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

[Terrapin Station]

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.

Again, it's simply a perspectival difference. We distinguish between perspectival differences all the time without having difficulty realizing that they're perspectival differences of something identical. We shouldn't have such difficulty with it in this case.

[GE Morton]

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.

Again, it's simply a perspectival difference. We distinguish between perspectival differences all the time without having difficulty realizing that they're perspectival differences of something identical. We shouldn't have such difficulty with it in this case.

I think we've covered this. You can't attribute apparent differences between two percepts as "perspectival differences" unless you already know, or are assuming, that the two percepts are of the same thing. I.e., you can't use those differences to argue for their being the same thing. That explanation begs the question. Moreover, the appearance of a thing from a given perspective can always be transformed into the view from another perspective via a simple algorithm. That obviously can't be done with the percepts of a red square and an EKG record. Those two percepts have nothing in common.

[Terrapin Station]

Moreover, the appearance of a thing from a given perspective can always be transformed into the view from another perspective via a simple algorithm.

Re this, which you've mentioned a number of times, can you give any aspect of any algorithm that amounts to any quality (property) in any manner?

[Terrapin Station]

I should have clarified re the question above, I'm asking you to give me an example. Give me an example of an algorithm or even just an part of any algorithm that would amount to any quality (that is, any property that's not simply something like the "two" part of "two horns"). So list the algorithm or part of the algorithm and list the quality it's supposed to amount to.

[GE Morton]

I should have clarified re the question above, I'm asking you to give me an example. Give me an example of an algorithm or even just an part of any algorithm that would amount to any quality (that is, any property that's not simply something like the "two" part of "two horns"). So list the algorithm or part of the algorithm and list the quality it's supposed to amount to.

"Algorithm that would amount to any quality"? I have no idea what you're asking. Algorithms don't "amount to qualities." They are mathematical operations to map one set of entities onto another set. We can transform the view from a given point of a given 3-dimensional object into the view from any other viewpoint by rotating the object through the three dimensions by amount in each dimension equal to the differences between the viewpoints. The properties of the object don't change in that process.

But we can't explain the apparent differences between, say, a mouse and an elephant as "differences in perspective." There is no algorithm that will map one onto the other without altering their properties.

[Terrapin Station]

I should have clarified re the question above, I'm asking you to give me an example. Give me an example of an algorithm or even just an part of any algorithm that would amount to any quality (that is, any property that's not simply something like the "two" part of "two horns"). So list the algorithm or part of the algorithm and list the quality it's supposed to amount to.

"Algorithm that would amount to any quality"? I have no idea what you're asking. Algorithms don't "amount to qualities." They are mathematical operations to map one set of entities onto another set. We can transform the view from a given point of a given 3-dimensional object into the view from any other viewpoint by rotating the object through the three dimensions by amount in each dimension equal to the differences between the viewpoints. The properties of the object don't change in that process.

But we can't explain the apparent differences between, say, a mouse and an elephant as "differences in perspective." There is no algorithm that will map one onto the other without altering their properties.

The topic is property differences due to perspectival differences. Are you or are you not claiming that algorithms can somehow translate to these property differences due to perspectival differences?

[GE Morton]

The topic is property differences due to perspectival differences. Are you or are you not claiming that algorithms can somehow translate to these property differences due to perspectival differences?

The properties of the object viewed do not change with changes in perspective. They are constant throughout all changes in viewpoint. If the apparent properties of one object cannot be transformed into the apparent properties from another viewpoint with a simple algorithm then the percepts are of different objects, not one object viewed from different perspectives.

[Faustus5]

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).

That is not an assumption, it is me paying strict attention to the evidence that actually exists without unjustified spin.

E Morton" post_id=368664 time=1601780659 user_id=47101]The empirical evidence suggests otherwise --- namely, that some physical events can cause mental events.

There is no evidence whatsoever that brain events cause further physical events that are mental events but not brain events. If I am wrong, please cite an example from the peer reviewed scientific literature.

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.

It is not obvious at all that they are not identical, otherwise there would not be an abundance of scientists and philosophers who do think they are, in fact, identical. Talk about ACTUAL question begging, here.

All I can can conclude is that there is a causal relation between them.

Then you should embrace the dualism that is fundamentally at the heart of the way you see consciousness, and stop trying to deny it. There is no documented case anywhere of brain events causing anything other than other brain or nervous system events. You can't call mental events physical events (but not brain events) unless you can point to exactly what measurable particles carry them that aren't part of the brain. They can't be physical if they are not addressed or addressable by physics.

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

You're doing exactly what all dishonest scholars of his work do--cherry picking what looks convenient and ignoring what goes directly against the misrepresentation you are trying to push. Very early on in one of the papers you cite ("Quining Qualia"), he says, in plain English:

"Everything real has properties, and since I don't deny the reality of conscious experience, I grant that conscious experience has properties. "

So there you go. He believes in the reality of conscious experiences, he just thinks the way folks like you theorize about them is misguided.

But the existence of qualia (and other mental phenomena) are not products or consequences of any theoretical or ideological commitments.

That is exactly what qualia are. Otherwise, there would not be philosophers and scientists who deny that they exist while being perfectly happy to acknowledge that mental states are real. You don't get to assume you side has won the debate until the debate is over, and that will only happen when there is a consensus in the community that qualia are real and not an ideological invention. That will never happen if the best you can do is just stamp your feet and insist they are "obviously" real.

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

If it is dogma to insist on sticking to what has actually been measured and verified in mainstream cognitive science, then you've just made "dogma" into a scientific virtue I'm more than happy to embrace.

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

Feel free be the revolutionary pioneer who transforms what cognitive science is. Step one: find out a way to articulate how mental event can be a physical state that is not also a brain state and then verify it experimentally. Good luck with that!

[Terrapin Station]

The topic is property differences due to perspectival differences. Are you or are you not claiming that algorithms can somehow translate to these property differences due to perspectival differences?

The properties of the object viewed do not change with changes in perspective. They are constant throughout all changes in viewpoint. If the apparent properties of one object cannot be transformed into the apparent properties from another viewpoint with a simple algorithm then the percepts are of different objects, not one object viewed from different perspectives.

And the example of an algorithm capturing any property?

[Gertie]

Faustus

You say phenomenal experience/mental states are real, but qualia aren't.

So can you explain what mental states you believe are real. and why?

And how Dennett would answer the same question?

Simply and clearly, avoiding ambiguity as much as possible.

[GE Morton]

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.

Well, all predictions can be called "guesses," I suppose. But there are good guesses and bad ones. What distinguishes them is that the former are confirmed by observation. And they are reliably testable --- either the system displays the predicted behaviors or it doesn't. If it does, then the prediction was correct, and for the reasons set forth in the theory, at least until another theory comes along, offering different reasons, that makes even more correct predictions. There is no way to assess the "correctness" of any theory other than the reliability of the predictions it makes.

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.

The above quote does answer that, Gertie. There doesn't need to be any evolutionary pressure for experiential states to "arise." There only needs to be evolutionary pressure for systems to arise which have survival advantages. Certain kinds of systems happened to have that property, which proved to confer some survival advantage. That is true of all traits which confer some survival advantage. Various traits appear in populations at random, for physical reasons. Some confer survival advantages in a given environment, some disadvantages, some neither. Cheetahs, almost alone among cats, don't have retractable claws. There was no evolutionary pressure for that trait to appear in some ancestor population. But it did appear, due to some random genetic variant, and happened to confer an advantage on cats in a certain environmental milieu (in other environments it would be a disadvantage). Biological traits appear at random, due to some random alteration in a DNA sequence somewhere. Whether a trait confers a survival advantage can only be assessed after it appears. There is no "pressure" for any particular trait to arise.

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.

THE correct one?

I've given you a methodology for determining whether an hypothesis, or theory, is "correct." You can't speak of "THE correct one," unless you have some methodology in mind for discovering it. The correct theory or explanation will always be, and can only be, the one which generates the most most reliable predictions. Asking how things "really are" in some transcendental sense, "from God's point of view," is a vacuous exercise. Meaningless.

No, I can't give the specific necessary and sufficient conditions for a physical system to manifest consciousness. We know that they exist, however, since we have physical systems that do manifest that property. Whether we can fully elucidate them remains to be seen; we will know when we have succeeded when we have constructed a system whose behavior warrants calling it "conscious." We'll then impute phenomenal states to it, just as we do when we deem certain animals (and other humans) to be conscious.

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.

How do you think it is used? How do you understand it?

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.

Behaviors we deem sufficient for imputing consciousness to other humans IS the sufficient condition, the only one we have, being unable (as third parties) to observe those internal states directly. That is the only similarity empirically accessible. We can't ask whether the machine's experiences are similar to ours; I can't even ask whether your phenomenal experiences are similar to mine. Those are unanswerable questions.

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.

I'm saying more than that --- not only do we not know precisely how phenomenal states are generated by physical systems, or whether a machine's (imputed) phenomenal states, or yours, are similar to mine, we can never know that --- because those states are not available for analysis by scientific methods and are not derivable from known scientific laws. They are, however, found only in connection with certain physical systems, which warrants considering them physical effects. We can rule out identity theories because phenomenal states are obviously not identical to brain states, per the common definitions of "identical." We can rule out panpsychism on Popperian grounds --- because it imputes a property to things which is in principle unconfirmable and unfalsifiable, to things which exhibit no behaviors that warrant imputing that property, and those behaviors are the only warrant we have for imputing it to anything.

[GE Morton]

And the example of an algorithm capturing any property?

I have no idea what you mean by an algorithm "capturing a property." They don't "capture" anything. An algorithm is a systematic method of transforming one set of apparent properties into a another set of apparent properties, particularly shapes and other apparent spatio-temporal properties.

[Gertie]

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.

Well, all predictions can be called "guesses," I suppose. But there are good guesses and bad ones. What distinguishes them is that the former are confirmed by observation. And they are reliably testable --- either the system displays the predicted behaviors or it doesn't. If it does, then the prediction was correct, and for the reasons set forth in the theory, at least until another theory comes along, offering different reasons, that makes even more correct predictions. There is no way to assess the "correctness" of any theory other than the reliability of the predictions it makes.

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.

The above quote does answer that, Gertie. There doesn't need to be any evolutionary pressure for experiential states to "arise." There only needs to be evolutionary pressure for systems to arise which have survival advantages. Certain kinds of systems happened to have that property, which proved to confer some survival advantage. That is true of all traits which confer some survival advantage. Various traits appear in populations at random, for physical reasons. Some confer survival advantages in a given environment, some disadvantages, some neither. Cheetahs, almost alone among cats, don't have retractable claws. There was no evolutionary pressure for that trait to appear in some ancestor population. But it did appear, due to some random genetic variant, and happened to confer an advantage on cats in a certain environmental milieu (in other environments it would be a disadvantage). Biological traits appear at random, due to some random alteration in a DNA sequence somewhere. Whether a trait confers a survival advantage can only be assessed after it appears. There is no "pressure" for any particular trait to arise.

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.

THE correct one?

I've given you a methodology for determining whether an hypothesis, or theory, is "correct." You can't speak of "THE correct one," unless you have some methodology in mind for discovering it. The correct theory or explanation will always be, and can only be, the one which generates the most most reliable predictions. Asking how things "really are" in some transcendental sense, "from God's point of view," is a vacuous exercise. Meaningless.

No, I can't give the specific necessary and sufficient conditions for a physical system to manifest consciousness. We know that they exist, however, since we have physical systems that do manifest that property. Whether we can fully elucidate them remains to be seen; we will know when we have succeeded when we have constructed a system whose behavior warrants calling it "conscious." We'll then impute phenomenal states to it, just as we do when we deem certain animals (and other humans) to be conscious.

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.

How do you think it is used? How do you understand it?

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.

Behaviors we deem sufficient for imputing consciousness to other humans IS the sufficient condition, the only one we have, being unable (as third parties) to observe those internal states directly. That is the only similarity empirically accessible. We can't ask whether the machine's experiences are similar to ours; I can't even ask whether your phenomenal experiences are similar to mine. Those are unanswerable questions.

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.

I'm saying more than that --- not only do we not know precisely how phenomenal states are generated by physical systems, or whether a machine's (imputed) phenomenal states, or yours, are similar to mine, we can never know that --- because those states are not available for analysis by scientific methods and are not derivable from known scientific laws. They are, however, found only in connection with certain physical systems, which warrants considering them physical effects. We can rule out identity theories because phenomenal states are obviously not identical to brain states, per the common definitions of "identical." We can rule out panpsychism on Popperian grounds --- because it imputes a property to things which is in principle unconfirmable and unfalsifiable, to things which exhibit no behaviors that warrant imputing that property, and those behaviors are the only warrant we have for imputing it to anything.

We're not going to agree on these points so I'll leave it there. Your What If might be right, but there are good reasons that there's no consensus on a Theory of Consciousness, no matter how convinced people are that their contradictory preferences are the obvious answer.

[Steve3007]

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

I'll guess that when you keep talking about "medium sized dry goods", you mean phenomena that occur on human scales of distance and time and which are detected directly without the use of apparatus other than those we already have. I think the distinction between that and other phenomena is irrelevant for the purpose of defining "physical", which was what this was about. There are plenty of "medium sized dry goods" that physics deals with and has dealt with.

I'm still interested in this:
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viewtopic.php?p=367770#p367770
viewtopic.php?p=367801#p367801
viewtopic.php?p=367823#p367823

You said you define physical simply to mean the same thing as matter and its associated relations and processes. I pointed out that that simply shifts the issue onto providing a useful definition of "material". Your answer was the rhetorical question beginning:

Is the idea here that we're dealing with someone who has no grasp at all re what "physical" might refer to, so we need to find a synonymous phrase that they might have a grasp of, where we are dealing with someone who also has no grasp of what "material," "relations" etc. refers to?

As I said, it appears to me that your answer is that it should be obvious to anyone with any life experience what words like "physical" and "material" refer to. So I'll ask again:

How have they gained a grasp of what those terms refer to?

By a lifetime of sensory experiences and processing those experiences, yes?

[Steve3007]

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.

Yes, I essentially agree with this definition of existence. I think one thing that it reminds us is that the entities we regard as existing can change as a result of new experiences/sensations/experiments. Clearly this has in fact happened over time. For example, it was once thought that there was an existent substance called "caloric", which flowed through bodies and which was responsible for heat conduction. The luminiferous aether is another well known example.

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.

It appears to me, on evidence so far, that this is a problem that Terrapin Station has: the desire to construct an ontology without acknowledging the sensory experiences that are used to decide which things to include in that ontology. Personally, I have no problem with people saying that there is a "way things really are", but it becomes a problem when they seem to disconnect that from "the way things appear to be" and think that anyone who acknowledges that connection is guilty of thinking that " everything is about epistemology" or "everything is about us".

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."

I agree, but I think that in saying "to be is to be useful" you will be accused of thinking that "everything is about us".

The question that then follows is the old one about whether the laws of physics (and the everyday regularities that we notice as a result of living in the world and which we use to get through the day, of which the laws of physics are more formal versions) are created or discovered. Those who prefer to think that there is a "way things really are" will presumably tend to prefer the story that there is a real set of regularities towards which the laws of physics we create are striving. They will presumably tend to think that regardless of which things (such as electrons and elm trees) we find it useful to see as existing on current empirical evidence, there is an objective answer to the question of what really exists towards which we are also striving.