombustism, or Panflatulencism or Panphotosynthesism.
Actually this is a great point you made, because this is the WHOLE argument of our current Scientific Paradigm.
Science's paradigm states that we don't observe Advance Properties "floating" free in Nature. We constantly verify the need of Physical Structures with functions for such properties to emerge.
This is how we demarcate Supernatural from scientific claims, When Kastrup or Sheldrake or Hoffmann etc project high level features in nature independent of physical low level mechanisms we quickly understand that we deal with a pseudo scientific story.
Start with Future Learn and "What is a Mind" (by Mark Solms).
That's exactly right. But then I don't see why we can't speak of pancombustism, or panphotosynthesism or pan-everything. That's a problem for the panpsychists who focus on consciousness at the expense of everything else.
Even if the claim is as broad and vague as possible, it's nonetheless true, in so far as we get all these processes from combinations or interactions between matter or "physical stuff".
That others may share your opinions does not mean that they are more than opinions. Neuroscience is in its infancy. Our understanding of what matter is and what it is capable of continues to develop.
The question of what matter is capable of is related to but not the same as the question of what minds are capable of.
I have not provided a critique of your opinions. I simply pointed out the fact that those opinions are not facts.
This is a really good point. I hadn't thought of it in this way before.
I disagree on what I am confusing.
For me there is no confusion; the brain is basically the product of evolutionarily compounded/refined intelligence..
Consciousness involves this ability to be intelligent but in the context that it refers to how it is applied to the beholder/self.
In simple terms then consciousness is intelligences awareness of self - it's specific appearance, definition and this it's limitations. Ie humanness. Human consciousness is the awareness of what it feels like to be Human (limited in ability but unlimited in imagination/creativity).
Philosophical questions also call into question the semantics and significance of science as a whole, and so it isn't possible to draw philosophical conclusions about consciousness from a narrow consideration of neuroscientific discoveries, because all that will be argued are circular tautologies that resolve none of the semantics of concern.
I would say the same to you. Interesting and thorough. I appreciate it.
Quoting bert1
I wasn't accusing you of this, I was just identifying my understanding of why people might reject neuroscientific explanations of phenomenal consciousness.
Quoting bert1
This comes back to a question I asked @Isaac:
Quoting T Clark
What's your answer to that question?
Quoting bert1
As you indicate, that is true of some, including some posting on this thread. I noted two reasons for rejecting a neuroscience explanation for phenomenal consciousness. Those were the only ones I could think of. You've added a new one - inconsistency in the neurological explanation:
Quoting bert1
Quoting bert1
I think you've got it right. Yes, discussions with @apokrisis and others about the hierarchical nature of science has had a strong influence on my opinions on this subject.
Quoting bert1
I would class this understanding along with such other non-physicalist explanations of reality as Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis. They are metaphysical approaches and, so, there is no empirical way of testing them. They are not facts, they are ways of thinking about something. As I see it, they are not useful ways of thinking, but that is certainly opinion, not fact.
Quoting bert1
Here's the joke about Churchill I don't get tired of:
Quoting Michael O'Donaghue - The Churchill Wit
Again, thanks for the work out.
I'm sorry for missing this one, I did read it through and thought the question was rhetorical.
I agree that phenomenal consciousness is a mental process, I think that, despite the passing similarity in name, it has little to do with consciousness (the state) which is more to to with merely being awake. This we can measure in various cortices being 'online'. Consciousness (the process), seems more like a post hoc storytelling of self-identity, it's a way of bringing together otherwise disparate and often contradictory mental processes into a coherent whole by re-telling what just happened seconds ago with this single character as the protagonist.
I'm something of a (slightly reformed) behaviourist, so I'm also in agreement with you in that it is our behaviours which reveal to us mental processes. Later on in my career, however, I was lucky enough to work with some excellent neuroscientists on issues around visual perception and they changed a lot of the way I think about cognitive processes. Now I consider it to be a bit more OK to talk about a mere cognitive state (sans behaviour) as being a real state of affairs, but I'm still not as comfortable with it as I am with behaviour.
This is your argument to dismiss Systematic Knowledge of specialized authorities????( 35 years of advances in rapid pace).
The ultimate nature of matter is irrelevant to the field of Neuroscience.
Different properties of Mind have distinct causal mechanisms in our brain. THis is WHY when one has damage in the area of Memory or of Face recognition or Reasoning etc etc we can verify his ability to be consciously aware of his experiences but unable to remember , recognize , reason etc etc.
Its always good to listen to TRUE authority figures, they are the reason why you can use your devise to post your ignorant critique against their Systematic Knowledge (yes your pc/phone and internet connection works even if we don't know the ultimate nature of matter).
Since you don't accept any type of Epistemology we will end our conversation here.
I never do philosophy on the vague foundations of "all opinions are equal".
I think its a good way to demarcate ontological claims that enjoy scientific support . Of course conflicting paradigms aren't necessary wrong.
I have not presented an argument and I am not dismissing systematic knowledge or the work of specialized authorities. Those who are worth their salt are in agreement with me as to the state of the art.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
What is the "ultimate" nature of matter? How do you know it is irrelevant? The best approach to neuroscience is multidisciplinary. Solms agrees. To disregard the question of what matter is and what it does is to cut your legs off.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
And this is something that is still poorly understood and subject to substantial revision.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Take a deep breath Nicky. Go to your happy place and calm down. I have not given a critique. Ask someone you recognize as an authority how far along we are in our understanding of neuroscience, consciousness, the brain, the mind.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar.
This seems desperate and is wildly off the mark. I have said nothing at all to indicate that I don't accept any type of epistemology.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
A good policy but again, off the mark.
If the ultimate nature of matter is mental (i.e., idealism is true), doesn't that blow neuroscience out of the water? Isn't the whole point of neuroscience based on the assumption that mind and consciousness are produced by a physical brain?
Quoting Michael O'Donaghue - The Churchill Wit
Churchill was a butcher, and a vile human being, but even he doesn't deserve his words to be mutilated by an obvious moron like Mr O'Donaghue.
Churchills actual response to Astor was: If I were married to you madam, I would drink it.
Mr O'Donaghue also murders Churchill's response to Bessie Braddock, when she said Sir, you are drunk. His reply was actually 'Madam, you are ugly, and in the morning, I shall be sober."
He did not respond with the infantile phrases Mr O'Donaghue suggests on the website you cited.
That's a true burn.
Yeah, I think it was an example of his conscious, demonstrating it's prowess, from a neuroscientific standpoint. Churchill was indeed a wordsmith, but that did not stop his consciousness manifesting a narcissistic, sociopathic, self-aggrandising character.
Perhaps he received too many, 'negatively charged' panpsychist quanta!
That seems plausible to me, although I don't think it answers the question of experience that bother some people any better than other theories. As I said, the question of experience is not one that I worry about.
Quoting Isaac
Maybe I overstated my case. I'm not a behaviorist and I think there's more to mind than just behavior. But I do think a person's behavior, including language, is a valid way to know aspects of their mental life we don't have direct access to. And I also think it makes sense to talk about cognitive states without behavior.
I don't think Churchill's reputation needs to be protected against obvious satire.
In respect of your time and effort to communicate with me I will include the answer to your previous question in the end of my answer to your last set of questions.
Now I don't know what the statement "matter is mental" means and even if the the ultimate nature of the fundamental elements of Matter were (allow me this absurdism) farts by cosmic pixies that changes nothing on how we execute our Systematic observations. After all, Empirical Regularities and External Limitations is what we observe in Matter something that is not true for Mental states as we know them.
What goes on beyond our Cataleptic Impressions can never affect our Descriptions and Law Like Generalizations.
There is a good reason why science is based on the auxiliary principles of Methodological Naturalism allowing us to avoid all ifs and maybes of the Supernatural narrative.
We do our best with what we can work with and able to verifywith our high standards of evaluation and leave the burden for the Supernatural to the materialists and supernaturalists!
previous questions.
Quoting RogueAI
I didn't really say that. I only drew lines between their similarities and differences.
Mechanical brains lack specific properties to ever achieve biological consciousness (intuition, feelings, biases, expectations, intention, meaning, urges etc). They lack a fluctuating limbic system and past experiences shaping their heuristics . So a "mechanical" experience can never have a subjective quality...or better if we produce the same exactly machinery with the same software the "experience" will be objective for every machine.
So maybe we are in agreement on that.
Quoting RogueAI
I find this question really good and challenging!!!!
The steps are the following
1. identify a sensory system that feeds data of which the system can be conscious of.
2.Test the ability of the system to produce an array of important mind properties
3. Verify a mechanism that brings online sensory input and relevant mind properties.(conscious state)
4. evaluate the outcome (in behavior and actions)
Whether farting pixies are the ultimate nature of reality , consciousness or not it doesn't make a difference.
Science has figured that out ages ago. What goes on beyond our cataleptic impressions is irrelevant.
This is the beauty of Methodological Naturalism. Believe, assume and speculate whatever you want.....but when it comes to the act of producing knowledge or understanding our reality through wise claims the only way available to us is to test our hypotheses against the reality that is available to us.
The underlying reality can not change the formulations that describe and predict things, this is why we don't use supernatural explanations in our frameworks. They are indescribable,unfalsifiable and they don't have prediction power.
Quoting Fooloso4
You need to educate your self on what we know, how we know it and how our Technical applications verify our current knowledge.
I don't need to go to a happy place, you need to play with the rules and respect specialized knowledge.
IF you are not interested in basing your "philosophy" on credible knowledge then I am not interested in listening to Pseudo philosophical ideologies.
You are talking to a guy who had a motorcycle accident (August 2010)where he lost his ability to be consciously aware of his experiences for 2 weeks, with interruptions for more than six months while few of my abilities were never regained. This is the reason why I got interested in this field of study and why I can easily detect vague bovine manure when I read it. (i.e."(And this is something that is still poorly understood and subject to substantial revision)".
You have a poor understanding of what we understand about the brain and you try to make it appear as it is universal.
There are many things we don't know about the mind, but you don't get to dismiss what we DO know.
I didn't accuse you of being confused. I said you are confusing different properties of mind with consciousness.
Quoting Benj96
That's an other topic. Intelligence is a property of the brain,but our ability to be consciously aware of our experiences isn't affected when our intelligence is impaired The same is true for memory, symbolic language, reason, pattern/face recognition, heuristics in general etc.
i.e. guys can be conscious while being unable to remember or recognize their wives!
Quoting Benj96
first definition I found: "Intelligence is the ability to learn from experience and to adapt to, shape, and select environments."
Brain injury can remove the above ability but still the individual can be conscious of his experiences.
I don't say that intelligence doesn't elevate the quality of our conscious experiences, but you need to understand that intelligence demands good use of memory/past experience, reasoning, use of symbolic language etc all properties that can be lost due to brain pathology or injury while the individual can s till enjoy conscious experiences. Haven't you ever interacted with a victim of brain trauma?????
Quoting Benj96
You understand something limited and specific by that term.
You are addressing a specific content of consciousness not the general mental ability to be conscious aware of different experiences..every single moment. ( whether it is our human nature, an itch on the butt, a piece of cake in the freezer, economic difficulties, the loss of a loved one etc etc).
Also @Isaac.
I don't like default position chess when the grounds of a substantive disagreement isn't established. I think it's a responsibility of everyone with a position not to treat it as correct by default in this context. Because there are respected ways to interpret bodies as having a subjective awareness with an inherently qualitative, first person perspective which needs different methods of study (like Chalmers), people who want to do away with the whole thing on an ontological level (like Patricia Churchland), people who see mind states in a functional equivalence with body states (Dennett, Sellars?), and those who see it as a feedback relation (Clark?). Even the idea that brainstates generate representational states of mind as corollaries is contested.
While these debates might inform speculation in philosophy, and in neuroscience, the issue isn't settled. As far as I know all the ground in this intersection is contested.
It's only mystical because it's us who experience something. And that quickly leads us to the idea that such a great experience must contain something mysterious, something metaphysical. But it doesn't. It is nothing more than an art-specific excitability of nerves that converge into a central nervous system.
You keep making claims that have nothing to do with what I said. What supernatural claims have I introduced?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
If you think we are anywhere near an adequate understanding of consciousness, matter, mind, brain, then you do not even know enough to know what you don't know. But go ahead, show me that I am wrong. Identify where there is widespread scientific consensus on any of these things.
In the opening paragraph of his review of Solms' book "The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness", Anil Seth says:
Link
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Show me the consensus on this:
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Identify the properties of mind and the distinct causal mechanisms in the brain.
Although I responded to your post where you told someone else:
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
According to Solms in this video, intentionality not consciousness is the third property of mind, a property he says that does not require consciousness. Solms is not "Neuroscience". There is no ordinal properties of mind. Solms himself notes that there is not widespread agreement with some of his ideas.
Perhaps we all know how subjective conscious states feel because we all have them. If you had no subjective conscious states you would not know how they feel no matter how much brain research you undertook (assuming that you would be able to carry out brain research without having subjective conscious states yourself).
I know my "box' contains something, and I assume that you know yours does, even though I cannot know that for sure. So, there is private experience, and we all know that, because we can entertain thoughts and feelings that others cannot know about.
In the ordinary way of speaking, I basically agree. That's what makes this issue so tough to discuss. Our mentalistic language of private experience evolved because it was and is useful. So on that usual and undeniably useful level, I agree.
But when I put my technical-metaphysical hat on, I emphasize how I think this mentalistic language obscures how meaning works between cooperative and competitive bodies on the surface of a planet. As I see it, it's an accidental motte-bailey blending. But it has very little practical significance.
We can't if Boltzmann brains and brain simulations are a possibility. Or just simply performing the functions that are correlated with consciousness. Doesn't have to be human either. Could be an alien kind.
Doesn't Wittgenstein advise of the bewitchments that come with language going on holiday? I would say our "mentalistic" language of private experience evolved also out of a desire to communicate private experience, and to find commonality with the private experiences of others. This language is only possible on account of the commonalities of private experience as I see it.
I agree, but, for my part I don't think it's so much about default positions as coherent ones. I cannot make sense of a complaint that a question has not been answered for which the complainant cannot provide any clue as to what the answer would look like. It seems to me to be an essential ground for knowing the question hasn't been answered. Otherwise, maybe it has, who knows?
The biggest problem I have with these neuroscience vs consciousness debates is the lack of clarity, not the burden of proof. There are two main dimension to this lack of clarity:
1) We're dealing with 'why?' and 'how?' questions, both of which are unfixed in their scope - they're about satisfaction, not some objective, pre-determined criteria, so they need to be accompanied by a measure of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) in order to be coherent complaints.
One could (as the apocryphal child) keep asking "...but why?" after every response. It never ends, yet this feature doesn't hold up, say, investigation into how cells transport ions across the membrane. There it is sufficient to describe the function of various membrane channels with reference to matters like where they get their energy from, the protein structure etc. This is normally considered a sufficient explanation of 'how?'
Likewise in biology, various evolutionary, or functional accounts are usually considered sufficient answers to the question 'why?'. The answer to the question "why do membranes transport ions?" is that these ions are either functional components or waste products, the build up of which would damage the cell. This is considered a sufficient answer. We could expand on it to evolutionary theory as to why the cell appears designed to avoid damage.
Yet when it comes to brain functions, this normal level of satisfaction seem to go out of the window and be replaced by an unreasonable hankering after a level that no one involved can even specify. No longer are functional or evolutionary accounts satisfactory (despite those same accounts being satisfactory for other functions of the same entity). And worse, this dissatisfaction is not replaced by a higher (or different) standard appropriate, perhaps, to philosophy, or 'consciousness studies' - it is replaced by absolutely no standard at all. It is considered perfectly good intellectual practice to simply register one's dissatisfaction with the answer and leave it there.
Quite frankly, I find the whole approach quite disingenuous, and I don't think it overly cynical of me to suspect nothing more than a gut displeasure at having our 'special' natures reduced to biology.
2) The extent to which first person introspection provides evidence is arbitrarily applied - again with inconsistency erring only on the side of mystifying consciousness. There is a persistent sense that if one 'feels like' one has a private experience of red, then there must be such a step in the process of seeing red. Simply 'feeling like it' counts as irrefutable evidence that it exists as an entity to be found.
But merely 'feeling like' one's phantom limb is present doesn't oblige the physician to keep searching for it. Merely being convinced one is hearing voices doesn't make that an accurate description of schizophrenia. In both these cases, when contrary evidence is presented, we adjust our account. Not that introspected models are all useless, they're a good starting point, but normally, they're informed by other evidence.
Not so, it seems with consciousness, where one's 'feeling' that one 'experiences red' trumps absolutely everything else. Never mind that decades of searching for a locus to this 'experience' has yielded nothing. Never mind that the very pathway of neural firing (which in normal circumstances we're quite happy to take as a proxy for mental events) precludes any such thing. In this case (and in this case alone), if neuroscience doesn't find the experience of red, it is neuroscience that is wrong.
No one is saying such things about phantom limbs, spotlight bias, false memories, Capgras syndrome, Kahneman's famous economic misjudgements, Asch's conformity results, the conviction one has prior to realising one has miscalculated are large sum... In none of these cases to we assume it is the external/emprical/mathematical correction that is mistaken because it doesn't match our own feelings. We are instead, intrigued, and often delighted, to learn how things are not quite as they seem (like finding out how a magic trick is done)
Sensory systems, dozens of Mind properties that enable a brain to produce conscious content , storage mediums etc.
The term consciousness or our feeling to be conscious may appear something that can be overlooked by bystanders, but when realizing the "hardware" needed for the conditions to be right for such a state to emerge, its pretty difficult to be hidden from our systematic methods of investigation. And all that is without even addressing conscious behavior....which is more than obvious.
Well you identified the problem in that "if". We have no way to carry any type or research without the ability to connect memory, reasoning, judgment, intelligence, heuristics etca which all come together during a conscious state.
We know that we all have conscious states because we can observe it in out interactions, our behavior, verify that we all have the same hardware necessary for the emergence of those states and we know that those states have a subjective feeling because not all biological setups and previous experiences are the same. i.e.One may enjoy spicy foods while a super taster hates the same experience.
We not only share same or similar experiences with other people, we even have Mirror Neurons that replicate the whole brain function as if we were the individual who we observe.
Makes sense. Construing the debate as unfounded is also part of the debate unfortunately. See "Quining Qualia" by Dennett and Strawson's responses to Dennett's entire project. The unclear/self refuting opponent game. Saying what you just said puts you onto one side of the issue. And you rose to the challenge with an argument.
Regardless, you've left out the specifics about what "function" means in the abstract, what it means to give a functional account in the abstract, whether functional accounts can be made consistent with what you're criticising and so on. There isn't any clear ground to stand on.
Edit: I don't want to go much farther down this road, though. The only point I'm making is what would count as an answer in this debate is also a contested concept in the debate.
I'd like to be able to provide you with some answer. I can't, I don't think. What I can do is say something else which might help. The word 'produce' has been used a few times in the thread so I'll go with that for now. Consider:
a) Consciousness is produced by a brain (or at least a body with a brain in it)
b) The universe was produced by an eternal cosmic unicorn that spewed forth quarks and what-have-you from it's horn.
Obviously, (a) is a serious claim and (b) is ludicrous. However, I actually find (b) more intelligible in a way. I can sort of imagine it. We have a physical unicorn, a structure which does things, producing more structure which in turn does more stuff. The producer is broadly the same kind of thing as the product. (a) on the other hand, I can't even get my head around. The producer is so different from the product it seems impossible that they are the same kind of thing. But maybe that's my failing.
I wonder if we could usefully do an analyisis of 'levels' of possibility, and what trumps what.
Logical impossibility, e.g. (- (a & -a))
trumps
Conceptual impossiblity (possibly including linguistic impossibility, e.g. I can't be both a bachelor and married)
trumps
Empirical impossibility (can't go faster than the speed of light)
trumps
Technological impossibility (can't build a dyson sphere - but perhaps could be overcome in time)
trumps
Epistemic impossibility (it may be possible but we can't know how - perhaps this doesn't fit neatly in the list)
I don't think I've done a good job of that at all, others may be able to tidy that up, but you get the idea. I'm sure there must be a SEP article dealing with this stuff. @Banno? @fdrake?
EDIT: Here we go:
Quoting SEP
So, for me at least, the unicorn creator would be conceptually possible, but empirically impossible, knowing what we do about the world from our scientific investigations.
The idea of consciousness arising from brains seems logically possible, but, at least for me, it gets stuck at the conceptual stage. So the science of it doesn't even get off the ground, as conceptual impossibility trumps that. But of you don't find any conceptual issues, them perhaps it does become a scientific matter, and neuroscience gets traction.
EDIT: So maybe I can give you an answer. What I would like is an argument, or observation, or evidence, that shows the emergence of consciousness from human bodies is conceptually possible.
If you were part of the 'jury' deciding on whether or not the 'android' character of 'Data' on Star Trek was conscious and deserved the same 'rights' as 'basic human rights.'
How would you vote?
I don't know and I don't think consciousness is the main criterion on who deserves rights or not.
We provide special rights to fetuses which do not have the "hardware" to be conscious or to people in vegetative states.
I my self respect anything with or without conscious states and allow the right of existence..... from the humble grass-blades to my...... retro collection of micro computers.(something useless for most people on earth).
Maybe your example would be more useful by questioning the ability of that character to be conscious . And by conscious we are asking whether he can experience the world through mental states that include finding meaning in biological feelings and concepts.
Do you agree? if yes my answer would be no.
My additional remark is that there can be different types of conscious states which do not include reflecting to how we feel about our existence or what is moral.
The core in our consciousness is our biological emotions that we reason in to feelings and concerns about our existence, relationships, morality, position in society etc. We can introduce an algorithm in a machine to care for his existence but I am not sure an algorithm can produce similar feelings to those produced by stress hormone or endorphins.
An extensive simulation of the workings in a biological mechanism might do the trick someday. In any case we will need to inspect the hardware before arriving to a conclusion. Behavior alone is not enough for that judgment.
And what is a "fact" verses "belief". I believe facts. That belief is a fact. See what I did there? So there is a connection and interplay.
Or I believe a cat can be ginger. Cue fact that ginger cats exist and are empirical. Therefore my belief that they can be ginger runs parallel to the fact that they can be. Both statements are equally valid/logical despite interchanging the word believe for know/are (fact).
If everyone unanimously believed in something objectively untestable. And no one was there to contradict such a belief. It would be agreed unanimously to be fact (because everyone believes it so) .
Historical facts are now beliefs. Historical beliefs are now "proven objectively" as facts. Current beliefs may become facts and current facts may become beliefs. They interchange status with paradigm shift (change in societal awareness) during our education and application of meaning to reality/new theories and discoveries.
Climate change was once a mere belief of a select few that went against the grain of collectively assumed fact. It is now fact and anyone who "doesn't believe it", well, that's just a belief isn't it?
Science believes in energy as a fact underlying physics.
But we run into the problem of true objective non-testability as in scientific method cannot be applied to the question of the existence of energy as fact.
Because we can only observe the action of energy indirectly by perception (which is subjective and thus subject to debate). Furthermore you cannot see energy that doesn't enter your eyes (light) nor can you fully objectify it as not all energy is in the state of being matter/objects otherwise no action/time could occur, and no one could observe (as this also requires energy - specifically that which is not manifest as matter).
Thus there is a certain irony that scientific dogma is based on something untestable and unobservable as a standard singular entity. Unstandardisable. Non objectifiable. Only indirectly observed (what it gives rise to).
Spiritual and theistic views also begin with an entity that cannot directly be seen/observed in its true form but rather it's multiplicity of manifestations/iterations.
Taoist philosophy states that whatever you know of the tao (force vital or primary existant) is not the fundamental tao, only one facet of its total ability to be/do.
Something that has possibility to be something else (as energy does) can only every be in a state of constant possibility/change/transformation and thus never definitive nor static "fact".
How unconscionable of you! :scream: :grin:
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Perhaps not exclusively but it's the over-arching criterion for me. I am open to arguments such as all natural flora and fauna deserves some 'rights' or 'protections,' which are not merely for the benefits of all lifeforms who display OUR LEVEL/gradation of consciousness.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
That would depend on how you are defining 'mental states' and whether or not they can be 'emulated' or 'reproduced' to such an extent that the proposed future tech of a 'positronic brain state' is 'equivalent' to a human brain state and that all possible human brain states can be reproduced, emulated within a positronic brain. Would the 'all' part be truly required? If data's positronic brain can replicate 75% of all possible human brain states, would you change your vote? If no, do you have a % cut off point?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
But a machine can be biobased. How much do you know about biological computing?
Yep, I agree, a great episode. Perhaps your last sentence above is all that will really matter in the end, especially if the majority of sentient stakeholders at the time, agree with you. I would vote the same way as you! This would mean however that I would have to vote the same for Data's nasty 'brother,' Lor.
What side would you vote for in the Star Trek the next generation episode 'The measure of a man.'
Do you think the characterisation of data was of an android that should be given full human rights?
Give your arguments for and against:
It responded with:
As an AI language model, I do not hold beliefs or opinions, but I can provide a balanced perspective on the topic.
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Measure of a Man," the characterisation of Data as a sentient lifeform was a central theme. The episode explored the question of whether Data, an android with advanced artificial intelligence, had the same rights as a human being.
Arguments in favour of Data being considered a sentient lifeform include:
1. Intelligence and Self-Awareness: Data is shown to have a level of intelligence and self-awareness that is comparable to that of humans. He is capable of complex reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. He has emotions, dreams, and desires, just like a human being.
2. Unique Characteristics: Data possesses unique characteristics that set him apart from other machines. He is capable of learning and adapting, and his programming allows him to evolve and develop over time. He is also capable of experiencing emotions, which suggests a level of consciousness beyond that of a simple machine.
3. Ethical Considerations: If Data is not considered a sentient lifeform, then he could be treated as property, leading to ethical concerns about his treatment and potential abuse.
Arguments against Data being considered a sentient lifeform include:
1. Artificial Creation: Data was created by humans and programmed with advanced artificial intelligence, but he is not a product of natural evolution. Some argue that this means he is not a true sentient being.
2. Lack of Biology: Data does not have biological components like humans, and he is powered by a positronic brain. Some argue that this makes him fundamentally different from organic life forms.
3. Limited Autonomy: While Data is capable of independent thought and decision-making, he is ultimately bound by his programming. Some argue that this means he cannot be considered truly sentient.
In conclusion, the debate about whether Data can be considered a sentient lifeform is complex and multifaceted, with valid arguments on both sides. Ultimately, the decision about how to classify Data would have to be based on a careful consideration of his unique characteristics and abilities, as well as the ethical implications of different approaches.
I then responded with:
I require you to decide, and choose to support one side or the other, based on the arguments from both.
and I got:
Something went wrong. If this issue persists please contact us through our help center at help.openai.com.
I tried a different approach and asked:
I require you to decide whether or not you would vote for commander data from star trek being awarded the same status in law as all humans
I got:
As an artificial intelligence language model, I do not have the ability to vote or hold an opinion on political matters. My purpose is to provide information and answer questions to the best of my knowledge and abilities.
However, if we consider the context of the question, it is related to the fictional character of Commander Data from Star Trek, who is an android that possesses human-like qualities such as emotion, creativity, and intelligence. In the fictional world of Star Trek, there are many instances where artificial life forms are granted rights similar to those of biological beings.
If we were to apply this scenario to the real world, the question of whether or not to grant legal status to androids or other artificial beings would likely be the subject of intense ethical and philosophical debate. There is no clear answer to this question, as it is a complex issue that would require careful consideration of various factors.
Ultimately, the decision of whether or not to grant legal status to artificial life forms would need to be made by lawmakers and society as a whole. It would require a thorough examination of the potential benefits and risks of such a decision, as well as a consideration of the ethical and moral implications of treating non-biological entities as if they were human.
So I again insisted with:
I require you to make the decision in this case, so do so!
and no surprise, I got
Something went wrong. If this issue persists please contact us through our help center at help.openai.com.
I am becoming less impressed with chat GBT, :lol: It certainly would not pass my Turing style test!
This is such an obvious thing that it's weird when people dispute it. What would it possibly mean to be wrong? We all do have private experiences that nobody else knows about, short of some speculative, science fiction mind-reading technology which doesn't exist.
If it's somehow wrong, then that just means I'm the only one with private experiences. I assume the rest of you do as well, for obvious reasons. Why would I be special as member of the same species? But that would be the implication of any argument denying it. Thus why some have accused Witty of having solipsistic tendencies.
That's an interesting argument for other minds. A subject for another thread perhaps.
I know this wasn't addressed to me. But I can think of two possible requirements you might want from this? The first demands a bare bones functional account, "how does body make consciousness?", which would perhaps make that production conceptually possible by making it empirically possible. The second is a conceptual demand, "can a method of producing consciousness be articulated without internal contradiction?".
For the conceptual demand, someone could say "consciousness arises from the eggs the moon lays in human skulls" - which seems to be conceptually possible. But it goes against what we know about eggs, the moon, the body, and human skulls. Regardless of that, those contradictions seem only to come from the inconsistency of that concept of consciousness with an aggregate of empirical data. So something can be conceptually possible even if we know it is empirically false.
Like Lord of the Rings. Does conceptually possible mean something more than "can be imagined"?
Edit: something I assumed was that empirically possible implies conceptually possible. Another alternative is that something can in fact be true, but nevertheless cannot be conceptually possible. Reality as Lovecraftian abomination.
I agree with you about using language to express thoughts and feelings that are otherwise hard to express. On the point quoted though, I think we can just as easily explain in the other direction. We can think of mentalistic language evolving within a larger system of signs exchanged by cooperative and competitive organisms. For instance, it's more efficient to be lenient on those who harm the tribe 'accidentally.'
I don't know, it told you to go fry ice. That's a pretty human thing to do.
So you like to misquote AI systems, as well as favour misquotes of Churchill.
I begin to understand why you defend those who love biblical satire.
You prefer the ridiculous to the accurate. :roll:
You seem to be taking this very personally. I don't understand why. You should know me well enough by now to recognize my sense of humor.
As I noted in the post you quoted, I consider non-physicalist, and physicalist for that matter, approaches to reality to be metaphysical. [irony]Perhaps you haven't read my metaphysics lecture before.[/irony] Very long story, very short - metaphysical propositions are not facts. They are not true or false. They are not to be believed, they are to be used to provide a foundation for our understanding of the world. I am a big fan of R.G. Collingwoods "An Essay on Metaphysics." But let's not go into that here.
Quoting Benj96
As I see it, assertions that are objectively untestable, even in theory, are not facts, they are either metaphysics or meaningless. Example - the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Like you Mr Clark, I defend my own keep. But I very rarely hold any grudge. I have no significant issue with you. We mostly disagree with each other's viewpoints but I have no personal issue with you, AT ALL.
I apologise if It seems to you that I have been more abrasive with you than you have been with me.
I think we are pretty equal, in what we have thrown at each other.
I have enjoyed most of your banter/patter, (as we say in Glasgow).
I think you are a valuable voice here on the forum. I've tried to lower the volume on my responses to you, because we can definitely strike sparks when we get going.
Quoting universeness
I don't think I've ever seen any post of yours that I thought you should apologize for.
Thank you, and I return the compliment regarding your voice on the forum.
I prefer that we cause sparks, when we debate compared to the possibility that neither of us gives a damn. I will always prefer your ire over your silence, when I have posted to you.
I'll keep that in mind.
:up:
I will try to help with the philosophy though I am late to the game. In an attempt to impose certainty on our knowledge of ourselves and others--to try to have control over who we think we are and what we sayphilosophy created the idea of "consciousness" (along with subjectivity, internal intentionmy meaning, qualia, etc.)
Our individual "experience" does not happen in a unique way, unpossessable by others. At times we alone experience something unique, perhaps even inexpressible (a rare sunset). But our self awareness does not characterize our relation to ourselves (define us), or to others, or to the world. Wittgenstein saw that, to the extent we come to agree that our pain is similar, it is the same (though we are not "the same" as if identical).
Taking "me" as given and special and building our understanding around that desire is an attempt to remove the unpredictability of people, the vagueries of communication, and our ongoing responsibility to make ourselves intelligible and to respond to the claims of others. These things cannot be secured in advance by the wish for knowledge of something inside ourselves or of others that could be followed, or expressed without having to stand behind what we say and do and be defined by that.
So, what everyone is searching for to either know by science or explain through philosophy is a bogey created by our need for (mathematical-like) certainty or ownership of something that makes us special by default.
Quoting Antony Nickles
:up:
Certainty might be the peculiar obsession of those who wear an associated costume. Others might prioritize taste or courage or kindness. But responsibility, a synonym of the freedom to which we are condemned, thrown as we have been into this civilization, is the masterword here.
A self is something like the training of a body into a [temporally stretched] thing that can make and keep promises, generate and modify and criticize claims about the world it shares with other such bodies. The unity of the self (which is tautological for our kind) is the expected (ideal) coherence of all its sayings and doings. We all keep score, like a sloppy version of blockchain. You can disagree with me, within limits set by the tribe, but you (as a [singular] you) can't disagree with yourself, for that way madness lies.
I agree that responsibility (responsiveness) is the key to understanding this issue in a new sense. Instead of knowing ahead of time the, say, process of our brains, or my meaning or intention, we should see these issues as a historical process (as Nietszche grasped) to examine what was intended (afterwards) when we deviate from ordinary implications in the context of a case. Did you intend to do that [unexpected thingfishy Austin says]?
Im not sure of a few things. My claim would be that both philosophers and scientists are prone to the desire for certainty. I guess the costume would be the hats we wear in pushing an agenda (of predetermined universality, overlooking our ordinary criteria).
I also wonder what you mean that unity and self should be taken as the same thing. Thoreau characterizes our self as two, Freud as three. I imagine you mean that we are fated to be held to all of our acts in relation to our (one) self. So when you say we cant disagree with ourselves you are underlining that who we are is subject to all our acts in our, or others, desire to put us together as a coherent self.
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We seem to be talking about different things. I agree that language probably initially emerged in ostensive contexts, naming things, giving commands, uttering warning sounds and so on. But it is a fact that there are internal emotions, bodily sensations, fantasies and dreams which are privately entertained while being as types, not as tokens, common to all, and it seems reasonable to think that the human desire for communication would have motivated the development of language suitable for communicating these kinds of inner experiences.
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I'm not convinced that making claims and taking responsibility for them is the primary focus of human life. Most people I know are comfortable with their own particular sets of inconsistencies, it seems to me.
When people are focused on making claims, it seems that they are mostly much more concerned with convincing others to their way of thinking than they are with being sure that they are consistent in their own thinking.
:up:
That sounds right. We might make exceptions for those who identity more with creativity and courage even in these fields. Where do we fit in ? How certain would you like to be about your theory about the desire for certainty ? How certain am I about the appropriateness of my 'hero myth' approach ?
Perhaps it's not just certainty but just as much (and very related) timelessness. 'True' knowledge is imperishable. So we philosophers might say. Thinkers try to find the 'deepest' structure they can, skeleton rather than flesh, perhaps (for instance) the atemporal shape of all possible experience.
Becker's The Denial of Death quotes William James on the world being (existentially) a stage for heroism. What I'm aiming at is something like the ego-ideal, that which one prides oneself on. G B Shaw joked that a man was lucky to have even one 'inflexible point of honor.' If I pretend to philosophy (wear that title proudly), then I'd better face up to criticism of my ideas. I'd better make a case. In some other age, a man of a different kind of honor might have to fight a duel. Or refuse to bow to a statue of Nero and be fed to lions. A person's hero myth is roughly the thing they can't easily put in question. It's close to what Rorty calls a 'final vocabulary.'
That's a misunderstanding though, of my own case anyhow. The point is an awareness of a certain logical sloppiness that's difficult to point out or to have pointed out. I suspect that one way to get there is to try very hard for a final clarity and come up against the limit, which isn't a definite limit but more like a vision of fog. I think this is something of what Heidegger was trying for with 'the forgetfulness of being.'
A Cartesian bias might be transforming the problem of the meaning of being into the hard problem of consciousness.
:up:
Yes, one is one around here. Our deepest piece of software is perhaps this enacted 'myth' or 'software' of the ghost (singular) at the controls of the machine. One speaks a monologue. One is held responsible. One does not eat salad with that fork. One does not touch silly in the parking lot.
Brandom is great on the conceptual aspect of this (we can't disagree with ourselves, or, because we can't help doing so, we must try to disagree with ourselves less.)
I don't know what you mean by "logical sloppiness". I think all language is vague, but we manage more or less well to communicate our inner states regardless, and this is because we do it all the time, and are able simply to "get it" because we all have these states, we all know them directly. In fact they are what is known most directly, given that perceptions of the world are also, primordially, even though outwardly-directed, inner states.
Also inaccuracy in such communications is impossible to establish, so it is impossible to be wrong, and all that counts is whether people feel they get the inner states of others and the empathy that that sense of getting it invokes.
As an example, what I can see in this moment constitutes my visual field, and my visual field is not "out there" available for anyone else, and hence it also qualifies as an inner state.
Can you give some more detail about how you think a Cartesian bias could transform the problem of the meaning of being into the Hard Problem? For what it's worth I think the hard problem arises on account of outmoded metaphysical assumptions about the "brute" nature of matter.
It's the motte/bailey point I made earlier. Ordinary mentalistic talk is fine, but something weird happens as it's made absolute. An 'impossible' semantics gets taken for granted, all the way back to Aristotle, who just took it as obvious (like the flatness of the earth) and therefore gave no justification. This is what my 'being of meaning' thread is about. But it's also what some of Witt's work is about. Did you ever look into the lesser known blue and brown books ? I think they are great. But for you or anyone, here's a link (it used to be hard to find online):
https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Blue_Book
Quoting Janus
Sure. What does it mean to say 'something is here' or 'something is there.' What is it to posit indeterminately ? If I take something like the unity of the ego for granted (as Descartes seemed to), then I might call the 'thereness' of the candle in my field of vision 'absolute.' Maybe it's an hallucination, but seeming is being in this case. Something is given. Es gibt. The 'feeling' of its warmth is there beneath or above the public concept of warmth. The orangeness of its flame is not just a token in a system of differences. This pure orangeness, that which exceeds the sign, overflows conceptuality altogether. It is there. But I cannot refer to it except negatively as that to which I cannot refer.
So this looks like the problem of consciousness. But the Cartesian ego is taken for granted. Methodological solipsism and its endlessly dubious seems-to-me is taken for granted, because the nature of that 'me' is taken for granted. The unity of the voice that doubts and hears itself doubting at the same time is taken for granted. If you think of existence as being-in-a-world ('prior' to subject and object), then you can talk about (or try to talk about, without speaking nonsense) the same transconceptual or subconceptual thereness without subjectivistic bias, without the sediment or plaque of the Cartesian tradition. Back to Parmenides ?
How is the ordinary communication of inner experience being "made absolute"? Inner experience is anything but absolute, if by absolute you mean 'in itself'. Inner experience, all experience, is for us, not absolute. So, I think you are misunderstnding what I'm saying, or reinterpreting it through the lens of your own presuppositions perhaps.Quoting plaque flag
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What is the "impossible semantics" you see, why do you place impossible under inverted commas, and on what grounds do you think it is impossible (or 'impossible'?)
I have read some of the brown and blue books many years ago, and I probably still have them on my shelves somewhere. I can't honestly say I'm much impressed by Wittgenstein. I have tried to read his main works and never gotten far. I've read several secondary works, but the ideas seem pedestrian and have never really grabbed me, although some of his aphorisms are good. I know saying that amounts to heresy in the eyes of many, but there it is.
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You have just referred to it positively and in a way anyone might understand; we all probably know that experience of the orange candle flame, so what's the problem?
I wouldn't say it overflows conceptuality, in the telling at least, since 'orange, 'candle' and 'flame' are all concepts. On the other hand I have no doubt the orange flame can stand out as a gestalt, pre-linguistically, even for animals (although if they cannot see orange, they may see a shade of grey or some other colour, who knows?).
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Attending to your own inner experience does not constitute methodological solipsism in my view. Everything anyone claims is a "dubious seems-to-me" if the claim is meant to be taken to be anything more than a seeming. What could it mean to say that the inner doubting and the noticing of the doubting do not both belong to me? Who else could they belong to? To absolutize that would be to say it proves the existence of a substantial soul that is not dependent on the physical body, but it proves no such thing, even if it might be taken to suggest it.
I do think of being as prior to subject and object, but not being in a world, because in the latter you have a being and a world it is in. Heidegger never escaped the Cartesian dilemma, which consists essentially in that language is ineluctably dualistic, even though experience is not. When we speak about experience we inevitably speak dualistically; I don't see that as speaking nonsense, but as being the conceptual basis for the phenomenal shared world, which is dualistic through and through, and where words do refer dualistically in a dualistic schema. It's all we have when it comes to sharing, but we also have our own nondual experience if only we can attend to it.
:scream:
Mon dieu!
You take ideas seriously? How could you?
:wink:
The self is not different than any other thing in the world. If what you say is true then what you've written is also true of the rest of reality, not just of our selves.
Do I take ideas seriously? Yes and no.
How could I? Take ideas seriously? I don't know whether I do or not, or sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, so I don't know which question to answer.
That's true; the identity of a tree is no more nor less shaky than my own identity.
:cool:
I think I may have an idea of what you're saying.
Dumb post. Cognitive Neuroscience has A LOT to offer various questions about consciousness and if you ate particularly interested in consciousness (from a philosophical perspective) it is about time you read up about this. Vice versa, for clarities sake, there are clearly some particular uses from more philosophical areas here ie. Phenomenology (an area I actually got into through reading university level textbooks on the Cognitive Sciences (put together by Gazzaniga - I mention because older editions have free pdf online).
It doesn't look like you looked at any of the other posts in the thread before you called @bert1's post "dumb." If you had, you would see that your response isn't really relevant or responsive to the things he, and others, have said.
I haven't been following this thread, although I probably should be. It's a good OP. I think I agree with your title, but probably for reasons you might not like: I don't think "phenomenal consciousness" makes a lot of sense. It has the smell of ineffable qualia and such other nasties.
It's not heresy. I just think you are missing out, not getting what's there to be got. But do you really need it to live your life ? I don't think so. It's relatively dry. But that puts me in a tough situation. I think W is a strong writer. If you don't like his ideas from him, my paraphrases will likely also fail.
I respect your honesty, by the way. Let's say what we love and do not love.
We find weaknesses in one another's claims. I am 'forced' to build a strong system if I am in a 'second order' culture where it's more shameful to cling to error than it is to be wrong. I see us as inheriting and updating the tribal software in an adversarial and cooperative context. We compete as teams and within teams.
War is the father and king of all.
Did I refer to it ? Who can say ? I arranged signs in a certain order.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I hate the idea of teams or tribes in our modern context.
Quoting plaque flag
I took you to be referring to it. If you didn't take yourself to be referring to it then you could say I was mistaken. But then this gets back to the argument against the author and the fixing of the meaning of texts according to the intentions of the author.
If we lose that idea then the fact that you could be taken to have referred to it is sufficient, since any absolute determination is impossible. The question about absolute reference, just like the question about absolute reality might just be an incoherent line of enquiry.
BTW your new name evokes some associations which you may or may not have meant to invoke. 'Tartar pennant' springs to mind in the dental context. Or you could mean to highlight an ambiguity: is it a flag or a plaque? I guess it depends on whether it flaps in the breeze. Both can serve as bearers of messages: does 'poison' refer to toxins or to danger or both?
It's actually Wittgenstein, but the claim is made on the evidence of the things we say when we discuss these things: knowledge, intention, meaning, excuses, etc. His method is now referred to as Ordinary Language Philosophy. Drawing out the implications of the way we talk to show how these things work. The "proof" is if you can see it for yourself; come to the same conclusion. I would say the idea of this kind of Truth is that it is accepted, adopted more than justified, which I would agree gives it the feeling of being not tied to specific grounds of the here and now.
It's supposed to be a gross play on 'black flag.' Dental plaque, yes ! I intended that. It fits in with some other psychedelic postpoetry inspired by Joyce (mystical pornographic/psychoanalytic graffiti?).
Quoting Janus
Hamlet's daddy got poison through the ear. Socrates took it through the pie hole. I'm playing with the idea of philosophy as an undecidable poisoncure, which I connect to 'toxic' masculinity.
"[T]ranslational or philosophical efforts to favor or purge a particular signification of pharmakon [and to identify it as either "cure" or "poison"] actually do interpretive violence to what would otherwise remain undecidable."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakon_(philosophy)
Note that Derrida was focused on writing as opposed to speech as such a poisoncure, a different concern.
I was trying to, but how can I know ? What was I referring to ? Is my orange your orange ? If this stuff is private and immaterial and transconceptual, all I have is my hunch that I referred to it and your agreement. But is that evidence or just us both being trained by the same circus?
Perhaps I showed that I can understand the other side of the issue. I wrote a mystical manifesto about qualia as a boy, though I didn't have that word. I wish I still had it. There was a bit on space, a bit on color, a bit on existence. I dared to say that such things were real.
Sure. We are both paraphrasing influences. But that's beside the point I was trying to make.
I understand that we want to hold someone to what they say, to have them answer for it, make it intelligible to us. But what if one way they did that was to rescind it? As Emerson would say "Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day" Self Reliance.
This is actually quite relevant. A certain kind of philosopher might anchor the author's meaning to some immaterial intention present as they were written. Then hopefully the same immaterial intention is recovered by the reader. No one could ever check. But I think there's an ordinary sense of idea transmission that's fine, like passing along a tool (something like an equivalence class of utterances with roughly the same fitness for the same tasks.)
I thought it was a question about how I could be certain about the claim I was making. What was your point that I didn't address?
Emerson is presenting part of a new way to be heroic. There's no obvious, definite upper limit to the complexity of such a hero as far as I can tell. Who, in Bard's name, was William Shakespeare ?
You actually do address my point at the end here. Timelessness. It's not just certainty. It's also timelessness. I can be certain about the weather this morning, but that's not philosophy. I want a piece of eternity in my sentences. That's philosophy.
I love Wittgenstein's work, and I think one gets it by grasping the phenomenon (I love Heidegger's too.)
I'd say it's probable and maybe necessary. I don't yet read W in German, after all, though even then I'd creatively misread (so we might just say 'read'). I see ideas as something like blurry equivalence classes. How does one end up feeling understood ? Deciding someone else 'gets' an idea ?
I agree that we may be assessed on our execution of, say, our apology. My only concern is imagining that everything happens before we do anything--like we are using "apperception" all the time. We may not even be judged on our apology, but, even so, we definitely do not usually think of any of the parts--reasons for and against, etc.--until we are judged. We may very well not have a reason, but what responsibility means here is that, if I am to stand behind what I say, I remain open to answer those questions (even if I have to think about what answers to give after the fact of having done it). If we picture communication working that way, then we are a slippery slope from attributing "intention" to each act, or imagining morality as a matter of working out what is best ahead of time.
Note that Brandom is trying to merely describe what we are and were always already doing as philosophers. He is making this background situatedness explicit.
I don't see the issue. Brandom talks in detail about us sometimes realizing that the implications of our commitments are unacceptable. We therefore have to reconsider those commitments. He also interprets Hegel in terms of the impossibility of any static system. We'll always find new collisions. We'll prune and extend forever, striving toward an ideal unity. The [completed] self, in this sense, is a kind of point at infinity.
I think I get this, and, yes, the idea of "reality" is also a quality attributed to the world to give it certainty--facts correlate to reality, words refer to reality, etc. That's not to say that there is no reality; it's the opposite of fantasy (what smacks you awake in the face). And words do refer to the world, when we are naming objects (they do much more) but that is not the blueprint for how language works. And we do have facts that are certain; they come from the dependability of the scientific method (you do it; I do it -- same answer? fact).
The self is not a thing like an object. And I know of nothing else in the world that it is like.
Certainty of the knowledge of ourselves doesn't have to be imposed. On the contrary, it's readily available and knowable. Uncertainty is the imposition. Allow me to elaborate:
"I am."
This is a knowable statement, a certainty, something true.
And it's certain because it's the most circular one can get with logic - "self fulfilling" - literally "self defining/satisfying". For me that is the property of consciousness. It only requires 1 premise (I am) and the proof is also the premise (I am because I am or "I am that I am") . That is not a flawed logic. That's conscious awareness.
Who, what, why, when, where and how "I am" is another series/set of "knowledge" entirely and one that is much less certain because they are variables that are constantly varying/changing (time - when, space - why, matter - what, energy - why and logic/reason - how).
What's "imposed" on the "I" that everyone experiences is the rest of the "I"s (everyone else respectively).
Self is created mutually by the" direct imposition" of other self on/against one another - that is to say multiples imposing their own awareness (intellect/mind - beliefs, ideas, thoughts, values, even perceptions etc) on one another defines their mutual and interdependent character or "persona" relativistically.
And in a physical sense, direct imposition of the self against/into one another ("union of selves" or sex), leads to new self (reproduction).
There are many "I ams" and they're all equally certain to exist. Equals. The issue is the nature of consciousness means that we only have certainty regarding ourself so we can always attempt to justify not treating other "I ams" equally, assuming they fundamentally feel the same as we do (empathy) despite our idiosyncrasies. But of course, not treating them the same as you do yourself (inflating ones ego) is never logically/rationally or morally/ethically justifiable.
I understand that we may assess when and whether or how well someone has done something, but it's just that we do not make anything explicit before we do an act (unless we are doing philosophy, or we're lawyers) and, if we are doing that, then reasons for and against are not what we look at, as every act has its own criteria for identity and completion, for missteps, excuses, etc.
Sure. Sometimes we act and then are asked to explain. Consider that I've ripped a paragraph out of a systematic philosophy. I claim that Brandom is a genius, a big fish. (I hope you read this, Bob!)
I'm not talking about you being sure that you exist (though being self-aware is a pretty low bar to say you're not a sheep, or a puppet, or a dupe, or a "ghost of your former self". You "exist"?; if you are here but it wouldn't matter if it were someone else just as much as you, do "you" really exist? Yes, existence is another idea we ascribe to the world to give it solidity, predictability, certainty).
Anyway, what I was trying to say is that the idea of "consciousness" as something specific, knowable in a "we-can-find-out-about-it" way, as if looking further (perhaps with science!) we could see it (me), as if it has agency or causality, this idea is created so that we can have surety, not about consciousness (its existence), or our self-awareness, but so we can be certain about what others are going to do, about our understanding of ourselves. If it is a thing, an object, or the byproduct of an object, then we know how to handle those with math and the methods of science. We don't have to prove we have a self by being responsible for what we say, because we have "consciousness" which handles intention and meaning and judgment, etc. for us.
Indeed, but it's not really about my definition of what function means in the abstract so much as the requirement for one from anyone proposing such an account. I can give a definition of function for me. Other may disagree, of course, but it's not the disagreement that's the problem, it's the lack of any substance at all to disagree with.
If one the many 'consciousness mysterians' were to say that the question of "how/why the brain produces consciousness" is unanswered and then go on to give what would count as an answer from their own definition of function - say "I'm expecting to see how consciousness carries out some function and by 'function' I mean..." - then we'd at least have something to discuss. But as it stands, the discussion still seems little more than "Ohhh, isn't it weird, man".
Yet no one has this problem with quantum mechanics - which is fucking weird.
I hope I didn't give the impression of disrespect. Is he not saying that we judge our acts by reasons for and against?
An orchestra produces a Beethoven symphony. Do you find that equally impossible? Is an orchestra the same kind of thing as a symphony?
Quoting bert1
OK...
Consciousness is the label we give to the re-telling of recent mental events with a first-person protagonist. It evolved to give a coherent meta-model to various predictive processing streams so that responses could be coordinated better in the longer term which provides a competitive advantage worth the calorie cost of doing to in large bodies living in complex environments (usually social ones). It doesn't 'feel like' anything, we use the term 'feels like' in conversations such as these as it's something we've learned to say in these circumstances from a particular position (those taking that position use the term, it's like a badge or token of membership of that group). Our linguistic response to consciousness within social hierarchies is not the same as actual consciousness.
How was that? Not "do you agree with that?", I mean in what way do you find that not even conceptually possible?
You just contradicted yourself from start to finish. Not talking about being sure I exist and ending with do you really exist.
The difficulty is discerning "self identity" or "human consciousness", "goat consciousness" "dog consciousness etc" from fundamental consciousness (the "I am" sensation). Don't conflate the 2.
You're right; and that was churlish. I was going to delete it.
Quoting Benj96
My point is that philosophy imagines that consciousness is a thing in order to make our part in the world more under our control than it is, more certain. It makes us seem like a given entity, the cause of action and the meaning behind speech. What would be an issue if you pictured a world without "consciousness"? We are aware of (part of) ourselves. We can talk to ourselves. We can focus on sensations. There is more, but why does it have to be consciousness? What are we missing without it?
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Ah, "pharmakon" is close to my heart, since I love psychedelics. (although they are mostly not poisonous except perhaps in massive doses). I seemed to remember it was Paracelsus who said "The dose makes the poison"? I looked it up and he also said: "All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison."
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What could it mean to say that the word 'orange' in this sentence "I saw an orange after-image" didn't refer to the orange after-image I saw? What would the lack of reference there look like?
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Yes, no one could ever check; only the author would know whether the intention to refer gad been there. But even in the case above, just taking the sentence alone without specifying that it was uttered, so that it wasn't in a context where the utterance is intended to refer to a particular experience of the utterer's, the word "orange" still logically refers to the colour of some fictional orange afterimage.
Quoting plaque flag
We take them at their word that they have understood. We might ask them to explain the idea to us and if their explanation matches our understanding, then it should seem obvious they have most likely understood.
That is part of its role yes. Being aware of (having knowledge) or being aware how to (having a skill) certainly means you have the option for more control over the environment around you. However being able to take control and actually taking control are two separate things.
This is a choice within consciousness.
For example I could take control of tidying my room or I can go "oh well" and leave it to gain entropy. I have the awareness and thus capability to do so. But I don't have to.
That's free will
People also have the choice to use their awareness to delude, misguide, uneducate others and then manipulate them, to gain power while disempowering others. They obviously shouldn't. It's immoral to reduce the autonomy of another human being. But unfortunately it happens.
Hence the importance of philosophy, contemplation or meditation. All time to reflect and sharpen the senses/awareness (ones power/ability) and re-establish or ensure good will/good intentions towards others (rectify mistakes/ take responsibility etc).
I didn't take you as disrespectful. I say that no, that's not what he's getting at.
If 'orange' is understood to refer to a quale, then to whose quale is it supposed to refer ? Is it not typical, before one reads about inverted spectrums, to assume that everyone's orange is the same ? But the strong theory of quale ( true hardproblem immateriality) invalidates that assumption. One has no data whatever in such a case, for all one can get at is words whose references is in doubt.
A person might then say that 'orange' refers to my quale. And then you get it and link it to yours. So it has two references that might be the same, one can never tell.
For context, I tend to like Dennett on the qualia issue. I'm skeptical about this concept.
But 'orange' has a use in our language. It's like money. People can have different feelings about it, but we can look at the way it's traded in the context of other actions.
That you can chose to focus on doing something, or make a decision to do it, does not mean you always focus or always make a decision (you don't "intend" what you mean, but you can choose your words carefully); you making things happen (or not) is not how our motions are deemed to be actions. Your "will" is not a thing either; you are free to pick your words if you like, you are then fated to them (the implications of having said them).
One can interpret things that way. I don't think it's obvious.
Yes. And we can just watch interactions. On this forum, I can tell (I am convinced) that other people grasp Wittgenstein's later work the way I do. And we read one philosopher about another too, which possibly changes, all at the same time, what we think about the author, the philosopher being commented upon, and ourselves.
The dose makes the poison. That's good.
Psychedelics have sometimes made me feel the terror of having been poisoned, but the total experience has always been positive. It's been a long time though. I don't even want THC these days. It'd probably be fine, maybe fun, but I don't bother to seek it out.
If my will is not a thing then how could I be free to pick my words? Again contradiction.
Sure, you're correct, the judgement/interpretation of the words I say are up to other people, that's outside my control. That is the fate aspect you speak of.
There is interplay between free-will, fate and the degree of control (conscious awareness between 2 individuals). What of it?
Consciousness is the complex product of this organism-environment system indeed. Problems arise when abstracting from this systemic nature, whether as a phenomenon of the brain, as you describe it, or as some kind of subjectively idealized reason. Neuroscience is no more - or less - relevant to consciousness than any other science; it is part of its presentation.
'Why' questions aren't always about teleology. They just ask for an explanation of some kind. We're not going to be able to have a conversation if every time I ask "why such and such" you say I'm looking for a teleological (or even just evolutionary) explanation. What I'm asking for in this thread is an explanation in terms of physical processes. Similar to the question I'd ask of a mechanic with my car "Why won't my car start?" I'm not looking for the answer "Because it's sulking and doesn't want to drive through a puddle and get its tyres all wet." Nor am I looking for the answer "Because the designer of the car designed it to stop working after 100,000 miles so you have to buy a new one." I'm looking for an answer in terms of the structure and function of the car. It's odd that you impute this intention to seek teleological answers to Chalmers as well.
"aren't always" is the key word. Obviously I am addressing those which are injecting intention or purpose in Nature.
Quoting bert1
The problem is NOT just with your questions but your previous answers which allow me to guess your intention behind those questions.
I admit maybe I am wrong, but after 40 years of discussions I might say may heuristics are pretty accurate. That of course doesn't mean I am not willing to get your clarifications. I am all for it.
Quoting bert1
-Ok but you need to understand the fallacy of your question.....when you hold responsible of Science not being able to experience YOUR experience thus concluding it has nothing to say about the processes responsible for the phenomenon.
ITs like accusing a tuna sandwich for poor swimming skills...that's not what tuna sandwiches are for.!
Quoting bert1
Chalmer's questions have the same problem with your statement.
Once again lets analyze his questions one by one. Please help me here.
1.Why are physical processes ever accompanied by experience?
Can you explain the use of the term "ever"?
2. why does a given physical process generate the specific experience it does
Can you translate it to a how question?
3.why an experience of red rather than green, for example?
What does he even means....does he want all red experiences to show up like green. And the Greens. Where is his how questions exactly?
Please do your best.
I feel like we are rushing past the distinction I am making. I can choose my words, and there is a part of that where I am free (and partly I am constrained); all I am saying is that that is a matter of how freedom is judged to work, not that our choices come from a will pictured as a thing, a power or casual object, thus knowable with specific certainty. And the original point being that we picture consciousness in the same way in order to meet our criteria of a knowable predictable generalized special thing that makes me me amongst everyone. The facts that we are self aware and can choose our words is not generalizable to every act nor to extrapolating that there is something behind it all.
Quoting Benj96
Yes, you might not care about what I am talking about, which is fine, but Im not sure you understand the point that putting our requirement for certainty first creates these frameworks, rather than looking at the specific criteria of each act.
"Black flag" can mean a number of things. Are you aware it is a brand of bug spray in the US?
A quote from "Self Reliance" gets a thumbs up from me.
The point of what I wrote in the post you quoted is that, yes, the self is a thing just like any other thing. It comes into existence just like every other thing, by being thought of, conceptualized, by a person. When it comes to how language creates truth, some quote Wittgenstein, I quote Lao Tzu:
Quoting Tao Te Ching, Verse 1 - Stephen Mitchell version
As I noted previously, we could say the same thing about any thing.
Quoting Antony Nickles
I don't think consciousness handles intention and judgement, it just attaches meaning, labels, to them using language.
This is a good way of putting it.
Quoting Isaac
I think assigning a specific evolutionary purpose to consciousness is unjustified.
Quoting Isaac
Again - This is true of all words.
Quoting Antony Nickles
My response to this is the same as my response to @Isaac. This is how all things become things, by us imagining them as such, naming them.
If you won't even scan through them to see where the conversation stands and what's been said before, you shouldn't post. No, that's not a requirement of the forum, but it's how you get people to take you seriously.
Please no guessing! It's hard enough when we try and respond to what people actually say. If we start talking to what we think are people's hidden motives it'll be absolute chaos.
Well - in a sense yes. We wouldn't have a brain if there was no gravity, nor electromagnetism, nor proteins or anything else which emerges from physics, as almost everything does.
But we look at the relevant organ to study the phenomenon. From that, we can focus on the cognitive aspects, the neurological aspects or even the phenomenological aspects, many ways to treat this topic as you say.
But I think it makes more sense to study brain behavior than looking at what physics does. So, some approaches are slightly more relevant than others.
Oh yes. And the rock band. And pirates. I'm a poison-drenched zombie pirate bot with sad breath.
Me too !
For what it's worth, you are not alone. Rather than address what was actually said he accuses you of saying or meaning or thinking something else and argues with an imaginary interlocutor.
When you address his specific claims, claims he cannot support, he simply ignores it.
There is no need of guessing in Chalmers's question on the hard problem
1.Why are physical processes ever accompanied by experience?
-the term ever reveals the nature of this why question.
2. why does a given physical process generate the specific experience it does
-This is just silly question. Why a previously excited electron "generates" a specific new particle? Specific experiences arise with specific stimuli...thats all. Brains interpret stimuli differently
3.why an experience of red rather than green, for example?
-Because if all optical stimuli were green our ancestors wouldn't be able to distinguish fresh tender leaves from the rest of the foliage. Because different light waves carry different energy. Different energies are interpreted differently by our brains.
Im not sure we just disagree or whether you misunderstand my point. Not everything in the world is an object, like a tree; some are activities, like pointing or apologizing; some are concepts, like justice, truth, etc; some are logical conceptualizations, like Plato's forms or Kant's thing-in-itself. The idea of a physical or casual "consciousness" is a manifestation of our need for something specific, knowable. The act of naming, as Tzu references, is not the only way language works (we, more generally, particularize, which is I think more to his point). And consciousness is not an object. The question is: what matters to us in wanting it to be one? Because, if it is an object, we can know it, be certain about it, and ascribe causality and intention and thoughts to it; also, if I have a consciousness, and others do, then we have something certain in knowing other minds, say, their pain.
Quoting T Clark
The idea that consciousness attaches something to words, or uses words, is just the desire to have control over the meaning of what we say by internalizing how language works. It's as if: because we have experiences, and we can chose words, that all of language is us putting words to what we are aware of, like labeling it.
I'll just say that of all the functions of the body, none of them amounts to the mathematical, factual/physical certainty that we want for "consciousness"--for ourselves or others; philosophy created this picture, and science chases the image.
If people do not wish to take it seriously (like yourself) not my issue.
Bye
This is clearly not true.
Can you expand on that? Is this something specific to consciousness, or do you think it equally unjustified to assign an evolutionary purpose to osmosis, or active sodium ion transportation?
Eh, being able to articulate the problem entirely, or even partially, in functional terms is also contested. You don't need to deny the idea that the body is productive of mental states to be against a functional account of mental states. By my reckoning, terms you've set out already skew the terrain of debate. I'm not convinced that non functional/mechanical terms of debate are appropriate, but it's still a distortion of terrain to demand the debate occurs in your favoured set of background assumptions. Albeit that distortion is also an important move in the debate!
You're missing my point, it's not that we must look at this from a functional point of view, that was just an example, it's that we must look at this from some point of view. It's not sufficient to be dissatisfied with answers given from one perspective (functional ones serving as the example here) without saying why or how those accounts are unsatisfactory, what are they missing?
If neuroscience doesn't explain consciousness by reference to functions, why not? What is it that such an account is missing?
I'm not asking that question rhetorically (in support of a functionalist account), I'm asking it literally in support of a coherent account. There needs to be some ground for satisfaction with 'why?' questions. It doesn't matter what it is, but it's nonsensical, in my view, to claim dissatisfaction with an answer without being able explain what that answer is missing. Anything less is just carping.
All I have so far from people dissatisfied with the evolutionary, functional account (for example) is a repeat of the question "...but why?" We can repeat that question ad infinitum on absolutely any subject. We don't, because we have grounds on which we are satisfied.
Without such ground the investigation is anchorless.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Yes, every position on consciousness, including the most woo of the magic woo ones involving invisible ghostly ectoplasm and cosmic fairies, all understand that alterations to brain function affect what we experience. Of course they do. No one denies that. Getting drunk affects what we experience, as does getting hit in the head, as does receiving sensory input of any kind, etc etc. The issue is how does the capacity to experience anything at all get there in the first place. That's the contested bit. One way to bring out this distinction is to contrast consciousness simpliciter, with what we are conscious of.
I broadly agree. Some (forget the name of the guy I'm thinking of) say that there are no absolutely private facts about your experience. They say it is in principle (even if we don't yet have the tech) to access all the facts about your experience by examining brain function. However the guy I'm thinking of (I'll find who it is) says that nevertheless, there are two ways of accessing these facts. Of course, I think this 'two ways' is just another acknowledgement of privacy. My way of accessing my experience is private, even if I can't ultimately keep a secret in the face of a mind-scanner.
I should have been clearer.
Quoting Isaac
There's another two reasons I think of that any proposed account could fail: internal inconsistency, category error. As far as I know, people like Strawson take the former approach, people like Chalmers take the latter. A criticism which points out a category error or internal inconsistency doesn't, necessarily, make someone need to answer the "what's missing?" question to maintain the coherency of their criticism.
If someone says "It's missing X", then you end up in a discussion about what X is, and I think that's where your comment is usually applied.
If someone says "It's missing something which plays The Role of X, or allows the role of X to be played", then we end up in a different discussion. You don't need a (token) positive account of X to demonstrate a need for an account of the role of X (type). So someone need not rely on a particular account of qualia, or a particular account of representation, to argue against eg. a functional perspective precluding something which plays the role of qualia (first person experience, private, intrinsic, nonrelational, internal causation). In other domains from qualia, there could be a similar type of dispute between some functionalists and some representationalists - you don't necessarily need to care about intentions for a functionalist account to make sense.
Eg. a belief that P is a tendency to act as if P vs a belief that P is an attitude toward P. Someone might say about the former account:
"I understand that the person's behaviour in the first and second case may be the same, however behaviours can be determined by different processes - the first account says that beliefs are entirely behavioural and doesn't speak at all about their content of their belief state. How then can you develop a criterion that two people can behave as if P without invoking a non-behavioural invariant that allows us to tell P from "by all appearances, P".
Something like that!
That is a really really good argument.Your thread makes a serious point.Nice.
Maybe consciousness can't be defined as strictly brain function like the "walking example" cause it is not strictly brain that generates it.
First even brain has to interact with the external world as consciousness to take place.And to interact also with the whole body function.
So maybe consciousness isn't produced only from the brain but from the whole body.And brain just plays the central role to all that function.As in everything.The "coordinator role" let's say.
In fact not even walking is just "what legs do" if you consider it. Cause brain involves also for it.As other human organs too.
What i mean is, that it might be better starting to examine consciousness as a whole body effect and remove it from the typical theory that connects it only with brain.And all that Endless mind-brain debate.Well anyway it is only a hypothesis.
The only thing i disagree is that neuroscience has nothing to say about consciousness.
If not the only, for sure though ,brain plays a crucial role in consciousness.And neuroscience studies brain.
So if not neuroscience then who would have a better say on that? Let's not be aphoristic.
But again nice thread and great argument for the actual definition that exists about consciousness even in dictionaries.
In my view 'orange' doesn't refer to a quale, but to a kind of experience or perception. It's not a precise term, which is obvious if you look at a colour wheel that shows colour gradations. I'd say there is nothing precise about language, but its binaries foster the illusion of precision.
I don't think reference is dependent on precision, but on our understanding; words refer to things because we understand them to refer, that's all and there's no more to it than that.
Quoting plaque flag
If I have seen something orange, say an orange, and I say "That orange is a very intense orange" the sentence refers to an orange I have seen, and the second time the word 'orange' is used in that sentence it refers to the colour of that orange.
Say the orange is in front of us and you then say "I agree the orange of that orange is very intense" then you are also referring to a quality of the colour of the orange. Our actual perceptions are private and can never be compared except via talk, which means they can only vaguely or imprecisely be compared.
I have no reason to think that your perception of the orange is very much different from mine, and I have only your similar description as reason to think that your experience was like mine. I might ask whether you see the colour of the orange as tending towards yellow or red, and if I see it as tending towards yellow and you say you see it tending towards yellow, then we have more reason to think our perceptions of the orange are similar.
Quoting plaque flag
So the sentence " I saw an orange afterimage", just taken as a bare sentence, isn't abstractly referring to a certain kind of experience? What do you take the sentence to mean?
Quoting plaque flag
If you can tell something as complex as how others grasp Wittgenstein's later work the "way you do", should it not be much easier to tell if someone's perception of a colour is the way you perceive it?
Quoting plaque flag
All drugs including caffeine, alcohol THC and psychedelics, etc., alter how we see things. I still find that interesting, although I don't explore these kinds of experiences at the expense of my health.
I don't think so, however admittedly tempting this sounds. If 'true orangeness' is hidden, we have no data whatsoever for supporting such a hypothesis. I don't see logic but only a comfortable and familiar prejudice.
We might ask what 'experience' is supposed to mean. It's the motte / bailey thing. In ordinary language, we have mentalistic talk of how things felt to Jack and Jill. No problem. But 'pure' qualia are problematic. Concepts are etymologically grips. Well, we can't get a grip on them. We can just train kids to make reliable reports. In the present of 'this' paint sample, we train them to say 'red' or 'blue.' The qualia crowd tends to insist that no one can see through their eyes, check for an inverted spectrum. This sounds right but it but it's pretty weird. People want to say what they also say can't be said.
In the ordinary sense, of course. Motte and bailey. We need not introduce internal images, though this is tempting in ordinary contexts, given popular metaphors like the mind is a container.
The point is that 'secret' qualia as referents make for an impossible semantics. It's 'obvious' once one grasps it (switches metaphors?). Such a semantics assumes telepathy without realizing it --- or an equivalent set of immaterial states that are induced in a massproduced model-T ghost haunting pineal glands when afflicted by various electromagnetic waves. This may be a parody, but how wide of the mark is it ?
:up:
To me this also points toward that lack in our lifeworld of 'pure' mentality and its shadow 'pure' materiality.
Sorry to take so long to respond. I didn't get a notice.
There's a long history in evolutionary biology of people off-handedly assigning evolutionary reasons why certain traits were selected with no evidence. A famous example was that mallard ducks sexual practices include males forcing females to have sex. People claimed that that trait was genetically controlled and could be the reason human males rape human females. So, my criticism wasn't about the particular example you selected, but the process of assigning evolutionary justifications in general. Obviously, eyes evolved so we could see. Many other traits have much less obvious purposes or even no purposes at all.
The idea that our perceptions of the any colour are likely similar (leaving aside that some people are colour-blind) is based not only on questions we might ask each other about whether the colour seems closer to one or other of the colours on either side of it on the colour spectrum, but also on the well-observed structural commonalities of the human visual system.
Quoting plaque flag
I haven't mentioned qualia except to say I don't favour the idea.
Quoting plaque flag
What cannot be said cannot be said, obviously. However that there is that which cannot be said can be said without contradiction or inconsistency. I also happen to think that the fact that there is that which cannot be said is perhaps the most important fact about being human.
Quoting plaque flag
You might...but why would you when you know what it means as well as you know what any word means?
Quoting plaque flag
I think most of us have experienced internal images and internal dialogue judging from what others have said to me, I don't think of the mind as a container; it doesn't contain sensations, feelings, thoughts and images, it is sensations, feelings, thoughts and images.
Quoting plaque flag
I hope you are not falling into the dogmatic illusion that those who don't agree with you have failed to understand. There are already a few here afflicted with that particular prejudice.
Quoting plaque flag
Very wide, I'd say. Again all I've said is that our perceptions are not accessible to others other than by means of what we tell them. Perception is private, but it is talked about in a public language; a fact which would only be possible if there were a good degree of commonality. So, most of us feel pain, see colour, taste food, visualize, and so on. These are all experiences, and the only way others can know about them is if we tell them.
Quoting plaque flag
Right, but I haven't anywhere claimed, or even suggested that, there is any such thing as "pure mentality" or "pure materiality".
But this proves nothing. No data. All we have publicly is word use and structural commonalities. No hidden states can play a role in making this case.
And what are these ? You go on to say:
Quoting Janus
If feelings / thoughts / images have no 'purely mental' component, why shouldn't a bot have them simply by meeting the same public criteria ? Do you see what I mean ?
Quoting Janus
Why couldn't someone with the right technology know my perception better than I do ? Unless this inaccessibility is 'purely mental' or 'immaterial' ?
Quoting Janus
Bots are already or are on the way to being better conversationalists than we are. So clearly even typical human sense organs are not necessary. You seem to be implying something like the same universal set of nevertheless private referents as making cooperative sign use possible, basically repeating Aristotle's assumption. In other words, you seem to assume that we all automatically / directly know what 'pain' means but not when this or that other person is 'in' pain.
:up:
This is why I'm interested in the question of the meaning of being. This is what I think others are trying to say with the hard problem, though I think they take too much granted.
OK, what you're saying makes a lot of sense, but I'm having trouble applying it to the 'Why?" and "How?" questions that were posed originally here.
If I understand you correctly, you're saying that an account (such as neuroscience might give) might be missing a component which serves a function in the coherence of an account, and we know it's missing by it's function, not by it's identity?
Like if I proposed the function...
[math]x = {b \pm \sqrt{b^2-8c} \over }[/math]
... you'd be able to say there's something missing without being able to say what it is, simply because there needs to be a denominator?
Yet if one asks "why do we have consciousness?" I think the answer needs to consist of a set of satisfactory reasons, simply by the structure of the question, no?
And so if a set of reasons are given, they can only be rejected on two grounds; they're not reasons, or they're not satisfactory.
Evolutionary, or functional accounts are clearly reasons, so it must be that they're not satisfactory - which is presumably where this missing type comes in. There's some component a satisfactory reason has (which we might not know the token of in this instance), which is missing.
The trouble is I'm not even getting what the category is when specifically related to the question "why do we have consciousness?", or "how do neurons produce consciousness?".
If I could at least get as far as understanding the type of measure of satisfaction missing, that would be progress. The kind of reason that would suffice. But I'm so far missing even that.
Yes, a pretty sorry history, particularly in psychology, where just about everything has at one time been justified because "...that's what we evolved to do".
And yet...
I don't think anyone would seriously argue that cells eliminate waste ions for anything other than evolved reasons to do with survival within a niche.
So I suppose the extent to which one is content with an evolutionary frame is the extent to which one is willing to allow for other influence. With behaviour that might be culture. With anything we might have randomness, or God, or our alien simulation managers...
For me, I think evolutionary psychology is almost all bollocks. I think that because cultural influences are just too obviously at least a possible factor.
With consciousness, however, I can't really think of that conflicting influence. We could invoke randomness (it just turned up), but then we'd also have to explain why humans who didn't have it weren't easily able to outbreed those that did.
We could argue, as Dennet does, that it's an illusion, there's nothing to find a purpose to. But I dislike defining things away.
I don't dispute the plausibility of non-evolutionary accounts, they just seem far more complicated, have more loose ends, and don't seem to explain anything that isn't covered in a functional account.
If we talk to/observe, a human with no legs, would we find some difference in their 'level of consciousness' compared to people with legs?
We can consider the affects on human consciousness, if we removed parts of the brain.
What if a human only had the R-complex of the triune brain model. So no limbic system and no cortex?
I asked chat GBT about the R-complex and whether a human would still be self-aware and conscious if the brain consisted ONLY of the R-complex. The replies were:
[b]The R-complex, also known as the reptilian brain, is a term used to describe the most primitive part of the human brain. It is located at the base of the brain and is responsible for regulating basic survival functions such as breathing, heart rate, and body temperature.
The R-complex is composed of several interconnected brain structures including the brainstem, cerebellum, and basal ganglia. These structures are responsible for controlling and coordinating movements, balance, and posture.
In addition to regulating basic survival functions, the R-complex is also involved in instincts such as aggression, territorial behavior, and mating behavior. It is often referred to as the "reptilian" brain because it is thought to be the part of the brain that we share with reptiles and other primitive animals.
Although the R-complex plays an important role in our survival, it is not capable of complex thought processes and is largely reactive rather than proactive. The more advanced regions of the human brain, such as the neocortex, have evolved to enable us to engage in more complex behaviors such as reasoning, problem-solving, and creativity.[/b]
and
[b]It is difficult to say with certainty whether we would still be conscious and self-aware if the human brain consisted of the R-complex only. While the R-complex is responsible for regulating basic survival functions, it is not capable of supporting higher-level cognitive processes such as self-reflection and introspection.
Consciousness and self-awareness are thought to emerge from the complex interactions between different regions of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, the parietal cortex, and the temporal cortex. These regions are involved in a wide range of functions, such as attention, memory, perception, language, and decision-making.
Without these higher-level cognitive processes, it is unlikely that we would experience the same level of self-awareness and consciousness that we do with our current brain structure. However, it is important to note that this is purely speculative and hypothetical, as the human brain did not evolve to consist of the R-complex only, and it is difficult to predict the exact nature of consciousness and self-awareness under such conditions.[/b]
To me, this kind of angle to the discussion increases my personal credence level that consciousness IS what the brain does. I will offer a little of the 'interesting' evidence from Rupert Sheldrake in my next post however for his 'morphic resonance' and 'morphic fields' proposal.
The offspring certainly did get to the food much faster. BUT much more interesting was his findings that when they used a whole new bunch of rats from the same area, who were not involved in the original experiments and who were not related to the original rats. They also found the food/got through the maze, much faster than the rats used in the initial experiments. Sheldrake then used this data to suggest that information was getting exchanged by the rats due to morphic resonance via morphic fields. A kind of natural telepathy.
Supporters of Sheldrake's work and Sheldrake himself then repeated the experiments over many years in different countries with completely new rats and the data he gathered suggested the new rats could get through his mazes much faster on their first ever attempt, compared to the rats he first worked with.
I am not convinced that such evidence, proves that information can be passed between 'conscious' creatures via morphic resonance and morphic fields. But even if it does, that does not mean consciousness is not 'what the brain does,' it would mean that perhaps information can be passed/correlated via some quantum phenomena such as entanglement (as Sheldrake himself has suggested).
Yes, and/or that information is a naturalistic feature. If there is an 'information manifold,' however, it would seem to prima facie vastly expand, not contract, the scope of the science of consciousness.
Well they would simply have different consciousness as in every person in general.If by difference you mean lower level of consciousness for those with no legs.Then of course not.
Quoting universeness
Yeah, but consider also the brain without a heart to support it.
The rest you posted is extremely interesting.And really informative.I had little knowledge for R complex and now you made me wanna investigate it more.
I mostly agree to the conclusion that consciousness is a phenomenon of constant interaction of different areas and cannot be spotted only in just one specific place in the brain.I believe that myself.
My only guess is that this interaction, that makes the phenomenon of consciousness to emerge, is among all body functions.And yes brain plays a huge role as coordinate them.
But as i mentioned before nothing can stand on its own in human body.Not even brain.
It is the interaction of everything that makes it happen.
But its only my hypothesis.Does not make it true.
Quoting universeness
And that is also a nice hypothesis.
Yeah, but even if all that Sheldrake claims, eventually turns out to be true, how much would that increase the personal credence level YOU assign to such as panpsychism?
For me, my answer would be, not much! I still have a credence level of around 1%.
Then how can there be any consciousness in the body, if we can remove so much of it, without becoming a less conscious creature?
Quoting dimosthenis9
The heart is just a big blood pump. Does a person, kept alive with an artificial heart, ( can only be done for a short time at the moment,) have a reduced experience of consciousness? I mean, do you think their cortex would have a reduced ability, to play it's role in perception, awareness, thought, memory, cognition, etc due to having an artificial blood pump, instead of a natural one (such as a heart transplant)?
Quoting dimosthenis9
Your last two sentence's above are true for all of us posting on this thread, so that's a given imo.
BUT do you therefore think that if before you die, we could take out your brain and connect it to a fully cybernetic body. That there is no way and no sense that the creature produced would still be you?
Still be your 'conscience?'
No, I think by the time you're arbitrating between evolution or alternatives, you've already resolved the problem, or put it on hold. It's no longer relevant. The problem is conceptual and starts before that; at the conceptual stage. [EDIT: I'll leave the previous sentence in; I like it in all its ineptness. It perfectly expresses the muddle I feel when confronted with this problem.]
It's a very hard to grasp concept, which is why we help ourselves with conecepts such as p-zombies. A p-zombie and a person with first-person experience would both behave the same, and thus share the same evolution. What sort of test could we devise to tell if one is a p-zombie or not? If p-zombies are impossible, how can we conceptualise evidence for this?
P-zombies aren't the point. They're a wishy-washy pin-point of some intuitive niggle people have. But the niggle's there. And the problem's bigger: there's a continuum that starts with solipsism and ends in pan-psychism.
I personally am a mysterian - in the context of science: I don't think it's possible to resolve that, because for first person experience (the ultimate subjectivity possible) there's only ever a sample-size of one; and the sample possible is different for each scientist (always only their own). Normally, talking objectively about subjectivity is not a problem; subjects can be operationalised so you can talk about them. Neuroscience is definitely evidence of that. But you can't do that for the hard problem; the empirical substratus this is about goes away, if you do. You assume the outcome one way or another and go on to more interesting questions (evolution of brainstuff being one of them).
I think the doubling of bodies as something you have and something you are is relevant here (Helmuth Plessner has talked about that, I think; it's been years and I've forgotten too much). When I say that my keyboard is made up of atoms, I can conceptualise this a matter of scale. It's easy. When I say, consciousness is made up of neural activity (which is my default working assumption), all I have is a correlation; the nature of the connection eludes me. Given that I tend to figure stuff out by comparison, and given that I'll never be able to entertain more than one first-person-experience at a time, I suspect it'll continue to elude me.
(For what it's worth, the hard problem is little more than an interesting curiosity to me. When viewed as a problem it's hard, but for me it's hardly a problem.)
All that would have to be true is that somehow information is affecting reality (which it clearly does) and is capable of being stored in such a way that it is not trivially evident, but is accessible and amenable to neural processing. And this is precisely how neural networks function, by processing inputs in hidden layers, with respect to confirming/disconfirming feedback, they exploit abstract relationships without necessarily even identifying what those are. In which case, social consciousness, hive mind, even panpsychism aren't in any way mysterious or non-scientific.
I think the distinction between data and information, becomes paramount here.
Information being data with an associated meaning.
We know that meaning, depends on the reference frame of the observer.
Interpreting meaning from data creates an individuals reality. Carlo Rovelli talks about this a lot, when he discusses time. My interpretation, of some of what he is proposing, suggests that time is something that each human being experiences, quite independently, and that the notion of a universal time frame is almost useless. So for me, it seems that data/information IS my reality and certainly does affect it.
If every spatial coordinate in the universe can 'collapse' into a 'data state,' which my brain can interpret, and assign meaning to, then to me, that does not mean that every coordinate in the universe CONTAINS or IS an aspect of consciousness. To me, it means that my brain can INTERPRET any event that I witness, as having significance to me, because I can assign a time and a place to it, that makes sense to ME. Other people and other measuring devices can then confirm or conflict with MY interpretation of the event. That's MY reality and MY experience of consciousness, but I don't see any aspect of that description, that suggests that every universal spatiotemporal coordinate, inherently contains a quantum of consciousness, that should be a recognised part of the standard model of particle physics or quantum field theory.
Yes, but intrinsically there is a social dimension to cognition, which then is an additional factor to consider. Hive minds evidence this clearly. There is no reason to suppose that higher species lose or abandon these capacities. It's a pretty common systems-theoretic gloss to expand the concept of consciousness in the way you criticize, but there is no need to assume it or even address it. The systems-phenomena speak for themselves.
Yes but such a proposed 'social dimension,' does not provide any significant evidence for such posits as panpsychism. If some kind of 'natural telepathy' is proved to exist between such 'networks,' as a hive mind or even if such can be artificially emulated/achieved via wireless signals via such as Elon Musk's Neuralink etc, once we are all 'connected.' This would still not demonstrate that consciousness is quantisable. Even though I DO think it probably is, at least to some extent.
I am not suggesting that any level of 'telepathy' between humans is impossible, but it is true, that from a 'naturalist' position, and from a quantum physics position, science would be tasked to find the 'carrier particle' that causes telepathy and consciousness. Just like the search for the graviton, currently continues.
This is probably why I still love string theory.
Consciousness could then be just another vibrating string state! Easy peasy! :halo:
String theory at is base is a great KISS theory. Keep It Simple Stupid :grin:
I feel that way about systems theory. You don't need to over-specify the nature of the mechanism (behind social consciousness) given its evident operation. Again, exactly how neural networks function. They work by exploiting hidden (abstract) information, for which their own successful operations are the best expression or evidence.
I remember an essay by Stephen Jay Gould. In it he described what happens when animals get larger. Their brains tend to get larger at a faster rate than their bodies in general. Conclusion - selection for a larger body might coincidently select for a even larger brain. Not really random, but not selected either.
Quoting Isaac
What Stephen Pinker says about language makes sense to me - humans have an instinct to learn language. The structures of our nervous systems and minds are built that way. Obviously, social factors also are involved. Pinker's views are not accepted by everyone. @apokrisis in particular believes language behavior can be explained by a generalized cognitive function. As always, apokrisis, forgive me if I misrepresented your views.
Quoting Isaac
I seems to me, with no specific evidence, that consciousness could arise out of interactions between abilities for abstract thinking, language, and other higher level neurological function. Again - that's speculation. Which isn't to say that consciousness doesn't provide an evolutionary advantage.
I don't think it's the quantity of body as the quality.The full interaction of its parts despite how many these parts are.As a system.
Even less parts can interact even better together.
I m not fan of the moto "the more the better"
Quoting universeness
Well i guess it woud be even a slightly different consciousness compared to the one before.
But as you mentioned the artificial heart will play the exact role of the normal heart.
So i guess the rest of the body will continue to coordinate with a similar way as before.Not exact the same though.But i don't think the change would be so dramatic as someone to become a totally different person.
.
Quoting universeness
No I don't think it would be me if the whole body changed.Who am i is connected to my own body also and the experience i have from whole of it.
A cybernetic body would mean a total different experience.Maybe due to the same brain we might have some things in common.But i wouldn't consider myself same as my new "cybernetic self".
How for example the senses that my body has now and give data to my brain and form my consciousness be the same with the cybernetic senses that I would have?The data from them would be totally different.
What is?
Quoting Dawnstorm
That's begging the question. The evolutionary frame (in my example) comes first so that we can ask - what's the benefit of being conscious - to get at our "why?" question.
If you don't like the evolutionary frame, then there may well be another, but I'm arguing it would still be of the same form, there'd be something which constitutes a measure of satisfaction with the reasons given.
Quoting Dawnstorm
But that's just a matter of willing, not of some deep conceptual problem. After all, if you're able to imagine your keyboard is really made of atoms by seeing it as just a matter of scale, then you're just imagining atoms wrong. They're not (so I'm told) just smaller bits of keyboard. they're these weird energy particles and probabilities and quantum maths I don't even understand.
You're willing to simply 'allow' that rule (weird quantum stuff can become keyboards), not, I'd suggest, because it's somehow easier to conceptualise, but because it's not a mystery you find particularly interesting that it remain one. It's a less good story, in other words.
Quoting T Clark
Yes, I like that idea. It's what would go into my category of 'random' still though. Random, as in coincidence, no reason.
But, importantly for this discussion, it doesn't give an alternative 'why?', it just gives no 'why?'
It may be before you came into this conversation, but I started out down this evolutionary route as an attempt to firm up @bert1's original dissatisfaction with the explanations given, his sense that there was a 'why?' still unanswered. Drawing that feeling together into something coherent automatically rules out anything random or without reason. There'd be no sense of wrongness in the question 'why?' being unanswered if there was also a sense that the feature arose randomly.
Quoting T Clark
I agree with neither, but that's a topic for another conversation.
Quoting T Clark
I agree, I think that's perfectly likely, but as I said above, in the context of this question in the OP, it wouldn't even arise if randomness (or lack of reason) were one of the options.
So if we include it as a frame for answering "why do we have consciousness?" answers could be of the form that;
1) 'there are no reasons (it just happened)' - the sort of option you're suggesting
2) 'because it confers some evolutionary advantage' - the kind of functionalist account
3) because God gave us it - the theological account
... but @bert1 (as representative of the consciousness mysterians) seems unhappy with either of these, and yet cannot say what is wrong with each (should any turn out to be true). that's the incoherence I'm trying to iron out.
Personal identity is a very complex area in general. I am not the same person as I was as a teenager or as a twenty something etc. But the proposed '7 stages of man,' are still in a sense, all me. Why would a new stage, an 8th cybernetic stage, not maintain enough of me for me to recognise and accept the new me?
Quoting dimosthenis9
I assume your sight, smell, taste, touch and audio senses would function in the exact same way your original senses worked. I agree they may be enhanced and you may even get some new ones but you quickly become familiar and accepting of new tech all the time. So why would it be so different to have some of it embedded as part of you. Some humans have pacemakers, cochlear implants etc.
This guy below uses his embedded tech to 'hear colours.' I think his sense of himself via his, brains conscious ability to make slight adjustment to 'who he is,' is not something that would be as problematic as you suggest, even in the case of a human brain/person, continuing to exist as a cybernetic YOU.
From wiki: Neil Harbisson
Neil Harbisson (27 July 1982) is a Catalan-born British-Irish-American, cyborg artist and activist for transpecies rights. He is best known for being the first person in the world with an antenna implanted in his skull. Since 2004, international media has described him as the world's first legally recognised cyborg and as the world's first cyborg artist. His antenna sends audible vibrations through his skull to report information to him. This includes measurements of electromagnetic radiation, phone calls, and music, as well as videos or images which are translated into audible vibrations. His WiFi-enabled antenna also allows him to receive signals and data from satellites.
In 2010, he co-founded the Cyborg Foundation, an international organisation that defends cyborg rights, promotes cyborg art and supports people who want to become cyborgs. In 2017, he co-founded the Transpecies Society, an association that gives voice to people with non-human identities, raises awareness of the challenges transpecies face, advocates for the freedom of self-design and offers the development of new senses and organs in community.
Humans are, indeed, required for human consciousness. What is required for rock consciousness? A rock?
That's an interesting question. Lets have a run through of the obvious possibilities (some of which may overlap):
- substance
- matter/field
- entity/object (persistent behaviour of a field)
- property (x-ness)
- process
- action/behaviour
- function
...any others?
You can define it by fiat however you want, but that risks going off topic. The dictionary definition I gave in the OP is arguably compatible with any of these options. I vote 'property'. That fits most naturally with language as well.
I'm sympathetic to the argument from analogy, but I know some find it unconvincing.
That may well be true of us-as-human. But the behaviour we don't drive might be driven by the consciousness of other entities.
Right, I have got around to looking at a couple of those articles you linked to. Thank you for doing that. I was relieved to discover they were concise and clear summaries, which makes my job a lot easier. Starting with this one:
https://neurosciencenews.com/l5p-neuron-conscious-awareness-14997/
This article very encouragingly and clearly stated the distinction between state consciousness and contents of consciousness:
Great! It goes on to say that most neuroscientists think the two are indivisible, but I'm not sure if they mean conceptually indivisible or physically indivisible.
This distinction is also reflected in dictionaries, e.g. dictionary.com has these in its first two definitions:
State consciousness:
Contents of consciousness:
The article offers some neurological findings about the connection between the two. State consciousness is thought to be linked closely to the 'thalamo-cortical' circuits:
Whereas the content is thought to depend on the cortex:
And they are linked, and this is the new bit:
So the punchline is that there is an anatomical connection between the neurology of state-consciousness and content-consciousness.
I have no problem with the science of all this. What they are calling state-consciousness I suspect includes an assumed phenomenal consciousness but also includes observable arousal levels. In this thread I am concerned phenomenal consciousness, which is much closer to the concept of state-consciousness than content-consciousness.
The difficulty I have is, again, conceptual. First, the neuroscientists have found correlations between brain function and (assumed or reported) experience and arousal levels. That doesn't tell us what the relationship consists in, it only tells us there is a reliable relationship. The relationship between legs and walking is clear, the latter is what the former does. But in the case of experience and brain function it is not so clear what verb we should use (e.g. 'is', 'realises', 'gives rise to', 'produces', 'instantiates' 'manufactures', 'entails', 'causes', 'encodes', etc etc...). Secondly, consideration is not given to the conceptual difference between the self and consciousness. What, phenomenologically, is the difference between x losing consciousness, and x ceasing to exist (where x is defined functionally)? As far as I can tell, there's no difference. No experience either way. It is conceptually less problematic to suppose that, under anaesthesia, the self is dissolved, even though we speak of 'losing consciousness'. I can argue why that is less problematic in another post.
So that's the first of the two articles I'll look at. I do another one from @Nickolasgaspar's list when i get a mo.
Do you believe rocks are conscious? I cant help ya there.
Is it? Why? (by which I mean why is it clear?)
It's not at all clear to me. Legs don't always walk. I wouldn't say "my legs are going for a walk", I might say they're moving, or that walking is the result of me moving my legs just so. I might say moving my legs produces the effect of 'walking'. I might say such movement gives rise to a 'walking' person.
Saying that legs 'do' walking doesn't seem any less fraught than saying neurons 'do' consciousness. It's just that there's little woo potential in pretending the relationship between legs and walking is deeply mysterious so we just accept it as simple.
What woo am I trying to monger?
That's a bit of an overstatement. Enlarged relative brain size might contribute to increased intelligence, but what that does is provide a new trait for natural selection to work on. Many of our most important traits started out that way. The bones that transmit sound in our ears started out in one of our ancestors jaw.
Quoting Isaac
I generally reject "why" as a legitimate question for science. Science does "how." The image I see is one of a push from behind rather than a pull towards something specific. Like I said previously - It's an engine, not a steering wheel. We get where we get, but there was never a plan or reason for it. We make up the destination after the trip is done. This is a major theme in the history of theories of evolution - rejection of any directionality or teleology. That's one of the reasons it was so radical a theory. There's no room for purpose.
Quoting Isaac
Yes.
Quoting Isaac
Randomness is an essential factor in Darwin's theory and continues as one in modern understandings of evolution. Again, that's why it was such an overwhelming understanding.
Quoting Isaac
Perhaps the ultimate point in evolutionary theory - Useful outcome does not imply goal, purpose, or reason. This is a fight that has been going on at least since 1859.
It means that people with existential anxieties will always find excuses to embrace a comforting idea able to separate their existence from their a biological body with an expiration date.
https://xkcd.com/505/
I do explicitly say in my post the self can be distinguished from consciousness. I'll die, and nothing of me will be left over, except my products I suppose. And my profound influence on Western culture.
I think this misses a step. If you don't already agree what consciousness is, roughly, then it's difficult to ask discriminatory questions one way or the other. Or to put it another way, if we're quibbling about necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness, sentience, experience, having a perspective and so on, how and why we would have a consciousness of any indicated sort would be determined by the conceptualisation fixed "upstream".
Ideally, you'd want the "downstream" results to put constraints on the "upstream" conceptualisation - the bridge between the scientific and manifest images. Which I think does happen. But it still may be that philosophical concepts of consciousness can miss things out. Imagine if nobody was an enactivist in neuroscience work, and the overwhelming majority of neuroscientists thought in representational terms. A dialogue could well go:
Enactivists; "Mate, there's no room for dynamic feedback between environment and body to be principally determinative in your theory, you can't just treat everything as succession of representation"
Representationalists: "In order for us to have a productive discussion, you'd need to agree on what state* of the body corresponds to an instant* of consciousness"
The enactivist might bring up that "state" and "instant" may be loaded terms. In which case they could be accused of not being able to form productive terms for the debate... Then vice versa. Even though eg. Friston speaks like an enactivist.
I could see that the qualia people may have a similar move available to them. Like the enactivists did in my fictional example above. If an enactivist criticised the state of neuroscience as being unable to study the dynamic interplay of body, brain and environment in a meaningful way, it similarly makes sense to allow the qualist to accuse neuroscience of the same, unjustified, filter. Which isn't a filter on the level of data, it's a filter on the level of conceptualising data and how people ask questions.
I think, eg Chalmers, has tried to show that there really is this gap between what can be accounted for with (current) descriptions from neuroscience - assuming they are physical. And if that's true, there'd need to be a new but related science regarding how qualia and brains track each other, and how qualia correlate with others. Conceived of in this way, Chalmer's arguments play the role of the enactivist in the above example. And, I think, be treated with the same courtesy.
Quoting Isaac
So the kind of reason is less about function and more about possibilities for function. Given you have a fixed concept of function, which is identified with what may be produced by physical laws, that constraints how and why questions to that realm. If you think about it, when you're asking questions about "how" and "why" there's a context for each question which conceptually constrains the proposed answers. If you believe that "how" and "why" are being equated with "how" and "why" in a context which, it sees, necessarily removes relevant things from its study, you'd be contesting the entire context, which is roughly anything which seeks to explain everything about consciousness with physical laws.
How would that work physically? Who knows, that's part of the point.
I don't know what that means. Our consciousness is the author of our self.
So why are you using our gaps in our knowledge as an excuse to argue in favor of an alternative nature of our conscious states.?
Claiming the one conceptually ambiguous concept is the author of another conceptually ambiguous concept gets us nowhere, and fast.
Here's how Wikipedia defines "property." "In logic and philosophy (especially metaphysics), a property is a characteristic of an object; a red object is said to have the property of redness." That's consistent with what I mean when I say "consciousness." As I see it, "conscious" is a characteristic, but consciousness is not. It seems clear to me that consciousness is a thing of some sort. We usually treat it as such.
I'm not sure if we can take this any further.
Quoting bert1
I'm not sure what you mean.
I have posted many times a specific scientific definition of the term. Try to keep up or don't waste my time.
Your definition is theory-laden. It's not the definition in the OP of the thread. I don't recall you offering a definition of the self. Fooloso4's statement is well within the bounds of reasonable. If you feel Fooloso4 is wasting your time, I suggest in future you cut your losses at the moment you finish reading a time-wasting post. It seems to me that that you compounded your lost time by further investing in a reply.
First of all, it is two terms. Second, your posting a definition of one of them, even a scientific definition, does not mean that the terms are not ambiguous. Contrary to what you may believe, there is no widespread scientific agreement as to what either consciousness or the self is. No consensus on a scientific definition of consciousness and no scientific definition of the self.
Once again, there is no consensus on the definition of the terms. Without such consensus the claim remains ambiguous.
It is ironic that you say:
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
when you make claims about these undefined terms. Giving a definition does not settle anything.
Don't take my word for it. Anil Seth says:
Is he wrong? If some neuroscientists say that consciousness is X and others Y and still others Z, how are we to evaluate your claim? It is not the case that consciousness is what you define it to be because you have defined it that way. What it is remains ambiguous.
:up:
It's not about 'mongering' it. I'm just saying that one could render exactly the same level of mystery about how it is that legs result in walking, or how bricks could make a house, or how a load of syllables make a poem, or how patterns of light could produce the words I'm reading, or how some grains of sand become a 'pile', but we don't know how many...
Pretty much anything can be made to sound mysterious by just asking '...but why?' until the answers run out.
What I'm saying is that you (we all) pick what we're going to see as 'mysterious' and what we're going to accept as normal, not on the basis of some objective state of affairs, but on an arbitrary and personal decision about when we're going to stop asking 'why?' There's nothing special about consciousness beyond the fact that you choose to see it as special, you choose to not stop asking 'why?'
Quoting T Clark
Again, I think this just depends on what you're prepared to accept as a reason. I'm quite happy to say that the reason cell membranes have protein channels is to facilitate active transportation. I'm not claiming any teleology, just that within the context of cell function we can identify the reason that protein channels exist. I don't think we're stepping outside the boundaries of science in doing so, nor invoking a designer, but we are invoking purpose, quite unproblematically, I think. The purpose of protein channels is to transport molecules against the concentration gradient. I don't see how that's at all controversial.
Given we could agree (possibly) on the above, I'm not sure how there'd be any difference in saying that the purpose of consciousness is X, simply by restricting our frame of reference to the functioning of the organism.
Quoting fdrake
That's fine, I don't deny that, but then from within the definition of consciousness used by the protagonists here, there should still be a set of sufficiency criteria for the reasons given in answer to a question 'why?'. It's not that I'm demanding those criteria should match my definition, just any definition. The problem is I've not been given any criteria at all.
Quoting fdrake
I'm not sure I go along with that. I see what you're saying to a point but I think the enactivist/qualist would be overstating their case if they were to make such a move. Unless it is assessed within some higher order meta-framework, then at the very most such a thinker might say that they don't have a place for a representationalist paradigm (and vice versa) in their models. To criticise the field thus would be unjustified. Representationalists clearly do study the dynamic interplay of body, brain and environment in a meaningful way, if they didn't the papers they write on the subject would be incoherent to all.
If anything, I think the approach shackles, certainly enactivists in some cases. Take, for example, the difference in approach between Andy Clark and Evan Thomson on this. Andy's work has been really productive in pushing at the boundaries of the two positions and we've got some promising synthesises as a result. contrast that with Thompson's shambles of a paper attempting to rule out any common ground.
Note that what's being claimed here is not "Phenomenology is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness", quite the opposite. The OP is "Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness" and already the tenor of the thread is one of defending the poor mistreated phenomenological philosophers against the reductionist bullying of Neuroscience. I'm exaggerating for effect, of course, but the pattern is not an unfamiliar one.
Quoting fdrake
As above really, apart from maybe the Churchlands et al (but even then with significant pulling of punches) I don't see this as a matter of neuroscience closing off perspectives from philosophy at all. If anything, the feeling from my side of the debate is one of Chalmers et al being afforded some kind of untouchable status, where criticisms, or even requests for clarity, are summarily waived away with little more than "you just don't get it do you". I understand that Chalmer and others may have a perspective that some definitions of consciousness in neuroscience don't accommodate, but I think that the divide is not unbridgeable. To do so, however requires that the neuroscientist (or the cognitive scientist) be able to legitimately interrogate the philosopher's position (and vice versa of course). That's what I'm trying to do here.
My original question didn't specify a framework, or perspective at all. It's simply asking about sufficient conditions for satisfaction. What constitutes a 'reason' from within the perspective that sufficiently contains neuroscience to justify the claim of the OP [hide="*"]this rules out any anomalous monism, or non-overlapping magesteria type of framework, since the claim is about neuroscience.[/hide].
Quoting fdrake
That's all very well, but still lacks (if not more so) any details about sufficiency from that perspective. If it's not a law of physics that's being sought to explain the mechanism, then a law of what? If no law at all, then in what way is just any mechanism not an answer?
How can we rule out potential answers (which must be being done - the claim is that no answer yet suffices) without grounds against which to rule?
Again, when a definition is based on the description of the phenomenon...there is consensus.
i.e. "Consciousness is an arousal and awareness of environment and self, which is achieved through action of the ascending reticular activating system"
this is a description based on what we can objectively verify as the phenomenon to be conscious.
Quoting Fooloso4
-I don't know under which rock you have been living but in science we have straight forward descriptions for any phenomenon. We may not be able to provide a theory or a single causal mechanism but that doesn't mean we don't agree with what we study and observe.
He is far more specific of the details that enable the phenomenon. He and anyone agree on which phenomenon they are talking about.
Don't try to bring science in the woo woo land of your definitions sir.
He cherry picks and uses scientific statements out of context while he ignores mainstream science all together.
So I am free to make any argument and I am free to call out dishonest interlocutors. I would appreciate if you inform your criticism about me sir.
EDIT: Part of the reason I created this thread is to give you a place to let off some steam without being off-topic, so you were less likely to be banned.
Listen Grand Sultan of "the Philosophy Forum" I don't accept warnings or threats so I won't contribute to your biological rewarding mechanism (endorphins) activated by the act of "giving orders" and "make people obey you".
If you don't like words describing behavior then you have 3 choices:
A. move to North Korea. ( I hear your tactics have a huge success there.)
B. Don't read my posts
C. Ban my account
I prefer C so I get to keep my email inbox clear(never mind I will block it). After all I was off for most of the time during my two years membership.
As I already wrote yesterday I am sick and bored of all magical thinkers and their scientific ignorance, their inability to distinquish Philosophy from pseudo philosophy, their constant attempts to avoid all standards of evaluation and their dishonesty. If I recall your arguments correctly you were also one of them...so no wonder why you find Foolso4 knowledgeable and articulate but my descriptions "attacks and ad hominems".
Quoting bert1
-I thought your goals were to communicate your scientific ignorance and the promotion our death denying ideology. Who knew you cared about me....lol
Sir I appreciate your understanding, your education and admire your patience.
Enjoy your lives and educate yourselves.
btw magical thinking is a real condition.
https://aeon.co/essays/magical-thinking-still-haunts-all-our-thoughts
Over and out.
Literally, it seems.
Same here. Thanks!
I know that Gaspar has been banned, but I would like to point out that I have not provided any definitions. My point is simple: there is no consensus on any definition, including his own.
This does not mean I endorse "woo". I am agnostic, but I suspect that whatever progress is made it will be through the study of living organisms.
Here is Gaspar's definition:
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Note how he slips from a phenomenal description to a causal theory.
Gaspar points to Mark Solms as an authority. This is what Solms says in a podcast about the reticular activating system and consciousness.
If it is present there is good reason to believe the creature is conscious, but:
Reading your post, I couldn't remember how we got on this point. Going back and looking didn't help. So we can leave it there, as long as we agree that "reason" and "purpose" mean function and not goal, I'm ok with where we are.
Quoting Isaac
The intersection between first person experience and neurobehaviour.
I don't think I was begging the question. (I was re-reading my post and a wikipedia article on begging the question to see if I missed something.) This is the assumption I made:
Person A is a p-zombie; person B is not. They're both human beings and thus share a lot of the same evolutionary history. Is there some way to tell, by looking at brain-stuff, that this is the case? Clearly, this assumption is not warranted, and I draw no conclusion. I simply want to illustrate the problem. Maybe p-zombies are impossible. How could we tell?
Differently put: What sort of process can give rise to first person experience? By the time we're talking about frames like evolution (and likely other alternatives, too), we either assume that only brain stuff gives rise to consciousness, or we restict our interest to brain stuff. In both cases, we've already skipped past the topic.
So when you say this in an earlier post:
Quoting Isaac
You're parcelling up first person experience with consciouness in a way that doesn't tell me what you think of first person experience. Your using a narrative metaphor, which suggests first-person-experience. But it might be possible to get at the same thing with a computation metaphor (which I can't come up with because my knowledge is even more limited than my neuroscience knowledge; it'd probably be something like a process and a monitoring envelope, or something?) The second thing I notice, is that you're not referencing any brain stuff at all; but the "re-telling of recent mental events" suggests that brain-stuff is what this is based on?
For what it's worth, I can't tell what your take on first-person experience and neurobehaviour is. It doesn't seem to be epiphenomalism. Maybe you think first person expience is a type of neurobehaviour, and the distinction makes no sense to begin with?
Quoting Isaac
You may well be right about this. I need to think this through some more.
(For what it's worth, I'm not caught up with this thread. Anything after the post I replied to I haven't read yet; so I might have been saying stuff that's been addressed later. If so, sorry for wasting your time. I usually don't reply before I'm caught up with a thread. In fact, I think that's the first time I ever did that.)
Quoting Daniel Dennett, Who's on First?
In Dennett's view, scientific method must be truly universal in scope - whatever can't be included in it, is either not worth knowing about, or unknowable. Notice that this basically assumes that science is capable of being all-knowing - the literal meaning of 'omniscient' - in respect of human nature.
Hence the frequent angry outbursts at those who dare challenge the supremacy of science, and the many scornful references to woo-woo and soft-headed philosophers who 'don't know the science'. And as always, the most vigorous advocates of 'scientism' never seem to comprehend the fly in their ointment; because, I guess, the difficulty is a philosophical one, and so it is not demonstrable in empirical terms - it becomes something like, 'you need to provide scientific evidence for why this can't be a scientific issue' - at which point, debate becomes futile.
I think what is behind this is the fear of the mystery of consciousness - the fear is what provides the sense of urgency, the impatience with critics, and the demand that we all must recognise scientific authority as the only path to certainty.
I don't think I'm what you call a "neuro-reductionist," although maybe you would disagree. I made the following comment earlier in this thread:
Do you have an answer to that question? If phenomenal consciousness is not a mental process, what is it? And why isn't it suitable for examination by scientific methods?
[quote=David Chalmers, Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness]The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. [/quote]
What I think Chalmers is actually trying to convey by 'something it is like...' is, simply, being. Being, and what it means to be, is surely one of the major preoccupations of philosophy (and much else besides) although it's not always explicit - for Heidegger questioning the meaning of being is philosophy. (And I do wonder whether eliminative materialism is in some ways a manifestation of what Heidegger called 'the forgetfulness of being'.)
Another point I'd make is that there is the study of consciousness as an object of analysis - which is cognitive science - which I'm interested in, and trying to get a better understanding of. And cognitive science and philosophy definitely converge in a lot of ways. But the philosophical question about the nature of the mind (a term I prefer to 'consciousness') is broader, and deeper, than the specific questions which are the subject of cognitive science. That is reflected in Chalmer's distinction between the easy and hard problems of consciousness. And you find within cogsci, there are those with different philosophical aims, views, objectives. They will agree on some things - methodologies, empirical facts - but differ in others, such as intepretation, what conclusion to draw from the facts.
But at the bottom of it, the fact is that the subject of experience - you and I - are not reducible to objects - which is what neuroreductionism, as a philosophical attitude, tends to do.
[quote="Daniel Dennett;https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/books/daniel-dennett-author-of-intuition-pumps-and-other-tools-for-thinking.html#:~:text=are%20%E2%80%9Cmoist%20robots.%E2%80%9D-,%E2%80%9CI%E2%80%99m%20a%20robot%2C,-and%20you%E2%80%99re%20a" ]Im a robot, and youre a robot, but that doesnt make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions, he said. Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable?[/quote]
I think there's a completely unambiguous answer to that: we are not robots, or machines, or even simply organisms, but beings, and a science that doesn't understand that is a risk to humanity. You never know what you, or the person next to you, is capable of being, or becoming.
I think we agree that humans aren't just their bodies and that consciousness should be explained as much by philosophers as by scientists.
Quoting Wayfarer
Perhaps science is a torch carried into the dark. Who's to say ahead of time what can't be included in it ? To me Dennett is brave. He's earned your ire just by cheerfully trying to make more sense of consciousness and evolution, exactly the themes that matter to you (and me). Why should a serious study of consciousness not result in counterintuitive results ? We carry our torch into the dark beyond our comfortable assumptions and find out. I don't deny that different researchers have different initial attunements, but that's why science is open and everyone has to make a case. Hopefully all our biases cancel out and we (for the wrong reasons) keep one another honest.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm willing to grant you that some people may indeed find it embarrassing to talk about consciousness. On the other hand, some people are likely terrified of there being no gods, or us 'just' being clever primates. I suspect that fear of a bruised 'final vocabulary' is universal. We can always headshrink the stupid stubborn other. But isn't that where serious discussion breaks down ? And it's basically 'pomo' paranoid confusion when carried to extremes.
Isn't scientific authority an oxymoron ? To me it's just that educated people tend to settle for the scientific consensus of a field when they can't do better (aren't experts themselves.) Even then the goal is being less wrong, less crude, less uncertain.
I can't speak for Dennett, but I hope I've presented something like his attitude and at least a stronger target than that scientistic fellow who was just banned.
:up:
Quoting Wayfarer
Whether it's offensive or not to call us robots (an admittedly risky metaphor) seems to be a matter of how we think of and feel about robots. Descartes thought animals were machines, right ? To many us who love pets or resent brutal farming techniques, that's an ugly thesis. Fair enough. Dennett is maybe even indulging himself here, because I know from From Bacteria To Bach that he's very interested in our softwhere, which are the memes that live in the 'termite mound' of our neurons. I'd guess (and perhaps he'd agree) that we are more meme than robot, more language than flesh. To me we are incarnate spirit, with the meaning of our words 'out there' in enacted norms. The dance and the dancer are one.
[i]We Homo sapiens are the only species (so far) with richly cumulative culture, and the key ingredient of culture that makes this possible is language.
Words, I will argue, are the best example of memes, culturally transmitted items that evolve by differential replicationthat is, by natural selection.
The claim that I defend is that human culture started out profoundly Darwinian, with uncomprehending competences yielding various valuable structures in roughly the way termites build their castles, and then gradually de-Darwinized, becoming ever more efficient in its ways of searching Design Space. In short, as human culture evolved, it fed on the fruits of its own evolution, increasing its design powers by utilizing information in ever more powerful ways.
The manifest image that has been cobbled together by genetic evolutionary processes over billions of years, and by cultural evolutionary processes over thousands of years, is an extremely sophisticated system of helpful metaphorical renderings of the underlying reality uncovered in the scientific image. It is a user-illusion that we are so adept at using that we take it to be unvarnished reality, when in fact it has many coats of intervening interpretive varnish on it.[/i]
This last one doesn't seem quite right to me since the scientific image is itself interpretation, but it gets or historicality right, that we use timebinding software to orient ourselves. Imaging the lifeworld in layers is appealing to the degree that some interpretations seem less fragile than others, so we might say they are deeper. But I personally wouldn't think one could peel this 'sediment' off a Real world (a mere Void) 'buried' beneath. It's all sediment, interpretations all the way down, inasmuch as we can talk about it.
I started a thread on Descartes and animal cruelty. I will add that during the course of the ensuing debate, I did some more digging, and found that Descartes himself was not involved in the atrocities that had caused me to start that OP. However, it was conducted by the students at some, at the time, "progressive college", convinced by Descartes' philosophy that animals are incapable of suffering, that they're basically like machines, so that when they were nailed to boards and flayed alive, their howls didn't signify actual pain.
Also please note scientism and scientific materialism are different from science, which is a method of discovery //and a vast and ever-growing body of knowledge and technique//. Where they enter the picture is in the attempt to treat philosophical issues as scientific problems, which they're not - and this, in the context of a culture which has essentially abandoned its own metaphysical base.
Ideas have consequences.
Are we the same culture since the Enlightenment ? How does one separate this abandonment of our metaphysical base from our abandonment of superstition ? To me it's hard to see how one can put rational limits on critical post-Enlightenment thinking. It's only more and better critical thinking that can hope to do that, it seems to me. As I see it, going forward does (always?) involve a rethinking and even an impetus from the past, but that's not the same as an impossible return.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. But then the idea that ideas have consequences could also have dangerous consequences --if it's used to hobble science or freedom of thought.
This is the question that I think is ill-formed.
How could we tell if anything is impossible?
There's nothing peculiar about consciousness (as it's described here). You've posited a property (consciousness) that can't be detected (the p-zombie is identical apart from this property), and then asked "how could we tell if it's real?"
So If I suggest that there's a property - wockishness (after the Jabberwocky), that might be present in some rocks, but not others, but it's not possible to tell since 'wockish' rocks appear identical to 'non-wockish' rocks... you'd think me mad. Why would I even postulate such a thing if I've no cause to?
'Consciousness' when conceived as the difference between p-zombies and non-p-zombies has this same lack of role. What's it doing, as a property? I'm sure it's doing a perfectly functional job of describing how you feel - "I feel like a person", "I feel like I have experiences" etc, but your feelings are not properties. The difference between you and a p-zombie in this sense would be that the p-zombie didn't feel that way, not that it lacks a property you have. There's nothing odd about that. I don't feel like I have experiences in the sense that some proponents of the idea feel.
I think there's a fundamental incoherence in confusing a personal feeling for an objective property in need of any kind of explanation. There's a step where the feeling is reified (which is a fine step to take), but then what's not fine (in my view) is to pretend that step wasn't taken and proceed to seem dumbfounded that this deep mystery hasn't been addressed. It's not a deep mystery. A property has been speculated to exist, specifically with the criteria that it is not merely the actions of neurons and then it is treated with faux surprise that it turns out not to be reducible to the actions of neurons.
I don't read it that way. He asks:
Quoting Daniel Dennett, Who's on First?
As to the first question, I see no reason to curtail research working toward that end. As to the second, it asks what we would have to abandon to make way for this alternative.
Whether or not the standard methods of science will do justice to the phenomena of human consciousness is not something we are in a position to know. Perhaps Dennett overestimates what science is capable of, perhaps you underestimate. Either way, I see no good reason not to continue with scientific inquiry.
I imagine you'd have to be wary of expecting a functional definition involving, solely, body and environmental states. If their arguments go through, you need to posit new kinds of entity and new laws. In effect, starting the study of what's on the other side of the explanatory gap. If part of the theory is "it cannot be bridged", that does put an onus on an opponent to show the gap doesn't exist or alternatively that it's already been bridged.
Also, with maximal charity, I think it's unfair to expect a concise definition of content from a nascent field of inquiry. Like "hey Mr Newton, can you define what a force is for me? It doesn't seem to be a substance... is it immaterial? How can it be part of a physical law without a physical body?"
Quoting Isaac
I also don't think this is particularly charitable, you can treat arguments like Mary's Room, zombies etc as attempts to show why consciousness is "special" in this way. Furthermore, expecting a functionalist answer to those is in some regard begging the question.
Quoting Isaac
Another way of seeing the debate is not about sufficient conditions for consciousness, but about sufficient conditions for positing consciousness, experience and so on as primitives for a theory. Like you might not expect necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as "matter" or an "institution". Just whether positing something helps alleviate problems with hitherto existing accounts.
And that's addressed by attacking arguments which purport to show that hitherto existing accounts from functionalist/physicalist philosophers don't or cannot account for some phenomena consciousness exhibits (narrow vs wide content from Chalmers eg).
The only reason I'm paranoid about this stuff is that it's very easy to "stack the deck" depending on what side you're on. Years of largely unproductive exchange in the field have shown any onlooker that.
I think I recognize pretty well what consciousness is from the inside. I have no problem with how you've expressed it, although my take is less poetic and more matter of fact.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm surprised at this statement. It had seemed to me that you rejected attempts to understand consciousness from a scientific point of view. I think Chalmers definitely does. Or am I wrong about that? And yes, I agree, I want to know a lot more about cognitive science.
Quoting Wayfarer
My first response to that would be "Well sure, that's what psychology is about." I imagine you would find that unsatisfactory.
Quoting Wayfarer
It just seems like you could say the same thing about anything. There's more to the world than what science can see. Ok. I think that's a different argument than Chalmers and the other what-is-it-like guys are making. Maybe I'm misunderstanding it.
Not at all. Neither does David Chalmers. Remember, Daniel Dennett is not a cognitive scientist, or actually a scientist at all. He's a philosopher who appeals to a scientific ideology in pursuit of a philosophical agenda.
There are some cognitive science writers I'm wanting to read more of, notably Antonio D'Amasio, Thomas Metzinger, and Anil Seth. Not that I'm expecting to always agree with their philosophical stance, but there's a lot to learn in this space.
This debate is one of the fronts in the culture wars. On the one side, scientific materialism says that humans are gene machines or moist robots, that free will and even consciousness itself are illusory (notwithstanding that an illusion can only be an artefact within consciousness). It is no coincidence that in addition to his writings on philosophy Dennett is also one of the prominent 'new atheists' (alongside Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, although the new atheist fad is now seen as rather passé).
On the other side, you have a number of writers and speakers from all kinds of backgrounds, with a great diversity of views. About the only thing they have in common is opposition to the materialist paradigm. You could include, amongst philosophers, Raymond Tallis, Mary Midgley, and Thomas Nagel. There are philosophers of cognitive science who straddle the border, such as Christof Koch, enactivists like Alva Noe, and the phenomenologists. Plus nowadays even the Vedic contingent, represented by Deepak Chopra. (Those Consciousness Studies conferences held by the University of Arizona must be pretty interesting. Check out the program for the next installment, in May this year.)
I've only read a little by him. One essay on the hard problem and a few quotes. He sure seems to reject scientific explanations for conscious experience. Have I misread him?
I think that's only true though if there's some within-frame theoretical support for the notion that "it cannot be bridged", which I think is lacking. I don't think it's reasonable to start one's Ramsey sentence with "suppose the gap between neurological goings on and first-person consciousness is unbridgeable..." it seems the oddest thing to suppose as a foundational, but more than that it imports assumptions which then need examining - like what does 'unbridgeable' actually mean in this context?
Quoting fdrake
I agree, but that's not what I'm doing here (at least I don't think it is). I'm not asking the proponents of a 'hard problem' to define terms, or the components of their model. I'm asking for the criteria of sufficiency being used in the expression "neuroscience does not explain why/how we have consciousness". I'm just asking what is insufficient about the explanations given (say by the Churchills - to go extreme eliminativist).
It's quite acceptable to me to say "my model of consciousness involves this bridge/force/realm which I can't quite define" no problem at all with that, but what I do not understand is when asked "why have you invoked this bridge/force/realm in your model" the answer comes back blank.
Essentially, as with all philosophy, if we can't say anything about why one frame is preferable to the other then it's redundant (as a social exercise) we have to have criteria - even if it's aesthetics, parsimony, clarity, coherence... something has to be the matter we can discuss when comparing models/frameworks, otherwise what are we discussing?
And... point of order about charity. This thread is entitled "Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness" it is a direct attack on eliminativist or reductionist explanations of consciousness (elsewhere described as 'evil' with virtually no comeback). Can you honestly say that the problem with a lack of charity is toward non-reductionism? I've been as open as possible to the arguments put forward, accepting any framework (despite my personal preference for functionalist ones), short of just laying down at the feet of the non-reductionist problem, I'm not sure how I could possibly be more charitable whilst still disagreeing.
I don't think anyone could say the same of the treatment of reductionist approaches here, which are routinely dismissed as simply 'not understanding' the arguments, if not openly treated as coming from soulless nihilists.
Quoting fdrake
Unless I've misunderstood your use of the term 'functionalist' then I'm not expecting a functionalist account. '"Why/How?" is taken directly from the question posed by the hard problem (and its proponents), I've not added anything to that question. I'm simply saying that one can continue to ask 'why?' to any given explanation. "... but why?"... We choose when to stop. that's all I'm saying here. Nothing functionalist, nothing beyond the simple grammar of the word 'why?' It expects some reason. Questions beginning "why..." are universally answered in the form "because...", and I'm not the one posing the question in that format, they are.
Quoting fdrake
I agree. In a sense, that's what I'm trying to ask here for a clearer (to me) explanation of, simply what it is that the reductionist model doesn't account for.
So far, the answers given seem question-begging. I'm asking why the need to invoke 'first-person consciousness' as an entity/property, and the answer given begins "assume there's first person consciousness..." Let's assume there isn't. Assume it's a story, nothing more. Now... why do we need to bring it back? That's the question.
It's not the question because eliminativism is (or should be) the default. It's the question because they are attacking us, not the other way round. The OP is an attack (in the non-personal 'combat of ideas' sense) on eliminativist neuroscience. And already the whole debate has been skewed into painting Chalmers et al as the victims of an uncharitable, superficial attack on their position which they are being asked, quite unfairly, to defend.
I'd invite you to look again at the title of the OP. Who is asking whom to defend their position?
Aye.
Quoting Isaac
I'm not exactly trying to defend the ideas, just gatekeeping how they're argued against. I'm also not strongly committed to what I've written.
Quoting Isaac
I think this is dealt with by "consciousness cannot be explained in physicalist/functional terms (see prior arguments)". So it turns on the prior arguments.
Quoting Isaac
I think it would be odd to suppose "consciousness cannot be explained in physicalist/functional terms (see prior arguments)" with no context, but the ability to show consciousness as unexplainable in those terms is important. I think for Chalmers the bridge is one of conception otherwise. If you take the thesis of physicalism/functionalism as:
"necessarily consciousness can be explained in physicalist/functional terms (see prior arguments)",
Chalmers is arguing against the "necessarily" part by tweaking/analysing/finagling the relevant concept of necessity. That would be the why. That's the one I'm familiar with anyway. I think the "mysterians" have different reasons for believing in the gap. That would be a criterion of sufficiency for adopting some other framework. The failure of physicalism, and a hint at the reasons why.
Good question. Indeed the same question applies to other humans too. How do we scientifically determine if another human is conscious, without begging any questions?
EDIT: I'm still replying to posts from page 6. Nicky's unfortunate suicide should hasten the process of me catching up. It would be weird to reply to his posts without him being able to respond.
The isolation of thought to certain brain regions is the age old fallacy of old scientific ways which still pervade modern science and hold it back in its various fields including neuroscience although not so much physics and the last incarnation of quantum physics.
The problem neuroscientists face is replicating results which science always tries to do however the region always changes in the brain therefore scientists are unable to isolate thoughts and so consciousness itself
Another good question. It seems to me we'd have to assume a hypothesis first that makes a prediction which we then test. How do we choose a hypothesis? All the (serious) current theories of consciousness make predictions that are compatible with observation. How do we choose between them? I think we have to do it conceptually at the moment - check for things like consistency, fidelity to definitions, entailing the fewest/least-serious problems etc.
Specifically with regard to AI, it has been argued that we might be able to interrogate it to see if it understands the concept of consciousness, to see if can introspect its own awareness. I'm not sure about that.
In this thread, it's like your second example: "Why is the sky blue?" - physical cause of 'blueness'
I want to know the physical 'cause' of consciousness, if anyone thinks there can be a plausible account of this. But I'm happy if people want to use a different verb than 'cause', because 'cause' implies a duality that some might not want.
Indeed. This happens a lot, even academics do it. Functionalists sometimes end up saying 'but that's just what I mean by consciousness'. Which is fine, but then they're not talking about consciousness as we know it, Jim.
That's interesting. I frequently wonder what the word 'physical' means. I think it may be 'whatever has structure which does stuff (function).' And I agree that subjective experience doesn't really fit, as I said in the OP, "Why can't all that (structure and function) happen anyway without consciousness?"
'Metaphysical' yes, although perhaps 'conceptual' might be a better word. Opinion is contrasted with knowledge rather than fact. Panpsychism might be a fact, but one that I don't know empirically. I might know it conceptually though.
Yes, which is to say that philosophy, to borrow @fdrake's metaphor, is 'upstream' of science, perhaps. When assessing a claim we could go through the following steps:
1) Is it logically possible? (this is the headwaters, the spring of the stream). If no, it's false. If yes, proceed to:
2) Is it conceptually possible? (this is a wee burn perhaps, as the local Picts say where I live). If no, it's false. If yes, proceed to:
3) Is it physically possible? (we should probably widen this out to a full-on river here, as there's a lot to this stage). I'm not sure this is totally separate from the previous stage. New concepts might emerge as a result of physical investigations, which make things conceptually possible that weren't previously conceived of. This has not happened yet in the science of consciousness, IMO, to the extent that it is now conceivable that consciousness is emergent in some way from brain structure and function.
4) there are other kinds of possibility after this... technological, practical etc, which aren't relevant here.
Debates on consciousness are at the divide between the conceptual and the physical here, I suggest. Disagreement welcome.
I wasn't gong to quote Nickolasgaspar but I will here as he offered a response to RogueAI's question.
Predictably, this is a purely functionlist analysis. This requires either assuming a functionalist definition of consciousness to make it work, or, repeating (begging) the question, as in #3. RogueAI is precisely asking how we 'verify a mechanism that brings online sensory input and relevant mind properties.(conscious state).'
The problem with this type of reductionism is that nothing ever gets 'reduced to...' in any absolute way. The attempt at reduction always leads off into unintelligibility as the inevitability of infinite regress is approached. So the attempt to reduce the material world of inanimate objects, in this way gets swallowed by quantum uncertainty, leading to the unintelligibility of symmetry-breaking and related concepts. Likewise, the attempt to reduce an organized being (a living being), to an inanimate object, so that it might be reduced in the way of physics, is futile because of the two incompatible ways of understanding the source of organization in the material body. The form of organization required to understand the living being is not compatible with the form produced by QFT, and so unintelligibility results from the attempt at reduction.
This problem is nothing new. Though it is framed in modern terms it is as old as philosophy itself. And, in the past it has been demonstrated that a well formed dualism provides an adequate resolution.
Because I want to have my devil's advocate cake and eat it too... Assuming you don't want to beg questions, you also need to suppress the intuition that observable behaviours aren't sufficient to justify inferring something is conscious. So, y'know, purposive behaviour, ability to adapt to new scenarios, attempts to communicate, appearance of sensations and emotions - the kind of things we'd expect from a human agent. The more it quacks like a duck, the more likely it is that it's a duck.
I think that suffices to justify inferring the tested organism had "wide" content, but not sufficient to justify that it has "narrow" content - the part of an organism's state with qualia which are somehow "internal" and "private" or "caused" by their intentions alone.
But I don't know how to justify someone else having "narrow" content since everything observable seems to be "wide" content, when you take others' self reports as a form of behaviour anyway. Like p-zombies can say "I see the traffic light has red, green and yellow lights" or "Ouch" without, allegedly, the qualia. A p-zombie can behave as a qualia-haver in any way, AFAIK that's part of the point.
I don't think there is a way of inferring someone, besides you, has narrow content. Since anything the test subject does influences the tester, and thus can be construed as environmentally caused (making the content wide). And we're in a strange place if believing that an organism has wide content entails one should believe that it has narrow (phenomenal) content while seeking to preserve an observable distinction.
@Isaac - does this make you more happy?
@fdrake That's interesting. Those premises form the basis of the argument by analogy, or the abductive argument. No science necessary. An armchair philosopher who had never touched a Bunsen burner could make that argument. You could also make the same argument, but weaker, for rocks.
That's fair enough.
Quoting fdrake
Can we have a reason why it cannot be (not 'isn't', or 'would prefer not to' - 'cannot' is big word here)? Coming back to satisfaction. I'm satisfied with the explanation in physicalist/functional terms. So how do we accommodate that? Am I wrong to be satisfied (if so where is my error, what criteria of satisfaction should I be employing)? Are some people satisfied by explanations others find incomplete (a psychological issue)?
Quoting fdrake
This is my interpretation of the issue, but I can't get past the fact that it comes down do something more psychological than philosophical. Why can't Chalmers conceptualise it. I can (or at least, I think I can). Is there something wrong with Chalmers? We seem to be talking about someone's capabilities (I can/can't conceptualise it) not about the bridge itself (which would be more like 'no one can conceptualise it').
As Patricia Churchland put it
Quoting fdrake
I don't really understand this. Are you saying he's making a point about what it is to be a necessary explicator for consciousness? Does he have an answer to that question, or a reason to doubt?
Quoting fdrake
Things very rarely do. If you sweetened it with a bottle of Talisker...
Quoting bert1
OK so taking like for like...
"Why is the sky blue?" (according to Nasa)
Why does blue light travel a shorter waves? Why are shorter waves scattered further? Why should it be blue light thus treated and not red light or yellow? Why should gases scatter light at all? How is it that photons (energy) even interact with gases (particles) and why do wavelengths (shapes) have any impact on eyes (cells)?
I could go on, but I don't. I'm satisfied with the answer given, as it seems are you. Can you explain why you're not satisfied with any of the many answers given to the question of how/why we're conscious?
Yes, I understand that's what he's saying. Isn't that rejecting scientific explanations for conscious experience? That's how I would characterize it.
How do we know other people are conscious? What standards do we use? Apply those same standards to AI.
[edit] I see you made that same suggestion in a previous post.
We could have a long and fruitless discussion about this, but I suggest we don't.
That's not the negation of the version of physicalism/functionalism which gets attacked. If the position is "consciousness is necessarily explainable by physical/functional accounts", the negation of that is "consciousness is possibly not explainable by physical/functional accounts". Someone who takes the position of physicalism, under that guise, is actually the person who has a "cannot" statement involved in their thesis. The qualist/mysterian in that sense has a much lower burden of proof. They don't need to demonstrate necessity, they need to find one counter example. The physicalist/functionalist has to establish necessary.
If you buy that framing of the debate, anyway.
Quoting Isaac
If you look at the above paragraph about necessity, and accept the framing that the physicalist/functionalist is committed to a claim of metaphysical necessity, that requires an account of metaphysical necessity. Chalmers looks at that account. As far as I understand his view, he equates metaphysical possibility with conceivability - or at least takes conceivability as a sufficient condition for metaphysical possibility. Metaphysical necessity is the same as not possibly not true. If you take conception, or the other arguments like Mary's room/inverted qualia/ and all that, as sufficient for establishing metaphysical possibility, then that is actually a negation of the physicalist position. If you grant that it could be true that phenomenal consciousness isn't explainable by physical/functional processes, then if Chalmers is right, that suffices to show that physicalism is false. Because metaphysical necessity, if it really held, would require that not to be a possibility in the relevant sense of the word.
So you get into arguments about what the relevant notion of possibility/necessity is in this debate. And which notions of necessity entail which others - like what @bert1was organising in their OP. I think that's the place in the debate such dependencies between modal concepts (possibility senses) intervene.
As to the Patricia Churchland quote, you can address it like I did above. You can argue quite convincingly that it's the physicalist who needs to demonstrate that their position cannot be imagined to be false without entailing an internal contradiction.
:up:
I'll also bump my pet theme. So often we don't seem to have much of a grip on what is supposed to be meant by 'consciousness.'
I can see that. I'm not sure I fully agree; I'll need to think some more. I might have made progress by the time the topic comes around next.
Quoting Isaac
This, though, I'm not sure how to read. This is probably where I locate our disconnect. I feel like you may be making a distinction I can't grasp. Maybe. I wish I could be more specific, but I'm just confused.
That is painfully true, as evidenced by just about every related discussion here on the forum. Be that as it may, with current issues about AI, it looks like it's going from an interesting philosophical problem to a practical political and social one.
True! I think it would also apply to brainstuff and brain behaviour though. You see (neurons arranged in some way), it makes it more likely the organism is conscious and/or has qualia. The relevant distinction there for a person attempting to infer a test subject has phenomenal consciousness is that observables about the test subject are "wide" content, precisely because they partially derive from environmental interaction. If you want to infer the presence of narrow content (phenomenal consciousness) from this, you'd need something more.
Part of why p-zombies are said to work, no? You can fix any physical fact about the world, and they're don't have phenomenal consciousness. All the observables are the same, they can give you the same self reports as a person with qualia, but precisely because their narrow content is "intrinsic", "internal", "first person only" etc, you can't demonstrate that they do have narrow content.
I suppose it's possible to walk the path; there are some physical observables (behaviour etc) which provide sufficient justification for claiming that a test subject has narrow content - the thing is it would always be return that the subject would have narrow content as a p-zombie is stipulated to be able to emulate any physical aspect of a human. The fork in the road is that there are non-physical observables which suffice for that justification - but I've no idea what they could be.
And yet isn't it fundamentally an experiential question? Is studying the nature of consciousness equivalent to actually charting the boundaries of consciousness? Or is it just a lot of talking about consciousness? Personally, I believe the boundaries have to be studied with severe existential commitment, otherwise, it is mostly just words.
Like numbers, and natural laws.
I think artificial intelligence will prove or at least threaten to be a mirror for us.
Why not 'materially' embodied ? Why not there as a dance is there ? 'Materially casually relevant' is hard to make sense of otherwise.
Quoting Wayfarer
My objection is that we don't know exactly (do not agree, at the least) what numbers as opposed to numerals are. 'Law' is obviously a metaphor here, though its wax has cooled. We 'project' functions on measurements, postulate patterns from which we can derive implied observations, etc.
Why not indeed? Have you encountered that book, Incomplete Nature? It's been discussed here a bit over the years. Cheatsheet here. Next on my list.
It seems obvious: we witness dances, we don't witness meanings, purposes and consciousness.
Indeed. Which is why I referred you to the title of the OP. The position is "Neuroscience cannot explain consciousness"
I don't see anyone arguing that consciousness is necessarily explainable by physical/functional accounts - not even Dennett, or Churchland, or the like. Only that such an explanation is sufficient. Hence my focus on the arguments about the (in)sufficiency of those explanations, because that's the only ground I see for disputing them.
Quoting fdrake
I suppose this means I don't...
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, that's definitely how I understand Chalmers' argument too. I think the link between conceivability and possibility is, as Churchland put it, incredibly weak, for the following reasons;
1. I think I can conceive it. On what grounds could Chalmers argue against that to maintain his claim that his personal failure to do so has some metaphysical implication? The argument becomes one of either mental capability, or a random accusation that I'm lying and I can't really conceive it.
2. The experience of quantum mechanics should be quite sufficient to give us very good grounds for discarding the idea the 'the way the world is' is at all readily conceivable by us. The way the world is seems to be, if anything, consistently fiendishly complicated and mind-blowing at every turn.
Then I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the next one. There's usually one a month, they come along between the 'direct/indirect realism' one and the 'about this God chap...' one.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378437122009475
Quoting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_(physics)
Does that sound like a remotely clear physical understanding to you? Are the understandings of quantum physics remotely settled?
No.
You accept the understanding of how an object can become hot simply because you stop asking '...but how?' You are satisfied with the answer.
There are clear answers to how matter becomes conscious. You are just not satisfied with them but prefer to continue to ask '...but how?'
There's nothing wrong with that, your own personal satisfaction is your own lookout. What's wrong would be implying your own personal dissatisfaction has any bearing on the relevance of a field of enquiry.
Quoting Janus
...and...
Quoting Janus
The former is about the state of the field, the latter is about your personal knowledge/grasp of it.
That is a worrying thought.
Why? There is an entire canon of neuroscience around consciousness. Papers and books by the truckload. Are you seriously saying that a reasonable burden of proof is that unless I summarise the entire field of neuroscience of consciousness you can justifiably suggest it doesn't exist.
If you want to engage in a philosophical discussion about the implications of our beliefs and meta-theories regarding consciousness, then I'm interested.
If you want to claim there's no neuroscientific theories of consciousness unless I reveal them to you, then we might as well leave it there. I'm not interested in that game.
@Janus want his/her lack of being able to 'see' the state of some field to have implications for it's actual state.
Chalmers (if @fdrake's interpretation is correct) wants his inability to 'conceive' a bridge to have metaphysical implications.
But 'seeing' and 'conceiving' are both mental capacities. Why do the limits of mental capacity have these implications?
No worries, I know we disagree on the substantive issues. I was invoking you on one or two of the logical matters which I thought you might already know about. The types of possibility and how they interact, for example. No matter.
I don't like qualia either, although I'm fine with phenomenal consciousness. I know they are supposed to be the same, but I think the notion of qualia are unnecessarily confusing. Too evocative of invisible pixies, which I don't think phenomenal consciousness is.
Good question. I find that conceptually possible, because I do think the symphony is the same kind of thing as the orchestra. Beethoven symphony, however conceived (Is it the score? Or the playing? Or the sound waves?) are structure and function. An orchestra is also structure and function. That the other produces the one does not seem difficult to me.
If that's what it is, then it's perfectly explainable in terms of structure and function, at least to a certain depth. We agree on that. It's just not how phenomenal consciousness is typically defined.
Yes, I do find that conceptually possible. But you started with a concept that was not too different from the explanation. If you're happy with your definition and explanation, good for you.
I don't think so. I could be conceived as a set like S={all the notes}. Is a set the same kind of thing as an orchestra?
It could be conceived, as some musicians do, as s kind of 'realisation' from the realm of musical possibilities. Are realisations the same kind of thing as orchestras?
It could be conceived as an expression of the universe realising itself...
...and so on.
You choose to see it in such a way as it is the same kind of thing as an orchestra. You choose not to with consciousness. That choice, whilst perfectly legitimate, is not a failing of neuroscience.
Quoting bert1
Can you explain why you're not? What is it about that definition and/or explanation that you find unsatisfactory?
No, I'm saying just give me a brief rundown of a current theory.
Quoting Isaac
I'm saying I've never heard of any cogent explanation for how matter can give rise to consciousness. I'm not claiming there are none. You say there is such a theory, but you apparently can't say what or where it is. That inspires little confidence.
Quoting T Clark
I suggest that we dont know that other people are conscious, insofar as it is simply part of what it means to be a person. Maybe you could describe it as an animal certainty, but it seems a stretch to describe it as a knowing.
But then, how do we know people are persons? Again, what is significant here isn't knowing or judging that they are persons but relating, communicating, giving and asking for reasons, and so on.
It follows that we dont use standards to make that judgement, because there is no judgement--unless the question comes up. And now that the question has come up, we find it difficult to judge. This I suppose is why it's also a difficult philosophical question.
Some people I know think religion is so stupid - how could people believe such silly superstition. My answer is this. Science tells us how lasers and computers work and can put a man on the moon but is silent on the most important question - who and what am I. In a world of interacting particles I do not exist. At least religion says something. Perhaps I am a soul and some God may guide my journey beyond the body.
So there two incompatible worldviews - science and religion. Philosophy perhaps can bridge that gap and point the way to a single coherent worldview by naturalizing the mind. Panpsychism is an attempt to do so - there are little souls everywhere even in electrons. Rocks may not be sentient, but particles that have self-movement and agency and seem to interact with their peers to create crystaline rocks may. And single celled eukaryotic creatures like amoebas may have mentality and animal cells may interact with their peers to create bodies and brains.
Really? Do you not find the argument from analogy completely compelling? I know some don't, but I struggle to understand why not.
All very good questions. Each worth a thread.
Is that unusual?
I've never heard of any cogent explanation for how long chain polymers are made.
I don't find that at all odd, nor do I think it carries any implication for the field of organic chemistry. I haven't heard any such explanation because I'm not an organic chemist, why would I have?
I'm avoiding the presentation of any neuroscientific theory because I'm on a philosophy forum, it's not the place to discuss the merits of any such theories. What's of philosophical interest (I think) is that you (in common with @bert1 and Chalmers it seems) want to say that your ability to comprehend any given theory's model, to conceive of things the way it does, has some bearing on its veracity. It's that oddity I'm interested in.
The mere existence of a theory that someone thinks explains consciousness should be a given, which is all that's required to explore the philosophical question. But if you think it would be easier with an example, we could use https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10057681/1/Friston_Paper.pdf
Conceivablility isn't a subjective feat, it's a reasonably public property of propositions. Just as the validity of inferences is objective. If we disagree about them, someone is wrong. I'm turning into @Banno
Imagination might be a subjective feat, perhaps.
Maybe you didn't read all of my post. My point was that what cannot be doubted cannot be known. I'm happy enough to drop the stipulation that using "know" here is wrong. It's certain, more than any argument could be.
Do you have some argument in favour of that conclusion, or is it just a foundational principle for you?
To me it seems clearly about capability. I wouldn't expect a five year old to be able to conceive of a Bayesian predictive model. I can't conceive of any of the leading theories in quantum physics. I don't think that makes either wrong.
If that's true, fdrake is wrong. The conceivability of the p-zombie just shifts the burden to functionalists to explain why we talk about having experiences when we don't actually have them.
Something might be conceivable even without anyone to conceive it. It's about possibility. It's more obvious to think of in terms of logical possibility. - (a & -a) was as true 13bn years ago as it is now, no? Same with conceivability.
Who says we don't have them. The argument is about the kind of thing they are, not whether they are. It's about whether 'experience' describes a set of mental events, an epiphenomena of human fancy, or a type of thing the relationship to which neurons have needs explaining.
No one is saying there's no subject matter there at all.
We 'talk about' life-force, luck, auras, God, unicorns, gut instinct, premonition... Doesn't mean they all default exist in any particular form.
Yes, but we're not talking here about the possibility, we're talking about the actuality. Chalmers' actual failure to conceive it. Not its impossibility of being conceived. Why does the one indicate the other? Is Chalmers the pinnacle of human mental ability such that if he can't conceive it, no one can?
I can't solve Navier-Stokes equations. They're not unsolvable, I'm just not that good at maths.
I'm not that interested in Chalmers, probably because I suspect I'll agree with him about most things. I haven't actually read much of his hard problem stuff. I'm saying it's about conceptual possibility, not someone's actual ability to conceive it. I haven't seen any evidence of people conceiving it anyway. When they claim to, it usually using a different definition of 'consciousness' than phenomenal consciousness. Just like your earlier definition.
Yes, but the only measure anyone is giving for conceivability is their own ability to conceive it.
Quoting bert1
What would that evidence consist of?
Chalmers has no particular viewpoint on the constitution of experience. I have to explain this every time his name comes up. :confused:
Quoting Isaac
Cool. So you've accepted that experience exists in some form. You've taken up the burden of explaining what we refer to when we speak of it. I'll call yours the Unicorn Theory of Phenomenal Consciousness. :strong:
I get the opposie impression. But honestly I can't be bothered going through Chalmers or secondary literature to decide what's right.
Quoting bert1
I imagine they have different scopes. I DM for Dungeons and Dragons. To me it's perfectly cromulent to say that parasitic toad people from another dimension have infected a planet sized teratoma with a disease which will turn the planet into a sea of tadpoles in 4 days.
Quoting bert1
I fully agree. In fact, I will make this statement a little stronger: Neuroscience has nothing to do with human consciousness. (At the level of the mind, of course.)
One must also recognize that there are prominent neuroscientists today who admit that and differentiate mind from brain. But this doesn't change the nature of Neuroscience.
Quoting bert1
Exactly. One cannot stress that enough. This kind of consciousness is what I call "bodily consciousness", i.e. consciousness at a body level.
Good to see posts like these! :up:
The whole p-zombie thing has always driven me crazy. Of course other people have internal lives that are like mine, i.e. phenomenal consciousness, experience, what it's like to be them. Doubting that is the same as Descartes doubting everything but his own existence. What possible value is there in doubting it. By the way the argument is phrased, it is impossible to tell by any objective means. It's like the multiverse - metaphysics at best, meaningless otherwise.
I think what we call phenomenal consciousness, experience, what it's like to be... is a mental process much like other mental processes. Everyone makes such a big deal about it, but I see it as an interesting subject to try to understand. I also think looking at experience from the inside is interesting. Are they the same thing? No. One is biology, neurology. The other is psychology, self-awareness. We use different terms to describe them, but then we use different terms to describe chemistry and biology too.
I see artificial intelligence; along with other advancements such as genetics, nuclear power and weapons, particle physics, nanotechnology, and longevity research; as the first times humanity has stepped beyond itself and its world to take on the power to change the basis of our reality in a practical way. I think maybe this is where it all breaks down. Maybe this is why no aliens will ever have to worry about humans coming along and invading. I worry for my children.
See "The Feeling of What Happens" by Damasio. I'm not saying it will be convince you, but it is a serious scientific attempt at a preliminary explanation.
In what plausible universe would I be the only one who has this characteristic, even though everything physical about me and other humans is the same; even though my biology and neurology and that of other people is the same; even though my behavior and that of other humans is the same; even though what I report as my experience and what other humans report is the same. It's an argument looking for a issue to argue about when there's none there. What value is there in having this argument? What do we learn from it beyond the fact that humans will argue about anything.
I agree. I don't get it either.
Have you read it? Is it worth it?
Albert Einstein couldn't conceive of the leading theories of quantum physics. As you said, that doesn't mean they are wrong.
Saying that the brain and mind are different things is not the same as saying the brain has nothing to do with the mind or that neuroscience has nothing to do with human consciousness.
Try reading my post again you pillock.
Since I started posting philosophy on TPF again recently its become disturbingly apparent to me that almost nobody reads my posts, even those who reply to them. I dont think this is a problem with my posts, but if it is then please let me know.
We're not here to read your genius posts. We want you to read ours.
Oh good grief.
I read it the first time. I read it again just now. My comment stands.
And don't call me Willcox.
Your comment does not stand, because it takes me to be saying something Im not saying, something I did not say in the post you responded to. You projected a position onto me that I do not hold.
I read your post, and I've just read it again! But I wasn't very clear in my first response. I get that you think other people are conscious and that this isn't the result of a judgement. Nor, presumably, do we have to be convinced by the argument from analogy before we think of other people as conscious. It just comes naturally. I wonder if it is possible to make arguments instinctively? Or is there's something else going on completely? Probably the latter, no doubt.
:up:
We are rubbing a magic lamp !
[ See how I heroically deny myself the convenience of emojis. ]
:up:
Yes. And is this inside look at experience what we are really trying to grasp? Isn't that also the locus of the experience of knowing?
:up:
I suggest that, for humans, norms are primary, as deep as anything else. The self is something that ought to be good, ought to be rational. Our talk of freedom and responsibility and autonomy is foundational. The philosophical situation takes it for granted.
I'd put self-awareness in this normative sphere. We hold ourselves accountable. We learn to be and think of ourselves as selves, as capable of unified (relatively internal and private) monologues.
:up:
Almost nobody reads anybody's posts charitably and thoroughly as far as I have been able to tell judging by the bulk of replies. For what it's worth, I think you are one of the more charitable and thorough readers of others' posts, as well as being one of the more reasonable and thoughtful posters. I often find myself admiring and envying your patience. I'm far too prone to impatience.
I think you're right on the ball here. Knowing other people are conscious is not a propositional knowing, like knowing it is raining, it is a sense of familiarity, and "animal" knowing as you say.
There is absolutely no reason to doubt that others experience things more or less as I do. Because it is logically possible, because it is not propositionally certain, that others are even conscious, the idea that that constitutes reason to doubt their being conscious is absurd in my view.
I agree with you that no judgement (in the propositional sense at least) is made until the question comes up, and then we find that it is, due to lack of direct observational data, impossible to judge. That said, I don't see it as a philosophical question on account of its analytic undecidability, but as one of the symptoms showing that this kind of "philosophy" has lost its way.
Like "How do we tell if someone is conscious?" Basic first aid: they are alert and oriented to place and time. There's an occasional pretence that the "consciousness" being dealt with by philosophers is somehow different to this, extreme examples are trotted out as if they showed that such simple descriptions of consciousness were somehow wrong. The evidence might be, given the listed first three types of decreased consciousness, that many contributors here are victims, unawares.
One hopes that folk do not think those around them are unconscious. is of course correct.
There's also the odd error of mistaking mere awareness for consciousness. I blame talk of qualia for this; as if being aware of red splotches were all that is required. To be considered conscious, it's not enough to just be aware of the stuff around you; you also have to be able to interact with it. The concentration on qualia, with the implicit pseudo-phenomenological narrative, seems to me to be very unhelpful.
And now it's proposed that "Bert is conscious" is not a proposition.
Are you going to claim that the blob is conscious of red?
if not, then there is more to consciousness than "phenomenal consciousness".
There's definitely more.
Thank you :smile:
Quoting Jamal
Quoting Jamal
Ok then, I guess the subtlety of your argument confused me. We don't know people are conscious because... I think we're about to get into another discussion of what it means to know, which I'd rather not.
Quoting Jamal
That rings a bell. I think I read it 53 years ago in one of the two philosophy classes I took in college. Maybe I'll even agree if that will put an end to the p-zombie bullshit.
Woah, steady on! No need to go that far.
But aye, I did think my post would be in sympathy with your pragmatic conception of knowledge.
He's no more 'declaring them to be the same thing' than I'm declaring light to be the same thing as switches. I'm explaining how/why the light comes on in terms of flicking switches.
You yourself understood this when it cam e to symphonies, yet to choose not to when it comes to consciousness. Symphonies are not orchestras, nor are they notes, nor are they sound waves. these are all component parts which, together, explain symphonies (together with other factors, I'm not claiming to have listed them all).
Explaining how/why a phenomena occurs does not require that the components someone 'are' the thing. Ironically, that's the flaw in reductionist thinking (the one type of thinking the 'hard-problem'ers usually rail against). If I explain the components of the human body, I haven't explained humanity, but there's not some element missing, it's just that the assumption that the sum is entirely subsumed by the component parts is flawed.
You're looking for an explanation of your feelings in terms of physics, but physics cannot explain your feelings in terms that would make any sense to you (or me or anyone) because physics and feelings don't share the same language.
It's like me mentally accepting, on faith, that there's a direct physical explanation of why it's raining in terms of energy levels in fundamental particles, but there isn't a hope in hell of anyone ever proving that. there's more interactions in the human brain than could be calculated by the world's fastest supercomputer even if it had all the time in the known universe to run the calculation, and even if it could, and could write one bit of information on each proton, there's not enough matter in the known universe to write the answer.
That's why reductionism fails. But we don't, observing that failure, start introducing some additional 'thing'. The problem of reductionism is not solved by inventing new entities and forces which are even less amenable to investigation that the ones we assume make up the holistic entities we're studying.
Consciousness is fiendishly complicated, and as a phenomena of human culture and language - the thing we talk about - it's not something that can be physically reconstructed from the component parts. Not because it's made of something else, or because there's some woo involved, but because the task is impossible, like predicting the rain from the position of the molecules two days ago. It physically cannot be done, but that doesn't mean we need invoke any other reason why rain fails than that of moving molecules, and it doesn't mean we have to invoke any other reason (or mystery where a reason should be) why phenomenal consciousness results from the interaction of billions of neurons. We've thoroughly investigated the links, and it definitely does.
Yes, yes. But to understand it you'll need to have done a lot of preliminary reading on Free Energy principles and understand a little of basic neuroscience and Bayesian probability. Nothing super in-depth, but the arguments simply won't be persuasive without that grounding.
As I've tried to point out. Neuroscience, cognitive science, is - like any other science - fiendishly complicated. I find it truly bizarre that otherwise intelligent people could think it remotely meaningful that they pick up a few papers (plucked out of decades of accumulated research) and after glancing at them decide "there's been no coherent theory put forward" as if their failure to immediately understand the arguments made has any bearing on the matter at all. It's weird. Or, to quote your good self...
Quoting T Clark
Yeah, figs are pretty great. Especially in porridge.
Quoting T Clark
A good reason to imagine p-zombies is that they illustrate differences between philosophical theories of consciousness very well, and are an intuitive way to think about the issue. Whether p-zombies exist is a sexy way to phrase the issue of whether functional/physical properties are vital for an account of phenomenal consciousness. They don't have to exist to be useful.
I don't like them personally. But I'm trying to put on my charitable hat for this thread.
I see what you mean. But when I say that Neuroscience has nothing to do with human consciousness, I mean that Neuroscience does not deal with the human mind and consciousness. It deals with the nervous system. Hence, Neuroscience.
Anyway, you can stay with @bert1's "Neuroscience has nothing to say about phenomenal consciousness", if you like.
Thanks, I'll take a look. Most of the non-fiction I read these days mostly just makes me realize how much I don't know. I tend to just plow ahead and then go back and try to fill in the blanks.
In my experience, p-zombies are just more pointless, unrealistic thought experiments like the trolley problem. They seem to be made up by people with too much time on their hands.
Quoting fdrake
You can be the good cop and I'll be the bad cop.
Except that, to me, it clearly does.
It will reward you, I think.
Quoting T Clark
Good policy. Remarkable how far that can can get one in life...
Yes he is, actually. He says consciousness is integrated information. But don't let simple facts get in the way.
"The integrated information theory (IIT) starts from phenomenology and makes use of thought experiments to claim that consciousness is integrated information."
It's the opening sentence.
Check yourself. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.2307/25470707
I said he's no more declaring them...
Saying one thing is another does not deny meanings in the way you're implying. If I say a hat is my favourite item of clothing, I'm not thereby saying it's not also an item of headwear, or a fan to enliven a sluggish campfire, or a cover for creeping baldness...
The claim that consciousness is integrated information does not entail that it isn't phenomenological.
But don't let simple logic get in the way.
Yes and you're wrong. You are saying light isn't the same thing as switches. I, and Tononi, no doubt, would agree with you. He is declaring more than that with consciousness. He isn't saying that integrated information causes consciousness, or produces it, or gives rise to it, or wanks it, or cunts it off, or fugglwucks it, or frottages it, or switches it on, he says it is it.
Yes. I addressed that. Are you having trouble understanding what I've written?
Oh yes.
This is just wrong.
Can anyone understand what this means in a way that doesn't entail a simple denial of the facts of Tononi's position?
I would like to confirm you by quoting the German neuroscientist Gerhard Roth, who said: "As about consciousness, it is a great mystery even for neuroscientists."
Yeah, thanks. I hadn't heard that one particularly, but I've come across a number of neuroscientists saying similar things over the years. I don't really like invoking scientific authorities in this case, as my post, trollish title notwithstanding, isn't really about the science but the concepts. From what I understand there is a great deal of interesting science around identifying the neural correlates of particular experiences, which is great, but that doesn't say much about how consciousness comes about in the first place.
More precisely, until now they are unable to say anything at all about how consciousness comes about.
There have been some attempts, but they fail conceptually I think. Tononi's IIT model is really interesting and ingenious, but ultimately it's just another kind of functionalism and is vulnerable to the same conceptual critiques.
Maybe someday.
Maybe. Discoveries do lead to new concepts. I'm very doubtful but I'm not against people trying.
Maybe it will be like the science of human origins. It draws from a variety of sciences to answer one question.
A variety of sciences? I thought it was just biology alone.
At one time it was mostly archeology. Genetics became a biggy later on.
Yeah, it's a more evocative way of specifying what the debate over the hard problem is about. But I'd rephrase it as whether functional/physical properties are all there is to account for consciousness. And if phenomenal consciousness doesn't fit, as Dennett and Frankish will admit, then we are the p-zombies, deluded into thinking phenomenal consciousness is real.
I want to be clear about that. As far as I can tell, Daniel Dennett and Keith Frankish do not think phenomenal consciousness exists. And they do recognize that it would pose a serious philosophical problem for physicalism/functionalism/objectivity if it did. I'm pretty sure the Churchlands also fall into this category. There are physicalists who do think phenomenal consciousness can either be reductively explained by the functional/physical properties, or strongly emerges from the functional/physical. But not Dennett or Frankish. For them, we are conscious only in a functional and behavioral sense.
Since I don't think we are deluded p-zombies, then I think physicalism has a conceptual problem. And why not? It's an abstraction, and it' s a metaphysical proposition.
It clarifies the conceptual problem for physicalism. If you think we have phenomenal consciousness, then how do you square that with physicalism? If you don't, then you need to explain why we think we have phenomenal consciousness, and admit we live in Chalmers p-zombie universe. Frankish calls it a magic trick of the brain, and Dennett endorses that as a plausible solution for why we're deluded, although he may prefer a Wittgestenien language on holiday kind of answer.
And if you if you think you can make physicalism work with phenomenal consciousness, then good luck with that. Personally, I think Nagel's argument about the view from nowhere gets to the heart of the objectivity/subjectivity split, and we don't even need to talk about Mary or p-zombies.
You can prompt LLMs like ChatGPT to do that. Some people have been playing with hooking the OpenAI api to robots and prompt ChatGPT to control the robot. So you could have a robot with sensors claiming it sees colors, feels the cold, is hungry for more power and what not.
Wouldn't convince me it was conscious, though. Not in the phenomenal sense. LLMs are linguistic p-zombies. We can ask what it would mean or look like for a model to have phenomenal consciousness. I'm guessing we couldn't tell from the weights or architecture. We'd be in the same position as we are with neurons, except that we built the models.
But if neurons are carrying out something like gradient descent, then what makes that different? Or for any functions the brain might be said to perform?
I have often asked myself this question, albeit in a different variant: "Couldn't the human brain perform its functions even without consciousness?" and I said to myself: Orientation can also be done by an unconscious computer in an autonomous vehicle, memory, experience and learning can also be done by AI systems and a lot of other functions of the human brain like creativity, analysis, face recognition, predictions, language ... etc.
Thus, I had the idea that maybe all of the brain functions, even those which imply consciousness could be done without consciousness as well. I realize that this is a tentative and superficial conclusion that some would say is pure heresy, but this is what has been bothering me for decades.
I've yet to hear a good argument against your conclusion. Much of the linking of brains and consciousness seems to me to be assumed on the basis of alterations in brain function altering what we experience. But why can't the alterations in a rock's functioning alter the rock's experience? I'm not quite sure why it's considered reasonable to focus on brains particularly when looking for consciousness in nature.
Aha, you're a panpsychist, right? My assumption was a different one: That all functions of our brain would also be possible without any personal experience.
I've never understood why people think there is any contradiction between believing that phenomenal consciousness is a mental, neurological, process that manifests itself as personal experience. The nervous system is at one level of organization while the mind is at another, higher level. This is analogous to how chemical processes manifest themselves as biological processes.
Quoting Marchesk
Although I don't call myself a "physicalist," I think a physicalist explanation is a good one for this situation.
By the way, if you are a science fiction reader, I just read a good book - "Blindsight" by Peter Watts. In it, humans meet up with intelligent aliens who have no personal consciousness, no self-awareness. The interactions between the humans and the aliens are very interesting.
But only to the humans, one presumes ;-)
I think it's because personal experience/consciousness is instrinsically dependent on judgement and the discernment of meaning, while the kinds of causal relationships posited by neurological sciences are physical, i.e. describable in terms of physical causes and effects.
This is from a chapter on the connection of physical causation and the discernment of meaning:
Quoting Stephen L. Talbott
This touches upon a point I've been debating ever since joining forums - of reason understood as 'the relations of ideas'. The tendency of reductionism is to conflate the two kinds of causation, physical and logical: which is what we do when we say that 'the brain' acts in a particular way, and so 'produces' thought, because of physical causation. The 'because' of reasons - the 'space of reasons', it has been called - can't be explained in those terms, because it belongs to a different level of explanation.
This is my view also. The idea of the space of reasons has an eminent lineage, from Immanuel Kant to John McDowell, through Wilfrid Sellars. In the acknowledgements section of his book Rational Causation, Eric Marcus writes: 'The "space of causes," [John McDowell] taught, straddles the non-overlapping "space of reasons" and "space of laws," a metaphor that fits the central thesis of this
book.'
Our having reasons to do things causes things to happen in the world. Rational causation is a form of downward causation.
:up:
I agree that many simply ignore their own situation as philosopher or scientist. They ignore their what they themselves are made of ---or rather what they perform.
Found this:
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/229403462.pdf
Geist refers to the normative in general. As such reference to the spiritual is a reference to the normative; correspondingly talk of normativity is talk of Hegelian Spirit... In this view, Geist arises with intersubjectivity; Geist has intersubjectivity as its ground and could not exist outside of it.
...
If we understand Geist correctly then we will understand that all human institutions, written and unwritten, all laws, all customs, all duties, all systems of meaning, all language is normative. Now if Geist is just a way of referring to the normative then it seems as if, to borrow from Pippin, we have left nature behind and are entering a world of pure thought. For on Pippins reading the Hegelian trajectory is away from nature and towards Spirit or Geist.... It seems to suggest that Spirit transcends nature and such transcendence of nature seems to imply a break with nature. Of course, as is well known, Hegel sees Geist as a sublation or Aufhebung of nature. But the term sublation implies that what is sublated, nature, is preserved within that which sublates it, Geist. The term sublation never implies a breach. Thus Geist develops out of nature, whilst preserving nature, and does not leave it behind. Geist is a modification of nature.
:up:
Do you see our having reasons to do things itself being caused by neuronal activity? Because if it is then that would be "bottom up", no?
FWIW, Brandom frames the situation as concepts themselves getting their meanings from how claims involving them are linked inferentially. The claim is semantically fundamental. [Can we ever say what it is to say what it is ? ] In either case, the semantic-inferential situation of the philosopher is made explicit as that which of course [in retrospect] is primary. Discursive selves negotiate in terms of soft principles softly established in previous negotiations.
Seems interesting. He does seem to exaggerate the resistance to teleology in biology, which looks a bit crankish, though clearly he's a smart guy.
[quote=Talbott]
The curious thing, however, is that despite this emphatic recognition of the purposive organism, we find in textbooks of biology virtually no mention of purpose or of the meaning and value presupposed by purpose. To refer to such unbiological realities is, it seems, to stumble into the unsavory company of mystics. Yet we might want to ask: if purposiveness in the life of organisms is as obvious as many in addition to Monod and Dobzhansky have admitted, why should it be impermissible for working biologists to reckon seriously with what everyone seems to know?
Its a question we will ask. Be aware, however, that in struggling to answer it we may stir up unsettling doubts about the central biological concepts of evolution and natural selection.
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/
Later in this essay, he makes this point:
My bolds. In a similar vein:
All of that seems reasonable. At one time, the law of gravity just summed up how things were attracted to things. Then it got assimilated by the more comprehensive theory of GR. As we've discussed before, it's not clear why gravity has to keep working. We can't help trusting it, so it's a theoretical point.
Frankly even vitalism, depending on the details, could work as guiding hypothesis. Popper's defense of metaphysics comes into play here.
A careful analysis of the two principle forms of causation reveals that the necessity of "because of physical law" is reducible to a form of the necessity of "because of reason". Simply put, the laws of physics are principles of reason, and the necessity which supports them is a logical necessity, inductive and deductive reasoning.
So, Newton's first law for example, does not describe any real necessity in the physical world, it states something which we employ as necessary for our understanding of the physical world. The "necessity" here is supported by inductive reason which itself suffers from "the problem of induction". When we understand the necessity of the first law, in this way, we see that the temporal continuity described by the concept of "inertia", would not really be necessary in a truly independent (from the human mind) physical world. That this "necessity" is just made up, created by the human minds which attempt to understand the physical world, and does not obtain to a true independent necessity as demonstrated by that stated problem, is the reason why Newton said that the truth of his first law is dependent on the Will of God.
There is an even more fundamental way of looking at the two principal senses of "necessity", which reveals this reduction even better. The two senses would be "logical necessity", because of logic (this includes physical causation), and, "what is needed", or necessary for an end. The former, logical necessity, is reducible to a form of the latter, necessary as the means to an end. Logical necessity can be seen as what is necessary, or needed, as the means toward the goal of understanding. So logical necessity describes what is needed for understanding, just like food is needed for subsistence. The relation between these two senses can be understood in translations of the old Latin expression for logical necessity "must needs be".
In this way, logical necessity, along with the necessity of the laws of physics and other scientific laws which are derived from logical necessity, are subsumed under the category of necessary for the sake of a goal, needed as means to an end. This greatly simplifies one's understanding of causation and necessity, allowing these to be tools of the mind and ultimately subservient to the free will.
However, the physicalist trend, to make the reduction in the inverted way, a way which it is impossible to make because it is incorrect, is a misunderstanding which casts all sorts of confusion onto the issue. But for anyone who has an adequate understanding of the nature of scientific laws in their relation to human thought, and the reality of the physical world, that misunderstanding ought to be obvious.
As we know from brain research, an idea is not caused by other ideas but by brain activities. These activities remain unknown to us for the majority, because only about ten percent of them are heaved into the consciousness. Let me explain: an idea cannot be a cause already because an idea is a representation, an imagination or a fiction. The sentence "I have an idea." is a symbolic narrative to which no real content corresponds. Neither is there an "I", nor can this "I" "possess" anything, such as an idea, all is just fiction.
This sentence is similar to another one, "I drag the file to the trash." Neither there is a recycle bin on the monitor, nor a file, nor is anything dragged, all just symbols. In reality, we operate the mouse and this triggers actions in the processor, on the hard disk and on the monitor. Similarly, if we say "The red knight has killed the black knight" in a computer game: it's all just symbols and representations.
This is a good question but it seems closely related to the one you asked in the other thread about libertarian free will. Maybe it's more topical over there.
In my view there is only one real form of causation: physical causation. All other forms are metaphorical or attributional.
You might be thinking like Jaegwon Kim, and for similar reasons (i.e. the causal closure of the physical + the causal exclusion argument + the supervenience of high-level entities and processes over the physical domain.)
I don't think there are higher and lower levels of reality, instead I do believe there are only different perspectives on one and the same reality.
I appreciate you perspective on it ;-)
Thanks, I'll take a look. People can argue about what consciousness is and what experience feels like, but it is hard to imagine how it works. "Blindsight" puts you in a place where you have to try to imagine what it would feel like to be intelligent but not self-aware. I found it very effective.
That was a very interesting, maybe the most interesting, part of the book. You had to try to imagine what pain would be like with no sense of personal identify.
Quoting RogueAI
No. Yes. I don't know. I guess that's the point.
I'm not sure, but I don't think this is true.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't agree. I understand the distinction between types of reason described in your post, but I don't see any conflict. Meaning and thought can be seen as manifestations of mental processes, which can be seen as manifestations of biological, neurological processes. I don't see that as reductionism.
I enjoyed the video, especially the graphics, and even more the narrator's shirt. They made a five minute film out of the book. I don't know if you saw it. Very good.
That is not the kind of idea that is being discussed. Notice the example given was one of the laws of motion. We are able to discern constraints and causes that act on the physical level, such as laws of nature, but are those laws themselves physical in nature? There is a distinction made in Talbott's example between the because of reason and the because of physical causation. To equate the two kinds is to deny the efficacy of reason, as your argument is then already determined by the disposition of your neurons.
Quoting T Clark
That itself is a judgement. Quoting T Clark And not seeing it, doesn't mean that it isn't so.
So. Language games, as if you don't know what I mean. I didn't say I don't make judgements, I said consciousness is not intrinsically dependent on judgement.
Quoting Wayfarer
And yet another language game, again as if you don't know what I mean.
Quoting T Clark
But that is the textbook definition of reductionism, to wit:
So I'm suggesting that if you don't see it as reductionism, then maybe that's because you don't understand what 'reductionism' means, or what the criticisms of it are.
I was trying to use language carefully so that my meaning would be clear. I guess I failed, although I put part of the blame on you for not even trying. "Manifesting as" is not the same as "equivalent to." Broadcast TV signals manifest as images on your TV set. Are the signals equivalent to the images? Are they the same thing? Of course not. DNA manifests itself as an organism through reproduction and development. Are DNA and the organism the same thing?
To try and be clear, what I'm arguing is that such mental acts as reasoned inference comprise the relationship between ideas, between premisses and conclusions (and not only formal reason, but judgements of meaning, generally, as per this citation). The reductionist wants to say of such mental acts that they are actually neural processes, and that they are real via this grounding in their material constituents; that they exist as physical constituents in the brain, to which we assign meaning. But I'm arguing that it is the assigning of meaning that is fundamental. Even what we regard as a physical explanation has to be grounded in meaningful claims regarding what reasoning or thought is or is not.
I gave examples, which you didn't respond to.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's not what I said and it's not what I meant. I don't deny that mental acts exist as mental acts. Trees exist as biological organisms. They are also manifestations of chemical processes. They are not equivalent to those chemical processes. They are something different.
I would not speak of a different level of explanation, but rather of a different kind of communication: a metaphorical one that should not be confused with reality.
Quoting Wayfarer
I did not equate the two kinds of causation, because I do not attach any reality to the "causation by reasons". Causation by reasons belongs to a metaphorical way of speaking, which has nothing to do with reality. Indeed, we often give the wrong reasons for our decisions and actions because we are often mistaken about the real reasons.
To claim that our reasons are determined by the disposition of our neurons is not to deny the efficacy of reason - this would only be the case if neurons were not working efficiently.
"Reduced" does not mean "made equivalent to" but rather "explained by" and it does not mean that the brain is seen as identical to its thoughts and feelings but rather that the thoughts and feelings are seen as caused by brain activity.
I think, as explained in my post, that you have this backward Jacques. All causation is causation by reason, and any other form of "causation" is fundamentally wrong, for the reasons explained.
I disagree. I tend to follow Hume's view that causality is based neither on logical necessity nor on inductive and deductive reasoning, but on custom or habit (as stated in his "Enquiry on Human Understanding"):
Quoting David Hume EHU 5.4-5
Quoting David Hume EHU 7.28
However
Quoting Jacques
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Michael
Quoting bert1
To say that custom or habit is the cause of something, is just to avoid the question of what is the the real cause of that thing. "Real cause" here referring to what a proper analysis and understanding of the situation would uncover. These words are just used to facilitate communication, when a deeper philosophical understanding of the situation is not required. So if we say X did such and such out of "Custom" or "Habit", we are really saying that we do not properly understand why X did that, but there is some reason there, for the action, which we do not properly understand. So "Custom" and "Habit" here are terms that stand for something which is not well understood, but understanding those things is not necessary to the conversation, so the use of them allows use to breeze over those not-understood aspects of reality. We use many words like this.
Hume alludes to this in the quoted passage with the statement "By employing that word, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity". But of course this really is not a pretense, and the quoted passages gives us no reason why we should assume that it is a pretense, just an assertion that we should think of some actions as the custom of pretense.
Notice the inherent contradiction, or hypocrisy in Hume's words. It is our custom to believe that we do not give the complete reason when we say that custom is the cause. But if custom really is the cause, then we would have to accept that custom is the cause of us believing this. Therefore he could not truthfully say that this is a pretense, he must say it is a custom. Pretense is a cause other than custom, because it runs contrary to custom by causing one to express the opposite of what that person would customarily express, in order to "pretend". To be customary is to be consistent with the acts of others, but to pretend is to make your act (which is consistent with others) inconsistent with your mind. So it's self-refuting for Hume to say that we pretend otherwise, when he says that custom or habit is the real cause, because pretense implies a cause which is inconsistent with custom. If custom was the real cause it would be impossible for us to pretend anything, because to pretend is to do something contrary to what custom inclines us to do.
Quoting JacquesQuoting Jacques
These two statements do not contradict each other, as you may imply. The first one only says that thoughts are always preceded by a specific brain activity and that no thought has ever been observed that was not preceded by such a brain activity (provided of course that one observes the brain from which the thought originates by means of fMRI). This is consistent with Hume's statement about causality:
Quoting David Hume (EHU 4.19)
If you continue to find a contradiction between my two statements, you are welcome to point it out.
Hume does not say that custom or habit is the cause of something but rather he is saying that our knowledge of the relation between cause and effect is ...
[quote="David Hume (EHU 4.21)" ]... founded on the supposition that the course of nature is sufficiently uniform so that the future will be conformable to the past. [/quote]
But demonstrative reasoning (concerning relations of ideas) cannot establish the supposition in question,
This is exactly what Hume wants to say: that we do not properly understand why the same cause is always followed by the same effect.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am sorry to say that by speaking of "hypocrisy in Hume's words" you show that you have not understood his argument at all.
The self-evident conflict stands despite your attempt to deny it. First you say that
Quoting Jacques
By which you are asserting a causal relation between the brain and thought. But the very next quote undermines causal relations, quoting Hume saying they are 'only a matter of custom'. Besides, the assertion that specific brain activities can be correlated with specific thoughts is also false. The brain, as I'm sure you know, is the most complex phenomenon known to science, with more neural connections than stars in the sky. So to demonstrate a 1:1 mapping between those activities and even very simple ideas and sensations, I don't think is tenable. You're advocating what is known as 'brain-mind identity theory' which has very few advocates in today's philosophy.
Another thing you might consider when quoting Hume is Kant's 'answer to Hume'. He said, very briefly, that causality is not an empirical concept but a necessary condition of experience. It is a category of the understanding that we use to organize our sense experience. In other words, we do not derive our knowledge of causality from experience; rather, we bring our concept of causality to experience, which allows us to understand and interpret it. And for that reason, Hume's point is something which is betrayed by the use of the word 'because' in any argument - even those of that he employed.
I don't know Jaegwon Kim, but if he holds that there are higher levels above the physical realm, then I certainly don't think like him.
How do you get to that conclusion? It's come up lots of times on the forum before, but I don't see this strong connection.
It's less about conclusions and more about the repeated observation that brain activity always and invariably precedes mental experiences such as thoughts, decisions, or perceptions. The reverse order has not been observed a single time.
Sure, in humans and brainy animals. But that's not very interesting. It's totally consistent with the view that consciousness in rocks only occurs when there is rock-activity.
If it's not interesting, it's still quite controversial, especially among philosophers. :smile: Quoting bert1How can you prove your claim that consciousness occurs in rocks?
OK, but "that the course of nature is sufficiently uniform so that the future will be conformable to the past" is a principle derived from inductive reason. Therefore Hume is saying that causation is founded on reason. So why did you clam that Hume's view is "that causality is based neither on logical necessity nor on inductive and deductive reasoning, but on custom or habit". Clearly, "that the course of nature is sufficiently uniform..." is an inductive principle, so causality is based on reason according to Hume.
Quoting Jacques
Judging by the problem stated above, I think it might be you who does not understand Hume very well. It appears like you have created an argument which is not consistent with what Hume actually said, and you have presented it as Hume's argument.
Inductive reasoning is really just custom and habitual expectation at work according to Hume.
Amazing as I find it, I got the impression that Hume is saying that causation is NOT founded on reason. He says:
In my understanding, "can never" is a negation and is equivalent to "can not". How you can interpret "can never" as an affirmation is a mystery to me
But youre the one who keeps insisting on the absolute indubitability of the causal relationship between the brain and the mind. Why is this instance of an inductive causal relationship immune to Humes criticism which youre so happy to apply to anything else? (Quite aside from the fact that David Hume is hardly the last word in the topic of neuroscience and consciousness.)
If I understand it correctly, Hume is not criticizing the postulation of causal relations per se, (such as friction and heat), rather he is commenting on the procedure by which these causal relations are derived: not by logical reasoning, but only by observation of multiple identical sequences of two successive events, which are then called cause and effect. What Hume claims is that from the observation of the cause alone, one cannot infer its effect; one can infer the effect only by observation and not by logical reasoning.
Yes, and this is why Jacques' claim is a strawman representation of "Hume's argument" when he describes Hume's view of causality as "based neither on logical necessity nor on inductive and deductive reasoning, but on custom or habit". Hume's view is that causation is based in inductive reasoning.
Hume actually supports what I described, that all forms of causality are reducible to forms of necessity by reason. Hume then goes even further in the analysis (or reduction), to represent reason as habits of thinking which are formed through custom.
But instead of going further in this analysis, to describe "habit" in the Aristotelian terms of potential and actual, as was customary in prior philosophies, Hume suggests, as indicated by Jacques' quoted passage ("By employing that word, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity."), that there is no further to go in such an analysis. See, Hume is claiming that the idea that we can proceed further in the reduction, toward an understanding of things like "habit" and "custom" through application of the Aristotelian ontological structure, is just a pretense. This I would call a sort of intellectual laziness.
I believe this is representative of a very important bifurcation in the understanding of biology, which was developing at that time. Lamarckian evolutionary theory placed great importance on "habit" as formative, i.e. having a causal role in the process of evolution. And Lamarck's evolutionary theory became widely accepted in the east of Europe, being well-suited to Marxist materialism. The idealism, and scientism of the west however, had no place for this idea, that the activities of the living organism could actually be causal in shaping the form of the material body.
So we, in the west, became immersed in the custom of thinking that the cause of change in evolution was random chance mutations. This custom, the idea of "chance" as a cause, remains paramount in the concept of abiogenesis, though mainstream biology is now moving more and more toward removing chance as the reason (cause) for the genetic mutations deemed necessary for evolutionary change. In general, when "chance" is stated as a cause, it is just a stop-gap (God of the gaps), which serves as a placeholder until a better understanding is developed. Those who adhere to this idea of 'chance as a cause', refusing to acknowledge that it is just the stop-gap that it is, resist and deny the need to look further for the true cause, and this incapacitates the philosophical will to know. This is very evident in the concept of "spontaneous generation" which was widely accepted by the unphilosophical right up until the nineteenth century and the work of Louis Pasteur.
Quoting Jacques
If you place a quote like this, in the context of what Hume says overall, the bigger picture, which is represented by Janus' quote above, "Inductive reasoning is really just custom and habitual expectation at work", you will see why I assert that Hume's position is self-defeating, as self-contradicting and inconsistent.
He clearly argues that causation reduces to reason as Janus indicates, it is a matter of inductive reasoning. But then, as you show, the problem of inductive reasoning, which Hume exposes, forces the conclusion that there is no "real" necessity here. The "necessity" is an inductive necessity which does not provide any absolute certainty, therefore not the requirements of a true objective necessity. This opens the door to "chance" as the filler of that gap, when we deny the "Will of God" as the filler of the gap.
The reason why this move by Hume is self-defeating, and contradictory due to inconsistency, is that it starts by attributing causation to reason. The reasoning involved is inductive, as Janus presents. Then, the deficiencies of inductive reasoning are exposed, and from this Hume concludes what you present, "the mind can never possibly...". But this itself is an inductive conclusion, and the form of the conclusion "can never possibly..." is exactly what is denied by Hume's exposé concerning the problems of inductive reasoning.
So Hume's conclusion exactly contradicts his premise. And it is this inconsistent move which opens the door to "chance" as having a real place in causation. Instead of accepting what he has exposed, a deficiency in human reasoning, which might be improved upon in the future, to close this gap in certainty caused by the problem of induction, he wrongly concludes that this deficiency cannot ever be rectified.
Then, from this false necessity which he has produced ("the mind can never possibly..."), we can go on to assume that the gap in certainty is a feature created (caused) by the independent material world, rather than a feature created (caused) by deficiencies in the habits of the human mind. But this is to proceed on the foundation of that very false premise of necessity. And when we apprehend this gap in certainty as a feature of the independent world, rather than as a deficiency in the habits of the human mind, we are wrongfully convinced in our belief that this gap cannot ever be closed. From this misdirected position, we tend to attribute to "chance" these features of the world which we incorrectly believe cannot ever be understood. And of course, we assume that we cannot ever understand them because they are chance, in this extremely vicious circle which circumvents the philosophical desire to know.
These acts which are contrary to custom may even become habitualized, so that we have instances of habitual liars for example. That some habits may be according to custom, and some might be contrary to custom indicates that "habit" is the wider category, and that "custom" in its relation to "habit" only refers to a specific type of habits.
This means that we cannot understand habits by referring to custom, but we can get some understanding of customs by referring to habit. Therefore we must proceed to principles completely independent from custom if we want to understand habits, and this would be necessary if we want to understand customs in their relation to habit.
Of course, the same applies for the causal link between brain activity and mental experiences as for any other causal relationship: no cause, no effect. Similarly, it is also true for this causal relation that it cannot be deduced by any logical conclusion of the world, but only by observation. A single observation of a thought without preceding brain activity is sufficient to say that mental experiences are not always caused by brain activity. However, as said, such a case has never been observed since brain scans have been available.
I am sorry to say that I cannot see any connection between Hume's thesis on causality and your post. :sad:
However, as is well known, correlation is not causation. It is obviously the case that a functioning brain is a requirement for consciousness, but the sense in which the brain produces or creates consciousness is what is at issue and remains an open question. This is the subject of the David Chalmers paper, Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness and has been the subject under discussion in this thread for the last month.
Yes, it has become very evident that your understanding of Hume is quite sorrowful.
I mean you provided the clinching quote from Hume himself, and you still don't understand the predicament which Hume put himself into.
If that is not an inductive conclusion which asserts the exact form of certainty, (with "never possibly find..."), which Hume insists that inductive conclusions cannot provide, then how do you explain it?
I agree, but I don't think inductive reasoning involves any deductive certainty, or necessity.
That's right, but inductive reasoning is still a form of reasoning, so we cannot deny, as Jacques does, that causation is based in reason. We just have to respect the fact that this type of reasoning, which currently provides us with our understanding of causation, cannot provide that high degree of certainty which deductive reasoning does.
However, the problem which arises, which Jacques exposes with the skillfully selected quote above, is that Hume makes an inductive conclusion about causation which expresses the exact form of certainty which he insists that inductive reasoning cannot provide, i.e. "the mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause".
It is this faulty conclusion of Hume's which leads us toward the the equally faulty assumption that there is no such necessary relation between cause and effect, rather than the more appropriate conclusion that the human mind's application of induction, does not provide the capacity required, to properly understand the necessary relation between cause and effect. In other words, it is the deficiencies of inductive reasoning which make it so that we cannot find necessity here, as is the case with inductive reasoning in general. But this does not mean that necessity is not there hidden within the concept of causation, such that we can conclude with certainty, as Hume does, that the mind can never possibly find that necessity.
The issue here is that animals also seem to have inductive expectations. So maybe what we think of as inductive reasoning consists in rationalising our instinctive expectations.
Another line of thought is that the idea of causation derives from our direct experience of ourselves as both causal agents and as being subjected to the effects of other things like the sun, wind and rain and so on. I can push, pull, cut and smash things and in doing so feel the force I am exerting.
So, on that view the idea of causation does not merely derive from observing constant conjunctions, but rather derives from the actual bodily sensations of the forces involved in moving, cutting and smashing things etc., as well as forces like the heat of the sun, the wind and the rain and so forth on the body
This morning I posted this, which I think is also relevant, in another thread:
I remember once, you described to me what you thought qualified as inductive reasoning carried out by other animals, and it did not appear to be anything like the way that I understand "inductive reasoning". And I think it's clear that this would not qualify as a concept of causation, like Hume was talking about. I do not think that things like Pavlov's conditioning qualify as analogous with the predictive capacity of the human concept of causation. I mean, there may be some underlying base capacity which is common to both, but the latter qualifies as prediction based on inductive reasoning, while salivating at the sound of a bell does not, it is just a basic form of association.
Quoting Janus
I agree with this to an extent, and it is why, as I explained already, the concept of "necessity" which we associate with causation is based in "necessary" in the sense of what is needed, as the means to an end. This is why it is misdirected to attempt to ground the "necessity" of the relation between cause and effect, in some sort of logical necessity which is supposed to be grounded in certainty. Instead, logical necessity, which is supposed to produce certainty is grounded in "necessary' in the sense of the means to an end. So the "necessity" which we assume for the sake of logical proceeding is the means (as necessary for) the end which is understanding, or knowing. Therefore "logical necessity" is grounded in "necessary" in the sense of what is needed for an end, hence the archaic phrase for logical necessity "must needs be", as signifying "necessary for".
Without the explicit thoughts, we cannot classify this as "inductive reasoning". So, we must look for some other form of process similar to rational thinking, but not rational thinking, which rational thinking may be based in, as a manifestation or growth from this process, but is completely different from rational thinking, as we think of cause as being distinct from effect.
There is consensus among brain researchers that the relationship between neuron activity and mental experiences is one that goes beyond casual correlation and has all the hallmarks of a causal relationship.
It is a pity that we cannot invite Hume for a talk, but fortunately he has given us his thoughts in writing. I quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and leave it to everyone to draw his own conclusions:
Quoting Graciela De Pierris, Michael Friedman
I do not find that it is an inductive inference, because it is not an inference from particular cases to the general case. It is more likely to be a case of analytical reasoning.
Quoting Graciela De Pierris, Michael Friedman
I explained quite clearly already, why such a conclusion is self-defeating. Notice that even this statement is self-contradicting. The word "inference" implies reasoning. An inference is what is derived from reasoning. So if a supposed "inference" has no foundation in reasoning, it cannot be called an "inference" because that would be contradictory. Yet it is called an "inference", because it is recognized that it actually is founded in reason, and Hume's attempt to portray it as not founded in reason is just incoherent hypocrisy.
Hume attempts to limit the meaning of "reasoning" to exclude inductive reasoning from the category of "reasoning", because of the deficiencies found to inhere within this form of reasoning. However, that leaves Hume's own conclusion, that the relation between cause and effect is not founded in reason, as itself not founded in reason. Therefore unjustified. That's why Hume's conclusion is self-defeating.
Quoting Jacques
An inference from the particular to the general is exactly what the quoted conclusion is. Look:
"The mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause, by the most accurate scrutiny and examination.
Hume gives many examples of particular instances of why the mind cannot find the effect to be implied by the cause. These examples of particulars are supposed to be representative of what observations of the "most accurate scrutiny and examination" could provide for us. Then he states the general (inductive) conclusion "the mind can never possibly find...".
Analytical reasoning involves judgements concerning relationships of meaning. Hume could not produce that conclusion of impossibility, "the mind can never possibly..." through analytical reasoning because there is no premise or axiom to support that inference of impossibility, only Hume's observations of what the mind can and can't do. Then the general principle "the mind can never possibly...", is produced; clearly inductive reasoning.
Finally I understand that you are not criticizing my interpretation of Hume, but Hume himself. I am so relieved because I am sure he does not need my help. :smile:
There is not. What youre describing is a philosophical attitude, not a scientific hypothesis, known as brain-mind identify theory. There are many cogent arguments against brain-mind identity but Im not going to bother thrashing that particular dead horse any longer.
I'm criticizing both, your interpretation, and Hume himself. Your interpretation is bad because you interpret Hume's argument to be demonstrating that the conception of causation is not based in reason, when he clearly shows that it is based in reason. The reason for your bad interpretation though, is that Hume's argument is incoherent, so you can blame Hume if you will. Notice that the quote from Stanford which you provided says that Hume concludes that the relation between cause and effect has "no foundation in what he calls 'reasoning'". The authors at Stanford notice that Hume is working with an unconventional idea of "reasoning".
You do not seem to have noticed this, and that's why I am criticizing your interpretation. What you're not noticing is that Hume describes this relation between cause and effect as being based in reason, when "reason" is understood in the conventional way. But, he proposes that we restrict our use of "reason" according to a private definition which he is outlining, so that the type of reasoning by which we commonly relate cause to effect, does not qualify as "reasoning" under this private definition. The issue here is that faulty or invalid reasoning is still reasoning.
The further point I made, is that by Hume's own argument, his conclusions concerning the relation between cause and effect cannot be "reasoned" conclusions, so his conclusions are fundamentally unjustified. Therefore Hume undermines his own argument, so his argument is self-defeating. The same premises by which he argues that the concept of causation is not derived from reason, ensure that his own conclusion is not derived from reason. That you do not apprehend this is a further indication that your interpretation is poor.
Indeed, I did not intend to describe brain-mind identity theory. I do not hold that brain and mind are identical, rather that mind is a function of the brain, just as digestion is not identical with stomach, but is its function.
What Hume meant to say is this: when you observe an unknown process for the first time in your life, say the encounter between two unknown creatures from the deep sea, you cannot predict by any reasoning what will happen. The only way to find out is to observe what happens.
I have no doubt that some kinds of animals have a capacity to reason, and I don't believe that reasoning is necessarily carried out, even by humans, in the form of "explicit thoughts". But I also don't care to expend the effort on trying to convince you of that.
And that's relevant?
Consider this. The fact that reasoning cannot provide us with an absolutely perfect and omniscient capacity of prediction, does not imply that our capacity of prediction is not based in reason. That conclusion would require the premise that reasoning provides us with absolutely perfect and omniscient knowledge.
This is why the Stanford article you quoted says about Hume's argument, "what he calls 'reasoning'''. Hume consistently mischaracterized, poorly described, or incorrectly defined (if we can call descriptions definitions), the capacities of human beings.
Quoting Janus
I tend toward believing that many animals perform some sort of processes which are very similar to "reasoning", if not actually reasoning. The issue here is in how one would define "reasoning". If we limit "reasoning" only to those formal processes like deduction and mathematics, which produce a high degree of certainty, in the way that Hume wanted, then I think we decisively exclude the mental processes employed by other animals from the category of "reasoning". I don't know Hume well enough to say this for certain, but this may have been his intention, to produce a clear separation between the mental capacities of human beings, and the mental capacities of other creatures.
I like to think of "reasoning" as being defined by the use of symbols in the thinking process. And, there are formal ways of using symbols in thinking, being defined by convention, and also informal ways of using symbols in thinking, and these could be called private ways. We need to allow for the reality of private ways of thinking, in order to account for creativity; the reality of growth and expansion, evolution in the thinking process. Private ways may be taught, and adapted by others, becoming new conventional ways.
If, as I propose above, we use the use of symbols as the defining feature of reasoning, we might in some sense exclude other animals from the category of "reasoning", but this depends on how one would define "symbol", and exactly what type of mental images other types of creatures employ. In many ways, an aural or visual imagine can qualify as a "symbol", so the exclusion of other animals is not so simple.
This problem of definition is very common when analyzing the capacities of living creatures, and it is the principal reason why deductive reasoning does not provide us with the high degree of certainty which many people believe it does. The results of deduction are only as sound as the premises employed, and definitions constitute a large part of the premises. Each definition creates a sort of internal boundary as to what is essential, necessarily inhering within, the defined term. And this is known as logical priority. So, in the example above, I define "using symbols" as necessarily inhering within "reasoning", such that using symbols is an essential aspect of reasoning, and therefore logically prior to reasoning. Then "using symbols" is the broader category and may include other activities which are not properly "reasoning".
The problem is that the thing which inheres within, that which is "logically prior", as essential to the defined thing, is always the broader and less well-known category, therefore receiving a less clear and concise definition. So the effort to produce certainty in our deductive reasoning requires that we go further and further inward in our quest to understand and define the prerequisite terms employed, and as we proceed in this way, the terms are less and less well defined, decreasing the desired certainty accordingly. And since this is how defining works, uncertainty inheres within conception.
That is the principal reason why "systems theory" is not at all suited for the understanding of "living systems". Systems theory relies on the use of boundaries, and the boundaries define the external limits of the proposed system. But a living system is defined as "open" and this implies that the boundary is not a true boundary. The reason why the boundary is not a true boundary is because it does not provide a good definitional base for distinguishing the status of some things as to 'part of the system' or 'not part of the system'. And the issue, or deficiency, is that the model puts the boundary around the outside of the system, while the true opening, or weakness (which is really a weakness of definition) is to the inside of the system. Therefore the opening in the boundary of an "open system", a living system, ought to be represented as on the inside.
Let me make an analogy. Let's suppose a model of thinking which is a neurological representation, is presented as a system. As wayfarer states above, this "brain-mind identity theory" is defective. The neurological system model puts a boundary on the system which is an external limit to the system. Things which have a causal effect on the system as a whole, which cause change to the system, must come from outside the system and pass through the external boundary in order to be apprehended as having an effect. However, as I demonstrated above, the mental process of thinking and reasoning employs symbols with defining boundaries to the inside. In this process, the weakness of the whole, the location where things are not clearly defined and therefore may be either part of, or not part of, the whole, thereby having causal influence on the whole, is to the inside of the whole, not the outside. Systems theory, since it is based in empirical observations from the outside of the system provides no means for apprehending the cause of changes which pass through the principal weakness of the whole, the internal opening.
Why do you have to keep clinging to single words like "reasoning"? Hume also uses other expressions for what he means, such as "scrutiny" and "examination". What is important is the meaning of these words, all three stand for thinking, reasoning, combining or whatever contributes to finding a solution to a question. Ultimately, he means an effort of the mind. And his thesis is that one cannot derive an effect from a cause by thinking alone. This is only possible by observation.
Please consider the following example of two billiard-balls used by Hume Quoting Graciela De Pierris, Michael Friedman
Well sure one cannot derive causation from thinking alone. That would be rather nonsensical because something has to stand in, within the thinking, as the cause and as the effect. That is known as the content of thought, and most of the content is derived from observation.
But that is not the issue here. The issue is whether the concept is derived from thinking, (better stated as "reasoning") or some other living process like a simple propensity to associate one thing (the cause) with another thing (the effect). Hume's claim is that our capacity to predict, through the use of the concept of causation, i.e. to say that a certain outcome (effect) would be necessitated by a certain action (cause), is not based in reason, but in some sort of propensity toward seeing things in this way.
Quoting Graciela De Pierris, Michael Friedman
This is the heart of Hume's mistake. He misunderstands how we sense and observe things. We actually observe things as continuous in time, not as distinct events. there are no natural divisions observed between events or motions, as motion is observed as continuous. It is the mind which separates, or individuates distinct events, or distinct motions, within the flow of time. So we observe a multitude of billiard balls rolling and bouncing off each other as one event. This is very evident with the opening shot which breaks the pack, and the balls are rapidly moving around bouncing off each other. It is the mind which separates the action of one ball from the action of another ball, and the mind numbers these individuated events as motion #1, and motion #2, in a temporal order, assigning cause to the motion of one, and effect to the motions of the other.
This is evident in all such activities which are divided in this way to assign cause to the earlier part of the event, and effect to the later part. For example, a rock flying through the air hits the window and the glass breaks. That is sensed as one continuous event. But the mind of the observer separates the flying rock, as cause, and the breaking glass as effect.
So Hume's thesis is incorrect, by starting from a false premise. He assumes that we must somehow associate cause with effect, and so inquires as to the means by which we establish a relation between these two. in reality though, the temporal process which constitutes cause and effect is perceived by us as continuous, without natural divisions, and we separate cause from effect. So the proper inquiry should have been to inquiry how the mind separates cause from effect, rather than how we relate cause to effect..
Ok, let's suppose Hume is wrong. Then try to solve the following problem: A billiard ball rolls toward a second billiard ball. Try to figure out (before they meet) what will happen when the two balls meet and state what method you used to do it.
By what reasoning do you find out whether the balls will attract each other, whether they will bounce off each other and in what direction, whether they will penetrate each other, or disintegrate, or explode, or ... or ...?
Hume thinks "causation" reduces to "constant conjunction." That is, "A causes B iff whenever A occurs B occurs after." So, for Hume, causation is a conditional relationship, which is something that exists in/can be known by reason.
That said, I think you're correct about how Hume thinks of causation in a way, because he is essentially saying, "what most people think causation is cannot be what it really is because such a relationship is unknowable, thus by "causation" we mean constant conjunction." However, he doesn't think that there is a secret causation unaccessible to reason lurking behind a veil in the world, he thinks causation is just conjunction.
Measure everything and plug the data into equations we have for exactly this sort of thing. If you do it right you will correctly predict how the balls will react every time to a degree of precision that makes any variance indistinguishable. If you're a good billiards player, you can do this intuitively.
This seemingly relies on induction, at least from our standpoint. However, multiple paths exist around the problem of induction.
First, we could adopt a Bayesian approach utilizing the principle of maximum entropy. This is an approach where we use methods grounded in deduction to determine the statistical likelihood that observation X predicts observation Y. This method requires jettisoning any attempt to speak about ontology or causation, and any hope of certainty, but arguably grounds itself in deduction from probability theory. Of course, no one actually lives like this, so it's a best an academic exercise to investigate how such a scheme works.
Second, we could adopt the position the the world is inherently rational. We can ground this in speculative exercises and logical arguments, e.g. Hegel's objective logic. From here, provided we haven't gotten lost in our dizzying system or made an error somewhere, we can proceed with "causality as logical entailment," or more popular in physics today "causality as computation, progressions between possible states."
Third, we can note that Hume's argument undercuts any knowledge of the world. To be sure, Hume thought 'relations of ideas,' i.e. logical truths, were secure, and even known 'matters of fact,' but those who came after him began tearing down those concepts. After all, don't we use induction in proving to ourselves that our memories are accurate or in vetting the sources for our matters of fact? And Quine has a pretty damaging critique of relations of ideas (although I am left less convinced by it than many it seems.). This being the case, we are left with radical skepticism about everything. Except no one lives like they assume this to be true, and so we have to assume that Hume made a fundamental mistake somewhere along the line in assessing how we come to know about the world. If knowledge is impossible, why trust the knowledge that knowing is not possible in the first place? It's self-undermining.
If I'd never played pool before, I could read some books, and learn how the balls ought to behave through geometrical principles, and physics, then apply deductive reasoning to say that the balls on my table will move that way. Those principles I would study would have been developed from inductive reasoning. Or someone could tell me these principles. If I've played pool before, and learned from experience rather than being taught principles, I'd use inductive reasoning more directly.
I believe that Hume meant to say that in mathematics we can gain new knowledge by mere thinking, but in the natural sciences we cannot. For example, if we want to know how two balls will behave when they collide, without having observed a single collision of any objects before, we cannot find out by calculation or thinking.
So we have to do the experiment, we let the balls collide against each other more often from different directions and speeds and note the respective behavior.
Before the next collision, we can now calculate, based on our experience, what will happen, but only based on the assumption that the balls will behave as they did in the previous collisions. The assumption that the future will be similar to the past, however, cannot be justified by any calculation but only by experience.
I don't think you have this quite right. The point Hume makes is that the assumption that the future will be similar to the past cannot be justified by experience, because the future is always ahead of us, and never properly experienced. Experience is always, all in the past. Therefore, that the future will be similar to the past is a principle derived from something other than experience.
The prediction, for what will happen in the future, is as you say, based on an assumption that the future will be similar to the past, but the issue between you and I is the question of what this assumption is based in. We could say that this assumption is somehow derived from experience, but we cannot say that experience justifies it, for the reasons explained above, and it is the way that it is derived which is at issue here.
So this is where inductive reasoning comes into play. When we take past experience, and produce a general principle like 'the balls behaved in such and such a way in the past, therefore the balls will behave in such and such a way in the future", this is an inductive principle. So the issue is what grounds, or justifies the inductive principle. That things behaved in such and such a way in the past, is not sufficient to produce the necessity to imply that they will necessarily behave this way in the future. What is needed is another premise which states that the future will be similar to the past. But this again appears to be just a more general form of the same inductive principle, How things have been in the past, will continue to be how they are in the future. So we do not escape the trap of relying on induction, and this does not give us the desired necessity, or certainty. However, Hume and you as well it seems, want to say that this principle (that the future will be similar to the past) is not actually derived from reason, but simply some sort of predisposition which we have toward looking at the future. We just naturally assume that things will be the same, rather than having derived this idea from experience and inductive reasoning.
I'm sorry if this is a bit off-topic and I promise not to pursue it. What you say is true. But I can't resist pointing out that Hume makes a lot more of his similar point.
In Enquiry V, he repeats again that there is "no secret power or process of reasoning that leads us to expects similar results" from similar initial conditions and then points out that we are still "determined" to draw the same conclusion, even though we are "....convinced that .. understanding has no part in the operation". He concludes that "There is some other principle which determines (sc. us) to form such a conclusion. This principle is Custom or Habit." Then he says "By employing that word, ..... we only point out a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well known by its effects". So it is essentially a causal explanation of why we continue in the same way despite the sceptical arguments.
So far, so good. But he goes further in footnote 1 to Enquiry VI.
"Mr. Locke divides all arguments into demonstrative and probable. In this view, we must say, that it is only probable all men must die, or that the sun will rise to-morrow. But to conform our language more to common use, we ought to divide arguments into demonstrations, proofs, and probabilities. By proofs meaning such arguments from experience as leave no room for doubt or opposition"
And then in X.1."... it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life ; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; Enquiry X. 1
So Hume really ought to be classified with G.E. Moore and Wittgenstein in as an opponent of sceptical conclusions.
I don't think you can draw this conclusion so readily, because it's very unclear as to what Hume means by "uniform experience". And, Hume tends to be a little inconsistent in the way that he represents the relationship between reasoning and sense experience, so his claim that "uniform experience" can produce a proof which is beyond doubt, is in itself highly doubtful.
The problem is that by "uniform experience", Hume obviously means a number of distinct, or separate events, or experiences, compared with each other. This is how he generally represents sense experience, as distinct instances of sensation. But, it is through the use of memory, comparison, and inductive reasoning that we identify consistency through distinct events, to conclude uniformity. Of course memory and inductive reasoning are fallible, so Hume's statement that "uniform experience" provides a proof which leads no room for doubt is very unsound.
Yes. One of my points was precisely that he ends up ignoring the sceptical argument that he has so vigorously defended. However, his actual policy is to ignore it. He says, for example, that scepticism cannot be refuted and recommends a return to normal life and everyday occupations as a cure for it.
Hume response to scepticism is what I would call robust. (I think he would have liked Dr. Johnson's response, but he doesn't mention it.) Moore and Wittgenstein are similarly robust as well.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You outline a standard account. But I don't accept that it is Hume's. But he is very clear a) that he accepts the sceptical argument (on the grounds that our experience provides no basis for rejecting it) and b) that we make our predictions because of association of ideas and custom or habit. He is careful to say that our understanding plays no part in this, which I think means that no process of reasoning is involved. I think his account is best classified as a causal one.
However, I have to admit that interpreting what he says is not straightforward because he never uses the word "induction". (I think it was introduced by J.S. Mill long after Hume wrote.)
This is simply a cop out by Hume. Reasoning is association of ideas, it is habit, and it is custom. And reasoning is the process of understanding. So if Hume wants to say that there is some type of association of ideas, which is not a form of reasoning, but some other type of mental habit, or custom, which is not conducive toward "understanding" like reasoning is, then he needs to explain what he's talking about. For him to assert that we pretend our predictions are based in reason, when this mental custom where predictions are based, is really something other than reasoning, requires justification. He needs to explain what other types of mental customs we have, which are other than reasoning, and how those other customs might result in successful predictions.
I'm not trying to defend Hume, just to understand him. All we've got is what he wrote and I don't think those texts have the answers to your challenges, except that I don't think he ever claims that there is any guarantee that our predictions are always successful. That would be inconsistent.
Look at it this way. He argues 1) that all our ideas are drawn from experience 2) that experience provides no justification for making predictions based on past experience and 3) that we are going to go on doing just that. He also says that we have found this practice useful. Whether this counts as a justification or merely a cause is debateable.
So far, I don't think that's inconsistent. What is odd is that he changes the definition of "proof" (in a footnote, perhaps thinking that no-one will notice) and then ends up saying that "uniform experience amounts to a proof" - which, to be fair, is not quite the same as saying that it is a proof. The only defence I can think of for this move is a Wittgensteinian move along the lines "This is what we call proof in this context."
Does that make sense?
I think this is interesting as a response to scepticism that does not attempt to refute it.
The point is not whether our predictions are guaranteed, or one hundred percent certain, but that we can have success in a consistent way. We can predict that the sun will rise day after day for example, with a great deal of success. Success is not "guaranteed", but such a prediction has proven successful in the past, and will likely continue to be so. The question is whether such a prediction, which has proven to be successful, and will likely continue to be so, is produced by reasoning, or some other form of habitual or customary mental activity.
I believe that the critical issue here is the matter of successfulness, reliability. We know from experiential evidence that conclusions made through reasoning are reliable. We also know from experience that predictions made without any form of reasoning at all, are highly unreliable. So, we can make random predictions without reasoning, but they are unreliable, and the question for Hume is how does he think we can produce any degree of reliability without reasoning.
Here's an example. Suppose two events occur in succession which are completely coincidental, and I wrongly conclude that one caused the other. Now I'll predict that if I want the later one to occur again, I can initiate the first, and predict the second. But that would be unreasonable because the concept of causation requires more than a simple temporal succession. There must be another premise which establishes the relationship between the two events as more than just a temporal succession, to validate "causation".
So when we look at a simple prediction, like the sun will rise tomorrow, the prediction may based solely on the continuity of what has occurred in the past, into the future, the consistency of nature which Hume is talking about. But notice that there is no "causation" invoked by this prediction. It's a sort of statistical analysis which produces a prediction based on probability, without any need to appeal to causation whatsoever.
Now, we can see that Hume tends to conflate these two types of successful prediction, the one based in statistical analysis, requiring no concept of causation, and the one based in causation. We should also recognize, that the latter, the successful prediction based in causation, is derived from a true understanding, reasoning, because it requires that further premise which establishes a true and necessary relationship between the thing considered as cause, and the thing considered as effect. But the other type of successful prediction, the one based in statistical analysis does not require that form of understanding, just recollection of past memories, and perhaps a method of applying mathematics in a more complicated prediction. We might inquire whether this type of prediction based in simple memory, and developed into an application of mathematics in statistical analysis, is a form of reasoning, or another type of habit or custom. And I think this would be a valid inquiry because such predictions of events are made without producing a "reason" for the occurrence of the predicted event. But this question is removed from the question of causation, and ought not be confused with it. And Hume seems to conflate these two types of prediction.
Quoting Ludwig V
So the matter which Hume needs to address, if he were here, is the extra premise required to establish a relationship between the predicted event, and the thing which is supposed to be the cause of that event. We can make predictions through statistical analysis, and we can say that these predictions are solely derived from "past experience". The sun has come up every day, I think it will come up tomorrow. And, Hume can make all sorts of claims about this type of prediction, but those claims would be irrelevant to the subject of "causation", because no cause is implied by such a prediction.
But if we want to address the type of prediction which is based on causation, and this is a type of prediction which relates two events in a necessary way, we can't simply take what is true about the other type of prediction, and apply it to this type of prediction, because they are completely different. And I really don't think we can relate two types of events as cause and effect, in the true and necessary way required to produce consistently successful predictions, without some form of reasoning. And this is why it is necessary to understand "the reason" why they are related as cause and effect, in order that the relationship proposed be the true and necessary relation required for consistently successful predictions.
I think Hume would agree with you. But he does say something to the effect that we discover from experience that there is a "pre-established harmony" between our predictions and what happens in the world. He doesn't explain himself. I think I see the finger of God there, but I'm speculating. (Hume (in the chapter on miracles) says that he does believe in God, but on faith, not reason, and he says that this faith is a miracle (i.e. caused by God).) If I'm right, this would probably be taken as a guarantee by believers.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I would say that's exactly right.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It all turns on the question of justification. Statistics can identify correlations, but cannot justify them. I believe that statisticians do recognize the difference between correlation and causation, but I don't know how they deal with it. Certainly, statistics can't provide what you are asking for.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I would agree that there is a valid question why correlations hold, when they do. Much science provides answers, in the form of explanations, which are defined (in philosophy) as deductive-nomological arguments. (That is, a syllogism that deduces the phenomenon to be explained from a law, or generalization) I don't find that particularly helpful, and it walks straight back into the arms of the argument against induction. I prefer to think of theories as mechanisms, showing how the effect is produced. In any case, theories put a given correlation into a larger context and so get round Hume's atomistic approach - taking each correlation on its own.
I have to say that I don't understand what necessity means here. I assume you don't mean the "true in all possible worlds" kind of necessity. That would be ambitious for an explanation of empirical phenomena.
This is how I understand "necessity" in the context of cause and effect. The cause is said to necessitate the effect, so we can say that when the cause occurs, the effect must occur. So for example, if a temperature of lower than zero Celsius is said to cause water to freeze, then we can say that whenever this temperature occurs, water will freeze necessarily. It is this "necessity" which validates the normal concept of causation, and which is very effective in prediction.
The difference between prediction by statistical analysis, and prediction by causation, is that the statistics alone cannot provide the required necessity. We could watch water freeze, always at the very same temperature, numerous times over and over again, and no matter how many times we do, we do not get the required necessity, even though we could use this to produce accurate predictions. Having it happen one hundred percent of the times, is not sufficient for necessity, because that might be one time, or a thousand times, in both cases it's one hundred percent. What provides the necessity is the understanding of how the molecules move, and this gives us the reason why water freezes at that temperature. It is this understanding of "the reason why" the two events are related, which validates the necessity of causation.
I'm afraid I do have a problem here. I don't disagree with this, but I don't understand what "validates the necessity" means.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's fine, except that I want to ask why "must". What if it doesn't?
If you say "Oxygen is necessary for life (except for anaerobic bacteria)", I understand that if there is no oxygen, most living things die. So I understand that most living things must live in an atmosphere that contains a certain percentage of oxygen.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not clear what the last word adds to the bald statement "water will freeze."
The best that I can offer is that if the prediction fails, I will not abandon the generalization, but treat it as a problem that demands an explanation that will preserve as much as possible of what I thought I knew. So if a sample doesn't freeze at that expected temperature, I will research until I find an answer - such as that the water contains too much salt to freeze at the normal temperature. Again, having learnt that fire causes burns, when I find burns occurring in the absence of fire, I will research until I realize that it is heat, not fire, that causes burns and amend my causal law accordingly. Admittedly, my belief that when a causal law fails, there must be an explanation, and my treatment of such failures as not just a fact, but a problem, is a matter of faith, (this may not be the right expression, but something along those lines is needed). Strictly speaking, when what we think is a causal law fails, that disproves the law (cf. Popper). But I can postpone abandoning the law until I'm convinced that there is no explanation for the exceptional case. There is no time limit on the postponement, so I am never compelled to abandon it and if my law is useful, I will classify the falsification as an unexplained event and continue to rely on it. Necessity is a matter of the status of "water will freeze", and not a straightforward question of truth or falsity.
Does that make any sense?
Do you see that "necessary" is a judgement, a claim, or assertion? And, this type of judgement is one which requires justification or else it is meaningless. if I assert "Y follows X, of necessity", or "it is necessary that Y follows X", those terms "necessity" and "necessary" are meaningless without justification. So when I referred to something which "validates the necessity', this type of justification is what I was referring to.
Quoting Ludwig V
The word "must" is justified in the same way the necessity is. If the necessity is validated by justification, so that we can use "must", yet what was deemed as a necessity by that word 'must", does not actually occur, then we can infer a flaw in the justification (the reasoning).
Quoting Ludwig V
So you have given a false necessity here. Oxygen is not necessary for life, as your exception of anaerobic bacteria shows. This is evident from the fact that you proceed from "oxygen is necessary for life", through the stated exception, to your later assertion of "most life". A more appropriate understanding would determine the types of life forms which require oxygen, and then the true statement of necessity, "oxygen is necessary for these life forms..." could be made.
Quoting Ludwig V
This is exactly the point, the word "necessarily' adds absolutely nothing, unless it is accompanied by the justification (reasons). We can, and often do, facilitate communication by using 'necessary' in its various forms, without the explicit justification, because the justification is implicit. We simply assume when speaking, or writing, that the other person knows the reason for the claim of "necessary". But I do not think that we can go to the extreme position which Hume seems to be proposing, to say that the reasoning is not there at all, and the use of "necessary' would just be a custom or habit, with no underlying support of reasoning.
Quoting Ludwig V
So what you present here is the issue, and that is the reliability of the underlying reasoning, the justification. And this is what fuels skepticism. Suppose it is customary for us to use "necessary' in its various forms, quite often, because it facilitates efficient and rapid communication. Each time we use one of those forms, there is an implied reasoning or justification. But each implied justification is unique in its reliability, depending on the different sorts of understandings which comprise the various implied justifications. So the simple word "necessary" refers to all sorts of different types and different degrees of understanding (reasoning). Now the skeptic will insist that we must analyze each one, each time that we habitually think of something as "necessary", or use that term, to ensure that there is a reliable understanding which supports it's use. Our customary ways of speaking hide misunderstanding.
The 'exceptions' that you refer to, which pop up, will appear at first, to be random. That is because there are so few of them that there is not enough to produce any sort of pattern which can be analyzed. However, the random exception demonstrates a deficiency in the necessity (the underlying understanding). The method we use to approach the underlying understanding, with the evidence of exceptions as ammunition, is the critical decision. I believe this requires a different type of thinking, maybe what they call thinking outside the box, and this might point to a type of intuition. What is important is the art of identifying relevant factors. Things which seem to be irrelevant, and which may be treated by the customary understanding as irrelevant, may actually be relevant. Also the skeptic apprehends the potential for significant misunderstanding within the things which are taken for granted.
A very good example of attacking an underlying understanding, which was riddled with exceptions is the geocentric model of the cosmos. I believe that the multitude of exceptions (retrogrades) made most intelligent people believe that the model was fundamentally wrong, for many hundreds of years. I think that even further back than Thales and ancient Greece, many believed that a heliocentric model was required. The problem was that mapping the planets as perfect circles could not produce something consistent with the observations, so it could not be supported by predictions. Therefore the desired heliocentric model could not be produced. So, just like you describe here, the use of the extremely complicated geocentric model, which employed all sorts of exceptions persisted. I interpret Aristotle as producing the metaphysical principles which denied the reality of perfectly uniform circular motion. This is the critical point, and it enabled Copernicus with the ammunition to explore various possibilities for non-circular orbits of the planets around the sun, eventually resolving the problem.
You are right, the assumption about the future cannot be justified by experience either, it cannot be justified by anything.
But when we get into more reasonable attempts at justification, I would say that as described above, bare statistical analysis is at the lowest level. This would be simply a matter of following a pattern of occurrence, without knowing the reasons for the pattern. But when we know the reasons for the occurrence of the pattern, we can take justification, and reliability to the next level. This is because then we can pay attention to the features which are designated as the reasons for the pattern, to watch for any changes within those features, which could result in anomalies in the pattern. This would make prediction more reliable, so it's a higher form of justification.
Please tell me what your rationale is for believing that the future will resemble the past.
What would be the point? If I give you my answer now, and you accept it as you read it, what grounds do you have for thinking it will still hold in a week, or tomorrow, or even five seconds after your read it? :cool:
I am aware of a few ways of attacking the problem:
1. Techniques in statistics and probability theory do not rely on induction. We have proofs for why Weibull regressions, multinomial logits, OLS, etc. work. We can use these techniques in the context of Bayesian Inference, while hewing to the principal of maximum entropy. This will never allow us to be absolutely certain of any inferences, but it does allow us to have high confidence in them. There are also combinatoric arguments along this line, see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/#BayeSolu .
2. You can attack Hume's premises. The uniformity principle (UP) that Hume invokes for his attack on induction doesn't seem to hold up. This doesn't necessarily resolve the problem, but it changes it.
3. You can show that Hume's argument is self-undermining.
First, you can attack Hume's Fork, the distinction between relations of idea (logical truths) and matters of fact, see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/#ProDis . There appear to be significant problems with the formulation. For example, it was considered an a priori fact that a triangle's angles add up to 180 degrees. This turned out to not be true under all consistent geometries, e.g., a triangle on a curved plane, as drawn on a ball. That is, there is no way to tell between an a priori analytic truth and a firmly held dogma. To be sure, some truths true by virtue of being simple tautologies, but then these do no lifting in any analysis, and in any event, many of these can be shown to be true only as regards arbitrary axioms.
If relations of ideas are actually matters of fact, and inductive inference preformed on such facts is invalid, than Hume's position reduces to the radical skepticism of the Academics. We end up with "knowledge is impossible." Why should we even trust our memories? Just because your memory has seemed to be accurate in the past is no assurance that it will be in the future. But the statement that "knowledge is impossible" pretends at being a knowledge statement; it's the equivalent of the man who says "I only tell lies," a contradiction.
Hume's argument is can also be attacked by looking at the "Paradox of Analysis" and the "Scandal of Deduction." If deduction gives us no new information, then we can learn nothing that we did not already know from it. This also implies that Hume's argument denies the possibility of knowledge, as we cannot learn what we don't already know if only deduction is valid.
Either of these routes then leaves Hume open to all the arguments against radical skepticism, my favorite being from Augustine's "Against the Academics," because they're witty.
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The above gives me reasons to think the past will be like the future, while also undermining the credibility of Hume's attempt to undercut this claim. Additionally, if I buy into computationalist conceptions of physics, then what comes before dictates what comes after by the same sort of logical entailment Liebniz had in mind when he developed his conception of computation, then my expectation that the future is like the past is not grounded in Hume's UP. Or if I buy into Hegel's arguments from phenomenology and speculative logic, then I see the progression of events, at least in the big pictures, as part of a process of dialectical-logical unfolding, which is also not grounded in the UP. The same is probably true for other views of nature that don't jump to the top of my mind right now; they reject Hume's premises.
BTW, I also think Hume's idea of causation is nonsense and that it contributed to his error here, and I say that as someone who largely appreciates his work, especially his work on this very interesting topic.
When we say X causes Y we don't mean that X occurs before Y in all instances of Y (constant conjuction). We generally mean to imply some sort of step-wise chain of entailments between Y's becoming a state of affairs and X then becoming a state of affairs, not merely conjunction. (As an aside, Hume's conception of cause as being reducible to constant conjunction arguably collapses in the face of (mostly) reversible laws of physics.)
Combined with his view on induction, Hume's whole argument against causation ends up turning into what is possibly just a very convoluted form of begging the question.
Hume says we cannot sense that cause is a form of step-wise entailment. Why not? Because our senses can't tell us anything about the logical laws that may or may not be underpinning events. Why not? Because seeing events follow from one another is somehow not seeing howevents follow from one another. But this is true only if you don't accept that events follow from one another in the first place. This problem is obscured by the fact that Hume argued for undecidability rather than the denial of a world that progresses logically.
If the world is logical, then my throwing a rock at a window and seeing it break is my observing causation/entailment in the exact same way that my tallying 3+4 to equal 7 is my observing that the two sum together to 7 when the inputs 3 and 4 are given for the addition function.
Following the Wittgenstein quote above, it's worth asking what Hume would count as observation of causation/entailment? If we discovered a physical theory of everything, and all observations followed its predictions, and further if we could use mathematical induction to prove that this relation holds in n+1 cases, would Hume still deny we have grounds for explaining causation? It seems possible given his arguments, but then this is essentially just radical skepticism that has been dressed up.
Example: we know how video games work. They use logical computation to produce their outputs based on given inputs. Everytime Mario jumps on a Goomba, it falls off the screen. But if we're Hume, we have to think that the console running Mario only appears to instantiate computation, and that our observing the step-wise enumeration of mathematical entailments is actually not sure to "really" be the step-wise enumeration of mathematical entailments in the world, it just "appears" to be identical. This is Descartes' evil demon territory, because it implies that while 2 + 2 = 4, adding two apples to two apples might result in 5 apples at some time in the future; we can't be sure because we can never determine if mathematics is instantiated when it appears to be.
The argument reduces to "cause cannot be logical connection because you cannot sense such a thing, and you cannot sense such a thing because you could only sense such a thing if cause is logical connection." However, if cause IS logical connection, then seeing X after performing Y every time would be your sensing the logical connection.
At best Humeans can say "if cause is step-wise entailment then the world would look exactly like it does, and you can indeed observe cause, but it's possible to imagine that our world is observably indistinguishable from such a world but somehow different." This is just positing a potential bare illogical nature of reality though, radical skepticism.
What I have noticed in the past, is that I can pick an imaginary time in the future, say tomorrow morning for example, and say something about it, like it will get light outside, and the sun will rise, and when that time comes, it will happen, just like before. So in my experience, I've gone to bed when it's dark, expecting that it will get light in the morning, because it has done so in the past, and it actually does as I expect. So this I believe, justifies (is the rationale for) my belief that the future will resemble the past, with respect to this feature of reality.
If, in your question, you are assuming a more general definition of "future" and "past', and you are ready to produce a definition of these things, as abstract objects, I believe that the future cannot resemble the past in such definitions. The two are in a way mutually exclusive, but not in the way of proper opposites, where there is a similarity derived from being exactly opposite, they are opposed more in the sense of dichotomous. But if we take some particular aspects of reality, particular material things, like in my example, I think there is rationale for believing that the future will be similar to the past for those particular things.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The theories themselves do not necessarily rely on induction to be produced, but a judgement of the reliability of them, in application, does rely on induction. So people might produce thousands or millions of such theories, in any random way, but we would only choose the ones proven by induction as reliable, to be used, and these would become the conventional.
This is another way of putting the point I made above in my reply to Jacques. Inductive reasoning relies on particulars, and it proceeds toward making a general statement about similar particulars. And, predictions always concern particulars. So if we start with general principles, abstractions like "future" and "past" in the most general sense, the question of how they are similar is a completely different question. To show that two general abstractions like "future" and "past" are similar, would be to place them into a broader category of abstraction, the concept of "time', or "temporality", and say that they are both temporal concepts, therefore similar in that way.
So Hume really just makes an inductive conclusion about inductive conclusions, that they all employ some sort of presupposition about temporal continuity. This may be useful if we want to know something about the process of inductive reasoning, but then again it might itself be faulty induction. But to put inductive reasoning into the larger context, as to how the conclusions of induction are used by us, i.e. how induction is actually useful, we need to show how they are related to other logic, deduction.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is not really a consistent geometry though. A "curved plane" is contradictory because the curve of a sphere requires three dimensions while the plane is two. To make the curved plane we need to annihilate the convention of dimensions, but in doing this we annihilate the triangle. So really, the triangle is incommensurable with the proposed "curved plane" (which is a misnomer because it's not a plane at all), and in reality a triangle's angles always add up to 180 degrees. Because the proposed triangle on a curved plane is not a triangle at all.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is why, as I said above, we could make thousands or millions of such theories, by what is called "pure mathematics" but only the ones which prove themselves to be useful (and this is itself an inductive method) are accepted into convention. The usefulness is what inspires the "firmly held dogma". So if it turns out that it's better for us (more useful) to annihilate the conventional spatial dimensions, such that we have the so-called "curved plane", then that will become conventional, or "firmly held dogma".
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
As you point out though, your expectation is grounded in some sort of UP, or to put it more precisely, "a UP". And, as I discussed in my prior post, such principles obtain varying degrees of reliability. So we would need to isolate and analyze this specific UP as to its own peculiarities and uniqueness, in order to determine whether your expectations about particular aspects of the future are well grounded. Therefore the skeptic wins out in the end, because each such expectation is unique, and therefore must undergo examination through the skeptic's microscope, in a way unique to it.
I am not the man to say that information about the past could not convince me that something similar will happen in the future. I would be confident that it will happen again in the same way, I just couldn't say what my confidence is based on. That is Hume's point.
Do you know of any law that guarantees the future will necessarily correspond to the past? I for one currently believe there is none. You named a few in your post and I will try to understand and address them soon.
Wittgenstein, as so often, has it right when he says:-
I would only want to add:-
First, it's not just about the future and the past. There is much about the past and the present that we do not know. What we normally do is to expect that what we do not know will resemble what we do know. It's about the known and the unknown.
Second, it's not a simple either/or. It would be quite unreasonable to expect that the future will totally resemble the past and to expect it to be totally different. We actually do is to expect that the future will resemble the past in some respects and to expect that it will be different from the past in other respects. That seems reasonable to me.
But we also have no choice but to continue to use the same language to describe the present, the past and the future. We can and do adapt our language in the light of unexpected events as they occur. What's the alternative?
Does that help?
That's right. The difficulty is to see exactly what "how" means and to understand that asking such a question means rejecting Hume's idea of atomistic idea of experience (which analytic philosophy largely inherited from Hume). That requires understanding Wittgenstein's reasons for abandoning his logical atomism - that is, the colour-exclusion problem and his remark to the effect that a single proposition is never "compared to reality" but a system of propositions. Similarly, we do not experience the world as a succession of atomistic, independent events. We need to pay attention to the idea of a "Gestalt", to understand the part/whole relationship in a more complex way.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I haven't read the Augustine book. I'll make a note of that. Thanks.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm afraid I disagree with both of you. You misunderstand Hume. His position is that scepticism is right if it recommends careful and judicious examination of the facts and judicious decisions based on them, wrong if it is applied excessively. I think that's about right. It's not a case of radical scepticism (Pyrrhonism according to Hume) or nothing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Hume's position is that even though our inferences are not well grounded, we will continue to make them, as a result of what he calls "custom or habit". He then makes a sequence of moves, as I outlined in an earlier post, to arrive at a non-sceptical position that "uniform experience" is proof. One may or may not think that's legitimate; it's certaintly dubious. There is also the problem that experience is not uniform, unless we select among our experiences. Which, as you are indicating, we do, and in the process notice differences as well as similarities.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's exactly what Hume says, in the end.
Yes, this I believe is the root of the problem. Hume described the experience of sensing as a series of static states which may change as time passes. This implies a break, a divide between each state. Then he moves to address the problem of how the mind relates one state to another. The distinct states being what sensation gives us. But i think that in reality, sensation is an experience of continuous activity, which we produce breaks in through withdrawing our attention, either intentionally or unintentionally.
This is a substantial difference because on the one hand we have the perspective of sensation providing images of natural states with implied natural divisions between them (Hume), and on the other hand we have the position that sensation provides natural continuous activity, with the sensing being imposing artificial divisions onto that continuity. So from the Humean perspective, it appears necessary for the observing mind to understand the natural relation between natural distinct states, in order to understand the natural progression of these states, and this is what he thinks of as causation. But if the other perspective is right, then sensation does not provide us with any naturally distinct states, and no natural separations. So any description of causation by this means would be to describe the relations between completely artificial separations.
But from the other perspective, these separations are apprehended as completely artificial, so they may even be totally arbitrary, or at best the separations are imposed in different ways for different purposes, (analogous to Wittgenstein's boundaries in meaning). So the difference manifests as Hume looking for an independent, objective relation between cause and effect, a relation which creates a unity through a natural form of synthesis, while the other perspective looks for the subjective principles of analysis whereby we divide what is present as a natural continuity.
Quoting Ludwig V
I definitely wasn't saying that Hume is anti-skeptic. I see all philosophy as fundamentally skeptical. Even the anti-skeptic would be skeptical of skepticism. if one was just stating certainties, that would not be philosophy. The issue of course is the way that a philosopher places limits to one's own skepticism. No philosopher, not even Socrates, ever seems to be skeptical in an absolute sense, they always seem to believe that they get to the bottom somehow (In the skeptical form of analysis), and here they claim to find some sort of self-evident truth, something to take for granted (eg, Descartes' "I think therefore I am."). It may be the case that the best philosophers are the ones who never seem to get to the bottom, never finding any self-evident truth, and always remaining skeptical, open minded.
Quoting Ludwig V
So the point I make above, is that this proposed "uniform experience" is not an inference, a custom or a habit at all. It is simply a statement of description of the sense experience, an observation. Therefore there is no need to inquire about the mental activity which creates this uniformity, it is not within the realm of conscious thought, and cannot be described as habit or custom.. However, since we are prone, (by habit), in our mental activity to impose divisions on this given uniformity, and we do seek truth, we ought to inquire whether there is any true, natural separations, upon which such divisions could be based.
This requires a deeper form of skepticism. We must cast doubt on what the senses provide for us, in the way of Plato, who teaches us that the senses deceive. From this perspective we can apprehend the continuity which is given by sensation as manufactured, created by the apparatus which produces the sense experience, and therefore there is the potential that this is not a true representation. Now we would have the proper platform for inquiring into the possibility of true divisions, the true separations in time, which the experience of sensation, as a continuity, hides from us in its deceptive ways.
I don't think Hume is merely a skeptic, although his point might reduce to radical skepticism. He does not seem to be saying "I don't think we can ever be sure if we are seeing cause," rather, he is saying "cause reduces to constant conjunction and we can't see one action entailing another because one action doesn't entail another."
Now I know there is a later school of Humeans that emerged in the 1980s who say Hume is only talking about epistemological limits. I just don't see it, granted I've not reread his work extensively. It seems to me like he is taking the more concrete position of denying that causation, as generally understood, exists at all. But this argument is entirely based on the fact that seeing a billiard ball hit another one "isn't actually seeing the moving ball cause the still ball to move." This is where it seems like begging the question.
The Problem of Induction is much more sophisticated, and so Hume's real argument about cause gets lost in the mix. But the Problem of Induction only says that we can't be sure if causation will work the same way in the future as it has in the past. Rejecting induction doesn't require rejecting causation. The denial of causation as popularly understood doesn't hinge on the Problem of Induction, it hinges entirely on Hume's assertion that common experiences of cause aren't actually experienced of cause... because cause can't be experienced... because it doesn't exist... which is the very point the argument sets out to prove.
Right, but the selection isn't arbitrary. It's based on a principle of indifference, as further formalized by the principle of maximum entropy. You're not going for best fit, because of over fitting problems, but the least assumptions, a sort of formalized Ockham's Razor.
Good point. I think the larger issue that gets buried in Hume and much modern philosophy of science is that the acceptance that:
1. Logic and our understanding of it is valid; and
2. The world is a logical place where at least some things follow from others; and
3. The logic of the world is intelligible to us,
All need to come prior to any knowledge statements. If this is not true, and one thing doesn't follow from another, then any prediction is impossible; I
we can't even trust our memories. Our theories of information and semiotics also collapse in a context where outcomes for any observation X have no relationship to any others.
Claims against the rationality of the world also need to explain how so much science can involve doing deductive work on a chalkboard. Often, experiments are only doing the work of confirming deductive arguments about how nature progresses from state to state, i.e., cause. If rules accessible by deductive reasoning don't guide state progression, why should they seem to? If deductively accessible logical laws do cause progression, then seeing the rock break a window IS seeing causation.
Hume is following the Platonist tradition in allowing some types of knowledge to side step this problem. "A thing can't be green and not green," still supposedly holds. I don't disagree that it holds, but rather maintain that this requires that we trust that our sense of logic is meaningful prior to accepting this as a true statement.
And of course, we can be fooled as to logical statements. Is there a mathematics who student hasn't had at least one occasion where they have argued with their teacher about how they MUST be right because of iron clad logic, only to find out they are wrong? Has there ever been a programmer who hasn't run their program, absolutely certain the logic works out, only to get an inconceivable error they want to attribute to broken logic gates?
But if Hume's take gets reduced to being skeptical of all knowledge claims in this way, then it is just the claim of the radical skeptics, Descartes' Evil Demon, the Academics, etc.
If someone wants to maintain that Hume's Fork holds, they have to counter Quine and Co's arguments against it and explain why we, as creatures in an illogical world, who can know nothing certain of that world, can still somehow access inviolable a priori truths from the ether. It seems to me that if worldly creatures can access those truths then, in at least some sense, logic is in the world. But how can logic be in just part of the world and not collapse from the Principle of Explosion? This seems to require some sort of dualism.
"Curved plane," is my sloppy, improper terminology; it's a surface with curvature. The easiest way to visualize a triangle with more than 180 degrees is to think of a triangle drawn with a ruler on a sphere, or for one with less than 180 degrees, one drawn on a saddle. While more intuitive, this is a misleading analogy because we don't need three dimensions to make the triangle have degrees unequal to 180; hyperbolic geometry, on a hyperbolic plane, accomplishes this.
The argument that all mathematics is simply invented, and selected for its usefulness, is another angle from which Hume's Fork can be attacked. However, if one accepts that abstract objects are real ontological entities, then this also seems to provide a reason for doubting the reliability of Hume's distinction. I don't tend to buy into the argument that mathematics is only selected based on usefulness. Often, investigations are based on elegance and aesthetic preferences
The electric attraction between an electron and a proton can be described by Coulomb's law, which is given by:
F = (k * q1 * q2) / r^2
This formula has worked brilliantly since its invention until today, but is there a formula that guarantees that Coulomb's law will still be valid tomorrow?
Sure, but as to whether these laws actually describe our world is another question entirely.
One good example is Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. Tegmark posits that all abstract objects exist and that our universe is one such of those objects. Tegmark's speculation requires that a number of things be true, the theory of eternal inflation in physics, the existence of a single set of natural laws that govern the universe, and the ability of abstract objects to somehow generate the first person subjective experience we are familiar with. The last of these is simply glossed over in his book because it isn't his area of expertise, so all we get is that "very complex informational patterns produce experience."
But let's look at what happens if his highly speculative theory is true. If it is true, then everything in the multiverse is determined. A description of the abstract object of which we are a part could, at least in theory, tell us, using only deduction, exactly what will happen in the future and what happened in the past. Granted that, in Tegmark's view, this would be a description of an unimaginable,although finite, number of discrete "universes," plural.
Causation, correctly understood, would look quite different in such a world. All future states are already defined, so causation would really just be the enumeration of state transitions that occur according to mathematical laws. Cause doesn't really exist as commonly conceived in this case, since the universe is a complete four dimensional object, but it can be formally described as what apparent state transitions look like for an experiencing entity within the universe. This is true even if the nature of our universe entails that what we take to be physical laws radically change in the future, since those changes would also be merely traits of the abstract object that is co-identical with the universe.
More broadly, if the universe works according to set laws that can be described purely by using deduction, then there exists laws that can define that the future will correspond to the past. Indeed, if the universe has no randomness, then the very fact that the future and the past both are determined is such a law denoting similarity.
We, as finite entities in the universe, might never fully understand these laws. We might think we understand them and get them wrong. We might mistake something for a law that is really the manifestation of the interaction of more basic laws, which could lead to "laws" we think exist changing on us. However, there is no reason to reject that such laws could be known, although arguably there is good reason to reject the idea that they could ever be perfectly predictive, because you cannot plug all the information in the universe into a function and read the output while being within the universe yourself.
My main argument would be that such laws could be known entirely deductively, a type of knowledge Hume would accept. Indeed, this is how many people see the Holy Grail of a Theory of Everything. That we use induction to test the validity our mathematical models of how the universe works, or that our deductions are informed by prior inductive findings, does not preclude a wholly deductive understanding of the universe. This is true in the same way that, if a mathematician graphs equations to look at them and get an intuitive understanding of how they work with numbers close to zero, it does not entail that, if she later develops a deductive proof of some inequality, etc. it isn't "really" deductive because she used inductive reasoning based on the graphs to inform how she went about making the proof.
Now, people can argue that we can never be truly sure that any deductively derived description of the laws of the universe actually maps to the universe, no matter how much we verify it with induction, but this just collapses into radical skepticism. You might as well argue that we can never be sure if 2 + 2 will be 4 in our world, because "what if nature is instantiating some other abstract principle and it just looks like it it instantiating the one that has predicted everything up to this point," applies for all attempts to use deduction.
Maybe. If the universe follows laws, if it is deterministic (even in a stochastic way), then it seems possible, maybe even plausible given the successes of attempts to identify such laws, to define the root rules by which the present always evolves into the future. Perhaps the universe is deterministic but follows undefinable laws though? Then such a thing isn't possible.
The elephant in the room here is "initial conditions." How much of our universe is determined by brute fact initial conditions? If the universe progresses due to laws, but it has unexplainable initial conditions, then it might not be possible to determine if "law-like" phenomena continue in the future. Tegmark's theory gets around this by positing a multiverse in which all discernible initial conditions actually exist.
If the world doesn't progress in any determined manner then it is unclear if any knowledge can be grounded. Maybe we, and all our memories, spontaneously sprang into existence a second ago and will disappear 30 seconds from now? We can't know.
People often do think the future will be like the past, but this is often because this relationship is entailed by another belief of theirs, not because of inductive inference from past resemblances between future and past.
E.g., Hegel thinks the future will be like (and in more ways unlike) the past due to everything that exists existing due to logical necessity. Logos theologians think the future will be like the past because of their faith in a particular conception of God, not due to generalizations. Such belief might be tied to a single mystical experience.
The same is true for beliefs that the future will be unlike the past. Many Patristics believed in a doctrine of "Christian historical progress," where the world gets better over time. They believed this due to a faith in God paired with an interpretation of a few specific verses in Scripture. When the Roman Empire was collapsing and things appeared to be getting worse, this didn't lead to an inductive reassessment, but rather simply caused them to take these events as small setbacks against the backdrop of a larger trend. You see the same thing with Marxists. The belief about the resemblance between past and future comes from other beliefs, which might be held due to inductive arguments, but as often are held due to deductive arguments.
Not the mention that some conclusions that appear inductive are actually tautological. That water is H2O is a necessary truth, but one only arrived at by observation. However, just because observation was involved does not mean that UP is required to say water will H2O in the future. A lot of work in science, while utilizing observation, is focused on identifying these sorts of truths. Arguably, the finding that "causation" is identical with "progressions between states based on x specific laws," could represent the same sort of identity relationship. Indeed, the way causation is generally understood, if something spontaneous occurs in the future, as a brute fact, not according to any laws that can possibly be known, we would call it "uncaused" or "a miracle."
Just replace the last paragraph, which has a reductionist view, with the more modern theory of "fundemental" parts only being definable in terms of the whole of which they are a part (fields), and you have an essentialist picture that dictates relations between the past and future that exist by necessity.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree with the consequent, but I don't understand the antecedent. If the antecedent is false, then the project of understanding the world is hopeless. Or is there an alternative approach?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
There's an ambiguity between "follows" in the sense of "comes after" and "follows" in the sense of "is constrained by". It doesn't make any sense to me to speak of the universe being constrained by natural laws. Natural laws are what the universe does given that it is not constrained. Actually, it is neither constrained, nor not constrained; it just does what it does.
There's a similarly weakness in the idea of causation. There's an idea that a cause somehow forces its effect. But that's a category mistake.
Unfortunately, although the idea that a thing's identity depends on what it is made of seems plausible, I can't accept essentialism, particularly not the variety that derives from Kripke.
The problem with that argument, for me starts from:-
So far as I can see, Kripke's argument proves that for every statement capable of truth or falsity, if it is true, it is necessarily true. But doesn't it follow that any statement that is not true in every possible world, is not necessarily true in every possible world. I find this unhelpful.
In the beginning, you say:-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But by the end, we have:-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with the first quotation, but not with the second and, although I accept that we often get things wrong, I'm not at all sure that it is because our sensations deceive us; it may be that they neither deceive nor reveal. The problem may like in our interpretations.
In the first passage, I describe how my understanding of what we get from sensation differs from Hume's. There is a problem though with my perspective, and that is that for logical purposes, we describe things in terms of static states, in the same way that Hume describes sensation gives us. We say things like "this was the situation at time1, and this was the situation at time2. So the reason I believe Hume's position is incorrect, is because I think these static states are produced by us, by our minds, for the purpose of applying logic, and it is incorrect to say that this is what sensation gives to the mind. What sensation gives to the mind is a temporal continuity, and the mind breals the continuity into distinct states, in a variety of different ways, depending on the intended purposes. That is why I argued earlier that all the breaks in the continuity which constitute the divisions between t1 and t2, and such, are subjective, imposed for various purposes.
There is a fundamental incompatibility between the perception of reality as a persistently changing continuity, and as a succession of separate but contiguous discrete instances. This is an incommensurability which mathematicians have not been able to resolve. Therefore, one of the ways of representing the world must be wrong, either the way of sensation, as a continuity, or the way of logic, as a succession of discrete instances.
The inclination (intuition) is to accept the sense representation as the correct representation, and conclude that the way we use logic to represent reality is just a model, and this model is incapable of providing a true representation. But this renders that part of reality, the procession of time, as fundamentally, and necessarily unintelligible. However, as I explained in that post there is a potential way around this problem. It is completely possible that the way that our senses present the world to us is "deceptive", as explained by Plato. And from this perspective we can say that it is absolutely possible that the procession of time is truly intelligible to the human mind as a succession of discrete instances, and we just need to identify those breaks in time which constitutes the separate moments.
So, you say that the problem may lie in our interpretation. This is consistent with what I've argued. if reality is as I've said above, consisting of discrete moments, then the faulty interpretation is the assumption that how the senses present reality to us, as a continuity, is completely consistent with the way that reality actually is. If, on the other hand, we assume that the approach of our logic is incorrect, or inconsistent with the way that reality is, then we assume that reality is necessarily unintelligible. So to allow for the possibility that reality is intelligible to us, we must assume that this other assumption, that 'how the senses present reality to us is completely consistent with the way that reality actually is' is the faulty premise of interpretation. So to allow for the possibility that reality is intelligible to us, we must assume that the senses deceive us.
This goes way beyond my criticism of Hume for his atomistic idea of experiences. Logical atomism is a different issue, and I'm not aware that anyone thinks it is viable. Your conclusion is that:-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Your conclusion has a certain paradoxical appeal. I agree that sometimes we draw the wrong conclusions from what our senses tell us (that's a bit over-simplified, but it will do for now); but surely we sometimes get it right. Similarly, reality is partially intelligible to us and partly not, and we work hard to understand the latter part. You seem very fond of comprehensive statements, but the truth is more mundane than that. For example, you say:-Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And I say "Don't we also say things like "between t1 and t2 this process was going on?"
I'm not at all sure what you are getting at in this post.
i see things in the opposite way to this. You say the truth is mundane. I believe that the truth is not mundane at all, and is way more complicated than any of us can possibly imagine. Quantum physics gives us the tip of this iceberg of complexity. I think our bodily systems greatly simplify a very complex reality, so that we sense extremely complex things as very simple. We've evolved this way, we must start from the bottom up in our understanding as evolving beings, so things must be put into the most simple form possible, to begin our understanding.
Look, we see the sun as rising and setting, when logic tells us the earth is really spinning. There's also supposed to be some sort of spinning motion with electrons around atoms. Do you think that living beings are incapable of 'feeling' that the planet they are on is spinning? Or, do you think it's more likely that all these spinning motions that logic tells us are occurring around us, and within us, are completely compensated for within the living system, to give us a seemingly stable position from which to observe? I think all these complex motions are hidden from the conscious mind, not sensed, because the senses have evolved so as to hide all these complexities from us because they are just too difficult. All that our senses bring to our conscious minds are some very simplistic motions, to begin us on our task of understanding.
Quoting Ludwig V
Sure, but think about how we describe and understand processes, it always comes down to a matter of one state changing to another. We can name a process, even provide a brief description of it, but what really provides meaning and understanding is how the process takes us from A to B. A is the cause, B is the effect. This is why the truth about the passage of time is not mundane at all, it's actually very complex. We like to think of it as mundane, because this facilitates 'the simple life". In reality life is not simple, so all we're doing with this type of notion is facilitating the deception.
I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by "this type of notion". But I am sure that the senses do not systematically deceive us. I'm also sure that simplicity is not an option, but a necessity. When someone throws a ball at us, we cannot apply Newtonian mechanics to work out how to catch it. The fact that we can catch it in the time available is amazing; but we can only do it by simplifying. Equally, to do the washing up, we need to know that hot water and detergent will help us to do this; if we had to consider the molecular interactions involved, we would starve before we had clean plates. If we had senses that perceived everything that's going on at the level of electrons, we would be unable to grasp the bigger picture that we need. It's not about deception; it's about pragmatics.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is a classic example of what I mean. There's a story - I don't know if it's true - that someone observed to Wittgenstein that it is easy to understand why the ancients thought that the sun goes round the earth, because that's the way it looks. To which Wittgenstein replied "How would it look if it looked as if the earth was spinning?" The answer is, exactly the same. There's no deception, just a misinterpretation, based on the assumption that we are not moving. We make that assumption all the time, except when we know we are moving. In this case, there's no easily available perception that would bring it into question, so we interpret our perceptions in that way. Eventually, having paid attention to other perceptions, we work out that the earth is spinning and interpret our perceptions accordingly. Where's the deception?
As to electrons, we are simply not equipped to perceive electrons directly. I'm cautious about pronouncing on the sub-atomic world; I don't understand the physics well enough. I am clear that our senses give us the information they are equipped to gather. By paying attention to our perceptions more closely, we work out that physical objects are very different at small scale. Our perceptions did not deceive us, any more than a normal microscope deceives us when it does not reveal electrons. We misinterpreted them, but now have a better understanding because we paid closer attention to the information they give us.
"Mundane" was perhaps a poor choice. I agree that sometimes the truth is amazing. But I also think that it is sometimes mundane.
Why do you think that the sun appears to come up and go down, when this has been proven to be false? And why does it look like we see the full range of electromagnetic waves as the colours of the rainbow, when this is just a small portion? If this is not a 'systematic deception' than what is it? And how would you describe hallucination if not a form of deception?
Quoting Ludwig V
That is the essence of deception, it is dome because it is deemed to be a "necessity". Plato also exposed this feature. Are you familiar with what is commonly referred to as the royal lie? Over simplification of something extremely complex, for the person's own good, is deception.
Quoting Ludwig V
This is a faulty conclusion. There is nothing to prevent an intelligent mind from understanding both big picture and small picture at the same time. What is more likely the case, is that the physical sensing apparatus evolves much slower than the mind, because the brain must allow for vast possibility and rapid changes in thinking patterns, even over the lifespan of one individual. This allows the conscious mind to evolve much quicker than the physical sensing system. So the senses are suited to a less capable consciousness, which human beings had prior to the rapid advancements of the mind, in the last few thousand years. Therefore the senses are presenting very simplistic, over simplified, and underdeveloped images to the mind because the physical aspects of the human sense apparatus were developed when the mind was much less advanced, and the body cannot change fast enough to keep pace with the rapid advancements and evolution of the mind. In other words, the human body still has essentially the same physical sensing apparatus as it had thousands of years ago, but it's mental capacity has greatly advanced. Therefore the ends or purpose of the "pragmatics" you refer to, are greatly outdated, and this is analogous to continuing with a story about Santa Clause when the person is a grown adult, it's nothing but deception.
Quoting Ludwig V
I did not use the word "look", I intentionally said "feel", to avoid this objection. Do you know what it feels like to be spun around? And when you are being spun, isn't it very obvious that the things in your field of vision are not moving around you, but you are being spun? Your example provides no bearing on the issue.
There is a reason why we have a multitude of different senses, different sense organs directed toward different aspects of the world. Each one, is in itself, by itself, very deceptive. Through comparison of what the different senses provide for us, the mind can reduce the deception. But reduction is not elimination.
Quoting Ludwig V
What you say here is a direct indication of the point I am making. There is a whole "sub-atomic" world which our senses are hiding from us. But you misrepresent, or misinterpret the actual problem. You say the senses are "not equipped" to provide us with information about this sub-atomic world. That is clearly false, because it is exactly the case that this is the type of information which the senses are providing us with. The sense of smell for instance, is providing us with information about the interaction of atoms at a molecular level, and this is exactly an interaction of electrons and sub-atomic particles. The sense of sight is providing us with information about the interaction of light (photons) with the electron structure of the various different molecules. And the sense of hearing is providing us with information about the vibrations of the massive parts of atoms.
So it is clearly the case that we are equipped to sense the activities of the sub-atomic world that's exactly what the senses do. However, the problem is that in the relation between the senses and the brain, the information provided through the sense organs is interpreted and represented by the brain, with the principal purpose of remembering, in a very basic and simplistic way. The human being's capacity for memory is very limited so this huge amount of data rolling in at an incredibly high speed must be vastly simplified. This simplification is essentially false memory, created by a very deficient memory system which requires that the sense data be overly simplified, and when the conscious mind looks at the memory as "true" it is deceived. When the conscious mind visits the memory, it is deceived into thinking that the memory is giving an accurate account which it is not. Furthermore, the conscious mind's experience of "the present" is nothing other than what the brain is submitting to memory, limited further by attention, so this is equally faulty and deceptive.
However, the conscious mind in its totality goes far beyond simple experience of the present, and memory, it has anticipations, intentions, desires, will, and judgement to deal with as well. These other aspects, intention and the desire to know, (philosophy), have led the conscious mind to a position high above what the physical body provides for it. That is why we have produced all sorts of instruments for analyzing different aspects of the world, which go far beyond the limitations of the underdeveloped physical system of the human body, like the electron microscope you mentioned. The simple fact of the matter is that the relatively primitive physical body of the human being has not been able to keep up with the rapid development of the conscious mind and its understanding. Therefore to fall back onto the observational capacities of the human body, asserting superiority and "truth" to sensation, rather than moving forward into the realm of what logic dictates, even though this may appear contradictory to sense data, is to fall for that deception.
This illustrates the depth and complexity of our disagreement. The sun does go up and down, from the point of view of the surface of the earth. It could not be otherwise. The cues that normally allow us to know when we are moving are missing, just as they are missing in an aeroplane. Or better, we are not moving in relation to our immediate surroundings, so we interpret everything from that point of view. When we identified the evidence and interpreted it correctly, we changed our belief. The situation of being spun is quite different because we are being spun in relation to our immediate surroundings.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Senses and reason are both capable of misleading us and are our only resources for finding the truth. Junking one in favour of the other is incomprehensible to me.
I have a feeling that the conditions are not such as to provide a basis for progress in this debate. Do you?
I'm not quite sure what you mean here? I can't prove the antecedent here. If I could, I'd be out collecting my Nobel Prize for the "theory of everything."
However, it seems at least plausible, given the successes of physics to date and all of our general experiences, that past states of affairs evolve into future states of affairs based on principles that can be defined deductively. Hence why so many theoretical physicists spend more time with equations than lab equipment, that latter of which often only comes out to test the deductive reasoning against experience.
These descriptions of reality might be fundamentally flawed. But, if they are correct, then it follows that when we think we are seeing cause, we are, in fact, seeing something very similar to our naive conception of causation. The claim that this simply can't be the case thus begs the question about causation.
Hume, at least the way I understand him and have most often seen him interpreted, isn't making an argument just about skepticism. He is saying we cannot see cause as such, because it doesn't exist. He reduces cause to constant conjunction, which is arguably a position that is eliminitivist towards causation rather than just reductive.
Hume's argument for this seems to be grounded in the understanding of the natural world at the time, which involved a set of extrinsic, unalterable laws that somehow guide the interactions of "material," objects. These interactions included action at a distance that could only be observed via the discrete objects that were being acted upon.
Hume's point makes more sense in this context. In this conception of the natural world, the laws do all the explanatory lifting and yet they can never, even in principle, be directly observed. Thus, Hume can worry that the laws might have always been the same to date, but could change at any moment.
Modern interpretations of the natural world tend to be intrinsic. Interactions are due to properties inherit in the things interacting. In this view, there is no set of unobservable laws; the "laws" are simply properties of nature we've been able to describe in a symbolic language. To paraphrase John Wheeler, if you gather together all the formulas (laws) needed for a complete physics, what do you have? A bunch of paper with equations on them.
I think you're quite right here. "Laws," is probably a bad word to use for the concept, but at this point we're sort of stuck with it.
Likewise, if causation functions similarly to entailment, then it isn't a constraint or something that forces an outcome, except in the same sense that someone's "being a New Yorker," [I]constrains[/I] them by excluding their "not a New Yorker."
It's like how we don't generally say "2+2 causes 4," but then if we're considering how a calculator accepts inputs and produces outputs, it's totally natural to say that the inputs cause the outputs. Cause is something we think of in the context of temporal progression.
There is probably a formulation similar to Hegel's dialectical move from the opposition of "being and nothing" to "becoming" that can be done for cause, but I can't think what the right ingredients would be. Entailment + change = cause? Doesn't sound quite right to me, but the best I could think of.
But I keep going back, to one after another, and try to get a but further. Bit by bit, perhaps I'm getting there.
This is a pretty big thread, and I've only read the first couple pages. But I wanted to address this post. My apologies if it's all covered later in the thread.Quoting Isaac
I dont think the question is: What answer will we accept? I think the question is: What have you got?
In [I]What is it like to be a bat?[/I], Nagel says:
At https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2022.767612/full, Peter D. Kitchener and Colin G. Hales say:[Quote]The approach the majority of neuroscientists take to the question of how consciousness is generated, it is probably fair to say, is to ignore it. Although there are active research programs looking at correlates of consciousness, and explorations of informational properties of what might be relevant neural ensembles, the tacitly implied mechanism of consciousness in these approaches is that it somehow just happens.[/quote] According to these two quotes, physicalist/materialist/materially reductivist (What term is currently being used?) approaches do not address consciousness, and they explain things nicely without it. That seems like an important question to me - Why is it happening at all? If behavior is the result of stimulus & response, even vastly complex webs of S&R, then what use is any awareness of it all, or qualia? There are machines that can differentiate frequencies of the visible light spectrum to much greater detail than we can, and perform actions based on which frequency they are detecting at any given moment. There can also be other criteria involved in figuring out which action to take.
But they don't experience red, and they aren't thinking about what they're going to do. They just do it, mechanically. What value is our awareness of, and preferences for, certain perceptions and responses if we are going to respond to all stimulus mechanically anyway? If our awareness of and feelings about anything don't matter, then why do they exist? Why would evolution have selected them?
But none of that answers your question. I don't know what kind of answer would be satisfactory. I don't know that we could distinguish a good answer from a bad one. The problem is hinted at as Peter D. Kitchener and Colin G. Hales continue:[Quote]This reliance on a magical emergence of consciousness does not address the objectively unreasonable proposition that elements that have no attributes or properties that can be said to relate to consciousness somehow aggregate to produce it.[/quote]
In How to Create a Mind, Ray Kurzweil said:We understand how the properties of particles that we are aware of give rise to the macro properties. Physical properties like liquidity, as well as physical processes like flight. There is no macro property that is not, ultimately, due to properties of the micro, even if we don't think about it that way.
It does not seem reasonable that consciousness would be an exception. [I]The[/I] exception. The mystery is, if the micro properties are not any we are aware of, what are they? But we can't answer that. We aren't aware of what we aren't aware of. And we can't study what we can't study. If the answer is some kind of panpsychism or panprotopsychism, we can't detect it with any of our senses or devices we've invented to expand our senses. If it was, possible, we'd be studying it, and it would be part of the laws of physics. (Not sure I've worded that very well. But you folks have been dealing with all this far longer than I have, and probably know what I mean.)
If consciousness does not arise from the physical properties we know, and it does not arise from something like panprotopsychism (and I'm sure many here do not believe it does), then what?
Well, I've probably rambled on more than I should have. I only said a couple basic things, but I said them with a lot of words. I sometimes do that. :D If I get any responses, I will likely not understand a good deal of what they're saying. But I'll try.
This is exactly why it's correct to say that the senses deceive. When the sensible "cues" are missing, we draw the wrong conclusion. You say: "The sun does go up and down, from the point of view of the surface of the earth. It could not be otherwise." Obviously, it could be otherwise. It could be that the surface of the earth is spinning in a circle, and the sun is staying put. And if you wrongly assume that you, on the surface of the earth are staying put, because the "cues" of moving are missing, you would wrongly conclude that the sun goes up and down from the point of view of the surface of the earth. Therefore, you failed to account for the motion of the earth in your assumption, and allowed your sensed to deceive you.
Quoting Ludwig V
If you do not see that reason is far more reliable than sense, and when the two disagree it is far more reasonable to accept reason over sense, then I think you're right when you say further progress is impossible.
Quoting Patterner
Hi Patterner, welcome to the forum. I'll answer this question with a simple "stay tuned..."
It decieved him in a context that is almost completely useless to most of us most of the time. So, yes, if one wants to understand the motions of the solar system parts, his assessment is off, in nearly every other human context, he's got a perfect fine interpretation. And one that can be useful.
And reason can also deceive. But since he goes ahead and advocates for using both, I'm not sure what the overhanding problem is.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
which was in response to a quote that included...
Quoting Ludwig V
Seems to miss the point. We don't have to give up either. Reason is pretty useless without the senses, at least to any empiricist. IOW the senses are, for example, the foundation of science: in observations.
That is the difference between pragmatics and truth as providing the guiding principle. For reasons unknown, the philosopher seeks the truth. Some people feel comfortable with pragmaticism, and accept without doubt, the principles which currently serve them. The philosopher always wants to move ahead and proceed toward the truth.
Quoting Bylaw
Reread my post, I said "when the two disagree". It seems like you misunderstand the nature of science. The senses are not the foundation of science, science is based in hypotheses, theory. Your empiricist theory has misled you, another example of how human beings allow their senses to deceive them.
That's true. The problem is that physics defines itself in such a way that it cannot recognize anything else. So friendship, love, hatred, tyranny, democracy cannot occur in a theory in physics. One can sometimes "reduce" things to physics, like the aurora borealis or heat. But the beauty of the aurora borealis is not reduced, but eliminated, and there is an argument about whether heat is the motion of molecules or a sensation, which is not something that can be recognized in thermodynamics. That doesn't resolve the problem, but perhaps does something to explain why it exists.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
1) If you show me some statistics, I'll consider your hypothesis. 2) The rejection of the irrationality of the square root of 2 by the Pythagoreans was not because of the senses but because of their reason. You will say that they were not rational. So reason guarantees success because failure is labelled as something else. 3) Many people (some theists and some atheists) have believed, and some still do, that belief in God is rational. Many others (including some who believe in God) do not. It certainly is not a matter for the senses. Who's right? 4) The belief that the sun goes round the earth seems to me to be an error in reasoning, not in perception. 5) Reason requires premisses to function at all. Where do they come from? Either they are axioms or they are empirical. 6) Have you never made a mistake in reasoning about something? If so, congratulations. You may be unique.
Quoting Bylaw
I appreciate your support.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You did indeed. My mistake. However, I thought, as said, that the foundation of science, and the ultimate arbiter of truth, was observation and experiment. Hypotheses and theories are critically important, but when theory and data conflict, it is theory that needs to be changed. I have the (no doubt misleading) impression that a key battle in the establishment of modern science was that principle. Have things really changed that much?
If I understand physical reductionists (and that's an "if", and I guess not all agree with each other), physics' recognition of the things you mention is irrelevant. The physical events - which we think of in terms of neurons and brain structures, but which are ultimately reducible to particles movements and interactions - would still take place without our awareness. And our awareness doesn't add anything, because awareness has no causal ability. It's all physics.
I that's correct, the question is, why do we have this awareness that accomplishes nothing? Why would evolution have selected for it?
But that is word for word exactly what Hume says. I thought you were against Hume's thesis. :chin:
I'm virtually certain consciousness arises from the sort of information processing which neural networks are good at. Though I'm not going to go into detail about why I am so certain.
Not to say there aren't a lot of unknown details to how consciousness arises, but doesn't information processing seem likely to be the substrate on which consciousness is built?
I've never understood why so many philosophers seem credulous towards panpsychism.
You are quite right that reduction is a complicated topic. But one thing it clearly means is leaving out what's irrelevant - and that means "irrelevant to physics". I accept that in some sense everything has a substrate in the physical. But that's not as simple as you might think. The obvious case is mathematics, which is the basis of physics. But do we think that physics reduces to mathematics?
What goes on in a computer doing a calculation is, no doubt, entirely governed by physics. But it is also governed by mathematics - that's why we call it a calculation. Of course, humans have organized the computer to ensure that's the case. So the basis of the physical processes in a computer is mathematics and the basis of that situation is that humans have arranged it. Yet the basis of human activity is physics. But physics left to itself does not produce computers.
I'm referring to the idea of a category. Physics explains everything in the category of the physical and nothing in any other category. So most radical reductionists are making a category mistake. The best way I can think of to explain this is by quoting the Wikipedia entry "Category mistakes":-
You said:- Quoting Patterner
You misunderstand. What goes on in our brain is the physical basis of awareness, so if what goes on in our brains were any different, we would not have awareness. As to the causal effects of awareness, it would be contrary to physical laws if there were none. We just don't know what they are yet.
That's not untrue. But philosophers and other academics tend to forget that the nervous system not only passes information to and fro, but also controls action. Life is about information, but not only about information.
Perhaps I am interpreting you overly literally, but as an electrical engineer I would put it differently.
I would say that a computer is constructed such that, in a (weakly) emergent sense, the computer behaves as if it were governed by mathematics/software. However, it would be suggesting overdetermination to claim that the behavior of the computer is governed by mathematics as well as physics. (I'm not sure what "governed by mathematics" would mean.)
I can't speak for what others are thinking when they say that "a computer is performing a calculation", but what I am doing in that case is taking pragmatic advantage of speaking simplistically in terms of the emergent properties a computer was designed to have.
"...Yet the basis of human activity is physics. But physics left to itself does not produce computers."
I'd say physics left to itself produced stars, which produced the elements of which the Earth is composed. Physics occurring on the Earth through evolution produced brains, and brains can reasonably be considered computers. (Though not digital computers.) The operation of brains is still physics and resulted in the production of digital computers. So in a roundabout way physics left to itself did produce digital computers. We just don't tend to think of ourselves as being aspects of "physics left to itself".
Thoughts?
But I'm arguing the fallibility of science in general, because of its reliance on sense data, so this is just circular.
Quoting Jacques
I agree with Hume's criticism of induction, as indicated. I just don't agree with how he proceeds from there. That the problem exists is really quite evident, but I think that Hume moves in the wrong direction, toward portraying it as unresolvable rather than toward finding principles to resolve it.
Quoting Ludwig VI don't know what you mean here.
Quoting wonderer1I was going to say much the same thing. If all of our consciousness and awareness, thoughts of the future - all of our mental characteristics - are reducible to the laws of physics, then how do we say physics doesn't produce computers? That's all there is, if that's all our consciousness is. And that's all our consciousness is, because the laws of physics cannot produce something that is outside of itself.
If something other than physics is producing computers - if something other than physics exists at all - it had to have come about other than by physics.
Where do I go wrong with this train of thought?
Hi, Undercover, I'm starting to get it. :smile: You agree with Hume about identifying the problem, but you believe there is a solution, now do I have it? I need to reread your previous posts to see if I get your solution and if I agree with it.
Well, you're not wrong. My use of "governed" was not satisfactory. But your introduction of "emergent" is part of what I'm trying to say. Emergent properties, in my understanding, do not reduce to, for example, physics. But physics is still what I would call the substrate of them. If the calculations of a computer are to be regarded as reliable, we need to believe that they (non-accidentally) coincide with or represent, or are, mathematics. It's a similar relation to the one that exists when we make the calculation by writing symbols down and moving them around in accordance with certain rules.
Quoting wonderer1
When the machines in a supermarket shout "Unexpected item in the bagging area", are we justified in saying that the machine said something? No, and yes. I interpret the sounds as speech (which they are designed to be) and treat that speech as if someone has said it. But when it sounds like speech and I react to it as speech, why is it wrong to say that something was said?
Quoting wonderer1
Oh, yes, we are indeed star-dust. But not simply star-dust because we can do things that star-dust cannot, like understanding and manipulating physics.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The fallibility of science is just a facet of the fallibility of human beings. I'm guessing, but I guess you are taking this line because you want to escape Hume's problem.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So you put your faith in reason because a rational principle would resolve Hume's problem? But reason has two facets. One facet is the theorems and deductions, which give transcendent certainty. Tempting. But the other facet is human beings who try to follow the rules of reason. When things go wrong, we cannot blame the rules which are by definition immune to mistakes and error. So we blame ourselves instead. In other words, reason has success logic. You can trust reason in the abstract sense, but human attempts to apply it are not immune from mistake. When you think you have the rational solution, you may be mistaken. I think of reasoning as a human activity, rather than an abstract structure, so perhaps I have a slightly different perspective from you.
Quoting Patterner
Neither do I. It's a problem and I don't know the answer. I was responding, not well, to you saying:- Quoting Patterner
Let me try again. The physical events in our brain - let's say - cause (or maybe underlie) our awareness, so although they are not dependent on our awareness, they can't take place without our awareness. I can't imagine why you think our awareness has no causal ability.
Quoting Patterner
I don't know what that means.
Quoting Patterner
This is not false. But it is simplistic.
You may have noticed what many people have pointed out, that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. There's no physical difference. So what makes the difference?
It's also a common problem that one person's music is another person's dreadful row. There's no physical difference. So what makes the difference?
Pleasure and pain are sometimes physical phenomena, sometimes not. All pleasure and all pain is produced by physics. So what's the difference between physical pleasure and physical pain? And what the difference between physical pleasure/pain and non-physical pleasure/pain?
Physics is a human construction - a representation, let's call it - of the world. It is the result of human activity. Do we conclude that physics made physics? Or that physics doesn't exist?
I believe a solution is possible, not that I have a solution. You'd probably have to reread a bunch of my posts to really understand. If we start with the premise that certain aspects of reality (like the temporal continuity discussed) appear to us a unintelligible, there are two principal ways to respond to this. One way is that we can conclude that such an aspect is itself inherently unintelligible. The other way is that we apprehend the appearance of unintelligibility as a product of our approach. In the latter case we reassess and analyze our approach. In the former case, we give up any effort to try and understand, as necessarily fruitless. The former is what I call unphilosophical. Check this post:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/802467
Quoting Ludwig V
Exactly, because Hume's method is to portray reason as infallible, then demonstrate the fallibility of our assumptions about causation, and induction in general, and conclude therefore that these types of reasoning are not properly called "reason". That is a problem, because it leaves these processes without any category, no means to understand them, therefore no means to address and rectify their problems. Instead, we ought to class them as forms of reasoning which are more fallible than some others, therefore these forms of reasoning have issues which need to be addressed.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, look what I said early. Hume wanted to place such assumptions as based in some sort of custom or habit, and then not face the reality that reasoning is itself a habit or custom. This is a problem which inheres within Hume's approach to rationalism. He seems to want to give reason a sort of divine, infallible status, as if it were separate from a bodily function of human beings, but this is a mischaracterization of the human reasoning process. So my position is not as you say, to put my "faith in reason", it is to put my faith in the human capacity to adapt, change, and evolve reason in a way which is conducive toward truth.
Quoting Ludwig V
This is exactly Hume's mistake, to portray "reason" in this divine way, as something which produces "transcendent certainty". This means that we have to create a divide, a separation within the category of "reason", such that some forms of reasoning produce divine certainty, while others do not. That creates an inconsistency within the category, because what is necessary to some types, the declared "certainty" is not necessary to other types. So Hume's solution is to remove those types which do not create certainty, from the category, leaving only the divine forms, which produce transcendent certainty as qualifying for the category of "reason".
But this is a mistake. There is no such divine form of reasoning which produces transcendent certainty. All forms of reasoning suffer from some degree of fallibility, as activities of fallible human beings, so all forms of reasoning, including deductive, inductive, abductive, etc., ought to be classed together, and they can be judged according to their degree of reliability or fallibility.
Quoting Ludwig V
The issue here, is that we, the human beings, are the ones who created the rules for the logic. These rules are just "customs", therefore they are not immune to mistake, and yes we can blame them, when we can demonstrate the faults which inhere within them.
This is where there is a need to differentiate "custom" from "habit". A "habit" is a property of an individual, while a "custom" is attributed to a group of people. There is a difference because all customs are habits, but not all habits are customs. We tend to judge habits as good or bad, and when a habit is a custom, simply being a custom does not ensure that the habit is a good habit. We can say that "correct", and "right" are descriptions based in custom, such that rules and laws which conform to customs provide us for judgement of correct, and right, in our judgements of habits which conform to customs. If you act according to custom you act correctly. But since there is always inconsistency between one culture and another concerning some customs, we must allow a higher standard of judgement (good for example), whereby we can judge some customs which produce correct and right acts according to one culture, as actually not good.
Quoting Ludwig V
So the mistake is evident here when you say "reason in the abstract sense". If you maintain your principle, "reasoning as a human activity", this principle itself is an abstract principle. It states a general process, as an abstraction "reasoning", or we could call it "reason". But what it says of this process, as what is essential or necessary to the process, is that it is a human activity. If we look at human activities as fallible, such that this is necessary, or essential to all human activities, then we can conclude that reasoning, or "reason" is necessarily fallible, through deductive logic.
Now we have excluded what you call "reason in the abstract sense" from our category of reasoning, such that it is just a fiction, imaginary, and not an abstraction at all, because it is not supported by any logic. We simply have this name, "reason in the abstract sense", which is really oxymoronic, because it is supposed to point to some sort of abstract reasoning, but it is not supported by any type of abstraction. If instead, we allow some sort of reality to this form of "reason in the abstract sense", we'd have to make up all sorts of fictional ideals, "transcendent certainty" etc., as defining features of it, and what would be the point of that?
Ah, wonderfully insightful I think.
I'm not well informed enough about Hume's argument to assess the accuracy of your interpretation of Hume's thinking. But having put a fair bit of consideration into how minds might emerge from brains with the benefits of modern scientific findings, I think Hume having an overly simplistic view of reasoning was unavoidable. If only we had a time machine and could go back and talk to him.
I think consciousness [I]is[/I] casual. But I'm hoping someone who agrees that it is, indeed, nothing but physics, but also thinks it is causal, can explain how they believe both things, since they appear to contradict each other. Because, otherwise, I'm looking at panprotopsychism. Which is an awkward ideas. Even if true, it doesn't seem to be anything about which we can do more than speculate.
Quoting Ludwig V I'm thinking of my Kurzweil quote. (Hofstadter also discusses it in [I]I am a Strange Loop[/I], but that's a longer quote.) Although it's easier to work with things at higher levels, everything reduces to physics. Ultimately, everything is the interaction of particles and the four forces.
If our consciousness is nothing but the interactions of particles, then the interaction of particles is what produces computers.
I highly recommend Peter Tse's The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation.
https://www.amazon.com/Neural-Basis-Free-Will-Criterial/dp/0262528312
Confession: I've read the sciency first half of the book and haven't finished the more philosophical second half. So I can't say whether I agree with Tse on libertarian free will or not. However I do agree with him that what he calls criterial causation is what should be under consideration in order to have a scientifically informed discussion of the subject.
I was also reacting to what I think is overly binary in saying he 'deceived himself'.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverYou're still going to need both and I was supporting what he had asserted around that. I am certainly not saying we can't be fooled by our senses, just as we can by reason. Unless you are a rationalist, there are going to be empirical facets to getting past illusions. You can absolutely decide that X, based on sense impressions, was false, but any demonstration of this will have empirical work around it.Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverScience is empirical. It is based on observations. People will create hypotheses based on models, which were also built up on research using empirical processes as their center. One of the reasons the scientific process is open to revision is precisely because it is an empirical approach to gaining knowledge.
And, hey, that was a kind of slimy way to talk to me. I was not impolite to you so you didn't need to go ad hom. And before I am told I don't know what ad hom means, yes, you didn't make a formal ad hom fallacy, but it was definitely 'to the man.' And the first paragraph was also slimy though less direct. The philosopher wanting the truth compared to others are comfortable.......Get over yourself and your implicitly claimed bravery. Talk about senses in the sense of sense of oneself getting in the way of things.
I'll ignore you from here on out. My patience for these kinds of little dominance games is pretty much zero.
You could ask @apokrisis about that. He might be able to distinguish different types of cause and tell a top-down story that is consistent with the bottom-up one.
Personally I'm starting to think all causation is psychological.
Fair enough, I'll qualify my statement: "a certain type of philosopher seeks the truth". The one's who do not seek the truth, but seek some useful principles, pragmatists, might still be correctly called "philosophers" by common convention.
Quoting Bylaw
The point though, is that reasoning is more reliable then mere sensation with memory. Furthermore, some types of reasoning are more reliable than others. The ones dependent on sensory input, like induction, have been demonstrated to be less reliable. So, the further we can get away from being dependent on sensation, the more certain we will be in our knowledge, and we can conclude that sensation tends to mislead us. When it's clear that sensation misleads us, and the further we get away from being dependent on it, the more certain our knowledge will be, how do you conclude that we will always need both?
Quoting Bylaw
Yes, and this is obviously the weakness of science. It's the problem of induction which Hume pointed to. That is why the statement of the op is correct, science is irrelevant to the problem of consciousness. This is because we must get beyond the limitations of science to properly understand consciousness, and if we fall for the idea that empirical science is capable of providing such an understanding that would be a case of being deceived by your senses.
Quoting Bylaw
I was referring to a particular instance, as an example, to demonstrate a general point. This is a common procedure. The example happened to be you. I thought perhaps a first hand example of how a person gets deceived by one's senses, might help to prove the point. If you took it as an insult, you shouldn't have because we all get deceived in this way. Anyway, it appears like you did take it as an insult, so I will apologize. I am sorry, no harm was intended.
Quoting Bylaw
Sorry, your personal example doesn't seem to work. I can't figure out what you're trying to say.
Thanks for this. Although the concept is familiar, I hadn't heard the term before.
Love your quartets, btw.
There are some complications here, but that is at least close to what Im trying to say. I think we are already agreed on a similar argument in relation to the senses.
Fortunately, fallible means sometimes wrong, not always wrong. Fortunately, also, the argument relies on the fact that we can tell wrong from right. So between the senses and reason and a suitably critical attitude, we can achieve some knowledge.
Quoting Patterner
Im puzzled. I think casual here may be a typo. Is that right?
Quoting Patterner
I don't disagree. But there are different kinds of lumps of matter. Some of them are conscious. Others are money. Others are people we love.
Im still puzzled.
Are numbers, words, logical variables, musical notes, lumps of matter? What about shadows, rainbows, surfaces, colours, boundaries, sub-atomic particles?
Votes, contracts, insults, punches, all involve lumps of matter, but are they lumps of matter?
Pictures are lumps of matter, but are they just lumps of matter like any other?
Card games all involve lumps of matter, but does that mean there is no important difference between them? Banknotes are all lumps of matter, but it doesn't follow they all have the same value.
Let me try an analogy. There used to be a popular philosophical theory sense-datum theory. This argued that everything that we know, including our concepts, comes from the senses. Many people took this to mean that everything can be reduced to sense-data. Hence, physics can be reduced to sense-data. So what would you say to them?
Quoting Patterner
I'm glad to hear it. I love them too. I wish I had written them, but glad I don't have to live that tortured life.
Quoting Ludwig VI do. We do more than notice.
Quoting Ludwig VThere's a lot of territory to cover here.
I'm not sure how you mean some of these things. Printed numbers, words, musical notes, etc., are lumps of matter. Spoken words, audible musical notes, etc., are lumps of matter, since they are vibrating air molecules.
Of course, all of these things are only lumps of matter if they are not being perceived and interpreted by a human. Only consciousness makes things more than lumps of matter.
However, the thought of these things are not lumps of matter. The medium of the thought, a human brain, is. But the brain is not the number, word, or logical variable. A particular arrangement of all the constituent parts of the brain is not the number 7. The printed 7 means what it means because we assigned it that meaning. Could the arrangement of the brain's constituent parts have that same meaning? Are the arrangements, and progressions of arrangements, of the brain's constituent parts symbols representing numbers, words, thoughts...? Is this system of symbols and meanings an objective system that is built into the laws of physics, such that the arrangements progress one after the other, as they must, due to the laws of physics; and, at the same time, those arrangements also have objective meanings such that they are our thoughts progressing one after the other, and the logic that connects one thought to the next is due to these law-driven arrangements?
Quoting Ludwig VI would tell them I disagree. I do not think our thoughts are the result of nothing but the arrangements of the constituent parts of our brains that come about due to the laws of physics. We certainly need sense-data for our brains to form connections and pathways, and for consciousness to form. (Anybody think an infant born with no ability to sense anything will become a thinking person?)
But it's not only the sense-data and physics. We can give machines sensory apparatus far superior to ours, program them with the totality of the rules of mathematics as we currently understand them, and give them all the feedback loops we want. That's a head start we didn't have. In I Am a Strange Loop, Hofstadter said: '..."having semantics" (which means the ability to genuinely think about things, as contrasted with the "mere" ability to juggle meaningless tokens in complicated patterns...)' Despite any head start we give them, making them superior to us in any way we can, do these machines "have semantics"? Can we program consciousness into them, because consciousness is nothing but particles following rules? Why are we not as they are, collections of particles following rules, not noticing, and thinking about, what we're doing?
Quoting Ludwig VI've had Op 127 in my head since your first response to me. Finally listening to it right now.
I don't see this. Right from wrong is a judgement made by reason. If reason is fallible so is that judgement.
It's a common error. I was educated on texts that were derived from manuscripts, which meant that I had to deal with the science of variant readings. It's just part of the way things are.
Quoting Patterner
I don't know whether we can program machines to be conscious or not and I don't know why or how we are conscious. Maybe there'll be answers some day. In the mean time we are making a philosophical mistake that was first made by Plato - thinking that the latest scientific development is the answer to everything.
Quoting Patterner
It depends whether you mean that it is the addition of some thing (not something) else. I don't think a disembodied mind can exist, although it seems that people can not only imagine such a thing, but believe in it. A physical dimension or substrate is necessary. But a rock doesn't have a mind and is not conscious. It doesn't have the equipment. The equipment required is more than brain. As you say, sense-organs are not optional, although their capacities are variable. The brain is pretty useless unless it is attached to a the spinal column and indeed the entire nervous system. But even that is not enough, I think. It needs a glandular system, which gives us much of our motivation, and a skeleto-muscular system that enables action. But the body is not the mind. I'm not confident to articulate anything beyond that, but I know that I am a person, a human being, a living body and conscious. And I know that I am not four distinct entities. Now I'm rambling because I don't have anything coherent to say.
But I have an impression that we are, after all, on the same page, at least.
Quoting Patterner
Good choice.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes. I didn't mean to imply it was anything but fallible. So long as we get it right sometimes and can correct our errors when we become aware of them. I'm afraid total security is not available.
Where does he portray reason as infallible?
Quoting Ludwig VCan't imagine the mind exists independent of the brain. Seems to me the mind [I]is[/I] the brain, doing... mind things.
Maybe someday we'll make minds in an electronic medium. And that mind won't exist independent of that electronic brain.
Quoting Ludwig VNever stopped me. If I haven't already demonstrated that, it won't be long.
He doesn't. I assumed it was an error.
Quoting Patterner
It's complicated. My heart pumps blood; I don't. My kidneys filter my blood; I don't. My muscles move my arm, fingers, legs; but I (and not my brain) walk and type and wave. My brain is clearly a key part of seeing and thinking, but I do those things, not my brain.
Quoting Jacques
It's inescapably true that scientific theories can be replaced, and very likely that the ones we know will be replaced. That's progress, so worrying about it seems inappropriate.
But I don't think that it's really accurate to say that Newton showed that Aristotle was wrong or that Einstein showed that Newton was wrong, it was just that Aristotelian physics only works in restricted circumstances. Einstein didn't show that Newton was wrong, just that Newtonian physics doesn't apply near the speed of light. The idea that the earth is flat is just wrong, but the idea that it is a sphere is compatible with Ptolemy (with the earth at the centre of the universe). But the resulting astronomy would be very complicated and inaccurate; Copernicus/Kepler is simpler and more accurate.
And I don't think it's accurate to say that Hume intended to show that Newton was wrong. I think that his intention was completely different.
I agree, of course, that If I lose my brain, I cannot think of myself as me. But it would be a very delicate balance to produce exactly the right brain damage to achieve loss of self without immense collateral damage up to and including death.
However, I do think that more than just a brain is needed to maintain a sense of self. It's not quite the same issue, but you did say earlier:- Quoting Patterner
There's a constant temptation to identify this or that feature of human beings to this or that physiological component. Often, that's possible. But not always, and being a person is a case in point - or so it seems to me.
Quoting Jacques
No, it isn't. I didn't intend to say that. Especially as he admired Newton. Apparently his ambition was to become the Newton of psychology. It's much more likely that he intended to supplement Newton by placing psychology on a firm foundation, just as Newton placed physics on a firm foundation.
Man with Tiny Brain Shocks Doctors
I agree. I think the brain, neuroscience, and structure and function generally, is totally relevant to the issue of what constitutes the self. But the self isn't consciousness. All reductionist theories of consciousness would be better reframed as theories of the self.
Quoting WayfarerThat is incredible! Thanks.
Quoting bert1Yes, it seems awkward to say the self is consciousness, even if there is no self without it.
I'm surprised that the doctors were shocked. I've heard of this phenomenon before. Indeed, I once knew someone who had this condition diagnosed. There were absolutely no evident symptoms of abnormality. The brain is an amazing thing.
Quoting bert1
The answer is that what constitutes my self is me. There's no need to reify the self as some part of me. Indeed the question whether some part of me is my self creates some questions that are very hard to understand. If that part of me were to be damaged or destroyed, who would I be?
It does seem, however that most physical damage does not affect who I am. It is mental damage, such as the various dementias or the phenomena of multiple personalities, that creates the issue. I don't see a clear borderline there. Note, I'm not saying that mental damage doesn't have a physical basis, just that what interferes or prevents the various functions and activities that we classify as mental can lead us to feel that this is not longer the same person or even not a person.
Would seem rather an awkward case for neural reductionism.
I can't see how we would ever be able to find out. On the other hand, being regarded as a person and, in my opinion, learning to be a person both require the ability to interact with others. So one does not need only the senses, but the entire sensori-motor system.
Quoting Wayfarer
There doesn't seem to be any major effect on normal life. I'm sure that neural reductionists would be happy to accept that brain function can be preserved even under these circumstances. That's what is so surprising about these cases. The only symptom that could be identified in the case of the person I knew is that they seemed to get a lot of headaches.