when did we develop conciousness?

[Piggy]

Rather, there are things we do which have been dumped into the category "bodily actions", others in the category "mental events", and others (the categories do overlap) into "consciousness". And yes, I continue to use the proper Radical Behaviorist definition of behavior, which includes private behavior. "Seeing a tree" is something you do; it is behavior, and it is as well understood as the behavior of walking--that is, neither is understood down to the individual nerve pathways in the brain, but each is understood pretty damned well considering the complexity of the system.)

Well, then, this "radical behaviorism" is very different from any behaviorism I studied as part of my psych minor in the undergrad days... but that was a couple decades ago, so perhaps things have changed.

Yet it seems to me that folding the mental experience of perceiving a tree into behaviorism violates the most fundamental tenets of the approach, since perceiving a tree by subject A cannot be observed by observer B.

Sounds like behaviorism shoehorning itself into areas where it cannot reasonably go.

But since I've been out of that loop for a while, let's call thought and perception and such things "behavior".

First, this "awareness of seeing a tree" (one example of a felt experience) may well be the result of a secondary neural pathway, the stimulus for which is the firing of the first neural pathway. So, in addition to "seeing a tree" we have "seeing the seeing of a tree".

Ok, let's parse this out a bit b/c the language seems dangerously loose here.

It seems you're drawing a meaningful distinction (which I would also draw) between a physical sort of sight -- that is, biological reception of a light pattern, neural processing, and physical reaction -- and awareness of seeing -- that is, the "felt experience" which is different from reflex or unconscious reaction.

I dislike the phrase "seeing the seeing of a tree" b/c it hints at the homunculus fallacy.

So let's provide a perhaps more case-clarifying example -- perception of a missile.

Suppose you and I are walking across the quad in the late afternoon and suddenly I flinch and duck.

"What happened?", you ask.

"I don't know," I say. "I felt like something was going to hit me." (Most likely, this assessment was performed after the fact.)

"It was probably just the shadow of the frisbee," you say. You point to some students playing frisbee. "I saw the shadow move over your face just as you ducked."

That's non-conscious processing of light stimulus, reaction without awareness. Presumably (tho it's too early to get into the details yet) this is how insects react to light stimulus.

On the other hand, suppose we're walking across the quad in the late afternoon and suddenly I say, "Great catch!" and point to a student descending from the air with a frisbee in his outstretched hand.

That's not mere physical reaction to light stimulus. My voiced appreciation of the deftness of the catch is evidence of something more -- of conscious awareness. The fact that I am able to assess what I see, deduce the referents (so to speak), and provide an emotional evalution is evidence that I have a felt experience associated with these patterns of light which goes beyond biologically programmed reaction.

So I would say, in addition to purely physical sight (physical perception - physical processing- physical reaction, akin or equivalent to a reflex), we have conscious awareness of what is seen, a sense of having personally experienced the event.

Let us call these "physical sight" and "conscious seeing".

I think you, Piggy, have talked about Dennett's analysis of this earlier in the thread. But secondly...there is perfectly good reason it is not necessarily always associated withthe activity of any given portion of the brain (although new research shows spindle cells firing when we experience "awareness" of something): we do not learn the term based on the firing of brain areas, but based on behavior.

This is where I have to break with you.

Suddenly invoking our juvenile acquisition of the term is irrelevant. The only pertinent question is: What do we mean by the term here and now, in this thread?

If you were defining behavior the way I was taught in college psych, you would likely be wrong here. Chances are, most of us did not learn the meaning of the term by observing behavior in the way my profs defined it. Chances are, our mother or father or teacher said something like, "When you're awake, you're conscious; when you're asleep but not dreaming, you're unconscious. Rocks aren't conscious because they never think or feel anything." So we learn what it means by considering our own mental states.

But here you're defining behavior much more broadly. So according to your definition, we learn the term by observing (I suppose) our own "private behavior" and comparing that to the definition we have been provided, and coming up with a workable definition.

But so what?

It doesn't matter what we thought when we learned the term. It only matters what we mean by the term now.

When we learned the term "Santa Claus" most of us thought it referred to an actual magical man. But so what? Now we know better. If we are to discuss Santa Claus, all that matters is what we understand it to mean now.

So even if we do learn the term based on our observation of our own "private behavior", this is still irrelevant.

If we want to discuss the fact that conscious awareness cannot be mapped exclusively to activity in any specific area of the brain, we may do that without appeal to our acquisition of the term. In fact, to avoid falling into needless linguistic traps, I highly recommend that we avoid this unnecessary and unproductive appeal to acquisition.

Our referents for consciousness are not the brain firings, but actions which are imperfectly correlated with them.

By this point, the shoehorned definition of behavior is becoming burdensome.

It reminds me of a certain education course I took, in which "literacy" was defined so loosely as to include distinguishing among cartoons on a cereal box. At that point, the value of the term as meaning "being able to read and write" (as opposed to "not being able to read and write") was lost. Because it meant almost anything, it meant almost nothing.

My referent for consciousness is not the firings. (It is hoped that one day we'll understand the relationships among the firings and conscious events.)

But neither is my referent any sort of "action" in the way the term was defined in my psych courses.

My referent is precisely the "felt experience" which I am aware of, and which I know other human beings must also be aware of. The fact that I infer the presence of felt experience in other humans from their behavior, and from my understanding of the world and of science and evolution, does not in any way transfer the referent of the term "consciousness" to these behaviors by which I deduce the presence of felt experience (the actual true and enduring referent). The referent remains "felt experience".

So yes, by "consciousness" we mean what you call "private behavior" or what others have called "mental events". We mean "seeing" rather than "sight", as explained in the example above.

(this is why the analysis of how we learn the word is important--if one critique of the brain activity explanation is that the correlation between brain activity and felt experience is imperfect, this analysis renders that critique irrelevant.)

Actually, discussion of acquisition of the term has no impact on this critique. This critique must be dealt with by other means, involving comparisons of observed neural activity and reported mental states, combined with analysis of the relationship between the actions of other emergent phenomena and patterns in their underlying components.

The demand for one-to-one correspondence can be shown to be invalid by comparison to other sorts of emergent phenomena such as waves and vortices. It is clear that the actions of the macro-constructs do not precisely correlate with the actions of the micro-constituents and that the latter cannot be predicted or accurately described solely by reference to the former. Therefore, there is no reason to assume that we should see anything different when it comes to the relationship between consciousness and neural firings.

Forays into term acquisition remain irrelevant and ineffective in this arena.

Although the felt experience is (in part) an emergent property of a wide range of brain activities, our understanding of it is an emergent property of an even wider range of publicly observable behaviors which are imperfectly correlated with those brain activities.

If you're saying here that our investigation of the emergent phenomenon of consciousness, which is imperfectly correlated to neural activity in the brain, relies on the emergent phenomenon of consciousness, which is imperfectly correlated to neural activity in the brain, I would classify that observation as trivial.

Have you read Dennett's Kinds of Minds? Chapter 4's discussion of pain in both rhesus monkeys and cephalopods is worth examining here.

No. Can you provide a synopsis?

I would argue that these questions are independent of ethics. Although I would not wish to cause pain and suffering, where I draw the line is independent of knowledge of "felt pain".

Then all you are saying is that these questions are independent of your ethics. They are certainly not independent of mine.

(and, of course, comparing to Dennett's ch. 4 I mention above, it is behavioral similarity to our behavior that is the deciding factor, rather than phylogenetic similarity; cephalopods behave sentiently, despite being more closely related to clams than to vertebrates.)

That's not how I would procede. Behavior can be deceptive. Similar behavior may arise from various sources (e.g., conscious awareness or programming). The study of evolution and the study of emergent phenomena and the study of AI demonstrate that similar effects may arise from very different causes.

Therefore, I would prefer to procede by investigating how our brains produce felt experience, how damage to various areas of the human brain affects felt experience, and begin to tease out the mechanisms, and make deductions from these observations regarding what is likely true of other species, based upon their brain structures.

 

[Interesting Ian]

There's your problem right there. That's like saying that because waves are the aggregate motions of molecules in the ocean, therefore waves can't affect physical matter. As a former resident of the Florida panhandle, I can assure you this isn't the case.

I think you need to emerge from your philosophies and join the real world.

Waves are nothing but the sum of the motions of all the molecules comprising the waves. The waves causal power is therefore only apparent; that is its causal power is epiphenomonal.

This is the thesis of reductionism. All real causal powers resides in the ultimate entities comprising an object or process. The causal power of the object itself is only apparent. It's apparent causal power is really only the resultant of all the ultimate small entities comprising it.

The same applies to consciousness. According to reductionism everything we ever do is simply due to the interactions of elementary particles because it is only these ultimately small particles which have true causal powers.

So you're right, according to reductive materialism, strictly speaking, neither waves, consciousness or anything else apart from the fundamental smallest particles have real true causal powers.

Thus consciousness is not causally efficacious in a real true sense, even though it is very useful to suppose it does.

But I have argued elsewhere that to suppose consciousness is not truly causally efficacious is incoherent.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian :
I assert I know with complete certainty that I myself am conscious. I cannot prove this however, I take it an an axiom. But once you accept this axiom (or at least the axiom that you are conscious) then reductive materialism fails.

Piggy
No, it doesn't. Or at least, it doesn't if you are willing to peek beyond your limited philosophy and consider the overwhelming and incontrivertible evidence that an objective reality exists, and the overwhelming evidence that consciousness is indeed an emergent phenomenon arising from brain activity.

I don't have any problem with the idea that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon. It does however directly contradict reductionism. I'll just quote from my forthcoming website to try and clarify this concept of reductionism.

If all phenomena can be understood by looking at its component parts and how these parts interact, then this process must continue until we reach the smallest component parts possible. In principle then reductionism entails that the physics of elementary particles – the smallest particles physics deems exists --should in principle be able to explain all things. In practice though reality is far too complex for this to be achieved. For this reason there are many differing branches of science, each with their own distinctive methods of investigation and theories. We have, for example, the sciences of:

Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Psychology
Sociology,

As we descend the list each branch of science deals with phenomena on a progressively greater and greater scale, and each has their own distinctive method of investigation and theories peculiar to that discipline. Nevertheless, in principle, if not in practice, the reductionist must hold that the science dealing with the entities on the smallest scale -- namely physics – can explain and replace all the theories in the other scientific disciplines.

Let us try to illustrate this idea further by referring once more to the example of a clockwork clock. As an example of reduction it was stated above that by looking at the components of that clock - namely the cogs, the springs, and the wheels - and how they all interrelate together, we can actually understand how the hour, the minute and the second hands move. But suppose, for whatever reason, we were unable to understand the intricate mechanism. This need not stop us making certain observations such as noting the respective rotational speeds of the hour, minute and second hands. Indeed we can even formulate a very simple theory regarding the respective rotational speeds of the hands that can be expected to hold in the future.

Likewise, for each branch of science, we can systematically relate various phenomena that the particular science is concerned with, and subsume the data under some appropriate theory concerning how they will relate in the future. But just as we need to appeal to the underlying intricate mechanism to find the real reason for the movement of the hands in the clock, so we have to appeal to physics, indeed elementary particle physics, if we wish to find the real reason why phenomena are related in a certain way. Indeed, even with the example of the clockwork clock, the solidity of the clock's components, and thus the fact that the cogs and wheel can exert forces when in contact with each other, is explained by the mutual electrical repulsion force between the electrons* (an electron is an example of an elementary particle) near the surface of the respective cogs and wheels and the other internal components. Thus the fact that a clock keeps time can ultimately be explained by the properties and motions of elementary particles.

But now we come to the crucial point. If, as reductionism implies, all change in nature and natural phenomena results from alterations in the ultimately smallest particles of matter, then we human beings should of course constitute no exception. Indeed this was understood as far back as the birth of the mechanical philosophy in the 17th-century. Even as long ago as then it was widely debated whether animals could be understood as being, in essence, mere biological machines. More radical thinkers took this to its logical conclusion and advocated that human beings too might simply be elaborate machines.

Let us explore the implications of this. Consider the fact that we have the science of psychology to explain peoples’ behaviour. Now the (reductionist) materialist holds that the usage of psychological concepts is simply one of convenience. To take one example: although a lot of our behaviour is held to be explicable in terms of the desire on our parts to fulfil certain goals we may have, the reductionist materialist holds that the true real causes of a person’s behaviour are the physical processes occurring in my brain. Such physical processes are an inevitable outcome of prior physical states of my brain, which, together with the input to the brain from the environment provided by the 5 senses, evolve or change according to physical laws. And, in addition, the physical state of the brain and its change to other physical states can ultimately be understood, at least in principle, by the properties and interactions of the most fundamental constituents composing our bodies; namely the properties and interactions of the elementary particles subsumed under the subject matter of physics. In short the science of physics is considered to be the most fundamental of the sciences, and is capable, in principle, of completing explaining our behaviour.

OK, now emergence denies this. Even though it holds that consciousness is generated by the brain, consciousness cannot itself be scientifically explained. Imagine that the movements of the hands of a clockwork clock was accompanied by consciousness i.e the clock is conscious. Now by examining the mechanism we might be able to understand how the clocks hands move, but we wouldn't be able to understand why the hands movements was accompanied by consciousness. Thus if clocks were conscious we would need to embrace the idea that the consciousness emerges somehow, rather than being able to be derived as reductionism holds. The same goes for people.

Moreover emergence is quite happy to embrace the idea of downward causation. That is to say that some of our body movements are actually due to consciousness per se rather than the ultimate particles comprising our brains.

So are you sure you wish to hold that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon?

BTW I'm not sure what you mean by your assertion that an objective reality exists. If you mean a reality independent of consciousness then I disagree.

 

[Piggy]

Waves are nothing but the sum of the motions of all the molecules comprising the waves. The waves causal power is therefore only apparent; that is its causal power is epiphenomonal.

This is not accurate. Waves are not the sum of the motions of all the molecules. Waves cannot be described by referring only to molecular motion. To speak meaningfully of waves, we must refer to mid-level entities such as currents, temperature zones, densities, and the like.

The wave's causal power is not merely "apparent". The wave has very real and measurable effects which cannot be reduced in any meaningful way to an aggregate effect of the molecular motion.

This is the thesis of reductionism. All real causal powers resides in the ultimate entities comprising an object or process. The causal power of the object itself is only apparent. It's apparent causal power is really only the resultant of all the ultimate small entities comprising it.

If that is the thesis of reductionism, then reductionism is fatally flawed and does not deserve consideration. The universe clearly does not operate this way.

The same applies to consciousness. According to reductionism everything we ever do is simply due to the interactions of elementary particles because it is only these ultimately small particles which have true causal powers.

If that's what "reductionism" claims, then reductionism is an absurd philosophy with no basis in science or direct observation.

But I have argued elsewhere that to suppose consciousness is not truly causally efficacious is incoherent.

Ok. But let's try tackling that without setting up this strawman of reductionism as you have described it. It may easily be dispensed with.

 

[Piggy]

I don't have any problem with the idea that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon. It does however directly contradict reductionism.

Then farewell, reductionism. I find reductionism as you've described it to be patently false anyway.

If all phenomena can be understood by looking at its component parts and how these parts interact, then this process must continue until we reach the smallest component parts possible. In principle then reductionism entails that the physics of elementary particles – the smallest particles physics deems exists --should in principle be able to explain all things.

Since you've made a deadly mistake in the first 2 sentences, I don't feel obliged to read further in this passage.

The materialist stance holds that all phenomena can be understood by working upward from component parts without invoking dualism or supernaturalism.

Emergence fits in very nicely. The materialist POV does not claim that the physics of elementary particles should be able to explain all phenomena at higher levels of magnification and organization. If you understood the workings of science rather than merely your selections from the philosophy of science, you would know this and would not be making such patently false statements.

Imagine that the movements of the hands of a clockwork clock was accompanied by consciousness i.e the clock is conscious.

Why would I imagine something as silly as that? That's like saying, "Imagine that there was a hurricane inside the belly of a hyena", then trying to reason from there whether science is capable of understanding hurricanes.

The same goes for people.

The same does not go for people. People have brains, and scientific investigation into how these brains operate is at last beginning to shed light on how consciousness is created and maintained by the body.

Moreover emergence is quite happy to embrace the idea of downward causation. That is to say that some of our body movements are actually due to consciousness per se rather than the ultimate particles comprising our brains.

So are you sure you wish to hold that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon?

Yes. Quite happy.

BTW I'm not sure what you mean by your assertion that an objective reality exists. If you mean a reality independent of consciousness then I disagree.

You're free to disagree, but don't expect me to get sucked into that tired old discussion.

 

[Interesting Ian]

This is not accurate. Waves are not the sum of the motions of all the molecules. Waves cannot be described by referring only to molecular motion. To speak meaningfully of waves, we must refer to mid-level entities such as currents, temperature zones, densities, and the like.

We must refer to them? All these "mid-level entities" can simply be derived from the motion and arrangements of more fundamental entities which these "mid-level entities" are made of. Certainly denying this denies reductionism.

 

[Mercutio]

Ok, I can only touch on a few things here, and I am away from the office so I am away from the Dennett book to summarize below. I will, later, though.

Well, then, this "radical behaviorism" is very different from any behaviorism I studied as part of my psych minor in the undergrad days... but that was a couple decades ago, so perhaps things have changed.

heh...you learned about behaviorism during the heart of the "cognitive revolution". For a number of reasons (many of which are the behaviorists' own fault), this means you probably were exposed to an obsolete form of behaviorism, while the real behaviorists (a very small number, because cognition was hot at the time) were in their labs doing other things.

Yet it seems to me that folding the mental experience of perceiving a tree into behaviorism violates the most fundamental tenets of the approach, since perceiving a tree by subject A cannot be observed by observer B.

Yeah, just as I suspected. Your behaviorism, like Ian's, is a caricature. Accurate as of around 1960, but not at all accurate today. If you have access to "Case studies in the great power of steady misrepresentation" (American Psychologist, 1992 I think) or "Mythmaking: how introductory psychology texts present B.F. Skinner's analysis of cognition" (The Psychological Record, 1997), you will see that what a lot of people know to be true about Radical Behaviorism, simply is not so.

Sounds like behaviorism shoehorning itself into areas where it cannot reasonably go.

It's called science. It progresses. Did Einstein shoehorn physics into areas it could not reasonably go?

But since I've been out of that loop for a while, let's call thought and perception and such things "behavior".

Thought is not behavior--thinking is. But that is the sort of thing that makes perfect sense to a behaviorist (and is a meaningful and important distinction), but is seen as trivial or silly to others.

Ok, let's parse this out a bit b/c the language seems dangerously loose here.

It seems you're drawing a meaningful distinction (which I would also draw) between a physical sort of sight -- that is, biological reception of a light pattern, neural processing, and physical reaction -- and awareness of seeing -- that is, the "felt experience" which is different from reflex or unconscious reaction.

In truth, here I was trying to parse out your example from above, along with a bit of Dennett.

I dislike the phrase "seeing the seeing of a tree" b/c it hints at the homunculus fallacy.

But in this case it is not turtles all the way down. The "awareness" loop is as far as it goes. I can see where you might get the homunculus out of this, but I assure you that behaviorists are even more opposed to homunculi than you are.

That's not mere physical reaction to light stimulus. My voiced appreciation of the deftness of the catch is evidence of something more -- of conscious awareness. The fact that I am able to assess what I see, deduce the referents (so to speak), and provide an emotional evalution is evidence that I have a felt experience associated with these patterns of light which goes beyond biologically programmed reaction.

True...it is learned. Shaped by your environment. Remember that behaviorism is not a simple stimulus-response model.

So I would say, in addition to purely physical sight (physical perception - physical processing- physical reaction, akin or equivalent to a reflex), we have conscious awareness of what is seen, a sense of having personally experienced the event.

Now your own language is getting loose. Is this sense that you speak of here simply something that has emerged from your learning history, or are you assuming it is something more?

This is where I have to break with you.

Suddenly invoking our juvenile acquisition of the term is irrelevant. The only pertinent question is: What do we mean by the term here and now, in this thread?

Which is best answered by how we have acquired the term.

If you were defining behavior the way I was taught in college psych, you would likely be wrong here.

Or your college psych was wrong.

Chances are, most of us did not learn the meaning of the term by observing behavior in the way my profs defined it. Chances are, our mother or father or teacher said something like, "When you're awake, you're conscious; when you're asleep but not dreaming, you're unconscious. Rocks aren't conscious because they never think or feel anything." So we learn what it means by considering our own mental states.

I disagree. We could not learn a label which we agree upon with others without reference to publicly observable things. Your example alludes to it with the examples your parents or teachers give you. Of course, that is simplistic--the actual shaping of the word is influenced by many more examples than heavy-handed teaching. And your last sentence does not follow from your example. It should read "so we learn what it means by comparing our [mental states*] to the examples our parents/teachers etc. point out to us." (*private behavior--"mental" implies "not physical", and there is no reason to suspect that.)

But here you're defining behavior much more broadly. So according to your definition, we learn the term by observing (I suppose) our own "private behavior" and comparing that to the definition we have been provided, and coming up with a workable definition.

I guess I should have read ahead.

But so what?

It doesn't matter what we thought when we learned the term. It only matters what we mean by the term now.
[snip]
If we want to discuss the fact that conscious awareness cannot be mapped exclusively to activity in any specific area of the brain, we may do that without appeal to our acquisition of the term. In fact, to avoid falling into needless linguistic traps, I highly recommend that we avoid this unnecessary and unproductive appeal to acquisition.

But if our acquisition of the term included (as with NDE's) different phenomena grouped under one label, the definition is a less precise way of examining the term. Looking at the acquisition allows us to dissect the term into functional units, each of which is then much more accurately studiable.

By this point, the shoehorned definition of behavior is becoming burdensome.

It is not shoehorned. Trust me. I'm a behaviorist. Or ask Jeff Corey.

My referent for consciousness is not the firings. (It is hoped that one day we'll understand the relationships among the firings and conscious events.)

But neither is my referent any sort of "action" in the way the term was defined in my psych courses.

My referent is precisely the "felt experience" which I am aware of, and which I know other human beings must also be aware of. The fact that I infer the presence of felt experience in other humans from their behavior, and from my understanding of the world and of science and evolution, does not in any way transfer the referent of the term "consciousness" to these behaviors by which I deduce the presence of felt experience (the actual true and enduring referent). The referent remains "felt experience".

But you are still defining "felt experience" as one thing--there is absolutely no reason you should. There is every reason to transfer the referent to those behaviors--they more accurately reflect where the word came from, and are more closely tied to it than your private behavior is. This does not deny the importance of your felt experience--it merely chooses a more accurate means of investigating it.

[snip]
Therefore, I would prefer to procede by investigating how our brains produce felt experience, how damage to various areas of the human brain affects felt experience, and begin to tease out the mechanisms, and make deductions from these observations regarding what is likely true of other species, based upon their brain structures.

Great. I agree. I just also think that different sorts of "felt experience", because of our learning histories, have been collected under the same label, and that our investigation of felt experience will go much more smoothly if we do not assume that just because a collection of things fits under one label, that they can all be investigated as one thing.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Emergence fits in very nicely. The materialist POV does not claim that the physics of elementary particles should be able to explain all phenomena at higher levels of magnification and organization.

Reductive materialism certainly does. I don't know about non-reductive materialism. If a thing has properties which are causally efficacious per se, but such properties cannot in principle be derived from all the more fundamental parts composing that thing, then this is holism.

So in the case of consciousness, it cannot be derived from all the parts comprising the brain. Moreover such consciousness is causally efficacious in its own right. In other words the totality of our behaviour cannot in principle be understand by an exhaustive examination of all the arrangements and processes of the ultimate parts comprising the brain. In order to explain some of our behaviour we have to refer to intentions and desires and the like.

But then this is just flat out interactive dualism.

Why would I imagine something as silly as that? That's like saying, "Imagine that there was a hurricane inside the belly of a hyena", then trying to reason from there whether science is capable of understanding hurricanes.


The same does not go for people. People have brains, and scientific investigation into how these brains operate is at last beginning to shed light on how consciousness is created and maintained by the body.

I'm very disappointed. I'm trying to make my website so that intelligent people who have never looked at philosophy can still nevertheless understand it I think you're being a bit pig-headed about this.

I'm saying that brains are analogous to any other machine. The parts of a machine and how they interact etc explain the output of the machine in the form of its behaviour or whatever. Once we have a complete understanding of the component parts and their effects on other component parts, we ought to understand everything about its output.

So we understand why the clocks hands moves as it does. This is analogous to understanding people behave as they do -- it's just that they are vastly more complex.

But if the clocks hands were accompanied by consciousness, and if peoples' behaviour is accompanied by consciousness, this consciousness is not something which in principle can be derived from the components of the clock/brain. The components/parts in either case can only ever explain physical happenings in the world e.g the movements of the hands in the case of the clock, and the totality of our behaviour in the case of people.

Just read my website when its finished. I'll let you know when it's completed.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Forget it

 

[Piggy]

We must refer to them? All these "mid-level entities" can simply be derived from the motion and arrangements of more fundamental entities which these "mid-level entities" are made of. Certainly denying this denies reductionism.

Yes, we must refer to them.

No, they cannot be adequately described in terms of the motion and arrangements of the constituent particles.

"Reductionism" as you've described it is nonsense, so yes, I deny it.

 

[Piggy]

Hi, Merc. I'm glad we're hammering out a common language.

Yes, indeed, cognitive theory was the rage during my undergrad days.

A couple of quick notes.

I can see where you might get the homunculus out of this, but I assure you that behaviorists are even more opposed to homunculi than you are.

They couldn't possibly be more opposed than I am. But anyway, I didn't think that you were making this error -- I merely objected to the phrasing b/c it hinted at that error. Carry on....

True...it is learned. Shaped by your environment. Remember that behaviorism is not a simple stimulus-response model.

Yes, I understand that about behaviorism. Even in my day, we were warned against this misunderstanding of behaviorism.

But I need to ask you, what do you mean by "it" here? What is learned?

This may be a point of real divergence in how we're seeing this issue. Or, we could be talking at right angles again and need to keep re-aligning.

Thanks

 

[Interesting Ian]

Yes, we must refer to them.

No, they cannot be adequately described in terms of the motion and arrangements of the constituent particles.

"Reductionism" as you've described it is nonsense, so yes, I deny it.

I'm not sure what you think reductionism means. Reductionism simply holds that anything can be understood by looking at its componet parts.

Lets look at your examples of mid-level entities which you allege cannot be derived from more fundamental entities:


You said:

To speak meaningfully of waves, we must refer to mid-level entities such as currents, temperature zones, densities, and the like.

But a current is just the sum of all the molecules composing the current. Temperature is just the measure of the dynamics of extremely small particles, the density is simply the number of particles per unit volume.

Nothing here is immune to a reductive analysis.

 

[I less than three logic]

Nothing here is immune to a reductive analysis.

Nothing here, but consciousness you mean, right? No sense in arguing against yourself.

 

[Piggy]

Now your own language is getting loose. Is this sense that you speak of here simply something that has emerged from your learning history, or are you assuming it is something more?

I don't understand the question.

Here's the difference I mean -- perhaps this will answer.

Suppose we set up an experiment in a sleep lab. We rig people up to brain activity monitors and have someone call out their names at various volumes at various stages of sleep. We do the same when they're awake and engaging in a variety of tasks, and we record the brain activity. We also ask them to describe their experience.

Suppose we discover that at various stages of sleep, the brain and body (an artificial distinction in some important ways, I know) react when the name is called out, but there is never a report of having "heard" the name called out. At other stages of sleep, there is no reaction to the name at all. And in one case, a subject is awakened from REM sleep and reports a dream in which some unseen person was calling his name.

Suppose also that we see something similar in the waking tests. On one end of the scale, when a subject is heavily involved in a task and the name is whispered, there is no discernable reaction in the brain. At the other end, we see all the right circuits lighting up and the subject reports, "I heard my name called". In the middle, when a subject is heavily involved in a task, we see all the circuits active to indicate that the brain is processing the perception of the name, but the subject claims he heard nothing.

Here we have, roughly described, 3 possible states. (Actually, I see them as something more like attractors, but let's not get into that.)

1. No processing of the sound at all.
2. Physical reaction to the sound, but no experience of having heard it.
3. Physical reaction to the sound, plus experience of having heard it.

The difference between 2 and 3 is the difference between mere physical perception-process-reaction (what I expect is happening in insects) and felt experience.

 

[Piggy]

But a current is just the sum of all the molecules composing the current.

No, it is not. You may well find that every molecule in the current is behaving quite randomly when considered on its own.

 

[Roboramma]

Yes, we must refer to them.

No, they cannot be adequately described in terms of the motion and arrangements of the constituent particles.

I don't get it, why not? The simplest way to calculate the effect of the earth's gravity on the moon might be to take the earth as a whole object, figure out it's center, and look at how that will effect the moon, but that doesn't mean that this would give a different answer than if we looked at each individual atom that the earth is made up of and calculated it's effect independantly and then added them up. They should both give us the same answer - it's just that the first approach is much simpler, to the point that we aren't even capable of the second approach right now.

Theoretically they should give us the same answers, shouldn't they?

Similarly, just because we can't deduce the laws of chemistry from physics doesn't mean that chemistry isn't just physics - it just means that the level of complexity is greater than our ability to compute.

I'm just not sure what you're saying piggy. There is nothing that the physical properties of water molecules predicts about waves that isn't true - why assume that there are things in waves that aren't predicted by the behavior of water molecules?
That is, why should we think that if we knew everything about those molecules and their interactions and had the computing power to follow through the implications of that knoweldge, that we wouldn't be able to predict a wave?

Why not? What is it about waves that can't be explained by the interaction of those molecules?
Note: I'm not suggesting that we have the knoweldge to make that explanation, just that one should be theoretically possible.

 

[Piggy]

Temperature is just the measure of the dynamics of extremely small particles, the density is simply the number of particles per unit volume.

Quite right. But the conditions which give rise to the hurricane (an emergent phenomenon) cannot be explained by reference to the physics specific to the molecules. Only when we view the picture at a larger granularity does anything meaningful and explanatory appear. And -- here's the important part -- at that level of magnification the particle-level physics ceases to matter.

This is why we see similar wave action across many types of highly various media. Ditto for vortices.

At this middle level, it doesn't matter much whether the medium is cream in coffee or stars in space.

 

[Piggy]

Hi, Robo.

I wouldn't use the example of gravity b/c I don't think we're dealing w/ emergent phenomena when we consider it.

I'm just not sure what you're saying piggy. There is nothing that the physical properties of water molecules predicts about waves that isn't true - why assume that there are things in waves that aren't predicted by the behavior of water molecules?
That is, why should we think that if we knew everything about those molecules and their interactions and had the computing power to follow through the implications of that knoweldge, that we wouldn't be able to predict a wave?

What you're proposing and the conclusions you're drawing are different from what Ian is proposing and the conclusions he's drawing.

What you're describing is an upward aggregation of data. That works fine -- keeping in mind, of course, that vital information such as currents, density "fronts", and temperature "fronts" are non-entities at the purely molecular level.

Everything is indeed consistent from level to level. But information at the level of "ocean" is qualitatively different from information at the level of "molecule". And what is vitally important at the molecular level may be unimportant in describing, and predicting, the wave.

What Ian is suggesting is that everything should be explanable entirely from the smallest scale physics. And this is simply not possible. From that claim, Ian moves on to conclude that science is incapable of explaining consciousness, and that consciousness cannot (from a scientific point of view) be considered an agent which acts upon the world.

The action of a hurricane is entirely consistent with atomic physics and with chemistry. But it is not explanable by reference to this level of granularity alone. In order to understand and predict hurricanes, we must make reference to middle-level entitites such as currents and zones of temperature and density.

And these middle-level entities are the prime determiners. Hurricane-like activity could theoretically be produced in media with very different molecular properties from water, if the middle-level conditions were right. Ditto for waves -- you can get very similar behavior if the middle-level stuff is similar, even if the lower-level constituents are not.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Nothing here, but consciousness you mean, right? No sense in arguing against yourself.

Well yes. Remember it suits my purposes to maintain that the whole of reality apart from consciousness can be reductively analysed, because that would be one more thing which makes consciousness uniquely special.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Hi, Robo.

What you're proposing and the conclusions you're drawing are different from what Ian is proposing and the conclusions he's drawing.

No it's precisely the same.