Bear in mind that I said "consciously experienced"; I already allowed that there is a sense in which we could say that reflected electromagnetic radiation is (pre-consciously) experienced by the body. giving rise to the (possibly) conscious experience of coloured things. — Janus

But how do you _know_ it not just a matter of words? You see light and dark. If we had called those radiation then radiation would be experienced?

Some likes and dislikes may change overnight...(...) I wouldn't call such fickle likes and dislikes "aesthetic judgements"). — Janus

That you are fickle with respect to your feelings regarding cauliflower....
— Mww

......You seem to be claiming that liking or disliking the flavor.... — Janus

As is plain to see, I made no mention of, nor did I mean to implicate, the mere sensation of the taste of a thing, with an aesthetic feeling of like (pleasure) or dislike (displeasure) of (in) it. I chose cauliflower because it is more apt to resonate with the course of the dialectic. My fault, I suppose, insofar as such mundane examples of cauliflower in your case, and hairstyles in Josh’s case, didn’t get my point across. I was initially going with beheadings, or some such that invokes a very authoritative aesthetic judgement, yet without the burden of experience confusing the view.

The mode of intuition with respect to the flavor of an object, is every bit the sensation as vision, but whereas vision has the chance of synthesis with a veritable plethora of conceptions, that is, the formulation of a rational discursive judgement from which a cognition follows, such that the subject can then report exactly what he has seen, the sensuous phenomenon of empirical taste, or flavor, has no proper manifold of conceptions, no more than the physiology of that sensuous mode permits, hence no definitive reportable cognition, from which occurs that the subject reports no more than a general subjective condition, re: tastes good, I like it/tastes bad, I don’t like it, or some mediation between those extremes, but without a categorically intelligible understanding for it.
—————

The taste may simply be unpleasant and you might simply avoid it without any conscious thought about it at all — Janus

Exactly. Avoidance, or partaking, without any conscious thought at all, because of the above, re: you simply may not be able to report on exactly why you avoid the unpleasant dislikes and partake of the pleasant likes. Hence, the burden of experience with respect to the phenomenon of taste, as opposed to the purely subjective aesthetics of it. Now, the common rejoinder is, the like or dislike of a thing presupposes the thing, which is true, but presupposing the thing does not carry the implication of forming a cognition as to what the thing is. Re: “here, taste this/what is it/never mind, just taste it/JEEESSUSSS, that’s disgusting!!!!!!

In my view an aesthetic judgement always carries a discursive dimension, and I don't see a discursive dimension being involved in simply liking or disliking foods. — Janus

Which supports your assertion that “fickle likes and dislikes” are not aesthetic judgements. As the example immediately above shows, on the other hand, aesthetic judgements as to pleasure/displeasure may arise without any discursive judgement as to its object. That most times they do, but that sometimes they don’t, removes necessity as a condition.

That I dislike falling off a bike because it is accompanied by the distinct possibility of pain, but that I dislike pain doesn’t require that I fall off a bike. I find pain a dislike to avoid for nothing other than I am discomforted by it. Ironically enough, there are those that feel just the opposite, in finding pleasure in circumstances for which pain should be the normative prescription. Go figure, huh?

Taken to a sufficient metaphysical reduction, we find the old adage, “there’s no accounting for taste”, to be quite true. It is the case that human aesthetics is directly correlated with subjectivity, but damned if we have the slightest explanation for it.

Same as it ever was......

I was joining you in your declaration of nonsense, not fighting against you. Too bad you missed that sarcasm against Husserl. Or was it my fault? :)

So, just to close that post -- I agree with you that it is nonsense. You certainly exist with or without me perceiving you.

Now that's out of the way:

It's good to rant. Nice to meet you. I'm Caldwell, a female.

Don't be discouraged about what you read in this forum, or any forum. It's a personal activity - take it or leave it. Find what makes you feel excited. I've been part of the philosophy forum community for a long time, and had "suffered" through grad school, falling in love, break-ups, new relationships, work politics, work toxicity, job changes, heartbreaks, happiness, contentment, disappointments, etc. I've seen the same members developed into expert interpreters of philosophy (or however you may describe them), some are very witty, sharp, and quick. It amazes me sometimes.

It takes a skill to evaluate forum posts -- what the merits are, whether they're worth responding to, or even worth engaging with. Try to be patient and understanding. Don't forget that in the music world, for example, there are a bunch of mediocre artists or musicians that are....well...mediocre and boring. But they are there, getting millions of views.

So, again, welcome. If you choose to stay, remember that your reaction to what you read here is a reflection of your personality. If you want scholarly writings, please try to access publications online -- there are tons of them, you might need to create an account or pay even. Some aren't free. But, those might satisfy what you're looking for.

Do we see light and dark? We see light and dark things. We don't see light itself; we see by means of light.

I don't find anything to disagree with in that; which is not so good for discussion.

Depends - identifying a thing often requires movement - or when you are close to a colored surface or in the case of a looking into a flashlight you might not really see a "thing" as such.
The point I was trying to make is that the statements "I see a red lighter" and "I see a lighter in the 600nm spectrum" are different in that the second one is more precise and much more complex. It remains to be shown that the first does actually name something else. A single individual is as unlikely to come up with the understood-by-others word "red" as with the frequency-spectrum of light by himself.
Also I fear we do not really have the same picture of the whole process. A popular concept is that light causes an effect on the nervous system which causes the experience of red, which implies a dualism. I doubt the cause-effect relation of the second part - I think the effect of light _is_ the experience.

I don't find anything to disagree with in that.... — Janus

Nor I, this:

I would say experience is not a thing, although it involves things. To describe an experience you describe the things involved in that experience. — Janus

‘Til next time. Your turn to buy.

My current position on the subject:

Nature has structured the brain in such a way as to enable it to dismember a confluence of many different sensory impressions and store or encode these "members" of the whole composite impression in different ways and places in the brain or nervous system (consider synesthesia). It is also able to perceive it's own encoding in part or in whole or in combination with other elements of prior memories. The "purpose" of this is to simulate itself and it's environment within it's own neurology for general problem solving and survival.

The effect of the brain perceiving it's own neural encoding appears to that brain as qualia. In essence.. Neural encoding observing it's own neural encoding.. in a continuous dynamic feedback loop resulting in the "qualia" of a relatively unbroken chain of self-awareness (consciousness and identity).

Because the brain encodes the sense impression of "red" for example in some initially arbitrary but consistent way throughout, then when that encoding is activated again it perceives exactly the neural state that caused the brain structure for that qualia to form in the first place... thus the experience of "red" either in real time or in recall. So for me consciousness and qualia are useful illusions that the brain creates for itself to run it's simulations. We don't actually see "red", we experience what the conscious part of the our brain thinks as "red", for color as we know it in our consciousness may not even exist in the "real" external world. It is merely symbolic and representative to that neural encoding for the purposes of that encoding.

Consider also how experiments have shown that scientists can predict a persons choices seconds or fractions of a second before the person is even aware of the choice at a conscious level (illusion of free will at least at the conscious level). The unconscious brain makes choices the conscious brain does not know or understand, and then after the choice is made unconsciously the conscious mind creates it's own rationalization as to why it did what it did consistent with it's own internal running conscious narrative or inner dialog (which may have nothing to do with the real reason).

Chalmers does not offer what a viable theory would look like. He points out what has been left out by what has been offered so far. So his attempt to re-frame the question is not a hypothesis, much less a theory.
I like his approach because he admits he cannot describe it.

Been reading most of this thread without interfering, but this comment struck me wrong.

My intuitive sense is that people have no feel for what might be beyond the physical because they're instinctively oriented around the world of sensory detection - that only what can be sensed, weighed, measured by the senses or by scientific instruments is real. — Wayfarer

Only by physical instruments. Any physical instrument can serve as a scientific one, so maybe the distinction is unnecessary, but your choice of words seems to limit your thinking only to 'gadgetry', so to speak, as illustrated by your following comment:

Obviously today's scientific instruments are unthinkably powerful but people still have trouble understanding the sense that there might be some dimension or domain that is not available to apprehension by those means.

But the human body (among other things perhaps) is such a physical instrument, hardly 'unthinkably powerful' and yet you assert this other domain is available to it. That means a physical device (your body) is measuring this domain somewhere. All you have to do is investigate where, which is after all a scientific endeavor. Perhaps we can build a simple device that measures the same thing.

‘Qualitative assimilation, phenomenal experience and Being’ (QAPEB) is a paper that was published in Biosemiotics journal at the end of 2018 (it can be accessed and downloaded free). Its publication was the culmination of 32 years work. It addresses ideas relate to subjectivity, objectivity, and the hard problem.

The first thing to say about it is that it claims to bridge the objective–subjective divide. The objective–subjective divide is the problem of how to explain why an objective world has subjectivity at all: why is it that an objective world has 'given rise' to agents that possess a subjective view of the objective world?

The second thing the paper does, is provide a viable answer to the hard problem of explaining the phenomenal qualitative nature of conscious experience.

QAPEB solves these two problems by explaining how and why three distinct ontological categories have emerged and evolved. Each of these categories is tackled in separate sections and inform the title of the paper.

Section 1 explains how it is that a world of physical properties became a world of qualitative properties.
Section 2 is concerned with how it is that the world became differentiated in individual creatures in a qualitative, spatial and temporal way, and in doing so, characterises subjective conscious experience.
Section 3 explains the emergence of the realisation of self-reference and of the self-identification of ‘being-in-the-world’.

Each of these ontologically distinct levels can be thought of as characterising the objective physical world in a particular kind of meaningful way (hence being published in a journal of biosemiotics), where 'meaningful' refers to such things as qualities, space, time and belief. One of the key claims in the paper is that meaning is generated when there is some kind justification of value. Certain physical mechanisms satisfy this requirement and facilitate the generation of meaning during their interactive engagement with the environment.
What we find in each level is a different kind of physical activity that creates a different category of meaning about the world. This is why we get differentiated ontological categories and an explanation of subjectivity in objective terms.

As far as I can tell the so-called hard problem of consciousness is just Chalmers, the magician's, sleight of hand. Let me walk you through how Chalmer tricks us into believing something that isn't true:

First, Chalmers informs us that a certain aspect of consciousness - the first-person subjective awareness - is inaccessible territory for science which has always been viewed as a third-person point of view.

Second, Chalmers, this is the part where he executes the invalid inference, goes on to say there's an explanatory gap between physical science and consciousness.

Would you, for example, agree with a person who claims that because a certain other individual (science) can't do something (can't explain consciousness physically) that that something can't be done at all (there's no physical explanation for consciousness)? There maybe a perfectly good workaround; we just haven't found out what that is.

The explanatory gap is a scientific problem, not a philosophical aporia, because it concerns explaining facts of the matter which philosophy does / can not; therefore philosophers can only propose woo-of-the-explanatory-gap nonsense (e.g. panpsychism, substance dualism, subjective idealism) that only begs the question of one unknown with a further (metaphysical? magical?) unknowable. — 180 Proof

A month late, but a) :up: and b) I'd go further. The explanatory gap is itself an invalid preconception of what the answer must be, based on a prejudice against the notion that minds can be functions of lowly, base, physical stuff. It really doesn't matter what model of consciousness physics ends up with, consciousness is by definition "not that".

Would you, for example, agree with a person who claims that because a certain other individual (science) can't do something (can't explain consciousness physically) that that something can't be done at all (there's no physical explanation for consciousness)? There maybe a perfectly good workaround; we just haven't found out what that is. — TheMadFool

Good point. The argument "science has failed to explain consciousness" against science's ability to explain consciousness is common enough, although I don't think that's Chalmers' argument. Rather he is placing a limit on or domain for what science can tell us. That limit really reduces to the third-person/first-person distinction but that the insistence that this distinction is not the whole story, e.g. the subjective experience of phenomena is more than a frame-transform from whatever objective description we end up with (seeing a red ball is more than the neurological activity involved in seeing a red ball from the first-person perspective). Which is just another way of insisting that mind is more than brain function.

Yes, I'm aware that Chalmers (maybe) setting down some kinda boundary for science - demarcating its borders in a manner of speaking, whatever lies outside our field of vision; perhaps we can look at it as a blind spot or something like that.

My point is science, if there are absolute limits to science, may not be the only materialist/physicalist game in town. Another materialistic/physicalist, albeit nonscientific, perspective may be out there waiting for the right person to discover it, loads of luck a sine qua non as far as I can tell. This new materialistic philosophy/viewpoint could dissolve the first-person/third-person distinction and provide for us the window through which science can enter the domain of pure subjective consciousness and work its magic.

The explanatory gap is itself an invalid preconception of what the answer must be, based on a prejudice against the notion that minds can be functions of lowly, base, physical stuff. It really doesn't matter what model of consciousness physics ends up with, consciousness is by definition "not that". — Kenosha Kid

:100:

My point is science, if there are absolute limits to science, may not be the only materialist/physicalist game in town. Another materialistic/physicalist, albeit nonscientific, perspective may be out there waiting for the right person to discover it, loads of luck a sine qua non as far as I can tell. — TheMadFool

Sure. I guess my response to that in particular is it would probably end up being absorbed by science one way or another. It steals the good bits of everything! :rofl: The distinction between 'physical' and 'observable (in principle)' is nought from where I see, and nature in general (and conscientiousness in particular) appears at least statistically predictable. A non-scientific source of sound physicalist theory would likely lend itself to a scientific basis. But I'd be intrigued to hear otherwise.

Yes! Nonphysicalists can hope that mind is a different kind of physical. I'd consider that a win! Wordplay or something substantive? I dunno!

Nonphysicalists can hope that mind is a different kind of physical. I'd consider that a win! — TheMadFool

:rofl: :up:

Your question. I don't think Chalmers is saying 'it can't be done'. I think he is saying that it is a unique problem which differentiates it from all other phenomena that science seeks to explain. The reason why it is a unique problem is because we only know of the qualitative nature of experience because we experience it subjectively. Science is good at explaining objective measurable phenomena. It has not found a way of bridging the divide between objectivity and subjectivity... but note the paper referenced in my previous post

Chalmers' argument needs a name. I call it The Burqa Argument. Chalmers is saying that because we can't see the woman in a burqa (science can't directly observe consciousness), the woman (consciousness) isn't physical. If he's not saying that, I have no bone to pick with him.

The explanatory gap is itself an invalid preconception of what the answer must be, based on a prejudice against the notion that minds can be functions of lowly, base, physical stuff. — Kenosha Kid

It's not that.

It really doesn't matter what model of consciousness physics ends up with, consciousness is by definition "not that".

That may well be true. Separating definition from theory is really important. Functionlists, I allege, nearly always end up having to redefine 'consciousness' by fiat so that it is something that is amenable to functional explanation. I have no particular objection to functionalist theories of various functions! But as far as consciousness goes, I never hear an answer to the question "Why can't that function happen in the dark?" which does not involve a redefinition: "But that's just what I mean by consciousness". In which case I say "Well, OK, that's great for your definition, but that doesn't touch the hard problem then." Apo weirdly has tried to just reverse the burden of proof and to ask "why shouldn't it feel like something" without having first said why it must. And the video he linked to of course doesn't do that.

It's not that. — bert1

According to them. But it sure seems like that from the outside, including in Chalmers' case.

Apo weirdly has tried to just reverse the burden of proof and to ask "why shouldn't it feel like something" without having first said why it must. — bert1

There's nothing weird about that. Neurons aren't firing in a vacuum: the central nervous system is an integrated system. Biology can only do what it can do. If it does something, then clearly it can do it. Why does the response to a red ball feel like me _seeing_ a red ball and not a blue ball or hearing a red ball or feeling a red ball...? Well, it has to integrate somehow and biology only has so many tricks up it's sleeves. For a bat, a the sound of the ball might be something it sees. For a racoon, touch is something it might see.

There's nothing weird about that. Neurons aren't firing in a vacuum: the central nervous system is an integrated system. Biology can only do what it can do. If it does something, then clearly it can do it. — Kenosha Kid

Oh, sure, that's a very good point. We are conscious, we know that, and we know what we experience depends on brain function, so we know that there is something it is like to be functioning brain, right? That's enough, no? There's no need to explain that in order to show it happens, we already know it happens. It's therefore up to the person who questions that fact to explain themselves first. Have I understood your point?

Why does the response to a red ball feel like me _seeing_ a red ball and not a blue ball or hearing a red ball or feeling a red ball...? Well, it has to integrate somehow and biology only has so many tricks up it's sleeves. For a bat, a the sound of the ball might be something it sees. For a racoon, touch is something it might see.

Those are interesting questions too, but different. "How does a brain generate conscious experience at all?" ...is a different question from "Why do particular functions feel the way they do?"

According to them. But it sure seems like that from the outside, including in Chalmers' case. — Kenosha Kid

Sure I understand that might be what it looks like.

There's no need to explain that in order to show it happens, we already know it happens. It's therefore up to the person who questions that fact to explain themselves first. Have I understood your point? — bert1

Why activity in an integrated system is integrated with other activity in that system isn't begging for an answer. The how is still interesting. We don't need to consider counterfactual senses or nothing happening at all and work from there. However the question of why certain _kinds_ of perceptions are possible at all, i.e. how they do what they do, and how we evolved them, is still of interest. And of course how species make certain senses more prominent.

"How does a brain generate conscious experience at all?" ...is a different question from "Why do particular functions feel the way they do?" — bert1

There's a difference in complexity at first glance I guess, but my understanding from talking to neuro peeps like Isaac (he seems to have disappeared again) is that it's actually really difficult to separate out individual functions from overall considerations of consciousness, including non-conscious stuff. It probably isn't possible to have what we consider consciousness with just one sensor that, say, senses the intensity of ambient light (no colour or well-defined shape). Some think that language is also a necessity for consciousness (a story we tell ourselves). It's all a chaotic mess which makes it only the more intriguing to figure out how it actually works.

I was very much deterred from thinking of particular functions as in any way capable of being carved out of the whole and considered in a vacuum. It's not that they're not contributing to consciousness, rather that they do so in the context of everything else.

I never hear an answer to the question "Why can't that function happen in the dark?" which does not involve a redefinition: — bert1

Apo weirdly has tried to just reverse the burden of proof and to ask "why shouldn't it feel like something" without having first said why it must. — bert1

So does the function ever in fact happen “in the dark”? Is there any reason to believe that?

You might say you can imagine it happening in the dark. But then you would have to give positive reasons for how it could happen in the dark. Which of course you can’t.

And so we arrive at those who actually have theories that model the function in question. And they can rightfully say why it would feel like something to be modelling the world in the way the nervous system models the world.

There are good reasons for thinking that all that brain activity couldn’t do anything else but generate experience.

So yes, the burden falls back on the naysayer who can offer nothing but their disbelief.

So does the function ever in fact happen “in the dark”? Is there any reason to believe that? — apokrisis

If you consider structured matter processes just that, yes. But reality proves you wrong. I feel structured processes. If I hear a piece of music, there are structured processes going on in my brain (looking at it from the outside). But why should they be conscious experiences? Because of the very fact there is structure? I can imagine the same processes going on without a conscious experience.

I was very much deterred from thinking of particular functions as in any way capable of being carved out of the whole and considered in a vacuum. It's not that their not contributing to consciousness, rather that they do so in the context of everything else. — Kenosha Kid

t's possible to approximately carve out conscious experiences like colors, shapes, motion, sounds, pain, thoughts, dreams, emotions, despite them being part of a coherent structure. A blind person (with the retina in good shape) who still perceives motion and misses parts of her visual system that are responsible for color, intensity of light, shape, and visual depth perception can still see, to a certain extent, moving objects. Other brain parts can partially take over. See here.

While these experiences are embedded in a larger living structure, you can still track the sub processes. If one of my visual V regions, or parts of it, give up, this will have an impact on my visual experience. Of course it's impossible to isolate visual processes and place them in a vacuum.

If I hear a piece of music, there are structured processes going on in my brain (looking at it from the outside). But why should they be conscious experiences? Because of the very fact there is structure? I can imagine the same processes going on without a conscious experience. — Cartuna

What do you think conscious experience is then - such that you could positively motivate this claim?

Do you not think that the structure of the ear drums, the structure of the auditory processsing hierarchy, all the rest of the brain’s structure, probably has a lot to do with the structure of our auditory experiences given the way the two always seem to be found in each other’s company?

Can you imagine a body without ears, a brain without auditory cortex, and yet there would still be auditory experience?

So I hear you expressing your doubt. I don’t see what substantiates that doubt as yet.

Can you imagine a conscious experience going on without those neurological processes? How does that work?

I see your point. A consciousness experience is not the structured process by itself, as observed in brain scans or imagined in your mind. It is, well,... the conscious experience itself. As experienced by the structured process it is attached to. So by looking at structured processes you can say if there is consciousness inside, but that doesn't explain the conscious experience. Only by considering the structured processes as the only base consciousness becomes an illusion.

Nope. I’m just asking you to attempt to justify your dualist framing of things.

We haven’t got on to how things might be better framed under a triadic and semiotic systems perspective.