Consciousness

[Juma]

Your are acting out (talking about, writing about) your subjective experience thus there must be a causal chain between your subjectivit experience and these physical acts.

It would fit nicely that "aboutness" is the filler that unites the consciousness between every discontinuous physical correlate.

What on earth are you babbling about? There must be a cause link, thus a physical link, since you can talk about subjective experience.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Simple mind here.

What if we started with a simple model, an antecedent. if we observed other animals with backbones, with bilateral symmetry, with a nervous system, and with the ability to distinguish food from other. Isn't it necessary for one to be aware to be aware of food and other than food? If not, why not?

Yes I didn't start at the beginning. I presumed everybody knows humans are bilaterally symmetric, move, have a nervous system, and have the ability to distinguish food from other.

So my question about being aware is moot since we are aware and by similarity others with such attributes as we, we can presume they are aware if they find and eat food, or, what we surmise as food.

What's neat about this form of modelling is we can choose a being with these qualities which we can observe, experiment, and record. I suggest we take one of the simplest with these attributes, the Manta Ray since it has what other scientists describe as all the elements of nervous function required to be conscious. It has structures for memory, association, perceiving, and directing its activity with respect to such as food.

In fact others have already done this work. One, Francis Crick, has observed the manta have a visual system capable of defining edges and olfactory and tactile systems capable of discerning metabolic substances, a memory, and an associative capability in its nervous system.

Together with these capabilities we have measured the manta's capability to detect, move toward and capture food, and that it uses its visual system, olfactory system, and tactile systems to perceive and control its motor system to recover said food. It has been studied to the extent that after finding novel food, it learns to search out that particular food again for its' satisfaction. So we have a nice little model for awareness study.

Remarkably it uses it's analogues to our systems to do what our systems do to accomplish finding and consuming food. What the manta doesn't have is the ability to communicate with us about how it accomplishes what we accomplish and talk about.

I put that problem in the trivial bin since we can record from both and observe both making telling is what's on its mind a minor thing.

Now I could go the recesses of my mind and conjure up some paradigm of proof which would satisfy me and those of like kind, but, it wouldn't generalize to other living things which I find pretty important since it has become overwhelming evident since we do have almost absolute knowledge that they and we are deterministically genetically related.

I'd like so very much to put you out of your misery if I could but that will be a waste of my time. Human beings have cognitive capabilities, we all understand that, and they can of course be investigated just as we can investigate other animals' capabilities and explained from the perspective of the theory of evolution. Not so easy, of course, perhaps much more difficult than usually said, but we can conceive doing it within a reasonable amount of time assuming Trump does get us all killed one way or the other before that. Yet, this is beside the point. It is still today totally inconceivable how understanding everything there is to understand about the human brain would provide any clue at all about the nature of our subjective experience. Of course, this might change if a completely new paradigm could be conceived but this is precisely what we have failed to do so far and your piece here is a good example of how scientists are likely to fail some more. But, hey, keep going! I don't want to keep you from your hobby.

Which brings me back to the model I just presented that seems to do the same thing, but, without the communication linkage.

In reference to the communication thing I presented a challenge for those who disagree with my approach to try to think when they don't access language. I'm pretty certain we can and do think without language else we couldn't do much of what we do which when we don't articulate it. This puts me in the place of pointing to other species that do things we do without the aid of language.

Let's say we can't say "cogito ergo sum". Does that mean because that is so we can't be? I don't think so. Again I point to our vertebrate cousins and other relatives.

Descartes's notion of thinking wasn't premised on language. For him, thought was any conscious state of mind. The Cogito had to be verbalised but he clearly meant that any thought meant you exist.

Why am I doing this?

I'm doing this to get people away from framing philosophical questions in terms of well developed and articulated languages. How about a point method or a demonstration method, or Philosophy forbid, and experimental method. Are not experiments and demonstrations rational?

Subjective experience is demonstration enough but you sure can pretend it doesn't exist. If a robot could do it I'm sure that anybody can do it.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Yes, they are related, practically parallel.

But the subjectivity is not needed to explain anything physically observable about me. Like I told Juma, if they pinpointed the exact physical correlation to the experience of the color green, then the physical correlate would still have the physical properties and the subjective experience property. It will always be out of reach from our physical instruments.

Your are acting out (talking about, writing about) your subjective experience thus there must be a causal chain between your subjectivit experience and these physical acts.

That there would be a causal link may not help solve the question the way you think. Subjective experience is not mediated. We know what it is. What we don't know is the material world. All be can do is explain one apparent physical event in terms of another, which doesn't provide any knowledge of this physical world. So a causal link if there is one won't solve the problem. At best we might get to understand how consciousness affect the physical world. Big deal.
EB

 

[Juma]

Your are acting out (talking about, writing about) your subjective experience thus there must be a causal chain between your subjectivit experience and these physical acts.

That there would be a causal link may not help solve the question the way you think. Subjective experience is not mediated. We know what it is. What we don't know is the material world. All be can do is explain one apparent physical event in terms of another, which doesn't provide any knowledge of this physical world. So a causal link if there is one won't solve the problem. At best we might get to understand how consciousness affect the physical world. Big deal.
EB

i didnt say it was a big deal. but it will hopefully shut up epiphenomenalists as ryan.

 

[fromderinside]

Speakpigeon, to your last to my last post.

Modelling subjective experience depends on which models one applies to the problem. For instance, most times individuals have subjective experiences related to objective experiences which, in turn are related to reality at hand (in the world). Inserting a decision process with the proper amounts of insanity of one sort or another, or, delusion of some sort, will produce subjective experiences. One might say the task is done with that. Not I. I'll go out and define the subjective aspects of 'the common man' or 'the expert pilot' or something else and bring back a much more realistic - this is just a cuteness of art - subjective experience making model.

A computer model isn't a robot, it is a scientifically realizable model of the nervous system of some sort of statistical person. A robot uses models to drive seeing and effecting and speaking and other dimensions of human being. I'd say it is harder to make a robot who experiences than it is to make a man program that experiences because the robot is a particular actualization of after what it is modeled.

I disagree that human beings have cognitive experiences. Human beings believe human beings have cognitive experiences. It never goes to actualization. It always remains at belief for humans. So maybe what I'm doing is going to put you out of your miserable beliefs, which is only possible if you aren't any more co I can't - legal sanctions yano - actually do that. As you said if I did it would be a waste of my time and my life as well and its just not worth it.

 

[fromderinside]

You thinking you can surmount philosophical truisms. Like the truism that to have experience you need both something which can experience and something to experience. You cannot merely have something to experience.

I won't comment on truisms beyond they point to what I'm about to post. Human beings believe they experience and that model depends on two unprovables and falls on a provable. A believed experience depends on what one believes one can experience and what one believes is experienced. The fact is these are beliefs, personal, and whatever else one needs to thrown on to make something a belief. All that we can know is what we verify publicly. 'We' is a population term here. So we can verify we have something to experience and we have tools with which we can experience. These are tools which I use and you don't use. So you're the one stuck in the belief well.

It is true I can never prove to you what I can do with experience because what your experience is is a belief.

 

[ryan]

It would fit nicely that "aboutness" is the filler that unites the consciousness between every discontinuous physical correlate.

What on earth are you babbling about? There must be a cause link, thus a physical link, since you can talk about subjective experience.

The words out there are only about (aboutness/intentionality) something because of the consciousness. My brain has generated this particular instance of the consciousness that happens to be about its own causal existence.

This is actually a really good example of just how vastly different subjective experience and the physical world is. Even though we come from the physical world, what the physical world is doing is meaningless. But the consciousness is this other thing that gives meaning to it, and makes the exterior interesting, alive, real.

 

[Juma]

What on earth are you babbling about? There must be a cause link, thus a physical link, since you can talk about subjective experience.

The words out there are only about (aboutness/intentionality) something because of the consciousness. My brain has generated this particular instance of the consciousness that happens to be about its own causal existence.

This is actually a really good example of just how vastly different subjective experience and the physical world is. Even though we come from the physical world, what the physical world is doing is meaningless. But the consciousness is this other thing that gives meaning to it, and makes the exterior interesting, alive, real.

No. Its not conciousness that "creates meaning": meaning is created by interplay of intentional agents. Intentional agents are simply informationa processing systems that predicts the actions of other systems.
When these other systems are other intentional agents meaning arises from/as the predicted intention of the other intentionsl agents.

So you are wrong and you have still not explained what that post had anything to do with my post...

 

[ryan]

The words out there are only about (aboutness/intentionality) something because of the consciousness. My brain has generated this particular instance of the consciousness that happens to be about its own causal existence.

This is actually a really good example of just how vastly different subjective experience and the physical world is. Even though we come from the physical world, what the physical world is doing is meaningless. But the consciousness is this other thing that gives meaning to it, and makes the exterior interesting, alive, real.

No. Its not conciousness that "creates meaning": meaning is created by interplay of intentional agents. Intentional agents are simply informationa processing systems that predicts the actions of other systems.
When these other systems are other intentional agents meaning arises from/as the predicted intention of the other intentionsl agents.

So you are wrong and you have still not explained what that post had anything to do with my post...

I love it when science takes a metaphysical concept like intentionality, finds its physical correlate, and then tries to make the actual metaphysical part of it go away.

When we objectively exam two people interacting, there is no need for metaphysical concepts like intentionality. There are just two clusters of matter having a purely physical interaction one particle at a time. If one of the 2 people is crying because her dad just died and they are talking about the life of her father and how much he meant to her, all of that metaphysical stuff doesn't exist or is irrelevant to the physical ontological account.

So no Juma, intentionality requires consciousness which is where meaning exists. No matter how well science makes the physical correlations from metaphysical concepts to the physical world, it can't forget about what it is making these correlations to.

 

[untermensche]

You thinking you can surmount philosophical truisms. Like the truism that to have experience you need both something which can experience and something to experience. You cannot merely have something to experience.

I won't comment on truisms beyond they point to what I'm about to post. Human beings believe they experience and that model depends on two unprovables and falls on a provable. A believed experience depends on what one believes one can experience and what one believes is experienced. The fact is these are beliefs, personal, and whatever else one needs to thrown on to make something a belief. All that we can know is what we verify publicly. 'We' is a population term here. So we can verify we have something to experience and we have tools with which we can experience. These are tools which I use and you don't use. So you're the one stuck in the belief well.

It is true I can never prove to you what I can do with experience because what your experience is is a belief.

Humans do not believe they experience.

They know it.

Beyond doubt.

Descartes 101. If there is a thought there is something that experiences it. There are my thoughts. Therefore I exist.

And the "I" Descartes is talking about is consciousness. The subjective experiencer.

 

[untermensche]

No. Its not conciousness that "creates meaning": meaning is created by interplay of intentional agents. Intentional agents are simply informationa processing systems that predicts the actions of other systems.
When these other systems are other intentional agents meaning arises from/as the predicted intention of the other intentionsl agents.

So you are wrong and you have still not explained what that post had anything to do with my post...

No such "Information processing systems" have been found in the brain.

Nobody can explain the brain activity that results in any aspect of consciousness.

It is merely taken as a given that some kind of brain activity results in consciousness.

That is as much as science can say about it.

 

[bilby]

Just because nobody can explain things to YOU, doesn't imply that nobody can explain things.

Perhaps the problem isn't with the explanation, but with the audience.

 

[untermensche]

Just because nobody can explain things to YOU, doesn't imply that nobody can explain things.

Perhaps the problem isn't with the explanation, but with the audience.

Go ahead.

Tell me the physiological basis of experiencing the color blue.

What does the brain do to create the experience of blue?

I have a lot of education in human physiology so you don't have to simplify.

 

[fromderinside]

I won't comment on truisms beyond they point to what I'm about to post. Human beings believe they experience and that model depends on two unprovables and falls on a provable. A believed experience depends on what one believes one can experience and what one believes is experienced. The fact is these are beliefs, personal, and whatever else one needs to thrown on to make something a belief. All that we can know is what we verify publicly. 'We' is a population term here. So we can verify we have something to experience and we have tools with which we can experience. These are tools which I use and you don't use. So you're the one stuck in the belief well.

It is true I can never prove to you what I can do with experience because what your experience is is a belief.

Humans do not believe they experience.

They know it.

Beyond doubt.

Descartes 101. If there is a thought there is something that experiences it. There are my thoughts. Therefore I exist.

And the "I" Descartes is talking about is consciousness. The subjective experiencer.

Yet there was room for Berkeley to interpose another as the thinker of thoughts. We're talking philosophy here. Philosophers speak of rational belief including thought. Being an observer one can never be certain of even immediate facts. One needs public test and published result for knowing with the exception that one may know what one knows without objection because it is the claim of the one about the one. I can prop up all kinds of objections to what you claim to know, but, I can never falsify your claim without your assent.

Let me put it this way, if you claim to know you are conscious, possess consciousness, I cannot falsify your personal claim without your assent. As an objective construct there is strong evidence we are as other material things physical machines. Material things do not have consciousness as it is not a physical thing. Whatever one is basing one's belief about one having consciousness must then be some form of physical phenomenon, perhaps a state in a process, or a state among conjoining or parallel processes, or something similar and physical, or it is something that is only a belief. Which brings us full circle.

Currently I'm testing possibilities of physical mechanisms resulting in one coming to the belief one is and has consciousness.

Of course you've just been banging your drum.

 

[untermensche]

Yet there was room for Berkeley to interpose another as the thinker of thoughts. We're talking philosophy here. Philosophers speak of rational belief including thought. Being an observer one can never be certain of even immediate facts. One needs public test and published result for knowing with the exception that one may know what one knows without objection because it is the claim of the one about the one. I can prop up all kinds of objections to what you claim to know, but, I can never falsify your claim without your assent.

Talking philosophy in philosophy. Go figure.

What is known best is experience.

All else is suspect. All else is hearsay.

 

[ryan]

Just because nobody can explain things to YOU, doesn't imply that nobody can explain things.

Perhaps the problem isn't with the explanation, but with the audience.

Go ahead.

Tell me the physiological basis of experiencing the color blue.

What does the brain do to create the experience of blue?

I have a lot of education in human physiology so you don't have to simplify.

Don't let him off the hook with asking what the brain does to experience blue; we pretty much know what the brain does to experience blue. The question is how does the brain generate something so fundamentally different from its fundamental physical properties.

 

[untermensche]

Go ahead.

Tell me the physiological basis of experiencing the color blue.

What does the brain do to create the experience of blue?

I have a lot of education in human physiology so you don't have to simplify.

Don't let him off the hook with asking what the brain does to experience blue; we pretty much know what the brain does to experience blue. The question is how does the brain generate something so fundamentally different from its fundamental physical properties.

We know how the brain responds to light.

We know absolutely nothing about the physiology of blue.

Blue is an experience. Light is something out in the world.

 

[bilby]

Don't let him off the hook with asking what the brain does to experience blue; we pretty much know what the brain does to experience blue. The question is how does the brain generate something so fundamentally different from its fundamental physical properties.

We know how the brain responds to light.

We know absolutely nothing about the physiology of blue.

Blue is an experience. Light is something out in the world.

We also know how the particles that make up atoms interact; But we don't have a complete quantum-level description of a single cell. We know how temperature and humidity affect the density of air; But we cannot predict where the next hurricane will cross the coast.

Blue is something happening in the brain. We don't know exactly what - but it is likely a LOT of things happening in the brain, with complex relationships between each of them. Hurricanes are made of moist air. There's no mysterious 'hurricane stuff' that needs to be considered when discussing hurricanes; and there's no mystery about why you don't see a hurricane every time you boil a kettle.

Not knowing something is not a license to make up something totally new from whole-cloth. It's not better to come up with a hand-wavy idea that cannot be right than it is to say that we don't know the details, but it's basically more of the same. Ken Wilson showed that high level phenomena can be explained in terms of lower level interactions, but that the opposite is NOT true. You can study things at any scale and get useful results while knowing nothing about what happens at smaller scales - which is a good thing, or Chemistry would never have been understandable until we had completed our understanding of Quantum Field Theory; and the Iron Age would have had to come AFTER the Information Age.

Not only do you not know what you are on about; You don't know what I am on about, and you refuse to even consider it. So you end up making insane demands like "Tell me the physiological basis of experiencing the color blue", in smug ignorance of the fact that my inability to meet your arbitrary demand says nothing about whether I am right, and even less about whether you are. You remain wrong; and you remain incapable of grasping that you might be wrong. So I will stick to sniping from the background, with occasional explanatory responses such as this one for the benefit of third parties with the wit to grasp them.

I don't expect you to understand this, nor to make a useful response.

 

[untermensche]

Blue is something happening in the brain.

I see now. Thanks for the explanation.

Perhaps the problem isn't with the explanation, but with the audience.

With explanations like this how can the audience feel less than satisfied?

 

[ryan]

Don't let him off the hook with asking what the brain does to experience blue; we pretty much know what the brain does to experience blue. The question is how does the brain generate something so fundamentally different from its fundamental physical properties.

We know how the brain responds to light.

Yes, I agree. I was referring to the "how" question of how subjective experience (or consciousness in general) is generated from observables of different kinds of properties, namely physical ones.

We know absolutely nothing about the physiology of blue.

Blue is an experience. Light is something out in the world.

Do you mean the physiology of the physical correlate of the experience blue, or do you actually mean the physiology of just the experience of blue?