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

[Pattern-chaser]

But Conscious Experience is something that Exists in the Manifest Universe that we Exist in.

Yes, of course it does.

Since it Exists it must be understood...

Why? Why are you so insistent that you even ignore the possibility that we are unable to understand it, in the particular way that you want to?

You insist, once again, that we must achieve understanding. And yet we already have what you so fervently desire. We have the intuitive understanding of Conscious Experience that comes from experiencing Conscious Experience, do we not? On top of that, we have the privilege of consciousness, whatever it is, that bestows on us the gift of Conscious Experience in the first place.

And yet you continue to rail against the cosmos, demanding understanding in a precise and scientific/objectivist sense. [Have I got that right?] Is it really so important? Is it really even possible?

[SteveKlinko]

But Conscious Experience is something that Exists in the Manifest Universe that we Exist in.

Yes, of course it does.

Since it Exists it must be understood...

Why? Why are you so insistent that you even ignore the possibility that we are unable to understand it, in the particular way that you want to?

You insist, once again, that we must achieve understanding. And yet we already have what you so fervently desire. We have the intuitive understanding of Conscious Experience that comes from experiencing Conscious Experience, do we not? On top of that, we have the privilege of consciousness, whatever it is, that bestows on us the gift of Conscious Experience in the first place.

And yet you continue to rail against the cosmos, demanding understanding in a precise and scientific/objectivist sense. [Have I got that right?] Is it really so important? Is it really even possible?

There is nothing I have said that suggests that I don't know we might not ever figure Conscious Experience out. But the Belief that we can't understand Conscious Experience is not a guiding principle for me. I will continue to try. If understanding CE is not important to you, why are you even on this Forum. I guess it is just so you can Nag people with your Belief.

[Sculptor1]

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.

You can selectively remove parts of your brain with a metal spoon, or if you want the nuclear option blow your brains out.
Option one will give you plenty of evidence that consicousness is indeed a physical phenomenon, and that very specific qualities of consciousness such as awareness of specific parts of the body, control of the body, face recognition, speech and langauge skills, emotions, inhibitions and so on.
Taking the second option will also provide possible putative reflections on a future state. Though no one has yet come back to share their findings.

[Sculptor1]

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.

Yes no one does know thought billions have died no one seems to have managed to share their findings.

[Papus79]

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.

The expression 'you first' comes to mind here.

[Sy Borg]

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?

Do you think qualia is not real, that a sense of experience is only an illusion?

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.

I don't have a set model. Only guesses, like everyone else.

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.

If we understood consciousness then we would have a model for creating consciousness from scratch. There is no viable model so far, despite decades of testing. Your above rationalisations don't account for that brute fact.

I see no reason to put this issue to bed just to avoid encouraging the superstitious. While you have strong views about this, I don't. I'm just interested in phenomena. I don't much care what the final answer is and I dislike philosophy and science being interfered with by politics, which just skews people's views.

There is simply a phenomenon - consciousness - that is not well understood at this stage. That is the situation. So there's no good reason to declare the hard problem solved. I'm in no rush to solve the hard problem so I'm content to wait for more information and see how it fits, and in the meantime mull around ideas.

[SteveKlinko]

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.

You can selectively remove parts of your brain with a metal spoon, or if you want the nuclear option blow your brains out.
Option one will give you plenty of evidence that consicousness is indeed a physical phenomenon, and that very specific qualities of consciousness such as awareness of specific parts of the body, control of the body, face recognition, speech and langauge skills, emotions, inhibitions and so on.
Taking the second option will also provide possible putative reflections on a future state. Though no one has yet come back to share their findings.

All that indicates is that you are disrupting Connections from the Conscious Mind to the respective removed parts of the Physical Mind (Brain). Connectism will work with any Physicalist/Materialist argument you might make.

[SteveKlinko]

Thus, my guess is that qualia is generated in what might be considered an extended global workspace, that involves the very complex interaction between the metabolic and nervous/sensory systems.

The all important question is "And then what?". What do the qualia actually do once they are generated? What's the point? Do they cause any further effects that are evolutionary beneficial, or are they just epiphenomenal? And if they do cause any further effects, what's the biochemical story there?

Scientists can describe the Neural Activity that occurs in the Brain when we See. But they, and you, seem to be completely puzzled by the Conscious Visual Experience (an example of Qualia) that we have that is correlated with the Neural Activity. Incredibly, some even come to the conclusion that the Conscious Experience is not even necessary! They cannot find the Conscious Experience in the Neurons so the Experience must not have any function in the Visual process. They believe that the Neural Activity is sufficient for us to move around in the world without bumping into things. This is insane denial of the obvious purpose for the Qualia of Visual Consciousness. Neural Activity is not enough. We would be blind without the Conscious Visual Experience. From a Systems Engineering point of view, it is clear that the Conscious Visual Experience is a further Processing stage that comes after the Neural Activity. The Conscious Visual Experience is the thing that allows us to move around in the world. The Conscious Visual Experience contains vast amounts of information about the external world all packed up into a single thing. To implement all the functionality of the Conscious Visual Experience with only Neural Activity would probably require a Brain as big as a refrigerator.

[Sculptor1]

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.

You can selectively remove parts of your brain with a metal spoon, or if you want the nuclear option blow your brains out.
Option one will give you plenty of evidence that consicousness is indeed a physical phenomenon, and that very specific qualities of consciousness such as awareness of specific parts of the body, control of the body, face recognition, speech and langauge skills, emotions, inhibitions and so on.
Taking the second option will also provide possible putative reflections on a future state. Though no one has yet come back to share their findings.

All that indicates is that you are disrupting Connections from the Conscious Mind to the respective removed parts of the Physical Mind (Brain). Connectism will work with any Physicalist/Materialist argument you might make.

No what it demonstrates is that the brain generates and sustains consciousness.
Scooping bits of it out remove bits of consciousness, and the more we learn the more this is apparent.
On the other hand, incorporeal theories have zero to recommend them.

[Faustus5]

Do you think qualia is not real, that a sense of experience is only an illusion?

I do not think qualia are real. I think they are an artifact of very bad philosophical perspectives on consciousness which are incompatible with all known science.

That is different from believing that our "sense of experience" is an illusion. I think our "sense of experience" is real, but that people have a lot of misconceptions about it.

Having said that, the fact of the matter is that philosophers and scientists don't even agree with one another on what the term actually means. If someone were to define and use "qualia" in a manner that was consistent with cognitive neuroscience and didn't lead to magical thinking about the mind, I would have no problem acknowledging that this version of qualia existed and was a useful term. There are one or two people who post in this forum who seem to think of qualia in this way, but they are not the norm in philosophy of mind.

If we understood consciousness then we would have a model for creating consciousness from scratch. There is no viable model so far, despite decades of testing. Your above rationalisations don't account for that brute fact.

We do indeed have models of consciousness that have gained a wide consensus in the scientific community, the global neuronal workspace model being the most prominent. That is a brute fact for you.

Feel free to articulate what these models get wrong or where we should find them lacking, but to deny that they exist and are taken seriously just means you aren't engaging with the scientific literature. No wonder you harbor the illusion that everyone is just guessing.

[SteveKlinko]

Do you think qualia is not real, that a sense of experience is only an illusion?

I do not think qualia are real. I think they are an artifact of very bad philosophical perspectives on consciousness which are incompatible with all known science.

That is different from believing that our "sense of experience" is an illusion. I think our "sense of experience" is real, but that people have a lot of misconceptions about it.

Having said that, the fact of the matter is that philosophers and scientists don't even agree with one another on what the term actually means. If someone were to define and use "qualia" in a manner that was consistent with cognitive neuroscience and didn't lead to magical thinking about the mind, I would have no problem acknowledging that this version of qualia existed and was a useful term. There are one or two people who post in this forum who seem to think of qualia in this way, but they are not the norm in philosophy of mind.

If we understood consciousness then we would have a model for creating consciousness from scratch. There is no viable model so far, despite decades of testing. Your above rationalisations don't account for that brute fact.

We do indeed have models of consciousness that have gained a wide consensus in the scientific community, the global neuronal workspace model being the most prominent. That is a brute fact for you.

Feel free to articulate what these models get wrong or where we should find them lacking, but to deny that they exist and are taken seriously just means you aren't engaging with the scientific literature. No wonder you harbor the illusion that everyone is just guessing.

Using GWT, please Explain the Conscious Experience of Redness, the Standard A Tone, the Salty Taste, or any other Quale, that you would like to Explain. By what Chain of Logic does GWT take you from Neural Activity to any Conscious Experience like I listed?

The problem with these theories is that they in fact talk about some generalized Consciousness concept that has no real meaning. So all these theories are claiming to Explain a Phantom Consciousness concept. I don't think there is this generalized Consciousness concept, but rather there are only Conscious Experiences. No one that supports any of these theories can Explain any particular Conscious Experience. Maybe you can with GWT.

[SteveKlinko]

We do indeed have models of consciousness that have gained a wide consensus in the scientific community, the global neuronal workspace model being the most prominent. That is a brute fact for you.

I looked a little closer at your post. I assumed that Global Neuronal Workspace the is same as Global Workspace Theory. Excuse me if that was not correct.

[Faustus5]

Using GWT, please Explain the Conscious Experience of Redness, the Standard A Tone, the Salty Taste, or any other Quale, that you would like to Explain. By what Chain of Logic does GWT take you from Neural Activity to any Conscious Experience like I listed?

I know this effort is going to be a complete waste of my time because it is obvious from your posting history that you have a somewhat desperate marriage to the idea the consciousness must be an Ultimate, Unfathomable Magic Mystery. Nothing anyone ever says is going to convince you that a divorce is in order.

Here is the model in a nutshell, from a paper published in a volume called The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness by Dehaene and Naccache:

At any given time, many modular cerebral networks are active in parallel and process information in an unconscious manner. An information becomes conscious, however, if the neural population that represents it is mobilized by top-down attentional amplification into a brain-scale state of coherent activity that involves many neurons distributed throughout the brain. The long distance connectivity of these “workplace neurons” can, when they are active for a minimal duration, make the information available to a variety of processes including perceptual categorization, long-term memorization, evaluation, and intentional action. We postulate that this global availability of information through the workplace is what we subjectively experience as a conscious state.

You're going to call this meaningless and beside the point, I know the drill, I've plenty of experience with your type. But this is the sort of model that guides the conversations and experiments among serious scientists and scholars, even if it doesn't mean much to folks who post on philosophy discussion boards.

[Pattern-chaser]

If understanding CE is not important to you, why are you even on this Forum. I guess it is just so you can Nag people with your Belief.

I'm on this forum to chat and to learn. CE is one of many topics discussed here. And if you think you're being nagged, then we're done. I'm not the only one who has challenged your views, but I shan't do so again. Fare well.

[SteveKlinko]

Using GWT, please Explain the Conscious Experience of Redness, the Standard A Tone, the Salty Taste, or any other Quale, that you would like to Explain. By what Chain of Logic does GWT take you from Neural Activity to any Conscious Experience like I listed?

I know this effort is going to be a complete waste of my time because it is obvious from your posting history that you have a somewhat desperate marriage to the idea the consciousness must be an Ultimate, Unfathomable Magic Mystery. Nothing anyone ever says is going to convince you that a divorce is in order.

Here is the model in a nutshell, from a paper published in a volume called The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness by Dehaene and Naccache:

At any given time, many modular cerebral networks are active in parallel and process information in an unconscious manner. An information becomes conscious, however, if the neural population that represents it is mobilized by top-down attentional amplification into a brain-scale state of coherent activity that involves many neurons distributed throughout the brain. The long distance connectivity of these “workplace neurons” can, when they are active for a minimal duration, make the information available to a variety of processes including perceptual categorization, long-term memorization, evaluation, and intentional action. We postulate that this global availability of information through the workplace is what we subjectively experience as a conscious state.

You're going to call this meaningless and beside the point, I know the drill, I've plenty of experience with your type. But this is the sort of model that guides the conversations and experiments among serious scientists and scholars, even if it doesn't mean much to folks who post on philosophy discussion boards.

It doesn't seem like you even know what the Consciousness Thing is that GWT Explains. I gave you specific Conscious Experiences that GWT needs to Explain. You are obviously a bad attitude Physicalist/Materialist who believes that Conscious Experience is in the Neurons or is the result of Neural Activity. I understand you now. For you, talking about what the Neurons do is the same as talking about what Conscious Experience does. This could be true, but you still need a Chain of Logic to show how Neural Activity produces a particular Conscious Experience. We are at an Impasse. Bye to you and your type.