given a suitable (pragmatic or conceptual) reason to demarcate between different facets, we probably agree. — fdrake

Sounds about right.

Subjects are points in spacetime? — fdrake

In my view everything has a spatial and temporal location, at least defined relationally with respect to other things. (I don't buy the idea of "spacetime" as a thing in itself.)

We're getting way off topic with fundamental ontology. I want bring you back to the question this whole sideshow seemed to distract from

what is missing from the third party account? — Isaac


I just answered this: the perspective of being those states. — Terrapin Station


But where is that perspective if not in "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc"? I'm afraid "At various reference points, including the reference point of being the thing in question." isn't really a coherent location for me. — Isaac — Isaac

I don't think there's a way to straighten it out for you without you sorting through the more general ontological mess you've gotten yourself into.

I said "to my satisfaction". I prefer consistency, I can't really conceive of a reality that can be two ways at once, so two apparently conflicting models are sufficient to convince me that they can't both be right. — Isaac

Given your ontology, there's no way to make sense of "this model is right." You don't even believe that there are any objective properties.

For (a) we're talking about some way the world really is, — Isaac

The way the world really is is perspectival. "Perspective" there isn't referring to persons or their consciousness. It's referring to frames or points of reference (not strictly in the physics sense, so don't be misled to think that I'm strictly talking about Special Relativity) or situatedness--relative spatiotemporal locations. Frames/points of reference can be "of" a person, but they need not be. There's no frame-of-reference-free frame of reference, so to speak, or there's no "view from nowhere." Properties are unique from every point of reference, and there's no preferred point of reference.

For (b) if it is possible for someone to be wrong, then our brains are not inevitably arranged to reflect reality accurately. — Isaac

They're not infallibly fixed to get things right. That doesn't imply that we can't get things right. To even say that we can't things right would require knowing that things are different than we suppose, but we can't know that unless we know how things are.

The fact that I'm constructing people does not lead to the fact that I can construct them however I'd like to construct them. — Isaac

Why not? What would constrain it? Especially what property-free thing?

I didn't say the absence of properties wasn't a concept. There's a difference though between positing the absence (or skepticism) of properties and the positing of some particular property (light, location, shape etc) as being real.

One is simply agnosticism, the other dogmatism. — Isaac

You weren't being skeptical. You claimed that there are no objective properties.

The claim is that properties are incoherent without a person to define them thus. Not that they aren't there. — Isaac

Wait so now there are objective properties, it's just that the objective properties are incoherent?

Given your ontology, there's no way to make sense of "this model is right." You don't even believe that there are any objective properties. — Terrapin Station

What have 'properties' got to do with measures of the degree to which I find a model to be right?

There's no frame-of-reference-free frame of reference, so to speak, or there's no "view from nowhere." Properties are unique from every point of reference, and there's no preferred point of reference. — Terrapin Station

Right. Which is exactly what I'm saying. There is no 'way things are' there's only the 'way things seem from here' or the 'way things seem from there' (where 'here' and 'there' are not here limited to spatial specifications), so where does this leave your "there is a coin"? Only from a certain perspective.

That doesn't imply that we can't get things right. — Terrapin Station

I didn't say we can't get things right. I said that if we did so it would have to be by chance as there doesn't seem to be a mechanism to ensure it.

Why not? What would constrain it? — Terrapin Station

Biology.

You weren't being skeptical. You claimed that there are no objective properties. — Terrapin Station

Yes. Like there is no god is skeptical of all God claims. I've not yet been convinced by any so I'm an atheist. I've not yet been convinced by any noumenal properties.

Wait so now there are objective properties, it's just that the objective properties are incoherent? — Terrapin Station

No, something that is incoherent cannot exist in the models I have.

Presumably an important part of consciousness is what things are like experientially to the bearer of the consciousness in question. — Terrapin Station

How is that an important part of consciousness? Important for what? What do we even mean by, "what things are like experientially to the bearer of the consciousness"? What is a bearer of consciousness and how can something be experientially to it? What does that even mean? I think we take many of these ideas and patterns of speaking for granted without really understanding what it is that we are saying.

So if we can't tackle that scientifically, we have a problem with devising scientific accounts of consciousness. We can just ignore it and not care about it, but then we're ignoring a big part of what we we're supposedly addressing. An alternate track--one that many have taken--is to try to deny that there is such a thing in the first place, or at least deny that it's any different than what things are like outside of consciousness. — Terrapin Station

The latter is what I would propose because if it's not the same, then how does consciousness and the world interact? What would the experience be about, and then how can things that aren't consciousness be about other things that aren't consciousness?

So let's imagine that there's an experiential state someone is in. This is how what they're doing feels. (edit: pay no attention to the situation and agent demarcations here, they are behind the curtain, there's also a fixity to the experiences in the presentation which arguably is not there - fixed by a phenomenological approach to description itself)

I'm currently in a room, with a mood, and doing some stuff.

I can stratify that into some distinct experiences.

I am in my room, I am curious, reflecting, I am typing on my laptop.

I can stratify those experiences in various ways. One way would be by sensory modality:

Vision: I'm looking at this page on TPF.
Hearing: Ringing in my ears, keyboard clicks.
Bodily position: sitting down.
Touch: fingers on keys, bum sitting down, pressure from headphones.
Thought: state of attention, introspective.
Smell: nothing of note.
Temperature: not of much note, a bit cold maybe.

I can stratify the vision experience into objects with positional relations between them, each object has shapes and colours.
I can stratify the hearing experience into distinct sound sources; ringing in my ears, keyboard clicks, occasional noise from the road outside.
I don't seem to be able to stratify the bodily position experience very well; it is a general sense of attended parts and where I am in the room, different parts are highlighted more or less at different points; my felt bodily position also seems to involve my vision somehow - where is my body? involves vision (but need not...).
I can stratify the fingers on keys into individual keystrokes; decomposing into pressure and... but this relies upon the positional awareness and visual information (where the keys are, the words on the page provide feedback, typo correction etc)
The thought experiences; I dunno, I'm catching thoughts and expressing them, the thoughts come as the words appear on the page; the thought formation and the keystroke experiences intermingle.
Smell: nothing of note, not really part of the experiential state.
Temperature: tied up with position feelings and bodily awareness, different parts are different temperatures, felt temperature variation occurs over my body, the intensities of temperature are not discrete, more a general sense over my body.

Which parts do we attach the label "quale" to?

I can very easily do that with my vision in a limited way; shape qualia and colour qualia - but are there distance qualia (how far something away is)? Brightness qualia? Opacity qualia?

Hearing: well I guess there's a 'what's it like' to have this ringing in my ears, but there are tonal variations, different intensities, the 'position' the sound appears to be emitted from in my ears changes with its pitch. Does each tone have a quale? Each pressure? Each felt location of origination?

Bodily position: interesting really, I'm not aware of most of my body during most of this state of awareness; my state of awareness does not chart every piece of leg, say, just bits of contact with the chair that are deemed relevant (those that are in contact). The "qualia" I'd associate with my leg positions seem to go away when I focus close to my bum, there's just a.. 'leg-bum' location, the contact area is treated as a single experiential unity with differences of intensity over it.

Touch: well, when I'm typing, not every keystroke I type actually has the same quale - is there a G key quale? When I'm hitting the space bar, I don't always notice it. I do always notice the end of the sentence, though. Maybe there are full stop quales. Or are these 'sentence ending" quales?

But I'm not really experiencing the end of the sentence through my sense of touch; there is a pause for thought. The touch quale there is really a thought quale and a bodily position quale (of stopping motion).

I could go on, but this is already long enough. It seems to me that that 'chopping up' of experience that we do prior to applying the label "quale" to it isn't particularly reflective of what it's like at all. What it's like to be in any experiential state is a colossal feedback and intermingling of my senses and thoughts.

And qualia aren't supposed to label "experiential states", they're supposed to label "components" of them. Where do the components come from? What principle distinguishes them? Are these distinctions retroactive or part of the phenomenal character?

It seems to me the types of qualia people usually talk about just aren't so independent or distinctive after all; the principle that individuates the components of phenomenal character is not tracked by the principle of individuation that generates phrases like "red quale".

Twelve pages of philosophy done right, worthy of a subtle nod from the back of the room. Subjectively speaking, of course.

Carry on..........

I don't know if this is where you were going anyway, but I wanted to raise this angle now just in case it wasn't.

What you've said here speaks to the distrust I, and I think you, have about qualia talk (what it's like talk) not being a genuine reflection of experience but a post hoc modelling.

Regular in the literature about qualia (certainly Jackson and Chalmers) is mention of the "experience of redness" or something similar. That there is something it is like to experience red.

But there's obviously no such thing as the experience of red. It simply never happens. So whilst the 'what it's like' talk can be theoretically linked to some experience or other (though I still think there's no referent), talk of it being linked to something like the experience of 'redness' is clearly bogus. No one in the world has ever had an experience of redness, its always been an entire lived event involving a red thing.

its always been an entire lived event involving a red thing. — Isaac

I think this is about right. I would emphasise, though I don't know if this is relevant to colour specifically, that when we perceive; language and conditioning plays a role, as do innate features of our sensory capacities (like the perception of motion when we step off a boat onto the land, say). The "the table is part of your arm" thing from Ramachandran plays with fundamental bodily processes, but there's also social mediation of perception.

Whatever we experience, we experience in an evaluated context to the task at hand, and what we experience in something can very much be informed by what we've learned. A doctor might be able to (non-figuratively) see abnormal lung structure in a lung x-ray. Where that 'abnormal' came from isn't something innate to any sense, it's a complex convolution of norms being embedded in our perception, and perception informing norms.

I suspect "norms informing perception" is why it seems so natural to some to describe their experiences as containing "red quales" or "seeing redness". "Perception informing norms" may be why colour words are cultural universals and roughly map onto each other (most of the time). This is more than just a change in vocabulary, experience has an ontology to it, what the 'beings' of experience are (facets of phenomenal character) isn't something we can ignore when studying it.

There's no "brute" sensory information or experiences, there are only relatively autonomous sensory processes that are still context sensitive (illusions, Ramachandran's stuff, lesions); or full blown socially mediated perceptions.

"Classing all the cases together" is a way of talking about the concepts we formulate as such--those are abstractions that range over a number of unique instances. And sure, insofar as we're talking about concepts, that's fine. — Terrapin Station

What about insofar as we're using concepts to talk about (e.g. compare and sort) the unique instances? Not fine? E.g.,

Given we're both looking at some distinct particular objects classed nonetheless together under the concept (which is to say, under any or all of my and your countless mental instances of the concept) of 'yellow-wavelength-reflecting', I notice that my dynamic brain states during this period all have properties which it is natural for me to class together as (which is to say, under any or all of my countless mental instances of my concept of) yellow (in the mental sense). And I wonder (as y'do) if my concept of mentally-yellow is roughly coextensive with yours, as I assume is the case with our concepts of EMR-yellow, and as might be tested if I got the right kind of acquaintance with your brain states and their properties?

Is that fine?

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking.

The first question seems to be about concepts where they aren't abstractions ranging over a number of particular instances. I wouldn't say that would qualify as a concept. It would just be a name and/or description of the particular. ("Description of" isn't really possible without concepts ranging over a number of particulars, though.)

But the paragraph that you're quoting after that question doesn't seem to be what the first question is about. Re the content of that paragraph, I don't think there's any way to experience someone else's consciousness--I think that in principle that is impossible.

I suspect "norms informing perception" is why it seems so natural to some to describe their experiences as containing "red quales" or "seeing redness". — fdrake

Not sure about this. I think 'redness' as a concept, enters much later than actually informing perception. I seriously wonder how much people do describe their experiences in these terms outside of philosophical qualia talk. I've never heard anyone answer "how was your train journey?" with anything like "well, it was pure 'redness'". 'Red' seems primarily used as a description of external states of affairs, never internal ones. I think there's still some sleight of hand being done here to define a post hoc division of the memory of experience into the 'qualia' of actual experience.

If one were to look at, say, a red wall (about the most purely red but still real thing I can think of). I still think that their 'experience' of seeing that wall would be undivided. The red, the sounds, the texture, the accompanying sounds, the feel of their clothes, the reason why they're staring at a red wall, the curisoty about why the wall is red...

The brain certainly divides things up, different cortices deal with different aspects of the experience, but evidence from synathetes, phantom limb, paraprenalia, psychosis...all indicate very strongly that the consciousness does not have any direct isolated access to those cortices. If it did, then synathetes, for example, would be able to divide up their number identification experience from their colour identification experience prior to the hyper-connection between the two which causes the mixed sensation.


Other than that, your point is well taken, we should include the social environment as well when understanding the extent to which 'experience' is constructed. All of which put together makes a 'redness' quale nothing but a philosophical conceit.

'Red' seems primarily used as a description of external states of affairs, never internal ones. I think there's still some sleight of hand being done here to define a post hoc division of the memory of experience into the 'qualia' of actual experience — Isaac

Agree that red is a concept. Stuff is also red. There's an interplay between language use and perception; the language we are used to invites us to parse our self reports in accordance with its rules. There are probably effects in the inverse direction; playing with associations of signifiers for dramatic effect. Maybe sometimes we can expect red and see green? Movies, green blooded human = replicant or something, the basis of surprise there.

Unsure the internal/external distinction makes sense for most things like this. When your phenomenal self model (Metzinger) can assimilate to include a table, or when your apartment becomes a living memory bank (alzheimers patients); the boundaries break down due to what is involved with what. It seems more productive to think of these structures as ones of involvement that span the distinction between mind and body, rather than retroactively imposing more categorical distinctions which don't seem to be there. To my mind:

"internal/external = ideal/material = subject/object= phenomenal/noumenal = mind/body = reason/affect"

is a chain of associations that acts to straitjacket thought; a madness purporting to be its own cure. Thinking in these terms generates access and interaction problems everywhere that the manifest relations between each pole have already undermined; why ask how can when we can already ask how? I hope we can eat just the best bits of these concepts' already dead bodies.

The brain certainly divides things up, different cortices deal with different aspects of the experience, but evidence from synathetes, phantom limb, paraprenalia, psychosis...all indicate very strongly that the consciousness does not have any direct isolated access to those cortices. If it did, then synathetes, for example, would be able to divide up their number identification experience from their colour identification experience prior to the hyper-connection between the two which causes the mixed sensation. — Isaac

Yes! Components seem to call other components, there's both specialisation and plasticity, relative independence and specificity; seemingly contextually (sensorimotor process, social cue etc) dependent too. Reflection seems to be a high effort process that reorganises (stratifies/contextualises/conjectures) pre-reflective (and evolutionarily older) bodily processes; it takes time. What this doesn't preclude, however, is that someone's ideas can change cultural norms which change... You see what I mean.

All of which put together makes a 'redness' quale nothing but a philosophical conceit. — Isaac

I certainly think it's a retrojection to put it back into experience without heavy qualifications. I'm quite happy with "red" though.

Aside: a friend of mine is a synesthete. He had numbers and letters with colours. He let me experiment on him for a bit, drew him a few pictures and made a powerpoint slide - studying, say, how far away would two 0's need to be on a page before they got seen as an 8. He could tell that from what colour association he saw from the image. I made him something like this abomination:



so it would be like a Necker Cube for his synesthetic sight. Apparently very disorienting. The different colours shifted to reflect the gestalt form of the image (whether overall it's an 8, or focussing on the 1 interconnections, or the individual 9s...). The most interesting thing there seemed to be that his attention coincided with the synesthetic impression; even though he didn't seem aware of or able to tell which gestalt shifts would occur when just looking at the image. I guess that's not surprising if it's neurological-architecture-of-sensorimotor-systems deep; he may as well have been trying to exert the vaunted force of his will over the micromovements of his eyes.

He could also smell the letter U, it was palma violets (lavendery-violety-lilacy sweeties), from the previous stuff with the 0's and 8's we found out that continuous transformation (translation on a powerpoint slide) eventually produced a gestalt shift and changed the synesthetic impression. The letter C was just gold for him.

So I picked a font where C and U were rotated copies of each other, and slowly rotated C to U. The gestalt shift caused him considerable feelings of panic, which is perhaps not so surprising.

We are not used to a colour rotating into a smell.

sometimes we can expect red and see green? Movies, green blooded human = replicant or something, the basis of surprise there. — fdrake

Yeah, I get what you mean now. The expectation of red informs the perception in some way unique to 'red'. 'Red' I can definitely do. 'Redness' I think should be consigned to use only by printers and paint manufacturers!

Unsure the internal/external distinction makes sense for most things like this. When your phenomenal self model (Metzinger) can assimilate to include a table, or when your apartment becomes a living memory bank (alzheimers patients); the boundaries break down due to what is involved with what. It seems more productive to think of these structures as ones of involvement that span the distinction between mind and body, rather than retroactively imposing more categorical distinctions which don't seem to be there — fdrake

You're absolutely right. One of the biggest problems with my writing here is laziness. I generally write on the phone whilst supposedly doing other things, and mostly when I write my thoughts race ahead of my writing. They seem to impatiently call back to my actual written words "come on, that'll do, we've got more stuff for you to translate". I often end up writing stuff even I don't believe just to get the ideas that surround it down before the next ones take over.

So my apologies to anyone having to pick up the slack of my sloppy writing. I agree internal/external is an unhelpful distinction. I suppose what I was trying to say was more something like 'red' being used primarily in a technical sense, to communicate some fact about an object, rather than in an experiential sense.

Wonderful stuff with your synasthete friend. My daughter has synaesthesia, but we learnt early on that most experiments of that kind made her extremely panicky (having a two psychologists for parents is not always a good thing, but we did stop experimenting eventually, promise). As I'm sure you know, the panic is the brain's response to contradictory information, just like travel sickness (motion feedback from the eyes, no motion feedback from the body). The interesting thing, for me, is the strong extent to which most of what we think of as our model of reality is the brain's kind of buffer against this panic. Most sensations, including memory-based ones, are actually contradictory to some extent. The stories our brain tells us, the illusion of self, is all about minimising the confusion. I think that's why we love stories so much.

I often end up writing stuff even I don't believe just to get the ideas that surround it down before the next ones take over. — Isaac

I figured you were all about the extended mind stuff, I wasn't just writing for you there, I wanted to highlight that it's easy to use a vocabulary that we're used to that nevertheless contradicts the nature of the topic. Sort of like trying to draw on white paper with white chalk.

Redness' I think should be consigned to use only by printers and paint manufacturers! — Isaac

Shame the flames we'd like to burn these ideas in are red.

(having a two psychologists for parents is not always a good thing, but we did stop experimenting eventually, promise). — Isaac

I can't imagine not being academically interested in your kid if you're academically inclined. I'm more surprised that you stopped experimenting than that you started!

he panic is the brain's response to contradictory information, just like travel sickness (motion feedback from the eyes, no motion feedback from the body). The interesting thing, for me, is the strong extent to which most of what we think of as our model of reality is the brain's kind of buffer against this panic. Most sensations, including memory-based ones, are actually contradictory to some extent. The stories our brain tells us, the illusion of self, is all about minimising the confusion. I think that's why we love stories so much. — Isaac

This is very cool. Do you have a citation for this type of account? I'm a bit skeptical that "panic" is one sort of thing; my understanding of it neurologically, which is probably wrong, is that it's a neural/endocrine response to some threat that sets off a bunch of bodily cascades (including behavioural), the "threat" can be really abstract; nowadays a work meeting can be a tiger in the bush. It seems to me the underlying threat (threat in general, like kidney the organ) is unanticipated but now sufficiently negatively valued differences rather than contradictory information sources (not talking about people who get the panic response due to anticipation or memory here I guess too?). Anyway, these are causal types rather than causal instances; "excessive caloric intake causes weight gain" vs "if I keep eating 1 kg of carrot cake every day I'm going to be obese very soon".

it's easy to use a vocabulary that we're used to that nevertheless contradicts the nature of the topic. Sort of like trying to draw on white paper with white chalk. — fdrake

Yes, I've lost count of the number of times in this topic I've wanted to actually use the expression "what it's like" despite disagreeing that it means anything at all! Academic technicalities can end up creating their own referrents, castles in the air, and they leach into topics where they do not belong.

Shame the flames we'd like to burn these ideas in are red. — fdrake

Indeed, but if I don't look...

I can't imagine not being academically interested in your kid if you're academically inclined. I'm more surprised that you stopped experimenting than that you started! — fdrake

Oh, you wouldn't believe the number of experiments we've surreptitiously carried out, it's a wonder they're sane!

Do you have a citation for this type of account? — fdrake

Yes, I'll dig some out when I'm back at home.

m a bit skeptical that "panic" is one sort of thing; my understanding of it neurologically, which is probably wrong, is that it's a neural/endocrine response to some threat that sets off a bunch of bodily cascades (including behavioural), the "threat" can be really abstract; nowadays a work meeting can be a tiger in the bush. — fdrake

Yes, that's quite right, but the brain seems to perceive an inconsistent environment as one of the bigger threats. It's possibly an attached consequence of our reliance on 3d integrated modelling of our environment (catching hold of a tree branch swinging towards you is actually really hard and takes up the vast majority of our brains). So, the idea of panic (and I should stress this is all highly speculative) is that it shuts down certain systems, particularly automotive ones, so that we don't go jumping from branch to branch when we're not sure where the next branch is.

Ever wondered what the evolutionary advantage could possibly be of legs turning to jelly at the exact moment you need to run away from said tiger in the bush?

but the brain seems to perceive an inconsistent environment as one of the bigger threats. — Isaac

That makes sense. Sudden noises, people going apeshit on shrooms, forgetting your keys, leaving the oven on while you're out... I wonder what the scope of environment is there? I guess as abstract as can be habituated within. (germaphobe panic response? "your disease only makes sense in the light of our understanding of infection and contamination..")

Ever wondered what the evolutionary advantage could possibly be of legs turning to jelly at the exact moment you need to run away from said tiger in the bush? — Isaac

I thought it was so you could politely ask the girl to go on top.

I wonder what the scope of environment is there? I guess as abstract as can be habituated within. — fdrake

Good question, I hope not so wide as to end up saying nothing useful at all. I'd agree that it has to be first habituated, but it does seem to be strongly linked to sensory inputs too, so habituated conceptual environments don't seem to have the same effect. Faced with conceptually contradictory knowledge, people tend to become more entrenched in the original concept, so there's still some strong incentive in the brain towards predictability, but real panic (failing limbs, sweating, fainting etc..) seems to need sensory initiates, even if hallucinatory ones.

So, one interesting study here (I'll try to find it) was to do with panic attacks among hyperchodriacs. Here, what they thought they'd found, which would apply to the public speaker, the exam, the first date etc, was that a normal preparation (raised heart rate etc) was being picked up on and the brain was kind of going "hey, why's my heart beating faster, there's no tiger I can see" and panicking about the difference between the autosomal information and the perceptual information and completely ignoring the conceptual information that would have made sense of it all.

I thought it was so you could politely ask the girl to go on top. — fdrake

Ahh, the days when one only had to ask politely...

so habituated conceptual environments don't seem to have the same effect. — Isaac

My (broadly Humean) guess is that concepts typically are learned associations; iterated relations of relations of neural patterns (patterns of patterns..., patterns articulating previous patterns partially articulating previous patterns partially articulating...) that interface less strongly with the neural architecture for sensation. There's something about energy expenditure in thought and parts of the brain which are involved too (prefrontal cortex shit, an imagined - my fanfiction - neural basis for Kahnnemann's 2 system approach).

So my take is: concepts mediate and inspire bodily processes and comportments rather than being strongly (probabilistically) tied to the neural architecture involved with executing (most types) of them. Concepts; and the contexts they are articulated in; are reflective, usually calm, memory and imagination focussed (most of the time), so any strong feelings are likely to be felt as through a memory or an anticipation; if strong feeling happens it's probably leveraging some architectural shortcut (limbic shit, "that's unnatural" = "I am disgusted") or (non exclusively) intermediary strong association between cogitation and the other association schemes of neural patterns ("If I'm wrong on the internet my identity is a lie"). No one runs away from a keyboard in panic while typing, but guys do sometimes smash their computer in nerd rage.

"hey, why's my heart beating faster, there's no tiger I can see" and panicking about the difference between the autosomal information and the perceptual information and completely ignoring the conceptual information that would have made sense of it all. — Isaac

That's really cool. Do you think there's any correspondence with model averaging in stats, if you're familiar? If we imagine anticipation and memory as models of input states based on previous patterns of association; there might be more than one anticipation (model) running at once; a multithreading of thought-action chains (neural+sensorimotor impetus for the body's comportment, including thoughts) that originate in multiple places; these will amplify and die out in accordance with continual feedback (models learning different weights); but the feedback mechanism might 'get stuck' in a certain pattern of valuation. Edit: perhaps when, say, two patterns (which are models in this analogy) generate predictions (anticipations) that are "valued" very highly by each other? (edit: analogy breaks down a lot here, models and loss functions... stupid loss functions).

Edit: oooh, random thought, if there are lots of models permeating the brain at once, any proposed model could be evaluated relative to any other one in terms of difference in predictions, and we'd get a domination effect if the models modulated eachothers' behaviour to be more in accord with what the 'most typical' model was proposing - so we model until we have annihilated differences in expectations/anticipations (sources of panic) coming from aberrantly proposed models. The hypochondriac's situation model down weights any mere conceptual mediation; it differs too strongly from the anticipations generated through the autosomal and perceptual decoupling), so 'forcing oneself to think' contrary to the situation doesn't do much (maybe the multithreadeded bits don't always implicate themselves in the bits that generate our phenomenal awareness... uncountable subselves appearing and dying to the routine of our personality).

"Classing all the cases together" is a way of talking about the concepts we formulate as such--those are abstractions that range over a number of unique instances. And sure, insofar as we're talking about concepts, that's fine.
— Terrapin Station

What about insofar as we're using concepts to talk about (e.g. compare and sort) the unique instances? — bongo fury

[That] question seems to be about concepts where they aren't abstractions ranging over a number of particular instances. I wouldn't say that would qualify as a concept. It would just be a name and/or description of the particular. ("Description of" isn't really possible without concepts ranging over a number of particulars, though.) — Terrapin Station

Oh, I get it. I'm right to interpret your "concepts" as mental events analogous to general terms like adjectives. (No?) But when I blithely speak of using them to sort particulars you are alarmed because you see a general term as naming (or pointing at or designating or referring to) a whole class of or abstraction from the instances, as an entity in its own right. You can't see it referring to a particular and still being general? (Correct me.)

But can't a nominalist deny the class or abstraction, and reconstrue a general statement (e.g. a predication or attribution or description) quite simply as shared naming, i.e. as ascribing the property to, or simply pointing out and thereby sorting under the term, all of the instances, severally? I'm not saying that approach doesn't throw up problems. But it's what I was about in the second paragraph.

Re the content of that paragraph, I don't think there's any way to experience someone else's consciousness--I think that in principle that is impossible. — Terrapin Station

Fair enough. Inconceivable, even? If my ability to compare my successive mental events (dynamic brain states) is afforded by continuous neural connection between them, couldn't I in principle get a similar bridge between mine and yours? I mean I can quite believe it might be inconceivable on your view. Just trying to see the view.

Oh, I get it. I'm right to interpret your "concepts" as mental events analogous to general terms like adjectives. (No?) But when I blithely speak of using them to sort particulars you are alarmed because you see a general term as naming (or pointing at or designating or referring to) a whole class of or abstraction from the instances, as an entity in its own right. You can't see it referring to a particular and still being general? (Correct me.)

But can't a nominalist deny the class or abstraction, and reconstrue a general statement (e.g. a predication or attribution or description) quite simply as shared naming, i.e. as ascribing the property to, or simply pointing out and thereby sorting under the term, all of the instances, severally? I'm not saying that approach doesn't throw up problems. But it's what I was about in the second paragraph. — bongo fury

I'm still confused about what you're getting at here. Concepts are a means of calling/considering phenomenon a and phenomenon b the "same thing"--namely whatever the concept term is. So I think we used "yellow" as an example. That way you can see the color of, say, a car and the color of a guitar and use the term "yellow" for both. (Which is using a general term--that's what concepts are, and referring to particulars--the particular yellow of that particular car--for example, if that answers that question).

I don't know how someone could deny that we do this--that we utilize concepts this way, because if we don't utilize concepts that way, then language is impossible. It would just be a string of proper names (effectively) with never-ending variety . . . and even then, writing would be difficult, because the whole idea of writing "g" and having a particular repeatable set of sounds indicated by it is a concept per what I describe above.

What have 'properties' got to do with measures of the degree to which I find a model to be right? — Isaac

There's no way to check anything about any model if there are no objective properties. What would you be checking?

Right. Which is exactly what I'm saying. There is no 'way things are' there's only the 'way things seem from here' or the 'way things seem from there' (where 'here' and 'there' are not here limited to spatial specifications), so where does this leave your "there is a coin"? Only from a certain perspective. — Isaac

That wasn't at all what I was saying though. I'm not talking about seeming first off (or not just about that--again this is not about consciousness). There is a way that things are, but the way that things are is always from some point of reference. Things aren't identical from every point of reference. That's not a seeming. That's a reality.

Why not? What would constrain it? — Terrapin Station


Biology. — Isaac

How if biology is a concept you created and it has no properties independent of that?

How is that an important part of consciousness? — Harry Hindu

Because the whole gist of it is (subjective) experience.

What is a bearer of consciousness — Harry Hindu

A particular person who is conscious/who has experiences. We're talking about their consciousness/their experiences.

and how can something be experientially to it? What does that even mean? — Harry Hindu

They have experiences. Those experiences have properties.

if it's not the same, then how does consciousness and the world interact? — Harry Hindu

Through our senses (for input) and our motor skills (for output).

Because the whole gist of it is (subjective) experience. — Terrapin Station

How is it subjective when your experience is part of the world and is an effect and a cause of other things? What does that even mean to insert, "subjective" into this?

We don't have direct access to apples either. We are stuck in our own heads.

Through our senses (for input) and our motor skills (for output). — Terrapin Station

Both of which aren't conscious-like, so how does consciousness get input from the senses and produce output in our behavior?

How is it subjective when your experience is part of the world — Harry Hindu

Is there a reason to believe that I'd say that "subjective" implies "not a part of the world"? No. It's subjective because we're talking about a brain functioning in a mental way, and that can only be experienced/observed by the brain in question. It's a phenomenon, in the world, that only occurs from the perspective of being a particular material in particular states.

Both of which aren't conscious-like, so how does consciousness get input from the senses and produce output in our behavior? — Harry Hindu

Your eyes, for example, send information (electrochemical signals) to your brain. Your consciousness is your brain functioning in particular ways. Likewise your brain sends signals to muscles and so on so that you can speak, move your limbs, etc. Why in the world would I need to explain this to you? Are we in kindergarten or something?

Concepts are a means of calling/considering phenomenon a and phenomenon b the "same thing"--namely whatever the concept term is. So I think we used "yellow" as an example. That way you can see the color of, say, a car and the color of a guitar and use the term "yellow" for both. (Which is using a general term--that's what concepts are, and referring to particulars--the particular yellow of that particular car--for example, if that answers that question). — Terrapin Station

Cool. So why do you say,

"Classing all the cases together" is a way of talking about the concepts we formulate as such--those are abstractions that range over a number of unique instances. — Terrapin Station

and not see the point of,

What about insofar as we're using concepts to talk about (e.g. compare and sort) the unique instances? — bongo fury

?

And earlier, why react in alarm to my response here,

In terms of our experience, it's a particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc.
— Terrapin Station

Particular in the sense of general but awaiting a clear physical definition (which would decide if a particular brain state was an instance of it)? — bongo fury

?

After all, you volunteered the comparison between, on the one hand,

With respect to the object (the objective stuff), it's the fact that it reflects that wavelength of EMR, sure. — Terrapin Station

... where "yellow" is applying wherever the physical definition is satisfied, and by the way we clearly are "classing all the cases together" yet talking about instances as much as concepts... and then on the other hand,

In terms of our experience, it's a particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc. — Terrapin Station

... where I just thought it made sense to point out that we would likewise be distinguishing cases of mentally-yellow from mentally-non-yellow (and again using the concept to sort the instances but not thereby be talking about concepts), despite having no corresponding physical definition of when a (unique) brain state or brain state property counts under someone's general concept of mentally-yellow.

Do you not intend your example of the car and the guitar to play out on both levels, objectual and mental, in roughly this way?

Shouldn't it make sense to discuss the extensions of our phenomenal colour concepts as well as, and perhaps in relation to, the more easily defined extensions of physical colour concepts?

They have experiences. Those experiences have properties. — Terrapin Station

You say it that way.

What if I said: Things appear (where 'thing' is taken in the broadest sense as objects, processes, colours, basically anything you can think of). What is it then that "has" properties? Are not properties just among the "things" that appear (if we allow that shapes, colours, textures and so on are even separable from shaped, coloured and textured objects)?

It seems to me that that 'chopping up' of experience that we do prior to applying the label "quale" to it isn't particularly reflective of what it's like at all. What it's like to be in any experiential state is a colossal feedback and intermingling of my senses and thoughts. — fdrake

...what in this experience furnishes the distinction between the shape and the colour of the table? — fdrake

Very well put fdrake.

Taking account of having the experience is itself it's own experience. Thinking intently about all the different aspects of one's experience is much the same experience aside from it need not be spoken, but could be, if need be. It's precisely what it's like to think about our own thought and belief.

Language used as a tool to slice up(think about) our experience... that's what furnishes the distinction between the shape and colour of the table.