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

[Terrapin Station]

It is only dualism if you construe that mental event to be a non-physical phenomenon. My argument is that it isn't; it is a physical phenomenon, though one that is not reducible to other physical phenomena for explicable, understandable reasons.

Yet you use "physical" somewhere between the colloquial "tangible/visible with the naked eye" etc. and "addressed by the scientific discipline of physics" while saying that mental phenomena are not identical to brain phenomena on your view. So what tangible or addressed-by-physics thing, aside from the brain, is mentality, exactly on your view?

[Steve3007]

Wait--so first, you know that GE Morton explicitly gave two different senses of the term "physical," right?

More recently, to GE Morton:

Yet you use "physical" somewhere between the colloquial "tangible/visible with the naked eye" etc. and "addressed by the scientific discipline of physics"

So those are the two different senses you were referring to? Don't you think the latter can be seen as a more formal and structured version of the former? Particularly if we broaden "physics" to something like "the physical sciences".

[Terrapin Station]

So those are the two different senses you were referring to?

Yes. He explicitly stated them in an earlier post. (And why didn't you ask when I first mentioned it?)

Don't you think the latter can be seen as a more formal and structured version of the former?

Not really. The former is kind of a "medium-sized dry goods (that I can interact with)" idea, which isn't really what physics is about. The colloquial notion is probably related to the scientific discipline in some way, but it would be a serious misunderstanding of it.

[GE Morton]

OK, here are the problems as I see them then.

As you agree neural correlation holds, then you're still stuck with the Hard Problem. Positing that experience is some kind of 'field' science can't account for, has no more explanatory value than positing it is some kind of 'perspective', or any other monist substance materialist 'What If'.

Consciousness is not a field; but it is somewhat analogous to one, inasmuch as it is an intangible, invisible effect of a physical process. But an EM field is an hypothetical construct, invented by us to explain certain empirically observable phenomena, while conscious phenomena are directly apprehensible --- but only by the experiencing agent.

And I think we've covered the Hard Problem. That problem is "hard" because it involves private phenomena not accessible to third parties, which renders scientific method useless for characterizing and analyzing them. We'll never be able to "account for" those phenomena analytically, i.e., reductively, which would allow us to predict the particular qualities of those phenomena from a known state of the physical system producing them. But we can predict that physical systems of a certain design will manifest those effects --- insofar as the behavior of the system indicates their presence. That is as much explanation as we're ever going to get.

You're still stuck with addressing Over Determinism too, like all monist materialist positions. If neural correlation holds, and neurons are affected by physical causality just like any other physical stuff, then experiential states are redundant, and there would be no evolutionary pressure for them to arise. When in reality, they look honed for evolutionary utility.

The problem with that position is that experiential states are --- obviously --- not redundant. They instigate most human behavior. Did not a desire on your part instigate your above comments? That certain brain states were also involved is a theory, a conceptual construct, which is another phenomenal artifact. That argument against epiphenomenalism rests on an assumption that phenomenal states and events imply the existence of another kind of "basic stuff" which, not being reducible to physical "stuff," cannot affect it, and is thus superfluous. But that implication is gratuitous; the subjectivity of phenomenal effects does not entail that they must be of a different kind of non-physical "stuff." They are just a different kind of effect. That they are only produced (as far as we know) by physical systems is ample warrant for considering them physical effects.

Nor do those effects arise independently from the physical systems producing them, any more than the negative charge on an electron arises separately from the electron. So they don't need an independent evolutionary justification. All that needs to be justified in evolutionary terms is the system as a whole, and the evidence is pretty strong that those effects confer some survival and reproductive utility on systems that manifest them.

You have an additional problem not just with explaining the generation of the 'experiential field', but with the way this field feeds back info/instructions to the physical brain systems.

Again, you seem to be considering a reductive explanation to be the only acceptable type of explanation. But for the reasons given that is impossible. So we either settle for another explanatory avenue that is empirically testable, or we retreat to magic.

And we'd expect to be able to locate the homunculus brain system which activates any time a person is conscious, with neural connections centring there.

That is premature. I agree there must be some brain subsystem corresponding to the "homunculus," but how that system is distributed/constituted is unknown (at least by me).

Testing - there is no way to test your preferred 'What If' against others.

But there is. We can try to construct artificial systems designed as suggested by the theory and observe whether they behave in ways that convince us that they are conscious --- behaviors that we take to signify consciousness in people and other animals.

[Steve3007]

Not really. The former is kind of a "medium-sized dry goods (that I can interact with)" idea, which isn't really what physics is about.

I don't know what you mean by that.

The colloquial notion is probably related to the scientific discipline in some way, but it would be a serious misunderstanding of it.

OK. I disagree,

[Terrapin Station]

Not really. The former is kind of a "medium-sized dry goods (that I can interact with)" idea, which isn't really what physics is about.

I don't know what you mean by that.

The colloquial notion is probably related to the scientific discipline in some way, but it would be a serious misunderstanding of it.

OK. I disagree,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_goods

Physics posits many things that are not tangible, visible, etc. in the colloquial sense. It in no way hinges on the colloquial tangibility idea.

[GE Morton]

Physics posits many things that are not tangible, visible, etc. in the colloquial sense. It in no way hinges on the colloquial tangibility idea.

"Tangible" in the colloquial sense is to be understood as "detectable by the senses." E.g., air is tangible. Physics extends that to "detectable by some empirical method," such as with instruments. But it also postulates entities not detectable by any method, e.g., gluons, superstrings, virtual particles, etc., all of which are nonetheless "physical entities."

[Atla]

air is tangible

How much more surreal can this discussion get?

[Steve3007]

"Tangible" in the colloquial sense is to be understood as "detectable by the senses." E.g., air is tangible. Physics extends that to "detectable by some empirical method," such as with instruments.

Yes. Physics is a formalization of what we do every day: making sense of the world, in such a way as to be able to create models of what it's going to do next, by observing it. i.e. by the use of sensory equipment connected to recording equipment and apparatus for analyzing the recorded data to look for patterns. That could mean just eyes and a brain or it could mean a whole range of other equipment.

But it also postulates entities not detectable by any method, e.g., gluons, superstrings, virtual particles, etc., all of which are nonetheless "physical entities."

Well, this is where the question starts as to what it is that physics (and, analogously, everyday working-stuff-out experience) proposes to exist extra-mentally, in the real world, and what it creates as an abstract model in order to try to describe and predict those things which exist extra-mentally.

You list some entities that you say are not detectable by any method. But clearly, in order to propose their existence, physicists must be proposing a system, into which those entities are proposed to fit, whose verification or falsification depends on empirical observation. If you say that these proposed entities are not detectable by any method, what exactly does it mean to detect something? What entities do you regard as detectable and why?

If a physicist notices a beam of green light in a cathode ray tube, he's apt to say that he's detected electrons flowing between the cathode and the anode. Has he? Or has he just detected glowing green gas? Similarly if he sees a line of ionized gas particles in a cloud chamber, designed to detect ionizing radiation. Can the electron, or the ionizing radiation, be said to exist or is it part of a mental model that we create in order to describe and predict the behaviours of things that we've decided do exist? Does it actually matter?

[Gertie]

GE

OK, here are the problems as I see them then.

As you agree neural correlation holds, then you're still stuck with the Hard Problem. Positing that experience is some kind of 'field' science can't account for, has no more explanatory value than positing it is some kind of 'perspective', or any other monist substance materialist 'What If'.

Consciousness is not a field; but it is somewhat analogous to one, inasmuch as it is an intangible, invisible effect of a physical process. But an EM field is an hypothetical construct, invented by us to explain certain empirically observable phenomena, while conscious phenomena are directly apprehensible --- but only by the experiencing agent.

And I think we've covered the Hard Problem. That problem is "hard" because it involves private phenomena not accessible to third parties, which renders scientific method useless for characterizing and analyzing them. We'll never be able to "account for" those phenomena analytically, i.e., reductively, which would allow us to predict the particular qualities of those phenomena from a known state of the physical system producing them. But we can predict that physical systems of a certain design will manifest those effects --- insofar as the behavior of the system indicates their presence. That is as much explanation as we're ever going to get.

As I said your What If is still stuck with the Hard Problem. If that is as much explanation as we're ever going to get, then accept the consequences. Your 'predictions' are just guesses. And the results are not reliably testable. And even if they were you couldn't know if your What If is the reason the guessed prediction is correct.

You're still stuck with addressing Over Determinism too, like all monist materialist positions. If neural correlation holds, and neurons are affected by physical causality just like any other physical stuff, then experiential states are redundant, and there would be no evolutionary pressure for them to arise. When in reality, they look honed for evolutionary utility.

The problem with that position is that experiential states are --- obviously --- not redundant. They instigate most human behavior. Did not a desire on your part instigate your above comments? That certain brain states were also involved is a theory, a conceptual construct, which is another phenomenal artifact. That argument against epiphenomenalism rests on an assumption that phenomenal states and events imply the existence of another kind of "basic stuff" which, not being reducible to physical "stuff," cannot affect it, and is thus superfluous. But that implication is gratuitous; the subjectivity of phenomenal effects does not entail that they must be of a different kind of non-physical "stuff." They are just a different kind of effect. That they are only produced (as far as we know) by physical systems is ample warrant for considering them physical effects.

Nor do those effects arise independently from the physical systems producing them, any more than the negative charge on an electron arises separately from the electron. So they don't need an independent evolutionary justification. All that needs to be justified in evolutionary terms is the system as a whole, and the evidence is pretty strong that those effects confer some survival and reproductive utility on systems that manifest them.

You haven't answered the objection - If neural correlation holds, and neurons are affected by physical causality just like any other physical stuff, then experiential states are redundant, and there would be no evolutionary pressure for them to arise. When in reality, they look honed for evolutionary utility.

You have an additional problem not just with explaining the generation of the 'experiential field', but with the way this field feeds back info/instructions to the physical brain systems.

Again, you seem to be considering a reductive explanation to be the only acceptable type of explanation. But for the reasons given that is impossible. So we either settle for another explanatory avenue that is empirically testable, or we retreat to magic.

Again, your preferred What If isn't reliably testable, because experience isn't third person observable, and you don't provide an explanation which gives us something which might be - like specific necessary and sufficient conditions. Copying something isn't explanatory. And while it might at least in principle (if it was reliably testable) rule out some What Ifs, it won't identify THE correct one.

And we'd expect to be able to locate the homunculus brain system which activates any time a person is conscious, with neural connections centring there.

That is premature. I agree there must be some brain subsystem corresponding to the "homunculus," but how that system is distributed/constituted is unknown (at least by me).

Then you're just defining whatever mechanism results in a sense of being an 'Experiencer-Self' in humans as a homunculus. This isn't how the term is used.

Testing - there is no way to test your preferred 'What If' against others.

But there is. We can try to construct artificial systems designed as suggested by the theory and observe whether they behave in ways that convince us that they are conscious --- behaviors that we take to signify consciousness in people and other animals.

If we constructed a machine we were convinced was experiencing based on similarity to humans, we wouldn't know what particular key aspect of similarity (nec and sufficient conditions) we'd captured. So we wouldn't know if it proved your What If, or Identity Theory or Panpsychism, or something we hadn't thought of.


So my objections remain. If you simply took the position that you accept them, but think your What If is the best bet because... this or that, I'd say fair enough. But you hand wave real problems the same way others with different preferences do. Fair play for actually having thought your position through and being able to defend it in detail, but there's really nothing wrong in saying We Don't Know, when we don't know.

[Gertie]

Steve

Can the electron, or the ionizing radiation, be said to exist or is it part of a mental model that we create in order to describe and predict the behaviours of things that we've decided do exist? Does it actually matter?

That's an interesting question.

[Terrapin Station]

Physics posits many things that are not tangible, visible, etc. in the colloquial sense. It in no way hinges on the colloquial tangibility idea.

"Tangible" in the colloquial sense is to be understood as "detectable by the senses." E.g., air is tangible. Physics extends that to "detectable by some empirical method," such as with instruments. But it also postulates entities not detectable by any method, e.g., gluons, superstrings, virtual particles, etc., all of which are nonetheless "physical entities."

So were you agreeing or disagreeing with me?

[Terrapin Station]

Yes. Physics is a formalization of what we do every day: making sense of the world, in such a way as to be able to create models of what it's going to do next, by observing it. i.e. by the use of sensory equipment connected to recording equipment and apparatus for analyzing the recorded data to look for patterns. That could mean just eyes and a brain or it could mean a whole range of other equipment.

Not what "tangible" refers to in the colloquial "medium-sized-dry-goods-that-I-can-interact-with" sense.

[GE Morton]

You list some entities that you say are not detectable by any method. But clearly, in order to propose their existence, physicists must be proposing a system, into which those entities are proposed to fit, whose verification or falsification depends on empirical observation. If you say that these proposed entities are not detectable by any method, what exactly does it mean to detect something? What entities do you regard as detectable and why?

If a physicist notices a beam of green light in a cathode ray tube, he's apt to say that he's detected electrons flowing between the cathode and the anode. Has he? Or has he just detected glowing green gas? Similarly if he sees a line of ionized gas particles in a cloud chamber, designed to detect ionizing radiation. Can the electron, or the ionizing radiation, be said to exist or is it part of a mental model that we create in order to describe and predict the behaviours of things that we've decided do exist? Does it actually matter?

It only matters conceptually, philosophically. If a postulated entity (particle, field, force, etc.) allows us to reliably predict future experience, then it exists. That is the only criterion for the existence of anything, from the elm tree in my backyard to superstrings (not to mention all the myriad abstract entities and phenomena we talk about every day). They exist if postulating them allows us to anticipate future experience or communicate actionable information to someone.

Most ontologies are futile efforts to gain some sort of transcendental knowledge, to identify the "basic stuff" of the universe, on the assumption that there is some "way things really are." They presume to describe Kant's noumenon.

But practical ontology --- the "reality" we experience and talk about --- is dynamic and utilitarian. "To be is to be perceived" must be replaced with, "To be is to be useful."

If electrons enable us to predict what will happen --- what we will observe or otherwise experience --- when we apply a voltage to a cathode, then they exist. If gluons help us predict what will happen when we bombard a proton with electrons in a particle accelerator, then gluons exist. If the elm tree postulate allows me to predict that if I walk in a certain direction I will be impeded by an immovable object having a certain appearance, then the tree exists. Etc.

[GE Morton]

Yes; Dennett et al would so claim.

Not just Dennett, but anyone committed to a non-dualist, non-supernatural model of consciousness, which you seemed to do when you earlier agreed that of course mental phenomena are just physical phenomena. Physical phenomena are only caused by other physical phenomena. There is no such thing as a mental event that is somehow physical but not a brain event.

Well, that is question-begging. Yes, mental events are caused by brain events. But that doesn't entail that they are brain events. You are assuming that brain events can only cause other brain events (or perhaps other "physical" events). The empirical evidence suggests otherwise --- namely, that some physical events can cause mental events. Which are "physical events" in the philosophical, theoretical sense, but not the colloquial sense (as discussed earlier).

If we can distinguish between a mental phenomenon (such as the sensation I experience when beholding a red square) and the activities of a group of neurons observable as EKG traces or under a microscope, then they are obviously not identical. All I can can conclude is that there is a causal relation between them.

A. What everyone agrees exists and needs to be explained (mental phenomenon, subjective experience, whatever you want to call them). As you say, that these exist is something that no one can deny or wants to deny. Dennett, for instance, does not deny them and can only be characterized as having done so by deliberately ignoring his actual words.

Well, here are (some of) Dennett's own words:

"My claim, then, is not just that the various technical or theoretical concepts of qualia are vague or equivocal, but that the source concept, the 'pretheoretical' notion of which the former are presumed to be refinements, is so thoroughly confused that even if we undertook to salvage some 'lowest common denominator' from the theoreticians' proposals, any acceptable version would have to be so radically unlike the ill-formed notions that are commonly appealed to that it would be tactically obtuse--not to say Pickwickian--to cling to the term. Far better, tactically, to declare that there simply are no qualia at all. (Endnote 2).

Endnote 2: "The difference between 'eliminative materialism'--of which my position on qualia is an instance [italics added] --and a "reductive" materialism that takes on the burden of identifying the problematic item in terms of the foundational materialistic theory is thus often best seen not so much as a doctrinal issue as a tactical issue: how might we most gracefully or effectively enlighten the confused in this instance?"

---Dennett, "Quining Qualia":

https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/p ... inqual.htm

B. One’s theoretical or ideological commitments to how the elements in A are best characterized and explained. One never establishes the reality of such commitments by claiming they cannot be denied. One establishes such commitments by making reasoned, evidence based arguments showing they are better than the alternatives.

Well, I agree. But the existence of qualia (and other mental phenomena) are not products or consequences of any theoretical or ideological commitments. Quite the contrary --- they are primal, the raw materials from which all theoretical speculations and postulated entities and processes, including brain states and neural processes, begins. We can only undertake analysis of an elm tree, or brains, if we have some percepts, comprised of some concatenation of qualia, that informs us of something in need of analysis. We can't "explain" qualia by denying them, or gratiuitously identifying them with something from which they are easily distinguishable.

If mental events are physical events, which you earlier committed to, they can only be brain processes.

THAT, my friend, is a "theoretical or ideological commitment." A dogma, and an indefensible one.

There is literally no available alternative consistent with established cognitive neuroscience . . .

It is only inconsistent with a certain narrow construal of the scope of cognitive science.

Not even remotely, not by a zillion light years, is this statement true. Scientific theories are not logical theorems.

True. But they are mental phenomena.