Eliminating Qualia

[Subsymbolic]

Oh, and here's the key bits from Chalmers' paper:

https://evolutionnews.org/2008/06/the_hard_and_easy_problems_in/

I'll be honest, I think that solving the easy problems is harder than the hard problem. That's just reminding ourselves that the problem only exists on the back of a religious way of looking at brains. Once you accept that the hard problem is just what solving the easy problem feels like from the inside then there's not much else to explain. Solving problems by asking the right question rather than the wrong one has a long history. It's another job philosophers have.

The really hard problem is to do with beliefs...

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The things the brain does, like create a mind and presentations for that mind, arose the same way.

Right, so, again, all you're saying is that "mind" is a process generated by the brain. Again, I don't think anyone itt would have any problem with that assertion.

To call it a "thing," however, is misleading. It's a process, so unless you are including "process" under your definition of "thing," continuing to use the term "thing" is just getting in your way. Though, tbh, I don't really see what your way is. You've gone a long way to say that brain generates activity, which is non-controversial.

 

[ruby sparks]

Is the brain and the "signal" to contract a muscle the same thing?

Why are you even asking? What does it matter to the topic? What's with this segue to 'what activity is'? What has it got to do with (a) why the brain can't be an experiencer or (b) how you know you have an 'I'?

'It just can't, because only the mind can' and 'I just do' will not be all that convincing, just in case those might be your preferred answers.

 

[ruby sparks]

As I think you know, I do conceive of it that way (though I qualify it with the brain imbuing the analogue with a sense of “free will” in that it has the capacity to act across maps), yet I don’t see the self as separate from the brain (or a “thing” for that matter). It’s a construct of the brain used initially for strategic, survival-based “role playing” if you will that has since been repurposed due to our extended life-spans; i.e, “leisure” orientation rather than hourly “survival” orientation.

Just as we find it helpful to discuss problems with each other for feedback, the brain creates analogues to help it solve problems. It’s merely a useful tool to help gain perspective, but it’s all ultimately the brain talking to itself, for lack of better terminology.

If there were ever a situation where a baby survived a crash landing on a deserted planet, I doubt it would ever develop much of a self for precisely that reason; it has no others to emulate/map. There have been many tales of “feral” children (and others that were kept in isolation throughout their childhood) that normally entail a lack of self identity.

Which is all just a long-winded way of saying, I still don’t see what UM is arguing for. Brain generates “mind.” I think everyone itt can agree with that assertion.

Yes, I think everyone agrees on that last thing.

I would rather not get into free will, 'free will', partial free will or elbow room, etc. Hopefully that quagmire won't necessarily have to pollute a thread which is not really about that if we use the word 'agency' and leave the free or otherwise aspects of it temporarily aside here.

Not blaming you for bringing it up, since I did that.

Anyhows, Untermensche, I think, has mind having autonomous agency. An analogy would be my computer, or some future more sophisticated computer or robot, developing a mind of its own and that mind essentially directing the computer or robot as to what to do next, at least some of the time, including 'when it (the mind) wants to'. Not barmy, of course. Impossible to disprove, I think, and certainly what it feels like, to us, a lot of the time. But not the only model in town, certainly not one of the popular ones among the relevant brain specialists in modern times as far as I know, and imo not as good a model as some others, for reasons previously given, including, among others, lack of parsimony (from having more 'things' and interactions between them) a potential infinite regress of experiencers, and various neuroscience/psychology experiments which cast at least some doubt on the role of conscious intent (free or otherwise) in our system's decision-making capacities.

I admit I also have trouble seeing, in principle, how a mind could be an autonomous agent, if it is continuously being produced by a brain. It's not as if the brain makes a mind and then the mind is free to go off and have fun all by itself being in charge for a while, because presumably if a mind at one instant is the product of brain processes, then an instant later, it is still the product of and is effectively sustained by (supervenes on) more, subsequent and continuous brain processes. Iow, is there likely any moment when the mind is not created by the underlying/supporting brain processes? I would find it hard to explain. I'm fairly happy with 'mind is one of the things brains do'.

This doesn't rule out feedback or causality from mind to brain, but those aren't autonomy for a mind, since a mind would seem, at least in the main, to be more akin to the product than the manufacturer (or the Fat Controller) of the brain processes creating it at every given moment. 'Higher' and 'lower' processes may not even be a good way to think of it, for something that is continually in a state of revolving stochastic flux, with waves of neuronal activity sloshing around in all directions and feedback loops of awesome complexity looping all over the place*.

But to get back on the OP topic of qualia, Um has qualia as 'things that the mind perceives' not 'things the brain perceives', whereas I tend to think of mind and qualia as being 'of the same kind/class of (mental) things' and both experienced by a brain. In addition, I do not discount another possibility (or model) in which both the brain and the mind are aspects of the same thing, a bit like two sides of a coin, which are, of course, in a way, 'different things', otherwise no football (soccer) match would ever have kicked off.



* ETA: That said, and on second thoughts, there might be a positive correlation between higher intensity of brain activity and consciousness, speaking generally.

 

[WAB]

Oh, and here's the key bits from Chalmers' paper:

https://evolutionnews.org/2008/06/the_hard_and_easy_problems_in/

I'll be honest, I think that solving the easy problems is harder than the hard problem. That's just reminding ourselves that the problem only exists on the back of a religious way of looking at brains. Once you accept that the hard problem is just what solving the easy problem feels like from the inside then there's not much else to explain. Solving problems by asking the right question rather than the wrong one has a long history. It's another job philosophers have.

The really hard problem is to do with beliefs...

Thanks for the link, and the further clarification. I guess I wasn't sure I knew what was meant by the hard and easy problem.

Oh, am I glad you mentioned Ramachandran. I've seen lots of videos, but I admit I haven't read him. In his videos, he demonstrates enormous sympathy for people like me who have experienced brain dysfunction that results in religious mania, or religious euphoria, whereas Harris seems shut off to that kind of sympathy.

I think I may have threads in the archives wherein I talk about Ramachandran and even linked to some videos where he does talks about case studies of patients undergoing massive cognitive dissonance due to things beyond their control, ie the things going on in their brains. One young man in particular, not religious in any real way before his conversion process, breaks into tears describing his "relationship" with God, his Love for God, even though in the back of his mind he is aware that he is probably just sick. The young man's father, who of course loves his son intensely, also has tremendous sympathy and supports his son through his experiences.

I went through several years where I didn't know I was sick, and I was a major asshole here. BUT, after years of self introspection and research, I came to understand what was going on with me. After all, and my journey is mapped in detail here at TFT, formerly FRDB, I started out here as an atheist.

It is a very difficult thing for an outsider to grasp: what goes on with these deeply emotional feelings of oneness with God, with a very real LOVE for God. I have developed a sympathy not only for people like me, and the young man I refer to, but for the average believer who has a huge emotional investment in their beliefs.

The "religious" people I have no time for, and in fact have deep contempt for, are your "God hates fags" morons. These people could drop off the face of the earth without me shedding a single tear. Fuck' em!

Of course, even people who may not be that idiotic, but who truly cannot wait to get to Heaven so they can enjoy watching people suffer in hell, well, they can fuck themselves too. I got a membership at Rapture Ready only so I could walk all up and down some of those simpletons as they discussed gleefully with one another about how they couldn't wait to watch those stupid God-haters burn in agony. I was ignored and marginalized poste-haste, of course, and I abandoned the joint after a few days.

OH, and I plan on stealing one of your phrases: "What the actual fuck..." LOL!

 

[WAB]

It's been years, but I think this is the young man I was referring to:



Then again, perhaps it was someone else; although I went through a short phase where I thought I was God, then thought I was the second coming of Christ. LOL. At least I didn't share those actual thoughts here, but I did have one major whackadoodle thread where I came close.

ETA, yep, this is what I remember.

This is the first of a series.

I had only a few seizures, but the first was a doozy. I lived alone, after my divorce. I woke up on the floor in great pain, with a strong and vivid sense that I had fallen down a flight of stairs. There were no stairs in my apartment. It could have been residue from the Exorcist film, which I had been watching obsessively just prior to my seizure. At the end of that film, Father Kharas falls down the Hitchcock steps. I obsessed over those stairs. To this day I want to go to Georgetown to see them.

When I got to the hospital, only then did they notice a giant hematoma on my right side and back. I have no idea what happened to me, but I had a real good knock.

I had some seizures later, but nothing like that.

When I woke up, I had a kind of amnesia. I stood staring about me, not knowing I was in my apartment. I recall, in flashes of memory, standing at my computer and looking at my Facebook profile, and thinking, "Yeah, William A Baurle. I know that guy." But I didn't recognize that it was me.

I had several hours where I couldn't recognize faces. When my sister, who was my neighbor (I had wandered outside) called the ambulance, I remember telling them that God had given me the job of winding all the clocks back to the Big Bang.

I saw the EMTs as cavemen. I had a distinct sensation that I was in the stone age, having been taken back at least that far by God. I spent 48 hours in the ER. They let me go too soon. When my father came to see me, I thought he was Joe Namath.

 

[untermensche]

The things the brain does, like create a mind and presentations for that mind, arose the same way.

Right, so, again, all you're saying is that "mind" is a process generated by the brain. Again, I don't think anyone itt would have any problem with that assertion.

That's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying the mind is a product of a process.

You have the brain. You have the activity of the brain (the process). And you have the product of the activity, the mind, that arises because of the activity.

 

[untermensche]

Is the brain and the "signal" to contract a muscle the same thing?

Why are you even asking? What does it matter to the topic? What's with this segue to 'what activity is'? What has it got to do with (a) why the brain can't be an experiencer or (b) how you know you have an 'I'?

'It just can't, because only the mind can' and 'I just do' will not be all that convincing, just in case those might be your preferred answers.

It is to show that the mind is removed from the brain.

There is the brain.

There is the activity of the brain that creates the mind.

And there is the product of the brain activity, the mind.

The mind that is altered when brain activity is altered.

The mind is one step removed from the brain.

 

[WAB]

I still can't figure out how to access the archives, even after going to the Wiki pages which ostensibly link to these archives, but return a "Page not found" error page.

BUT, alas, I have recalled the name of my whackadoodle-theory thread. I believe it was called "The Road to Understanding." In it, I describe a theory (ahem...lol) wherein total understanding may be arrived at just by grasping the idea of zeroes and ones. Apparently, zeroes and ones, and all things binary, including all one-on-one relationships and especially opposites, would yield total comprehension of the mysteries of life. I was lucky in that only four users came to slam me, and I was at least clever enough not to respond. The thread, miraculously, did not wind up in Elsewhere. Albeit, I don't even remember if there was an Elsewhere then. This would have been around 2011 somewhere, or perhaps 2012.

 

[WAB]

unter,

If I may ask a few questions, and suggest a few things:

It seems to me that DBT and ruby believe you to be positing a ghost in the machine kind of thing, even if not literally a homonculous. I don't see it that way, and please correct me if I am wrong.

It appears to me that you are what might be called a property dualist: which it appears I pretty much am. Are you proposing a duality of some kind? I am pretty certain you are manifestly NOT positing anything like a soul or an agency completely independent of the brain, some external force that influences the brain.

It also appears to me that what you are describing as the distinction between brain and mind could very well be one of semantics, ie that the mind describes the abstract activity or non-material activity or subjective content of the brain, ie qualia, the subjective experience, or simply conscious volition: the will?

If so, you and I are in agreement. However, if you mean by the mind something else, or moreover, something that is not an emergent property of the brain, but a literal part of the brain, then you and I don't agree.

To me, "the mind" is just an article of nomenclature: a word expressing the ability for cognition, of thinking, thoughts, ideas, imagination, will, all of which arise, as DBT and ruby agree (I think ), by extremely complex processes of brain activity, and are not independent of, nor a thing distinct from, the brain.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The things the brain does, like create a mind and presentations for that mind, arose the same way.

Right, so, again, all you're saying is that "mind" is a process generated by the brain. Again, I don't think anyone itt would have any problem with that assertion.

That's not what I'm saying.

That is precisely what you are saying. You say it again:

I'm saying the mind is a product of a process.

You have the brain. You have the activity of the brain (the process). And you have the product of the activity, the mind, that arises because of the activity.

So “mind” is a process generated by a brain. That is exactly what you just wrote. Are you using some esoteric definition of “product” now?

Here, let’s put it this way: brain activity generates “mind.” Why are you trying to separate out “brain” then “activity” then “mind”? They are not equivalent, discrete constructs. It is the activity of the brain that generates “mind.”

Without the brain, you have no brain activity. Without brain activity, you have no “mind.” That is the proper sequence. You don’t have “activity” on its own. You don’t have “mind” on its own. As you put it, “mind is a product of a process” but it’s not a can of tuna kind of product; it doesn’t exist in its own right.

I guess the question is, what’s your point? “Mind” is a product of a process. Ok. So what?

 

[DBT]

A brain and it's activity are two completely different things.

No they are not. Neural activity is a function of the brain, a part of its architecture. A dead brain is a completely different thing to a live, active brain.....

 

[ruby sparks]

Is the brain and the "signal" to contract a muscle the same thing?

Why are you even asking? What does it matter to the topic? What's with this segue to 'what activity is'? What has it got to do with (a) why the brain can't be an experiencer or (b) how you know you have an 'I'?

'It just can't, because only the mind can' and 'I just do' will not be all that convincing, just in case those might be your preferred answers.

It is to show that the mind is removed from the brain.

There is the brain.

There is the activity of the brain that creates the mind.

And there is the product of the brain activity, the mind.

The mind that is altered when brain activity is altered.

The mind is one step removed from the brain.

That doesn't answer either of the two questions.

 

[ruby sparks]

A brain and it's activity are two completely different things.

No they are not. Neural activity is a function of the brain, a part of its architecture. A dead brain is a completely different thing to a live, active brain.....

Some theories are full of holes. In Um's case, they're pigeonholes.

As someone else pointed out, a red ball has both redness and roundness. Two completely different things, separate and removed from each other. You can't say that shape and colour are the same thing or are even related. Don't even get me started on size, density, elasticity, temperature, velocity or location.

So many completely different things.

 

[untermensche]

It is to show that the mind is removed from the brain.

There is the brain.

There is the activity of the brain that creates the mind.

And there is the product of the brain activity, the mind.

The mind that is altered when brain activity is altered.

The mind is one step removed from the brain.

That doesn't answer either of the two questions.

Some people are not even worth bothering with.

Any moron can say they do not see what is there.

You have your answers. Find them.

 

[untermensche]

That's not what I'm saying.

That is precisely what you are saying. You say it again:

What exactly do you not understand about the difference between a process and that which arises out of the process?

What is happening in the computer chip is the process.

What appears on the screen is what arises out of the process.

A simple distinction.

For most.

 

[ruby sparks]

That doesn't answer either of the two questions.

Some people are not even worth bothering with.

Persistent evasion noted.

Any moron can say they do not see what is there.

Untermensche resorting back to 'I'm rite becoz it reely reely feelz like it' mode in 3....2...1....

Plus some implied insults. Nice work all round. Really professional, rigorous and convincing.

 

[ruby sparks]

It seems to me that DBT and ruby believe you to be positing a ghost in the machine kind of thing, even if not literally a homonculous.

Not literally a homunculus but functionally equivalent.

I am pretty certain you are manifestly NOT positing anything like a soul or an agency completely independent of the brain, some external force that influences the brain.

Not external or completely independent but functionally separate. As I understand it, his mental agent is created by the brain, but then has 'Fat Controller' autonomy over the brain afterwards.

Unless there's supposed to be a separate 'thing' for merely perceiving qualia 'things' and another 'thing' for giving orders to the brain, plus other 'things' enabling the message activity between all the various 'things'. I would not be surprised.

 

[untermensche]

Persistent evasion noted.

Any moron can say they do not see what is there.

Untermensche resorting back to 'I'm rite becoz it reely reely feelz like it' mode in 3....2...1....

Plus some implied insults. Nice work all round. Really professional, rigorous and convincing.

Basically you are a waste of time.

I give my arguments.

You have nothing reasonable to refute them with. You claim the brain itself and not merely it's activity changes in the presence of LSD. Absurdity!

Then you claim there are no arguments.

It is an endless cycle of hell with you.

 

[ruby sparks]

Basically you are a waste of time.

Don't post to me then. Or can you not stop yourself?

I give my arguments.

Yes, not very clear ones, imo. That you wouldn't follow up on when asked specific, detailed questions about them.

You have nothing reasonable to refute them with.

No. Your only suggested reason (other than, 'It's obvious') as to why the brain could not be the experiencer was energy waste, and I replied that it wouldn't be an energy waste if the 'presentations' were useful to the brain and that even if they weren't, them alternatively being a necessary byproduct would make your point irrelevant anyway. You never came up with another suggested reason. Nice try though. And then, ironically, you yourself waste your own time by posting to me. Neat demo of both energy waste and a lack of autonomy. Lol.

You claim the brain itself and not merely it's activity changes in the presence of LSD.

It does change. The brain is mostly liquid and chemical and even the 'hard' bits' are flexible, permeable or porous. It's a mixed system. If the chemicals change, that's a physical change to the brain. Furthermore, toxic chemicals damage and even kill cells. If you put cream in your vegetable soup, that is a change to the soup, even if the vegetables (the 'hard bits') remain more or less the same. This sort of biological/chemical (ie physical) change is widely accepted and understood by science. In fact, if it did not physically change, neither could the brain activity change, because brain (or any) activity is not itself automomous, something not properly addressed in your vague 'it's a completely different thing' paradigm.

Absurdity!

No, that would be the infinite regress of experiencers in your UMPM (Unparsimonious Multifarious Pigeonholes Model).