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

[Pattern-chaser]

There is no Evidence in Speculations. The Speculation must be proven and the Evidence must be found for any theory of Conscious Experience.

Then, judging by our current progress, you are onto a loser. Speculation? Yes, of course. "Evidence" is rather more difficult to gather. There are no 'scientific' measurements that can be made, and detached or impartial observation is next to impossible, given that the subject must be an intimate part of the investigation, or even an investigator themselves.

Conscious Experience exists; "Evidence" does not, as yet. And it seems likely that this will not change. You cannot investigate something so subjective in an objective manner, I don't think.

[SteveKlinko]

There is no Evidence in Speculations. The Speculation must be proven and the Evidence must be found for any theory of Conscious Experience.

Then, judging by our current progress, you are onto a loser. Speculation? Yes, of course. "Evidence" is rather more difficult to gather. There are no 'scientific' measurements that can be made, and detached or impartial observation is next to impossible, given that the subject must be an intimate part of the investigation, or even an investigator themselves.

Conscious Experience exists; "Evidence" does not, as yet. And it seems likely that this will not change. You cannot investigate something so subjective in an objective manner, I don't think.

What do you know about Conscious Experience that leads you to say Science will never find the Explanations for Conscious Experience. I am betting that Science will be able to Explain CE someday, but it will be with new Concepts and with new ways of thinking. CE will be made Objective in some new Scientific way.

[Papus79]

To say conscious experience can't be understood seems akin to saying that it's truly non-physical or in some sense supernatural (the later is a word that I think we butcher, and it tend to just mean whatever we don't like - I mean it here in the 'above nature' or 'above physicalism' sense, where most things people would want to call 'supernatural' I'd estimate are more in the space of the 'deep physical' or 'deep natural', such as top-down dynamics in nature being a thing). It's one thing perhaps to say that our current assumptions are so crude that we're nowhere close to making entry on a problem that doesn't care about our needs to reduce complexity, at the same time that's not at all the same as saying that we could never understand it.

[Pattern-chaser]

What do you know about Conscious Experience that leads you to say Science will never find the Explanations for Conscious Experience?

What do I know? I just told you:

There are no 'scientific' measurements that can be made, and detached or impartial observation is next to impossible, given that the subject must be an intimate part of the investigation, or even an investigator themselves.

Science cannot magically transform something subjective into something objective, any more than it can transform metal into wood. "Ye canna change the laws of physics, Captain!"

[Pattern-chaser]

To say conscious experience can't be understood seems akin to saying that it's truly non-physical or in some sense supernatural.

My guess is that it might, one day, be understood, but that understanding will not emerge from 'evidence' or scientific measurement/observation. I don't think CE can be described in that way.

[Papus79]

To say conscious experience can't be understood seems akin to saying that it's truly non-physical or in some sense supernatural.

My guess is that it might, one day, be understood, but that understanding will not emerge from 'evidence' or scientific measurement/observation. I don't think CE can be described in that way.

For us to ever feel comfortable that we've understood it - that would at least take some model where, even if we derived it through sheer mathematics or some other similar means that isn't experimental hypothesis testing, it ends up making predictions that we find to be correct.

In some sense I think it would be easiest to find an ultimate cause if we were properly in a reductive materialist paradigm, much more difficult in an absolute idealist set and setting because we'd never have anything beyond paradox (zero insight otherwise into absolute reality) to expand our theories into.

[SteveKlinko]

My speculation is as good as the Physicalist/Materialist speculation. There is Zero Explanation how the Material Produces the Conscious Experience.

Not so.
What you laughingly called a "speculation" is where all the evidence reigns.

Laughingly? I am quite serious. There is no Evidence in Speculations. The Speculation must be proven and the Evidence must be found for any theory of Conscious Experience.

Eveything you say is speculation. However the physicalist materialist theory is ALL evidence based without exception. It is definitively evidence based.
And it demonstrates and indelible and continous link between the brain and consciousness, which other theories choose to ignore.
It is a fact that consciousness is a physical phenomenon. If you can't work from that point of view then you are just speculating about hot air

If you like the Materialist/Physicalist Speculation, then I know I won't be able to change your Mind. We are at an Impasse. But you could be right and time will exonerate one of us.

[SteveKlinko]

What do you know about Conscious Experience that leads you to say Science will never find the Explanations for Conscious Experience?

What do I know? I just told you:

There are no 'scientific' measurements that can be made, and detached or impartial observation is next to impossible, given that the subject must be an intimate part of the investigation, or even an investigator themselves.

Science cannot magically transform something subjective into something objective, any more than it can transform metal into wood. "Ye canna change the laws of physics, Captain!"

But Conscious Experience is something that Exists in the Manifest Universe that we Exist in. SInce it Exists it must be understood because that is what inquiring Minds will always do. I think CE will ultimately be understood and it will be Measurable. It will actually be a sad day when they figure out how to Measure it. No more private thoughts. But I still want to know how to do it.

[Consul]

Science cannot magically transform something subjective into something objective, any more than it can transform metal into wood. "Ye canna change the laws of physics, Captain!"

Subjective experiential occurrents can non-magically result from constellations of objective nonexperiential occurrents.
(I mean the identity-entailing resultance of a whole through composition or constitution rather than nonidentity-entailing emergence.)

Your experiences are subjective or private in the sense that I cannot experience them. They are experientially inaccessible to me; but it doesn't follow that they are also perceptually inaccessible to me from the external perspective. For if your subjective experiences are complexes of objective occurrences in your brain, I can externally perceive them as such (with the help of neuroimaging technology). Of course, there is still a (numerical&qualitative) difference between your internal experiencing of an experience and my external perceiving of your experience (as a neural process).

QUOTE>
"[W]hat of the objective-subjective divide? You are, it would seem, privy to your own experiences in a way no one else could be. Experiences are private, unobservable in principle from the outside. In contrast, goings-on inside your body, including goings-on in your brain, are, at least in principle, observable by anyone with the right equipment. It is all well and good to suppose your experience of a red tomato is correlated with an occurrence in your nervous system. A neuroscientist might observe and measure your experience’s neural correlate, the state that, presumably, ‘gives rise’ to your experience. But it makes no sense to imagine a neuroscientist’s observing your experience.

Comfortable there in the fly-bottle? Think about it. What exactly would it be for a scientist to observe your experience? If we are careful to distinguish the qualities of what is experienced, the redness of a tomato, for instance, from qualities of the experience, it would be a mistake to expect a scientist observing your experience of a red tomato to observe something red and tomato-shaped. This opens the door to the possibility that your experiencing the tomato is an occurrence in your brain that could in fact be observed by others. Describing brain processes as correlates of experiences is just another time-honored way of stacking the deck.

What, then, accounts for the powerful sense that experiences are distinctively private affairs? Undeniably, there is a difference between something’s being in a particular state and observations of something’s being in that state. Suppose your undergoing a particular conscious experience is for your brain to be in a particular state. Now, imagine a neuroscientist’s observing your brain’s being in that state. The neuroscientist’s observing your brain state is itself a matter of the neuroscientist’s being in a distinct experiential state.

What reason is there to imagine that the neuroscientist’s experience of your experience of a red tomato should resemble your experience of a red tomato or, more generally, that a neuroscientist’s observation of a conscious state could yield an awareness of ‘what it is like’ to be in that state, whatever the state? Observing a state reveals what the state is like, not what it is like to be in the state. Assuming that it makes sense to identify experiences with neurological states or processes, undergoing and observing the undergoing of an experience are chalk and cheese.

What of the elusive ‘what-it’s-like-ness’ of experiences? All sides agree that knowing what it is like to experience red requires having visually experienced something red. The point is a perfectly general epistemological point having nothing in particular to do with experiential qualities. Knowing what an echidna is like requires encountering an echidna, or pictures or descriptions of echidnas, or creatures you know to be echidna-like.

At the risk of adding a distracting complication, I feel obliged to insert a caveat here. Suppose, as I have suggested, that in hallucinating something red or experiencing a red after-image you are in a state that qualitatively resembles the corresponding veridical state. If you could go into such a state without having previously gone into the corresponding veridical state, then you could, in principle anyway, know what it is like to experience something red without ever actually having experienced anything red. At any rate, you would have the raw materials required for such knowledge. Whether you would be in a position to make the requisite judgment is another matter.

None of this should be seen as especially controversial. If your visually experiencing a tomato or suffering a painful experience is a matter of your being in a particular state, a scientist’s experiencing that state, visually, for instance, is a matter of the scientist’s being in a particular state. These states, yours and the scientist’s, need not be similar, qualitatively or otherwise, in fact it would be astonishing if they were. If knowing what it is like to be in a particular state requires being in, or having been in it that state, knowing what it is like to experience a tomato visually differs from knowing what it is like to experience a visual experience of a tomato.

The subjectivity of experiences stems, not from their in-principle unobservability from the outside, but from the relatively humdrum distinction between something’s being in a particular state and someone’s observing that state. The distinction applies to mental and nonmental phenomena alike. A quantity of water’s being in a liquid state is one thing, your observing the water’s being in that state something else altogether.

Please do not imagine that I am asking you to embrace yet another implausible theory of the mind. I am not asking you to embrace any theory at all. What I am urging is just that you come to see as optional theses that have led to our languishing in the fly-bottle: ‘the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves’."

(Heil, John. Appearance in Reality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. pp. 109-10)
<QUOTE

[Sculptor1]

Not so.
What you laughingly called a "speculation" is where all the evidence reigns.

Laughingly? I am quite serious. There is no Evidence in Speculations. The Speculation must be proven and the Evidence must be found for any theory of Conscious Experience.

Eveything you say is speculation. However the physicalist materialist theory is ALL evidence based without exception. It is definitively evidence based.
And it demonstrates and indelible and continous link between the brain and consciousness, which other theories choose to ignore.
It is a fact that consciousness is a physical phenomenon. If you can't work from that point of view then you are just speculating about hot air

If you like the Materialist/Physicalist Speculation, then I know I won't be able to change your Mind. We are at an Impasse. But you could be right and time will exonerate one of us.

There is a simple test you can do to verify that the brain is where consciousness resides.
Why not take the test?

[Belindi]

How may disembodied minds be connected when minds can't experience each others' qualia?

Minds are insulated from each other in Conscious Space. They seem to need to connect to Physical Space to Communicate. But there is probably direct Mind to Mind Communication possible when the Physical Mind (Brain) is quieted, or when two Minds are disconnected from their Physical Minds.

But in that case there would no incoming information from the senses, and the disconnected mind would be reduced to facing the future from memorised information.

Although qualia can be remembered absolute mind is not absolute at all unless experiences of physical space and the feeling of purpose towards the future are included.

Of course, nobody knows what happens after a Disconnection like in Death.

Your theory allows for continuation of experiences after the death of the body.

[Sy Borg]

Minds are insulated from each other in Conscious Space. They seem to need to connect to Physical Space to Communicate. But there is probably direct Mind to Mind Communication possible when the Physical Mind (Brain) is quieted, or when two Minds are disconnected from their Physical Minds.

But in that case there would no incoming information from the senses, and the disconnected mind would be reduced to facing the future from memorised information.

Although qualia can be remembered absolute mind is not absolute at all unless experiences of physical space and the feeling of purpose towards the future are included.

Of course, nobody knows what happens after a Disconnection like in Death.

Your theory allows for continuation of experiences after the death of the body.

You'd have three minutes or so of brain oxygen left, technically allowing for post death experiences. From a practical standpoint, there may be a significant subjective sense of time dilation (as in dreams), so one may cram far more subjective events in those three minutes than usual.

[SteveKlinko]

Laughingly? I am quite serious. There is no Evidence in Speculations. The Speculation must be proven and the Evidence must be found for any theory of Conscious Experience.

Eveything you say is speculation. However the physicalist materialist theory is ALL evidence based without exception. It is definitively evidence based.
And it demonstrates and indelible and continous link between the brain and consciousness, which other theories choose to ignore.
It is a fact that consciousness is a physical phenomenon. If you can't work from that point of view then you are just speculating about hot air

If you like the Materialist/Physicalist Speculation, then I know I won't be able to change your Mind. We are at an Impasse. But you could be right and time will exonerate one of us.

There is a simple test you can do to verify that the brain is where consciousness resides.
Why not take the test?

Please describe the Test.

[SteveKlinko]

Minds are insulated from each other in Conscious Space. They seem to need to connect to Physical Space to Communicate. But there is probably direct Mind to Mind Communication possible when the Physical Mind (Brain) is quieted, or when two Minds are disconnected from their Physical Minds.

But in that case there would no incoming information from the senses, and the disconnected mind would be reduced to facing the future from memorised information.

Although qualia can be remembered absolute mind is not absolute at all unless experiences of physical space and the feeling of purpose towards the future are included.

Of course, nobody knows what happens after a Disconnection like in Death.

Your theory allows for continuation of experiences after the death of the body.

It was a surprise consequence of the theory. However, it is not a theory, but rather it is a Perspective. Physicalists believe that Conscious Experience is completely in the Neurons, but the Inter Mind Model provides the Perspective that Conscious Experience could be in some other abstract Conscious Space. Since Conscious Experience is in another place (not in Space) it might Exist after Death. I am calling the Perspective Connectism because the Conscious Mind (CM) is Connected to the Physical Mind (PM).

Connectism provides a new and refreshing Connection Perspective with respect to Conscious Experience. With proper usage you would say that you are a Connectist because of your Connectist views on Connectism. Connectism seems to be similar to Dualism, but it is different from Dualism because the Dualist does not emphasize the Connection aspect of the PM to the CM. The Inter Mind (IM) is the central connecting component within Connectism. The PM is Connected to the IM and the IM is Connected to the CM. So Connectism is actually a Triple Mind perspective, in contrast with the Double Mind perspective of Dualism. The IM looms large within Connectism but is completely absent in Dualism. Connectism is categorically not the same thing as Dualism.

[Faustus5]

I don't know. I expect that one with qualia is able to more flexibly deal with the environment than one without qualia, but that is already adding one guess upon another.

If this is all a matter of making guesses about which one has little or no confidence, why propose that qualia exist in the first place? What is the motivation?

If your model says that when qualia are "generated," they contribute to an organism's effectiveness in dealing with the environment, then your next task is to explain how this happens.

Let's assume that qualia are not magical by nature.

All cognitive functions are mediated by biochemical reactions inside and in between neurons and networks of neurons. In order to induce any kind of changes to how these processes occur, qualia themselves have to be specific biochemical events, generated by other biochemical events that are not themselves qualia. If they are real and not epiphenomenal, it is simply a scientific requirement that they participate in a causal chain of events in this manner.

So to be credible as a serious participant in scientific models of consciousness, qualia have to be assigned to something we've already measured or can measure in cognitive neuroscience, or we have to locate a causal gap in our current models which we can then propose qualia to explain.

The first option, obviously, is to just identify qualia with specific brain events and be done with it.

The second option requires a causal gap which so far has never been identified in brain science, which means qualia are being proposed to explain a problem that doesn't exist.