Good post.

Conscious experience is the most immediate primal thing we have. There is nothing nebulous about stubbing your toe or an orgasm. The materialist explanation (or lack thereof) of how neurons give rise to conscious experience is what's nebulous. The explanations are all terrible.

It's very clear what we refer to when we use that term. It's just difficult to explain or define it using language. — Echarmion

The only way I can reconcile the first (to me inexplicable) one of these claims with the second (perfectly reasonable) one is to hope that you mean to observe, merely, that we can easily enough find clear cases and clear non-cases of conscious experience, while quickly enough failing to find any sign of a dividing line... cases (perhaps less clear) close enough to non-cases to explain what makes the difference.

That would be cool, though. If we could agree some clear cases of both conscious and unconscious experience. And then discuss the less clear ones. We would have common ground, despite having apparently contrary philosophies.

But if what I suggest is of no interest to you, I would be curious anyway to know how you reconcile the two claims.

We all know what thoughts are, it's just difficult to define using language. — Echarmion

We might all know when we are thinking, but it doesn't follow that we know what thoughts are. Similarly, we know when we are digesting food, but that does not entail that we understand the process of digestion.

The "most immediate primal thing we have" is the sensed world, especially other people and our bodily, emotional and linguistic interactions with them, of course including our own bodies and their sensations and feelings. What we might call "conscious experience" is only a tiny part of all that.

Of course any explanation is not what it explains, and remains merely an explanation, one among countless others, but some explanations are more comprehensive, more in accordance with our scientific and general knowledge and understandings. Philosophical worldviews and beliefs are luxuries, diversions, tacked onto everything else that matters.

But if what I suggest is of no interest to you, I would be curious anyway to know how you reconcile the two claims. — bongo fury

I don't see how these claims require reconciliation. Is an explanation using language constitutive for knowing what something is?

We might all know when we are thinking, but it doesn't follow that we know what thoughts are. Similarly, we know when we are digesting food, but that does not entail that we understand the process of digestion. — Janus

But thinking is the process of thinking. We don't know where the thoughts we experience as our thoughts ultimately come from, but we do know what a thought is, when we have one, and how one thought leads to another etc.

I see your point about 'existential anxiety', but is that any more significant than an atheist (like me) saying 'all religions are nonsense'?
As for 'the explanation of explanation', that may turn out to rest on a 'nested systems' approach, in which 'life processes as dissipative structures' (Maturana) can be applied at many levels, from the cell, to the society. From that pov, the languaging we call 'explanation' might be adressed at the level of 'co-ordination of co-ordination' between nesting levels. After all, without getting into formal systems theory, we are already aware that the language employed in 'individual thinking' has been socially acquired.

To All,

Thankyou for your thoughts over night (UK)
My question still stands...are we witnessing 'the demise of philosophy as we know it' ?
Or to put it another way, is 'neurophilosophy' any more iconoclastic than the issues raised by Wittgenstein, the Pragmatists, or the Post Modernists.

I see your point about 'existential anxiety', but is that any more significant than an atheist (like me) saying 'all religions are nonsense'? — fresco

Might be a different version of the same thing. Anyway, I think the idea that 'all religions are nonsense' is nonsense. Religion has been foundational to every human culture since 'neanderthal flower burials'. But I do know a lot of people believe the whole thing has been put away and don't want to revisit it.

As for 'the explanation of explanation', that may turn out to rest on a 'nested systems' approach, in which 'life processes as dissipative structures' (Maturana) can be applied at many levels, from the cell, to the society. — fresco

Not the point, though. Reason is sovereign. As soon as you try to explain reason, then you're engaged in a circular argument. Can't you see how that must be the case? What is 'an explanation' other than 'the use of reason'? So if you say 'well, really, reason can be explained in terms of neurobiology', then you must by necessity be begging the question, because you're appealing to the very faculty that you're purporting to explain. You can't set aside reason, or stand outside it, and say what it is, because to say what it is, you have to use it.

I don't agree that 'reason is sovereign'....'Life' is. What we call 'reason' facilitates that aspect of human life concerned with 'prediction and control'. Of course you might argue that this points to an infinite regress involving 'reasoning about what life is', but it seems there may be an ultimate backstop to this with the concept of life as an 'autopoietic structure'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis
It might be useful to consider this with respect to Von Glasersfeld's comments on circular language'.
http://vonglasersfeld.com/125.2

It's very clear what we refer to when we use that term. It's just difficult to explain or define it using language. — Echarmion

I would be curious [...] to know how you reconcile the two claims. — bongo fury

I don't see how these claims require reconciliation. Is an explanation using language constitutive for knowing what something is? — Echarmion

I would have thought it constitutive (or required) for being "very clear what we refer to". For being able to show examples of what we do and don't refer to. Which would be explaining and defining it, I would have thought. Ideally, as I say, finding a dividing line between what we do and don't refer to by the term.

Or, failing that, but still usefully, finding a common ground of clear cases and clear non-cases, and working from there.

We might all know when we are thinking, but it doesn't follow that we know what thoughts are. — Janus

But judging cases of thinking and not thinking would be a perfectly good place to start finding out what thoughts are.

My question still stands...are we witnessing 'the demise of philosophy as we know it' ?
Or to put it another way, is 'neurophilosophy' any more iconoclastic than the issues raised by Wittgenstein, the Pragmatists, or the Post Modernists. — fresco

:lol: Obviously no and no.

I don't agree that 'reason is sovereign'....'Life' is. — fresco

But that's a platitude, in the circumstances. The topic is 'philosophy of mind' and your post opens with a statement about 'the application of neuroscience to reasoning'. That's what I was talking about. I'm homing in on that particular statement as it is central to the question. And as this is a philosophy forum, then I would hope that respect for reason would be recognised here. (I mean, there's plenty of places where it isn't. By the way, I'm very familiar with Maturana and Varela, I read their book in 1992. You know that before he died, Varela took a lay ordination in Tibetan Buddhism? That he helped found the Mind-Life Institute of which H. H. The Dalai Lama is chair?')

Not obvious to me! On the contrary, just looking at this forum, many threads appear to me to be little more than a bit of 'intellectual dancing'. Cynically, it could be argued that 'philosophy' is an intellectual hobby for those of us fortunate to have time on their hands.

The point about 'neuroscience' is that it tends to deflate 'thinking' as an epiphenomenon of 'neural activity'. We resent this, of course, but we cannot argue with some of the empirical research on which it is based. And it is that empiricism which sets it apart from other iconoclastic movements.

Yes. I did know about the Buddhist connection but I put that down to the holistic, 'self ' dissipation ethos surrounding autopoiesis.
BTW. I don't think I placed this in the 'Philosophy of Mind ' section as I consider it antithetical to such a label. Nor do I agree that my usage of 'life' is a platitude since I am not playing the language game 'that's life', I am citing a particular concept of life proposed by the Santiago movement. This point would tend to displace 'reason' with 'rationality'.
(Note too that I did switch from 'reasoning' to 'rationality' in the opening paragraph )

epiphenomenon — fresco

Dualism worthy of Descartes.

No...'Emergence' worthy of levels of discourse in systems theory.

I would have thought it constitutive (or required) for being "very clear what we refer to". For being able to show examples of what we do and don't refer to. Which would be explaining and defining it, I would have thought. Ideally, as I say, finding a dividing line between what we do and don't refer to by the term.

Or, failing that, but still usefully, finding a common ground of clear cases and clear non-cases, and working from there. — bongo fury

The problem is that conscious experience is so basic that there is no way to give examples. If I gave you an example, like petting a cat, that example would only exist within your conscious experience. Everything I could refer to would be a conscious experience.

The point about 'neuroscience' is that it tends to deflate 'thinking' as an epiphenomenon of 'neural activity'. We resent this, of course, but we cannot argue with some of the empirical research on which it is based. And it is that empiricism which sets it apart from other iconoclastic movements. — fresco

People do argue with it, though. Where do you take the certainty that they must all be wrong from?

I am citing a particular concept of life proposed by the Santiago movement. This point would tend to displace 'reason' with 'rationality'. — fresco

Well, sure. But look at what the Churchlands are arguing - 'rationality is a product of the brain'. Think through the philosophical implications. I'm offering a philosophical criticism which I think undercuts that. You don't seem aware of the background.

I did know about the Buddhist connection but I put that down to holistic ethos surrounding autopoiesis. — fresco

I have Embodied Mind on my hard drive. The forward explains that the inspiration for the book was Varela's lectures at Naropa University, which was Chogyam Trungpa's teaching institute in Boulder. The book developed as a 'dialogue between Buddhism and cognitive science'. This is not a criticism of it, it's very much the kind of book that I have been studying; I'm re-reading parts of it again at the moment, and also Evan Thomson's recent book Waking Dreaming Being which carries forward many of the same ideas. Buddhism is and is not 'religious' in the Western sense - the principles are vastly different to Christian principles, albeit with many convergences on the point of ethics. But if you think it's not religious, that's also mistaken. The Buddhist analysis didn't grow out of theistic religion, so is not theistic, but it's also not atheistic in the sense that Western materialism is.

So I'm not criticizing you, or Maturana. But what is at issue is a specific point which actually has nothing much to do with Varela and Maturana and auto-poesis. I'm trying to point something out, a very specific point about philosophy of mind, in relation to the issue of 'eliminative materialism' of which 'The Churchlands' are emblematic.

The point about 'neuroscience' is that it tends to deflate 'thinking' as an epiphenomenon of 'neural activity'. We resent this, of course, but we cannot argue with some of the empirical research on which it is based. — fresco

Can, and are.

Because ‘arguing’ is a rational activity. You will never, ever see an argument in a neural image.

Or, failing that, but still usefully, finding a common ground of clear cases and clear non-cases, and working from there.
— bongo fury

The problem is that conscious experience is so basic that there is no way to give examples. — Echarmion

Not with that attitude...

If I gave you an example, like petting a cat, — Echarmion

Yes! Please! What kinds of cat-petting experiences are clearly conscious and which unconscious? Let's play...

that example would only exist within your conscious experience. — Echarmion

:sigh: Really? No common ground here.

To what extent do the objectives of neuroscience overlap with the objectives of transcendental
phenomenology?

In my opinion, if we are talking about a purely naturalised conception of neuroscience whose only objective is the description of the stimulus-response mappings of the brain of a third-person, then these objectives have nothing in common.

Wittgenstein in the Blue Book, briefly raises the tantalising idea of a solipsistic "first person" neuroscience in which the experimental neuroscientist and the test-subject are one and the same - for example by placing an electrode into your own scalp by using a mirror, whilst recording your thoughts and observations.


In my opinion, "Solpsistic neuroscience" cannot be expected to produce results that are commensurable or even consistent with standard naturalised neuroscience. I don't however, see how naturalised neuroscience can claim epistemological superiority, for that would be question-begging according to the transcendental phenomenologist.

But I agree that 'domains of discourse' (perspectives) can be useful for the larger picture of philosophy with the proviso that those domains are not mutually exclusive — fresco

Actually that is the main point of SP - the fact that there are structural isomorphisms between systems of different types itself represents a connection between apparently disparate domains.

Yes! Please! What kinds of cat-petting experiences are clearly conscious and which unconscious? Let's play... — bongo fury

If you are petting a cat right now, that's clearly a conscious experience. If you remember petting a cat, that memory is also a conscious experience, which may or may not be based on another conscious experience. If you remember dreaming about petting a cat, that's a conscious experience that may or may not be based on another conscious experience, or possibly on some form of unconscious experience, if dreams are actually experience, which I think is dubious.

The "most immediate primal thing we have" is the sensed world, especially other people and our bodily, emotional and linguistic interactions with them, of course including our own bodies and their sensations and feelings. What we might call "conscious experience" is only a tiny part of all that.

You're making some assumptions here. That there is a "sensed world" (I take it you mean "external world"?), that there are other people, and that we have bodies.

But even granting all that, to say conscious experience is "only a tiny part" A) isn't true (it's the most foundational thing we have. It permeates our every waking moment), and B) even a tiny bit of conscious experience has to be explained, and we're back to the same problem: how does interacting matter give rise to conscious experience?

I take on board your interest in embodiment, and I admit that I was over generalizing with my comment 'all religions are nonsense' (I should have said deism). It was stylistically useful to take a devils advocate stance when presenting the thesis, but other than scepticism, I don't think there is much that 'philosophers' can say against 'advances' in neuroscience, and I'm a sceptic myself !

I take on board your interest in embodiment, and I admit that I was over generalizing with my comment 'all religions are nonsense' (I should have said deism). It was stylistically useful to take a devils advocate stance when presenting the thesis, but other than scepticism, I don't think there is much that 'philosophers' can say against 'advances' in neuroscience, and I'm a sceptic myself !

Correlation is not causation. Neuroscience is great at finding neural correlates. But as to the causal explanation of why/how brains are conscious, we're no closer than we've ever been.

Well we can keep going round in circles here. Neuroscientists claim words like 'consciousness' are too nebulous to deal with. That claim is made on the back of historical advances in other sciences which have deconstructed 'folk concepts' like 'the humours' or even 'time'. It could all be merely a matter of optimism versus pessimism.

LATER EDIT: I Should have re-iterated that 'causality' may also be 'a folk concept'

If you are petting a cat right now, that's clearly a conscious experience. — Echarmion

Agreed, and it suggests several less clear cases that might be interesting. Like... me petting, or holding, the cat while drunk or asleep... or, Alexa the automatic cat-petter petting the cat... or, Alexa the autonomous neural-network machine self-trained to pet the cat... or, the cat's mother petting the cat.

If you remember petting a cat, that memory is also a conscious experience, — Echarmion

At least, it probably marks an occasion when consciousness happened, although not necessarily consciousness of the memory, except on the slightly question-begging interpretation of remembering as "recalling to mind". I might be trying and failing to identify the relevant word or picture (etc.) of the scene, or just curiously disturbed by an unconscious association with the scene or those symbols. But of course, my consciousness while petting the cat is not necessarily of the petting, either.

If you remember dreaming about petting a cat, that's a conscious experience that may or may not be based on another conscious experience, — Echarmion

Sure. Plenty of fascinating if potentially illusory data from introspection of transitioning into and out of "waking" consciousness. Man!

Equally, I desire to establish a common ground of agreed cases of non-consciousness. The project is compromised if you (or whoever) has pan-psychist sympathies... How about insects?

Anyway, thanks for at least humoring me by putting aside talk of the data "only existing subjectively" etc. Even if that gesture is only for the sake of argument... which I anticipate with (conscious, if ill-advised) pleasure.

Like... me petting, or holding, the cat while drunk or asleep... or, Alexa the automatic cat-petter petting the cat... or, Alexa the autonomous neural-network machine self-trained to pet the cat... or, the cat's mother petting the cat — bongo fury

What I originally said was that it's clear what "conscious experience" refers to. If I am drunk I am still conscious, but not when I am asleep. I am also not an automatic machine, or a cat. So none of these things are my conscious experience.

At least, it probably marks an occasion when consciousness happened, although not necessarily consciousness of the memory, except on the slightly question-begging interpretation of remembering as "recalling to mind". I might be trying and failing to identify the relevant word or picture (etc.) of the scene, or just curiously disturbed by an unconscious association with the scene or those symbols. But of course, my consciousness while petting the cat is not necessarily of the petting, either. — bongo fury

Right, but uncertainities of memory aside, while we "recall" it, we are certainly consciously experiencing.

Sure. Plenty of fascinating if potentially illusory data from introspection of transitioning into and out of "waking" consciousness. Man!

Equally, I desire to establish a common ground of agreed cases of non-consciousness. The project is slightl — bongo fury

I am not sure we can know when we are not conscious. How would we differntiate between not having been conscious and simply not remembering?