Let's talk about feels. What are you afraid of?

:blush: Eh, we'll see how things go with the argument at hand.

But I am quite tiered of this interplay. Enjoy. — javra

You waved goodbye. But I keep getting tagged.

Now that you are talking of this mystical thing of “the mind’s eye”, is that something a philosophical zombie also has? Or are you simply pulling the rhetorical stunt of claiming something “exists”, but you define it so as to be beyond any possible empirical reach … because epistemic devilry of whatever needed form.

Does “the mind’s eye” come with a definition? We never got one for “consciousness” out of your mouth.

It’s all part of the game of course. Demand explanations for any term you decide to toss into the discussion, but refuse to give definitions for those terms in ways that would commit to an empirical test.

One can always keep claiming that no empirical evidence has been presented when one has refused to even agree as to what the nature of that empirical evidence might be.

All we have here is you playing the game of “look at me. I can say that I doubt”. But those words ring hollow. You never set out a position that you were prepared to believe.

Now that you are talking of this mystical thing of “the mind’s eye”, is that something a philosophical zombie also has? — apokrisis

The mind's eye is a "mystical thing"? No, it's not.

You waved goodbye. But I keep getting tagged. — apokrisis

So stamp your feet and splutter away. But I’ve lost interest. — apokrisis

And you keep on telling untruths. Why should I bother again?

But I am quite tiered of this interplay. Enjoy. — javra

So this is goodbye. :party: — apokrisis

Oh, yea. There was also this.

Oh, yea. There was also this. — javra

My celebration was premature. My name keeps being brought up. And suddenly you all seem to be reading papers on biosemiosis. I am curious about the gyrations that will be performed to sustain this Hard Problem charade for the next 26 years too.

My name keeps being brought up. — apokrisis

As the empirically obvious evidence shows, not by me.

You so far haven't made any mention of the charading, posturing, lying accusation I just made against you. Curious to witness it.

To be blunt, I see no sane reason to reply to you at this point.

ENOUGH SNARK ALREADY. I deleted the last post as it was blatantly abusive. Unless there are more constructive contributions to be made this thread will be locked.

suddenly you all seem to be reading papers on biosemiosis — apokrisis

This is mainly because of your contributions to the forum so as to provide some background to the subject for those lacking it, to better understand what you are talking about, which goes over the heads of many contributors here.

The grammatical differences among first, second and third person sentences present some interesting quirks, Moore sentences for instance.

But other than that, how exercised do we get about the difference between "He said he's going out" and "I said I'm going out"? We translate between them regularly.

(Obligatory anecdote: Kafka said, "I became a writer when I found I could say 'he' instead of 'I'.")

But if you define a phenomenon so that its first-person-ness is part of the phenomenon, we're in "Hand me the book on the shelf" territory.

Just don't do that. We use mentalistic vocabulary about others as readily as we do about ourselves, attribute knowledge and beliefs and awareness and forgetfulness and consciousness to other people all day long, and we mean the same thing as when we describe ourselves as being in these mental states. What matters is the book, not its being on the shelf. That's just a double bind.

But if you define a phenomenon so that its first-person-ness is part of the phenomenon, we're in "Hand me the book on the shelf" territory. — Srap Tasmaner

Right - that is the issue. The key paragraph in David Chalmer's original paper was:

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 Problem of Consciousness

Compare Chalmer's antagonist, Daniel Dennett, who claims:

In Consciousness Explained, I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be 'the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science. — Daniel Dennett, The Fantasy of First-Person Science

I agree with Chalmers, on the grounds that objective physical sciences exclude the first person as a matter of principle. Many other scholars and academics, including John Searle and Thomas Nagel, agree that Dennett's attempt to account for the first person perspective in objective terms, is conceptually flawed from the outset. Hence the satirical depiction of Dennett's book by Searle et al as 'Consciousness Ignored'.

Many other scholars and academics, including John Searle and Thomas Nagel, agree that Dennett's attempt to account for the first person perspective in objective terms, is conceptually flawed from the outset. — Wayfarer

How can it not be??? If we knew the biology of an alien species to 100% accuracy (or close to it), would we still have any inkling whether they were zombies or not? Not to sound like a broken record, but materialism utterly fails to give a satisfactory response to this problem regarding machines. Does ChatGPT have a first person perspective? Will it's fifth-generation successor? Materialism/physicalism is utterly unable to answer this question, and the problem will only get worse and worse as the Ai's get better and better.

objective physical sciences exclude the first person as a matter of principle — Wayfarer

So what?

I think you're aware of this discussion in exactly the same sense that I'm aware of this discussion. Why should I define a special me-having-my-awareness instead of just saying I have awareness just like you.

Why should there be science conducted exclusively from my point-of-view? And if there can't be, why is that a shortcoming? Other people can study the same properties of me.

I think you're aware of this discussion in exactly the same sense that I'm aware of this discussion. — Srap Tasmaner

But that takes for granted that you and I are both subjects of experience, so that you can safely assume that I will understand what you mean. And for the purposes of describing or acounting for objective phenomena, the fact that we're both subjects can be ignored. But in the philosophical question of the nature of consciousness, insofar as that is a first-person experience, it can't be ignored, nor can be accounted for in those terms.

As John Searle put it:

in his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. For him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have. For Dennett there is no difference between us humans and complex zombies who lack any inner feelings, because we are all just complex zombies. ...I regard his view as self-refuting because it denies the existence of the data which a theory of consciousness is supposed to explain...Here is the paradox of this exchange: I am a conscious reviewer consciously answering the objections of an author who gives every indication of being consciously and puzzlingly angry. I do this for a readership that I assume is conscious. How then can I take seriously his claim that consciousness does not really exist?

Does ChatGPT have a first person perspective? — RogueAI

No, ChatGPT does not have a first-person perspective. It is an artificial intelligence language model that generates text based on patterns it has learned from a large dataset. It does not possess personal experiences or consciousness. Instead, it provides responses based on the information it has been trained on. Its purpose is to assist users in generating human-like text based on the prompts and questions it receives. — ChatGPT

ChatGPT knows something that Dennett doesn't.

ChatGPT knows something that Dennett doesn't. — Wayfarer

If an Ai was capable of consciousness, and that consciousness influenced it's decision making, knowing what it knows about the evils we humans are capable of (and have done over the millenias)... would it admit to being conscious? What does game theory say about that?

But that takes for granted that you and I are both subjects of experience, so that you can safely assume that I will understand what you mean. — Wayfarer

So is the argument that consciousness is off-limits because it's first-person, or that one of the things psychology needs to account for is that it is first-person?

The first is "Being me the book on the shelf"; the second is "Why are books on shelves?"

Unanswereable questions, I think, although useful grist for the mill for sci-fi stories. (Did you by any chance see Devs?)

So is the argument that consciousness is off-limits because it's first-person, or that one of the things psychology needs to account for is that it is first-person? — Srap Tasmaner

David Chalmer's doesn't say that consciousness is off-limits. He says it is intractable from the third-person perspective, due to its first-person character. He has written extensively on that, e.g. his book 'Conscious Mind: in search of a fundamental theory'. This whole debate between Dennett and Chalmers practically kicked off the modern 'consciousness studies' field, with their conferences in Arizona, featuring a cast of colorful characters and some truly mind-bending ideas.



I think the more interesting approach is the phenomenological/hermeneutic/existential approach in continental philosophy. Also the intersection of phenomenology and Buddhist philosophy of mind in the embodied cognition approach (e.g. The Embodied Mind, Varela Thompson et al.)

David Chalmer's doesn't say that consciousness is off-limits. He says it is intractable from the third-person perspective, due to its first-person character — Wayfarer

'Intractable' is all I meant there, but I was trying to resolve the ambiguity in "due to its first-person character."

If you're demanding the book be on the shelf when I hand it to you, that's just a double bind, and probably a misunderstanding on your part.

If you want to know why we only find books on shelves, you want to see what it is about shelves that make them uniquely capable of hosting books.

The grammatical differences among first, second and third person sentences present some interesting quirks, — Srap Tasmaner

Yep, a useful trick of grammar inflated to become an epistemic no go theorem and from there, the greatest mystery of all metaphysics. :up:

greatest mystery of all metaphysics... — apokrisis

Not really. The objective point of view doesn't take the subject into consideration - it is only concerned with what is amenable to quantitative analysis from a third person point of view. Philosophy, generally, has a more expansive scope, concerned with existential questions of meaning and being, which may be of little concern to science. But due to the (some would say) disproportionate degree of respect accorded to science and engineering in today's technological culture, such concerns are often misunderstood, trivialised or rejected. Kudos to David Chalmers for having the insight and persistence to surface the issue.

(Interestingly, I notice that the forthcoming blockbuster, Oppenheimer, is shot in both colour and black and white. Christopher Nolan, director, explained "I wrote the script in the first person, which I'd never done before. I don't know if anyone has ever done that, or if that's a thing people do or not. The film is objective and subjective. I wrote the color scenes from the first person. ..." Nolan goes on to explain that “the color scenes are subjective” and “the black-and-white scenes are objective.”

Apparently there's a difference!)

Apparently there's a difference! — Wayfarer

Yeah. One's from the protagonist's point-of-view, one's not. Or do you think it was impossible for Nolan to write or film the 'subjective' scenes?

Also, Nolan is famously red/green colorblind, which makes this all weird.

The objective point of view doesn't take the subject into consideration - it is only concerned with what is amenable to quantitative analysis from a third person point of view. — Wayfarer

That would be a grave misunderstanding of Peircean semiotics. Or indeed, post-Kantian epistemology in general.

Nolan goes on to explain that “the color scenes are subjective” and “the black-and-white scenes are objective. — Wayfarer

The difference between being there “for real” and being there as if watching the displaced historical newsreel record of events.

A simple but effective narrative trick by the sound of it. Not sure it supports your idealism very well though.

I’m not seeing a mind’s eye in the brain images provided. — javra

Really? What does one look like then? You said

No one can in any way see that aspect of themselves which visually perceives imagined phenomena via what is commonly termed “the mind’s eye”. — javra

So presumably, at least, you've never seen one (you think no-one has). So how do you know the image I've posted isn't one? You seem to on the one hand want to say no one's ever seen one, but on the other you seem to know exactly what one should look like.

What I am seeing are individual slides empirically depicting a certain set of a brain's functions which are inferred to correlate with empirically evident self-reports concerning something that might or might not in fact be. — javra

Yep. Can you think of any knowledge you have at all that isn't inferred from evidence? Certainly the vast majority, if not all. Why is being inferred from evidence suddenly being treated with such suspicion?

were philosophical zombies to be real,... — javra

Were philosophical zombies to be real you'd be right and I'd be wrong. You're begging the question. For philosophical zombies to be real there'd have to be some nonphysical state called 'consciousness' which doesn't map to any physical states. That's what you're trying to demonstrate, so you can't do so by invoking it's truth. If I'm trying to prove aliens exist " the aliens told me so" is not a persuasive argument.

Your argument is "I think there's a non-physical entity called 'consciousness' - show me the physical thing which it is if you want to prove me wrong", it's self immunised. If you think the images I've shown you are not 'the mind's eye' then you'll have to come up with a better counter argument than "that's not what I was expecting it to look like"

In other words, these illustrations of a brain’s functioning so far do not falsify the proposition which was provided. — javra

Of course they do. The proposition was

No one can in any way... — javra

It wasn't "There exist ways in which..." your proposition attempts to rule our physicalist/naturalist interpretations. It doesn't merely rule-in dualism. We're not here arguing if dualism is a possible way to think about consciousness. You're arguing that physicalism isn't. To make that you have to show that this view is incoherent, not that it doesn't match the way you like to think about things.

So minds and brains are different? What are the differences? — RogueAI

Minds are a facon de parler. We don't get hung up on where 'courage' is. We don't start invoking other worlds to locate 'hunger'. The act of 'forgetting' doesn't require a special force from the 'forgetting' realm.

In fact. I'll tell you what - since Chalmers did so well out of his bet that neuroscience wouldn't find 'consciousness' - here in front of witnesses (@Srap Tasmaner and @Wayfarer as official as it gets on this thread) I'll bet you two crates of fine wine that in five years time neuroscience won't have found my mojo either.

(If any neuroscientists have found where my mojo is - I've got this problem with it, see I've got it working but it just won't...)

We use mentalistic vocabulary about others as readily as we do about ourselves, attribute knowledge and beliefs and awareness and forgetfulness and consciousness to other people all day long, and we mean the same thing as when we describe ourselves as being in these mental states. What matters is the book, not its being on the shelf. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, exactly. My mind, your mind, his mind... I'm not at all seeing a problem with this "eye can't see itself" nonsense. As if we have trouble understanding eyes because of that.

Can you think of any knowledge you have at all that isn't inferred from evidence? — Isaac

Certainly. That I am right now looking at the keyboard I'm typing on is knowledge that is not (consciously) inferred by me from evidence - but, instead, is knowledge of direct experience. For instance, I might be hallucinating, be a brain in a vat, etc. but my knowledge of seeing what I am seeing as a percept at the current moment remains utterly unaltered by these and all other possible stipulations. And other such examples of non-inferential knowledge could be provided.

Why is being inferred from evidence suddenly being treated with such suspicion? — Isaac

Our empirical precepts are not conscious inferences. Inferences are one aspect of reasoning-based knowledge (deduction, etc.). On the other hand, empirical data - i.e., data obtained via the physiological senses - are one aspect of experience-based knowledge (the experience of one's own confidence being non-empirical in the modern sense of the term). Yes, the two are intimately intertwined. But they are nevertheless utterly different.

It's not about suspicion for inferences. Its about inferences not being empirical data, or empirical information if one prefers.

If you think the images I've shown you are not 'the mind's eye' then you'll have to come up with a better counter argument than "that's not what I was expecting it to look like" — Isaac

This illustrates your utter misconception of my position; simply: one cannot see the minds eye because it has no look whatsoever. See below.

your proposition attempts to rule our physicalist/naturalist interpretations. It doesn't merely rule-in dualism. We're not here arguing if dualism is a possible way to think about consciousness. You're arguing that physicalism isn't. To make that you have to show that this view is incoherent, not that it doesn't match the way you like to think about things. — Isaac

This, again, is completely mistaken. I made no metaphysical claims. We are not discussing metaphysics here. Instead, we are discussing whether or not the mind’s eye can be in any way empirically observed. A mere epistemological claim as to what is the fact of the matter.

Your counter regarding p-zombies to me misses the logical implications by focusing on ontological commitments. Nevertheless, I fully grant that the issue can easily become confusing. So, I’ll offer a different, but much less concise, way of addressing why I’m not seeing the mind’s eye in the illustrations:

When I visually imagine a table, I see the table from one singular perspective (rather than, say, from 12 different perspectives simultaneously). This, to me, is an experiential fact of the matter. To clarify, I know this to be the case experimentally in non-inferential manners; and - as with my visual percept of the keyboard I am now typing on - this experiential knowledge is steadfast. I'm not claiming this knowledge is infallible, but I am claiming that I can be in no way uncertain about this experiential knowledge regardless of inference I might entertain or be informed about - this on account of it being precisely what I experience.

In keeping with common language, this visual perception of an imagined table I then term my seeing an imagined table with my mind’s eye. So I experimentally know in non-inferential manners that my mind’s eye is singular. Whether it’s a singular entity, process, both, or neither is here fully irrelevant to the actuality of the experience (and could only be an inference extrapolated from the experience's occurrence).

In contrast, the illustrations you've presented all depict multiple brain processes that are located in different portions of one brain (over a dozen different locations in each illustration last I looked). We can of course infer that these visualized brain processes depict aspects of the physiological brain which in whole constitute that process of me seeing an imagined table. Nevertheless:

I am not seeing the perfectly singular, cognitive perspective which sees a spatially-extended table in its imagination via its non-physiological sight (by which I simply mean, sight which does not occur via the use of one's physiological sensory organs). Of course the person whose brain is illustrated likely imagined something different, but I'm addressing a table to keep things simple.

Just as strictly observing the empirical constituents of a rock cannot be equivalent to seeing the rock itself, so too with brain and awareness: to empirically observe the brain processes on which first-person awareness is dependent cannot be equivalent to empirically observing first-person awareness itself. The multiple constituents of a whole are not equivalent to the singular whole which is addressed.

In other words, I am not seeing the mind’s eye in the illustrations. At best, all I am seeing is a multiplicity of certain disparate constituent aspects of it.

--------

Again, I'm not claiming that the mind's eye has a certain look that hasn't yet been evidenced. I am claiming that the mind's eye cannot be empirically observed in principle.

I'll bet you two crates of fine wine that in five years time neuroscience won't have found my mojo either. — Isaac

Well that assumes you had some to start with :wink:

That I am right now looking at the keyboard I'm typing on is knowledge that is not (consciously) inferred by me from evidence - but, instead, is knowledge of direct experience. — javra

And that experience isn't evidence because...?

I might be hallucinating, be a brain in a vat, etc. but my knowledge of seeing what I am seeing as a percept at the current moment remains utterly unaltered by these and all other possible stipulations. — javra

One does not 'see' percepts though. A percept is the result of seeing, you don't then 'see' it, otherwise what results form that process? Another percept? A percept of a percept?

empirical data - i.e., data obtained via the physiological senses - are one aspect of experience-based knowledge — javra

I'm struggling to think of an example where I obtain knowledge directly from my senses without any inference. Perhaps you could provide one?

Its about inferences not being empirical data, or empirical information if one prefers. — javra

What difference would that make, even if I were to agree?

one cannot see the minds eye because it has no look whatsoever. See below. — javra

But we're discussing the question of whether it does or not (have a look), you can't use, as a point in that discussion, the 'fact' that it doesn't. that's not a fact, it's your opinion and we're exploring the differences between it and mine. The 'mind's eye' is just a made up term at the moment. You're trying to establish it's a real thing (but not material), I'm trying to establish the opposite (not real, but if it were anything it would be in the brain). So you're begging the question by just keep dogmatically asserting what the 'mind's eye' is (and isn't) without argument.

we are discussing whether or not the mind’s eye can be in any way empirically observed. — javra

We're not. You've declared the mind's eye to be the sort of thing that cannot be empirically observed. That's not a discussion it's a lecture. A discussion would accept that we don't currently now and look for mutually agreed evidence either way.

When I visually imagine a table, I see the table from one singular perspective (rather than, say, from 12 different perspectives simultaneously). — javra

No, you don't. You see several perspectives, you see aspects of the table that are behind and shaded, aspects that are out of focus, or moving. Part of the process of 'seeing' involves inferring these details.

In keeping with common language, this visual perception of an imagined table I then term my seeing an imagined table with my mind’s eye. So I experimentally know in non-inferential manners that my mind’s eye is singular. — javra

What? You say it's singular, so therefore you know it's singular? That doesn't make any sense, and I know it doesn't make any sense because I just said it doesn't.

I am not seeing the perfectly singular, cognitive perspective which sees a spatially-extended table in its imagination — javra

Of course you aren't. There's no such thing. A 'cognitive perspective' can't 'see' anything. 'Seeing ' is something whole bodies do (whole brains at the very least). It's not something 'cognitive perspectives' do - whatever the hell they are.

I am claiming that the mind's eye cannot be empirically observed in principle. — javra

Yes, and we're all waiting for an actual argument to back up that claim that isn't self-referential.

How dare you! As I said - I've got my mojo working...*.

* way too old-fashioned a reference for our younger readers.

I agree with Chalmers, on the grounds that objective physical sciences exclude the first person as a matter of principle. — Wayfarer

But physical sciences don't exclude the first person as far as I can tell.

Can you show me somewhere, where this principle you speak of is written down?