Non-technical anti physicalist concerns

[Manifespo]

We are self-aware, self-replicating systems of electromagnetic plasma.

 

[Fausty]

If I was claiming that causal chains at the quantum level guaranteed particular effects at the macro (or quantum) level for everything but consciousness, then your complaints about the non-deterministic structure of the universe would be relevant. But this isn't what I'm saying. I happily agree that physical processes cause consciousness in the same probabilistic way that they cause any other physical effect. The only difference is that the particular effect of a blue color experience is a non-physical effect. That is, blue color experiences are caused (non-deterministically) by physical processes, but are not physical processes themselves.

Oh, I am using "deterministic" in the purely technical/systems sense of the word. When we say a system exhibits fully deterministic behavior, we mean that at time (t), we can predict with absolute precision the state of that system (given full knowledge of the starting conditions, etc.). We know where the system is going.

Non-deterministic systems don't have this property. We can know all the details of the system - perfectly - no need for quantum probabilistic fuzziness. We can know the starting state, with absolute precision. But when asked where the system will be at time (t) - where t is not a trivial number relative to the starting iteration - we cannot answer. This is, by common definition, stochasticity - unpredictability of system state in the future based on the current state.

Now, logically, this is utterly unacceptable. If I know everything about a system, and its rules. . . how can I not know where it's going to be in the future? Alas, this is the nature of our universe - most complex systems are by definition non-deterministic. Incidentally, this is quite a new finding.

In the past, many of these stochasticities were explained as the "ghost in the machine," or God, or bad measurements, or whatever. Turns out, now that we have computers to run all sorts of complex test cases, it's intrinsic to algorithmic systems of all kinds. That's important, and relevant to discussions of consciousness and whether the fact that brains exhibit complex behavior means they are magical, or non-physical, or mythical, or non-materialist, or whatever term you choose to use.

Furthermore, I never said we couldn't explain consciousness either. Even if my concerns are right, they still leaves open an explanation of consciousness in terms of physical systems causing or taking on non-physical properties. This explanation takes consciousness as fundamental instead of trying to reduce it to some lower level physical phenomena. It's also worth noting that I even left open the possibility that we could one day give a purely physical explanation of consciousness, although it is entirely unclear at the moment what that might look like.

Indeed, I think we're in total agreement on these specific issues. Reductum ad Absurdio is hardly the standard method of science nowadays, and expecting neural behaviors to be "explained" by boiling them down to constituent bits and pieces would be silly. In fact, the entire "systems" approach to inquiry takes this as axiomatic. As a (someday) Doctor in Systems Theory, I'd have to pretty much say I agree with that position.

And I also agree that our understanding of how thinking takes place is pretty pathetic right now. Most neuroscientists, I believe, would agree with this. Rather than requiring magic to explain our poor understanding, however, I'd suggest we need sharper thinking, better analytic structures, and broader minds - not a retreat to spiritualism or beliefs in the ether.

Incidentally, I'd suggest that projects like Numenta represent relevant baby steps in the right direction.

With regard to your list of borderline cases for consciousness: it is a well known fallacy to suggest that fuzzy cases for a given concept imply that the concept has no application. As someone who loves movies, I could give you a giant list of things that may or may not count as movies (I'm thinking of various avant garde pieces of art). This shows that our concept of 'movie' is not entirely precise, but obviously does not imply anything deep let alone the non-existence of movies!

No, no - those aren't borderline cases! Some of those, I'd think, we all agree are "conscious." Some of them, most would agree, aren't. The ones in the middle? The problem isn't that we cannot agree on where they fit - the problem is that we don't even have any generally accepted criteria by which to make this decision! That's more than mere definitional ambiguity. It's a strong suggestion that the "class" of things that are conscious is not well constituted (in the set theoretic sense of the word).

I think there's something important here, for sure. I think it's worthy of study (heck, I've spent years of academic life poking at it, myself). I think we're making some hesitant strides in the right direction. But I also think that we're not being anywhere near clear enough in what we are studying, or trying to explain, or to replicate, to measure, or whatever.

The core, historical roots of the concept of "consciousness" held that only adult humans, when not sleeping (or badly injured, etc.) are considered to have consciousness, to be conscious, to exhibit conscious thought. To me, this is a huge red flag (another one) that this concept has structural, definitional problems. Because, of course, the old ideas about humans being "above" all other life forms on our planet have been comprehensively shot down. Now that this has been show, we've sort of stretched the word "consciousness" here and there, at random, to try to cover over the cracks. It's not working.

Look, man, since you seem to have very specific requirements for how words are used I'll give up the term 'consciousness' to mean whatever fuzzy, non-existent thing that you insist it means. But its still true that there exist blue color experiences and it is these (along with every other phenomenal feel such as pains, tickles, experiences of sounds, etc.) that I'm talking about.

As more of a quantitative critter by nature, I'll admit that this whole "what blue feels like" thing as a "definition" of consciousness is just anathema to me. Subjectivity is great, and subjective experiences (like pain) are worth taking seriously. No doubt. But when we're trying to talk about "consciousness," taking as definitional the existence of subjectivity just seems. . . tautological. Sorry.

Consciousness has to do with self-referentiality (in the Godel, Escher, Bach sense), self-awareness, and memory. Or something like that. Learning? Can one be conscious if one cannot learn? Not sure, but I think these are the genuine questions around the definitional issue - not what blue feels like.

Fussy complaints about definitional precision aside, I don't think the investigation of what I've been referring to as consciousness is doomed in terms of scientific investigation.

Again, we're in total agreement! In fact, I'd take this sentence, call it my own, and paste it on my forehead. :D But I think your reversion to "non-physicalist" explanations does sort of smell like you're saying it's beyond science. However, you've clarified that somewhat below - so I'll not beat that dead horse too many times here.

Oh, and 'materialist' and 'physicalist' are not synonymous with 'scientific'. It is perfectly scientific to think that there exist things that are not constituted by lower-level physical stuff. These are the things that science takes as fundamental. These include: space, time, causality, every law of nature, and basic non-divisible physical particles (if they exist). As a matter of fact, the scientific evidence is neutral on whether a conscious state is constituted by physical stuff or caused by it. The kind of non-physicalist views of consciousness that I have in mind can be accommodated by science, they just relocate conscious states as a fundamental type caused by physical stuff rather than a high-level type constituted by low level physical stuff.

This is a complex paragraph and includes a number of significant distinctions and proposed connections. I must admit, however, that I'm fully lost in terms of understanding with this "non-physicalist" thing is. There's a longstanding and still extant branch of thought about consciousness that posits it to be something beyond rational comprehension, something God-given, or irreducably complex, or just fundamentally mysterious and thus impervious to scientific analysis. I'd assumed this is the position you were carrying forth in positing "non-physicalist" explanations for it. In fact, in using Dennett as a straw man, that seems pretty much to be a given.

Now if, in fact, you are only saying that conscious systems exhibit behavior that is more than just the behavior of their bits and pieces. . . well, I'd think basically every scientist and writer in the field is in agreement - including Dennett. As I've tried to outline in discussing determinism and stochasticity, any complex system is "more than the sum of its parts." That's not magic, it's just reality in our universe as we understand it thus far.

Peace,

Fausty

 

[neonads]

Non-determinism is the inability to separate the object under measurement from the rest of the universe. In classical terms an example would be trying to measure the melting point of iron (MP=1535'C) from a lump of pyrite (MP~1182'C) with a maximum heating capacity of 1300'C.

We could be said to be least conscious when performing well practised and repetitive actions, e.g. reverie, meditation. We could be said to be most conscious when actively seeking out new sensation for the sake of it's newness, e.g. critical thinking, art appreciation.

So is consciousness the act of sensory data association? If so, how could we make a deterministic model?

 

[mulberryman]

I don't think consciousness could ever really be measured, and even if it could, which, eventually science may come close to doing so, those measurements and observations would very likely defy any sense of logical conformity just as much as all those quarks and axions.

 

[skywise]

Oh, I am using "deterministic" in the purely technical/systems sense of the word. When we say a system exhibits fully deterministic behavior, we mean that at time (t), we can predict with absolute precision the state of that system (given full knowledge of the starting conditions, etc.). We know where the system is going.

Non-deterministic systems don't have this property. We can know all the details of the system - perfectly - no need for quantum probabilistic fuzziness. We can know the starting state, with absolute precision. But when asked where the system will be at time (t) - where t is not a trivial number relative to the starting iteration - we cannot answer. This is, by common definition, stochasticity - unpredictability of system state in the future based on the current state.

In the past, many of these stochasticities were explained as the "ghost in the machine,"....

Ok, this is nothing new to me. It's important to note that this is only a concern about the fundamental unpredictability of effects caused (at a later, even if only silghtly later, time) by a system we know everything about at its starting time. The fact that you are bringing this up in this context suggests to me that you are misplacing my concern about experience. It's not that I'm taking the thought that we can't predict which color experience will come from certain neural processes and saying that this is a big special problem about experience. In fact, we have actually made some decent headway in this direction. What I'm saying is that even if we knew all of the physical facts at any given time t, none of those facts seem like candidates for a blue color experience occurring at that same time.

To use a really simple example: maybe we couldn't predict that we would get water by combining two Hydrogen atoms with an Oxygen atom even if we knew everything there was to know about Hydrogen and Oxygen beforehand. Maybe the effect of these two molecules bonding is just completely unpredictable. But, given H2O that is already bonded, you could learn all the information there is to know about water (except maybe what complex effects it might have in certain causal contexts). Why? Because H2O constitutes, just is, water. If you're studying H2O, you're studying water! Now, if someone wants to say that a blue color experience just is, or is constituted by (not caused by!) brain process x, then a complete list of facts about brain process x should be able to tell us everything there is to know about blue color experiences (except maybe what complex effects the blue color experiences might have in certain causal contexts). If, on the other hand, brain process x just causes a blue color experience, then your concerns about unpredictability of complex systems applies, but doesn't get us anywhere with showing that blue color experiences just are some physical process.

And I also agree that our understanding of how thinking takes place is pretty pathetic right now. Most neuroscientists, I believe, would agree with this. Rather than requiring magic to explain our poor understanding, however, I'd suggest we need sharper thinking, better analytic structures, and broader minds - not a retreat to spiritualism or beliefs in the ether.

I don't believe in spirits, magic, ether or Santa Clause for that matter, and the concerns I've noted in this thread entail nothing of the sort. All they entail is that there exist such things as experiences. If this seems spooky or spiritual to you then maybe you don't have them? Maybe when you look at a blue object it doesn't look any certain way to you? I don't know how to respond to this sort of complaint except to say that there is an experiential aspect to my life and that I don't find it spiritual or ether-like at all. I just find it to be a fact. I know that it's easy to read a thread like this and think of me as some superstitious person who "don't know about science too well." But actually, I'm fairly well educated on this particular subject!

The core, historical roots of the concept of "consciousness"....

As more of a quantitative critter by nature, I'll admit that this whole "what blue feels like" thing as a "definition" of consciousness is just anathema to me. Subjectivity is great, and subjective experiences (like pain) are worth taking seriously. No doubt. But when we're trying to talk about "consciousness," taking as definitional the existence of subjectivity just seems. . . tautological. Sorry.

Consciousness has to do with self-referentiality (in the Godel, Escher, Bach sense), self-awareness, and memory. Or something like that. Learning? Can one be conscious if one cannot learn? Not sure, but I think these are the genuine questions around the definitional issue - not what blue feels like.

It's obviously true that the word 'consciousness' can be used in such a way that it refers to these things. All I can say about this is that these things are not what I'm talking about here! I don't care about giving a definition of the word 'consciousness' as it is used in every context. The fact that you keep criticizing my views by appeal to these other uses of the word is really annoying. It would be like if you made a thread to discuss writing pens, and I kept making posts about pig pens and the history of how the word 'pen' came to mean both. It's just not relevant.

To reiterate, I'm just talking about the subjective experience part of mental processes. I actually believe that thinking (and learning, believing, etc.) can mostly be understood in terms of physical functions. This is actually pretty uncontroversial. You can complain all you want that subjective experiences cannot be easily defined in terms of anything else, but it doesn't change the fact that such things exist! In fact, it is a plus in explanatory power for the view I have suggested that pain experiences and the like cannot be defined in physical terms. Why? Because if experience is to be taken as a fundamental, non-physical type, related to physical processes by causal laws, then it would make sense why we can't define it in terms of something else. You can't define space or time in terms of something else, but you would be hard pressed to find a good scientist claiming that this means they are either "magical ether" or "don't exist at all".

I must admit, however, that I'm fully lost in terms of understanding with this "non-physicalist" thing is.

It's just the experience you have when you see a blue object, or get pricked with a pin, etc. etc. If you want to claim that this is "physical" in any normal sense of the word then you would have to show me what physical stuff, or process it is. This has proven very difficult for a great many of very smart people. You can't avoid this question by pointing out that it is in principle impossible to predict the effects of a complex system because the concern isn't that its hard to see how experience is caused by physical stuff. The concern is that experience doesn't seem to be (or be made of) physical stuff.

 

[mulberryman]

Is not physical stuff still physical, just because its mayhap in another dimension?

 

[Fausty]

To reiterate, I'm just talking about the subjective experience part of mental processes. I actually believe that thinking (and learning, believing, etc.) can mostly be understood in terms of physical functions. This is actually pretty uncontroversial. You can complain all you want that subjective experiences cannot be easily defined in terms of anything else, but it doesn't change the fact that such things exist! In fact, it is a plus in explanatory power for the view I have suggested that pain experiences and the like cannot be defined in physical terms. Why? Because if experience is to be taken as a fundamental, non-physical type, related to physical processes by causal laws, then it would make sense why we can't define it in terms of something else. You can't define space or time in terms of something else, but you would be hard pressed to find a good scientist claiming that this means they are either "magical ether" or "don't exist at all".

Ok, I think I might actually be understanding more of where you're coming from. And I agree with you - we seem to be talking about two entirely separate things. I'd suggest the question you are asking is a fundamental epistemological one, an Hegelian issue. In Buddhism, the "just suchness" of experience.

Important stuff, surely, but I'm not sure that's what most of us are talking about when we talk about consciousness. Or are we? As you know, that's one reason this definitional quagmire spooks me - you and I don't even know if we're talking about the same thing! For me, when you set up Dennett as a straw man in opposition to your position, you are therefore tacitly accepting the quasi-conventional use of the word "consciousness." If you are juxtaposing your ideas about the concept against someone who is working within the conventional bounding of that concept, it's not really effective for you to decide after all that your concept isn't anywhere close to his concept - why bother comparing your ideas with his, in that case?

Alternatively, you are in fact thinking of the same kinds of stuff as Dennett is thinking of - and my own conception of "consciousness" is fundamentally idiosyncratic. I don't discount this as a possibility, either.

Peace,

Fausty

 

[skywise]

^^ Well, It's not that Dennett uses the word 'consciousness' just to talk about belief, memory etc. and is neutral about the "what it's like" aspects. His claim is that beliefs, memory, physical functions, etc. are all there is to be explained about our mental life. Dennett's view (in print) of what I will from here on out refer to as 'experience' is that there is no such thing. The man has committed himself to the claim that there is no such thing as a blue color experience over and above the functional facts like being able to pick out blue objects, etc. Thus, Dennett's views are also called "eliminitavist" regarding experience or the "just suchness" as you called it.

I'm not alone in thinking this is implausible (which is why Dennett's view is a minority one, even amongst those who think consciousness is somehow a physical process).

Anyway, I'm glad to at least have gotten clear about what it is I'm talking about and find so hard to explain in purely physical terms. Maybe I'll make my next post about the kind of physicalist view I find most plausible as an explanation for blue color experiences and the like.

 

[Fausty]

^^ Well, It's not that Dennett uses the word 'consciousness' just to talk about belief, memory etc. and is neutral about the "what it's like" aspects. His claim is that beliefs, memory, physical functions, etc. are all there is to be explained about our mental life. Dennett's view (in print) of what I will from here on out refer to as 'experience' is that there is no such thing. The man has committed himself to the claim that there is no such thing as a blue color experience over and above the functional facts like being able to pick out blue objects, etc. Thus, Dennett's views are also called "eliminitavist" regarding experience or the "just suchness" as you called it.

It's been several years since I read Consciousness Explained, and given its heft I'm not likely to re-read it anytime soon. Still, my memory of Dennett's stance is less that he denies the existence of experiential sensation, and more that he does not feel that subjectivity, per se, is the one and only element of relevance when discussing "consciousness." In fact, I recall him arguing that it's a bit of a red herring, leading us away from a more workable definition of something important ("consciousness") and towards a self-referential non-concept.

To return to the spandrel example: Dawkins doesn't attempt to demonstrate that spandrels "don't exist;' instead, he points out that they don't, in and of themselves, carry much analytic substance - one is better served studying the overall architecture of the cathedral rather than engaging in extreme focus on the purely secondary by-product: the spandrel.

I'm trying to think of any well-known philosophical thinker who genuinely denies the very existence of experience and I can't come up with one. The best I can come up with is the old Descartesian fallacy that every living thing - except human beings - is a mindless, non-conscious, non-experiencing clockwork that only exhibits clever simulations of these human-unique attributes. Needless to say, that silly, illogical, and utterly self-serving "theory" has long since been disproven.

I'm not alone in thinking this is implausible (which is why Dennett's view is a minority one, even amongst those who think consciousness is somehow a physical process).

Again, I'm not aware of some groundswell of "anti-physicalist" sentiment amongst researchers of consciousness. Then again, I'm not as current on the literature as I once was. I've read a bit of the "quantum consciousness" literature, and that's interesting - I guess. Don't know if that's non-physicalist, or not, by your definition.

Could you provide a few examples of researchers in the field who explicitly state that physical explanations alone are, by definition, utterly incapable of explaining "consciousness?" I'm curious to see how that argument reads, in a longer format than here.

Anyway, I'm glad to at least have gotten clear about what it is I'm talking about and find so hard to explain in purely physical terms. Maybe I'll make my next post about the kind of physicalist view I find most plausible as an explanation for blue color experiences and the like.

I'd be interested to hear more about your ideas on that, so you've got my vote! I have to admit it still sounds to me a bit like "I'm describing a non-physical feeling, something that's outside of physicality - and I challenge anyone to prove that my (by definition) 'non-physical' concept can be explained on physical terms!" If I were in a crabbier mood, I'd say it strays awfully close to tautology.

But I'm not.

Peace,

Fausty

 

[skywise]

^^^ I'm posting a link to an article written by Dennett that criticizes a property dualist, Chalmers, and pretty explicitly denies the existence of qualia (an example of which is the experience of blue). He compares the view that physical functions do not completely account for experience to the old abandoned view that physical functions can't account for life (vitalism). If you read this article though, it's only fair to read Chalmers' response to it which I'm also posting.

Dennett "Facing Backwards"

Chalmer's response (in section 2 of this paper):

Chalmers "Moving Forward"

There also is an article on eliminative materialism in the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy that explicitly references Dennett and a couple of others in section 3.3 "Eliminativism and the Phenomenal". It is probably a good starting place as it explains Dennett's view in a much more objective light than I would, and then in the next section gives the standard criticisms of eliminativism in general. Here is an excerpt and a link:

Excerpt: Dennett suggests that part of the reason we may have difficulty replicating pain in computational systems is because our concept is so defective that it picks out nothing real.

Eliminative Materialism

By the way, as far as I know most scientists are neutral about the existence of experience. It's more the philosophers who are eliminative about it. For example, neuroscientist Christoff Koch (researcher friend of the Crick that Dennett criticizes, and co-advocate of a 40-hertz oscillation theory) has explicitly written that "there may not even by a scientific solution to the really difficult aspects like subjective feelings... of pain, of pleasure, of seeing blue, of smelling a rose" and gives the a simple version of the explanatory gap concern that I gave in this thread (Discover, 1992 p. 96).

Granted, unlike Koch, I'm confident that there is a scientific solution. I just suspect that it might be non-physical.

 

[Fausty]

By the way, as far as I know most scientists are neutral about the existence of experience. It's more the philosophers who are eliminative about it. For example, neuroscientist Christoff Koch (researcher friend of the Crick that Dennett criticizes, and co-advocate of a 40-hertz oscillation theory) has explicitly written that "there may not even by a scientific solution to the really difficult aspects like subjective feelings... of pain, of pleasure, of seeing blue, of smelling a rose" and gives the a simple version of the explanatory gap concern that I gave in this thread (Discover, 1992 p. 96).

Granted, unlike Koch, I'm confident that there is a scientific solution. I just suspect that it might be non-physical.

Cool, I'll dig into those philosophical writings later this evening. However, I think you are grasping at straws to cite Kock as a someone supportive of a "consciousness can't be explained because blue is mysterious" line of thinking. Sentence citation from 1992 notwitstanding, he is after all the author of 2004's The Quest for Consciousness. I'm still reading through it, myself, but just from the jacket cover description comes this statement:

In The Quest for Consciousness, Christoph Kock, one of the leading researchers in the emerging field of consciousness, explores the biological basis of the subjective mind in animals and people. He outlines a framework that he and Francis Crick have constructed to come to grips with the ancient mind-body problem. At the heart of their framework is a sustained, empirical approach to discovering and characterizing the neuronal correlates of consciousness - the NCC - the subtle, flickering patterns of brain activity that underlie each and every conscious experience.

Now, I'll grant that the philosophical literature on consciousness may indeed be as conflicted on the issue of "subjectivity" or "physicality" or "materiality" as you have suggested. However, I reject entirely your effort to export this epistemological conflict into the neuroscience itself. That is, in fact, a literature with which I am quite familiar - as a doctoral candidate in this field for a number of years.

Neuroscientists aren't arguing about the "reality of experience," or whatever. They aren't. The work in this field relates to empirical efforts to map, model, and understand the actual neuronal architectures underlying our brains - which, by common definition, we posit as exhibiting "consciousness." Koch, least of all, is sitting in his office with a worried look on his face, wondering whether the way he feels when he sees the color blue is "real" or not.

There's plenty of legitimate debates and conceptual schisms in the neuroscientific literature on consciousness (network-based models versus linear programming, emotion-centric/affective versus "rational thought," memory versus instantiated awareness, etc.) - you, I think, are looking to overlay something of a philosopher's debate topic onto a branch of research that is long past navel-gazing, self-referential definitional quagmires, and the rhetorically-based creation of conflict where none exists.

Peace,

Fausty

 

[skywise]

"I'm describing a non-physical feeling, something that's outside of physicality - and I challenge anyone to prove that my (by definition) 'non-physical' concept can be explained on physical terms!" If I were in a crabbier mood, I'd say it strays awfully close to tautology.

But I'm not.

By the way, that's hardly a sympathetic reading of my view. Sometimes it really surprises how little sense people want to grant arguments that I think show a lot of knowledge on the subject and are the product of 2 years of study.

Anyway, my view can more accurately be summarized as follows: There exist experiences (or there exists an experiential aspect of our mental life). Given that everything else in the world has turned out to be physical, we have good reason to suppose that experience is also physical. But, despite many attempts by many intelligent people, it has thus far proven very difficult to give a physical reduction of experience. The reason why is that our experiences seem to be different in type from any physical process or thing in the world.

Now you'll no doubt complain that I haven't given any definition of 'experience' at all. Well, that's because I'm refusing to play the definition game with a subject that has proven very difficult to define. Instead, I'm just pointing you toward examples, such as when I say, "I'm just talking about the what it's like aspect of seeing something blue". Presumably, there is something it is like for you to see blue and you know what I'm talking about, no?

This method of direct reference rather than definition is not tautological or illegitimate in any way. Imagine that I made a thread to discuss Hesperus. Now imagine that you were unfamiliar with this term and made a post asking what Hesperus was. It would be perfectly legitimate and not tautological for me to reply, "Hesperus is Venus." This isn't a definition of what Hesperus means (it's definition is "the evening star"), but informative and non-circular nonetheless. Now, if you didn't know what Venus was either, this answer might not help you get a handle on what the thread was about. But if you were familiar with Venus, you would certainly know what I was talking about and would have to be really daft to start complaining that I hadn't given you a good definition of Hesperus.

Now, what I've tried to do in this thread is use words like "what it's like to see blue, or feel pain, etc." to refer to your experiences as an answer to your question of what I meant by 'consciousness'. This supposes that there's something its like to be you and that you're familiar with it. Given that you are familiar with these things, then you shouldn't be complaining any more about my lack of definition in this case then you would if I told you what Hesperus was by saying it is Venus. Again, this does assume that there is something its like to be you and that you realize this, but I'm willing to take that bet as I don't think of you the way Descartes thought of dogs.

edited to fix the part about direct reference so it made sense.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Hey Skywise, good post. I haven't read through the responses yet, but I think you may be making a very fundamental mistake in your line of reasoning.

You are actually demanding of the physicalist an explanation for why it is the case that such and such arrangement of physical particles gives rise to this very peculiar thing: ie consciousness. But notice, by reformulating your demand in this way, we have all but presupposed that consciousness has a physical basis.

A strict physicalist can remain open to the claim that it is not necessarily true that this physical arrangement of matter provides the basis for consciousness. That is to say, its not necessary that we are conscious (or that there is a possible world where differing physical laws make it such that consciousness is not realized by brain/body states isomorphic to ours).

However, this explanation of the laws connecting consciousness to the physical facts of reality is different from a commitment that the physicalist must maintain (physicalism as I see it is not the doctrine that only physical things exist, but rather the doctrine that only physical things have causal powers) about consciousness. That commitment: the basis for consciousness (the subvenient basis if you take the received view that any form of an identity theory is unworkable) is wholly physical. Consciousness itself supervenes on (in other words is realized by) physical properties.

This is separate, however, from the why question you are really posing. Nobody knows why this stuff (points to our brain) realizes consciousness. What are the laws that make it such that our physical matter (brains, CNS, body, environment) realize consciousness? That is a tough problem...perhaps it is like Chomsky though a mystery (ie unsolvable by rational methods)?

Peace and sorry if this post is confusing.

 

[Jabberwocky]

ps just skimmed some of the rest of the thread. Can I give you a word of caution: Dennett is FAR from the receieved view in contemporary analytic philosophy. He is something of a maverick (check out his program if you need confirmation of this, he teaches a terminal MA program that only accepts non-philosophy students, such as neurobiology, computer science, mathematics students).

I hesitate to offer any one philosopher as representing the received view within contemporary philosophy on consciousness, since, well there is no received view on consciousness! But, if there is to be one formulated in the next few years it surely won't be Dennett!

Here are some that come off the top of my head though that are more 'mainstream' physicalists (though much of what they say is controversial): Jaegwon Kim, Fred Dretske, Christopher Hill, David Armstrong, Brian McLaughlin, the Churchlands (though they are pretty radical eliminativists), Donald Davidson.

 

[Fausty]

^^^ I'm posting a link to an article written by Dennett that criticizes a property dualist, Chalmers, and pretty explicitly denies the existence of qualia (an example of which is the experience of blue). He compares the view that physical functions do not completely account for experience to the old abandoned view that physical functions can't account for life (vitalism). If you read this article though, it's only fair to read Chalmers' response to it which I'm also posting.

I was previously familiar with the Dennett article you cite, and in fairness he does not "explicitly deny the existence of qualia" in this article - or anywhere else. He simply posits that the "feelings" we have can be fully explicated by understanding the component functions of our brains. That is not to deny the feelings exist - only to say that we can understand them through functional analysis, without reverting to any extra-functional magic. So I think you've badly misread Dennett.

As to Chalmers, the article you cite is not a "response" to Dennett, but rather an interesting summation of his views in relation to other philosophers writing on the subject. In short, this is a philosophical discourse, with only tangential mention of the neuroscience at all.

Chalmers does, indeed, posit that there is some special magic that must exist in our universe for consciousness to exist. Well, actually he's more specific: the magic is needed to explain human consciousness because for him (of course) it's inconceivable to imagine anything else. After all, when we "feel" things we report them in human language - so without human language, we couldn't report our "feelings" - and thus there's no consciousness.

With all due respect, this position he takes removes any fragment of credibility he may have to be discussing the question of "consciousness" at all. What he is talking about is humanity, the cognitive experiences of humanity, the feelings of human beings as they go about being human. It's all quite exciting, I'm sure, if that's your cup of tea. But on a larger level, it's purely naval-gazing solipsism.

Those who want to talk and write and coo about how "special" it is to be "uniquely human" are certainly welcome to do so. As a species, we love talking about ourselves, and assuming we're the center of the universe. Imagining a special power that makes "human consciousness" so amazingly irreducable that science could never explicate it, indeed, takes such a position to its natural apothesis. As Dennett and many other philosophers have pointed out clearly, consistently, and in strongest terms however, such a position is pure tautology.

In sum, Chalmers is kin with those other genuine explorers of the human psyche: the creative writers. I'd say that Nabokov has as much or more to say about what it feels like to "feel human" that Chalmers or any of his ilk do, in fact (not to mention Ray Carver, for example). Dressing up that sow in the clothing of quasi-science is disrespectful to science itself but also to the sow: she's quite fine as a sow, and she (literature) carries herself with ample competence in exploring what are genuine and powerful questions - at least for us humans.

However, if someone says with a straight face that they are interested in "consciousness" but intentionally and blissfully ignore the dolphins and the elephants and the wolves - not to mention the cephalopods. . . well, we can only say that they're being less than forthright in their actual subject matter. For them, the real question is humanity - not consciousness. Genuine researchers of consciousness are a different class altogether.

Peace,

Fausty

 

[Jabberwocky]

Fausty, I think you may be confusing Chalmers with another philosopher (bermudez comes to mind with the language-consciousness necessary link). I do not remember reading anything in Chalmers that suggests language is key for consciousness or that only humans are conscious/worthy of study (in fact his own theory endorses utilizing third-person data acquired from animals such as non-human primates).

I think he like many others would agree that language is a cognitive faculty that could be removed from the picture while consciousness would be preserved. You are right that the focus is on humans though. Human consciousness is taken to be the area of most interest (but fundamental identities occur across species the assumption goes). This has to do with the connection between academic research/work and therapeutic application. There is a deep and abiding connection between all things academic (scientific at least) and therapy of the human state of being (thesis not conclusion).

Chalmers has developed a 'science of the consciousness' that utilizes third person data (brain scans, observing behavior) as well as first person reporting (that is necessarily executed through language yes). But, this is just a means to acquire data, not a necessary component of consciousness.\

ps check out chalmers bibliography (he has a bunch of papers posted by other philosophers as well, great resource for somebody without academic access).
http://consc.net/mindpapers

 

[skywise]

In The Quest for Consciousness, Christoph Kock, one of the leading researchers in the emerging field of consciousness, explores the biological basis of the subjective mind in animals and people. He outlines a framework that he and Francis Crick have constructed to come to grips with the ancient mind-body problem. At the heart of their framework is a sustained, empirical approach to discovering and characterizing the neuronal correlates of consciousness - the NCC - the subtle, flickering patterns of brain activity that underlie each and every conscious experience.

Ok, notice that their book is an investigation of the neural correlates of consciousness. It's a well known fact that correlation does not imply causality. What seems less well known (at least amongst bluelighters) is that correlation, or causation for that matter, does not imply constitution. The Koch quote I pulled out suggests that he understands this simple idea. He researches correlates (and causes) of consciousness, but he remains neutral on what consciousness is. This is because, as you point out, it's not really the most popular subject for empirical research.

To make the distinction between correlation/causation and constitution vivid:

There is a strong correlation between my punching someone hard in the nose and the nose's bleeding. There is also a causal relation between my punching someone in the nose and the noses bleeding. But it's just not true that my punching someone in the nose constitutes, or is, a bleeding nose. The correlation and causal relation between the "punches to the nose" and "bleeding noses" don't imply that bleeding noses are made out of punches. It's just crazy to think that. Bleeding noses are made out of flesh and hemoglobin, etc. So, I really don't understand why so many seemingly reasonable people want to think that an explanation of the neural correlates (or causes) of consciousness implies anything about what consciousness is (or is constituted by). I haven't read Koch's new book but I would be shocked if he would be so confused as to suggest that his brilliant research on the causes and correlates of consciousness implied anything as to what experience is (especially given his earlier comments on the subject).

You, I think, are looking to overlay something of a philosopher's debate topic onto a branch of research that is long past navel-gazing, self-referential definitional quagmires, and the rhetorically-based creation of conflict where none exists.

Actually I'm just trying to point out that neuroscience is neutral about what consciousness is, even if it is very helpful in explaining what causes consciousness. Now, if you want to suggest that this issue is jsut a rhetorically-based creation of a conflict where none exists you're going to have to do some argumentation to support that. And considering that I've been the one doing most of the work to clear up and brush aside the purely semantical conflicts between us, I'd say that this isn't something you're going to be able to do accomplish all that easily.

 

[Fausty]

Fausty, I think you may be confusing Chalmers with another philosopher (bermudez comes to mind with the language-consciousness necessary link). I do not remember reading anything in Chalmers that suggests language is key for consciousness or that only humans are conscious/worthy of study (in fact his own theory endorses utilizing third-person data acquired from animals such as non-human primates).

I'll look forward to familiarizing myself more with his writing. I took data only from the article SW cited here in this thread. In that article, Chalmers uses "consciousness" and "human consciousness" interchangeably. If he was being less than precise, or if perhaps his thought has progressed since that article, good on him!

Gotta run for now - life intrudes.

Peace,

Fausty

 

[Jabberwocky]

Fausty, I think the idea is that what we say about human consciousness will extrapolate to consciousness, simpliciter.

Skywise, did you see my post above directed to you? I still think there is a fundamental misunderstanding in your original post and your attack against physicalists does not go through.

 

[Fausty]

Ok, notice that their book is an investigation of the neural correlates of consciousness. It's a well known fact that correlation does not imply causality. What seems less well known (at least amongst bluelighters) is that correlation, or causation for that matter, does not imply constitution. The Koch quote I pulled out suggests that he understands this simple idea. He researches correlates (and causes) of consciousness, but he remains neutral on what consciousness is. This is because, as you point out, it's not really the most popular subject for empirical research.

I'm afraid your misreading the word "correlate," which has more than one usage. Koch is not referring to statistical correlation - quite clearly. He is referring to "correlates" as those things which, together, constitute a superset. For me, the "correlates" of a good weekend are mountains, sunshine, and canine companionship. This doesn't mean that I am making a statistical statement regarding the R squared relationship between these variables.

Perhaps you are picking out - and misreading - individual words because you haven't actually read the substantive writing on these subjects? I'm not sure, but I know that this "one-word-itis" doesn't seem very conducive to rewarding discussion.

And, just for the record, I'm quite clear on the statistical definitions of correlation and causation - though I thank you for clarifying it for others who, perhaps, didn't pick up a master's degree in finance from the University of Chicago. <raises paw> yeah, so, I think my statistical foundation is reasonably solid - if a bit rusty.

Oh, and you've mangled the old aphorism: the correct rejoinder regarding these topics (at least as it was taught to me by Nobel laureates in economics at the GSB) is as follows: correlation does not mean causation. There's no "constitution" anywhere in this statement - and in fact "constitution" is not a term of art in the statistical field to the best of my knowledge.

So, I really don't understand why so many seemingly reasonable people want to think that an explanation of the neural correlates (or causes) of consciousness implies anything about what consciousness is (or is constituted by). I haven't read Koch's new book but I would be shocked if he would be so confused as to suggest that his brilliant research on the causes and correlates of consciousness implied anything as to what experience is (especially given his earlier comments on the subject).

Again, you're entirely confusing set theoretic/constructivist issues with statistical definitions of terms - apples and oranges, or perhaps apples and jellyfish. The (statistical) reminder that correlation does not, a priori, imply causation when dealing with two variable series has nothing to do with the question of whether one "understands" a system through an analysis of the functional components of the system.

Indeed, I am sure Koch himself understands this distinction - it is, essentially, an undergraduate-level question and hardly something a post-doctoral researcher would confuse merely because two terms sound similar.

Actually I'm just trying to point out that neuroscience is neutral about what consciousness is, even if it is very helpful in explaining what causes consciousness. Now, if you want to suggest that this issue is jsut a rhetorically-based creation of a conflict where none exists you're going to have to do some argumentation to support that. And considering that I've been the one doing most of the work to clear up and brush aside the purely semantical conflicts between us, I'd say that this isn't something you're going to be able to do accomplish all that easily.

No, you've been attempting to inject a minor skirmish within epistemological philosophy into genuine research on consciousness by neuroscientists, and you've posited a quasi-magical, ineffable something-or-other that we must imagine if we are ever to discuss what you feel like when you see the color blue. I've pointed out where the mainstream of neuroscientific research on these questions is to be found, and I've corrected your repeated mis-statements of Dennett's positions because, well because I've spent a good bit of time with Dennett's writings and it bothers me to see his interesting and provocative approach inaccurately boiled down to a chimerical straw man that he, himself, would surely not recognize as his own.

This isn't a "purely semantical" discussion. Your definition of what you're trying to explore has been shifting - a bit of a "god of the empty spaces" syndrome - as I've pointed out where research focuses in the field as it is actually practiced. In the end, it seems we get back to a statement that you feel something when you see the color blue, and nobody but you can know what that feels like. Ok. Fine. Fair enough.

That's not a theory of consciousness.

Peace,

Fausty