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Consciousness

samadhi_smiles said:
You're right. The hard problem is (as succintly as possible) finding a place for subjective, phenomenal states of mind in an explanatory theory of consciousness. That place, I answer (unoriginally I may add) is as a monitoring tool on the organism's body state (selected for blindly through evolution).

The hard problem is NOT identifying neural correlates and how they give rise to consciousness. Thats the easy problem (the problem for neuroscientists). The hard problem has very little to do with the actual physical systems that realize our consciousness. We can imagine radically different physical systems that realize consciousness (non-carbon based perhaps), however there would still be the hard problem of WHY the entity is conscious (ie why does pain feel like THIS and not THAT).
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

From wiki:

The term hard problem of consciousness, coined by David Chalmers[1], refers to the "hard problem" of explaining why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences.

Various formulations of the "hard problem":

"Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all?"
"How is it that some organisms are subjects of experience?"
"Why does awareness of sensory information exist at all?"
"Why do qualia exist?"
"Why is there a subjective component to experience?"
"Why aren't we philosophical zombies?"
"There is something it is like to be a bat", or other conscious organism (Thomas Nagel)

You seem to think that the answer is functional. I still don’t see why this monitoring function couldn’t occur in the absence of consciousness. I need to do some work before I respond to your latest post. This is fun!
 
I don't think experience is functional, since any functional explanation will miss the main aspects. I think a functional explanation is necessary in order to situate experience as a biological process (as a result of evolutionary processes), but that doesn't mean it is exhausted as a functionally definable process (its not, like you correctly put it, the monitoring processes that phenomenal consciousness serve could very easily be realized in an entity that is not conscious - there's a paper about frogs, catching flies, and visual representation that goes into this in depth, forgive me for having forgotten the author).

I think the answer as to why conscious experience emerged as a monitor device has to do with how our minds are and how are brains are. At a base computational level, our brains are pattern recognizers. Much more than we think of at first is done through pattern recognition in our brains (you can see this most clearly by studying artificial neural network modeling, which provide explanations of how it is possible to recognize very complex facial structures solely through a multitude of simple pattern recognitional processes - this is sometimes cashed out in 'morpho-space' and as such relies on brute computational processes - see Paul Churchland, "The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul.").

I'm actually unsure where to go from here...the path has something to do with the mind building upon these pattern recognitional processes and adding neurochemicals (to give distinct subjective feels for individual phenomena). Maybe you can fill in the blanks.

BTW Dondante, if you haven't read the Chalmers paper, "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" you should read it. Its great. You can download that one and other papers he wrote on his website. He's also compiled a bibliography for the philosophy of consciousness on his site. Very useful!
 
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samadhi_smiles said:
This possible world (in which the world is physically identical to ours with identical physical laws yet lacking conscious experience) is not conceptually possible, if it is not naturally possible in any possible world.
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Natural possiblity is a much stronger constraint than logical possibility. I believe you have it reversed; something can be logically/conceptually possible but not naturally possible.

From Chalmers:

"The distinction between logical and natural supervenience is vital for our purposes. We can intuitively understand the distinction as follows. If B-properties superevene logically on A-properties, the once God (hypothetically) creates a world with certain A-facts, the B-facts come along for free as an automatic consequence. If B-properties merely supervene naturally on A-properties, however, then after making sure of the A-facts, God has to do more work in order to make sure of the B-facts: he has to make sure there is a law relating the A-fact and the B-facts. Once the law is in place, the relevant A-facts will automatically bring along the B-facts; but one could, in principle, have had a situation where they did not."

The zombie world is logically possible, but not naturally.
 
OK, I really want to get this point across, as like I said, I think it is correct and it is an original idea (as far as I know!).

You're right about the distinction between conceptual and natural possibiility. Logical (or in other words, conceptual) possibility is stronger constraint than natural possibility. Conceptual possibility constrains natural possibility. For example its not conceptually possible for something to both exist and not exist. It follows (trivially) that it is not naturally possible for something to both exist and not exist (insofar as it is not conceptually possible).

This is not true, but suppose in all conceptually possible worlds, there was a natural law governing how high humans could jump (say 100 feet). It follows that it is not conceptually possible that a human can jump 150 feet (because of a constraint of natural possibility). This is rare that natural possibility constrains conceptual possibility, and can only happen when something is not naturally possible in all conceptually possible worlds (or at least this is the only case I can think of).

But, my point is, that if something is not naturally possible in any conceptually possible world, then that point is ipso facto not conceptually possible (even if it may seem as if it is conceptually possible).

We can say anything is conceptually possible, but it does not make it so. I can ask you to imagine a possible world in which an object both exists and does not exist, however that does not mean automatically (since I phrase it in 'thought-experiment-ese' that it is conceptually possible). There is a contradiction entailed within the premise (that something both exists and does not exist) and the law of contradiction tells us that the premise is false and the negation of the premise must therefore be true (i.e. the premise 'it is not the case that something both exists and does not exist' is true).

Fair enough, now to some premises I use to show the natural impossibility in all conceptually possible worlds for two systems physically isomorphic (governed by physically identical laws) to not both either produce consciousness or neither produce (I'm going to call this functional isomorphism even though its a bit of a misleading term).

If consciousness is a biological process and biological processes accord to natural laws, then there is a natural law governing consciousness (or some aggregate of natural laws).

If there is a natural law governing consciousness and you ask me to imagine two possible worlds which are physically isomorphic (in respect to the matter they contain as well as the laws that govern that matter), in which one world has conscious entities and the other world has unconscious entities, then I will tell you that is not conceptually possible.

The only way that two worlds physically isomorphic can differ (insofar as conscious entities are concerned) is if it was naturally possible for two worlds with identical physical matter and identical laws to differ in functional isomorphism (however, as I established above it is not possible for biological processes such as consciousness not to conform to natural laws and insofar as it is not naturally possible for any conceptually possible world to exist that entails the non-conformity of physical matter to physical laws, it is therefore impossible to conceptualize zombies).

Chalmers is wrong ;)
 
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I'm actually going to email Chalmers and ask him if the physically isomorphic worlds we are asked to imagine entail physical identity of laws. If not, then of course it is conceptually possible to imagine zombies (insofar as different laws are governing the emergence of biological processes). But, if the laws are meant to be identical also then we must conclude that zombies are not conceptually possible.

Philosophy is fun!
 
samadhi_smiles said:
Logical (or in other words, conceptual) possibility is stronger constraint than natural possibility. Conceptual possibility constrains natural possibility.
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I had a few beers at happy hour, so I'll read it thoroughly later, but you still have it backwards from what I see.
 
All I will say is that noone is ever going to prove the existence of anything, unless you can first prove the existence of existence. There, thats my well thought out treatise on conciousness.
 
You're all such analytic die-hards... ;)

This a very long post, hope it's digestible...

Whats missing here is any appreciation for two crucial aspects - history and the other.

Maybe it's best to view consciousness as a spandrel, (a non adaptive trait that goes hand in hand with an adaptive one) something that came along with the evolution of the "psychological mind" as Dondante calls it. This is more or less what Dennett proposes - the subjective, phenomenal mind is a complex, constant redrafting of a narrative which glues all the psychological subsystems together. It does not have to be epihenomal - without the phenomenal mind perhaps the whole system of advanced human cognition would fall apart. This seems much more likely to be the case than a pure epiphenomena which we can conceive of doing without (the zombie argument)

Making claims to the logical possibilities of zombies is fairly redundant when we have no understanding of the logical relations between the phenomenal and the physical mind, and such thought experiments really on a slight of hand that the "common sense" position is correct. Dennett is very good again on the critique of such thought experiments (I can't remember where now sadly..)

Consider - we are fully aware of the logical relations of a cube, we can separate the elements essential and non-essential to it. It is logically possible that the cube could be another colour, or material or indeed a kind of being (a physical cube as opposed to an abstract one in vector space), it is not possible that the cube can have no corners. The premises of the zombie argument ("that there is a logically possible world in which zombies exist") assume that the relation between the phenomenal to the physical/psychological mind is analgous to that between the colour and the cube.

EDIT: Just realised psood0nym's post describes this better in terms of natural kinds and properties...

As for history... how we conceive consciousness has changed a lot through the history of man, and across cultures (it would make no sense, for instance, to pose the zombie problem within a Buddhist context - the problem would be meaningless). The very idea of phenomenal consciousness as Dondante conceives it has only been around since John Locke (300 years). If there's one thing that psychedelics have taught me, it's that it is possible to be conscious in different ways. To ask when historically phenomenal consciousness arrived, and where the cut off is between animals that have consciousness or not make no sense (as I think Dondante would agree). So it was that the full gamut of human modern human conscious has been built up over time, to where we are now, complex consciousnesses built on the core of phenomenal consciousness and self awareness. It previous times, our ancestors were not like this. At some point they were animals, consciousness is a broad spectrum not just across species but across time.

From Dondante's first post (I haven't read the thread he makes a distinction between self-awareness and phenomenal consciousness, which requires only awareness of the external world. Your tone suggest you think phenomenal consciousness is primary both historically and casually to self consciousness. I hope when you say self-awareness you mean reflective, future planning, disctinct awareness of a "self" in the modern sense, not simply the awareness of being a subject. Because to have awareness of the external world, you must have something to distinguish it from - the subject, self in the most primitive sense. There must be something the world is external to.


Where of course continental philosophy has much to say - Hegel & Heidegger both brought an awarness of the historicity of "being". Hegel's most famous work, The Phenomenology of Spirit is a history of consciousness, starting from pure undivided subject, no other, and works its way in steps thought the introduction of the other, the steps to consciousness and the metaphorical struggle to become self-conscious in the more complex sense. Self consciousness is only achieved finally through relationship with another consciousness. Specifically, the final step to being self-conscious is recognising that same self consciousness in another. Primitive, pre self consciousnesses together become self conscious by reciprocal recognition of each other, as being both the same (both conscious humans) and yet different (you and me). Ontologically, there are three kinds of things - me (my self consciousness), not-me (the world) and me-but-not-me (the self consciousness of another). Of course then Hegel goes on to build other more complex layers of consciousness through the development of society, art, religion etc.

Autopoesis is worth mentioning briefly too, when psood0nym bemoans the difficulty of drawing fixed jumps in kinds of being:

psood0nym said:
Up to and through the level of molecules, panexperientialism is pretty clean. When we make the jump to the cellular level things start to get muddy, and when we make the leap to the level of the organism it’s a damn swamp. What are the rules for deciding what constitutes an experiential property of a cell and what doesn’t (the removal of one ion channel or a lipid from the cell’s wall might change it’s properties subtly but not in a deeply functional way; does it change its experience)? What about the profoundly more complex level of the organism?!
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Autopoesis proposes that the next kind catgory, between molecules and cells is that of a homeostatic boundary, which is simply defined as a system that maintains its integrity and distubances to that integrity with certain parameters (full definition of a autopoetic system here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoesis ). Actually pinning down the details of it is a complex issue, but what is interesting to note is that the formation of the homeostatic boundary is strikingly similar to the first step in Hegel's analysis - the division into subject and object.

To try an tie this together - Hegel shows that full self consciousness requires the presence of the Other (i.e. other human consciousness, that which is both like you and not like you), and thus it is wrong to try and localise the consciousness to supervern on the physical/psychological structures of the brain. (In the same way that Putnam argued that "meaning just ain't in the head" and that Clark & Chalmers argue for the external nature of the mind). Rather, consciousness supervenes on the grouping of physical brain, the world and the Other. This, to me, is the only worthwhile notion of emergence - consciousness emerges from, and is created by the network of relations that exist between people and things in the world - it is self supporting, the actions of consciousness produce consciousness.


Putnam & Semantic Externalism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam#Semantic_externalism

Clark & Chalmers "The Extended Mind" - http://consc.net/papers/extended.html
 
^^^Kinda begs the question though doesn't it? Oh wait for the mushrooms to kick in then I might be able to make sense of this thread
 
Fascinating post specialspack. You've given me plenty to chew on for the next good while. ;)

What a great thread. Thanks guys!!! =D =D =D
 
SpecialSpack, great post. I believe you are correct situating consciousness within a historical framework.

However, I think the idea will go beyond simply being able to grasp the concept of consciousness (through a historical perspective), if one situates consciousness as a biological process emergent as a result of evolution. Evolutionary history is something that can be scientifically understood. Not only the history but also the future.

In order to understand the true nature of consciousness (and not just our historical perception of), there must be an understanding of how it emerged. I believe consciousness emerged out of simple pattern recognition processes. It seems to work theoretically (under artificial neural network models) as well as experentially (especially on psychedelics it seems intuitive!). As these processes developed, the fine grained nature of consciouness emerged. Apples started tasting like apples and oranges started tasting like oranges (based on a near infinitude of pattern repetition).
 
willow11 said:
^^^Kinda begs the question though doesn't it? Oh wait for the mushrooms to kick in then I might be able to make sense of this thread
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...I am so lost in here...:(
 
hahahahaha

Now if someone without a sense of humor read that in a forest and noone else was around.....
 
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