The man in the room has a different set of rules for interpreting the scribbles on the paper than the rules that Chinese people have for interpreting those same symbols. Hence, the instructions in the room are not for understanding Chinese because they are not the same set of rules that Chinese speakers learned or use. The room understands something. It understands, "write this symbol when you see this symbol." The room also understands the language the instructions are written in. How can that be if the room, or the man, doesn't understand language? — Harry Hindu

A digital computer can't understand language so that it can translate like a human. I'm a translator, I use a computer translation tool. It's excellent and amazing, but it can't do what I do. And the barrier is insurmountable.

You're right that the rules in the room are not those that Chinese speakers use. But that's the point: a computer can't understand language in the way we can. The reason is that we learn meaning through conscious experience.

My translation customers often want to make the reader feel good about something, typically to feel good about their products.

To truly understand what "good" means, you have to have felt good. Because you enjoyed food, or the sunshine, or sex, or being praised by your parents.

The same applies to technical translations. It can be very difficult even for a human to understand and translate instructions for the assembly of a machine for example, if they haven't had experience of assembling machinery.

And of course my PC hasn't assembled a machine, or enjoyed sex, or had any of the countless experiences we have had that allow us to understand language, and life.

Ok, I must have missed something. Carry on.

I am not an expert on species. I do think "species" was not a good option for this discussion. I recently listened to a science podcast on this topic where the difficulties of defining a species were made clear. There isn't anything you can point at and say "if it has this, it's that species".

I haven't read the whole discussion, but I think you needed a word that was capable of tighter definition.

Hi Apokrisis,

I'm reading Cell Phenomenology, Olivier passed on your recommendation, so thanks for that. The idea of the self/non-self distinction originating with the cell has been floating around in my head for some time so this is a fascinating read for me.

I am slightly puzzled by the epistemic in epistemic cut. I understand that this is to be distinguished from Descartes ontological cut, but I don't see how epistemic relates to the subject/object distinction. Can you help?

Edit: I think I've got it, it's the cut between the observer and the observed??

I don't think this is the right approach. There is nothing special going on with observer dependence. Yes, a bit, or an assembly instruction, has no meaning in itself. But neither does a neuron. All take their meaning from the assembly of which they are a part (rather than an outside observer). In hardware, the meaning of a binary signal is determined by the hardware which processes that signal. In software, the meaning of an instruction from the other instructions in a program, which all together process information. And in a brain, the meaning of a neuron derives from the neurons it signals, and the neurons which signal it, which in totality also process information. — hypericin

Here's a rather lovely working model of a Turing Machine. https://youtu.be/E3keLeMwfHY?t=258

The whole 5 minute video is worth watching, but I've skipped to the part where the narrator explains that the machine is carrying out a simple binary counting program.

It's us outside observers, including the people who built the machine, who determine that those marks are to be read as 0s and 1s, and that the binary system is to be used. There's nothing in the physics of the machine that says that 1011 is a binary number equivalent to eleven in decimal notation.

The situation is not the same where our brains (and bodies) are concerned. The processes in a brain are not dependent on what an outside observer says about them.

Well you have now.

How can a person be happy, without also being wealthy, recognised, popular or influential? It's not clear how such is possible. — baker

This really made me laugh out loud. Have you never met anyone who was happy without being wealthy, recognised, popular or influential?

I can also recommend Cell Phenomenology: The First Phenomenon by Howard Pattee. Apokrisis told me about this. It’s all based on Pierce theory of signs, and the importance of interpretation by a subject, which according to Pattee lies at the core of the ‘hard problem’. (Pattee doesn’t solve the problem but exposes it quite well) — Olivier5

Oh wow, it's great to find somebody who thinks like me ! I've been thinking along these lines for ages. It's why I say a robot/computer isn't an entity in the way a human is. But I've also been thinking that a bacterium is an entity of the appropriate kind. Looking forward to reading Pattee now, thanks Olivier!

Err.. no, I’m not a big fan of Dennett. I think he is bullshitter. — Olivier5

Oh wow, it's great to find somebody who thinks like me! I borrowed his "Consciousness Explained" from the public library when it first came out in 1991, when I knew almost nothing about Philosophy of Mind. I took what he said at face value, I believed he really was explaining consciousness. I will never forgive him for misleading me like that. I think he's a charlatan.

A robot, a dead man and a blindsighted nun are lying next to you on a sunny beach. Describe the different effects of the sunlight on each of them. Do not write on both sides of the paper at once. Your time starts...now.

The problem with the "Chinese" room is that the rules in the room are not for understanding Chinese. Those are not the same rules that Chinese people learned or use to understand Chinese. — Harry Hindu

I think you're getting things back to front. The room is set up to replicate the way a computer works, the kinds of rules it works with. It's not trying to replicate the way humans work, the kinds of rules we use to understand language. So Searle is showing why a digital computer can't understand language.

Like memory, consciousness itself is simply some brain mechanism.

Why are we conscious, what purpose does it serve? Well as has just been said above:

I could point to blind-sight patients as evidence that phenomenal experience is necessary. Blind-sight patients don't behave, or think like normal humans. They don't have the level of detail about their environment that normal people do. Their different behavior is the result of their phenomenal experience, or the lack of one, compared to those that have it. — Harry Hindu

Both a robot and a human can detect red light.

A human has an accompanying experience. The robot doesn't.

Right? — frank

I don't believe a robot can detect red light in the way a human can, because a robot is not an entity in the way a human is.

Can a dead person detect red light in the same way a living person can?

You seemed (to me) to be implying that there was no such distinction, so I was looking for clarification.

Doesn't blindsight for example suggest a distinction between perception and experience?

William Dalrymple The Anarchy

Historian writes about the British East India Company, which acted like a State, conquering and (mis)governing parts of India. Wonderful characterisations, fascinating insights into bizarre societies (both western and oriental), a great book but I've had to stop reading it as I can't bear the descriptions of torture and mutilation.

We are born into a world where we are expected to strive for success : which to most is to have the best of everything; the best wealth, the best recognition, the best popularity and influence. — Benj96

Hi Benj,

I agree with the first part but not the second. Of course those in a position to express their expectations for you expect (or hope) that you will succeed rather than fail, but speaking for myself I don't regard wealth, recognition, popularity or influence as particularly important indicators of success, for myself or for my children. I very much doubt I'm alone in this: I think if you asked, most parents would say they want their children to be happy, rather than wealthy, recognised, popular or influential.

Unfortunately we are largely governed by people who regard wealth, recognition, popularity and influence as the primary goal in life.

↪Daemon
What progress? The theories about how matter produces consciousness are highly speculative, all over the map, and there's nothing close to a consensus around any of them — RogueAI

I found this a very interesting read:

https://www.academia.edu/42985813/The_Idea_of_the_Brain_A_History_By_Matthew_Cobb

Our latest theories allow us to create artificial memories in the mind of a mouse. Very recently the theories about memory were highly speculative and all over the map, and now we understand the mechanism (for one kind of memory). I think new knowledge like this will lead to the discovery of the mechanisms underlying conscious experience.

I have a family member working in this field and I'm hoping that he will be the one to make the breakthrough. I reckon people his age can expect to live to at least 120 and to be active at least into their 80s. So I'm confident that within another 40 or so years I can give you an answer.

Hello Isaac, I'm new here and I've never heard of model-dependent realism, so I'd be interested in a concise description of it, and some indication of why it means we don't see colours.

Hi Hypericin,

This is a favourite topic of mine, for various reasons. It seems that the received wisdom nowadays is that digital computers are or could be conscious, and (or) that our brains are conscious because they work like digital computers. I think that Searle's argument, properly understood, shows decisively that the received wisdom is wrong in this case, and I always enjoy it when I think I know something most people don't.

Also I'm a professional translator, and I enjoy knowing that digital computers will never be able to do what I do, which is to properly understand natural language.

The crucial reason why digital computers (like the ones we are using to read and write our messages here) can never be conscious as a result of their programs is that the meanings of their inputs, processes and outputs are all, to use Searle's term "observer dependent".

You can see this in concrete, practical terms right from the start of the design of a computer, when the designer specifies what is to count as a 0 and what is to count as a 1.

And the reason a digital computer can never understand natural language as we do is that our understanding is based on conscious experience of the world.

Any questions?

↪Daemon
If we're making astonishing progress, shouldn't somebody have seen something that points the way to a mechanism by now? What's your timeframe on how long we should tolerate the lack of progress on the mind/body problem before we start questioning fundamental assumptions? — RogueAI

We've been questioning fundamental assumptions throughout and will continue to do so. In my view Searle has solved the mind/body problem, it's Chalmers' Hard Problem that we are currently making progress with.

This is from Frankish's article published in Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23 (11-12), 2016, pp. 11-39, later reprinted in K. Frankish (ed.) Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, Imprint Academic, 2017

"Another common objection to illusionism is that in the case of qualitative states there is no gap between illusion and reality. Something can look like a Penrose triangle without being a Penrose triangle, but an experience that seems to have a greenish phenomenal character really does have a greenish phenomenal character*. As Searle puts it, ‘where consciousness is concerned the existence of the appearance is the reality. If it seems to me exactly as if I am having conscious experiences, then I am having conscious experiences’ (Searle, 1997, p. 112, italics in original).12 This is often presented as a crushing objection to illusionism, but it is far from compelling. It turns on what we mean by seeming to have a greenish experience. If we mean having an introspective experience with the same phenomenal feel as a greenish experience, then, trivially, there is no distinction between seeming and reality. But of course that is not what illusionists mean. They mean introspectively representing oneself as having a greenish experience, and one can do this without having a greenish experience.

* I follow Levine’s practice of using ‘greenish’ for the (putative) feel associated with perception of a green object"

_____________________________________________________________________

So a quale for Frankish consists of introspectively representing oneself as having an experience, and this is to be distinguished fromhaving an introspective experience.

I'm still trying to apply the Principle of Charity, but he's not making it easy. Is it clear to anyone what introspectively representing oneself means?

I ask the people who still hold out hope that science will explain consciousness: what do you base that hope on? — RogueAI

On the astonishing and accelerating progress we have recently made in neuroscience. As we're able to see and understand more and more my hope is that somebody will see something that points the way to the mechanism causing consciousness.

I'm a light user of commas. I was wondering if you were saying something interesting.

Every time a neuroscientist says "neural representation" without clarifying it as readiness to play a social game of agreeing actual representations, a dualist gets more confused. — bongo fury

I'm not really following Bongo.

There was a famous experiment a while ago that showed that neurological behaviour associated with motor responses fired before correlated decision-making processes in the prefrontal cortex. — Kenosha Kid

That sounds like Libet: there's still a lot of controversy about these experiments, their findings, their interpretation.

Now, it's true that the neurons themselves are dedicated structures in the sense that auditory neurons are sensitive to sound and not light and vice versa for ocular nerves. However, this doesn't solve the problem of how the two perceptions, sound and light, are differentiated because both ultimately end up as action potentials. — TheMadFool

I'm not a neuroscientist but I would suggest that the differentiation takes place during processing in the different areas of the brain. I vaguely remember reading that synesthesia results from signals going to the wrong location, auditory signals reaching visual processing areas for example, so that sounds result in the perception of colours.

Not that qualia do not exist, but that what we infer from their existence is an illusion. This also seems consistent with what Dennett says: it's not that qualia -- which are familiar, everyday phenomena -- do not exist, but that they are not what we think about them. — Kenosha Kid

Are you able to say what the Illusionists believe we infer from the existence of qualia, and/or what we think about them, Kid?

My objection to qualia is that in so far as they are subject to discussion they are just what we see, taste and feel; and so far as they are of philosophical interest, they are not available for discussion. — Banno

I could also live happily without (the concept of) qualia, we could just say "conscious experiences" instead. But are they available for discussion, in your view?

I'm trying to apply the Principle of Charity by taking Frankish's arguments in their strongest form. Trying to understand what he's trying to say rather than dismissing it. So Banno, or anyone else, do you have a clear understanding of his distinction between qualia and experiences?

Hello Everybody,

Thanks for the link and the discussion so far.

1. It's not clear to me what it is that Frankish is claiming to be an illusion. My understanding is broadly that "qualia" is a collective term for experiences. Frankish seems to not like qualia because they have mysterious non-physical properties, but he's relaxed about experiences. Why do qualia have mysterious non-physical properties and experiences don't? What am I missing?

It's said that Frankish "doesn't think the experience has any properties of qualia. It just seems to be that way." What is meant by "properties of qualia"?

2. "Keith suggests that one the one hand there is the perceptual account. But then there is a separate internal monitoring of the perceptual processes that gives rise to the sense of a rich, internal world. And the reason for this illusion is to make ourselves and other humans feel special. The seeming hardness is a feature of the illusion, with the implication being one of survival and ethical considerations."

What's the perceptual account? Bacteria can swim towards a favourable environment, we can explain this process exhaustively by describing chemical processes (stunning knowledge!). Is the bacterium perceiving the light, sugar?

Or does the perceptual account involve seeing?

The separate internal monitoring. Is that not a homunculus?

Maybe that's enough to be going on with for now.