ruby sparks
Contributor
All it would take would be an ability for the brain to 'feel', to experience sensations.
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Downward Causation: Useful or Misguided Idea?
- Thread starter Copernicus
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All it would take would be an ability for the brain to 'feel', to experience sensations.
untermensche
Contributor
The brain creates sensations for the consciousness to experience.
There is no evidence the brain experiences anything.
The brain reacts to stimulation by making a presentation for consciousness.
Brain activity is centered around consciousness and devoted to serving consciousness.
And the brain responds to orders from the consciousness.
The brain does not question if the arm should be moved. When the consciousness orders it the brain reacts like a slave.
ruby sparks
Contributor
Pain?
Koyaanisqatsi
Veteran Member
By the time any sensations are translated into chemical “information” and passed along through the central nervous system, it is perhaps a category error to even use the term “experience.” The body (i.e., the sensory apparatus) experiences; the brain interprets. The “I” (or “self” or “consciousness”, whatever we want to call it—I prefer the analogue self), is a part of that interpretive process.
I guess one could argue that, technically, the brain “experiences” chemical interactions and electrical impulses, etc—i.e., it “experiences” the information process—but then that’s probably stretching the meaning/intent of the word “experience” for purely pedantic reasons.
I guess one could argue that, technically, the brain “experiences” chemical interactions and electrical impulses, etc—i.e., it “experiences” the information process—but then that’s probably stretching the meaning/intent of the word “experience” for purely pedantic reasons.
Koyaanisqatsi
Veteran Member
Not in the manner I think you mean. The brain interprets pain impulses (i.e., reacts/assesses damage to the body), but if I’m not mistaken, brain surgery can be performed without anesthesia and patients can and evidently need to be actively participating as the surgeon operates.
untermensche
Contributor
Reacting and experiencing are not the same thing.
When a mind experiences it knows it is experiencing. That is part of experiencing. The immediate knowledge of the experience.
The brain reacts. There is no evidence it experiences.
If the brain could experience it wouldn't need to create a mind to experience. The mind would be a useless redundancy and whither away.
But the opposite has happened. The mind has become more robust and expansive.
Because it is the crucial decision maker.
ruby sparks
Contributor
In your model, the brain has to create a mind when then experiences thought. In the commonly accepted model, the brain creates and experiences all mental phenomena. It's much simpler. I mean, in your model, what is the mind doing when there are no thoughts for it to experience? Is it even created (by the brain) when there are no thoughts? What's a 'thoughtless mind'? Does it even exist? How would you know?
untermensche
Contributor
There are clearly some things the brain does that the mind experiences and some things the brain does that the mind does not.
In your model there is no need for a mind.
Subsymbolic
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For the sort of thing you think a mind is, certainly. The sorts of people who believe in that sort of mind usually spend their Sundays asking the king of the elves if their mind can go to elfland when their brain stops working.
untermensche
Contributor
You just willfully used your mind to say that nonsense.
No brain evolved to do such worthless things.
But minds have.
No brain evolved to do such worthless things.
But minds have.
DBT
Contributor
But it is the brain that interprets signals from damaged body parts, cuts, abrasions, etc, as a sensation of pain.
It doesnt ”know” that it experiences. It experiences. The experience becomes knowledge (or rather: stored information)
ruby sparks
Contributor
I'm not understanding you there. Could you give me an example?
Also, if, at a particular time, the mind isn't experiencing anything, what makes you think it's there, at that time?
Well, what exactly do you mean by the word 'mind'?
In my model, mind would be all the mental things a brain experiences, including thoughts, emotions, a sense of self, pain, sound, etc.
ruby sparks
Contributor
Actually I didn't mean it that way. I meant it as in, when there are 'mental' phenomena (such as basic hearing, or pain, through emotion and thoughts and finally a robust sense of self) it is the brain which experiences them. As regards my discussions with untermensche specifically, I am asking if the brain first has to create an intermediary thing (the mind) in order to experience these things or whether the brain experiences them itself, without the middleman as it were. This does not make mind redundant, it just suggests that mind is all those mental things, that they are not things separate or independent from each other, although they may be of varying complexity.
It satisfies his idea that in order for there to be experience, there must be both the thing experienced and the thing experiencing.
Of course, it doesn't involve substance dualism necessarily. Anomalous monism might say (if I grasp it even generally right) that the two 'things' are just aspects of each other. So in that case the 'two things' idea could be rephrased as, in order for there to be a coin, there has to be (at least) two sides.
Interestingly, Untermensche's model appears to go beyond dualism to triunalism. And one could think of models that go beyond that, just as one could imagine coins with more than two sides.
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ruby sparks
Contributor
I will not pretend to understand this 2014 paper (link below). I will just say that it is an attempt to support the sort of two-way causal interactionism of which the OP represents one way (mental to physical):
http://journals.mu-varna.bg/index.php/bmr/article/view/1038/887
It includes the interesting suggestion that the way anaesthetics are thought to work at the nanoscale supports the idea that they don't just block a one way process (brain affecting consciousness) but a two-way interactive process (brain affecting consciousness and consciousness affecting brain). I think the general idea is that if the former ('upward') process is happening in the way suggested, there appears to be nothing in principle (in the model) to stop it going (via neurotransmissions) the other way ('downward') as well.
http://journals.mu-varna.bg/index.php/bmr/article/view/1038/887
It includes the interesting suggestion that the way anaesthetics are thought to work at the nanoscale supports the idea that they don't just block a one way process (brain affecting consciousness) but a two-way interactive process (brain affecting consciousness and consciousness affecting brain). I think the general idea is that if the former ('upward') process is happening in the way suggested, there appears to be nothing in principle (in the model) to stop it going (via neurotransmissions) the other way ('downward') as well.
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Koyaanisqatsi
Veteran Member
Well, if we’re trying to delineate what experiences what, then it’s the body that experiences the 3D universe (i.e., interracts directly with the macro scale) and the brain that interprets all of the “telemetry” constantly being communicated by the body as a result of that interraction.
The body is, after all, just a giant multi-tooled sensory input/output machine. The brain created the “self” (or “selves”) as an animated analogue the first time one of our ancestors picked up a pebble and intimated that it represented him, most likely in a “how do we kill the beast in that valley that has so far killed all five of our strongest warriors before it was my turn to face it” kind of way. Iow, “virtual.”
The brain maps the telemetry received and it superimposes the analogue representative “self” into those maps, but instils “autonomy” so that the analogue can essentially roam with “free will” in order to test out all of the various possible best/worst-case scenarios for survival. Etc.
It obviously hinges on what we mean by the term “experiences.” If by that we mean “directly interracts with (on a macro scale),” then the only thing the brain “experiences” is chemicals.
If, however, we’re talking the ever elusive “qualia” then the brain doesn’t experience anything; it generates qualia. It would be like saying a mathematician experiences “Math” when he writes an equation on a chalkboard.
ETA: Because the animated analogue has been imbued with a sense of autonomy—and evolved from strictly survival to leisure and thus had time to repurpose over the millennia—it has labeled such generated qualia and in the sense that it is still nevertheless part of the brain (and provides it informational feedback as well), I suppose you could say that the brain (in a meta sense) is likewise “experiencing,” but as I contend, it hinges on whether we’re defining “experiences” as something that is a direct or indirect condition.
But then we’re basically getting into the concepts of the trinity (i.e., the brain generates the analogues, but the analogues feedback to the brain; all is one, one is all, etc).
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Speakpigeon
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I guess the crucial point, as often, is vocabulary and how different people use the word "experience". By "experience" I mean "subjective experience" I mean experience of qualia. The subject or agent in this case is rather elusive but it's usually not the brain nor the body that most people will mean. The crucial point in this case is that we're all supposed to know what is meant because "we" are the ones who do the experiencing. We can also experience life in the 21st century as lawful citizens of democratic countries and that will be something else entirely.
Still, that will be the first time I see somebody using "experience" as something done by the body.
I take it you mean the body as it normally includes a brain. And there I suddenly feels better. So, now that I can at least breathe, sure, the body is obviously essential to whatever experiencing is going on. Still, what people usually assume, I think, is that all the synthetic informations, like that relative to three-dimensionality of objects, which are constitutive of whatever experience there is, would be in any case somehow located within the brain. This is at least some justification for saying that the brain is experiencing.
I'm definitely not tempted to go down that road. I think that experience, whatever it is that is being experienced, requires a subject in the Cartesian sense. That is, we need something like a mind, in the ordinary, subjective, sense. Even experiencing "life in the 21st century as lawful citizens of democratic countries" requires such a mind. Now, I would still grant you that a body seems to be pretty much a requirement for a mind to have this experience. It's a necessary mediator for the particular kind of experience concerned here. But a brain in a vat would do, although the contents of the experience would then probably be very different, just as the experience is very different when you're dreaming. In any case, I wouldn't say as you do that "it’s the body that experiences the 3D universe". The body is necessary for a 3D experience but it's still the mind that does the experiencing, and that's what I would say irrespective of the real nature of the mind, which may well be, for all I know, just a part of the body. And I suspect that's what most people usually mean by experience in this context.
Personally, I believe it's not even the mind that does the experiencing, but at best only a part of the mind. Experience, according to me, is what's usually called "subjective experience", since an experiencing without a subject to do the experiencing would seem meaningless to me. Now, subjective experience seems to require a conscious mind to do it, and a conscious mind is just a part, apparently, of the whole mind. My unconscious mind may be experiencing but I wouldn't know it, and I suspect it doesn't. I certainly don't know that the subject doing the experiencing is necessarily different from the experience itself, just as I don't know that the mind is something necessarily different from the body. But the thing is, the only thing I know, is that I'm experiencing, so there is at least that, even if the "I" and the experiencing were to be just one and the same thing.
Still, you're free to use formulations that can only make it more difficult to communicate.
EB
Copernicus
Industrial Grade Linguist
Maybe it would be useful to re-inject some of Sean Carroll's perspective here, in light of Speakpigeon's reference to experience as an external force of some kind. BTW, Carroll has coined the term 
poetic naturalism to describe his philosophical approach, which is essentially that one needs different ontological frameworks to describe different levels of systemic emergence. He associated "downward causation" with the idea of irreducible strong emergence.
In his recent book on cosmology, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, he touches on a lot of the philosophical issues that we debate in this forum, including the emergence of consciousness in physical nature. If I read him correctly, he felt it was connected with the phenomenon of a phase transition--e.g. when a collection of molecules passes from a gaseous to a liquid to a solid state. The molecules don't change, but their natural arrangement and velocity changes in a way that gives rise to an unpredictable emergent behavior. So gases and liquids both behave like fluids, but liquids have very different properties from gases in the way that we interact with them. The new properties give rise to a new way of describing the behavior of that collection of molecules--a new ontological vocabulary. And the phase transition invariably takes place under the influence of an external force such as heat or pressure. I suppose that one could claim that bodily experiences are necessary to consciousness--a kind of phase transition in matter induced by external influences. (Anyway, I'm still in the process of reading his book, so I hope that I haven't distorted his point of view on consciousness too badly.)
poetic naturalism to describe his philosophical approach, which is essentially that one needs different ontological frameworks to describe different levels of systemic emergence. He associated "downward causation" with the idea of irreducible strong emergence.In his recent book on cosmology, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, he touches on a lot of the philosophical issues that we debate in this forum, including the emergence of consciousness in physical nature. If I read him correctly, he felt it was connected with the phenomenon of a phase transition--e.g. when a collection of molecules passes from a gaseous to a liquid to a solid state. The molecules don't change, but their natural arrangement and velocity changes in a way that gives rise to an unpredictable emergent behavior. So gases and liquids both behave like fluids, but liquids have very different properties from gases in the way that we interact with them. The new properties give rise to a new way of describing the behavior of that collection of molecules--a new ontological vocabulary. And the phase transition invariably takes place under the influence of an external force such as heat or pressure. I suppose that one could claim that bodily experiences are necessary to consciousness--a kind of phase transition in matter induced by external influences. (Anyway, I'm still in the process of reading his book, so I hope that I haven't distorted his point of view on consciousness too badly.)
WAB
Veteran Member
Much applause for the above post ^.
And how cool, another nod to Muriel Rukeyser (from Sean Carroll), who I mentioned in my thread hereabouts.
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"Hey Muriel, look at what you went and did!" William waves at Muriel, who is somewhere off in the Great Beyond.
And how cool, another nod to Muriel Rukeyser (from Sean Carroll), who I mentioned in my thread hereabouts.
*
"Hey Muriel, look at what you went and did!" William waves at Muriel, who is somewhere off in the Great Beyond.
untermensche
Contributor
The consciousness knows it is experiencing "red". It knows when it is experiencing "red".
There is no doubt.
The brain uses a lot of energy to create "red" for the consciousness to experience.
The only reason to create things for a consciousness to experience is so the consciousness can act on them.
Something that can't act has no need of the knowledge of "red".