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Where is your experience?

Halfcentaur said:
If you transfer your frame of reference to a machine while your body is somewhere safe transmitting your sense of self through a complex system of connections, then your sense of self is actually going to be in the machine. It's still being generated by the brain.

You seem to be asking a question to make a point, and you seem to be waiting for a certain answer. Why?
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Really, it never ceases to amaze me the insistence of (some) members of this forum to pretend to see, or expect at any costs, some claim about something "supernatural" going on... come on... is that really all you are expecting? Here you rise a straw man "It's still being generated by the brain." Well, duh, where in my post do you see any indication of my claiming that the brain has nothing to do with it? In my example would it be generated then by the engine on the train? :D

Still, at least you understood what is going on, contrary to the first responses I got, you managed to realize that the sense of self is in the senses, so, in the train example if I wanted to point at your "sense of being you" I would point to your body, and it would be correct. You are located at a different location than your brain and I believe it is an interesting fact.

Of course, interesting things can be drawn from that mental experiment (to those who like to think this is) and so, your "it is still being generated by the brain" starts to be seen as an incomplete answer, as that it is not actually the brain (alone) what "causes the mind"... the senses are needed to, and that in a sense, consciousness cannot exist without the senses. No, again, is not that I'm discovering something new, revolutionary, something nobody have thought before... I just like to think about this kind of things and I'm interested in what people here think.
 
LogicFail said:
Just like I thought, self grandizing wooish nonsense........yawwwwn

"I am so wonderful because me goofy idea is so much more sophisticated than you unwashed horde of miscreants. look at me pet the golden unicorn..."

If i had a quarter for every time I've heard that spiel on this site I'd have about $42
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:rolleyes: I dare you to point at the "wooish nonsense"... come on... please illustrate me... :D Be as detailed as you possible can... if you can, of course.
 
Lowpro said:
Actually model dependent realism isn't too controversial. The woo that can stem from it is that model dependent realism has to eliminate the experience altogether and because of that elimination woo's believe it must mean free reign for weird ideas.
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By saying that our description that experiences are processed in ou brain is unsophisticated and naive sounds like dancing the border of woo to me.
 
LogicFail said:
By saying that our description that experiences are processed in ou brain is unsophisticated and naive sounds like dancing the border of woo to me.
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I edited to try to illuminate it a bit. Don't take the words "naive" as an insult or a loaded word (I used to as well) it's just that model dependent realism HAS to leave that possibility of naive realism open.
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
:rolleyes: I dare you to point at the "wooish nonsense"... come on... please illustrate me... :D Be as detailed as you possible can... if you can, of course.
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Nice , a personal attack.....that's going to win you argument points, it was totally unwarranted....


By saying that our experiences, what makes us who we are, is in the senses would be to state that someone with no limbs , no hearing and no sight has no experiences. But I would argue that by thought alone they are experiencing their own existence.

Are people in coma's not experiencing? When i am asleep am I not experiencing what happens in my dreams, though they are not being conveyed to me by my senses? My brain makes me who I am, I can lose any part of my body and I still exist until my brain shuts off.

Yes, I think attempting to link "self" to "senses" is a gateway to wooish thinking as stated so eloquently above by LowPro.
 
Might I add that I am of the opinion that trying to link philosophy with science makes both studies worse and neither better.
 
LogicFail said:
Might I add that I am of the opinion that trying to link philosophy with science makes both studies worse and neither better.
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Well as I said before, naive realism seems to be a bit more of a "caveat emptor" consideration that is within model-dependent realism and that's where woo's can latch onto it. I still think the OP question of where experience is with respect to a human subject has been answered; it's localized in the brain and probably nowhere specific as the inclination leads us to believe. "Self" is extremely illusory, and I think illusory is the best term too...
 
Lowpro said:
Well as I said before, naive realism seems to be a bit more of a "caveat emptor" consideration that is within model-dependent realism and that's where woo's can latch onto it. I still think the OP question of where experience is with respect to a human subject has been answered; it's localized in the brain and probably nowhere specific as the inclination leads us to believe. "Self" is extremely illusory, and I think illusory is the best term too...
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Well, not to get involved in this, but one could say that all "self" is , is a measure of experiences. So , one could say that "we" reside in our brain too...


But I digress, I'm not really feeling discussing this anymore tonight...where are some crazy people to laugh at ? :D
 
LogicFail said:
Well, not to get involved in this, but one could say that all "self" is , is a measure of experiences. So , one could say that "we" reside in our brain too...


But I digress, I'm not really feeling discussing this anymore tonight...where are some crazy people to laugh at ? :D
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I agree it resides in the brain, but that itself opens a can of worms. If the self resides in the brain as a measure of experience, what's the threshold for it then? Because of that, and the fact that there actually IS a naivete (again, not used a pejorative, just descriptive) in that there is at least historically been a perception of self, and I would believe that perception is now more accurately defined as consciousness. We can at best assume* a dead body is not conscious and therefor that perception is eliminated, but then it makes for an interesting investigation at which point you can flip the switch from dead to "conscious"

Again, I love plugging Christof Koch's book "The quest for consciousness" because he addresses this specific concern between being a precious zombie and being conscious. He doesn't answer it, but he lays the groundwork for a preliminary investigation.

*The reason I say "assume" is because while we do have a good understanding of the mechanics that describe perception, and through that we can say a dead body doesn't perceive at all because the machines that do the perceiving are nonfunctional AGAIN when we go back to model-dependent realism that naive realism has to kick in. It's not meant to be a "going nuclear" field leveling argument though, at the least all it does is reduce conviction from 100% to <99.9%. For woo's their conviction may be devastated to a much lower number...
 
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LogicFail said:
What exactly do you mean when you say "flip the switch from dead to conscious?"
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I'll try to be both accurate and succinct because the entire idea encompasses a 400+ page book. Koch descibes a "zombie within" which is essentially that consciousness obviously doesn't require every single bit of your brain. You can suffer a gunshot wound to the head and survive the surgery and have a particular area so damaged that you can no longer speak but you can sing perfectly (it happens, and it's hilarious). But are those patients "conscious" is the question. Obviously they may think they are even without particular faculties. This means that perhaps if they suffered a similar trauma prenatally and NEVER developed speech but could still sing then consciousness may not require that particular neural correlate. Sure that particular subject may be perceiving his or her own consciousness ABSENT of their ability to speak (and thereby having a naive consciousness; again we ALL have a naive consciousness because it's dependent on the faculties you have that's the entire point!)

But that makes it interesting! Which Neural Correlates are the ones involved in "just" consciousness, that is, if you remove them you become just "the zombie within"

It's not woo as it's just preliminary and utilizes scientifically understood concepts. It's just interesting to think of what trauma would be required to be between dead and "non-conscious" basically flipping switches within the brain to find that magical point or points.
 
Ahhhhh, I see, hmmmm......... I would say that the proper answer is probably :

'we don't know yet"

Though, I would take a guess that if we decided to hack some poor guy up (and I doubt that would be allowed to happen since it's pretty much murder)we would find that it's a war of attrition. That there isn't a "spot" or "part" that houses it all, but rather a cumulative effort of billions of different little bits working together and as you weaken the links between them, less and less of "you" is there until finally one link too many is cut, and you would cease to be.

Or, I could be totally wrong , and it's in the hippocampus.... lol Neurology was never my strong suit.
 
LogicFail said:
Ahhhhh, I see, hmmmm......... I would say that the proper answer is probably :

'we don't know yet"

Though, I would take a guess that if we decided to hack some poor guy up (and I doubt that would be allowed to happen since it's pretty much murder)we would find that it's a war of attrition. That there isn't a "spot" or "part" that houses it all, but rather a cumulative effort of billions of different little bits working together and as you weaken the links between them, less and less of "you" is there until finally one link too many is cut, and you would cease to be.

Or, I could be totally wrong , and it's in the hippocampus.... lol Neurology was never my strong suit.
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That's why it's so interesting :D it becomes even more dubious when you realize that cutting one link may sever entire faculties for only half your brain; you have to remember each lobe, which communicates with eachother, houses different faculties.

Imagine the fountains of grant money one could pour into researching it...
 
I would rather they spent that money researching particle physics!!! lol That's what I like talking about!
 
The OP question is like asking "where is the leader in a flock of birds?" or "where on the spectrum is black?"

Experience is an illusion created by the brain, like the illusion of leadership in a flock of birds.

I think Yoda might put it as, "there is no where -- there is only is."
 
It's not as hard as one might think. Try it this way -- if I asked you to point to where you think "me" is happening, where else could you point? What are the other candidates?

Either it's a malformed question, or you point to my brain.
 
Well, the heart is certainly not the center of personality, since plenty of people have had heart transplants and come out of surgery with the same basic outlook on life. The same can be said for: lungs, liver, kidneys and for removed, but not replaced organs such as: gall bladder, spleen, appendix. Otherwise the personality, the "you" has to remain in parts that have never been altered in modern medical practice (to which any physician members can more ably contribute), such as skin, musculature, and bones. However, there are plenty of good arguments based on people that have lost significant amounts of skin, muscle, bones, etc. and have not had personality changes that are not as well attributable to other reasons, to say that those are not the seat of personhood. On the other hand, look at brain injury cases. They can show significant changes in personality (e.g. Phineas Gage).

All of the above does not alter the possibility that we each have an invisible unicorn that safeguards our "self".

... Just to be clear.
 
LogicFail said:
Though, I would take a guess that if we decided to hack some poor guy up (and I doubt that would be allowed to happen since it's pretty much murder)we would find that it's a war of attrition. That there isn't a "spot" or "part" that houses it all, but rather a cumulative effort of billions of different little bits working together and as you weaken the links between them, less and less of "you" is there until finally one link too many is cut, and you would cease to be.
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Kinda like the scene in 2001 where HAL's brain is being pulled one board at a time. HAL doesn't stop at any one point, he just gets foggier and foggier.
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
It is unsophisticated and naive, a scientific account is preferable (and I would believe that it is preferred by JREF members). There is a fine line between naive realists and scientific realism, and of course, every naive realist I have found acts like if what he/she REALLY is a scientific realist, but it is rare. I can understand that, of course, as naive realism is all that is needed for daily life. Its like keeping figures of speech like "the sun rises" even when we believe otherwise (that the earths rotation creates the appearance of the sun rising).

Now as for my own stance, well, I have argued extensively about it, and it is difficult to explain it in few words. Here, this would be a good introduction to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism
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So, in line with model dependent realism, where would you point to indicate where your experience is?
 
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