It's in the first sentence. Is there something you're not understanding about the subject matter of the paper because I keep repeating this and you keep ignoring it.

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.

The entire paper is about why we might report our experiences that way, not what our experiences actually are. 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.

We can see that quite clearly here, as that's exactly the way you're using 'red' throughout this whole thread.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual process of perception. It has nothing whatsoever to do with normal everyday use of the word 'red'. It is to do with exactly what they specify in the very first sentence of the paper.

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

That's what I've been trying to explain to you all along. When I say that I see a blue dress and you say that you see a red dress, you and I have different qualia (however you want to make sense of qualia), and that in this context the colour terms "red" and "blue" refer to this qualia.

you and I have different qualia — Michael

meta-theory — Isaac

The claim is not that we actually have qualia, it is explaining why we might think we have qualia when thinking about perception.

Do you have privileged and unfettered access to everything that happens in your brain? — Isaac

And going back to this, no, I don't, but I do know how to speak English and use colour-terms like "red" and "blue", and so it is a mistake to think that some in-depth scientific and mathematical account of brain activity and sensory experience determines what we mean by such words.

What I do have access to is qualia, and it is this qualia that directs my use of colour terms like "red" and "blue".

The claim is not that we actually have qualia, it is explaining why we might think we have qualia when thinking about perception. — Isaac

The paper concludes "[our story] is realist in that it identifies qualia with distinctive mid-level sensory states known with high systemic (and 100% agentive) certainty."

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.

So, again, nothing in either this paper on the "hard problem" of consciousness or the other paper on the responsiveness to sensory impressions supports your claim that being red is (only) an external world property.

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?

We could say the same about the 'god' neurons. I suppose they prove we actually do speak to god?

And schizophrenia? Identifying the models which give the impression of external voices proves schizophrenics really do hear external voices?

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

I don't know. I don't understand what relevance other papers have to what this paper is explicitly saying? It quite clearly says "qualia [are] distinctive mid-level sensory states known with high systemic ... certainty".

If you want to argue that this account is problematic then you need to speak to the authors, not to me.

It quite clearly says "qualia [are] distinctive mid-level sensory states known with high systemic ... certainty". — Michael

The fact that you've had to change the wording of the quote to make it match your conclusion says it all.

The fact that you've had to change the wording of the quote to make it match your conclusion says it all. — Isaac

I didn't change it to match my conclusion. I changed it so that the grammar flows better. But if you prefer:

I don't know. I don't understand what relevance other papers have to what this paper is explicitly saying? It quite clearly says "[our story] identifies qualia with distinctive mid-level sensory states known with high systemic (and 100% agentive) certainty".

If you want to argue that this account is problematic then you need to speak to the authors, not to me.

If you want to argue that this account is problematic then you need to speak to the authors, not to me. — Michael

The account is not problematic. It merely identifies the subjective certainty about qualia with some meta-theoretical models.

Other papers have identified feelings of 'speaking to god' with certain neural clusters very active in a few people.

Other papers have identified out-of-body experiences with modeling activity in the parietal and premotor cortices.

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. The authors of each paper have merely identified the.modeling processes associated with those reports.

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

This is misleading. 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). Qualitative experiences don't depend on there being some "corresponding" external world stimulus, and we have words like "red" and "painful" that refer to features of these qualitative experiences, e.g. the voices the schizophrenic hears have a tone, a pitch, a pace, a volume, etc.

¹https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557633

cognition can't be an active state because it doesn't interact with the external states — Isaac

True, it doesn’t. But external states are absolutely necessary for the representations (empirical) cognition does act upon. Activity herein being internally systemic. All in accordance with a specific speculative theory, hence not necessarily the case. Feasible, possible, non-contradictory....sure; the way things really are........ehhhhh, maybe not.
———-

it's a wonder either of us can understand a word the other says. — Isaac

And here is a perfect example of the depth of Kantian metaphysics. Think about it for a minute: you say you are amazed you can understand a word I say, but it is probably closer to the truth that you understand perfectly well what I say. The possible obscurity resides in the judgement you make upon receiving what I say, when you compare it to what you mean by the same word or conception you already possess.

The tripartite system in action:
(Deleted for being too long and dawn out, and perhaps only of passing interest anyway)

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

That's the point. They seem external. The authors identified the models associated with them seeming external, but they are not actually external.

People seem to have qualia. The authors identified the models associated with them seeming to have qualia, but they do not actually have qualia.

The authors identified the models associated with them seeming to have qualia, but they do not actually have qualia. — Isaac

That's not what they say. They say that qualia isn't what most people think it is:

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.

It's right there in the quote. They're saying that qualia – colours, sights, and sounds – aren't "raw experiential data" but are "generative model posits".

And again:

[our story] identifies qualia with distinctive mid-level sensory states known with high systemic (and 100% agentive) certainty.

And I'll add something else from the conclusion:

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.

We see red, not because the external world stimulus has some property of being red, but because of something going on "in the head". They just make sense of what goes on "in the head" as being a Bayesian inference rather than as the occurrence of "raw experiential data".

What is it you understand by 'generative model posits'? What definition of generative model posit are you using?

What is it you understand by 'generative model posits'? What definition of generative model posit are you using? — Isaac

I'm not using any, I'm repeating what they're saying. Another quote:

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.

Do you want to argue that this theory says that dogs and cats don't exist?

I'm not using any, I'm repeating what they're saying — Michael

You're selecting bits of what they're saying with virtually no knowledge of the field and no understanding of the theoretical context, but instead of finding out what it means, you're arguing with someone who could explain it to you.

It is quite an advanced paper in cognitive science, it's embedded in a whole theoretical framework about which you know virtually nothing.

I've tried to explain it to you, but I'm not going to continue to bang my head against a wall. If you really think you can now argue positions in cognitive science after scanning a couple of papers, using terminology you admit you don't even know the meaning of, then there seems little point continuing.

Do I need to properly understand cognitive science to understand the philosophical implications of what Friston and Hobson say here?

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

Yes. It's a paper about cognitive science, you need to understand the terminology and theoretical context to understand it. I would have thought that was obvious.

I don't need to understand cognitive science to understand that it's clearly a form of indirect realism. I speak English and what they say there is quite straightforward non-technical English.

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

The Zahavi paper that Wayfarer linked to tries to show how Husserlian phenomenology allows us to avoid the metaphysical trap that you , Kant and Dennett are stuck in. Specifically, it doesn’t begin from a notion of mind as an unconditioned ‘inside’. It begins from an irreducible
a priori of correlation that produces both what we call mind and what we call external objects.

what they say there is quite straightforward non-technical English. — Michael

I asked you what one of the terms they used earlier meant and you replied that you didn't know.

What do you understand by...

free energy minimization

in the first quote?

To what do you think they're referring when they reference...

sort of neurobiological and cognitive specification that we attempt to demonstrate in this paper.

in the second quote?

What is the sense of 'model' and 'hypothesis' they mean in terms of active inference when they say...

You cannot see someone else’s red or another red because they are entailed by another model or hypothesis.

in the third quote (which also references active inference)

And we've not even touched on the theoretical framework, the context, nor the paragraphs around the ones you've picked...

Functional integration and the mind, Jakob Hohwy

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.

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

You could also call it neo-Kantianism.

1

Forthcoming in Husserl Studies. Please quote from published version.

Brain, Mind, World: Predictive coding, neo-Kantianism, and transcendental idealism:

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/54174325/Predictive_coding-libre.pdf?1503060419=&response-content-disposition=attachment%3B+filename%3DBrain_Mind_World_Predictive_coding_neo_K.pdf&Expires=1658349141&Signature=TJReJgoXSnrRGvSTjMJaS3tz2IQ~hDWuXZYU4wRrOJz39Z8153gr7B5I2PRAvZVrU4hM7qlXWolX~Yt8sPnoPuROVJrLLv5G1J~G1EQKXVUwnmgXcq6Pu-t5kCgGXw~CHlm7wmoX91ej5iKrDfsG67W9MJdOTvPPCwb4jmirprYFBld2GOF3b4m8KZbZr24jcYJlEVdan1gQ5elYii4oaU1sVRFBbOM5FqjJ9-yVueeGYOxp0Vzjbw~meSlCKY74Y36Q-5nCh5lrEMAX5uQlWRGz7KUl3k9J0oudgjmxICP3SkUp~Nb3NTLp6PdhEGOerJHMBvOu38Y-cLqCAZkFbA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

Hey.....

Yeah, I read the paper, happy with it, good for some to hang his hat on, but, I’m good with what I know.

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+.

So there is no metaphysical trap, per se. Mind is just that which is conceived when we....carelessly......step one idea over the explanatory threshold.

My opinion only, of course.

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

How would you articulate a model of reason that didn’t make use of a notion of mind( or subjectivity)?

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

Wait, do the authors actually state that? Because what Michael quoted seems to say the opposite:

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.

Maybe you prefer to call it "virtual red" instead of "red quale", but it plays the same intrinsic, immediate, private, ineffable role Dennett so wanted to quine. The only difference being that color is part of a virtual reality model instead of a Cartesian Theater.

Truth be told, I must admit to only being able to articulate someone else’s model. I ain’t nowhere’s near smart enough to come up with a decent, original myself. But then, I don’t need to repeat what’s already been done.

OK, so....a model.

First, some assumptions:
.....does a human being think (or whatever one choses to call that pesky voice in his head that never seems to shut the hell up).....check;
.....does a human being receive sensory data (or whatever one choses to call that oh-so-subtle imaging process in his head that only goes away when he chose not to need it).....check;
.....does a human being ask himself, even if only once in awhile, about stuff for which he has no answer, and then, if he has no answer, creates one that makes him feel good....check;
.....is there stuff in the human intelligence in general, no matter which head contains it, the denial of which is impossible....check.

Given those assumptions, enter the guy that figures out a bunch of parts, assembles them into an explanatory method sufficient to turn those assumptions into succession of logically consistent internal mental events.

And there’s your model. Which fine for the talking, but means not a damn thing to the doing. I’m mean.....you gotta use the very thing you’re trying to model. Every abstract cognitive notion suffers the same map/territory paradoxical circularity. But whatcha gonna do, when you don’t even know with apodeictic certainty what you have to work with.

do the authors actually state that? — Marchesk

Yes. The entire paper is (as is stated very clearly at the outset) about our meta-model of perception - why we feel we have qualia.

inferring that something is red is distinct from receiving selective visual sensations

Yes. The author (and me, for what it's worth) consider perception indirect. The wording in this quote again could not be more clear about what 'red' refers to. "inferring that something is red". Something. Not the inference itself, some external thing.

Furthermore, you can only see your own red that is an integral part of your virtual reality model.

Look at the part you haven't bolded.

And again here...

you cannot see my red — you can only infer that I can see red.

'Red' is referred to as a shared external property.

The paper is arguing that we model something like qualia in our meta-model of perception (not the process of perception itself) because it helps us to imagine keeping that part of the inference steady whilst changing others which helps with prediction. It's a tool in a model. Not even a model involved in perception, but in the higher order reflective models of consciousness (which would be clearer if one had read Friston's work on active inference and consciousness).

What's being confused here is the indirectness of perception and the properties of the percept. The process of perception is pretty clear (it's very well studied). Colour is determined in a stage in the iterative process that is prior to object recognition (except in cases of plain colour swatches to which we respond slightly differently). It is not possible with the current mechanisms we know about, for a person's actual perception to 'see' a red dress as an internal model. 'Red' is modeled by the V4 region (primarily) which is close to the optic nerve itself (in network terms). Our conscious awareness is several dozen steps removed and several seconds behind. For us to actually have a 'red' quale would require us to model affect directly from that V4 region, and we cannot (despite looking) find any evidence of such a process. Any affect modeling is from a red dress, or a red post box, or a red car, from which percept we later, artificially extract the 'red' as a qualia-like inference, to render prediction of, say, a green post box.