On Consciousness

[Fudbucker]

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".

That doesn't make sense. If something must exist, then it necessarily exists in all possible worlds (i.e., it is impossible for it not to exist). If qualia must exist, then qualia exists.

Since nothing in the physical world has the property of necessary existence, qualia, being part of the physical world, also do not have that property.

I think "sensing" and "experiencing" are pretty close to the same thing, but
"sensing and experiencing light IS "red"" (with the emphasis on IS) sounds definitional. In which case, the statement isn't true because many of you have defined red as a certain wavelength of light.

 

[Mr. Scott]

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

Blind sight works something like this:

The image doesn't make direct qualia*, but features in the image do.

For example, a blind sight subject might be shown a dot that's moving upwards. He'd not see a dot, but experience and report sensing upward movement.

Or, you might show him an image of a tiger. He'd not see anything, but when asked to guess what he was looking at, would guess a tiger. So, the tiger quale would be experienced without the experience of a tiger image.

Cool, eh?

* I don't like the words quale or qualia but use them here to make a point. One could argue that qualia are just any information consciously registered. Everything coming into the mind has its own quale and triggers associated qualia. The thunderstorm outside, the couch I'm sitting on, the ticking of the clock, the approach of dinner -- all have a quale of their own. We could just call them information structures, but we're conditioned to think of them as uncomputable metaphysical subjective experiences.

PS: You know, this whole thread has a quale all its own for me? Sometimes a slightly icky quale.

 

[Belz...]

You're confused: If "red" has two different definitions, then we have to be clear which we're using.

You said "it makes no sense to use the same word "color" to talk about wavelengths of light AND mental states." It makes plenty of sense, and many words have several meanings. You want us to be clear, fine. But saying that there is no such thing as "red" light is silly.

Piggy has stated that "color" refers to a mental state (which is true).

Do you agree that "heavy" is a property of the object, not just the lifter ?

Anyone disagree so far?

No, I think we're clear, here.

 

[Belz...]

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.

I'm not sure, either. I don't know much about blindsight.

 

[Belz...]

That doesn't make sense. If something must exist, then it necessarily exists in all possible worlds (i.e., it is impossible for it not to exist). If qualia must exist, then qualia exists.

Since nothing in the physical world has the property of necessary existence, qualia, being part of the physical world, also do not have that property.

I'm not playing the philosophy game. Ever. If you don't know what I meant then ask for clarificatin, but don't try to out-philosophy me, because I'm just going to let you win, and that'll be no fun for you.

 

[Fudbucker]

You said "it makes no sense to use the same word "color" to talk about wavelengths of light AND mental states." It makes plenty of sense, and many words have several meanings. You want us to be clear, fine. But saying that there is no such thing as "red" light is silly.

Since I never said this, I don't know why you're talking about it. Perhaps if you didn't chop off my quotes, you wouldn't be confused:

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.

Obviously I think red light exists.

 

[Belz...]

Since I never said this, I don't know why you're talking about it.

PIGGY said it. Don't you remember when you walked into this conversation ? Please at least keep track of the conversation you participate in. I was responding to Piggy, and you responded to me. I thought you'd remember that.

 

[Fudbucker]

I'm not playing the philosophy game. Ever. If you don't know what I meant then ask for clarificatin, but don't try to out-philosophy me, because I'm just going to let you win, and that'll be no fun for you.

You're certainly grumpy today.

Anyway, when you make a claim that X MUST exist, you're making an ontological claim. You should be prepared to defend your statements, whether they're philosophical, mathematical, scientific, whatever. It's not about winning. Don't you want your argument to make sense?

Also, it's hilarious that you would object to playing a "philosophical game" in a discussion about consciousness. Especially, when you're espousing views of consciousness championed by philosopher Daniel Dennet.

 

[Fudbucker]

PIGGY said it. Don't you remember when you walked into this conversation ? Please at least keep track of the conversation you participate in. I was responding to Piggy, and you responded to me. I thought you'd remember that.

LOL, you were responding to Piggy when you quoted me.

OK, whatever, Belz.

 

[shuttlt]

Or, you might show him an image of a tiger. He'd not see anything, but when asked to guess what he was looking at, would guess a tiger. So, the tiger quale would be experienced without the experience of a tiger image.

Being able to guess with what ever success rate, even 100%, that my eyes have seen/are looking at a tiger doesn't strike me as much like what I normally mean by the word qualia. If I think the answer is "tiger", but I have no sense of how I know that, where is the qualia?

Just in order for the word "tiger" to get into one's head, there'd have to be a heck of a lot of processing of colour, shape, etc... not many of which in blind sight as you describe it seem to be becoming qualia, yet they are getting sensed and information processing is being done. It feels like sticking a label on something rather than experiencing qualia.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Being able to guess with what ever success rate, even 100%, that my eyes have seen/are looking at a tiger doesn't strike me as much like what I normally mean by the word qualia. If I think the answer is "tiger", but I have no sense of how I know that, where is the qualia?

Just in order for the word "tiger" to get into one's head, there'd have to be a heck of a lot of processing of colour, shape, etc... not many of which in blind sight as you describe it seem to be becoming qualia, yet they are getting sensed and information processing is being done. It feels like sticking a label on something rather than experiencing qualia.

I'm expanding the idea of qualia to encompass more than raw sensory information. I'm coining it right now. I think it's valid.

There's a module in the brain that has the role of identifying animals. One patient with damage to that module could not identify animals, but was otherwise pretty normal. He'd look at a tiger, and have no intuition about what it was, though he could reason out that since it had orange and black stripes and waked on all fours, it just might be a tiger. In other words, his brain could no longer perform any animal quale.

...or the guy who didn't believe his mother was his mother. He thought she was a stranger who looked, sounded, and acted exactly like his mother. In other words, he experienced all the sensory qualia of his mother, but his brain would not perform "mother" when he looked at her. Interestingly, he had no problem identifying her when speaking with her over the telephone. His problem was undoubtedly due to some interruption between the visual modules and the personal identification modules.

Here's where Ramachandran talks about these things in the cool documentary "Phantoms in the Brain" (Part one -- youtube will lead you to the subsequent parts):

 

[Piggy]

Blind sight works something like this:

The image doesn't make direct qualia*, but features in the image do.

For example, a blind sight subject might be shown a dot that's moving upwards. He'd not see a dot, but experience and report sensing upward movement.

Or, you might show him an image of a tiger. He'd not see anything, but when asked to guess what he was looking at, would guess a tiger. So, the tiger quale would be experienced without the experience of a tiger image.

This is incorrect.

All you're doing here is conflating conscious and non-conscious processes as though they were the same thing.

You're pretending that it doesn't matter that the person has no experience of sight.

But of course it does.

There's a difference between what's going on in brains that do and don't perform any experience of seeing what the eyes are looking at.

Pretending there's not is both non-sensical and counter-productive.

I find that many folks who do this are people who are into AI and want to believe that they are studying, or programming, consciousness, when they're not. Again, an attempt at a free lunch, something for nothing.

 

[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.



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.

Seriously, we cannot have a rational adult conversation if you continue with this "magic bean" nonsense. I know you think you're giving a witty dismissal to the physicalist position with that little bon mot, but you're simply displaying the fact that you don't understand it.

The paper does not in any way contradict what I'm saying.

Of course distinction among wavelengths in the retina is a necessary precursor to differential color experience downstream.

If the color blindness is caused by a retinal fault, then repairing that fault will repair the condition.

This does not in any way contradict the physicalist position. In fact, it's utterly trivial.

You are simply failing to understand the difference between what's necessary and what's sufficient.

 

[Piggy]

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

No, they do not have it wrong.

Nothing there contradicts the physicalist position.

Of course the brain distinguishes among various wavelengths of light.

And of course, the brain eventually produces various experiences of color as a result.

That is the phenomenon under study when cognitive neurobiologists study conscious experience, or one of the phenomena at least.

Again, you've made a trivial citation.

 

[shuttlt]

I'm expanding the idea of qualia to encompass more than raw sensory information. I'm coining it right now. I think it's valid.

I think you mean something different by qualia to what I mean and what I think Piggy means. One of us needs a new word.

 

[Piggy]

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

So, you are of the opinion that human survival depends on our brains experiencing light as color and airwaves as sound?

I won't even ask why you believe such a thing.

Because in fact, there are any number of qualia that a brain might produce in order to allow a being to navigate the world.

If poisons produced a sensation of intense heat as we got nearer, we would still avoid poisons.

If flames produced overwhelming nausea when we got too near, we'd still avoid getting burned.

And so forth.

Our phenomenal palettes are totally arbitrary, and in fact we know that they are not identical with those of other animals.

The fact that we experience light as color is just as arbitrary as the fact that we have five digits on our hands and not four or six.

Yes, it works, but nature was not bound to come up with that solution, and it's not the only possible solution that would have worked.

 

[Belz...]

Anyway, when you make a claim that X MUST exist, you're making an ontological claim.

That's what I said: I'm not playing the philosophy game.

LOL, you were responding to Piggy when you quoted me.

No, I was responding to Piggy when YOU quoted me. Again: KEEP UP.

 

[Mr. Scott]

I think you mean something different by qualia to what I mean and what I think Piggy means. One of us needs a new word.

Didn't we mention pain as a quale? Is emotional pain not a quale, just because it's not sensory?

I experience a particular quale, for example, when I see the colors of Jamaica. It's not the formal knowledge that those are the colors of Jamaica. It's a visual feeling I get that, in turn, brings up the taste of jerk chicken, the rhythm of reggae music, the texture of dreadlocks -- none of it verbal or coldly informational in the formal sense. All of it subjective.

Piggy, stop being so hostile/defensive and listen. You might learn something.

 

[Piggy]

Didn't we mention pain as a quale? Is emotional pain not a quale, just because it's not sensory?

I experience a particular quale, for example, when I see the colors of Jamaica. It's not the formal knowledge that those are the colors of Jamaica. It's a visual feeling I get that, in turn, brings up the taste of jerk chicken, the rhythm of reggae music, the texture of dreadlocks -- none of it verbal or coldly informational in the formal sense. All of it subjective.

Piggy, stop being so hostile/defensive and listen. You might learn something.

Well, all I can say is you might want to project a different tone onto my statements.

Also, I would recommend instead that folks on the informationalist side actually respond to the questions I've posed instead of choosing their own questions to respond to.

The thing is shuttit is right... if you choose to conflate conscious and non-conscious processes both under the rubric of "qualia" then you will need a new word to refer to conscious processes.

Sorry if pointing out errors bothers you, but that's the way it is.

I'm not one for kid gloves.

At least I'm not accusing you of believing that physical processes are magic.

 

[shuttlt]

Didn't we mention pain as a quale? Is emotional pain not a quale, just because it's not sensory?

I experience a particular quale, for example, when I see the colors of Jamaica. It's not the formal knowledge that those are the colors of Jamaica. It's a visual feeling I get that, in turn, brings up the taste of jerk chicken, the rhythm of reggae music, the texture of dreadlocks -- none of it verbal or coldly informational in the formal sense. All of it subjective.

Piggy, stop being so hostile/defensive and listen. You might learn something.

To answer this fully, I'd have to think some more. What you are talking about here goes beyond correctly guessing the word "tiger". My first attempt at answer would be to say that you seem to be saying there are a heck of a lot of distict qualia here. I vaguely remember reading that emotional disgust (seeing/thinking about something nasty perhaps) and physical disgust (eating something nasty) triggered the same areas of the brain. Clearly there are emotional associations to things that generate particular feelings, but I do wonder whether it isn't a redifinition of qualia to talk about a specific qualia for the Jamaican flag, if that's what you mean. If seeing the Jamaican flag makes your heart race, or triggers disgust or some such, then I can think I'm probably OK with the experience having qualia aspects. Other qualia may obviously be triggered by memories, I think this has been covered before. I don't think you can go from that though to a 1-1 correspondance between the brain sensing something and qualia for that thing being generated. Are blindsighted people constantly bombarded by the qualia of all the things their visual cortexes are exposed to?