Has consciousness been fully explained?

[westprog]

Why do I have to keep repeating myself on this point? When I look at the sky I see blue. I'm not denying that I see blue. What I *am* saying is that it's not at all helpful to analyze this using the notion of qualia. It's like you're insisting that I repeat "I see blue in the sky" to myself in French so that I can somehow get more out of the proposition. No matter what language I use, whether it involves qualia or not, the analysis is the same.

I've deliberately avoided using that term in order to avoid precisely that red herring.

My model of reality is based on my understanding of logic and reality. I have learned that there are times to not trust my senses.

And how do you access "reality" without using your senses?

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. My theory about the world includes the possibility of hallucination. How do I separate my sense impressions from my hallucinations? Obviously, I can't rely on my sense impressions...

Then you're pretty well screwed, because everything you know about the universe comes from your sense impressions.

Just as there are non-scientific ways to learn about God. And non-scientific ways to learn about souls. And non-scientific ways to learn about prayer and miracles and psychics, right?

Art does *not* grant us access to the subjective experience of others. Your assertion makes me wonder if you really understand what the rest of us are talking about.

We certainly don't gain direct access to the subjective experience of others, but art is how we try to do it. If you want to know what it was like to be Vincent Van Gogh, you look at Starry Night. That will tell you more than dissecting his brain.

Are you genuinely speaking up for a world where science is the only way in which people interact? That is not only unreasonable, it's extremely unscientific.

 

[westprog]

Art, and any form of communication in general, may not grant us direct access to the subjective experiences of others, but it certainly grants us indirect access. It's the reason us humans attempt to communicate with each other in the first place. People write books and create paintings to attempt to communicate their mix of emotions and ideas about a particular subject. This mix of emotions and ideas is the subjective experience of the author.

I'd like to think that the same or a very similar subjective experience as the author's can be felt by careful readers of a book, or by careful admirers of a painting. Of course, this doesn't happen in everyday communication, because we are too caught up in our own personal biases to really try and take in what another is communicating.

Nevertheless, I do believe subjective experience can be exchanged in this fashion. How perfect the recovery of a subjective experience through different forms of communication such as art and literature really is is just something we can't measure right now. Perhaps if we find ways to more precisely correlate neural activity with certain subjective experiences in the future, we will be able to measure how well an idea or an emotion or any subjective experience in general flows from one mind through a communication medium and into another mind.

I do believe this is along the lines of what westprog was referring to when he said "grant us access to the subjective experience of other people".

I think you've got the idea. How can we test whether it's working or not?

Well, one way is to see whether you can transfer a subjective experience to someone, and whether they can send it back to you. Sadly, that's not something art is particularly good at. However, in personal relationships, that happens all the time.

Or, maybe you don't understand what he is talking about



I'd like to think this is possible, in principle, through correlation of brain states with certain subjective experiences. Although this correlation cannot be completely precise as it would rely on test subjects to describe what they are experiencing, I doubt that will stop experimenters from running such tests anyway.

However, I've yet to see a compelling explanation as to how the physical world gives rise to subjective experience, and I have my doubts as to whether such an explanation can be given, at least with our current understanding of the physical world.

And in the meantime, we have to deal with our subjective experiences, and I submit that the absence of a compelling scientific theory as to how they are created is not a compelling reason to stop talking to each other.

 

[westprog]

Your use of the highlighted phrase above is *very* idiosyncratic and possibly loaded.

Is your whole point that all of our information about the outside world comes to us as sense data? Ok, sure. So what?

If you mean something more, then you'll need to spell it out.



Ok, it's starting to sound like you mean something more. Here's a thought: physics and all of science is a way of overcoming the well-known limitations of subjective experience. Most, if not all, of science is put together to eliminate the influence of any single subjective experience and tease out the patterns that give rise to those experiences.

Yes, that's fair enough. As a means of correcting certain types of random error, it seems to work pretty well. But it's certainly not a way to take subjective experience out of the loop, because it's all subjective experience.

It's perfectly and obviously conceivable to me that a computer program can "notice" regularities in sensor data and derive possible experiments and laws to account for those regularities. The program would effectively be doing science without any subjective experience (assuming we all agree that this particular computer program need not have subjective experience).

And the moon is doing science when it goes around the Earth. A tree is doing science when it records a new ring every year. But the only conscious beings have understanding of science.

Um, no. But this is like asking if you've ever eaten food without passing it through your mouth. And when someone says no, you conclude that food, metabolism, and cooking are all about your oral sphincter. Sure, it's a part of the process, but it doesn't have the center billing you want to give it. Similarly, if you are pointing at qualia as being somehow fundamental to physics or science, you are missing the point.

I think they're far more fundamental than that.

 

[Belz...]

Both are conjecture.

With one small distinction: one extrapolates based on everything we already know, the other posits that we cannot know. I'll let you guess which to side Occam's Razor swings.

"do quite a lot" - yes. However, the only way we can derive physics is via subjective experience. That's the only way we know or believe anything.

Operative keyword is "we". It doesn't follow that this is the only way physics _can_ be derived. Unless you mean by "subjective experience" any effect on any object, in which case we're not talking about the same thing.

 

[Belz...]

I can at least provisionally accept most of what you say, but I can't accept that beliefs should be part of "subjective experience", and thus, qualia. It makes more sense to me to say that belief is a stance we adopt toward certain assertions.

That seems to me to be the fundamental problem with the qualia hypothesis: it seeks to explain behaviour with substance, whereas we know substance is just another behaviour. It might be due to a slight misunderstanding of the sciences involved.

 

[Belz...]

We don't know what subjective experience is.

Sure we do: subjective experience is experience limited to an individual. It follows from the fact that no thing is in touch with the entire universe at any given time, and form the fact that some things are conscious.

What you mean is: we don't know what subjective experience is made of, but that assumes it's made of something else than action i.e. substance.

Your supposition that there is a real keyboard is based on your experience of touching it, seeing words appear on the screen, and so on. Any theory that discounts your experience of the keyboard has to logically abandon the real keyboard as well.

Again, this depends on your definition of "real".

 

[cienaños]

but what does it mean oh god!? oh dear me, what does it bleeding mean? oh me!

 

[westprog]

With one small distinction: one extrapolates based on everything we already know, the other posits that we cannot know. I'll let you guess which to side Occam's Razor swings.

However, both are conjecture.

Operative keyword is "we". It doesn't follow that this is the only way physics _can_ be derived. Unless you mean by "subjective experience" any effect on any object, in which case we're not talking about the same thing.

 

[Belz...]

And the moon is doing science when it goes around the Earth.

No, it does not. If you think it does, you don't know what science is.

Then you're pretty well screwed, because everything you know about the universe comes from your sense impressions.

Unless you want to go into solipsism, the whole point of science is to eliminate the effects of subjectivity. That's why we have jet fighters and air conditioners.

 

[cienaños]

i'm no longer a pisces all is lost!

 

[Belz...]

However, both are conjecture.

You keep repeating that as though no one will notice that it's meaningless.

DRAGONS, Westprog. It's DRAGONS that cause your subjective experiences. See ? It's a conjecture just as much as the two other choices. But perhaps you'll understand why DRAGONS are less likely than the others.

 

[cienaños]

did i lock the car outside?....

 

[westprog]

Sure we do: subjective experience is experience limited to an individual. It follows from the fact that no thing is in touch with the entire universe at any given time, and form the fact that some things are conscious.

What you mean is: we don't know what subjective experience is made of, but that assumes it's made of something else than action i.e. substance.

No, I mean we don't know. What is an individual? Well, when it comes down to it, we define an individual by his subjective experience. That's not an explanation, that's a definition - and a definition made by equating two not very well understood things.

Yes, subjective experience comes about because things are conscious. What does it mean to be conscious? I think we know where that one leads. Round and round the garden and we get back to where we started.

Again, this depends on your definition of "real".

What we mean is, in general, that the keyboard is there when we don't look at it. We think that it is, but we can only test by looking at it.

 

[westprog]

You keep repeating that as though no one will notice that it's meaningless.

DRAGONS, Westprog. It's DRAGONS that cause your subjective experiences. See ? It's a conjecture just as much as the two other choices. But perhaps you'll understand why DRAGONS are less likely than the others.

When you try to label your own philosophical predilection as "science" and an alternative philosophical viewpoint as philosophy, I think a label saying "Here be dragons" is entirely appropriate.

This is a topic where it's the materialists who are desperately pretending that fundamental ignorance should be filled in by half-arsed guesswork.

 

[dlorde]

Art, and any form of communication in general, may not grant us direct access to the subjective experiences of others, but it certainly grants us indirect access.

I must be doing it wrong - at best it only seems to give me novel and interesting subjective experiences of my own. Sometimes I like to think that the artist had some aspects of those experiences in mind when creating the work...

 

[Belz...]

No, I mean we don't know. What is an individual? Well, when it comes down to it, we define an individual by his subjective experience.

We don't.

That's not an explanation, that's a definition - and a definition made by equating two not very well understood things.

That's a philosopher's definition, and those are usually made with the intent to avoid understanding. Understanding means the philosopher is out of a job.

Yes, subjective experience comes about because things are conscious. What does it mean to be conscious?

Self-Referential Information Processing ?

What we mean is, in general, that the keyboard is there when we don't look at it. We think that it is, but we can only test by looking at it.

No. We can test by having someone else look at it.

When you try to label your own philosophical predilection as "science" and an alternative philosophical viewpoint as philosophy, I think a label saying "Here be dragons" is entirely appropriate.

This is a topic where it's the materialists who are desperately pretending that fundamental ignorance should be filled in by half-arsed guesswork.

Nice dodge. Would you like to answer my point now ? How is science just as speculatory, when it comes to consciousness, as pure guesswork ?

 

[westprog]

I must be doing it wrong - at best it only seems to give me novel and interesting subjective experiences of my own. Sometimes I like to think that the artist had some aspects of those experiences in mind when creating the work...

Transferring subjective experience between humans is the aim of art. It's not necessarily successful.

 

[westprog]

Nice dodge. Would you like to answer my point now ? How is science just as speculatory, when it comes to consciousness, as pure guesswork ?

Calling something science when it's pure guesswork doesn't actually make it science.

 

[westprog]

No. We can test by having someone else look at it.

Right. And since we have direct access to his subjective experience... oh, wait, we have to go from our direct experience of the keyboard to an indirect experience of the keyboard. Does that count as "proof"?

This is philosophy, of course. Science assumes that the keyboard is there, all the time. But that's an assumption, not a claim.

Looking at the keyboard ourselves, looking at it through a remote camera, asking someone else to look at it - they are all just ways to produce the keyboard in our consciousness.

 

[Philosaur]

No, I mean we don't know. What is an individual? Well, when it comes down to it, we define an individual by his subjective experience. That's not an explanation, that's a definition - and a definition made by equating two not very well understood things.

Yes, subjective experience comes about because things are conscious. What does it mean to be conscious? I think we know where that one leads. Round and round the garden and we get back to where we started.

Well thank you for finally admitting the circularity of this argument.

So, westprog, do you think a computer could ever be conscious?

If not, why not?