Philosophy Discussion Forums

Further re "Not in the ontological sense," if we're saying "x is this, not that," ("x in this sense, not that sense") then how are we not proposing different/distinct or separate senses ("separate" in the senses of "to set apart" or "to make a distinction between"), and if we're doing that, how are we not asserting dualism/pluralism?

Consul wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 1:02 am

Gertie wrote: ↑May 26th, 2020, 4:06 pmSo, back to whether you need an Experiencer to experience.

If you are simply defining the substrate as the Experiencer of the experiential states, then (Idealism aside) yeah you can say that.

But it seems like a thin definition which misses the point that a sense of being a discrete, unified Self, the sense of being an Experiencer, is a feature of the nature of experience (as it manifests in humans at least).

What about pathological distortions of self-awareness/self-consciousness? For example, the sense of being a "unified self" can get lost (dissociative identity disorder); and Foster seems to be wrong in stating that "the subject’s awareness of himself, and of his role as mental subject, is an essential element of his awareness of the item itself," and that "someone’s introspective awareness of a mental item includes the awareness of himself as its subject." For there are pathological states of mind where one is aware or conscious of a mental item without a sense of ownership ("mineness") and subjecthood. Thought insertion is an example, where schizophrenics don't innerly perceive their thoughts as their own ones.

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"When someone is introspectively aware of a mental item, he is not aware of it as an object presented to him. He is aware of it, more intimately, from the inside, as an instance of his own mentalizing—as an instance of his being in a certain mental state, or performing a certain kind of mental act, or engaging in a certain kind of mental activity. The subject’s awareness of himself, and of his role as mental subject, is an essential element of his awareness of the item itself.

There should be no issue, then, over the need for an ontology of mental subjects. One has only to focus on the nature of any type of mental item as our concept of that type reveals it—be it pain, visual experience, belief, decision making, desire, anger, or whatever—to be able to see quite plainly that that sort of thing can be realized only as an instance of mentalizing by a subject. And one has only to think about introspective awareness in the right way to see quite plainly that someone’s introspective awareness of a mental item includes the awareness of himself as its subject."

(Foster, John. "Subjects of Mentality." In After Physicalism, edited by Benedikt Paul Göcke, 72-103. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. pp. 72-4)
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If we go back to the substrate's physical correlates (I tend to use 'brains' as a shorthand), we see as I mentioned before, there doesn't seem to be a Self correlate, no central Cartesian Theatre, no command and control centre, where my 'I System' neurons somehow assess what's going on and decide what to do. No-one knew that before we had the instruments to look, there might have been some physical 'Self' correlate like that, but it's not what we've found.

Rather there are dedicated (but plastic) subsystems interacting via unimaginably complex neural electro-chemical exchanges. Somehow, this results in an experiential discrete, unified, coherent sense of self in humans. The incredible thing isn't that this sometimes goes wrong, but that it happens at all.

The evolved functional benefit of a sense of self as a coherent, unified, discrete entity, located in a correlated body, with a first person pov navigating an 'external world' which we can make coherent models of, is clear. When it goes significantly wrong, we see people still often create internally coherent narratives, or even a variety of 'selves' as in DID, so it all somehow hangs together for them. Same with split brain experiments.

It seems reasonable to assume this necessity to create coherence and unity arises from the complexity of lots of different types of systems interacting. Avoiding a confusing cacophany of sensory experiences, emotions, sensations, memories, thoughts, etc. That kind of complexity is fine for purely physical systems, but for mental experience it wouldn't be functional. So we have this useful discrete, unified experiential sense of self, which we note is correlated to a specific body located in space and time, we can focus attention and create models of the external world and ourselves, have beliefs which we reason from, use 'thinky internal narratives', imagine, make predictions, etc. That's useful.

If say a moth for example, only has one experiential state - light/dark, there wouldn't be a need for this kind of unifying integration, and I'd guess a sense of self might not manifest. Just the experience. And the more complex the critter, the more subsystems and neural interactions, the closer to a human sense of self it might have.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 8:01 am

Greta wrote: ↑May 26th, 2020, 5:44 pm
The statement of mine that you objected to was, 'Researchers have been "almost there" since the 1990s too'. That referred to their almost universal belief that brains must be the exclusive generator of consciousness. They have been poking around in there for decades trying to find how it happens.

After complaining about that, you replied, "... a consensus that any final theory of consciousness is going to fall within the outlines of the global neuronal workspace model, and that consensus has existed since the 1990's'.

It says the same thing!

It only says the same thing now that you have traveled back in time to make "almost there" identical with "brains must be the exclusive generator of consciousness." That's some incredible semantic acrobatics you have going there.

Focusing on the brain is one thing--an approach that has been near universal for much longer than the 1990's since it is completely justified by all available evidence and literally nothing else is. No one in the mainstream with any sense at all thinks this focus means we are "almost there". That is a gross distortion.

One again you prove my point while pretending not to (and adding some more ad hominems, which appears to be your standard approach). Funny that you should use the ad hom "mental acrobatics" when your post is not quite rational. Why do you need to use ad homs to belittle? Do you feel that insulting others makes you appear smarter or more educated than them?

Simply, as I have said, the researchers stopped looking at other possibilities decades ago, having convinced themselves that the brain was the only possible generator of consciousness.

Whether you believe they are right or not is not the issue. The fact is that they have largely stopped looking elsewhere. I point that out and you are arguing with me about it! Yet you confirm my point ever more with each post, making clear the total belief in the global workspace model.

Yet there are no results decades on, but people still absolutely believe that the brain-only approach is the correct track. I will wait for results before becoming a believer. Researchers have been wrong in their pre-empted certainties many times before. Why not now?

Greta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 5:55 pm Whether you believe they are right or not is not the issue. The fact is that they have largely stopped looking elsewhere.

They're not going to look elsewhere if there's no good evidence for consciousness occurring outside of brains.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 7:05 pm

Greta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 5:55 pm Whether you believe they are right or not is not the issue. The fact is that they have largely stopped looking elsewhere.

They're not going to look elsewhere if there's no good evidence for consciousness occurring outside of brains.

It's not a matter of excluding brains but broadening the search.

There are most likely significant dependencies between major body systems that we have not yet identified. Does anyone believe that modern medicine fully understands the human body? Some such interdependencies may have a significant role in having a sense of being.

It was not long ago that researchers found important influences and co-dependencies between the microbiome (which we did not even know about when I was young) that will, in time, revolutionise some fields. Knowledge of living systems understandably remains patchy, given the extremely complex interdependencies.

My issue is not with neuro-centric arguments, which are fairly logical and easy to follow. No, it is the unwavering nature of those beliefs in some people here - the absolute certainty. I want more hard evidence, not just correlations, before uncritically believing anything. I want to know what the mechanisms are between patterns of neurons charging and having a sense of being. I want to see measurements, providing even an approximate measure of the intensity of qualia being subjectively experienced. Then I will be a believer.

The complete dismissal of potential roles that the metabolism may play in the generation of consciousness (qualia) appears to be a matter of economic rationalism. That is, it is much easier to isolate a single system (that's already intimidatingly complex) than to broaden the search.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 7:05 pm

Greta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 5:55 pm Whether you believe they are right or not is not the issue. The fact is that they have largely stopped looking elsewhere.

They're not going to look elsewhere if there's no good evidence for consciousness occurring outside of brains.

Terrapin, you can not be that naïve. It is not possible.

Science is not going to look outside of the brain because science is NOT looking for the source of consciousness, they are looking for control of consciousness. It is Science!! Science requires computers, labs, machines, funding and more funding. Who do you think supplies that funding? What do those suppliers want in return? Science studies how to control consciousness in humans -- that is what they study. That control is in the brain.

To say that the brain is the source of consciousness, is just plain stupid. It is not possible because life is conscious, so the brain would have to have created itself. Nonsense. Stop and think for a minute -- a brain creating life IS the "God" concept. This is the monism v dualism debate, which is nothing but a power struggle between science and religion, and you are supporting it -- although you claim to not be supporting it.

Gee

As for human consciousness, as far as I know humans originally tended to believe that their being was centered in the gut. Gut feelings and such had such a strong influence, and there are now debates going on whether we should treat the gut as a second brain or not. Or treat the "two" brains as one. Maybe our sense of being does extend beyond the head brain, throughout the spine and into the gut, maybe not. (Based on my own life experience I tend to theorize that it does.) Most of the "processing", and the creation of the model of reality we experience, is happening on in the head brain though, that's pretty undeniable by now.

Though these are again easy question of consciousness. As for the hard problem, consciousness isn't generated, neither by the head brain, nor the gut brain, nor both together, because consciousness isn't generated at all. Or at least there is no reason to believe that in the human body, physical stuff generates something inexplicable by physics.

Atla wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 11:23 pm As for human consciousness, as far as I know humans originally tended to believe that their being was centered in the gut. Gut feelings and such had such a strong influence, and there are now debates going on whether we should treat the gut as a second brain or not. Or treat the "two" brains as one. Maybe our sense of being does extend beyond the head brain, throughout the spine and into the gut, maybe not. (Based on my own life experience I tend to theorize that it does.) Most of the "processing", and the creation of the model of reality we experience, is happening on in the head brain though, that's pretty undeniable by now.

I read about that second brain in the gut in one of the science forums. It gave me a chuckle, but not a good visual. I don't want to think about a wormy-looking kind of organ in my gut. Ugh! But then, I don't think they were talking about an actual organ -- no wormy looking brain thingy. I think they were talking about chemistry that works like the brain.

This brings up an interesting point. This thread is about people, who seem to have functional brains, at least they seem to work, but the actual brain is damaged or mostly missing. It is interesting to note that other species are alive and aware -- even the ones without a brain -- and they use chemicals to communicate their awareness (consciousness). And the "gut" brain also uses chemicals to communicate. And the "head" brain is actually swimming in a vat (skull) full of chemicals. So is it the grey matter or is it the chemicals? Or is it both?

It is also interesting to note that the chemistry in the brain can cause mental difficulties, and schizophrenia, and death, even though the "grey matter" may be undamaged. So is it the grey matter, chemicals, or both?

Atla wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 11:23 pm Though these are again easy question of consciousness. As for the hard problem, consciousness isn't generated, neither by the head brain, nor the gut brain, nor both together, because consciousness isn't generated at all.

Although I agree with this, I think that it can look like it is generated. I think there is something that I call "raw" consciousness that is a fundamental part of the universe, and that it processes through life and becomes more than it was. So it looks like life generates consciousness, but in truth it is only processing consciousness and making it into something else. Just like all evolution, it becomes something other than what it was. imo

Atla wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 11:23 pm Or at least there is no reason to believe that in the human body, physical stuff generates something inexplicable by physics.

I am not so impressed with science. Just because physics can not explain something is no reason to doubt the reality of it. After all, physics can not explain life, but even a chicken can create new life.

Gee

Greta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 5:55 pmOne again you prove my point while pretending not to (and adding some more ad hominems, which appears to be your standard approach).

Might I suggest you find a dictionary and look up the meaning of “ad hominem”? You really don’t seem to be aware of what the term actually means.

Greta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 5:55 pmSimply, as I have said, the researchers stopped looking at other possibilities decades ago, having convinced themselves that the brain was the only possible generator of consciousness.

This is a very good thing! They had every reason to stop looking elsewhere. Scientists don’t like wasting their time and precious funding on pointless quests.

Greta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 5:55 pmThe fact is that they have largely stopped looking elsewhere. I point that out and you are arguing with me about it!

What I am disagreeing with you about are two things:

1. The notion that settling on the brain as the primary source of consciousness is identical with thinking we have almost achieved full understanding of consciousness. You were simply wrong to suggest this and now appear to be changing the subject rather than admit you made an error of hyperbole.

2. The notion that settling on the brain as the primary source of consciousness is a bad, premature “rush to judgement”. It isn’t—it is a prudent decision based on the evidence.

Greta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 5:55 pmYet there are no results decades on, but people still absolutely believe that the brain-only approach is the correct track. I will wait for results before becoming a believer.

What counts as a “result” for you? What kind of standards are cognitive neuroscientists supposed to meet before they get your blessing?

I'm skeptical of your skepticism because I have an almost two decades old book called “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness” edited by Stanislas Dehaene. It is a fantastic collection of many papers going over the “results” which have convinced scientists that the global neuronal workspace model is a convincing picture of how brains form consciousness.

The authors of those papers seem pretty reasonable and rational to me. I'm going to believe them over you until you can articulate reasonable standards for what gets to count as a "result".

Greta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 7:51 pm I want more hard evidence, not just correlations, before uncritically believing anything. I want to know what the mechanisms are between patterns of neurons charging and having a sense of being. I want to see measurements, providing even an approximate measure of the intensity of qualia being subjectively experienced. Then I will be a believer.

Aside from the specifics you're providing (and thanks for providing some), what, in general (with an aim of putting on our critical philosophy of science hats for a moment), would you say is the difference between "hard evidence" and "just correlations"?

Re "intensity of qualia" I'm not sure how we'd measure that because I'm not even sure what it's referring to. I don't at all deny qualia, but subjectively, I don't experience or think about qualia in a way related to "intensity." For example, I know what the "(tactile) fuzziness" of velvet is like to me subjectively, so I know the quale of "(tactile) fuzziness" re velvet, but it doesn't make sense to me to apply an "intensity" rating to that quale. There might be more or less "plush" velvet, but those are different qualia in that case in my view, not the same quale with a different "intensity."

The complete dismissal of potential roles that the metabolism may play in the generation of consciousness (qualia) appears to be a matter of economic rationalism. That is, it is much easier to isolate a single system (that's already intimidatingly complex) than to broaden the search.

The reason for dismissing stuff like that is because people can lose or have most body parts replaced or significantly changed, except for their brains, without concomitant changes in their consciousness or subjective experience.

Greta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 7:51 pm I want to know what the mechanisms are between patterns of neurons charging and having a sense of being. I want to see measurements, providing even an approximate measure of the intensity of qualia being subjectively experienced. Then I will be a believer.

Until these demands of yours can be carefully articulated in scientific language, which requires a lot of specificity, they do not constitute fair and reasonable standards that any science could satisfy. "Being" for instance, is a scientifically meaningless concept. So are "qualia".

I'm not saying you could never turn these demands into something fair and reasonable that a science of consciousness could address, just that you haven't done the work yet. But that's what makes the subject fun and challenging, right?

Gee wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 9:16 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 7:05 pm

They're not going to look elsewhere if there's no good evidence for consciousness occurring outside of brains.

Terrapin, you can not be that naïve. It is not possible.

Science is not going to look outside of the brain because science is NOT looking for the source of consciousness, they are looking for control of consciousness. It is Science!! Science requires computers, labs, machines, funding and more funding. Who do you think supplies that funding? What do those suppliers want in return? Science studies how to control consciousness in humans -- that is what they study. That control is in the brain.

Re this bit, it's rather that I'm not that paranoid, and I don't buy any conspiracy theories, really.

To say that the brain is the source of consciousness, is just plain stupid. It is not possible because life is conscious, so the brain would have to have created itself.

This bit simply makes no sense to me. You're thinking that consciousness was required for consciousness to be initiated historically? Why would you be thinking that? That would amount to an argument that consciousness simply can't be initiated historically . . . which we'd think because?

Nonsense. Stop and think for a minute -- a brain creating life IS the "God" concept. This is the monism v dualism debate, which is nothing but a power struggle between science and religion, and you are supporting it -- although you claim to not be supporting it.

Regarding religion/gods/etc. you're not going to find anyone who is "more of an atheist" than I am. I don't think that the notion of gods etc. deserves the slightest bit of consideration, because those ideas are so absurd. I was lucky enough to not be raised in the context of any religious beliefs, pro or con, so that when I finally ran into those beliefs, I had a complete outsider's perspective, and the beliefs struck me, and still do, as among the most ridiculous things that people could believe, right up there with something like believing that the solar system was created as the result of an alien nuclear war, etc. The beliefs seem like those of someone who should be in a loony bin.

Greta

Simply, as I have said, the researchers stopped looking at other possibilities decades ago, having convinced themselves that the brain was the only possible generator of consciousness.

I think once we discovered physical neural correlations, it gave scientists something tangible (observable, measurable) to work with, something they could apply scientific methodology to, so that's understandable. Whether it should be extended to the gut systems and microbiome for example, will probably be down to following and testing similar types of correlative evidence.

But there's also a **** ton of research and money going into AI which either directly or indirectly is looking for other possibilities as regards finding conscious states. Some of the wealthiest people and corporations in the world see huge potential profits to be made exploiting that type of research.

They can try to emulate similarities with brains based on patterns of processes and functions, rather than the composition of the substrate. Which might be on the right track, or might not. But computers have the potential to perform similarly extremely complex processes in a conveniently doable way, so it looks worth a shot.

Testing without knowing the necessary and sufficient conditions for experiential states will still be a problem though.

Gertie wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 5:25 pmIf we go back to the substrate's physical correlates (I tend to use 'brains' as a shorthand), we see as I mentioned before, there doesn't seem to be a Self correlate, no central Cartesian Theatre, no command and control centre, where my 'I System' neurons somehow assess what's going on and decide what to do. No-one knew that before we had the instruments to look, there might have been some physical 'Self' correlate like that, but it's not what we've found.

What we've found in the brain are clusters of neuronal networks, and the many neurons constituting the material substrate of the cerebral mechanism of consciousness can be regarded as its (collective) subject.

This is basically the brain view of (cerebralism about) subjects or "selves" (egos or persons), according to which they are brains (or parts of brains). Interpreted materialistically, Tim Bayne's substrate phenomenalism correponds to subject cerebralism.

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"If we are neither animals nor material things constituted by animals, we might be parts of animals. … The only spatial parts of animals that I can think of any reason to suppose we might be are brains, or something like brains—parts of brains or perhaps entire central nervous systems. Call the view that we are something like brains the brain view.
The brain view says that we are identical with brains, not that we 'are' brains in some looser sense. It is not the view that our brains are important to our being in a way that none of our other parts are. (That is not an account of what we are.) Nor is it that our brains constitute us, or that we are temporal parts of brains (…). The brain view is that we are literally brains. So it implies that you are about four inches tall and weigh less than three pounds. You are located entirely within your cranium and made up mostly of soft, yellowish-pink tissue. In normal circumstances we never strictly see ourselves or each other. (Most of us would not want to.) This might sound like something out of a comic book. Some readers will already be thinking of jokes. Is it really a serious view?"

(Olson, Eric T. What are We? A Study in Personal Ontology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. p. 76)
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"Each person is the subject of the relevant PF [psychological framework] or psychological bundle. We who are materialists hold that in actual fact the thing that thinks, feels, and so on is a certain material thing, most plausibly a brain. So, in actual fact each person is a brain. ...On my proposal, then, persons are neither egos nor bundles. They are the subjects of appropriately complex psychological bundles. In actual fact, I claim, these subjects are brains insofar as those brains are in the appropriate physical states (states sufficient for psychological states making up a single PF)."

(Tye, Michael. Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. pp. 142-3)
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"Naive phenomenalism turns out to be too naive, but perhaps the basic approach can be salvaged. Rather than identify the self with the stream of consciousness perhaps we should identify it with the underlying substrate that is responsible for generating the stream of consciousness—the machinery in which consciousness is grounded. Mackie seems to have something like this position in mind in suggesting that ‘unity of consciousness is, as it were, the nominal essence of personal identity . . . But the real essence of personal identity will be whatever underlies and makes possible the unity of consciousness’ (Mackie 1976 [Problems from Locke]: 200). Let us call this view substrate phenomenalism."

(Bayne, Tim. The Unity of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. p. 287)
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Gertie wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 5:25 pmRather there are dedicated (but plastic) subsystems interacting via unimaginably complex neural electro-chemical exchanges. Somehow, this results in an experiential discrete, unified, coherent sense of self in humans. The incredible thing isn't that this sometimes goes wrong, but that it happens at all.

The evolved functional benefit of a sense of self as a coherent, unified, discrete entity, located in a correlated body, with a first person pov navigating an 'external world' which we can make coherent models of, is clear. When it goes significantly wrong, we see people still often create internally coherent narratives, or even a variety of 'selves' as in DID, so it all somehow hangs together for them. Same with split brain experiments.

It seems reasonable to assume this necessity to create coherence and unity arises from the complexity of lots of different types of systems interacting. Avoiding a confusing cacophany of sensory experiences, emotions, sensations, memories, thoughts, etc. That kind of complexity is fine for purely physical systems, but for mental experience it wouldn't be functional. So we have this useful discrete, unified experiential sense of self, which we note is correlated to a specific body located in space and time, we can focus attention and create models of the external world and ourselves, have beliefs which we reason from, use 'thinky internal narratives', imagine, make predictions, etc. That's useful.

If say a moth for example, only has one experiential state - light/dark, there wouldn't be a need for this kind of unifying integration, and I'd guess a sense of self might not manifest. Just the experience. And the more complex the critter, the more subsystems and neural interactions, the closer to a human sense of self it might have.

The unity of (phenomenal) consciousness has different aspects, with two of them being content unity and subject unity: Two or more experiences occurring at the same time are content-united iff they are integrated into one and the same field of consciousness; and they are subject-united iff they are all had or undergone by one and the same subject.

According to the global workspace theory of consciousness, its content unity is part of its function as a global workspace in the mind/brain.

Again, the phrase "sense of self" is ambiguous. I think even moths have a primitive body-centered "sense of self", i.e. bodily self-awareness, in the sense of a holistic mental representation of themselves, their bodies in the form of a unitary body image or body schema.

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"Body Schema: General term for the personal awareness of one’s body, including the location and orientation of its various parts and their relative motion in space and time, as well as its functional integrity."

Source: https://link.springer.com/referencework ... 9948-3_713
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What is incorrect is that having a body schema or body image requires the mental status of personhood, because minds/brains can create and use ones on a subpersonal level of self-awareness. For example, what a moth surely doesn't have is an "autobiographical self", i.e. mental self-representations in the form of a self-referential "life story", which requires the capacity for linguistic thought.

Galen Strawson uses the following concepts of a self and self-experience, with an important aspect of the latter being that the occurrence of self-experience is said to be independent of the existence of selves. For fictionalist or "virtualist" views of selves or subjects, see e.g. the quotes below!

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"There's a distinctive kind of experience which I'll call 'self-experience'. …Self-experience is not just experience of what is in fact oneself. Nor is it just expressly self-conscious experience of what is in fact oneself, i.e. experience of oneself conceived of specifically as oneself. In the ordinary human case it's experience of oneself as being an 'inner' subject of experience or locus of consciousness—inner relative to the human being that one is considered as a whole. More generally, it's experience of oneself as something which is not the same thing as a human being considered as a whole; experience of oneself as a specifically mental presence of some sort, a mental someone or something. One might say that it's experience of oneself as having nothing more than mental being, inasmuch as it doesn't involve any positive or express figuration of oneself as something that has any existence beyond one's mental being; but it certainly needn't positively exclude the idea that one has existence that goes beyond one's mental being. …Self-experience, then, is experience informed or shaped by—involving the deployment of—a certain complex experience-determining mental element: the idea or sense or feeling of the self. Self-experience can exist whether or not selves do, just as pink-elephant-experience can exist whether or not pink elephants do.
Let me repeat this: self-experience exists, as a form of experience, whether or not selves do. 'Self-experience' is a strictly phenomenological term. It's a name for an aspect of our existence of how things are that exists whether or not things are that way in fact. Self-experience may turn out to be illusory in so far as it purports to be experience of an existing entity properly called a self, but its phenomenological reality—its reality as a form of experience, a way of conceiving or apprehending things—is not in doubt."

(Strawson, Galen. Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. pp. 1-2)

"A self is certainly—essentially—a subject of experience, and it’s certainly—essentially—not the same thing as a human being considered as a whole. I take these two claims to be true by definition. Some say that the only thing that is legitimately called ‘the subject of experience’ is the human being considered as a whole. One must reject this view if one holds that there are such things as selves. A self is some sort of inner conscious presence that is not the same thing as a human being considered as a whole, if it is anything at all. It’s the kind of thing human beings have had in mind, over thousands of years, in talking of ‘my inmost self’; ‘my self, my inward self I mean’; the ‘living, central,…inmost I’; the ‘secret self…enclosed within’. It’s part of what Hindus have argued about for at least three millennia, and Buddhists for almost as long: ‘my self, that which I most intimately am’.

Self-experience is experience of there being such a thing as this. It’s experience as of there being there being such a thing as the self, whether or not there are such things. Self-experience exists on a view like Dennett’s, for example, according to which selves don’t really exist in the straightforward sense I’ve committed myself to defending, but are, rather, useful fictions or abstractions that help us to organize our experience when we think about ourselves and our lives.

It’s a mistake to think that this form of experience, this sense of self, is a peculiarly modern or ‘Western’ phenomenon, or a product of the Romantic movement or of an unusually leisured or intellectual life. It is, for one thing, and as just remarked, something that has been explicitly discussed in the Eastern tradition of thought for thousands of years. But that is a vanishingly small point next to the point that self-experience, as understood here, is as old as humanity, fundamental to the daily experience of all normal human beings.

If you doubt this, I haven’t yet managed to convey what I have in mind. Self-experience
is something extremely basic. It begins in early childhood. It’s vivid in one’s coming to consciousness of the fact that one’s thoughts are unobservable by others and of the fundamental respect in which one is ‘alone in one’s head’. It’s universal in ordinary human beings, in the sense in which I’m concerned with it. It’s not subject to significant cultural variation. There is, furthermore, no conflict between the fact that self-experience presents the self as a specifically mental presence or entity and the fact that self-experience is fundamentally grounded, in all ordinary human beings, in the experience of embodiment.
Self-experience is not something that is less available or natural in (say) traditional African societies. Mbiti considers the replacement, in such societies, of the Cartesian ‘I think, therefore I am’ with ‘I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am’ (1969: 106). Senghor suggests replacing or complementing ‘I think, therefore I am’ with ‘I think, I dance the other; I am’. These proposals have a clear and vivid point, but the sense in which they’re accurate doesn’t conflict with the present claim that self-experience is universal in ordinary human beings. To think that it might be somehow less prevalent or less strong in such societies is to show that one hasn’t understood what I have in mind when I talk of self-experience. One is thinking instead in terms of some more theoretically and culturally encumbered notion of self-experience.

When Henry James writes, of an early book, ‘I think of…the masterpiece in question…as the work of quite another person than myself…a rich relation, say, who…suffers me still to claim a shy fourth cousinship’ (1915: 562–3), he knows perfectly well that he’s the same human being as the author of that book, but he doesn’t feel he’s the same person or self as the author of that book. This feeling is common when people consider their past, and perhaps also their future: one of the ways in which people tend to figure themselves to themselves, quite independently of whether or not they have any religious beliefs, is as something whose persistence conditions—identity conditions, existence conditions—are not necessarily the same as the persistence conditions of the whole human being that they are. This way of figuring oneself presupposes—involves—the fundamental phenomenon of self-experience."

(Strawson, Galen. Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. pp. 8-9)

"Some philosophers deny that they have any self-experience, any sense of themselves as a subject of experience or locus of consciousness that isn’t the same thing as the human being considered as a whole. This isn’t because they’ve engaged in meditative practices of the kind that are designed to eliminate a sense of the self but rather, it seems, because they subscribe to deeply entrenched doctrines in philosophical metaphysics and philosophy of mind, philosophical logic, and in philosophical psychology—doctrines about personal identity, about the reference of the word ‘I’, about the fundamental importance of the body in shaping our experience, and so on—that they take to provide powerful grounds for resistance not only to the claim that there’s such a thing as the self, the subject conceived of as something distinct from the human being considered as a whole, but also to the claim that self-experience exists. Trefil, though, is right about the phenomenology: ‘no matter how my brain works …, one single fact remains…I am aware of a self that looks out at the world from somewhere inside my skull…this is…the central datum with which every theory of consciousness has to grapple’ (1997: 181), as is Dawkins: ‘each of us humans knows that the illusion of a single agent sitting somewhere in the middle of the brain is a powerful one’ (1998: 283–4)—even as he says that this experience is illusory.
It’s wrong to think that self-experience automatically incorporates some sort of belief in an immaterial soul, or in life after bodily death. It doesn’t, even if it’s often the basis of such a belief. Philosophical materialists who believe as I do that we’re wholly physical beings who don’t survive bodily death, and that complicated conscious experience of the sort with which we are familiar evolved by purely physical natural processes on a planet where no such experience previously existed, have self-experience as strongly as anyone else."

(Strawson, Galen. Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 37)

"The cognitive core of self-experience is simply a sense of oneself specifically as a mental presence or mental someone, and this doesn’t require any sort of self-concern. There’s no logical difficulty in the idea of a fully self-conscious being that has self-experience although it is entirely affectless."

(Strawson, Galen. Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 96)

"[S]elf-experience has in fact only one truly fundamental element: subject. On this approach, self-experience is simply a certain way of experiencing oneself as a subject of experience. More particularly, it’s a way of experiencing oneself as being a subject of experience specifically in so far as one has mental being (= is mentally propertied), and not, say, in so far as one is a human being considered as a whole. That is, it’s experience of oneself as subject-as-mental."

(Strawson, Galen. Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 205)
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"Dennett's center of narrative gravity:
Human beings are constantly engaged in presenting themselves, both to others and to themselves. We create autobiographical narratives about who we are. The self, according to Dennett (1991), is not the source of these narratives but, rather, a by-product of the brain's propensity to produce them. The self is a sort of story. By speaking of a center of narrative gravity, Dennett is describing an act of public self-representating. We are at some level trying to present a collection of facts about ourselves as a unity. We are doing this both for other people and for ourselves. We are endeavoring to create a clear and stable concept of ourselves, in ourselves and others, despite a fundamental lack of unity. Dennett thus argues that the self is a fiction, an abstract object, like the engineer's notion of a center of gravity. The self is the center of narrative gravity within the biographies our brains compose about ourselves and each other. Selves, like centers of gravity, are useful organizing concepts but they are not real. There is not a part of you called 'the self' any more than there is a part of you which is your center of gravity. Dennett sees this narrative self as a sort of virtual self, in the sense that one human person might produce several quite different centers of narrative gravity over time, just as a computer might run several different programs. In our parlance, Dennett is denying the existence of an executive self and attempting to replace it instead with a type of representational self."

(Hirstein, William. Mindmelding: Consciousness, Neuroscience, and the Mind's Privacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. p. 141)
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"What might we be looking for in looking for an account of the self ? …I will focus on three roles that ‘the self ’ or ‘subject of experience’ (I use these terms interchangeably) ought to play. These roles are not the only ones that are associated with the self, but taken together they are clearly central to the notion of the self. Anything that might hope to qualify as a bone fide self ought to play all three roles, and anything that does play all three roles will thereby qualify as a self.

Firstly, experiences don’t occur as self-standing entities, but are ‘had by’ selves. Selves are the things to which we ascribe conscious states. Call this the ownership component of the self-role. Secondly, selves are the objects of first-person reflection—‘I’-thoughts. What one thinks about when one thinks in the first-person is a self—indeed, it is oneself. Call this the referential component of the self-role. Thirdly, selves have a perspective or point of view on the world. A self is not merely an entity in the world, it is also something for which the world itself is an entity. Call this the perspectival component of the self-role."

(Bayne, Tim. The Unity of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. pp. 269-70)

"Virtual phenomenalism

We need to take a step back and reconsider the ‘logical space’ in which we have operated thus far. The two versions of phenomenalism that I have examined each identify selves with concrete particulars: streams of consciousness in the case of naive phenomenalism and the mechanisms underlying those streams in the case of substrate phenomenalism. But there is another way in which we might hope to forge a constitutive link between streams of consciousness and selves. Rather than looking for something onto which we might map representations of the self, we might think of selves as merely intentional entities—entities whose identity is determined by the cognitive architecture underlying a stream of consciousness. Appropriating Dennett’s (1992) notion of the self as a centre of narrative gravity, I suggest that we should think of the self as a merely virtual centre of ‘phenomenal gravity’.

The central notion in this approach to the self is that of de se representation (Lewis 1979). In de se representation the subject represents themselves as themselves. De se representation isn’t the exclusive provenance of explicitly self-conscious thought, but permeates consciousness through and through. As Pollock (1988) has argued, the conscious states evoked by the presentations of one’s senses are automatically de se. In effect, this means that streams of consciousness—at least the kinds of streams of consciousness that we enjoy— are constructed ‘around’ a single intentional object. The cognitive architecture underlying your stream of consciousness represents that stream as had by a single self—the virtual object that is brought into being by de se representation.

This account forges an essential tie between the self and the unity of consciousness, for the cognitive architecture underlying consciousness ensures that any de se representations that occur within a single phenomenal field will be co-referential. For phenomenal selves, the rule is one subjective perspective at a time. No self can have more than one experiential perspective at a time, for de se thought cannot bridge the gaps between phenomenal fields. The functional role of de se representation guarantees that the boundaries of the virtual self are limned by the boundaries of the phenomenal field (at least, at a time).

How deep does this link between de se thought and the unity of consciousness run? Is de se structure an essential feature of consciousness as such, or is it merely a feature of our cognitive architecture—indeed, perhaps not even a particularly deep feature of our cognitive architecture? I’m not convinced that de se representation must structure the experiences of any possible subject of experience, but I do think that a case can be made on broadly Kantian grounds for the view that de se content must inform the representations of any creature whose experiences purport to represent an objective world. (I won’t, however, try to make that case here). Leaving to one side the question of whether there might be a necessary link between consciousness and de se representation, it is certainly very plausible to suppose that de se structure is an essential feature of our cognitive architecture. A case can be made for thinking that it is retained even in those pathologies of self-consciousness—such as the schizophrenic phenomenon of thought insertion and the dissociative phenomenon of inter-alter access (…)—in which individuals experience aspects of their own mental life as alien in some way. I suggest that what has been lost in such conditions is only the subject’s ability to keep track of their own thoughts and experiences.

We can now see where other approaches to the self go wrong: they assume that there must be some ‘real’ entity that plays the role of the self. The only thing that plays the self role—indeed, perhaps the only thing that could play the role of the self—is a merely intentional entity. Experiences do indeed have ‘owners’ or ‘bearers’, but the owner of an experience is nothing ‘over and above’ a virtual object—indeed, the very same virtual object around which that experience is structured. ‘I’-thoughts do have referents, but the referent of an I-thought is nothing other than an intentional object. And of course selves have experiential perspectives, but such perspectives are nothing more than the perspectives of intentional objects. Both the naive phenomenalist and the substrate phenomenalist are right to think that selves depend on streams of consciousness, but they conceive of this relationship in overly concrete terms. To identify the self with a stream of consciousness or its underlying substrate is a bit like identifying Hercule Poirot with the novels in which he figures."

(Bayne, Tim. The Unity of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. pp. 289-90)

"Virtual phenomenalism can also account for many of the modal intuitions associated with the self. In the same way that we can make sense of the thought that Poirot might have retired after solving his first crime, so too we can make sense of the thought that one could have had experiences that were very different from those that one has actually had. It should also be clear that virtual phenomenalism can meet the initial objection to phenomenalism—namely, that streams of consciousness are not identical to selves but are ‘had by’ or ‘owned’ by them. In generating a virtual self the cognitive architecture underlying the stream of consciousness also ensures that the self is represented as the owner or bearer of those experiences that are responsible for its very existence. The intentional structure of the phenomenal field leads us to experience ourselves as entities that stand over and against our experiences—as inhabiting the ‘centre’ of a phenomenal field."

(Bayne, Tim. The Unity of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. p. 292)

"A final objection is unique to virtual phenomenalism. The worry is this: if the self is a ‘merely intentional entity’ then doesn’t it follow that it is unreal—that selves don’t really exist. And not only is the denial of the self of dubious coherence—it is certainly not how virtual phenomenalism was advertised. I said I was going to provide an account of the self, not an account that explained the self away.

Whether or not this account explains what selves are or whether it instead explains them away depends on just what one is looking for. Although selves are merely intentional there is nonetheless a sense in which self talk is perfectly legitimate. It needn’t be rejected (indeed, I doubt whether it could be rejected), nor need it be legitimized by finding something in consciousness or its underlying substrate that might qualify as its referent, for it needs no such referent. It should not be thought that the self is fictional in the way that Hercule Poirot and other creatures of fiction are. Although Hercule Poirot is a Belgian detective, his name would not appear on a list of Belgian detectives. (And if by chance the name ‘Hercule Poirot’ did appear on such a list it wouldn’t refer to the Hercule Poirot that features in the writings of Agatha Christie.) Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective, and his mode of existence is to be contrasted with that of real (non-fictional, actual, existent) Belgian detectives. But there is no kind of real self with which our kinds of selves could be contrasted, for it is in the very nature of selves to be virtual. The kinds of selves that we possess are as real as selves get. This kind of reality might not be enough for some, but I think it provides all the reality that we might have reasonably hoped for here. Perhaps more importantly, it provides all the reality that we need."

(Bayne, Tim. The Unity of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. pp. 292-3)
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"Virtual Phenomenalism: For [Tim] Bayne, the “self” is merely an intentional entity, one whose identity is determined by the cognitive architecture underlying the stream of consciousness; a sort of brain architecture that generates a fictitious entity like a character in a novel. So, the “self” is a virtual center of phenomenal gravity. In de se reference, the “subject” represents itself as itself; conscious states are automatically de se. Streams of consciousness are constructed around a single intentional object like a narrative is unified around the novel’s main character. So the cognitive architecture underlying your stream of consciousness represents that stream as if it were had by a single self – the virtual object that is “brought into being” by de se representation.

The cognitive architecture underlying consciousness creates a unifying single subject/center of consciousness as a projected, virtual reality due to the de se nature of the constructed conscious states. A unified field projects one and only one virtual self. Other approaches go wrong in thinking that there must be a real entity that plays the role of the self, but the self is a mere intentional object (like Zeus?). The self isn’t really real, but self-talk is still “legitimate” like we talk of a character in a novel."

(Moreland, J. P. "Substance Dualism and the Unity of Consciousness." In The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism, edited by Jonathan J. Loose, Angus J. L. Menuge, and J. P. Moreland, 184-207. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018. pp. 197-8)
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Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 8:41 am

Greta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 7:51 pm I want more hard evidence, not just correlations, before uncritically believing anything. I want to know what the mechanisms are between patterns of neurons charging and having a sense of being. I want to see measurements, providing even an approximate measure of the intensity of qualia being subjectively experienced. Then I will be a believer.

Aside from the specifics you're providing (and thanks for providing some), what, in general (with an aim of putting on our critical philosophy of science hats for a moment), would you say is the difference between "hard evidence" and "just correlations"?

Re "intensity of qualia" I'm not sure how we'd measure that because I'm not even sure what it's referring to. I don't at all deny qualia, but subjectively, I don't experience or think about qualia in a way related to "intensity." For example, I know what the "(tactile) fuzziness" of velvet is like to me subjectively, so I know the quale of "(tactile) fuzziness" re velvet, but it doesn't make sense to me to apply an "intensity" rating to that quale. There might be more or less "plush" velvet, but those are different qualia in that case in my view, not the same quale with a different "intensity."

The complete dismissal of potential roles that the metabolism may play in the generation of consciousness (qualia) appears to be a matter of economic rationalism. That is, it is much easier to isolate a single system (that's already intimidatingly complex) than to broaden the search.

The reason for dismissing stuff like that is because people can lose or have most body parts replaced or significantly changed, except for their brains, without concomitant changes in their consciousness or subjective experience.

I've said it before. I want to understand how dynamic patterns of neurons in the brain can be identical to having a sense of being. How do you go from A to B? How do you measure it?

I just want evidence. I will not be a believer without it, not of religions, not of fact claims. And I see no reason to choose a side. Why? To undermine the claims of those pesky theists and prove to them once and for all that there is no afterlife? Theists cause all manner of problems, so I understand the wish to undermine those selfish tribes with speculative philosophy posing as a fair accompli without actual evidence. I've done it before myself, but I am trying to take a higher road now. Or, really, avoid throwing what I see as "low blows". It's not easy at a time when throwing low blows has been normalised.

At this stage, research tends to entirely focus on the "easy problem" of mental processing - x pattern of neuronal activity correlates with y reported subjective affects. Some believe that progress on the easy problem will naturally solve the hard problem, that the hard problem is a concoction rather than reality (a la Dennett). Imagine trying to gain grant money to study the potential sense of being that may (or may not) be experienced by echinoderms! It comes under the heading of "esoteric research", which is anathema to today's rationalist commercial environment.

While other body parts are said to be replaced without major cognitive changes, a percentage of heart and liver transplant patients report changes in personality afterwards that align with aspects of the donor - and that is without being aware until later meeting the family. These are, however, often dismissed in meta-analysis, despite being accepted by individual researchers. The changes are usually passed off as suggestions based on subconscious memory of apparently forgotten details in briefings or, more reasonably, a response to trauma.

However, I am more interested in the boundaries, such as echinoderms and cnidarians with nerve nets that have no brain. Consul and I have long debated whether these have a sense of experience. He says almost certainly not, and I say they probably do. One might imagine they are operating like a sleepwalker, but sleepwalkers are experiencing, just that their perceptions are less bounded by physical reality than when awake.

I find it hard to imagine how an organism can see and smell prey, chase it, corral it and fight it down without experiencing anything. After all, when we are in non-experiential states like deep sleep, our sensing is restricted to temperature and internal conditions. If a brainless being experiences something, then it would seem to me that experiencing may have deeper roots than just the brain, which would then be considered to be the filterer and shaper of being rather than the generator. For all we know, it's the nerves rather than the brain that are fundamental. Or it may go deeper again.

Also consider deathbed lucidity, where a person rendered helpless by dementia for an extended period becomes briefly and abruptly lucid not long before dying. That suggests to me that the dementia was a blockage in the brain's operation and, as the brain was in the process of dying, the blockage was released. Like water gushing through a broken filter in a pipe.