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

[Dancing David]

Not interested in p-zombies for your reasons.

If I had an example from my own experience, I could never make you experience it, so it would be pointless. All I can do is try to point you towards what I mean. Funnily enough, my first proper realisation that I was conscious and what that fully meant was through introspection in a philosophy class when I was about 30!!

So it's like this. I see red. But I am not the redness I see, I am what sees the red. I have organs of perception. But I am not the organs of perception, I am what experiences through the organs of perception. The red has an effect on my organs of perception. But I am not the effect on my organs of perception, I am what experiences the effect on my organs of perception. The effect on my organs of perception produces a quality that is what it is like to experience redness. But I am not what it is like to experience redness, I am what experiences that redness.

Well after I studied the teachings of the buddha I came to a different experience.

There is no 'seer behind the seeing', would be the quote and then the whole teaching of anatta which is a counter to the teachings of the atman. But it has deeper meaning than tahta s well, there is no self there is the body, thoughts feelings, perceptions and habits. But that is all, the illusion of the self is the source of dukka.

'I' being used here to mean consciousness. This isn't meant to be spiritual, it is an exercise in introspection and observation. Consciousness is the final observer.

Well take away the habits, take away the perceptions, take away the emotions, take away the thoughts, take away the body.

What have you got? That is the doctrine of the empty house.

I think you are right that its not possible to have consciousness without perception, even if that perception is restricted to brain generated inputs, thoughts, emotions, feelings. I just don't see how that helps really. Being conscious implies being conscious of something, even if it is only the feeling of existence, which is the lowest level I have ever achieved. Anything else is called falling asleep.

yet i would argue those being conscious of something is being conscious of thoughts, emotions, thoughts, perceptions and the body.

 

[Dancing David]

(I don't know how to keep the already quoted text when re quoting)

Yes, again to the heart of it, none of the above The quale is what it actually feels like to be hot. It is what is actually feels like to be cold. My thermometer never feels hot or cold, it just is hot or cold and responds accordingly. Somehow, I have an experience of hotness. That experience has a 'hot' quality to it. I don't need to remember, associate, compare or think about it. That experience of hotness is the raw hotness quale. And what experiences the hot quale is consciousness. I can't conceive of it any other way so far.

And those are all physical sensations, perceptions, thoughts, memories and emotions.

The quote thing involves punching the quote button.

To do the tag use '[' or ']' instaed of '{' or '}'

to end a quote and start your quote use
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to end your quote and return to the citation quote use
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So in explantion it looks like

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But if I sub [ for { and ] for } you get

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[Malerin]

Mary's Room, I think, is the best thought experiment to determine whether one views consciousness as a hard problem or not.

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

 

[rocketdodger]

And like I said, there's nothing in the above that couldn't have been done ten thousand years ago - with a similar likelihood of accuracy.

I am pretty sure that anybody remotely educated in either history or neuroscience or especially the history of neuroscience will tell you that a cave man would not have been able to

1) Find a neural structure in a human
2) Find a neural structure in a mouse
3) Determine what each structure does in the context of the experience of either the human or the mouse
4) Determine whether the two structures were similar

In fact, I find it quite absurd that you would even suggest a cave man could have done such a thing "with a similar likelihood of accuracy."

 

[RandFan]

What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

Of course. Learning as an imersive experience. I can teach someone all of theory of riding a bike but until the person puts into practice the theory then he or she doesn't fully know how to ride a bike. So, we can say that knowing how to ride a bike involves the qualia of riding a bike.

As a former dualist I used to think qualia was some kind of insurmountable problem. Not likely. It's very likely simply a problem of imagination. It's ignorance. The third dimension would be a "hard problem" to someone who lives in flat land. The fourth dimension is a "hard problem" for us.



I can't imagine how the experience of color could arise from physics threfore it's not possible to ever understand the experience of color via a physics model.

 

[rocketdodger]

Mary's Room, I think, is the best thought experiment to determine whether one views consciousness as a hard problem or not.

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

Does a programmer learn anything when they give a known system a novel set of input that leads to novel behavior in the system?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Yes, it's a hard problem. What I said already.

But the issue isn't that it's a difficult problem, it's that it's irrelevant to understanding how consciousness works.

Similarly, I'm not female so I can never get pregnant, but I can know an awful lot about pregnancy; biology can explain pregnancy.

You claimed that neuroscience hasn't led to any greater understanding of the subjective experience of perception, but it has. That it doesn't allow someone to experience another person's subjective experience is irrelevant.

 

[PixyMisa]

Mary's Room, I think, is the best thought experiment to determine whether one views consciousness as a hard problem or not.

Mary's Room is a circular argument that assumes immaterialism and uses equivocation to hide this. It is utterly worthless.

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

The answer under materialism is no. If she knows "all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on" then that includes the experiential information about what it is "like" to see those things, because that is just another physical process.

 

[westprog]

I am pretty sure that anybody remotely educated in either history or neuroscience or especially the history of neuroscience will tell you that a cave man would not have been able to

1) Find a neural structure in a human
2) Find a neural structure in a mouse
3) Determine what each structure does in the context of the experience of either the human or the mouse
4) Determine whether the two structures were similar

In fact, I find it quite absurd that you would even suggest a cave man could have done such a thing "with a similar likelihood of accuracy."

A caveman wouldn't have known anything about the neural structures of a mouse. But he would have observed the behaviour of a mouse, and could have made all the important deductions from that.

He might not have traced the neural connections which showed that mice don't have the structures associated with speech, say, or tool-building. But he would have noticed that mice don't talk, or make tools. So he could have come to the same conclusions by a different route.

Does a neural analysis tell us nothing about what it's like to be a mouse? No, there are some minor hints which might rule out certain things, but in fact, we simply don't know.

 

[Robin]

It's not a problem for science. It is a problem for people who think that science has no absolute limitations. It may also cause problems for people with certain types of metaphysical beliefs.

What usually gets said on this board is something like "either science can investigate it or there is nothing to investigate". The problem is caused by this overly science-biased way of looking at the world. Science itself just carries on regardless

We are back to questions like "are non-scientific types of knowledge possible?" In other words, is there something like what it is to be a human which humans can know directly but science can't know at all? Some people seem to feel threatened by the mere suggestion that there could be something which exists, but which is impossible for science to investigate. But the fact that science can't investigate X isn't actually "a problem for science". Science can only have problems in areas that it can theoretically investigate, but is having practical or technical problems doing so.

Is poetry a problem for mathematics? No, mathematics has nothing to tell us about poetry. It would only appear to be a problem if somebody believed mathematics has something to tell us about everything that could be investigated at all. The fact that mathematics can't investigate poetry is not a criticism of mathematics. The fact that science can't investigate consciousness is not a criticism of science. It's just the way things are.

Again it is a non-sequitur.

Why does "science can't put us inside a mouse's mind and make us feel mouselike" equate to "science can't investigate consciousness"?

Science can and does investigate consciousness.

But it can't put us inside a mouse's head and make us feel mouselike.

Neither can anything else.

 

[Robin]

Try to define any physical model, and it always rests on perceptions.

Not at all. The definition rests on mathematics.

As I pointed out before, if we rested our definition on perceptions then we would always define physical things as imprecise and immeasurably changeable.

That's the difference between mathematics and physics. The mathematics doesn't rest on perceptions. We can just think our maths.

Which is why we define physical things in terms of mathematics instead of perceptions.

It might be a bit disconcerting to realise the subjective nature of our interaction with the universe, but that's the way it is.

Why should that be disconcerting? Doesn't disconcert me at all. Can't imagine how else an intelligent being could observe it's environment.

But that still does not mean that we define physical things in terms of perceptions.

Because we don't.

We define them in terms of mathematical models.

 

[Robin]

There is no way to get inside a mouse's mind and feel mouselike but I don't understand why that should be a problem for science.

You might think that the question of what it's like to be something other than oneself - the nature of other people and creatures - is of less interest than say, the composition of the atmosphere on Titan, but I think you'll find that the way other beings feel is not only of considerable interest to most people, it forms a huge part of human discourse and activity.

Fine.

Now tell me why the fact that we can't get inside a mouse's mind and feel mouselike is a problem for science.

 

[Robin]

Mary's Room, I think, is the best thought experiment to determine whether one views consciousness as a hard problem or not.

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

Presuming that it is neurologically possible, then she learns what it is like to experience colours.

So what?

 

[Malerin]

Presuming that it is neurologically possible, then she learns what it is like to experience colours.

So what?

After learning all there is to know physically regarding seeing colors (assuming that's possible), does Mary learn anything new when she actually sees colors for the first time? If yes, then this new knowledge about seeing colors comes by a non-physical means, since it was stipulated she already had 100%knowledge of the physical aspects of seeing colors.

 

[Robin]

After learning all there is to know physically regarding seeing colors (assuming that's possible), does Mary learn anything new when she actually sees colors for the first time? If yes, then this new knowledge about seeing colors comes by a non-physical means, since it was stipulated she already had 100%knowledge of the physical aspects of seeing colors.

By saying she has 100% knowledge of the physical aspects of seeing colour without having seen colour you are simply assuming your conclusion that consciousness is not physical.

 

[Robin]

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the non-physical (ie abstract/theoretical) information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

If yes, then this new knowledge about seeing colors comes by a physical means, since it was stipulated she already had 100%knowledge of the non-physical aspects of seeing colors.​

Unless you are arguing that theoretical information is physical then clearly this is the more plausible premiss.

So Mary in the black and white room proves physicalism.

Tada!

 

[PixyMisa]

After learning all there is to know physically regarding seeing colors (assuming that's possible), does Mary learn anything new when she actually sees colors for the first time?

If materialism is true, then no, she doesn't learn anything she didn't already know.

If yes, then this new knowledge about seeing colors comes by a non-physical means, since it was stipulated she already had 100%knowledge of the physical aspects of seeing colors.

Which means that you have stipulated that this knowledge is non-physical.

As I said, circular and utterly worthless.

 

[RandFan]

After learning all there is to know physically regarding seeing colors (assuming that's possible), does Mary learn anything new when she actually sees colors for the first time?

No. "Everything" would have to include whatever "seeing" or the "qualia" of seeing or the experience of seeing is.

BTW: The brains of blind people can be stimulated to see color. We can do this through physical stimulation of the brain (see Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain).

 

[Malerin]

By saying she has 100% knowledge of the physical aspects of seeing colour without having seen colour you are simply assuming your conclusion that consciousness is not physical.

No, because you could argue, as some philosophers do, that Mary learns nothing new by actually seeing the color red.

And if you think Mary does learn something new, it still isn't a circular thought experiment: she learns everything there is to know physically possible about seeing colors, and is still lacking some knowledge by virtue of being color-blind. I don't see any circularity or question begging, and I've never seen the thought experiment objected to on those grounds, either in the Wiki article or here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/

 

[PixyMisa]

No, because you could argue, as some philosophers do, that Mary learns nothing new by actually seeing the color red.

Obiously.

And if you think Mary does learn something new, it still isn't a circular thought experiment

Yes it is.

she learns everything there is to know physically possible about seeing colors, and is still lacking some knowledge by virtue of being color-blind.

If you assume materialism is true, then "everything there is to know physically possible about seeing colors" includes the experience itself, and the argument falls on its face.

If you assume materialism is false, such that "everything there is to know physically possible about seeing colors" doesn't include the experience itself, then the argument is circular.

In no case does the argument tell you anything useful.

I don't see any circularity or question begging, and I've never seen the thought experiment objected to on those grounds, either in the Wiki article or here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/

You do see the arguments that Mary learns nothing new, right? Dennett's reply, and the Ability Hypothesis?

Well then.

If we assume materialism is true, Mary learns nothing new. The argument tells us nothing.

If we assume materialism is false, Mary might learn something new. The argument at best confirms what we already know.

In no case does the argument tell you anything useful.

The Stanford article is abject weaselry. They note that

Indeed she comes to know all the physical facts pertinent to everyday colors and color vision.

and then try to back away from this essential stipulation with the following:

The Ability Hypothesis, as it is often called, is more resilient than many philosophers suppose (see Tye 2000, Chapter One). But it has difficulty in properly accounting for our knowledge of what it is like to undergo experiences of determinate hues while we are undergoing them. For example, I can know what it is like to experience red-17, as I stare at a rose of that color. Of course, I don't know the hue as red-17. My conception of it is likely just that shade of red. But I certainly know what it is like to experience the hue while it is present. Unfortunately, I lack the abilities Lewis cites and so does Mary even after she leaves her cell. She is not able to recognize things that are red-17 as red-17 by sight. Given the way human memory works and the limitations on it, she lacks the concept red-17.

This is drivel.

Mary is not human. Mary knows

all the physical facts pertinent to everyday colors and color vision

- something that is not possible, even in principle, for any human. (The Stanford article asserts that it is; this is pure nonsense.) In attempting to defend the argument they directly contradict its core thesis.

Mary's Room is an abject failure, every bit as much as the Chinese Room and for similar reasons.