Then I think you've either had little experience of the scientific community in my field or you've misunderstood my position. It's quite the most common view among my colleagues and those whose work I generally follow. — Isaac
That color and pain are models? — Marchesk
In neuroscience though, nobody thinks people are p-zombies. That's not up for debate. — frank
Again, for emphasis. — frank
The hidden state of some part of the external world. — Isaac
Do you agree with these things?
(1) The model's state is informative of the hidden state, but underdetermined by the hidden state. — fdrake
(2) The model's state is directly causally connected with the hidden state but underdetermined by it. Underdetermined because there're priors and task parameters. — fdrake
When a hypothetical philosophical someone says "I see the apple", they're utilising the causal connection between their perceptual system and the apple. Do you believe they're seeing "apple models" or do you believe they're seeing what the apple models are modelling in the manner they are modelled (roughly, the apple)? — fdrake
↪fdrake An alternative one could take is that the model puts one in direct access with the hidden state. Not sure how tenable that is, but if you wanted to ground scientific discovery in direct perception, that's a way to do it. — Marchesk
Yes, but less so. I don't necessarily see any reason why a model might no become disconnected from the causal state which at one time formed it, I don't think there's anything neurologically preventing that. — Isaac
The apple. There's nothing more that an apple is than the publicly agreed model. It's not that there's no apple, it's that that's what 'seeing an apple is'. — Isaac
Are you throwing the hidden states into the public agreed model there? — fdrake
For me at least, a perceptual system is direct when there are no intermediaries between some part of it and hidden states. — fdrake
Yeah, I think you'd have to. We can't escape this and look at it from a position where I'm outside of my modelling, but I don't see that as a problem (I know some people do). I'm ultimately a pragmatist and it seems to work. — Isaac
Ah, so you're another one for whom 'why?' apparently means something completely different with regards to consciousness than it does in every other field of inquiry. — Isaac
What use is just saying that the way things seem to you right now is completely impervious to any evidence to the contrary? — Isaac
None of which demonstrates that it does so directly (ie, that you are experiencing the stimuli and not your culturally-embedded response to the stimuli). — Isaac
Yes. That the brain creates models to predict the outcome of the body's interaction with hidden states of the exterior environment. That these models are heavily socially mediated (factors like language and culture). — Isaac
Conscious experience of red cups is what was in need of explanation... not an explanation of an explanation. — creativesoul
Yes. That the brain creates models to predict the outcome of the body's interaction with hidden states of the exterior environment. That these models are heavily socially mediated (factors like language and culture).
— Isaac
Ok so my experience is largely shaped by my language and culture. First off, no one is disagreeing (at least I'm not). Secondly, how does this undermine the claim that there is a phenomenological layer? It doesn't. — khaled
So would what constitutes a 'perceptual system' have parameters other than the edge of their Markov blanket? I mean such that we're not simply making the above true by definition? — Isaac
Okay yeah, but it's not an experience of a world outside the body, so ...
One could say the brain is generating a very immersive (but weird) VR-like experience when dreaming. — Marchesk
And your position is that qualia exist (are a coherent ontological commitment), so saying their existence is 'obvious' is exactly the same as saying that your position is obvious. It's no different to arguing that 'Elan Vitale' is obvious, or that 'Aether' is obvious. — Isaac
It doesn't matter what weird expression you use, they all end up empty. "What it's like...", "the way it seems...", "how it feels"...none of these expressions have any coherent meaning beyond behaviours and interoception of physiological states. There's nothing they describe that the aforementioned don't. — Isaac
There's no need to introduce an artificial "phenomenal layer" to account for that difference.
— Andrew M
I keep hearing this argument by all the Quiners here. I want to instead ask, what's the problem with introducing that layer anyways, even if we don't need to (not that I'm convinced of that)? What are y'all afraid might happen? What confusion have you been trying to avoid? — khaled
Conscious experience of red cups is what was in need of explanation... not an explanation of an explanation.
— creativesoul
What? Idk what you're trying to say here. — khaled
The connection between this "internal" experience and the "external" world is consequently mysterious. — Andrew M
...spooky emergentism. — Marchesk
Do you think the following are true:
(1) Environmental hidden states underdetermine perceptual feature formation.
(2) Bodily hidden states underdetermine perceptual feature formation.
(3) Task parameters underdetermine perceptual feature formation.
(4) Priors underdetermine perceptual feature formation.
? — fdrake
If you make the environmental hidden states a part of the process of perceptual feature formation, you lose the ability to elicit underdetermined behaviours from them based on models; to be surprised by them at all. Since they may become fully causally, not just possibly informationally and partially causally, determined by the process of perceptual feature formation. How things look in public becomes what they are. — fdrake
I think if you put the hidden states into the process of perceptual feature formation, it changes part of their causal relationship with perceptual feature formation. — fdrake
I think the perceptual system would not be direct if the process of perceptual feature formation didn't have direct causal contact to some hidden states. Isn't that the Cartesian theatre metaphor? We see "models" or perceive "aspects of aggregated sense data", rather than perception being a modelling relation. In those formulations, the models or the sense data are in direct causal contact with the environment, and all perception is of those things which are in direct causal contact with the environment. Two steps removed at all times (Cartesian Theatre) vs One step removed at some times (direct realism). — fdrake
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