Resolution of Transporter Problem

[Z]

And that's why most of us consider you a dualist - because that 'sense of an inner voice' is the homonculus, unless you lump it together with thinking and visual phenomenology. It's all thinking - i.e. brain activity - and there's really no particular distinction, beyond which parts of the brain are doing the activity.

From what it sounds like, you're hung on the dualists' qualia; you see a distinction between 'experiencing (a thought, a feeling, a sensation)' and what it's like to sense an experience. The qualia and the thought are more related, to you, than the experiences themselves; this is a classic dualist point of view (and of course idealist, lest we forget them).

And I do get that concept - that there feels, initially, like there's a difference between a sensation and the experience of having that sensation. But after a while, you come to realize the 'what it's like' part is so utterly irrelevant, so utterly without meaning, that you can discard it. It doesn't matter if the red I'm experiencing looks the same to me as the red you're experiencing or anyone else's red; what matters is that your brain still assigns that sensation to apples, stop signs, blood, and what have you. As I've indicated before, the qualia of an experience is irrelevant - an epiphenomenon, if you will - while the interrelationships between experiences is the entire key. The secret isn't in the objects, or the processing, or whatever - it's in the patterns and relationships. That's where the real keys are.

And that all boils down to data processing - and, ultimately, physical reality - materialism.

 

[Third Eye Open]

Qualia is a word philosophers made up so they could still have something to argue about.

 

[Nick227]

And that's why most of us consider you a dualist - because that 'sense of an inner voice' is the homonculus, unless you lump it together with thinking and visual phenomenology. It's all thinking - i.e. brain activity - and there's really no particular distinction, beyond which parts of the brain are doing the activity.

I'm sorry, but your logic to me sounds like something out of the Middle Ages here, Z. You can't just lump highly separate phenomena together because if you don't someone might call you a dualist. This is ridiculous and totally unscientific.

There is a sense of an inner voice. This exists and it's generally regarded that the greater body of humanity experience it (see Baars). PET scans have even shown that the two key areas of the brain involved in hearing and understanding speech - Broca's Area and Wernicke's Area - are both in high activity during periods of inner speech (tested on 'mental rehearsal').

From what it sounds like, you're hung on the dualists' qualia; you see a distinction between 'experiencing (a thought, a feeling, a sensation)' and what it's like to sense an experience. The qualia and the thought are more related, to you, than the experiences themselves; this is a classic dualist point of view (and of course idealist, lest we forget them).

The problem is deeper than this, and it is this that the genuine researchers like Blackmore and Baars pick up on. When it comes to creating actual functional models for human consciousness there are these big problems around subjectivity. Finally, the hard problem may disappear, either in the wake of a big discovery or with the resolution of all the easy problems but, as of March 5th 2009 that hasn't happened yet.

Human consciousness may or may not be analogous to AI. It's clear that much processing activity is highly similar to AI but whether consciousness itself - if it exists aside of processing - is analogous is simply not clear. There is not clear agreement and there are plenty of materialist research professionals who completely accept this.

And I do get that concept - that there feels, initially, like there's a difference between a sensation and the experience of having that sensation.

Well, personally I'm non-dualist, so I would dispute that experience even exists, beneath the level of the whole, functioning organism. To me, Pixy's notions of feedback loops that experience are akin to asserting that God made fossils to test our faith.

Nick

 

[rocketdodger]

It doesn't matter if the red I'm experiencing looks the same to me as the red you're experiencing or anyone else's red; what matters is that your brain still assigns that sensation to apples, stop signs, blood, and what have you.

Bingo.

Now, the next step is to ask whether there is an actual "red" that can be experienced.

Or, is there simply an association or relationship between apples, stop signs, blood, and especially the word RED, that we consider to be "red."

 

[Nick227]

Bingo.

Now, the next step is to ask whether there is an actual "red" that can be experienced.

Or, is there simply an association or relationship between apples, stop signs, blood, and especially the word RED, that we consider to be "red."

Well, you can be aware of red without being aware of what it is that is coloured red. If you have your eyes closed and someone sticks a giant canvas painted red in front of you, when you open your eyes you will see red regardless of whether you recognise a canvas or not.

If you want to oppose the notion of a hard problem associated with the subjective experience of colour then I think it's more profitable to say that colours simply are the brain's reactions to certain light stimuli.

Nick

 

[Z]

Well, you can be aware of red without being aware of what it is that is coloured red. If you have your eyes closed and someone sticks a giant canvas painted red in front of you, when you open your eyes you will see red regardless of whether you recognise a canvas or not.

If you want to oppose the notion of a hard problem associated with the subjective experience of colour then I think it's more profitable to say that colours simply are the brain's reactions to certain light stimuli.

Nick

The same goes for any sensation, then - therefore, the subjective experience as a whole is merely a brain's reaction to various stimuli. Hence, no hard problem at all.

 

[Nick227]

The same goes for any sensation, then - therefore, the subjective experience as a whole is merely a brain's reaction to various stimuli. Hence, no hard problem at all.

Well, that's the standard way to deal with the hard problem as far as I know - to state that the mind simply is what the brain does. But it's just a theory and there are issues as I have pointed out in this thread. As most honest researchers will affirm...we don't know yet.

This "way out" of the hard problem does create problems of its own. Namely, why should there appear to be an experiencer? (Why should there appear to be a subject-object relationship associated with phenomenology?) This is where Dennett's great campaign against "cartesian materialists" starts. Many materialists like to use the notion that "the mind is what the brain does" to get out of the hard problem. But most of them still run into trouble when they try and construct models of brain function based on this notion. They still look for some type of experiencing self within the brain, be it an executive neuronal complex or an experiencing feedback loop. None of these can be present as anyone who really grasps materialism will know. As soon as you're examining things beneath the level of the whole brain there simply can be no experiencing self and nothing that resembles it, no matter how counter-intuitive this might appear.

Dan Dennett himself points out, if your theory of consciousness isn't counter-intuitive then it's just wrong! Of course, as the creator of likely the most extreme counter-intutive theory of consciousness anyone's yet come up with - Multiple Drafts - he maybe has an investment in saying such things!

Nick

 

[Third Eye Open]

Bingo.

Now, the next step is to ask whether there is an actual "red" that can be experienced.

Or, is there simply an association or relationship between apples, stop signs, blood, and especially the word RED, that we consider to be "red."

"RED" is just a label for one wavelength of light. Your brain can even make up colors that don't actually have a wavelength to represent them. When you see a combination of Red and Violet light, your brain interprets it as the color Pink, even though the wavelength in between Red and Violet is actually Green. There is no one wavelength of light for Pink, it is not in the light spectrum, but your brain has made up a label for it.

So is there an 'actual' pink out there? It doesn't matter, it is a pointless question. Everything we experience is labels for stimuli.

 

[rocketdodger]

"RED" is just a label for one wavelength of light. Your brain can even make up colors that don't actually have a wavelength to represent them. When you see a combination of Red and Violet light, your brain interprets it as the color Pink, even though the wavelength in between Red and Violet is actually Green. There is no one wavelength of light for Pink, it is not in the light spectrum, but your brain has made up a label for it.

So is there an 'actual' pink out there? It doesn't matter, it is a pointless question. Everything we experience is labels for stimuli.

That isn't in question.

What is in question is the epistemology of "red."

Everything I know about a car comes from stimuli. So you could say "car" is a label attached to the set of stimuli that is associated with a car. But what about "red?" "Red" seems to be different because "being red" is a property that many other labels share in a non hierarchical fashion. You can't say multiple labels are associated by virtue of sharing the property of "being a car," (again, assuming a lack of hierarchy) because "being a car" is itself a set of labels that aren't shared by any other construct -- hence a "car" can be called a "car" and not a "truck," or whatever. But you can with "red." So there is some fundamental difference here.

At a basic level, all information in our neural network is encoded as connections between neurons. The question is, what is the difference between the structures and pathways involved with "car" and those involved with "red?" My educated intuition tells me that there isn't any difference besides the way those structures and pathways interact with the rest of our minds.

 

[Third Eye Open]

That isn't in question.

What is in question is the epistemology of "red."

Everything I know about a car comes from stimuli. So you could say "car" is a label attached to the set of stimuli that is associated with a car. But what about "red?" "Red" seems to be different because "being red" is a property that many other labels share in a non hierarchical fashion. You can't say multiple labels are associated by virtue of sharing the property of "being a car," (again, assuming a lack of hierarchy) because "being a car" is itself a set of labels that aren't shared by any other construct -- hence a "car" can be called a "car" and not a "truck," or whatever. But you can with "red." So there is some fundamental difference here.

At a basic level, all information in our neural network is encoded as connections between neurons. The question is, what is the difference between the structures and pathways involved with "car" and those involved with "red?" My educated intuition tells me that there isn't any difference besides the way those structures and pathways interact with the rest of our minds.

Well, a 'car' is an object, and 'red' is a label for one property of an object (the wavelength of the light it reflects).

You're 'concept' of the 'idea of' a car or the color red may be different then mine, because you have different experiences with cars and the color red. So the structures and pathways involved with thinking about any object are not going to be exactly the same in every person.

 

[rocketdodger]

Well, a 'car' is an object, and 'red' is a label for one property of an object (the wavelength of the light it reflects).

But what is an "object" in terms of stimuli?

 

[Nick227]

At a basic level, all information in our neural network is encoded as connections between neurons. The question is, what is the difference between the structures and pathways involved with "car" and those involved with "red?" My educated intuition tells me that there isn't any difference besides the way those structures and pathways interact with the rest of our minds.

The car is constructed by the mind from stimuli, as you say, according to what it's learned. Red is simply what happens when light within a certain frequency range enters the eye. To avoid the hard problem you have to take this position, I think.

Nick

 

[rocketdodger]

The car is constructed by the mind from stimuli, as you say, according to what it's learned. Red is simply what happens when light within a certain frequency range enters the eye. To avoid the hard problem you have to take this position, I think.

Nick

No.

For two reasons.

First, a "car" is also simply light striking the eye.

Second, taking that position ignores all the other experiences surrounding "red," such as the ability to visualize "red" when my eyes are closed. And before you say it, no, that doesn't imply the HPC is valid -- it only implies there is more to "red" than mere retinal nerve data.

 

[Nick227]

No.

For two reasons.

First, a "car" is also simply light striking the eye.

A car is something I drive around in. Red is what happens when light of certain frequency range strikes the eye.

Second, taking that position ignores all the other experiences surrounding "red," such as the ability to visualize "red" when my eyes are closed. And before you say it, no, that doesn't imply the HPC is valid -- it only implies there is more to "red" than mere retinal nerve data.

Can you actually fill your visual field with red with your eyes closed? We can imagine colours but I don't know that we truly visualize.

Nick

 

[rocketdodger]

A car is something I drive around in. Red is what happens when light of certain frequency range strikes the eye.

Yet there is such a thing as a "red car," which implies that the label "car" can be applied to a set of visual stimuli (since "red" is light striking the eye, by your own definition, information about anything that can be "red" must also reach us via light striking the eye).

So again ... no.

Can you actually fill your visual field with red with your eyes closed? We can imagine colours but I don't know that we truly visualize.

If you can provide an operational difference between "imagining colours" and "visualizing" then I might agree with you.

Given your track record on providing coherent non-circular definitions for anything you are talking about, I am going to presume that you can't.

 

[Nick227]

Yet there is such a thing as a "red car," which implies that the label "car" can be applied to a set of visual stimuli (since "red" is light striking the eye, by your own definition, information about anything that can be "red" must also reach us via light striking the eye).

To me a car is a car. I don't term it "a set of visual stimuli." If there was a machine feeding my visual tract with information causing it to appear that I was standing in front of a car, would I call the machine a car? Or the machine's programmer? No, for me this is nonsense. A car is a car. It looks and it functions a certain way.

If you can provide an operational difference between "imagining colours" and "visualizing" then I might agree with you.

Given your track record on providing coherent non-circular definitions for anything you are talking about, I am going to presume that you can't.

Well, I consider that rude, RD. We don't have coherent defintions for many of the phenomena studied in consciousness research, not least the word itself. This is well accepted.

With visualisation and imagination, for me there are two phenomena here. With my eyes closed I can manipulate a portion of the darkened visual field into certain shapes, by moving my focus in a pattern. I can't get it coloured a certain way by will-power alone, it's usually just light on dark. To me, this is visualisation because there is a sensation of colour analogous to what happens with eyes open. I can also imagine colours and objects but this is much more fleeting and it's hard to really keep the colours in focus.

Nick

 

[rocketdodger]

To me a car is a car. I don't term it "a set of visual stimuli." If there was a machine feeding my visual tract with information causing it to appear that I was standing in front of a car, would I call the machine a car? Or the machine's programmer? No, for me this is nonsense.

How would you know? If you see a car in front of you, you assume (all else being equal) that there is a car there. Are you seriously claiming otherwise?

A car is a car.

How informative. You are making progess on your definitions!

It looks and it functions a certain way.

Oh, a car looks a certain way. And it functions a certain way, which you can only confirm by looking. So what was your point again? That a car isn't a set of visual stimuli?

Well, I consider that rude, RD. We don't have coherent defintions for many of the phenomena studied in consciousness research, not least the word itself. This is well accepted.

No. You don't have coherent definitions and you accept it. Because it suits your dualist motives.

On the other hand, the entire field of cognitive and computer science relies on precise formal definitions. That you think otherwise betrays your ignorance of the subject matter.

With visualisation and imagination, for me there are two phenomena here. With my eyes closed I can manipulate a portion of the darkened visual field into certain shapes, by moving my focus in a pattern. I can't get it coloured a certain way by will-power alone, it's usually just light on dark. To me, this is visualisation because there is a sensation of colour analogous to what happens with eyes open. I can also imagine colours and objects but this is much more fleeting and it's hard to really keep the colours in focus.

I can visualize red with my eyes closed -- I can picture apples, stop signs, whatever. If you can't, then sorry.

 

[Nick227]

How would you know? If you see a car in front of you, you assume (all else being equal) that there is a car there. Are you seriously claiming otherwise?

How informative. You are making progess on your definitions!

Oh, a car looks a certain way. And it functions a certain way, which you can only confirm by looking. So what was your point again? That a car isn't a set of visual stimuli?

If I introspect on it enough, I could consider the car to be pretty much anything. This is why I prefer to stick with a car being a car.

No. You don't have coherent definitions and you accept it. Because it suits your dualist motives.

There's no agreed philosophical definition of the term "consciousness." This is simple fact.

On the other hand, the entire field of cognitive and computer science relies on precise formal definitions.

Exactly. They rely on precise formal definitions. Without formal definitions they have absolutely nothing to work on. This is why they struggle with something so seemingly complex as human consciousness...and try and strap it down...and resist at anyone who suggests actually it isn't so well defined.

I can visualize red with my eyes closed -- I can picture apples, stop signs, whatever. If you can't, then sorry.

In front of your eyes? I'm impressed.

Nick

 

[rocketdodger]

If I introspect on it enough, I could consider the car to be pretty much anything. This is why I prefer to stick with a car being a car.

Is it just a coincidence that such a useless tautological definition also allows you to waste internet bandwidth with pointless statements? I doubt it.

There's no agreed philosophical definition of the term "consciousness." This is simple fact.

So what? Should that prevent people from having scientific discussions about human cognition?

You seem to think so. Because every time anyone asks you for a definition or provides one of their own, you resist.

If I had to guess I would say that the primary conclusion reached by anyone reading this thread is that your goal is not understanding but rather obfuscation.

Exactly. They rely on precise formal definitions. Without formal definitions they have absolutely nothing to work on. This is why they struggle with something so seemingly complex as human consciousness...and try and strap it down...and resist at anyone who suggests actually it isn't so well defined.

What exactly are you saying, Nick? Are you saying that human consciousness doesn't obey some set of formal rules? Are you saying it is somehow magical and can't be explained by what we have learned about the universe?

 

[Nick227]

So what? Should that prevent people from having scientific discussions about human cognition?

No. Of course not. But it's a reminder that actually we don't yet have a clear definition for what it is we're investigating. Because what happens for me with you and Pixy is you go charging off into wild claims that can't be substantiated. The "hard problem" is not adequately understood yet to be disregarded in the manner that you guys do. This fact is appreciated by professionals working in this field. But to you two you think it's all over and done with simply because you subscribe to one definition.

You seem to think so. Because every time anyone asks you for a definition or provides one of their own, you resist.

I'm just stating the simple fact that there is currently no well accepted philosophical definition for the word "consciousness." This is true.

If I had to guess I would say that the primary conclusion reached by anyone reading this thread is that your goal is not understanding but rather obfuscation.

I am pointing out that charging ahead to what you perceive as the finishing post in the manner you do is just dwelling in fantasy. As far as I can tell the majority of serious researchers still perceive big issues. They may be resolved over time or they may disappear as more and more of the "easy problems" are resolved, but there are still big issues here and now.

What exactly are you saying, Nick? Are you saying that human consciousness doesn't obey some set of formal rules? Are you saying it is somehow magical and can't be explained by what we have learned about the universe?

I don't think it's magical. But I do think there is a gulf between AI and human visual awareness.

Nick