Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Chili]

What if some of my neighbors are conscious and others are not? Certainly, automata are everywhere which mimic a conscious person's behavior's to a greater and greater degree. Everywhere in my neighbor's brain, I will find blind automatic physical chemical reactions. Why would I imagine that adding millions of blind reactions together gives something beyond a blind automatic situation? If particle physics is sufficient to model my neighbor, then why would I imagine there to be agency and/or consciousness there? It's just like the weather. Our understanding of weather at a reductionist physical level got better and better, so that pleading to Zeus to spare us rain & lightning fell out of favor. Occam's razor, really. I am much more certain that I have subjective experiences than that I have a brain. With my neighbor it is vice versa.

[Consul]

What if some of my neighbors are conscious and others are not? Certainly, automata are everywhere which mimic a conscious person's behavior's to a greater and greater degree. Everywhere in my neighbor's brain, I will find blind automatic physical chemical reactions. Why would I imagine that adding millions of blind reactions together gives something beyond a blind automatic situation? If particle physics is sufficient to model my neighbor, then why would I imagine there to be agency and/or consciousness there? It's just like the weather. Our understanding of weather at a reductionist physical level got better and better, so that pleading to Zeus to spare us rain & lightning fell out of favor. Occam's razor, really. I am much more certain that I have subjective experiences than that I have a brain. With my neighbor it is vice versa.

You don't innerly perceive your experiences as brain processes, but it doesn't follow that they aren't brain processes.

Why should I doubt that my neighbors are subjects of consciousness too? We're all members of the same animal species (homo sapiens) sharing the same evolutionary history, so how plausible is it that I happen to be the only conscious one among them?

If my parents are nonconscious zombies, why am I not a nonconscious zombie too?

Yes, there are far-fetched possibilities, such as that extraterrestrial aliens secretely replaced my conscious neighbors with nonconscious behavioral duplicates; but I don't have to take these seriously, do I?

[Felix]

Consul: "If my parents are nonconscious zombies, why am I not a nonconscious zombie too?"

My guess is that they are not your biological parents, you were adopted.

[Chili]

You don't innerly perceive your experiences as brain processes, but it doesn't follow that they aren't brain processes.

Why should I doubt that my neighbors are subjects of consciousness too? We're all members of the same animal species (homo sapiens) sharing the same evolutionary history, so how plausible is it that I happen to be the only conscious one among them?

If my parents are nonconscious zombies, why am I not a nonconscious zombie too?

Yes, there are far-fetched possibilities, such as that extraterrestrial aliens secretely replaced my conscious neighbors with nonconscious behavioral duplicates; but I don't have to take these seriously, do I?

Reasonable as far as it goes ... but it would be a mistake to refer to belief in other minds as a scientific truth.

The materialist who believes the world contains consciousness is in a bit of a pickle. Which model works best:

* particle physics gives rise to consciousness, which then chooses action

* particle physics gives rise to action, and also gives rise to consciousness, which doesn't influence action

* particle physics gives rise to action, and consciousness is just something some people believe in, like ghosts

[Consul]

Reasonable as far as it goes ... but it would be a mistake to refer to belief in other minds as a scientific truth.

But the mere logical possibility of solipsism is no good reason to disbelieve in other (conscious) minds.

"Doesn't one need reasons for doubt?"

(L. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §122)

I have no reasons to doubt that I am not the only conscious being, and I have many reasons to believe that there are many other conscious beings, including many nonhuman ones.

The materialist who believes the world contains consciousness is in a bit of a pickle. Which model works best:

* particle physics gives rise to consciousness, which then chooses action

* particle physics gives rise to action, and also gives rise to consciousness, which doesn't influence action

* particle physics gives rise to action, and consciousness is just something some people believe in, like ghosts

Eliminativism about consciousness is obviously false, but epiphenomenalism is not. Reductive physicalists can easily reject epiphenomenalism, since according to them experiences are physical events, and physical events are non-epiphenomenal. However, nonreductive physicalists have a hard time defending psychophysical interactionism against epiphenomenalism, especially as the concept of mental-to-physical "downward/top-down causation" is highly questionable.

[Chili]

"Doesn't one need reasons for doubt?"

(L. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §122)

Maybe but that's the opposite of how science works. For instance you can believe in God but you can't claim scientific justification for it.

[Consul]

Maybe but that's the opposite of how science works. For instance you can believe in God but you can't claim scientific justification for it.

As I said, there can very well be third-person neuroscientific evidence for (the absence or presence of) consciousness, since there are objective neural correlates of consciousness, the absence or presence of which is (non-accidentally) correlated with the absence or presence of consciousness.

[BigBango]

Maybe but that's the opposite of how science works. For instance you can believe in God but you can't claim scientific justification for it.

As I said, there can very well be third-person neuroscientific evidence for (the absence or presence of) consciousness, since there are objective neural correlates of consciousness, the absence or presence of which is (non-accidentally) correlated with the absence or presence of consciousness.

Yes Consul of course. Still, one cannot dispense with an inquiry as to the nature of consciousness apart from its correlation to neural processes.

You seem to want to accept the correlation between the two as an excuse for assuming that consciousness is merely epiphenomenal. Yet we must realize that "correlation" is not necessarily causation. Consciousness may very well have attributes that go beyond the correlations with neural activity. The third person observations may only be capturing the high points and completely missing the subtleties of conscious experience.

[Consul]

Yes Consul of course. Still, one cannot dispense with an inquiry as to the nature of consciousness apart from its correlation to neural processes.

We have introspective psychology and phenomenology for the first-person inquiry into consciousness.

You seem to want to accept the correlation between the two as an excuse for assuming that consciousness is merely epiphenomenal.

I merely said that nonreductive physicalism about consciousness is threatened by epiphenomenalism.

Yet we must realize that "correlation" is not necessarily causation. Consciousness may very well have attributes that go beyond the correlations with neural activity. The third person observations may only be capturing the high points and completely missing the subtleties of conscious experience.

Yes, correlation needn't be causation; and the relation between neural processes and experiences needn't be causal. If it is causal, experiences qua effects of neural processes can exhibit new qualities (qualia) that are absent from their neural causes. But according to reductive physicalism, experiences aren't effects of neural processes but neural processes themselves. If this is true, the qualia of experience are complex neural properties. Of course, there is then still a difference between internally perceiving a quale from the first-person point of view and externally perceiving it from the third-person point of view, because you cannot internally perceive a quale as a complex neural property, and you cannot externally perceive a complex neural property as a quale. But reductionists argue that this doesn't mean that there is no identity, since one and the same thing can look different from different perspectives or points of view.

[Chili]

As I said, there can very well be third-person neuroscientific evidence for (the absence or presence of) consciousness, since there are objective neural correlates of consciousness, the absence or presence of which is (non-accidentally) correlated with the absence or presence of consciousness.

You can correlate two things once you can detect or measure them both. Once you have decided that person A is conscious and person B is not, you can correlate what you have decided to the neurological activity, but it all rests on your decision about the two people and their states. Otherwise what I am doing is correlating neural states on the one hand and behaviors that convince me a person is conscious on the other. We're not dealing with consciousness per se.

[Sculptor1]

As I said, there can very well be third-person neuroscientific evidence for (the absence or presence of) consciousness, since there are objective neural correlates of consciousness, the absence or presence of which is (non-accidentally) correlated with the absence or presence of consciousness.

You can correlate two things once you can detect or measure them both. Once you have decided that person A is conscious and person B is not, you can correlate what you have decided to the neurological activity, but it all rests on your decision about the two people and their states. Otherwise what I am doing is correlating neural states on the one hand and behaviors that convince me a person is conscious on the other. We're not dealing with consciousness per se.

But that is all we can ever do for anything.
That's all we've got.
It does not get any better whatever you look into.

[Consul]

As I said, there can very well be third-person neuroscientific evidence for (the absence or presence of) consciousness, since there are objective neural correlates of consciousness, the absence or presence of which is (non-accidentally) correlated with the absence or presence of consciousness.

You can correlate two things once you can detect or measure them both. Once you have decided that person A is conscious and person B is not, you can correlate what you have decided to the neurological activity, but it all rests on your decision about the two people and their states. Otherwise what I am doing is correlating neural states on the one hand and behaviors that convince me a person is conscious on the other. We're not dealing with consciousness per se.

Of course, the science of consciousness depends on introspective reports, which are a kind of behavior—linguistic behavior. Neuroscientists don't have direct access to the subjective introspective data on which introspective reports are based (which raises the question of the epistemic reliability of the latter). A nonconscious AI robot might be programmed to make false introspective reports that aren't based on any actual introspective data, since in the robot's case there's nothing to introspect due to the absence of consciousness.
So, yes, the science of consciousness does have serious epistemological and methodological problems, because behavior doesn't entail consciousness, and consciousness doesn't entail behavior. But it doesn't follow that a science, particularly a neuroscience of consciousness is impossible. See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cons ... roscience/

Also see: David Chalmers: How Can We Construct a Science of Consciousness? (PDF)

[Consul]

Of course, the science of consciousness depends on introspective reports, which are a kind of behavior—linguistic behavior.

There are also "no-report paradigms": https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cons ... NoRepoPara

[Chili]

But that is all we can ever do for anything.
That's all we've got.
It does not get any better whatever you look into.

Most science can be described as a search for correlation between what measuring devices register numerically.

So many things in human life can be simply shown to be the same as what some device is measuring, but consciousness per see is another matter.

[Chili]

Is the outer world really there? I cannot use the scientific method to answer this question. I just have to take it as a given, and make a footnote that I have done so. I can use science to explore various correlations between aspects of the outer world. Are any of those objects or beings out there having
subjective experiences? I cannot use the scientific method to answer this question. I just have to take it as a given, and make a footnote that I have done so. Everything that is said by Chalmers et al proceeds after both of these givens are accepted. I'm not sure sometimes how many people appreciate that.