On Consciousness

[Piggy]

Because the alternative would imply the monkeys had specialized neural infrastructure already in place just in case they happened to be injected with a tailored virus that mutated the opsins of a fraction of their cones into responding to a different wavelength. That seems somewhat less likely than the hypothesis that the existing infrastructure is plastic enough to code for a novel population, something we already know most of the brain is capable of.

Do you mind re-linking the study, please. I don't have the original link.

 

[PixyMisa]

I will be sure and enquire of my tablet as to its disposition before I engage in email activity.

Non-sequitur.

Consciousness IS symbolic computation….and consciousness IS data processing… and consciousness IS information processing.

Yes.

Consciousness seems to be…everything. We have an entire universe that is… consciousness (is there anything that isn’t information?). A universal consciousness!!!! How interesting. Pixy has become a theist!

No.

You do realise that symbolic computation, data processing, and information processing are the EXACT SAME THING?

 

[Fudbucker]

Wavelength doesn't exist ?

In your brain???

 

[Beelzebuddy]

No, simply referencing an ability to distinguish between wavelengths does not explain why the brain does what it does later, when it produces specific colors.

No, it is the production of specific colors. Different wavelengths trickle down through the visual system to make differently activated neuronal populations, which is color.

You see red instead of green because the red population - the population that's active when a red wavelength is presented; the population that differentiated itself over time by repeated presentation (at least 20 weeks, if the linked paper is accurate) - is active, and not the green population. That's it. We're done. There's no next step. That is the color, that is seeing the color, that is the experience of seeing the color, that is however many nested layers of homunculous special pleading you want to wrap around the damned thing to convince yourself that you're more than that. You're not. This is where it all happens, and there is no magic bean here.

Do you mind re-linking the study, please. I don't have the original link.

Sure: linky. If you're looking for an excuse to dismiss the paper's results, let me give you a valid out: some female monkeys of that species naturally expressed trichromatic vision, so if you want to argue that there's some kind of neural processing infrastructure that somehow survives the typical neural culling processes and is specifically required for nonexistent red color vision yet is flexible enough to work with red cones expressing the human homolog of the LW opsin, that's at least less wrong than most of the other alternatives.

 

[steenkh]

For the last time, steenkh, there is no such thing as a "physical reality" of color outside of what you're calling a "mental image".

The laws of physics don't allow it.

So these guys have it all wrong: Green is centered at around 510 nm wavelength

By the time an animal's brain generates the experience of color, the light which triggered it -- if it happens to have been triggered by light, which it doesn't have to be -- is a long way away.

By the time a camera records the colours in the picture, the original light is long gone. What is your point?

And as has been described more than once, the exact same "physical reality" can trigger more than one color response inside different brains, so your choice of which color to assign to the "physical reality" must be arbitrary.

We have been through this before, and the answer is still that different data structures as a result of different physical input is no problem for a computer theory of consciousness. Hard-wiring and learning can ensure that the data structures will be adequate and correspond in different individuals. There is nothing arbitrary here, so there is no need for a magic bean.

You're simply dead wrong about this. Demonstrably, provably so.

Could be, but you have certainly not demonstrated or proved it. If you want to, you could start by accepting that colours are a physical reality, as every physicist can tell you. And please, do not again confuse yourself by conflating the physical colours with the colours in your mind, which is a different thing.

DNA can be described as data, but that's not the same thing as it being data. DNA is physical stuff. Everything it does can be described in terms of physics, with no recourse to "data". Talking in terms of "data" simply makes it easier to talk about.

Information is not stuff, it is an abstraction, a measurement.

Redefining data will not help you. DNA carries information, and that information is used to build cells and organisms. That is data, but if you prefer, we can call it something different, it just makes talking about it more difficult.

 

[Belz...]

In your brain???

Please keep up. No: objectively. Red = wavelength X to Y.

 

[Belz...]

What you fail to take into account is the obvious fact that it's possible to "re-wire" an animal brain so that, for example, it "sees" sound waves and "hears" light waves. This has been done in ferrets, for example.

You seem to think that if humans do this to a brain, it would be some sort of "distortion" of a natural dispensation of things.

No one "seems" to be doing anything of the sort. Seeing red as green, or "sour", doesn't change the fact that it is, actually, red.

 

[steenkh]

What you fail to take into account is the obvious fact that it's possible to "re-wire" an animal brain so that, for example, it "sees" sound waves and "hears" light waves. This has been done in ferrets, for example.

You seem to think that if humans do this to a brain, it would be some sort of "distortion" of a natural dispensation of things.

Yes, I think there is a low survivability with this scheme. What was the re-wiring supposed to be an argument against?

But the fact that we respond to light in our eyes with colors and air in our ears with sounds is just a quirk of evolutionary history.

Evolution could just as easily have made our brains to hear light, see the air in our ears, feel nauseated when too close to heat, or feel burning sensations in response to potential poisons in our noses or mouths.

Hardly, because humans would not have survived in that case.

The fact that our brains produce the phenomenology that they do is entirely accidental and arbitrary. Colors are not, in fact, a quality of light, and sounds are not, in fact, a quality of the way air bounces around.

I give it to you that you stick to your guns no matter how the laws of physics is against you!

Which leaves the question which you refuse not only to answer but even to properly consider… when you look at a stoplight, why does it appear to you that the red light is on the bottom and the green light is on top, rather than the other way around?

What is there to answer? The red light is red to me because some apples have the same colour, cheeks can be red, and other people tell me that they call this colour red. All the connections that make up the data structure that we call red.

It's not just that you're not answering the question. But your blind adherence to an informationalist point of view is preventing you from even understanding the question -- a question which should be quite simple to understand.

I believe I understand the question for the silliness that it is, and your blind adherence to the belief that there is more to the brain than can be emulated with a computer makes you invent such questions because of they seem 'deep' to you.

I note that you are now advocating that the "phenomenology" of the brain is entirely accidental and arbitrary. How do you solve the problem that every human and animal actually sees the colours that their visual system allows, and that they hear the sounds, and smell the smells? There is not much arbitrariness here.

 

[Piggy]

No, it is the production of specific colors. Different wavelengths trickle down through the visual system to make differently activated neuronal populations, which is color.

You see red instead of green because the red population - the population that's active when a red wavelength is presented; the population that differentiated itself over time by repeated presentation (at least 20 weeks, if the linked paper is accurate) - is active, and not the green population. That's it. We're done. There's no next step. That is the color, that is seeing the color, that is the experience of seeing the color, that is however many nested layers of homunculous special pleading you want to wrap around the damned thing to convince yourself that you're more than that. You're not. This is where it all happens, and there is no magic bean here.

There's no magic bean anywhere. Nobody here believes in any magic bean. Can you please, at last, stop with that nonsense? Thank you.

Yes, different wavelengths of light trigger different sorts of neural reactions which result in the experience of different colors.

But you still have not answered -- nor, apparently, understood -- the question.

There is, at present, no physics, no calculus, no theory of any kind which explains why the specific colors are what they are.

If we shine a light in a person's eye (observer A) and have another person (observer B) observing the first person's brain activity, we have two sets of observations.

Observer B can see how the light triggers neural activity. And we have physical theories to account for that. We also have physical theories to account for any response such as squinting or reflexive muscle movement.

That's no problem.

But when we do this repeatedly, and with different wavelengths of light, we end up with 2 sets of observations which end up being very tightly correlated.

Let's say we try it with 6 different wavelengths, W-1 through W-6.

Observer B records that the brain has neural responses which vary regularly, let's call them N-1 through N-6. These are related in many ways -- all going thru the visual cortex, for example, but they're not identical, and their variance is perfectly regular.

And explaining this correspondence is no problem, given our current understanding of physics, chemistry, and biology. We know why N-1 is always the response to W-1, and N-2 is always the response to W-2, and so forth.

The problem to be solved, however, occurs when we try to explain the observations of observer B with the observations of observer A.

When observer B records that the brain is performing N-1 through N-6, observer A consistently reports an entirely different set of observations of the resulting phenomenology, P-1 to P-6, which in this case happen to consist of colors.

The correspondence is just as tight and consistent as with the W-to-N observations.

But unlike the W-to-N observations we have no theory to explain why P-1 to P-6 are arranged in that pattern, and not some other pattern.

We know that they are, but we can't explain why.

For that matter, we can't explain why it's that particular set at all. Why is it not instead P-47 through P-52, which could be colors or sounds or smells or any other bits of the phenomenological palette?

We can't find an explanation in the Ws, clearly, because that's just backing up the correspondence a step further, which doesn't help.

Nobody studying the brain believes that this correspondence is the result of magic (which is why your "magic bean" nonsense is just silly).

It's simply two sets of observations which are tightly correlated and for which we currently have no theory, or even the basis of a theory, to explain the correlation.

And it's not enough to say, "Well, it just is". We know it just is, but why?

It's like when Newton discovered that gravity decreases in proportion with the square of the distance between two objects. After Newton, we could say, "That's just what gravity is, it's an attractive force that weakens in proportion with the square of the distance."

But that observation doesn't explain why that value should be what it is, and not some other value, such as the raw distance, or the cube of the distance.

So far, our Einstein of consciousness has not appeared to explain why N-1 is correlated with P-1, and not P-24, or for that matter no P at all!

In everyday terms, we don't understand why a normal human brain sees a green light on the bottom of a stoplight and a red light on top, and not the other way around.

We know that it is the case.

The question is why.

 

[Belz...]

There's no magic bean anywhere. Nobody here believes in any magic bean. Can you please, at last, stop with that nonsense?

Don't you find the irony delicious ? I suppose it could've been more obvious if someone had instead called you a consciousness mythicist.

There is, at present, no physics, no calculus, no theory of any kind which explains why the specific colors are what they are.

And none probably ever will. It's like asking "why" the universe exists rather than not, and expecting an answer.

Again: what would you expect us to experience ? You ignored that question when it was forwarded to you, and qwhen someone else also asked it.

What's funny here is that you are asking for an impossible degree of knowledge and certainty in this thread, while blindly trusting so-called experts about a very uncertain conclusion in another thread, going so far as excluding all other options.

 

[shuttlt]

Piggy, let's say we remove colour from the equation ? Let's imagine an alternate scenario human with a brain that doesn't produce what you would call qualia.

So the light of wavelength X hits the retina, and a signal is sent to the brain, which interprets the signal to mean that light of type X has been detected.

How, exactly, do you expect the mind of that hypothetical human to perceive light ? He can't really see a text message saying "Light X detected", right ? Because that's also qualia. He can't see colour, sense smell, or hear sounds. He just receives raw information. How do you think this person would experience light of wavelength X ? If you're so sure that the "red" part is an extra step or component, then what would you expect to happen without it ?

Now apply this to a very complex machine. One far superior to anything we have today, and with the exact same capacity as a human. Its camera detects light of wavelength X and transmits a signal to the CPU. How do you expect the CPU to "experience" this, and how is it different than our hypothetical human or, in fact, actual real-life humans ?

And if someone could be bothered to quote this to Piggy, who has me on ignore, apparently, I would be grateful.

Isn't this just a restatement of the p-zombie problem which I think Piggy has already commented on at least once.

 

[Belz...]

Isn't this just a restatement of the p-zombie problem which I think Piggy has already commented on at least once.

No it's not. Piggy says that there is no explanation for why we see red as red. I'm asking him what he expects us to see, then. How does he expect us to experience that wavelength of light ? How would that be different from a non-conscious human ? And how is that, then, different from a machine's perception ?

I'm not arguing for P-zombies.

 

[shuttlt]

No it's not. Piggy says that there is no explanation for why we see red as red. I'm asking him what he expects us to see, then. How does he expect us to experience that wavelength of light ? How would that be different from a non-conscious human ? And how is that, then, different from a machine's perception ?

I'm not arguing for P-zombies.

OK. I thought you were assuming that the person was somehow identical to a regular person, but lacked qualia - in this case a specific one.

If this person has no colour phenomenology, aren't they brain damaged/neurologically impaired in some way? In what sense the colour information got through to them would surely depend a lot on the details? Perhaps it would be like blindsight? I can't immediately think of any sense data that seems to lack qualia that I have more direct access to than that.

 

[Fudbucker]

Please keep up. No: objectively. Red = wavelength X to Y.

Wait. How can red exist in the brain AND as a certain wavelength of light?

We must be talking about two different things: the mental state of "redness" and a corresponding wavelength of visible light. Therefore, it makes no sense to use the same word "color" to talk about wavelengths of light AND mental states.

Piggy's right: colors are mental states. Or, "Red" is a particular wavelength, "mRed" is the mental state caused, in part, by seeing "red" wavelengths.

ETA: So the question can be framed: why does "mRed" occur when we see "Red" as opposed to "mGreen"? How can I prove that your "mRed" is the same as mine?

 

[Belz...]

OK. I thought you were assuming that the person was somehow identical to a regular person, but lacked qualia - in this case a specific one.

If this person has no colour phenomenology, aren't they brain damaged/neurologically impaired in some way? In what sense the colour information got through to them would surely depend a lot on the details? Perhaps it would be like blindsight? I can't immediately think of any sense data that seems to lack qualia that I have more direct access to than that.

My point is actually that, insofar as qualia exist, they _must_ exist. There's no way to sense something without experiencing it. Piggy seems to think that there's an extra step to sensing and experiencing light that produces "red". I suggest that sensing and experiencing light IS "red".

 

[Belz...]

Wait. How can red exist in the brain AND as a certain wavelength of light?

By having two different definitions.

We must be talking about two different things: the mental state of "redness" and a corresponding wavelength of visible light.

Yes, as has been pointed out by more than one poster already. But in any event it's false to say that red light doesn't exist.

Therefore, it makes no sense to use the same word "color" to talk about wavelengths of light AND mental states.

Non sequitur.

Piggy's right: colors are mental states.

No, he's not, and you're wrong: red is defined as a range of light wavelength, in addition to being an experience.

 

[shuttlt]

My point is actually that, insofar as qualia exist, they _must_ exist. There's no way to sense something without experiencing it. Piggy seems to think that there's an extra step to sensing and experiencing light that produces "red". I suggest that sensing and experiencing light IS "red".

Do you mean then that people with blindsight do in fact experience qualia associated with vision?

 

[Belz...]

You might have a point, there. I don't think they experience it the same way we do, but if I understand correctly there is something going on in there.

 

[Fudbucker]

By having two different definitions.



Yes, as has been pointed out by more than one poster already. But in any event it's false to say that red light doesn't exist.



Non sequitur.



No, he's not, and you're wrong: red is defined as a range of light wavelength, in addition to being an experience.

You're confused: If "red" has two different definitions, then we have to be clear which we're using. Being clear is never a non-sequiter.

Piggy has stated that "color" refers to a mental state (which is true). Color has also been used to refer to a specific wavelength, which is causing a lot of confusion.

The mental state of "red" (mRed) is partially caused by, a certain wavelength (red). However, mRed and red are two different things.

Anyone disagree so far?

 

[shuttlt]

You might have a point, there. I don't think they experience it the same way we do, but if I understand correctly there is something going on in there.

Do you mean by "something" some qualia, or just that knowledge gained from vision is getting into the conscious mind by some indirect path? I'm no expert on it, so I'm not certain of the answer. Even if there were qualia associated with blindsight, I don't see why it should be impossible for such things to happen without qualia. The brain clearly does a lot of things that it doesn't bother us with.