The Hard Problem of Gravity

Ichneumonwasp said:
You could view it as a form of meta-attention, allowing more efficient use of directed attention and a playground on which behavioral tendencies are sifted.
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That's certainly a possibility, and it seems likely that there is some reason for it - otherwise it's odd that we evolved it.
 
Mercutio said:
Nor does it have to. ...
As a behaviorist, I am perfectly satisfied with learning as "a relatively permanent change in behavior brought about by interaction with the environment".
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Works for me, and makes my prior post moot. I appreciate your putting up with laymen like myself.
 
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Ichneumonwasp said:
A huge part of the problem that I see is that we bandy these words about -- experience, feeling -- as though we all know what they mean. Sure, we have a vague sense and know how we use them, but that vague sense is a problem since it gives us the 'feeling' that we have a handle on the situation when we don't. What drove people nuts about Socrates was his constant harping about 'what do you mean by x?' -- because it became obvious that they didn't really know. I don't know what these words mean deeply. That is why I ask for the definitions. I know that all words have many meanings, so I'm not trying to trap anyone.
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This is, exactly, why I do not engage in this kind of discussions, as I said before, is like going nuts trying to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin...

I have, of course, been accused before of being "Socratic" (reading, my questions are deeply uncomfortable for some), but how can we ever hope to advance if stuff like "consciousness", "feelings", "qualia", and such, are defined by everyone in (sometimes slightly) different way?

I do not believe in consciousness, I do not believe brains are computers, I do not believe computers can have cognition in the way we do. What I believe is that it is an interesting topic, but completely FULL of woo.
 
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Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
This is, exactly, why I do not engage in this kind of discussions, as I said before, is like going nuts trying to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin...

I have, of course, been accused before of being "Socratic" (reading, my questions are deeply uncomfortable for some), but how can we ever hope to advance if stuff like "consciousness", "feelings", "qualia", and such, are defined by everyone in (sometimes slightly) different way?

I do not believe in consciousness, I do not believe brains are computers, I do not believe computers can have cognition in the way we do. What I believe is that it is an interesting topic, but completely FULL of woo.
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Yes, the Woo is strong here! :lol2:
 
Ichneumonwasp said:
A consequence of that would be that no being, other than a human, experiences.
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Well, my point is that humans actually don't experience in the sense they believe they do. They construct stories about what is going on and there is identification with the stories.

I don't think that is correct.


ETA:

It would, in fact, mean that there is nothing that it is like to be a bat, bats being devoid of language and so incapable of internal dialogue.
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There is nothing it is like to be a bat imo. It might seem that one could somehow "get inside" a bat's brain and experience its sensory inputs but this is imo a result of a fallacious grasp of what experience is.

Hey, think I'm drifting back to Strong AI!

Nick
 
AkuManiMani said:
We aquire the cultural labels of our internal states by observing others. The states and introspective capacities are there independent of, and prior to, the aquisition of any learned language. Language itself is merely an evolved capacity of communicating these states among entities which share some [or all] such states in common.
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I don't know, Aku. Seems to me like I learned pretty much everything from observation.
 
westprog said:
No. Because we've no physical theory of "private behaviour".
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WHAT ?

There is no physical theory of "private behaviour" ???

Come on, westprog. That's a little dishonest of you. We know behaviour exists, and "private" only means it is accessible only to your senses. There is no NEED for a physical theory of "private behaviour". It's not "subjective experience", anymore.
 
Belz... said:
WHAT ?

There is no physical theory of "private behaviour" ???

Come on, westprog. That's a little dishonest of you. We know behaviour exists, and "private" only means it is accessible only to your senses. There is no NEED for a physical theory of "private behaviour". It's not "subjective experience", anymore.
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I knew there was one comment I had forgotten to address; exactly the right answer, Belz. If we have no physical theory of private behavior, then we have no physical theory of public behavior.

[mad scientist] After all, the nerves are just semipermeable tubes with saline solutions, able to propagate a chemical wave, the heart is just a pump, the kidneys are filters, the spleen is just a plastic bag of miniature marshmallows...[/ms]
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
This is, exactly, why I do not engage in this kind of discussions, as I said before, is like going nuts trying to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin...

I have, of course, been accused before of being "Socratic" (reading, my questions are deeply uncomfortable for some), but how can we ever hope to advance if stuff like "consciousness", "feelings", "qualia", and such, are defined by everyone in (sometimes slightly) different way?

I do not believe in consciousness, I do not believe brains are computers, I do not believe computers can have cognition in the way we do. What I believe is that it is an interesting topic, but completely FULL of woo.
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And wherefore is it wooing? And from whence are you saying of the illusion of consciousness?
 
Nick227 said:
Well, my point is that humans actually don't experience in the sense they believe they do. They construct stories about what is going on and there is identification with the stories.
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OK. I certainly agree that we construct stories about what is going on. I don't think that is all there is to experience, however.


There is nothing it is like to be a bat imo. It might seem that one could somehow "get inside" a bat's brain and experience its sensory inputs but this is imo a result of a fallacious grasp of what experience is.

Hey, think I'm drifting back to Strong AI!

Nick
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I think we define the word 'experience' in different ways, then. I think I understand what you are saying.

I, again, certainly agree that we have no possible access to what it is like to be a bat and that we are left with projecting 'experience' onto other creatures. The same is true of all of us, though language mediates talk about it fairly well.

I think there is something that it is like to be a bat or a dog. It's very different, undoubtably, from what it is like to be a human. I don't think we experience most things in the same way that dogs and bats do. They may experienc more like how we would if our left hemisphere were turned off, so the story flow stops.

But we can agree to disagree.
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
how can we ever hope to advance if stuff like "consciousness", "feelings", "qualia", and such, are defined by everyone in (sometimes slightly) different way?
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By fits and starts probably as we are doing. We can't make much progress, I think, until we do the hard work of piecing out what these words mean.

There has been quite a bit of good investigation into 'feeling', I think, recently. I think we can make progress, but the armchair stuff is a hindrance most of the time, especially when it stops at "Ooh, that's wild" which, as you well know, happens a good bit of the time.
 
Mercutio said:
I knew there was one comment I had forgotten to address; exactly the right answer, Belz. If we have no physical theory of private behavior, then we have no physical theory of public behavior.

[mad scientist] After all, the nerves are just semipermeable tubes with saline solutions, able to propagate a chemical wave, the heart is just a pump, the kidneys are filters, the spleen is just a plastic bag of miniature marshmallows...[/ms]
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I take it from your "mad scientist" talk that you're alluding to my comment, but I don't really understand how what Belz said is "exactly the right answer" for the point I made because my contention had to do not with behavior but with experience, and the two concepts are quite different from one another. A "private behavior" would just refer to a cognitive process that is not outwardly communicated. An "experience" would refer to the actual sensations associated with those cognitive processes. The conundrum I pose deals with the fact that since you can explain any behavior, public or private, completely in terms of cognition, where is there any room in a theory of the mind for the concept of experience?
 
westprog said:
Babies seem quite able to experience the sensation of "I'm hungry" without the capacity to label it, and they certainly don't recognise it in others.
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At that age, no, I don't think they are able to do that. But as we get older we learn to associate general emotions from facial expressions and body language. Eventually, we acquire the common language of the society we live in an individuals can communicate their internal states in more detailed ways which we can relate to, on some level.
 
Ichneumonwasp said:
Perhaps. What is the definition then? If we examine it, perhaps we can make headway?

Subjective seems clear -- it is private. It is the experience thing and awareness that seem a bit fuzzy. So how do we define them? How do we go about working with these concepts?
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Nearest I can tell, awareness denotes some focus of attention on some subjective experience. Earlier me and 'Dodger were discussing the example of a person focusing on the pain of a stubbed toe. Its perfectly possible for an individual to not be aware of some internal stimulus. Lets suppose that, by some means, the pain of the stubbed toe were prevented from reaching the conscious attention of the individual. The nervous system may process the pain signal but if the person does not consciously experience the signal as such, then there is no pain.
 
lupus_in_fabula said:
I think you're simplifying too much in terms of creating a dichotomy that really isn't there in the way you have presented it. Labeling is also part of our internal interpretation, and whilst being an integral part of interpretation, it also changes and creates new internal states in reference to that, which in turn gives rise to new interpretations and new states etc. Thus, interpretation and labeling are also part of the whole conditioning by which we for some reason then feel tempted to say that "introspective capacities are there interdependent of..." It's really not that clear cut at all. In much, we have learned, internalized and directed what we feel and how we experience our "own" internal states (including that of which is our own and which is not).

We also learn how to feel by learning to interpret context (where labels are an integral part too). In certain contexts the same actions can be felt differently. Seeing someone slipping can induce a variety of internal states depending on the context being a 'clown' doing his 'act' on a 'stage', or your 'grandpa' 'struggling' down the 'stairs'. Often we learn to like caviar, beer, coffee or smelly cheese.
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Well, I didn't mean to imply that the process was so simple. There really is no absolute distinction between introspection and extrospection, per se. My point was to illustrate that without referring to our internal states there is no way to communicate them or identify such states in others.
 
Belz... said:
So "qualia" are "qualitative experience" are "subjective experience" are "qualia".

How do we know they exist, again ?
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The same way that we know anything else exists; we experience it in some capacity.

Belz... said:
Actually, finding out if they exist is the first useful step.
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Again, the terms are just labels we put on the actual experiences. Scientifically understanding the experience is what we should be aiming for.
 
Mercutio said:
I knew there was one comment I had forgotten to address; exactly the right answer, Belz. If we have no physical theory of private behavior, then we have no physical theory of public behavior.

[mad scientist] After all, the nerves are just semipermeable tubes with saline solutions, able to propagate a chemical wave, the heart is just a pump, the kidneys are filters, the spleen is just a plastic bag of miniature marshmallows...[/ms]
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... and hunger is?
 
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