the problem of explaining the behaviors and verbal reports that we associate with the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness’. These may include reports of puzzlement, of the attractiveness of dualism, of explanatory gaps, and the like. We present and defend a solution to the meta-problem.
If you want to translate it into what 'red' refers to it would be the trivially true statement that, for some, 'red' refers to the quale 'red' when they are verbally reporting their meta-theory of perception. — Isaac
Do you have privileged and unfettered access to everything that happens in your brain? — Isaac
The claim is not that we actually have qualia, it is explaining why we might think we have qualia when thinking about perception. — Isaac
It's quite clearly accepting that we have qualia, it's just arguing that qualia is something other than the "raw data" that some think it to be. — Michael
So the papers identifying out-of-body experiences with certain activity in the parietal and premotor cortices, is saying that we do actually have out-of-body experiences?
Or, is it saying that we feel like we have out of body experiences (but don't really) because of the modeling assumptions of those regions? — Isaac
The fact that you've had to change the wording of the quote to make it match your conclusion says it all. — Isaac
If you want to argue that this account is problematic then you need to speak to the authors, not to me. — Michael
Other papers have identified the schizophrenic's 'demon voices' with failures of backwards acting suppressive models in the autidory system.
None of these papers are saying that the phenomena is actually happening as it reported. We don't actually talk to god, we don't actually have out-of-body experiences, we don't actually hear demons, and we don't actually see qualia. — Isaac
cognition can't be an active state because it doesn't interact with the external states — Isaac
it's a wonder either of us can understand a word the other says. — Isaac
The schizophrenic does hear voices1, she's just wrong to interpret these voices as belonging to some demon (or person, or something external to herself). — Michael
The authors identified the models associated with them seeming to have qualia, but they do not actually have qualia. — Isaac
If the term ‘qualia’ is constrained to pick out some kind of raw experiential data, then qualia are an illusion, and we only think (infer) that such states exist, But in another sense, this is a way of being a revisionary kind of qualia realist, since colors, sights, and sounds are revealed as generative model posits pretty much on a par with representations of dogs, cats, and vicars.
[our story] identifies qualia with distinctive mid-level sensory states known with high systemic (and 100% agentive) certainty.
We see red because we infer a strangely certain and peculiarly independent dimension of ‘looking red’ as part of the mundane process of predicting the world.
What is it you understand by 'generative model posits'? What definition of generative model posit are you using? — Isaac
But thus constructed qualia, we argue, are of a piece (modulo that added certainty, more on which later) with other inferred variables such as dogs, cats, heatwaves, and vicars. This gives our story its slightly more realist tinge. Qualia – just like dogs and cats – are part of the inferred suite of hidden causes (i.e., experiential hypotheses) that best explain and predict the evolving flux of energies across our sensory surfaces.
I'm not using any, I'm repeating what they're saying — Michael
This paper considers the Cartesian theatre as a metaphor for the virtual reality models that the brain uses to make inferences about the world. This treatment derives from our attempts to understand dreaming and waking consciousness in terms of free energy minimization. The idea here is that the Cartesian theatre is not observed by an internal (homuncular) audience but furnishes a theatre in which fictive narratives and fantasies can be rehearsed and tested against sensory evidence.
...
These facts have a powerful bearing upon our assumptions about how consciousness is engendered by the brain. We are forced to conclude that we live in something like a theatre and, while it is certainly not Cartesian, it does have properties that lend themselves to the sort of neurobiological and cognitive specification that we attempt to demonstrate in this paper.
Finally, associating consciousness with inference gets to the heart of the hard problem, in the sense that inferring that something is red is distinct from receiving selective visual sensations (visual data) with the appropriate wavelength composition. Furthermore, you can only see your own red that is an integral part of your virtual reality model. You cannot see someone else’s red or another red because they are entailed by another model or hypothesis. In short, you cannot see my red — you can only infer that I can see red. In one sense, tying consciousness to active inference tells one immediately that consciousness is quintessentially private. Indeed, it is so private that other people are just hypotheses in your virtual reality model.
Do I need to properly understand cognitive science to understand the philosophical implications of what Friston and Hobson say here? — Michael
To study the mind presupposes it. So.....if mind is the unconditioned relative to human cognitive systems, what is there that can presuppose? To posit an antecedent to an unconditioned is a contradiction. Which relates to introspection, in that the mind ends up studying itself, which must be impossible. Now we got all kindsa metaphysical roadblocks, in that we are mistaking the replication of the doing of the deed, for the deed itself being done. It just may be Kant’s greatest philosophical gift was not to try to explain stuff that didn’t need it — Mww
what they say there is quite straightforward non-technical English. — Michael
in the first quote?free energy minimization
in the second quote?sort of neurobiological and cognitive specification that we attempt to demonstrate in this paper.
in the third quote (which also references active inference)You cannot see someone else’s red or another red because they are entailed by another model or hypothesis.
There is much more to be said about these broad kinds of models, for which I refer to the papers by Eliasmith, Grush, and Friston & Stephan.
One important and, probably, unfashionable thing that this theory tells us about the mind is that perception is indirect. As Gregory puts this Helmholtzian notion:
"For von Helmholtz, human perception is but indirectly related to objects, being inferred from fragmentary and often hardly relevant data signaled by the eyes, so requiring inferences from knowledge of the world to make sense of the sensory signals. (1997, p. 1122)"
What we perceive is the brain’s best hypothesis, as embodied in a high-level generative model, about the causes in the outer world.
But I don't even know why I even need to quote this. The previous quote of Friston, especially about seeing red, is enough. It's quite clearly a form of indirect realism. It just replaces the usual notion of "raw sense data" with something else. — Michael
we renounce dualism (Dennett, 1991). We
put in its place a dual aspect monism — Hobson and Friston's Choice
Thing is....mind is just a catch-all, a logical placeholder to prevent infinite regress, having nothing to do with speculative theoretics as a system. For instance, in searchable Guyer/Wood (1998) CPR, brain has four returns, mind 176, but reason has 1400+. — Mww
People seem to have qualia. The authors identified the models associated with them seeming to have qualia, but they do not actually have qualia. — Isaac
Finally, associating consciousness with inference gets to the heart of the hard problem, in the sense that inferring that something is red is distinct from receiving selective visual sensations (visual data) with the appropriate wavelength composition. Furthermore, you can only see your own red that is an integral part of your virtual reality model. You cannot see someone else’s red or another red because they are entailed by another model or hypothesis. In short, you cannot see my red — you can only infer that I can see red. In one sense, tying consciousness to active inference tells one immediately that consciousness is quintessentially private. Indeed, it is so private that other people are just hypotheses in your virtual reality model.
do the authors actually state that? — Marchesk
inferring that something is red is distinct from receiving selective visual sensations
Furthermore, you can only see your own red that is an integral part of your virtual reality model.
you cannot see my red — you can only infer that I can see red.
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