Is there a "hard problem" of consciousness?
Dianelos Georgoudis
This page argues that there is not really any "hard problem" of
consciousness:
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HARDPROB.html
They use Leibniz's principle of the identity of the indistinguishables
(namely that two entities that do not have any properties allowing to
distinguish them should be seen as a single entity) to show that as
there is by definition no way to distinguish between a zombie (namely a
physical mechanism that seems to be just like us but that is not
conscious) and a conscious human being, zombies and humans are one and
the same thing. Right, but in the best case this can mean two things:
that all people I see are zombies or that all people I see are
conscious beings, and the article does not explain why I should choose
one over the other - beyond calling the former view a "nightmarish
fantasy" - but on arguments of this quality you don't build "a complete
philosophy or world-view" which this site says is its purpose.
In any case the problem is wildly misstated. No materialist philosopher
studying the mind-body problem believes that there may be zombies out
there; what they find hard is to show on materialist grounds why there
can't be any zombies - and I am sure they know about the principle of
indistinguishables. The article says "We assume [other people] have
conscious experience similar to ourselves because they behave in all
other respects similar to us." But the question is not whether other
people have similar conscious experiences, but how we can find out on
objective grounds whether any other biological or artificial organism
has consciousness (i.e. the capacity of having conscious experiences)
in the first place - and observing their behavior does not help us at
all. It's true that we all strongly believe that all people are
conscious, but the problem of consciousness is not limited to human
beings. Consider cockroaches, for example. Most of us would
subjectively judge that they behave as if they were conscious beings,
but on which objective criteria can we decide whether they really are?
To simply draw an imaginary line of similarity of behavior and state
that any organism that behaves more similar to us than that has the
capacity of conscious experience and that all other organisms do not
- such drawing of a line is completely arbitrary not to mention
anthropocentric.
One may think that once science finds out how the human brain produces
consciousness it will be easy enough to study whether other organisms'
brains have a similar capacity. But here is the problem: science cannot
find out how the human brain produces consciousness because this
question cannot be put in a scientifically valid form. This is the
basic difference between the hard and the easy problems of
consciousness that Chalmers explains. Here is why: Suppose you perform
an experiment and hit the drums - you will hear some noise. Now you
perform another experiment and hit a toddler - you will hear some noise
too. In both cases science is capable to fully explain why that noise
(or any other objectively observable phenomenon that results in either
experiment) was produced by describing the physical processes that were
caused by hitting the drums or by hitting the toddler. So for science
there is no fundamental difference between what happens in these two
experiments. But we who are conscious beings strongly believe that
there is in fact a fundamental difference: in the case of the toddler
some conscious subject felt something (namely pain) and in the case of
the drums no conscious subject felt anything. So the problem of
consciousness is one that simply does not exist for science, because
all science does is to explain phenomena and in both experiments it
fully explains the objectively observable phenomena without using the
consciousness hypothesis. (In fact there is little doubt that science
is able to fully explain all phenomena of human behavior, including how
people speak of their "conscious experiences", without requiring the
existence of consciousness.) But in this case the problem we face is
not one of explaining phenomena, but rather of how to justify the
belief that in the case of hitting the toddler there was somebody who
felt pain and in the case of hitting the drums there was nobody feeling
anything.
Now how one justifies beliefs depends a lot on one's philosophy,
specifically on one's epistemology. The materialist philosophy implies
that one must justify all beliefs on materialist grounds. Materialist
philosophers until now assumed that all beliefs about being (i.e. about
what exists) would be answered by science but now confront very
strongly held beliefs (e.g. about the existence of other peoples'
consciousness, or about that we all see colors in the same way, etc)
that cannot be put into a scientific form and therefore cannot be
justified by scientific knowledge or research. Simply stated the hard
problem of consciousness consists in that the materialist philosopher
must find a way to justify on materialistic grounds beliefs about the
existence of something that from the scientific point of view does not
exist, because there is no objectively observable phenomenon for which
it is the best explanation. Which puts the materialist philosopher who
tries to justify common beliefs about consciousness in the same place
occupied by the theist philosopher who tries to justify common beliefs
about God, namely to justify the existence of something that is not
required as a scientific hypothesis. Of course in comparison the
materialist philosopher has it especially bad, because the theist
philosopher is not limited by materialism's epistemology.
Now it's interesting to note how materialists responded to this
problem:
1. Some appear not to understand the hard problem in the first place,
as appears to be the case in the page quoted at the beginning of this
post. The fact that there are hundreds of academic papers discussing
the hard problem demonstrates that most do understand it. Also the fact
that so many philosophers discuss the problem of consciousness and do
not comfortably sit back letting science solve it (as they do in the
case of other difficult problems that are clearly scientific, for
example the problem of the origin of life) evidences that they deep
down know that this is not a problem for science to solve.
2. Some try to transform the problem into a scientific one by claiming
that consciousness is identical to some particular physical processes
that happen in our brain, thus pushing the problem squarely on
science's lap. But this amounts to a redefinition of the concept of
consciousness, because when people speak of consciousness or conscious
experience they do not mean some particular physical brain processes,
so the so-called "identity theory of the mind" is really an attempt to
define to problem away. It also does not work for many other reasons,
such as that any materialistic hope of understanding consciousness as
well as any possibility of creating artificial consciousness requires
that it be understood as some high level organization of what happens
in a human brain, an abstract organization that is present in but not
identical to some particular physical processes that happens there.
3. Some bite the bullet and try to solve the problem, with the bravest
admitting that it looks not merely hard but impossible. There has not
been any perceptible advance whatsoever in finding a solution in the
last decades. J. A. Fodor put it best: "Nobody has the slightest idea
how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it
would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material
could be conscious."
4. Some think that maybe we should consider consciousness to be a
fundamental principle of physical reality just like, say, matter is. If
so, any organization of matter has the capacity of conscious
experience, only in most cases it will be able to have only some very
primitive conscious experiences. May be, but then we should start
talking of the spirituphysical universe, and instead of materialism we
should start talking of spiritumaterialism.
5. Some, I think rather ludicrously, decide that if according to
science consciousness does not exist then in fact it does not exist -
and if it appears to exist as so many people loudly claim it's only
because of an illusion they suffer. But of course, the concept of
"illusion" presupposes the reality of consciousness, so I don't
see how the idea "consciousness is just a sophisticated illusion that
our brain produces" makes any sense.
6. Some choose the TALTOI ("there-are-limits-to-our-intelligence")
defense, citing one or other reason why our brain is fundamentally
incapable of understanding itself. I wonder if they would agree that it
is technologically feasible to create computers much more intelligent
than we are which will then be able to understand consciousness and
teach us about it - at least then we may finally find out whether
cockroaches are conscious beings or not.
7. No materialist philosopher I know of has come out in the open
suggesting that maybe the existence of the hard problem of
consciousness means that materialism may be an incomplete paradigm of
reality, and that maybe there is time to look for more powerful
paradigms. Who knows, there may be epistemologies out there that are
capable of understanding consciousness in a manner that is both
intellectually satisfying and empirically useful.
Agrafina Zoya Kolesnikov
by Paul Oppenheim and Hilary Putnam, where all sciences would be
reduced to physics. No problem in the the newer Unity Of Science
approach of integrative levels, where the psychological stratum does
not have to reduced, but it suffers from explaining how emergentism
takes place, or if there even is such a thing as genuine emergence.
Helena Sheehan sums-up the latter as:
"We can pursue the unity of science without adopting the reductionist
model by opting for a philosophy of integrative levels. There is an
optimal philosophy for achieving the unity of science. It is an
evolutionary, integrative, emergentist form of materialism. .....It
recognises the ascending levels of complexity in the organisation of
matter and the emergence of novelty in the evolutionary process, such
that each level is rooted in the preceding level without being
reducible to it. It construes the methodological relationship between
the different sciences as parallel to the ontological relationship
between the different levels of reality, with the various sciences
emergent from each other thus:
social sciences
^
psychology
^
biology
^
chemistry
^
physics
Sir Frederick
to ascertain that "consciousness" is manifesting in the function
of an intelligent machine of our crafting.
In my opinion the problem is paradigm caused. Your number 4 item
is attractive to me. This holistic paradigm supports that more than
matter-energy and space-time are manifest. In the holism paradigm
"organizing principles" are also manifest in unity with the rest. These
organizing principles promote the emergent phenomena, such as
possibly consciousness.
--
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcn...@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill
*************************
Phrase of the week :
"For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that."
- Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
:-))))Snort!)
**************************************
Jan Burse
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
> This page argues that there is not really any "hard problem" of
> consciousness:
> http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HARDPROB.html
> They use Leibniz's principle of the identity of the indistinguishables
> (namely that two entities that do not have any properties allowing to
In agent based models you can introduce modal operators
K_i for each agent. Thus two objects named k1 and k2
might be equal for one agent and but not for another.
I.e.:
we might have |- K_i k1=k2
but |- K_j ~ k1 = k2.
That is the equality is not necessary a rigid relation
symbol, that has the same interpretation in all possible
worlds, in this case for each agent.
So for example for a color blind agent two squares might
have the same color, but for the agent that is not color
blind the squares might be different.
Logic has absolutely no problem in expressing such dependency
on agents and it is not in conflict with some traditional
principle of indistinguishables of first order logic.
First order logic traditionally takes the global view of
equality. In modal logic a non rigid possible world view
of equality occurs naturally.
Nevertheless many modal logics can be rewritten to first
order logic, and thus first order logic can also express the
subjectivity of agents.
Bye
1Z
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
> This page argues that there is not really any "hard problem" of
> consciousness:
>
> http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HARDPROB.html
>
> They use Leibniz's principle of the identity of the indistinguishables
> (namely that two entities that do not have any properties allowing to
> distinguish them should be seen as a single entity) to show that as
> there is by definition no way to distinguish between a zombie (namely a
> physical mechanism that seems to be just like us but that is not
> conscious) and a conscious human being, zombies and humans are one and
> the same thing.
They are using "indescernability" in a question-begging
way to mean *external* indiscernability. If a mad
scientist took away your phenomenal consciousness for a while
and then returned it, you would notice introspectively.
(You could continue forming memories during your period as a Zombie
providing they were purely informational, not containing any emotional
or
phenomenal colour. It could be objected that you would
have no way of knowing whether you were failing
to lay down phenomenal memories, or had had the phenomenality
removed from your memories retrospectively, but that does not
affect the central point, that there is a difference beteen
a phenomenal and a non-phenomenal state).
Is that a fact ? Isn't psychology a science ?
> This is the
> basic difference between the hard and the easy problems of
> consciousness that Chalmers explains. Here is why: Suppose you perform
> an experiment and hit the drums - you will hear some noise. Now you
> perform another experiment and hit a toddler - you will hear some noise
> too. In both cases science is capable to fully explain why that noise
> (or any other objectively observable phenomenon that results in either
> experiment) was produced by describing the physical processes that were
> caused by hitting the drums or by hitting the toddler. So for science
> there is no fundamental difference between what happens in these two
> experiments.
"Science" includes psychology.
>,But we who are conscious beings strongly believe that
> there is in fact a fundamental difference: in the case of the toddler
> some conscious subject felt something (namely pain) and in the case of
> the drums no conscious subject felt anything. So the problem of
> consciousness is one that simply does not exist for science, because
> all science does is to explain phenomena and in both experiments it
> fully explains the objectively observable phenomena without using the
> consciousness hypothesis.
Not psychology.
> (In fact there is little doubt that science
> is able to fully explain all phenomena of human behavior, including how
> people speak of their "conscious experiences", without requiring the
> existence of consciousness.)
Without explictly mentioning phenomenal consciouness, I think
you mean. But talk about a bunch of trees is talk about
a wood, even if the wood isn't explicitly mentioned.
> But in this case the problem we face is
> not one of explaining phenomena, but rather of how to justify the
> belief that in the case of hitting the toddler there was somebody who
> felt pain and in the case of hitting the drums there was nobody feeling
> anything.
How to justify it on an external 3rd-person basis, or how
to justify it.
> Now how one justifies beliefs depends a lot on one's philosophy,
> specifically on one's epistemology. The materialist philosophy implies
> that one must justify all beliefs on materialist grounds. Materialist
> philosophers until now assumed that all beliefs about being (i.e. about
> what exists) would be answered by science but now confront very
> strongly held beliefs (e.g. about the existence of other peoples'
> consciousness, or about that we all see colors in the same way, etc)
> that cannot be put into a scientific form and therefore cannot be
> justified by scientific knowledge or research.
What does "put into scientific form" mean ?
That depends on what you mean by" mean".
If an ignoramus talks about water, are they talking about
H20 --even if they don't know that water is H20 ?
I'm with you on that one.
> 6. Some choose the TALTOI ("there-are-limits-to-our-intelligence")
> defense, citing one or other reason why our brain is fundamentally
> incapable of understanding itself. I wonder if they would agree that it
> is technologically feasible to create computers much more intelligent
> than we are which will then be able to understand consciousness and
> teach us about it - at least then we may finally find out whether
> cockroaches are conscious beings or not.
> 7. No materialist philosopher I know of has come out in the open
> suggesting that maybe the existence of the hard problem of
> consciousness means that materialism may be an incomplete paradigm of
> reality, and that maybe there is time to look for more powerful
> paradigms. Who knows, there may be epistemologies out there that are
> capable of understanding consciousness in a manner that is both
> intellectually satisfying and empirically useful.
Hmm. Well I'm pretty sure Chalmers has.
1Z
Yes, the problem of materialism is reductionism, not matter.
Jan Burse
and not "identity of the indistinguishables".
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8248%28197612%2943%3A4%3C491%3ALPOTIO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D&size=LARGE
And there is also a difference between "Indiscernibility of Identicals"
and "Identity of Indiscernibles". Whereby the former holds in a logic
with equality, even in a modal one, F can be non rigid as well.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-indiscernible/
Jan Burse
of human beings, see for example:
DULANY D. E. (1991), "Conscious representation and thought systems".
In R. S. Wyer and T. K. Srull (Eds.), Advances in Social Cognition,
Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 97-120
JANISZEWSKI C. (1988), "Preconscious Processing Effects: The
Independence of Attitude Formation and Conscious Thought". Journal of
Consumer Research, Vol. 15, pp. 199-209
KIHLSTROM J. (1987), "The Cognitive Unconscious". Science, Vol. 237,
pp. 1445-1452
SHAPIRO S. (1999), "When an ad's influence is beyond our conscious
control: Perceptual and conceptual fluency effects caused by incidental
ad exposure". Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 26, pp. 16-36
etc..
Less material can be found about zombies...
Jan Burse
Jan Burse
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> "Science" includes psychology.
It does? Does psychology make quantitative predictions that are
empirically testable and possibly falsifiable? Does psychologically
explain human behavior in a manner that is consistent with the
underlying physical laws in terms of objects and causes that have
testable consequences?
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> Yes, the problem of materialism is reductionism, not matter.
Don't knock reductionism. It has been the single most successful program
in leading to our understanding and partial control of the world about
us. Reductionism may be incomplete, but it is not wrong.
Bob Kolker
>
Agrafina Zoya Kolesnikov
Psychology is part of the Social Sciences (anthropology, economics,
linguistics, etc). Statisical physics supposedly can be / has been
applied to SS territory, perhaps causing some to view it as another
possible Unity Of Science approach in the future, if it has the
capacity to pervade all the disciplines:
http://physicsweb.org/article/world/16/10/7
Zoya
1Z
Robert J. Kolker wrote:
> 1Z wrote:
> >
> >
> > "Science" includes psychology.
>
> It does? Does psychology make quantitative predictions that are
> empirically testable and possibly falsifiable?
Yes.
>Does psychologically
> explain human behavior in a manner that is consistent with the
> underlying physical laws in terms of objects and causes that have
> testable consequences?
Yes.
> Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
>
> Psychology is part of the Social Sciences (anthropology, economics,
> linguistics, etc). Statisical physics supposedly can be / has been
> applied to SS territory, perhaps causing some to view it as another
> possible Unity Of Science approach in the future, if it has the
> capacity to pervade all the disciplines:
Is Social Science (so-called) really science? Does it produce
explanations and predictions which are empirically testable and possibly
falsifiable? Is Social Science grounded in the physical laws of the
cosmos? If it is not physically grounded and empirically testable it
ain't science.
Bob Kolker
andy-k
> Is Social Science (so-called) really science? Does it produce explanations
> and predictions which are empirically testable and possibly falsifiable?
> Is Social Science grounded in the physical laws of the cosmos? If it is
> not physically grounded and empirically testable it ain't science.
Scientific theories are like partial differentiation -- they hold valid when
certain parameters are invariant. But everything changes. The strongest
scientific theories, then, are those for which the invariant parameters
remain invariant over timescales that are *practically* significant. Physics
and chemistry are the epitome. In biology things change more visibly, but
over such long timescales as to admit of testable hypotheses. But culture
changes so rapidly that abstracted hypotheses that may have explanatory
power in retrospect might fail to have explanatory power in prospect. So I
would say that the social sciences are on the threshold -- some aspects
might justifiably be called science, but not others.
Milan
"1Z" <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1149203943.7...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Reductionism is never the problem -but the solution.
regards
Milan
1Z
Reductionism has no apriori guarantee to succeed. When it runs
into a problem it can't solve, we shoudl recognise the fact.
1Z
> > Yes, the problem of materialism is reductionism, not matter.
>
> Reductionism is never the problem -but the solution.
Aaaaaa-mmmeeeeeennnnnnn.
Agrafina Zoya Kolesnikov
>Is Social Science (so-called) really science?
If the Social Sciences don't adhere to the scientific method, then they
are accepted as part of the scientific community for what reason?
Charity? Pity? Whim? Prank? I'm receptive to at least reading any
conspiracy theories that you offer.
>Does it produce explanations and predictions which
> are empirically testable and possibly falsifiable?
It would be interesting to inquire that from the horse's mouth, a
scientist in a social field. I can merely speculate that this stems (at
least in psychology) from possible confusion of the pop-variety with
the real thing:
"As a result of such proliferation of psychotherapists, the work of
psychological scientists who do research and teach at colleges and
universities tends to be invisible outside the academy. .....Yet while
the public assumes, vaguely, that therapists must be 'scientists' of
some sort, many of the widely accepted claims promulgated by therapists
are based on subjective clinical opinions and have been resoundingly
disproved by empirical research conducted by psychological scientists.
Here are a few examples that have been shown to be false:"
http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i25/25b00701.htm
>Is Social Science grounded in the physical laws of
> the cosmos? If it is not physically grounded and
> empirically testable it ain't science.
If there's a desire for all the sciences to explain solely in terms of
fundamental or universal laws, then I can only suggest completing the
original Unity of Science endeavor; which is to say, providing the
necessary bridging principles to reduce all fields to physics. As the
days of thumping on a podium and declaring that all disciplines of
research should genuflect to the basal science seems to be over, as far
as receiving obediance to that rite, if ever it existed except in the
imagination of some of its more arrogant practitioners:
http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050916-6.htm
http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/challengetophysics121001.htm
Zoya
Dianelos Georgoudis
Just so that our discussion does not become too broad, let's define one
concrete question that is related to the problem of consciousness, and
use it as a reality check. Possibly the most basic question related to
consciousness is how one can detect whether consciousness is actually
present in the first place. An example of such a question is this:
Does a cockroach's consciousness exist?
In other words: does a cockroach have the capacity of having conscious
experiences? To any person this question has a clear meaning. Of
course, if we find a way to justify the belief that cockroaches do not
have that capacity, then all talk about what conscious experiences
cockroaches have, how these experiences are caused, how cockroaches'
consciousness evolved, etc. are irrelevant. You may ask, why speak of
cockroaches and not of people? Because the problem of consciousness is
not a problem specific to humans; most of us have learned by now that
that anthropocentric assumptions do not work. At the very least it is
logically possible that cockroaches have the capacity to have conscious
experiences, so do they? But then you may ask, why cockroaches, and
not, say, cats? Because cats are far more complex organisms and some
irrelevant parameter could misguide our reasoning; also most people
feel quite confident that cats do have the capacity of conscious
experience and that might cloud our reasoning also - in comparison I
would say that the question about cockroaches' consciousness is pretty
much anybody's guess. On the other hand cockroaches are very successful
biological organisms, have a nervous system and a brain, model their
environment, display intentionality, can memorize, can learn, and in
general have all the cognitive abilities we assume are necessary for
consciousness.
So, how are we to decide whether cockroaches have or don't have the
capacity of conscious experience?
My point is that one cannot claim to have explained consciousness if
one is not able to give a justified answer to this question. Neither
can one claim that X science of philosophy is capable of answering this
question if one is unable to give even some very rough idea about how X
is to proceed in order to answer this question, because if one cannot
even give such a very rough, how can one justify one's belief that X
is able to find an answer?
Above you speak of "an optimal philosophy for achieving the unity of
science. It is an evolutionary, integrative, emergentist form of
materialism." So, can you suggest how this philosophy would proceed in
order to answer the question above, and, if not, how do you justify
your belief that this philosophy can answer this question?
Dianelos Georgoudis
Sir Frederick wrote:
> This "problem" may only be "solved" when we are able
> to ascertain that "consciousness" is manifesting in the function
> of an intelligent machine of our crafting.
One could argue that we have already crafted machines that display more
intelligence than a cockroach. Where in these machines' observable
behavior, or in a cockroach's observable behavior, would consciousness
manifest itself if it existed?
> In my opinion the problem is paradigm caused. Your number 4 item
> is attractive to me. This holistic paradigm supports that more than
> matter-energy and space-time are manifest. In the holism paradigm
> "organizing principles" are also manifest in unity with the rest. These
> organizing principles promote the emergent phenomena, such as
> possibly consciousness.
Yes but *all* other emergent phenomena we know of are objectively
observable. Consciousness is not objectively observable neither
directly nor indirectly, and that's why nobody really knows whether
cockroaches are conscious or not. So to suggest that consciousness is
an emergent phenomenon is a case of special pleading.
Also to call consciousness a phenomenon does not make sense I think.
Phenomena are by definition the quantifiable contents of our conscious
experience, but consciousness itself is the capacity of having
conscious experiences in the first place. It seems to me that to assume
that the capacity of having conscious experience is some content of
that conscious experience is to commit a clear category error.
Milan
"Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
news:1149331822....@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> Sir Frederick wrote:
> > This "problem" may only be "solved" when we are able
> > to ascertain that "consciousness" is manifesting in the function
> > of an intelligent machine of our crafting.
>
> One could argue that we have already crafted machines that display more
> intelligence than a cockroach. Where in these machines' observable
> behavior, or in a cockroach's observable behavior, would consciousness
> manifest itself if it existed?
>
> > In my opinion the problem is paradigm caused. Your number 4 item
> > is attractive to me. This holistic paradigm supports that more than
> > matter-energy and space-time are manifest. In the holism paradigm
> > "organizing principles" are also manifest in unity with the rest. These
> > organizing principles promote the emergent phenomena, such as
> > possibly consciousness.
>
> Yes but *all* other emergent phenomena we know of are objectively
> observable. Consciousness is not objectively observable neither
> directly nor indirectly, and that's why nobody really knows whether
> cockroaches are conscious or not. So to suggest that consciousness is
> an emergent phenomenon is a case of special pleading.
It is not a case of special pleading. It is a case of inference to the best
explanation. A tentative (and parsimonious) explanation that is based on a
number of observations in which properties and functions displayed by human
beings (and other biological organisms) were found to be the consequence of
the workings of their biological structures.
> Also to call consciousness a phenomenon does not make sense I think.
> Phenomena are by definition the quantifiable contents of our conscious
> experience, but consciousness itself is the capacity of having
> conscious experiences in the first place. It seems to me that to assume
> that the capacity of having conscious experience is some content of
> that conscious experience is to commit a clear category error.
The capacity to have conscious experience is a function and this function
allows us to have experiences of many things, including the experience of
the idea that we have the capacity to have conscious experience. This is not
a category error.
regards
Milan
Dianelos Georgoudis
I don't agree. If a mad scientist had taken my phenomenal consciousness
away for some time yesterday then I would have no way of finding out
now, because during that time my brain would have reacted in exactly
the same way and registered exactly the same bits of information that
it would have if I were conscious in the phenomenal sense. In fact one
cannot be absolutely certain that one was phenomenally conscious 5
minutes ago - one can only be absolutely certain that right now one's
phenomenal memory is consistent with having been phenomenally conscious
5 minutes ago.
[snip]
> > One may think that once science finds out how the human brain produces
> > consciousness it will be easy enough to study whether other organisms'
> > brains have a similar capacity. But here is the problem: science cannot
> > find out how the human brain produces consciousness because this
> > question cannot be put in a scientifically valid form.
>
> Is that a fact ? Isn't psychology a science ?
I think it is. In any case, above I claim that there is no
scientifically valid form to express the proposition "consciousness
exists" (or the proposition "the human brain produces the capacity of
having conscious experiences") in a scientifically valid form, in other
words in a form that represents the best explanation for some
phenomenon. How do you suggest psychology would express any of these
propositions?
No I mean without requiring the concept of "consciousness" at all
in anything science can say about human behavior. On the contrary there
is a lot that science can say about trees that require the concept of
"wood".
> > But in this case the problem we face is
> > not one of explaining phenomena, but rather of how to justify the
> > belief that in the case of hitting the toddler there was somebody who
> > felt pain and in the case of hitting the drums there was nobody feeling
> > anything.
>
>
> How to justify it on an external 3rd-person basis, or how
> to justify it.
In any basis you like - it doesn't have to be "scientific" or
"objective". Actually the most common argument is by analogy: In
general the toddler looks and behaves similar to myself; if some
performed the same experiment on myself I would at least feel like
crying out loud because of the pain I would feel; therefore it is
reasonable to believe that the toddler felt pain too. There is a deep
philosophical analysis by Plantinga that shows that this analogy is not
rational (see: "God and Other Minds"); but it any case it is easy to
see why this argument by analogy does not hold water: "Similarity"
defined in any non ad-hoc manner is a continuous quantity whereas
consciousness (i.e. the capacity of having conscious experience) is
binary, so one would have to arbitrary define some degree of similarity
that distinguishes between the mechanisms that have consciousness form
those that haven't. But if one is to arbitrarily define such necessary
degree of similarity, then one could as well arbitrarily decide which
mechanisms have consciousness and which have not without using the
argument by analogy at all. It seems the argument by analogy serves
only as a smoke screen for hiding what is a at bottom an unjustified
belief, or at least a belief the justification of which cannot be put
in words.
Now, either there is a justification for one's belief about the
existence of other beings' consciousness or there isn't. If there isn't
then reality is incoherent (because if it were coherent then all
existents would relate to each other and it would be possible to find a
way to justify one's belief about the existence of other being's
consciousness). If there is then either it can be found or it can't. If
it can't then we are not smart enough to understand reality's
coherence. If it can be found then it will almost certainly not be a
scientific argument, i.e. an argument based exclusively on objective
evidence, because by now it's is almost certain that there is no
objective evidence for which the existence of consciousness is the best
explanation. Suppose it is not a scientific argument. Then almost
certainly it will be impossible to put it in words using
scientific-like language.
> > Now how one justifies beliefs depends a lot on one's philosophy,
> > specifically on one's epistemology. The materialist philosophy implies
> > that one must justify all beliefs on materialist grounds. Materialist
> > philosophers until now assumed that all beliefs about being (i.e. about
> > what exists) would be answered by science but now confront very
> > strongly held beliefs (e.g. about the existence of other peoples'
> > consciousness, or about that we all see colors in the same way, etc)
> > that cannot be put into a scientific form and therefore cannot be
> > justified by scientific knowledge or research.
>
> What does "put into scientific form" mean ?
Basically it means to put an existential proposition in the form of a
hypothesis that represents the best explanation for some objective
phenomenon. We don't know how to put the proposition that other
peoples' consciousness exists into a scientific form, for exactly the
same reason that we don't know how to put the proposition that God
exists into a scientific form: neither hypothesis is required in order
to explain some objective phenomenon.
[snip]
> > 2. Some try to transform the problem into a scientific one by claiming
> > that consciousness is identical to some particular physical processes
> > that happen in our brain, thus pushing the problem squarely on
> > science's lap. But this amounts to a redefinition of the concept of
> > consciousness, because when people speak of consciousness or conscious
> > experience they do not mean some particular physical brain processes,
>
> That depends on what you mean by" mean".
> If an ignoramus talks about water, are they talking about
> H20 --even if they don't know that water is H20 ?
Of course not. After all water is not identical to H2O. It's true that
water is composed by H2O molecules, but that's irrelevant to the
question of identity. After all marble statues are not identical to
CaCO3 either. And cities are not identical to construction materials.
And of course one can intelligibly speak of water without knowing
exactly what water is composed of. In general it is possible to
intelligibly speak of X without knowing absolutely all of X's
properties. What one must know is some of X's identifying properties
for practical reasons. And for identifying water is not necessary to
know that it is composed of H2O molecules.
Still, what I was referring above is something different and far more
basic: People use words. Words have meaning. The only objective way to
know what that meaning is, is to observe how people use a word. Take
the word "exist". Almost all people say and agree with propositions
such as "stones exist", "numbers exist", "beauty exists",
"consciousness exists", "physical laws exist", "death exists",
"unicorns do not exist", "the greatest prime number does not exist",
"the perpetuum mobile does not exist" etc. Some other propositions such
as "God exists", "UFOs exist", "PSI exists", "astrological effects
exist", enjoy no such broad agreement, but even here people debates
evidence that they mean the same by "exist". In most cases of
disagreement about existence people slowly come to agree, as for
example in the case of "flogiston exists". Discussions are not
always coherent. For example in relation to the proposition "God
exists" there is much incoherent discussion even between people who
agree with this proposition; we know that everybody knows the meaning
of "exist" so the best explanation of the current situation is that
people do not use the same meaning for "God". In any case the meaning
of "exist" is clearly circumscribed by the way people use the word, and
a good definition will try to capture the common elements in these uses
and reflect these uses. Now some people apparently do not like the
meaning of a word and propose a redefinition of it, i.e. a definition
that far from reflecting rather grossly contradicts the way people use
it. But nobody has the right to do that - not even in the case of
words that are used to classify people - for example short people
have not the right to redefine what "short" means. In the same way
nobody has the right to redefine what "exist" means because they don't
like its meaning. If they don't like its meaning they are free to coin
a new word that has the meaning they prefer. But to redefine the
meaning of words such as "exist", or "consciousness" in order to shore
up one's own worldview is definitely not rational and clearly not
useful because it only leads to confusion.
So, the fact that common words such as "exist", or "water", or
"consciousness" have a clear meaning as evidenced by the objective fact
that people coherently discuss propositions that include these words.
These words are used coherently even by 10 year olds which evidences
that their meaning is clear, generalized, and does not require any
special education or intelligence. Redefining words in ways that
clearly contradict their real meaning is a loser's game. So when some
materialists try to redefine "exist" into "physically exist" (and start
claiming such absurdities like that "numbers do not exist") or try to
redefine "consciousness" into "brain processes" - definition that
clearly contradicts the common use of these words - it only evidences
the weakness of their position. After all by redefining words anybody
can easily prove anything, including that they are the emperor of
China.
[snip]
> > 7. No materialist philosopher I know of has come out in the open
> > suggesting that maybe the existence of the hard problem of
> > consciousness means that materialism may be an incomplete paradigm of
> > reality, and that maybe there is time to look for more powerful
> > paradigms. Who knows, there may be epistemologies out there that are
> > capable of understanding consciousness in a manner that is both
> > intellectually satisfying and empirically useful.
>
> Hmm. Well I'm pretty sure Chalmers has.
You are right! I wasn't aware of that. For example he says: "if one
takes consciousness seriously, one has to go beyond a strict
materialist framework" see http://consc.net/book/tcm.html
andy-k
> This page argues that there is not really any "hard problem" of
> consciousness:
>
> http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HARDPROB.html
Extracted from the above:
"Consciousness is not some mysterious substance, fluid, or property of
matter, but a level of organization emerging from abstract processes and
relations."
-- Here Heylighen outlines the way he's using the word "consciousness". He
avoids falling into the trap of giving consciousness a substantial
interpretation, but goes on to give a fairly useless definition because of
its vagueness.
"People who search for consciousness in elementary particles (a form of
panpsychism that has been suggested as a way to tackle the "hard problem"),
because they cannot otherwise explain where the consciousness in our brain
comes from, are misguided. Their intuition may be correct insofar that
particles, just like any other system, should be seen as relations rather
than just as clumps of matter. But to attribute consciousness to these
extremely simple types of relations is merely a way to evade the really
hard, but solvable, problem of reconstructing the complex cybernetic
organization of the human mind in all its details and subtleties."
-- Here he uses some sleight-of-hand to disparage panpsychism.
Firstly, I'm not aware of anybody "searching for consciousness in elementary
particles" -- how would one proceed?
Secondly, to entertain panpsychism "because they cannot otherwise explain
where the consciousness in our brain comes from" implies some kind of
failure on their behalf -- but who *isn't* guilty of this failure? Would he
have us believe that it's bad practice to consider alternate hypotheses?
Thirdly, "to attribute consciousness to these extremely simple types of
relations is merely a way to evade the really hard, but solvable,
problem" -- this statement implies that panpsychism is nothing more than an
evasion tactic to avoid doing some really hard work, and that he has done
the really hard work and solved the hard problem. With a definition as vague
as the one he quotes above, he can easily solve the hard problem -- the
difficulty of scoring goals is inversely proportional to the distance
between the goalposts. This is what Chalmers fittingly calls a
"bait-and-switch".
Milan
>
> 1Z wrote:
> > Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
>
> Now, either there is a justification for one's belief about the
> existence of other beings' consciousness or there isn't. If there isn't
> then reality is incoherent (because if it were coherent then all
> existents would relate to each other and it would be possible to find a
> way to justify one's belief about the existence of other being's
> consciousness). If there is then either it can be found or it can't. If
> it can't then we are not smart enough to understand reality's
> coherence. If it can be found then it will almost certainly not be a
> scientific argument, i.e. an argument based exclusively on objective
> evidence, because by now it's is almost certain that there is no
> objective evidence for which the existence of consciousness is the best
> explanation. Suppose it is not a scientific argument. Then almost
> certainly it will be impossible to put it in words using
> scientific-like language.
Plantinga's analysis is simply a strategy to protect faith in gods from
being labelled irrational. He argues that it is rational to believe in
orther minds without evidence, therefore it is rational to believe in God,
etc etc. Plantinga claims that the only possible argument for the existence
of other minds is one based on analogy. This is a straw man (classic
Plantinga style). Plantinga, of course, happily ignores the fact that, as
has been pointed out by others, a much stronger argument makes the belief in
the existence of other minds a consequence of inference to the best
explanation. We communicate rather well with others about our feelings,
thoughts, moods, etc etc. We feel that others understand our thoughts and
feelings. Such observations are readily explainable by the hypothesis that
others have feelings and thoughts like ours. On the other hand, huge areas
of our everyday experience, in which we seem to share thoughts or feelings
with others, would be inexplicable should we deny that others have minds.
How could we explain those everyday experiences in which others seem to
understand our feelings or share our thoughts? The question thus arises:
what alternative hypothesis could be proposed to make sense of our everyday
experiences? Is there a better or simpler alternative hypothesis that
explains the data?
[snip]
I dont think it does. Not too long ago when people talked about madness they
meant possession by devils, now we know that we are talking about a brain
disorder. Analogously, when we now talk about moods, feelings and thoughts,
we know that we are talking about phenomena that are the consequence of the
workings of our brains. Our current knowledge shapes our worldview and our
worldview informs the way we perceive phenomena.
regards
Milan
1Z
It would have reacted in the same *physical* way.
Surely it is question
begging to assume that that means it would have registered phenomenal
information the same way -- that just amounts to assuming Zombies are
impossible.
> In fact one
> cannot be absolutely certain that one was phenomenally conscious 5
> minutes ago - one can only be absolutely certain that right now one's
> phenomenal memory is consistent with having been phenomenally conscious
> 5 minutes ago.
If one found oneself with non-phenomenal memories one might not
know whether they were accurate memories of phenomenal
experiences or inaccurate memories of phenomenal experiences,
but one way or the other , the lack of phenomenality
woudl be subjetively noticibable.
> [snip]
>
> > > One may think that once science finds out how the human brain produces
> > > consciousness it will be easy enough to study whether other organisms'
> > > brains have a similar capacity. But here is the problem: science cannot
> > > find out how the human brain produces consciousness because this
> > > question cannot be put in a scientifically valid form.
> >
> > Is that a fact ? Isn't psychology a science ?
>
> I think it is. In any case, above I claim that there is no
> scientifically valid form to express the proposition "consciousness
> exists" (or the proposition "the human brain produces the capacity of
> having conscious experiences") in a scientifically valid form, in other
> words in a form that represents the best explanation for some
> phenomenon.
Surely consiousness is the phenomenon, not the explanation,
> How do you suggest psychology would express any of these
> propositions?
There are many aspects of consiousness which psychology
can easily state, such as the abilty to respond to the environment.
the ability to report on private mental states and the a sef-concept.
You seem to be taking consciounsness to mean "conscious experience".
But what is there to stop a psyhcologist talking about conscious
experience --
except the assumption that psychology must be ultimately reducible
to physics ?
Hence my conlusion that reducitonism is the fly in the ointment.
That is a very contentious position. It would mean
that when people talk about their conscious experience,
you would have to regard them as lying or fantasising.
I would urge you to reconsider whether not needing the concept
of consciousness (conscious experience) as such is really sufficient
ground for dismissing it entirely.
> On the contrary there
> is a lot that science can say about trees that require the concept of
> "wood".
Scientists do not use the concept of "jade", since it is too
substances , jadeite and nephrite. That does not mean
there is no jade -- not jadeite or nephrite.
> > > But in this case the problem we face is
> > > not one of explaining phenomena, but rather of how to justify the
> > > belief that in the case of hitting the toddler there was somebody who
> > > felt pain and in the case of hitting the drums there was nobody feeling
> > > anything.
> >
> >
> > How to justify it on an external 3rd-person basis, or how
> > to justify it.
>
> In any basis you like - it doesn't have to be "scientific" or
> "objective". Actually the most common argument is by analogy: In
> general the toddler looks and behaves similar to myself; if some
> performed the same experiment on myself I would at least feel like
> crying out loud because of the pain I would feel; therefore it is
> reasonable to believe that the toddler felt pain too.
That is still 3rd person. Why not just ask the infant ?
> There is a deep
> philosophical analysis by Plantinga that shows that this analogy is not
> rational (see: "God and Other Minds");
You only arrive at the other minds problem if you have some reason not
to
take 1st-person reports at face value.
> but it any case it is easy to
> see why this argument by analogy does not hold water: "Similarity"
> defined in any non ad-hoc manner is a continuous quantity whereas
> consciousness (i.e. the capacity of having conscious experience) is
> binary,
I see no reason to suppse that all.
> so one would have to arbitrary define some degree of similarity
> that distinguishes between the mechanisms that have consciousness form
> those that haven't. But if one is to arbitrarily define such necessary
> degree of similarity, then one could as well arbitrarily decide which
> mechanisms have consciousness and which have not without using the
> argument by analogy at all.
That does not follow. Analogy is needed to show that some mechanism
(ones that are very close to a natural brain) have consciousness, and
arbitrariness to define the cut-off point, if oe is needed.
An arbitrary decision does not by itself justify anything other than
a brain having consciousness.
And the binary assumption is wrong anyway.
> It seems the argument by analogy serves
> only as a smoke screen for hiding what is a at bottom an unjustified
> belief, or at least a belief the justification of which cannot be put
> in words.
> Now, either there is a justification for one's belief about the
> existence of other beings' consciousness or there isn't. If there isn't
> then reality is incoherent (because if it were coherent then all
> existents would relate to each other and it would be possible to find a
> way to justify one's belief about the existence of other being's
> consciousness). If there is then either it can be found or it can't. If
> it can't then we are not smart enough to understand reality's
> coherence. If it can be found then it will almost certainly not be a
> scientific argument, i.e. an argument based exclusively on objective
> evidence, because by now it's is almost certain that there is no
> objective evidence for which the existence of consciousness is the best
> explanation.
I don't know why you keep saying that. Why shouldn't
the existence of consciousness be the best explantion
for the habit of claiming to be conscious ?
And why isn't consciousness a phenomenon in itself ?
(Conscious behaviour is certainly a phenomenon -- "consciousness"
does not equate to experience).
> Suppose it is not a scientific argument. Then almost
> certainly it will be impossible to put it in words using
> scientific-like language.
> > > Now how one justifies beliefs depends a lot on one's philosophy,
> > > specifically on one's epistemology. The materialist philosophy implies
> > > that one must justify all beliefs on materialist grounds. Materialist
> > > philosophers until now assumed that all beliefs about being (i.e. about
> > > what exists) would be answered by science but now confront very
> > > strongly held beliefs (e.g. about the existence of other peoples'
> > > consciousness, or about that we all see colors in the same way, etc)
> > > that cannot be put into a scientific form and therefore cannot be
> > > justified by scientific knowledge or research.
> >
> > What does "put into scientific form" mean ?
>
> Basically it means to put an existential proposition in the form of a
> hypothesis that represents the best explanation for some objective
> phenomenon. We don't know how to put the proposition that other
> peoples' consciousness exists into a scientific form, for exactly the
> same reason that we don't know how to put the proposition that God
> exists into a scientific form: neither hypothesis is required in order
> to explain some objective phenomenon.
>
> [snip]
Phemonal consciousness *is* a phenomenon,.
> > > 2. Some try to transform the problem into a scientific one by claiming
> > > that consciousness is identical to some particular physical processes
> > > that happen in our brain, thus pushing the problem squarely on
> > > science's lap. But this amounts to a redefinition of the concept of
> > > consciousness, because when people speak of consciousness or conscious
> > > experience they do not mean some particular physical brain processes,
> >
> > That depends on what you mean by" mean".
> > If an ignoramus talks about water, are they talking about
> > H20 --even if they don't know that water is H20 ?
>
> Of course not. After all water is not identical to H2O. It's true that
> water is composed by H2O molecules, but that's irrelevant to the
> question of identity. After all marble statues are not identical to
> CaCO3 either.
That's a false analogy.Marble the material *is* identical to CaCO3.
Adding
the word "statue" adds a particular shape to the raw material.
> And cities are not identical to construction materials.
> And of course one can intelligibly speak of water without knowing
> exactly what water is composed of. In general it is possible to
> intelligibly speak of X without knowing absolutely all of X's
> properties. What one must know is some of X's identifying properties
> for practical reasons. And for identifying water is not necessary to
> know that it is composed of H2O molecules.
But is still possible to persuade them that the water they
were talking about was "really" H2O all along. The fact
that people are able to funtion with a superficial
and unscientific understanding of things does not
preclude science from coming up with the "real" answer.
> Still, what I was referring above is something different and far more
> basic: People use words. Words have meaning. The only objective way to
> know what that meaning is, is to observe how people use a word.
You are assuming that there is only one meaning to
a word.
Claiming that words have both "folk" and scientific meaings
is not tendentious redefintion. People who don't
know that water is H20 are not asserting that is some
other chemical. People who don't think of consciousness
as a brain process are not asserting it is something else.
(and if your argument *were* correct, nobody would
be able to correctly tell him that water is really H20)/
> So, the fact that common words such as "exist", or "water", or
> "consciousness" have a clear meaning as evidenced by the objective fact
> that people coherently discuss propositions that include these words.
And the scientific meaning is something that expands
on the fok meaning, not something that replaces it.
> These words are used coherently even by 10 year olds which evidences
> that their meaning is clear, generalized, and does not require any
> special education or intelligence. Redefining words in ways that
> clearly contradict their real meaning is a loser's game. So when some
> materialists try to redefine "exist" into "physically exist" (and start
> claiming such absurdities like that "numbers do not exist") or try to
> redefine "consciousness" into "brain processes" - definition that
> clearly contradicts the common use of these words - it only evidences
> the weakness of their position. After all by redefining words anybody
> can easily prove anything, including that they are the emperor of
> China.
H20 is not a redefinition of "wet stuff". H20 is stuff and it is wet --
among other
things.
Sir Frederick
>
>Sir Frederick wrote:
>> This "problem" may only be "solved" when we are able
>> to ascertain that "consciousness" is manifesting in the function
>> of an intelligent machine of our crafting.
>
>One could argue that we have already crafted machines that display more
>intelligence than a cockroach. Where in these machines' observable
>behavior, or in a cockroach's observable behavior, would consciousness
>manifest itself if it existed?
>
>> In my opinion the problem is paradigm caused. Your number 4 item
>> is attractive to me. This holistic paradigm supports that more than
>> matter-energy and space-time are manifest. In the holism paradigm
>> "organizing principles" are also manifest in unity with the rest. These
>> organizing principles promote the emergent phenomena, such as
>> possibly consciousness.
>
>Yes but *all* other emergent phenomena we know of are objectively
>observable. Consciousness is not objectively observable neither
>directly nor indirectly, and that's why nobody really knows whether
>cockroaches are conscious or not. So to suggest that consciousness is
>an emergent phenomenon is a case of special pleading.
The book "A Different Universe" by Laughlin considers *all* observables
as emergences. Reductionism is a valid model and methodology. Holism
considers that "More is Different", and that difference is not only mandated
by the parts as context but is also new in the whole. Laughlin considers
all of what we call "observables" as emerging as new. Interesting subject.
>
>Also to call consciousness a phenomenon does not make sense I think.
>Phenomena are by definition the quantifiable contents of our conscious
>experience, but consciousness itself is the capacity of having
>conscious experiences in the first place. It seems to me that to assume
>that the capacity of having conscious experience is some content of
>that conscious experience is to commit a clear category error.
We certainly are culturally conning ourselves when it comes to brain function.
Deceit and self deceit are quite functional in context. Prehistory may
depict our proper context.
That aside, the experiences of external(sensor) and internal(self) qualia are truly
mysterious. We need our sibling conscious machines.
--
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcn...@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill
*************************
Phrase of the week :
"For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that."
- Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
:-))))Snort!)
**************************************
Agrafina Zoya Kolesnikov
What do you mean by "explaining"? Why would there be some kind of
"ultimate answer" in the non-reductive physicalist approach? The
nearest it might come to resembling reductive physicalism is in
discovering the various kinds of neural activities or configurations
that specific human experiences could potentially be found to emerge in
association with (taking into account multiple realisabilty). Since
there seems to be no way to get crickets to report when they're under
brain-scanning or brain stimulation, and rocks have no brains at all to
examine, then what need for non-reductive psychological and
neuroscientific researchers or science philosophers with the same bent
to engage in futile speculation about non-human experiences? Future AI
computers could report, but one would have to ask their designers if
the AIs were merely referring to the presence of the syntatic
definitions of "green" or "sadness" in part of their processing rather
than experiential meanings. If the designers were indecisive, then
again, nothing but negative or positive beliefs about the matter, or
skepticism.
Zoya
Sean
Hi Dianelos ... i admire your passion and clarity on this subject. It is an
important question, and an interesting read of posts thus far. I doubt any
comments I could make will be found terribly useful, so I'll simply make a
suggestion you may like to try out, if you're game.
Best to do this before going to bed each night for a few days. Ask your own
"higher consciousness" ......... "Do cockroaches possess consciousness?"
.. and see what answer/ideas if any comes through to you .... in any form,
from any direction, by any method during the next few days/weeks thereafter.
Nothing wrong in remaining skeptical, but be sincere & try it anyway.
donsto...@hotmail.com
answer? They have limited consciousness. They have enough
consciousness to avoid a foot coming down on them, which is more than a
computer has (most, anyway).
Robert J. Kolker
Sean
<donsto...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1149361446.1...@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Does a cockroach have consciousness? Why does it have to be a yes/no
> answer?
Well I didn't ask the question, simply offering a potential line of enquiry.
I already know the answer to my satisfaction.
> They have limited consciousness. They have enough
> consciousness to avoid a foot coming down on them, which is more than a
> computer has (most, anyway).
>
Exact same thing goes for humans as well. How smart one is or how big there
ego is doesn;t have much to do with that. except the bigger the ego, the
less consciousness has a role in one's life. Like a present consciousness
will *know* the foot is coming down before it even appears, and get out of
the way. a big ego will stand there and say how dare you attempt to step on
ME !!! and get squashed in the process. Think about it. ;-)
donsto...@hotmail.com
Well, you're 100% correct in that comment. Unless there's a cockroach
afterlife where its little consciousness will exist for eternity?????
Dianelos Georgoudis
By "explaining" something I mean to give an efficient description for
it - noting that all efficient descriptions carry explicatory power
(help me create a coherent model of reality) and carry predictive power
(help me predict future experience, often as it will be affected by my
own actions).
> Why would there be some kind of
> "ultimate answer" in the non-reductive physicalist approach?
I am not asking for the "ultimate answer". I am asking the most basic
question one can ask about consciousness once one agrees that it
exists, namely how to ascertain where consciousness is present and
where it isn't. Surely that's a basic question that any science of
consciousness must answer. And I think it's a question that can be
answered but not based on any form of materialistic epistemology.
> The
> nearest it might come to resembling reductive physicalism is in
> discovering the various kinds of neural activities or configurations
> that specific human experiences could potentially be found to emerge in
> association with (taking into account multiple realisabilty). Since
> there seems to be no way to get crickets to report when they're under
> brain-scanning or brain stimulation, and rocks have no brains at all to
> examine, then what need for non-reductive psychological and
> neuroscientific researchers or science philosophers with the same bent
> to engage in futile speculation about non-human experiences?
Well, these are real and clear questions, which carry much ethical
significance. Before giving up on them and calling them "futile", just
because materialistic methodologies don't work, why not evaluate other
methodologies? Otherwise it's a case of "sour grapes".
> Future AI
> computers could report, but one would have to ask their designers if
> the AIs were merely referring to the presence of the syntatic
> definitions of "green" or "sadness" in part of their processing rather
> than experiential meanings. If the designers were indecisive, then
> again, nothing but negative or positive beliefs about the matter, or
> skepticism.
Consciousness is a huge issue. Any way one looks at it, knowledge about
consciousness is the most relevant kind of knowledge there is. After
all each one of us does not really live in physical space but rather in
a space of conscious experience (just look around you for a few seconds
and you'll agree) and everything we really value is directly linked to
our conscious experience. So any epistemology that is incapable of
answering even basic questions about consciousness is not worth its
salt.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Sean wrote:
> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
> news:1149330459....@f6g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
I am not sure what you mean by "higher consciousness". In any case I am
not saying that questions about consciousness cannot be answered. I am
only pointing out why I believe that they can't be answered using any
methodology of thought based on materialism. In fact I think there are
more powerful methodologies of thought that can answer such questions.
Dianelos Georgoudis
We all know what "conscious experience" means, right? So
"consciousness" denotes the capacity of having conscious experiences.
Virtually everybody believes that people have this capacity and stones
do not have it. If cockroaches have that capacity, not matter how
primitive their actual conscious experiences, then indeed cockroaches
have consciousness.
I think that's the way virtually all people speak of "consciousness".
That's why we speak of "conscious beings" - implying that there are
beings that have consciousness and there are beings that do not have
consciousness but there aren't beings that kind-of have consciousness.
Consciousness is binary property.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Milan wrote:
> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
> news:1149331822....@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > Sir Frederick wrote:
> > > This "problem" may only be "solved" when we are able
> > > to ascertain that "consciousness" is manifesting in the function
> > > of an intelligent machine of our crafting.
> >
> > One could argue that we have already crafted machines that display more
> > intelligence than a cockroach. Where in these machines' observable
> > behavior, or in a cockroach's observable behavior, would consciousness
> > manifest itself if it existed?
> >
> > > In my opinion the problem is paradigm caused. Your number 4 item
> > > is attractive to me. This holistic paradigm supports that more than
> > > matter-energy and space-time are manifest. In the holism paradigm
> > > "organizing principles" are also manifest in unity with the rest. These
> > > organizing principles promote the emergent phenomena, such as
> > > possibly consciousness.
> >
> > Yes but *all* other emergent phenomena we know of are objectively
> > observable. Consciousness is not objectively observable neither
> > directly nor indirectly, and that's why nobody really knows whether
> > cockroaches are conscious or not. So to suggest that consciousness is
> > an emergent phenomenon is a case of special pleading.
>
> It is not a case of special pleading.
I understand "special pleading" as a case where somebody uses a general
rule but pleads for an exception to some of its properties. Here is a
definition of the fallacy of special pleading: "Special Pleading is a
fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to
others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to
be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption.
(See: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/special-pleading.html)
In this case the standard rule used is that of emergent properties, and
the exception being pleaded for is that even though in all other cases
emergent properties are objectively observable in the case of
consciousness one should not require this.
> It is a case of inference to the best
> explanation. A tentative (and parsimonious) explanation that is based on a
> number of observations in which properties and functions displayed by human
> beings (and other biological organisms) were found to be the consequence of
> the workings of their biological structures.
Exactly right: "consequence of the working of their biological
structures" and nothing more. Whether these structures also produce the
capacity and the content of conscious experience is irrelevant, and
therefore an unnecessary hypothesis. Scientifically speaking
consciousness does not exist - for the same reason that God does not
exist. There is not one objectively observable phenomenon for which
either hypothesis is the best explanation.
> > Also to call consciousness a phenomenon does not make sense I think.
> > Phenomena are by definition the quantifiable contents of our conscious
> > experience, but consciousness itself is the capacity of having
> > conscious experiences in the first place. It seems to me that to assume
> > that the capacity of having conscious experience is some content of
> > that conscious experience is to commit a clear category error.
>
> The capacity to have conscious experience is a function and this function
> allows us to have experiences of many things, including the experience of
> the idea that we have the capacity to have conscious experience. This is not
> a category error.
I agree to what you say here, but I don't see how it applies to my
argument above that consciousness should not be considered a phenomenon
but should rather be considered the means of becoming aware of
phenomena.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Sir Frederick wrote:
> On 3 Jun 2006 03:50:22 -0700, "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >Sir Frederick wrote:
> >> This "problem" may only be "solved" when we are able
> >> to ascertain that "consciousness" is manifesting in the function
> >> of an intelligent machine of our crafting.
> >
> >One could argue that we have already crafted machines that display more
> >intelligence than a cockroach. Where in these machines' observable
> >behavior, or in a cockroach's observable behavior, would consciousness
> >manifest itself if it existed?
> >
> >> In my opinion the problem is paradigm caused. Your number 4 item
> >> is attractive to me. This holistic paradigm supports that more than
> >> matter-energy and space-time are manifest. In the holism paradigm
> >> "organizing principles" are also manifest in unity with the rest. These
> >> organizing principles promote the emergent phenomena, such as
> >> possibly consciousness.
> >
> >Yes but *all* other emergent phenomena we know of are objectively
> >observable. Consciousness is not objectively observable neither
> >directly nor indirectly, and that's why nobody really knows whether
> >cockroaches are conscious or not. So to suggest that consciousness is
> >an emergent phenomenon is a case of special pleading.
>
> The book "A Different Universe" by Laughlin considers *all* observables
> as emergences.
But does it mention any evergent property that is not observable?
Because that's the case with the claim that consciousness is an
emergent property.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Good point. But then it's questionable how useful these fields are.
Maybe an answer is that these fields cannot (for the reasons you
mention) make good predictions about the future, but their subject
matter is so important that even having very little predictive power is
valuable.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Milan wrote:
> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
> news:1149340061....@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > 1Z wrote:
> > > Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
> >
> [snip]
>
> > Now, either there is a justification for one's belief about the
> > existence of other beings' consciousness or there isn't. If there isn't
> > then reality is incoherent (because if it were coherent then all
> > existents would relate to each other and it would be possible to find a
> > way to justify one's belief about the existence of other being's
> > consciousness). If there is then either it can be found or it can't. If
> > it can't then we are not smart enough to understand reality's
> > coherence. If it can be found then it will almost certainly not be a
> > scientific argument, i.e. an argument based exclusively on objective
> > evidence, because by now it's is almost certain that there is no
> > objective evidence for which the existence of consciousness is the best
> > explanation. Suppose it is not a scientific argument. Then almost
> > certainly it will be impossible to put it in words using
> > scientific-like language.
>
>
> Plantinga's analysis is simply a strategy to protect faith in gods from
> being labelled irrational. He argues that it is rational to believe in
> orther minds without evidence, therefore it is rational to believe in God,
> etc etc.
I think you are wrong on both counts. Plantinga uses "rational" with
the commonsense meaning of a belief that is compatible with being a
rational person - so he accepts as a priori true that the belief in
other minds is rational. He then argues that there is no justification
on evidence for this belief - i.e. renders this belief irrational in
the more strict sense of the word. Even so Plantinga concedes that the
rational belief in other minds may not require justification, whereas
belief in God in order to be rational may require justification. Here
is what he writes:
"Then we must conclude, I believe, that a man may rationally hold a
contingent, corrigible belief even if there is no answer to the
relevant epistemological question [i.e. justification]. Of course if
follows only that *some* such beliefs may be held rationally under the
indicated conditions; it does not follow that a man can hold *just any*
such belief without a reason or evidence. And, it might be held,
although rational belief in other minds does not require an answer to
the epistemological question, rational belief in God does."
> Plantinga claims that the only possible argument for the existence
> of other minds is one based on analogy.
No, he is far too careful a thinker to claim this; he only supposes
this, because indeed nobody has offered a better argument. Here is what
he writes "But let us suppose, as seems to me to be true, that there
are no viable alternatives to the analogical position."
> This is a straw man (classic
> Plantinga style). Plantinga, of course, happily ignores the fact that, as
> has been pointed out by others, a much stronger argument makes the belief in
> the existence of other minds a consequence of inference to the best
> explanation. We communicate rather well with others about our feelings,
> thoughts, moods, etc etc. We feel that others understand our thoughts and
> feelings. Such observations are readily explainable by the hypothesis that
> others have feelings and thoughts like ours.
Yes, but the issue here is not if the hypothesis that consciousness
exists is an explanation but whether it's the *best* explanation. And
the best explanation is that other people have brains.
> On the other hand, huge areas
> of our everyday experience, in which we seem to share thoughts or feelings
> with others, would be inexplicable should we deny that others have minds.
Why? Behaviorist psychology (which many would call scientific
psychology) does fine explaining all these phenomena without requiring
the consciousness hypothesis. In fact I think almost all scientifically
minded people agree that the whole gamut of human behavior, including
how people speak of their conscious experiences, can be explained
without recourse to consciousness and based only on causal physical
processes that happen in peoples' brains.
> How could we explain those everyday experiences in which others seem to
> understand our feelings or share our thoughts?
Brain processes. We are complex social animals and have evolved brains
and language complex enough to make it possible for us to create
civilized societies.
> The question thus arises:
> what alternative hypothesis could be proposed to make sense of our everyday
> experiences?
Brain processes.
> Is there a better or simpler alternative hypothesis that
> explains the data?
Oh, the brain may be very complex, but no scientifically minded person
doubts that by exclusively studying a human brain's physical processes
science can at least in principle explain every single detail of human
behavior. Some people may feel that the existence of consciousness is a
simpler explanation, but nobody really believes that it can explain the
full range of human behavior in the detail that neurophysiology can.
Already neurophysiology has explained aspects of human behavior that
cannot be explained otherwise, for example the behavior of Alzheimer
patients.
Exactly my meaning. Before people thought that devils possessed
peoples' minds, and now we know it only has to do with brain processes
- no mind- or consciousness- hypothesis is necessary.
> Analogously, when we now talk about moods, feelings and thoughts,
> we know that we are talking about phenomena that are the consequence of the
> workings of our brains.
Indeed, and not a consequence of our consciousness. Neither is the
hypothesis that the working of our brain produces consciousness
required for explaining any phenomena, such as how we talk about
"moods, feelings and thoughts".
> Our current knowledge shapes our worldview and our
> worldview informs the way we perceive phenomena.
I would put it differently: The phenomena we perceive inform our
knowledge which shapes our worldview.
Sir Frederick
"Evergent" is not in the many dictionaries I checked.
Please explain.
Sean
> >>
>> Nothing wrong in remaining skeptical, but be sincere & try it anyway.
>
> I am not sure what you mean by "higher consciousness".
Yes of course, sorry. Ok, your regular thought processes are conscious
activity, but that [ your mind ] is not your "consciousness" imho. That's
what I mean by higher consciousness, the beingness behind your usual sense
of being alive awake and thinking or doing. It's there but not usually
present in a way we are aware of it. is that clearer?
whether u believe it is there or not, I'm suggesting imagine/pretend it is,
and ask IT the qustion u have about cockroaches [ or any other ] and see
what comes thru to your mind, or your everyday awareness. If something does,
u will not miss it! <smile>
> In any case I am
> not saying that questions about consciousness cannot be answered. I am
> only pointing out why I believe that they can't be answered using any
> methodology of thought based on materialism. In fact I think there are
> more powerful methodologies of thought that can answer such questions.
>
My opinion is methodologies of thought and materialism, can't provide
answers for things non-material, and beyond the mind, which is what
consciousness is.
They can only be used to discuss and ponder in abstract terms ... whilst
failing to really define or justify anything, so finding some agreement in a
philosophical sense is pretty unlikely. Unless people have had the same
level of experiences/awareness. Consciousness can only be expereinced by the
individual. It's not the ego, thoughts, emotions, opinions, judgements,
actions etc. Our consciousness, who we really are, is the power behind these
things occuring in the physical world. iow words things are "blended" in a
way, where we can';t tell the difference. imho.
Consciousness is a "hard problem" for sure. The reason?
"What you are looking for, you are looking with."
cheers.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Sorry, that's a typo. I mean "emergent".
1Z
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
> I am not asking for the "ultimate answer". I am asking the most basic
> question one can ask about consciousness once one agrees that it
> exists, namely how to ascertain where consciousness is present and
> where it isn't.
Since consciouness is not limited to experience, that is quite easy.
Milan
Exactly. He ignores the obvious alternative that it is an inference to the
best explanation. He "supposes" that the analogical position is the only
one.
> > This is a straw man (classic
> > Plantinga style). Plantinga, of course, happily ignores the fact that,
as
> > has been pointed out by others, a much stronger argument makes the
belief in
> > the existence of other minds a consequence of inference to the best
> > explanation. We communicate rather well with others about our feelings,
> > thoughts, moods, etc etc. We feel that others understand our thoughts
and
> > feelings. Such observations are readily explainable by the hypothesis
that
> > others have feelings and thoughts like ours.
>
> Yes, but the issue here is not if the hypothesis that consciousness
> exists is an explanation but whether it's the *best* explanation. And
> the best explanation is that other people have brains.
Exactly, and that their minds are a consequence of the workings of their
brains. Let's note also that Plantinga talks about the existence of other
*minds*, not about consciousness per se. So, in a way we are conflating two
issues here; but it is not too much of a stretch to include consciousness as
part of the mind functions, and therefore a consequence of brain's workings.
> > On the other hand, huge areas
> > of our everyday experience, in which we seem to share thoughts or
feelings
> > with others, would be inexplicable should we deny that others have
minds.
>
> Why? Behaviorist psychology (which many would call scientific
> psychology) does fine explaining all these phenomena without requiring
> the consciousness hypothesis. In fact I think almost all scientifically
> minded people agree that the whole gamut of human behavior, including
> how people speak of their conscious experiences, can be explained
> without recourse to consciousness and based only on causal physical
> processes that happen in peoples' brains.
So you accept as rational that other people have minds but not that other
people have consciousness?
>
> > How could we explain those everyday experiences in which others seem to
> > understand our feelings or share our thoughts?
>
> Brain processes. We are complex social animals and have evolved brains
> and language complex enough to make it possible for us to create
> civilized societies.
I'm not sure what your argument is here. You accept that other people's
thoughts and feelings are the consequence of brain processes but you dont
accept that they have consciousness?
> > The question thus arises:
> > what alternative hypothesis could be proposed to make sense of our
everyday
> > experiences?
>
> Brain processes.
Of course, brain processes are at the core of all intellectual and emotional
phenomena. Are you saying that thinking and feeling are brain processes but
consciousness is not? If so, why not?
> > Is there a better or simpler alternative hypothesis that
> > explains the data?
>
> Oh, the brain may be very complex, but no scientifically minded person
> doubts that by exclusively studying a human brain's physical processes
> science can at least in principle explain every single detail of human
> behavior. Some people may feel that the existence of consciousness is a
> simpler explanation, but nobody really believes that it can explain the
> full range of human behavior in the detail that neurophysiology can.
> Already neurophysiology has explained aspects of human behavior that
> cannot be explained otherwise, for example the behavior of Alzheimer
> patients.
I'm not sure I understand this paragraph.
> >
> > [snip]
I understand your point better now. I agree that "mind" and "consciousness"
are a consequence of brain processes. However, we need to establish how this
process we call "consciousness" comes about.
> > Analogously, when we now talk about moods, feelings and thoughts,
> > we know that we are talking about phenomena that are the consequence of
the
> > workings of our brains.
>
> Indeed, and not a consequence of our consciousness. Neither is the
> hypothesis that the working of our brain produces consciousness
> required for explaining any phenomena, such as how we talk about
> "moods, feelings and thoughts".
But the hypothesis that the workings of our brain produce consciousness is
itself a subject of study.
> > Our current knowledge shapes our worldview and our
> > worldview informs the way we perceive phenomena.
>
> I would put it differently: The phenomena we perceive inform our
> knowledge which shapes our worldview.
Same difference.
regards
Milan
1Z
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
> Exactly right: "consequence of the working of their biological
> structures" and nothing more. Whether these structures also produce the
> capacity and the content of conscious experience is irrelevant, and
> therefore an unnecessary hypothesis. Scientifically speaking
> consciousness does not exist - for the same reason that God does not
> exist. There is not one objectively observable phenomenon for which
> either hypothesis is the best explanation.
Milan
>
> donsto...@hotmail.com wrote:
> > Does a cockroach have consciousness? Why does it have to be a yes/no
> > answer? They have limited consciousness. They have enough
> > consciousness to avoid a foot coming down on them, which is more than a
> > computer has (most, anyway).
>
> We all know what "conscious experience" means, right? So
> "consciousness" denotes the capacity of having conscious experiences.
> Virtually everybody believes that people have this capacity and stones
> do not have it. If cockroaches have that capacity, not matter how
> primitive their actual conscious experiences, then indeed cockroaches
> have consciousness.
Yes, but consciousness usually includes self-awareness and sentience. This
is what is doubtful cockroaches possess.
> I think that's the way virtually all people speak of "consciousness".
> That's why we speak of "conscious beings" - implying that there are
> beings that have consciousness and there are beings that do not have
> consciousness but there aren't beings that kind-of have consciousness.
> Consciousness is binary property.
We should not let language dictate how things are. If we do we normally end
up with essentialist positions such as this one, which have a strong
tendency to be incorrect.
regards
Milan
Milan
>
> Milan wrote:
> > "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
> > news:1149331822....@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> > >
[snip]
> Exactly right: "consequence of the working of their biological
> structures" and nothing more. Whether these structures also produce the
> capacity and the content of conscious experience is irrelevant, and
> therefore an unnecessary hypothesis. Scientifically speaking
> consciousness does not exist - for the same reason that God does not
> exist. There is not one objectively observable phenomenon for which
> either hypothesis is the best explanation.
However, we continually make plausible inferences based on consistent
patterns of evidence. Our interactions with other humans indicate that they
are conscious of the environment, that they are sentient and that they are
self-aware, ie, that they are conscious as we are. So, the best explanation
is that they are indeed conscious.
> > > Also to call consciousness a phenomenon does not make sense I think.
> > > Phenomena are by definition the quantifiable contents of our conscious
> > > experience, but consciousness itself is the capacity of having
> > > conscious experiences in the first place. It seems to me that to
assume
> > > that the capacity of having conscious experience is some content of
> > > that conscious experience is to commit a clear category error.
> >
> > The capacity to have conscious experience is a function and this
function
> > allows us to have experiences of many things, including the experience
of
> > the idea that we have the capacity to have conscious experience. This is
not
> > a category error.
>
> I agree to what you say here, but I don't see how it applies to my
> argument above that consciousness should not be considered a phenomenon
> but should rather be considered the means of becoming aware of
> phenomena.
Agreed. Consciousness is a function (or a process) that allows us to become
aware of phenomena.
regards
Milan
Agrafina Zoya Kolesnikov
>I am not asking for the "ultimate answer". I am
> asking the most basic question one can ask
> about consciousness once one agrees that it
> exists, namely how to ascertain where
> consciousness is present and where it isn't.
Experience (which is what Chalmer's hard problem concerns) is only
known to have an association with neural activities of the human brain.
Although Chalmers diverges to Nagalistic "what it's like" to be other
organisms, this is a token gratuity as there is no Vulcan mind-meld
technique for "perceiving" what (if anything) experientially transpires
in the most primitive non-human organisms or non-biological systems
like the weather.
>Surely that's a basic question that any science of
> consciousness must answer. And I think it's a
> question that can be answered but not based on
> any form of materialistic epistemology.
For pansentience to serve a purpose, one should be able to describe
what non-human experiences across the universe are like in either
ordinary language or reduce that to a scientific language for
describing them. This is presently not possible, since again, there is
no Vulcan mind-meld technique for apprehending any internal states of
matter-energy systems other than one's own brain. Therefore, there is
no point in abandoning the physical method of representing the universe
in terms of extrinsic relationships, which manipulate quantity (derived
from measurements) in place of any qualitative essences that
matter-energy might have (which are inaccessible in the non-human
area). The social sciences can use phenomenal language in addition to
any abstract concepts because human experiences are accessible (when
converted to public language, there are corresponding memory
experiences the words can be correlated to in other human brains).
>Well, these are real and clear questions, which
> carry much ethical significance. Before giving up
> on them and calling them "futile", just because
> materialistic methodologies don't work, why not
> evaluate other methodologies? Otherwise it's a
> case of "sour grapes".
If we cannot empirically access non-human experiences and they cannot
be defined in a meaningful way, then we would be venturing into the
metaphysical excesses that Kant and Wittgenstein warned about by
discarding today's workable physical approach for pansentience or
whatever. These speculations demand a breakthrough that would allow
them to be rendered into practical or workable paradigms.
As it stands, non-reductive materialism may be largely neutral about
whether or not matter/energy has intrinsic essences; or better -- it
really doesn't have to "go there" since the psychological level emerges
from the biological and physics levels instead of reducing to them. If
the future reveals an underlying cause for the evolutionary
manifestation of nomological novelties and properties or new levels,
then fundamental intrinsic states may become a more relevent fixation
(if anything can be said about them in non-human territory).
Circumstances like "Big-Bangs" and the Casimir effect emerge from the
quantum vacuum, but there doesn't seem to be any deep explanation for
this beyond the uncertainty of energy, which still seems to amount to
"it just happens" (in probabilistic fashion).
Zoya
donsto...@hotmail.com
Don't agree. I'll agree that a stone has no consciousness. I'll agree
that a human has (a lot of ) consciousness. But I see clearly that a
cockroach falls between the two. Ok - group it into the "conscious"
category, but it has far less of it than humans. I think it's more
descriptive to state how much a system has rather than just giving a
yes/no as to wheter it has consciousness.
Oh, by the way, a good definition of consciousness is "the softweare
running on its substrate (hardware)." It's easy to distinguish what
part of a living being's behavior is software, so there's a nice
high-level description.
Also, why can't qualia just be patterns of neurons firing? I was given
chocolate as a child - that caused a pattern of taste neurons to fire
whch I still experience as the taste of chocolate.
Don
1Z
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
> I think that's the way virtually all people speak of "consciousness".
> That's why we speak of "conscious beings" - implying that there are
> beings that have consciousness and there are beings that do not have
> consciousness but there aren't beings that kind-of have consciousness.
> Consciousness is binary property.
We have two words "bald" and "hairy" -- but baldness/hairiness is
very much a spectrum, nto a binary. Most people *don't*
think consciousness is binary, despite the poverty of language.
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> Since consciouness is not limited to experience, that is quite easy.
It is? I have no trouble establishing that -I- am conscious. I have
trouble establishing that -you- are conscious. Can you help me? How do I
distinguish you from a an automaton?
Bob Kolker
Roger Johansson
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
> I am not sure what you mean by "higher consciousness".
Don't you guys realize that religious people are trolling you, and you
fall for it, day after day, year after year.
The religious people love to talk about "spiritual life", it is a
speeded state of mind created by special training and preparation so
love becomes a drug.
They waste enormous amounts of their own and other people's time
talking about this state of mind, as if they never experienced anything
better than a centrally stimulating drug.
They cause a lot of trouble because of misunderstandings of their
symbolism.
"Spiritual life" is not about real physical life, it is about a state
of mind.
Yet they cause worshipping of physical life as well as spiritual life,
which results in murdering doctors who perform abortions.
They talk about the origin of spiritual life, not about the origins of
physical life.
They talk about the initiation rite that transforms boys into men, it
has nothing to do with the origins of the human race or the origins of
physical life.
They love talking about this speed freak state of mind because they
have never experienced any better state of mind. They try to involve
other people in these discussions to proselytize for their creationist
religion.
--
Roger J.
Nam Nguyen
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
>
> I am not sure what you mean by "higher consciousness".
I don't know what the op meant by that either. But conceivably, and
logically, a conscious being C2 could be defined as being of "higher
consciousness" than C1 if whatever C1 could be capable of being
conscious of C2 could, and more.
--
----------------------------------------------------
Time passes, there is no way we can hold it back.
Why then do thoughts linger, long after everything
else is gone?
Ryokan
----------------------------------------------------
Dianelos Georgoudis
Agrafina Zoya Kolesnikov wrote:
> Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
>
> >I am not asking for the "ultimate answer". I am
> > asking the most basic question one can ask
> > about consciousness once one agrees that it
> > exists, namely how to ascertain where
> > consciousness is present and where it isn't.
>
> Experience (which is what Chalmer's hard problem concerns) is only
> known to have an association with neural activities of the human brain.
> Although Chalmers diverges to Nagalistic "what it's like" to be other
> organisms, this is a token gratuity as there is no Vulcan mind-meld
> technique for "perceiving" what (if anything) experientially transpires
> in the most primitive non-human organisms or non-biological systems
> like the weather.
Right. That's a fact: if there are other experiences than ours
happening then we have no experiential access to it. At least not now,
at least not in any usual way.
> >Surely that's a basic question that any science of
> > consciousness must answer. And I think it's a
> > question that can be answered but not based on
> > any form of materialistic epistemology.
>
> For pansentience to serve a purpose, one should be able to describe
> what non-human experiences across the universe are like in either
> ordinary language or reduce that to a scientific language for
> describing them.
I am not discussing pansentience - that's just one possible answer.
Neither am I asking for a description of how it is to be a cockroach. I
am asking about how to ascertain whether any biological (say a
cockroach) or non-biological system (say a PC running a particular
program or, why not, a weather system) has the capacity for conscious
experience, in the sense that some conscious subject exists capable of
having conscious experiences associated with this system and only with
this system.
> This is presently not possible, since again, there is
> no Vulcan mind-meld technique for apprehending any internal states of
> matter-energy systems other than one's own brain.
Just a moment. Let's check the assumptions here. I do not contest that
your and my conscious experience is associated with your and my brain's
neural activities. After all a good argument can be made that what we
most directly perceive are these neural activities in our brains and
that we don't perceive anything else. But I do contest the assumption
that your and my capacity for conscious experience is associated to
your and my brain's neural activities. What I mean can be elucidated by
an example: Suppose some time in the future neurophysiology has
advanced so much that it becomes technologically feasible to make a
detailed analysis of a cockroach's (or a bat's) brain and graft the
relevant neural processes into our brain. Then it will indeed be
possible for us to know how it is to be a cockroach (or a bat). But we
won't have answered the question about whether that cockroach (or bat)
have the capacity for conscious experience - maybe it doesn't. In other
words, even if we had Vulcan *brain*-meld techniques we wouldn't be
able to answer my question above.
Incidentally, we think that cockroaches may have the capacity of
conscious experience and that digital cameras almost certainly don't,
because we make the assumption that there is something in our body that
gives us the capacity of having conscious experience and we observe
that our body is much more similar to the body of a cockroach than to
the body of a digital camera. But I don't know of any justification for
this assumption. Sometimes making unjustified assumptions is what leads
us to paradoxes and hard problems; so maybe it's a good time to rethink
this assumption.
> Therefore, there is
> no point in abandoning the physical method of representing the universe
> in terms of extrinsic relationships, which manipulate quantity (derived
> from measurements) in place of any qualitative essences that
> matter-energy might have (which are inaccessible in the non-human
> area). The social sciences can use phenomenal language in addition to
> any abstract concepts because human experiences are accessible (when
> converted to public language, there are corresponding memory
> experiences the words can be correlated to in other human brains).
Well, the concept of conscious experience people use is not related to
language or to language acquisition. Whichever way it is we know that
other people in general have the capacity of conscious experience, we
also know that pre-linguistic children also have it. It is certainly
logically possible that cockroaches and digital cameras have the
capacity of conscious experience and enjoy some kind of primitive
conscious existence. The question is how do we find out how it is.
> > Well, these are real and clear questions, which
> > carry much ethical significance. Before giving up
> > on them and calling them "futile", just because
> > materialistic methodologies don't work, why not
> > evaluate other methodologies? Otherwise it's a
> > case of "sour grapes".
>
> If we cannot empirically access non-human experiences and they cannot
> be defined in a meaningful way, then we would be venturing into the
> metaphysical excesses that Kant and Wittgenstein warned about by
> discarding today's workable physical approach for pansentience or
> whatever. These speculations demand a breakthrough that would allow
> them to be rendered into practical or workable paradigms.
>
> As it stands, non-reductive materialism may be largely neutral about
> whether or not matter/energy has intrinsic essences; or better -- it
> really doesn't have to "go there" since the psychological level emerges
> from the biological and physics levels instead of reducing to them.
I would say that science does not have to "go there" because science
only explains objective phenomena and therefore consciousness is a
scientific non-issue as it is not required for explaining any objective
phenomenon (the same way that God is a scientific non-issue). The
situation for materialism is different: materialism claims to be the
correct paradigm of reality, but if so materialism's epistemology
should be able to answer any questions about reality, and you and I
know that consciousness is real notwithstanding science's view of it as
a non-issue. If materialism is fundamentally incapable of answering
questions about reality then it is an incomplete paradigm of reality.
> If
> the future reveals an underlying cause for the evolutionary
> manifestation of nomological novelties and properties or new levels,
> then fundamental intrinsic states may become a more relevent fixation
> (if anything can be said about them in non-human territory).
> Circumstances like "Big-Bangs" and the Casimir effect emerge from the
> quantum vacuum, but there doesn't seem to be any deep explanation for
> this beyond the uncertainty of energy, which still seems to amount to
> "it just happens" (in probabilistic fashion).
Well, again theses are really scientific non-issues. Science explains
phenomena, and the big-bang hypothesis forms part of such explanations.
It is not science's job to justify its hypotheses beyond the
explanatory power they have. In particular it's not science's job to
describe the physical reality that materialism insist is there,
including how one is to explain the big-bang happening. As far as
science is concerned, should tomorrow somebody propose a better
scientific model of phenomena in which the universe's history is
unbounded then the big-bang hypothesis will go the same way that the
Newton's gravitational forces hypothesis went. But materialism must
deal with these issues. And if according to materialism the big-bang
really happened it must explain it.
Now, when I claim that consciousness and the description of material
reality including the origin of the big-bang and consciousness are
really scientific non-issues I am not implying that there are no
scientists investigating them. I am only saying that when scientists
investigate them they are not trying to answer scientific questions but
rather trying to answer materialism's questions - and it is telling how
impressively unsuccessful they are in the latter task compared to how
successful they are in the former.
Maybe what I am saying will become clearer if I explain to you the
context. I think that the materialist/realist paradigm of reality is a
failed one because it cannot answer fundamental questions about reality
(how physical reality actually is, how it brings forth consciousness,
what justifies ethics, etc). On the contrary I find that the
idealist/antirealist paradigm of reality is much more powerful. I can
easily show that this paradigm of reality covers all scientific and
technological knowledge, renders meaningless materialism's hard
problems, and its epistemology is capable of reasoning about such
questions as other peoples' consciousness (and whether say all people
have the same subjective experience of colors) and also about who else
is conscious. In fact its epistemology is capable of integrating all
fields of human knowledge, including ethics esthetics and theology,
into one methodological framework. I predict that right now we are at
the initial phase of paradigmatic shift of how we understand reality,
and that the deepening crisis of materialism will catalyze this
process. So what I am trying to do is first to bring to the surface all
the failing of materialism and then to show how nicely idealism solves
all these problems and gives us an intelligible and coherent view of
reality.
Sean
> Agreed. Consciousness is a function (or a process) that allows us to
> become
> aware of phenomena.
>
> regards
> Milan
>
>
How do you know that Milan?
ie is a function/process .... and b) that it is consciousness that allows us
to be aware of external phenomena? [ say as opposed to neurons firing?]
and what do you mean by consciousness anyway? I ask that because I can;t see
any difference between saying consciousness above, or replacing that word
with *the brain* [ as per previous opinions expressed by you about that - if
i inderstood them correctly]
so i do n ot understand what exactly you mean here, or why it could be seen
as true, or backed up by any evidence. If it;s an opinion/guess, that;s fine
too. I'm not disagreeing per se, simply trying to understand the thinking
here.
thx
donsto...@hotmail.com
Sure. The Turing test. Like these discussions.
Robert J. Kolker
The Turing test is a mere heuristic. If something fails the Turing test
then we know it is an automaton. But if something passes there is no
assurance it is not a very clever automaton. The Turing test is only
semi-definite.
Bob Kolker
>
Agrafina Zoya Kolesnikov
>Now, when I claim that consciousness and the
> description of material reality including the origin
> of the big-bang and consciousness are really
> scientific non-issues I am not implying that there
> are no scientists investigating them. I am only
> saying that when scientists investigate them
> they are not trying to answer scientific questions
> but rather trying to answer materialism's
> questions - and it is telling how impressively
> unsuccessful they are in the latter task
> compared to how successful they are in the
> former.
Materialism is usually intended as an equivalent for physicalism in
philosophy of mind, and also in philosophy of science (which defends,
justifies, interprets, and etc: science). While historical varieties of
"materialism" are probably still entertained in nooks of general
philosophy, I'd be skeptical that those have much interplay or impact
upon natural science as the former two. So historical materialisms are
probably brought-up for strawman purposes, I assume as a side-effect of
people having spent time arguing with militant secular groups that
might still dabble in those.
Bertrand Russell might have been one of the earliest to describe
physicalism. What I might alter in both his "proto-definition" and
possibly current ones is changing it from a reference of what "physics
deals with" to what the "physical sciences" concern (including
biology). Because any reductive physicalism efforts taking place
currently would be trying to reduce mental language to neural language,
and not a hyper-leap down to particle physics lingo or something, far
ahead of time.
Bertrand Russell= In fact, everything that we can directly observe of
the physical world happens inside our heads, and consists of "mental"
events in at least one sense of the word "mental". It also consists of
events which form part of the physical world. The development of this
point of view will lead us to the conclusion that the distinction
between mind and matter is illusory. The stuff of the world may be
called physical or mental or both or neither, as we please; in fact,
the words serve no purpose. There is only one definition of the words
that is unobjectionable: "physical" is what is dealt with by physics,
and "mental" is what is dealt with by psychology. When, accordingly, I
speak of "physical" space, I mean the space that occurs in physics. It
is extrordinarily difficult to divest ourselves of the belief that the
physical world is the world we perceive by sight and touch; even if, in
our philosophic moments, we are aware that this is an error, we
nevertheless fall into it again as soon as we are off our guard. The
notion that what we see is "out there" in physical space is one which
cannot survive while we are grasping the difference between what
physics supposes to be really happening, and what our senses show us as
happening; but it is sure to return and plague us when we begin to
forget the argument. Only long reflection can make a radically new
point of view familiar and easy. =("Physical & Perceptual Space")=
>I think that the materialist/realist paradigm of
> reality is a failed one because it cannot answer
> fundamental questions about reality (how
> physical reality actually is, how it brings forth
> consciousness, what justifies ethics, etc). On
> the contrary I find that the idealist/antirealist
> paradigm of reality is much more powerful.
I don't see what difference idealism would make, since even if it were
the case, the events of its perceptual flow had lead the average person
to believe in an external world (of some kind) long before the advent
of philosophy and science. If we're in a "minds-in-an-immaterial-vat"
situation, then the "immaterial vat" apparently wants us to be realists
and is going to remain a non-spatiotemporal enigma that we can
meaningfully say little about.
Zoya
Milan
"Sean" <sant...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:rvGdnXznVK4-ah7Z...@inspired.net.au...
> >
> > Agreed. Consciousness is a function (or a process) that allows us to
> > become
> > aware of phenomena.
> >
> > regards
> > Milan
> >
> >
>
>
> How do you know that Milan?
> ie is a function/process .... and b) that it is consciousness that allows
us
> to be aware of external phenomena? [ say as opposed to neurons firing?]
>
> and what do you mean by consciousness anyway? I ask that because I can;t
see
> any difference between saying consciousness above, or replacing that word
> with *the brain* [ as per previous opinions expressed by you about that -
if
> i inderstood them correctly]
By "process" I mean neural processes -certain patterns of neural firing.
regards
Milan
donsto...@hotmail.com
The Turing test can be extended far beyond Turing's original definition
as the Imitation Game. Actually, even people sizing each other up with
conversation (as here) is a Turing test. Questions can be defined to
probe at whatever level is necessary to examine the other system's
psyche. It also boils down to definition. If one has very high
standards then any system will be considered an automaton.
But if there is no test that will satisfy you as to whether system X is
conscious or not, then I guess we're stuck. Most people just develop a
feel for it from their experiences having lived their lives. Probing
other people with their own Turing tests, though they never call it
that.
Don
Sean
Sean
>> By "process" I mean neural processes -certain patterns of neural firing.
>>
>>
>> regards
>> Milan
>>
>>
>
> OK thx.
>
.... so i did understand your meaning.
PS in other words, regarding DG's queries, you believe that any being with a
functioning brain has "consciousness", and anything without a brain [ or
dead] does not. Therefore a materialist investigation/study is the only
thing required to define whether "consciousness" exists in a sentient being
such as a cockroach, mouse, or whatever. That seems to be the logical
outcome of such a position.
as well as any further study of the dynamic physical mechanisms of a brain
would tend to define the "how" of consciousness.
iow your particular brain defines who you are as a "consciousness" ???
Is that a fair accurate extrapolation, or do you [ or others] see it
differently? THX
Dianelos Georgoudis
Agrafina Zoya Kolesnikov wrote:
> Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
>
> >Now, when I claim that consciousness and the
> > description of material reality including the origin
> > of the big-bang and consciousness are really
> > scientific non-issues I am not implying that there
> > are no scientists investigating them. I am only
> > saying that when scientists investigate them
> > they are not trying to answer scientific questions
> > but rather trying to answer materialism's
> > questions - and it is telling how impressively
> > unsuccessful they are in the latter task
> > compared to how successful they are in the
> > former.
>
> Materialism is usually intended as an equivalent for physicalism in
> philosophy of mind, and also in philosophy of science (which defends,
> justifies, interprets, and etc: science). While historical varieties of
> "materialism" are probably still entertained in nooks of general
> philosophy, I'd be skeptical that those have much interplay or impact
> upon natural science as the former two. So historical materialisms are
> probably brought-up for strawman purposes, I assume as a side-effect of
> people having spent time arguing with militant secular groups that
> might still dabble in those.
Well, as far as I can see all flavors of materialism have a common
nucleus: the thesis that all of reality must be understood on
physicalist principles, which basically means - as you point out -
using the methodology of physical sciences (or natural sciences). In
other words materialism's epistemology is the scientific method. But
this is exactly the point: that as natural science deals with objective
phenomena only whereas we live in a space of subjective experience,
science's methodology is fine for explaining objective phenomena but is
not sufficient to explain the whole of reality as an ontology should be
able to. That's why Chalmers says "if one takes consciousness
seriously, one has to go beyond a strict materialist framework" see
http://consc.net/book/tcm.html - and I don't think he is playing
strawmen games.
Here is how Bernard Russell puts it in his Introduction to Philosophy:
"When it is said that light *is* waves, what is really meant is that
waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light
itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do
not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is
independent of us and our senses" [i.e. presumably the physical world].
Makes you think, doesn't it? If "light itself" is not supposed by
science to form any part of the physical world - where does it exist? I
suppose in the same place where the hurting leg of an amputee exists:
in the space of conscious experience. The same space that the idealist
says exhausts all of reality. Anyway I love Russell's English; if you
know of a way for me to learn to write as well as he did please let me
know.
> >I think that the materialist/realist paradigm of
> > reality is a failed one because it cannot answer
> > fundamental questions about reality (how
> > physical reality actually is, how it brings forth
> > consciousness, what justifies ethics, etc). On
> > the contrary I find that the idealist/antirealist
> > paradigm of reality is much more powerful.
>
> I don't see what difference idealism would make, since even if it were
> the case, the events of its perceptual flow had lead the average person
> to believe in an external world (of some kind) long before the advent
> of philosophy and science.
Indeed the realist/materialist paradigm of reality (i.e. there is big
physical universe out there in which we with our little physical bodies
exist and move around) is both simple and effective (at first).
Arguably by the age of three (i.e. before the acquisition of long term
memory) we have all become realists/materialists. So this basic way of
making sense of our field of conscious experience is fairly hard-wired
in our minds before we start to notice its limitations - and, as your
quote of Russell above says, it's extraordinarily difficult to yank our
mind from the impression that what we perceive is actually the physical
world (a view that that in the materialist camp only the direct
realists maintain, but I assume they are fairly marginalized).
> If we're in a "minds-in-an-immaterial-vat"
> situation, then the "immaterial vat" apparently wants us to be realists
> and is going to remain a non-spatiotemporal enigma that we can
> meaningfully say little about.
Well, indeed, one can make sense of the immaterial vat (as you put it -
I would rather have said "field of conscious experience") using a
realist/materialist paradigm of reality. And what's the special
significance you see in this? I find it quite elegant that the coarse
structure of the immaterial vat is such that even three year olds with
their weak cognitive abilities can make sense of it. And in the end why
should we be able to say something more about that immaterial vat than
the fine and deep patterns we can discover in its structure? What good
would anything else be for?
The beauty of idealism/anti-realism is that it allows for a more
powerful way to think about reality in which a) all scientific and
engineering books make perfect sense and the scientific method remains
perfectly applicable to the physical phenomena observed, b) one avoids
materialism/realism's many paradoxes and problems, c) one can develop
one epistemological framework for the whole of human knowledge and
acquire knowledge that cannot be acquired with materialism. One wins in
all senses. And as you know in the end nothing succeeds like success.
Milan
> >>
> >> By "process" I mean neural processes -certain patterns of neural
firing.
> >>
> >>
> >> regards
> >> Milan
> >>
> >>
> >
> > OK thx.
> >
>
> .... so i did understand your meaning.
>
> PS in other words, regarding DG's queries, you believe that any being with
a
> functioning brain has "consciousness", and anything without a brain [ or
> dead] does not. Therefore a materialist investigation/study is the only
> thing required to define whether "consciousness" exists in a sentient
being
> such as a cockroach, mouse, or whatever. That seems to be the logical
> outcome of such a position.
Given that consciousness is usually taken to include self-awareness,
sentience, etc, I should not think that a brain is a sufficient condition
for consciousness. But it is a necessary condition.
> as well as any further study of the dynamic physical mechanisms of a brain
> would tend to define the "how" of consciousness.
Yes.
> iow your particular brain defines who you are as a "consciousness" ???
The structure and function of a brain determines who the carrier of the
brain is. It determines moods, personality, etc.
regards
Milan
MobyDikc
> Here is how Bernard Russell puts it in his Introduction to Philosophy:
> "When it is said that light *is* waves, what is really meant is that
> waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light
> itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do
> not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is
> independent of us and our senses" [i.e. presumably the physical world].
> Makes you think, doesn't it? If "light itself" is not supposed by
> science to form any part of the physical world - where does it exist? I
> suppose in the same place where the hurting leg of an amputee exists:
> in the space of conscious experience. The same space that the idealist
> says exhausts all of reality. Anyway I love Russell's English; if you
> know of a way for me to learn to write as well as he did please let me
> know.
I have a question about:
[i.e. presumably the physical world]
Who inserested that? Russell?
Think Leibniz, who was mentioned earlier in your post, perfered to call
it "metaphysical world" in order to stress that the "physical world"
*is* the "phenomenal world".
> Indeed the realist/materialist paradigm of reality (i.e. there is big
> physical universe out there in which we with our little physical bodies
> exist and move around) is both simple and effective (at first).
> Arguably by the age of three (i.e. before the acquisition of long term
> memory) we have all become realists/materialists. So this basic way of
> making sense of our field of conscious experience is fairly hard-wired
> in our minds before we start to notice its limitations - and, as your
> quote of Russell above says, it's extraordinarily difficult to yank our
> mind from the impression that what we perceive is actually the physical
> world (a view that that in the materialist camp only the direct
> realists maintain, but I assume they are fairly marginalized).
A perfect example of why it is extraordinarily difficult to yank out
that idea is because some of us still refer to the hidden, absolute
world beyond our perceptions as "physical".
Here is a formula for velocity:
v = d / t
This is physics. However, it is a sentence, stated in mathematical
terms, which stand for measurements.
The measurements are results of perception. They occur in our senses.
And thus, the physical world is just part of the phenomenal world.
(The counter-intuitive phenomena of relativity and quantum mechanics
ought to be indication of that enough.)
This is why Leibniz thought Newton's ideas cultish, and seemingly
perferred to describe the world of monads (transcending beyond the
phenomenal and physical) as "metaphysical".
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/l/leib-met.htm#H9
Again, my point: physics is a description, and the way Newton did it,
directly describing measurements in our perception, is a description
purely of the phenomenal.
I think we should try not to refer to the absolute world beyond our
perception as "physical".
Robert J. Kolker
>
> Here is how Bernard Russell puts it in his Introduction to Philosophy:
> "When it is said that light *is* waves, what is really meant is that
> waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light
> itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do
> not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is
> independent of us and our senses" [i.e. presumably the physical world].
> Makes you think, doesn't it? If "light itself" is not supposed by
> science to form any part of the physical world - where does it exist?
The visual cortex. Light as -perceived- is a lot of neurons firing.
Bob Kolker
Milan
Light is *not* supposed by science to be independent of us and our senses.
Our senses are the physiological mechanisms of perception. Vision is the
sense that allows us to detect electromagnetic waves within the visible
range of frequencies. Rod cells on the retina respond to the stimuli of
photons and initiate the response. Rods are connected to nerve fibers and
convert the energy of incident light into signals that are carried to the
brain by the optic nerve. All the elements of this signal transduction
cascade are part of the physical world. Is there any real need to say this
or are we still living in the times of Bishop Berkeley?
regards
Milan
Dianelos Georgoudis
This can't be correct, because light as -perceived- is often green
whereas a lot of neurons firing are never green. Maybe you mean that a
lot of neurons firing cause our perception of light. If so you are
undoubtedly correct, because clearly we don't perceive physical light
directly but rather perceive what's happening in our physical brain.
But then the question remains: where does light as -perceived- exist?
Dianelos Georgoudis
MobyDikc wrote:
> Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
>
> > Here is how Bernard Russell puts it in his Introduction to Philosophy:
> > "When it is said that light *is* waves, what is really meant is that
> > waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light
> > itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do
> > not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is
> > independent of us and our senses" [i.e. presumably the physical world].
> > Makes you think, doesn't it? If "light itself" is not supposed by
> > science to form any part of the physical world - where does it exist? I
> > suppose in the same place where the hurting leg of an amputee exists:
> > in the space of conscious experience. The same space that the idealist
> > says exhausts all of reality. Anyway I love Russell's English; if you
> > know of a way for me to learn to write as well as he did please let me
> > know.
>
>
> I have a question about:
>
> [i.e. presumably the physical world]
>
> Who inserested that? Russell?
Not, that was I and that's why I put it in square brackets and wrote
"presumably". As far as I know the expression "the world that is
independent of us and our senses" is always used to refer to "the
physical universe".
I completely agree.
> I think we should try not to refer to the absolute world beyond our
> perception as "physical".
>
> http://cloudmusiccompany.com/science/
But why should we assume in the first place that there is an absolute
world beyond our perception? For if there isn't such a world then
whether we should call it "physical" or not is quire irrelevant.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Milan wrote:
> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
> news:1149624958.0...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> > Here is how Bernard Russell puts it in his Introduction to Philosophy:
> > "When it is said that light *is* waves, what is really meant is that
> > waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light
> > itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do
> > not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is
> > independent of us and our senses" [i.e. presumably the physical world].
> > Makes you think, doesn't it? If "light itself" is not supposed by
> > science to form any part of the physical world - where does it exist? I
> > suppose in the same place where the hurting leg of an amputee exists:
> > in the space of conscious experience. The same space that the idealist
> > says exhausts all of reality. Anyway I love Russell's English; if you
> > know of a way for me to learn to write as well as he did please let me
> > know.
>
> Light is *not* supposed by science to be independent of us and our senses.
What do you mean? Does science say that light *is* dependent on us?
> Our senses are the physiological mechanisms of perception.
How do you justify this claim?
> Vision is the
> sense that allows us to detect electromagnetic waves within the visible
> range of frequencies.
Right. Or to be more precise: We posit the existence of electromagnetic
waves in order to explain the visual phenomena we experience. After all
we need some conscious experience in order to posit the existence of
any physical thing.
> Rod cells on the retina respond to the stimuli of
> photons and initiate the response. Rods are connected to nerve fibers and
> convert the energy of incident light into signals that are carried to the
> brain by the optic nerve. All the elements of this signal transduction
> cascade are part of the physical world. Is there any real need to say this
> or are we still living in the times of Bishop Berkeley?
Well, I don't think that Bishop Berkeley would oppose anything in your
explanation about these physical processes in our brain. So? What's
your point?
Sean
"Milan" <mtk...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4em92sF...@individual.net...
>>
>> PS in other words, regarding DG's queries, you believe that any being
>> with
> a
>> functioning brain has "consciousness", and anything without a brain [ or
>> dead] does not. Therefore a materialist investigation/study is the only
>> thing required to define whether "consciousness" exists in a sentient
> being
>> such as a cockroach, mouse, or whatever. That seems to be the logical
>> outcome of such a position.
>
> Given that consciousness is usually taken to include self-awareness,
> sentience, etc, I should not think that a brain is a sufficient condition
> for consciousness. But it is a necessary condition.
>
OK ty, makes sense, can u expand on that at all? But what other conditions
need to exist then?
>> as well as any further study of the dynamic physical mechanisms of a
>> brain
>> would tend to define the "how" of consciousness.
>
> Yes.
>
>> iow your particular brain defines who you are as a "consciousness" ???
>
> The structure and function of a brain determines who the carrier of the
> brain is. It determines moods, personality, etc.
>
Sure. So does this mean that you feel that "consciousness" is more or less a
sort of varible state becaue our moods change etc.? [ say vs a state of
existence per se ]
thk for the reply, just trying to understand ur pov.
> regards
> Milan
>
>
MobyDikc
We don't have to.
Then, we are existentialists.
But, we have to think differently in the context of answering any
question about mind, and any thing related to it.
The link at the bottom is my attempt at explaining why, and answering
some questions about mind, such as the measurement problem.
Robert J. Kolker
>
> This can't be correct, because light as -perceived- is often green
> whereas a lot of neurons firing are never green. Maybe you mean that a
> lot of neurons firing cause our perception of light. If so you are
> undoubtedly correct, because clearly we don't perceive physical light
> directly but rather perceive what's happening in our physical brain.
> But then the question remains: where does light as -perceived- exist?
Meaningless question. Effects do not necessarily have specific
locations. The subjective awareness of light is not a physical event so
it does not have specific location.
Bob Kolker
Milan
>
> Milan wrote:
> > "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
> > news:1149624958.0...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> [snip]
> > > Here is how Bernard Russell puts it in his Introduction to Philosophy:
> > > "When it is said that light *is* waves, what is really meant is that
> > > waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light
> > > itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do
> > > not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is
> > > independent of us and our senses" [i.e. presumably the physical
world].
> > > Makes you think, doesn't it? If "light itself" is not supposed by
> > > science to form any part of the physical world - where does it exist?
I
> > > suppose in the same place where the hurting leg of an amputee exists:
> > > in the space of conscious experience. The same space that the idealist
> > > says exhausts all of reality. Anyway I love Russell's English; if you
> > > know of a way for me to learn to write as well as he did please let me
> > > know.
> >
> > Light is *not* supposed by science to be independent of us and our
senses.
>
> What do you mean? Does science say that light *is* dependent on us?
I'm simply emphasizing what Russell said.
> > Our senses are the physiological mechanisms of perception.
>
> How do you justify this claim?
I didnt think this statement could be contentious. Decades of physiological,
biochemical and cell biological studies support it. I dont think I need to
provide references for something that can be easily found in any college
textbook.
> > Vision is the
> > sense that allows us to detect electromagnetic waves within the visible
> > range of frequencies.
>
> Right. Or to be more precise: We posit the existence of electromagnetic
> waves in order to explain the visual phenomena we experience. After all
> we need some conscious experience in order to posit the existence of
> any physical thing.
Not quite. You can perceive light without knowing that it is an
electromagnetic wave. There is no need to posit the existence of
electromagnetic waves to explain the physiology of vision. The cell biology
and the neurophysiology that underpins visual perception could have been
developed without the concept of electromagnetic waves. And, furthermore,
the visible spectrum is but a very narrow range of the electromagnetic
spectrum.
> > Rod cells on the retina respond to the stimuli of
> > photons and initiate the response. Rods are connected to nerve fibers
and
> > convert the energy of incident light into signals that are carried to
the
> > brain by the optic nerve. All the elements of this signal transduction
> > cascade are part of the physical world. Is there any real need to say
this
> > or are we still living in the times of Bishop Berkeley?
>
> Well, I don't think that Bishop Berkeley would oppose anything in your
> explanation about these physical processes in our brain. So? What's
> your point?
I thought my point was rather clear. You state that "If "light itself" is
not supposed by science to form any part of the physical world - where does
it exist?". My paragraph above points out that light is indeed part of the
physical world and we understand how it propagates and we understand the
physiological basis of how we perceive it.
It is also interesting to note that Berkeley was an immaterialist and
therefore held that there are no material substances; however, in his essay
New Theory of Vision, Berkeley writes as though our ideas of sight and touch
are of external objects and therefore does not presuppose immaterialism.
regards
Milan
Milan
>
> Robert J. Kolker wrote:
> > Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Here is how Bernard Russell puts it in his Introduction to Philosophy:
> > > "When it is said that light *is* waves, what is really meant is that
> > > waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light
> > > itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do
> > > not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is
> > > independent of us and our senses" [i.e. presumably the physical
world].
> > > Makes you think, doesn't it? If "light itself" is not supposed by
> > > science to form any part of the physical world - where does it exist?
> >
> > The visual cortex. Light as -perceived- is a lot of neurons firing.
>
> This can't be correct, because light as -perceived- is often green
> whereas a lot of neurons firing are never green. Maybe you mean that a
> lot of neurons firing cause our perception of light.
No. The firing of certain neurons is the perception of light.
>If so you are
> undoubtedly correct, because clearly we don't perceive physical light
> directly but rather perceive what's happening in our physical brain.
> But then the question remains: where does light as -perceived- exist?
The Cartesian theatre has been closed for quite some time. There are no
seats available.
regards
Milan
Craig Franck
> Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
It's most likely that our conscious states are states of our nervous
system. So subjective awareness would be located in our nervous
system. Or, perhaps, our subjective awareness is the result of
events distributed throughout the environment, internal and external,
and the judgment is somewhat arbitrary as to where to place the
emphasis (which may have been your point).
You are correct that as an information space, all we can determine
directly from our visual field is systems of relations. But to say a ball
falls from the blue sky to the green grass because of the law of gravity,
and not the state of the neurons in our visual cortex, places the cause
external to us; it's like saying I saw a specific actress in a movie
because she stood in front of a camera, not just because the film
was run through a projector.
I also don't consider where our perceptions exists to be a meaningless
question. I suffer from sciatica, and it is important to note where the
cause of our perceptions are located. The pain in my foot comes from
a problem in my back, not my foot or brain.
It would be odd to hold that all the causes of my subject experience
are in my body, yet the experience itself isn't in my body, even if it
"occurs to me" in a separate perceptual space.
--
Craig Franck
craig....@verizon.net
Cortland, NY
Craig Franck
> MobyDikc wrote:
>> I think we should try not to refer to the absolute world beyond our
>> perception as "physical".
>>
>> http://cloudmusiccompany.com/science/
>
> But why should we assume in the first place that there is an absolute
> world beyond our perception? For if there isn't such a world then
> whether we should call it "physical" or not is quire irrelevant.
What might be worthy of being called "absolute" or "physical" has
changed greatly in the last 100 years. Russell has been mentioned
several times in this thread, and I believe his requirements for reality
might be definite causal chains of events with actual histories.
Events are definite in that statements about them must be finely
resolvable (all electrons behave identically in identical situations ) and
they have actual histories (photons released 13.2 billion years ago
make up the CMBR).
I get the impression that Russell believes reality must be such that
science can function more or less as it currently does. It begs vast
questions, but it may simply be we need an external world since it
allows us to distribute "facts" across the universe, rather than locating
all distinctions locally. (It seems problematical if the entire Internet is
an elaborate dream one person is having, unless I'm god, I guess.)
Craig Franck
> "Milan" wrote
>> Given that consciousness is usually taken to include self-awareness,
>> sentience, etc, I should not think that a brain is a sufficient condition
>> for consciousness. But it is a necessary condition.
>>
>
> OK ty, makes sense, can u expand on that at all? But what other conditions
> need to exist then?
Chalmers holds a view similar to this. The other conditions are specific
psycho-physical laws, possibly requiring a kind of panpsychism: Brains
are conscious, but only because all information spaces are conscious.
We just have particularly rich conscious states compared to, say, a
thermostat.
Sean
"Craig Franck" <craig....@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:21Khg.5006$vq3.3901@trndny09...
thx i'll look into that idea. cheers
Agrafina Zoya Kolesnikov
>But then the question remains: where does light as
> -perceived- exist?
Or why should we be so fixated on the visual experience? The tactile
sensations in the somatic sensory cortex have been mapped so well that
a distorted homunculus can be placed alongside a diagram of it to
represent the various areas of the the body. IOW, that's where the
particular "feelings" of one's body exist if one is a reductionist; or
the neural correlate of tactile sensations if one is a
non-reductionist, dualist, idealist, etc:
http://faculty.etsu.edu/currie/images/homunculus1.JPG
We could go so far as to say that it is not even the world that we
perceive a simulation of in the various cortexes, but rather our
bodies: a nervous system report of all the micro-batterings taking
place across the body on the skin, the photoreceptor tissue in the
eyes, the olfactory bulb, the tongue, and the eardrums. The body
becomes an "incidental" map of the overt environment which is
assaulting it with EM and air-pressure oscillations, molecules, and
electric charge repulsions (touch).
Zoya
Dianelos Georgoudis
I agree. Light as -perceived- (as well as everything else we perceive)
is not a physical event and does not have a specific physical location.
This much should be quite obvious, but many people believe that our
perceptions are physical events that somehow take place in our brain.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Milan wrote:
> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
> news:1149667816.2...@c74g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > Robert J. Kolker wrote:
> > > Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Here is how Bernard Russell puts it in his Introduction to Philosophy:
> > > > "When it is said that light *is* waves, what is really meant is that
> > > > waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light
> > > > itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do
> > > > not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is
> > > > independent of us and our senses" [i.e. presumably the physical
> world].
> > > > Makes you think, doesn't it? If "light itself" is not supposed by
> > > > science to form any part of the physical world - where does it exist?
> > >
> > > The visual cortex. Light as -perceived- is a lot of neurons firing.
> >
> > This can't be correct, because light as -perceived- is often green
> > whereas a lot of neurons firing are never green. Maybe you mean that a
> > lot of neurons firing cause our perception of light.
>
> No. The firing of certain neurons is the perception of light.
Well, you can repeat that claim as many times as you wish, but you are
not answering to the argument above: Light as -perceived- if often
green whereas the firing of neurons is never green. So the two cannot
be identical, because if they were they would have the same properties.
> >If so you are
> > undoubtedly correct, because clearly we don't perceive physical light
> > directly but rather perceive what's happening in our physical brain.
> > But then the question remains: where does light as -perceived- exist?
>
> The Cartesian theatre has been closed for quite some time. There are no
> seats available.
And your point is?
Dianelos Georgoudis
Zoya, I wonder if you saw my previous answer to you here:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.philosophy/msg/11ff65c652a94f65
Agrafina Zoya Kolesnikov wrote:
> Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
>
> >But then the question remains: where does light as
> > -perceived- exist?
>
> Or why should we be so fixated on the visual experience?
No special reason I suppose. On the other hand conscious experience is
quite complex, so picking one particular bit of it, say the experience
of colors, seems to be a good strategy.
> The tactile
> sensations in the somatic sensory cortex have been mapped so well that
> a distorted homunculus can be placed alongside a diagram of it to
> represent the various areas of the the body. IOW, that's where the
> particular "feelings" of one's body exist if one is a reductionist; or
> the neural correlate of tactile sensations if one is a
> non-reductionist, dualist, idealist, etc:
> http://faculty.etsu.edu/currie/images/homunculus1.JPG
No one doubts that there is such a neural correlate. I suppose one can
safely assume that there exists a 100% correlation between any aspect
of our conscious experience and neuronal activities in our brain. So,
how does this help us along? The question remains: Why do we have the
capacity for conscious experience in the first place - for these neural
activities to cause particular conscious experiences?
> We could go so far as to say that it is not even the world that we
> perceive a simulation of in the various cortexes, but rather our
> bodies: a nervous system report of all the micro-batterings taking
> place across the body on the skin, the photoreceptor tissue in the
> eyes, the olfactory bulb, the tongue, and the eardrums. The body
> becomes an "incidental" map of the overt environment which is
> assaulting it with EM and air-pressure oscillations, molecules, and
> electric charge repulsions (touch).
Right. And as far as I can see, physically speaking, there is no
special significance between what is inside or outside our skin. Our
body and its environment is one causal physical system. The presence of
electromagnetic radiation of a particular frequency causes under some
conditions our experience of "green" and the presence of some (as
yet unknown) pattern of neuronal activity in our brains also causes
under some conditions our experience of "green". Still I think it
is reasonable to assume that the smallish region where our brain is,
already displays a 100% correlation with our conscious experience.
Therefore, again physically speaking, I don't see why a materialist
would want to study anything beyond the brain when discussing the
mind-body problem. But if they wish to study physical processes outside
the brain, it's OK with me, even though I don't see in what way
this helps.
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> No one doubts that there is such a neural correlate. I suppose one can
> safely assume that there exists a 100% correlation between any aspect
> of our conscious experience and neuronal activities in our brain. So,
> how does this help us along? The question remains: Why do we have the
> capacity for conscious experience in the first place - for these neural
> activities to cause particular conscious experiences?
Why is there something rather than nothing? The only reasonable answer
is --- because. You are asking an unanswerable question.
Bob Kolker
Agrafina Zoya Kolesnikov
>Zoya, I wonder if you saw my previous answer to you
>
Yes, I read it, but despite physicalism's connection to physics, you
still seem to have slid back into the popular cliche that "materialism"
is as Descartes sketched it in his substance dualism: an insensate
opposite of "mental", having no fundamental aspect whatsoever that
would enable it to produce human experience. When the case is that
physics does not know or define what the actual essence of the world
is, it only represents matter-energy as abstract, quantitative
relationships (contemporary materialism = physical).
Galen Strawson discerns the neutrality: "Many take the [mind-body
problem] to be the problem of how mental phenomena can be physical
phenomena given what we already know about the nature of the physical.
But those who think this are already lost. For the fact is that we have
no good reason to think that we know anything about the physical that
gives us any reason to find any problem in the idea that mental
phenomena are physical phenomena." ("Real Materialism", 2003)
So what is the point of my commenting any further about "materialism"
if you are simply going to continually assume contemporary statements
about "physical" or "material" as involving the restrictions of
historical or classical materialism? Instead, one might as well
branch-off into a mundane conversation about the weather, which under
this topic is analogous to small-talk about features of the brain like
the somatic sensory cortex. ;-)
When Chalmers talks of going beyond a "strict materialist framework" he
is referring to reductive materialism, not the non-reductive
materialism that his "naturalistic dualism" falls into. Chalmers: "This
leads to a natural hypothesis: that information (or at least some
information) has two basic aspects, a physical aspect and a phenomenal
aspect. This has the status of a basic principle that might underlie
and explain the emergence of experience from the physical. Experience
arises by virtue of its status of one aspect of information, when the
other aspect is found embodied in physical processing."
http://www.imprint.co.uk/chalmers.html
But his naturalistic dualism could seemingly collapse into something
like the intrinsic qualitative states that reductive materialism would
probably have to posit for the extrinsic descriptions of physics, in
order to accomplish the original Unity Of Science agenda of reducing
psychology (and the other sciences) to particle physics. Which is
merely my acknowledgement that although reductive materialism is a
minority position now in POM and philosophy of science, it is not dead
and buried.
Zoya
Craig Franck
> Robert J. Kolker wrote:
>> Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
Are you suggesting the volume of space that makes up our visual field
is not inside the visual cortex?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_cortex
"Lesions to primary visual cortex usually lead to a scotoma, or
hole in the visual field. Interestingly, patients with scotomas are
often able to make use of visual information presented to their
scotomas, despite being unable to consciously perceive it. This
phenomenon, called blindsight, is widely studied by scientists
interested in the neural correlate of consciousness."
There are about a half dozen maps of our visual field, each part of the
brain that processes input getting a copy. If there is a perceptual hole
because a part of the brain is damaged, I'd say that's where the image
is supposed to reside or be processed in someway.
The issue you brought up about neurons not themselves being the color
they represent when firing is important. The neural networks responsible
for this represent an information space. Colors only have meaning when
referring to other colors. Seeing a neuron firing is not a color; the
physical neuron's color is determined by its anatomy, not what it
represents or asserts by its activities.
Milan
What is "green"?
> > >If so you are
> > > undoubtedly correct, because clearly we don't perceive physical light
> > > directly but rather perceive what's happening in our physical brain.
> > > But then the question remains: where does light as -perceived- exist?
> >
> > The Cartesian theatre has been closed for quite some time. There are no
> > seats available.
>
> And your point is?
You cannot get a seat in the Cartesian theatre any more. Please dont insist.
It's closed.
regards
Milan
Dianelos Georgoudis
Agrafina Zoya Kolesnikov wrote:
> Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
>
> >Zoya, I wonder if you saw my previous answer to you
> >
>
> Yes, I read it, but despite physicalism's connection to physics, you
> still seem to have slid back into the popular cliche that "materialism"
> is as Descartes sketched it in his substance dualism: an insensate
> opposite of "mental", having no fundamental aspect whatsoever that
> would enable it to produce human experience. When the case is that
> physics does not know or define what the actual essence of the world
> is, it only represents matter-energy as abstract, quantitative
> relationships (contemporary materialism = physical).
>
> Galen Strawson discerns the neutrality: "Many take the [mind-body
> problem] to be the problem of how mental phenomena can be physical
> phenomena given what we already know about the nature of the physical.
> But those who think this are already lost. For the fact is that we have
> no good reason to think that we know anything about the physical that
> gives us any reason to find any problem in the idea that mental
> phenomena are physical phenomena." ("Real Materialism", 2003)
Well, here is the very first line of this article: "Materialism is the
view that every real, concrete phenomenon in the universe is physical."
and here is how "concrete" is defined: "By 'concrete' I simply mean
'not abstract'. It is natural to think that any really existing
thing is ipso facto concrete, non-abstract, in which case
'concrete' is redundant. But some philosophers like to say that
numbers (for example) are real things-objects that really exist, but
are abstract."
So, presumably, he thinks that numbers do not "really" exist, or at
least feels uncomfortable discussing what materialism says about
numbers, so he shoves the question under the rug giving only a
definition about what materialism says about "concrete" real things.
But materialism is an ontology, and an ontology discusses the whole of
reality, not just the part one feels comfortable with. Actually, the
way I understand it, the position "only what is physical is real" is
not mainstream materialism but rather eliminitative materialism (aka
"naive materialism"), which far from being "real materialism" is rather
a fringe position in academic philosophy, correct? After all surely non
physical things such as numbers really really exist - simply because
this is the way people use the word "exist". If materialists of any
stripe do not like the meaning that this word has they are perfectly
free to coin a different word. I never understood why, if some
materialists by "exist" mean "physically exist", they don't simply use
the latter expression and avoid confusion - rather than pushing things
under the rug by adding the "concrete" qualifier, or else claiming that
numbers exist, yes, but only because they are really nothing more than
neuronal firing patterns instantiated in the brains of people when they
think of numbers (which in turn is not what people mean when they speak
of "numbers") etc. Let's call a spade a spade, and if the word "spade"
does not fit coin a new word. Philosophers do that all the time.
Now, let's take Strawson's paragraph you quote above. He is basically
saying that if one so much as wonders about how mental phenomena can be
physical phenomena one has taken a wrong turn, because there is no
reason to doubt that mental phenomena are physical phenomena in the
first place. But there is such reason: All physical phenomena are
objectively and directly observable, correct? But there is no way to
objectively and directly observe a cockroach's mental phenomena,
because if it were somebody would easily answer my question about
whether a cockroach has the capacity of conscious experience. So we
have found a trivial example of a property that physical phenomena have
and that mental phenomena don't - which is reason enough to question
the claim that mental phenomena are physical phenomena.
> So what is the point of my commenting any further about "materialism"
> if you are simply going to continually assume contemporary statements
> about "physical" or "material" as involving the restrictions of
> historical or classical materialism? Instead, one might as well
> branch-off into a mundane conversation about the weather, which under
> this topic is analogous to small-talk about features of the brain like
> the somatic sensory cortex. ;-)
Fair enough. So why don't you define what you think is the most
reasonable version of materialism and I shall make an effort to only
discuss this version.
> When Chalmers talks of going beyond a "strict materialist framework" he
> is referring to reductive materialism, not the non-reductive
> materialism that his "naturalistic dualism" falls into. Chalmers: "This
> leads to a natural hypothesis: that information (or at least some
> information) has two basic aspects, a physical aspect and a phenomenal
> aspect. This has the status of a basic principle that might underlie
> and explain the emergence of experience from the physical. Experience
> arises by virtue of its status of one aspect of information, when the
> other aspect is found embodied in physical processing."
> http://www.imprint.co.uk/chalmers.html
Ah, "non-reductive materialism". To me it sounds like an atheist
claiming "non-justified belief", or a mathematician claiming a
"non-proved theorem". An epistemology is supposed to give us the tools
for explaining, and explanations are supposed to be reductive. In fact,
except for the case of the mind-body problem do you know of any other
case where non-reductivity applies in an explanatory framework? Because
if you don't it would seem that non-reductivity is simply a case of
special pleading dressed up in fancy wording. I am not as knowledgeable
as you about the various materialistic streams and brooks, but it seems
to me that many materialists are busy trying to build semantic shields.
As for Chalmers' idea that all information has a dual aspect, physical
and phenomenal - that's an interesting idea, but it makes information
(a non-concrete real thing, and therefore according to Strawson a
non-physical thing) the basis of reality. But then it's not materialism
any more. Or, should we overstep Strawson's eliminative materialism, it
makes reality have both a physical and a phenomenal dimension, in which
case we should not speak of physical reality but rather of
spirituphysical reality.
> But his naturalistic dualism could seemingly collapse into something
> like the intrinsic qualitative states that reductive materialism would
> probably have to posit for the extrinsic descriptions of physics, in
> order to accomplish the original Unity Of Science agenda of reducing
> psychology (and the other sciences) to particle physics. Which is
> merely my acknowledgement that although reductive materialism is a
> minority position now in POM and philosophy of science, it is not dead
> and buried.
Reductive materialism is a minority position in philosophy of science?
I'd never had guessed. After all isn't science itself strictly
reductive?
Dianelos Georgoudis
All paradigms of reality have a place where one touches bottom - some
place that is no more reducible. According to materialism this bottom
is "matter", which means that everything else must be explained based
on physical (materialist) principles. But materialism fails to explain
its claim that some physical systems have the capacity for conscious
experience. So, there is something wrong with materialism not with the
question.
As for the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" the
answer is trivial as one could answer "There is something because, for
example, I am here".
I think that by this question people actually mean: "Why is there
everything there is rather than nothing at all?" But in this form I
think the question is meaningless. You see "why X?" questions ask for a
description of how X fits with the rest of reality. But this particular
question negates the whole of reality so there is nothing to fit
something in.
There is another to discuss such questions. There are questions the
form of which implies the impossibility of knowledge. But the answer to
any question is a piece of knowledge. So all questions that ask for an
answer while denying the possibility of knowledge are meaningless. Here
is one good example: "Would the physical universe exist if nobody were
around to perceive it?"
Dianelos Georgoudis
Craig Franck wrote:
> "Dianelos Georgoudis" wrote
>
> > Robert J. Kolker wrote:
>
> >> Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
>
> >> Meaningless question. Effects do not necessarily have specific
> >> locations. The subjective awareness of light is not a physical event so
> >> it does not have specific location.
> >
> > I agree. Light as -perceived- (as well as everything else we perceive)
> > is not a physical event and does not have a specific physical location.
> > This much should be quite obvious, but many people believe that our
> > perceptions are physical events that somehow take place in our brain.
>
> Are you suggesting the volume of space that makes up our visual field
> is not inside the visual cortex?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_cortex
>
> "Lesions to primary visual cortex usually lead to a scotoma, or
> hole in the visual field. Interestingly, patients with scotomas are
> often able to make use of visual information presented to their
> scotomas, despite being unable to consciously perceive it. This
> phenomenon, called blindsight, is widely studied by scientists
> interested in the neural correlate of consciousness."
I think that nobody doubts that what we are actually directly conscious
*of* is some particular activity that happens in our brain, and also
that we are not directly conscious of all activity that happens in our
brain, hence the subconscious, blindsight, and so on. No question about
that.
The basic question that materialism must answer is: How come we have
the capacity for having conscious experience in the first place? Let me
elucidate this:
Some injury suffered by a brain can render a person blind. But you will
also lose your visual experience if you enter a windowless room and
turn off the lights. Now, you may say that you didn't permanently lose
your visual experiences because you can simply turn on the lights back
again. But what if you were permanently locked into a room without
lights? Even then, you may say, you would still maintain your capacity
of seeing light, only this capacity would not be realized as you are
locked in this dark room; if somebody would to open the door you would
again see light. But similarly, if somebody would repair the lesion in
the brain that rendered the other person blind, they would again see
light too. Therefore a blind person is not one who has not the capacity
of having visual experiences, but only somebody whose brain does not
produce these visual experiences. So it seems that any injury to our
visual cortex (and even the very absence of a visual cortex) does not
affect our capacity of having visual experiences.
Which brings us to an interesting realization: The structure and
activities in our brain not only define what experiences we shall have
but also define what kind of experiences (vision, hearing, touch, etc)
we shall have. For example our brain does not produce echo-location
experiences as, say, a bat's brain does. But should a neurosurgeon in
the future be able to graft into your brain a bat's brain corresponding
structures and neuronal activities it is reasonable to assume that you
would then know how it is to have these echo-location experiences that
bats have. Assuming of course that bats have the capacity for conscious
experience, but if it turns out that they don't you would then be the
first conscious being to know how it is to be a bat ;-)
> There are about a half dozen maps of our visual field, each part of the
> brain that processes input getting a copy. If there is a perceptual hole
> because a part of the brain is damaged, I'd say that's where the image
> is supposed to reside or be processed in someway.
Right.
> The issue you brought up about neurons not themselves being the color
> they represent when firing is important. The neural networks responsible
> for this represent an information space. Colors only have meaning when
> referring to other colors. Seeing a neuron firing is not a color; the
> physical neuron's color is determined by its anatomy, not what it
> represents or asserts by its activities.
Here you kind of lost me.
Dianelos Georgoudis
> >
> > Milan wrote:
[snip]
> > > Our senses are the physiological mechanisms of perception.
> >
> > How do you justify this claim?
>
> I didnt think this statement could be contentious. Decades of physiological,
> biochemical and cell biological studies support it. I dont think I need to
> provide references for something that can be easily found in any college
> textbook.
As far as I know these textbooks explain the correlation between our
senses and the physiological mechanisms of perception in our brain, or,
if you prefer the language, they describe what physiological mechanisms
produce or cause our visual experiences. But that's very different from
claiming that our senses *are* the physiological mechanisms of
perceptions.
> > > Vision is the
> > > sense that allows us to detect electromagnetic waves within the visible
> > > range of frequencies.
> >
> > Right. Or to be more precise: We posit the existence of electromagnetic
> > waves in order to explain the visual phenomena we experience. After all
> > we need some conscious experience in order to posit the existence of
> > any physical thing.
>
> Not quite. You can perceive light without knowing that it is an
> electromagnetic wave.
Sure, but you can't explain visual phenomena without positing
electromagnetic waves.
> There is no need to posit the existence of
> electromagnetic waves to explain the physiology of vision.
Above I wrote that we posit the existence of electromagnetic waves in
order to explain *visual phenomena*. Surely we agree so far - that's in
fact what scientists did. Now you make an altogether different
statement: that there is no need to posit the existence of
electromagnetic waves to explain the physiology of vision. I agree, but
only up to a point, because electromagnetic waves (albeit not in the
visible spectrum) do take part in the physiology of vision deep inside
our brain.
> The cell biology
> and the neurophysiology that underpins visual perception could have been
> developed without the concept of electromagnetic waves.
I know what you mean, but again strictly speaking there are
electromagnetic waves within our brain too, as is evidenced in
electroencephalograms.
> And, furthermore,
> the visible spectrum is but a very narrow range of the electromagnetic
> spectrum.
Yes, obviously. On the other hand observe that some visual phenomena
(e.g. our seeing an x-rays plate) can only be explained by positing
electromagnetic waves beyond the narrow visible range.
> > > Rod cells on the retina respond to the stimuli of
> > > photons and initiate the response. Rods are connected to nerve fibers
> and
> > > convert the energy of incident light into signals that are carried to
> the
> > > brain by the optic nerve. All the elements of this signal transduction
> > > cascade are part of the physical world. Is there any real need to say
> this
> > > or are we still living in the times of Bishop Berkeley?
> >
> > Well, I don't think that Bishop Berkeley would oppose anything in your
> > explanation about these physical processes in our brain. So? What's
> > your point?
>
> I thought my point was rather clear. You state that "If "light itself" is
> not supposed by science to form any part of the physical world - where does
> it exist?". My paragraph above points out that light is indeed part of the
> physical world and we understand how it propagates and we understand the
> physiological basis of how we perceive it.
You are talking about electromagnetic radiation in the visible
spectrum, not about light as perceived. I, following Russell's quote
in the previous post, ask where light as perceived (what philosophers
today call "phenomenal light") exists.
> It is also interesting to note that Berkeley was an immaterialist and
> therefore held that there are no material substances; however, in his essay
> New Theory of Vision, Berkeley writes as though our ideas of sight and touch
> are of external objects and therefore does not presuppose immaterialism.
It seems to me that Berkeley was misunderstood to an absurd degree. To
deny the reality of an objective and independent material world out
there is simply to point out that one does not need that hypothesis in
order to make sense of one's conscious experience, including the
whole edifice of science and technology. For an idealist, apples and
electromagnetic radiation and brains and the entire physical universe
exist only as explicatory patterns found in our field of conscious
experience. After all that's how we discover the existence of these
things and of their properties and the first place. Also observe that
we freely change their existential status or that of their properties
when a better explanation for the same phenomena is discovered (for
example today we say that gravitational forces do not exist because our
currently best explanation of gravitational phenomena does nor require
that hypothesis). Idealism simply sticks with reality as directly known
and refuses to make the arbitrary realist/materialist assumption,
which, not surprisingly, leads people into many paradoxes and hard
problems.
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> Reductive materialism is a minority position in philosophy of science?
> I'd never had guessed. After all isn't science itself strictly
> reductive?
Have you read -A Different Universe (reinventing physics from the bottom
down)- by Robert B. Laughlin. The author is a nobel lauriate in physics
who thinks the future of physics is with emergent phenomena.
Bob Kolker
>
Robert J. Kolker
>
> As for the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" the
> answer is trivial as one could answer "There is something because, for
> example, I am here".
That merely says there is something. It does not say why, which is the
object of the question. No one doubts existence. But no one has an
explantion for it either.
Bob Kolker
Bob
<now...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>Have you read -A Different Universe (reinventing physics from the bottom
>down)- by Robert B. Laughlin. The author is a nobel lauriate in physics
>who thinks the future of physics is with emergent phenomena.
Oh no - the ghost of Carl Sagan stalks the halls of academia.
Billions and billions of atoms...
--
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable."
--Sun Tzu
Bob
You are not qualified to speak for everyone. There are credible
explanations although not everyone is equipped to understand them.
Being is necessary in ontology. The condition of nothingness has no
ontological content. It is not possible to overcome the absurdity of
the claim that "nothing exists". You can play epistemological
psychobabble with Kant and Wittengenstein all you want, but in the
final analysis, Being exists. Nothing is a negation of Being and
therefore has no ontological content.
There is no cause of Being. It simply exists. It is the Act which
constitutes itself by asserting itself. It simply "IS". There is no
"ISN'T" possible - only "IS".
Robert J. Kolker
>
> There is no cause of Being. It simply exists. It is the Act which
> constitutes itself by asserting itself. It simply "IS". There is no
> "ISN'T" possible - only "IS".
Word games. Will it help me pick the winning number in tomorrow's Lotto?
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
>
> There is no cause of Being. It simply exists. It is the Act which
> constitutes itself by asserting itself. It simply "IS". There is no
> "ISN'T" possible - only "IS".
So -why- (i.e. for what reason or from what cause) does Being exist?
Hmmm?? What is the point of Being? What is the cause of Being? Why isn't
there Nothing instead? If God exists and is omnipotent can he kill
Himself and if He does, will Being cease?
Bob Kolker