What occurs to me, reading that article, is that what his model is describing is ego, the self's idea of itself. — Wayfarer
I don't think it addresses the aspect of the hard problem concerned with what it means to be. — Wayfarer
He does say: “With this marvelous new phenomenon at the core of your being, you’ll start to matter to yourself in a new and deeper way. You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance.”
I wanted to say the same thing with “unique” as he is with “singular significance” though I take it as a fantasy created by our desire rather than a given state. I think I’ve made that as clear as I can. — Antony Nickles
You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you. For you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours.
You could flip this perspective, you know. You're saying that, because we can't define the physical, due to the ambiguous wave-particle nature of matter and the other paradoxes of qm, that it could or must be the case that, if everything exists is physical then the physical must also include the mental. But what if we acknowledged that nothing is completely or only physical, on the grounds that what is physical can never be completely defined, and that what we experience as physical is instead the attribute of a class of cognitive experiences? — Wayfarer
How do you view the hard problem as concerned with “what it means to be”? — Luke
I don't want to say that say, what we call "Mars" is constituted (made of) something mental, I don't think it is. But I grant that whatever we know about Mars comes through experience. — Manuel
The rest of the quote counters your claims:
You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you. For you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours.
This does not reflect a desire for uniqueness. — Luke
You're not alone. Albert Einstein was walking with his friend Abraham Pais one afternoon, when he suddenly stopped and said 'Does the moon cease to exist when nobody's looking at it?' He was asking exactly the same question. I won't address it here though as it's a derailer. — Wayfarer
The implication of the sentence is that you also (along with me) will be unique, and I will respect that more: “You’ll come to believe… in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you [that you will come to believe is singularly significant]. For you’ll soon realize that other[ s are singularly significant too]. (Emphasis and paraphrasing mine.] — Antony Nickles
But it doesn't come to terms with the issue of what it means to be - the kind of concerns that animate phenomenology and existentialism. It's a different kind of 'why' - there's an instrumental 'why', and an existential 'why', if you like. I think Humphries addresses the first, but not the second. — Wayfarer
As far as anybody knows, anything that our conscious minds can do they could do just as well if they weren’t conscious.
Our commonsense notions lead us astray in regard to the nature of the world. That something can be at the same time a particle and a wave in superposition is a fact about the world, it doesn't make sense to us, too bad, it's what we have. — Manuel
No, by physicalism I mean everything in the world is physical stuff - of the nature of the physical - this means that experience is a wholly physical phenomenon. But if it is true that experience is physical, and history is physical and everything that exists is physical, then clearly the physical goes way beyond what we usually attach to the meaning of the word. — Manuel
The quote says “you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours.” You are resorting to cherry picking and omitting parts of the quote to try and contort it to fit your argument regarding a desire for uniqueness. — Luke
"Materialism is the view that every real, concrete2 phenomenon3 in the universe is physical. It’s a view about the actual universe, and for the purposes of this paper I am going to assume that it is true.
2. By ‘concrete’ I simply mean ‘not abstract’. It’s natural to think that any really existing thing is
ipso facto concrete, non-abstract, in which case ‘concrete’ is redundant, but some philosophers like to say that numbers (for example) are real things—objects that really exist, but are abstract. — Manuel
I don't understand why you point to my alleged narrow-mindedness, though it could well be the case. — Manuel
As for the supposed contradiction you raise, I take it to be part of our cognitive constitution. We understand the manifest image (as per Sellars term) and we understand a bit of the scientific image.
We are so constituted that we grasp the two aspects of the world, which are actually different views of the same phenomenon, one being more reflexive and careful (science).
It could easily be the case that some intelligent alien species would see how photons get colours as they are processed in the brain, or they could intuitively understand how gravity or qm works. That's not us. — Manuel
As I said in my first comment, the question 'why are we subjects of experience?' is a strange question. It's tantamount to asking 'why do we exist?' The question is asked, 'why did consciousness evolve?' — Wayfarer
So the statement is completely self contradictory - 'a conscious mind could do what it does, even without the attribute that makes it "a conscious mind" '. And I don't know that the phenomenon of blindsight is a persuasive argument for that. — Wayfarer
If you think I’ve got it wrong, what do you think he is saying?
“You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you. For you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours.”
And when I say that, I’m not asking what you take from it, but to answer the open questions, such as: what do I believe? and how is it the same thing as before, only now more? What is it that could be mine, but yet also something others can have (“my own”)? And what will “not just be you”? That which I believe in? That I will not just believe in something that is mine, I will believe in something that is theirs? If so, what and how do I and they possess it? How is mine mine and theirs theirs but they are alike? How is theirs “like” mine? — Antony Nickles
So, think back to the transformation that must have taken place when your ancestors first woke up to the experience of sensations imbued with qualia, and – out of nothing – the phenomenal self appeared. Of course, it won’t have happened overnight. But nor need it have been a gradual process either. For the fact is that complex patterns of activity in feedback loops are liable to undergo sudden stepwise changes; attractors have an all-or-nothing character. I believe the reorganisation of the brain circuits responsible for generating phenomenal experience, once started, could have come to fruition quite quickly, perhaps within a few hundred generations.
Whenever it happened, it’s bound to have been a psychological and social watershed. With this marvellous new phenomenon at the core of your being, you’ll start to matter to yourself in a new and deeper way. You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you. For you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours. You’ll be led to respect their individual worth as well.
However, what I found most fascinating is the idea that qualia constitute the self, rather than being something perceived by the self.
As the article notes in relation to blindsight patients who function as sighted despite lacking visual qualia, "they don’t take ownership of their capacity to see. Lacking visual qualia – the ‘somethingness’ of seeing – they believe that visual perception has nothing to do with them." Extend this lack of ownership via lack of qualia to all qualia and the self itself disappears. — Luke
No.He is talking about the evolution of phenomenal consciousness - when it first appeared on the scene. Upon its inception you'll come to believe in your own singular significance because you are now phenomenally conscious; you now have personhood. This is not born of some fantasy or desire for individuality, or of wanting your individual pains and colours to be unique, but merely finding that you have them for the first time. — Luke
...using the title "A potential solution to the hard problem" is itself biased already because, without first allowing the thread responses to express their criticisms to the points discussed in the article, saying it ahead of time is leading. — L'éléphant
...the "proposed solution" that the article offers... — L'éléphant
Consciousness is a characteristic of life. All living organisms are conscious. All of them have qualia, i.e. subjective, conscious experience.why we experience qualia at all. — Luke
That's a mislabeled response from me. When I said "no", I meant that you are correct in your explanation of the article, but I disagree with the article.? — Luke
Yes, I doubt it, and yes you did.Do you doubt that the article offers a proposed solution to the hard problem? Have I created bias by announcing that that's what the article is about? — Luke
Have they agreed? Sorry if I missed a post here that agreed that the article proposes a solution. I read some who praised the article as a good article or exciting.Furthermore, I doubt that anyone would honestly disagree that the article proposes a solution to the hard problem. — Luke
Have they agreed? Sorry if I missed a post here that agreed that the article proposes a solution. — L'éléphant
A rehash of what's already been written about phenomenal experience in philosophy, except with fancy words and invention or creative license, which unfortunately is unwarranted since he was actually talking about biological and physiological activities. We have scientific records, no need to invent things.If you disagree that the article proposes a solution to the hard problem, then what would you say the article is about? — Luke
A mental record, in other words, a temporal perception, which has already been written about a thousand times by the likes of Descartes, Hume, A. Shimony, etc.Let’s imagine, however, that as the animal’s life becomes more complex, it reaches a stage where it would benefit from retaining some kind of ‘mental record’ of what’s affecting it: a representation of the stimulus that can serve as a basis for planning and decision-making.
What are these attractors? He explains it in this passage:I believe the upshot – in the line of animals that led to humans and others that experience things as we do – has been the creation of a very special kind of attractor, which the subject reads as a sensation with the unaccountable feel of phenomenal qualia.
It means retrieving the information from memory. Mind you, bodily functions such as hunger is not memory based, nor the bowel movement ( I will explain it for those uninitiated, upon request).And, I suggest, this development is game-changing. Crucially, it means the activity can be drawn out in time, so as to create the ‘thick moment’ of sensation (see Figure 2c above). But, more than that, the activity can be channelled and stabilised, so as to create a mathematically complex attractor state – a dynamic pattern of activity that recreates itself.
"Nicholas Humphrey's Seeing and Somethingness -- His Personal Account of What Goes On In Our Brain If or When We Have Sensations For Those Who Have Not Studied Or Read Or Understood Neuroscience".What discussion title would you have used instead? — Luke
If it's all just physical information processing - as the physicalists insist - and there is no mental "stuff" that is categorically different from the physical "stuff", then the physicalists should find that people would behave the same way even if they were not phenomenally conscious. So, how and why are we phenomenally conscious, dear physicalists? — Luke
It means retrieving the information from memory. Mind you, bodily functions such as hunger is not memory based, nor the bowel movement ( I will explain it for those uninitiated, upon request). — L'éléphant
If you disagree that the article proposes a solution to the hard problem, then what would you say the article is about? — Luke
A rehash of what's already been written about phenomenal experience in philosophy, except with fancy words and invention or creative license, which unfortunately is unwarranted since he was actually talking about biological and physiological activities. We have scientific records, no need to invent things. — L'éléphant
Here again are passages lifted from the article -- passages are in quote marks: (I suppose I have to work harder because I'm in the minority of disagreeing with his "solution")
Let’s imagine, however, that as the animal’s life becomes more complex, it reaches a stage where it would benefit from retaining some kind of ‘mental record’ of what’s affecting it: a representation of the stimulus that can serve as a basis for planning and decision-making.
A mental record, in other words, a temporal perception, which has already been written about a thousand times by the likes of Descartes, Hume, A. Shimony, etc. — L'éléphant
I believe the upshot – in the line of animals that led to humans and others that experience things as we do – has been the creation of a very special kind of attractor, which the subject reads as a sensation with the unaccountable feel of phenomenal qualia.
What are these attractors? He explains it in this passage:
And, I suggest, this development is game-changing. Crucially, it means the activity can be drawn out in time, so as to create the ‘thick moment’ of sensation (see Figure 2c above). But, more than that, the activity can be channelled and stabilised, so as to create a mathematically complex attractor state – a dynamic pattern of activity that recreates itself.
It means retrieving the information from memory. — L'éléphant
Why do visual sensations, as experienced in normal vision, have the mysterious feel they do? Why is there any such thing as what philosophers call ‘phenomenal experience’ or qualia – our subjective, personal sense of interacting with stimuli arriving via our sense organs? Not only in the case of vision, but across all sense modalities: the redness of red; the saltiness of salt; the paininess of pain – what does this extra dimension of experience amount to? What’s it for? [....]
Sensation, let’s be clear, has a different function from perception. Both are forms of mental representation: ideas generated by the brain. But they represent – they are about – very different kinds of things. Perception – which is still partly intact in blindsight – is about ‘what’s happening out there in the external world’: the apple is red; the rock is hard; the bird is singing. By contrast, sensation is more personal, it’s about ‘what’s happening to me and how I as a subject evaluate it’: the pain is in my toe and horrible; the sweet taste is on my tongue and sickly; the red light is before my eyes and stirs me up.
It’s as if, in having sensations, we’re both registering the objective fact of stimulation and expressing our personal bodily opinion about it. But where do those extra qualitative dimensions come from? What can make the subjective present created by sensations seem so rich and deep, as if we’re living in thick time? [....]
In attempting to answer these questions, we’re up against the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness’: how a physical brain could underwrite the extra-physical properties of phenomenal experience. [....]
I believe sensations originated as an active behavioural response to sensory stimulation: something the animal did about the stimulus rather than something it felt about it. — Nicholas Humphrey
What discussion title would you have used instead? — Luke
"Nicholas Humphrey's Seeing and Somethingness -- His Personal Account of What Goes On In Our Brain If or When We Have Sensations For Those Who Have Not Studied Or Read Or Understood Neuroscience". — L'éléphant
If it were all just physical information processing and there were no experiential dimension, then there would be no one to find anything, nothing to be found, and indeed, no physicalists or physicalism, either. — Janus
If there were no experiential dimension then there would be no hard problem, but since there is, there is. — Luke
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