Philosophy Discussion Forums

Gertie wrote: ↑
Yesterday, 1:20 pm

True, I'm just making the point that there's nothing intrinsically special about a model which includes the model maker, which might lead to experiential states manifesting. Do you think there is?

I'm not sure what would count as "intrinsically special," or why a system must have some intrinsically special (however understood) property to manifest consciousness.

I'm inclined to think of consciousness as a natural phenomenon that occurs predictably in complex dynamic systems of a certain type, analogously to the way a magnetic field appears around a wire carrying an electric current. It appears, or can, at a certain point when evolutionary pressures forge ever more complex organisms having ever more sophisticated tools for assuring their survival and propagation. Consciousness is a survival strategy (though how successful it will be in the long run remains to be seen).

To clarify I don't dismiss behaviour, that is a major observable clue, it would be daft to ignore it. You made the point that we have to assume other people have mental experience too, and I'm saying we have an extra clue re other people - they are made of the same stuff and biological/chemical processes. That could be very significant, we don't know.

Yes, it is a clue, but it may be coincidental and thus superficial.

The only evidence we will ever have for its importance, or lack of it, is behavior.

Many of the technologies we've devised were first observed as natural phenomena --- fire, electricity, flight, many others. We've learned to extract the physical principles involved in those phenomena and apply them artificially. E.g., we learned that heavier-than-air objects may fly from birds, but (at least after Icarus) did not assume feathers and muscles are necessary to enable it.

Where-as if we had an actual explanation which included the necessary and sufficient conditions, then we could test for those. We could make a consciousness-o-meter and not have to guess.

Well, that's the problem --- there can be no such meter, because phenomenal experience is inherently, impenetrably private. Behavior is the only evidence we will ever have, and if the behavior of an AI system is indistinguishable from that of a human, then it would only be subbornness that deters us from attributing consciousness to it.

It's OK to say we don't know.

Are we willing to say that about other people?

I just want a robot servant, is that too much to ask! But we should err on the side of caution, if there's enough evidence to think they have experiential states, they should in principle have commensurate moral consideration, probably including rights. (Just keep the off switch handy).

Should we install such switches on humans too, at birth?

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑September 13th, 2020, 7:19 pm
There's a difference between observing something third-person and observing something first-person, where the latter is the observational circumstance where you're identical to the thing in question.

There's only one thing that exists where we can be in a first-person observational circumstance with respect to it: the subset of our brain functions that amount to mentality. That's the only thing for which we can have the perspective of BEING the thing in question.

GE Morton wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 12:18 pm Oh, I agree. But that is not what you were saying earlier. Earlier you were claiming that the properties of a thing were dependent upon spatio-temporal reference points.

Well, first, it makes no sense to speak of perspectives when there is no possibility of more than one. For qualia, there is no possibility of any perspective on it other than that of the person experiencing one.

Gertie wrote: ↑September 14th, 2020, 5:08 pm
If you believe your own experience doesn't exist, you're beyond confused.

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑September 14th, 2020, 5:48 pm
The whole idea that pain is subjective, and the realisation that colours are not "out there" nut only experienced in the head is pure science.

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑September 14th, 2020, 5:48 pm And it was Charles Sanders Peirce a SCIENTIST who first coined the phrase.
So yes it was in a scientific paper.
Check your ignorance before you make an **** of yourself

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 1:07 pm What sort of material would you say is pertinent? Can you give any sort of reference to it?

Atla wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 3:32 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 1:07 pm What sort of material would you say is pertinent? Can you give any sort of reference to it?

Very well..

I'd say Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta are the best to get to the gist of it (the real Advaita, not this neo-Advaitan or pseudo-Advaitan shallow nonsense). But Western interpreters like Alan Watts and Rupert Spira are pretty good, they have many talks online where they are trying to eff the ineffable. If one is somewhat smart, then one doesn't have to waste time by reading a million books or engaging in a 40-year meditation routine or whatever.

If you listen to them, you'll notice that all they seem to be saying is a bunch of rather random gibberish, accompanied by nonsensical hand-waving. With some shallow everyday wisdom here and there that everyone already knows. But what they are actually talking about is a very deep subject, and everything they say actually makes perfect sense and is logically structured.

Again, they are trying to eff the ineffable, all nondual talk is kind of metaphorical. They try to express nondualism in dualistic language, because that's how we communicate. Language is inherently dualistic, all Western philosophy is inherently dualistic, and therefore has an inherent fatal flaw which prevents it from ever succeeding.

----------

Or alternatively, there is the route which I took, QM has proven a century ago that existence is either nondual, or we have to subscribe to some batshit crazy literal magical mind-physical world dualism. Don't try to understand how QM has shown this, it's probably above your conception. I learned about Advaita later, after I found out that this is how the world works.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 3:38 pm

Atla wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 3:32 pm
Very well..

I'd say Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta are the best to get to the gist of it (the real Advaita, not this neo-Advaitan or pseudo-Advaitan shallow nonsense). But Western interpreters like Alan Watts and Rupert Spira are pretty good, they have many talks online where they are trying to eff the ineffable. If one is somewhat smart, then one doesn't have to waste time by reading a million books or engaging in a 40-year meditation routine or whatever.

If you listen to them, you'll notice that all they seem to be saying is a bunch of rather random gibberish, accompanied by nonsensical hand-waving. With some shallow everyday wisdom here and there that everyone already knows. But what they are actually talking about is a very deep subject, and everything they say actually makes perfect sense and is logically structured.

Again, they are trying to eff the ineffable, all nondual talk is kind of metaphorical. They try to express nondualism in dualistic language, because that's how we communicate. Language is inherently dualistic, all Western philosophy is inherently dualistic, and therefore has an inherent fatal flaw which prevents it from ever succeeding.

----------

Or alternatively, there is the route which I took, QM has proven a century ago that existence is either nondual, or we have to subscribe to some batshit crazy literal magical mind-physical world dualism. Don't try to understand how QM has shown this, it's probably above your conception. I learned about Advaita later, after I found out that this is how the world works.

I'm actually pretty fond of Zen Buddhism, which I first got into via a martial arts teacher all the way back when I was a teen. Though I don't agree with every aspect of every view, obviously. I'm not very familiar with Advaita Vedanta. I'll have to check that out.

Atla wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 3:41 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 3:38 pm

I'm actually pretty fond of Zen Buddhism, which I first got into via a martial arts teacher all the way back when I was a teen. Though I don't agree with every aspect of every view, obviously. I'm not very familiar with Advaita Vedanta. I'll have to check that out.

Unfortunately, most Advaita talk online will be the pseudo-Advaita, where they use the words but don't understand what they are pointing to.

Personally I also very much like Peter Russell's 'The primacy of consciousness' talk. He is very scientific minded like I am, and went through a very similar route, when investigating the nature of consciousness.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 3:14 pm

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑September 14th, 2020, 5:48 pm
The whole idea that pain is subjective, and the realisation that colours are not "out there" nut only experienced in the head is pure science.

We've known this for a long, long time and didn't need to be told by scientists that this was the case. It was never a scientific discovery.
{/quote]
Your ignorance is astounding

Thanks for the education, but I very much doubt that any such paper would be considered "scientific" rather than a work in philosophy. Do you have a link to it so I can read the source?

Your doubt is only based on your ignorance.
Are you a flat earther too?
Educate yourself and come back.

And this may be a quibble you can justifiably dismiss, but wasn't Peirce really more of a philosopher who was fluent in science rather than someone whose main contributions were scientific? Sort of a 19th century Daniel Dennett?

Get a life

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑September 14th, 2020, 8:01 pm

evolution wrote: ↑September 14th, 2020, 7:42 pm

You still do NOT get it.

I KNOW what a 'philosophical context' is, from my perspective. All I was trying to do was understand better what your perspective of that phrase is. If you can NOT or will NOT back up, explain, or elaborate on what you say and claim on a philosophy forum, then WHY post in one?

So what is your "'what is' presentation" for propositional knowledge in this philosophical context, per how you think about philosophical contexts?

Wossname wrote: ↑September 14th, 2020, 6:23 am
I think this is a damned difficult topic.

I’m not sure you are wrong but I have some doubts all the same. I lean towards a particular version of identity theory, (embodied identity theory), so I think I broadly agree with TS, but I’ve not yet completely fallen over. I am not sure whether detailed description of the necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness is needed to resolve matters as you suggest.

Firstly, the effects of some drugs, brain injuries, sleep, dreaming and brain scans etc. suggest that perceptual, cognitive and affective states are linked with brain processes, and experiment suggests a direct link. Change the brain and you can change the experience and vice versa. I think this gives identity theory some plausibility.

A concern is that objective accounts of an experience may fail to capture the subjective nature of the experience. The subjective appears to be something extra that needs explaining. But as has been pointed out, if consciousness is identical to a brain state then brain processes do not generate or produce consciousness, they are consciousness (and vice versa). If X generates Y it is not identical to Y. In your example GEM, if bees or the things that they do generate honey, then bees or the things they do are not honey. But identity is symmetrical and if consciousness is a brain process, it is not an extra property. There is no new thing to look for. (Gertie, your point about a homunculus is well taken).

The claim, then, is that some objective events are identical to some subjective events. The fact that there are different ways of encountering a thing does not necessarily mean we are encountering different things. A thing may be encountered subjectively as lived experience, or objectively as when observed by another.

Note that, in viewing consciousness as a brain process, mentality is not somehow eliminated by the analysis as some have argued. We are not left with just the objective physical description of events. The physical process is also a mental event.

A difficulty is that some argument will not allow analysis involving anything other than the comparison of objective physical events even though (as I think you recognise) this may be inadequate to the task in hand. In other words I am concerned that, for some, identity is only permitted to be established by observed similar properties from an objective POV, and this will not allow, by definition almost, a different POV (e.g. one allowing that subjective experience could be identical to objective experience), simply on the grounds that the two perspectives are different.

The brain may be modelling the external world, but identity theory proposes that this modelling just is the processing being done by the brain, not some extra epiphenomenal thing.

An external observer using a scanner to watch your brain working cannot experience what your brain is experiencing, since they can only experience what their own brain is experiencing. But this just is what it means to have different perspectives.

The inside of your house does not look like the outside of your house, but it is your house all the same (assuming you have one).

If this works then there seems nothing missing here. Some say you can’t see a thought. But by this view you can, though you can only directly experience your own. This does allow that a clever external observer may be able to decode brain activity, and tell what the thought or subjective experience is likely to be, and researchers are making progress here. I have read that currently, decoding of information gained by brain scans enables researchers to determine what playing card someone is holding with better than 90% accuracy, and it is thought that in the future brain decoding will be capable of extracting information an investigator might want, such as the encryption code to a file or the combination to a safe.

How do we decide on identity? Well, are we justified in saying (in time honoured tradition) that the morning star is the same as the evening star? Even without powerful telescopes, when we examine where and when we encounter these two things it seems we are (something recognised it seems even in ancient Sumeria). And again, we may ask whether these two things, the physical and mental, are the same thing. Again, we answer by looking at how we encounter these things, and the evidence and reasoning outlined above seems to me to justify the view that they probably are.

To play with your thought experiment, it seems possible that if we are looking at a screen showing our brain activity while looking at the screen, it may be an example whereby both the objective and subjective can be objectively seen to coincide. Flash up a red square, a blue triangle, a green circle or whatever and see the changes in brain activity that result. This would seem to support mind-brain identity.

GE Morton wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 11:04 pm GE Morton » Today, 4:04 am

Suppose Frank Jackson's Mary's vast knoweldge of optics and neurology includes that information. She has never seen colors, and so her brain has never manifested that pattern. She agrees to allow a researcher to induce that pattern electronically in her brain. Will she be able to predict what that experience will "be like" for her? What distinctive sensation will appear to her counsciousness? Or will she say, "Ah! So THAT is what red looks like!" That is what knowledge of brain states can't predict.

GE Morton wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 11:04 pm GE Morton » Today, 4:04 am


I think this disagreement boils down to what is the relevant criterion for declaring two (nominal) things to be identical. I know of no others than the two I mentioned, and minds and brains are not identical per either of those.

evolution wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 6:12 pm Therefore, whatever is in agreement and accepted as being propositional knowledge, then that is what is propositional knowledge, to those people.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑September 15th, 2020, 5:01 pm
Okay, thanks--I'll check Russell out.