I often don't mind being a p-zombie

[Darat]

That was stating the facts. How do you know them?

Same way you "know" that your "I" exists.

 

[rocketdodger]

If you want to start removing the I concept (at particular layers), then that is where you need to start slicing. Knock out my ability to recognize you as a separate agency and I no longer have the same concept, though I may very well still have a feeling of control that I cannot explain. Knock out my sense that I can control actions and you've cut deeper, though I would caution you that at this point you're starting to severely interfere with the "normal working" of this machine. For lighter touches, you can mess up my ability to conceive that the thoughts floating in my head are "mine", or any of a number of similar attacks--and at that point, you no longer need to hypothetically imagine entities, for there are plenty of real ones to study.

But that isn't really what I am talking about. I can burn my hand, or swerve to avoid an automobile, or even sit here typing, and be fully aware of the world and furthermore implicitly -- or rather, subconsciously -- aware of the distinction between self and non-self. Yet I have no thoughts that reference the concept of "I" in any way. In fact I would argue that most of us spend far more time in such a state than we do in those that do reference the concept of "I."

The concept of "I" is not merely self recognition, it is recognizing self recognition. If you removed that, I don't think it would impact the functioning very much at all, at least for most of the day.

 

[rocketdodger]

I agree with calebprime though--this isn't what p-zombies are supposed to be. They're supposed to refer to entities that lack the "raw feel" of experience, whatever that is. I recognize that you find this incoherent, but I don't see that as a valid objection to the definition. It's still supposed to refer to it. If it happens to be incoherent, it's simply incoherent--reformulating it coherently is still reformulating it all the same.

I guess I am speaking about a specific type of almost-p-zombie, a normal person who has been put on the path to p-zombieness by removing the "raw feel" of self.

You might say that is what the concept of "I" is to begin with -- the raw feel of self recognition. A p-zombie would not have that, correct?

 

[aggle-rithm]

I disagree. I would argue that if things like qualia had a coherent definition, it would be more along the lines of what you are aware of when you are aware of seeing red, for example. And that means we don't experience qualia until we start thinking *about* the qualia. For example, when you look at a red object, are you experiencing "what it is like to see red" before a thought such as "that is red" pops into your head? I say no. Until you have that thought, you are just looking at a red object.

Note that this is kind of a cheap position for me to take because it is impossible to argue against -- since there is no way to evaluate "redness" without thinking about "redness" to begin with -- but I can't help it.

One thing that I've found hard to wrap my head around...much of what we think of as "I" is actually just the verbal part of the brain, and those parts that have strong connections to that part. When you say 'a thought such as "that is red" pops into your head', you are really saying that the information has reached that part of your brain that is capable of saying "that is red".

According to some theories, the verbal part of the brain bullies and dominates the other parts into submission, so we think of their operation as being "unconscious". They don't become conscious until we put words to them...but it's very possible that "putting words to something" and "becoming conscious" of it are really the same thing.

Experiments on split-brain patients tends to confirm this view. They seem to indicate that there is another "I" in there that the verbal "I" doesn't know about. (And, of course, that "I" cannot call itself "I" because it needs language to do that...)

 

[rocketdodger]

One thing that I've found hard to wrap my head around...much of what we think of as "I" is actually just the verbal part of the brain, and those parts that have strong connections to that part. When you say 'a thought such as "that is red" pops into your head', you are really saying that the information has reached that part of your brain that is capable of saying "that is red".

According to some theories, the verbal part of the brain bullies and dominates the other parts into submission, so we think of their operation as being "unconscious". They don't become conscious until we put words to them...but it's very possible that "putting words to something" and "becoming conscious" of it are really the same thing.

Experiments on split-brain patients tends to confirm this view. They seem to indicate that there is another "I" in there that the verbal "I" doesn't know about. (And, of course, that "I" cannot call itself "I" because it needs language to do that...)

If it can't call itself "I" then is it really an "I?"

Or is it something else ... perhaps like the types of self reference that other creatures and even machines are capable of that so many people claim doesn't entail consciousness?

And if that were the case, is it possible that the whole hang up when it comes to human consciousness is the language thing?

 

[yy2bggggs]

According to some theories, the verbal part of the brain bullies and dominates the other parts into submission, so we think of their operation as being "unconscious". They don't become conscious until we put words to them...but it's very possible that "putting words to something" and "becoming conscious" of it are really the same thing.

Experiments on split-brain patients tends to confirm this view. They seem to indicate that there is another "I" in there that the verbal "I" doesn't know about. (And, of course, that "I" cannot call itself "I" because it needs language to do that...)

This sounds suspicious to me. First, the methodological concern.

You are presenting a hypothesis that the concept of the "I" is linked to language. Then you point to a corpus callosotomy patient, who reports that there seems to be an "I" that it doesn't know about. Now, how are you proposing exactly that your hypothesis is supported?

Your hypothesis suggests that there is no "I" in the right hemisphere. You're basically interviewing the left hemisphere, who gives a subjective response that there seems to be another "I". I grant it that we should merely interpret this response as something the left hemisphere came up with--that only makes sense.

But the silence of the right hemisphere is quite obvious. The right hemisphere cannot produce speech because that is a specialty of the left hemisphere. There's no confirmation here that the right hemisphere has no "I" due to its silence; it seems to be argumentum ad silentio.

Now, the evidential concern.

Speech production is a specialty skill of the left hemisphere, but it's also a very skilled form of communication, and not the only possible form available. As it turns out, in corpus collosotomy patients, the right hemisphere can be trained to comprehend simple language; and it can respond by reading and pointing to answers. Here's an amusing such case that I posted before:

In this scenario, the right hemisphere seems to be responding to questions of its belief, which suggests that it may in fact have a concept of "I".

This is how I understand what is going on, based on my current level of comprehension.

Our brains are massively parallel; however, somehow, we both do behave serially in particular fashions, and we "have to" behave serially in those fashions (it conserves quite a bit of energy to do so; alternately phrased, it wastes quite a bit of energy to not do so). The particular way in which serialization is required would be for acted on intentions--for physical feats, this is what makes me able to pick up the coke on the left or the pepsi on the right without "fighting myself" by reaching in between the cans. The same can be said for mental feats--and this is what helps us focus thoughts (at least in a "conscious stream").

The serialization of conflicting purposes is, I would guess, something done "cooperatively" by the brain--through "loudest wins", some "stabilization routine", or some other sort of method, there is a means to make sure the goal is stable and commit to it before carrying it out. We perceive ourselves as a singular agency because we perceive "the voted in" intent behind actions, and we also separately sense that there's a purpose in those actions (it does indeed appear to be a separate sensation).

In split brain patients, there are two "chunks" of massively parallel machines that don't communicate with each other. So you do have the "I" that is on the talking side, and that is the thing that is aware of its intents. But the "voting in" and the "purposeful actions" also occur on the right hemisphere side; only since it's not communicating with the left-hemisphere, there are now two "principalities". The left hemisphere doesn't know what intents the right hemisphere is "considering" or "votes in", so its only aware of its own intents. That comprises the "I" that the speech-expert reports on.

But the right hemisphere isn't for naught--it's got intents that it considers, votes in, and so on as well. The only difference here is that it has only a vestigial "speech expert", so it doesn't get to produce speech. But since it's also acting as an in-effect singular-"minded" entity, it becomes its own agency. So there's another "I" in there.

To further challenge the notion that the language part is what bullies the rest of the brain into submission, I offer a few other observations. Besides the specifics of the patient Ramachandran describes, corpus callosotomy patients' right hemispheres (left body motions for example) do seem to be able to carry out actions with purposes, so they are implementing the aforementioned "serialization" processes in the right hemisphere. Yet the right hemisphere doesn't have a language portion to "bully" the rest in submission, supporting my alternate view that this happens "some other way" through a more collaborative process than a "selective" one. Now, strictly this isn't quite true--there is still a vestigial speech center in the right hemisphere that could be playing the bullying role, but I don't see a reason to think that this is the explanation at this point.

Another point I'd like to raise is that the serialization that occurs in nominal cases, occurs in large part without consciousness. Back to the canonical driving example, I'm constantly making decisions, but I never both try to go up a gear and down a gear at the same time, fighting myself (lucky for me!). Yet I'm also almost never thinking of shifting--usually I'm concentrating on what I'm going to do when I arrive, planning ahead--that sort of thing. Or fantasizing, or something. So, per your description, since it's not conscious, presumably I'm not putting words to it (maybe I am subconsciously, but your account seems to be that I become conscious of it when I do so). And if that's the case, since no language seems to be involved, I would wonder why I should presume that it's the language center that is responsible for bullying myself into wanting to upshift rather than downshift.

If it can't call itself "I" then is it really an "I?"

Why not? You're pointing to a slightly different concept of "I"--one of recognizing self-recognition. But that's still different than producing the word "I". You're looking for whether or not there's a conceptual category of a particular type; someone who can express that category certainly has it, but that's an overspecification. If someone cannot express it, they can still either have it or not have it--they just can't map it in a particular language.

I'm not entirely sure if our hypothetical corpus callosotomy patient's "right hemisphere" has this particular sense of "I", for example, but it would seem that it could be phrased in simple enough language to ask the right hemisphere so that it can give you a response, if you want to apply that test. But you won't know until you train the patient and ask it the question. (And you may want to rule out that the training produced the concept somehow).