What woo am I trying to monger? — bert1

It's not about 'mongering' it. I'm just saying that one could render exactly the same level of mystery about how it is that legs result in walking, or how bricks could make a house, or how a load of syllables make a poem, or how patterns of light could produce the words I'm reading, or how some grains of sand become a 'pile', but we don't know how many...

Pretty much anything can be made to sound mysterious by just asking '...but why?' until the answers run out.

What I'm saying is that you (we all) pick what we're going to see as 'mysterious' and what we're going to accept as normal, not on the basis of some objective state of affairs, but on an arbitrary and personal decision about when we're going to stop asking 'why?' There's nothing special about consciousness beyond the fact that you choose to see it as special, you choose to not stop asking 'why?'

Useful outcome does not imply goal, purpose, or reason. — T Clark

Again, I think this just depends on what you're prepared to accept as a reason. I'm quite happy to say that the reason cell membranes have protein channels is to facilitate active transportation. I'm not claiming any teleology, just that within the context of cell function we can identify the reason that protein channels exist. I don't think we're stepping outside the boundaries of science in doing so, nor invoking a designer, but we are invoking purpose, quite unproblematically, I think. The purpose of protein channels is to transport molecules against the concentration gradient. I don't see how that's at all controversial.

Given we could agree (possibly) on the above, I'm not sure how there'd be any difference in saying that the purpose of consciousness is X, simply by restricting our frame of reference to the functioning of the organism.

if we're quibbling about necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness, sentience, experience, having a perspective and so on, how and why we would have a consciousness of any indicated sort would be determined by the conceptualisation fixed "upstream". — fdrake

That's fine, I don't deny that, but then from within the definition of consciousness used by the protagonists here, there should still be a set of sufficiency criteria for the reasons given in answer to a question 'why?'. It's not that I'm demanding those criteria should match my definition, just any definition. The problem is I've not been given any criteria at all.

I could see that the qualia people may have a similar move available to them. Like the enactivists did in my fictional example above. If an enactivist criticised the state of neuroscience as being unable to study the dynamic interplay of body, brain and environment in a meaningful way, it similarly makes sense to allow the qualist to accuse neuroscience of the same, unjustified, filter. Which isn't a filter on the level of data, it's a filter on the level of conceptualising data and how people ask questions. — fdrake

I'm not sure I go along with that. I see what you're saying to a point but I think the enactivist/qualist would be overstating their case if they were to make such a move. Unless it is assessed within some higher order meta-framework, then at the very most such a thinker might say that they don't have a place for a representationalist paradigm (and vice versa) in their models. To criticise the field thus would be unjustified. Representationalists clearly do study the dynamic interplay of body, brain and environment in a meaningful way, if they didn't the papers they write on the subject would be incoherent to all.

If anything, I think the approach shackles, certainly enactivists in some cases. Take, for example, the difference in approach between Andy Clark and Evan Thomson on this. Andy's work has been really productive in pushing at the boundaries of the two positions and we've got some promising synthesises as a result. contrast that with Thompson's shambles of a paper attempting to rule out any common ground.

Note that what's being claimed here is not "Phenomenology is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness", quite the opposite. The OP is "Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness" and already the tenor of the thread is one of defending the poor mistreated phenomenological philosophers against the reductionist bullying of Neuroscience. I'm exaggerating for effect, of course, but the pattern is not an unfamiliar one.

I think, eg Chalmers, has tried to show that there really is this gap between what can be accounted for with (current) descriptions from neuroscience - assuming they are physical. And if that's true, there'd need to be a new but related science regarding how qualia and brains track each other, and how qualia correlate with others. Conceived of in this way, Chalmer's arguments play the role of the enactivist in the above example. And, I think, be treated with the same courtesy. — fdrake

As above really, apart from maybe the Churchlands et al (but even then with significant pulling of punches) I don't see this as a matter of neuroscience closing off perspectives from philosophy at all. If anything, the feeling from my side of the debate is one of Chalmers et al being afforded some kind of untouchable status, where criticisms, or even requests for clarity, are summarily waived away with little more than "you just don't get it do you". I understand that Chalmer and others may have a perspective that some definitions of consciousness in neuroscience don't accommodate, but I think that the divide is not unbridgeable. To do so, however requires that the neuroscientist (or the cognitive scientist) be able to legitimately interrogate the philosopher's position (and vice versa of course). That's what I'm trying to do here.

My original question didn't specify a framework, or perspective at all. It's simply asking about sufficient conditions for satisfaction. What constitutes a 'reason' from within the perspective that sufficiently contains neuroscience to justify the claim of the OP .

If you believe that "how" and "why" are being equated with "how" and "why" in a context which, it sees, necessarily removes relevant things from its study, you'd be contesting the entire context, which is roughly anything which seeks to explain everything about consciousness with physical laws. — fdrake

That's all very well, but still lacks (if not more so) any details about sufficiency from that perspective. If it's not a law of physics that's being sought to explain the mechanism, then a law of what? If no law at all, then in what way is just any mechanism not an answer?

How can we rule out potential answers (which must be being done - the claim is that no answer yet suffices) without grounds against which to rule?

Once again, there is no consensus on the definition of the terms. Without such consensus the claim remains ambiguous. — Fooloso4

Again, when a definition is based on the description of the phenomenon...there is consensus.
i.e. "Consciousness is an arousal and awareness of environment and self, which is achieved through action of the ascending reticular activating system"
this is a description based on what we can objectively verify as the phenomenon to be conscious.

when you make claims about these undefined terms. Giving a definition does not settle anything. — Fooloso4

-I don't know under which rock you have been living but in science we have straight forward descriptions for any phenomenon. We may not be able to provide a theory or a single causal mechanism but that doesn't mean we don't agree with what we study and observe.

Despite a revival in the scientific study of consciousness over recent decades, the only real consensus so far is that there is still no consensus.

He is far more specific of the details that enable the phenomenon. He and anyone agree on which phenomenon they are talking about.
Don't try to bring science in the woo woo land of your definitions sir.

You are free to make any arguments you like, but please refrain from ad hominem attacks and insults ('I don't know under which rock you have been living', 'the woo woo land of your definitions').

Attacks and insults? Mr Foolos04 is dishonest and he has been like that from his first reply. My labels describe his behavior and intentions that he has displayed again and again, so they are not ad hominems. He doesn't respect scientific knowledge and all his arguments are based on his personal incredulity(which is a fallacy).
He cherry picks and uses scientific statements out of context while he ignores mainstream science all together.
So I am free to make any argument and I am free to call out dishonest interlocutors. I would appreciate if you inform your criticism about me sir.

The poster you're referring to is knowledgeable and articulate, and is making sound criticisms. Take this as a warning - keep it up and you'll be suspended and/or banned.

@Nickolasgaspar Don't martyr yourself just yet! You've made some interesting points I still want to get to. Especially where you said something about necessary and sufficient conditions.

EDIT: Part of the reason I created this thread is to give you a place to let off some steam without being off-topic, so you were less likely to be banned.

Listen Grand Sultan of "the Philosophy Forum" I don't accept warnings or threats so I won't contribute to your biological rewarding mechanism (endorphins) activated by the act of "giving orders" and "make people obey you".
If you don't like words describing behavior then you have 3 choices:
A. move to North Korea. ( I hear your tactics have a huge success there.)
B. Don't read my posts
C. Ban my account

I prefer C so I get to keep my email inbox clear(never mind I will block it). After all I was off for most of the time during my two years membership.

As I already wrote yesterday I am sick and bored of all magical thinkers and their scientific ignorance, their inability to distinquish Philosophy from pseudo philosophy, their constant attempts to avoid all standards of evaluation and their dishonesty. If I recall your arguments correctly you were also one of them...so no wonder why you find Foolso4 knowledgeable and articulate but my descriptions "attacks and ad hominems".

EDIT: Part of the reason I created this thread is to give you a place to let off some steam without being off-topic, so you were less likely to be banned. — bert1

-I thought your goals were to communicate your scientific ignorance and the promotion our death denying ideology. Who knew you cared about me....lol


Sir I appreciate your understanding, your education and admire your patience.

Enjoy your lives and educate yourselves.

btw magical thinking is a real condition.
https://aeon.co/essays/magical-thinking-still-haunts-all-our-thoughts

Over and out.

Over and out. — Nickolasgaspar

Literally, it seems.

↪180 Proof
Sir I appreciate your understanding, your education and admire your patience — Nickolasgaspar

Same here. Thanks!

Don't try to bring science in the woo woo land of your definitions sir. — Nickolasgaspar

I know that Gaspar has been banned, but I would like to point out that I have not provided any definitions. My point is simple: there is no consensus on any definition, including his own.

This does not mean I endorse "woo". I am agnostic, but I suspect that whatever progress is made it will be through the study of living organisms.

Here is Gaspar's definition:

Again, when a definition is based on the description of the phenomenon...there is consensus. i.e. "Consciousness is an arousal and awareness of environment and self, which is achieved through action of the ascending reticular activating system" this is a description based on what we can objectively verify as the phenomenon to be conscious. — Nickolasgaspar

Note how he slips from a phenomenal description to a causal theory.

Gaspar points to Mark Solms as an authority. This is what Solms says in a podcast about the reticular activating system and consciousness.

If it is present there is good reason to believe the creature is conscious, but:

not only is it possible through convergent evolution that there may be some other mechanism other than the reticular activating system which also makes a creature capable of consciousness. Not only is it possible and plausible its even more so possible and plausible that there is some sort of proto reticular activating system, some sort of primordial arrangement that precedes the evolution of the reticular activating system which may have given rise to some form of proto consciousness interestingly in the mammalian brain stem and the vertebrate brain stem.
...
There may also be entirely different arrangements ... the nervous system of the octopus ...

Given we could agree (possibly) on the above, I'm not sure how there'd be any difference in saying that the purpose of consciousness is X, simply by restricting our frame of reference to the functioning of the organism. — Isaac

Reading your post, I couldn't remember how we got on this point. Going back and looking didn't help. So we can leave it there, as long as we agree that "reason" and "purpose" mean function and not goal, I'm ok with where we are.

What is? — Isaac

The intersection between first person experience and neurobehaviour.

That's begging the question. The evolutionary frame (in my example) comes first so that we can ask - what's the benefit of being conscious - to get at our "why?" question.

If you don't like the evolutionary frame, then there may well be another, but I'm arguing it would still be of the same form, there'd be something which constitutes a measure of satisfaction with the reasons given.

I don't think I was begging the question. (I was re-reading my post and a wikipedia article on begging the question to see if I missed something.) This is the assumption I made:

Person A is a p-zombie; person B is not. They're both human beings and thus share a lot of the same evolutionary history. Is there some way to tell, by looking at brain-stuff, that this is the case? Clearly, this assumption is not warranted, and I draw no conclusion. I simply want to illustrate the problem. Maybe p-zombies are impossible. How could we tell?

Differently put: What sort of process can give rise to first person experience? By the time we're talking about frames like evolution (and likely other alternatives, too), we either assume that only brain stuff gives rise to consciousness, or we restict our interest to brain stuff. In both cases, we've already skipped past the topic.

So when you say this in an earlier post:

Consciousness is the label we give to the re-telling of recent mental events with a first-person protagonist. — Isaac

You're parcelling up first person experience with consciouness in a way that doesn't tell me what you think of first person experience. Your using a narrative metaphor, which suggests first-person-experience. But it might be possible to get at the same thing with a computation metaphor (which I can't come up with because my knowledge is even more limited than my neuroscience knowledge; it'd probably be something like a process and a monitoring envelope, or something?) The second thing I notice, is that you're not referencing any brain stuff at all; but the "re-telling of recent mental events" suggests that brain-stuff is what this is based on?

For what it's worth, I can't tell what your take on first-person experience and neurobehaviour is. It doesn't seem to be epiphenomalism. Maybe you think first person expience is a type of neurobehaviour, and the distinction makes no sense to begin with?

But that's just a matter of willing, not of some deep conceptual problem. After all, if you're able to imagine your keyboard is really made of atoms by seeing it as just a matter of scale, then you're just imagining atoms wrong. They're not (so I'm told) just smaller bits of keyboard. they're these weird energy particles and probabilities and quantum maths I don't even understand.

You're willing to simply 'allow' that rule (weird quantum stuff can become keyboards), not, I'd suggest, because it's somehow easier to conceptualise, but because it's not a mystery you find particularly interesting that it remain one. It's a less good story, in other words. — Isaac

You may well be right about this. I need to think this through some more.

(For what it's worth, I'm not caught up with this thread. Anything after the post I replied to I haven't read yet; so I might have been saying stuff that's been addressed later. If so, sorry for wasting your time. I usually don't reply before I'm caught up with a thread. In fact, I think that's the first time I ever did that.)

My objection to neuro-reductionism is that what it is seeking to explain is something which is different in kind to other topics of scientific analysis, and in so doing, it can't help but treat the human as a species, or a specimen - as an object of analysis, something which will yield to scientific method. Daniel Dennett, who is one of its leading advocates, puts it like this:

What, then, is the relation between the standard ‘third-person’ objective methodologies for studying meteors or magnets (or human metabolism or bone density), and the methodologies for studying human consciousness? Can the standard methods be extended in such a way as to do justice to the phenomena of human consciousness? Or do we have to find some quite radical or revolutionary alternative science? I have defended the hypothesis that there is a straightforward, conservative extension of objective science that handsomely covers the ground — all the ground — of human consciousness, doing justice to all the data without ever having to abandon the rules and constraints of the experimental method that have worked so well in the rest of science. — Daniel Dennett, Who's on First?

In Dennett's view, scientific method must be truly universal in scope - whatever can't be included in it, is either not worth knowing about, or unknowable. Notice that this basically assumes that science is capable of being all-knowing - the literal meaning of 'omniscient' - in respect of human nature.

Hence the frequent angry outbursts at those who dare challenge the supremacy of science, and the many scornful references to woo-woo and soft-headed philosophers who 'don't know the science'. And as always, the most vigorous advocates of 'scientism' never seem to comprehend the fly in their ointment; because, I guess, the difficulty is a philosophical one, and so it is not demonstrable in empirical terms - it becomes something like, 'you need to provide scientific evidence for why this can't be a scientific issue' - at which point, debate becomes futile.

I think what is behind this is the fear of the mystery of consciousness - the fear is what provides the sense of urgency, the impatience with critics, and the demand that we all must recognise scientific authority as the only path to certainty.

My objection to neuro-reductionism is that what it is seeking to explain is something which is different in kind to other topics of scientific analysis — Wayfarer

I don't think I'm what you call a "neuro-reductionist," although maybe you would disagree. I made the following comment earlier in this thread:

I classify phenomenal consciousness as a mental process. That's the kind of a thing I say it is. The category I say it belongs in. One of the characteristics of a mental processes is that they are behaviors or at least that they manifest themselves to us as behaviors.

If it's not a mental process, what kind of a thing is it? What category does it fit in? — Me

Do you have an answer to that question? If phenomenal consciousness is not a mental process, what is it? And why isn't it suitable for examination by scientific methods?

I don't think your depiction of it is mistaken, but it's not the whole story. Recall a salient passage from the original paper:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. — David Chalmers, Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness

What I think Chalmers is actually trying to convey by 'something it is like...' is, simply, being. Being, and what it means to be, is surely one of the major preoccupations of philosophy (and much else besides) although it's not always explicit - for Heidegger questioning the meaning of being is philosophy. (And I do wonder whether eliminative materialism is in some ways a manifestation of what Heidegger called 'the forgetfulness of being'.)

Another point I'd make is that there is the study of consciousness as an object of analysis - which is cognitive science - which I'm interested in, and trying to get a better understanding of. And cognitive science and philosophy definitely converge in a lot of ways. But the philosophical question about the nature of the mind (a term I prefer to 'consciousness') is broader, and deeper, than the specific questions which are the subject of cognitive science. That is reflected in Chalmer's distinction between the easy and hard problems of consciousness. And you find within cogsci, there are those with different philosophical aims, views, objectives. They will agree on some things - methodologies, empirical facts - but differ in others, such as intepretation, what conclusion to draw from the facts.

But at the bottom of it, the fact is that the subject of experience - you and I - are not reducible to objects - which is what neuroreductionism, as a philosophical attitude, tends to do.

I’m a robot, and you’re a robot, but that doesn’t make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions,” he said. “Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable? — Daniel Dennett

I think there's a completely unambiguous answer to that: we are not robots, or machines, or even simply organisms, but beings, and a science that doesn't understand that is a risk to humanity. You never know what you, or the person next to you, is capable of being, or becoming.

I think we agree that humans aren't just their bodies and that consciousness should be explained as much by philosophers as by scientists.

In Dennett's view, scientific method must be truly universal in scope - whatever can't be included in it, is either not worth knowing about, or unknowable. — Wayfarer

Perhaps science is a torch carried into the dark. Who's to say ahead of time what can't be included in it ? To me Dennett is brave. He's earned your ire just by cheerfully trying to make more sense of consciousness and evolution, exactly the themes that matter to you (and me). Why should a serious study of consciousness not result in counterintuitive results ? We carry our torch into the dark beyond our comfortable assumptions and find out. I don't deny that different researchers have different initial attunements, but that's why science is open and everyone has to make a case. Hopefully all our biases cancel out and we (for the wrong reasons) keep one another honest.

I think what is behind this is the fear of the mystery of consciousness - the fear is what provides the sense of urgency, the impatience with critics, and the demand that we all must recognise scientific authority as the only path to certainty. — Wayfarer

I'm willing to grant you that some people may indeed find it embarrassing to talk about consciousness. On the other hand, some people are likely terrified of there being no gods, or us 'just' being clever primates. I suspect that fear of a bruised 'final vocabulary' is universal. We can always headshrink the stupid stubborn other. But isn't that where serious discussion breaks down ? And it's basically 'pomo' paranoid confusion when carried to extremes.

Isn't scientific authority an oxymoron ? To me it's just that educated people tend to settle for the scientific consensus of a field when they can't do better (aren't experts themselves.) Even then the goal is being less wrong, less crude, less uncertain.

I can't speak for Dennett, but I hope I've presented something like his attitude and at least a stronger target than that scientistic fellow who was just banned.

What I think Chalmers is actually trying to convey by 'something it is like...' is, simply, being. Being, and what it means to be, is surely one of the major preoccupations of philosophy (and much else besides) although it's not always explicit - for Heidegger questioning the meaning of being is philosophy. (And I do wonder whether eliminative materialism is in some ways a manifestation of what Heidegger called 'the forgetfulness of being'.) — Wayfarer

:up:

I think there's a completely unambiguous answer to that: we are not robots, or machines, or even simply organisms, but beings, and a science that doesn't understand that is a risk to humanity. You never know what you, or the person next to you, is capable of being, or becoming. — Wayfarer

Whether it's offensive or not to call us robots (an admittedly risky metaphor) seems to be a matter of how we think of and feel about robots. Descartes thought animals were machines, right ? To many us who love pets or resent brutal farming techniques, that's an ugly thesis. Fair enough. Dennett is maybe even indulging himself here, because I know from From Bacteria To Bach that he's very interested in our softwhere, which are the memes that live in the 'termite mound' of our neurons. I'd guess (and perhaps he'd agree) that we are more meme than robot, more language than flesh. To me we are incarnate spirit, with the meaning of our words 'out there' in enacted norms. The dance and the dancer are one.


We Homo sapiens are the only species (so far) with richly cumulative culture, and the key ingredient of culture that makes this possible is language.

Words, I will argue, are the best example of memes, culturally transmitted items that evolve by differential replication—that is, by natural selection.

The claim that I defend is that human culture started out profoundly Darwinian, with uncomprehending competences yielding various valuable structures in roughly the way termites build their castles, and then gradually de-Darwinized, becoming ever more efficient in its ways of searching Design Space. In short, as human culture evolved, it fed on the fruits of its own evolution, increasing its design powers by utilizing information in ever more powerful ways.

The manifest image that has been cobbled together by genetic evolutionary processes over billions of years, and by cultural evolutionary processes over thousands of years, is an extremely sophisticated system of helpful metaphorical renderings of the underlying reality uncovered in the scientific image. It is a user-illusion that we are so adept at using that we take it to be unvarnished reality, when in fact it has many coats of intervening interpretive varnish on it.

This last one doesn't seem quite right to me since the scientific image is itself interpretation, but it gets or historicality right, that we use timebinding software to orient ourselves. Imaging the lifeworld in layers is appealing to the degree that some interpretations seem less fragile than others, so we might say they are deeper. But I personally wouldn't think one could peel this 'sediment' off a Real world (a mere Void) 'buried' beneath. It's all sediment, interpretations all the way down, inasmuch as we can talk about it.

Descartes thought animals were machines, right ? — plaque flag

I started a thread on Descartes and animal cruelty. I will add that during the course of the ensuing debate, I did some more digging, and found that Descartes himself was not involved in the atrocities that had caused me to start that OP. However, it was conducted by the students at some, at the time, "progressive college", convinced by Descartes' philosophy that animals are incapable of suffering, that they're basically like machines, so that when they were nailed to boards and flayed alive, their howls didn't signify actual pain.

Also please note scientism and scientific materialism are different from science, which is a method of discovery //and a vast and ever-growing body of knowledge and technique//. Where they enter the picture is in the attempt to treat philosophical issues as scientific problems, which they're not - and this, in the context of a culture which has essentially abandoned its own metaphysical base.

Ideas have consequences.

Where they enter the picture is in the attempt to treat philosophical issues as scientific problems, which they're not - and this, in the context of a culture which has essentially abandoned its own metaphysical base. — Wayfarer

Are we the same culture since the Enlightenment ? How does one separate this abandonment of our metaphysical base from our abandonment of superstition ? To me it's hard to see how one can put rational limits on critical post-Enlightenment thinking. It's only more and better critical thinking that can hope to do that, it seems to me. As I see it, going forward does (always?) involve a rethinking and even an impetus from the past, but that's not the same as an impossible return.

Ideas have consequences. — Wayfarer

Yes. But then the idea that ideas have consequences could also have dangerous consequences --if it's used to hobble science or freedom of thought.

Maybe p-zombies are impossible. How could we tell? — Dawnstorm

This is the question that I think is ill-formed.

How could we tell if anything is impossible?

There's nothing peculiar about consciousness (as it's described here). You've posited a property (consciousness) that can't be detected (the p-zombie is identical apart from this property), and then asked "how could we tell if it's real?"

So If I suggest that there's a property - wockishness (after the Jabberwocky), that might be present in some rocks, but not others, but it's not possible to tell since 'wockish' rocks appear identical to 'non-wockish' rocks... you'd think me mad. Why would I even postulate such a thing if I've no cause to?

'Consciousness' when conceived as the difference between p-zombies and non-p-zombies has this same lack of role. What's it doing, as a property? I'm sure it's doing a perfectly functional job of describing how you feel - "I feel like a person", "I feel like I have experiences" etc, but your feelings are not properties. The difference between you and a p-zombie in this sense would be that the p-zombie didn't feel that way, not that it lacks a property you have. There's nothing odd about that. I don't feel like I have experiences in the sense that some proponents of the idea feel.

I think there's a fundamental incoherence in confusing a personal feeling for an objective property in need of any kind of explanation. There's a step where the feeling is reified (which is a fine step to take), but then what's not fine (in my view) is to pretend that step wasn't taken and proceed to seem dumbfounded that this deep mystery hasn't been addressed. It's not a deep mystery. A property has been speculated to exist, specifically with the criteria that it is not merely the actions of neurons and then it is treated with faux surprise that it turns out not to be reducible to the actions of neurons.

In Dennett's view, scientific method must be truly universal in scope - whatever can't be included in it, is either not worth knowing about, or unknowable. Notice that this basically assumes that science is capable of being all-knowing - the literal meaning of 'omniscient' - in respect of human nature. — Wayfarer

I don't read it that way. He asks:

Can the standard methods be extended in such a way as to do justice to the phenomena of human consciousness? Or do we have to find some quite radical or revolutionary alternative science? — Daniel Dennett, Who's on First?

As to the first question, I see no reason to curtail research working toward that end. As to the second, it asks what we would have to abandon to make way for this alternative.

Whether or not the standard methods of science will do justice to the phenomena of human consciousness is not something we are in a position to know. Perhaps Dennett overestimates what science is capable of, perhaps you underestimate. Either way, I see no good reason not to continue with scientific inquiry.

That's fine, I don't deny that, but then from within the definition of consciousness used by the protagonists here, there should still be a set of sufficiency criteria for the reasons given in answer to a question 'why?'. It's not that I'm demanding those criteria should match my definition, just any definition. — Isaac

I imagine you'd have to be wary of expecting a functional definition involving, solely, body and environmental states. If their arguments go through, you need to posit new kinds of entity and new laws. In effect, starting the study of what's on the other side of the explanatory gap. If part of the theory is "it cannot be bridged", that does put an onus on an opponent to show the gap doesn't exist or alternatively that it's already been bridged.

Also, with maximal charity, I think it's unfair to expect a concise definition of content from a nascent field of inquiry. Like "hey Mr Newton, can you define what a force is for me? It doesn't seem to be a substance... is it immaterial? How can it be part of a physical law without a physical body?"

What I'm saying is that you (we all) pick — Isaac

That's all very well, but still lacks (if not more so) any details about sufficiency from that perspective. If it's not a law of physics that's being sought to explain the mechanism, then a law of what? If no law at all, then in what way is just any mechanism not an answer? — Isaac

what we're going to see as 'mysterious' and what we're going to accept as normal, not on the basis of some objective state of affairs, but on an arbitrary and personal decision about when we're going to stop asking 'why?' There's nothing special about consciousness beyond the fact that you choose to see it as special, you choose to not stop asking 'why?'

I also don't think this is particularly charitable, you can treat arguments like Mary's Room, zombies etc as attempts to show why consciousness is "special" in this way. Furthermore, expecting a functionalist answer to those is in some regard begging the question.

That's all very well, but still lacks (if not more so) any details about sufficiency from that perspective. If it's not a law of physics that's being sought to explain the mechanism, then a law of what? If no law at all, then in what way is just any mechanism not an answer? — Isaac

Another way of seeing the debate is not about sufficient conditions for consciousness, but about sufficient conditions for positing consciousness, experience and so on as primitives for a theory. Like you might not expect necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as "matter" or an "institution". Just whether positing something helps alleviate problems with hitherto existing accounts.

And that's addressed by attacking arguments which purport to show that hitherto existing accounts from functionalist/physicalist philosophers don't or cannot account for some phenomena consciousness exhibits (narrow vs wide content from Chalmers eg).

The only reason I'm paranoid about this stuff is that it's very easy to "stack the deck" depending on what side you're on. Years of largely unproductive exchange in the field have shown any onlooker that.

What I think Chalmers is actually trying to convey by 'something it is like...' is, simply, being. Being, and what it means to be, is surely one of the major preoccupations of philosophy (and much else besides) although it's not always explicit - for Heidegger questioning the meaning of being is philosophy. (And I do wonder whether eliminative materialism is in some ways a manifestation of what Heidegger called 'the forgetfulness of being'.) — Wayfarer

I think I recognize pretty well what consciousness is from the inside. I have no problem with how you've expressed it, although my take is less poetic and more matter of fact.

Another point I'd make is that there is the study of consciousness as an object of analysis - which is cognitive science - which I'm interested in, and trying to get a better understanding of. — Wayfarer

I'm surprised at this statement. It had seemed to me that you rejected attempts to understand consciousness from a scientific point of view. I think Chalmers definitely does. Or am I wrong about that? And yes, I agree, I want to know a lot more about cognitive science.

But the philosophical question about the nature of the mind (a term I prefer to 'consciousness') is broader, and deeper, than the specific questions which are the subject of cognitive science. — Wayfarer

My first response to that would be "Well sure, that's what psychology is about." I imagine you would find that unsatisfactory.

I think there's a completely unambiguous answer to that: we are not robots, or machines, or even simply organisms, but beings, and a science that doesn't understand that is a risk to humanity. You never know what you, or the person next to you, is capable of being, or becoming. — Wayfarer

It just seems like you could say the same thing about anything. There's more to the world than what science can see. Ok. I think that's a different argument than Chalmers and the other what-is-it-like guys are making. Maybe I'm misunderstanding it.

It had seemed to me that you rejected attempts to understand consciousness from a scientific point of view. — T Clark

Not at all. Neither does David Chalmers. Remember, Daniel Dennett is not a cognitive scientist, or actually a scientist at all. He's a philosopher who appeals to a scientific ideology in pursuit of a philosophical agenda.

There are some cognitive science writers I'm wanting to read more of, notably Antonio D'Amasio, Thomas Metzinger, and Anil Seth. Not that I'm expecting to always agree with their philosophical stance, but there's a lot to learn in this space.

The only reason I'm paranoid about this stuff is that it's very easy to "stack the deck" depending on what side you're on. — fdrake

This debate is one of the fronts in the culture wars. On the one side, scientific materialism says that humans are gene machines or moist robots, that free will and even consciousness itself are illusory (notwithstanding that an illusion can only be an artefact within consciousness). It is no coincidence that in addition to his writings on philosophy Dennett is also one of the prominent 'new atheists' (alongside Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, although the new atheist fad is now seen as rather passé).

On the other side, you have a number of writers and speakers from all kinds of backgrounds, with a great diversity of views. About the only thing they have in common is opposition to the materialist paradigm. You could include, amongst philosophers, Raymond Tallis, Mary Midgley, and Thomas Nagel. There are philosophers of cognitive science who straddle the border, such as Christof Koch, enactivists like Alva Noe, and the phenomenologists. Plus nowadays even the Vedic contingent, represented by Deepak Chopra. (Those Consciousness Studies conferences held by the University of Arizona must be pretty interesting. Check out the program for the next installment, in May this year.)

Neither does David Chalmers. — Wayfarer

I've only read a little by him. One essay on the hard problem and a few quotes. He sure seems to reject scientific explanations for conscious experience. Have I misread him?

The point he’s trying to make is that while cognitive science is adequate for the explanation of the various functions of consciousness, it can’t show how to bridge the explanatory gap between those accounts and the felt nature of first-person experience. You could know all about the physiology of pain without knowing pain, which you only know by having had it. Elsewhere he writes about the possibility of developing a ‘first person science’ although I haven’t studied that. You’ll find a comprehensive set of papers here https://consc.net/consciousness/ But I will say he’s a very clear writer and thinker.

If part of the theory is "it cannot be bridged", that does put an onus on an opponent to show the gap doesn't exist or alternatively that it's already been bridged. — fdrake

I think that's only true though if there's some within-frame theoretical support for the notion that "it cannot be bridged", which I think is lacking. I don't think it's reasonable to start one's Ramsey sentence with "suppose the gap between neurological goings on and first-person consciousness is unbridgeable..." it seems the oddest thing to suppose as a foundational, but more than that it imports assumptions which then need examining - like what does 'unbridgeable' actually mean in this context?

I think it's unfair to expect a concise definition of content from a nascent field of inquiry. Like "hey Mr Newton, can you define what a force is for me? It doesn't seem to be a substance... is it immaterial? How can it be part of a physical law without a physical body?" — fdrake

I agree, but that's not what I'm doing here (at least I don't think it is). I'm not asking the proponents of a 'hard problem' to define terms, or the components of their model. I'm asking for the criteria of sufficiency being used in the expression "neuroscience does not explain why/how we have consciousness". I'm just asking what is insufficient about the explanations given (say by the Churchills - to go extreme eliminativist).

It's quite acceptable to me to say "my model of consciousness involves this bridge/force/realm which I can't quite define" no problem at all with that, but what I do not understand is when asked "why have you invoked this bridge/force/realm in your model" the answer comes back blank.

Essentially, as with all philosophy, if we can't say anything about why one frame is preferable to the other then it's redundant (as a social exercise) we have to have criteria - even if it's aesthetics, parsimony, clarity, coherence... something has to be the matter we can discuss when comparing models/frameworks, otherwise what are we discussing?

And... point of order about charity. This thread is entitled "Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness" it is a direct attack on eliminativist or reductionist explanations of consciousness (elsewhere described as 'evil' with virtually no comeback). Can you honestly say that the problem with a lack of charity is toward non-reductionism? I've been as open as possible to the arguments put forward, accepting any framework (despite my personal preference for functionalist ones), short of just laying down at the feet of the non-reductionist problem, I'm not sure how I could possibly be more charitable whilst still disagreeing.

I don't think anyone could say the same of the treatment of reductionist approaches here, which are routinely dismissed as simply 'not understanding' the arguments, if not openly treated as coming from soulless nihilists.

I also don't think this is particularly charitable, you can treat arguments like Mary's Room, zombies etc as attempts to show why consciousness is "special" in this way. Furthermore, expecting a functionalist answer to those is in some regard begging the question. — fdrake

Unless I've misunderstood your use of the term 'functionalist' then I'm not expecting a functionalist account. '"Why/How?" is taken directly from the question posed by the hard problem (and its proponents), I've not added anything to that question. I'm simply saying that one can continue to ask 'why?' to any given explanation. "... but why?"... We choose when to stop. that's all I'm saying here. Nothing functionalist, nothing beyond the simple grammar of the word 'why?' It expects some reason. Questions beginning "why..." are universally answered in the form "because...", and I'm not the one posing the question in that format, they are.

Another way of seeing the debate is not about sufficient conditions for consciousness, but about sufficient conditions for positing consciousness, experience and so on as primitives for a theory. Like you might not expect necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as "matter" or an "institution". Just whether positing something helps alleviate problems with hitherto existing accounts.

And that's addressed by attacking arguments which purport to show that hitherto existing accounts from functionalist/physicalist philosophers don't or cannot account for some phenomena consciousness exhibits (narrow vs wide content from Chalmers eg). — fdrake

I agree. In a sense, that's what I'm trying to ask here for a clearer (to me) explanation of, simply what it is that the reductionist model doesn't account for.

So far, the answers given seem question-begging. I'm asking why the need to invoke 'first-person consciousness' as an entity/property, and the answer given begins "assume there's first person consciousness..." Let's assume there isn't. Assume it's a story, nothing more. Now... why do we need to bring it back? That's the question.

It's not the question because eliminativism is (or should be) the default. It's the question because they are attacking us, not the other way round. The OP is an attack (in the non-personal 'combat of ideas' sense) on eliminativist neuroscience. And already the whole debate has been skewed into painting Chalmers et al as the victims of an uncharitable, superficial attack on their position which they are being asked, quite unfairly, to defend.

I'd invite you to look again at the title of the OP. Who is asking whom to defend their position?

I'd invite you to look again at the title of the OP. Who is asking whom to defend their position? — Isaac

Aye.

And already the whole debate has been skewed into painting Chalmers et al as the victims of an uncharitable, superficial attack on their position which they are being asked, quite unfairly, to defend. — Isaac

I'm not exactly trying to defend the ideas, just gatekeeping how they're argued against. I'm also not strongly committed to what I've written.

Essentially, as with all philosophy, if we can't say anything about why one frame is preferable to the other then it's redundant (as a social exercise) we have to have criteria - even if it's aesthetics, parsimony, clarity, coherence... something has to be the matter we can discuss when comparing models/frameworks, otherwise what are we discussing? — Isaac

I think this is dealt with by "consciousness cannot be explained in physicalist/functional terms (see prior arguments)". So it turns on the prior arguments.

"suppose the gap between neurological goings on and first-person consciousness is unbridgeable..." it seems the oddest thing to suppose as a foundational, but more than that it imports assumptions which then need examining - like what does 'unbridgeable' actually mean in this context? — Isaac

I think it would be odd to suppose "consciousness cannot be explained in physicalist/functional terms (see prior arguments)" with no context, but the ability to show consciousness as unexplainable in those terms is important. I think for Chalmers the bridge is one of conception otherwise. If you take the thesis of physicalism/functionalism as:

"necessarily consciousness can be explained in physicalist/functional terms (see prior arguments)",

Chalmers is arguing against the "necessarily" part by tweaking/analysing/finagling the relevant concept of necessity. That would be the why. That's the one I'm familiar with anyway. I think the "mysterians" have different reasons for believing in the gap. That would be a criterion of sufficiency for adopting some other framework. The failure of physicalism, and a hint at the reasons why.