Subjective Experience

[westprog]

I've noticed in the interminable succession of threads about consciousness that there doesn't seem to be any consensus about what subjective experience is, and how accessible it is. The interesting thing is that this absence of consensus applies even within the groupings of opinion of the nature of consciousness. So a poll.

 

[Darat]

Hold on you've got this a bit backward, you need to tell us what the term "subjective experience" is meant to mean before we can tell you what we think it is!

 

[westprog]

Hold on you've got this a bit backward, you need to tell us what the term "subjective experience" is meant to mean before we can tell you what we think it is!

And when we've all agreed on what it means, we can have the poll?

I don't expect to live that long. I suggest that each person votes according to what they think subjective experience means.

 

[Hokulele]

Why is there no option for "is scientifically accessible"?

 

[Darat]

And when we've all agreed on what it means, we can have the poll?

I don't expect to live that long. I suggest that each person votes according to what they think subjective experience means.

OK - I had thought you were interested in a meaningful discussion. What do you intend doing with the poll - using it as a random number generator?

 

[Gate2501]

New poll:

Will humans ever be able to simultaneously track a buttrillion neurons in a human's brain, and make sense of this information in a way that mirrors said brain?

1. Yes.

2. No.

I fixed yr poll.

 

[H'ethetheth]

I'm actually more interested in what "scientifically accessible" means in this context.

I can think of a few different though overlapping alternatives, you see.

1. Does it mean we can one day "plug into", i.e, experience someone else's experience?
(It would have to be a sort of partial plug in, or you wouldn't realize you are someone else because you wouldn't be you, nor would you have any memory of being someone else afterward. It would be a rather pointless way of deleting time from your experience.)

2. Does it mean we can plan to induce any experience we choose and successfully induce it on any given subject?

3. Does it mean that we can tell exactly what someone is thinking at any point?

 

[Fnord]

Maybe might someday possibly happen ... but don't count on it.

 

[Beerina]

New poll:

Will humans ever be able to simultaneously track a buttrillion neurons in a human's brain, and make sense of this information in a way that mirrors said brain?

1. Yes.

2. No.

I fixed yr poll.

Hehe, but mapping these NCCs, Neural Correlates of Consciousness, is actually just the start.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Hold on you've got this a bit backward, you need to tell us what the term "subjective experience" is meant to mean before we can tell you what we think it is!

Stuff that happens to you, of which you are directly aware.

 

[Third Eye Open]

Stuff that happens to you, of which you are directly aware.

Then of course it is scientifically accessible using that definition. So that must not be the definition westprog uses, or he wouldn't have this poll up.

 

[paximperium]

New poll:

Will humans ever be able to simultaneously track a buttrillion neurons in a human's brain, and make sense of this information in a way that mirrors said brain?

1. Yes.

2. No.

I fixed yr poll.

If that is the poll definitely 1. YES

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Are you asking whether neurophysiology will eventually have a model of consciousness that convinces most people that consciousness is understood as an emergent property of the brain?

~~ Paul

 

[Gate2501]

If that is the poll definitely 1. YES

Well, I think that is what subjective experience IS.

Take person A for example.

Map all of the neurons in A's brain, and simulate them in a computer program.

Duplicate the information processing algorithms present in A's brain inside the simulation.

Now put person A's head into a giant helmet that records the state of his entire brain in real time, send the information of his neural state to the simulation and process it there in parallel with person A's brain.

The simulation now has access to the subjective experience of person A.

I see the whole "subjective experience is special" bit, as an absurd philosophical version of the god-of-the-gaps style argument.

 

[paximperium]

Well, I think that is what subjective experience IS.

Take person A for example.

Map all of the neurons in A's brain, and simulate them in a computer program.

Duplicate the information processing algorithms present in A's brain inside the simulation.

Now put person A's head into a giant helmet that records the state of his entire brain in real time, send the information of his neural state to the simulation and process it there in parallel with person A's brain.

The simulation now has access to the subjective experience of person A.

Here is the difficult but not insurmountable problem. Will the minute differences between person A and simulated person A's memory(since they diverge from the time of recording) be the same and will that play a role in "subjective" experience?

Frankly while it is interesting to research this, I see little relevance in why the variation of subjective experience(ie Qualia) is in anyway even interesting. Person A and Person B experience wetness/red/sadness differently...no poop Einstein! Of course different brains experience these things differently.

I see the whole "subjective experience is special" bit, as an absurd philosophical version of the god-of-the-gaps style argument.

I agree

 

[Gate2501]

Here is the difficult but not insurmountable problem. Will the minute differences between person A and simulated person A's memory(since they diverge from the time of recording) be the same and will that play a role in "subjective" experience?

Well, say Person A is at t1 when the process starts, and Person A is at t5 by the time the Simulation has processed A@t1. You would just need to record the states A@t2-t5 and queue them up to keep the Simulation experiencing the subjective state of Person A. Constantly keeping a record of the past X states for processing in the Sim. Whatever the delay was, you could accommodate it in this manner.

Obviously the Simulation would "lag" behind Person A somewhat.

 

[Apathia]

I vote not sceintifically acessible in priniciple.

But indirectly observable? Yes.

Capable of being created? In my opinion yes. Eventually we'll be able to build artificial beings that have subjective experiences (Though i can't see why we'd want to do that. We already make a mess of things by creating entities by the popular method.)

And anyway, you poll's flawed because it doesn't have a Planet X option.
For example: On Planet X, SHRDLU has stolen your subjective experience.

 

[AkuManiMani]

I'd say that subjective experience is not only scientifically accessible, but is the foundation of science itself. Every empirical observation is a subjective experience. We don't just observe subjective experience on a regular basis; it -is- observation. Being as how we individually can vouch for the veridical reality of our own experiences this means that they are objectively real. IMO, any veridical phenomena must be accessible to scientific inquiry of some sort or another. The fact that we do not yet have a scientific means of directly observing consciousness in others is more a practical limitation than one of principle.

 

[Gate2501]

I'd say that subjective experience is not only scientifically accessible, but is the foundation of science itself. Every empirical observation is a subjective experience. We don't just observe subjective experience on a regular basis; it -is- observation. Being as how we individually can vouch for the veridical reality of our own experiences this means that they are objectively real. IMO, any veridical phenomena must be accessible to scientific inquiry of some sort or another. The fact that we do not yet have a scientific means of directly observing consciousness in others is more a practical limitation than one of principle.

Solipsism.

 

[yy2bggggs]

You probably mean to ask a different question, because I too would tend to want to vote for the otter that I do not see--that subjective experience is scientifically accessible.

The raw, ordinary study/creation of optical illusions, for example, is addressing subjective experience.

(ETA: Is "subjective experience" redundant? Is there such a thing as objective experience?)