• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

My take on why indeed the study of consciousness may not be as simple

Fontwell said:
Interesting thread! I'm going to ignore all the "gay ants" and "key characteristics of life" stuff and go back to the OP.

As far as I'm concerned, the hard problem of consciousness i.e. the feeling of what it is like to experience something ( quale ) is the key issue and one which nobody has ever really adequately addressed yet. Now, QM has some weird stuff going on for sure. But in the end it seems to me that it is still just describing the behaviour of some physical bits of the universe. And however strange and unfathomable this behaviour may be, it doesn't get us one step closer to understanding where the experience of what something is like comes from.

The experience of qualia seems so unlike anything to do with the habits of sub atomic particles I just can't see how it could ever help, though I may be wrong. It reminds me of AI in a way;

There was a period when the limits of computing power were used as a reason by some people to explain why we couldn't produce real AI. Then we got all the computing we wanted and the problem didn't get any easier to solve.

Similarly, strange QM behaviour is being suggested as the solution to understanding consciousness. But I can't imagine what kind of strange behaviour of particles or waves, however bizarre, could ever succeed in bridging the gap between 'how things move' and the subjective experiences of qualia through our senses.
Click to expand...

I think the above is a good summary of the current situation. One way to address the problem of subjective experience is to deny that there is any such thing, or that it's just a description we give to already well defined phenomena. (Recent posts referenced eliminative materialism as a name for the idea). It has the advantage of producing a theory which conforms with known physics, though lacking the benefit of explaining anything.
 
westprog said:
I think the above is a good summary of the current situation. One way to address the problem of subjective experience is to deny that there is any such thing, or that it's just a description we give to already well defined phenomena. (Recent posts referenced eliminative materialism as a name for the idea). It has the advantage of producing a theory which conforms with known physics, though lacking the benefit of explaining anything.
Click to expand...
Or we could just stick to the phenomena we "subjectively" experience as consciousness and let consciousness explain itself ;)
 
I'm not a philosopher but I don't understand how people can even doubt the existence of a 'subjective experience'. The only thing I can think is that they really don't get it! At some level there is an argument about how do I know someone else actually has a subjective experience but that is like philosophy for the sake of philosophy and anyway, I have a subjective experience.

I know that the taste of beer is different to the taste of coffee. But not because the parts of my tongue that get stimulated and interpreted by my brain are different for beer and coffee (although that goes on), but because that interpretation done in my brain feels different as an experience.

I don't know too much about Daniel Dennett as a philosopher, other than he seems to think consciousness is no big deal to explain and qualia are just bits of physics and biology, and also he isn't full of woo. So I'm using him to represent the view that there isn't a subjective experience. But I watched a TED video in which he supposedly talked about consciousness and other than using the word a lot, he never actually talked about it once. I was also considering buy his book "Consciousness Explained" from Amazon and so I read a few reviews of it. One of them was written by someone who seemed quite reasonable and who said that the book was very interesting and useful but would have been better entitled "Everything Except Consciousness Explained". This implies that at an every day level of word use, DD doesn't actually know what consciousness is.

This leads me into an awkward situation. Can I, as a layman, really presume to have grasped the meaning of something that a whole group of credible philosophers don't get? On the other hand, nothing I've read can convince me that that my qualia are an illusion. Even the idea of being an illusion seems to back up the idea of subjective experience to me!
 
Dancing David said:
I believe that I stated it is dependant upon three things:
-defintion of consciousness
-nature and number of neurons
-arrangement and interaction of neurons

I believe you have mistaken me for RandFan.
:)


I think we might have to get to another thread, as this is in its thrid incarnation of derail.

I feel/think that phenomenology in the sense of just looking at the internal events is non productive.

Now looking at the events of phenomenology in the sense of sensations and models of the action of objects outside one's brain pan, specifically the action of other people/animals brain pans.

that is slightly more productive.

And consciousnesss is more than hippocampal function.

That is why terminolgy is so crucial, there are many ways we can approach it:
-levels of physical arousal (coma, sleep, drosy, sleepy, tired, unfocused, attentive)
-levels of interaction and choice making
-levels of cognition, sensation, perception, awareness, concentration
-levels of abstracxtion in cognition
Click to expand...

I think our discussion is still relevant to at least trying to clarify what this consciousness is that Penrose hopes will be explained by QM.

I am not rejecting neuroscience and the analytical approach as having no role to play. I am questioning the justification in going outside of thinking (subjectivity) to explain thinking. I think the problem with this approach becomes clear when one then asks questions about objective measure and gets told its an emergent property and therefore numbers are irrelevant.
Well then this property needs to explain itself if its components cannot be used to explain it.

The honest approach perhaps is to reject any notion of a subjective consciousness/thinking and embrace a universal objective consciousness/thinking.
This is the honest intuition I believe is behind Penrose's argument, but I don't think he is being honest by further projecting our consciousness experiences as derived from the world of atomic particles, because this world happens to be "different". This is the underlying dualism in Penrose which is what I suggested earlier in this thread.

To maintain honesty and avoid dualism one would also have to accept that our consciousness/thinking has some objectivity and is not something different but equivalent to what we can observe. The thing-in-itself is not a thing after all.

Perhaps the phenomenologists were onto something ;)
 
Last edited:
I'm not sure I follow all of your post !Kaggen but I think I get the gist. One thing does occur to me though and it is the use of the words 'subjective' and 'objective' in the context of personal experiences.

In other fields it is easy to spot that 'hot' is subjective and '85 degrees Celsius' objective. But what do subjective and objective mean when referring to what we experience?

Well I would use the phrase 'my subjective experience' largely to emphasise that it is my experience, and also that it is my experience. The word subjective seems to handily highlight that I'm talking both about the personal and also the not easily quantifiable.

But there is something unhelpful here. When we say 'hot' is subjective, one reason is because different people will have different interpretations of when something is hot. But when we are already talking about consciousness, my personal experience of 'hot' is always the same (for me). It is not like the personal experience of 'cold'. So actually, at the personal experience level, 'hot' is objective in as much as it isn't like 'cold', or indeed anything else as an experience. Even if my experience of hot is not like your experience of hot, my hot is always like my hot to me.

Just thinking about this has made me wonder if I really mean 'my objective experience'!
 
Last edited:
Fontwell said:
Interesting thread! I'm going to ignore all the "gay ants" and "key characteristics of life" stuff and go back to the OP.

As far as I'm concerned, the hard problem of consciousness i.e. the feeling of what it is like to experience something ( quale ) is the key issue and one which nobody has ever really adequately addressed yet. Now, QM has some weird stuff going on for sure. But in the end it seems to me that it is still just describing the behaviour of some physical bits of the universe. And however strange and unfathomable this behaviour may be, it doesn't get us one step closer to understanding where the experience of what something is like comes from.

The experience of qualia seems so unlike anything to do with the habits of sub atomic particles I just can't see how it could ever help, though I may be wrong. It reminds me of AI in a way;

There was a period when the limits of computing power were used as a reason by some people to explain why we couldn't produce real AI. Then we got all the computing we wanted and the problem didn't get any easier to solve.

Similarly, strange QM behaviour is being suggested as the solution to understanding consciousness. But I can't imagine what kind of strange behaviour of particles or waves, however bizarre, could ever succeed in bridging the gap between 'how things move' and the subjective experiences of qualia through our senses.
Click to expand...

I disagree about the quale part, calling it that may be part of the prblem, we do have a good understanding of sensation and perception. Not perfect but well grounded.

So which part is the mystery?

One part of the PNS sends teh sensations to teh brain where they becoem perceptions, other parts of the brain create memories and cognitions about teh perceptions.

So where is the potential HPC?
 
It's not a HPC when you get to that level - red could be purple and it wouldn't really matter to the function of consciousness. It's an entirely different question. It's not connected to consciousness at all.
 
That's right. At the level of organs of perception we can follow signals into the brain and see what happens there. But that is just like looking inside a T.V. or an X box and trying to figure out how it works. What it doesn't do is explain the feeling of hot, or put another way, what it is like to be hot.

When I'm too hot I want to cool down. This isn't because I've deduced or recognised that I'm at an unhealthy temperature. It has a quale, I have an experience of being too hot. This automatically implies consciousness. Without qualia and consciousness, all we have is data.

ETA 50th post!
 
Last edited:
Fontwell said:
I'm not sure I follow all of your post !Kaggen but I think I get the gist. One thing does occur to me though and it is the use of the words 'subjective' and 'objective' in the context of personal experiences.

In other fields it is easy to spot that 'hot' is subjective and '85 degrees Celsius' objective. But what do subjective and objective mean when referring to what we experience?

Well I would use the phrase 'my subjective experience' largely to emphasise that it is my experience, and also that it is my experience. The word subjective seems to handily highlight that I'm talking both about the personal and also the not easily quantifiable.

But there is something unhelpful here. When we say 'hot' is subjective, one reason is because different people will have different interpretations of when something is hot. But when we are already talking about consciousness, my personal experience of 'hot' is always the same (for me). It is not like the personal experience of 'cold'. So actually, at the personal experience level, 'hot' is objective in as much as it isn't like 'cold', or indeed anything else as an experience. Even if my experience of hot is not like your experience of hot, my hot is always like my hot to me.

Just thinking about this has made me wonder if I really mean 'my objective experience'!
Click to expand...

Good observation there, I like.
It becomes interesting if we keep to the subject for a while instead of running off for 2nd hand objectivity every time we need to start thinking about thinking.;)
 
cyborg said:
It's not a HPC when you get to that level - red could be purple and it wouldn't really matter to the function of consciousness. It's an entirely different question. It's not connected to consciousness at all.
Click to expand...

That will depend on how much weight you give to thinking.
 
cyborg said:
I fail to see why. You don't have to have consciousness for sensation.
Click to expand...

Well this is the heart of it.

To me, a sensation is experienced. The thing that experiences it is consciousness. Without the consciousness and experience it is just information. The only difference between being at 25 degrees C and 85 degrees C would be the numbers. But I'm not like that. Something experiences what it is like to at 85 degrees C and feels the quality of that experience in a way that is unlike any other kind of experience.

This is one of those things where it can't be easily explained. if I you can't see what I mean then I can't show it to you, I can only push in that direction. Of course it is equally true that you may have a way of understanding sensation which I just don't get:)
 
Fontwell said:
Interesting thread! I'm going to ignore all the "gay ants" and "key characteristics of life" stuff and go back to the OP.

As far as I'm concerned, the hard problem of consciousness i.e. the feeling of what it is like to experience something ( quale ) is the key issue and one which nobody has ever really adequately addressed yet.
Click to expand...

I disagree. All those brain properties/functions I've been mentioning which are collectively referred to as consciousness do indeed address the subjective feeling: memory, proprioception, nociception, arousal, other sensory perception, etc.

Now, QM has some weird stuff going on for sure. But in the end it seems to me that it is still just describing the behaviour of some physical bits of the universe. And however strange and unfathomable this behaviour may be, it doesn't get us one step closer to understanding where the experience of what something is like comes from.
Click to expand...
And again, the very reason the QM weirdness is "weird" is because it does not happen in the macro world. So subatomic physics is the wrong level of organization to study consciousness.

The experience of qualia seems so unlike anything to do with the habits of sub atomic particles I just can't see how it could ever help, though I may be wrong.
Click to expand...
I don't think you're wrong. For one thing, we can look at the track record. QM has thus far contributed nothing to our understanding of consciousness, whereas various fields of biology (especially neuroscience) has contributed a great deal. Including the practical benefits I mentioned earlier. (If anaesthesia is not about the subjective experience, then I don't know what is!)

Similarly, strange QM behaviour is being suggested as the solution to understanding consciousness. But I can't imagine what kind of strange behaviour of particles or waves, however bizarre, could ever succeed in bridging the gap between 'how things move' and the subjective experiences of qualia through our senses.
Click to expand...
I agree. As I've been saying, studying the strange behavior of subatomic particles/waves will no more give you insight into consciousness than studying a single brick will give you insight into the emergent properties of a house.
 
Last edited:
cyborg said:
I fail to see why. You don't have to have consciousness for sensation.
Click to expand...

Again, in the neuroscience model (which has resulted in a great deal of insight into conscious experience), sensory inputs run via afferent fibers to the CNS. Where they make connections to the neocortex (the primary sensory cortex) we have the subjective experience of the sensation.

If the neocortex is quiescent (through brain trauma, drugs, etc.) or the incoming sensory input doesn't get there (as with sleep or injury to the afferent fibers), we don't have the subjective experience.
 
Fontwell said:
This leads me into an awkward situation. Can I, as a layman, really presume to have grasped the meaning of something that a whole group of credible philosophers don't get? On the other hand, nothing I've read can convince me that that my qualia are an illusion. Even the idea of being an illusion seems to back up the idea of subjective experience to me!
Click to expand...

Well, precisely. It's impossible to have an illusion without a conscious being to be deceived.

Part of the business of writing consciousness out of existence is the redefinition of half the English* language so that words are defined to mean something other than what they are normally accepted to mean - so thermostats "want" to keep the house warm.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
I disagree. All those brain properties/functions I've been mentioning which are collectively referred to as consciousness do indeed address the subjective feeling: memory, proprioception, nociception, arousal, other sensory perception, etc.
Click to expand...

This maybe a definitions issue. The things you mention are (I think) the so called 'easy' problems of consciousness. They explain a great deal about how the mind works and are truly fascinating but they don't help, so far, with the problem of how we get to actually experience these things as processes which have a quality to them. Again, I'm reduced to saying 'what it is like to be hot' rather than just detecting information. There is a level of consciousness that appears to be one step beyond the biological workings of the mind. It is the level which sees/feels the sensations or thoughts, not the level which is the mechanisms of sensations or thoughts.

ETA Although, ******! Perhaps I am surrounded by p-zombies!!
 
Last edited:
Fontwell said:
That's right. At the level of organs of perception we can follow signals into the brain and see what happens there. But that is just like looking inside a T.V. or an X box and trying to figure out how it works. What it doesn't do is explain the feeling of hot, or put another way, what it is like to be hot.

When I'm too hot I want to cool down. This isn't because I've deduced or recognised that I'm at an unhealthy temperature. It has a quale, I have an experience of being too hot. This automatically implies consciousness. Without qualia and consciousness, all we have is data.

ETA 50th post!
Click to expand...

And we can have the feeling of hot or cold for quite different temperatures at different times.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom