Experience is a synthetic virtual representation of the physical state of the body. This simulation processing takes time, so it is only natural that physical reaction comes first and mental re-imagination of it second. — Zelebg

I think that would be correct if we only look at reflex actions. It is true that when we touch a hot object, we move our hand before we experience the pain because this particular action is controlled by the spinal cord which intercepts the message before the brain can.


However, what happens when you see a sad movie. You obviously don't start crying before processing its content and experiencing the mental state of 'sadness'.

Nope. Try again. Perhaps you are misinterpreting WebMD or is that your own philosophy? That doesn't line up with reality

Okay, If that does not sound strange to you, that is fine but let me propose two more arguments I came across. Again, these are not mine, I am merely exploring the philosphy of the mind.

The China Nation Argument :

I suppose you have already heard of this but let me detail this one out.

Assume that there is an artifical interface or an artiicial body that has all the senses a human has. These senses convey information to the entire population of china all of whom have a cell phone to receive and transmit information. These individual humans behave as neurons for the artifical body and can control it's action. So each chinese person sends message to many others and similarly recieves messages from many others as well and all of these processes that are analogous to the processes performed by neurons give rise to human like behaviour of the robot.

Now a functionalist would be forced to conclude that the entire nation of china is conscious in fashion similar if not same as humans

Does it sound strange now?


The inverted qualia argument

Now I would really like to hear you respond to this. This is perhaps the most challenging problem functionalists face at the moment . Would love to hear your views on this one.

First let me just say that according to functionalism every psychological/mental state is completely determined by the causal relations it bears to (1) a certain "sensory input", (2) other psychological states, and (3) a behavioral output.

The inverted qualia argument proposes that it is possible for two humans to experience two different qualia even if they are in the same mental state and observe the same object.


A common version would be colour inversion. What if someone experiences the qualia I attribute to the colour red when they see the colour green? That is when they observes green apples, their experience would be similar to mine when I observe red apples (Their green is my red)

Let us for a moment entertain this possiblity of inverted colour experience and see how it breaks functionalism.

Let us say p1 is has normal vision has sees red like we all do while p2 sees what we would call green when he sees red. However, he will still call the colour red and not know that his experience is different.
(See private language argument if that sounds strange)
P2 is has pseudonormal vision

This colour inversion implies the possibility that there can be two psychological states s1 and s2 in two persons p1 and p2 so that s1and s2 completely resemble each other with respect to their causal roles but are nevertheless psychologically different. For example, s1 and s2 may both be caused by the perception of a ripe tomato and for their part cause the same beliefs, emotions, desires, behavior, etc., but whereas s1 is a sensation of red, s2 is (p2 being pseudonormal) a sensation of green. So if the inversion is conceivable, it seems possible that there are two different psychological states with exactly the same causal roles, which contradicts the conceptual functionalist's assumption that psychological states are defined by their causal roles.

Most functionalist argue that such inversion of qualia is incoherent and simply not possible. Afterall can such inversion take place of pain and pleasure (hedonistic inversion) ? Obviously not. Hence they argue that such inversion for colour, while seems possible, is not actually possible.

The only issue is that such a inversion actually exists for colour. This qualia inversion is no longer a philosophical possibilty but a scientific possibilty too with one scientist figuring one in 14,000 people undergo this qualia inversion for colour.

I don't know if you are aware of this problem so here is a link if you want to read about the 'Qualia Inversion Hypothesis'

http://www.home.uni-osnabrueck.de/uwmeyer/Paper/Pseudonormal.Vision.pdf

I would recommend reading the pdf if you are not already familiar with Nida-Rümelin argument that I have highlighted in bold above.

Consciousness is the instigator.

The problem of other minds, is solved, via consciousness is above one conception, it is whole if necessary.

You can not be sure that some exist, fine.

You think others must meet some criteria but that is a symbol of your true effort, that's not what consciousness is.

It is actually this experienced online shape.

The China Nation Argument : — StarsFromMemory

I figured your homonculi scenario was a refinement of this same argument, so, same answer.

The inverted qualia argument — StarsFromMemory

Supposing that inverted qualia are possible is just supposing that functionalism is false. Not only do we not have any reason to assume that inverted qualia are possible, but we cannot ever possibly know that they are, because we cannot ever share someone else's first-person experience, only our own.

I would recommend reading the pdf if you are not already familiar with Nida-Rümelin argument that I have highlighted in bold above. — StarsFromMemory

I was not aware of those scientific findings, but as I started reading that PDF's description of them my immediate reaction was the same one that that author came to by the end: the conclusion that inverted qualia have been shown possible by those results hinges on a bunch of philosophical presuppositions.

The only slight differences in my take are that the stuff that goes on in the middle of a function can make a difference in the total phenomenal experience that happens on account of it. Just like, in the Chinese Nation or the homonculi scenarios, I concede that there is some different experiencing going on on account of how the "neurons" in the simulated "brain" each have their own full brains and lives and do things other than just execute the neuronal functions in the simulated brain, so too on my account there would be slightly different phenomenal experience going on within the functionally different sub-components of the person with inverted color cone pigments, but the phenomenal experience of the whole person, who remains functionally the same on that whole-person level, would remain the same.

However, what happens when you see a sad movie. You obviously don't start crying before processing its content and experiencing the mental state of 'sadness'.

Yes, interaction goes both ways, but the mind is secondary in many respects. For example, some people get brain seizure while driving or playing an instrument and they continue their activity totally unconscious as if nothing happened. In fact they fail to react to novel or unusual stimuli, so there, that’s what the mind is for.

Also, I never said I believe in panpyschism. But it is worth considering.

Sorry, I thought I was talking to Pfhorrest.

Nope. Try again. Perhaps you are misinterpreting WebMD or is that your own philosophy? That doesn't line up with reality

You try again, you forgot to say what exactly do you believe doesn't line up with reality. In the meantime I will repeat what I sad. Experience is a synthetic virtual representation of the physical state of the body. This simulation processing takes time, so it is only natural that physical reaction comes first and mental re-imagination of it second.

You try again, you forgot to say what exactly do you believe doesn't line up with reality. In the meantime I will repeat what I sad. Experience is a synthetic virtual representation of the physical state of the body. This simulation processing takes time, so it is only natural that physical reaction comes first and mental re-imagination of it second. — Zelebg

People's reactions and emotions are very complex. You treat the human psyche as though we are an insect. What is your article that supports what you said. If i told Frank that i was going to go to his house in a week and shoot him, there is a good chance he would be scared before running. I've actually been held at gun point delivering pizzas and the human psyche and what goes on in our heads is very complex. Not that this is pertinent but i ran both robbers off. What medical journal supports that you run first and get scared later. Most medical journals would support that the human psyche is very complex. What you are proposing is much more controversial than what i'm proposing so if anyone should have to prove themselves it should be you. Do you have an article?

Do you have an article?

Yes, many, because what I said is not controversial at all. Google it!

what keywords do i google? You made a two sentence statement so i'm not sure what to google.

what keywords do i google?

You said “it’s not complex enough”. It was about time delay, not complexity. Almost every neuroscientist and philosopher will tell you there is no free will based on -> Libet experiment <- and similar.

I read the important parts of Libet experiment and i also believe in scientific determinism (and the rejection of the classical look of how free will works). I have no problem with the findings of the Libet experiment. The problem is you have drawn conclusions that cannot be drawn from the Libet experiment. Humans may not have a say in their future decisions based on billiards table effect of the universe, but your interpretation of the "bear" example is not found in the Libet experiment.

Libet finds that conscious volition is exercised in the form of 'the power of veto' (sometimes called "free won't"[10][11]); the idea that conscious acquiescence is required to allow the unconscious buildup of the readiness potential to be actualized as a movement. While consciousness plays no part in the instigation of volitional acts, Libet suggested that it may still have a part to play in suppressing or withholding certain acts instigated by the unconscious. Libet noted that everyone has experienced the withholding from performing an unconscious urge. Since the subjective experience of the conscious will to act preceded the action by only 200 milliseconds, this leaves consciousness only 100-150 milliseconds to veto an action (this is because the final 20 milliseconds prior to an act are occupied by the activation of the spinal motor neurones by the primary motor cortex, and the margin of error indicated by tests utilizing the oscillator must also be considered).

This doesn't support the "bear" example the way you like but it does point towards determinism or scientific determinism. The latter i would agree with.

The problem is you have drawn conclusions that cannot be drawn from the Libet experiment. Humans may not have a say in their future decisions based on billiards table effect of the universe, but your interpretation of the "bear" example is not found in the Libet experiment.

What do you think I said? What exactly are you arguing against?

Libet finds that conscious volition is exercised in the form of 'the power of veto' (sometimes called "free won't"[10][11]); the idea that conscious acquiescence is required to allow the unconscious buildup of the readiness potential to be actualized as a movement. While consciousness plays no part in the instigation of volitional acts, Libet suggested that it may still have a part to play in suppressing or withholding certain acts instigated by the unconscious. Libet noted that everyone has experienced the withholding from performing an unconscious urge. Since the subjective experience of the conscious will to act preceded the action by only 200 milliseconds, this leaves consciousness only 100-150 milliseconds to veto an action (this is because the final 20 milliseconds prior to an act are occupied by the activation of the spinal motor neurones by the primary motor cortex, and the margin of error indicated by tests utilizing the oscillator must also be considered).

This doesn't support the "bear" example the way you like but it does point towards determinism or scientific determinism. The latter i would agree with.

Again, you say you disagree, but you never say what is it you disagree with. Are you a robot?

I believe that there is no plant, animal, virus, molecule, atom, or elementary particle that does not have consciousness of some sort. As well as in the other direction: clouds, planets, stars, galaxies.

I doubt we have any idea of "what it's like" to "be" any of these things other than some animals. Consciousness is generated by the interaction of the universe with itself on an infinitesimal scale. This participates in a causal cascade — events leading to other events. The main things we usually assume are conscious are animals, in which all parts interact with each other constantly. But many other conglomerations of matter have the same property, clouds for instance.

I realize that these claims will sound utterly outlandish to most people. But the reason I believe them is that I find this to be the simplest explanation for what we know and observe.

I realize that these claims will sound utterly outlandish to most people. But the reason I believe them is that I find this to be the simplest explanation for what we know and observe. — Daz

:100:

It is far simpler and less absurd to assume that just having a first-person experience at all is not a special unusual thing but a perfectly ordinary facet of everything, and that the nature of that first-person experience varies with the functionality and behavior of things, than to suppose that some magical wholly new metaphysical thing starts happening when otherwise inert matter gets arranged in just the right way (or else than even we humans somehow don’t even have the first person experience we think we do).

Far simpler than what?

He said it here....

than to suppose that some magical wholly new metaphysical thing starts happening when otherwise inert matter gets arranged in just the right way (or else than even we humans somehow don’t even have the first person experience we think we do — Pfhorrest

IOW simpler to assume consciousness is a facet of matter in general rather than an emergent property of some matter. We lack, currently a direct measure of consciousness, though we do have measures for behaviors and functions. We have assumed, for example, within the scientific community in Western culture that only humans, then grudgingly only perhaps primates, then slowly other mammals were conscious. Only in recent years has it been accepted that perhaps many animals more distantly related to us have consciousness in some way and the boundary is now hovering around plants in that community where there is some acceptance that they may be conscious. Before this of course other parts of Western culture just (and I would argue correctly) assumed that animals were conscious: animal trainers, pet owners, indigenous members of Western societies, children and more. There the presumption of consciousness at least with animals worked extremely well and was a better axiom than the one held by the scientific community. IOW there are a few default positions, all matter, all life, only very complicated organisms with nervous systems like us. I think the last is based on bias. Right now however we do not have a way to reconcile the issue. It is very hard to falsify any of these positions, though I would not say any of them are unfalsifiable, since technology may change that over time. We can test for memory in some things - which is a cognitive function that may or may not be hinged to conscoiusness. We can test for behavior. But we cannot directly test for consciousness in anything we cannot communicate with, problem of other minds and all that. Right now in the epistemologically scientific community with its default (and not demonstrated default) position that complex neural networks are must for consciousness, the set of organisms that are considered conscious has been expanding for decades. And as I said now even the possibility that plants are conscious is being taken seriously despite their not fitting that default. So, even in a group that has a very rigid a priori, the set has been expanding. Even up to the early 70s asserting in professional contexts as a scientist that animals were conscious was a position potentially damaging to one's career. I sometimes wonder if the influx of women scientists was part of what shifted the extremely rigid default agnosticism present before that, when science was actually behind and clearly almost solipsistically behind the positions of a number of other groups in Western society and then also beyond.

I was agreeing with you. That :100: emoji means “full marks” or “entirely correct”.

Thanks . Yes, for a long time I wondered what kind of arrangments of matter led to consciousness, and whether computer were conscious just because they can compute.

One thing nudging me toward going all-in on where consciousness occurs was watching recent time-lapse videos of plants. They "behave" just like animals except for being planted in one place (other than tumbleweeds).

I was not aware of those scientific findings, but as I started reading that PDF's description of them my immediate reaction was the same one that that author came to by the end: the conclusion that inverted qualia have been shown possible by those results hinges on a bunch of philosophical presuppositions. — Pfhorrest

Yes, but those philosophical presuppositions are entirely justified while the presuppositions required for the correction of qualia before it becomes conscious have been widely abandoned. The author only wanted to show that even this is not a purely scientific hypothesis.

Just quoting the author here :
"However, this position presupposes that there is a clear-cut boundary between the levels
of conscious sensations and reactive dispositions, an assumption having come under
heavy attack during the last few years, in particular since Dennett (1991). In his book,
Dennett criticizes what he calls the 'Cartesian Theater' theory of consciousness, according to which all sensory inputs of a given moment come together at a certain area of the
brain (the Cartesian Theater) where a conscious 'picture' of the world is formed from
them, this picture then giving rise to later reactive dispositions.Dennett raises a lot of empirical issues in his book, but I think that one main point is essentially philosophical. Prior to the question whether there is a clear-cut boundary between the levels of conscious sensations and reactive dispositions, one could ask if there can possibly be such a boundary. A positive answer would amount to the thesis that there is a sensible concept of pure sensation, i. e. to the assumption that one can sensibly imagine a sensation existing without any connection to reactive dispositions:after all, if the existence of a sensation were necessarily connected to the existence of a respective reactive disposition, one could never exclude the possibility that the disposition has an influence on the qualitative character of the sensation. However, this is a highly controversial point in philosophy. To quote an authority from the past, Kant seems to deny the existence of pure sensations by saying that sensations without concepts are "blind", i. e. that a sensory input must at least be subsumed under some (perhaps very general) concept in order to become a conscious sensation. "

Besides, a functionalist would agree that a concept of pure sensation/qualia does not make sense because a sensation is defined by its relation to reactions and other mental states.

One other thing I have problem apprehending is how the author concludes that the processing in the person 1 and person 2 must be different and which leads to him to the possibility of the correction of qualia before it becomes conscious. To quote the author again :

But now notice that relevant parts of the brain of a pseudonormal person p1 must differ from those of a normally sighted human being p2 if they are assumed to produce different reactions to the same 'input' and the same reaction to different inputs. Suppose p1 and p2 both look at a ripe tomato. In p1, the average activation of G-cones in the respective area exceeds that of the R-cones, whereas in p2 the average activation of the Rcones exceeds that of the G-cones. So the inputs at level 4 are different. But they are both disposed to utter sentences like "This tomato is red", "This tomato looks red to me" etc., so that the outputs of the further processing are the same. This may also be true of
the emotional reactions being caused by the sight of the color red. It follows that the processing in p1 must differ from that in p2. Suppose further that p1 is looking at a ripe tomato, whereas p2 is looking at an unripe (green) one. The relevant input at level 4 is the same, but the behavioral output is different: p1 will be disposed to say things like "This tomato is red", whereas p2 will say that is looks green to him. Again, it follows that the processing in p1 must differ from that in p2.

In the peculiar case of colour, even if the input and the lower level processing (that gives rise to the qualia) is the same, the output can still be different. Let us assume that both p1 (normal vision) and p2 (pseudonormal vision) look at blood. Also, for the sake of simplicity, let us assume that the sensation of blood red, leads to experience of fear and disgust and a tendency to look away. Now the input in the case of p1 would be his r-cones firing (colour is red so r-cones fire in normal people) whereas the input in case of p2 would be his g-cones firing (colour is red, so g-cones fire in pseudonormal people).

Let us assume that now this input is processed in the same way in both people leading to a sensation of red in p1 and a sensation of green in p2. However, since p2 has learned to associate this sensation of green with the feelings of disgust and fear and sentences like 'yuck, blood red', he will still react the same way as p1 who has learned to associate the sensation of red with disgust and fear and sentences like 'yuck,blood red'. In other words, the lower level processing of the vision need not be different so as to give rise to same qualia 'sensation of red' in both people so that they can react the same way.

Indeed, would it be wise to even consider that the lower level processing is suddenly different because of an genetic anomaly in the cones of the eye? Consider p2 (pseudonormal vision) as a baby and seeing blood (red colour) for the first time. If his processing is same as other people, he would experience sensation of green. Concluding that somehow his lower level processing has changed would mean that the brain already knew that blood gives rise to red sensation and hence changed the green sensation to red. That makes no sense. Besides, a genetic change in the eyes has no effect on the brain just like genetic change in my limbs does not affect my heart.

What does make sense is that this pseudonormal baby learns to associate the sensation of green with all things we associate sensation of red with. Hence functionalism can't really account for this.

so too on my account there would be slightly different phenomenal experience going on within the functionally different sub-components of the person with inverted color cone pigments, but the phenomenal experience of the whole person, who remains functionally the same on that whole-person level, would remain the same. — Pfhorrest

Yes, there would be a difference in the experience of the r-cones and g-cones, however, the overall experience is also different

I've said multiple times what I was arguing against. Do you remember the bear example you gave? Once again, libets experiment doesn't dictate or certainly not in every case that fear does not come before the person runs from the bear. This basic notion of mine falls in line with libets and with an ordinary understanding of reality. I stated this general argument several times. You are looking for something in libets experiment that isn't there. Not every reality or truth in this universe has to have some strange twist. I do agree however the realities of scientific determinism or determinism are likely but believe it or not that is a separate issue from the bear example.

Strange twist? Experience comes with a time delay, that’s all.

I thought it was settled that not all experience comes with some sorta delay. Most are caused by mental states or a combination of mental states. Only in certain primitive reflex responses, where the brain is not involved in decision making, does the experience come later.

I realize that these claims will sound utterly outlandish to most people. But the reason I believe them is that I find this to be the simplest explanation for what we know and observe.

It “explains” why my socks and bubblegum are conscious, even though no one thought they were, but it doesn’t explain why the human brain is conscious the way the human brain is conscious, which is what we actually want to know. To put it mildly, panpsychism is irrelevant and pointless.

I thought it was settled that not all experience comes with some sorta delay. Most are caused by mental states or a combination of mental states. Only in certain primitive reflex responses, where the brain is not involved in decision making, does the experience come later.

I'm only talking about response / reaction, any reaction, as opposed to contemplation / imagination.

I'm at lunch so I'm not going to argue all the way back to the original bear example. But yes I agree there is a time delay and or an iteration of events delay before anything in the future occurs for everything. Stated the way you just said it I agree

I'm only talking about response / reaction, any reaction, as opposed to contemplation / imagination. — Zelebg

Do you have a point you want to make using the case of such reflex action?

Sure, in some cases behaviour does precede the mental state but that does not violate any concept of panpyschism or functionalism. It would help if you could state what you are trying to prove using those examples.