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

[Consul]

A mindless experience, of course, would be hardly memorable. I am not convinced that so called "unconscious processes" are entirely unconscious. I think there are sensations being registered, just that they are akin to the sound of a pin dropping amid the "pneumatic drills" that are human minds. So we assume unconsciousness. The situation is akin to not seeing asteroids in other solar systems because the star is so dominant.

The phrase "unconscious process" is ambiguous between "nonexperiential process" and "experiential process of which its subject is not conscious" ("uncognized/unperceived experiential process"). According to first-order theories of consciousness, subjects needn't be conscious (aware) of their experiences in order to have or undergo them. According to higher-order theories of consciousness, there can be no experiences without any consciousness (awareness) of them; so totally uncognized/unperceived experiences are non-experiences.

I had believed for a long time that nonconscious experiences (ones of which their subjects aren't conscious) are still real experiences, but I changed my mind (owing to the influence of experts): An experience which is not mentally apperceived or apprehended in any way is no different from a nonexperience. The mental apperception or apprehension of one's experiences requires attention and (short-term/working) memory.

Interesting quote. The brain fills in countless gaps in our sensory perceptions, while ultimately ignoring most inputs. However, I expect that human consciousness is vastly more consistent than that of simpler organisms.

When we introspect our consciousness, it seems to be a continuous field or stream of experiences. Does its apparent continuity and unity reflect its real essence (constitution)?

One problem here is that many argue that the appearance/reality distinction cannot coherently be applied to consciousness/experience itself, because introspection is unlike sensory perception: We are not introspectively aware of our consciousness/experience through the medium of sensations that makes perceptual illusions and even hallucinations possible; so when consciousness/experience introspectively seems so-and-so, then it is so-and-so. Whether this is true is a hotly debated issue in the philosophy of mind. (I'll stop here, because it's off-topic.)

"Human consciousness usually displays a striking unity. When one experiences a noise and, say, a pain, one is not conscious of the noise and then, separately, of the pain. One is conscious of the noise and pain together, as aspects of a single conscious experience. Since at least the time of Immanuel Kant (1781/7), this phenomenon has been called the unity of consciousness. More generally, it is consciousness not of A and, separately, of B and, separately, of C, but of A-and-B-and-C together, as the contents of a single conscious state."

The Unity of Consciousness: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-unity/

However, we cannot experience touch, vision or sound without our noisy brain mediating everything. Meditators try to dampen this effect but they are aware that emptying one's mind 100% is impossible. As I say, I think humans interpret minimal consciousness as zero due to the relativities, like trying to see an asteroid orbiting a distant star.

My contention is that even minimal P-consciousness requires a cognitive apparatus capable of accessing and processing (operating on) it (its experiential content). I also maintain that such an apparatus can only be physiologically realized by a CNS.

[Consul]

I had believed for a long time that nonconscious experiences (ones of which their subjects aren't conscious) are still real experiences, but I changed my mind (owing to the influence of experts): An experience which is not mentally apperceived or apprehended in any way is no different from a nonexperience. The mental apperception or apprehension of one's experiences requires attention and (short-term/working) memory.

Note that I'm not saying that experiences depend for their being on being objects of deliberate, intentional, voluntary acts of cogitation or introspection.

QUOTE>
"Introspection can be something we deliberately do; it can be an act of ours: turning our gaze into our breasts as Hume puts it. It is then like, say, looking deliberately around a room. But deliberately introspecting is rather a sophisticated thing to do. We may contrast it with mere introspective awareness, where we simply become aware of some current mental content, in the same sort of way that, in vision, we become aware that something or other is before us. Introspective awareness can be of a very 'reflex' sort. The introspecting mechanism, whatever it is, does no more than keep a watching brief on our own current mental contents, but without making much of a deal about it."

(Armstrong, D. M. The Mind-Body Problem: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999. pp. 114-5)
<QUOTE

[Belindi]

Consul wrote:

My contention is that even minimal P-consciousness requires a cognitive apparatus capable of accessing and processing (operating on) it (its experiential content). I also maintain that such an apparatus can only be physiologically realized by a CNS.

Don't you think that consciousness(i.e. mind) is the ground of existence, and material(physical) concepts such as the CNS are subsumed in consciousness(mind)?

[Consul]

Don't you think that consciousness(i.e. mind) is the ground of existence, and material(physical) concepts such as the CNS are subsumed in consciousness(mind)?

No, I don't think so, because I'm a materialist and not a spiritualist about fundamental reality.

Of course, physical concepts qua mental representations are part of the mind; but physical objects and the physical universe aren't concepts or ideas in minds, let alone in the minds of immaterial spirits.

[Sy Borg]

A mindless experience, of course, would be hardly memorable. I am not convinced that so called "unconscious processes" are entirely unconscious. I think there are sensations being registered, just that they are akin to the sound of a pin dropping amid the "pneumatic drills" that are human minds. So we assume unconsciousness. The situation is akin to not seeing asteroids in other solar systems because the star is so dominant.

The phrase "unconscious process" is ambiguous between "nonexperiential process" and "experiential process of which its subject is not conscious" ("uncognized/unperceived experiential process"). According to first-order theories of consciousness, subjects needn't be conscious (aware) of their experiences in order to have or undergo them. According to higher-order theories of consciousness, there can be no experiences without any consciousness (awareness) of them; so totally uncognized/unperceived experiences are non-experiences.

I had believed for a long time that nonconscious experiences (ones of which their subjects aren't conscious) are still real experiences, but I changed my mind (owing to the influence of experts): An experience which is not mentally apperceived or apprehended in any way is no different from a nonexperience. The mental apperception or apprehension of one's experiences requires attention and (short-term/working) memory.

That seems to be the case with large brained organisms.

However, this is where relativities come in. That is, to us, a non-apprehended experience is like a non-experience. However, if an organism's sensory journey through life is not consciously processed, I am not convinced that that would necessarily feel like nothing. Comparing such activity to mammalian consciousness is akin to comparing a small pebble with the Sun - it is rendered invisible.

Imagine trying to tell ancient people that organisms exist that are smaller than the eye can see. That is my angle, that the null results of research are epistemic rather than ontic.

Interesting quote. The brain fills in countless gaps in our sensory perceptions, while ultimately ignoring most inputs. However, I expect that human consciousness is vastly more consistent than that of simpler organisms.

When we introspect our consciousness, it seems to be a continuous field or stream of experiences. Does its apparent continuity and unity reflect its real essence (constitution)?

One problem here is that many argue that the appearance/reality distinction cannot coherently be applied to consciousness/experience itself, because introspection is unlike sensory perception: We are not introspectively aware of our consciousness/experience through the medium of sensations that makes perceptual illusions and even hallucinations possible; so when consciousness/experience introspectively seems so-and-so, then it is so-and-so. Whether this is true is a hotly debated issue in the philosophy of mind. (I'll stop here, because it's off-topic.)

"Human consciousness usually displays a striking unity. When one experiences a noise and, say, a pain, one is not conscious of the noise and then, separately, of the pain. One is conscious of the noise and pain together, as aspects of a single conscious experience. Since at least the time of Immanuel Kant (1781/7), this phenomenon has been called the unity of consciousness. More generally, it is consciousness not of A and, separately, of B and, separately, of C, but of A-and-B-and-C together, as the contents of a single conscious state."

The Unity of Consciousness: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-unity/

I suspect that consciousness will be found to be granular rather than indivisible, just as seems to be the case with physical reality. Consciousness is ultimately a collection of numerous tiny reflexes that bundle together to form broader responses. An analogy would be a soup made from various vegetables - it seems continuous, but sufficient technology one could isolate the molecules of the original foods.

However, we cannot experience touch, vision or sound without our noisy brain mediating everything. Meditators try to dampen this effect but they are aware that emptying one's mind 100% is impossible. As I say, I think humans interpret minimal consciousness as zero due to the relativities, like trying to see an asteroid orbiting a distant star.

My contention is that even minimal P-consciousness requires a cognitive apparatus capable of accessing and processing (operating on) it (its experiential content). I also maintain that such an apparatus can only be physiologically realized by a CNS.

Do you agree that very small things or dynamics can seem to be invisible - as if nothing at all - from the perspective of much larger things or dynamics?

[Belindi]

Don't you think that consciousness(i.e. mind) is the ground of existence, and material(physical) concepts such as the CNS are subsumed in consciousness(mind)?

No, I don't think so, because I'm a materialist and not a spiritualist about fundamental reality.

Of course, physical concepts qua mental representations are part of the mind; but physical objects and the physical universe aren't concepts or ideas in minds, let alone in the minds of immaterial spirits.

Is English your native language, Consul? I ask because a spiritualist is not the same as an idealist(in American English immaterialist).

To get back to your main point; if mind were to be subsumed in extended matter there would be a problem explaining consciousness which affects extended matter.

The natural sciences are materialistic, however quantum physics is neutral monist , as is modern psychiatry with its materialistic and mentalistic approaches working together to relieve suffering.

[Consul]

Is English your native language, Consul? I ask because a spiritualist is not the same as an idealist(in American English immaterialist).

No, I'm not a native speaker; but I know the distinction between "spiritualist"/"spiritualism" in the philosophical sense and "spiritist"/"spiritism" in the occultistic sense:

"SPIRITUALISM:
1. A system of belief or religious practice based on supposed communication with the spirits of the dead, especially through mediums.
‘Spiritism or spiritualism is the belief that the human personality survives death and can communicate with the living through a sensitive medium.’

2. Philosophy: The doctrine that the spirit exists as distinct from matter, or that spirit is the only reality."

Source: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/spiritualism

To get back to your main point; if mind were to be subsumed in extended matter there would be a problem explaining consciousness which affects extended matter.

According to materialism, consciousness is a state of matter (material systems); so I don't see what's the problem here, because there is no mysterious dualistic interactionism between matter and mind.

The natural sciences are materialistic, however quantum physics is neutral monist , as is modern psychiatry with its materialistic and mentalistic approaches working together to relieve suffering.

Empirical scientists don't have to be metaphysical materialists. For instance, being a Berkeleyan immaterialist doesn't prevent one from practicing empirical science.
Neutral monism isn't the official worldview of quantum physics. Quantum mechanics is a mathematical apparatus that can be metaphysically interpreted in various ways. Nor is neutral monism the official worldview of psychiatry or psychosomatic medicine. Neutral monism is the view that the mental and the physical are both emergent from or reducible to some neutral stuff that is in itself neither mental nor physical.

[Belindi]

Is English your native language, Consul? I ask because a spiritualist is not the same as an idealist(in American English immaterialist).

No, I'm not a native speaker; but I know the distinction between "spiritualist"/"spiritualism" in the philosophical sense and "spiritist"/"spiritism" in the occultistic sense:

"SPIRITUALISM:
1. A system of belief or religious practice based on supposed communication with the spirits of the dead, especially through mediums.
‘Spiritism or spiritualism is the belief that the human personality survives death and can communicate with the living through a sensitive medium.’

2. Philosophy: The doctrine that the spirit exists as distinct from matter, or that spirit is the only reality."

Source: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/spiritualism

To get back to your main point; if mind were to be subsumed in extended matter there would be a problem explaining consciousness which affects extended matter.

According to materialism, consciousness is a state of matter (material systems); so I don't see what's the problem here, because there is no mysterious dualistic interactionism between matter and mind.

The natural sciences are materialistic, however quantum physics is neutral monist , as is modern psychiatry with its materialistic and mentalistic approaches working together to relieve suffering.

Empirical scientists don't have to be metaphysical materialists. For instance, being a Berkeleyan immaterialist doesn't prevent one from practicing empirical science.
Neutral monism isn't the official worldview of quantum physics. Quantum mechanics is a mathematical apparatus that can be metaphysically interpreted in various ways. Nor is neutral monism the official worldview of psychiatry or psychosomatic medicine. Neutral monism is the view that the mental and the physical are both emergent from or reducible to some neutral stuff that is in itself neither mental nor physical.

But if pleasure and pain are simple matters of electrons in brains why does it matter how much pleasure of pain is felt? And it does matter how much pleasure and pain is felt. The materialist can't escape the absurdity of denying mind as something more basic to reality than an array of epiphenomena.

It is indeed mind that evaluates plants and non-living events such as mountains, crystals, works of art, religions, universities, or political ideologies.

Regarding psychiatry, if I or my loved ones had a clinical psychosis I'd be unhappy with a therapy that offered mind altering drugs but no reassurance that the sufferer's feelings of pain were understood and addressed by the clinician.

Regarding quantum physics, uncertainty is a basic problem for the materialistic determinist.

It is true that a scientist may be a Berkeleyan idealist. George Berkeley is the sceptic par excellence. For the Berkeleyan , God and His pre-existing harmony is a matter of faith that does not detract from scientific scepticism. Many philosophically aware Christians and Muslims are excellent scientists.

[Consul]

But if pleasure and pain are simple matters of electrons in brains why does it matter how much pleasure of pain is felt? And it does matter how much pleasure and pain is felt. The materialist can't escape the absurdity of denying mind as something more basic to reality than an array of epiphenomena.

Materialism can but needn't be epiphenomenalistic about experience. Reductive materialism isn't, because according to it experiences are (constituted by) nonepiphenomenal neural processes.

QUOTE>
"Related to, but not identical with, mood is the phenomenon that for any conscious state there is some degree of pleasure or unpleasure. Or rather, one might say, there is some position on a scale that includes the ordinary notions of pleasure and unpleasure. So, for any conscious experience you have, it makes sense to ask, Did you enjoy it? Was it fun? Did you have a good time, bad time, boring time, amusing time? Was it disgusting, delightful, or depressing? The pleasure/unpleasure dimension is pervasive where consciousness is concerned."

(Searle, John R. Mind: A Brief Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 141)
<QUOTE

The pleasure/unpleasure dimension is called the valence of experience = "the value associated with a stimulus as expressed on a continuum from pleasant to unpleasant or from attractive to aversive." (APA Dictionary of Psychology)

It is indeed mind that evaluates plants and non-living events such as mountains, crystals, works of art, religions, universities, or political ideologies.

It's surely minded beings who do so.

Regarding quantum physics, uncertainty is a basic problem for the materialistic determinist.

There is a deterministic quantum-physical theory—Bohmian mechanics—that can handle that problem.

It is true that a scientist may be a Berkeleyan idealist. George Berkeley is the sceptic par excellence. For the Berkeleyan , God and His pre-existing harmony is a matter of faith that does not detract from scientific scepticism. Many philosophically aware Christians and Muslims are excellent scientists.

A scientific "sceptic par excellence"? I'm anything but a Berkeley expert, but he doesn't seem to be a sceptic about scientific knowledge and scientific explanations. See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/#3.2.3

QUOTE>
"It is a famous anomaly of recent science that while an influential number of physicists, once supposed to be students of physical nature, are suggesting that only conscious experience exists, an equally influential number of psychologists, once supposed to be students of consciousness, have suggested that only physical nature exists."

(Williams, Donald Cary. "The Existence of Consciousness." In Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays, 23-40. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1966. p. 23)
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[Pattern-chaser]

Regarding psychiatry, if I or my loved ones had a clinical psychosis I'd be unhappy with a therapy that offered mind altering drugs but no reassurance that the sufferer's feelings of pain were understood and addressed by the clinician.

In my experience, so-called therapies offered to - or forced upon? - those with mental health issues are intended to benefit neurotypical society, not the patient. Neurodiverse people are not liked, or even tolerated, by society, so they are taught (forced) to behave more like neurotypical people. No thought is given to the welfare of the patient, or to helping them to deal with the social rejection that causes many (most?) of their problems. 'Therapies' include mind-altering drugs, of course, as well as things like ABA, created by the same team who invented 'gay conversion therapy'.

So I agree with your words and your sentiment. It's nice to see a more understanding viewpoint than is common.

[Pattern-chaser]

Regarding quantum physics, uncertainty is a basic problem for the materialistic determinist.

There is a deterministic quantum-physical theory—Bohmian mechanics—that can handle that problem.

I just followed your link, and found this:

In particular, when a particle is sent into a two-slit apparatus, the slit through which it passes and its location upon arrival on the photographic plate are completely determined by its initial position and wave function.

The thing is that recent experiments, running single particles through the double-slit apparatus, have found that they apparently pass through both slits, interfere with themselves, and then provide the familiar scatter pattern associated with interference. Thus, the "slit through which it passes" is not a correct or relevant observation. The particle seems to pass through both slits. That seems to show that "Bohmian mechanics" is incorrect.

[Belindi]

But if pleasure and pain are simple matters of electrons in brains why does it matter how much pleasure of pain is felt? And it does matter how much pleasure and pain is felt. The materialist can't escape the absurdity of denying mind as something more basic to reality than an array of epiphenomena.

Materialism can but needn't be epiphenomenalistic about experience. Reductive materialism isn't, because according to it experiences are (constituted by) nonepiphenomenal neural processes.

QUOTE>
"Related to, but not identical with, mood is the phenomenon that for any conscious state there is some degree of pleasure or unpleasure. Or rather, one might say, there is some position on a scale that includes the ordinary notions of pleasure and unpleasure. So, for any conscious experience you have, it makes sense to ask, Did you enjoy it? Was it fun? Did you have a good time, bad time, boring time, amusing time? Was it disgusting, delightful, or depressing? The pleasure/unpleasure dimension is pervasive where consciousness is concerned."

(Searle, John R. Mind: A Brief Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 141)
<QUOTE

The pleasure/unpleasure dimension is called the valence of experience = "the value associated with a stimulus as expressed on a continuum from pleasant to unpleasant or from attractive to aversive." (APA Dictionary of Psychology)

It is indeed mind that evaluates plants and non-living events such as mountains, crystals, works of art, religions, universities, or political ideologies.

It's surely minded beings who do so.

Regarding quantum physics, uncertainty is a basic problem for the materialistic determinist.

There is a deterministic quantum-physical theory—Bohmian mechanics—that can handle that problem.

It is true that a scientist may be a Berkeleyan idealist. George Berkeley is the sceptic par excellence. For the Berkeleyan , God and His pre-existing harmony is a matter of faith that does not detract from scientific scepticism. Many philosophically aware Christians and Muslims are excellent scientists.

A scientific "sceptic par excellence"? I'm anything but a Berkeley expert, but he doesn't seem to be a sceptic about scientific knowledge and scientific explanations. See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/#3.2.3

QUOTE>
"It is a famous anomaly of recent science that while an influential number of physicists, once supposed to be students of physical nature, are suggesting that only conscious experience exists, an equally influential number of psychologists, once supposed to be students of consciousness, have suggested that only physical nature exists."

(Williams, Donald Cary. "The Existence of Consciousness." In Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays, 23-40. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1966. p. 23)
<QUOTE

If several individuals' minds were physically, neurologically, linked, let's say by some adventurous neurosurgeon, then qualia would probably be the same for all the individual subjects. Obviously the experiment would not be ethical. As human reality stands, individuals are subjects of unique qualitative experiences. Subjectivity is so real that when a subject is asked to rate a feeling on a scale of 1-10 the reports are extremely fuzzy and say possibly more about the subject's state of stoicism than objective measurement. (Naturally the subject's stoical courage or optimism is a consideration for a clinician).

Regarding David Bohm, I like to believe that the working of nature is an ordered affair. It is many years since I read his book, and I had to skip the chapter on physics.
The result of the EPR experiment affects me so that I suspend my disbelief. However it does suit my leaning towards idealism(immaterialism) that locality is superimposed upon nature by conscious animals. I am pragmatic about plants 'deserving ' of moral status, and I prefer to claim that if we are prudent we will grant moral status to plants rather as people do who live very close to non-human nature. However we do know that 'plants' may be and often are composed of several individuals, as people know who are plagued with Japanese knotweed.

[Consul]

My contention is that even minimal P-consciousness requires a cognitive apparatus capable of accessing and processing (operating on) it (its experiential content). I also maintain that such an apparatus can only be physiologically realized by a CNS.

Do you agree that very small things or dynamics can seem to be invisible - as if nothing at all - from the perspective of much larger things or dynamics

Yes, but experiences cannot (literally) be small or large. Anyway, the only consciousness that is "visible" to me is mine, since it's the only one I have introspective access to.

Conscious processing evolved from nonconscious cognitive processing (as defined below), which requires a CNS. You cannot have consciousness without a mind, i.e. without certain cognitive abilities.

I don't know what's still experiential about an experience of which its subject isn't cognitively conscious in any way. Nonconscious, noncognized experience seems no different from nonexperience; and even if (cognitively) nonconscious experience occurs, nobody will ever be able to tell us what it's like to undergo such an experience, since verbal reports about an experience depend on the subject's (cognitive) consciousness of it.

QUOTE>
"Here, cognition will be used to refer to the ability to form representations and use them to guide behavior—as when you refer to a mental spatial map when planning a route and using the plan to drive to your destination. …[T]hese basic cognitive capacities, like outcome-dependent instrumental responses, are present in mammals and birds, but have not been demonstrated in other species."

(LeDoux, Joseph. The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains. New York: Viking, 2019. p. 34)

"If we are going to explore cognition from an evolutionary point of view, we need a precise definition of what it is. As used here, cognition will refer to processes that underlie the acquisition of knowledge by creating internal representations of external events and storing them as memories that can later be used in thinking, reminiscing, and musing, and when behaving. Its dependence on internal representations of things or events, in the absence of the external referent of the representation, is what makes cognition different from noncognitive forms of information processing. Given this definition, processes that allow behavioral responses to an immediately present stimulus are not, strictly speaking, under cognitive control. Only responses that depend on internal representations are."

(LeDoux, Joseph. The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains. New York: Viking, 2019. pp. 205-6)
<QUOTE

[Sy Borg]

My contention is that even minimal P-consciousness requires a cognitive apparatus capable of accessing and processing (operating on) it (its experiential content). I also maintain that such an apparatus can only be physiologically realized by a CNS.

Do you agree that very small things or dynamics can seem to be invisible - as if nothing at all - from the perspective of much larger things or dynamics

Yes, but experiences cannot (literally) be small or large.

What of greater or lesser intensity, range of sensory input and constancy?

[Consul]

Yes, but experiences cannot (literally) be small or large.

What of greater or lesser intensity, range of sensory input and constancy?

Such differences exist; but the crucial question concerns the capacity for any sort of experience at all, no matter how intense it is.