The fact that we cannot think of a physical model, is neither grounds to say qualia are non physical, nor that they are some kind of "illusion". — Mijin

I agree.

An illusion happens when something is mistaken for something else; the illusion of a magic trick, the illusion of movement in an optical illusion; it appears like one thing but is another.

The notion then is that qualia are an illusion in that they appear one way but are not actually like that. — Banno

How do you know? Isn't what you said prior to your present experience of what you said? Can't you only infer what you previously said since it happened prior to your present statement of what you previously said? — Harry Hindu

That's true. Which is one reason why people can be mistaken. But if your argument against the idea that we are not conscious of the causes of our consciousness is going to rely on a general doubt about the veracity of anything we experience, you really do have a contradiction on your hands. After all, I'm only rendering knowledge of the causes of our experience indirect. You're questioning the reliability of experience itself, which is going much further (too far imo) down the road. The reliability of experience has nothing to do with my earlier comment; it is the total absence of experience of certain events that underlies my comment.

I'm trying to apply the Principle of Charity by taking Frankish's arguments in their strongest form. Trying to understand what he's trying to say rather than dismissing it. So Banno, or anyone else, do you have a clear understanding of his distinction between qualia and experiences?

So ... anyone else, do you have a clear understanding of his distinction between qualia and experiences? — Daemon

Speaking for myself, no:

to the delight and justified exasperation of dualists everywhere. — bongo fury

Same with,

just sensations — Banno

And

the brain constructing images. — Mijin

Every time a neuroscientist says "neural representation" without clarifying it as readiness to play a social game of agreeing actual representations, a dualist gets more confused.

My inner world is soggy meat, and I live in the outer world which I call 'the world'. — unenlightened

:100:

That's true. Which is one reason why people can be mistaken. But if your argument against the idea that we are not conscious of the causes of our consciousness is going to rely on a general doubt about the veracity of anything we experience, you really do have a contradiction on your hands. After all, I'm only rendering knowledge of the causes of our experience indirect. You're questioning the reliability of experience itself, which is going much further (too far imo) down the road. The reliability of experience has nothing to do with my earlier comment; it is the total absence of experience of certain events that underlies my comment. — Kenosha Kid

That all depends on what you mean by "conscious", "experience" and "knowledge". If the accuracy of our knowledge is not affected by how direct or indirect the knowledge is, then what is the point of using those terms? I'm only questioning the reliability of the experience by taking what you have said and running with it. If you don't mean to say that the accuracy of our knowledge is affected by the indirect nature of it, then what are you actually saying when you say that our knowledge is "indirect"?

If the accuracy of our knowledge is not affected by how direct or indirect the knowledge is, then what is the point of using those terms? — Harry Hindu

The accuracy likely is affected, but for one thing it avoids going down wrong paths when looking for or describing something. The way people often talk about human reason and it's role, for instance, seems very wrong to me. There was a famous experiment a while ago that showed that neurological behaviour associated with motor responses fired before correlated decision-making processes in the prefrontal cortex. The subjects remember, from their limited but direct phenomenal experience, deciding to act, then acting, when in fact the action appeared to be unconsciously chosen and only consciously ratified -- or rationalised -- after the act. The narrative based on the first person viewpoint is wrong, and this is exceedingly common it seems.

This reminds me very much of Daniel Kahneman's System 1 / System 2 model of the brain and his tests of it. Problems that appear amenable to pattern-matching (the thing that makes it easier to add 5 or 9 to things than 7 or 8) but that pattern-matching would lead to the wrong answer for follow a similar pattern. Human subjects swear blind they worked out the answer, when in fact they seem to be *receiving* an answer and ratifying it. Badly. That is, System 2 (the so-called rational, algorithmic part of the brain associated with conscious decision-making) receives a putative answer from System 1 (the dumb but hard-working pattern-matching part of the brain that acts without conscious input).

There are all sorts of psychological effects that follow from these sorts of behaviours, some good, some terrible, and those effects can be exploited. It's beneficial to know how your mind operates, what mistakes it makes. For instance, the above suggests to me that the conscious mind is not adept at discerning "We should do this, right?" from "We did this FYI." Besides that, it's just interesting.

"the brain constructing images."
— Mijin

Every time a neuroscientist says "neural representation" without clarifying it as readiness to play a social game of agreeing actual representations, a dualist gets more confused. — bongo fury

You are quoting me from a different thread, and I think the context is important here (I was talking about optical illusions).

I think the context is important here — Mijin

Sure. And accessible to the interested reader via the quotation link. As with quotations within a thread. If you wish not to be quoted across threads, no problem. :ok:

Same with, — bongo fury

As in, "no", or "to the delight and justified exasperation of dualists everywhere"?

But re-introducing Goodman is a good move.

Qualia aren't about soul/mind/body anymore, they're about distribution of quantum processes within nature and the body, something introspective thought might shed light on. — Enrique

Should qualify this, I think a place has to be set aside for theorizing unconscious motivation as in psychoanalysis, so a domain of mind exists beyond nature, body and first person thought.

It is interesting that there is so little critique of @Enrique's overreach by the supporters of qualia.

Again, I will cite it as an example of the sort of misconception that talk of qualia engenders.

As in, "no", or "to the delight and justified exasperation of dualists everywhere"? — Banno

Both, as in, I think I see how "sensations" (like also images and experiences and representations) is seen as a euphemism for "qualia".

Goodman — Banno

Don't get me started, but I love how you could (I probably did) read Languages of Art without forming the vaguest suspicion that the philosophy behind it was in the least bit austere.

Not that qualia do not exist, but that what we infer from their existence is an illusion. This also seems consistent with what Dennett says: it's not that qualia -- which are familiar, everyday phenomena -- do not exist, but that they are not what we think about them. — Kenosha Kid

Are you able to say what the Illusionists believe we infer from the existence of qualia, and/or what we think about them, Kid?

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. — Banno

I could also live happily without (the concept of) qualia, we could just say "conscious experiences" instead. But are they available for discussion, in your view?

Now, it's true that the neurons themselves are dedicated structures in the sense that auditory neurons are sensitive to sound and not light and vice versa for ocular nerves. However, this doesn't solve the problem of how the two perceptions, sound and light, are differentiated because both ultimately end up as action potentials. — TheMadFool

I'm not a neuroscientist but I would suggest that the differentiation takes place during processing in the different areas of the brain. I vaguely remember reading that synesthesia results from signals going to the wrong location, auditory signals reaching visual processing areas for example, so that sounds result in the perception of colours.

There was a famous experiment a while ago that showed that neurological behaviour associated with motor responses fired before correlated decision-making processes in the prefrontal cortex. — Kenosha Kid

That sounds like Libet: there's still a lot of controversy about these experiments, their findings, their interpretation.

Every time a neuroscientist says "neural representation" without clarifying it as readiness to play a social game of agreeing actual representations, a dualist gets more confused. — bongo fury

I'm not really following Bongo.

But are they available for discussion, in your view? — Daemon

They seem to me either irrelevant or just colours and tastes and so on.

That sounds like Libet: there's still a lot of controversy about these experiments, their findings, their interpretation. — Daemon

Correct. Libet’s experiment is easily debunked. We know that our decisions are often taken after some deliberation, that we commit to a choice after contemplating that choice, which can make our decisions somewhat predictable (with a better performance than just by chance), as in Libet’s experiment, but we also know that we can take decisions in less than a second (eg when driving, or playing blitz chess) so there’s no possible way to reliably predict such decisions.

That sounds like Libet: there's still a lot of controversy about these experiments, their findings, their interpretation. — Daemon

There have been lots, but I was thinking of Fried.

Libet’s experiment is easily debunked. We know that our decisions are often taken after some deliberation, that we commit to a choice after contemplating that choice, which can make our decisions somewhat predictable (with a better performance than just by chance), as in Libet’s experiment, but we also know that we can take decisions in less than a second (eg when driving, or playing blitz chess) so there’s no possible way to reliably predict such decisions. — Olivier5

Your argument is circular. You're assuming conscious decision-making in precisely the sorts of behaviours (e.g. split-second decisions when driving) that are suggested to be decided unconsciously.

I'm not really following Bongo. — Daemon

Is there perhaps a missing comma, or is that a general announcement?

I'm a light user of commas. I was wondering if you were saying something interesting.

Your argument is circular. You're assuming conscious decision-making in precisely the sorts of behaviours (e.g. split-second decisions when driving) that are suggested to be decided unconsciously. — Kenosha Kid

Not really. I’m not talking of conscious vs. unconscious here, but of predictable in advance vs. unpredictable. Libet’s experiment was testing the ability of a computer coupled with an MRI system to predict the choices made by folks in the MRI, opting between a red and a green button to press (with no consequence to the choice, no punishment or reward, which simplifies the problem quite a lot). Beside pressing one of two buttons, the ‘guinea pigs’ were also asked to note the moment when they felt they took the decision. If memory serves, the finding was that the computer, after some training, could predict the folks choice something like 5 seconds before the tested person was conscious of her choice. The interpretation given by Libet et al. was that choices are made unconsciously in advance of them becoming conscious, ie that consciousness is not an active function in human choice making.

My point was that there is a difference between leaning towards pushing the red button and committing to that choice. We know that our decisions are often taken after some deliberation, that we commit to a choice after contemplating that choice, which explains how Libet’s apparatus could predict some of those choices in a highly simplified and artificial context with a lot of time for deliberation.

But this apparatus would not work in a real life scenario where a decision has typically some stake in it, eg in a chess game that one wants to win or while driving a car; and in a context where a decision has to be taken very quickly, like under one second, eg in blitz chess or to avoid an incoming obstacle while driving. In those cases the decision cannot logically be taken 5 seconds in advance, because by then the obstacle wasn’t seen yet or the opponent hadn’t made his move yet. There was not yet a decision to make, 5 seconds ago and there is no time to quietly deliberate, so Libet’s machine won’t work. Another difference is that the stake involves emotions (fear for instance) which modify the way the brain operates. So from the moment I become conscious of the wild boar crossing the road in front on my car, my brain enters a different state, a different modus operandi than before I noticed the wild boar. How would a computer be able to predict that? Finally, another crucial difference is that the options available are much more numerous than in the case of Libet’s experiment (2), and they are not given, they are to be invented or imagined by the person before any choice can be made between them. Like I can veer the car (left or right), or brake, or any combination of these two, or do nothing if I want to kill that boar. In chess, the number of theoretical options is often very large.

For all these reasons, It is highly dubious that Libet’s apparatus could predict any real-life choice, because in my view it picks up clues from our deliberation that sometimes prepares decision making. When the deliberation time is reduced, when the alternatives have to be invented or imagined prior to deliberation, or when emotions systemically affect deliberations in sudden ways, I predict that no computer can predict my choices in advance.

The accuracy likely is affected, but for one thing it avoids going down wrong paths when looking for or describing something. The way people often talk about human reason and it's role, for instance, seems very wrong to me. There was a famous experiment a while ago that showed that neurological behaviour associated with motor responses fired before correlated decision-making processes in the prefrontal cortex. The subjects remember, from their limited but direct phenomenal experience, deciding to act, then acting, when in fact the action appeared to be unconsciously chosen and only consciously ratified -- or rationalised -- after the act. The narrative based on the first person viewpoint is wrong, and this is exceedingly common it seems.

This reminds me very much of Daniel Kahneman's System 1 / System 2 model of the brain and his tests of it. Problems that appear amenable to pattern-matching (the thing that makes it easier to add 5 or 9 to things than 7 or 8) but that pattern-matching would lead to the wrong answer for follow a similar pattern. Human subjects swear blind they worked out the answer, when in fact they seem to be *receiving* an answer and ratifying it. Badly. That is, System 2 (the so-called rational, algorithmic part of the brain associated with conscious decision-making) receives a putative answer from System 1 (the dumb but hard-working pattern-matching part of the brain that acts without conscious input).

There are all sorts of psychological effects that follow from these sorts of behaviours, some good, some terrible, and those effects can be exploited. It's beneficial to know how your mind operates, what mistakes it makes. For instance, the above suggests to me that the conscious mind is not adept at discerning "We should do this, right?" from "We did this FYI." Besides that, it's just interesting. — Kenosha Kid

This begs the question then, what use is personal phenomenal experience in an evolutionary "survival of the genes" sense? This seems more like evidence of a Cartesian theatre where the phenomenal experience is just along for the show - that there is no top-down, or fault-tolerant, processing.

That could mean different things. For one, it could be that consciousness is simply a mental model of attention. See the Attention-schema theory of consciousness:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory

What would it look like for someone to change their mind? And what about those instinctive urges that only seem to be inhibited by conscious effort? It seems like consciousness really evolved to inhibit certain instinctual behaviors within social environments. It also seems important when learning new skills. After the skill is acquired you don't have to focus conscious effort in performing it - like walking and riding a bike.

An interesting thesis. So for your first port of call I recommend the Manchester undergrad course

https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/2021/00550/bsc-cognitive-neuroscience-and-psychology/

Then there's some really good masters work there, but also at UCL

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/study/masters/msc-cognitive-neuroscience

The most exiting place to do doctoral and post doc work is the lab at Sussex

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/research/centres/sussex-neuroscience/research/consciousness

Hopefully they'll have some research opportunities for you.

When you've finished all that, it would be great if you could report back on your findings, in the meantime...perhaps just look up some actual source material before regaling us with how you 'reckon' the brain works?

Err... can you narrow down your query? If you have a particular paper or experiment — philosophically relevant — that you want to point me to, I’d be glad to look at it and try and explain it to you.

Talk of qualia muddies the water. Take something simple, like the pain of stubbing a toe. How does the feeling of pain emerge from non-thinking/feeling stuff? Science has no answer. Science has had no answer for a long long time. I expect science to continue to flounder.

I ask the people who still hold out hope that science will explain consciousness: what do you base that hope on?

How does the feeling of pain emerge from non-thinking/feeling stuff? — RogueAI

Your position is easier to resolve than Oliver's.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128005385/neuroscience-of-pain-stress-and-emotion

Talk of qualia muddies the water. Take something simple, like the pain of stubbing a toe. How does the feeling of pain emerge from non-thinking/feeling stuff? Science has no answer. Science has had no answer for a long long time. I expect science to continue to flounder. — RogueAI

The pain is to some degree quantum superposition, and that is what "qualia" can refer to. The what it is like is a property of physical matter (maybe a quantum field phenomenon?), as unintuitive as it seems to our wiring mechanism corrupted brains. The matter brains are composed of is intrinsically thinking/feeling stuff, just like it has a shape, size and texture. There are more than ten thousand kinds of neurons in the human brain and their electric fields interacting with different combinations of glial cells, probably explaining much of the variety.

I ask the people who still hold out hope that science will explain consciousness: what do you base that hope on? — RogueAI

On the astonishing and accelerating progress we have recently made in neuroscience. As we're able to see and understand more and more my hope is that somebody will see something that points the way to the mechanism causing consciousness.