There isn't really a 'freewill problem'.

[DBT]

I'm sorry, but it doesn't address what I said about brain agency.

 

[fromderinside]

Untermenche attempts repose but trips all over his sef.

Is there an "electricity gene" that produces the electrical properties of the brain?

Physiology types went thought this about 88 years ago when cochlear microphonices were reported by such luminaries as  Hallowell Davis. It's an electric artifact caused by fluids in the hearing chambers. It is not, as first reported, the brain's representation of sound. As it turns out the artifact can cause problems when recording from nearby neural processes.

Electrical activity similar to that recorded from the brain can be reproduced by mechanically stimulating (tapping) gourds filled with jello or hooking together a network of earthworms among other arrangements.

There is value to EEG but it is not in the overall activity at all. It's in generators associated with particular regions and cell types in the brain These lead us to characterize activity as wakefulness, dream sleep, calculating, etc. Onset and change in conditions are recorded as Event Related Potentials (ERP) are another form of electrical activity of some limited use.

With modern techniques we can now record using many electrodes to get local activity at various distances away from the particular electrodes whereas when I was recording we were limited to fewer than a dozen electrodes due to uncontrollable surface effects between electrodes.

The electrical properties of the brain, as you so naively put it are constrained to measuring within neurons and from neuron potentials as recorded more or less directly by inserting micropipettes into cells or precise areas. Other, field methods, can measure effectively metabolic activity and density and motion of material in the brain.

Why you even bring that topic up is disturbing as it signals a whopping scotoma in your understanding of the use of recordings from the brain.

Would you record from the surface of super computers to understand anything about what or how they are doing what?

 

[untermensche]

You completely miss the point.

There are genes that create structures, cells, that can create electricity thus allowing a brain to have electrical properties.

It would be the same for quantum properties.

You would have genes that create structures that somehow utilize quantum properties.

You would not have genes that create quantum properties.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Finding neural correlates to the consciousness is very important and sought after in the science of consciousness, and probably the most important and sought after thing.

I hope you don't mind me snipping this single point to respond to. I think it's the key one but if you feel shortchanged, I'll return to the others later.

Here's my problem, and I think, the problem for science: There is a problem of other minds which hasn't, to my knowledge been resolved. I think this matters, conscious experience is a private experience that it is assumed that we all have. The problem is that we are all inferring that from a single case and as philosophers like Wittgenstein have pointed out, we really cannot even know that it is the same case across people as we, individually and collectively, have no criterion for judging how similar our experiences are, beyond the judgements we express in words. That's one reason why linguistic behaviourism isn't flat out ridiculous - we really don't know that others are conscious, just that we judge ourselves to be conscious, a judgement that people like Dennett assert is an indefeasible error such that judging ourselves, in language, to be conscious is all there is to consciousness, the position he holds in Consciousness Explained.

I mention all this just to really make it clear that the only example we have of putative mental lives is our own. Now, the next step concerns the methodology of science. At the heart of science are the axioms that all experiments have to be repeatable by anyone and objective. My individual conscious experience is not only not objective, it's not even intersubjectively verifiable, hell, it's barely subjective as what seems to me is indefeasible rather than factual. As for repeatable? my conscious experience isn't, nor is yours and the notion that we all have the same experience is an act of faith that doesn't bear up to even the most cursory of inspections.


I'm red green colourblind - I didn't even realise until I was seventeen and even then all I knew about is my discriminatory abilities, no one can know how much my experience varies, (See all of the 'inverted qualia' argument) just that there are some colour distinctions I can't make and some colours that I cannot distinguish well when superimposed. The point here is that no one knows I'm colourblind unless I tell them - I can use colour language better than most (I like being a psych test subject and my alma had a huge vision department - who never noticed I was colour blind while running experiments on qualia - I was a partial colour zombie and no one noticed - my heterophenomenology, aided and abetted by a degree of expertise and perfectly good hue and saturation detection meant that my few errors were outriders and not noticed. Yeah, I didn't let on, because I was blinding them as much as they were blinding me, so as to speak.

However, there's a remarkable postscript, because my color blindness isn't dependent on a lack of ability to discriminate, but in a processing issue in which my eye doesn't filter wavelength gradients properly. Last year I was given some glasses that literally cure my sort of color blindness by the simple expedient of blocking critical chunks of wavelength to allow my brain to process the overwhelming majority of the signal in a opto-neurotypical manner. As a result, I'm in the rare position to know that even if I'm still not seeing what the opto-neurotypical see I'm seeing the colour difference between twilight and midday with every berry on a holly bush (rather than being a vague shadow) picked out in psychedelic relief. Yet still, in ordinary communication you wouldn't notice the difference (and again, I repeat, that's merely discrimination, that is clearly different. No one can tell if my mental experience is the same, merely that I will use the word 'scarlet' under certain conditions, I, as Wittgenstein pointed out, learned the grammar of Scarlet, not the phenomenal and entirely personal reality. (notice how much metaphorical language I needed just to communicate the possibility of such a difference.

So consciousness isn't objective, it isn't reproducible and as for falsification and the null hypothesis, how exactly would you put forward a falsifiable account of your own, let alone another's private experience? Whenever someone tells me they are looking for correlation or more between the mental and the physical as an empirical project then all I think they need to have a think about the scope, limits and methodologies of science. If they want to say it's a metaphysical or philosophical project then I want to hear about the project in detail - it's easy to be right, you only have to be sufficiently vague, or anecdotal...

There's a faint hope we might be able to correlate the neural correlates of nociception and discrimination in as much as they are not mental events, but the raw feels of consciousness - science has no way of proving they exist, let alone correlating physical events and mental events. That's phenomenology, when it gets to intentions, you have a very different and even more perplexing problem, But that's enough about this, I have a very silly Christian to school on motor mechanics and evolution yet! (and it's bed time, my best mate is over from Magyaristan and I have to set up a bass guitar for him before I go to bed).

Careful not to get infatuated with older "teachings" like from Wittgenstein. Science as you know moves relatively fast and philosophy even makes progress every once in a while.

That said, I will respect everything from the past until "better" logic is applied.

If you are interested, you can critique a specific method from the NYU report I linked, here again http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/final_revised_proof.pdf . It applies a relatively new "method" called "signal detection theory".

Or you can critique the author's justification here (NCC = Neural Correlates of Consciousness),

"Can the phenomenal NCC be studied empirically?
Doubts about whether phenomenal consciousness
(and hence its neural basis, the Phenomenal NCC) can
be studied empirically are common (see also Box 2), and
often based on the idea that ultimately, introspective
reports, that is, reports about one’s conscious experience,
are the fundamental epistemological basis of theories of
consciousness, the ‘gold standard’. [7,41,42]. Reports are
not supposed to be infallible, but any discounting of
reports as reporting too much or too little, will supposedly
have to be based solely on other reports. Reports inevitably
reflect the Access NCC, not just the Phenomenal NCC:
when people tell you about their conscious states, you only
hear about the ones that have won the winner-take-all
competition. Hence we can only study ‘access to consciousness’
[7], that is, access to experiential content, not experiential
content itself. I do not agree with this methodological
view for several reasons.
First, observed electrons can provide evidence about
electrons that cannot in principle be observed, for
example electrons that are too distant in space and time
(e.g. outside our light cone) to be observed. Why should we
suppose matters are any different for consciousness?
Second, there is no gold standard of evidence, here or in
any area of science. ... "

Something to work with.

Can the phenomenal NCC be studied empirically?

I don't much like Ned Block's terminology, but it will do as setting up the target. Obviously I say no.

Doubts about whether phenomenal consciousness
(and hence its neural basis, the Phenomenal NCC) can
be studied empirically are common (see also Box 2),

That's a teensy bit of an understatement.

and
often based on the idea that ultimately, introspective
reports, that is, reports about one’s conscious experience,
are the fundamental epistemological basis of theories of
consciousness, the ‘gold standard’. [7,41,42].

This is misleading, saying the gold standard implies that some other standards are available. They are not. The only way we can get at our experience of our inner mental life is behaviour. That's it. I also note that the phrase 'the fundamental epistemological basis of theories' is a very odd clause indeed. Ontological, sure, epistemological, less so.

Reports are not supposed to be infallible,

No, but they are indefeasible, non repeatable and entirely subjective. this sort of anecdotes is, in principle unacceptable for including things in a scientific ontology. Doubly so when there is such a difference between how things seem and how they are, and triply so when there are a cabinet full of problems like binocular rivalry, the phi phenomenon and the neglected blind spot.
Just imagine if we had such a low bar for evidence anywhere else, say UFO research or psychic phenomena? The point is that science has to be internally consistent, you can't make exceptions for one sort of anecdote but not for another.

but any discounting of reports as reporting too much or too little,

Again, this is just misleading, that's just not the problem for our verbal reports of subjective mental experiences. I've explained the problem clearly twice now: for science they are the worst sort of indefeasibl+e anecdote.

will supposedly have to be based solely on other reports.

I don't see why. I'm currently basing it on methodological problems, I can also go on to base it on metaphysical issues, but we haven't got to that point yet.

Reports inevitably reflect the Access NCC, not just the Phenomenal NCC:

There are two problems here. First no one has ever reported their NCC of anything. Rorty has a go with his 'Antipodeans' paper, but he's being sarcastic throughout. Just think what a neural correlate is, it's a brain state and no one is reporting brain states, they are reporting experiences (Phenomenal) and words (access). The idea that they report brain states seems fanciful even for a mature science of the mind, let alone the current situation. Block is just being unforgivably untidy with his language. He's a philosopher and he really should know better.

And the second is a point which will trip the unwary. Access and phenomenal consciousness are Ned Block's very own terms and his very own distinction. It's a good distinction and one that I am very happy with, In fact , the first time I met him, at Turing 90 if I remember correctly, I was introduced to him as someone who held a similar position on the bicameral nature of consciousness.

So, for Block, access consciousness is all the language based content, conceptualised, public and symbolic. Being symbolic it can only ever be instantiated in the brain as a tokens, a token that can be recorded, written down and transported easily from medium to medium, brain to brain in a process which is a striking foreshadowing of Dennett's 'heterophenomenology'. However, the point is that access consciousness isn't phenomenology, it's your public judgements about your private states. This is all very Wittgensteinian, of course.

Meanwhile, phenomenal consciousness is closer to a traditional idea of raw feels, qualia and all that - it's the logically private, privileged access aspect of consciousness that Nagel, for example, is talking about. It cannot be communicated and the only person in the right place to experience it is you.

when people tell you about their conscious states, you only hear about the ones that have won the winner-take-all competition.

And here, suddenly, we find a key move and it's a ridiculously subtle one. He's referring to Dan Dennett's multiple drafts model of consciousness. Dennett, a linguistic behaviourist of the same sort as Ryle, one of his supervisors at Oxford, wanted to help himself to neural accounts of non conceptual content, but couldn't admit that they had a phenomenal character. To achieve this sleight of hand, he promulgated the idea that a good metaphor for neural function was the preparation of a book for publication. Until the point of publication, there is no canonical version, no determinate content at all, just multiple drafts of the same idea percolating around the brain (author's friends and publisher) Dennett implies that this content is not only indeterminate, but non conscious and only becomes determinate and indeed conscious when it is published - and he's very clear about what publishing is: it's behaviour, specifically linguistic behaviour.

Block is commenting implicitly on Dennett's assertion that behavior is the very first point that content is determinate and indeed conscious. Because this is Dennett's position - that there is only access consciousness, only reporting, but nothing determinate or conscious to report. For Dennett, there is only access consciousness and that's what linguistic behaviourism is.

The idea that neural processing is a winner takes all competition only makes sense if one sees the process as leading to 'publishing' a canonical draft - to being sampled by, or reporting to some other system and the only real candidate is the hard edged and determinate results of conceptualisation - language. In fact Block looks a lot like he's making Dennett's behaviourist error. However, I am quite certain that he isn't because he is very clear as to what Dennett is and what he, Block, isn't.

So it looks a lot like multiple drafts lite. He's accepting the force of Dennett's argument (and to be clear, it's a bloody good one, huis analysis of Phi, for example, in terms of the ridiculousness of what he calls Stalinesque and Orwellian revisions is splendid, but it still misses the fundamental point that conscious experience isn't hearing yourself say something). So when Block says:

Hence we can only study ‘access to consciousness that is, access to experiential content, not experiential content itself.

Block and I agree that there is no logical force to this claim - because 'the winner takes all competition' only makes sense if you adopt Dennett's inherently behaviourist account of how we come to talk about our phenomenal states. However, Block fails do distinguish between Dennett's behaviorism and the reason for it. Dennett is denying phenomenology at all - claiming that only published content is determinate, conscious content. However, that is just Dennett's position - behind it is the far more reasonable point that phenomenology cannot be communicated. So what he's done is slid from the popular pastime of slagging down Dennett's account of consciousness, to denying the reason that Dennett even tries: that we can't talk about phenomenology directly but only through behaviour, specifically linguistic behaviourism. It's precisely Wittgenstein's point about accusations of behaviourism:'If I talk of a fiction, it is a grammatical fiction'...

I do not agree with this methodological view for several reasons.

Yeah, which one? Dennett's denial or the more reasonable point that Wittgenstein made and everyone is still responding to: that it is logically impossible to talk about phenomenology directly and that we can only talk about it indirectly through language. Then there's the weaker still claim, for non philosophers, that good science demands that it is methodologically impossible to talk about phenomenology for the reasons given above. Block's trying to pull a fast one behind the shield of everyone nodding sagely about how naughty Dennett is. He fails.

First, observed electrons can provide evidence about electrons that cannot in principle be observed, for example electrons that are too distant in space and time (e.g. outside our light cone) to be observed.

This can only be deliberately encouraging people to miss the point. It is merely conditionally impossible to study these electrons because they are too far away. If you were there you could study them as well as any others. Distance is the only problem brought up here. That's not the case with mental states which are in principle impossible to view both on logical and methodological grounds.

Why should we suppose matters are any different for consciousness?

Perhaps because the problem with studying consciousness isn't that it is too far away? FFS, this is schoolboy debating stuff and I'm disappointed that a philosopher I respect is coming out with it.

Second, there is no gold standard of evidence, here or in any area of science. ... "

Maybe, but we are not talking about Gold Standards here, we are talking about the absolute minimum standards that separate science from pseudoscience and mysticism - reproducibility, objectiveness, falsifiability and so on. Our reports of conscious experience are anecdotal; ubiquitous, sure, but anecdotal. More to the point, I hope my earlier point demonstrates that it's anecdote for a good reason.

I've taken a bit of time to make this really clear. I hope it's helpful.

 

[Subsymbolic]

You completely miss the point.

There are genes that create structures, cells, that can create electricity thus allowing a brain to have electrical properties.

It would be the same for quantum properties.

You would have genes that create structures that somehow utilize quantum properties.

You would not have genes that create quantum properties.

One word 'emergence'.

 

[Subsymbolic]

What you fail to add is the most important part....the blogger is talking about a paper by neuroscientist Peter Clarke with quotes and references. The blogger is not important. The blogger is irrelevant. The necessary information is provided in reference to the neuroscientist and his paper;

Here is the paper from the link in the blog page, the blog page, if you like, being merely a conduit to the article;


Neuroscience, quantum indeterminism and the Cartesian soul.
Clarke PG1.

Abstract
Quantum indeterminism is frequently invoked as a solution to the problem of how a disembodied soul might interact with the brain (as Descartes proposed), and is sometimes invoked in theories of libertarian free will even when they do not involve dualistic assumptions. Taking as example the Eccles-Beck model of interaction between self (or soul) and brain at the level of synaptic exocytosis, I here evaluate the plausibility of these approaches. I conclude that Heisenbergian uncertainty is too small to affect synaptic function, and that amplification by chaos or by other means does not provide a solution to this problem. Furthermore, even if Heisenbergian effects did modify brain functioning, the changes would be swamped by those due to thermal noise. Cells and neural circuits have powerful noise-resistance mechanisms, that are adequate protection against thermal noise and must therefore be more than sufficient to buffer against Heisenbergian effects. Other forms of quantum indeterminism must be considered, because these can be much greater than Heisenbergian uncertainty, but these have not so far been shown to play a role in the brain.

I see that this was written in 2013 and it mentions, "To date, there is no evidence that such quantum processes are involved in neuron-to-neuron communication or brain function."

But in 2014 evidence was found by Hameroff and Penrose and found and confirmed later again by a university in Japan in 2016.

And it was also written after Fisher's 2015 research article that suggests the theoretical possibility of quantum coherence using entangled Posener molecules.

No it wasn't. If you consider the problem of physics of scale you'd realize that the macro brain does not work according to quantum principles, wave collapse, scale, etc. The brain is a macro scale structure where the role neurons, support cells and connections, signals between cells, etc, determines function and output

As I've pointed out numerous times, all brains have the same underlying quantum substructure, cat brains, dog brains, mouse brains, horse brains, human brains and so on....all with their underlying quantum substructure, yet all producing sets of behaviour not according to their quantum substructures but their macro scale architecture, their size and wiring and the information they acquire through memory and learning, each according to species and range between individuals, some smarter, some not.

That is where quantum consciousness fails.

This.

I do think that quantum effects are the route to background noise, but nothing more. It suffers from exactly the same issue as spirit talk: the fact is that the brain is jam packed full of mechanism, some of which we clearly understand and most of which we partially understand, but all of which seems to be extremely busy doing all the work that is to be explained by quantum stuff in much the way it was explained by spirit stuff. There are plenty of arguments to deploy here, but the obvious one is that entities shouldn't be multiplied beyond necessity: the fact is that the medium sized, slow moving and most importantly overdetermined brain seems to be doing the job rather well. The only area that quantum effects matter is producing a decent quality random for the stochastic processes, that's not decision making, it's noise. However, it's becoming ever more clear that brains are noisy and need that stochastic background, a background that would tend to drown out the sort of signals Penrose is thinking of, unless they are so chunky as to be rather overdetermined.

 

[ryan]

I'm sorry, but it doesn't address what I said about brain agency.

You said, "all brains have the same underlying quantum substructure, cat brains, dog brains, mouse brains, horse brains, human brains and so on....all with their underlying quantum substructure, yet all producing sets of behaviour not according to their quantum substructures"

You also said, "Microtubules are not the decision makers".

Then I quoted from the document called, "Quantum Information Processes in Protein Microtubules of Brain Neurons":

"This orchestrated
OR activity (‘Orch OR’) is taken to result in moments
of conscious awareness and/or choice."

And you say that I did not address your statement? I addressed it, challenged it and later explained why your certainty is wrong in more detail.

 

[ryan]

Can the phenomenal NCC be studied empirically?

I don't much like Ned Block's terminology, but it will do as setting up the target. Obviously I say no.

Thanks for this critique. Although you know that I must critique your critique and you will probably do the same. I will skip what I don't feel strongly against.

Before I start, I just want to explain that this is more of a "soft" science like sociology (which many argue isn't a science either). But this is a science; we just have to accept more controversial premises than the more exact sciences use.

and
often based on the idea that ultimately, introspective
reports, that is, reports about one’s conscious experience,
are the fundamental epistemological basis of theories of
consciousness, the ‘gold standard’. [7,41,42].

This is misleading, saying the gold standard implies that some other standards are available. They are not. The only way we can get at our experience of our inner mental life is behaviour. That's it. I also note that the phrase 'the fundamental epistemological basis of theories' is a very odd clause indeed. Ontological, sure, epistemological, less so.

I think you are interpreting his phrase the wrong way, from Oxford Dictionary, "Epistemological: Relating to the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion."

Reports are not supposed to be infallible,

No, but they are indefeasible, ...

so are scientific observations used for research

non repeatable ...

Of course they are repeatable and are repeated.

and entirely subjective.

Then what scientists understand science, observations, research, etc. to be is also subjective. We must assume certain premises.

but any discounting of reports as reporting too much or too little,

Again, this is just misleading, that's just not the problem for our verbal reports of subjective mental experiences. I've explained the problem clearly twice now: for science they are the worst sort of indefeasibl+e anecdote.

Again, I don't see indefeasibility as an issue for reasons already given.

Reports inevitably reflect the Access NCC, not just the Phenomenal NCC:

There are two problems here. First no one has ever reported their NCC of anything.

To report on something is not meant to provide the thing being reported on. The report of a conscious experience is an effect from the conscious experience like an electron's photon emission (as Ned might say) is an effect reported by the photon. Except it is not matter being transmitted through space, it is the intentionality of the consciousness being transmitted.

Rorty has a go with his 'Antipodeans' paper, but he's being sarcastic throughout. Just think what a neural correlate is, it's a brain state and no one is reporting brain states, they are reporting experiences (Phenomenal) and words (access). The idea that they report brain states seems fanciful even for a mature science of the mind, let alone the current situation. Block is just being unforgivably untidy with his language. He's a philosopher and he really should know better.

I disagree. It seems sufficient.

And the second is a point which will trip the unwary. Access and phenomenal consciousness are Ned Block's very own terms and his very own distinction. It's a good distinction and one that I am very happy with, In fact , the first time I met him, at Turing 90 if I remember correctly, I was introduced to him as someone who held a similar position on the bicameral nature of consciousness.

Interesting.


I gotta go to bed. I will try to finish tomorrow.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Thanks for this critique. Although you know that I must critique your critique and you will probably do the same. I will skip what I don't feel strongly against.

cool, and very sensible, god knows, it's enough ink spilled!

Before I start, I just want to explain that this is more of a "soft" science like sociology (which many argue isn't a science either). But this is a science; we just have to accept more controversial premises than the more exact sciences use.

Sure, in that case we are not arguing. Obviously, as a cognitive scientist, I don't see sociology as a science, it's a different intellectual tradition with different rules criteria and so on. These days I demark science at the point of falsificationism, if one is not producing a falsifiable theory and clear criteria for falsification, whatever you are doing isn't science.

However, to be very clear, I don't think that's a bad thing, just a different thing. I don't see science as the arbiter of everything; there are many intellectual traditions with different rules for establising truth, different methodologies and so on.

I think you are interpreting his phrase the wrong way, from Oxford Dictionary, "Epistemological: Relating to the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion."

I was just being pedantic. It's not remotely central so I'm not going to push it.

Reports are not supposed to be infallible,

No, but they are indefeasible, ...

so are scientific observations used for research

Are they? can you give me an example of a indefeasible observation being used for research? Perhaps I have misunderstood.

non repeatable ...

Of course they are repeatable and are repeated.

I guess that depends on what that pronoun 'they' refers to: if it is one's heterophenomenological reports, to use Dennett's term then sure. If it is one's personal experience of phenomenology, there are not only no criteria for judging that two people are having the same experience, there are no criteria for judging that the same person is having the same experience from moment to moment. As Wittgenstein wittily put it, it would be like buying a second copy of the same paper to check if the first paper was correct. There simply isn't any criteria for judgement except the experience itself.

and entirely subjective.

Then what scientists understand science, observations, research, etc. to be is also subjective. We must assume certain premises.

Ahh, are you pulling global scepticism out of the hat here? I hope not. There is a vast difference between 1) someone saying 'right we are measuring that tree' a second person saying, 'which tree' and the first person marking the tree with paint and saying 'that one'. and (2) trying to reach agreement on which private, indefeasible phenomenal seeming we are talking about. Surely you see how objective agreement is possible in the one case and not the other? Now imagine a crowd of people trying to agree on what their colour terms refer to, especially if some are colour blind. Surely you see the difference?

but any discounting of reports as reporting too much or too little,

Again, this is just misleading, that's just not the problem for our verbal reports of subjective mental experiences. I've explained the problem clearly twice now: for science they are the worst sort of indefeasibl+e anecdote.

Again, I don't see indefeasibility as an issue for reasons already given.

Why? are you actually going down the linguistic behaviourist route? Otherwise there is the thing being reported - how it seems to you is all it can be and that can't be gainsaid, which is the definition of indefeasible.

Reports inevitably reflect the Access NCC, not just the Phenomenal NCC:

There are two problems here. First no one has ever reported their NCC of anything.

To report on something is not meant to provide the thing being reported on. The report of a conscious experience is an effect from the conscious experience like an electron's photon emission (as Ned might say) is an effect reported by the photon. Except it is not matter being transmitted through space, it is the intentionality of the consciousness being transmitted.

So are you asserting that a conscious experience is a report of the NCC? if it is that then you are begging the question: you are assuming the thing you are arguing in the premises.

Either that or you are asserting there is a necessary connection between a phenomenal experience and an access report - in which case why is there a problem of other minds?

Or are you saying that intentionality, the aboutness of conscious experience and intentionality, the content of beliefs and desires are the same thing? Sure they are both examples of intentionality, they both have aboutness, but it isn't the same aboutness. The both have content, but in cone case the content is subsymbolic (yeah, deliberate) Non conceptual and so on, while the other is symbolic conceptualised and so on. It's how you translate one content to the other that you will need to explain. I think it is simply judgement and is treated just as you would any external perception. The fundamental decision is that one's user illusion is the only thing in a position to judge.

Rorty has a go with his 'Antipodeans' paper, but he's being sarcastic throughout. Just think what a neural correlate is, it's a brain state and no one is reporting brain states, they are reporting experiences (Phenomenal) and words (access). The idea that they report brain states seems fanciful even for a mature science of the mind, let alone the current situation. Block is just being unforgivably untidy with his language. He's a philosopher and he really should know better.

I disagree. It seems sufficient.

I'm not sure this answer can be a response to what is quoted above it? If it is then it's begging the question or circular, because if you are reporting your NCC then your NCC are correlating with our NCC and that's looks like a circular denial of the mental as all you would have ios the neural correlates of the neural correlates. I'd look at what you were responding to again, because it's an odd response.

I gotta go to bed. I will try to finish tomorrow.

Sweet dreams.

 

[Val]

Any objections?

Well now that you mention it...

I object m'lud!

 

[untermensche]

You completely miss the point.

There are genes that create structures, cells, that can create electricity thus allowing a brain to have electrical properties.

It would be the same for quantum properties.

You would have genes that create structures that somehow utilize quantum properties.

You would not have genes that create quantum properties.

One word 'emergence'.

That is one word.

But the ability of matter to have quantum properties is not something that emerges. It is inherent to all matter.

Of course all biological entities and all their structures have "emerged".

 

[Val]

You completely miss the point.

There are genes that create structures, cells, that can create electricity thus allowing a brain to have electrical properties.

It would be the same for quantum properties.

You would have genes that create structures that somehow utilize quantum properties.

You would not have genes that create quantum properties.

One word 'emergence'.

That is one word.

But the ability of matter to have quantum properties is not something that emerges. It is inherent to all matter.

Of course all biological entities and all their structures have "emerged".

From what?

 

[untermensche]

That is one word.

But the ability of matter to have quantum properties is not something that emerges. It is inherent to all matter.

Of course all biological entities and all their structures have "emerged".

From what?

That is evolution. The emergence of new structure, sometimes a transformation from old structure, sometimes a transformation from spandrels, over time.

Of course a brain structure that utilized a quantum property of matter in some way would emerge.

Like all biological structures emerge.

 

[Val]

I asked you, from what does it emerge?

 

[Subsymbolic]

Any objections?

Well now that you mention it...

I object m'lud!

Morning Valerie. I hear you must have shared your bunny chow recipe with The Donald.

 

[Val]

Any objections?

Well now that you mention it...

I object m'lud!

Morning Riaan. I hear you must have shared your bunny chow recipe with The Donald.

The yanks make the best and biggest fans after all.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and it's Rhianne to you. Long story.

 

[untermensche]

I asked you, from what does it emerge?

From what does life emerge?

 

[Val]

What the fuck? I asked you a question, not give you an answer. What do you think this is, dubba fockin jippirdy?

 

[Val]

While I await an answer, I'll admit that it's not every day I'm faced with an argument for time being discrete by resorting to the existence of matter.

 

[fromderinside]

You completely miss the point.

There are genes that create structures, cells, that can create electricity thus allowing a brain to have electrical properties.

It would be the same for quantum properties.

You would have genes that create structures that somehow utilize quantum properties.

You would not have genes that create quantum properties.

Nope. I pointed out what electrical consequences arise in cells. Electricity is consequent to cell function it is not what cells produce. The electrical properties to which you refer are of the form and substance of what I wrote. Only those electrical properties used in information transmission. serving metabolism and ion transport, are used by living cell systems. Those electrical properties associated with brain metabolic function are really not used at all by the brain to any purposeful end. The organism produces such properties so the brain needn't be functionally tied to them.

Your analogy is a folse one. You take a general attribute and associate it with specific consequence which is not the case. The brain doesn't use electricitiy except to to as I described above. All you have is a speculation that the brain uses QM properties to which you cannot point to a single one. Te brain and the body certainly have ongoing QM activity which is just as viewable as are QM effects in macro behavior which is none. No consequent QM activity has been described detering deterministic macro behavior.

The point missing is yours sir. One should never take a broom to perform microsurgery nor micro tools to clean a garage.