Philosophy Discussion Forums

Gertie wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 5:56 pm 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.

Also the heart/lung system, as above. Or all three in tandem.

Ultimately, this subject tends to be tossed about between the materialist and panpsychist tribes. So we are given two options:
- It's all the brain
- It's the universe.

There's a vast grey area between those extreme positions. Qualia might all start in the nerves, sensing. Or ganglia. Or a synergy of organs. Or qualia might just come with being alive.

I think the easiest way is to consider what goes on with AI that is as complex as, say, a cockroach (which has not yet been achieved). Creation of something as complex as even a cat's cognition seems unrealistic without major breakthroughs. Complexity and certain configurations of matter do seem pivotal to an animal experience (which configurations? How?) but, whether they are fundamental to being remains to be seen.
Still, we all agree that transplant a brain into a new body rather than give

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.

For example, consider these results: Deep image reconstruction from human brain activity

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 8:41 amRe "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."

As far as sensations are concerned, a change of intensity isn't necessarily a change of quality. For example, bodily sensations such as pains, tickles, and itches do come in different intensities; and so do e.g. auditory sensations and olfactory ones.

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"A sensation is a simple conscious process standing in a relation of dependency to particular nervous organs, peripheral and central. But despite its qualitative simplicity, a sensation may be compared with other sensations in respect of certain attributes which attach to it. A given pressure sensation, for instance, may be more vivid, more lasting, and more extended, than another, though it is of the same kind or quality. These attributes are characterised (i) by their inseparability from the sensation. Every sensation of pressure possesses, over and above its specific content, a certain strength and a certain temporal and spatial character. We need not necessarily pay particular attention to all the attributes in all cases; but they are never absent and can be noted and determined as circumstances require. (2) Further, the nullification of any of the attributes involves the disappearance or cessation of the entire sensation. A pressure sensation which is unextended, whose duration or intensity is zero, or from which the quality is abstracted, simply ceases to be a pressure sensation. Sensation, that is, is not something to which attributes are added; it does not imply a substrate or substantial nucleus, upon or around which they are grouped. It follows, accordingly, that a complete description of the attributes of sensation is equivalent to a complete description of sensation.

Applying this criterion to sensation, we have to predicate of it four attributes: quality, intensity, duration, and extension. Quality is the property which characterises the simple conscious process as such, and in this sense may be regarded as the most fundamental of all. It distinguishes 'blue' from 'red', 'sweet' from 'bitter', 'warm' from 'cold'. The other attributes all refer to it; intensity is the intensity of a certain quality, and so on. Intensity itself is the property of sensation which enables us to compare it with others in respect of vividness; and duration and [/i]extension[/i] designate respectively its elementary temporal and spatial character. Thus a taste may be 'very sweet' or only 'sweet'; a sensation of warmth may be of greater or less duration; a 'blue' may be a blue of greater or less extension. In general, it may be said that all four attributes admit of isolated variation, so that we can formulate their laws independently. Quality, however, is peculiar in this respect. For alteration in quality means transition to new sensations; while if quality is left intact, and the other attributes are altered, the sensation appears to remain the same. This is another proof that quality is of the very essence of sensation. It represents the solid foundation, so to speak, which underlies the variability of the other properties. When we come to ask how many sensations a sense-organ mediates, therefore, we shall simply inquire as to the number of qualitatively different sensations.

Not every sensation possesses all four attributes. Quality, of course, attaches to all alike; and duration, too, may be predicated of all. But extension belongs only to the visual and cutaneous sensations. If we speak of the 'extension' of tones, scents, or tastes, we are either using the term allegorically, to express the magnitude of the effect which they have upon us, or employing it in a secondary sense, to indicate the spatial character of the objective conditions of the sensations, or that of other sensations or ideas, visual or cutaneous, which we associate with them. And intensity cannot be ascribed to sensations of sight, since any alteration or modification, whether of the intensity of the physical stimulus or of any other of the elements in the determination of sensible intensity, brings with it an alteration in quality, i.e., a transition to new sensations. The proof of this must come later; here we can do no more than note the fact. There is naturally no reason a priori why all the three attributes should attach to every sensation, over and above its essential and characteristic quality. We must appeal to experience, to discover whether variations in intensity, duration, and extension, occur in a particular case."

(Külpe, Oswald. Outlines of Psychology. Translated by E. B. Titchener. New York: Macmillan, 1901. pp. 29-30)
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Greta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 7:51 pmThe 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.

Influencing the brain mechanisms of consciousness is not the same as being part of them!

Greta wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 8:06 pmI find it hard to imagine how an organism can see and smell prey, chase it, corral it and fight it down without experiencing anything.

Aren't you guilty of anthropocentrism now?

Yes, it's not easy to believe that the robot SPOT can do that without being a subject of experience—yet it can!


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"Most researchers accept that even quite complex perception, cognition, and control of action can go on entirely 'in the dark'."

(Godfrey-Smith, Peter. "The Evolution of Consciousness in Phylogenetic Context." In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Kristin Andrews and Jacob Beck, 216-226. London: Routledge, 2018. p. 220)

"Provided one accepts that conscious states play a causal role in the production of behavior, one can apply Newton’s Principle, [Michael Tye] thinks: similar effects have similar causes. So when one sees an animal exhibiting behavior similar to that displayed by human beings—and specifically, when one sees an animal showing flexible, perceptually grounded sensitivity to properties of its environment or its own body—then one can conclude that it enjoys conscious experience."

(Carruthers, Peter. Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. p. 52)

"[S]ophisticated, flexible, sensorimotor behavior in humans can be guided by perceptions that are unconscious. So the fact that wasps, for example, implement their motor routines in ways that are guided, in detail, by the perceptual affordances of their environment does nothing to show that their perceptual states have feel or are like something to undergo. The same is true in the domain of emotion and affect. We know that there are multiple forms of evaluation, and multiple affective states, that remain unconscious in humans (…). So the fact that slugs are capable of evaluative learning does nothing to show that their affective states are phenomenally-conscious ones."

(Carruthers, Peter. Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. p. 68)
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Faustus5 wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 8:38 amWhat 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.

Yes, indeed. There's been a massive confluence of scientific data over a long period of time leading to the conclusion that the brain is in fact the organ, the seat&source of consciousness. It's just false to argue that we aren't justified in believing so unless we know how exactly consciousness is realized by the brain.

Consul wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 11:36 pm

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.

For example, consider these results: Deep image reconstruction from human brain activity

Just more correlation between brain patterns and a sense of being. Why doesn't a Spirograph pattern, for instance, generate a sense of being? Why these particular patterns? What is special about these patterns that creates qualia? How can observations of patterns in neuron dynamics be used to create qualia? If these patterns were reproduced in another medium, would that result in qualia?

The fact is that we don't know whether these patterns are qualia being created or filtered. I have pointed this out many times. There's no point putting the same correlations to me over and over and expect me to equate those correlations with causation. Repetition does not erase the logical fallacy that you keep putting to me, that correlation of brain states with certain neuronal dynamic patterns must necessarily imply causation.

I expect you will try again later, hoping that eventually you will catch me with my guard down - but not today, Joseph :)

Consul wrote: ↑May 29th, 2020, 12:36 amThere's been a massive confluence of scientific data over a long period of time leading to the conclusion that the brain is in fact the organ, the seat&source of consciousness. It's just false to argue that we aren't justified in believing so unless we know how exactly consciousness is realized by the brain.

Nope. You gents are believers, plain and simple. Belief in the unproven. Like many here.

Do you believe uncritically in dark energy too? String theory? How about supersymmetry? Do you believe that time is constant, as per QM, or variable as per relativity? Do you believe that black holes are really just "quark stars"? Is there life under Mars's surface? You can find evidence to support these ideas but, as with consciousness generation, the evidence is not conclusive.

So why bother believing one way or another? Why choose a side? In the end it is undoubtedly politics infecting this field.

A side note: Since I have memory issues, I looked online to remind me of the most contentious issues in science. I had little luck because the "contentious issues in science" are listed as mostly vaccines, evolution, abortion, climate change, the shape of the Earth and whether the Moon landing really happened.

Unlike qualia, these are issues that have been settled adequately by science. This suggests a regressive state in the west, particularly the US, today. People should be arguing about new issues like dark energy and Planck stars, not plodding over old ground like evolution. About the only sense of progress I am seeing is in Asia and in the work of billionaire entrepreneurs - that is, the ones who actually made their money rather than inherited.

So I well understand the wish to shut theists down by pre-empting research results with "obvious" conclusions - to burst their superstitious bubbles so the rest of us can get on with progressing without being pointlessly bogged down. However, in terms of "what is" rather than "what is political" the only rational view about consciousness generation is to wait for the research results.

Who knows? The solution may yet be a century or more away. If so, that's fine with me. Better to wait for hard research findings than be a believer of extrapolations and assumptions. Note that scientists will talk up their research prospects for grant money. No, not as a conspiracy. It's the dynamic, like a job interview. So the extrapolations provided to media are often largely "marketing", as required in competitive environments with tight resources, which is certainly with scientific grant programs.

BTW, I provided reasons to be unsure of those assumptions, which you did not address. Was that agreement or fatigue?

Consul wrote: ↑May 29th, 2020, 12:24 am

Greta wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 8:06 pmI find it hard to imagine how an organism can see and smell prey, chase it, corral it and fight it down without experiencing anything.

Aren't you guilty of anthropocentrism now?

Yes, it's not easy to believe that the robot SPOT can do that without being a subject of experience—yet it can!

Hardly anthropocentric to think it possible that "lesser" beings experience their lives.

The robot dog has less complexity than a bacterium, let alone an echinoderm. Did you really see that robot as having the complexity of any life form, given the limits of its function?

All it is doing is moving through an environment. It is not seeking energy, avoiding predators or chemical threats, nor preparing for mitosis or engaging in group dynamics. In terms of the complexity of that AI's functions, it is currently perhaps equivalent to parts of a microbe's repertoire. Even our most complex current AI is (arguably) up to the level of E. coli, at least as regards parts of its repertoire.

https://medium.com/@Soccermatics/what-i ... a9f02b2d9e

Harm van Seijen, the Microsoft researcher who created the Ms Pac-Man algorithm, had been very careful to explain that his model could not be considered as having been built from scratch. He had helped it by telling it to pay attention to ghosts and pellets. In contrast, the bacteria’s knowledge of the dangers and rewards of its environment have been built by bottom up, through evolution.

Harm told me: ‘A lot of people talking about AI are too optimistic, they underestimate how hard it is to build systems.’ Based on his experience of developing Ms Pac-Man and other machine-learning systems, he felt we were really far away from a general form of AI.

Even if we can create full bacterial intelligence, Harm was sceptical how much further we can go. He said, ‘Humans are really good at reusing what we learn in doing one task for a different related task; our current state-of-the-art algorithms are terrible in this.’

Greta wrote: ↑May 29th, 2020, 2:26 am

Consul wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 11:36 pm

For example, consider these results: Deep image reconstruction from human brain activity

Just more correlation between brain patterns and a sense of being. Why doesn't a Spirograph pattern, for instance, generate a sense of being? Why these particular patterns? What is special about these patterns that creates qualia? How can observations of patterns in neuron dynamics be used to create qualia? If these patterns were reproduced in another medium, would that result in qualia?

The fact is that we don't know whether these patterns are qualia being created or filtered. I have pointed this out many times. There's no point putting the same correlations to me over and over and expect me to equate those correlations with causation. Repetition does not erase the logical fallacy that you keep putting to me, that correlation of brain states with certain neuronal dynamic patterns must necessarily imply causation.

I expect you will try again later, hoping that eventually you will catch me with my guard down - but not today, Joseph

I'm puzzled why you consider this to be a logical fallacy.
When I use a hammer on a nail, it makes a loud noise and the nail enters the wood. NONE of this shows causality. There is not more than a convenient correlation between the noise and the action of the hammer on the nail, and there is nothing you can do to convince me that I have caused the nail to enter the wood with a loud report!
And yet again and again, I use a hammer to push nails into wood. That is induction. You might not like it, but we rely on it all the time. We even love to describe this "mere" correlation with even finer descriptions of how this apparent causality leads to noise and the banging in of nails. Yet no matter how hard we try there is nothing of any certainty we enjoy with deduction.

So why oh why, is the brain some sort of sacred area? Pristine and free of everyday causality.
Even when areas of the brain, specifically identified with neural activity are removed and we note the absence of that very thing that part of the brain causes, there is still someone wagging their finger demanding that no causality is implied. No, no, no!! Just because the brain does the same thing every time the person does the same action does not mean that its the brain wot did it mate! No - the brain is mysterious. The mind is forever a mystery and there is NO evidence of any kind that the brain is responsible for the mind? I won't need my brain when I am dead! So therefore I must survive my body in some way. Of course this in no way influences my thinking here. No.

So what is the brain actually doing?

Consul wrote: ↑May 29th, 2020, 12:02 am
As far as sensations are concerned, a change of intensity isn't necessarily a change of quality. For example, bodily sensations such as pains, tickles, and itches do come in different intensities; and so do e.g. auditory sensations and olfactory ones.

Yeah, I'd say that there are some qualia where "intensity" makes some sense--pain and itches are two good examples, but for the vast majority of qualia we experience, I don't think the idea makes any sense.

Consul wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 6:16 pm

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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That's an awful lot to reply to!

I read the first 3 quotes, and they're stating different opinions, which I do understand exist.

Could you highlight the points and quotes you think I need to reply to, and why? Or perhaps summarise your continuing objections to my view, supplemented with one or two quotes, and/or say why you think your view is better in a similar way?

I do appreciate the time, knowledge and background info you bring to these discussions. But I'd like to try to stay focussed on the views and reasoning which you and I favour on the issue of Subject and Self, to try to keep the exchange manageable - at my end at least!

Greta

Also the heart/lung system, as above. Or all three in tandem.

There's a vast grey area between those extreme positions. Qualia might all start in the nerves, sensing. Or ganglia. Or a synergy of organs.

I think scientists given time will be able to crack those type of questions in terms of correlation.

Ultimately, this subject tends to be tossed about between the materialist and panpsychist tribes. So we are given two options:
- It's all the brain
- It's the universe.

This is a more difficult question, because science doesn't have an obvious way of tackling the explanation for the correlations they note. I think we have to keep an open mind at this point.

My guess is that the answer lies in some more fundamental understanding of how the universe works which we're currently just guessing about. Panpsychism would be one such more fundamental understanding of the nature of the universe, right or wrong. (I don't think we're even in a position to discount substance dualism, who knows...)

Where-as simply saying phenomenal experience IS the brain/physical correlate, or is what brains DO, are just words people use which denote correlation, but offer no explanation. There are such possible explanations, like monism and emergent property dualism, but when you get into the weeds it's not nearly so clear cut.

I think the easiest way is to consider what goes on with AI that is as complex as, say, a cockroach (which has not yet been achieved). Creation of something as complex as even a cat's cognition seems unrealistic without major breakthroughs. Complexity and certain configurations of matter do seem pivotal to an animal experience (which configurations? How?) but, whether they are fundamental to being remains to be seen.

Trying to manufacture phenomenal experience using computers as alternative substrates could theoretically eliminate, or narrow down, the necessary properties of the substrate itself. So it gives us a different angle to investigate. And the incredible complexity of neural interactions (as opposed to the apparent uniformity and ordinariness of neuron cells themselves) does look like a clue. Trying to mimic something similar on a computer substrate is a mammoth task, but again I think it's something which will happen with time.

Might be a wild goose chase though.

Greta wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 8:06 pm 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.

Until you can define "sense of being" in specific, measurable, meaningful terms, this is simply not a fair or reasonable demand to make of a science of consciousness.

Greta wrote: ↑May 29th, 2020, 3:01 am Do you believe uncritically in dark energy too? String theory? How about supersymmetry? Do you believe that time is constant, as per QM, or variable as per relativity? Do you believe that black holes are really just "quark stars"? Is there life under Mars's surface? You can find evidence to support these ideas but, as with consciousness generation, the evidence is not conclusive.

This is a simply false and bogus comparison. The evidence that the brain is the primary organ of consciousness is settled science not even remotely speculative nor controversial outside of fringe internet forums.