Philosophy Discussion Forums

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 12:32 pm I never say that Conscious Experience will never be found in the Neurons or Neural Activity. I only note that Science has tried to do this for a hundred
years with Zero progress.

You seem to equate "progress" with "complete success" or "total victory", but these are not synonyms.

Scientists cannot find experiences "in the neurons" in the sense that they can directly perceive certain neural processes in your brain as your experiences; but they have nonetheless found on the basis of mountains of medical and psychiatric evidence that the brain is the seat and source of consciousness, that consciousness is a state of the brain. The Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 460 – c. 370 BC) was one of the first to realize that the brain is the organ of the soul. For example, given modern anesthesiology, physicians can switch your consciousness off and on again at will by chemically manipulating nothing but processes in your brain, which strongly confirms that your consciousness is realized by and in your brain.

From the scientific perspective the questions are no longer "Where do experiences come into being?" and "What brings experiences into being?", but "How does the brain bring experiences into being?".

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 12:32 pmThe only test of a theory for me is as described in the OP. All other criteria that you might come up with might also be satisfied but the theory has got to Explain Conscious Experience.

QUOTE>
"I will apply the Inter Mind Model (IMM) to each theory. The theory must be able to Explain what an Inter Mind (IM) would be in the theory. In order to Explain how the theory incorporates an IM, the theory must have the answer to a basic question. Given:

1) Neural Activity happens in the Physical Mind (PM)

2) Conscious Experience happens in the Conscious Mind (CM)

How does the Neural Activity of 1 produce the Conscious Experience of 2?

The IMM expects that there is some sort of IM that takes the Neural Activity as the input and produces the Conscious Experience as the output. So, the following analyses will demand that each theory have a plausible Explanation for what an IM would be in the theory. In other words, how does the theory explain Conscious Experience."

Source: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17679
<QUOTE

What's an "intermind"? A nonconscious mind between the brain and the conscious mind? Is that intermind supposed to be some sort of immaterial soul?

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 12:48 pmYes, and there are many Scientists doing it his way. But I think that Science is going to get nowhere unless it starts thinking outside it's Box. Science does need some Scientists to plod along applying known Scientific concepts, but it also needs to find some Scientists that will have the courage to think in new ways.

So, what is the Experience of Redness? Is it some form of Matter? Is it some form of Energy? Is it an aspect of the structure of Space? Redness seems not to be any of these things. But maybe it is and someone will show how it is someday. But for now, the Phenomenon of Redness does not seem to exist within the known Scientific categories of Phenomenon. Redness is a Category outlier. But every other Color, Sound, Smell, Taste, and Touch, Experience are also Category outliers. Our whole Conscious Existence is a Category outlier. How can Science Explain these things? Computations. Complexity, and Mathematics don't seem to Explain anything about these Conscious Experiences. These Conscious Experiences are simply and truthfully outside the Box of what Science is doing right now. But they are probably not outside the Box of what Science could be doing. They are just not doing it.

What do you think scientists should be looking for "outside the box"?
Anyway, the scientific "box" has been widened already, since there is a neuroscience of consciousness now! It's still in its infancy, but it has seen the light of day.

By the way, the three basic kinds of subjective experiences are sensations, emotions, and imaginations (including cogitations = thoughts). In my understanding, emotions are bodily sensations, and imaginations are virtual (simulated) sensations; so I think there is actually only one basic kind of subjective experience, viz. sensations (in the subjectivistic phenomenological sense of the term, and not in the objectivistic physiological sense). So the "hard problem" boils down to the question of how the objective neurophysiological sensoria (sensory apparatus and faculties) of animal organisms bring about subjective sensations (sense-impressions, sense-data, sensa).

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 2:21 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 2:07 pm Let me ask, because I don't know what you are referring to, what am I casually discarding?

This:

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 2:14 pm Conscious Experience is so real to me that it is just Incoherent to think it is an Illusion...

To which I replied:

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑November 27th, 2021, 7:24 am That's the thing about philosophy. Sometimes it's hard to draw the conclusions that the evidence justifies. It's harder still to consider something we have never even thought to question might not actually - in the real world, not in a philosopher's Ivory Tower - be correct. But evidence - or in this case, total lack of evidence - is evidence, and there is no justification in that evidence to believe what we have always assumed to be the absolute reality. It might be, or it might not be. If we discard theories without evidence or other justifiable reason, we will fail to discover what is there to be found.

For future reference, the up-arrow just to the right of where the quote-box says "SteveKlinko wrote:" is a link back to the post from which the text is quoted.

I have given the Illusion proposition all the consideration that it deserves. Decades worth of consideration. Illusionism of one form or another has always been there making a mockery out of the Reality of the World as I know it. There is no Chain of Logic that takes you from the Conscious Visual Experience that I have, to the realization that it is not really there. This is pure Hucksterism. They have got to do better than that. It's almost as if the Illusionists actually do not have Conscious Experiences like I have. They may be Experiencing more at the level of the Neural activity and actually do not have the Qualia of the Visual Experiences. Maybe the Lights are out in their Minds. Seems to me the usual move that I see with Illusionism is that they are the ones, in fact, casually dismissing Conscious Experience. It is up to them to Explain how what is so Obviously true can be so Illusory and wrong.

Thank You, didn't know about the arrow.

Consul wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 2:34 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 12:32 pm I never say that Conscious Experience will never be found in the Neurons or Neural Activity. I only note that Science has tried to do this for a hundred
years with Zero progress.

You seem to equate "progress" with "complete success" or "total victory", but these are not synonyms.

Scientists cannot find experiences "in the neurons" in the sense that they can directly perceive certain neural processes in your brain as your experiences; but they have nonetheless found on the basis of mountains of medical and psychiatric evidence that the brain is the seat and source of consciousness, that consciousness is a state of the brain. The Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 460 – c. 370 BC) was one of the first to realize that the brain is the organ of the soul. For example, given modern anesthesiology, physicians can switch your consciousness off and on again at will by chemically manipulating nothing but processes in your brain, which strongly confirms that your consciousness is realized by and in your brain.

From the scientific perspective the questions are no longer "Where do experiences come into being?" and "What brings experiences into being?", but "How does the brain bring experiences into being?".

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 12:32 pmThe only test of a theory for me is as described in the OP. All other criteria that you might come up with might also be satisfied but the theory has got to Explain Conscious Experience.

QUOTE>
"I will apply the Inter Mind Model (IMM) to each theory. The theory must be able to Explain what an Inter Mind (IM) would be in the theory. In order to Explain how the theory incorporates an IM, the theory must have the answer to a basic question. Given:

1) Neural Activity happens in the Physical Mind (PM)

2) Conscious Experience happens in the Conscious Mind (CM)

How does the Neural Activity of 1 produce the Conscious Experience of 2?

The IMM expects that there is some sort of IM that takes the Neural Activity as the input and produces the Conscious Experience as the output. So, the following analyses will demand that each theory have a plausible Explanation for what an IM would be in the theory. In other words, how does the theory explain Conscious Experience."

Source: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17679
<QUOTE

What's an "intermind"? A nonconscious mind between the brain and the conscious mind? Is that intermind supposed to be some sort of immaterial soul?

I'm not looking for complete success but there really is Zero progress with understanding Conscious Experience. There has been Huge progress with regard to the Neural Correlates of Conscious Experience. That should not be confused with progress with regard to Conscious Experience.

The Scientific and Physicalist view is that Consciousness is somehow located in the Neurons or is an Emergent Property of Neural Activity. It is a reasonable assumption given that Conscious Activity is Correlated with Neural Activity. But Science has no Theory, Hypothesis, or even a Speculation about how Consciousness could be in the Neurons or an Emergent Property. Science has not been able to show for example, how something like the Experience of Redness is some kind of effect of Neural Activity. In fact, the more you think about the Redness Experience and then think about Neural Activity, the less likely it seems that the Redness Experience is actually some sort of Neural Activity. Science has tried in vain for a hundred years to figure this out. If the Experience of Redness actually was in the Neurons, Science would have had a lot to say about it by now. Something has got to be wrong with their perspective on the problem.

The Inter Mind Model (IMM) can accommodate Consciousness as being in the Neurons or an Emergent Property, but it can also accommodate other concepts of Consciousness. The IMM is structurally a Connection Model, in the sense that the Physical Mind (PM) is connected to the Inter Mind (IM) which is connected to the Conscious Mind (CM). These Connections might be conceptual where all three Minds are actually in the Neurons or an Emergent Property. But these Connections might have more reality to them where the PM, the IM, and the CM are separate things. I will Speculate that the situation is more like the latter than the former. In that case the PM, which is in Physical Space (PSp), uses the IM to create a Connection to the CM, which is in Conscious Space (CSp). The important perspective change here is that the PM is Connected to the CM, rather than assuming that the PM contains the CM as part of the PM. This allows the CM to be a thing in itself existing in it’s own CSp.

I would like to introduce the term Connectism, to identify this new Philosophical concept. 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 is similar but different from Dualism because the Dualist does not emphasize the Connection aspect of the PM to the CM. The 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 inability of Science to solve the problem of Consciousness is the main driver for looking at other perspectives. Insisting that Consciousness is in the Neurons or is just some artifact of Neural Activity is getting us nowhere. Not only is Science unable to Explain Consciousness as Neural Activity, it is also unable to provide the first clue as to what something like the Experience of Redness actually is. Things like Redness, the Standard A Tone, and the Salty Taste, are Conscious Experiences. These kinds of Conscious Experiences are some sort of Phenomena that exist in the Reality of the Manifest Universe, but they are in a Category of Phenomena that Science cannot yet explain. It is therefore Sensible and Logical to Speculate a place for them to exist. This of Course is CSp.

At the developmental level we now will have the PM developing in PSp and a separate CM developing in CSp. There is also an IM which is developing the Connections between the PM and the CM. The CM is no longer trapped in the PM which is in PSp. The CM now has a separate development and existence in CSp. Maybe an IM, along with a CM, inhabits and uses a PM from conception. The IM and CM grow as a particular PM grows. First there is only one Neuron, then there are two, then three, and four, and so on until a fully formed PM, IM, and CM are produced. Note that maybe the IM will only need to connect with the Cortical Areas on the surface of the PM. With regard to memory, it is thought that it is possible that the recognition of objects and faces comes down to one Neuron firing. With this theory, the IM must know what a particular Neuron means when it fires in order to send a feeling of Recognition to a CM. On the other hand, if Memory has a more distributed configuration among many Neurons involving feedback and feedforward connections, then the IM will need to interpret the Memory using that more complicated activity.

Could an IM attach to a fully formed PM and just start using it? Or does an IM need to grow as a PM grows in order to properly use it? I will speculate that there probably is a developmental aspect involved in PM, IM, and CM connections. The act of growing from a single Neuron might be absolutely necessary for an IM and CM to properly connect. The IM might eventually be in contact with every Neuron in the PM. Maybe the only way an IM can be in control of billions of Neurons is if, as the PM slowly develops, the IM learns how to use each Neuron. It is not known how the IM learns the meaning of any particular Neuron that is firing. The PM and the IM might have built in mechanisms that facilitate the interconnection process. Maybe individual types of Neurons have some sort of chemical signatures that the IM can read in order to know what Conscious Experiences to produce. This seems to predict that the IM must have some innate ability to operate with Neurons.

We can make some statements about things that are in the CM and things that are in the PM. For example, the CM is where the Experiences of Redness, the Standard A Tone, and the Salty Taste are located. The CM is also where the Conscious Self is located. Examples of things that are located in the PM are Memory, Pattern Recognition, Eye Convergence/Tracking, and Balance.

Separating the CM from the PM allows a whole new Perspective for understanding various operational aspects of Consciousness. Some previous experimental deductions and conclusions about Consciousness may have to be overturned when using this new Perspective. For example, this separation provides a new way of understanding the effect of Anesthesia. With the old Perspective the reasoning was like this: The Neural Activity was halted and Consciousness seemed to also be halted, so therefore Consciousness must be in the Neurons. With the new Perspective the reasoning would be: The Neural Activity was halted and Consciousness seemed to be halted, so therefore the Connection must have been interrupted. With this new Perspective, Consciousness itself was not halted but rather the Connection from the PM to the CM was interrupted. We don't know what the CM does during an interruption. But since Anesthesia can halt Memory operations, the PM will not have been able to save any Memories of the interruption, that could be accessed by the CM after the Connection is reestablished.

The old assumptions about how PM injuries affect Consciousness will have new interpretations using the Connection Perspective. After a PM injury, the Connections between the PM and the CM can be disrupted. Memories may be difficult to retrieve, Volitional control of the body may become erratic, and the Personality might even be changed. But these are PM degradations and not CM degradations. The CM will not be affected because the CM is connected through the IM to the PM. The IM protects and buffers the CM from PM damages. The CM will effectively be Connected to something different after a PM injury. The CM will try to do the best it can with whatever PM it is Connected to, regardless of the PM degenerations that exist.

This separation of CM from PM also presents a new Perspective for thinking about the Sub-Conscious Mind versus the CM. It is logical to speculate that the Sub-Conscious Mind is completely implemented in the PM. Many of the actions we do everyday are controlled by Sub-Conscious Brain Programs that run in the background, out of view of our Conscious awareness. The IM needs to make the Processing decisions for which of the Activities in the PM should be Translated into Conscious Experiences. The IM implements the Binding Processing necessary to create a usable Conscious Experience of the External world for the CM to operate in. It would be very confusing and inefficient if the IM had to Translate all Neural Activity, including the Background Brain Programs, into Conscious Experiences. There has always been an intuition that there was a separate Conscious Mind and Sub-Conscious Mind. It is now easy to see how this PM to CM separation logically and naturally predicts a Sub-Conscious Mind concept separate from the CM.

Does the shape of the Brain say anything about the Connection Perspective? Interconnecting axons take up the bulk of the space inside the Brain (the white matter). The Conscious Experience part of the Brain consists of a thin layer of Neurons on the outer surface of the Brain (the gray matter). This is of course the Cortex. All Experience seems to to be correlated with Neural Activity in specific Areas of the Cortex. Maybe it is easier for the IM to Monitor and Connect to the Brain given that kind of surface configuration. Of course there are some large folds to the cortex, but it is essentially a surface structure. When you think about all those distinct functional Experiential Areas that make up the Cortex, it just looks like it must be some kind of Interface to some next Processing stage. But this is just a speculation. The only explanation from Brain Physiology is that it is a surface on the exterior of the Brain in order to promote cooling. But what if there is more to it than that?

It is time for Science to think more outside the Box with regard to Consciousness, and hopefully this Connection Perspective will inspire Research in new directions that might someday solve the Problem of Consciousness.

Consul wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 2:57 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 12:48 pmYes, and there are many Scientists doing it his way. But I think that Science is going to get nowhere unless it starts thinking outside it's Box. Science does need some Scientists to plod along applying known Scientific concepts, but it also needs to find some Scientists that will have the courage to think in new ways.

So, what is the Experience of Redness? Is it some form of Matter? Is it some form of Energy? Is it an aspect of the structure of Space? Redness seems not to be any of these things. But maybe it is and someone will show how it is someday. But for now, the Phenomenon of Redness does not seem to exist within the known Scientific categories of Phenomenon. Redness is a Category outlier. But every other Color, Sound, Smell, Taste, and Touch, Experience are also Category outliers. Our whole Conscious Existence is a Category outlier. How can Science Explain these things? Computations. Complexity, and Mathematics don't seem to Explain anything about these Conscious Experiences. These Conscious Experiences are simply and truthfully outside the Box of what Science is doing right now. But they are probably not outside the Box of what Science could be doing. They are just not doing it.

What do you think scientists should be looking for "outside the box"?
Anyway, the scientific "box" has been widened already, since there is a neuroscience of consciousness now! It's still in its infancy, but it has seen the light of day.

By the way, the three basic kinds of subjective experiences are sensations, emotions, and imaginations (including cogitations = thoughts). In my understanding, emotions are bodily sensations, and imaginations are virtual (simulated) sensations; so I think there is actually only one basic kind of subjective experience, viz. sensations (in the subjectivistic phenomenological sense of the term, and not in the objectivistic physiological sense). So the "hard problem" boils down to the question of how the objective neurophysiological sensoria (sensory apparatus and faculties) of animal organisms bring about subjective sensations (sense-impressions, sense-data, sensa).

Yes, and ironically the only thing that this Neuroscience of Consciousness is not able to Explain is Consciousness. They have Zero understanding of what Conscious Experience could be. There is no such thing as a generalized Consciousness thing. It is all Conscious Experience, regardless if Sensory, Emotional, Imagination, or Dreams/Hallucinations.

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 12:53 pm

Belindi wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 7:22 am Re "the question of why and how our brains create subjective, conscious experience".

The problem is simply anatomical.

The pain of cramp in a muscle is a quale, and the effect of a surgeon's probe on the auditory cortex is also a quale.

Afferent nerves connect the cramping muscle to the cortex and pain quale.

The tip of the probe connects the probe to the auditory cortex and the sound quale.

Don't just call everything a Quale. You are hiding the special nature of the different Quale. Qualia are Conscious Experiences. The problem is not simply Anatomical. For example, there is a Huge Explanatory Gap between probing the Auditory Cortex and the Experience of any Sound.

I don't "call everything a quale". What I call a quale is a subjective experience of an event at a specific part of the body.

The special nature of different qualia is due the different organs that receive stimuli, and also to whether or not there is an afferent channel between the point of stimulus and the cephalic centre.

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 3:22 pmYes, and ironically the only thing that this Neuroscience of Consciousness is not able to Explain is Consciousness. They have Zero understanding of what Conscious Experience could be. There is no such thing as a generalized Consciousness thing. It is all Conscious Experience, regardless if Sensory, Emotional, Imagination, or Dreams/Hallucinations.

The (Most) neuroscientists' materialistic working hypothesis is that all kinds of subjective experiences are realized by complexes of neural processes.

QUOTE>
"My preferred philosophical position, and the default assumption of many neuroscientists, is physicalism. This is the idea that the universe is made of physical stuff, and that conscious states are either identical to, or somehow emerge from, particular arrangements of this physical stuff. Some philosophers use the term materialism instead of physicalism, but for our purposes they can be treated synonymously."

(Seth, Anil. Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. New York: Dutton, 2021. pp. 18-9)
<QUOTE

See: The Neuroscience of Consciousness > The Future

The ontological(ly reductionistic) position I accept and defend is compositional/constitutional materialism (aka mereological physicalism) about mind and consciousness: All mental or experiential phenomena are composed of or constituted by neural processes or mechanisms.

From this point of view, the neuroscience of consciousness is looking for (explanations of) those neural mechanisms of subjective experiences which constitute them and are thereby identical to them (rather than mere correlates of them).

QUOTE>
"Constitutive Explanation

Constitutive explanation involves moving downward in the hierarchy and looking at a smaller-scale spatiotemporal grain or a lower level of organization. It is accomplished by showing that the phenomenon appearing as an integrated whole at one level can be decomposed to its constituent parts and their causal interactions at the immediately underlying, lower levels of description. Constitutive explanations describe the lower-level mechanisms that the entity is composed of, or whose activity, when taken as a whole, simply is the phenomenon to be explained by the description of the mechanism.

An illuminating example from biology is the cell. A single cell, taken as a whole, is an independent living unit. The constitutive explanation revealing what makes the cell tick descends to the immediately lower levels of organization where the different parts of the cell and their causal interactions are to be found.

When the same strategy is applied to the explanation of consciousness there is, first of all, the phenomenon to be explained (the explanandum): consciousness. It resides at some specific level of organization in the brain (the phenomenal level). The lower-level, nonconscious neurophysiological mechanisms, whose activity as a whole constitutes consciousness, reside at a lower level of organization in the brain.

The current search for the direct NCC appears to be the empirical approach to the constitutive explanation of consciousness. However, the notion 'neural correlates of consciousness' requires considerable clarification. The relationship between an explanandum and its lower-level constituents must be stronger than mere correlation, for correlation is not an explanatory relationship. The cell membrane, the nucleus, chromosomes, cell organelles, and other microscopic parts of the cell are not merely the biological correlates of life, but crucial microlevel constituents that explain why the whole system is alive. In the same vein, the constitutive explanation of consciousness should describe such part-whole or mereological relationships between the lower- and higher-level phenomena that make their hierarchical connection truly explanatory."
(pp. 18-20)

"How, then does a nonconscious phenomenon produce or become a conscious phenomenon? The problem with this characterization is that we easily imagine some nonconscious entity (a neuron, say) somehow 'producing' consciousness. But that image is misguided. Nonconscious phenomena do not mysteriously become conscious phenomena, or unaccountably 'emit' them. Rather, at one level of organization there are nonconscious phenomena that, when collectively interrelated, form a higher level of organization where there are conscious phenomena. The nonconscious phenomena do not mysteriously emit consciousness, they collectively constitute it. To ask, 'How does a nonconscious phenomenon produce or become a conscious phenomenon?', is like asking, 'How does a subatomic particle become an atom?' or 'How does a water molecule emit liquidity?' or 'How does a DNA molecule become alive?' The questions ascribe a higher-level feature to a lower-level entity, which in none of the cases makes any sense. Furthermore, it makes little sense to ask, 'Why is this experience of color (say, seeing the sun near the horizon as a red-orange circle) exactly like this?' Well, things are what they are: a pattern of phenomenal features is what it is, an electron is what it is, and a DNA molecule is what it is, and not something else. Does it make sense to ask, 'Why is an electron an electron?' or 'Why is a DNA molecule a DNA molecule?' I do not think these questions make any sense, and therefore require no explanation.

Instead of these misguided questions, we should form an image of a multilevel hierarchical organization in nature, where it is possible to move from one level to another, without any gaps. Yet, at the different levels, quite dissimilar entities and events are found. In the cases where we truly understand the mechanisms behind complex biological phenomena, we move across the levels and see that even a gapless natural continuum can support all sorts of radically different things."
(p. 358)

(Revonsuo, Antti. Inner Presence: Consciousness as a Biological Phenomenon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. p. 358)
<QUOTE

QUOTE>
"Perhaps most famously, across the sciences we find explanations that explain higher-level entities (whether individuals, properties, or processes) in terms of lower-level entities that scientists take to compose them and hence these explanations use vertical relations. For example, we explain the inheritance of traits between parent organisms and their off spring using molecules taken to compose them. We explain the refractive index of a crystal using the properties and relations of the atoms that compose it. Or we explain the movement of the earth’s surface using the tectonic plates, and currents of magma, taken to compose the earth. We use the term 'compositional explanation' to refer to such explanation, though philosophers have used various names for it.(3 And we term the vertical relations that such explanations posit 'scientific composition' relations where this includes relations between individuals, properties/relations, and also processes.
(3 Other terms include 'reductive explanation', 'microstructural analyses', 'functional explanation', 'constitutive explanation', or 'mechanistic explanation'.)"

(Aizawa, Kenneth, and Carl Gillett. "Introduction: Vertical Relations in Science, Philosophy, and the World: Understanding the New Debates over Verticality." In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Kenneth Aizawa and Carl Gillett, 1-38. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. p. 2)

"The Scientific Revolution was powered, at least in large part, by explanations that pierced the manifest image of common sense by explaining its level of everyday individuals, properties, and processes using qualitatively distinct, lower-level entities taken to compose them. And such explanations have now been iterated through all the levels of nature. For example, we take the corrosive action of glaciers to be explained by the movement of the ice molecules that we take to compose glaciers. We explain the motility of cells using the properties and relations of the molecules that we take to compose them. We understand why kidneys clean blood in terms of the properties and relations of the cells taken to compose them. And we could easily go on, and on, through such explanations across the sciences. Given their nature, such explanations are plausibly termed 'compositional' explanations, since they are founded around showing how lower-level entities of one kind (whether individuals, properties, or processes) compose entities of very different kinds at higher levels. Philosophers of science have used a range of other terms for compositional explanation, including 'reductive explanation', 'functional explanation', or 'mechanistic explanation', and there is a substantial body of work on the nature of such explanation, including a recent burst of research. Oddly, however, a couple of the key features of compositional explanations have not received much philosophical attention.

First, compositional explanations allow us to explain one kind of entity, such as a cell or its moving, in terms of the qualitatively different kinds of entity taken to compose it, like molecules or molecular processes of polymerization, and this hence results in what I term the 'Piercing Explanatory Power', or 'PEP', of compositional explanations. Second, we should mark that once we have successfully supplied a compositional explanation of certain entities in terms of certain others that compose them, then we have established that these entities are in some sense the same. Most importantly, a successful compositional explanation consequently shows that the mass-energy, or force, associated with a certain entity just is the mass-energy, or force, of certain component entities. This is what I will term the 'Ontologically Unifying Power', or 'OUP', of compositional explanations.

Our vast array of compositional explanations in the sciences, from fundamental physics to condensed matter physics or materials sciences, on to chemistry or biochemistry, through cytology and physiology, and now even beginning to encompass the neurosciences and psychology have had intellectual impacts in all kinds of ways. For instance, compositional explanations have been central to the centuries-old unification project in physics that has now established that there are no special forces, or energies, and that the only fundamental forces and energies are all microphysical in character. Connected to the later finding, and again driven by compositional explanations, working scientists now routinely assume the global claim that everything in nature is either identical to a microphysical entity or is composed by microphysical entities. (I will call this thesis 'physicalism' here.)"

(Gillett, Carl. "The Metaphysics of Nature, Science, and the Rules of Engagement." In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Kenneth Aizawa and Carl Gillett, 205-247. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. pp. 205-7)
<QUOTE

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 3:17 pmI'm not looking for complete success but there really is Zero progress with understanding Conscious Experience. There has been Huge progress with regard to the Neural Correlates of Conscious Experience. That should not be confused with progress with regard to Conscious Experience.

The Scientific and Physicalist view is that Consciousness is somehow located in the Neurons or is an Emergent Property of Neural Activity. It is a reasonable assumption given that Conscious Activity is Correlated with Neural Activity. But Science has no Theory, Hypothesis, or even a Speculation about how Consciousness could be in the Neurons or an Emergent Property. Science has not been able to show for example, how something like the Experience of Redness is some kind of effect of Neural Activity. In fact, the more you think about the Redness Experience and then think about Neural Activity, the less likely it seems that the Redness Experience is actually some sort of Neural Activity. Science has tried in vain for a hundred years to figure this out. If the Experience of Redness actually was in the Neurons, Science would have had a lot to say about it by now. Something has got to be wrong with their perspective on the problem.

The Inter Mind Model (IMM) can accommodate Consciousness as being in the Neurons or an Emergent Property, but it can also accommodate other concepts of Consciousness. The IMM is structurally a Connection Model, in the sense that the Physical Mind (PM) is connected to the Inter Mind (IM) which is connected to the Conscious Mind (CM). These Connections might be conceptual where all three Minds are actually in the Neurons or an Emergent Property. But these Connections might have more reality to them where the PM, the IM, and the CM are separate things. I will Speculate that the situation is more like the latter than the former. In that case the PM, which is in Physical Space (PSp), uses the IM to create a Connection to the CM, which is in Conscious Space (CSp). The important perspective change here is that the PM is Connected to the CM, rather than assuming that the PM contains the CM as part of the PM. This allows the CM to be a thing in itself existing in it’s own CSp.………

I'm not sure I understand you correctly, but you seem to have replaced interactionistic substance dualism with an interactionistic (connectionistic) substance trialism—which reminds me of the following:

"Ipse autem Deus pacis sanctificet vos per omnia et integer spiritus vester et anima et corpus sine querella in adventu Domini nostri Iesu Christi servetur."
—
"And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
—Bible, New Testament (1 Thessalonians 5:23)

Here we have an additional distinction between spirit (spiritus) and soul (anima), which happens to be pretty obscure.

While googling around, I came upon this paper, in which someone postulates a "submind":

* Njikeh, Kong Derick. "Mind, Submind and Body Substances/Components." International Journal of Philosophy 7/1 (2019): 17–19.
[Free PDF]

"Introduction: In Christian theology, trialism is the doctrine that human is made up of three components which are the Spirit, the Soul and the Body. Trialism was introduced in philosophy by John Cottingham as an alternative interpretation of the Cartesian dualism (mind-body dualism) of Rene Descartes, which states that human is made up of two substances; the Mind and Body which are distinct and separable with the Mind being a non-physical substance which holds consciousness. In Cartesian Trialism by Cottingham, he kept the two substances in cartesian dualism and introduce a third substance or attribute called Sensation which belongs to the union of the Mind and Body. Going in line with the three attribute (Mind, Sensation, Body) nature of human by Cottingham, I think that the third substance (Sensation), is limited in explaining the processes that takes place between the Mind and the Body. This is because Sensation is based mostly in the perception of the senses and doesn’t take into consideration the sub-thinking processes involving memories, emotions and reflexes. I think that the substance “Sensation”, in Cartesian trialism should be replaced with the term “Submind” in what I called “Derician Trialism” which involves; the Mind, Submind and Body. This Submind is equivalent to the soul component in Christian trialism and the subconscious state in neuroscience."

I don't know if Njikeh's ideas correspond to yours (Is your "intermind" a "submind"?); but the alleged connections or interactions between Descartes' two substances are very mysterious already, so ones between three (basic kinds of) substances are even more mysterious.

You've complained that the neuroscience of consciousness is a failure; but I fail to see how your ontologically abstruse tripartite model can explain the origin and nature of conscious experiences, which you put into a nonphysical "conscious mind" (located in a nonphysical "conscious space") that is directly connected to a nonphysical(?) subconscious(?) "intermind", and indirectly (via intermind) to a "physical mind" (= brain).

Well, cognitive psychology/cognitive science (with its nonphenomenological terminology featuring the central concepts of function, information, and representation) operates basically on a theoretical level below the phenomenological one and above the neurophysiological one: conscious mind — subconscious cognitive mind — brain.

But most cognitive scientists aren't substance dualists (let alone trialists), because they regard neither the conscious mind nor the subconscious cognitive mind as an immaterial substance existing in addition to the brain or body as a material substance. They think a realistic cognitive science must be developed into a cognitive neuroscience, with all subconscious cognitive (intellectual) capacities and activities being implemented by neurophysical processes and structures.

SteveKlinko wrote:

Next, I would like to talk about Panpsychism with respect to Conscious Experience. This seems to be a popular theory, or really just a speculation, that there is some sort of Consciousness aspect in everything. So Electrons, Protons, Neutrons, etc. have a tiny aspect of Consciousness. This is basically a Physicalist proposition because the theory stipulates Consciousness is in all matter even down to the level of elementary particles. The hope with this speculation is that when Electrons combine with Protons and other elementary particles, that the Atoms and Molecules will have some combined greater Consciousness. Finally, at the level of a massive object like a Brain, all the combined micro Consciousnesses will somehow combine to give us the Conscious Experiences that we have. There is no Logic or even a Clue as to how these micro Consciousnesses can combine into a larger Consciousness that has Conscious Experiences. So the biggest problem with this theory is that it always talks about some ambiguous vague generalized Consciousness Thing. It can never get to an Explanation for any actual Conscious Experience. There is no way this theory can Explain what the IM is within the theory. How does this theory Explain any Conscious Experience?

You are a philosopher capable asserting many good points worthy of debate;

But in philosophy many conceptualizations of concepts of concepts, such as 'Consciousness' are 'rabbit holes' - they branch in many,
if not infinite directions with no absolute definition or full understanding even possible - Unless you can simplify to the lowest common
denominator.
Such as this simplification by the famous Quantum Physicist Max Planck:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
― Max Planck

Another words no ideas or concepts are even possible unless an 'a priori' state of consciousness exists.
Consciousness can not come out of non-consciousness, non-consciousness is non existent
unless you want to postulate a creator god - but even that concept must stem from consciousness.

Panpsychism goes back to ancient Greek philosophers - And I suppose some of the prejudice against it is because of how old
and basic it is. But if you don't accept the consciousness of everything you immediately step into the rabbit hole,
a rabbit hole that has no way out.

That said two final questions: Express to me one thing, idea, concept or mathematical formula that exists independently of a
conscious state of mind and Prove the existence of a Universe existing independently of conscious observation

I don't think we can attribute consciousness to elementary particles and the like. At that level of reality you have reactions. When you have multiple interconnected reactions, as are found in simple organisms, then you have reflexes. Organise enough of those reflexes in an interconnected way and you have consciousness.

An analogy would be building digital circuits. You start with gates - yes or no switches - and you put the gates together to form simple circuits. Those circuits are then put together to create applications, such as a timer. Note that the switches are not the same as the final application; a digital gate is not a timer, but when many gates are be organised in certain ways, then they can create a timer.

So I see reactivity is the key concept of our universe rather than consciousness, though each pertain the the interconnectivity of reality. Things in the universe may be more or less reactive. Or they may be more or less selective about that to which they react. Or they may be more or less flexible in reactions. Consciousness can thus be thought of a thin sliver of a reactivity spectrum in a similar way to visible light on the electromagnetic spectrum - a thin sliver of the most complex and ordered dynamics amidst mountains of non conscious dynamics that range from quantum mechanics to galactic collisions.

That's my guess in 2021, anyway :)

Consul wrote:

But most cognitive scientists aren't substance dualists (let alone trialists), because they regard neither the conscious mind nor the subconscious cognitive mind as an immaterial substance existing in addition to the brain or body as a material substance. They think a realistic cognitive science must be developed into a cognitive neuroscience, with all subconscious cognitive (intellectual) capacities and activities being implemented by neurophysical processes and structures.

Neuroscience seems to be the most productive way to understand consciousness. A study of the anatomical nervous system of humans is worth time and energy.

Consul wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 4:51 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 3:22 pmYes, and ironically the only thing that this Neuroscience of Consciousness is not able to Explain is Consciousness. They have Zero understanding of what Conscious Experience could be. There is no such thing as a generalized Consciousness thing. It is all Conscious Experience, regardless if Sensory, Emotional, Imagination, or Dreams/Hallucinations.

The (Most) neuroscientists' materialistic working hypothesis is that all kinds of subjective experiences are realized by complexes of neural processes.

QUOTE>
"My preferred philosophical position, and the default assumption of many neuroscientists, is physicalism. This is the idea that the universe is made of physical stuff, and that conscious states are either identical to, or somehow emerge from, particular arrangements of this physical stuff. Some philosophers use the term materialism instead of physicalism, but for our purposes they can be treated synonymously."

(Seth, Anil. Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. New York: Dutton, 2021. pp. 18-9)
<QUOTE

See: The Neuroscience of Consciousness > The Future

It is a completely arbitrary assumption to just assume that Conscious Experiences are material stuff. The Experience of something like Redness is always going to be a Huge Problem for these Materialist propositions.

Consul wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 5:09 pm The ontological(ly reductionistic) position I accept and defend is compositional/constitutional materialism (aka mereological physicalism) about mind and consciousness: All mental or experiential phenomena are composed of or constituted by neural processes or mechanisms.

From this point of view, the neuroscience of consciousness is looking for (explanations of) those neural mechanisms of subjective experiences which constitute them and are thereby identical to them (rather than mere correlates of them).

QUOTE>
"Constitutive Explanation

Constitutive explanation involves moving downward in the hierarchy and looking at a smaller-scale spatiotemporal grain or a lower level of organization. It is accomplished by showing that the phenomenon appearing as an integrated whole at one level can be decomposed to its constituent parts and their causal interactions at the immediately underlying, lower levels of description. Constitutive explanations describe the lower-level mechanisms that the entity is composed of, or whose activity, when taken as a whole, simply is the phenomenon to be explained by the description of the mechanism.

An illuminating example from biology is the cell. A single cell, taken as a whole, is an independent living unit. The constitutive explanation revealing what makes the cell tick descends to the immediately lower levels of organization where the different parts of the cell and their causal interactions are to be found.

When the same strategy is applied to the explanation of consciousness there is, first of all, the phenomenon to be explained (the explanandum): consciousness. It resides at some specific level of organization in the brain (the phenomenal level). The lower-level, nonconscious neurophysiological mechanisms, whose activity as a whole constitutes consciousness, reside at a lower level of organization in the brain.

The current search for the direct NCC appears to be the empirical approach to the constitutive explanation of consciousness. However, the notion 'neural correlates of consciousness' requires considerable clarification. The relationship between an explanandum and its lower-level constituents must be stronger than mere correlation, for correlation is not an explanatory relationship. The cell membrane, the nucleus, chromosomes, cell organelles, and other microscopic parts of the cell are not merely the biological correlates of life, but crucial microlevel constituents that explain why the whole system is alive. In the same vein, the constitutive explanation of consciousness should describe such part-whole or mereological relationships between the lower- and higher-level phenomena that make their hierarchical connection truly explanatory."
(pp. 18-20)

"How, then does a nonconscious phenomenon produce or become a conscious phenomenon? The problem with this characterization is that we easily imagine some nonconscious entity (a neuron, say) somehow 'producing' consciousness. But that image is misguided. Nonconscious phenomena do not mysteriously become conscious phenomena, or unaccountably 'emit' them. Rather, at one level of organization there are nonconscious phenomena that, when collectively interrelated, form a higher level of organization where there are conscious phenomena. The nonconscious phenomena do not mysteriously emit consciousness, they collectively constitute it. To ask, 'How does a nonconscious phenomenon produce or become a conscious phenomenon?', is like asking, 'How does a subatomic particle become an atom?' or 'How does a water molecule emit liquidity?' or 'How does a DNA molecule become alive?' The questions ascribe a higher-level feature to a lower-level entity, which in none of the cases makes any sense. Furthermore, it makes little sense to ask, 'Why is this experience of color (say, seeing the sun near the horizon as a red-orange circle) exactly like this?' Well, things are what they are: a pattern of phenomenal features is what it is, an electron is what it is, and a DNA molecule is what it is, and not something else. Does it make sense to ask, 'Why is an electron an electron?' or 'Why is a DNA molecule a DNA molecule?' I do not think these questions make any sense, and therefore require no explanation.

Instead of these misguided questions, we should form an image of a multilevel hierarchical organization in nature, where it is possible to move from one level to another, without any gaps. Yet, at the different levels, quite dissimilar entities and events are found. In the cases where we truly understand the mechanisms behind complex biological phenomena, we move across the levels and see that even a gapless natural continuum can support all sorts of radically different things."
(p. 358)

(Revonsuo, Antti. Inner Presence: Consciousness as a Biological Phenomenon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. p. 358)
<QUOTE

QUOTE>
"Perhaps most famously, across the sciences we find explanations that explain higher-level entities (whether individuals, properties, or processes) in terms of lower-level entities that scientists take to compose them and hence these explanations use vertical relations. For example, we explain the inheritance of traits between parent organisms and their off spring using molecules taken to compose them. We explain the refractive index of a crystal using the properties and relations of the atoms that compose it. Or we explain the movement of the earth’s surface using the tectonic plates, and currents of magma, taken to compose the earth. We use the term 'compositional explanation' to refer to such explanation, though philosophers have used various names for it.(3 And we term the vertical relations that such explanations posit 'scientific composition' relations where this includes relations between individuals, properties/relations, and also processes.
(3 Other terms include 'reductive explanation', 'microstructural analyses', 'functional explanation', 'constitutive explanation', or 'mechanistic explanation'.)"

(Aizawa, Kenneth, and Carl Gillett. "Introduction: Vertical Relations in Science, Philosophy, and the World: Understanding the New Debates over Verticality." In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Kenneth Aizawa and Carl Gillett, 1-38. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. p. 2)

"The Scientific Revolution was powered, at least in large part, by explanations that pierced the manifest image of common sense by explaining its level of everyday individuals, properties, and processes using qualitatively distinct, lower-level entities taken to compose them. And such explanations have now been iterated through all the levels of nature. For example, we take the corrosive action of glaciers to be explained by the movement of the ice molecules that we take to compose glaciers. We explain the motility of cells using the properties and relations of the molecules that we take to compose them. We understand why kidneys clean blood in terms of the properties and relations of the cells taken to compose them. And we could easily go on, and on, through such explanations across the sciences. Given their nature, such explanations are plausibly termed 'compositional' explanations, since they are founded around showing how lower-level entities of one kind (whether individuals, properties, or processes) compose entities of very different kinds at higher levels. Philosophers of science have used a range of other terms for compositional explanation, including 'reductive explanation', 'functional explanation', or 'mechanistic explanation', and there is a substantial body of work on the nature of such explanation, including a recent burst of research. Oddly, however, a couple of the key features of compositional explanations have not received much philosophical attention.

First, compositional explanations allow us to explain one kind of entity, such as a cell or its moving, in terms of the qualitatively different kinds of entity taken to compose it, like molecules or molecular processes of polymerization, and this hence results in what I term the 'Piercing Explanatory Power', or 'PEP', of compositional explanations. Second, we should mark that once we have successfully supplied a compositional explanation of certain entities in terms of certain others that compose them, then we have established that these entities are in some sense the same. Most importantly, a successful compositional explanation consequently shows that the mass-energy, or force, associated with a certain entity just is the mass-energy, or force, of certain component entities. This is what I will term the 'Ontologically Unifying Power', or 'OUP', of compositional explanations.

Our vast array of compositional explanations in the sciences, from fundamental physics to condensed matter physics or materials sciences, on to chemistry or biochemistry, through cytology and physiology, and now even beginning to encompass the neurosciences and psychology have had intellectual impacts in all kinds of ways. For instance, compositional explanations have been central to the centuries-old unification project in physics that has now established that there are no special forces, or energies, and that the only fundamental forces and energies are all microphysical in character. Connected to the later finding, and again driven by compositional explanations, working scientists now routinely assume the global claim that everything in nature is either identical to a microphysical entity or is composed by microphysical entities. (I will call this thesis 'physicalism' here.)"

(Gillett, Carl. "The Metaphysics of Nature, Science, and the Rules of Engagement." In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Kenneth Aizawa and Carl Gillett, 205-247. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. pp. 205-7)
<QUOTE

This is all well and good, but show me how any of this can be applied, be it Reductive Analysis, Functional Explanation, Mechanistic Explanation, or Compositional explanation, to the Conscious Visual Experience and particularly to the Experience of Redness.

As I've commented time and time again, the first thing that needs to be tackled is a "philosophy of explanations" in general. We can't critique whether something works as an explanation or not if we don't rigorously tackle a philosophy of explanations first.

We need to pin down just what the criteria for explanations are--it needs to be literally spelled out in at least a cluster property manner--and we need to tackle just WHY are proposed criteria should be the criteria. A "subsection" of this is going to have to tackle philosophy of meaning in a plausible way, because it's going to need to address how expressions have meaning and how that all manages to "link up" or not with other things. And all of this needs to be done in a way that in general, things that are intuitively accepted as explanations can meet the criteria and things that are intuitively considered unexplained do not meet the criteria.

And, if we're going to dismiss a scientific approach to explaining consciousness because the scientific approach doesn't meet our criteria for explanations, then to be consistent, we either need to present an alternative approach that DOES meet our criteria for explanations, or we need to reject that just as well. So, for example, there can be no seduction into nonphysical, mystical, religious, etc. approaches to consciousness if those approaches can't meet our criteria for explanations--at least not if we're going to reject a scientific or physicalist approach for that very reason.

But we can't even begin to discuss this until we do our philosophical work re explanations, because otherwise we can't figure out whether we have an explanation or not, because we don't know exactly what explanations are or why they're whatever they supposedly are.