What woo am I trying to monger? — bert1
Useful outcome does not imply goal, purpose, or reason. — T Clark
if we're quibbling about necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness, sentience, experience, having a perspective and so on, how and why we would have a consciousness of any indicated sort would be determined by the conceptualisation fixed "upstream". — fdrake
I could see that the qualia people may have a similar move available to them. Like the enactivists did in my fictional example above. If an enactivist criticised the state of neuroscience as being unable to study the dynamic interplay of body, brain and environment in a meaningful way, it similarly makes sense to allow the qualist to accuse neuroscience of the same, unjustified, filter. Which isn't a filter on the level of data, it's a filter on the level of conceptualising data and how people ask questions. — fdrake
I think, eg Chalmers, has tried to show that there really is this gap between what can be accounted for with (current) descriptions from neuroscience - assuming they are physical. And if that's true, there'd need to be a new but related science regarding how qualia and brains track each other, and how qualia correlate with others. Conceived of in this way, Chalmer's arguments play the role of the enactivist in the above example. And, I think, be treated with the same courtesy. — fdrake
If you believe that "how" and "why" are being equated with "how" and "why" in a context which, it sees, necessarily removes relevant things from its study, you'd be contesting the entire context, which is roughly anything which seeks to explain everything about consciousness with physical laws. — fdrake
Once again, there is no consensus on the definition of the terms. Without such consensus the claim remains ambiguous. — Fooloso4
-I don't know under which rock you have been living but in science we have straight forward descriptions for any phenomenon. We may not be able to provide a theory or a single causal mechanism but that doesn't mean we don't agree with what we study and observe.when you make claims about these undefined terms. Giving a definition does not settle anything. — Fooloso4
He is far more specific of the details that enable the phenomenon. He and anyone agree on which phenomenon they are talking about.Despite a revival in the scientific study of consciousness over recent decades, the only real consensus so far is that there is still no consensus.
-I thought your goals were to communicate your scientific ignorance and the promotion our death denying ideology. Who knew you cared about me....lolEDIT: Part of the reason I created this thread is to give you a place to let off some steam without being off-topic, so you were less likely to be banned. — bert1
Same here. Thanks!↪180 Proof
Sir I appreciate your understanding, your education and admire your patience — Nickolasgaspar
Don't try to bring science in the woo woo land of your definitions sir. — Nickolasgaspar
Again, when a definition is based on the description of the phenomenon...there is consensus. i.e. "Consciousness is an arousal and awareness of environment and self, which is achieved through action of the ascending reticular activating system" this is a description based on what we can objectively verify as the phenomenon to be conscious. — Nickolasgaspar
not only is it possible through convergent evolution that there may be some other mechanism other than the reticular activating system which also makes a creature capable of consciousness. Not only is it possible and plausible its even more so possible and plausible that there is some sort of proto reticular activating system, some sort of primordial arrangement that precedes the evolution of the reticular activating system which may have given rise to some form of proto consciousness interestingly in the mammalian brain stem and the vertebrate brain stem.
...
There may also be entirely different arrangements ... the nervous system of the octopus ...
Given we could agree (possibly) on the above, I'm not sure how there'd be any difference in saying that the purpose of consciousness is X, simply by restricting our frame of reference to the functioning of the organism. — Isaac
What is? — Isaac
That's begging the question. The evolutionary frame (in my example) comes first so that we can ask - what's the benefit of being conscious - to get at our "why?" question.
If you don't like the evolutionary frame, then there may well be another, but I'm arguing it would still be of the same form, there'd be something which constitutes a measure of satisfaction with the reasons given.
Consciousness is the label we give to the re-telling of recent mental events with a first-person protagonist. — Isaac
But that's just a matter of willing, not of some deep conceptual problem. After all, if you're able to imagine your keyboard is really made of atoms by seeing it as just a matter of scale, then you're just imagining atoms wrong. They're not (so I'm told) just smaller bits of keyboard. they're these weird energy particles and probabilities and quantum maths I don't even understand.
You're willing to simply 'allow' that rule (weird quantum stuff can become keyboards), not, I'd suggest, because it's somehow easier to conceptualise, but because it's not a mystery you find particularly interesting that it remain one. It's a less good story, in other words. — Isaac
What, then, is the relation between the standard ‘third-person’ objective methodologies for studying meteors or magnets (or human metabolism or bone density), and the methodologies for studying human consciousness? Can the standard methods be extended in such a way as to do justice to the phenomena of human consciousness? Or do we have to find some quite radical or revolutionary alternative science? I have defended the hypothesis that there is a straightforward, conservative extension of objective science that handsomely covers the ground — all the ground — of human consciousness, doing justice to all the data without ever having to abandon the rules and constraints of the experimental method that have worked so well in the rest of science. — Daniel Dennett, Who's on First?
My objection to neuro-reductionism is that what it is seeking to explain is something which is different in kind to other topics of scientific analysis — Wayfarer
I classify phenomenal consciousness as a mental process. That's the kind of a thing I say it is. The category I say it belongs in. One of the characteristics of a mental processes is that they are behaviors or at least that they manifest themselves to us as behaviors.
If it's not a mental process, what kind of a thing is it? What category does it fit in? — Me
The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. — David Chalmers, Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness
I’m a robot, and you’re a robot, but that doesn’t make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions,” he said. “Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable? — Daniel Dennett
In Dennett's view, scientific method must be truly universal in scope - whatever can't be included in it, is either not worth knowing about, or unknowable. — Wayfarer
I think what is behind this is the fear of the mystery of consciousness - the fear is what provides the sense of urgency, the impatience with critics, and the demand that we all must recognise scientific authority as the only path to certainty. — Wayfarer
What I think Chalmers is actually trying to convey by 'something it is like...' is, simply, being. Being, and what it means to be, is surely one of the major preoccupations of philosophy (and much else besides) although it's not always explicit - for Heidegger questioning the meaning of being is philosophy. (And I do wonder whether eliminative materialism is in some ways a manifestation of what Heidegger called 'the forgetfulness of being'.) — Wayfarer
I think there's a completely unambiguous answer to that: we are not robots, or machines, or even simply organisms, but beings, and a science that doesn't understand that is a risk to humanity. You never know what you, or the person next to you, is capable of being, or becoming. — Wayfarer
Descartes thought animals were machines, right ? — plaque flag
Where they enter the picture is in the attempt to treat philosophical issues as scientific problems, which they're not - and this, in the context of a culture which has essentially abandoned its own metaphysical base. — Wayfarer
Ideas have consequences. — Wayfarer
Maybe p-zombies are impossible. How could we tell? — Dawnstorm
In Dennett's view, scientific method must be truly universal in scope - whatever can't be included in it, is either not worth knowing about, or unknowable. Notice that this basically assumes that science is capable of being all-knowing - the literal meaning of 'omniscient' - in respect of human nature. — Wayfarer
Can the standard methods be extended in such a way as to do justice to the phenomena of human consciousness? Or do we have to find some quite radical or revolutionary alternative science? — Daniel Dennett, Who's on First?
That's fine, I don't deny that, but then from within the definition of consciousness used by the protagonists here, there should still be a set of sufficiency criteria for the reasons given in answer to a question 'why?'. It's not that I'm demanding those criteria should match my definition, just any definition. — Isaac
What I'm saying is that you (we all) pick — Isaac
That's all very well, but still lacks (if not more so) any details about sufficiency from that perspective. If it's not a law of physics that's being sought to explain the mechanism, then a law of what? If no law at all, then in what way is just any mechanism not an answer? — Isaac
what we're going to see as 'mysterious' and what we're going to accept as normal, not on the basis of some objective state of affairs, but on an arbitrary and personal decision about when we're going to stop asking 'why?' There's nothing special about consciousness beyond the fact that you choose to see it as special, you choose to not stop asking 'why?'
That's all very well, but still lacks (if not more so) any details about sufficiency from that perspective. If it's not a law of physics that's being sought to explain the mechanism, then a law of what? If no law at all, then in what way is just any mechanism not an answer? — Isaac
What I think Chalmers is actually trying to convey by 'something it is like...' is, simply, being. Being, and what it means to be, is surely one of the major preoccupations of philosophy (and much else besides) although it's not always explicit - for Heidegger questioning the meaning of being is philosophy. (And I do wonder whether eliminative materialism is in some ways a manifestation of what Heidegger called 'the forgetfulness of being'.) — Wayfarer
Another point I'd make is that there is the study of consciousness as an object of analysis - which is cognitive science - which I'm interested in, and trying to get a better understanding of. — Wayfarer
But the philosophical question about the nature of the mind (a term I prefer to 'consciousness') is broader, and deeper, than the specific questions which are the subject of cognitive science. — Wayfarer
I think there's a completely unambiguous answer to that: we are not robots, or machines, or even simply organisms, but beings, and a science that doesn't understand that is a risk to humanity. You never know what you, or the person next to you, is capable of being, or becoming. — Wayfarer
It had seemed to me that you rejected attempts to understand consciousness from a scientific point of view. — T Clark
The only reason I'm paranoid about this stuff is that it's very easy to "stack the deck" depending on what side you're on. — fdrake
If part of the theory is "it cannot be bridged", that does put an onus on an opponent to show the gap doesn't exist or alternatively that it's already been bridged. — fdrake
I think it's unfair to expect a concise definition of content from a nascent field of inquiry. Like "hey Mr Newton, can you define what a force is for me? It doesn't seem to be a substance... is it immaterial? How can it be part of a physical law without a physical body?" — fdrake
I also don't think this is particularly charitable, you can treat arguments like Mary's Room, zombies etc as attempts to show why consciousness is "special" in this way. Furthermore, expecting a functionalist answer to those is in some regard begging the question. — fdrake
Another way of seeing the debate is not about sufficient conditions for consciousness, but about sufficient conditions for positing consciousness, experience and so on as primitives for a theory. Like you might not expect necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as "matter" or an "institution". Just whether positing something helps alleviate problems with hitherto existing accounts.
And that's addressed by attacking arguments which purport to show that hitherto existing accounts from functionalist/physicalist philosophers don't or cannot account for some phenomena consciousness exhibits (narrow vs wide content from Chalmers eg). — fdrake
I'd invite you to look again at the title of the OP. Who is asking whom to defend their position? — Isaac
And already the whole debate has been skewed into painting Chalmers et al as the victims of an uncharitable, superficial attack on their position which they are being asked, quite unfairly, to defend. — Isaac
Essentially, as with all philosophy, if we can't say anything about why one frame is preferable to the other then it's redundant (as a social exercise) we have to have criteria - even if it's aesthetics, parsimony, clarity, coherence... something has to be the matter we can discuss when comparing models/frameworks, otherwise what are we discussing? — Isaac
"suppose the gap between neurological goings on and first-person consciousness is unbridgeable..." it seems the oddest thing to suppose as a foundational, but more than that it imports assumptions which then need examining - like what does 'unbridgeable' actually mean in this context? — Isaac
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