Minds must be able to do something special, have some sort of value-added that living creatures without it are necessarily lacking. — Olivier5

Just to try and bring it back to within the bounds of the conversation about Dennett and materialist theories of mind, I'll refer to Thomas Nagel's op summarising the main point of his book Mind and Cosmos:

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of [the natural] universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory.

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-cosmos/

Whereas, Dennett and those like him want to dispute the reality of subject-hood altogether, or to say it is a byproduct or an illusion.

My hypothesis is that the mind is simply the pilot in the creature. It follows that the greater the freedom of movement of the creature, the greater the need for a mind. A plant moves less than an animal, and has far less need for a mind than an animal. A vegetative animal (e.g. a corral remaining in the same place, or any bivalve mollusk attached to its rock) has less need for a mind than an octopus. — Olivier5

I recognize ontological discontinuities between different kinds of beings - mineral, vegetative, animal, human - which is of course completely rejected by modern philosophy, in fact rejection of it is one of the hallmarks of modernity. But the appearance of living organisms in the cosmos, is also the appearance of horizons of being that are not manifest in the inorganic domain. We ourselves have a pivotal role in 'realising' the nature of the cosmos, because in h. sapiens, the Universe has evolved to a state where it can know itself (which is an idea implicit in some forms of ancient philosophy i.e. stoicism, hermeticism.)

Some folk hereabouts seem to think that we cannot acquire knowledge of our own conscious experience, simply because we must use it as a means for doing so. — creativesoul

I presume that would include myself. Let me clarify it again. Obviously I can 'know my own mind', and people can do that to a greater or lesser extent. Donald Trump exhibits a pathological lack of self-knowledge, whereas the wise person - Socrates as an archetype of that - is self-aware, 'knows him/herself'.

But none of that mitigates against the issue of scientific 'objectification' of the mind. The reason eliminativism wants to eliminate the mind (or consciousness) from their reckoning, is precisely because it can't be made an object of scientific analysis. It is not amongst the possible objects for the natural sciences.

The most cogent and succinct criticism of that view in the philosophical literature is, in my opinion, and based on secondary sources, Husserl's critique of naturalism.

Naturalism is the thesis that everything belongs to the world of nature and can be studied by the methods appropriate to studying that world (that is, the methods of the natural sciences). Husserl argued that the study of consciousness must actually be very different from the study of nature. For him, phenomenology does not proceed from the collection of large amounts of data and to a general theory beyond the data itself, as in the scientific method of induction. Rather, it aims to look at particular examples without theoretical presuppositions (such as the phenomena of intentionality, of love, of two hands touching each other, and so forth), before then discerning what is essential and necessary to these experiences. — IEP

(This is then the subject of all of the massive literature around epoche, suspension of judgement, bracketing, and so on, which I haven't studied in depth.)

[Naturalism] sees only nature, and primarily physical nature. Whatever is is either itself physical, belonging to the unified totality of physical nature, or it is in fact psychical, but then merely as a variable dependent on the physical, at best a secondary “parallel accomplishment”. "Whatever is" belongs to psychophysical nature, which is to say that it is univocally determined by rigid laws.

(Which are ultimately those of physics.)

What is taken for granted in natural thinking is the possibility of cognition. Constantly busy producing results, advancing from discovery to discovery in newer and newer branches of science, natural thinking finds no occasion to raise the question of the possibility of cognition as such… Cognition is a fact in nature.

Both from Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, ed. Dermot Moran.

So I went back and listened to Anil Seth's podcast on Philosphy Bites. He contrasts the real problem of consciousness with the hard problem. He explains that the real problem is one of mapping all the correlations between brain processes and phenomenology as a way forward to possibly explaining consciousness someday. And when they do cover the statistical inference of perception, conscious experience is still the end result of that which needs to be explained.

So although Anil is not pessimistic like Chalmers or McGinn about the problem being truly hard, he does not dismiss phenomonlogy by replacing with with neurological or statistical terms, as you do. Instead, he says we are conscious and it is strongly correlated with brain activity, so let's continue investigating the link between the two and see where that leads.

It lingers in the discomfort we might feel when we affirm phenomenal consciousness and then realize what that means about the universe. — frank

What does it mean, on your view?

IOW, yes, the concept of qualia is partly rooted in Descartes, but so is the notion that there is no qualia.

What i think we're looking for is some kind of synthesis. — frank

Maybe. Or even a dissolving of the dichotomy.

Before Descartes many philosophers did not approach the universe with a mental-physical dichotomy in mind. In particular, they had a much narrower picture of the mental domain, and a broader, more differentiated picture of the rest of the universe. Mental capacities were associated with what they called intellect: the ability to understand universal principles and make judgments of the sort we express in language. Descartes expanded the definition of the mental domain to include things that philosophers had previously not considered mental at all such as the experience of pain. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) and his medieval followers, for instance, took pain, perception, action, and related phenomena to be neither mental nor physical in Descartes' sense, and they did not take the physical universe to be a vast, undifferentiated sea of physical material. The universe instead consisted of physical materials that were structured or organized in various ways, and although living things were made out of the same materials as everything else, those materials were structured or organized in ways that conferred on them capacities not had by inanimate objects. These include capacities that could be described and explained using a mental vocabulary, but also capacities that could be described and explained using a nonmental vocabulary - not the vocabulary of fundamental physics, but a vocabulary that occupied a position between fundamental physics and psychological discourse. — Philosophy of Mind: A Comprehensive Introduction, p24 - William Jaworski

I submit for your esteemed consideration, we cannot use reason to acquire knowledge of consciousness, because reason invented it.

In order for that to be true, invention must not be a conscious experience and/or process.

I discussed this previously here. Cartesian dualism has no practical application in everyday life or in scientific inquiry. Concepts like qualia, p-zombies and the hard problem are purely philosophical inventions that derive from Cartesian dualism.
— Andrew M

That's not entirely true, since ancient skepticism and idealism proposed similar issues based on the problem of perception. — Marchesk

Certainly the antecedents for Cartesian dualism can be found in ancient thinking. As it happens, the textbook I quoted earlier links substance dualism with Plato.

Substance dualism has a venerable history. It was endorsed in the ancient world by the Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BCE) and his followers, and by Neoplatonists during the middle ages. From the seventeenth century until the twentieth, moreover, it was probably the most popular mind-body theory. — Philosophy of Mind: A Comprehensive Introduction, p35 - William Jaworski

But note that Descartes posited a conception of mind which included not just the intellect, as with Plato, but also pain and perception (see the above quote to Frank). So it lends itself to a concept of qualia that Plato's idealism doesn't (who regarded the entire natural world as dependent on Ideas, or Forms).

Yes. Erring on the side of neither dispenses with the inherently inadequate dichotomies altogether. — creativesoul

:up:

I think the divisions themselves, as understood in their Cartesian sense, are misleading and unnecessary. They don't arise in normal communication
— Andrew M

However, I'm hesitant if all experience has internal and external components, physical and non physical components; something to be connected and a creature capable of making connections, where the connections are the neither part but that which is being connected is one or the other(or both in the case of metacognitive endeavors).

So, while the subjective/objective dichotomy can be thrown out simply by granting subjectivism in it's entirety, I'm wondering about whether or not the internal/external and physical/non physical dichotomies can be equally dispensed with. — creativesoul

Supposing experience to have internal and external components still implies the Cartesian theater metaphor. Say you were playing a game of football where you scored a goal. Did this involve internal thinking and external kicking? Or did it involve kicking the ball intelligently and purposefully (as opposed to unthinkingly and aimlessly)? The latter description doesn't depend on an internal/external division. It instead applies everyday predicates to particular types of entities as appropriate (in this case, intelligent and purposeful behavior to you - or, where warranted, random and aimless behavior).

Also we can describe the football game in physical terms (say, in terms of the energy expended by the players or the distance they travelled), or in purposeful terms (say, in terms of who won the game). But those descriptions don't imply physical and non-physical components, or physical and non-physical activity. We simply predicate entities in particular ways depending on the kind of entities they are, whether they be humans or inanimate objects.

So the model is of entities interacting in a relational sense, rather than a model where the world is divided in a physical/mental sense.

The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

A prima facie example of a problem created by language use. The above basically says that...

The subjective essence of conscious experience equals and/or amounts to "how 'it' is" from the point of view of conscious experience's subject.

:brow:

Conscious experience is not the sort of thing that has the uniqueness of individual points of view as it's subject unless it is a conscious experience of talking in such terms.

Furthermore...

What noun does the pronoun "it" replace in the last part above, particularly the last two instances of it's use? What does the pronoun refer to? What singular entity does that pronoun pick out to the exclusion of all else?

But note that Descartes posited a conception of mind which included not just the intellect, as with Plato, but also pain and perception (see the above quote to Frank). — Andrew M

Added to which, in Descartes there is the tendency to objectify the mind. 'Res cogitans' means 'thinking thing'. It was from that, that the self-contradictory concept of 'thinking substance' developed. Whereas pre-Cartesian philosophy didn't conceive of it in those terms.

BTW- excellent passage from Phil. of Mind. :up:

A prima facie example of a problem created by language use. — creativesoul

I see you're commenting on the text I quoted above from Thomas Nagel. (Would help the other readers if you made that attribution.) It's not 'a problem created by language use'. He's spelling out why the objective sciences are necessarily incomplete in principle, due to the omission of the subjective from their methodology, at the outset, as part of the terms of their formation. Nagel has written a lot on this, including the essay that made him famous, 'What is it like to be a bat?'

What does the pronoun ('it') refer to? — creativesoul

In context: "There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it...'

'It', here, is 'an experience'. He saying, you can give a neurophysiological account of an experience (e.g. 'pain is the firing of c-fibers') but the experience of pain is much more than a descriptive account of the physiology of it.

I don't understand what is obscure or difficult about this idea.

...but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all....

...What noun does the pronoun "it" replace in the last part above, particularly the last two instances of it's use? What does the pronoun refer to? What singular entity does that pronoun pick out to the exclusion of all else? — creativesoul

are you trying to make a point by repeating yourself?

Looking for an answer to the questions posed... that's all.

I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.

What evidence do you have that that's what you did? You learnt to use 'red' at, what, two, three? Are you suggesting you have a clear memory of the method you used? — Isaac


Be reasonable. What use is it asking the question if the reply was going to be: Actually, you don't remember. — khaled

Because your own ad hoc, single person sample is next to useless as a description of how people learn to use terms. I thought you might have, you know, read some actual research before just randomly deciding how the cognitive development of language works, which you might be able to point me to, failing that some uniquely clear memory to work with, As it turns out, it's just how you 'reckon' it probably works based on the five minutes thought you gave it just now. There's masses and masses of research time gone into trying to figure this stuff out, you know. I know my tone can sometimes get a bit short, but can you not see how frustrating it is to be in a position where it might take years of work and ruthless scrutiny from peers to get to a point where I could publish a paper just on one small aspect of how our mind works only to have a discussion touching on those facts dominated by a load of guesswork about it from an armchair after not even having read the results of such investigations let alone bothered to carry any out.

Basic algebra tells you that X can take on any value including Y or Z. Point is that it seemed like something. I later call it "red" or "pain" or whatever. — khaled

No. I'm arguing here about the privacy and accesibility aspects. That requires that when you say it seems like X you're right - ie it could not be the alternatives Y and Z.

I'm trying to argue that they are not as you, seconds later, think they were. — Isaac


Agreed. — khaled

Right. So your account of the fact that it 'felt like X' is no more accurate than my neurological account of how it probably felt. We're both guessing how it felt from evidence - mine neurological (statistical likelihoods), your is inferential (traces of working memory re-firing of neurons). Neither have good access, neither have private access.

As far as I can tell, the working memory and sensory memory are the source of experiences. As in if they stopped funcitoning, you wouldn't have any experiences at all. What you're saying here is that I had the experience Y first which was then altered to a different experience X due to built in inaccuracies. That doesn't make sense, what is this experience Y? All I ever see is the experience X. There is no "more accurate" experience Y that preceded it. — khaled

Which is it, the working memory or the sensory memory. It can't be both, they'd deliver contradictory experiences?

Again, equivocation on 'experience' here is causing problems. If you're saying that the working memory is the 'source' of experience - ie it generates, but does not constitute experience - then that's a whole different discussion than the one we're having about perception, which involves considerably more brain regions than signal to the working memory. It would help if you clarified what model of consciousness you were working from.

If I am measuring something and it turns out to be 5cm you cannot make the claim "Actually, you made a more accurate measurement which was then changed to 5cm +- 0.1cm due to the built in inaccuracy of the ruler". — khaled

Yes I can, if I've got good evidence that that's what's happening. Why would I not?

Conscious experience is invoked in AI, physicalism, the limits of knowledge... — Isaac


Can't AI also have a certain experience then reach for the word "red" to describe it? — khaled

Yes, I think it can. I was pointing out here that theories about consciousness matter - in opposition to your comment about 'experience' just being shorthand for this. If it is then AI is definitely conscious because it can reach fr the word 'red' in response to some state of it's neural network. Yet there's intense debate about whether AI is conscious or could ever be. So this equivocation isn't helping. It' not the case that 'qualia' is just shorthand for experience which is just shorthand for this correlation between mental state and tendencies to respond (like reaching for the word 'red').

'Experience' is being used to refer to some ineffable, private, introspectively accessible concept when it come to AI, p-zombies, etc. Then when pushed by things like Dennett's intuition pumps and the evidence from neuroscience, you retreat to just "whatever you just described - that's what we mean by 'qualia'". But then the questions drop away. Ai is already conscious, p-zombies are impossible, panpsychism is wrong, and physicalism is fine - job done.

At no point do I have a 'feeling of a colour' which I then select the name for from some internal pantone chart. — Isaac


But you said that you experience something, then reach for the word "red" to describe it. I am asking how we can compare these "somethings". — khaled

Reaching for the word 'red' is part of the experience. As @creativesoul has pointed out experience is a constant process, not a series of discreet packages.

You'll have to quote him (or we'll just agree to differ), it's not the impression I get from either that podcast, nor his other lectures, nor his papers.

I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you. — Wayfarer

Sigh...

That requires that when you say it seems like X you're right - ie it could not be the alternatives Y and Z. — Isaac

That is true by the definition of "experience" that I am using. If you are asking about the experience in the moment, that is, by definition, exactly what it seems and therefore I am right about it. When asking about what it seemed like I give that I am not infallable there.

I thought you might have, you know, read some actual research before just randomly deciding how the cognitive development of language works — Isaac

You wanted me to provide you with research about the cognitive development of language? That's now how I read your question at all. If that's the case you probably already know the answer considering you work in the field. When someone asks "How do I learn a programming language" I would think they're not asking for research about cognitive development of language but rather some practical advice such as "Buy this book" or "Do these practise problems". I thought your question was in a similar vein, so I told you how I learn new words.

We're both guessing how it felt from evidence - mine neurological (statistical likelihoods), your is inferential (traces of working memory re-firing of neurons). Neither have good access, neither have private access. — Isaac

I think that "neurological guessing of how it felt" makes no sense. You can guess general aspects, like for example that I was afraid at time t1 (and even that is difficult) but you can't guess what fear feels like from a first person view. This "what fear feels like" is qualia.

Yes I can, if I've got good evidence that that's what's happening. Why would I not? — Isaac

The bit you can't make is:

Actually, you made a more accurate measurement which was then changed to — khaled

Because that makes no sense. There was no "more accurate measurement" which the ruler ruined. All we have is the 5cm +- 0.1 measurement. In the same way there was no "more accurate experience" which was then morphed by built in inaccuracies, we just have this one experience of what's going on right now.

p-zombies are impossible — Isaac

Agreed.

panpsychism is wrong, and physicalism is fine — Isaac

Don't see how either of those follow.

If it is then AI is definitely conscious because it can reach fr the word 'red' in response to some state of it's neural network. — Isaac

That doesn't follow exactly. An AI's "neural network" is hardly similar to a human's as far as I know. But besides that, I do think that conscious AI is eventually possible.

...He saying, you can give a neurophysiological account of an experience (e.g. 'pain is the firing of c-fibers') but the experience of pain is much more than a descriptive account of the physiology of it.

I don't understand what is obscure or difficult about this idea. — Wayfarer

I was not objecting to that. I agree with that.

Michel Bitbol. He has some very interesting and relevant insights into this issue - see his paper It is never known but it is the knower. — Wayfarer

Read it, thanks. That's really witty and useful, and very topical to pretty much all these discussions we've been having here on the "hard? problem?". (question marks to imply that the problem may not be that hard, or that it may indeed not be a problem at all)

Bitbol is making pretty much all the same arguments that we have been making here against the Great Denial. He calls it a blind spot, but I think he is being too charitable, at least in some cases. The amount of resistance that some eliminative materialists put up to the rather obvious idea that they themselves exist as 'minds', and their their incapacity to understand the contradiction in their stance indicate that something more sinister than a mere blind spot is at play: eliminative materialism is a self-denying and life-demeaning ideology. What started as a blind spot has evolved into denial.

I take Bitbol's point that we may never "objectify subjectivity", because that would be a contradiction in terms. So we will never be able to understand a subjective experience 'from the outside'. But explaining how our biology give rise to minds and how minds affect our biology in principle is a more modest project than to objectify fully a subjective experience. It is rather about explaining how something like experience could possibly emerge from biology.

you can't guess what fear feels like from a first person view. This "what fear feels like" is qualia. — khaled

What would an answer to this question even be? As far as I can tell it doesn't make any sense at all. If I ask "what the the rollercoaster like? " you might say "it was scary". If I ask "what was being scared like?", I expect you to shake your head and walk away, what could I possibly mean by that?

Simply being able to form a sentence does not make the content meaningful.

we just have this one experience of what's going on right now. — khaled

But you don't. That's the point. You have a memory of what was going on a few seconds ago. There's a fundamental disconnect between the external world (if you believe in such a thing) and your experiences which makes talk of the experience of red - where 'red' is considered to be something in the external world) fundamentally wrong.

If you want to say that experience 'just is' the unified memories of some mental states from the last few seconds, then we can work with that, but then we have an very good model of that already. There's no need for qualia.

panpsychism is wrong, and physicalism is fine — Isaac


Don't see how either of those follow. — khaled

Because if conscious experience is just reaching for some word (or other response) from some internal mental state, then rocks can't do it and we've given an entirely complete physical account of it.

If it is then AI is definitely conscious because it can reach fr the word 'red' in response to some state of it's neural network. — Isaac


That doesn't follow exactly. An AI's "neural network" is hardly similar to a human's as far as I know. — khaled

What part of the definition of conscious requires that is takes place in a network similar to humans?

If I ask "what was being scared like?", I expect you to shake your head and walk away, what could I possibly mean by that? — Isaac

I wouldn't. I would say "It's what you feel when you go on a horror ride" and ask you to try it. If you don't feel anything maybe there is something wrong with your brain.

There's a fundamental disconnect between the external world (if you believe in such a thing) and your experiences which makes talk of the experience of red - where 'red' is considered to be something in the external world) fundamentally wrong. — Isaac

When did I consider "red" to be something in the external world? Our very first discussion on this thread was agreeing how that wasn't the case. Heck this:

There's a fundamental disconnect between the external world (if you believe in such a thing) and your experiences — Isaac

Sounds like something I would say.

Because if conscious experience is just reaching for some word (or other response) from some internal mental state, then rocks can't do it and we've given an entirely complete physical account of it. — Isaac

How do you know rocks don't have a mental state? We have mapped certain mental states to certain brainstates. That gives us sufficient conditions for this or that experience. That doesn't explain what the necessary conditions are. Disclaimer: I am not claiming rocks have mental states.

What part of the definition of conscious requires that is takes place in a network similar to humans? — Isaac

It's just that we only know that a human's neural network produces consciousness. And an AI is fundamentally different in that it doesn't have neurons. They are not similar enough to conclude both are consciuos.

I'll start by quoting from from an article Anil wrote. It covers much the same ground.

In the same way, tackling the real problem of consciousness depends on distinguishing different aspects of consciousness, and mapping their phenomenological properties (subjective first-person descriptions of what conscious experiences are like) onto underlying biological mechanisms (objective third-person descriptions). A good starting point is to distinguish between conscious level, conscious content, and conscious self. Conscious level has to do with being conscious at all – the difference between being in a dreamless sleep (or under general anaesthesia) and being vividly awake and aware. Conscious contents are what populate your conscious experiences when you are conscious – the sights, sounds, smells, emotions, thoughts and beliefs that make up your inner universe. And among these conscious contents is the specific experience of being you. This is conscious self, and is probably the aspect of consciousness that we cling to most tightly. — Anil K Seth

And:

But there is an alternative, which I like to call the real problem: how to account for the various properties of consciousness in terms of biological mechanisms; without pretending it doesn’t exist (easy problem) and without worrying too much about explaining its existence in the first place (hard problem). (People familiar with ‘neurophenomenology’ will see some similarities with this way of putting things – but there are differences too, as we will see.) — Anil K Seth

And this, since it mentions dreaming:

What are the fundamental brain mechanisms that underlie our ability to be conscious at all? Importantly, conscious level is not the same as wakefulness. When you dream, you have conscious experiences even though you’re asleep. And in some pathological cases, such as the vegetative state (sometimes called ‘wakeful unawareness’), you can be altogether without consciousness, but still go through cycles of sleep and waking. — Anil K Seth

I've bolded the salient points.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one

I'll go grab some quotes from the podcast in my next reply.

I wouldn't. I would say "It's what you feel when you go on a horror ride" and ask you to try it. — khaled

That's what being scared is, not what it's like.

How do you know rocks don't have a mental state? — khaled

It's not the mental state, it's the inability to report on working memory, which you'd just said was what 'experiences' are. Rocks don't have a working memory.

It's just that we only know that a human's neural network produces consciousness. And an AI is fundamentally different in that it doesn't have neurons. They are not similar enough to conclude both are consciuos. — khaled

This assumes consciousness is very tightly bound the the type of substrate. I'm not even sure I'd go that far.

@Isaac I'll add this from the article.

Some researchers take these ideas much further, to grapple with the hard problem itself. Tononi, who pioneered this approach, argues that consciousness simply is integrated information. This is an intriguing and powerful proposal, but it comes at the cost of admitting that consciousness could be present everywhere and in everything, a philosophical view known as panpsychism. — Anil K Seth

It's readily apparent that Seth is talking about phenomenal consciousness, and he understands the issues, such as when you make it identical to something like "integrated information".

And then there's this that further drives the point home:

When we are conscious, we are conscious of something. What in the brain determines the contents of consciousness? The standard approach to this question has been to look for so-called ‘neural correlates of consciousness’ (NCCs). In the 1990s, Francis Crick and Christof Koch defined an NCC as ‘the minimal set of neuronal events and mechanisms jointly sufficient for a specific conscious percept’. This definition has served very well over the past quarter century because it leads directly to experiments. We can compare conscious perception with unconscious perception and look for the difference in brain activity, using (for example) EEG and functional MRI. — Anil K Seth

Neural correlates of consciousness wouldn't make sense unless Seth (along with Crick and Koch) didn't take phenomenal consciousness seriously as something in need of explanation.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one

@Isaac

This last quote from the paper is exactly what the anti-Dennett side has been arguing this entire thread.

But as powerful as these experiments are, they do not really address the ‘real’ problem of consciousness. To say that a posterior cortical ‘hot-spot’ (for instance) is reliably activated during conscious perception does not explain why activity in that region should be associated with consciousness.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one — Anil K Seth

That's what being scared is, not what it's like. — Isaac

So being scared is the experience you have on a horror ride? You're contradicting yourself:

First you insist that if someone who has never experienced fear before (someone with urbach-wiethe disease even) uses the word "afraid" then they know what fear is. Now you say that fear is fundamentally an experience.

It's not the mental state, it's the inability to report on working memory, which you'd just said was what 'experiences' are. Rocks don't have a working memory. — Isaac

Not exactly. I never said experience is the ability to report on working memory. You can be unable to report on working memory and still have experiences. When I say "reach for the word red to describe..." I don't mean literally saying the word "red". I still see red things without remarking "this is red" each time. I just need to have the mental category "red" to be able to see red things, not necessarily be able to report them.

What I said was sufficient conditions for consciousness, not necessary ones. I don't know necessary conditions.

This assumes consciousness is very tightly bound the the type of substrate. I'm not even sure I'd go that far. — Isaac

But it's not an unreasonable assumption. We know consciousness is produced under these particular conditions. There is no evidence to deviate from these conditions by attributing consciousness to anything else without first making a "consciousness-o-meter" to test our hypothesis.

Read it, thanks. — Olivier5

Glad you liked it, I was introduced to Bitbol on this forum and find his work illuminating. He has an excellent YouTube lecture on Kant and Bohr.

The amount of resistance that some eliminative materialists put up to the rather obvious idea that they themselves exist as 'minds', and their their incapacity to understand the contradiction in their stance indicate that something more sinister than a mere blind spot is at play: eliminative materialism is a self-denying and life-demeaning ideology. — Olivier5

It’s fear. For that, see Thomas Nagel’s essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. (Sorry if I’m overburdening you with reading materials. :yikes: )

But explaining how our biology give rise to minds and how minds affect our biology in principle is a more modest project than to objectify fully a subjective experience. It is rather about explaining how something like experience could possibly emerge from biology. — Olivier5

Of course! I think biosemiotics, about which I’ve learned a huge amount from this forum, is part of that idea. Also I really like a philosopher of biology by the name of Steve Talbot.

Thanks. That pretty much ties in with my understanding of Seth's position from his papers. The aspects I don't see how you're attributing are things like...

when they do cover the statistical inference of perception, conscious experience is still the end result of that which needs to be explained. — Marchesk

...and...

he does not dismiss phenomonlogy by replacing with with neurological or statistical terms, as you do. — Marchesk

Seth's work, his research objective in fact, is to do exactly that, explain the one in terms of the other. When he talks about matching first-person reports to third person analysis, he's explaining his method, not reifying first-person reports.

Neural correlates of consciousness wouldn't make sense unless Seth (along with Crick and Koch) didn't take phenomenal consciousness seriously as something in need of explanation. — Marchesk

Again, methodologically, not ontologically.

This last quote from the paper is exactly what the anti-Dennett side has been arguing this entire thread.

But as powerful as these experiments are, they do not really address the ‘real’ problem of consciousness. To say that a posterior cortical ‘hot-spot’ (for instance) is reliably activated during conscious perception does not explain why activity in that region should be associated with consciousness. — Marchesk

No, you've misunderstood what he's saying here. He's saying that the posterior cortical activity could not explain why the region should be associated with consciousness, not because of some fundamental inability to provide such explanations, but because the specific functions within that region don't encompass a wide enough base of signals related to conscious reports. He's making a purely neurological point, not a deep philosophical one. He's just saying 'good as these single modality correlations are, the don't address the real problem because it is multi-modal. He's not saying anything like what's being advanced on this thread. His entire lab would be rendered pointless if he held to that view.

Seth's View on perception is basically where I'm getting a lot of what I'm saying here.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17588928.2015.1026888, is unfortunately paywalled, but this paper gives a reasonably good account. He talks specifically about an active inference model of colour synthesis explaining conscious perception of colour.

Perception of a tomato, on this view, involves the brain deploying a high-level generative model predicting the sensory responses elicited by the tomato. In contrast to sensorimotor theory, PP emphasizes neural mechanisms as both necessary and sufficient for perceptual experience (at least at any particular instant)...

..My specific claim is that the subjective veridicality (or perceptual presence) of normal perception depends precisely on the counterfactual richness of the corresponding generative models...

...In addition to accounting for the phenomenology of synesthesia, the theory naturally accommodates phenomenological differences between a range of experiential states including dreaming, hallucination, and the like.

[my bolding]

That's what being scared is, not what it's like. — Isaac


So being scared is the experience you have on a horror ride? You're contradicting yourself:

First you insist that if someone who has never experienced fear before (someone with urbach-wiethe disease even) uses the word "afraid" then they know what fear is. Now you say that fear is fundamentally an experience. — khaled

What is preventing someone with urbach-wiethe disease (passing over the complications in simply correlating the condition with a lack of ability to feel fear) from saying "being scared is the experience you have on a horror ride". If being scared is the experience you have on a horror ride, then someone correctly identifying it as such has understood what fear is, haven't they? I don't see the contradiction.

You can be unable to report on working memory and still have experiences. — khaled

How could you possibly know that?

It's like you have blinders on. From the podcast around 7:24.

The real problem of consciousness, it's in distinction from Chalmers hard and easy problems that we talked about before. The basic idea of the real problem is to accept that consciousness exists, it's part of the universe, we have conscious experiences. And brains exist. One thing we know about consciousness is that it depends on the brain in quite close ways. And the idea is to describe as richly as we can the phenomenology of conscious experience. And to try to build explanatory bridges, as best we can, from brain mechanisms to this phenomenology. This has been called the mapping problem by Chalmers himself. — Anil Seth

He's not denying phenomenology. He isn't reifying the hard problem, but he's also not dismissing it. Rather, he's proposing a way forward for investigating consciousness. And it might turn out that the hard problem isn't so impossible after all.

While you have been arguing from an eliminativist view in this thread, dismissing phenomenology as irrelevant or replaceable by non-phenomenological terms. That is not what Anil is doing. He is talking about mapping brain processes to consciousness, and see where that takes us.

From the article:

Armed with this theory of perception, we can return to consciousness. Now, instead of asking which brain regions correlate with conscious (versus unconscious) perception, we can ask: which aspects of predictive perception go along with consciousness? A number of experiments are now indicating that consciousness depends more on perceptual predictions, than on prediction errors. — Anil Seth

You missed the quote where Anil talks about how identifying consciousness with something like integrated information is a form of panpsychism. And it's something Chalmers himself has endorsed, although from a property dualist view. Notice how Anil does not replace consciousness with a predictive model, rather it's a mapping from one to the other as part of the ongoing investigation.

I fully endorse what Dr. Seth is doing. If the hard problem or explanatory gap is every to be resolved, it's along these lines. It's not along the lines of pretending it's just an invention by philosophers.

On a separate note we probably agree on, I do like the talk of perception being an indirect and predictive process. Very interesting stuff.