So then the question is what's the referent both sides are talking about? So when Dennett argues that consciousness is functional states, and Chalmers argues that consciousness is qualia not reducible to physical, behavioral or functional states, how can they be referring to the same thing? — Marchesk

If Bob argues that stars are holes in the sky and Mary argues that stars are balls of plasma, how can they be referring to the same thing?

If Bob argues that stars are holes in the sky and Mary argues that stars are balls of plasma, how can they be referring to the same thing? — Michael

They're referring to pinpoints of light in the night sky, but I don't see how the analogy applies to consciousness, other than the use of that word.

They're referring to pinpoints of light in the night sky, but I don't see how the analogy applies to consciousness, other than the use of that word. — Marchesk

So your answer is just that they're referring to the same thing?

So your answer is just that they're referring to the same thing? — Michael

If by same "thing", you mean using the same word, then sure. But words can have multiple meanings, and consciousness is one of those words.

I love icecream. I love how the boss schedules these stupid meetings. I love my family. I'm in love with that girl. I love that dancer!

If by same "thing", you mean using the same word, then sure. But words can have multiple meanings, and consciousness is one of those words. — Marchesk

You're not addressing the issue. Surely you accept that when Bob talks about stars being holes in the sky and Mary talks about stars being balls of plasma you accept that they're both referring to the same things but that Bob's account of what those things are is mistaken? Then why is it so hard to accept that when one philosopher talks about consciousness being physical and another philosopher talks about consciousness being non-physical that they're both referring to the same thing but that one of their accounts of what that thing is is mistaken?

Without some qualia, you mean. — SophistiCat

No.

Surely you accept that when Bob talks about stars being holes in the sky and Mary talks about stars being balls of plasma you accept that they're both referring to the same things — Michael

They're referring to the same phenomenon in the night sky, yes.

Then why is it so hard to accept that when one philosopher talks about consciousness being physical and another philosopher talks about consciousness being non-physical that they're both referring to the same thing — Michael

This started with behaviorism. The physicalist is more challenging, because they might say that there is a physical explanation for consciousness, not that consciousness is brain activity. But we'll stick with equating consciousness to behavior or brain states.

In that case, there isn't a common referent like there is with those lights in the night sky. This is because the behaviorist and physicalist are not talking about the same thing at all. They are referring to behavior when someone is in a wakeful state, or the activity of a brain in a wakeful state.

But consciousness in the qualia or subjective sense is not behavior or brain states. The closest you can get to making this claim work is identity theory of mind where brain states and mental states are said to pick out the same thing somehow, despite differing conceptually.

that they're both referring to the same thing but that one of their accounts of what that thing is is mistaken? — Michael

It's easier to see this is not the case if we avoid the word consciousness and stick with qualia and behavior.

It's clear that when speaking of qualia we are not talking about behavior, and vice versa. A behaviorist would deny the existence of qualia, not say that qualia is actually behavior, because that makes no sense.

I have a big family of vivid visual thinkers, a couple of whom are great artists. When I was a kid I knew something was wrong because I couldn't look away from something, and then draw it, because I couldn't keep an image of it in my mind.

My little brother was great at art, and had an imaginary friend when he was really young. He told me that he could see images pretty good in his mind. I got a book on "drawing for left brain people" or something like that, which was basically just about drawing when you suck at visualizing.

Long story short, I still draw for shit from imagination, but I can replicate things alright, I just had to learn to draw without looking at my hands.

It's easier to see this is not the case if we avoid the word consciousness and stick with qualia and behavior.

It's clear that when speaking of qualia we are not talking about behavior, and vice versa. A behaviorist would deny the existence of qualia, not say that qualia is actually behavior, because that makes no sense. — Marchesk

The analogy with "qualia" here is to "hole in the sky". We can deny that there are holes in the sky while affirming that stars exist. Similarly, a behaviorist or physicalist can deny the existence of qualia, while affirming that dropping a rock on your toe hurts and that roses are red. For them, qualia serves no explanatory purpose.

In other words, a behaviorist or physicalist can affirm that consciousness is real, but deny the dualist explanation of consciousness.

In other words, a behaviorist or physicalist can affirm that consciousness is real, but deny the dualist explanation of consciousness. — Andrew M

But what does a behaviorist mean when when they say that dropping a rock on your toe "hurts"? If they mean you hop up and down and yell, then that's not consciousness. That's simply behavior. It they mean certain nerves are firing resulting in that behavior, it is again not consciousness, it's neurological activity.

In both cases, the behaviorist and physicalist are using the word consciousness to mean something entirely different.

Similarly, a behaviorist or physicalist can deny the existence of qualia, while affirming that dropping a rock on your toe hurts and that roses are red. — Andrew M

Going back to this:

Hurting means to feel pain. It's an experience. It can be accompanied with behavior, but not always. It's also not a neurological explanation, because people felt pain before they knew anything about neuroscience.

The rose being red is problematic for the physicalist because the experience of red color isn't part of the physical description of the world. The physicalist is put into a difficult position of defending color realism.

The behaviorist is put into a extremely counter intuitive position of reducing feels to behavior, despite the fact that people do feel plenty of things without behaving in a detectable manner. That's why we can't always tell what people are thinking or feeling. Behaviorism has no answer for that other than to fall back on neuroscience.

In any case, my argument would be that some of our concepts are subjective and not behavioral or physicalist. When I say that it hurts or the rose is red, I mean my experience of feeling pain and seeing red, not howling and jumping around, or a scientific account of optics and reflective surfaces.

I think that alone makes it clear why the behaviorist and physicalist cannot simply redefine consciousness to avoid the hard problem. Instead, they have to argue for reducing experience to behavior or physical explanations.

I don't think behaviorism can possibly succeed, and it's fallen out of favor, with functional cognitive explanations and neuroscience taking it's place. Turns out the black box really does matter.

The jury is still out on physicalism, with some physicalists arguing for nonreductive and emergent accounts of consciousness.

No

Are you talking about bodies, or beings?

Bodies enact qualia, but don't have them.

Beings experience qualia, but cannot experience anything absent a body, they can't enact them.

But what does a behaviorist mean when when they say that dropping a rock on your toe "hurts"? If they mean you hop up and down and yell, then that's not consciousness. That's simply behavior. It they mean certain nerves are firing resulting in that behavior, it is again not consciousness, it's neurological activity. — Marchesk

They presumably mean the same thing as you do. They're not redefining the term "pain" as hopping and yelling even in the absence of any felt sensation. Instead, they're attempting to provide an explanatory account of such experiences in terms of observable behavior or neural activity.

I would agree, however, that the behavioral project fails since I think it rests on a category mistake. Mental terms don't reduce to physical terms.

In any case, my argument would be that some of our concepts are subjective and not behavioral or physicalist. When I say that it hurts or the rose is red, I mean my experience of feeling pain and seeing red, not howling and jumping around, or a scientific account of optics and reflective surfaces. — Marchesk

I basically agree, though I would note that we mean roughly the same thing when we say that dropping a rock on our foot hurts or that the rose is red, or else ordinary communication would not be possible.

So while mental terms don't reduce to physical terms, they are still grounded in ordinary observation.

I basically agree, though I would note that we mean roughly the same thing when we say that dropping a rock on our foot hurts or that the rose is red, or else ordinary communication would not be possible. — Andrew M

When a rock is dropped on my foot and I say that it hurts, I certainly don't mean the resulting behavior, I mean the felt pain. Similarly, when I comment on the redness of a rose, I don't mean the wavelength of light.

What I'm communicating is the experience, not the behavior or optics. The reason we can communicate experience is because we're human and thus have similar experiences. But you notice how it doesn't always work. Sometimes what one person experiences is not entirely communicable to another. Sometimes we struggle to put into words what we feel.

Sometimes I just don't understand what you're talking about. I can't relate. There is a sense in which we're all our own island, separated from the other by this gulf of lack of understanding that cannot fully be breached by language. What is to be me is not what it is to be you, and you can't know that fully because you don't experience being me, and vice versa. There is definitely a private, unshareable aspect to our being.

When a rock is dropped on my foot and I say that it hurts, I certainly don't mean the resulting behavior, I mean the felt pain. Similarly, when I comment on the redness of a rose, I don't mean the wavelength of light. — Marchesk

Yes and your usages of "pain" and "red" here are the ordinary usages.

So, per physicalism, this is where the impossibility of p-zombies becomes apparent. You can't have two atom-by-atom identical beings where one is sentient (experiences pain, sees redness) and one is not.

There is definitely a private, unshareable aspect to our being. — Marchesk

So the philosophical question is whether this is an in-principle radical privacy, or whether language and technology can potentially bridge this. This is really a version of the Mary's Room thought experiment.

Yeah, a vague image. In the same way I don't need to decide on how many stripes the zebra has, I don't need to decide exactly on the triangle's shape.

I've been reading a lot of fiction lately, and I've noticed I can have a visual presence in the story while barely deciding on any visual details, if I don't want to imagine anything – so just the visual outlines of the scene appear to me. The characters might not even have any specific eye, hair, or skin color, or height.

Yeah, that's similar to my usual experience when reading fiction. It takes conscious effort for me to deeply visualize anything. (I first noticed this as a kid, reading the redwall series, when I became aware i was both thinking of the characters as animals, and not thinking of the characters as animals.)

But I guess I'd just say that this is exactly the 'zebra with some stripes' thing you mentioned above, so I don't think the idea is all that alien. I'd say this is more common than deep,detailed visualization for most people.

But to go back to the triangle - my hazy triangles tends to be hazy equilaterals. If I try, I can it make it a hazy right. I can't imagine what it would be to visualize a hazy triangle without it being at least a little determined. It seems like, at that point, it would literally be just a concept with a feeling attached. (though I think that a lot - though not all - of what we spontaneously describe as imaginative visualization is actually of the concept with feelings type. )

It seems to me the more visual the imagining is, the more I must commit to certain qualities. So the the extent I commit to no such quality, to that extent I'm not 'visualizing.'

The object seen is partly visual data and partly ideas. The idea of the tree is the core about which all the green and grey, light and dark orbit.

Why should the objects seen by the mind's eye be any different?

Sure, but maybe having a "a super vivid visual imagination" is to at least some degree dependent on the capacity to bring more of the processes of visualization that are going on below the conscious level into consciousness.

This would not be to suggest that the intensity or quantity of such purportedly sub-conscious processes must be the same in all people, though, so differences there could also be a factor in having "a super vivid visual imagination" or not.

Not to just repeat myself, but I just feel like, given the knowledge of brain structures, that simply can't be the case. One develops their faculties through there use, rather than gaining greater and greater access to a static capacity.

In practice, it wouldn't make much difference what one supposed what going on though, I would think. If I thought that through whatever process I was gaining greater and greater access to my sub-conscious visualizations, or I was just becoming better and better at visualization because of the activities I'm engaged in.

The results of either idea are the same.

Or I should say, that the "cortexes" visual, linguistic and such are the faculties of reflection, which utilize non-conscious sensuous modes symbolically.

So that the development of one's visual cortex is indicative of their ability to access the non-conscious tools of visual formation.

So, looking at it this way, I think you're also right.

There is plenty of other neuroscience to explain the phenomenology. It takes about half a second to generate a full strength mental image - that is how long it takes to turn a high-level inkling into a low level fully fleshed out perceptual image. But then the image fades equally fast because all the neurons involved habituate. They "tire" - because it is unnatural in the ecological setting to hold one image fixed in mind if it is not actually functioning as a perceptual expectation about something just about to happen. — apokrisis

Perhaps it is the time dilation effect of psychotropics that allows me to sustainedly examine them. That seems to beg the question as to what, in the subjective sense, "half a second" may be capable of becoming.

One develops their faculties through there use, rather than gaining greater and greater access to a static capacity. — Wosret

Sure, but I was speaking about different "natural" capacities enjoyed by different people, which I think undeniably obtain. Ones could certainly develop their "natural" capacities through use, however meager or great those capacities may "naturally" be.

I'm not sure what that means, so I'm not sure.

You're not sure what it means to say that people have different levels of ability? Think of athletic ability; it's a good example since it seems so apparent. One person could have naturally great athletic ability and yet never develop it; whereas another might have moderate ability and through diligent effort surpass the one with great natural ability.

I know what it means to say that people have different levels of ability, but you didn't say that until just now, you say a far less clear thing which doesn't mean that.

You then go on not to talk about different levels of ability, but different starting potentials or something. How that works precisely isn't clear to me.

OK, but for me ""natural" capacities" and "natural abilities" are not two different things.

Different levels of ability, and different natural capacities that may contradict actual levels of ability are not the same things to me.

Then we are confronting different understandings of the terms. For me 'capacity' is synonymous with 'ability'. So, it makes no sense to me to say that a natural capacity could "contradict" a natural ability. On the other hand an "actual level of ability or capacity" might, if not "contradict", at least differ from a natural ability or capacity, insofar as it was either an enhancement or a diminishment, of the natural ability or capacity.