Philosophy Discussion Forums

Faustus5 wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 9:13 am

Consul wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 9:06 amI'm not one of them! I don't believe in ontological emergence.

Me, either. The idea that consciousness has any non-physical properties is about as dumb and evidence-free an idea as anyone has ever had in philosophy.

My basic ontological argument against ontological emergence (which was originally devised by John Heil):

Imagine a simple (noncomposite) property Z and two distinct simple (noncomposite) material objects x and y. If Z is emergent, then it isn't had by x alone or by y alone, but by x+y collectively: Z(x+y).
Where is Z? It is neither wholly in x nor wholly in y, since it would then be a non-emergent property of x alone or y alone; and it is neither partly in x nor partly in y, since it doesn't have any spatially separable parts that can be at different places (where x is and where y is). If Z is neither wholly nor partly in x, and neither wholly nor partly in y, then it is neither wholly nor partly in x+y either, which means it isn't in x+y at all, in which case Z isn't an emergent property of x+y. There is no place for Z to be as an emergent property; and if there isn't, there can be no such emergent property as Z. This example can be generalized to any number >2 of objects said to collectively have some simple emergent property, so it's a general argument against the possibility of ontologically emergent properties.

Footnote: My argument presupposes Aristotelian immanentism about properties—as opposed to Platonic transcendentalism, according to which properties instantiated by objects in space aren't themselves anywhere in space.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 9:56 am

Atla wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 9:45 am
You were forced into the even worse position of both rejecting and accepting the existence of P-consciousness, while explaining it away.

Nah, I just play by the normal rules of scientific investigation and explanation, but since you want consciousness to be magic, this confuses you.

Trust me, it doesn't confuse the vast majority of scientists and philosophers who are scientifically literate, for whom nothing Consul and I believe is remarkable or controversial.

Fact is, you aren't scientifically literate enough to understand how there is no conflict between P-consciousness and science. You want P-consciousness to be magic and you rejected it, while also being forced to accept it, since it can't be rejected.

Scientific literacy, and understanding that it's bad to believe in X and not-X at the same time, can be useful.

Consul wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 10:07 am

Faustus5 wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 9:13 am

Consul wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 9:06 amI'm not one of them! I don't believe in ontological emergence.

Me, either. The idea that consciousness has any non-physical properties is about as dumb and evidence-free an idea as anyone has ever had in philosophy.

My basic ontological argument against ontological emergence (which was originally devised by John Heil):

Imagine a simple (noncomposite) property Z and two distinct simple (noncomposite) material objects x and y. If Z is emergent, then it isn't had by x alone or by y alone, but by x+y collectively: Z(x+y).
Where is Z? It is neither wholly in x nor wholly in y, since it would then be a non-emergent property of x alone or y alone; and it is neither partly in x nor partly in y, since it doesn't have any spatially separable parts that can be at different places (where x is and where y is). If Z is neither wholly nor partly in x, and neither wholly nor partly in y, then it is neither wholly nor partly in x+y either, which means it isn't in x+y at all, in which case Z isn't an emergent property of x+y. There is no place for Z to be as an emergent property; and if there isn't, there can be no such emergent property as Z. This example can be generalized to any number >2 of objects said to collectively have some simple emergent property, so it's a general argument against the possibility of ontologically emergent properties.

Footnote: My argument presupposes Aristotelian immanentism about properties—as opposed to Platonic transcendentalism, according to which properties instantiated by objects in space aren't themselves anywhere in space.

Don't you find it odd that you reject ontological emergence, while always searching for the ontological emergence of P-consciousness?

Atla wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 10:27 amDon't you find it odd that you reject ontological emergence, while always searching for the ontological emergence of P-consciousness?

To reject emergentism isn't necessarily to accept fundamentalism (primordialism), the view that mental/experiential entities have always existed in nature as a basic kind of entities. My view, materialist reductionism, is neither emergentistic nor fundamentalistic about mind/consciousness: Mental/experiential entities haven't always existed in nature, and the ones which exist are fundamentally composed of or constituted by nonmental/nonexperiential entities which are part of the ontology of physics.

Consul wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 10:07 am …This example can be generalized to any number >2 of objects said to collectively have some simple emergent property, so it's a general argument against the possibility of ontologically emergent properties.

I'm not saying composite objects such as atoms and molecules cannot have "holistic" properties. They can, but their properties cannot be ontologically irreducible emergent properties, i.e. basic simple ones of wholes. For they can only be nonbasic, derivative, and thus ontologically reducible structural properties of wholes or systems.

Consul wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 11:37 am

Atla wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 10:27 amDon't you find it odd that you reject ontological emergence, while always searching for the ontological emergence of P-consciousness?

To reject emergentism isn't necessarily to accept fundamentalism (primordialism), the view that mental/experiential entities have always existed in nature as a basic kind of entities. My view, materialist reductionism, is neither emergentistic nor fundamentalistic about mind/consciousness: Mental/experiential entities haven't always existed in nature, and the ones which exist are fundamentally composed of or constituted by nonmental/nonexperiential entities which are part of the ontology of physics.

They can't be measured by physics, so you default back to emergentism.

Consul wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 11:47 amI'm not saying composite objects such as atoms and molecules cannot have "holistic" properties. They can, but their properties cannot be ontologically irreducible emergent properties, i.e. basic simple ones of wholes. For they can only be nonbasic, derivative, and thus ontologically reducible structural properties of wholes or systems.

John Heil would object that complex or structural properties of wholes are just pseudoproperties, because they are nothing but complexes or structures of noncomplex or nonstructural, i.e. (mereologically) simple, properties (had by simple objects). Well, it depends on whether or not one is prepared to accept (mereological) sums of simple properties (or/and simple relations) as genuine properties in one's ontology.

Atla wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 11:48 amThey can't be measured by physics, so you default back to emergentism.

Eh…no. For example, if experiences are (constituted by) electrochemical processes, they have measurable electrical properties.

Consul wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 11:59 am

Atla wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 11:48 amThey can't be measured by physics, so you default back to emergentism.

Eh…no. For example, if experiences are (constituted by) electrochemical processes, they have measurable electrical properties.

It's a quite dishonest tactic of some philosophers and scientists to pretend that now that we are talking about complex physical systems with "soft emergent" properties, which as a whole may indeed be identical to the qualia in question, the Hard problem has been solved.

No, as usual, it has only been evaded again. The Hard problem is, why doesn't that complex physical property just happen "in the dark"? Again they had to smuggle in some hard emergence of mental happening, and then had to forget that they did so.

Atla wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 12:08 pmIt's a quite dishonest tactic of some philosophers and scientists to pretend that now that we are talking about complex physical systems with "soft emergent" properties, which as a whole may indeed be identical to the qualia in question, the Hard problem has been solved.
No, as usual, it has only been evaded again. The Hard problem is, why doesn't that complex physical property just happen "in the dark"? Again they had to smuggle in some hard emergence of mental happening, and then had to forget that they did so.

Of course, to say that experiences are composed of, constituted by, or constructed from neural processes is not to give any reductive neurological explanation of how this happens, since it's merely a description of the ontological relationship between mind and matter. It's up to the neuroscience of consciousness to find reductive explanations of consciousness and cognition. However, all scientific explanations end somewhere with some brute natural facts that defy further explanation and must be accepted "with natural piety" (Samuel Alexander). So, at the end of the day, it will be a brute natural fact that certain (yet to be discovered and described) dynamic patterns of neural activity are experienced subjectively and others aren't.

The words "to emerge" and "emergence" can be used by reductionists in a sense which doesn't imply any serious ontological commitment to strong emergence in the ontological sense. For example, "to emerge" can mean "to come into being through evolution" (Merriam-Webster), and reductive materialists certainly believe that consciousness is emergent in this sense of the term.

Consul wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 1:12 pm

Atla wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 12:08 pmIt's a quite dishonest tactic of some philosophers and scientists to pretend that now that we are talking about complex physical systems with "soft emergent" properties, which as a whole may indeed be identical to the qualia in question, the Hard problem has been solved.
No, as usual, it has only been evaded again. The Hard problem is, why doesn't that complex physical property just happen "in the dark"? Again they had to smuggle in some hard emergence of mental happening, and then had to forget that they did so.

Of course, to say that experiences are composed of, constituted by, or constructed from neural processes is not to give any reductive neurological explanation of how this happens, since it's merely a description of the ontological relationship between mind and matter. It's up to the neuroscience of consciousness to find reductive explanations of consciousness and cognition. However, all scientific explanations end somewhere with some brute natural facts that defy further explanation and must be accepted "with natural piety" (Samuel Alexander). So, at the end of the day, it will be a brute natural fact that certain (yet to be discovered and described) dynamic patterns of neural activity are experienced subjectively and others aren't.

The words "to emerge" and "emergence" can be used by reductionists in a sense which doesn't imply any serious ontological commitment to strong emergence in the ontological sense. For example, "to emerge" can mean "to come into being through evolution" (Merriam-Webster), and reductive materialists certainly believe that consciousness is emergent in this sense of the term.

Again, you can't explain without strong emergence how some dynamic patterns of neural activity are experienced subjectively and others aren't.
(And we can't use the trick of changing the topic from p-consciousness to some kind of local sense of subjectivity of an organism or artificial entity.)

NickGaspar wrote: ↑July 9th, 2021, 5:50 am

Gertie wrote: ↑July 8th, 2021, 8:14 pm

NickGaspar wrote: ↑July 8th, 2021, 3:33 am The end of this type of conversations in science is close.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmuYrnOVmfk&t=
Mark Solms the founder of Neuropsychoanalysis and the author of a groundbreaking paper on the mechanism of dreams explains the mechanisms responsible for consciousness.

If that represents the end of the type of contribution science can make, it amounts to noting correlation and a functionalist (psychological reward system) account. That conscious experience looks to have evolved on the basis of surviving and reproducing isn't controversial, it makes sense of why pain hurts and eating and reproducing feels good.

And more accurately pinning down the details of what happens where in the brain doesn't explain why particular material brain processes result in correlated phenomenal experience at all.

Solms thinks that affective phenonemal experience is more primitive, and somehow that means no such underlying explanation is required, a functionalist account will do, because... feelings have a function. But he's using dodgy word play to say that's Why they exist, that the reason they exist is to perform a function. Because that's not an explanation of what's going on to enable brains to perform the function of creating an experiential reward system.

I can say bicycles exist to travel from A to B, the reason they exist is to perform that function. But that doesn't explain Why lumps of metal and rubber can perform that function. The scientific explanation would talk about causal chains, friction, transferring energy into motion or whatever, relying on our physicalist model of how the world works. So there's a scientific explanation for why bicycles perform their function, which goes beyond noting the correlation between pushing a pedal and the bicycle moving. Solms is still at the point of noting correlations.

-"And more accurately pinning down the details of what happens where in the brain doesn't explain why particular material brain processes result in correlated phenomenal experience at all."
-Again why questions are not scientific or meaningful questions. Why a previously aroused electron produces light is not a question with a meaningful answer. Those are phenomena that exist and evolving organisms take advantage.
We need to keep pseudo philosophy away from philosophy, stop seeking answers for assumed intention or purpose in nature and understand how mechanisms produce a specific advance property...not why.

-"But he's using dodgy word play to say that's Why they exist, that the reason they exist is to perform a function."
-Again in nature ...there aren't reasons. They are mechanisms that organism "take" advantage or better manage to survive and pass the trait to the next generation.
Solms explanation is descriptive....he doesn't "think,believes, assumes". Stimuli create signals that either are in conflict with homeostasis or our biological urges (affections). Those interactions and conflicts produce new stimuli in order for the organism to take action and address the issues. Those are emotions that our higher level of our brains reason in to feelings, meaning, intention, purpose, theory, concepts, patterns and compared to previous experiences.
I have been writing about this mechanism in this exact thread long before Solms published his theory and Antonio Damasio has being pointing to emotions many years now. Its a descriptive explanation that only need logic and evaluating the facts.
Our technology comes and verifies our suspicions by identifying the role of the Ascenting Reticular Activating System and the Central lateral Thalamus as the areas responsible for our raw conscious states. We know that biological drives and primitive affections are at the same level with the above brain areas and we know that more complex and advanced mind properties responsible for the content of our states come well after the arousal of those primitive areas.

-" Because that's not an explanation of what's going on to enable brains to perform the function of creating an experiential reward system."
-You are creating up "obstacles" that aren't there. Evolution is just a driving force of what traits survive and flourish among future generations. You need to look in the neuroscience to answer the above question which is not addressed by the evolutionary aspect of the phenomenon.

Fortunately not all scientists are content with simply describing what is observed, they want to explain it too, and by doing so our understanding of how the world works progresses, giving us the Standard Model and now tackling what QM might mean beyond abstract maths and symbols.


That is what you're ignoring when you say anything but describing processes isn't science, but 'magic'. Bicycles being able to travel from A to B aren't ''magic'', we have scientific theories which explain it. We don't have any such theory to explain why certain organic processes result in conscious experience. And there seem to be specific relevant reasons for that, which Solms' attempt at using Functionalism as a stand in for a scientific explanation don't adequately address imo.

Btw did you watch the video you linked. Solms is the one using Functionalism as a Why response to the Hard Problem. Either misunderstanding or deliberately fudging the nature of Chalmers' point.

As for whether he's on the right track, it seems to me that studying the earliest and rawest types of conscious experience is a good way to go, hopefully reducing the wood for the trees in a super complex neural forest. Whether affective mood the first type of conscious experience to evolve strikes me personally as unlikely. I'd look to much simpler creatures than humans closer to the most ancient sentient acencestors for that, and those with fewer subsystems should make it easier to study too. But I'm no expert. Another approach is to try to replicate conscious experience via AI. If we can do that (and can confidently test our success) then that will offer major clues towards an explanation. It would be a big step towards isolating the necessary and sufficient conditions and what key processes are involved, rather than simply noting they must exist in brains.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑July 9th, 2021, 5:39 pmAll this time I have been considering the difference between:

1. a state that is on the brink of p-consciousness but, in fact, completely lacks internality

2. the weakest possible p-consciousness.

Studying a human brain to determine the above subtleties logically cannot work. Studying any brain will billions, or even millions, or neurons is ignoring potentially simpler consciousness. However, studying the human brain attracts far more research dollars than studies of the neuronally-challenged tunicate larvae, hydras and rotifers.

More likely, studies about the boundaries of consciousness will relate to AI, determining how complexification over time creates subjective experience. So the chance that p-consciousness may exist in very simple organisms appears likely to remain unexplored, left to speculation and airy dismissal.

What exactly does it mean to say that consciousness C1 is "simpler" or "weaker" than consciousness C2? In what respects is C1 simpler or weaker than C2?

There are three main dimensions of (phenomenal) consciousness:
1. its experiential/phenomenal content
2. its level (or "global state"): the degree of wakefulness (alertness, arousal)
3. its form or structure: the spatiotemporal order and unity of the items which are part of the content

I'd add:
4. its metalevel—mental self-consciousness: cognitive (introspective/reflective) awareness of 1,2, or 3.

1*. C1 can be said to be simpler/weaker than C2 in the sense that the number of (kinds of) experiences it contains or can contain (simultaneously) is lower than the one C2 contains or can contain (simultaneously).

2*. C1 can be said to be simpler/weaker than C2 in the sense that the degree of wakefulness/alertness of C1's subject is lower than the one of C2's subject.

3*. C1 can be said to be simpler/weaker than C2 in the sense that C1's contents are less ordered, less connected, less united than C2's contents.

4*. C1 can be said to be simpler/weaker than C2 in the sense that C1's subject is less cognitively aware of C1's content, level, or structure than C2's subject.

Consul wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 1:39 pm …
4*. C1 can be said to be simpler/weaker than C2 in the sense that C1's subject is less cognitively aware of C1's content, level, or structure than C2's subject.

…is of C2's content, level, or structure.

Consul wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 11:37 am

Atla wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 10:27 amDon't you find it odd that you reject ontological emergence, while always searching for the ontological emergence of P-consciousness?

To reject emergentism isn't necessarily to accept fundamentalism (primordialism), the view that mental/experiential entities have always existed in nature as a basic kind of entities. My view, materialist reductionism, is neither emergentistic nor fundamentalistic about mind/consciousness: Mental/experiential entities haven't always existed in nature, and the ones which exist are fundamentally composed of or constituted by nonmental/nonexperiential entities which are part of the ontology of physics.

Can you explain this more? Because my understanding (could be wrong) is that if something is reducible, then it's emerged from something more fundamental.

I'm not sure if this is just us using language differently, so if you could explain your position in clear simple terms that would help.