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.
This sounds like panpsychism. The matter that makes up the brain is intrinsically thinking/feeling stuff? I assume you mean neurons? What about the matter what makes up the neurons? Is it thinking/feeling too? — RogueAI
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. — Olivier5
You are confusing the easy problem (neural correlates of mental states) with the Hard Problem (how does non-conscious stuff produce conscious experience). Chalmer's paper is a great place to start. This is also good: https://iep.utm.edu/hard-con/ — RogueAI
How do you know that the work I've linked doesn't tell you how non-conscious stuff produces conscious experience?
"Look, the means by which this non-conscious stuff produces consciousness must, if it exists, be some process or mechanism that is a property of this non-conscious suff. It just seems really odd to me that you'd claim interest in such a mechanism and then refuse a study of the exact non-conscious stuff you would need to know about in order to ascertain if the production of consciousness was among their feasible properties."
Because the Hard Problem hasn't been solved. Ergo, the book you linked doesn't solve it. — RogueAI
I don't think neuroscience is going to solve the hard problem. The idea that you can mix non-conscious stuff around in a certain way and add some electricity to it and get consciousness from it is magical thinking. — RogueAI
Since we know consciousness exists — RogueAI
we should doubt the non-conscious stuff exists. We have no evidence that it does anyway. Why assume it exists? — RogueAI
Since we know consciousness exists
— RogueAI
We do?
If everything is physical (physicalism), then how do we account for (i.e. categorise) the mental/experiential? — Luke
Experience could emerge from brute matter, but then it is not identical with brute matter, and is therefore not itself physical (matter). — Luke
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. — Luke
Should we just give up on these philosophical questions? Perhaps they are conceptual problems - if so, why not try and resolve them? — Luke
Perhaps they have been dissolved to the satisfaction of some.Whether or not someone thinks they have been dissolved seems to be a function of the person's presuppositions, which is back to what I have been saying. — Janus
But our presuppositions are based on what we believe to be the facts, so its a matter of how much we are willing to pool into a common discourse. — Enrique
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. — Enrique
These are facts/presuppositions we can share, and an adequate foundation for research. — Enrique
Variations of the test have been performed for decades now as criticism of this form of yes-buttery is ongoing, all verifying the original result. — Kenosha Kid
I seriously doubt it. — Olivier5
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 — Daemon
↪Daemon
If we're making astonishing progress, shouldn't somebody have seen something that points the way to a mechanism by now? What's your timeframe on how long we should tolerate the lack of progress on the mind/body problem before we start questioning fundamental assumptions? — RogueAI
This begs the question then, what use is personal phenomenal experience in an evolutionary "survival of the genes" sense? — Harry Hindu
What would it look like for someone to change their mind? — Harry Hindu
I could equally well say that what we believe to be the facts is based on our presuppositions. As to "how much we are willing to pool into a common discourse", if what you are saying is based on presuppositions I don't share, don't accept, then "common discourse" may thus be limited. In the worst case we will be talking past one another, like ships passing in the darkest night. So, "a whole new language game" would need to be based on a sufficient commonality of presupposition — Janus
Most biochemical reactions happen too fast to be accounted for without near instantaneous motion such as in entanglement. — Enrique
None of this explains why have a different experience of my raw sensory input with memory, motivation, etc. than you have of my raw sensory input with memory, motivation. From my view, I don't experience neurons. I experience colors, shapes and sounds of the world. From your view, you experience neurons in the format of colors and shapes. How can on one end you point to a visual of neurons, while I point to an experience of a sound.Well, what use is it in day-to-day life? Isaac, Banno et al would argue that there isn't a meaningful separate phenomenal experience, i.e. it isn't useful at all even if it exists. The transformations and augmentations of raw sensory input with memory, motivation, etc., are sufficient to account for consciousness. And I agree to an extent. In my view, when we talk about qualia, we're talking about these transformations and augmentations, at least as available to access consciousness (which is all we can report on). The usefulness might be summed up as: it is quicker and easier to work with 'lion' than it is to work with an unadorned granular image. — Kenosha Kid
This assumes that consciousness only exists in one part of the brain. How do you know that there are not other consciousnesses in other parts of the brain making those decisions?That's probably not one thing. I've touched on an example from Kahneman's work earlier. There are decisions we make that are not consciously made, that is we are not conscious of making them in the way we do, but rather, once those decisions are made unconsciously, they are presented to consciousness as if for ratification in such a way that we'll swear blind we did make them consciously. (NB: Kahneman doesn't speak in terms of unconscious and conscious decision making but in terms of System 1 (fast, e.g. pattern-matching) and System 2 (slow, algorithmic). But the implication is there.) Consciously we can change our minds, i.e. System 2 will come up with a different answer. — Kenosha Kid
Everything is quantum mechanical at magnification levels great enough to reach that deep, but the evidence that those physical processes have any bearing whatsoever on greater issues that we like to discuss are very difficult if not impossible to verify. The gaps between physical levels in terms of speed and range are very wide, and it may not be possible to leap past intermediate levels. — magritte
↪Daemon
What progress? The theories about how matter produces consciousness are highly speculative, all over the map, and there's nothing close to a consensus around any of them — RogueAI
I found this a very interesting read:
https://www.academia.edu/42985813/The_Idea_of_the_Brain_A_History_By_Matthew_Cobb
Our latest theories allow us to create artificial memories in the mind of a mouse. Very recently the theories about memory were highly speculative and all over the map, and now we understand the mechanism (for one kind of memory). I think new knowledge like this will lead to the discovery of the mechanisms underlying conscious experience.
I have a family member working in this field and I'm hoping that he will be the one to make the breakthrough. I reckon people his age can expect to live to at least 120 and to be active at least into their 80s. So I'm confident that within another 40 or so years I can give you an answer.
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