Consciousness

[DBT]

I am claiming consciousness as a product of brain activity can influence other brain activity.

Which implies autonomy. You have actually gone further than what you say here, brain as a receiver, etc. Are you backing away from that now?

The more correct way to describe it is the brain, being a modular system, being composed of regions and lobes and distinct structures, that activity in one region effects changes in other regions within the system as a whole.

Consciousness is a form of brain activity that is being constantly 'fed' information by the surrounding unconscious brain activity, inputs processing, etc, and it is the totality of these inputs and unconscious and conscious activity that generates behaviour, lifting your arm, getting a drink, driving working and so on.

If that is mystical to you then you are truly an idiot.

That's you, a rude and ignorant individual whenever someone questions your beliefs.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Sorry, but knowledge of an observation only comes through qualia. Period. There is no telepathy. There is no way to measure, to observe, other than through sensory experience. Sight, sound, taste, odor, sensing hot or cold, all the kinesthetic senses from touch to knowledge of body position. The only way we might agree to agree on a measurement or observation is to ask "Do you <sense> it too?"
If a measurement is done by, say laser and recorded, the only way *you* have knowledge of that measurement is through your senses. Sensations of all kinds yield qualia. Red, loud, bitter, stinky, hot and smooth. Reading the measurement is done through experiencing qualia.
Qualia is the word to describe the personal experiences of sense data. There are indescribable internal states. I love, I care, to name two. The way I love may be different to you.

You are making the same confusion as the other sciency guys around here.

Qualia is not defined in relation to our senses, our sensations, our perceptions, or our sensory experience. Not at all. Instead, the term qualia just refers to the quality of our subjective experience, without, and this is the critical point, without prejudging at all how these qualia come about. How could you possibly know that your qualia have some causal relation to your senses if any knowledge of an observation comes through qualia? It's just nonsensical.

Sure, this is what we all believe but belief is not knowledge. And knowledge of an observation is not necessarily knowledge of whatever we have to assume may be observed.

What you are doing is equivalent to taking the word "God" to mean something like "the illusion that there is a supernatural all-powerful benevolent being". No. You, as an atheist, may believe that the idea of God is some kind of delusion, but whatever your beliefs may be in that respect it's not going to change what the word "God" means. If we start to ignore what the words mean we're not going to have any kind of meaningful conversation.


The word "God" means something like "a supernatural all-powerful benevolent being". Can you please tell me whether you are able to agree with that?
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

If there is an experience it must have a quality to it.

Talking about qualia is not talking about anything beyond talking about experience.

It is a redundancy to even mention it.

This is in any case a difficult question.

My view is that only qualia are undeniable. The expression "subjective experience" insofar as it implies the existence of a subject different from the experience is doubtful. Maybe there is a subject just as maybe there is a material world beyond our qualia but this is precisely what we don't know. The fact that we can't express ourselves without assuming that we are a subject doesn't prove that there is one. Descartes himself already made the distinction. The "I", as he used it, didn't refer to a subject distinct from experience. It was the experience. "I am the thing that thinks". "I am the thinking thing". He could have said, "I am the thinking that's going on", but that would have been somewhat ahead of the culture of the time.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

It is a given if there is experience.

Only if you can actively/consciously* consider it.

* Which does, as you imply, make the word "qualia" a circular reference.

I fail to see how it could have a circular reference.

The sentence "This sentence is false" would have a circular reference if we could think of it as referring to itself. But sentences don't refer to anything by themselves. Instead, we have to do all the work of referring. We have somehow to decide for ourselves and to imagine what it is we mean the sentence to refer to. So, the sentence "This sentence is false" does not refer to itself because sentences are not the kind of things capable of referring in the first place. And then the question becomes whether such a sentence can make any sense to you as somehow referring to itself. So if there is any circularity it's in the conception some people choose to have.

Qualia are the quality of your experience. So there has to be experience for there to be qualia. Knowing any quale is just another expression to say that you are conscious of it. However, the term "consciousness" is ambiguous, so the notion of being actively conscious only brings unnecessary ambiguity to the issue. The merit of the term "qualia" is precisely not to assume any uncertain ontology. Qualia are just what you know because they are what you experience. I don't see any circularity in that.

I also see no harm in believing that qualia may exist outside our experience of them. In fact, that's obviously what we do when we assume that other people are also experiencing qualia. So if you're not actively conscious of being cold, it might be that some part of your brain is nonetheless conscious of it, and it also might be that something is experiencing the quale of being cold even if you're not yourself conscious of it. Again, no circularity in that. What would be wrong, however, would be to pretend that we know that it's the case. We may believe it, we don't know it.
EB

 

[Juma]

Only if you can actively/consciously* consider it.

* Which does, as you imply, make the word "qualia" a circular reference.

I fail to see how it could have a circular reference.

The sentence "This sentence is false" would have a circular reference if we could think of it as referring to itself. But sentences don't refer to anything by themselves. Instead, we have to do all the work of referring. We have somehow to decide for ourselves and to imagine what it is we mean the sentence to refer to. So, the sentence "This sentence is false" does not refer to itself because sentences are not the kind of things capable of referring in the first place. And then the question becomes whether such a sentence can make any sense to you as somehow referring to itself. So if there is any circularity it's in the conception some people choose to have.

Qualia are the quality of your experience. So there has to be experience for there to be qualia. Knowing any quale is just another expression to say that you are conscious of it. However, the term "consciousness" is ambiguous, so the notion of being actively conscious only brings unnecessary ambiguity to the issue. The merit of the term "qualia" is precisely not to assume any uncertain ontology. Qualia are just what you know because they are what you experience. I don't see any circularity in that.

I also see no harm in believing that qualia may exist outside our experience of them. In fact, that's obviously what we do when we assume that other people are also experiencing qualia. So if you're not actively conscious of being cold, it might be that some part of your brain is nonetheless conscious of it, and it also might be that something is experiencing the quale of being cold even if you're not yourself conscious of it. Again, no circularity in that. What would be wrong, however, would be to pretend that we know that it's the case. We may believe it, we don't know it.
EB

you qualia does not exist to me,only to you. your qualia is what it is to be you.

 

[Speakpigeon]

you qualia does not exist to me,only to you. your qualia is what it is to be you.

So what? What does this have to do with anything?!
EB

 

[untermensche]

Which implies autonomy.

A degree of autonomy, yes. I have said it a thousand times.

And your inability to see how it could be is not any kind of refutation.

The question for science is: How does consciousness move the arm?

Instead many are pretending science has somehow demonstrated it can't.

The question for science is how does consciousness achieve a degree of autonomy.

Not pretend it doesn't have one.

You have actually gone further than what you say here, brain as a receiver, etc. Are you backing away from that now?

I never made the claim.

I said YOU could not prove it was not a receiver. It's just an argument demonstrating we don't have a clue what consciousness is.

It is not a claim.

If that is mystical to you then you are truly an idiot.

That's you, a rude and ignorant individual whenever someone questions your beliefs.

I'm rude to pompous asses that make claims to knowledge they do not possess.

Ultimately consciousness is complete mystery. We don't have the slightest clue in terms of brain activity what it is. Nobody can point to any specific brain activity and say THAT is consciousness.

There is no study that looks at consciousness except as subjective reporting. None that look at it in terms of brain activity or explain any aspect of it in terms of brain activity.

 

[untermensche]

If there is an experience it must have a quality to it.

Talking about qualia is not talking about anything beyond talking about experience.

It is a redundancy to even mention it.

This is in any case a difficult question.

My view is that only qualia are undeniable. The expression "subjective experience" insofar as it implies the existence of a subject different from the experience is doubtful. Maybe there is a subject just as maybe there is a material world beyond our qualia but this is precisely what we don't know. The fact that we can't express ourselves without assuming that we are a subject doesn't prove that there is one. Descartes himself already made the distinction. The "I", as he used it, didn't refer to a subject distinct from experience. It was the experience. "I am the thing that thinks". "I am the thinking thing". He could have said, "I am the thinking that's going on", but that would have been somewhat ahead of the culture of the time.
EB

For there to be experience there must be that which experiences, a subject.

And there must be that which it can experience, an object.

There cannot just be an object.

 

[Speakpigeon]

This is in any case a difficult question.

My view is that only qualia are undeniable. The expression "subjective experience" insofar as it implies the existence of a subject different from the experience is doubtful. Maybe there is a subject just as maybe there is a material world beyond our qualia but this is precisely what we don't know. The fact that we can't express ourselves without assuming that we are a subject doesn't prove that there is one. Descartes himself already made the distinction. The "I", as he used it, didn't refer to a subject distinct from experience. It was the experience. "I am the thing that thinks". "I am the thinking thing". He could have said, "I am the thinking that's going on", but that would have been somewhat ahead of the culture of the time.
EB

For there to be experience there must be that which experiences, a subject.

And there must be that which it can experience, an object.

There cannot just be an object.

Again I don't see any reason that the subject and the experience should have to be distinct from each other. So of course you have to have a subject and an object but it is possible that they are just one thing which would be both the subject experiencing and the object being experienced.

The impression that we are a subject experiencing can be understood as itself a quale, and as such part of the qualia being experienced.

I'm not saying I know this is so. I'm just pointing out that it may well be so. There's no reason that I can see that would preclude such an arrangement.

To assert that there is a subject distinct from what is being experienced is a metaphysical claim similar in principle to the claim that there is a material or external world beyond our qualia. Maybe there is and maybe there isn't.

Further, claiming a necessary subject merely adds confusion to the issue. All that you know are qualia and you do know the impression of being a subject. What you don't know is that there is a subject distinct from the qualia. So it's rather economical to assume that this impression may be itself just another quale. Does having the impression you're a subject means the subject is distinct from the qualia? I don't think so. If there's a quale of having the impression you're a subject, the notion that you are experiencing it will not require a distinct subject.

It is of course rather puzzling that there should be such a quale. But the quale of blue is just as puzzling. Especially when considered alongside the quale of pain, or the quale of recalling a distant event. Each quale is just as puzzling as the next one. It all seems to make sense in our metaphysical belief of what qualia correspond to in terms of the material world, i.e. that we experience blue because our brain somehow produces this impression of blue in certain circumstances that science can investigate. But without this metaphysical interpretation, qualia are just very, very puzzling. Of course, the metaphysics of it doesn't in reality solve the problem. We all presumably have this metaphysical belief that there's a material world and yet we still can't explain qualia in terms of it.

It is clear that there's no scientific explanation of how the quale of blue is produced. Worse, there's not the smallest hint that there could be one. Worse, there's a distinct feeling that qualia and the material world are not commensurate, i.e. they don't seem the sort of things that could have any common measure.

It remains that we know our qualia while we can't say we know the material world. So, any explanation that would encompass qualia and the material world would have to evolve a notion of the material world very different from what it is today because we don't have a notion of qualia that we could tweak. Knowing our qualia means that they are as we know them. There's no room for maneuver. Qualia are a fundamental fact of the real world. They are a given. People who are not prepared to accept this simple fact will keep themselves within a naïve view of reality, where the only kind of understanding there is to have is similar in principle to understanding how what we eat helps explain what comes out of our arses. Big deal.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

Just writing something doesnt make it so.
I thank you that acknowledge that my post is correct.

It was correct as to what fromderinside meant. But I don't need you to understand that.

Your post was irrelevant because fromderinside is wrong in his delusion that what he says somehow explains qualia. Making clear what he means is not going to change that.
EB

I didn't explain qualia. I explained away a need for there to be something to carry out the function of such a featrure.

 

[untermensche]

For there to be experience there must be that which experiences, a subject.

And there must be that which it can experience, an object.

There cannot just be an object.

Again I don't see any reason that the subject and the experience should have to be distinct from each other...

How could you have a detector of anything unless that which detects is distinct from what it detects?

If there is no distinction how is there detection?

The impression that we are a subject experiencing can be understood as itself a quale, and as such part of the qualia being experienced.

No.

The quality of an experience is not the same thing as that which is aware of the quality. That is as bad as saying the experience is the same as that which experiences it. Absurd.

If there is an experience there must be a quality to that experience.

Give me an experience that does not have a quality to it.

If all experiences have qualities one does not need to talk about qualities. One only has to speak about experience.

That is the hard problem. The generation of something capable of experiencing qualities.

Creating the qualities is hard too but a much less interesting topic.

Further, claiming a necessary subject merely adds confusion to the issue...

It is not a claim. It is a logical necessity.

To detect anything you must be distinct in some way from that which you detect.

If there is no distinction how could there be detection (awareness of)?

Logical necessities cannot just be tossed aside willy nilly. We are stuck with them and no logical explanation can abandon them.

This is why I laugh at the claims of some so-called neuroscientists.

They somehow think they don't have to explain "that which experiences". They somehow think just explaining that which is experienced is enough. It is sloppy thinking and of course reality will never be explained by running away from logical necessities.

 

[DBT]

A degree of autonomy, yes. I have said it a thousand times.

And you were wrong each and every time you have said it, however many times you say it, a thousand or a million times won't make it true. You maintain a false belief. You maintain your unsubstantiated claim in the face of all evidence to the contrary. You ignore all evidence that flatly contradicts your belief

I'm rude to pompous asses that make claims to knowledge they do not possess.

You are a rude and pompous ass who can't see the irony of your position or your own flaws and fallacies.

Ultimately consciousness is complete mystery. We don't have the slightest clue in terms of brain activity what it is. Nobody can point to any specific brain activity and say THAT is consciousness.

Which clearly doesn't stop you making positive claims such as autonomy of consciousness and thereby displaying your inability to see the contradiction and your inability to understand the irony of it all.

 

[untermensche]

And you were wrong each and every time you have said it, however many times you say it, a thousand or a million times won't make it true. You maintain a false belief. You maintain your unsubstantiated claim in the face of all evidence to the contrary. You ignore all evidence that flatly contradicts your belief

You have claimed this many times.

Demonstrated it never.

Your ignorance for how something might occur is not an argument. Your claims of impossibility are claims from total ignorance.

I'm rude to pompous asses that make claims to knowledge they do not possess.

You are a rude and pompous ass who can't see the irony of your position or your own flaws and fallacies.

You think that which experiences is the same as the things it can experience.

You could not be more lost in terms of even a starting point in the search of consciousness.

Ultimately consciousness is complete mystery. We don't have the slightest clue in terms of brain activity what it is. Nobody can point to any specific brain activity and say THAT is consciousness.

Which clearly doesn't stop you making positive claims such as autonomy of consciousness and thereby displaying your inability to see the contradiction and your inability to understand the irony of it all.

Claims make from clear experience and logical argument. Things you think you can ignore.

You can't explain intention by merely claiming it is the brain intending in some way. That is not an explanation of any kind. It is pretending to have an explanation.

You have no explanation of intention, no understanding of the basic necessities of consciousness, and no understanding of one bit of brain activity.

You have absolutely nothing.

Nothing to say about consciousness. You have no understanding of it beyond subjective experience. No greater understanding of it than anybody with consciousness.

 

[fromderinside]

Qualia exists and it's the only thing I know exists. Qualia might be some day somehow explained but I doubt it and I see not an iota of a beginning of an explanation under the current scientific paradigm. When AI machines take over, your gang will have a great time agreeing with them.

To insist that talking about qualia is pointless is pointless. So be my guest.
EB

Stuff seen while looking directly at it are related to plants, flowers, sunlight, rivers. lakes, hillsides, and ground. All of these things are organized by type and shape and color. During daylight the easiest set of EM wavelengths to catch are all plants which reflect light around 650 nm. are grouped by receptor class similarity as are other classes like lakes river, oceans and as are hillsides and ground grouped by similar receptor similarity.

So it is a rather simple thing to compare class of object by receptor class and group them similarly. When asked to match you get a report in a language that is learned for that class of thing.

It is probably not about sense of color but learned sense of grouping similar things in a receptor class. Difficult, but, test should be able to resolve the issue in favor of assigning class to color or class to receptor region and class.

Let me suggest that just as we have standards with which we reference weight, measure,and time. so do individuals have standards, learned with some more referential. with which we assign visual shape, size, color, and texture. By processes of approximation humans come to know at a glance the object, and it's likely properties by reference. We know, for instance, that it takes longer to assign color to an object than it does to assign shape, edge, and size. Suggests a referring process to me.

Thing is, I don't like people just waving a wand to define something. So this dog has gnawed on the bone and come to a fair chance of a defining experiment.

OK?

If one studies the organization of sensation, perception, and translation of those to articulated constructs of experience (what one is actually doing) one observing oneself as a conscious being is seeing red. It is not of consciousness, that is a construct set up in which to house what one articulates as having observed. One is not just observing 'color' one is observing the result of processing lots of data in what was sensed grouped to the point of being able to articulate an attribute of what was sensed and perceived, that attribute articulated is what you call qualia.

Simplifying, if I set up an experiment where EM energy of about 650 nm is projected on the center of a white surface all else being dark. The observer without hesitation responds I see red. Actually he has seen the darkness, the white sheet before, during and after the EM was projected on the center of the surface.

What you have been yammering about as qualia red is the result of the brain completing that complex perceptual activity with the set of of reporting one aspect , one attribute, of that complex. So what you call qualia is no more primitive than anything else, it is the output of the brain processing and instancing a report of red attribute from what has been seen.

The process I went through to come to the first experiment represents my knowledge of what the brain does when it processes color. If there is a qualia it is of a red dot in the center of the white surface directly in front o him in the dark arena.

Your construct is built on personal fluff.

If I could choose to reject anything else from the situation and expect only the color red to be seen and processed b y the observer, even then, I would have to take into account where it is, how bright it is, and in what context it resides at the time I experience it. You wave all that away with the assertion it is a qualia. You are not saying anything.

 

[untermensche]

The process I went through to come to the first experiment represents my knowledge of what the brain does when it processes color.

The brain does not "process" color.

It creates it.

Color does not exist as anything but an experience.

The "mechanism" the brain uses to create color is not the experience of red.

Red is an end result, not a process.

 

[George S]

The process I went through to come to the first experiment represents my knowledge of what the brain does when it processes color.

The brain does not "process" color.

It creates it.

Color does not exist as anything but an experience.

The "mechanism" the brain uses to create color is not the experience of red.

Red is an end result, not a process.

Right. The brain -- the neurology, actually -- creates the quale of color.

Why? Because it was useful to us.
How? Through processing signals from the eyes to a part of the brain.

But your red may not be my red and no one could ever know. I suspect that it is at least quite similar for us, both being human and all. I suspect a bat experiencing the world through echolocation does not see red through that experience. Perhaps its eyes can and do see the same red as us because they, too, are mammals.

So, what's the problem. I know what the experience of seeing red is. That same experience can be artificially generated with no red light in evidence by poking at the brain.
Someone with a cochlear implant reports that they experience sound differently than before.
I can no longer locate a sound in space. I am deaf in one ear. If I had a cochlear implant I might be able to again. I was able to locate the source of sound when I was 6. That quality of knowing the location of sound is no longer available to me. The neurology generates the knowledge of the location of sound -- a quale.

So now we agree. The neurology generates all first person experience as a result of neural activity. Part of the neurology activates another part of the neurology and the experience of the color red is the result. Is there a mystery here? If so, what is it?

 

[untermensche]

How? Through processing signals from the eyes to a part of the brain.

That isn't an explanation of how anything is done.

It is just a recognition that something is done.

Yes, something happens.

But your red may not be my red and no one could ever know.

What does that matter?

No two brains are close to the same thing. Brains are a huge jungle of cells.

And no two brains have the same experiences.

So one would expect that they would all have variation in their representations to consciousness.

So, what's the problem. I know what the experience of seeing red is.

The problem is the experience is experienced by SOMETHING.

And that which experiences red is consciousness.

Not red.

 

[DBT]

You have claimed this many times.

Demonstrated it never.

I am not the one making claims like this, your most recent rehash of rubbish in Bilby's thread: ''I don't know about you but my body moves at my command. I "will" my arm to move and it does.'' - Untermesche.

Which completely disregards evidence that shows unconscious processing and motor action precedes conscious awareness of intention to move and to act by milliseconds.

That doesn't matter to you, Mr Untermensche, because you fancy that you know better than the researchers with their research, that you, Mr Untermensche do understand when they don't because you have your subjective experience to back you up.

Then, quite unbelievably, the irony the following complaint to your opponent, as if your experience takes precedence and you are the one who knows;

''You have no understanding of it beyond subjective experience. No greater understanding of it than anybody with consciousness.'' - Untermesche

What you say is demonstrably false given the evidence;

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5928/811.short]Movement Intention After Parietal Cortex Stimulation in Humans;[/url]
''Parietal and premotor cortex regions are serious contenders for bringing motor intentions and motor responses into awareness. We used electrical stimulation in seven patients undergoing awake brain surgery. Stimulating the right inferior parietal regions triggered a strong intention and desire to move the contralateral hand, arm, or foot, whereas stimulating the left inferior parietal region provoked the intention to move the lips and to talk. When stimulation intensity was increased in parietal areas, participants believed they had really performed these movements, although no electromyographic activity was detected. Stimulation of the premotor region triggered overt mouth and contralateral limb movements. Yet, patients firmly denied that they had moved. Conscious intention and motor awareness thus arise from increased parietal activity before movement execution.''

A parietal-premotor network for movement intention and motor awareness
''It is commonly assumed that we are conscious of our movements mainly because we can sense ourselves moving as ongoing peripheral information coming from our muscles and retina reaches the brain. Recent evidence, however, suggests that, contrary to common beliefs, conscious intention to move is independent of movement execution per se. We propose that during movement execution it is our initial intentions that we are mainly aware of. Furthermore, the experience of moving as a conscious act is associated with increased activity in a specific brain region: the posterior parietal cortex. We speculate that movement intention and awareness are generated and monitored in this region. We put forward a general framework of the cognitive and neural processes involved in movement intention and motor awareness.''

Which of course you cannot accept because it interferes with your faith in autonomous consciousness and brain as a receiver of consciousness wafting throughout the ether.

 

[untermensche]

You have claimed this many times.

Demonstrated it never.

I am not the one making claims like this, your most recent rehash of rubbish in Bilby's thread: ''I don't know about you but my body moves at my command. I "will" my arm to move and it does.'' - Untermesche.

It is a fact.

The question of course is: What is "will"?

Which completely disregards evidence that shows unconscious processing and motor action precedes conscious awareness of intention to move and to act by milliseconds.

All the Libet experiments show is that there is preparation if movement is anticipated. They show nothing else.

What you label "unconscious motor action" may in fact be conscious anticipation.

You simply attach a label to activity you do not understand and pretend you understand it.

It must be pointed out that Libet did not make these conclusions. All he said was that it was an interesting phenomena.

The fact that there is preparation before anticipated movement is expected. And it does not prove anything about the alleged "unconscious".

 

[fromderinside]

The brain establishes standards just as does the scientific community. It observers, collates, associates, and correlates relations between receptors such as place, color of stimulus, object, etc. In the case of vision it collects which receptor responds to which place in the object seen, it gathers information about edges to define the object, it categorizes objects based on some sort of classification, it compares things like plants. rivers, mountains, and objects.

In the case of identifying color the brain knows the locations of receptors that are similar to other objects like the one seen and begins to groups them into thing, shape, color, and size groups. Through the use of these tools the brain builds a library of colors that are consistent with what is seen as plants etc.

We don't see color, we see objects of color and we group them together. As we develop language we articulate these comparisons into words such a green grass, green plant, green forest, so when we are shown a pure color on a blank white sheet we respond with green dot on a white sheet unless we are constrained only with the color we see.

So yes the brain actually sees color as the results of processes of sensation, perception, detection, discrimination, and recognition. The end result you talk of is no more than filtering down of what is seen into the required grouping 'color'.

I disagree with most here that quale is a valid category. Receptors and brains are similar and individuals come to understand what is processed in similar ways.