A question for scientists: Primary and Secondary qualities

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Ian,

Damn, I'm going to be really busy tomorrow so shall have to make some comments upon the exchange between Titus and Stimpy on Wednesday. Essentially it seems to me Stimp that you're taking an instrumentalist approach to science and applying it to consciousness like you would for any scientific entity playing a fruitful role in our successful scientific theories describing the external world. Thus you treat the reality of consciousness as being analogically akin to the reality of an electron. In other words you're begging the question.

Exactly what question am I begging? This is the rational default position to take with respect to any phenomenon. Assume that it can be understood in terms of its observable physical effects, and attempt to do so, until such time as it is demonstrated that it cannot be.

So far, nobody has come even close to demonstrating that it cannot be. The only justifications I have seen so far are:

Proof by assertion: Somebody asserts that consciousness is irreducible, offering no supporting argument other than to shake his head in disbelief at anybody who does not agree that it is obvious.

Intuitive Obviousness: Consciousness seems special, so it must be. As if our intuition has never been wrong about anything else.

Conceivability Arguments: You can conceive of scenario in which consciousness would be irreducible, therefore you claim such a scenario is logically possible, and since it such a scenario is logically possible, consciousness cannot be reducible. Pure circular reasoning.

So far, this is all I have seen. All I want is some logical reason to believe that consciousness is not reducible to physical processes. Why is it unreasonable for me to assume that it is, until such time as I am given a reason to believe otherwise?

It doesn't matter how or why it affects the brain, only that it does. Look at my post again. I said that to assert that consciousness cannot be described in terms of its physical effects, is to assert that there are characteristics which have no effect, direct or indirect on your brain.
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Of course there can be characteristics of consciousness which have an effect on the brain.

There is no question that at least some characteristics of consciousness effect the brain. My question to Titus was whether there are any characteristics of consciousness which do not affect the brain.

I note, by the way, that he has never given a straight answer to this question.

Maybe all characteristics of consciousness have some effect on the brain. But it does not follow from this that consciousness and its characteristics can be so described.

Of course not. That would only follow if consciousness and its interactions with the brain function according to natural laws. I have already explained this.

Not unless you conflate consciousness or its characteristics, with the effect on the brain of consciousness or its characteristics.

There is no conflation. I am not saying that the characteristics of consciousness are equivalent to the effects it has on the brain. I am saying that if all characteristics of consciousness have physical effects on the brain, and if both consciousness and its physical effects function according to logical rules, then it necessarily follows that those rules can, at least in principle, be deduced by observing those effects.

Titus, it seems to me you've clearly shown that Stimps arguments are wholly irrelevant to your position. OK guys, goodnight.

He has shown no such thing.


Dr. Stupid

 

[Titus Rivas]

Who's proving by assertion?

Dr. Stupid,

Forgive me for not making new comments on points I regard as covered already.

This is a point which is new enough for me to make an additional comment about:

Proof by assertion: Somebody asserts that consciousness is irreducible, offering no supporting argument other than to shake his head in disbelief at anybody who does not agree that it is obvious.

Well, this will be how you see my proof. However, you leave out one element, namely that I don't just assert that consciousness is irreducible, but I refer to the fact that each of us who's not a zombie can notice for himself that it is not. So my assertion refers to personal experience which I asume (and that's the only real assumption I can't prove) to be shared by all of us.

The point is that if consciousness is something we subjectively experience, it can't be something we don't subjectively experience. It's a matter of taking seriously our subjective experiences qua subjective experiences. The fatal error in your system is that you don't.

Reduction of subjective experiences to anything else, i.e. to something non-subjective, is like saying that our subjective experiences aren't really subjective. And that in turn is the same as asserting that there really is no such thing as a subjective experience. Hence your misguided identification of introspection with self-awareness (namely in the sense of the brain observing certain physical processes by other physical processes).

You simply dismiss as irrelevant our subjective experiences. Unless you are a real zombie, you KNOW that subjective experiences aren't just physical processes in the brain.

Therefore, the only one who's merely presenting a Proof by assertion here, is called Dr. Stupid, not Titus Rivas.

Have you ever tried to explain away for example your own personal feelings (say for a relative or friend) by reducing them to nothing more than entirely quantifiable neural firings in your brain? Has it ever struck you as highly implausible? And if so, how have you 'solved' this problem?

Titus

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Titus,

Proof by assertion: Somebody asserts that consciousness is irreducible, offering no supporting argument other than to shake his head in disbelief at anybody who does not agree that it is obvious.
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Well, this will be how you see my proof. However, you leave out one element, namely that I don't just assert that consciousness is irreducible, but I refer to the fact that each of us who's not a zombie can notice for himself that it is not. So my assertion refers to personal experience which I asume (and that's the only real assumption I can't prove) to be shared by all of us.

Fine. Then simply present your proof that experiences are irreducible. The simple fact that you have experiences does not imply that they are irreducible. I certainly cannot imagine how to derive from my experiences that they are irreducible. So how do you do it?

I suppose it is possible that your experiences are different from mine, in some way that makes it possible for you to logically deduce the irreducibility of yours, but impossible for me to logically deduce the irreducibility of mine. Maybe I am a p-zombie, and you are not.

But I think it is far more likely to be one of the following:

1) The irreducibility of experiences can be logically deduced from our experiences, and I just don't know how to do it.

2) The irreducibility of experiences can not be logically deduced from our experiences, and your belief that your experiences are irreducible is based on intuition, not logical deduction.

I suspect the latter. If you claim it is the former, then please explain to me how to make this deduction.

The point is that if consciousness is something we subjectively experience, it can't be something we don't subjectively experience. It's a matter of taking seriously our subjective experiences qua subjective experiences. The fatal error in your system is that you don't.

Nonsense. I do not in any way claim that we do not subjectively experience consciousness. I just don't see any reason to believe that there is anything about subjective experiences which is irreducible to physical processes. Why do you?

Reduction of subjective experiences to anything else, i.e. to something non-subjective, is like saying that our subjective experiences aren't really subjective.

Only if you define "subjective" to arbitrarily exclude the possibility of something subjective being reducible to other things. Why would you do that? Subjective just means "pertaining to the subject". Something is subjective if it is happening in somebodies mind. I see absolutely no reason why this definition must stipulate that the mind, and therefore the subjective experience itself, cannot be physical processes.

And that in turn is the same as asserting that there really is no such thing as a subjective experience.

No, it is the same as asserting that subjective experiences are not irreducibly subjective! You are using the terms "subjective" and "irreducibly subjective" interchangeably, and then using that as a justification for claiming that experiences are irreducible!

Hence your misguided identification of introspection with self-awareness (namely in the sense of the brain observing certain physical processes by other physical processes).

I honestly do not have any idea what you think the difference between self-awareness, and introspection, are.

You simply dismiss as irrelevant our subjective experiences.

I don't dismiss them at all. I think they are extremely relevant. I just don't think they are irreducibly subjective.

Unless you are a real zombie, you KNOW that subjective experiences aren't just physical processes in the brain.

Then I guess I am real zombie.

Seriously, what kind of argument is that? I don't think you "KNOW" that subjective experiences are aren't physical processes in the brain either. I think you just believe they are, because of a combination of intuition and wishful thinking.

If you know they are, then explain how you have logically deduced this fact from your experiences. If you cannot do that, then you cannot claim that this knowledge is anything more than an intuitive belief.

Therefore, the only one who's merely presenting a Proof by assertion here, is called Dr. Stupid, not Titus Rivas.

What have I claimed to have proven, by assertion or otherwise? I have not claimed that I can prove that consciousness is reducible to brain processes, or even that consciousness is reducible to physical processes. All I have done is point out the lack of any evidence indicating otherwise.

Have you ever tried to explain away for example your own personal feelings (say for a relative or friend) by reducing them to nothing more than entirely quantifiable neural firings in your brain?

How would that "explain them away"? Describing subjective personal feelings in terms of physical brain processes does not magically make them stop being personal feelings. It just provides a quantifiable explanation for what personal feelings are.

Has it ever struck you as highly implausible? And if so, how have you 'solved' this problem?

No, why should it? I have absolutely no problem accepting that my personal feelings are physical processes occurring in my brain. Why should this present a problem? Why should I consider this implausible?


Dr. Stupid

 

[Titus Rivas]

Sisyphus climbing the hill again

Dr. Stupid,

How would that "explain them away"? Describing subjective personal feelings in terms of physical brain processes does not magically make them stop being personal feelings. It just provides a quantifiable explanation for what personal feelings are.

The point I was making is that as soon as you accept subjective personal feelings as being just that, i.e. subjective personal feelings, you can't claim that subjective personal feelings really are non-subjective processes in the brain.

You claim that my position that subjective experiences aren't quantifiable is circular. It would only be so, if I had invented subjective experiences. However, I haven't. What I have done is pointing at your own subjective experiences. Again, I refer to my paper on Kant's error . Some logic once more: If there really are subjective experiences, they can't be really something else. Either subjective experiences don't really exist, or they can be nothing but themselves. Now, if we accept that people really have, at the very last least, the subjective impression that they have subjective experiences, we are really admitting that the category of subjective experiences (i.e. experiences experienced by experients rather than quantitative patterns registered by a machine) refers to something which is REAL, and therefore irreducible to anything else than itself.

Titus

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Titus said:

Some logic once more: If there really are {irreducible} subjective experiences, they can't be really something else. Either {irreducible} subjective experiences don't really exist, or they can be nothing but themselves. Now, if we accept that people really have, at the very last least, the subjective impression that they have {irreducible} subjective experiences, we are really admitting that the category of {irreducible} subjective experiences (i.e. experiences experienced by experients rather than quantitative patterns registered by a machine) refers to something which is REAL, and therefore irreducible to anything else than itself.

I have inserted {irreducible} in the places where you seem to be making that assumption about subjective experience. Why are you making that assumption?

~~ Paul

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Re: Sisyphus climbing the hill again

Originally posted by Titus Rivas Dr. Stupid, The point I was making is that as soon as you accept subjective personal feelings as being just that, i.e. subjective personal feelings, you can't claim that subjective personal feelings really are non-subjective processes in the brain.

Hi, Titus. In the other thread about "the science of the future", you invited me to pop over here and discuss this very topic.

Okay. Observation number one. I don't see why one can't claim that the things I think of as "subjective personal feelings" (pain, love, yellow etc) are non-subjective processes in the brain.

Suppose I held the view that my meaty brain is all there is to my mind. So I believed that for me to be conscious of seeing the colour yellow, was just for my meaty brain to be in a certain electrical and chemical state. A state that could, with sufficiently advanced technology, be studied or observed.

You claim above that I can't hold such a view, but I'm not sure why you think I can't. Could you elaborate on that a bit?

Some logic once more: If there really are subjective experiences, they can't be really something else.

I simply don't follow this argument you present. So what I'm going to do is try to state it back to you in my own words. When and if I get it wrong, that way you should be able to pick up on the error and explain it to me.

I take the above passage to mean "if there are experiences that are irreducibly subjective, those experiences cannot be something else, such as physical states or processes". So you're just stating a definition of what it is to be irreducibly subjective, right?

Either subjective experiences don't really exist, or they can be nothing but themselves.

What this seems to be saying to me is "Either what I call subjective experiences are states or events in a meaty brain, or they exist independently". Okay.

Now, if we accept that people really have, at the very last least, the subjective impression that they have subjective experiences, we are really admitting that the category of subjective experiences (i.e. experiences experienced by experients rather than quantitative patterns registered by a machine) refers to something which is REAL, and therefore irreducible to anything else than itself.

Okay. What I believe you are saying here is that IF we accept that people think they have subjective experiences (seems obvious to me that they do), then it follows that "subjective experiences" is a term that refers to something which is real. Okay. Then you say that because the term refers to something which is real, that something is irreducible.

The first half I have no problem with. I think we both agree that subjective experiences are real, we just disagree as to whether that reality is a meaty brain reality or a spooky ethereal reality.

It's the conclusion that gets me. Why, if something is real, do you think it follows that it is irreducible? My mobile phone is real, but it's not therefore irreducible.

It seems to me that you state a definition, which is fine. Then you state that subjective experiences are either meaty or spooky, which is also fine. Then you say that if people think they have experiences, there must be some truth to that, which is still fine. But none of this gives us reason to believe in spooky mind-stuff.

Then the final claim arrives, and it just seems nuts.

Could you either tell me where I misunderstood you, or explain how what you said makes up an argument?

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Titus,

How would that "explain them away"? Describing subjective personal feelings in terms of physical brain processes does not magically make them stop being personal feelings. It just provides a quantifiable explanation for what personal feelings are.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The point I was making is that as soon as you accept subjective personal feelings as being just that, i.e. subjective personal feelings, you can't claim that subjective personal feelings really are non-subjective processes in the brain.

I am not claiming that they are non-subjective. I am claiming that they are not irreducibly subjective.

You claim that my position that subjective experiences aren't quantifiable is circular. It would only be so, if I had invented subjective experiences. However, I haven't. What I have done is pointing at your own subjective experiences. Again, I refer to my paper on Kant's error . Some logic once more: If there really are subjective experiences, they can't be really something else. Either subjective experiences don't really exist, or they can be nothing but themselves.

So you define subjective to mean irreducibly non-physical? If this is the case, then of course I claim that subjective experiences don't really exist. Experiences exist, but your experiences are not really subjective as you have defined the term.

This is not a valid argument. You cannot just tack on "irreducibly non-physical" to your definition of subjective, and then conclude that since our experiences are subjective, they are irreducibly non-physical.

Now, if we accept that people really have, at the very last least, the subjective impression that they have subjective experiences, we are really admitting that the category of subjective experiences (i.e. experiences experienced by experients rather than quantitative patterns registered by a machine) refers to something which is REAL, and therefore irreducible to anything else than itself.

Completely circular. In order to accept that people have anything subjective, as you have defined it, I would first have to accept that people's experiences are irreducibly non-physical.

Enough with the word games, already. Forget about the word "subjective" for a moment. Strike it from you vocabulary. Where is your evidence that our experiences are irreducibly non-physical?

If and when you provide that evidence, you can assert that subjective implies irreducibly non-physical. When you simply define it to mean that, your premise that people have subjective experiences is begging the question.


Dr. Stupid

 

[69dodge]

Re: Sisyphus climbing the hill again

Originally posted by Titus Rivas
If there really are subjective experiences, they can't be really something else.

The history of physics is filled with things being explained in terms of other, apparently very different, things: sound is really just pressure waves in the air; light is really just electricity and magnetism; heat is really just the random vibration of molecules. So your argument, that consciousness cannot really be just brain processes because it appears to be very different from brain processes, is not an argument that is especially convincing to a physicist.

 

[Titus Rivas]

Appearance and reality

To several of the skeptics here:

My point is, as you could read already in my paper Kant's Error, consciousness is precisely the (so called phenomenal) domain of "'the way things seem to be". Now you can in principle claim that things may seem different than they are. That isn't absurd.
But you can't claim that "the way things seem to be" is itself something else than what it seems. The way something appears is exactly the way something appears, and not just the apparent way something appears. Appearance and reality are one and the same thing if you are talking about appearance (or a subjective experience) itself. If it were not, it would not be "the way things seem to be".
In other words, if you have for example a feeling of pain which seems to be related to your toe, it may really be related to your finger, but it can't be totally absent as that very feeling of pain which SEEMS to be related to your toe. You can't explain away subjective experiences just by claiming they're merely subjective. That's whay I meant by saying subjective experiences cannot possibly be really something else. It's purely a matter of logic and coherence.

If you don't get this, I simply have to give up to protect my own sanity Let's see if I finally reach (or reactivate) yours with this formulation.

No hard feelings,

Titus

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Re: Appearance and reality

You can't explain away subjective experiences just by claiming they're merely subjective. That's whay I meant by saying subjective experiences cannot possibly be really something else. It's purely a matter of logic and coherence.

Who is trying to "explain away" subjective experiences?

As far as I can tell we're all agreed that we have subjective experiences.

The question is whether we should think that these subjective experiences involve non-physical phenomena.

If you have a logical, coherent explanation as to why we should think non-physical phenomena are involved, I'd dearly love to hear it.

 

[BillHoyt]

Re: Appearance and reality

The way something appears is exactly the way something appears, and not just the apparent way something appears. Appearance and reality are one and the same thing if you are talking about appearance (or a subjective experience) itself. If it were not, it would not be "the way things seem to be".

Let's see now. It is circular and it is a straw man. What is circular and straw? Oh, a crop circle! That's it. What's my prize?

 

[Titus Rivas]

Hi Kevin

Hi Kevin, Welcome to this thread started by Interesting Ian.

Who is trying to "explain away" subjective experiences? As far as I can tell we're all agreed that we have subjective experiences.

What I meant by these words is that though some agree that subjective experiences appear to exist as such (i.e. not as anything else), they claim that subjective experiences ARE not really what they seem.

The question is whether we should think that these subjective experiences involve non-physical phenomena.

Well, I've said so several before on this thread but as it is so long already, let me repeat my main points. Subjective experiences ARE (they don't just SEEM) subjective, i.e. they can't be observed via any other means than through introspection. Then they are qualitative in a sense which also implies they are non-quantifiable. Both intrinsic subjectivity and intrinsic non-quantifiability are at odds with (the dominant) materialistic definitions of physical reality. Therefore subjective experiences can't be considered physical by such definitions.

If you have a logical, coherent explanation as to why we should think non-physical phenomena are involved, I'd dearly love to hear it.

Just done so, at your service.
By the way, I highly recommend this excellent paper to you.

Titus

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Titus,

My point is, as you could read already in my paper Kant's Error, consciousness is precisely the (so called phenomenal) domain of "'the way things seem to be". Now you can in principle claim that things may seem different than they are. That isn't absurd.

Not only is it not absurd, it must be accepted as a fact, if we are to believe that "the way things are" is logically self-consistent, because "the way things seem to be", just plain isn't.

Things very often seem different than they are. That is just a fact of life.

But you can't claim that "the way things seem to be" is itself something else than what it seems. The way something appears is exactly the way something appears, and not just the apparent way something appears. Appearance and reality are one and the same thing if you are talking about appearance (or a subjective experience) itself.

If you define "subjective experiences" to be "what are experiences seem to be", then you have defined them to refer to something which is not real.

If it were not, it would not be "the way things seem to be".
In other words, if you have for example a feeling of pain which seems to be related to your toe, it may really be related to your finger, but it can't be totally absent as that very feeling of pain which SEEMS to be related to your toe. You can't explain away subjective experiences just by claiming they're merely subjective.

I don't need to explain away subjective experiences, because you have not established that they exist at all. What we know exists are experiences. You can claim that experiences are subjective experiences, but when you do so, you are asserting that our experiences are exactly what they seem to be. Where is you evidence to support this claim?

If you don't get this, I simply have to give up to protect my own sanity Let's see if I finally reach you with this formulation.

I get it just fine. You define words like consciousness and subjective to implicitly assume irreducibility, and then if anybody says they don't exist, you redefine them to refer to our experiences and mental processes, which we cannot deny exist, so that it appears that we are asserting that something which obviously does exist, does not.

Such bait and switch tactics do not impress me. Be clear in your definitions. If you define consciousness to be irreducibly non-physical, then do not claim that it is our experiences, unless you can demonstrate that our experiences are irreducibly non-physical.

You clearly mean something very different by "subjective" and "consciousness" than what people like myself, and Paul do. Why didn't you make this clear before? When it became clear that I was not using these words the same way as you are, which must have happened very early in our discussion, why didn't you say anything?

In any event, what possible justification could you have for asserting that our experiences are exactly what they seem to be? Especially given that this option is not only far less parsimonious than the physical process theory, but also has the problem that it amounts to claiming that consciousness is supernatural.

I asked you before if your justification for believing that consciousness is irreducibly non-physical, was purely intuitive. You said it was not. But if your entire reason for believing this is based on the premise that our experiences must be exactly what they seem to be, then it is a purely intuitive basis.


Dr. Stupid

 

[Titus Rivas]

Any new points?

Dr. Stupid,

I'm at a loss. I've done my best to make you understand my position and still to no avail. You must forgive me if I give up now.

hy didn't you make this clear before? When it became clear that I was not using these words the same way as you are, which must have happened very early in our discussion, why didn't you say anything?

This is ludicrous, as I've repeatedly called you an eliminative materialist, and that's one way of saying that we have different views about consciousness. I've explicitly said so. So something must have gone wrong when you were reading my posts.

Then, you appear to use the word seem in the exclusive sense of "just seem, but really aren't". This may be due to the fact that English is not my native language, but I used the words seem and appear in a neutral sense of "seem, but thereby it isn't clear if they are or aren't".

It's often been an entertaining discussion, hasn't it? So in that sense it certainly was worthwile especially if we take into account that BH's approach was the dissonant exception rather than the rule.

Best wishes,

Titus

 

[BillHoyt]

Re: Any new points?

It's often been an entertaining discussion, hasn't it? So in that sense it certainly was worthwile especially if we take into account that BH's approach was the dissonant exception rather than the rule.

Come back when you have evidence. Come back when you haven't a circular argument structured on definitions carefully crafted to ensure the a priori conclusion.

"What seems to be is what seems to be" is tautological. It is also utterly useless. The question is "what is what seems to be". When we remove the question from your tautological phrasing, we look at the evidence and clearly see that what seems to be is not always what is.

This simple, demonstrable conclusion is one of the principle reasons for science's move to intersubjective validation and reality therapy as its sine qua non for reaching conclusions about the nature of the universe.

 

[BillHoyt]

I'm at a loss. I've done my best to make you understand my position and still to no avail. You must forgive me if I give up now.

Stimpy, you are the weakest link. Guh-bah.

How arrogantly dismissive.

 

[ceptimus]

How arrogantly dismissive.

You should know.

 

[Titus Rivas]

Irrelevant

Stimpy, you are the weakest link. Guh-bah. How arrogantly dismissive.

If the one who posted had read my posts a bit better, he'd already know that I have not exactly claimed that Dr. Stupid deserves this name in any but an ironic sense. I've explicitly traced misunderstandings to other factors than stupidity.
I don't know about himself (the poster) though, but let me just ignore that annoyingly irrelevant question.

Titus

 

[BillHoyt]

Re: Irrelevant

If the one who posted had read my posts a bit better, he'd already know that I have not exactly claimed that Dr. Stupid deserves this name in any but an ironic sense. I've explicitly traced misunderstandings to other factors than stupidity.
I don't know about himself (the poster) though, but let me just ignore that annoyingly irrelevant question.

Titus

You've been challenged to provide evidence of your claims. You have failed to do so. You shut off conversations with each poster who reaches this point. Way to go.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Love to contribute guys, but I'm absolutely cream crackered.

Bill Ho, unless you can say anything constructive then kindly p*ss off.