Philosophy Discussion Forums

Sy Borg wrote: ↑December 14th, 2021, 8:38 pm No, my reaction would be to agree, because I don't care about whatever cause are trying to promote, presumably materialism and neurocentrism. By contrast I'm just interested in this, and have no barrow to push.

The fact is that we don't understand the mechanisms of life so well either, although we are further along than with consciousness, so it seems. Researcher still have only a sketchy idea of the mechanism/s that turn/s non-living matter into living matter. Life's extreme complexity remains beyond us. Thus, your doctor probably won't have the answers to all your ailments, and even today new things are being found out about how microbes operate, let alone larger organisms. There are many blanks to fill.

As with consciousness, knowledge is still sketchy, not deep enough to create, to turn non-conscious matter into conscious matter.

Well, I can't say that anything you wrote here is wrong, I'd just emphasize that consciousness is not as big a mystery as folks like to make it out to be, and at least at a high level in outline, we already understand the general mechanisms responsible for it.

Consul wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 3:28 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 2:51 pm …What is that Redness that floats in front of our faces at various locations in the Visual Experience?

It's a subjective sensory affection or passion that consists in a particular electrochemical process in a brain.

Certain vision-related neural processes in your brain are experienced by you as colors.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 9:30 amAt several points in our recent history, humans have been convinced they had discovered all that is there to be discovered. Soon afterward, of course, we discovered how wrong we were, but it hasn't stopped us making the same mistake, again and again. The simple fact seems to be that, however much we discover, our biggest discovery is how much more there is to be known and understood. Uncertainty is a core characteristic of the world, as we humans experience it. In practice, if not in theory, there is no certainty.

The challenge is understanding the extent and limits of our certainty. One may know much about an entities' components without clearly understanding the synergies between those components.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 4:30 pm

Sy Borg wrote: ↑December 14th, 2021, 8:38 pm No, my reaction would be to agree, because I don't care about whatever cause are trying to promote, presumably materialism and neurocentrism. By contrast I'm just interested in this, and have no barrow to push.

The fact is that we don't understand the mechanisms of life so well either, although we are further along than with consciousness, so it seems. Researcher still have only a sketchy idea of the mechanism/s that turn/s non-living matter into living matter. Life's extreme complexity remains beyond us. Thus, your doctor probably won't have the answers to all your ailments, and even today new things are being found out about how microbes operate, let alone larger organisms. There are many blanks to fill.

As with consciousness, knowledge is still sketchy, not deep enough to create, to turn non-conscious matter into conscious matter.

Well, I can't say that anything you wrote here is wrong, I'd just emphasize that consciousness is not as big a mystery as folks like to make it out to be, and at least at a high level in outline, we already understand the general mechanisms responsible for it.

We understand some of the general mechanisms that shape consciousness. It's like the Big Bang - being able to postulate knowing what happened in the first second after the Big Bang does not infer knowledge of what preceded and triggered it. As with analysis of neuronal dynamics, knowing what happens after the fact is essential information needed to understand the phenomenon in question, but does not provide solid answers.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 4:30 pm Well, I can't say that anything you wrote here is wrong, I'd just emphasize that consciousness is not as big a mystery as folks like to make it out to be, and at least at a high level in outline, we already understand the general mechanisms responsible for it.

You may call it an article of faith, but I see no plausible and scientifically fruitful ontological alternative to central-state materialism (reductive materialism)—the view that all mental/experiential states are states of central nervous systems, and that they do not contain any properties (qualities) of a nonphysicochemical or physicochemically irreducible kind.

QUOTE>
"Central-State Materialism

The Causal Theory of mind sets up a scientific task: to find what in a man is causally responsible for those facets of his behavior which are "expressions" of mental conditions. When that task is complete we will have a full doctrine of what a mind is, and not just a causal schema which mentions some cause or other but does not fully specify it.

It is now universally accepted that in this connection the brain and its appendages are the bodily parts which matter most. If any bodily part is the thing whose events and processes are causes of behavior, the central nervous system is that thing. Central-State Materialism thus affirms the Causal Theory of mind and adds that behavior can be completely explained in terms of events in the central nervous system. The mind, the cause of behavior, turns out to be the brain.

One more step is required to reach Central-State Materialism. This step insists that the nervous system has no properties of a non-physical kind. It insists that the only properties the nervous system has are the properties recognized in chemistry and physics, together with their derivatives. Without this step the doctrine is not a materialism but a theory which accords to the brain two different sorts of attributes, non-material as well as material ones. Such a view is compatible with the Causal Theory of mind whether or not the nonmaterial properties are described in terms of their part in the causation of behavior. If they are, they would be mental properties of the mind. If they are not, they would belong to the mind but not be mental properties, like having a temperature of 98.4°F.

Central-State Materialism is thus the most uncompromisingly economical version of the Causal Theory of mind. It identifies the cause of behavior as a purely material object, the central nervous system as conceived in neurophysiology.

Central State-Materialism does not, like Behaviorism, deny that the mind is a thing. But it does deny that the mind is a spiritual thing. ...More fully, the answer concerning the relation of mind to body is: the mind is part of the body. It is a special part, the part which controls behavior. That is, it is the part which governs the movement of the limbs under the influence both of its own states (e.g., purposes) and of sensorily gained information concerning the body's environment and attitude. The part which does this is the brain, whose connections are chiefly with sense organs, which affect it, and muscles and glands, which it affects.

Thus the Mind-Body problem resolves into one of scientific detail. In precisely what changes does the brain play a part, and what part does it play? Neurophysiology is the science which will furnish the full account of the relation of mind to body. The relation of mind to matter is already settled: a mind is a special arrangement of matter in an organism, which is another special arrangement of matter. It is not some different non-material sort of thing standing in mysterious relation to the matter which makes up living bodies.

Just as there is no specially philosophical problem of the relation of a bus to its engine, and no special Boat-Rudder problem or Pump-Refrigerator problem in philosophy, so there is no special Mind-Body problem beyond the scientific one of the causal interplay of elements in a system. Considered as a solution to the traditional problem of mind and body, Central-State Materialism is highly satisfactory."

(Campbell, Keith. Body and Mind. 2nd ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984. pp. 86-9)
<QUOTE

Note that Campbell himself doesn't subscribe to central-state materialism but to what he calls central-state materialism plus = CSM + physically irreducible epiphenomenal qualia.

QUOTE>
"The account given of awareness by phenomenal properties is the only point where the new Epiphenomenalism diverges from Central-State Materialism. Perhaps the new Epiphenomenalism could be called Central-State Materialism Plus."

(Campbell, Keith. Body and Mind. 2nd ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984. p. 125)

———

"In 1970 Keith Campbell proposed a New Epiphenomenalism, which combines aspects of epiphenomenalism with the view that mental states are brain states. Frank Jackson later defended a similar view. Where classical epiphenomenalism asserts that mental states are non-physical and causally inert, the new epiphenomenalism asserts that mental states are causally potent physical states of the brain, but that in addition to their physical properties some of these states possess phenomenal properties or qualia which are non-physical and non-causal."

("Epiphenomenalism," by Keith Campbell and Nicholas J. J. Smith. In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3, pp. 351-4)
<QUOTE

Consul wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 6:47 pmQUOTE>
"The account given of awareness by phenomenal properties is the only point where the new Epiphenomenalism diverges from Central-State Materialism. Perhaps the new Epiphenomenalism could be called Central-State Materialism Plus."

(Campbell, Keith. Body and Mind. 2nd ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984. p. 125)

———

"In 1970 Keith Campbell proposed a New Epiphenomenalism, which combines aspects of epiphenomenalism with the view that mental states are brain states. Frank Jackson later defended a similar view. Where classical epiphenomenalism asserts that mental states are non-physical and causally inert, the new epiphenomenalism asserts that mental states are causally potent physical states of the brain, but that in addition to their physical properties some of these states possess phenomenal properties or qualia which are non-physical and non-causal."

("Epiphenomenalism," by Keith Campbell and Nicholas J. J. Smith. In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3, pp. 351-4)
<QUOTE

No matter whether or not nonphysical, physically irreducible qualia are epiphenomenal:

QUOTE>
"[O]ne of the difficulties for Dualism is that it must assign the coming into existence of the immaterial mind to a definite point of time in the development of the organism, although there seems to be no natural point at which such an entity could emerge. The same difficulty holds for the Attribute theory. At what point in the gradual growth of an organism do these new, non-material, properties of the substance appear? ...[O]n the physical side we seem to have no more than a gradual increase in physical complexity without a break at any point that might betoken the emergence of something new. ...
The final criticism to be brought against the Attribute theory is a very simple one. It is just that the notion of these unique properties is a mysterious one. We are to think of the central nervous system as somehow stippled over with a changing pattern of these special properties. ...Just how do these properties attach to the brain? I, at any rate, can form no clear conception of such properties and their attachment."

(Armstrong, D. M. A Materialist Theory of the Mind. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. pp. 47-8)
<QUOTE

Consul wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 6:47 pm

Faustus5 wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 4:30 pm Well, I can't say that anything you wrote here is wrong, I'd just emphasize that consciousness is not as big a mystery as folks like to make it out to be, and at least at a high level in outline, we already understand the general mechanisms responsible for it.

You may call it an article of faith, but I see no plausible and scientifically fruitful ontological alternative to central-state materialism (reductive materialism)—the view that all mental/experiential states are states of central nervous systems, and that they do not contain any properties (qualities) of a nonphysicochemical or physicochemically irreducible kind.

Yet decades of spectacularly funded intensive research has not answered the question.

There's no need to bother with non-physical solutions to the hard problem at this stage (if any such models actually exist outside of religions). There is so much more to know about physical aspects of consciousness, not least the synergies between the CNS and the metabolism. Life started as a metabolism with (probably) RNA molecules surrounded by a lipid layer that reacted subtly to outside conditions. All evolution since is an extrapolation of that basic model.

It starts with metabolism, yet we completely ignore it because, when a metabolic organ is damaged, consciousness is only changed in terms of suffering, not essential cognition. Yet, have we checked out a brain operating without any input from the metabolism, operated purely by synthetic connections designed to mimic the inputs from the digestive system? No, and the "brain in a vat" would very likely experience no qualia.

Ever more of the links between metabolic organs and the CNS are being determined because it's been being found that the synergies between metabolism and CNS have been hugely underestimated, both in terms of health and mental state. It's far from outlandish to question whether consciousness is generated by more than just the CNS, despite its apparently pivotal role.

Trouble is, such research will only be researched piecemeal, funded for medical purposes, so we can't expect definitive answers as regards the ontology any time soon.

Consul wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 3:28 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 2:51 pm …What is that Redness that floats in front of our faces at various locations in the Visual Experience?

It's a subjective sensory affection or passion that consists in a particular electrochemical process in a brain.

(By subjective affections or passions I don't just mean emotions but all sorts of experiential impressions, including sensations and imaginations.)

Yes, but how does that Electrochemical Process produce the Redness? As an analogy, it would be like you saying that the Image on your Computer Screen is a result of the Electronics, and then claiming that Explains it without showing how the Electronics produces the Image.

Consul wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 6:47 pm "In 1970 Keith Campbell proposed a New Epiphenomenalism, which combines aspects of epiphenomenalism with the view that mental states are brain states. Frank Jackson later defended a similar view. Where classical epiphenomenalism asserts that mental states are non-physical and causally inert, the new epiphenomenalism asserts that mental states are causally potent physical states of the brain, but that in addition to their physical properties some of these states possess phenomenal properties or qualia which are non-physical and non-causal."

("Epiphenomenalism," by Keith Campbell and Nicholas J. J. Smith. In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3, pp. 351-4)

Campbell goes through all that analysis and then says but there still is the Qualia that we cannot Explain. What!? It's the Qualia that we want to Explain. What good is that whole analysis if it does not Explain Conscious Experience? It's just more Neural Correlates.

Any phenomenon and all phenomena are experienced within perceptual frameworks. It's impossible to see red and not see a red something plus at least one other hue.

Perceptual frameworks suffice to explain qualia if you add in intentionality.

Intentionality is the word for how we live life towards the future however banal and trite our personal future may be we live our life towards it. In order to do so we need a perceptual framework. A perceptual framework is called a gestalt.

Please do let's not mystify qualia!

Belindi wrote: ↑December 16th, 2021, 8:46 am Any phenomenon and all phenomena are experienced within perceptual frameworks. It's impossible to see red and not see a red something plus at least one other hue.

Perceptual frameworks suffice to explain qualia if you add in intentionality.

Intentionality is the word for how we live life towards the future however banal and trite our personal future may be we live our life towards it. In order to do so we need a perceptual framework. A perceptual framework is called a gestalt.

Please do let's not mystify qualia!

I disagree. Look at a Fire Truck, then at an Apple, then at a Stop Sign. These are all different things and when you are Looking at them they are in the context of many other things. But now Realize that there is a Property or Experience about all of these things that is created in your Mind. That is the Redness of these things. No larger Context or Framework necessary. The Redness is a thing in and of itself that needs to be Explained.

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑December 16th, 2021, 8:14 am

Consul wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 3:28 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 2:51 pm …What is that Redness that floats in front of our faces at various locations in the Visual Experience?

It's a subjective sensory affection or passion that consists in a particular electrochemical process in a brain.

(By subjective affections or passions I don't just mean emotions but all sorts of experiential impressions, including sensations and imaginations.)

Yes, but how does that Electrochemical Process produce the Redness?

It doesn't produce the redness because it is (identical to) it: Certain (dynamic patterns of) electrochemical processes in your brain are your color experiences.

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑December 16th, 2021, 8:31 am

Consul wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 6:47 pm "In 1970 Keith Campbell proposed a New Epiphenomenalism, which combines aspects of epiphenomenalism with the view that mental states are brain states. Frank Jackson later defended a similar view. Where classical epiphenomenalism asserts that mental states are non-physical and causally inert, the new epiphenomenalism asserts that mental states are causally potent physical states of the brain, but that in addition to their physical properties some of these states possess phenomenal properties or qualia which are non-physical and non-causal."

("Epiphenomenalism," by Keith Campbell and Nicholas J. J. Smith. In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3, pp. 351-4)

Campbell goes through all that analysis and then says but there still is the Qualia that we cannot Explain. What!? It's the Qualia that we want to Explain. What good is that whole analysis if it does not Explain Conscious Experience? It's just more Neural Correlates.

Well, maybe mysterianism is true, and humans cannot explain conscious experience. Maybe it's a brute fact that is to be accepted "with natural piety" (Samuel Alexander).

QUOTE>
"The new Epiphenomenalism leaves the Mind-Body problem in a rather curious condition. It divides the problem into two parts, one soluble and the other insoluble. It reaches different conclusions on different aspects of mentality.
…
The central truth about minds is their causal role in behavior. With respect to all the causal aspects of the mind, the Mind-Body problem takes the form: What is the relation between human bodily activity and its mental cause? And the answer is as given in Central-State Materialism: bodily activity is caused by neurological changes in the central nervous system. The mind is part of the body. How changes in sense organs affect it, and how changes in it affect the muscles, become a painstaking matter of detailed scientific research which has no insoluble mystery attached to it.

But human mental life also embraces awareness by phenomenal properties. Such awareness is also, we must suppose, caused by changes in sense organs and brain. How this is done we do not know. Because the non-material seems to thwart our attempts to account for its operations, I suspect we will never know how the trick is worked. This part of the Mind-Body problem seems insoluble. This aspect of humanity seems destined to remain forver beyond our understanding."
(pp. 130-1)

"Bodily activity is caused by neurological changes in the central nervous system. The mind is part of the body. How changes in sense organs affect it, and how changes in it affect the muscles, become a painstaking matter of detailed scientific research which has no insoluble mystery attached to it.

But human mental life also embraces awareness by phenomenal properties. Such awareness is also, we must suppose, caused by changes in sense organs and brain. How this is done we do not know. Because the non-material seems to thwart our attempts to account for its operations, I suspect we will never know how the trick is worked. This part of the Mind-Body Problem seems insoluble. This aspect of humanity seems destined to remain forever beyond our understanding.

So we reach a skeptical conclusion regarding one facet of the Mind-Body problem. Philosophers ought to dislike skeptical conclusions, but they should not like spurious escapes from them any better. We cannot guarantee in advance that the whole of human nature is open to human understanding."
(pp. 130-1)

"Epiphenomenalists must just accept, if they are to remain Epiphenomenalists, that the existence of nonmaterial properties is a fact for which they have no explanation. They may comfort themselves in this uncomfortable position with two reflections: the lack of
explanation does not disprove the fact, and the existence of basic material properties of material things is something for which we equally have no explanation. Compared with Epiphenomenalism, Central-State Materialism embodies a single, simple, and universal
vision of the world. But we should not be prepared to pay for tidiness of theory the price of denying some of the facts. Epiphenomenalism rests on the claim that not all facts about men's minds will fit into the materialist account. H that claim is correct, we will have to reconcile ourselves to an interpretation of evolution ary theory and embryonic development which is less smooth and unproblematic than we might wish."
(pp. 137-8)

(Campbell, Keith. Body and Mind. 2nd ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.)
<QUOTE

CORRECTED QUOTE BOX:

QUOTE>
"The new Epiphenomenalism leaves the Mind-Body problem in a rather curious condition. It divides the problem into two parts, one soluble and the other insoluble. It reaches different conclusions on different aspects of mentality.
…
The central truth about minds is their causal role in behavior. With respect to all the causal aspects of the mind, the Mind-Body problem takes the form: What is the relation between human bodily activity and its mental cause? And the answer is as given in Central-State Materialism: bodily activity is caused by neurological changes in the central nervous system. The mind is part of the body. How changes in sense organs affect it, and how changes in it affect the muscles, become a painstaking matter of detailed scientific research which has no insoluble mystery attached to it.

But human mental life also embraces awareness by phenomenal properties. Such awareness is also, we must suppose, caused by changes in sense organs and brain. How this is done we do not know. Because the non-material seems to thwart our attempts to account for its operations, I suspect we will never know how the trick is worked. This part of the Mind-Body problem seems insoluble. This aspect of humanity seems destined to remain forver beyond our understanding.

So we reach a skeptical conclusion regarding one facet of the Mind-Body problem. Philosophers ought to dislike skeptical conclusions, but they should not like spurious escapes from them any better. We cannot guarantee in advance that the whole of human nature is open to human understanding."
(pp. 130-1)

"Epiphenomenalists must just accept, if they are to remain Epiphenomenalists, that the existence of nonmaterial properties is a fact for which they have no explanation. They may comfort themselves in this uncomfortable position with two reflections: the lack of explanation does not disprove the fact, and the existence of basic material properties of material things is something for which we equally have no explanation. Compared with Epiphenomenalism, Central-State Materialism embodies a single, simple, and universal vision of the world. But we should not be prepared to pay for tidiness of theory the price of denying some of the facts. Epiphenomenalism rests on the claim that not all facts about men's minds will fit into the materialist account. If that claim is correct, we will have to reconcile ourselves to an interpretation of evolution ary theory and embryonic development which is less smooth and unproblematic than we might wish."
(pp. 137-8)

(Campbell, Keith. Body and Mind. 2nd ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.)
<QUOTE

Consul wrote: ↑December 16th, 2021, 2:56 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑December 16th, 2021, 8:14 am

Consul wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 3:28 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑December 15th, 2021, 2:51 pm …What is that Redness that floats in front of our faces at various locations in the Visual Experience?

It's a subjective sensory affection or passion that consists in a particular electrochemical process in a brain.

(By subjective affections or passions I don't just mean emotions but all sorts of experiential impressions, including sensations and imaginations.)

Yes, but how does that Electrochemical Process produce the Redness?

It doesn't produce the redness because it is (identical to) it: Certain (dynamic patterns of) electrochemical processes in your brain are your color experiences.

You have to be able to show HOW Redness is Electrochemical Processes in the Brain. Saying it does not Explain it. It's ok as a Speculation but it is not an Explanation.