I challenge you: your best alternate to materialism

[Myriad]

Arrange some rigid members ("bones") and some tensile actuators ("muscles") however you want. Now start turning the actuators off and on. Some sequence will result in the Macarena and most won't. Why is one particular sequence (and/or arrangement) so special?

Materialism has a hard time with explaining why a particular bit of muscle activity produces a particular dance. This helps idealism because the idealist can remove the problem by simply asserting that everything is the Macarena, and there is some particular choreographer (God, a collection of Soul Train dancers, whatever) behind the series, coordinating all of our movements.

 

[PixyMisa]

Arrange the valves however you want. Now start turning them off and on. Some sequence will result in consciousness and most won't.

No arrangement of valves will result in consciousness.

Why is one particular sequence (and/or arrangement) so special?

It's not.

Arrange 100 billions neurons however you want. Now "turn the system on". Some neurons firing a certain way will produce the experience of stubbing your toe while another sequence of neurons firing will produce the experience of an orgasm.

If you take the letters in your post and rearrange them, they'd say something different.

This is not a great insight. It's not an insight at all.

Materialism has a hard time with explaining why a particular bit of neural activity produces a particular experience

Actually understanding things is harder than making stuff up.

This helps idealism because the idealist can remove the problem simply by asserting that everything is consciousness

It's easier to just make up incoherent drivel than to study and understand reality. This doesn't help idealism, because it's made up incoherent drivel.

 

[Fudbucker]

Arrange some rigid members ("bones") and some tensile actuators ("muscles") however you want. Now start turning the actuators off and on. Some sequence will result in the Macarena and most won't. Why is one particular sequence (and/or arrangement) so special?

Materialism has a hard time with explaining why a particular bit of muscle activity produces a particular dance. This helps idealism because the idealist can remove the problem by simply asserting that everything is the Macarena, and there is some particular choreographer (God, a collection of Soul Train dancers, whatever) behind the series, coordinating all of our movements.

Except dances and subjective experiences aren't analagous. The definition of a dance is just a series of particular movements of the body. The definition of pain is a bit more than just a particular series of neurons firing. Any definition of pain must also include the fact that there is a subjective experience produced by those neurons: pain hurts. It feels bad. That begs the question: why does one arrangement of neurons result in a specific kind of subjective experience?

I think you're taking the reductionist position that all mental states are identical to brain states. I think there are two reasons why this misses the mark: it defines a mental state as solely a brain state, which is precisely what people aren't referring to when they talk about how they feel- it's always a reference to a particular subjective experience, not some arrangement of neurons in their head.

In a thread awhile ago, someone posited an interesting kind of p-zombie: the non-conscious robot scientist. The robot scientist can do science, but it's not conscious and not capable of subjective experience. So we stipulate that the robot scientist discovers everything there is know about the nerve impulses and brain states associated with the feeling of pain. Can it be said that the robot scientist now knows what pain is? No, because pain transcends brain states. You have to experience it to know what it is. It's like people who are born blind- there's nothing you can tell them (no explanation exists) that allows for them to know what seeing is. It has to be experienced. There is something about experience itself that conveys additional information.

Anyway, we've wandered far away from the original argument. That consciousness is a problem is clear from even a cursory glance at the material.

 

[MRC_Hans]

The definition of pain is a bit more than just a particular series of neurons firing. Any definition of pain must also include the fact that there is a subjective experience produced by those neurons: pain hurts. It feels bad. That begs the question: why does one arrangement of neurons result in a specific kind of subjective experience?

Because pain is the body's warning that something is wrong. It is therefore useful to recognize pain so you can avoid situations that cause pain.

Tell me, is a cat conscious, in your book? Because I can assure you it feels pain. Go pinch a cat if you don't belive me.

I think you're taking the reductionist position that all mental states are identical to brain states. I think there are two reasons why this misses the mark: it defines a mental state as solely a brain state, which is precisely what people aren't referring to when they talk about how they feel- it's always a reference to a particular subjective experience, not some arrangement of neurons in their head.

And you know this, how?

Can it be said that the robot scientist now knows what pain is? No, because pain transcends brain states.

And you know this, how?

You have to experience it to know what it is. It's like people who are born blind- there's nothing you can tell them (no explanation exists) that allows for them to know what seeing is. It has to be experienced. There is something about experience itself that conveys additional information.

So what? Experience is just a set of memories.

Anyway, we've wandered far away from the original argument. That consciousness is a problem is clear from even a cursory glance at the material.

You have, however, failed to make that clear.

Hans

 

[Fudbucker]

Because pain is the body's warning that something is wrong. It is therefore useful to recognize pain so you can avoid situations that cause pain.

I totally agree. That does nothing to address my question: why does one particular arrangement of neurons (or valves or transistors or lightswitches or arrangement of rocks) produce the subjective experience of pain, while another arrangement produces the subjective experience of eating a turkey sandwich?

Tell me, is a cat conscious, in your book? Because I can assure you it feels pain. Go pinch a cat if you don't belive me.

Cats are conscious. Do you believe a person moving rocks around in the right way can simulate a universe like ours?

Is there a possible world where that comic is true?

And you know this, how?

How do I know that people are talking about their feelings and not their brain states? Really, you have to ask?

And you know this, how?

Because the robot scientist studying pain won't know what pain is until it experiences it.

Let me ask you, is it possible to explain sight to a person blind from birth so that they know what seeing is? Do you believe that if you could just explain "seeing" the right way, the person blind from birth would know what a sunset looks like? If no explanation exists, then the person would have to experience seeing in order to know what it is. Therefore, experience itself conveys information and mental states are not the equivalent of brain states. If they were, then studying brain states would be sufficient to understand what seeing is. Clearly, that's not the case.

So what? Experience is just a set of memories.

It is? You think experience happens after a memory is formed? I'm pretty sure the converse is true. Experience is independent of memory. You might remember an experience, you might not. Certainly the experience had to happen first, in order for a memory of it to form.

You have, however, failed to make that clear.

Hans

What, that consciousness is a problem? Like I said, it just takes a cursory glace at what's out there:
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/harder.htm
http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
http://consc.net/papers/puzzle.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/

You can ignore my questions. I won't be responding to you anymore on this.

 

[Belz...]

I totally agree. That does nothing to address my question: why does one particular arrangement of neurons (or valves or transistors or lightswitches or arrangement of rocks) produce the subjective experience of pain, while another arrangement produces the subjective experience of eating a turkey sandwich?

"Why" ?

 

[Myriad]

Except dances and subjective experiences aren't analagous. The definition of a dance is just a series of particular movements of the body. The definition of pain is a bit more than just a particular series of neurons firing. Any definition of pain must also include the fact that there is a subjective experience produced by those neurons: pain hurts. It feels bad. That begs the question: why does one arrangement of neurons result in a specific kind of subjective experience?

That question remains incoherent. The arrangement of neurons itself does not result in anything. The functioning of the neurons so arranged is what results in subjective experiences. Who says only one arrangement of neurons can result in a specific kind of subjective experience? That's almost certainly false.

I think you're taking the reductionist position that all mental states are identical to brain states. I think there are two reasons why this misses the mark: it defines a mental state as solely a brain state, which is precisely what people aren't referring to when they talk about how they feel- it's always a reference to a particular subjective experience, not some arrangement of neurons in their head.

That's true of everything about human physiology. People talk about food making them feel energetic, instead of talking about the Krebs cycle of oxidation taking place in their cells. People talk about pushing or pulling or lifting, instead of talking about troponin proteins shifting the cross-links between tropomyosin proteins. People talk about seeing things, instead of talking about the photons reflected from those things interacting with photosensitive pigments in their retinas. Nothing about the human body actually works the way we subjectively perceive it working. Why would you expect people to subjectively perceive neurons firing in their head, any more than they subjectively perceive electrolyte recapture in their kidneys? Why would you expect what they do subjectively perceive about how cognition works to tell you any details of how cognition actually works, any more than perceiving what it feels like to have to pee tells you any details about how your kidneys work?

In a thread awhile ago, someone posited an interesting kind of p-zombie: the non-conscious robot scientist. The robot scientist can do science, but it's not conscious and not capable of subjective experience. So we stipulate that the robot scientist discovers everything there is know about the nerve impulses and brain states associated with the feeling of pain. Can it be said that the robot scientist now knows what pain is? No, because pain transcends brain states. You have to experience it to know what it is. It's like people who are born blind- there's nothing you can tell them (no explanation exists) that allows for them to know what seeing is. It has to be experienced. There is something about experience itself that conveys additional information.

I think all such qualia arguments have a serious flaw. They illegitimately compare the studied abstract knowledge of pain (or in the canonical example, the color red) with the actual immediate experience of pain (or of seeing the color red). All that shows is that the immediate experience is different from not having the immediate experience—which we already know, because otherwise there would be no immediate experience worth mentioning.

The comparison that should be made is the robot scientist's knowledge about some particular pain, with an ordinary person's memory of that same pain. Neither will compare very well against the actual immediate pain, so who's to say which is closer to the real thing?

Do you think if you sit in a dark room and remember what the color red looks like, your memory is the same as the actual sight? Is remembering music, even if it's a recorded piece you know well, much like hearing music? (You could save a lot on iTunes that way.) It is not. Your actual experience gives you only a dim outline of what red looks like and what music sounds like. So how can you be so sure that the blind man who studied optical physics and the deaf man who carefully studied the physical nature of music don't achieve just as good a dim outline as your memory does?

Try it yourself right now. Think carefully about what it would feel like if you had a fresh paper cut three quarters of an inch long and a quarter inch deep on the ball of your left thumb. Use your lifetime of experience with paper cuts and other pains to imagine what it would be feeling like right at this moment.

I bet it's not working very well. There are probably all kinds of words and abstractions and actions coming to your mind (sharp, throbbing, aching, annoying, antibiotic ointment, band-aid) but not much of what it actually would feel like.

You and the robot scientist are in the same boat.

 

[marplots]

In a thread awhile ago, someone posited an interesting kind of p-zombie: the non-conscious robot scientist. The robot scientist can do science, but it's not conscious and not capable of subjective experience. So we stipulate that the robot scientist discovers everything there is know about the nerve impulses and brain states associated with the feeling of pain. Can it be said that the robot scientist now knows what pain is? No, because pain transcends brain states. You have to experience it to know what it is.

I don't buy this. If it were so, I'd have no idea what an atom "is" or what distant galaxies "are" since I only get information about them second hand.

It's like people who are born blind- there's nothing you can tell them (no explanation exists) that allows for them to know what seeing is. It has to be experienced. There is something about experience itself that conveys additional information.

I think this is wrong as well. It distills down to a circular loop: Those without consciousness (the zombie) or an inborn sense (the blind guy), do not have that "experience" of whatever they lack. Of course. You've defined it away.

Explanations do exist, just as they exist for other things I cannot experience, even imaginary things. I can tell you all the adventures of my invisible pink unicorn, and you can grasp the narratives - yet you never experience the unicorn directly (and, frankly, neither do I).

Just like with atoms, the "experience" on offer is constructed from the explanation and whatever sense modalities I do have. There is nothing special about direct experience, since that too is filtered and far from high fidelity. Consciousness, in this light, is simply "experiencing one's sense of self" - and that, alone, doesn't make it special or untouchable.

You can even test this notion directly. Here is an example of an audio illusion:



You will get one experience at first hearing - the same kind of "authentic" and direct experience we are talking about. You will have a different experience after listening the explanation - for the exact same input. Plainly, explanations can alter the experiences we report. There is no magical power our conscious mind has to ignore what we understand about the world (explanations) and perceive it unfiltered.

 

[Nonpareil]

The definition of pain is a bit more than just a particular series of neurons firing.

Oh, good. We're still on qualia. I was afraid I might have missed something while I was away. Good to see we're still talking in circles.

 

[MRC_Hans]

I totally agree. That does nothing to address my question: why does one particular arrangement of neurons (or valves or transistors or lightswitches or arrangement of rocks) produce the subjective experience of pain, while another arrangement produces the subjective experience of eating a turkey sandwich?

The question does not make sense. Our particular arrangement of neurons etc. eneables us to process sensory input. We then store categories of similar sensory input so that we can later react properly on it.

The sense of pain and the sense of taste come from different sets of sensors, which alone makes it easy to distinguish the categories.

It is possible that very basic experiences are inherited, that is, while we are probably born hard-wired to avoid pain, taste is certainly an acquired skill.

Cats are conscious.

OK. How about fish? Flatworms? (All have some reaction to pain).

Do you believe a person moving rocks around in the right way can simulate a universe like ours?

No.

Is there a possible world where that comic is true?

Personal opinion.

How do I know that people are talking about their feelings and not their brain states? Really, you have to ask?

You don't.

Because the robot scientist studying pain won't know what pain is until it experiences it.

So it can't experience something it hasn't got sensors for. Just like a blind person cannot experience sight. Does that make either of them more or less counscious?

Let me ask you, is it possible to explain sight to a person blind from birth so that they know what seeing is? Do you believe that if you could just explain "seeing" the right way, the person blind from birth would know what a sunset looks like? If no explanation exists, then the person would have to experience seeing in order to know what it is.

Lets put it this way: To have the experience, you must be able to experience it.

Therefore, experience itself conveys information and mental states are not the equivalent of brain states.

Why? What else, apart from sensory organs, are you using to store an experience.

If they were, then studying brain states would be sufficient to understand what seeing is. Clearly, that's not the case.

Well, we don't really know, do we? Let me give you an example: If you press your fingers against your closed eyes (WARNING: Excessive pressure might lead to eye damage), you will experience a display of light. If you send electrical impulses through the right parts of a blind person's brain he/she will experience light.

So clearly, we can in fact recreate the sensation of sight by simulating brain states.

It is? You think experience happens after a memory is formed?

No.

I'm pretty sure the converse is true. Experience is independent of memory. You might remember an experience, you might not. Certainly the experience had to happen first, in order for a memory of it to form.

Obviously. And?

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

What, that consciousness is a problem? Like I said, it just takes a cursory glace at what's out there:
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/harder.htm
http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
http://consc.net/papers/puzzle.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/

I know. What I said is that YOU have not, by means of your argumentation, made clear where the problem is. Well, at least not to me.

You can ignore my questions. I won't be responding to you anymore on this.

Suit yourself.

Hans

 

[tsig]

Oh, good. We're still on qualia. I was afraid I might have missed something while I was away. Good to see we're still talking in circles.

I think qualia is what a p-zombie experiences when it sees red.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

I will try to explain how I understand the hard problem of consciousness. It is several problems rolled into one. It is a combination of metaphysics, logic and epistemology.

I will start with the word physical and look at its antonyms:
-mental, psychological; having to do with the mind viewed as distinct from body.

Now if you understand viewed as metaphysical you get a non-physical/materialistic metaphysics, but if you consider it within metaphysical physicalism/materialism there is another way of looking at the word viewed. If all we know, is empirical, then is the only form of experiences you have tied to the five senses or more precisely - are all your experiences external sensory experiences?
It is very simply and it has to do with these 2 different meanings of see - see as see/observe/look and see as understand/makes sense.
The short, brutal version is this - can you tell us what the meaning of a no looks like? I could ask you to observe, describe and point to e.g. a cat, but you can't observe, describe and point to a no.
Now this is a part of it and connects to this:

These questions include, but are not limited to, whether being conscious could be wholly described in physical terms, such as the aggregation of neural processes in the brain. If consciousness cannot be explained exclusively by physical events, it must transcend the capabilities of physical systems and require an explanation of nonphysical means. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

Now if you accept physicalism/materialism and think you can explain everything through observation, then I simply ask you to describe the observation of a no. In other words some of the dualists/idealists use a "trick" - they know that you can't explain all words by pointing to what the word is about. They know that you only understand the meaning of such words as no first person and they then "cheat". There are words we can't understand through observation, therefore they are not physical.

What, they don't get, is that consciousness is epiphenomenal and supervenes on the brain, but what they get right is that you can't explain everything through observation. Here are two absurd examples:
The universe is what we observe as incoming light. Answer: No!
I only accept non-subjective observation. Answer: That sentence is not a case of non-subjective observation.

So if you roll metaphysics, logic and epistemology into one "nice, fuzzy" feeling of - "I can explain all of reality using objective/external sensory observation, logic, reason AND explain it with correct evidence/truth/proof AND so on"; then all I do is answer no

Within a metaphysically physical reality/universe/everything you can't explain everything with observation as seeing. In philosophical terms if you are a physicalist/materialist, you can't explain it only using observation, because you can't see how you make sense of your life and that is not objective. It has an irreducible subjective epistemology and no, it is not metaphysics/ontology. I.e. only you can know how to make sense of your life in the end, though there might be inter-subjective overlaps with other humans.
What always happens here is that someone will mix metaphysics, logic and epistemology into the following:
Everything is physical, therefore everything can be explain through observation. Answer: That depends on what you mean by observation?!! And as always we shift to logic, epistemology and meta-ethics.

With regards

 

[Nonpareil]

In philosophical terms if you are a physicalist/materialist, you can't explain it only using observation, because you can't see how you make sense of your life and that is not objective. It has an irreducible subjective epistemology and no, it is not metaphysics/ontology.

No.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

No.

Please explain more

 

[Fudbucker]

Oh, good. We're still on qualia. I was afraid I might have missed something while I was away. Good to see we're still talking in circles.

Yep.

These consciousness threads inevitably turn out the same (although no one has asserted they're a P-zombie yet).

 

[tsig]

Please explain more

"N" and "O" are letters in the English language, when combined they express negation.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Yep.

These consciousness threads inevitably turn out the same (although no one has asserted they're a P-zombie yet).

Can you explain all of reality/everything/the universe?

Now, I can't explain all of reality/everything/the universe, but from there doesn't follow that all explanations are equally good/correct/what ever you want to call it.
So with that in mind materialism is the best explanation for metaphysics. Now if you want to go the route of totally True without any fallacies and what not, you can't do that. Nobody can do that!!! In practice you go for second best - try to be objective, using critical thinking and skepticism and don't use double standards.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

"N" and "O" are letters in the English language, when combined they express negation.

Yes and behind that is some form of reasoning.

 

[tsig]

Yep.

These consciousness threads inevitably turn out the same (although no one has asserted they're a P-zombie yet).

Yes, on the one hand you have those who say that consciousness is the result of electrochemical reactions in the brain and those who are sure that something more is happening though they cannot say what that more is.

The latter are generally hip deep in qualia, p-zombies and the mystery of seeing red.