Subjective experience v. Self-awareness

[ruby sparks]

Pinker and others (most compatibilists) prefer to redefine, as a way out of the problem. Whether their redefinitions are appreciated or understood by 'most people' or ever will be is debatable.

No. They don't "redefine".

Sorry but that is just wrong. Doesn't matter.

Quick question: do you agree that all your actions and decisions are either fully determined or the result of a combination of determined and/or random causes?

 

[Speakpigeon]

Pinker and others (most compatibilists) prefer to redefine, as a way out of the problem. Whether their redefinitions are appreciated or understood by 'most people' or ever will be is debatable.

No. They don't "redefine".

Sorry but that is just wrong.

Yeah?

Pinker and others (most compatibilists) prefer to redefine, as a way out of the problem. Whether their redefinitions are appreciated or understood by 'most people' or ever will be is debatable.

No. They don't "redefine".

Their use of the term 'free will' seems in line with not only my own perception of what free will means for most people, but also with the definition given by my Collins dictionary:

Free will
a. The apparent human ability to make choices that are not externally determined.
Collins Dictionary, 3rd Edition - 1991

In my experience, most people think they have free will and most don't assume that this would somehow allow them to circumvent the laws of nature, if any. If anything, it's very easy to check you can't do whatever you want and most people are not idiotic.

There's no doubt that there is also a small number of intellectuals, philosophers and religiously minded people, who have peddled a sense of free will that would be contrary to the scientific view of nature. I believe this is what is so exercising some of the people on the other side. Both sides are in the minority, though. They're just hijacking the debate and polluting the discussion.
EB

Doesn't matter.

Good.

So, now, your quick question...

Quick question: do you agree that all your actions and decisions are either fully determined or the result of a combination of determined and/or random causes?

I really don't know that. How would I know?

I can suspect it's like this or it's like that but I still wouldn't know.

And suppose I said our actions are indeed "fully determined" but... by God. Is that Ok?

And, in my opinion, being "the result of a combination of determined and/or random causes" is nothing if not "fully determined".

Oh-oh, we seem to have a problem with a few words here.

Try... just a little harder?
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

Quick question: do you agree that all your actions and decisions are either fully determined or the result of a combination of determined and/or random causes?

I really don't know that. How would I know?

I can suspect it's like this or it's like that but I still wouldn't know.

I wasn't asking if you knew. I was asking did you agree.

The point was to find out what you thought, that's all, what was your position, your take.

Determined and random, by the way, are not the same type of thing. But you can use determined and indetermined if you like. Or we can skip that bit.

But basically, you say you have free will. How do you explain this vis-a-vis prior causality? If everything is a consequence of prior causes leading up to every decision or action you take (or thought you have) how is your will ever free?

 

[Juma]

Pinker and others (most compatibilists) prefer to redefine, as a way out of the problem. Whether their redefinitions are appreciated or understood by 'most people' or ever will be is debatable.

No. They don't "redefine".

Their use of the term 'free will' seems in line with not only my own perception of what free will means for most people, but also with the definition given by my Collins dictionary:

Free will
a. The apparent human ability to make choices that are not externally determined.
Collins Dictionary, 3rd Edition - 1991

In my experience, most people think they have free will and most don't assume that this would somehow allow them to circumvent the laws of nature, if any. If anything, it's very easy to check you can't do whatever you want and most people are not idiotic.

There's no doubt that there is also a small number of intellectuals, philosophers and religiously minded people, who have peddled a sense of free will that would be contrary to the scientific view of nature. I believe this is what is so exercising some of the people on the other side. Both sides are in the minority, though. They're just hijacking the debate and polluting the discussion.
EB

That definition makes clear that it isnt a real thing (apparent).
So what you discussing?

 

[ruby sparks]

And what is 'externally determined' supposed to mean? Outside of our heads? Is the implication that there are either no internal determinisms or that we can somehow get around them? How could that possibly even be be explained? It's not as if we don't nowadays understand quite a lot about neurons firing.

Either that's a poor definition, or, if it's what people actually mean by free will, they're missing very important considerations.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Quick question: do you agree that all your actions and decisions are either fully determined or the result of a combination of determined and/or random causes?

I really don't know that. How would I know?

I can suspect it's like this or it's like that but I still wouldn't know.

I wasn't asking if you knew. I was asking did you agree.

The point was to find out what you thought, that's all, what was your position, your take.

Determined and random, by the way, are not the same type of thing. But you can use determined and indetermined if you like. Or we can skip that bit.

But basically, you say you have free will. How do you explain this vis-a-vis prior causality? If everything is a consequence of prior causes leading up to every decision or action you take (or thought you have) how is your will ever free?

It seems to me you have read any of my post about free will.

So, please explain to me first how the view of free will I presented in detail in previous posts here and in my thread on free will could possibly be in any way in contradiction of a deterministic universe?

Can you do that?

My thread on free will is here https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?12739-Poll-Definitions-of-Free-Wiil
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

It seems to me you have read any of my post about free will.

So, please explain to me first how the view of free will I presented in detail in previous posts here and in my thread on free will could possibly be in any way in contradiction of a deterministic universe?

Can you do that?

My thread on free will is here https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?12739-Poll-Definitions-of-Free-Wiil
EB

It's ok. If you don't want to answer my question, that's fine. I'd rather not have to read through a whole thread to try to get a clarification that would surely have taken you less time to give than the time it's taken you to do two medium-length posts instead.

If your answer is basically, yes, why not just say that already?

 

[fromderinside]

Your post doesn't make sense to me. I really can't make sense of it. Any of it.

I think you need to rest a little.

Go for a walk, talk to some real people, and perhaps put me on 'ignore'. I'll do the same.
EB

OK so I'm supposed to go for a walk.

Still, it's nice to see how the Steven Pinker you referred to in your post does agree with me:

http://www.amirapress.com/video/t_VQxJi0COTBo
Question: What is free will?

<snip>
We also know that there's a part of the brain that does things like choose what to have for dinner; whether to order chocolate or vanilla ice cream; how to move the next chess people; whether to pick up the paper or put it down. That is very different from your iris closing when I shine a light in your eye. It's that second kind of behavior -- one that engages vast amounts of the brain, particularly the frontal lobes, that incorporates an enormous amount of information in the causation of the behavior that has some mental model of the world that can predict the consequences of possible behavior and select them on the basis of those consequences. All of those things carve out the realm of behavior that we call free will, which is useful to distinguish from brute involuntary reflexes, but which doesn't necessarily have to involve some mysterious soul.

I think I could almost have said it like that.
EB

OK. Here is my walk. It's not to recover, but rather, it is to fill in for the logical scotoma revealed is certain audience .

Below is a rough narrative of a possible sequence of ability developments that could lead to where modern man is today.

Crick and Koch came to a position that certain structures in the vertebrate brain were necessary for any level of consciousness including the quint notion of bare consciousness. I'll take that bare consciousness thing as my starting point. The minimum structure required by Crick and Koch can be found in the Manta Ray or it's immediate predecessor in brain development. Their notion was that the structures were necessary to tell food from threat from object, A bare level of consciousness.

Somewhat later mating and rearing evolved. As for mating the fighting fish shows evidence of central structures that balance approach behavior from withdrawal behavior which is clearly a primary function of early autonomic NS with it's cholinergic and adrenergic functions. This was mediated inf fighting fish in mating as a approach and withdraw dance attendant to particular color signatures in potential mates.

As vertebrates continued to become more complex succoring and mentoring young as they developed in a social environment. It is at this point where other became more than non threat. It became relevant recognize to those like oneself which required the beginnings of oneself capability development. which lead to more mediating capacities covering seek, avoid, attach, etc.

Even later features in the environment become important leading to such as move stop move stop strategies for processing change in location relative to others for food seeking and for group cohesion among other drivers. Chickens and deer employ more stop methods. Cats, dogs, mice use continuous updating methods to process and use for situation awareness. Long term memory was probably consequent to this.

All the above can be seen as evolutionary steps in consciousness.

Now we come to modern birds, cetaceans, and ungulates through primates all of which have capability to use signalling to communicate beyond alrarm. Probably even some rodents are also in this group given the existence for FOXP2 gene complexes and their capabilities for very fine manipulative and constructive control.

This is my, for this moment, just so rough road map to human consciousness. At no point is there any seer development. It's just increased cerebral control over motive and primitive social substrata along with short term and long term memory and memory access which can be employed just as one can adjust control over approach and withdraw capacities for more nuanced behaviors and social interactions. In parallel one can see the move from automata to variable response to basic demands of being an organism.

One should read the above as a possible line of development. It certainly isn't THE line of development that lead to modern man's ability to plan, design, execute complex and intricate tasks nor exist in complex and changing societies.

The others beyond Crick and Koch to which I referred in my wiki screed are all sources and advocates of such progression through evolutionary history of the feature consciousness.

If, as some suggest, evolution is partly seen as a tendency for increased complexity in organisms then consciousness is just one of those complexities that arose as demand from competition required.

No. I'm not brain dead, no I wasn't tired last night. I got up to feed the cat at 2: AM as is my custum along with my nightly need to take a leak.

My line is that it's not today for philosophers to define consciousness. Today it is for neuroscientists, geneticists, and evolutionists to so define.

Oh sure, there is still the big problem. How does one get from trillions oc synapses the immediate consciousness of the moment? In my view people like JD Haynes, those following on the trail of Crick and Koch, geneticists, neuro-chemists maybe even cognitive neuroscientists are going to get us there quite soon.

About 100 years ago a Social Psychologist at Iowa came up with vector hodology as a tool to describe social behavior in man. The next  Kurt Lewin may at this moment be developing working theory for consciousness

 

[Speakpigeon]

And what is 'externally determined' supposed to mean? Outside of our heads?

Outside our body.

Free will is obviously the free will of the person and the body is the normal spatial delimitation of the person.

Is the implication that there are either no internal determinisms or that we can somehow get around them? How could that possibly even be be explained? It's not as if we don't nowadays understand quite a lot about neurons firing.

Free will is free will of the person. The localisation of the person is the body. According to the definition, a person has free will as long as their will is not determined by anything outside the body. Given the laws of physics as we admit of them, the essential of what a person does at any one time is the result of the physical state of the person's body, i.e. its internal state, so it's not usually externally determined.

Situations where what people do is externally determined include the use of force or violence for example but not the threat of the use of force or violence because free will is not freedom to act but freedom to choose how to act irrespective of whether it's even possible to act according to choice. Merely being threatened does not remove free will even when it removes freedom.

Either that's a poor definition, or, if it's what people actually mean by free will, they're missing very important considerations.

Please tell me what these are.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

That definition makes clear that it isnt a real thing (apparent).
So what you discussing?

No, the definition doesn't make clear free will isn't a real thing.

This shows your English isn't good enough to understand the definition.

What is true is that the definition does not assert that free will exists. Instead, it provides the condition that needs to be met for free will to exist. It's then up to you to decide whether this condition is realised or not.

The qualification "apparent" is used here to express the idea that we seem to have free will but we don't all agree that we really have it.

I hope you understand now.
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

Either that's a poor definition, or, if it's what people actually mean by free will, they're missing very important considerations.

Please tell me what these are.

I already did. Never mind. If that's your preferred definition of free will, it's deeply flawed, but good luck with it.

 

[Speakpigeon]

OK so I'm supposed to go for a walk.

Still, it's nice to see how the Steven Pinker you referred to in your post does agree with me:


I think I could almost have said it like that.
EB

OK. Here is my walk. It's not to recover, but rather, it is to fill in for the logical scotoma revealed is certain audience .

Below is a rough narrative of a possible sequence of ability developments that could lead to where modern man is today.

<snip>

Excellent but nothing that I didn't already understood well enough, although certainly in less details.

Also, although it's clearly relevant to how the contents of subjective experience are generated, it is irrelevant to the question of the nature or quality of subjective experience itself, what Chalmers called the hard problem of consciousness.

No. I'm not brain dead, no I wasn't tired last night. I got up to feed the cat at 2: AM as is my custum along with my nightly need to take a leak.

My point was that your post didn't make any sense at all. I was just worrying for you.

My line is that it's not today for philosophers to define consciousness. Today it is for neuroscientists, geneticists, and evolutionists to so define.

All humans have consciousness and so every human being can legitimately claim expertise on consciousness. Providing a good definition or any intelligent discussion on the subject is certainly not given to everybody, and you are a case in point, but we all have a direct experience of it, at least that's the best assumption.

One task that scientists can undertake, one that probably only they can carry out, is to discover the relation between subjective experience and the physical world, if any.

What they have done so far is no way near achieving that. More worryingly, they don't seem like they are on the right track at all. But we'll just have to wait and see what they do, unless somebody else come up with a better idea.

Oh sure, there is still the big problem. How does one get from trillions oc synapses the immediate consciousness of the moment? In my view people like JD Haynes, those following on the trail of Crick and Koch, geneticists, neuro-chemists maybe even cognitive neuroscientists are going to get us there quite soon.

About 100 years ago a Social Psychologist at Iowa came up with vector hodology as a tool to describe social behavior in man. The next  Kurt Lewin may at this moment be developing working theory for consciousness

Doesn't look too promising if you ask me.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Either that's a poor definition, or, if it's what people actually mean by free will, they're missing very important considerations.

Please tell me what these are.

I already did. Never mind. If that's your preferred definition of free will, it's deeply flawed, but good luck with it.

If what I've seen and responded to is the best you can do then you certainly haven't showed the definition is flawed.

I guess we're done here.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

It seems to me you have read any of my post about free will.

So, please explain to me first how the view of free will I presented in detail in previous posts here and in my thread on free will could possibly be in any way in contradiction of a deterministic universe?

Can you do that?

My thread on free will is here https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?12739-Poll-Definitions-of-Free-Wiil
EB

It's ok. If you don't want to answer my question, that's fine. I'd rather not have to read through a whole thread to try to get a clarification that would surely have taken you less time to give than the time it's taken you to do two medium-length posts instead.

If your answer is basically, yes, why not just say that already?

Oh, look! Real magic!

Here is the relevant piece:

Stochastic processes are not inevitable until they have concluded. I'm happy to dump will and freewill, but you are going to struggle to sell rejecting ideas like choice, especially in a system that is in the business of predicting and explaining itself.

However, I'm keen to see the argument.

”Choice” and ”decision” are high level terms we use to describe perceived behavior. There is nothing physical to it.

But there is something physical.

People are human beings, which all have a physical body, and a human body has a reasonably well-defined physical boundary, which in turn defines a physical inside and a physical outside of this body, the latter being something which is the object of meticulous and detailed studies and research by perfectly respectable scientists.

The upshot of this fact is that whatever happens inside a human body at any given point in time is determined by its physical state at that point. And then, I'm pretty sure all scientists concerned are convinced that whatever a human being does is best explained by the physical state of his body immediately before doing it. That's true because that's true of just about anything physical, save perhaps some weird particles and fundamental things.

And then the difference between a human being and, say, a rock, is that the rock does not have anything like a representation of the world to decide what to do next. It does not have, like humans do, the ability to represent a number of alternative actions, all different, select one among them, perform the one he will have selected, and perform this action in a way pretty close to the one imagined initially. We definitely do that.

We even make computers perform a vastly simplified but nonetheless very effective version of what we do.

As I see it, that's essentially what people mean by free will and we all have that.

This is also independent of the precise nature of the world we live in, whether deterministic or not.

To be fair, I have to say that perhaps this view is in fact wrong. For example, maybe what we do is in fact decided by some almighty god. However, the view I have outlined is the one most people believe is true, including most scientists, including people who repeat 'free will doesn't exist' from sunrise to sunset.
EB

And the link:
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?12758-There-isn-t-really-a-freewill-problem/page12

Where there's a free will, there's a free way.

Enjoy.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

1. <snip>.... although it's clearly relevant to how the contents of subjective experience are generated, it is irrelevant to the question of the nature or quality of subjective experience itself, what Chalmers called the hard problem of consciousness.

2. All humans have consciousness and so every human being can legitimately claim expertise on consciousness. Providing a good definition or any intelligent discussion on the subject is certainly not given to everybody, and you are a case in point, but we all have a direct experience of it, at least that's the best assumption.

EB

1. Seems to me pretty relevant to to point of quality of subjective experience is continues improvements in quality of behaviors accessible to consciousness. It's one thing to be able to differ other from food, then from threat, then from past encounters, then from continuous record of history, for instance, and then to treat theat history as part of what is experienced and to join one's capabiities for treating the world with what one sees in what's around them here and now.

Seems scientists are tracking quallty of experience across evolution and development fairly well.

2. Now here's the thing. We don't know there is consciousness beyond subjective feeling, you call it knowledge, so we can't actually call what we claim as conscious experience as experts. A good definition from what we have learned from science and experimentation is one that can be operationalized with respect to the world we have reduced to material theory.

How would this be better that 'experts examining phenomena? Well, is conscious we experience actually relatable to the physical world we believe it is? Actually, in many cases it isn't. Illusions based on how the brain works are one impediment because they lay waste to the connection between the world and our experience of the world. We know many of the machines that make illusion in our experience so we can build a theory of consciousness that includes these machines and set them aside to prove experience and world are conjoint, onto, one to one. This is better than flawed experience since it means we should be able to devise machines to remove the illusions in our experience which is something no individual can reasonably do without science.

 

[Kharakov]

Are you differentiating between subjective experience and qualia,

Yes, I do.

I guess both expressions speak for themselves. A quale is a quality. So for instance, the quale of redness is the quality of redness, i.e. the quality of your subjective experience of the colour red. Thus, qualia are the quality of the contents of consciousness, i.e. the quality of whatever your are conscious of.

Subjective experience is distinct from the contents experienced and therefore from their qualia. Subjective experience is whatever it is that will stay the same whenever you happen to switch between different qualia.

Do you mean that the subjective experience is continuous as we switch between qualia? That's how I interpreted your statement, as it seems to best conform to my interpretation of qualia and the subjective experience.

So a cat would have a continuous, changing subjective experience (since the qualia are different over time) as it walked along a mountain trail.

or subjective and objective experiences?

Subjective experience is just 'raw' experience.

Objective experience is something entirely derived from subjective experience.

Before I explain my horribly written question: It seems to me that all experiences are both objective and subjective- they exist, so are objective, they have an impact on reality, but they are experienced by the point of view of the experiencer themselves, so are subjective. I've read elsewhere that experiences are never objective, but I don't see how they do not have objective existence.

So now to explain what I mean by objective experiences, which is almost definitely not what I wanted to say as I was rushed out the door:

I was thinking of objective experiences as if they were pieces of "experience fields (gradients)" and/or "experience units (or particles)", somewhat like atoms of continuous experience, that join together in some specific way as the experience itself. So they could be called quale, in my way of looking at things, so wouldn't be completely differentiated from them, unless they were something entirely different- they exist, but without an experiencer attached to the "objective experience molecule", there would be no actualization of the experience. So I maybe I shouldn't even call them objective experiences, but instead objective experience fields/particles?

Another way to say it, a metaphorical way, is to say that subjective experience is more akin to a picture while objective experience is whatever you can't help feeling the picture represents. So, objective experience is definitely a mental construct but that you take to be a real object in the physical world.

Would a hallucination be an objective experience then, or would it not be one because it does not pertain to any real world object (well, except the brain, right?)?

Yet, I don't see how we could possibly experience things that are not somehow inside our brain.

Finally, the elaboration of our objective experience by our brain can only be affected, arguably 'improved', by our constant interactions with other people and particularly by what these people say. Memory, too, should contribute to this process and to the end result. And this process of elaboration must be completely unconscious, as far as I can tell.
EB

So social interaction improves the functioning of the brain. I really must get out more.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Are you differentiating between subjective experience and qualia,

Yes, I do.
I guess both expressions speak for themselves. A quale is a quality. So for instance, the quale of redness is the quality of redness, i.e. the quality of your subjective experience of the colour red. Thus, qualia are the quality of the contents of consciousness, i.e. the quality of whatever your are conscious of.
Subjective experience is distinct from the contents experienced and therefore from their qualia. Subjective experience is whatever it is that will stay the same whenever you happen to switch between different qualia.

Do you mean that the subjective experience is continuous as we switch between qualia?

I suppose so, yes, if I understand what you mean.

It would be the case most of the time but I don't see why it would have to be continuous all the time. Sleep and coma, for instance, and for all I know, may well interrupt subjective experience.

That's how I interpreted your statement, as it seems to best conform to my interpretation of qualia and the subjective experience.
So a cat would have a continuous, changing subjective experience (since the qualia are different over time) as it walked along a mountain trail.

I assume so.

or subjective and objective experiences?

Subjective experience is just 'raw' experience.
Objective experience is something entirely derived from subjective experience.

Before I explain my horribly written question: It seems to me that all experiences are both objective and subjective- they exist, so are objective, they have an impact on reality, but they are experienced by the point of view of the experiencer themselves, so are subjective. I've read elsewhere that experiences are never objective, but I don't see how they do not have objective existence.

As I see it, "objective" has come to imply that any normally functioning human being would confirm, or validate, an objective fact. Thus, the Eiffel Tower exists objectively because visitors to Paris can come and check for themselves they can see it, touch it and bring back pictures of it to their friends back home. So, in this sense, it's as social construct. Science as we know it requires different people exchanging information about what they have seen and agreeing as to what it is they've seen.

For now at least, that's something we can't do with a large part of the contents of our subjective experience, say for example, pain, feelings, sensations etc.

When we can give what we take to be equivalent descriptions of the contents of the subjective experience we each have independently, then it qualifies as objective experience. So objective experience is also always first subjective experience.

But the reverse is not true. A large part of our subjective experience never gets to qualify as objective.

So now to explain what I mean by objective experiences, which is almost definitely not what I wanted to say as I was rushed out the door:
I was thinking of objective experiences as if they were pieces of "experience fields (gradients)" and/or "experience units (or particles)", somewhat like atoms of continuous experience, that join together in some specific way as the experience itself. So they could be called quale, in my way of looking at things, so wouldn't be completely differentiated from them, unless they were something entirely different- they exist, but without an experiencer attached to the "objective experience molecule", there would be no actualization of the experience. So I maybe I shouldn't even call them objective experiences, but instead objective experience fields/particles?

That, I'm afraid, doesn't make much sense to me.

Another way to say it, a metaphorical way, is to say that subjective experience is more akin to a picture while objective experience is whatever you can't help feeling the picture represents. So, objective experience is definitely a mental construct but that you take to be a real object in the physical world.

Would a hallucination be an objective experience then, or would it not be one because it does not pertain to any real world object

A hallucination is a subjective content that you take wrongly to be objectively real, i.e. to exist somehow outside your mind. So, no, it's not an objective experience, because nobody will come to agree with you that there's a sneering and smelly green monster sitting on your left shoulder all the time because there isn't one, believe me.

(well, except the brain, right?)?

Sorry, I'm not prepared to commit to the view that subjective experience and qualia and such are physical things like brains are supposed to be.

Finally, the elaboration of our objective experience by our brain can only be affected, arguably 'improved', by our constant interactions with other people and particularly by what these people say. Memory, too, should contribute to this process and to the end result. And this process of elaboration must be completely unconscious, as far as I can tell.

So social interaction improves the functioning of the brain. I really must get out more.

Yeah, me too.
EB

 

[Kharakov]

It's really a digression, but I was thinking of "objective experience particles or fields" as physical objects (or fields) that can be joined with or segregated from other objects/fields in physical reality.

So the qualia of "pink" could be attached to something, the qualia of "salty" could be attached to something, etc.

I'm not sure whether they'd have existence on their own: perhaps only when attached to an observer "field or particle" do the qualia come into play, like we only see something in a well lit room. In the case that the experience particles/fields require an observer to be actualized as qualia, they would not be the same thing as qualia, which would be a combination of the experience particles/fields with the observer particle/fields.

As I see it, "objective" has come to imply that any normally functioning human being would confirm, or validate, an objective fact. Thus, the Eiffel Tower exists objectively because visitors to Paris can come and check for themselves they can see it, touch it and bring back pictures of it to their friends back home. So, in this sense, it's as social construct. Science as we know it requires different people exchanging information about what they have seen and agreeing as to what it is they've seen.

So this seems to mean that if we have more than one observer of something, it has objective existence.


If my brain produces multiple consciousnesses, each contemplating a thought from slightly different perspectives, does the thought have objective existence?

 

[Speakpigeon]

It's really a digression, but I was thinking of "objective experience particles or fields" as physical objects (or fields) that can be joined with or segregated from other objects/fields in physical reality.
So the qualia of "pink" could be attached to something, the qualia of "salty" could be attached to something, etc.
I'm not sure whether they'd have existence on their own: perhaps only when attached to an observer "field or particle" do the qualia come into play, like we only see something in a well lit room. In the case that the experience particles/fields require an observer to be actualized as qualia, they would not be the same thing as qualia, which would be a combination of the experience particles/fields with the observer particle/fields.

If only fundamental things really exist, whatever these are, then macroscopic things don't exist at all. If so, then observers don't exist either. They would be mental and theoretical constructs.

That being said, we can be certain that both subjective experience and qualia exist. If we assume that there is indeed a physical world, then the question of how subjective experience and qualia relate to it, and possibly interact with physical things, is legitimate. Legitimate, but perhaps somewhat beyond our capabilities?

Objective things are mere mental constructs, i.e. qualia complexes mistaken as physical. Even the notion of being physical is itself just another quale. Still, this doesn't invalidate the notion of a physical world full of physical things. But even so, we would need to keep the distinction between the objective representation from the actual physical thing represented, which we would have absolutely no experience of. Any interaction would have to be between subjective experience and qualia on the one hand and these physical things on the other. Thus, any interaction with objective things would in effect be interactions with subjective experience and/or qualia (mistaken as objective thing).

As I see it, "objective" has come to imply that any normally functioning human being would confirm, or validate, an objective fact. Thus, the Eiffel Tower exists objectively because visitors to Paris can come and check for themselves they can see it, touch it and bring back pictures of it to their friends back home. So, in this sense, it's as social construct. Science as we know it requires different people exchanging information about what they have seen and agreeing as to what it is they've seen.

So this seems to mean that if we have more than one observer of something, it has objective existence.

I would rather talk of the objective fact of physical existence, thinking of objective facts as a matter of assumed collective agreement as to actual existence of physical things.

If my brain produces multiple consciousnesses, each contemplating a thought from slightly different perspectives, does the thought have objective existence?

A fact is only objective to the group of observers agreeing on it. So, physical things are not objective in themselves but qualified as such by a group of observers. It's the mark of our agreement, like talking of a "beautiful" thing. And it should be good enough that physical things should be physical, irrespective of what we think about them.

That's the conventional view of things.


Of course, if one wanted to try and rewrite the whole thing using subjective fields, objective particles and interactions between such, then one would have to work very hard for a long time, and collect hard money to pay for inevitably costly experiments.
EB

 

[Kharakov]

hahahaha. I'm not corrupt, so I'll never have money. You have to be willing to screw over the weak to rise up.... so I am screwed.