Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Consul]

In fact this is very simple. When you look around, you do not find your looking in the space you are looking in. This is true of physical space, but also logical space. Therefore it is impossible to reduce consciousness to its material objects. Remember that also brains are material objects.
You can see your eye, but not your looking.

Yes, you can if reductive materialism is true; since according to it, all experiences, including visual ones (seeings), are neural processes in the brain that are visualizable by means of technological neuroimaging.

Anyway, materialism doesn't reduce consciousness to a thing (object/substance)! According to it, consciousness is not a brain but a brain state/event/process.

"The identity theory of mind holds that states and processes of the mind are identical to states and processes of the brain. Strictly speaking, it need not hold that the mind is identical to the brain. Idiomatically we do use ‘She has a good mind’ and ‘She has a good brain’ interchangeably but we would hardly say ‘Her mind weighs fifty ounces’. Here I take identifying mind and brain as being a matter of identifying processes and perhaps states of the mind and brain. Consider an experience of pain, or of seeing something, or of having a mental image. The identity theory of mind is to the effect that these experiences just are brain processes, not merely correlated with brain processes."

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

[Tamminen]

In fact this is very simple. When you look around, you do not find your looking in the space you are looking in. This is true of physical space, but also logical space. Therefore it is impossible to reduce consciousness to its material objects. Remember that also brains are material objects.
You can see your eye, but not your looking.

Yes, you can if reductive materialism is true; since according to it, all experiences, including visual ones (seeings), are neural processes in the brain that are visualizable by means of technological neuroimaging.

Anyway, materialism doesn't reduce consciousness to a thing (object/substance)! According to it, consciousness is not a brain but a brain state/event/process.

"The identity theory of mind holds that states and processes of the mind are identical to states and processes of the brain. Strictly speaking, it need not hold that the mind is identical to the brain. Idiomatically we do use ‘She has a good mind’ and ‘She has a good brain’ interchangeably but we would hardly say ‘Her mind weighs fifty ounces’. Here I take identifying mind and brain as being a matter of identifying processes and perhaps states of the mind and brain. Consider an experience of pain, or of seeing something, or of having a mental image. The identity theory of mind is to the effect that these experiences just are brain processes, not merely correlated with brain processes."

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

Physical processes take place in physical space. Where does your looking take place? I mean the phenomenal event of looking? Nowhere. It just takes place. You look into space, but your looking is not in that space, or in any space. Physicalism seeks desperately all kinds of epicycles to save its claims, but the truth is much simpler. There is no need of finding connections where there are none. Consciousness does not need explaining. It is not a mystery.

[Tamminen]

To repeat:

There is nothing in our experiential sphere that gives justification for saying anything about a world, seen as alternate for our world, that would have completely different ontological structure than our world has: subjects experiencing it. 'The world' meaning everything there is, has ever been and will ever be. Nothing new here, just using different words.

[Consul]

Physical processes take place in physical space. Where does your looking take place? I mean the phenomenal event of looking? Nowhere. It just takes place. You look into space, but your looking is not in that space, or in any space. Physicalism seeks desperately all kinds of epicycles to save its claims, but the truth is much simpler. There is no need of finding connections where there are none. Consciousness does not need explaining. It is not a mystery.

Of course, when you look around in the world, none of the things or events you see is your seeing of them. Nonetheless, the subjective perceptual perspective, and subjects and their perceivings are as world-immanent as all objects of perception.

Phenomenal processes cannot take place beyond or outside space and time (especially as the very concept of an atemporal process or event is self-contradictory), so they must occur somewhere and somewhen. They take place in space and time just like nonphenomenal ones, taking place in those regions of spacetime which are occupied by brains. Subjective experiences are constituted or produced by neural processes in the CNS, so they occur therein too. Where else could they be?

As for the relationship between "phenomenal space" and physical space:

"I proposed that the level or state of consciousness is predisposed by the degree of spatial (and temporal) continuity of neural activity. This means that (the level or state of) consciousness can ultimately be traced back to the constitution of the intrinsic activity’s spatial (and temporal) continuity.

How is such spatial (and temporal) continuity of the brain’s neural activity related to the physical space of the world? The constitution of the intrinsic activity’s spatial (and temporal) continuity by the brain takes place within the physical space (and time) of the world the brain is part of. This means that, ultimately, consciousness and the intrinsic activity’s spatial (and temporal) continuity are constituted within the physical space (and time) of the brain and the world. In short, there is constitution of an “inner space consciousness” in (physical) space (and time).

Such constitution of consciousness in (physical) space (and time) must be distinguished from the experience of space (and time) in consciousness. The experience of space (and time) in consciousness is expressed by the term “inner space consciousness” (and “inner time consciousness”). Here, unlike in the constitution of consciousness in (physical) space (and time), we no longer refer to space (and time) as physical but rather as phenomenal. One may thus say that (phenomenal) space (and time) are constituted in consciousness. Accordingly, we have to distinguish between the “constitution of (phenomenal) space (and time) in consciousness” and the “constitution of consciousness in (physical) space (and time).”

Both are closely linked, however: since the “constitution of (phenomenal) space (and time) in consciousness” presupposes consciousness itself, it can be considered the output or result of the “constitution of consciousness in (physical) space (and time).” The focus in this (as in the preceding discussions with regard to time) is therefore on how the “constitution of consciousness in (physical) space” leads to the “constitution of (phenomenal) space in consciousness,” that is, “inner space consciousness.”

One may even further specify their relationship. The constitution of phenomenal space and time lays the very basis of the subsequent constitution of consciousness in general. Phenomenal space and time provide the spatial and temporal grid into which any content must be integrated and linked in order to become associated with consciousness. Metaphorically speaking, phenomenal time and space can be considered the skeleton of consciousness without which consciousness itself would remain impossible altogether.

This means that the constitution of phenomenal time and space provide the bridge between the physical space and time of the physical world on one hand and the phenomenal features of consciousness on the other. To put it slightly differently, the transformation of the different discrete points in the physical time and space of the physical world into the spatial and temporal continuity of the brain’s intrinsic activity predisposes the subsequent constitution of consciousness and its various phenomenal features. Therefore, I speak of a neurophenomenal account of space and time, which I believe mediates the transition from the physical world of nonconsciousness to the phenomenal world of consciousness."

(Northoff, Georg. Unlocking the Brain, Vol. 2: Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. p. 70)

[Consul]

Of course, when you look around in the world, none of the things or events you see is your seeing of them.

Well, you could see your seeings…

"…with the help of an autocerebroscope. We may fancy a 'compleat autocerebroscopist' who while introspectively attending to, e.g., his increasing feelings of anger (or love, hatred, embarrassment, exultation, or to the experience of a tune-as-heard, etc.) would simultaneously be observing a vastly magnified visual 'picture' of his own cerebral nerve currents on a projection screen. (This piece of science fiction is conceived in analogy to the fluoroscope with the help of which a person may watch, e.g., his own heart action.) Along the lines of the proposed realistic interpretation he would take the shifting patterns visible on the screen as evidence for his own brain processes. Assuming the empirical core of parallelism or isomorphism, he would find that a 'crescendo' in his anger—or in the melody he heard—would correspond to a 'crescendo' in the "correlated" cortical processes. (Similarly for 'accelerandos', 'ritardandos', etc. Adrian's and McCulloch's experiments seem to have demonstrated a surprisingly simple isomorphism of the shapes of geometrical figures in the visual field with the patterns of raised electric potentials in the occipital lobe of the cortex.) According to the identity thesis the directly experienced qualia and configurations are the realities-in-themselves that are denoted by the neurophysiological descriptions. This identification of the denotata is therefore empirical, and the most direct evidence conceivably attainable would be that of the autocerebroscopically observable regularities."

(Feigl, Herbert. The 'Mental' and the 'Physical': The Essay and a Postscript. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1967. pp. 89-90)

[Tamminen]

Of course, when you look around in the world, none of the things or events you see is your seeing of them. Nonetheless, the subjective perceptual perspective, and subjects and their perceivings are as world-immanent as all objects of perception.

Phenomenal processes cannot take place beyond or outside space and time (especially as the very concept of an atemporal process or event is self-contradictory), so they must occur somewhere and somewhen. They take place in space and time just like nonphenomenal ones, taking place in those regions of spacetime which are occupied by brains. Subjective experiences are constituted or produced by neural processes in the CNS, so they occur therein too. Where else could they be?

Successive experiences make subjective time as the subject meets the world. The relationship between subjective time and world-time is not as simple as we think at first sight, but my view is that subjective time with its present, past and future is what we originally mean by time. Physical time has no present, past or future. It is time measured with clocks. Experiences do not take place in it, although their correlates do. The same kind of analysis can be made about space, and I think I have already made it in this thread. It seems that we look at these things from opposite perspectives, as always.

[Tamminen]

A modification of an anecdote from Wittgenstein:

A man is looking for something in the forest. "What is he looking for?" "He is looking for himself." "Is he mad?" "No, he is just a philosopher."

[Tamminen]

Well, you could see your seeings…

"…with the help of an autocerebroscope.

I see a figure on the wall, and the new instrument called autocerebroscope shows exactly the same figure. So there are two identical figures, one of them being the content of my phenomenal consciousness and the other a picture of what happens in my brain. Two identical figures, so my consciousness is identical with what happens in my brain? A perfect correlation, nothing else. What did you expect? Nothing would be deeper than the ontological difference between those two figures.

[Consul]

I see a figure on the wall, and the new instrument called autocerebroscope shows exactly the same figure. So there are two identical figures, one of them being the content of my phenomenal consciousness and the other a picture of what happens in my brain. Two identical figures, so my consciousness is identical with what happens in my brain? A perfect correlation, nothing else. What did you expect? Nothing would be deeper than the ontological difference between those two figures.

What do you think is the best explanation of those perfect psychophysical correlations?

By the way, Ullin Place, one of the prominent champions of 20th-century (reductive) materialism, believed that…

"Perfect Correlation Is Identity:

I conclude that, apart from the dubious advantage that it is less susceptible than is the type-identity variety to empirical disconfirmation, token-identity physicalism has nothing to recommend it over its more robust type-identity rival. Moreover, so far from protecting physicalism from empirical disconfirmation, the token-identity version is itself in serious danger of being sidelined, if not actually falsified, by the emergence in the light of current and future research of the kind of 'perfect correlation' between psychological and physiological measures that according to the originator of the identity theory, psychologist E. G. Boring (1933, p. 16), constitutes identity. What Boring perhaps should have said is that if two measures correlate perfectly and spontaneously without requiring any experimental controls to induce them to do so, we have cast iron evidence that they measure one and the same thing. If, as seems more than likely, future research using the recently discovered techniques of brain imaging will allow us to identify such perfect correlations between mentally and physically specified variables, we shall be in a position to assert with confidence that at least some specifiable type-identity statements involving mentally and physically characterized processes are known to be true. In that case, who will give a fig for token-identity physicalism?"

(Place, U. T. "Token- versus Type-Identity Physicalism." 1999. Reprinted in Identifying the Mind: Selected Papers of U. T. Place, edited by George Graham and Elizabeth R. Valentine, 81-89. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 89)

Well, strictly logically speaking, perfect correlation does not entail identity, but it's strong evidence for it at least. Of course, you can reply e.g. that there's no identity but only a divinely pre-established harmony between different entities, but how plausible is that (in the light of our scientific knowledge of the world)?!

[Consul]

Phenomenal processes cannot take place beyond or outside space and time (especially as the very concept of an atemporal process or event is self-contradictory), so they must occur somewhere and somewhen. They take place in space and time just like nonphenomenal ones, taking place in those regions of spacetime which are occupied by brains. Subjective experiences are constituted or produced by neural processes in the CNS, so they occur therein too. Where else could they be?

Successive experiences make subjective time as the subject meets the world. The relationship between subjective time and world-time is not as simple as we think at first sight, but my view is that subjective time with its present, past and future is what we originally mean by time. Physical time has no present, past or future. It is time measured with clocks. Experiences do not take place in it, although their correlates do. The same kind of analysis can be made about space, and I think I have already made it in this thread. It seems that we look at these things from opposite perspectives, as always.

Do you believe there is a "metaphysical time" in addition to and different from physical time? If yes, what is metaphysical time?

Well, what is physical time? The philosophy of time, considering both the phenomenology of time (temporal consciousness) and the physics of time, is a minefield (like everything else in philosophy). Donald Williams wrote a paper "The Myth of Passage", and it may well be that the apparent flow or stream of experience represented by McTaggart's A-series is an introspective illusion.

"The distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.
[letter to Michelangelo Besso, 21 March 1955]"

(Albert Einstein. In: Knowles, Elizabeth, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. 7th. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 306)

"The confusion about flow or passage is enshrined in the etymology of the English word 'past', which is a variant of 'passed'. The idea is that past events are those which have passed by us, flowing from the future into the past, or alternatively, they are events which consciousness has already passed in its supposed advance into the future. We may then say that an event was future, became present and is now past. Trouble then arises if we are led by this to think of pastness, presentness and futurity as properties with respect to which events change. To elucidate this matter I need to explain something about indexical words. Indexical words are words whose reference depends in a rule-governed way on who utters them and on their time of utterance. So consequently does the matter of whether the utterance asserts something true or false. Thus if Joe says 'I am tired' at time t then this is true if and only if Joe is (tenseless) tired at time t. 'This utterance' said by Joe at t refers to the utterance said by Joe at t, i.e. to itself. I think that all indexicals could be paraphrased by means of experiences containing only a single indexical, namely 'this utterance'. Thus 'here' could be paraphrased as 'near the place of this utterance', 'I' could be paraphrased by 'the maker of this utterance', 'you' could be paraphrased by 'the addressee of this utterance', and so on.

'Past', 'present', 'now', 'future' and the tenses of verbs are indexicals (though tenses have other functions too, which for present purposes we can ignore). Thus to talk of a past event is to talk of something earlier than one's utterance, to talk of a future event is to talk of an event later than one's utterance, to utter 'now' is to refer to an event simultaneous with one's utterance. If one says 'Joe came' at t one utters a truth if and only if Joe comes earlier than t, where I indicate that a verb is to be read as tenseless by putting it in italics. 'Joe will come' uttered at time t asserts a truth if and only if Joe comes later than t. If Jim utters a sentence 'Joe had come at breakfast time' at t he utters a truth if Joe comes earlier than breakfast time and breakfast time is earlier than t. 'Joe will have come at breakfast time' asserts a truth if uttered by Joe at t if and only if breakfast time is later than t and Jow comes earlier than breakfast time. And so on.

Of course Joe might not speak a sentence but write it on a blackboard or in the manuscript of a book. Here the time of utterance should be taken as the initial writing on the blackboard (even though the sentence remains there all through a lecture), or as the initial writing of the manuscript, even though the manuscript is preserved. Similarly in the case of a printed book the utterance is not at the time of the printing but at the time of writing the manuscript.

The above remarks indicate that though we cannot translate a sentence containing indexicals into one not containing indexicals, we can give the rules for its use by means of a non-indexical sentence about the original sentence. For example, 'There will be a rabbit here' said by person P at time t is true if and only if there is a rabbit near P at time t* and t* is later than t.

We can now see what is wrong with the thought that there really is a change in events from being future through being present to being past. Someone who thinks this is thinking of pastness, presentness and futurity as properties of events much as being red, yellow or green is a property of a signal light. To think this is to forget the indexicality of the words 'past', 'present' and 'future' and their cognates. Indeed it is not even clear what such a sentence as 'Joe's visit to the dentist is future, will be present and then past' could mean. All I can suggest is the following lame statement: if one were to say now that Joe's visit to the dentist is future one would say something true, that if at a certain later time one were to say that Joe's visit to the dentist is present one would once more say something true, and that if at some still later time one were to say that Joe's visit to the dentist is past one would yet again say something true. Once the indexicality is brought out into the open the feeling that there is a real change in events in respect of pastness, presentness and futurity ought to disappear."

(Smart, J. J. C. Our Place in the Universe: A Metaphysical Discussion. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. pp. 35-7)

By the way, if time flows, what's its speed? One second per second? Well, that's just the number 1; and a mere number lacking a physical unit is no physical quantity at all.

Anyway, your (Descartesque) hyperphysical conception of experiences and their subjects, according to which they aren't located anywhere in (physical) spacetime, is both philosophically and scientifically implausible to the degree of sheer nonsensicality.

I'm afraid your hyperphysical metaphysics of subjects and their experiences is a "magical mystery show".

[Tamminen]

What do you think is the best explanation of those perfect psychophysical correlations?

They do not need an explanation, they are what comes naturally, because consciousness is just the subject's way of being in the material world. This is the difference in the way we look at these things. I take the subject's point of view, you take the point of view of material processes taken apart from the being of the subject, and this is a Münchhausen's trick, in my opinion.

Of course, you can reply e.g. that there's no identity but only a divinely pre-established harmony between different entities, but how plausible is that (in the light of our scientific knowledge of the world)?!

They are not different entities, there is only one process going on, but its ontological structure is 'subject - conscious of - material objects'. No gods, everything is natural. No need to change anything in the principles or discoveries of science, except in its materialistic prejudices, which sometimes lead to the kinds of absurdities we have discussed here.

Do you believe there is a "metaphysical time" in addition to and different from physical time? If yes, what is metaphysical time?

It is the subject's way of existing. There is nothing supernatural in it. It is the sequence of experiences. Present, past and future are essential for it. It is phenomenologically describable and ontologically original. Its relationship with physical time needs phenomenological analysis, but it cannot start with physical spacetime as a self-evident basis.

The distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.

I am not sure in what context Einstein has said this, but taken literally this is nonsense.

By the way, if time flows, what's its speed? One second per second? Well, that's just the number 1; and a mere number lacking a physical unit is no physical quantity at all.

Subjective time "flows" from moment to moment, that is all. And physical time does not flow at all, except relative to the subject's flow of experiences.

By the way - and this is important - subjective time is not consciousness of time, it is consciousness itself with temporality as its internal structure. We cannot imagine consciousness without time: something happening now, then something else happening, and so on.

Anyway, your (Descartesque) hyperphysical conception of experiences and their subjects, according to which they aren't located anywhere in (physical) spacetime, is both philosophically and scientifically implausible to the degree of sheer nonsensicality.

I'm afraid your hyperphysical metaphysics of subjects and their experiences is a "magical mystery show".

Empirical science gives me the material of thinking, and what I have presented here is the world view I have built from that, taking into account the existential paradoxes we meet in the middle of this "thrownness into the world".

Your perspective to all this is, from my point of view, a bit poor, or then you just have not understood anything of what I have said. I assume it is the latter.

[Sculptor1]

Given the massive strides of materialism in the last 300 years, it seems more than absurd to denigrate materialism. It took a long time to unpack the periodic table, atomic structure and sub atomic particles. But throughout this time all our progress in understanding the sciences; from Physics, Geology, Chemistry and Biology have all been achieved with materialist assumptions.
I am sure that before the periodic table was discovered many would have called materialism absurd.
In fact Isaac Newton himself believed in magical properties of chemicals and wrote over a million words on Alchemy, whose assumptions included astrology, and the four humours.
Science is always a work in progress, it can take backwards steps at times, but the collected progress in remarkable. So even if we've not yet figured out all the features of the so-called mind-body problem, that does not make materialism absurd.
There have been great strides in our understanding of how the mind works - ALL of them materialistic: brain mapping, effects of hormones, effects of drugs, understanding cerebral injury, brain surgery. All of these things show how materialistic the mind is, and how easily the mind can be altered, damaged, repaired. The mind is all about cerebral tissue, mainly the brain, but now understood to has contributions in the heart and digestive system where the same species of tissue can alter feelings.
If you have something better, then by all means lets hear it, but mumbo-jumbo is not much of an argument against all that progress.

[Felix]

Consul: "Well, you could see your seeings... with the help of an autocerebroscope."

But this device does not exist, nor does any other means to demonstrate perfect psychophysical correlation.

Albert Einstein: "The distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent."

Tamminen: "I am not sure in what context Einstein has said this, but taken literally this is nonsense."

Here is the context:
In this passage Einstein is referring to the “block universe” conception of spacetime. It’s hardly surprising that he accepted it, since although it came from the work of others (principally from Hermann Minkowski, one of Einstein’s teachers) it is the framework in which his own theories of special and general relativity are most naturally expressed.

The block-universe view of physical reality contains time, but in a way remarkably different to our usual conception. It presents a four-dimensional view in which all events across time and space are on an equal ontological footing, with no sense in which present events are judged more “real” or “actual” than past or future ones. It is also very difficult to recover any meaningful sense in which time “flows”.

[detail]

Materialism at least seems to be true from the viewpoint of physics. But the degrees of freedom are far to big to describe cultural and social as well as ontological behaviour. Thus a metatheory has to be found that describes the complex interactions of individuals and act's as some "kind of thermodynamics , as an empirical based theory not always based on particle statistics". To neglect this metatheory of the human mind in interaction with other humans is to neglect the fact of the existence of psyxhology as such a metatheory for the interaction. But this still does not explanin the reasoning for reason within this metatheory and we end up with a non materialistic , psychological based philosophy trying to describe phenomenologicallly the interaction of humans, and trying to explain the basic reason for existence, and philosophical statements within this theory.
This is how philosphy comes to place it's a reasoning behind a metatheory for the human mind , based not always on materialistic but more on ontological and psychological reasoning, at least trying then to coalesque with a materialistic reality.

[Atla]

Easy. The rock is made of mindstuff or whatever, and your head is also made of mindstuff or whatever, I throw the rock at you and your skull splits open.

Anyway you have accused me of believing in ghosts, of disregarding science, believing that nothing exists, being a solipsist. You are ridiculous.

Lotta whatever.
A rock is matter. That is definitive.
Get over it.

Well I can't argue with blind beliefs