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

[cyborg]

All that matters is that there is something like "your red" in the first place.

So why isn't there something like "your red" for a machine that processes data relating to electromagnetic radiation of a particular wavelength?

I believe the answer will be along the lines of "because I say so," or "because I don't see how," or "because it doesn't bleed enough for my tastes".

The whole of the natural world could, it seems, operate exactly as it currently does, even if there were no "qualia".

There is no reason for them to appear in that story until you start taking into account complex human artistic and religious behaviour

These statements contradict each other.

Unless you assert that humans are unnatural of course.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I gave up offering definitive definitions of consciousness or awareness many years ago for a very simple reason. You can only show inconsistencies in people's belief systems by getting them to provide the definitions and then show that their own definitions and arguments lead to a contradiction. If instead you supply the definition yourself, then you leave yourself open to the accusation that you have assumed your conclusion in the definition, even if you haven't. So whenever I am now faced with the question "will you please explain to me exactly what the problem with consciousness is?" I always end up asking the questioner to give me their definitions, and I adapt the argument to suit.

That is only an issue if you are interested in game playing. I'm not particularly interested in such games. I actually am interested in finding out if there is a definition with which we can work. If there is not, then there is not.

I think the only way to make progress on this is to try to get agreement on the following: that no definition of consciousness or awareness which is couched purely in terms of behaviour or neural activity is ever going to suffice. Any attempt to define consciousness or awareness as "information processing", "self-referencing in the brain", "the ability to to respond to external stimuli" or any of the thousands of other material alternatives that are floating about just isn't going to work. The debate goes nowhere because as soon as somebody makes this sort of claim, the materialists respond by accusing you of assuming your conclusion or by claiming it is an argument from ignorance or a rejection of science - they basically resort to any means possible of justifying a refusal to accept that a materialistic definition is permanently inadequate. If we could get beyond that then we could address some much more interesting (to me) questions - questions about what the actual implications are of accepting the claim as true. What are the consequences for science, materialism, religion and other types of "woo"? The questions are interesting not least because they would be likely to split "skeptical" opinion on this board - some people would be likely to feel severely threatened even by opening this up as a sensible line of inquiry. Others would be less bothered.

I'm sorry, but deciding ahead of time that no materialistic explanation will work is begging the question. At this point in the game there is no way that anyone could provide that level of explanation, though, so I will be content with any set of words that allow us to work toward a solution to this problem.

Accepting that no materialistic definition of consciousness is possible does have consequences, but they aren't necessarily as bad as some people fear. It may result in certain concessions to some forms of religion or "woo", but not the forms which cause most of the serious problems. The concessions are of little use to your average muslim fundamentalist or YEC, which is why even after nearly two decades of this debate raging in its current form, these forms of religion have not really shown much interest in pursuing the consciousness problem as a way of attacking their scientific and political opponents. The materialists see a threat, but those religious people do not appear to see an opportunity to use it to their advantage.

If you really think that is what people here are concerned with then I suggest that you read their posts more carefully. While this may be a concern for some it is not a concern for most. I don't care about the consequences because I have no idea what the nature of Ultimate Reality might be. If we are to arrive at an explanation then that explanation must involve some form of rule following. I am interested in a definition for awareness so that we can work on some type of explanation.

 

[Frank Newgent]

I am interested in a definition for awareness so that we can work on some type of explanation.

Is it safe to assume consciousness is a developmental process/project?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Is it safe to assume consciousness is a developmental process/project?

Probably, but who knows? We have to start somewhere. Does that perspective lead to a useful definition?

 

[PixyMisa]

The ironic part is that information processing, of any type, is not a physical property

It's a physical process.

but an abstract functional property.

No, you're confusing the model with the process.

The SRIP explanation of consciousness bypasses biology and physics altogether and tries to reduce it to a technical IT problem.

To a mathematical abstraction. Yes. Which is what we do when we are trying to understand things scientifically.

Once we have our model, we can add physics and biology (also models, of course) back in as appropriate for the specific case, and see if and how the activity of the brain matches that model. It does, but while the self-referential model is successful, there's a whole lot more detail to take into account when discussing human consciousnes.

All of it is physical processes, of course. Not of it involves anything beyond the established laws of physics or our existing knowledge of how biological systems can behave. Lots of detail, no qualia, no panentheism, no magic.

 

[Frank Newgent]

All of it is physical processes, of course. Not of it involves anything beyond the established laws of physics or our existing knowledge of how biological systems can behave. Lots of detail, no qualia, no panentheism, no magic.

Are you not describing autopoiesis?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis

 

[UndercoverElephant]

That is only an issue if you are interested in game playing. I'm not particularly interested in such games. I actually am interested in finding out if there is a definition with which we can work. If there is not, then there is not.

This is not "games playing". It's how philosophy works.

I'm sorry, but deciding ahead of time that no materialistic explanation will work is begging the question.

I just explained exactly why it is't. You can only be guilty of "begging the question" if you have selected a set of premises and definitions which both (a) assume your desired conclusion AND (b) could be provided in such a way that they do not assume any conclusions. This does not qualify according to either standard, let alone both. Firstly, by defining consciousness in this way I am not "assuming that no materialistic explanation is possible" - although this is eventually a consequence of that definition. Secondly, and more importantly, there is no other meaningful way of defining consciousness or awareness. By accusing me of question-begging you are just avoiding the real issue, which is that we have no real choice but to define awareness/consciousness in this way. Trying to define it in terms of material entities simply does not work.

People will continue to deny this until the cows come home. People will also continue to deny evolution. C'est la vie. People like to remain ignorant.

You have two choices. You can either accept that no materialistic definition of consciousness is possible and continue to the next part of the analysis, or you can go round and round in circles forever trying to find a non-existent materialistic definition that people will be willing to accept.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Probably, but who knows? We have to start somewhere. Does that perspective lead to a useful definition?

What does "useful" mean?

Does it mean "I can use this definition to further explore consciousness in terms of science and materialism?" or does it mean "the definition actually refers to this problematic thing we are actually talking about?" I suspect you want a definition that does both, and this is quite impossible.

 

[PixyMisa]

This is not "games playing". It's how philosophy works.

No, it's how philosophy fails. Which it does, most of the time. Cf. the joke about philosophy departments being cheaper to run than mathematics departments.

I just explained exactly why it is't.

You explained nothing. All you did was cough up Chalmer's "hard problem consciousness".

There is no hard problem. It's just a security blanket for immaterialists.

Firstly, by defining consciousness in this way I am not "assuming that no materialistic explanation is possible" - although this is eventually a consequence of that definition.

That is precisely what you are doing. You cannot come up with any rational rebuttal to the material explanations for consciousness, so you (like Chalmers) simply insist, louder and louder, that it cannot be so.

Secondly, and more importantly, there is no other meaningful way of defining consciousness or awareness.

Self-referential information processing.
Representational information processing.

They work just fine for me. It can be expressed differently, though still in entirely material terms, but that's what it reduces to.

By accusing me of question-begging you are just avoiding the real issue, which is that we have no real choice but to define awareness/consciousness in this way. Trying to define it in terms of material entities simply does not work.

And that is an insistence on magic.

The brain is a material system, UE. And it produces consciousness. There's simply no question about that. It's not just correlation, it's causation, because we see not only whole minds coming from whole brains, but broken minds coming from broken brains, and we can map the brokenness in both directions.

Mind is a material process, and you're just going to have to deal with it.

People will continue to deny this until the cows come home. People will also continue to deny evolution. C'est la vie. People like to remain ignorant.

And you are wrong.

You have two choices. You can either accept that no materialistic definition of consciousness is possible and continue to the next part of the analysis, or you can go round and round in circles forever trying to find a non-existent materialistic definition that people will be willing to accept.

If you reject reality, there is no next part of the analysis.

If you accept established facts, you can at least hope to build upon them.

 

[Belz...]

However you wanna categorize that fact, it's still immediately relevant to science. One cannot conduct science without empirical observation and it just so happens that one must be conscious to observe. Ergo, consciousness is the foundation of the scientific process.

Cameras observe but they are not conscious. However you want to cut it, science doesn't require consciousness.

For instance, how else can we know what brain stimulus is correlated with a particular sensation if the subject does not report their own internal states?

Depends. If you're a computer doing science you don't really care about the reported experience, so long as you can observe the results.

Because you would still need a conscious scientist to design the computer for the specified task, and a conscious observer to interpret the outputs of the machine.

Computers can't reach conclusions, now ?

Of course you need someone to construct the computer, but then that's not what you said. That would be moving the goalposts.

Meaning that complexity has little relevance as to whether or not a system is conscious. A human's brain does not become less complex when they go unconscious.

Agreed, but human-like consciousness requires SOME amount of complexity, still. As I said, we know of nothing artificial that can reach that threshold simply because we haven't made one yet.

You're missing what I'm saying. I presented two methods of conveying the same message: one used an electronic computer network, the other was a hand written message sent via vacuum tube system. The function of the two methods was identical [to convey a specific message to you] but the two means of carrying out that function were physically different. Understand?

Yes. The MEANS are physically different. You should have said so.

Okay, lets phrase it a different way: Even if it turns out that everything we experience in life is illusion we can still know that the experience itself is absolutely real.

I disagree.

 

[Belz...]

We have no access to anything except through experience. It makes sense to doubt everything else and trust experience, because experience is more basic.

Assertion.

 

[Belz...]

It's not irrelevant to me whether I'm conscious or not.

That's why I wouldn't step into a teleporter. But if there is NO WAY to tell a p-zombie from a not-p-zombie, then scientifically the question is irrelevant.

I find it strange that some people don't seem to care whether the people they encounter have (subjective) experiences or not.

Again, if there's no way to tell the difference, then what's the point ?

If I thought that there was no subjective experience happening, then I wouldn't care. Fundamentally, the only thing that matters - insofar as anything matters - is the actual experience of creatures capable of having subjective experience.

Interesting. Sometimes I care about fictional characters who CLEARLY do not experience. Don't you ?

Add a drop of A into solution B in the test tube at concentration C. Tabulate the results in Excel. If the computer is doing science, so is the test tube, so is the solution, so is the pipette.

I said it didn't COMPUTE. The test tube is incapable of doing science on its own.

Yes, I keep saying that there is no reliable test.

Ah, but what about a computer that displays all the behaviours associated with consciousness ? Like the crying child in your example, wouldn't you feel empathy ? Or is that empathy limited to biological beings ? If so, then you are not infering consciousness from behaviour but from similarity.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

This message is hidden because PixyMisa is on your ignore list.

Cake, anyone?

 

[Dancing David]

Cake or death?
Eddie Izard

 

[AkuManiMani]

I think that is a mischaracterization and one of the side issues that impairs such discussions. Discussions of information processing simply deal with the issue at a different level than the bare physics. What still occurs at a simpler level is Turing machine equivalence -- replace 0 with 1, replace 1 with 0, move one space to the left, move one space to the right.

Information processing is built on this fundamental level; and that information processing is designed by humans. Nature does the same thing in a blind way with neurons. There isn't that much difference in the two; we simply do not discuss the lower levels because explanations involving that sort of detail are cumbersome.

Atleast you're showing the ability to distinguish between information processing and physical systems performing the ops. I realize that considering cognition on simply the level computation helps simplify the problem to a manageable level. But there are a number of participants in the discussion who act as if I grew an extra head every time bring up the fact that the physics of brain activity has relevance as well. They act as if they cannot distinguish between physical instantiation and abstraction.

None of what I've been arguing in this discussion so far is either radical or deeply obscure; its stark in-your-face obvious. I shouldn't have to painstakingly argue and explain whats plain to see =/

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

"Consciousness is like a circular mirror, looking at itself on itself"

Ron T.

 

[AkuManiMani]

So it's all just about qualia again isn't it?

So again: if your red is not my red why does that matter for consciousness?

Because you have to be conscious to begin with in order to have any perception of light in the 630–740nm wavelength range as being "red". That people can experience different qualia for the same stimuli [for instance, one person's "red", to them, may look like another person's "green", or even taste like another person's "bitter", etc.] indicates that there is not a one-to-one correlation between stimuli and conscious experience of stimuli. Hence why a quale is "regarded as an independent object".

If it doesn't matter why are qualia relevant? A quale could exist without consciousness.

If it does then at what point does having different qualia stop something being conscious?

Being conscious necessarily entails the active capacity to experience information as subjective qualities. If a subject is experiencing qualia, of any "flavor", then they are conscious. Basically, a quale is an informational element in one's conscious awareness. No consciousness means no quale.

 

[cyborg]

Because you have to be conscious to begin with

This isn't circular at all.

If I have to be conscious to begin with then clearly I don't need any qualia.

Q.E.D. qualia - as you use them - have nothing to do with consciousness.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

This is not "games playing". It's how philosophy works.

I really don't want to carry this on forever, but what in the world makes you think that philosophy is not "game playing"? You phrased your reply about not wanting to engage in defining these terms because (and this may simply be my perception) you seem to feel that someone's ego might be bruised -- that all it amounts to is exposing contradictions in some position.

When it amounts to game-playing, as in the Socratic dialogues (though, of course there were more serious issues at play as well), then that is all that falls out. One of the sub-themes of the earlier dialogues was the ignorance of Socrates' interlocutors.

I suppose it is fairly telling, however, that you do not want to engage in philosophy if you wish to call that form of game playing "how philosophy works". It is still game playing.

I just explained exactly why it is't. You can only be guilty of "begging the question" if you have selected a set of premises and definitions which both (a) assume your desired conclusion AND (b) could be provided in such a way that they do not assume any conclusions. This does not qualify according to either standard, let alone both. Firstly, by defining consciousness in this way I am not "assuming that no materialistic explanation is possible" - although this is eventually a consequence of that definition. Secondly, and more importantly, there is no other meaningful way of defining consciousness or awareness. By accusing me of question-begging you are just avoiding the real issue, which is that we have no real choice but to define awareness/consciousness in this way. Trying to define it in terms of material entities simply does not work.

People will continue to deny this until the cows come home. People will also continue to deny evolution. C'est la vie. People like to remain ignorant.

You have two choices. You can either accept that no materialistic definition of consciousness is possible and continue to the next part of the analysis, or you can go round and round in circles forever trying to find a non-existent materialistic definition that people will be willing to accept.

Dude, you just argued that no material explanation is possible. You stated it outright in your earlier post; in fact, that post consisted in nothing but repeating that no materialist explanation is possible without a reason why that is the case.

Now you are telling me that you did not say what you just said. I'm sorry but I'm very confused by such behavior.

You are further now telling me that you did not beg the question because you seem to imply that you have arrived at a set of premises and definitions that do not assume their conclusion -- following a post in which you specifically said that you would not provide a definition (and in which you certainly did not provide one).

I just don't know what to do with that. OK, let's redefine what you did. You baldly stated that material explanations are not possible with no reason as to why that is the case. Fine. Your opinion is noted. If you have nothing substantive to offer I think it is time to move on.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

What does "useful" mean?

Does it mean "I can use this definition to further explore consciousness in terms of science and materialism?" or does it mean "the definition actually refers to this problematic thing we are actually talking about?" I suspect you want a definition that does both, and this is quite impossible.

In my world useful generally means that there is a pragmatic consequence -- in this case that we may cut through the verbiage and equivocation over definitions to move the discussion forward instead of the merry-go-round on which it currently sits.