Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Gertie]

Information Integration Theory has a go at quantifying consciousness, sort of, I think. I don't understand it myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrate ... ion_theory

[Faustus5]

Yes it certainly does. And feelings aren;t accessible to objective/third party observation.

Sure they are. You can usually tell from a person's non-verbal behavior in context, or you can ask, language being the interface between you and the other person's mental states.

[Faustus5]

Information Integration Theory has a go at quantifying consciousness, sort of, I think. I don't understand it myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrate ... ion_theory

It's pretty cool, but I don't think what they are doing is really quantifying consciousness so much as quantifying something important in the brain processes that constitute consciousness. Insofar as some mental states can only be categorized (and are created) by social norms, there is always going to be an aspect of consciousness that cannot be quantified because there's nothing there TO quantify.

[Consul]

You're not something different than experiences, occurrences, etc.

Yes, I am, because the subject of experience is a nonexperience. There is a categorial difference between mental/experiential subjects and mental/experiential contents. See this post of mine: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13032&p=239270&hilit=foster#p239270

[Gertie]

Yes it certainly does. And feelings aren;t accessible to objective/third party observation.

Sure they are. You can usually tell from a person's non-verbal behavior in context, or you can ask, language being the interface between you and the other person's mental states.

I was lying when I wrote that.

No not really!

Well when I say lying, I don't really know if you think of lying in quite the same way as me. Maybe you can work out from my non-verbal behavioural context, all the nuanced, intertwined mental states involved in creating that simple sentence, deciding to post it, and using those words.

Hmm, not too reliable this interface is it. Not really the same as directly observing experiential states at all.

[Sy Borg]

Your last claim is false. The "hard problem" was raised by David Chalmers, not as a secret theist agenda, but because it is a real conundrum. Processing v being. That is why neuroscientists have been trying all these years to work it out.

There is no possible sense in which any scientific project could ever solve the hard problem given how Chalmers has defined it. That alone should make us suspicious that it is nothing more than a philosophical artifact that can and should be dismissed.

Not so long ago it was proclaimed that we had found the ultimate generator of consciousness - the claustrum. It was major news for a while.

Forgive me, but I am highly skeptical of this claim, seeing as I follow this stuff pretty closely and I don't recall a single moment in which the scientific community was united in thinking the claustrum's discovery had sufficiently explained what consciousness is.

There's an obvious test to check our progress. How close are we to being able to create a sense of being in our creations and precisely measure their internality? How much do we know about the subtle (but possibly potent) interdependencies between the brain and metabolic systems? If we do not know, and cannot achieve, these then we do not understand the nature of being.

This sounds to me like an explicitly and entirely philosophical frame to these issues, which to my way of thinking just confuses things. When I start seeing the word "being" tossed around, a number of alarm sirens start sounding in my head.

There is no reason why qualia can't be worked out. The only "failure" in Chalmers' framing was not dumbing down observations of actual reality enough for today's technology to probe. The fact that we have not found a way to test qualia does not mean it will not happen. Just because we tend to vote superstitious man-children into office does not mean that progress has stopped, or will stop.

As stated, we will know that we understand qualia when we can recreate it. At this stage we are miles off. Proposing a test will only "confuse things" for those who believe without evidence. It's the lack of testing that "confuses things".

As for grand claims made about the claustrum, just to jog your memory, here are some headlines from a few years ago:

‘Crown of thorns’ neurone found in brain - which could crack mystery of CONSCIOUSNESS
Scientists discover a giant neuron around the brain that could explain consciousness
Is the key to consciousness in the claustrum? - Medical Xpress
What makes you conscious – and where is it in your brain ...
The discovery of a giant neuron could help explain how the brain creates consciousness
Are These Giant Neurons the Seat Of Consciousness in the Brain?
Where does consciousness come from? Brain scientist closes in on the claustrum
Giant neurons that circle the brain like a crown of thorns could explain how consciousness originates in the brain
The discovery of a giant neuron could help explain how the brain creates consciousness
Is This What Consciousness Looks Like?
Single Giant Neuron Wraps Around the Brain, Possible Site of Consciousness

It was an exciting moment. People really did think that the mystery may have been solved, yet the claustrum acts largely as a switch.

BTW, I do not break posts into context-free bits because the practice usually degrades conversations into barely readable, offtopic material laced with ad hominem attacks.

[Consul]

As stated, we will know that we understand qualia when we can recreate it.

No, we will know that we understand phenomenal consciousness/subjective experience when the neuroscientists can give detailed answers to the following questions: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cons ... neSpecCons

[Atla]

No, we will know that we understand phenomenal consciousness/subjective experience when the neuroscientists can give detailed answers to the following questions: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cons ... neSpecCons

The first focuses on a mental state’s being conscious in general as opposed to not being conscious. Call this property generic consciousness, a property shared by specific conscious states such as seeing a red rose, feeling a touch, or being angry. Thus:

Generic Consciousness: What conditions/states N of nervous systems are necessary and (or) sufficient for a mental state, M, to be conscious as opposed to not?

If there is such an N, then the presence of N entails that an associated mental state M is conscious and (or) its absence entails that M is unconscious.

Is this neuroscience or religion? They assume in advance that generic consciousness has to do with individual mental states, which is perfectly unscientific.

[Consul]

No, we will know that we understand phenomenal consciousness/subjective experience when the neuroscientists can give detailed answers to the following questions: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cons ... neSpecCons

The first focuses on a mental state’s being conscious in general as opposed to not being conscious. Call this property generic consciousness, a property shared by specific conscious states such as seeing a red rose, feeling a touch, or being angry. Thus:

Generic Consciousness: What conditions/states N of nervous systems are necessary and (or) sufficient for a mental state, M, to be conscious as opposed to not?

If there is such an N, then the presence of N entails that an associated mental state M is conscious and (or) its absence entails that M is unconscious.

Is this neuroscience or religion? They assume in advance that generic consciousness has to do with individual mental states, which is perfectly unscientific.

The question of generic consciousness concerns the neurological type-difference between (phenomenally) conscious mental states and (phenomenally) nonconscious ones.

[Atla]

Is this neuroscience or religion? They assume in advance that generic consciousness has to do with individual mental states, which is perfectly unscientific.

The question of generic consciousness concerns the neurological type-difference between (phenomenally) conscious mental states and (phenomenally) nonconscious ones.

Yeah and it's not scientific to assume that phenomenally nonconscious states exist.

[Consul]

Yeah and it's not scientific to assume that phenomenally nonconscious states exist.

QUOTE>
"Most researchers accept that even quite complex perception, cognition, and control of action can go on entirely 'in the dark'."

(Godfrey-Smith, Peter. "The Evolution of Consciousness in Phylogenetic Context." In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Kristin Andrews and Jacob Beck, 216-226. London: Routledge, 2018. p. 220)
<QUOTE

[Atla]

Yeah and it's not scientific to assume that phenomenally nonconscious states exist.

QUOTE>
"Most researchers accept that even quite complex perception, cognition, and control of action can go on entirely 'in the dark'."

(Godfrey-Smith, Peter. "The Evolution of Consciousness in Phylogenetic Context." In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Kristin Andrews and Jacob Beck, 216-226. London: Routledge, 2018. p. 220)
<QUOTE

And they accept this based on what?

[Atla]

You mean we can't directly measure it with instruments, and we never will be able to.

Again, a purely ideological statement.

No, it's fact. We can't measure qualia (the "what it's like" experience itself) directly, because we can't measure X using X. Reality can't be somehow other than itself, somehow outside of itself.

You occultists are the ones who claim otherwise, based on ideology. But that's not science.

[Terrapin Station]

You're not something different than experiences, occurrences, etc.

Yes, I am, because the subject of experience is a nonexperience.

If we read that as "The subject having experiences is not an experience," then you're simply restating the claim that I'm saying is mistaken. You, as the subject, are not something different than your experiences.

If we read that as "What experiences are about , or the contents of an experience, are not experiences," that's fine, but it has nothing to do with the fact that you are not different than your experiences.

There is a categorial difference between mental/experiential subjects and mental/experiential contents.

There being a categorial difference between anything is irrelevant here because categories are simply ways that someone thinks about something. You can think about yourself so that per your categories, you're different than you're experiences, but in that case, your thinking would be mistaken.

[Gertie]

Information Integration Theory has a go at quantifying consciousness, sort of, I think. I don't understand it myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrate ... ion_theory

It's pretty cool, but I don't think what they are doing is really quantifying consciousness so much as quantifying something important in the brain processes that constitute consciousness. Insofar as some mental states can only be categorized (and are created) by social norms, there is always going to be an aspect of consciousness that cannot be quantified because there's nothing there TO quantify.

I like how they are trying to take a pragmatic, scientific approach, measuring, making predictions, but using phenomenal experience as their axiomatic starting point, its properties and 'structures'.

But how successful they are I don't know, I just don't understand it. It does seem to imply some form of panpsychism from what they say, which makes it even more intriguing if it might lead to some more fundamental understanding like that of the nature of reality.

One to watch...