You're not responding to what I said, but what you think I said, which is understandable, as it is a very complex and controversial subject. I am *not* saying there's 'been no progress', or that cognitive science is deficient or invalid or broken. The title of the thread is about 'materialist philosophy of mind' and the paper I linked to is addressed directly to the philosophical issue of 'the subjective unity of consciousness' which has bearing on that particular question. Do you have anything to say about that particular point?

Oh brother. Obviously at no point have I even given the appearance of arguing against the proposition that "cognitive science is deficient or invalid or broken"- a proposition which had not appeared til you typed it just now. I understand quite well what you're saying and feel like my own remarks have been pretty clear.. and so I've said all I mean to say on the idea that 400 years of philosophy of mind + an incredibly productive last few decades in neuroscience has amounted to "no actual progress on how non-conscious stuff can produce consciousness since Descartes" (a statement of dogma if ever there was one).

I mean, I get it- boo materialism! But if that's all you've got to say, why bother?

Usually in philosophy, one is not hemmed in by an either-or. People are frustratingly good at finding alternatives. There are many approaches to consciousness, so it's decidedly not a binary proposition. We don't have to accept or discard anything because it's not a settled matter. — Marchesk

I don't understand what you're saying here. My proposition was that we either discard the idea that consciousness might not be what we think it is, or we accept that it might not be what we think it is. I'm not seeing any 'third way' in that, either accepting or rejecting a possibility seems pretty exhaustive of all options to me.

Cognitive science is not philosophy of mind. But this paper on the neural binding problem and the subjective unity of perception does explicitly mention David Chalmer's 'hard problem of consciousness', acknowledging that 'this version of the neural binding problem really is a scientific mystery at this time. ' — Wayfarer

As per my quote, my issue was with that statement that "no actual progress on how non-conscious stuff can produce consciousness". I do not argue that those active fields are all wrapped up.

the materialist canard, 'the brain secretes thought like the liver secretes bile'. — Wayfarer

Anyone perplexed by this phrase should know that it is @Wayfarer's bizarre mis-reading of this,

The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.
— Norbert Wiener: Computing Machines and the Nervous System. p. 132. — Wayfarer

Which is, as per my added emphasis, harsh on historical theories of brain function that ended up fueling dualism or eleven kinds of pan-psychism, but not on materialism.

I.e., not a "materialist canard" at all, but an apt caricature of how an abstract noun (like consciousness) can conjure up goo as well as woo. Hence the incredulity,

how non-conscious stuff can produce consciousness — RogueAI

Somewhere inside of which there may lurk a valid question, but it won't need to luxuriate in the usual fantastic premises (e.g. pictures in the head, or a world in the head) that phenomenalists claim are undeniable.

Anyone perplexed by this phrase should know that it is Wayfarer's bizarre mis-reading of this, — bongo fury

Mine was a reference to the original quote, by Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, a French materialist philosopher of the Enlighenment. It was his expression 'Le cerveau sécrète la pensée comme le foie sécrète la bile.'

That quote of Weiner's is commenting on the same point.

I would enlarge on Weiner's point by commenting that the fundamentals of reason, such as the law of the excluded middle, can never be conceived of as being 'produced' by the brain. What happens is, h. sapiens reaches the point of being able to grasp the truths of reason, at which point the mind transcends any strictly biological explanation for its capacities.

However as evolution now amounts to a secular creation mythology it is now naturally assumed that the mind can be explained in naturalistic terms. The effects of this belief extend well beyond the sphere of philosophy.

I get it- boo materialism! But if that's all you've got to say, why bother? — Enai De A Lukal

Because there are a lot of people who unconsciously accept materialism - like, they wouldn't think of themselves as materialist, and they're not materialist in an obvious or gauche kind of way. They don't know what philosophical materialism means, but they nevertheless believe it. Modern culture holds to what I call a kind of 'handrail materialism' - when it comes to tricky philosophical questions such as this one, then they grab for the materialist response, because an alternative seems religious (and, boo religion!)

There was a shrewd comment by a contemporary philosopher, on this point, to wit:

Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other".

Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.

However as evolution now amounts to a secular creation mythology it is now naturally assumed that the mind can be explained in naturalistic terms. The effects of this belief extend well beyond the sphere of philosophy. — Wayfarer

Good link, especially the bit that says:

Today's professional evolutionism is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry.

Yes. You'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise if you spend any time on philosophy forums.

Mine was a reference to the original quote, by Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, a French materialist philosopher of the Enlighenment. It was his expression 'Le cerveau sécrète la pensée comme le foie sécrète la bile.' — Wayfarer

Fine, so Wiener used as caricature a phrase from one of the theories whose assumptions he was targeting.

That quote of Weiner's is commenting on the same point. — Wayfarer

Yes, remarking how early attempts to understand brain function without reference to an immaterial soul ended up implying one through carelessness of metaphor.

I would enlarge on Weiner's point — Wayfarer

... on your obstinate (deliberate, even?) misreading of it.

Although, I never found a pdf of the Wiener book, and you had only the wiki-quote; but I would be astonished if my emphasis (above) is incorrect.

I haven't read Weiner's book either, but my initial reference wasn't to Norbert Weiner, so I haven't 'misread' or 'misrepresented' anything. Mine was a reference was to the original quotation, which makes a strong point using a vivid metaphor.

but my initial reference wasn't to Norbert Weiner — Wayfarer

Haha, ok forget about Weiner, and this ill-conceived thread.

From that you have retained the Cabanis quote and hope to use it to mock (now that you see that Wiener sought only to bolster) materialism.

No worries.

I agree that its a judgment call, but the idea that we've been running in circles (i.e. in philosophy) for 400 years since Descartes and that literally everything written since then has no value or has contributed nothing to the philosophical discussion strikes me as completely ludicrous... not least because of the fact that some of that work includes credible critiques of Descartes himself- Descartes own account of the mind is far from perfect or unassailable, that would be quite depressing if we have made no progress from that. I mean really, Descartes of all people is where you identify our philosophical accounts of the mind as having plateaued? And this is all granting the highly implausible notion that none of the results of the scientific study of the brain (and especially its relation to the mind) have any philosophical significance at all. If that's what you sincerely believe, okay, but good luck actually defending or supporting any of that.

We've made tremendous progress in identifying brain state/mental state correlations. I see no progress on the causation front. When it comes to how non-conscious matter gives rise to conscious experience, we're still completely flummoxed.

It's the "something from nothing" problem. "How does consciousness arise from non-conscious matter?" How does something (consciousness) arise from nothing (non-conscious matter ( (although the "nothing" here doesn't refer to the noun "matter", but rather the adjective: non-conscious))? Idealism makes this a non-issue, although it begs some obvious questions.

It's the "something from nothing" problem. "How does consciousness arise from non-conscious matter?" How does something (consciousness) arise from nothing (non-consciousness)? Idealism makes this a non-issue, although it begs some obvious questions. — RogueAI

Well, that's a pseudo-question so ... and "idealism" is (mostly) just woo-of-gaps. :roll: The more interesting (less speculative) question is: how does non-consciousness arise from consciousness (e.g. sleep, auto-pilot habit) and yield consciousness again (e.g. waking-up, novelty)?

Well, that's a pseudo-question so ... and "idealism" is (mostly) just woo-of-gaps. :roll: The more interesting (less speculative) question is: how does non-consciousness arise from consciousness (e.g. sleep, auto-pilot habit) and yield consciousness again (e.g. waking-up, novelty)?

Yes, that's interesting as well. As there's no agreed explanation for how consciousness arises, you can't get much more speculative than "how do brains produce consciousness?".

I don't see anything "wooish" about idealism. It never strays from first-principles. There are things we know that exist (mind(s), thoughts, ideas, sensations), and reality is made of this mental stuff. Since materialism posits the (unproveable) existence of non-mental stuff, it's far less parsimonious.

There are things we know that exist (mind(s), thoughts, ideas, sensations), and reality is made of this mental stuff. Since materialism posits the (unproveable) existence of non-mental stuff, it's far less parsimonious. — RogueAI

I suggest that it's our precritical linguistic habits that make it 'obvious' that ideas and sensations exist. I don't dispute that in some sense they do. 'Ideas' and 'sensations' are words that we know how to use, and they help us get along in the world.

To me the philosophical task is not simply deciding that 'mind' alone (or 'matter' alone) is 'real', but rather figuring out what all of our babble about such things is supposed to mean in the first place.

I suggest that it's our precritical linguistic habits that make it 'obvious' that ideas and sensations exist. I don't dispute that in some sense they do. 'Ideas' and 'sensations' are words that we know how to use, and they help us get along in the world. — Yellow Horse

I'm pretty sure I recall having sensations before 'sensations' entered my vocabulary. Don't you?

How does materialism even begin to explain how moving electrons across synaptic gaps in certain ways gives rise to conscious experience? — RogueAI

In principle, it doesn't seem that surprising to me that when you put together some "unconscious" stuffs you may get a stuff that is "conscious", as we know from experience that by combining stuffs we may get a different, new stuff. For example, if you mix blue and yellow paints you will get, perhaps surprisingly, a green paint.

Whether the stuffs of a brain are sufficient to constitute the stuff we call "consciousness", we don't know for sure. But we know that our brains play at least some role in it because changes in the brain correlate with changes in consciousness.

It also seems that objects that are conscious are very complex in the sense that they have many different dynamic parts that are richly dynamically interconnected (dynamic organized complexity). General anesthesia usually disrupts connections between parts of the brain and loss of consciousness follows (too much differentiation, too little connection). Epileptic seizures, on the other hand, are characterized by increased synchronization of brain processes and loss of consciousness follows (too much connection, too little differentiation). The cerebellum has four times more neurons than the cortex, but damage to the cerebellum, unlike damage to the cortex, has practically no impact on consciousness; it turns out that while there is rich differentiation and interaction in the cortex, the cerebellum has many small modules that process information locally, without much interaction with other modules.

I'm pretty sure I recall having sensations before 'sensations' entered my vocabulary. Don't you? — Kenosha Kid

I find the fact that you asked me that illuminating.

A speech act on my part is something we can reason about. It is there, it is public.

The problem is that sensations tend to be understood as private and therefore 'epistemologically invisible.'

A theist can assure me that we all experience God 'directly' through some kind of spiritual intuition.

I find Mach fascinating. He studied the relationship of sensations and 'external stimuli.' Or did he? Could he? (As a critically minded philosopher/scientist.)

We can't make objective (impersonal, transpersonal) statements about sensations, more or less by definition.

We can see whether certain wavelengths are called 'red.'

For me the unifying theme here is that facts (uncontroversial propositions) are primary.

The world is not sensations or noemata.

Or at least thinking in those ways leads to serious problems while ignoring how we actually reason.

The problem is that sensations tend to be understood as private and therefore 'epistemologically invisible.' — Yellow Horse

This rather treats indirect evidence the same as no evidence, which is just a pathway to solipsism. If we're going down that route, I deny that you and your argument exist! :rofl:

My sensation awareness and memory are not invisible to me. Evidence of yours is indirect. You can tell me God speaks to you, and I can ask others if God speaks to them and note that God never speaks to me, and from this I can deduce that you're probably mistaken. That this reassuring consensus requires words, it does not follow that I needed the words to 'not be spoken to by God'. I do not contest that I need language about sensation to understand your sensations. I contest that I do not need it to have my own.

For context, I'm a science-loving atheist. I am coming from a quasi-Wittgensteinian place, and I am also impressed by Sellars, quoted below.

****
Antecedent to epistemology, Sellars’s treatment of semantics essentially constitutes a denial of what can be called a semantic given—the idea that some of our terms or concepts, independently of their occurrence in formal and material inferences, derive their meaning directly from confrontation with a particular (kind of) object or experience.
****

My sensation awareness and memory are not invisible to me. — Kenosha Kid

In the everyday sense of those words, of course. The point is to challenge an inherited way of talking and thinking about 'consciousness.'

That this reassuring consensus requires words, it does not follow that I needed the words to 'not be spoken to by God'. — Kenosha Kid

I think you are taking too much for granted here. You could only be spoken to by God if you have been trained into knowing a language --the same language that would allow you to interpret yourself (your 'experience') as a human being (as a self) talked to by some kind of god.

I'm not denying some kind of extra-linguistic reality. There's just maybe not much we can say about it. We reason from facts (already language).

A p-zombie could write a great work of science or philosophy.

Objectivity does not depend on contact with mysterious objects, be they sense-data or intellectual intuitions.

It happens in public, in language.

I do not contest that I need language about sensation to understand your sensations. I contest that I do not need it to have my own. — Kenosha Kid

In the usual sense, sure, but you can't prove you aren't a p-zombie. I don't think you are, but the concept of the p-zombie is useful for thinking about epistemology.

Your private sensations (if they exist, whatever they are) can play no role in themselves. On the other hand, public speech acts including words like 'sensation' are epistemologically significant.

What do you make of the following famous passage?

https://web.stanford.edu/~paulsko/Wittgenstein293.html

The world is not sensations or noemata.

It's debatable whether there's an outer physical world. It's not debatable there's an "inner" mental world that is composed of sensations and noemata. Now, are you going to say this inner/mental world isn't part of "the world"? That's absurd. So it would seem that at least part of the world IS sensations and noemata.

Other than that, I enjoyed your post.

It's debatable whether there's an outer physical world. It's not debatable there's an "inner" mental world that is composed of sensations and noemata. — RogueAI

While I do understand where you are coming from --and while I do understand that in ordinary language terms that 'consciousness exists' -- I also think that a certain inherited interpretation of consciousness obscures important aspects of it.

When you say that 'it's not debatable,' I actually agree. But that is precisely the problem!

If consciousness is radically private, we are wasting our time talking about it. We don't can't even know if we mean the same thing by the word 'consciousness.'

We can throw way words like 'meaning' too as grunts that can't be checked for whatever 'meaning' is supposed to mean in our new isolation.

Now, are you going to say this inner/mental world isn't part of "the world"? — RogueAI

On the contrary, I am saying that the inner/mental world is actually 'in' the world, between us as language users. 'The world makes the self possible.'

As you reason with yourself and compose a response to this post, entertain the thought that you are using a borrowed, alien language to do so, because I claim that you are.

But we humans are the aliens, and the world is significant for us as social animals who have developed a complex system of interaction that involves sentences, handshakes, salutes, flags, etc.

Maybe there are toothaches, but the meaning of the word 'toothache' is 'out there' between us.

It's debatable whether there's an outer physical world. It's not debatable there's an "inner" mental world that is composed of sensations and noemata. — RogueAI

And you have the grounds for questioning (doubting) "there's an outer physical world" or grounds for taking-as-given (certitude) that "there's an 'inner' mental world"? Please elaborate.

And you have the grounds for questioning (doubting) "there's an outer physical world" or grounds for taking-as-given (certitude) that "there's an 'inner' mental world"? Please elaborate. — 180 Proof

I have a direct experience, that's an ultimate proof. Anything trying to prove it more or deny it it's simply a waste of time.

There are entire fields of study dedicated to this that are pretty mature now. — Kenosha Kid

All of them with some success for the easy problem and 0 success on the hard problem. Again, the hard problem has been avoided and even denied, but ultimately it has remained untouched by materialism.

I have a direct experience, that's an ultimate proof. Anything trying to prove it more or deny it it's simply a waste of time. — Eugen

Well I have direct (personal) experience of the 17 gods who created our world. Is that an 'ultimate proof' of my 17-god theology?

All of them with some success for the easy problem and 0 success on the hard problem. Again, the hard problem has been avoided and even denied, but ultimately it has remained untouched by materialism. — Eugen

The hard problem is understood by some precisely so that progress can't be made (so that nothing could count as progress.)

'I demand an objective explanation for stuff that only I have access to or am.'

I'd argue toward a philosophical explanation of consciousness. The word 'materialistic' tends to mislead people into equally useless assumptions (of ineffable stuff we can't be objective about).

I have a direct experience, that's an ultimate proof. Anything trying to prove it more or deny it it's simply a waste of time.
— Eugen

Well I have direct (personal) experience of the 17 gods who created our world. Is that an 'ultimate proof' of my 17-god theology?

All of them with some success for the easy problem and 0 success on the hard problem. Again, the hard problem has been avoided and even denied, but ultimately it has remained untouched by materialism.
— Eugen

The hard problem is understood by some precisely so that progress can't be made (so that nothing could count as progress.)

'I demand an objective explanation for stuff that only I have access to or am.'

I'd argue toward a philosophical explanation of consciousness. The word 'materialistic' tends to mislead people into equally useless assumptions (of ineffable stuff we can't be objective about).

Materialism (and materialists) make very bold claims about reality. They should have a causal explanation for consciousness by now.