Automatons

[rocketdodger]

It might be that it eventually turns out to be impossible to understand subjective experience. We don't yet know that.

Um, it is known to be impossible now -- its called incompleteness. It is logically impossible for a being to understand its own subjective experience.

Yet you, as a dualist, claim "we don't yet know that."

 

[rocketdodger]

Which is why it's a hard problem.

Yeah yeah. Heard this before. *yawn*

Which is why it's a hard problem.

Sure. *yawn*

I've not only followed the arguments in the thread, I've read a number of books on the subject. I've yet to find an explanation that is satisfactory.

You never will, as a dualist. The very definition of dualism is nonsense, and you won't ever find an explanation for nonsense.

If, on the other hand, you would simply dump all you apriori dualistic assumptions, you would clearly and easily see what materialists have known for over 20 years.

If you accept materialism, and you accept that such a thing as subjective experience exists, then it is part of the material world, and there should be a material explanation for it.

I do, and there is -- experience is the act of being the entity that is experiencing. Or, since you don't enjoy redundancy, experience simply is being.

Why don't you think that is a material explanation? That is the most material explanation possible!

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

I do, and there is -- experience is the act of being the entity that is experiencing. Or, since you don't enjoy redundancy, experience simply is being.

Why don't you think that is a material explanation? That is the most material explanation possible!

It’s some time ago so my memory might be faulty, but I think Searle made that point in one of his lectures on the philosophy of the mind? I also think he made it in a response to strong A.I. at the time, and simply pointed out that if they are to build a conscious computer/system like the human, it needs the wetware simply because having subjective experience (qualia) would be just that; being the system as it is (which is to say: being materialistic enough).

Personally, I did find it somewhat hard to picture in the beginning, although now, it seems kind of obvious. If the ecosystem we call “I” would be different, the subjective experience would be different, but still not completely explainable into a first person perspective because it’s a bit like: “Can you bite your own teeth?”; “can you see your own eyes?” From a third person perspective however, observing the being having subjective experience, it could in principle be fully explainable.

 

[westprog]

From a third person perspective however, observing the being having subjective experience, it could in principle be fully explainable.

I think that's implicit in a materialist explanation. I find the idea that something that exists in the real universe should be in principle outside scientific investigation at the least somewhat defeatist.

 

[sphenisc]

I think that's implicit in a materialist explanation. I find the idea that something that exists in the real universe should be in principle outside scientific investigation at the least somewhat defeatist.

Like the Uncertainty Principle?

 

[westprog]

Um, it is known to be impossible now -- its called incompleteness. It is logically impossible for a being to understand its own subjective experience.

Yet you, as a dualist, claim "we don't yet know that."

It's certainly not impossible for a being to understand its own subjective experience. It might be impossible to have total understanding of ones own subjective experience.

That is a seperate question as to whether subjective experience is subject to scientific investigation. If it is real, then it is part of the physical universe, and it can be investigated in the same way as any other phenomenon. To place it away in a box marked "don't touch" is just wrapping dualism in materialist paper.

But if subjective experience is to be considered part of the material world, and is to be scientifically investigated, then we have to accept that progress so far has been limited by huge difficulties. We can track the neural processes from stimulus to response, but there doesn't seem to be a need for awareness, or subjective experience, or qualia. It all works without them.

While Penrose may be entirely wrong about the quantum basis for consciousness, he is at least looking at the phyics of the system. That has to be the appropriate aim - a physical description of consciousness which is part of a physical description of the universe.

I'd be interested to hear the pov of the wolf in the story.

 

[westprog]

Like the Uncertainty Principle?

It might be that there is some kind of Uncertainty Principle which makes observation of consciousness impossible. If so, then we are on a search to discover such a principle. Until such a principle is established, we should be trying to find out the physical causes and laws of consciousness and subjective experience.

 

[Nick227]

The fact that you can't see through the eyes in my head.

You are clearly just talking nonsense now.

That there are different bodies does not mean there is a need for some "owner."

If I may say so, you are espousing a behaviourist version of materialism. It's fine for social reality. But when looking deeper this viewpoint just leads into completely untenable conceptualisations as you seem to me to be demonstrating in your discussion with WP. You are now proposing conscious water-molecules and god knows what. Sit back for a moment. Does that really seem likely? What I am doing is espousing is a harder, more reductionist materialist view. There are plenty of researchers who have travelled this pathway too. It gets around the issues that behaviourism runs into when it tries to penetrate deeper that the issue of selfhood. It does look weird. Many others have fully pointed this out.

Yes. It is the only computer using the cpu. So it owns it. Get it?

IMO, you are simply projecting your own sense of ownership onto the computer. But the computer is not human and does not even have a sense of self. If we change the housing of the computer, say, is it still the same computer that "owns" this CPU?

Can you not see the issues that behavioural materialism instantly runs into when it tries to deal with selfhood? It is simply not the tool for the job.

Nick

 

[Nick227]

From the reductionsist perspective nothing exists other than elementary particles and the axioms of mathematics. What is your point?

What is your point? Nobody here is arguing reductionism other than you.

My point is that reductionism allows deeper insights into the nature of consciousness. The viewpoint you're espousing is now professing conscious water molecules and computers that own their chips. Could you not consider that a fresh outlook might offer something more promising?

Nick

 

[Nick227]

If, on the other hand, you would simply dump all you apriori dualistic assumptions, you would clearly and easily see what materialists have known for over 20 years.

I do, and there is -- experience is the act of being the entity that is experiencing. Or, since you don't enjoy redundancy, experience simply is being.

Materialists have known for 20 years that everything that exists experiences? Frankly if the only two options were...

- there exists a hard problem
- there's no hard problem, it's simply that everything experiences

...then I would buy the hard problem. Fortunately there are other routes of inquiry.

Nick

 

[Nick227]

It’s some time ago so my memory might be faulty, but I think Searle made that point in one of his lectures on the philosophy of the mind? I also think he made it in a response to strong A.I. at the time, and simply pointed out that if they are to build a conscious computer/system like the human, it needs the wetware simply because having subjective experience (qualia) would be just that; being the system as it is (which is to say: being materialistic enough).

For sure it would need the "wetware" as you put it. I think it would need it to feel, for a start. But this does not imply to my mind that experiencing is an innate quality of all that exists. "Experiencing" is simply a linguistic, dualistic construct that arises in narration. There are, for example, feelings. Through articulating feelings so a narrative is identified with. This identification with narrative has several consequences. It reinforces the sense of selfhood, it creates a sense of "I" and of others, and it creates the duality experiencer-experience.

If you were alone on your own little planet you would not have any experiences. The only reason the brain constructs its processing as "experiencing" is with a view to communication.

Nick

 

[rocketdodger]

I think that's implicit in a materialist explanation. I find the idea that something that exists in the real universe should be in principle outside scientific investigation at the least somewhat defeatist.

You just don't "get it."

Subjective experience is not outside scientific investigation. Someone other than you can investigate your subjective experience.

But if it is someone other than you, then it is no longer subjective experience, it is just plain experience. So the only person who can investigate subjective experience is you.

But it is a mathematical fact that you can never know everything about yourself. So yes you can explain your subjective experience partially, but not fully. To fully understand your own experience is fundamentally impossible, and to fully understand something else's experience is also fundamentally impossible because you are not something else.

Do you see now?

 

[rocketdodger]

It's certainly not impossible for a being to understand its own subjective experience. It might be impossible to have total understanding of ones own subjective experience.

That is all I have been trying to say.

That is a seperate question as to whether subjective experience is subject to scientific investigation. If it is real, then it is part of the physical universe, and it can be investigated in the same way as any other phenomenon. To place it away in a box marked "don't touch" is just wrapping dualism in materialist paper.

Its a good thing I never said anything remotely like that, then.

But if subjective experience is to be considered part of the material world, and is to be scientifically investigated, then we have to accept that progress so far has been limited by huge difficulties. We can track the neural processes from stimulus to response, but there doesn't seem to be a need for awareness, or subjective experience, or qualia. It all works without them.

Yes. The entire world external to you would function identically if you were the only entity that possesed awareness, subjective experience, and qualia.

Doesn't that suggest something to you?

 

[westprog]

You just don't "get it."

Subjective experience is not outside scientific investigation. Someone other than you can investigate your subjective experience.

Which is what I am saying.

But if it is someone other than you, then it is no longer subjective experience, it is just plain experience. So the only person who can investigate subjective experience is you.

And what is non-subjective experience? If someone is investigating my experience, he's investigating my subjective experience. He can still investigate it. How he gets at it is another matter.

But it is a mathematical fact that you can never know everything about yourself. So yes you can explain your subjective experience partially, but not fully. To fully understand your own experience is fundamentally impossible, and to fully understand something else's experience is also fundamentally impossible because you are not something else.

Do you see now?

I think it's pretty well accepted in science that it's impossible to fully understand anything. Why should that stop us investigating as far as we are able?

It's already been pointed out that the Uncertainty Principle stops us finding out everything about individual particles. And yet CERN is up and running.

The study of subjective experience is possible until it's demonstrated by clear physical principles that it isn't. It is certainly not necessary to dismiss the whole problem by saying that subjective experience is just people being themselves.

 

[rocketdodger]

That there are different bodies does not mean there is a need for some "owner."

If I may say so, you are espousing a behaviourist version of materialism. It's fine for social reality. But when looking deeper this viewpoint just leads into completely untenable conceptualisations as you seem to me to be demonstrating in your discussion with WP. You are now proposing conscious water-molecules and god knows what. Sit back for a moment. Does that really seem likely? What I am doing is espousing is a harder, more reductionist materialist view. There are plenty of researchers who have travelled this pathway too. It gets around the issues that behaviourism runs into when it tries to penetrate deeper that the issue of selfhood. It does look weird. Many others have fully pointed this out.

Nick -- you clearly don't know what you are talking about. Thanx.

IMO, you are simply projecting your own sense of ownership onto the computer.

No, Nick, I am using a definition of "owner" common in the sciences. As in, if entity A is making use of entity B, then entity A is the owner of entity B.

Next, you will tell me that "making use of" is also a "linguistic construction", and "there is no need for it."

And you wonder why nobody on these forums takes you seriously anymore?

But the computer is not human and does not even have a sense of self.

So what? Again (how many times must I ask this) what is your point?

If we change the housing of the computer, say, is it still the same computer that "owns" this CPU?

Maybe, maybe not -- depending on the agreed upon definition of "computer." What is your point?

Can you not see the issues that behavioural materialism instantly runs into when it tries to deal with selfhood? It is simply not the tool for the job.

Nick

No, I cannot see this. Neither can any true materialists -- which you are definitely not. You are merely a closet dualist pretending to be a materialist. And like a creationist pretending to be an evolutionist, you are screwing up all the arguments -- because you don't understand them -- and doing little besides making a fool of yourself.

 

[Nick227]

Subjective experience is not outside scientific investigation. Someone other than you can investigate your subjective experience.

But if it is someone other than you, then it is no longer subjective experience, it is just plain experience. So the only person who can investigate subjective experience is you.

But it is a mathematical fact that you can never know everything about yourself. So yes you can explain your subjective experience partially, but not fully. To fully understand your own experience is fundamentally impossible, and to fully understand something else's experience is also fundamentally impossible because you are not something else.

RD,

As I understand it, you are now simply articulating and apparently reinforcing the HPC. You are saying that there are aspects to "subjective experience" which cannot be objectively recreated.

For me, it's quite possible that this could be so, as I don't understand enough about whole matter. However it is also possible that it is not so. Because it can be considered that selfhood and experience are simply artificial constructs being created by the "human machine" as aspects of its subjective phenomenological world, so it could be that they can be fully recreated. It's not clear for me.

If you think of Mary the colour scientist and, as Daniel Dennett points out, the fact that she must know her own reactive dispositions towards colour (as in the terms of the original TE) - she does not learn anything new when she sees red for the first time.

Anyway it's complex. I find it hard to discuss because the nature of language is to create duality here.

Nick

 

[rocketdodger]

The study of subjective experience is possible until it's demonstrated by clear physical principles that it isn't. It is certainly not necessary to dismiss the whole problem by saying that subjective experience is just people being themselves.

I am not dismissing anything. I am saying that you can investigate the experience of another all you want -- you can even get to the point of finding correlated structures and information flow in your own brain, and develop a strong understanding of how an information processing system can develop consciousness (which, btw, has been known for 20+ years) -- but that final step from "experience" to "subjective experience" is purely a question of identity.

There is nothing magical or difficult about it. It is the definition of subjective !! Experience + identity = subjective experience.

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

I think that's implicit in a materialist explanation. I find the idea that something that exists in the real universe should be in principle outside scientific investigation at the least somewhat defeatist.

What you seem to imply is that a phenomena which is causally reducible also has to be ontologically reducible. But that’s not necessarily the case at all. Solidity is causally reducible to how water molecules behave, but that doesn’t mean there must be a phenomenal essence to solidity that could (or must) be explained. The same could very well be true for subjective experience; i.e. it would be causally reducible to neuronal activity, but not ontologically. Hence from a third person perspective your subjective experience could be fully portrayed in terms of neuronal activity, but from a first person perspective the only way to explain it would be to be you having the experience. It’s almost like truism really.

 

[rocketdodger]

As I understand it, you are now simply articulating and apparently reinforcing the HPC.

No.

You are saying that there are aspects to "subjective experience" which cannot be objectively recreated.

Duh. Probably because by definition subjective and objective are different.

Which does not in any way invalidate materialism or validate the HPC. If you actually understood either, maybe you would see that.

 

[rocketdodger]

What you seem to imply is that a phenomena which is causally reducible also has to be ontologically reducible. But that’s not necessarily the case at all. Solidity is causally reducible to how water molecules behave, but that doesn’t mean there must be a phenomenal essence to solidity that could (or must) be explained. The same could very well be true for subjective experience; i.e. it would be causally reducible to neuronal activity, but not ontologically. Hence from a third person perspective your subjective experience could be fully portrayed in terms of neuronal activity, but from a first person perspective the only way to explain it would be to be you having the experience. It’s almost like truism really.

Yes, that is what I am after here.