Philosophy Discussion Forums

Consul wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 5:28 pm

Sy Borg wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 5:07 pm

Consul wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 4:26 pm"The knowledge argument aims to establish that conscious experience involves non-physical properties. It rests on the idea that someone who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being might yet lack knowledge about how it feels to have the experiences of that being. It is one of the most discussed arguments against physicalism."

Qualia: The Knowledge Argument: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/

I don't think the entry was worded well. "Non-physical" is a loaded term, its semantic implying dualism, as you noted. However, that adds an assumption to a proposition.
I think less controversial wording would be more appropriate: "The knowledge argument aims to establish that conscious experience involves properties that are not yet understood".

But that's not the ontological conclusion drawn by its defenders, which is clearly antiphysicalistic:

"What Mary discovered about color experiences is meant to apply to conscious experiences generally. The lesson Jackson wants you to take away is that being consciously aware of something is to be in a state of mind with a particular sort of qualitative character, a character utterly unlike the character of material bodies – including the brain. Your only access to conscious qualities is through your experiencing them first hand. This feature of conscious qualities places them outside the physical domain.
Taking Jackson seriously means taking dualism seriously."

(Heil, John. Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2013. p. 170)

Heil's quote is just a strawhuman constructed from concern that the thought experiment may give succour to the "enemy".

To take Frank Jackson's thought experiment seriously is to be perplexed, not to jump to conclusions. The irony is that, as neuroscientist Christof Koch has observed, depending on one's perspective, reality can be seen as dual without inferring spooky action. Matter and information, ie. stuff and the stuff's configuration. Quantum and relativistic effects at different scales. Hardware and software. Body and mind.

Besides, realit

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 2:14 pm Conscious Experience is so real to me that it is just Incoherent to think it is an Illusion...

That's the thing about philosophy. Sometimes it's hard to draw the conclusions that the evidence justifies. It's harder still to consider something we have never even thought to question might not actually - in the real world, not in a philosopher's Ivory Tower - be correct. But evidence - or in this case, total lack of evidence - is evidence, and there is no justification in that evidence to believe what we have always assumed to be the absolute reality. It might be, or it might not be. If we discard theories without evidence or other justifiable reason, we will fail to discover what is there to be found.

Consul wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 3:49 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 2:18 pmLet's take an engineering analysis approach where we trace the path of Light perception. The first thing that happens is that Physical Light (PL) enters the Eye and is focused onto the Retina. The instant the PL hits the Retina it activates the Rods and Cones. Various wavelengths of PL will preferentially activate various different Rods and Cones. The PL is absorbed by the Rods and Cones and the PL is no longer PL. What is left is an avalanche of chemical reactions that eventually fires a Neuron that sends a signal away from the Retina and to the Visual Areas (VAs) of the Cerebral Cortex. This happens for millions of Neurons at the same time with the signal from each Neuron bundled into the Optic Nerve. It’s a long journey from the Retina through the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN) of the Thalamus and to the Visual Areas which are located in the back of the head. During this whole trip from Eye to the VAs we are not dealing with PL anymore but rather this is of course Neural Light (NL). The NL signals eventually arrive at the first Visual Area (V1) get processed and are then sent to the second Visual Area (V2) and on to other Visual Areas V3, V4, V5, and more. All the areas also send signals back to previous Areas to create a giant mish mash of parallel processing that is difficult to completely quantify. All the processing and feedback is also NL since it is correlated with the PL. So, all we can really say is that we Experience NL not PL. We know when this NL happens that CL happens. The CL cannot be found in the Brain, and maybe someday it will be found there. But for now, we can only speculate that it is in some other Realm or Dimension or Space. I say CL is in Conscious Space (CSp). We can then speculate that there must be a Conscious Mind (CM) that exists in CSp, that is experiencing the CL. A similar argument can be made if we trace the path of Physical Sound (PS) to Neural Sound (NS) and then to Conscious Sound (CS).

The subjective "realm or dimension or space" of phenomenal consciousness isn't "transcerebral", let alone supernatural/hyperphysical. Phenomenal space and phenomenal time are realized within the physical space and the physical time of the brain. The conscious mind with its experiential contents (sensations, emotions, or imaginations) is wholly part of the brain, being a distinctive high-level type of neural (neuroinformational) organization.

Of course, even if subjective experiences are constituted by and thus identical to complexes of objective and externally perceptible neural processes, there is still a qualitative perceptual difference between e.g. your seeing a red tomato and my seeing the neural process which is your seeing a red tomato. For experiencing and internally perceiving a red-impression is certainly qualitatively different from externally perceiving the experiencing of a red-impression that takes place in your brain. As opposed to your seeing of a red tomato, my seeing of your seeing of a red tomato doesn't or needn't involve any red-impressions. But it doesn't follow that there is a numerical difference between the object of my external perception, viz. some neural process, and your internally perceived experiential content, e.g. some red-impression.

A neural process which is an undergoing of a red-impression certainly doesn't look red to external observers—unless red is intentionally used in the context of technological neuroimaging to represent aspects of the neural process. But what looks red then are parts of the image or picture of the neural process rather than the neural process itself, which may not be directly visible to the natural eye.

If experiences are neural processes, you cannot internally perceive your experiences as neural processes, and I cannot externally perceive the neural processes in your brain as experiences; but this perspective-relative (1st person vs. 3rd person) perceptual difference doesn't amount to an existential (ontological) difference, and to a confirmation of dualism (antireductionism) about subjective experience.

The more I think about and learn about the Physical Neural Activity, and then think about the resultant Conscious Experiences, the more I am convinced of a Dualistic reality. There is no Theory or even Speculation about how the Conscious Experiences are in the Neurons. Science has tried for a hundred years to push Conscious Experiences into the Neurons, but they have had Zero success in making that happen. It is time to free ourselves from that kind of limited thinking. I like to call my Dualism, Connectism (new word), where the emphasis is on the Connection aspect of Physical Mind to Conscious Mind. An Inter Mind concept is prominent in my thinking.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 8:51 pm

Consul wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 5:28 pmBut that's not the ontological conclusion drawn by its defenders, which is clearly antiphysicalistic:

"What Mary discovered about color experiences is meant to apply to conscious experiences generally. The lesson Jackson wants you to take away is that being consciously aware of something is to be in a state of mind with a particular sort of qualitative character, a character utterly unlike the character of material bodies – including the brain. Your only access to conscious qualities is through your experiencing them first hand. This feature of conscious qualities places them outside the physical domain.
Taking Jackson seriously means taking dualism seriously."

(Heil, John. Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2013. p. 170)

Heil's quote is just a strawhuman constructed from concern that the thought experiment may give succour to the "enemy".

To take Frank Jackson's thought experiment seriously is to be perplexed, not to jump to conclusions. The irony is that, as neuroscientist Christof Koch has observed, depending on one's perspective, reality can be seen as dual without inferring spooky action. Matter and information, ie. stuff and the stuff's configuration. Quantum and relativistic effects at different scales. Hardware and software. Body and mind.

You are wrong: The Mary argument is used by its defenders as an argument against physicalism (physicalist property monism)!

Consul wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 3:56 pm The real problem neuroscientists have is to reductively explain and to successfully predict subjective experiences in terms of neurological mechanisms. If the consciousness-constituting mechanisms are identified, and their structures and functions are completely described and explained, then there is no hard problem left. For then there is no point anymore in asking "Why is this neural process experienced subjectively at all?" and "Why is this neural process experienced subjectively in this way rather than that way?", because these will ultimately be brute facts of nature defying any further explanation.

That is a Huge If.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑November 27th, 2021, 7:24 amThat's the thing about philosophy. Sometimes it's hard to draw the conclusions that the evidence justifies. It's harder still to consider something we have never even thought to question might not actually - in the real world, not in a philosopher's Ivory Tower - be correct. But evidence - or in this case, total lack of evidence - is evidence, and there is no justification in that evidence to believe what we have always assumed to be the absolute reality. It might be, or it might not be. If we discard theories without evidence or other justifiable reason, we will fail to discover what is there to be found.

Obviously, there cannot be any empirical evidence for the nonexistence of experience.

Consul wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 4:20 pm

Consul wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 3:56 pm The real problem neuroscientists have is to reductively explain and to successfully predict subjective experiences in terms of neurological mechanisms. If the consciousness-constituting mechanisms are identified, and their structures and functions are completely described and explained, then there is no hard problem left. For then there is no point anymore in asking "Why is this neural process experienced subjectively at all?" and "Why is this neural process experienced subjectively in this way rather than that way?", because these will ultimately be brute facts of nature defying any further explanation.

"The hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers 1995) is the problem of explaining the relationship between physical phenomena, such as brain processes, and experience (i.e., phenomenal consciousness, or mental states/events with phenomenal qualities or qualia). Why are physical processes ever accompanied by experience? And why does a given physical process generate the specific experience it does—why an experience of red rather than green, for example?"

Source: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

First of all, the very formulations of these questions smell like dualism. For if x is "accompanied by" y, then x is different from y (isn't it?); and if x "generates (produces)" y, then x is different from y (isn't it?).

Anyway, even given these biased formulations, there are trivial answers to the questions:

1. Some physical processes are accompanied by experience, simply because it's a brute fact of nature that they do.

2. A given physical process generates the specific experience it does, simply because it's a brute fact of nature that it does.

Dualism (or what I call Connectism) is back in town.

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 27th, 2021, 11:00 am

Consul wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 3:56 pm The real problem neuroscientists have is to reductively explain and to successfully predict subjective experiences in terms of neurological mechanisms. If the consciousness-constituting mechanisms are identified, and their structures and functions are completely described and explained, then there is no hard problem left. For then there is no point anymore in asking "Why is this neural process experienced subjectively at all?" and "Why is this neural process experienced subjectively in this way rather than that way?", because these will ultimately be brute facts of nature defying any further explanation.

That is a Huge If.

Rome wasn't built in a day! The neuroscience of consciousness is still very young, and brains (especially the human brain) are the most complicated chunks of matter in the known universe; but it has already begun nibbling away at the hard problem or (what Seth calls) the real problem.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑November 27th, 2021, 7:24 am

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 2:14 pm Conscious Experience is so real to me that it is just Incoherent to think it is an Illusion...

That's the thing about philosophy. Sometimes it's hard to draw the conclusions that the evidence justifies. It's harder still to consider something we have never even thought to question might not actually - in the real world, not in a philosopher's Ivory Tower - be correct. But evidence - or in this case, total lack of evidence - is evidence, and there is no justification in that evidence to believe what we have always assumed to be the absolute reality. It might be, or it might not be. If we discard theories without evidence or other justifiable reason, we will fail to discover what is there to be found.

it's not just that. It is that Science has tried for a Hundred years to put Conscious Experience into the Neurons with Zero success. It is time to think in new ways. In my new way of thinking there is a Physical Mind (Brain) and a separate Conscious Mind. But there is a third aspect of Mind that is in between the Physical Mind and the Conscious Mind and that is the Inter Mind. The Inter Mind Connects the Physical Mind to the Conscious Mind. I call this Connectism.

Consul wrote: ↑November 27th, 2021, 11:10 am

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 27th, 2021, 11:00 am

Consul wrote: ↑November 26th, 2021, 3:56 pm The real problem neuroscientists have is to reductively explain and to successfully predict subjective experiences in terms of neurological mechanisms. If the consciousness-constituting mechanisms are identified, and their structures and functions are completely described and explained, then there is no hard problem left. For then there is no point anymore in asking "Why is this neural process experienced subjectively at all?" and "Why is this neural process experienced subjectively in this way rather than that way?", because these will ultimately be brute facts of nature defying any further explanation.

That is a Huge If.

Rome wasn't built in a day! The neuroscience of consciousness is still very young, and brains (especially the human brain) are the most complicated chunks of matter in the known universe; but it has already begun nibbling away at the hard problem or (what Seth calls) the real problem.

Show me one Nibble of Logic or Scientific findings that brings us above Zero for the understanding of the Conscious Experience of Redness or any other Conscious Experience.

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 27th, 2021, 11:14 am it's not just that. It is that Science has tried for a Hundred years to put Conscious Experience into the Neurons with Zero success. It is time to think in new ways. In my new way of thinking there is a Physical Mind (Brain) and a separate Conscious Mind. But there is a third aspect of Mind that is in between the Physical Mind and the Conscious Mind and that is the Inter Mind. The Inter Mind Connects the Physical Mind to the Conscious Mind. I call this Connectism.

The zero-success or zero-progress objection to the physicalistic approach to mind and consciousness is false; and, anyway, it immediately backfires: Is there an alternative nonphysicalistic/dualistic science of mind and consciousness which has succeeded in explaining how nonphysical (conscious) minds emerge from or are realized by physical bodies or nonphysical souls? No there isn't!

The hard problem isn't only a problem for physicalists but for dualists as well; and if the prospects for the physicalistic approach are dim, the prospects for the dualistic one are much dimmer!

QUOTE>
"Compare now what the neuroscientist can tell us about the brain, and what she can do with that knowledge, with what the dualist can tell us about spiritual substance, and what he can do with those assumptions. Can the dualist tell us anything about the internal constitution of mind-stuff? Of the nonmaterial elements that make it up? Of the nonphysical laws that govern their behavior? Of the mind's structural connections with the body? Of the manner of the mind's operations? Can he explain human capacities and pathologies in terms of its structures and defects? The fact is, the dualist can do none of these things because no detailed theory of mind-stuff has ever even be formulated. Compared to the rich resources and the explanatory successes of current materialism, dualism is not so much a theory of mind as it is an empty space waiting for a genuine theory of mind to be put in it."

(Churchland, Paul M. Matter and Consciousness. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. p. 31)
<QUOTE

QUOTE>
"Abstract: The mind and brain sciences began with consciousness as a central concern. But for much of the 20th century, ideological and methodological concerns relegated its empirical study to the margins. Since the 1990s, studying consciousness has regained a legitimacy and momentum befitting its status as the primary feature of our mental lives. Nowadays, consciousness science encompasses a rich interdisciplinary mixture drawing together philosophical, theoretical, computational, experimental, and clinical perspectives, with neuroscience its central discipline. Researchers have learned a great deal about the neural mechanisms underlying global states of consciousness, distinctions between conscious and unconscious perception, and self-consciousness. Further progress will depend on specifying closer explanatory mappings between (first-person subjective) phenomenological descriptions and (third-person objective) descriptions of (embodied and embedded) neuronal mechanisms. Such progress will help reframe our understanding of our place in nature and accelerate clinical approaches to a wide range of psychiatric and neurological disorders."

Anil Seth: Consciousness: The last 50 years (and the next)
<QUOTE

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 27th, 2021, 11:18 am Show me one Nibble of Logic or Scientific findings that brings us above Zero for the understanding of the Conscious Experience of Redness or any other Conscious Experience.

For example, the successful neuroscientific reconstructions of subjective percepts (that I mentioned above) help to understand their material constitution through specific neuroinformational patterns in the brain.

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 27th, 2021, 11:02 amDualism (or what I call Connectism) is back in town.

That's a ghost town!

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 27th, 2021, 11:02 amDualism (or what I call Connectism) is back in town.

Which sort of dualism is yours? Substance dualism (which includes property dualism) or only property dualism?

Consul wrote: ↑November 27th, 2021, 12:14 pmWhich sort of dualism is yours? Substance dualism (which includes property dualism) or only property dualism?

There's an emergent dualism according to which physically irreducible mental attributes or substances emerge from physical substances (bodies/organisms); but it's utterly unintelligible how anything nonphysical could naturally emerge from something purely physical.