A question for scientists: Primary and Secondary qualities

[Titus Rivas]

69dodge,

Analogously, a certain pattern in my brain should be considered a representation of a subjective experience if that pattern can somehow be used to recreate the experience

As I have shown already, that wouldn't be enough if you're talking about subjective experiences as a concept.

Yes, but perhaps the process of recalling a memory is analogous to playing the file, rather than simply examining its contents.

Again, that is not enough if what you're doing is precisely examining the contents.

What would that even mean? What is a stored experience without anyone who is currently experiencing it? How can it be subjective in the absence of a subject?

It is not so much a subjective (experienced) concept (though it can momentarily become one as all concepts can), but a metasubjective concept. Whatever its realization, it can only be realized in a non-physical medium linked to the same entity that we call experient during consciousness. That was the point I was making.

Best wishes,

Titus

 

[Titus Rivas]

The same old tune

Hi Kevin,

So just to make everything crystal clear, one of your main points is that subjective experiences cannot be observed except through introspection?

Yes, correct.

can't see why your copy wouldn't then have an identical set of subjective experiences, and be as convinced as you are that they had handled a rose. Unless that thought experiment has something drastically wrong with it, your story has something wrong with it.

As I've understood your thought experiment, it really HAS something wrong with it, as it deals with recreating subjective experiences in another subject, not with observing subjective experiences as such. And the latter was what I was talking about.

I recommend you read my paper Kant's Error . Hopefully that will help you out.
If you have done so already, try again.
If that doesn't work either, you might want to read books by Dr. John Beloff and The Self and its Brain by Karl Popper and John C. Eccles.
I can hardly add anything new to what I have said already about this topic.

Best wishes,

Titus

 

[Dancing David]

Re: Identifying the source of confusion

Especially for Paul, but probably interesting for other posters as well:

Ontological reduction is the theoretical reduction of one part of reality to what is naively conceived of as another part of reality.

In the case of the reduction of chemistry to physics, or of physiology to chemistry and physics, we see that the reduction really concerns the regularities of the processes taking place in the domain concerned. For example, chemical laws can be understood as special instances of physical laws and therefore chemistry can be reduced to physics. Similarly physiological laws can be understood as special instances of chemical and physical laws and therefore physiology can be reduced to chemistry and physics.

The reason why this type of reduction concerns laws rather than substance, is that the general underlying ontology states that the substance is one an the same in all of these cases, namely the physical world or matter. The generally assumed difference between biology and physics is not that one would be non-physical and the other physical, but that the first is clearly governed by more complex laws than the second.
The battle between reductionists and holists in this field concerns the question whether the laws governing biology can be reduced to physical laws or not. Holists claim that biological laws are radically different from physical laws rather than simply special, complex manifestations of them.

However, there is a second battle in theoretical biology, and that is the battle between reductionism and vitalism. Vitalism differs from holism in that it claims that biology is irreducible to physics, not primarily because of irreducible laws, but first of all because biology is about a different substance than physics, namely life (Latin: vita). Life would not just be a special manifestation of matter.

Similarly, in the philosophy of mind we find two battles which involve reductionism:
- Reductionism versus Holism. So far, there have been no proponents of holism in this thread. Holists, such as Roger Sperry, claim that the mind -though completely physical- functions according to special higher level laws which cannot be reduced to physiology.
- Reductionism versus Dualism. This is the battle of which I'm one of the main participants here.

(Idealism is a third position which is not so much a battle against reductionism but rather rejects the category of matter as irreducible to mind)

The question central to the reductionism vs. dualism debate concerning qualia is primarily one about substance, not about reducibility of the laws that govern the mind to physiology. In other words, we don't ask ourselves if consciousness can be said to function according to the laws we already know from physiology, but if consciousness IS really something different from the brain. So the causes of consciousness is not our primary concern, but the question whether consciousness can be regarded as a physical phenomenon. To answer this question it is not enough to state that mental laws can in principle be reduced to physiological laws. That would be begging the question, as you would just assume that the mind is nothing but the brain. Whereas the dualist position is that it is not, and that we have every reason to believe it is not and no reason to believe that it is.

I truly hope this helps.

Titus

Wow, Titus, this is it the explanation that I have been waiting for, alot of what I have read here makes more sense now. Thank You.

I still think that there are a lot of unproven assumptions that you take as given in your POV, bit thank you very much!

 

[Interesting Ian]

Re: Re: Hi Kevin

In a certain sense nothing is what it seems, since our eyes and ears can't resolve individual atoms and electromagnetic waves.

Hmmmm . .I see you've been comprehensively "brainwashed" into an unthinking acceptance of the common western metaphysic. Come on Kevin, stop talking crap.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Re: Re: Hi Kevin

I still think the simplest story is that our perceptions are brain states,

How is that anymore reasonable then saying a biscuit is really one and the same thing as an elephant? One could come up with all sorts of simple stories which are patently absurd.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Re: Re: Hi Kevin

Okay. Here's a thought experiment. I am an alien with sufficiently advanced technology. I put you in a blank room and I make a copy of you, perfect down to the quark level, which I put in an identical blank room.

I show the original you a rose. You smell it, touch it, fiddle with it, everything. I record what goes on in your brain and bloodstream and glands, with quark-level accuracy, using my alien scanning widget.

Then I use my alien action-at-a-distance widget to cause the exact same brain events, again replicated at the quark level, in the copy of you I made. I, the alien, know there is no rose but I fiddle your copy's brain states so it has exactly the same experiences as the original did.

I can't see why your copy wouldn't then have an identical set of subjective experiences, and be as convinced as you are that they had handled a rose. Unless that thought experiment has something drastically wrong with it, your story has something wrong with it.

I submit the copy would be a corpse. If materialism is true then Titus would simulataneously experience out of both his own body and the copy.

 

[hammegk]

Re: Re: Hi Kevin

...
Okay. Here's a thought experiment. I am an alien with sufficiently advanced technology. I put you in a blank room and I make a copy of you, perfect down to the quark level, which I put in an identical blank room.

I'm not sure we get very far with thought experiments which break TLOP rather than illuminating TLOP.

How do we thought-experiment Heisenberg & FTL communication out of your "exact duplicate" picture?

 

[Interesting Ian]

Re: Re: Hi Kevin

Introspection is just another sense, like touch or smell.

WTF??

It gives us useful reports, but it isn't perfect and it doesn't accurately represent reality at the atomic level.

Oh for God's sake don't be such a complete idiot.

Why should we presume that it alone of our senses gives us access to an otherwise inaccessible, supernatural realm? It just seems a bit silly.

You're claiming that if conscious experience is what it seems to be ie itself, then it is supernatural? Care to elaborate on this??

 

[Dancing David]

I don't mean to add to Titus's position that somehow there is a special and magical set of experineces that are beyond the reach of the scientific method. Because I would say that you are categorizing these thoughts right here, and there fore you are engaging in reduction of meta cognitive events.

But about this whole transfering of a subjective experience from one person to another: this will only happen in science fiction or the totaly distant future.

There are underlying mechanisims to the biology and perception that need to be understood, and somewhat support the argument of irreducibilty but not the 'special' nature of qualia.

When we look at the color red, and our eyes interact with the photons, this is called sensation. And it is more complex than just a switch in our eye being triggerd that then sends the signal red. It is more that a set of signals from adjoining receptors say that it is responding to red and not to green, and probably the other colors as well. There are these interlocked circles in the retina that go into the processing of the mere sensation of color.

These signals are then sent to the visual cortex for further processing, because our eye is not actualy as still as you might think, a dot of red is going to be percieved by a whole different set of receptors as the eye randomly scans the object, I could be wrong but there are subtle motions in the still eye.(It has been a very long time since I went to school). The signals in the visual cortex are processed in very thin strips, where all the cross matching and reference occurs before the interaction with the thinking cortex occurs and the 'projection' of the visual image by the visual cortex to the thinking cortex occurs. It is called projection but is not related to Descartes theater.

The point of this is that the brain is not electric, it is chemical, the brain is not a semiconductor chip, the neurons grow as the brain develops and apparently continue to grow. The signals in the brain are not programs like a computer, they are organic, sloppy, probalistic and reverberating in nature. A single cell has a probablity of firing in the network, it is only through the reverberation of multiple cells, and multiple networks sending the same matched or opposed signal that a coherent event occurs. It is nothing like a computer chip in the least. We are talking about a trillion cells with an order of magnitude higher connections, all trying to figure out things, very organic.

But the point of this is that each brain is unique, it is grown to generate similar events and patterns, but each set of cells, each set of networks, each set of reverberations is unique. I doubt very highly that the 'Matrix' like scenario is going to occur for a very long time. The actual set of brain experiences that produces the color red is goinf to be very different for each individual each time they see the color red. Because of the sloppy organic nature of the whole thing. Certain areas of the networks are going to have similar activity, but they will not be identical each time. That is for a single brain. The Brain Shaper (TM) would have to study the single brain for quite a while to learn which areas to even copy.

Much less the mapping of the 'experience' to the second brain. It is possible but would be very, very complex.

So while reducible in scientific terms, each brain does have very unique and individual sets of patterns to generate a simple qualia.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Re: The same old tune

Hi Kevin,
Yes, correct.

As I've understood your thought experiment, it really HAS something wrong with it, as it deals with recreating subjective experiences in another subject, not with observing subjective experiences as such. And the latter was what I was talking about.

Either you misunderstood me, or we are talking past each other.

In my thought experiment the subjective experience was observed. Then it was recorded. Then it was duplicated.

The point was that by exhaustively cataloguing what was going on in your mind as you handled the rose, the alien was observing everything there was to observe about that event. In my world view, anyway.

This brings up the question, what reason would you (Titus) give me to make me believe that the scenario is conceptually implausible? Because if the scenario is plausible, even in a very loose sense, then your argument that experience is irreducibly subjective and hence spooky does not work.

I recommend you read my paper Kant's Error . Hopefully that will help you out.
If you have done so already, try again.
If that doesn't work either, you might want to read books by Dr. John Beloff and The Self and its Brain by Karl Popper and John C. Eccles.

Giving me a reading list rather than an argument makes me think that you don't understand your own position well enough to explain it.

One of my own personal yardsticks as a philosopher is that if I can't explain an argument to my unphilosophical partner, clearly and in layperson's language, then I don't have it straight in my own head yet.

It's probably worthwhile for you, just as an exercise if nothing else, to try to put your claim into words without using ambiguous and technical terms like "subjective", "irreducibly" and so on.

The ability to do that is what differentiates good philosophy from nonsense on stilts.

Cheers,

Kevin Lowe.

 

[Titus Rivas]

Nothing personal

Well Kevin,

With all due respect, I'm afraid I really don't have anything more to say about this point anymore. The problem is that I sincerely think that I've covered it enough.

Don't take it personally. Thanks for the thought experiment, which is not idiotic or something, but in my view simply irrelevant.

By the way, in my opinion good philosophy is first of all characterized by solid reasoning.

Titus

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Re: Re: Re: Hi Kevin

I'm not sure we get very far with thought experiments which break TLOP rather than illuminating TLOP.

How do we thought-experiment Heisenberg & FTL communication out of your "exact duplicate" picture?

If I'd said "Suppose I could subvert the first law of thermodynamics, what kind of cool stuff could I do then?", it would not be constructive to reply "Well, you can't, so your question is silly".

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Re: Nothing personal

Well Kevin,

With all due respect, I'm afraid I really don't have anything more to say about this point anymore. The problem is that I sincerely think that I've covered it enough.

I can't make you post more on the topic.

I don't think your position is coherent, and I'm certain that the arguments you've presented for it don't do the job you need them to do.

Believe me, I'd love to hear an argument that could convince an unbiased observer that there is something spooky afoot in our heads. That would be very cool. But I haven't seen it yet.

Don't take it personally. Thanks for the thought experiment, which is not idiotic or something, but in my view simply irrelevant.

An thought experiment that seems to remove all scope for spooky stuff to be necessary for subjective experience, is irrelevant to a thesis that spooky stuff is a vital part of subjective experience?

Please.

I'm not presenting it as a knock-down argument, but calling it irrelevant is obviously false.

By the way, in my opinion good philosophy is first of all characterized by solid reasoning.

"Solid reasoning" in philosophy is as much use as tits on a bull, as we Aussies say, if others cannot read your work and come to understand why you drew your conclusions and why they should draw the same conclusions themselves.

I'm not sure what sort of brain malfunction could cause one to think in solid reasoning and write evasive nonsense, but the assumption I make when I'm reading (or marking) work is that no such malfunction exists.

That's why I put clarity at the top of the list. Philosophy is no use to anyone if it is not comprehensible.

 

[ceptimus]

Re: Re: Nothing personal

I'm not sure what sort of brain malfunction could cause one to think in solid reasoning and write evasive nonsense

I would call that 'religion'. It seems to me that these people have a kind of religion; 'consciousness' is their god.

Religious people generally don't like it when you mock their god.

 

[Titus Rivas]

Religious taboo

Ceptimus,

Religious people generally don't like it when you mock their god.

Something encountered all too often among materialists who simply can't stand it if their opponents call themselves rational

Titus

 

[hammegk]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Hi Kevin

If I'd said "Suppose I could subvert the first law of thermodynamics, what kind of cool stuff could I do then?", it would not be constructive to reply "Well, you can't, so your question is silly".

Yeah, and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Feel free to think all you want about subverting the first law. Get it right, and build it: wow - perpetual motion. And FYI there is some actual discussion of "zero point energy".

In any case, your duplication experiment yields nothing. Duplicate the simplest carbon-based lifeform you can find subverting both Heisenberg and FTL data transfer. If the duplicate "lives" prove that the structure you provided was the cause of "life", rather than "life" choosing to inhabit the duplicate structure you were able to provide.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Re: Re: The same old tune

Either you misunderstood me, or we are talking past each other.

In my thought experiment the subjective experience was observed. Then it was recorded. Then it was duplicated.

The point was that by exhaustively cataloguing what was going on in your mind as you handled the rose, the alien was observing everything there was to observe about that event. In my world view, anyway.

This brings up the question, what reason would you (Titus) give me to make me believe that the scenario is conceptually implausible? Because if the scenario is plausible, even in a very loose sense, then your argument that experience is irreducibly subjective and hence spooky does not work.

Kevin,

I have already explained that your thought experiment is irrelevant because it is an impossible thought experiment, even if we assume materialism is true.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I recommend you read my paper Kant's Error . Hopefully that will help you out.
If you have done so already, try again.
If that doesn't work either, you might want to read books by Dr. John Beloff and The Self and its Brain by Karl Popper and John C. Eccles.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Giving me a reading list rather than an argument makes me think that you don't understand your own position well enough to explain it.

Presumably he explains it in his paper. Why does he need to write it out twice?

One of my own personal yardsticks as a philosopher is that if I can't explain an argument to my unphilosophical partner, clearly and in layperson's language, then I don't have it straight in my own head yet.

Clearly that doesn't follow.

It's probably worthwhile for you, just as an exercise if nothing else, to try to put your claim into words without using ambiguous and technical terms like "subjective", "irreducibly" and so on.

The ability to do that is what differentiates good philosophy from nonsense on stilts.

We have a lot of unsubstantiated assertions from you Kevin. Philosophy is extremely difficult. Now people do have a propensity to use technical words where others would suffice. And yet, on the other hand, using simpler language may not adequately convey a person's meaning. It's a question of steering a middle course.

Now I certainly agree that a lot of people are capable of understanding much more than we give them credence for. Yet you should also bear in mind that we are not all equally intelligent, and some people are able to understand what others cannot.

Now I can't understand materialism. If you think that you understand it, then presumably you can explain it to me. Otherwise by your own reasoning you don't understand it yourself. So go ahead and enlighten me. God this should be fun!

 

[Interesting Ian]

Re: Re: Nothing personal

Believe me, I'd love to hear an argument that could convince an unbiased observer that there is something spooky afoot in our heads. That would be very cool. But I haven't seen it yet.

I have no idea what you could possibly mean by "spooky" in this context. The only think spooky about consciousness, would be if it is not what it appears to be, but is something physical.

An thought experiment that seems to remove all scope for spooky stuff to be necessary for subjective experience, is irrelevant to a thesis that spooky stuff is a vital part of subjective experience?


Please.

I'm not presenting it as a knock-down argument, but calling it irrelevant is obviously false.

How impressively stupid you are.

"Solid reasoning" in philosophy is as much use as tits on a bull, as we Aussies say, if others cannot read your work and come to understand why you drew your conclusions and why they should draw the same conclusions themselves.

I'm not sure what sort of brain malfunction could cause one to think in solid reasoning and write evasive nonsense, but the assumption I make when I'm reading (or marking) work is that no such malfunction exists.

I think that in certain areas of philosophy you simply do not have the requisite understanding to mark anyones work.

 

[ceptimus]

Re: Re: Re: The same old tune

I have already explained that your thought experiment is irrelevant because it is an impossible thought experiment, even if we assume materialism is true

Since when did though experiments have to be possible? When Einstein founded his relativity theory based on the thought experiment, 'What would it be like to ride along at the speed of light?', thank god you weren't there to discourage him.

 

[Titus Rivas]

Reversed logic

BillHoyt,

Thanks for nominating me. The nomination coming from you, I should feel honored.

Titus