the way it "feels" to be conscious is a result of our delusional conscious perception. The accuracy that such a feeling has to convey information about what is truly happening inside is highly questionable. ie: accuracy of conscious perception should be treated with the same Kantian spectacles as with all other perceptions. This is the complaint against introspection on steroids — Malcolm Lett
In any case, what do you think about the argument overall? — Malcolm Lett
I take a materialistic stance w.r.t. to the nature of both access and phenomenological consciousness. I believe they can be explained through physical processes that we already understand. The usual argument against such a stance is that it leaves an explanatory gap - that consciousness "feels" a certain way that cannot be explained mechanistically / representationally / reductively / and other variations on the theme. — Malcolm Lett
The most we can say for certain is that our perception of consciousness may be completely delusional. — Malcolm Lett
Well, there's the solipsistic outtake - we should stop talking about this because we can't know anything. — Malcolm Lett
You can explain the mechanics of walking in all the detail you want. Every muscle fiber; every muscle group; every blood vessel; every nerve. What every tiny component is doing at every moment; what every large component is doing at every moment. When you're done, you can demonstrate how it all comes together, producing walking.Point number 1:
Our intuition is the source of that complaint. We have no logical grounding to claim yay or nay to whether computational physical processes could yield conscious feels. I think it was Ned Block in his "The Harder Problem of Consciousness" that argued strongly that we have no grounding for such discussions. So why do we hold so strongly to such views? Clearly it's our intuition. It just "seems wrong". — Malcolm Lett
That's the beginning of the beginning of the beginning of the beginning of the series of events and processes that explains/describes how we detect a certain range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Add some other events, and we can distinguish different frequencies within that range. More events explain how patterns of our perceptions are stored in our brain. And still more explain how what is stored becomes part of the algorithm that chooses which action we take when stored patterns are perceived again.When light first strikes the retina a photon interacts with a molecule called 11-cis-retinal, which rearranges within picoseconds to trans-retinal. (A picosecond is about the time it takes light to travel the breadth of a single human hair.) The change in the shape of the retinal molecule forces a change in the shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which the retinal is tightly bound. The protein’s metamorphosis alters its behavior. Now called metarhodopsin II, the protein sticks to another protein, called transducin. Before bumping into metarhodopsin II, transducin had tightly bound a small molecule called GDP. But when transducin interacts with metarhodopsin II, the GDP falls off, and a molecule called GTP binds to transducin. (GTP is closely related to, but critically different from, GDP.)
I have a materialistic theory of consciousness that I believe provides a good in-road into explaining phenomenal consciousness. — Malcolm Lett
Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.” — Thomas Nagel, Review of From Bacteria to Bach and Back
If our core intuitions can be this wrong, and there is "nothing to explain," then I have no idea why we should be referring to neuroscience for explanations in the first place. We only have a good reason to think science tells us anything about the world if our basic intuitions have some sort of merit. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The problems of phenomenal consciousness are to begin with the result of tension between different intuitions
But "things are only extension in space and motion," or "all that exists can be explained in terms of mathematics and computation," are not basic intuitions. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Something is intuitive, a noetic "first principle," if we cannot conceive of it being otherwise. 2+2 is intuitively 4. It is intuitive that a straight line cannot also be a curved line, that a triangle cannot have four sides, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Ok, well we might debate what counts as adequate explanation here. But what is not a good response is to say, "yes, it does seem inadequate, but that's only because human reason is ultimately deficient." This essentially amounts to saying "I do not need to offer a convincing explanation or demonstration, because such a thing is not possible, but you should still accept the truth of what I'm saying."
This is like Luther's response to Erasmus. Erasmus says "a God who predestines — forces — man to sin, and then punishes him for it seems evil."
To which Luther responds: "yes, but it only seems evil because our reason is deficient due to the fall." This is not an explanation though. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Our perception of consciousness is equally subject to the same perceptual hallucinations as all other perceptions. — Malcolm Lett
I am not really sure what you're trying to to get at here. What counts as intuitive might be debated, but certain statements like "a line of points cannot be simultaneously continuous and discrete," or "2+2=4," can largely be agreed upon. Are you claiming we lack good warrant for believing these sorts of things?
Eliminativism, in its most extreme form, does violate these sorts of intuitions. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This would be the claim that "you don't actually experience anything, see blue, hear sounds, etc." But does anyone actually advocate this? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Dennett himself calls this type of eliminitivism "ridiculous," in "Conciousness Explained." — Count Timothy von Icarus
Good deal! That's another way of saying what I mean by : "Consciousness*1 is the function of brain activity". In math or physics, a Function*2 is a relationship between Input and Output. But, a relationship is not a material thing, it's a mental inference. Also, according to Hume, correlation is not proof of causation.In brief, I hold that the content of consciousness is a high-level summary of the general "goings on" within the brain. — Malcolm Lett
But consciousness of consciousness is maximally simple, no? It doesn't specify any particular experience. We might be wrong in perceiving a lion in the grass, it might just be a patch of grass. But we can't be wrong that we have experienced something-or-other, i.e. a world. And to go one step further, when we turn consciousness on itself, in experience of experience, where the subject is the object, there is no gap for a mistake to exist in. — bert1
Good deal! That's another way of saying what I mean by : "Consciousness is the function of brain activity". In math or physics, a Function is a relationship between Input and Output. But, a relationship is not a material thing, it's a mental inference. Also, according to Hume, correlation is not proof of causation. — Gnomon
Intuition is not physical vision --- traceable step by step from outer senses to inner sensations --- but a mysterious metaphysical way of knowing what's "going-on" inside the brain, without EEG or MRI. — Gnomon
Those discussions usually then trail off into meaninglessness — Malcolm Lett
On the one hand, given that the brain is itself, it should have no trouble knowing itself. In practice, there are a number of problems with that notion. — Malcolm Lett
After centuries of debates on the provenance of Consciousness, I doubt that you will find a slam-dunk argument either way. In most such discussions, the debater tends to end up at his own starting point. Materialism begins from the assumption that Matter is all there is, hence Mind must be a kind of matter. Idealism assumes that Mind is all that exists, so Matter must be a form of Mind. But my non-authoritative hypothesis, as an amateur philosopher, is that both Mind and Matter are forms of primordial Energy/Information (the power to transform). In other words, Consciousness is caused by Causation, not Substance.I'm yet to see an argument that proves the non-reductive thesis - though I probably just haven't read enough. — Malcolm Lett
I try to find analogies. If I saw a skyscraper made entirely of liquid H2O, I'd know something was up. The properties of liquid H2O cannot explain a skyscraper. I know something else is at work.As I understand it. The non-reductive thesis about something, paraphrased as "more than the sum of its parts", says that something cannot be entirely explained by its parts and their interactions because it has some additional qualities that are not explained by those parts and/or their interactions. Thus, consciousness being an example of such a thing, consciousness cannot be explained via the existing reductive methods of science.
I'm yet to see an argument that proves the non-reductive thesis - though I probably just haven't read enough. — Malcolm Lett
I'm yet to see an argument that proves the non-reductive thesis - though I probably just haven't read enough.
Smallism is the idea that "facts about large things are reducible to facts about smaller parts." Wholes are defined by their parts, rather than vice versa. Whatever is "fundamental" in the universe must exist on the smallest scales. It preferences "bottom-up" explanations over "top-down" ones.
Certainly, smallism has its appeal and some empirical support. A common way we are able to understand things better is by breaking complex things down into constituent parts.
However, there is no prima facie reason that smallsim or reductionism should be a preferred "default" in the sciences or metaphysics. "Bigism," the preferencing of the universal and "top-down" arguments, parts being defined in terms of wholes, is just as supportable.
Further, the empirical support and track record of reductionism is simply not that strong. Chemistry is a mature field and quantum mechanics has been around for a century now. Yet molecular structure has not been reduced to physics, and there are arguments that it will never be. 1 Indeed, even within the realm of physics there are ongoing debates regarding the nature of apparent emergence in quantum level phenomena.
The waters are further muddied here because exactly how to define "scientific reductions" is an area of much debate. Additionally, scientific unifications (the explanation of disparate phenomena in terms of more general principles) are often misunderstood as reductions. Unifications though, would tend to support a sort of "bigism," and there have been many of these.
The whole idea of fundamentality adds another wrinkle. For example, in quantum field theory the fields that fill the entire universe are more fundamental than particles - the whole more essential than the part. Indeed, the Italian physicist G.M. D'Ariano likens "particles" to the shadows on the walls of Plato's cave, claiming that fields and relational information hold a higher ontological ground. 2 There are good arguments that computation isn't decomposable in the way assumed by smallism either ("more is different"), and there is a lot of support for pancomputationalism in the physics community. 3 If the pancomputationalist view is correct in certain major respects, it would seem that smallism is simply a bad presupposition, a useful view for understanding some sorts of problems, but flawed as metaphysical doctrine. At the very least, this would seem to caution against common views that seem to assume reductionism and smallism are true until decisively proven otherwise.
Neuroscience tends to be very bottom up, particularly because we lack good top-down theories for major phenomena like consciousness. Physics tends to have a lot of top-down explanations. Although I am not aware of any polling on this, I would not be surprised to learn that reductionism is more popular in the special sciences, and among non-scientists, than with physical scientists themselves.
I would take this to suggest that even if something like smallism is true, it will nonetheless require some sort of major paradigm shift that allows for some sort of "emergence-like" phenomena to occur to resolve this impasse. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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