The hard problem of consciousness

[Dancing David]

Dont get caught in the word "experience". It's ONLY A WORD, that points to something beyond language. It's the simple act of "see-ing"(not analysing) the thought, the emotion, sense perception as it happens.

'see-ing' is two things the sensations and then the perceptions, there is no need to suggest there is an unknown entity until evidence for it arises. It is possible, but as this point undocumented. Why can't it just BE the physical process?

 

[Dancing David]

I can't show you the evidence. I can only point to your own subjective dancing. To the phenomenon we call dancing. Not to the thing we are dancing(what ever that might be at the moment) but to the act of dancing.

 

[Dancing David]

The experiencer, which is different from a blind string of reaction after reaction

To quote the AHB again:

If you pluck out your eye, will you see better?

 

[Nick227]

'see-ing' is two things the sensations and then the perceptions, there is no need to suggest there is an unknown entity until evidence for it arises. It is possible, but as this point undocumented. Why can't it just BE the physical process?

It may be a physical process.

This regardless you are still confusing thoughts with experience. You cannot capture experience with thoughts. It is too immediate. You can direct the mind to try but if you examine the results you will see that they are not the experience.

This is not to suggest that there is some unknown entity involved, merely to point out the innate limitations of thought-based systems of understanding.

Nick

 

[Darat]

Well then Nick227 I haven't a clue what you mean by "experiencing". The only time "I" am aware of experiencing anything is when I have an internal dialogue (as I am doing at the moment when thinking about this post I am typing) the rest of the time "I" experience nothing.

 

[Nick227]

Well then Nick227 I haven't a clue what you mean by "experiencing".

Well, "experiencing" is just a word, a word I'm using to convey the primacy of whatever is in my mind in the moment. Of course this conveying inevitably fails!

The only time "I" am aware of experiencing anything is when I have an internal dialogue (as I am doing at the moment when thinking about this post I am typing) the rest of the time "I" experience nothing.

You're saying, for example, that you cannot experience a chair without having thoughts about the chair? I don't quite follow.

Nick

 

[rocketdodger]

When I sit down and think about what happens when I think, more thoughts are created. I fail to see how this resolves anything to be honest. It just creates more thoughts. So what?

Nick

And this is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Instead of just shutting up (not to be insulting) and actually trying something, you, as an HPC proponent, instantly write it off because "you fail to see how it resolves anything." Dude, science wouldn't have gotten very far if everyone didn't try stuff because they "fail to see how it resolves anything."

The point of the exercise (which I now must explain because you don't seem to have the patience to do it) is that subjective experience is reasoning.

When you receive sensory input, you are not experiencing anything. You are just receiving input. There is no experience yet. In fact, it won't ever be an experience unless you take some extra steps.

For example, when you are driving home every day, you look at literally millions of objects. How many of them do you "experience?" Do you "experience" the passing cars on the other side of the freeway? Do you "experience" every bush along every building? Do you "experience" every crack in the road? Absolutely not.

What you experience is sensory input that, for whatever reason, your mind chooses to process further. And this further processing is known as reasoning. So when a car on the other side of the freeway "catches your eye," the implicit reasoning system that is your neural network starts going to town. A whole cascade of inferences are made, automatically, that link that car with countless other ideas and memories. Perhaps your family had a similar car? Perhaps the car is your favorite color? Perhaps you think it is moving too fast? Perhaps the sun glinted off the hood in just the right way and made you think of the ocean in Mexico at sunset?

Furthermore, for you to be aware that you are having an experience, you have to infer that it is yourself having the experience. Otherwise, how could you think "I am having an experience?" This is yet more reasoning.

Subjective experience is reasoning. Self consciousness is just subjective experience considering the self -- a reasoning system reasoning about itself.

 

[rocketdodger]

If you are in-the-moment aware of the immediacy of experience you are aware of the HPC.

Ahhhhh. I see! So the HPC only exists in the infinitessimal period of time between when you experience something and you are aware of experiencing something.

Well, that makes so much more sense! I mean, other than the fact that the very definition of experience that the HPC requires is based on one being aware of experience (I.E. subjective).

But who cares about keeping definitions consistent in a debate, right?

 

[Mercutio]

Well, the act of definition does take one away from the experience of definition. The attempt of the mind to define anything is just the mind attempting to define. So what? What has experience to do with definition? You can experience definition, but you can't actually define experience. It's too primary, too inescapable.

More turtles.

I know you asked not to get hung up on the word "experience" (which was my point, actually, which was why I used the other words as well), but everything you are doing is adding an undefined something to what is known, then asking us to define that undefined something.

I think the HPC deniers are simply so identified with thought that they fail to see the issue lies with the inability of thought to convey experience. Thoughts can merely be used to invoke a similar experience in others, but they are not touching on experience. You can have the experience of trying to define experience through thinking, but you are not actually defining experience, merely trying.

See? You use the term "HPC deniers", when what is being "denied" is nothing more than the additional something you insist must be there.

If you are in-the-moment aware of the immediacy of experience you are aware of the HPC.

No. You are falling prey to our language. If you insist that, in order to explain "sunrise", we must actually explain the movement of sun through sky over stationary earth, then we have the HPS, or Hard Problem of Sunrise. You are taking "conscious experience" as some sort of bedrock, when it clearly is not, and cannot be.

Take a listen to the course that Pixy linked to (I was surprised to see that it is just a psych class, not one specifically aimed at consciousness, but at second thought realized that this shows just how much we *do* know about the processes under debate here); the actual science involved frames the question in a vastly different way than philosophy does. There is evidence of how we perceive, sense, remember, think... and so far, none of it is pointing to anything like "qualia" as having any meaningful existence at all. "Qualia" is a philosophical construct, a shortcut to describe part of perceiving, no more real than "sunrise". Sure, both words allow us to be understood in many contexts, but neither helps us when trying to explain what is really happening.

 

[rocketdodger]

You're saying, for example, that you cannot experience a chair without having thoughts about the chair? I don't quite follow.

Anything that pops into your head is a thought.

Follow now?

 

[Nick227]

And this is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Instead of just shutting up (not to be insulting) and actually trying something, you, as an HPC proponent, instantly write it off because "you fail to see how it resolves anything." Dude, science wouldn't have gotten very far if everyone didn't try stuff because they "fail to see how it resolves anything."

Well, let me first be honest about my view on HPC. I don't really like the word consciousness, because like experience, to me it's trying to refer to something which is inescapable and thus irreferable (if such a word exists!). By their nature abstract concepts tend to imply that one can escape primacy and this doesn't really work for me. If we say however that we can refer to it, then personally I don't know if consciousness arises in the body. I don't know.

What I'm skeptical of, in considering the HPC, is whether a machine can be created which exhibits all the traits of human consciousness. I'm skeptical of it because I haven't seen one yet. It may well be possible. I'm just not yet convinced, because of these issues with experiencing.

Back to what you wrote. I did try what you suggested. I did have more thoughts. I don't see that having more thoughts resolves the issue. I think all it showed me was that having as many thoughts as you like does nothing to bridge the gap between conceptual models and the primacy of what is. The fact that scientists have developed thought-based models of understanding to the degree that they have does not undermine this for me.

The point of the exercise (which I now must explain because you don't seem to have the patience to do it) is that subjective experience is reasoning.

Do you need to reason about, say, a chair, to experience the chair?

Nick

 

[Nick227]

Anything that pops into your head is a thought.

Follow now?

You're saying the chair is a thought?

Nick

 

[Mercutio]

You're saying the chair is a thought?

Nick

*sigh*

What aspect of the chair are you experiencing? The texture? The color? The softness? Your associations about sitting at it for dinner?

Please give one example of anything about experiencing that chair that is *not* thinking.

As Calkins once put it, "can you conceive of something that cannot be conceived?" Her answer was "no". I want to see yours.

 

[Nick227]

See? You use the term "HPC deniers", when what is being "denied" is nothing more than the additional something you insist must be there.

I would agree with you in that, attempting to articulate the primacy of experience, one inevitably has to conceptualise, and that in so doing, one creates issues which are not present in primacy. Thus, certainly one does create a "something" out of that which is anyway inescapable, borderless, and indefinable. I consider this a tendency of the conceptual mind.

There are things. There are thoughts. There are feelings. Can a machine be created which has all the aspects characteristic of human consciousness, which experiences feelings?

Nick

 

[Nick227]

*sigh*

What aspect of the chair are you experiencing? The texture? The color? The softness? Your associations about sitting at it for dinner?

Please give one example of anything about experiencing that chair that is *not* thinking.

As Calkins once put it, "can you conceive of something that cannot be conceived?" Her answer was "no". I want to see yours.

To me there is the chair, and there are thoughts about the chair. I can passively observe the chair without thinking about it.

If you ask me about the experience I have only thoughts with which to try and convey it. In even considering the chair as an experience of a chair, I must inevitably create the duality I/chair. I have to write down thoughts I have about the chair. Yet there is still the chair.

Nick

 

[Darat]

To me there is the chair, and there are thoughts about the chair. I can passively observe the chair without thinking about it.

...snip...

No you can't.

 

[Nick227]

To me there is the chair, and there are thoughts about the chair. I can passively observe the chair without thinking about it.

...snip...

No you can't.

I can. In reflecting upon it, in considering it as a challenge, in considering it as "an experience," in trying to articulate it as an experience, in thinking "I'm passively observing it now!", so thoughts are created.

But I can passively observe the chair without thoughts.

Nick

 

[Mercutio]

I can. In reflecting upon it, in considering it as a challenge, in considering it as "an experience," in trying to articulate it as an experience, in thinking "I'm passively observing it now!", so thoughts are created.

But I can passively observe the chair without thoughts.

Nick

How would you know you are doing so?

If you actually see the chair, how is that not a thought? If you do not (nor smell it, touch it, etc.), how are you observing it? Am I passively observing the small chair in the room down the hall from you right now? If I am, I certainly am not aware of it, and we can pretty much throw out any definition we have of "observing". If I am not, and it actually takes some form of actual observing to observe a chair, then you cannot passively observe the chair without thoughts.

(quibble: I hate the term "thoughts"; it is simply a reification of a process into a noun. There are no "thoughts", there is simply thinking. It makes so much more sense to end my last sentence as "without thinking".)

 

[JoeEllison]

Well, the act of definition does take one away from the experience of definition. The attempt of the mind to define anything is just the mind attempting to define. So what? What has experience to do with definition? You can experience definition, but you can't actually define experience. It's too primary, too inescapable.

I think the HPC deniers are simply so identified with thought that they fail to see the issue lies with the inability of thought to convey experience. Thoughts can merely be used to invoke a similar experience in others, but they are not touching on experience. You can have the experience of trying to define experience through thinking, but you are not actually defining experience, merely trying.

If you are in-the-moment aware of the immediacy of experience you are aware of the HPC.

Nick

The more I read your posts, the less sense they make. Seriously, I'm not sure you're even saying anything in this post.

 

[rocketdodger]

(quibble: I hate the term "thoughts"; it is simply a reification of a process into a noun. There are no "thoughts", there is simply thinking. It makes so much more sense to end my last sentence as "without thinking".)

I agree. Especially in the context of discussions like this, where people get hung up on the notion of a "thought" necessarily being something complex and analytical.