Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Pattern-chaser]

And all that is what we perceive, using our mind. Is it not?

Yes, it isn't.

[GrayArea]

then you have to do better than saying with regard to Conscious Experience and the laws of Physics that "They simply just exist and carry themselves out". How is it that Conscious Experience is in the Neurons? The answer can not be "Conscious Experience just IS the Neurons". If that would be the thrust of your answer, then that is a non answer.

With all due respect I don't think you may have fully read my initial response but rather just my summary of it, because I already told you more stuff than that. I did not say that the Conscious Experience just is the neurons.

The laws of physics "simply just existing and carrying themselves out" is not what my initial response talks about but rather just one of the ideas behind it.

[Belindi]

@Consul

In the light of our chats, I thought this might be of interest to you: https://www.wionews.com/science/even-a- ... ys-a-study

The verb "to decide" is ambiguous between "to come to a resolution in the mind as a result of consideration" and "to make a choice from a number of alternatives" (source). In the first sense, decisions require the capacity for conscious thought, which all worms lack; and in the second sense, they don't, because a nonconscious selective mechanism in an organism can "make a choice" from a number of behavioral alternatives or options. Worms may be capable of "making decisions" in this second sense, but their automatic neurophysiological mechanisms responsible for doing so are totally nonconscious.

I still think that animals declaring other animals "non-conscious" based on assumptions is problematic.

Humanity has a long and ugly history of treating its own type of consciousness as a yardstick, as if it was typical. In fact, humanlike consciousness is an extreme outlier. Thus, humans are the very worst species to use as the basis of consciousness studies. A significant issue here is the use of post hoc rationalisations to describe human behaviours that are, at heart, no more complex than P. pacificus's discretionary treatment of C. elegans - just reflexes with justifications made after the fact.

It is the Conscious Experience as a thing in itself that is at issue. Any subsequent Behaviors are irrelevant to the study of the Conscious Sensory Experience if you are trying to understand the Experience itself.

Steve, by "the Experience itself" (and I note your honorific capital E) do you refer to pre-cognitive , pre-linguistic, experience ?

[GrayArea]

And all that is what we perceive, using our mind. Is it not?

Yes, it isn't.

Dunno what you mean by "Yes, it isn't", that's a both yes and no?

Also not to be rude but if you're just gonna state opinions and purposefully not provide any plausible reasonings behind, I can also say that I'm right instead and then move on...Which I still am so far, by the way.

Not saying that you have to provide your own reasoning behind your opinions, I can't control you nor do I care enough about it.

[Pattern-chaser]

And all that is what we perceive, using our mind. Is it not?

Yes, it isn't.

Dunno what you mean by "Yes, it isn't", that's a both yes and no?

Also not to be rude but if you're just gonna state opinions and purposefully not provide any plausible reasonings behind, I can also say that I'm right instead and then move on...Which I still am so far, by the way.

Not saying that you have to provide your own reasoning behind your opinions, I can't control you nor do I care enough about it.

OK, my response was flippant. But what we perceive is, in general, what we expect to perceive. Our perceptions are no guide to what is, as opposed to what we perceive. I'm sorry you found my comment offensive.

[GrayArea]

And all that is what we perceive, using our mind. Is it not?

Yes, it isn't.

Dunno what you mean by "Yes, it isn't", that's a both yes and no?

Also not to be rude but if you're just gonna state opinions and purposefully not provide any plausible reasonings behind, I can also say that I'm right instead and then move on...Which I still am so far, by the way.

Not saying that you have to provide your own reasoning behind your opinions, I can't control you nor do I care enough about it.

OK, my response was flippant. But what we perceive is, in general, what we expect to perceive. Our perceptions are no guide to what is, as opposed to what we perceive. I'm sorry you found my comment offensive.

Interesting perspective, but even so, how could we possibly tell that what we perceive is what we perceive, instead of that what we perceive is what *is*?

If what we perceive is indeed what we perceive, then one can say the fact that the act of perceiving "is", is what allows us to perceive what we perceive in the first place. Turning this notion into something in-between "We perceive what is" and "We perceive what we perceive".

So in the long run, it's hard to tell what "is" and what "we perceive". Perhaps the only way to tell is to experience them, and not understand them.

Any thoughts?

[Sy Borg]

It is the Conscious Experience as a thing in itself that is at issue. Any subsequent Behaviors are irrelevant to the study of the Conscious Sensory Experience if you are trying to understand the Experience itself.

We don't know how to measure that yet.

[SteveKlinko]

The verb "to decide" is ambiguous between "to come to a resolution in the mind as a result of consideration" and "to make a choice from a number of alternatives" (source). In the first sense, decisions require the capacity for conscious thought, which all worms lack; and in the second sense, they don't, because a nonconscious selective mechanism in an organism can "make a choice" from a number of behavioral alternatives or options. Worms may be capable of "making decisions" in this second sense, but their automatic neurophysiological mechanisms responsible for doing so are totally nonconscious.

I still think that animals declaring other animals "non-conscious" based on assumptions is problematic.

Humanity has a long and ugly history of treating its own type of consciousness as a yardstick, as if it was typical. In fact, humanlike consciousness is an extreme outlier. Thus, humans are the very worst species to use as the basis of consciousness studies. A significant issue here is the use of post hoc rationalisations to describe human behaviours that are, at heart, no more complex than P. pacificus's discretionary treatment of C. elegans - just reflexes with justifications made after the fact.

It is the Conscious Experience as a thing in itself that is at issue. Any subsequent Behaviors are irrelevant to the study of the Conscious Sensory Experience if you are trying to understand the Experience itself.

Steve, by "the Experience itself" (and I note your honorific capital E) do you refer to pre-cognitive , pre-linguistic, experience ?

I am referring to Sensory Experiences like the Experience of Redness, the Standard A Tone, the Salty Taste, and etc. These are the common Experiences that Exist in the Mind. I think Pre Cognitive has something to do with seeing into the future and Pre Linguistic has something to do with communicating without Language? I would not know how to classify my Experience of Redness into any of those two categories. Except that I have had discussions with people in the past who were adamant that you cannot have a Color Experience without a name for the Color. To me that is a very weird belief. I just Experience Redness, without a need for the word Red. So maybe I can say that the Redness Experience is Pre Linguistic.

[SteveKlinko]

then you have to do better than saying with regard to Conscious Experience and the laws of Physics that "They simply just exist and carry themselves out". How is it that Conscious Experience is in the Neurons? The answer can not be "Conscious Experience just IS the Neurons". If that would be the thrust of your answer, then that is a non answer.

With all due respect I don't think you may have fully read my initial response but rather just my summary of it, because I already told you more stuff than that. I did not say that the Conscious Experience just is the neurons.

The laws of physics "simply just existing and carrying themselves out" is not what my initial response talks about but rather just one of the ideas behind it.

Great Answer.
Thank You

[SteveKlinko]

It is the Conscious Experience as a thing in itself that is at issue. Any subsequent Behaviors are irrelevant to the study of the Conscious Sensory Experience if you are trying to understand the Experience itself.

We don't know how to measure that yet.

It is the Embarrassment of Science that we don't know how to measure Conscious Experience yet. The Embarrassment is the fact that Science does not even understand that there is something to Measure. They just obsessively look at the Neurons hoping that the Conscious Experience will magically spring from the Neural Activity. Nobody, nowhere, is even trying to Measure Conscious Experience itself.

[GrayArea]

then you have to do better than saying with regard to Conscious Experience and the laws of Physics that "They simply just exist and carry themselves out". How is it that Conscious Experience is in the Neurons? The answer can not be "Conscious Experience just IS the Neurons". If that would be the thrust of your answer, then that is a non answer.

With all due respect I don't think you may have fully read my initial response but rather just my summary of it, because I already told you more stuff than that. I did not say that the Conscious Experience just is the neurons.

The laws of physics "simply just existing and carrying themselves out" is not what my initial response talks about but rather just one of the ideas behind it.

Great Answer.
Thank You

I take it that you took time to read through my original post once more?

[Sy Borg]

It is the Conscious Experience as a thing in itself that is at issue. Any subsequent Behaviors are irrelevant to the study of the Conscious Sensory Experience if you are trying to understand the Experience itself.

We don't know how to measure that yet.

It is the Embarrassment of Science that we don't know how to measure Conscious Experience yet. The Embarrassment is the fact that Science does not even understand that there is something to Measure. They just obsessively look at the Neurons hoping that the Conscious Experience will magically spring from the Neural Activity. Nobody, nowhere, is even trying to Measure Conscious Experience itself.

There are quite a few embarrassments, or opportunities, depending on one's perspective - the big bang, dark energy and dark matter, abiogenesis, QM and relativity, cancer, time, and so on. As far as I can tell, emergent phenomena occurs when brains are sufficiently complex and integrated, but I am also not sure that a basic sense of being is generated by neurons, even though that is the most widely accepted hypothesis. I am not convinced of the existence of "biological machines" because an organism's senses are innate to it, while a machine's senses are a relatively abstracted addendum.

[SteveKlinko]

It is the Conscious Experience as a thing in itself that is at issue. Any subsequent Behaviors are irrelevant to the study of the Conscious Sensory Experience if you are trying to understand the Experience itself.

We don't know how to measure that yet.

It is the Embarrassment of Science that we don't know how to measure Conscious Experience yet. The Embarrassment is the fact that Science does not even understand that there is something to Measure. They just obsessively look at the Neurons hoping that the Conscious Experience will magically spring from the Neural Activity. Nobody, nowhere, is even trying to Measure Conscious Experience itself.

There are quite a few embarrassments, or opportunities, depending on one's perspective - the big bang, dark energy and dark matter, abiogenesis, QM and relativity, cancer, time, and so on. As far as I can tell, emergent phenomena occurs when brains are sufficiently complex and integrated, but I am also not sure that a basic sense of being is generated by neurons, even though that is the most widely accepted hypothesis. I am not convinced of the existence of "biological machines" because an organism's senses are innate to it, while a machine's senses are a relatively abstracted addendum.

The senses are also an abstracted addendum to Biological Machines through the Millions of years of Evolution.

[SteveKlinko]

then you have to do better than saying with regard to Conscious Experience and the laws of Physics that "They simply just exist and carry themselves out". How is it that Conscious Experience is in the Neurons? The answer can not be "Conscious Experience just IS the Neurons". If that would be the thrust of your answer, then that is a non answer.

With all due respect I don't think you may have fully read my initial response but rather just my summary of it, because I already told you more stuff than that. I did not say that the Conscious Experience just is the neurons.

The laws of physics "simply just existing and carrying themselves out" is not what my initial response talks about but rather just one of the ideas behind it.

Great Answer.
Thank You

I take it that you took time to read through my original post once more?

Please provide link to OP that you are talking about.

[GrayArea]

The connectivity?

Connectivity as in what connects these two? I'm not really sure about that.

We're more like the beings that sets these two apart from each other, and as a result define both of them. However, I suppose in that sense, these two—physicality and mentality—can be considered connected, through ourselves.

Take a look at this Forum Topic on Connectism:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17727

While not intended, thanks for the reminder. I remembered that I left one of your questions in this thread unanswered, that was, how the attributes of Conscious Mind(Qualia) such as redness could spring from the Physical Mind. I think I have somewhat of a vague answer to this question:

They are essentially “how neurons are affected by the outside world in a specific way due to the specific nature of what they are made out of as well as their inner functions”.

I'll explain further because I don't want to be TOO vague either. Because of the laws of physics, materials are bound to react to some degree from outside impulses. Different materials are bound to react differently to each outside impulses, especially when it comes to cellular objects, they would react with more intensity as they have a lot of inner functions going on, as opposed to metal or wood which are just molecules combined together. Redness is when the specific frequency of the lightwave makes our neurons(out of all objects) react and activate in a certain specific way. To be more specific, it is how the neurons themselves translate that "red" frequency part of light into their own language, something they can describe only using what materials and functions they are made out of & how they are affected by this lightwave.

That is to say, redness can therefore be described as a frequency of light that is solely described by the neurons' own native materials and functions. And so this information of redness is spread throughout the neighboring neurons and is very easily understood by them, as redness is how only the neurons specifically "see" the "red" frequency of the light. How that frequency affects their materials and functions.

In a way, the creation of Qualia is akin to a process of translating a language.

Here.