• Enrique
    842
    How do the colors, sounds, feels, etc come from the color-less, soundless, feel-less matter?Marchesk

    I already told you, an intrinsic aspect of quantum superposition in matter is the qualia constituents that contribute to colors, sounds and feels, conjoined in specific and relatively rare ways to generate qualitative experience in brains and elsewhere. The basic scientific framework is resolved, that is what we are going to find. Human qualia are not action potentials alone, they're wave interferences between quantum resonances in cells and the global quantum field of the brain that is exuded by trillions of simultaneous action potentials, producing along with additional factors an extremely complex array of superpositions.
  • Banno
    25.3k
    I already told you...Enrique

    oh, @Marchesk, when you gonna listen?

    an intrinsic aspect of quantum superposition in matter is the qualia constituents that contribute to colors, sounds and feels, conjoined in specific and relatively rare ways to generate qualitative experience in brains and elsewhere....(and so on)Enrique

    Tell me again how talk of qualia clarifies things.
  • Enrique
    842
    Tell me again how talk of qualia clarifies things.Banno

    you nitwit! lol matter=quantum superposition=qualia
  • Banno
    25.3k
    you nitwit! lol matter=quantum superposition=qualiaEnrique

    Oh. Ok. Tell me again how talk of qualia clarifies things.
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    Quantum Brain Shivers
  • Enrique
    842
    Oh. Ok. Tell me again how talk of qualia clarifies things.Banno

    arf!=meow!=moo! lol
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    I don't know how to evaluate that. Why do you think it's the superposition of all the cells that results in consciousness? I think Jaron Lanier did suggest something along those lines.

    It would be wicked cool if we could tie quantum weirdness to consciousness, but color me a little skeptical.
  • Banno
    25.3k
    Come on! Qualia, and it's all quantum. End of story. Wave the words around and nod your head. Nitwit.
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    I prefer my woo to be shivered in a more supervenient fashion than the microphysical.
  • Enrique
    842


    Most biochemical reactions happen too fast to be accounted for without near instantaneous motion such as in entanglement. Systems of entangled particles like subatomic bodies of water conjoin molecules in photosynthetic reaction centers, the foundation of the ecosystem, and will probably be discovered in much functionality throughout nature. Magnetoreception in birds and butterflies relies on a quantum process called the fast triplet reaction that is sensitive enough to register the magnetic field of the earth. The brain produces a similar field as standing waves measured by an EEG. Biochemistry of the nervous system and especially the brain may be fine tuned for responding to this field, generating the synthetic holism of human consciousness. Fields on fields cause superpositions analogous to hybrid wavelengths of the visible light spectrum. Entanglement systems similar to photosynthetic reaction centers could have comparable superposition effects with the brain's electric field. Qualitative consciousness is the brain's electric field superposed with these entanglement systems as honed by evolution.

    Its the only possible explanation.
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    Would you consider this a form of emergentism?
  • Enrique
    842
    Would you consider this a form of emergentism?Marchesk

    Qualitative consciousness on the macroscale is emergent from material qualia on the nanoscale. Its not a simple ascending pyramid though, top down factors exist as well.
  • creativesoul
    12k
    . I have yet to see a satisfying explanation for the conscious sensations of color, sound, etc.Marchesk

    What better reason to throw such empty notions and/or language use aside?

    :brow:
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    Colors and sounds are empty notions?
  • creativesoul
    12k
    ...conscious sensations of color, sound...Marchesk

    :smirk:
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    You don't shiver conscious sensations?
  • Luke
    2.6k
    What do you think the assumptions are that lead to the hard problem?Janus

    If everything is physical (physicalism), then how do we account for (i.e. categorise) the mental/experiential?

    Is not the primary idea that experience could not emerge from "brute matter"?Janus

    Experience could emerge from brute matter, but then it is not identical with brute matter, and is therefore not itself physical (matter).

    Why would that be any more of a problem than the idea that self-organizing life could not emerge from brute matter?Janus

    I take it you are using "emerge from" here to mean "evolve from", whereas the putative emergence of experience from matter occurs as a process of a (current) functioning body. Experience itself may have emerged/evolved as life evolved, but that's not the same use of the term associated with the "emergence" of experience/consciousness from the matter of a functioning body, which occurs concurrently.

    Perhaps it is our conceptions of what experience, life and brute matter are that is the problem. The fact that we cannot exhaustively explain how it happens should not be surprising; we cannot really exhaustively explain much of anything.Janus

    Should we just give up on these philosophical questions? Perhaps they are conceptual problems - if so, why not try and resolve them?
  • Luke
    2.6k
    And don't come along claiming that I disavow qualia and then use them; my beef with qualia is no more than that they are not needed, and that using them leads the discussion astrayBanno

    Isn't that a bit like saying you believe we have qualia, but we just can't discuss them; which is to say that they are ineffable?

    Rather than "hedg[ing] his bets", as Dennett posits, perhaps this is what Wittgenstein means when he says:

    304. “But you will surely admit that there is a difference between pain behaviour with pain and pain-behaviour without pain.” — Admit it? What greater difference could there be? — “And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a Nothing.” — Not at all. It’s not a Something, but not a Nothing either! The conclusion was only that a Nothing would render the same service as a Something about which nothing could be said." — Wittgenstein
  • creativesoul
    12k
    You don't shiver conscious sensations?Marchesk

    I have yet to see a satisfying explanation for the conscious sensations of color, sound, etc.Marchesk

    What conscious sensations?
  • Banno
    25.3k
    If you prefer; I don't see it making no nevermind. But yes, that is the sort of Wittgenstein that puts qualia out of business.
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    What conscious sensations?creativesoul

    The one's you're aware of.
  • Luke
    2.6k
    that is the sort of Wittgenstein that puts qualia out of business.Banno

    If that were the case then Wittgenstein would admit that there is no difference between between pain-behaviour with pain and pain-behaviour without pain. Instead, he says: "What greater difference could there be?"
  • Luke
    2.6k
    Because the pain is the qualia; what it feels like. Acknowledging that there is pain (qualia) associated with pain-behaviour is not putting it "out of business".
  • creativesoul
    12k


    Either you can explain what you're referring to when you use "conscious sensations" or you cannot. It's not my job to fill in your blanks. I do not use such language. I'm aware of "conscious sensations" as an utterly inadequate metacognitive notion borne of a gross understanding of thought and belief, and thus conscious experience.
  • Banno
    25.3k
    Because the pain is the qualia;Luke

    Is it? OK, then qualia are not ineffable, and we can talk about them.

    So, what's the next step? What do we infer?

    I made the claim:
    My objection to qualia is that in so far as they are subject to discussion they are just what we see, taste and feel; and so far as they are of philosophical interest, they are not available for discussion. A close approximation would be someone deciding to call their beetle in a box "Fred". The beetle still drops out of the conversation.Banno
    This seems to me to be in keeping with the Wittgenstein quote.
  • Luke
    2.6k
    We can talk about pain, just as we can talk about colour. But we can't say much about the nature of our pains or the way we see colours - the sensation itself - because we can't observe another person's sensations or intersubjectively compare them. That was my point about the inverted spectrum, and I take it that was Wittgenstein's point in the quote.
  • Banno
    25.3k


    Wittgenstein's point is not that we cannot talk about pain. Read the whole of ∮304. Better, read thru to ∮309 - the fly and the bottle.

    Pain is not a thing in the way a chair is. But our grammar misleads us into thinking that it is.
  • Luke
    2.6k
    I'm happy for you to provide an argument. All I see in those sections is W repeatedly stating that he does not want to deny that any "inner process" or mental process takes place.

    As I have previously quoted:

    307. “Aren’t you nevertheless a behaviourist in disguise? Aren’t you nevertheless basically saying that everything except human behaviour is a fiction?” — If I speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction. — Wittgenstein

    He is saying only that qualia do not enter into the language. He does not deny their existence:

    "The conclusion was only that a Nothing would render the same service as a Something [i.e. qualia] about which nothing could be said."
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