Thought experiment regarding Qualia

says, there is no reason to conclude this.

Indeed if the phenomenon "is not encompassed by the rules of physics, chemistry or computation", what possible reason could you have for the claim that it is "associated with my brain"?

The pain was sufficient to be noted on the board, and hence had a physical effect.

Wayfarer

But we also know that pain has been realized through physics, chemistry, and the study of the brain. — Philosophim

It that so? What does ‘realised’ mean, in this context? It means ‘made real’ or ‘brought into reality’. But pain has never been ‘realised’ in that sense, by third-person sciences such as neurology, physics, and chemistry. You could know all there is to know about the physiology and biochemistry of pain, but pain is first and foremost a sensation, and sensations are felt by subjects. You could capture tissue samples, scans, and all manner of other objective data about the body and brain whilst undergoing pain, but none of those data are actually pain; they’re data, which furthermore require interpretation by an expert, before their meaning is even intelligible.

Many mind/body problems in philosophy predate modern day neuroscience, and are mostly just for historical study. — Philosophim

There was an important book published in 2003, The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, by Peter Hacker and Max Bennett - a distinguished neuroscientist and a philosopher. It calls these kinds of claims into question: ‘Wittgenstein remarked that it is only of a human being that it makes sense to say “it has sensations; it sees, is blind; hears, is deaf; is conscious or unconscious.” (Philosophical Investigations, § 281). The question whether brains think “is a philosophical question, not a scientific one” (p. 71). To attribute such capacities to brains is to commit what Bennett and Hacker identify as “the mereological fallacy”, that is, the fallacy of attributing to parts of an animal attributes that are properties of the whole being.‘

So this kind of calm assurance that neuroscience has it all worked out is misplaced. It’s really a kind of cultural myth in its own right.

RogueAI

What is the neuroscientific explanation for how brains produce consciousness?

Philosophim

↪Wayfarer

It that so? What does ‘realised’ mean, in this context? — Wayfarer

By realised I mean that it has been researched and chemicals have been discovered to inhibit pain. Anesthesia and opiates are two that come to mind. Anasthesia numbs the nerves, and opiates

"Opioids attach to proteins called opioid receptors on nerve cells in the brain, spinal cord, gut and other parts of the body. When this happens, the opioids block pain messages sent from the body through the spinal cord to the brain." https://www.asahq.org/whensecondscount/pain-management/opioid-treatment/what-are-opioids/#:~:text=Opioids%20attach%20to%20proteins%20called,spinal%20cord%20to%20the%20brain.

There are articles on pain research ongoing here https://www.iasp-pain.org/PublicationsNews/NewsDetail.aspx?ItemNumber=10601&navItemNumber=643
At the international association for the study of pain.

And yes, the application of biology stops the sensation of pain.

The question whether brains think “is a philosophical question — Wayfarer

https://www.dw.com/en/we-know-what-youre-thinking-we-read-your-brain/a-47279723
"A group of neuro-engineers at the Zuckerman Institute have been working on a technique called "auditory stimulus reconstruction" for some time. In the jargon of their paper — "Towards reconstructing intelligent speech from the human auditory cortex" — which has just been published in Nature, "reconstructing speech from the human auditory cortex creates the possibility of a speech neuroprosthetic to establish a direct communication with the brain and has been shown to be possible in both overt and covert conditions.""

The quote you cited was from 2003, which is 17 years ago. Now, it is not that there won't be philosophical questions going forward, but they must be based on neuroscience, not philosophical questions from the 17th century. Once philosophy reaches a certain point of verifiability, it becomes science. Science has many philosophical questions still, but they are in their field, and based off of the modern day knowledge we have.

Philosophim

What is the neuroscientific explanation for how brains produce consciousness? — RogueAI

https://www.sciencealert.com/harvard-scientists-think-they-ve-pinpointed-the-neural-source-of-consciousness#:~:text=Researchers%20have%20long%20thought%20that,work%20together%20to%20form%20consciousness.

The Harvard team identified not only the specific brainstem region linked to arousal, but also two cortex regions, that all appear to work together to form consciousness.

RogueAI

Obviously, I'm asking you for the neuroscientific answer to the Hard Problem to illustrate a point: there isn't an answer. The explanatory gap remains, an enduring embarrassment to materialism.

Philosophim

Obviously, I'm asking you for the neuroscientific answer to the Hard Problem to illustrate a point: there isn't an answer. The explanatory gap remains, an enduring embarrassment to materialism. — RogueAI

It was not obvious to me, sorry. I googled it. There is a ton on this, could you maybe give a better explanation of what you mean? I simply answered the question as given, and do not know what specific part of the hard problem you feel neuroscience cannot answer.

bongo fury

I simply answered the question as given, and do not know what specific part of the hard problem you feel neuroscience cannot answer. — Philosophim

:rofl:

RogueAI

Start here:
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf

Then read Chalmer's "The Hard Problem of Consciousness".

Francis

Hello everyone, sorry it has taken me a while to respond to these posts I have been busy. Thanks for the replies, I may alter this thought-experiment as time goes on.

The philosopher has no proof, but he does have his personal experience of Qualia which is evidence, and being an educated philosopher studying the mind-body problem in this thought-experiment he has deliberately familiarized himself with the science concerning the matter that makes up his brain and understands that the circumstance of there being a sensation of pain produced when there is a certain behavior of matter in his brain differs from the conceptual possibility he can make of these objects simply existing and behaving by the laws of physics without bringing any sensation of pain into the picture.

The statement that the mind-body problem is outdated is your opinion, which is fine, but there are many educated people who disagree with it. There are many who agree with it also to be

↪Banno

It affects physical objects but its not conceptually part of the rules that typically govern their behavior. Keep in mind I am talking about the rules governing the behavior of the objects that you may learn in a physics or chemistry class.

In order to understand how we know that Consciousness and Qualia are connected with the brain, you can look up something called the Neural Correlates of Consciousness where scientists have done tests identifying regions of the brain which seem to be active when people have certain experiences.

TheMadFool

Just curious. Who's picture is that? I feel I've seen it somewhere. :chin:

bongo fury

the wiki page for "ingenue" (from which "disingenuous")

TheMadFool

:ok: :up: Thanks

Gregory

It's got to be a silent actress.

That style was only done in Hollywood in that era. I'm guessing a world war 1 scarlet

Philosophim

Ah, ok. Now again, you did not narrow what you intended by this scope, so I will do my best to address what you think the problem is based on the old Nagel paper.

Nagel's point is not incompatible with mine. Nagel is trying to note that one's personal experience is something that no one will ever be able to have identically. We can't post a picture on the wall for example of what you see before you, and it be the exact picture you experience personally. But what we CAN do, is measure your brain activity, and find brain activity that matches the personal experience you are having.

Understand that Nagel wrote this paper almost half a century ago, and such advances did not exist. It wasn't on his radar, or the scope of his topic. While yes, nothing will ever duplicate the experience you are having, that does not mean we cannot find the underlying physical processes that are causing you to have that personal experience. Modern neuroscience is at that step. I cited two papers which show this.

The first is the ability to read a person's mind and match it with a number the person is thinking of. When the person thinks, "10" we do not know the tonality they are speaking in (yet, we may in the future). But that is irrelevant. We know they are thinking the number "10", and are then able to represent this through a voice synthesizer. We have evidence now that the thoughts we have are able to be matched to the brain's physical process.

The second paper is the advances in consciousness. Consider for a minute that your conscious mind does not have control of your entire body. You cannot tell your gall bladder to produce more or less gall for example. There are certain areas of your brain you do not have access to. The brain has independent sections that manage certain tasks like sight, sound, and language. We know this because we have found damage or stimulation to these regions also affects people's personal experience in these areas. All of these areas need to be combined together into something coherent to be able to make basic judgments. It is worthless to see if it does not help you identify food from not food within that sight for example.

Consciousness is the cobbling together of certain resources to make decisions. Should I pursue that food, or should I not. With intelligence comes a greater ability to make judgements, and manage the different resources of the brain. All of this, is the brain itself. Philosophy is not about creating arguments based on ignorance. It is about creating arguments about things we are ignorant to, while basing it upon our limitations of the reality we know. If you wish to do viable philosophy in regards to the mind, old arguments that do not address modern day findings of neuroscience will be an argument based off of ignorance, and not very useful. Perhaps you will present me with a philosophy theory about the mind that neuroscience cannot be helpful in and prove me wrong.

Philosophim

↪TheMadFool the wiki page for "ingenue" (from which "disingenuous") — bongo fury

So a person on these forums who could have any passing amount of knowledge or focus in different areas of philosophy comes on here, admits they did not know something, asks to learn something from the poster, and you mock them as being disingenous?

I studied philosophy of mind years ago. I do not remember many phrases like, "The hard problem". He did not use "the hard problem" in his questioning. If someone does not know something, and asks to learn something, then assume they are being honest until they know otherwise. Mocking people who can admit to ignorance fosters a place where people feel afraid to admit they are wrong. Do you want that in a place where our goal is to discuss and learn from one another? Don't you want an environment where people say, "I do not know, could you clarify, teach me more, etc?"

Think before you post such things in the future.

bongo fury

Oh dang. Thought it might misfire, it did and I'm sorry.

Probably I don't even understand "disingenuous". I meant it in an admiring way, thinking you might have skillfully cornered a hard-problem-ist.

I'll stop digging.

Philosophim

Oh, my apologies bongo fury. Not a worry! Disregard my comments then.

TheMadFool

@bongo fury

What/who should be the first thing/person to think of when someone tries to explain consciousness with neuroscience?

Ernest Nagel (1901 - 1985) who wrote the book The Structure Of Science (1961) in which he discussed scientific reductionism? Someone else?

RogueAI

Dennet? Does Sam Harris talk about it?

RogueAI

"Ah, ok. Now again, you did not narrow what you intended by this scope, so I will do my best to address what you think the problem is based on the old Nagel paper.

Nagel's point is not incompatible with mine. Nagel is trying to note that one's personal experience is something that no one will ever be able to have identically. We can't post a picture on the wall for example of what you see before you, and it be the exact picture you experience personally. But what we CAN do, is measure your brain activity, and find brain activity that matches the personal experience you are having.

Yes, we have found lots of neural correlates to consciousness. Chalmers calls that the "easy problem". The Hard Problem is WHY are we conscious AT ALL and HOW does consciousness arise from non-conscious stuff? Science's failure to explain those key questions is called the "explanatory gap".

Understand that Nagel wrote this paper almost half a century ago, and such advances did not exist. It wasn't on his radar, or the scope of his topic. While yes, nothing will ever duplicate the experience you are having, that does not mean we cannot find the underlying physical processes that are causing you to have that personal experience. Modern neuroscience is at that step. I cited two papers which show this.

Yes, you're talking about neural correlates. Correlation is not causation. Suppose science found the exact two million neurons associated with first person subjective experience. That would still put us no closer to answering the Hard Problem.

The first is the ability to read a person's mind and match it with a number the person is thinking of. When the person thinks, "10" we do not know the tonality they are speaking in (yet, we may in the future). But that is irrelevant. We know they are thinking the number "10", and are then able to represent this through a voice synthesizer. We have evidence now that the thoughts we have are able to be matched to the brain's physical process.

Again, suppose we invent a machine that exactly tells us what another person is thinking about. We still haven't solved the Hard Problem.

The second paper is the advances in consciousness. Consider for a minute that your conscious mind does not have control of your entire body. You cannot tell your gall bladder to produce more or less gall for example. There are certain areas of your brain you do not have access to. The brain has independent sections that manage certain tasks like sight, sound, and language. We know this because we have found damage or stimulation to these regions also affects people's personal experience in these areas. All of these areas need to be combined together into something coherent to be able to make basic judgments. It is worthless to see if it does not help you identify food from not food within that sight for example.

That's true, but doesn't address the Hard Problem.

Consciousness is the cobbling together of certain resources to make decisions.

Look up "philosophical zombie" (again, Chalmers).

Should I pursue that food, or should I not. With intelligence comes a greater ability to make judgements, and manage the different resources of the brain. All of this, is the brain itself. Philosophy is not about creating arguments based on ignorance. It is about creating arguments about things we are ignorant to, while basing it upon our limitations of the reality we know. If you wish to do viable philosophy in regards to the mind, old arguments that do not address modern day findings of neuroscience will be an argument based off of ignorance, and not very useful. Perhaps you will present me with a philosophy theory about the mind that neuroscience cannot be helpful in and prove me wrong.

You should also read about Integrated Information Theory. I think you might find it interesting.

Philosophim

I'm not sure. I don't follow any one particular individual. I just like to read the news and see new things that are being discovered. Here's a pretty good article that sums up a bit of the history through the 1990's to today. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02207-1

Perhaps there are aspects of this that you might be more interested in exploring.

Philosophim

The Hard Problem is WHY are we conscious AT ALL and HOW does consciousness arise from non-conscious stuff? — RogueAI

I see now. Lets break down into two ways to interpret this to see if we can get to the problem then.

First interpretation: The answer to the hard problem is through the mechanical workings of the brain. A good read on this is here from 2018 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-neuroscience/ He has a section on the hard problem, and correlates of consciousness as well. He will do a much better and in depth job of covering the role of neuroscience as the essential ingredient in the mind/body problem at this day and age.

Second interpretation: We don't care about the mechanical why and how. Any attempt to link a physical action to a thought in the mind can only be correlative, because when I cut open a skull and look at a working mind, I can't see the thing its thinking about. This is the hard problem.

Lets break it down further. Your second part, "HOW does consciousness arise from non-conscious stuff?" in the non-mechanistic way.

How does water arise from hydrogen and oxygen mixing together? Water does not catch on fire and burn, (normally) but if I take the hydrogen and oxygen out, they are highly flammable. The idea that new states arise out of the combination of the elements is a given. Now we know the mechanical function behind it. But in the non-mechanical sense of, "HOW does this happen?" ,we honestly don't know; it simply does. This of course does not mean that we think such reactions happen apart from the mechanical processes. We do not envision a separate realm that actually produces the fire or water, and the mechanical processes are merely correlative. We are looking at hydrogen and oxygen separately and do not see fire. Why then is it so hard to believe that consciousness is simply another combined state of matter?

You are a combination of matter and energy. You are a carbon based set of chemical reactions, that has the property that unlike, "non-living" matter that burns its reaction out, you actively seek to replenish it and keep it going. You are simply another expressed combination of the elements. Your consciousness is part of that. This is honestly the only reasonable conclusion backed by the reality we are aware of. The idea that somehow this consciousness is not an expression of matter comes from...where? We have never observed any expression of existence that has not come from matter and energy. It is merely an idea from the imagination, and has no bearing in reality.

I have written a paper on knowledge here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9015/a-methodology-of-knowledge
I feel questions like the "hard problem" come up because of a misunderstanding of the knowledge of our ideas, versus the knowledge of our application of these ideas to reality. To simplify it, just because I can imagine a unicorn, does not mean one exists in reality or has any bearing apart from the fact we can imagine it. The hard problem is like asking why we can envision a unicorn, but can't find one. It is a misapplication of our ideas to reality.

And for the first part of your point, "WHY are we conscious AT ALL", the answer is the same. The how is the description of the process, and the why is the existence of that process. If you mean to take this back to why is there humanity, the Earth, anything really, we are beyond the question of consciousness. Matter and energy can be combined a particular way to form a consciousness. It is done in billions of beings on this Earth every day, and not a radical statement. Why is matter and energy able to do this? Why does anything exist at all? A topic for another time.

I can go on and give more examples, but I feel I need to make sure I'm on the right track with how you see what the hard problem is. Feel free to critique or correct my assumptions in any way, I will try to reply the best I can.

RogueAI

From your link:

"Perhaps the most common attitude for neuroscientists is to set the hard problem aside."

TheMadFool

Dennett is pretty vocal about his beliefs - he's a physicalist - but he's more of an acolyte than a high priest.

Sam Harris is an affirmed atheist but watching his interviews I get the feeling that he's kept his options open.

Thank you for the link.

Recent reduction debates in the philosophy of science were initiated by Ernest Nagel’s model of theory reduction (Nagel 1949, 1961, 1970), which has also received considerable attention in the philosophy of mind (see, e.g., Fodor 1981: 150; Kim 1993: 150, 248). More recent approaches to reduction depart from or were developed in opposition to the Nagel model (Hooker 1981; Churchland 1985; Schaffner 1993; Bickle 1998, 2003; Dizadji-Bahmani, Frigg, & Hartmann 2010; van Riel 2014), though it has been argued that most of these approaches merely echo the Nagel model instead of proposing fundamentally new interpretations (Endicott 1998, 2001; Dizadji Bahmani et al. 2010) — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Philosophim