Given that some neural processes experience qualia, and even knowing that neural networks are exquisitely correlated with a world around, how are qualia inside the brain about that world rather than just the inside of a brain? — Danno
Given that some neural processes experience qualia, and even knowing that neural networks are exquisitely correlated with a world around,how are qualia inside the brain about that world rather than just the inside of a brain?
Could facing up to functions being somehow (somehow) first-order fundamental (with implications for internalism-externalism, organic-inorganic, selectpsychism - panpsychism) help face up to the 'aboutness' problem, in a way that's consistent with known physics? (somehow)
Although they say in passing this should use "ingredients that are widely accepted as being nothing over and above physical or functional ingredients", they don't go into functionalism.
Given that some neural processes experience qualia... — Danno
Could facing up to functions being somehow (somehow) first-order fundamental (with implications for internalism-externalism, organic-inorganic, selectpsychism - panpsychism) help face up to the 'aboutness' problem, in a way that's consistent with known physics? (somehow) — Danno
In the traditional functionalist conception, cognition is treated as fundamentally distinct from emotion. Cognitivist explanations focus on the abstract problem-solving characterization of cognitive tasks, the structure and content of symbolic representations, and the nature of the algorithms for manipulating the representations in order to solve a given problem. Cognitivism goes hand in hand with functionalism in the philosophy of mind, which in its extreme computational form holds that the embodiment of the organism is essentially irrelevant to the nature of the mind. It is the software, not the hardware, that matters most for mentality.
Cognitivism made meaning, in the sense of representational semantics, scientifically acceptable, but at the price of banishing consciousness from the science of the mind. (In fact, cognitivism inherited its consciousness taboo directly from behaviorism.) Mental processes, understood to be computations made by the brain using an inner symbolic language, were taken to be entirely nonconscious. Thus the connection between mind and meaning, on the one hand, and subjectivity and consciousness, on the other, was completely severed.
Information-processing models of the mind leave unexplained the autonomous organization proper to cognitive beings because they treat cognitive systems as heteronomous systems. These models characterize cognitive systems in terms of informational inputs and outputs instead of the operational closure of their constituent processes. As a result, they do not explain how certain processes actively generate and sustain an identity that also constitutes an intrinsically normative way of being in the world. Cognition or sense-making is the intentional and normative engagement of the system with its environment. One of the basic propositions of the enactive approach is that being autonomous is a necessary condition for a system to embody original intentionality and normativity. Unless the processes that make up a system constitute that system as an adaptive self-sustaining unity, there is no perspective or reference point for sense-making and hence no cognizing agent. Without autonomy (operational closure) there is no original meaning; there is only the derivative meaning attributed to certain processes by an outside observer.
Given that some neural processes experience qualia, and even knowing that neural networks are exquisitely correlated with a world around, how are qualia inside the brain about that world rather than just the inside of a brain?
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