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

[yy2bggggs]

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

...no, that's irrelevant:

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

There's certainly a difference between experiential knowledge and theoretical knowledge. But your use of terms is just sophistry.

You're physically restricting your hypothetical Mary from having experiential knowledge by keeping her from seeing red. Since everything Mary learns about how seeing red works never actually happens to her, all she can have is theoretical knowledge.

Then you're calling this state Mary is in, lacking experiential knowledge, a state of complete physical knowledge, in spite of the fact that you physically restricted her from obtaining experiential knowledge.

Finally, you introduce experience, by physically giving her a color television for the first time. And for the first time, that stuff actually happens to Mary. For the first time, erythrolabe in a region in her eye probabilistically isomophizes more than cyanolabe, actually resulting in the red-green opponent process, actually triggering those neurons, and rather than words describing the actions making it to Mary inside the head, for the first time, a different pattern of neural firings actually emerges in Mary's head.

One she knows about, no doubt, and one she even knew, no doubt, was never triggered before. Still, it's different--sure!

Here's another one for you.

Joe is brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world without a basketball. He specializes in the neurophysiology of biomechanics and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we play basketball. He discovers, for example, just which muscles need to be controlled to launch the ball at appropriate velocities to make the target, just how to jump to intercept a ball and slam dunk it, 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 ‘Give me the ball, I'm going to do a layup’. [...] What will happen when Joe is given a basketball and challenged to play with similar peers against the Harlem Globetrotters? Which team would you bet on?

Despite the fact that Joe learns all there is to know about playing basketball, I'm betting on the Globetrotters. I also have an odd feeling that Joe would bet on them himself.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

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"?

I have no idea how you are defining "consciousness" if you think science can investigate it, Robin. Sure, if you're going to claim the word "consciousness" means "self-referential information processing" or some other concept which has been warped so it is amenable to scientific study but is not longer actually consciousness, then science can study it. From my POV, this borders on intellectual dishonesty, because deep down even the people offering the warped definitions (most of them, anyway) know perfectly welll that we are not talking about "self-referential information processing" and only justify it in their minds by going around insisting that "but conciousness IS self-referential information processing" or something else which makes equally little sense. The only way I can make sense of it is by concluding that if people are sufficiently-comitted to defending a specific metaphysical worldview, then they are capable of saying and believing anything at all which helps to defend it, regardless of whether or not what they are saying is actually comprehensible. It's that bad.

Anyone who really "doesn't understand what all the fuss about consciousness is" simply isn't looking hard enough. It's amazing what you can fail to see if you really don't want to see it.

ETA: Having been discussing this subject on this board for nearly a decade now, I can also say that the process of going from "I don't see a problem, honest I don't!" to "err...well actually maybe now I am beginning to see that there is a fundamental problem here" can take several years. It has as much to do with actually being open to accepting that there may be a fundamental, foundational problem with one's worldview than just seeing a normal problem. People (skeptics, atheists) have to get to the point where either they believe it is "safe" to admit there is a problem, or they have to be committed enough to finding the truth that they pursue it even though it is not "safe" (from the POV of their belief system).

 

[PixyMisa]

I have no idea how you are defining "consciousness" if you think science can investigate it, Robin. Sure, if you're going to claim the word "consciousness" means "self-referential information processing" or some other concept which has been warped so it is amenable to scientific study but is not longer actually consciousness, then science can study it. From my POV, this borders on intellectual dishonesty, because deep down even the people offering the warped definitions (most of them, anyway) know perfectly welll that we are not talking about "self-referential information processing"

That's certainly what I'm talking about.

If it's not what you're talking about, then you have to provide a definition. An operational definition, if you would be so kind.

and only justify it in their minds by going around insisting that "but conciousness IS self-referential information processing" or something else which makes equally little sense. The only way I can make sense of it is by concluding that if people are sufficiently-comitted to defending a specific metaphysical worldview, then they are capable of saying and believing anything at all which helps to defend it, regardless of whether or not what they are saying is actually comprehensible. It's that bad.

Given that you are unable to come up with any coherent definition yourself, it seems unreasonable of you to launch an ad hominem attack based on the argument from incredulity regarding a concise and precise definition that has been provided.

One might almost say that it bordered on intellectual dishonesty.

One might.

 

[westprog]

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.

I don't claim that science can ever necessarily solve the problem, but I reject the idea that science should have limits on what it is permitted to investigate.

 

[westprog]

{quote}
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{/quote}

my blah blah
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{/quote}

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

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my blah blah
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Funnily enough this post was one of the better ones in the thread. Also I suggest use of the " button which compiles together the bits you need from earlier posts.

 

[westprog]

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"?

Since I didn't make either of those statements, I feel no need to defend them.

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.

Actually, human beings spend much of their time trying to pass on the contents of their heads, with greater or lesser success. Mice are generally excluded from the process, though Laura Numeroff's seminal thesis Imagining the other - conceptualising extra-human consciousness is an example of how it might be done.

I know of no proof that subjective experience cannot, in principle, ever be experienced by someone else. It's just that science has yet to make any serious inroads.

 

[westprog]

Not at all. The definition rests on mathematics.

No, it always rests on quantified physical attributes. There is no physical equation that doesn't. A physical equation defines the relationship between physical quantities.

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

I think you'll find that imprecision of measurement is always assumed by physicists, and hence that all quantified physical laws are approximations.

It's also a fundamental part of modern physics that measurement isn't actually possible with arbitrary precision anyway.

Any physicist will accept that even assumptions such as that the charge on the electron being the same as that on a proton, though almost certainly true, are limited by the precision of the ability to measure the quantities - iow, by human perception.

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

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.

No physical law could ever possibly be devised in the absence of observation. It's possible to derive one mathematical statement from another, of course, but if it's physics, there is a measurement at the back of it somewhere.

 

[westprog]

One might almost say that it bordered on intellectual dishonesty.

One might.

One might make that accusation whenever anyone disagrees with one.

 

[Dancing David]

I knew it might be dangerous to invoke 'I' when dealing with consciousness It was just a rhetorical device. To be honest, I don't think it matters what I am. It really does lead down a path of arbitrary definitions and personal opinions. In practice, I think I people equivocate when using the word I. I know I do. Most of the time everyone understands what is meant and there's no harm done. I could make an argument for 'I' really being the consciousness only but it's so closely associated with our bodies that the distinction would prove to be a linguistic disaster. No one says my body is going out to buy some beer (unless they are pedantic Buddhists).

Yay for pedantic buddhists!

they have a term, pugala for the term self in common usage.

 

[Dancing David]

Well if I admitted to knowing nothing about this, then I was referring to the process by which the structure of the brain can give rise to consciousness.

On the other hand, I have done an inordinate amount of exercises like this, including 5 years of meditation. In fact it is the experience of exercises promoting the awareness of self, surroundings, thoughts and feelings that have lead me to my understanding of what it feels like to be conscious. Interestingly, when I talk to people with a philosophical system which involves consciousness and who have practised for some time (Hindus, Buddhists), we generally seem to agree on what we mean by consciousness. Unfortunately they then bring in all sorts of woo to explain things and there we part ways.

Well 35 years of practice took me the other way, the processes are consciouness. It is just a rubric for a legion of seperate events.

 

[Dancing David]

ETA Bollox to the lot of you (apart from westprog), I come here trying to reconcile my understanding with that of the experts and then get told I'm a liar.

Wow , so RD's behavior causes you to say bollocks to me, well all I can say is

Double bollocks to you!

 

[Dancing David]

Have you tried the more zen-like meditations where essentially you blank your mind and don't follow the thoughts that flow across it? I found that experiencing that my thoughts came from "outside" the thing that I think of as me quite profound. Neuroscience already told me that my decisions came before I experienced deciding but it's the personal experience of facts that sometimes make things real. I loved the program Supersense which tried to show how various animals experienced the world but it didn't give you the experience any more than playing Mario Kart tells you what it's like to feel the drift as you take a corner too fast.
So I have experienced "me" as an abstract layer floating above the parts of me that do the thinking and deciding. So how would something like that evolve? Perhaps as part of the mechanism for cultural transmission - our species evolutionary advantage - our minds and our language evolved together to be able to propagate ideas, knowledge, myth as well as genes. And this consciousness, this "I" evolved as part of that mechanism.
I work on massively complex IT systems and see daily what happens, the complexity and unintended consequences of systems evolving and that's still on a tiny scale compared to the human mind. And I think that's where you see the hard AI guys failing - that they can build the systems that do the thinking, the deciding but not the part that floats on top?

I think it means that 'consciousness' is the interaction of different parts of the brain, one part does this, another part does that. So one part has verbal cognitions and the other parts recognise that.

And the unintended consequences is what evolutions is all about, apart from the hokey pokey.

 

[PixyMisa]

One might make that accusation whenever anyone disagrees with one.

One might. Though that would be dishonest, unless one's accusation were supported by the content of the posts being disagreed with.

 

[PixyMisa]

I don't claim that science can ever necessarily solve the problem

What problem?

but I reject the idea that science should have limits on what it is permitted to investigate.

Well, that's nice, but whoever suggested anything of the sort?

 

[PixyMisa]

Since I didn't make either of those statements, I feel no need to defend them.

Actually, human beings spend much of their time trying to pass on the contents of their heads, with greater or lesser success. Mice are generally excluded from the process, though Laura Numeroff's seminal thesis Imagining the other - conceptualising extra-human consciousness is an example of how it might be done.

I know of no proof that subjective experience cannot, in principle, ever be experienced by someone else. It's just that science has yet to make any serious inroads.

You mean, except for all the remarkable breakthroughs in our understanding of the subject over the past few decades? No inroads, just revolutions?

That your understanding of the topic remains fixed in the 19th century does not change the fact that the rest of the world is in the 21st.

 

[Dancing David]

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?

Not really, since Mary has not been exposed to the 'color red' or 'wavelengths of visble light labeled as red' she is not going to have experience of the color red in a direct physical form.

When exposed to 'the color red' she is not going to see it, she may see it as a color that is similar to those she already processes, so she may see it as a kind of orange, say a very pale orange. But she has not been exposed to the color red so she is not going to perceive it, at least the first few times around.

But since she has never neen exposed to any colors other than black or white, and her nervous system from childhood has not been exposed to any colors at all, she has not developed the sensations of red, or colors other than black and white. She will experience 'gray', now it is hard to say if the strutures of color sensation and perception have atrophied, if they have then there is a high probability she will never develop color perception.

Now there is a distinct difference between
-Mary creates a model of who the perception 'color red' is modelled in theory for a biological system
-Mary has the perceptual experience of the color red.

So then the defintion of learning will come into play, in that
'Will Mary have an experience she has not had before?' -Yes
'Will Mary possibly have a subjective event of perception she has not had before?' -Yes
'Will mary understand what the perception of red as experienced by people with full color perceptions is like?'- Probably not.
'Will this influence the theories and models Mary has of color perceptions?' -Possibly

 

[PixyMisa]

Yes, but you're only allowing for what is actually possible, which contradicts the central thesis of the argument.

 

[Dancing David]

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.

Um, false dichotomy, straw argument.

Mary has a theoretical model for how biological systems generate color vision, this is a seperate category from the set of 'perceptions Mary has had', although there is some overlap.

fallacy of construction.

To have all physical knowledge in your defintion involves two sets:
-knowledge of the theries of color perception and the data and evidence for the models
-state of past perceptions mary has had

So the latter changes.

 

[PixyMisa]

Um, false dichotomy, straw argument.

Mary has a theoretical model for how biological systems generate color vision, this is a seperate category from the set of 'perceptions Mary has had', although there is some overlap.

But the argument asserts that Mary knows "everything there is to know" about the physical process of vision. Without that assertion, the argument doesn't say anything.

Of course, with that assertion the argument doesn't say anything either, but that's Jackson's problem, not ours.

 

[westprog]

What problem?

Well, that's nice, but whoever suggested anything of the sort?

I suggest using the double quote function, because clipping Robin's post makes the discussion impossible to follow. If you and Robin can come to either a consensus or a disagreement then I'd find it a lot easier.