o. What goes on between the ears is irrelevant. That's rather the point pushed by PI, that it's what happens that counts, not what goes on in heads. "Can I have two apples, please" is understood if I get the two apples. What happens in the head of the grocer is irrelevant. — Banno

Unless the grocer is a serial killer who’s triggered when he’s asked for two apples. Then it kind of matters what’s going on between his ears.

That color and pain are models? — Marchesk

Both have models in my field, although in truth the pain models are fairly ridiculous, however the pediatric pain model is accurate enough, excluding the fundamental aspect of assigning an objective level to the subjective experience of pain as indicated by the facial expression on the individual experiencing it. Still, the models exist.

No, your account wants for nothing. It is incoherent, and hence not an account. — Banno

:flower:

I'll leave that alone.

Unless the grocer is a serial killer who’s triggered when he’s asked for two apples. Then it kind of matters what’s going on between his ears. — Marchesk

But not necessarily to the purchaser of the apples. The grocer is triggered by the request, makes the sale and proceeds to plan and execute his next murder. The assumption that the serial killing grocer will elect to murder the apple purchaser is flawed and operates on the assumption that the grocer is a lower functioning serial killer. Maybe that is accurate, but it is a bold assumption.

If science was just another social game, it would have no material effectiveness. And yet it works. You are typing on a device and we can read what you type, thanks to science. Therefore science is more that just a game. Of course it IS or can be a social game, but it’s more than that.

Point being that it matters what’s going on the serial killers head, if you care about not being the next victim.

Still, the models exist. — Book273

Sure, thousands of years after humans have been seeing color and feeling pain, a few ambitious behaviorists created some models to Quine the woo away.

Off topic. Did you go here yet?

Red cups, apples, and pains in hands are not propositional content.
— creativesoul

Can’t they be subjects or objects of propositions, hence contents of them? Or can propositions not have content? — Mww

Red cups, apples, and pains can be directly perceived, named, and further described.

I reject the subject/object framework altogether. We are both objects in the world and subjects taking account of it and/or ourselves. As far as the objective/subjective dichotomy goes, I grant subjectivity in it's entirety. Everything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, signed, expressed, and/or otherwise uttered comes through a subject. Thus, the notion cannot be used to further discriminate between anything we're saying. It's all subjective.

They are most certainly always part of the correlational content of belief about them.
— creativesoul

Yes, always, with the caveat that correlational content of belief is not propositional. — Mww

I take similar issue with the very notion of "proposition"(the historical renditions). It's fraught with confusion regarding what meaning is, how it emerges, and the role that it plays in our experiences, including language less, pre-theoretical linguistically informed, and theoretical linguistically informed. Of course, philosophy proper - at large - has very deep-seated issues regarding meaning. Hence, there is no consensus on the matter, to this day, despite it's being so basic, so pivotal, so crucial, so irrevocable, so fundamental to each and every philosophical position throughout history...

Off topic.

No brains for you, zombie Nazi!

I reject the subject/object framework altogether. We are both objects in the world and subjects taking account of it — creativesoul

How are those two assertions not contradictory?
——————

I take similar issue with the very notion of "proposition" (....)....

Ehhhh....all discourse requires them, so we’re sorta stuck with them.

.....and the role that it plays in our experiences — creativesoul

I don’t think they play a role in our experiences, but necessarily play a role in the expression our experiences. But that’s just me.
—————

Sidebar: is a language-less creature one that has no language to use, or one that has no use of the language he has?

Conceptually I agree with the idea of qualia. Practically speaking, the term "qualia" is of little value beyond its use in such unhelpful phrasing as "the patient expressed having multiple qualia..." Which, while accurate, is also fairly useless and I am not sure why anyone would actually use that phrase, as it would be a foregone conclusion.

using the word differently is equivocating. — creativesoul

It would be if I were not setting out explicitly how I am using the word.

Sidebar: is a language-less creature one that has no language to use, or one that has no use of the language he has? — Mww

One that has no language to use is language-less. The other one is simply poorly educated, the language is there, willingness to use/learn it may be lacking.

Ok. Thanks.

See top of pg 83 for context.

To say "I have a body" instead of "I am a body" is precisely the way of thinking/ speaking that leads to Cartesian dualism. — Janus

It's a conventional way of speaking. We also speak of a person who acts independently as having a mind of their own. But before assuming dualism, we should first investigate the contexts that give rise to those usages.

So, yes, you're right; according to that dualistic way of thinking, the body does not have beliefs, but according to the monistic ways of thinking myself as a body, the body does indeed have beliefs; or perhaps better expressed beliefs are embodied, they are modes or dispositions of the body. — Janus

Suppose that someone shoots and kills Bob. Bob, as we knew him, no longer exists. Yet his body remains.

So that might be one reason to distinguish Bob from his body. A living body and a dead body consist of the same material, but what makes the difference is how that material is structured and organized.

Whereas the Cartesian dualist says that what makes the difference is a separable mind, and it is that separable mind that is the locus of experiences and beliefs.

Anyway, it's an interesting issue to raise. As with the phrase that "the Sun rises in the East", perhaps problems only arise when one draws philosophical or ontological implications that extend beyond the actual use.

Perhaps I'm just a bit slow but has a point/prevailing argument/consensus been reached on anything relevant to this thread- qualia, consciousness, etc?

For anyone else not intimately familiar.

"Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of wine, as well as the redness of an evening sky. As qualitative characters of sensation, qualia stand in contrast to "propositional attitudes", where the focus is on beliefs about experience rather than what it is directly like to be experiencing." — Wikipedia

I suppose I just don't get it. The fact the average person enjoys and focuses more on the sensations of direct experiences as opposed to "what they mean" is supposed to mean.. what exactly?

The main issue for me is that a description of a human being at a physical level should not contradict descriptions at other levels of abstraction.
— Andrew M

Ok, it seems you can't agree about the philosophical challenge. You want to settle: for different levels of description, not literally commensurable. Then, unfortunately, I have to dispute your continual claims to have risen above dualism. — bongo fury

I think you misunderstand. I didn't say that different levels of description were incommensurable. I said that they depended on structure and organization. So to understand how to relate different levels of description requires investigating a system's structure and organization.

Of relevance here, organization shares the same root as organism and organ (Greek: organon).

... leads to conflating pre-theoretical language less conscious experience, pre-theoretical linguistically informed conscious experience, and theoretical linguistically informed conscious experience.
— creativesoul

Fair enough, but if the goal is to distinguish "conscious experience" from a non-conscious variety of something or other (experience?), and all three of your sub-categories fall on the positive side of the distinction, what exactly is the point of the proposed sub-division? Ah...

Only the first of the three consists entirely of directly perceptible things.
— creativesoul

Ok, I'm curious to know in what way you aren't offering to help frank here to,

Clean away the strawmen piled in the idea of phenomenal consciousness,
— frank

?

Just interested. — bongo fury

I'm not entirely sure what frank is arguing for, so if it is the case that what I'm arguing somehow helps them, it is purely coincidental.

I'm attempting to provide an adequate evolutionarily amenable account of all conscious experience from non linguistic through metacognitive.

I reject the subject/object framework altogether. We are both objects in the world and subjects taking account of it
— creativesoul

How are those two assertions not contradictory?
—————— — Mww

If it is the case that we are both objects in the world and subjects taking account of it and/or ourselves, then the dichotomy cannot be used as a means to draw a distinction between us and our accounts...

So, I reject the dichotomy.

using the word differently is equivocating.
— creativesoul

It would be if I were not setting out explicitly how I am using the word. — Banno

You may tell me as often as you like that you're going to be using the same term in different ways, and in most normal everyday situations that would be more than acceptable. This is not one of those normal everyday situations.

What counts as belief is precisely what's at issue.

When you propose that belief is an attitude towards a proposition, that cats have beliefs, that cats cannot have attitudes towards propositions, and that cats cannot have beliefs, you've arrived at self-contradiction and/or incoherency. An open public admission of practicing multiple different accepted uses of a term in the same argument does not exonerate you from equivocation, regardless of whether or not you readily admit to committing the fallacy without outright naming it.

It may save you from seeming to be self-contradictory, but it does not save you from committing the fallacy of equivocation.

You chopped out too much context regarding my comments on propositions for me to make much sense of the rest...

Sidebar: is a language-less creature one that has no language to use, or one that has no use of the language he has? — Mww

A creature that draws correlations between different things, none of which are language use, and none of which have ever been language use.

While there are all sorts of language less creatures incapable of drawing correlations between different things, those aren't of interest here, for such creatures aren't capable of attributing meaning, and consciousness is the ability to attribute meaning.

All conscious experience is meaningful to the creature having it.

I was probably unclear. You said that an experience "describes your practical contact with things in the environment". Could you clarify whether "practical contact" is the same as "physical contact"? If so, isn't one's physical contact with the environment a concrete (i.e. physical) thing? (This would imply that an experience is a physical thing.) — Luke

In this context (i.e., regarding human experience), "practical contact" and "physical contact" can have different senses, which is why I gave the robot example. And physical contact is still an abstraction over concrete things. A concrete thing is something that is not predicated of anything else. So the cup and the person are examples of concrete things. Whereas physical contact is a relation between concrete things. Since it's predicated of those concrete things, it is abstract, not concrete.

Seeing red is not an experience? To be clear, I'm talking about a person seeing red (e.g. seeing a red object). — Luke

OK, I thought you were saying that "seeing red" was an experience in the mind (but from your qualification, you don't seem to have been intending that). Though even there, I would say that the experience was one of drinking coffee and that seeing the red cup was just an aspect of that broader experience (albeit an aspect that might be commented on at the time or reflected on later).

I'm not sure that I understand. You're saying it's not merely physical contact but it's also no more than physical contact...? How are robots any different in this regard? — Luke

The sense is different. When I touch something, the implication is usually that I felt it (though I need not have), and whatever other human-specific aspects are involved in that event. That's not the case with a robot (though the robot may register it as an event if it has sensors).

And I would add that the practical contact is between the cup/coffee and the person, not between the person's eyes and the photons. The latter is detail about the physical process and operates at a different level of abstraction than what I'm describing here.
— Andrew M

On the one hand, there is practical contact between a person and a coffee. On the other hand, there is practical contact between a person and photons. What's the difference? What other process is there besides "the physical process"? — Luke

They are descriptions at different levels of abstraction. By experience, we're referring to a human-level interaction involving coffee and cups. I don't see photons hitting my eyes (even though photons are hitting my eyes), I see the coffee and the cup.

Also suppose that drinking the coffee was part of a job interview process. Then a description of that high-level interview process would be just as valid as a description of the underlying physical process. The level of abstraction that is relevant depends on one's purposes.

It's a conventional way of speaking. We also speak of a person who acts independently as having a mind of their own. But before assuming dualism, we should first investigate the contexts that give rise to those usages. — Andrew M

What about the hardware and software dichtomy in computers? Do you forgo that dualism in favor of just the hardware?

What about the hardware and software dichtomy in computers? Do you forgo that dualism in favor of just the hardware? — Marchesk

There.s also the quantic wave-particle duality, and Aristotle’s duality of form and matter. Dualism works just fine.

For you, the grocer is an object and his subjectivity is irrelevant to you. For the grocer, you are the object and your subjectivity is irrelevant to him. — Mww

I realize this remark is partly in jest, and in response to a mind denier. I don’t think people treat other people as pure objects, without ever thinking of other people’s opinions, and never connecting at the subjective level with other ‘souls’. That’s just not how we work. Even when we physically desire somebody (which is sometimes called ‘objectification’) we desire her body and soul.

Drop the notion that the stuff between your ears has primacy. The stuff you might describe as "out there" is just as valid. Minds do not come into existence by themselves, but by interacting with the world. — Banno


@Isaac might disagree, which would be interesting. Presumably, for example, there are neural structures in place in a new born that permit the development of vision. But that is not Kant's a priori concepts. — Banno

There are indeed such neural structures and they have an enormous impact on the way we interpret what's 'out there', but...those neural structures are 'out there'. I look at fMRI scans, I ask people for phenomenological reports, I record behaviour...all of which is 'out there' (to me). So I agree it would be lunacy to give primacy to what's between our ears when we have no clue what that is other than by treating it as an object 'out there'.

Cognitive scientists are in an odd position in that we need to communicate something about objects prior to their being recognised as such by the brain (which I hope we all agree does the recognising work). This sometimes necessitates an odd turn of phrase, but it's us that are being odd, not the rest of the world - an (intentionally) self-contained little language game to get a job done so we can move on with what is (hopefully) useful research.

It's translation into philosophical frameworks is fraught (so I'm discovering). Doesn't mean it's irrelevant (that would be to reject naturalism entirely - I'm too Quinean for that), but it also doesn't mean we can simply replace our ordinary talk of apples with talk of 'models of apples' (otherwise, what the hell are actual apples?).

What I've been advocating here is the approach that Seth takes which is to use data from cognitive sciences to better understand how we might have arrived at the phenomenological experience we have, and, more importantly, what exactly goes wrong when those experiences are at odds with normal humans. What I object to is not talk of apples as apples (I'm quite happy with that). It's the confusion we see hereabouts between the actual phenomenological experience (which is the end-point we're trying to better explain) and and armchair speculation as to the process by which it came about.

Cheers. That's as I thought.

But I still like my armchair.