So the multitude goes – like the flower and the weed
That wither away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes – even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that hath often been told.

For we are the same things that our fathers have been,
We see the same sights that our fathers have seen,
We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun,
And we run the same course that our fathers have run.

The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think,
From the death we are shrinking from they too would shrink,
To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling –
But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing.

They loved – but their story we cannot unfold;
They scorned – but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved – but no wail from their slumbers may come;
They joyed – but the voice of their gladness is dumb.

They died – ay, they died! and we, things that are now,
Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
Who make in their dwellings a transient abode,
Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road.

Yea, hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together like sunshine and rain:
And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other like surge upon surge.

‘Tis the twink of an eye, ’tis the draught of a breath,
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud –
O why should the spirit of mortal be proud!

William Knox

Epiphenomenalism asserts that metal events are caused by physical events in the brain, — Joshs

Epiphenomenonalism appeared in the 19th Century before we clearly understood that physics is unfinished. I don't think it violates the spirit of epiphenomenonalism to allow the explanation for consciousness to stray from the little spot between our ears. We can still call that cause, whatever it may be, physical, if that's important to someone. The point is that we end up with property dualism. The only question is whether an individual human has the power to alter the course of the universe, or if the universe is an unchanging block. I think I know your view on that.

Enactivist approaches to cognition informed by phenomenological philosophy reject this ‘mind-mind’ split. — Joshs

That's their prerogative, but I don't think their view is the only workable one. Do you?

Hard determinism has worked well for the natural sciences , but it isn’t such a great fit for elucidating psychological processes such as intentionality, mental illness, motivation, affectivity, empathy and learning. — Joshs

What part of the psyche doesn't fit with epiphenomenalism? I mean, when does freedom of the will become necessary to understanding?

If communication requires common experiential ground, this seems to rather imply the privacy of experience. If experience were communicable, then the relevant experiential background could be communicated. — hypericin

Well... it's that we couldn't communicate all without any preceding common ground. There may be little nuances about your experience of say, seeing the stars at night, that I don't and possibly couldn't know about, but I must largely know what that experience is like in order to talk to you about it, right?

Aphantasia is kind of a special case. Our experience of our inner world echoes our experience of the outer world. Our inner monologue echoes the sound of us (or someone) talking, and our inner visualization echo (faintly,to be sure, for most) the experience of seeing. — hypericin

I see what you mean. I think Chalmers is including all of that as phenomenal consciousness, of the outer world and the realm of imagination.

Experience is only revealed from the internal, first-person perspective. That is, to the organism. — hypericin

Would you agree that the third person view is a construction?

I'm a hard determinist, so I don't share that concern.

Science is ok. :up:

So do you experience them as public, external, effable? — hypericin

Are you familiar with Meno's paradox? It basically concludes that communication is always a matter of pointing to facets of your audience's experience. You can't really communicate something that's outside their available data because communication is a matter of pointing. Explanation is a matter of channelling focus.

In short, communication requires a common experiential ground. There could be cases where experience varies significantly, as with people with aphantasia, but knowledge of that implies some commonality in order to communicate it.

So if experience is truly private, there's no way we could know that. See what I mean?

As for "internal". I just don't understand what it's supposed to be internal to. My skull?

doubt this will convince you. But this is my view, and it is quite hard for me to think outside of it. Especially the denialists, they are incomprehensible to me. — hypericin

And that's what's interesting to me. When we scrub the conversation of animosity and distrust, we come up on the ways that we differ in terms of conception.

Science, as a practice, developed through a lot of discussion about separating causality from coincidence. Given that we are creatures who base much of our knowledge upon lining up what happened at the same time as evidence of a cause, it was only through suppressing this tendency that we became aware of systems that were not simply extensions of our assumptions. Establishing what is happening and building models for why it did was the beginning of looking for functions rather than accepting we have been shown what there is to know.

After some time of doing this, the method starts to consider what it dismissed at the beginning of its enterprise; The inclusion of observations made isolated from other people. — Paine

It's as if we started creating a documentary film, then forgot about the guy behind the camera. We wanted to remove personal bias from the account, and we ended up removing the person altogether.

Now we want to put the cameraman in the documentary?

How do you experience it? I don't ask that as a trick question. I am not accusing anybody of misrepresenting their experiences. — Paine

I just meant that I don't grasp what it means to call experience internal. I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass when I say that. I just really don't.

Something deliberately built to avoid a problem was turned upon the potato deemed too hot to pass around. — Paine

Could you expand on that?

Something odd I've recently noticed is that I don't really understand why people say phenomenal consciousness is private, internal, and ineffable. I really believed Dennett was being disingenuous when he assigned those properties to it.

Now I'm starting to realize that many people actually do experience things that way. I think now that Dennett was being honest, so it's easier for me to believe now that NOS is being honest.

I think maybe all the people who say they don't know what phenomenal consciousness are telling the truth. They really don't.

Gotcha. Maybe someday down the road you'll return to it and it will all click into place, but not now. :up:

I think you don’t have any evidence and are holding out for some odd reason — NOS4A2

I don't play dirty. I'm telling it straight. If you follow Chalmers' and Dennett's works, you'll find that both are pretty heavily preoccupied with who has the burden of proof.

The point of the p-zombie and other thought experiments is not about proving a difference between experience and biological function. They only prove that we can't assume they're the same. It's a subtle, but ultimately slam dunk point regarding the hard problem.

You have to face the fact that we don't know what causes phenomenal consciousness. You can insist that it's equivalent to biological function, but you'll need to provide evidence, ideally of a type that would be published in Nature. You can't just assume it. Do you see why?

I am willing to change my mind upon further evidence, but there isn’t any. I can only observe and conceive of what it is that you are talking about, and all I can see and all I can conceive of is the biology. — NOS4A2

I'm thinking you saw Pinocchio as a child and said, "This is inconceivable!"

How do you know that?

We’ve looked. — NOS4A2

Among the many accounts of gravity on the table is that our gravity is bleeding into our universe from another bigger one. Some scientists noticed that the big bang has some of the characteristics of black hole, leading them to wonder if we're actually in one.

This is the way science works. We don't settle on a conclusion because it seems like the last resort, exclaiming, "We looked."

Do you find p-zombies convincing? I don’t even find them conceivable. I can’t even think about how such a being could be possible. — NOS4A2

This is metaphysical possibility, not physical possibility. An evil demon or a god could have done it. It's just a test for conceivability. Santa Claus is conceivable, though we would all struggle to explain how reindeer could act as an engine.

For the simple reason that phenomenal consciousness is not equivalent to anything else. There is no other entity in the universe onto which we can affix the label "phenomenal consciousness" but the biology. — NOS4A2

How do you know that?

So what would you take to show that they are not equivalent? — NOS4A2

Chalmers has a couple of thought experiments that show that the two are logically distinct. One is the p-zombie. This shows that we don't know apriori that the two are equivalent. We need evidence to show that.

Take a look. That which is giving its first-person account is the exact same being to which we give a biological account. — NOS4A2

And you take this to show that phenomenal consciousness is equivalent to biological states? Could you explain how? Because I'm not seeing it.

The biological reality and the first person reality are one and the same thing. — NOS4A2

This may be, but you'd need to provide evidence for it. It's not a logical truth.

It should be highlighted that disrespectful behavior towards mods will earn you a ban. — Shawn

Oh shut up.

Right, and that is a far cry from saying "science needn't bother answering this". — hypericin

Yes, but Chalmers hasn't opined on what science should do, has he? Just on what it would have to do to address the hard problem.

There is absolutely a need for one to explain the other, if there was no need there would be no hard problem. — hypericin

Chalmers doesn't think that science, in it's present state, is capable of addressing the hard problem. He thinks it will probably take some sort of paradigm shift.

Lol. She asked me! — Baden

:grin:

I'm not looking to do a deep dive on what Isaac thinks because I'd probably bump my head on the bottom of the pool. But he said:

The use of the word 'consciousness' as it's used here and the study of neurons are not 'in the same world' they don't overlap in their activities. There's no need for one to explain the other, it wouldn't even make sense it'd be like expecting physics to explain what a googly is in cricket. — Isaac

The last sentence is not too far from Chalmers' view.

A generalised insult against the whole team by PM. — Baden

Oh shut up.

I don't see how. Chalmers famously labelled it the 'hard problem', didn't he? I'm suggesting it isn't a problem at all. I can't think of any way we could be much farther apart than that. — Isaac

Regardless, your view is similar to his.

Yes. That genius truly shines through when you're silent. — Benkei

I thought you were off grid somewhere in France.

Not me. I'm always a frickin genius!

Olivier was a little high strung (much like you). He would completely flip out sometimes, especially in private conversations.

This plague of right-wingers is very scary. They're still a problem even out of office. — Manuel

What do you think generates that kind of movement?

I've gotta good book recommendation if you're interested.
— frank

Written by a Portuguese, I am sure... — Olivier5

It's a collection of essays and excerpts published by Oxford.

The use of the word 'consciousness' as it's used here and the study of neurons are not 'in the same world' they don't overlap in their activities. There's no need for one to explain the other, it wouldn't even make sense it'd be like expecting physics to explain what a googly is in cricket. — Isaac

I think you're broadly in agreement with Chalmers here.

Every event must have a cause. If consciousness isn't supernatural, and the physical state of the brain remains constant, then the inversion would be left without any possible cause. — hypericin

Yes. This is metaphysical possibility. We can have a god do whatever we want as long as it's not a contradiction. The test is for conceivability, that's all.

Assuming you reject dualism then I don't see how that is conceivable. — hypericin

How so?

What you're saying is experience causes neural activity. — Moliere

There's no doubt that experience and neural activity go hand in hand. It could be that neural and other CNS materials give rise to experience. We don't know that, though, and we can't assume it.

The inverted spectrum argument is one of the many reasons we can't assume it.

That argument doesn't require two people. It goes:

One day you wake up and your spectrum is inverted, but no physical changes happened to your brain. Is that conceivable? Sure.

Therefore, brain function and experience are not logically identical. In order to claim that one explains the other, we'll need evidence of that.

have an understanding of the hard problem. — Moliere

This was your understanding:

So, whatever that is -- why my red is my red -- that's what the hard problem of consciousness is about. It's the feeliness of the world. And the thought, so my memory of what I was lead to believe at least, is that there is as yet no scientific explanation for why my red is my red (or, perhaps another way to put it, there's no scientific way to tell what my red is -- whether it is your blue or not -- yet I certainly see red) — Moliere

I see where these speculations are coming from, but the hard problem is more basic. It's: why do you experience orgasms? Why doesn't that neural activity happen without any associated experience of it?

It's not about why your orgasms are your own and not someone else's. See the difference?

I think? I'm fine with being quizzed, but I don't have a firm answer to your first question. — Moliere

So if you aren't sure what the hard problem is, why would you vouch for someone else's understanding? I don't understand.

So, would you believe me? I'm certain Banno understands — Moliere

From what you've said so far, I don't think you do. It's just a call a theory of consciousness that includes an explanation for phenomenal consciousness. Is that your understanding?

Actually, this gets to why I'm somewhat suspicious now... notice how close that looks to ye olde ontological argument?) — Moliere

I don't think it's an ontological argument. It's just that functionalists will have to prove that there's nothing more to phenomenal consciousness than function. We can't just assume that.

They just don't share the same worlds at all, — Isaac

What things don't share the same world? I don't know what you mean.

I was just saying this same thing. Worldview comes into play in the assumptions people make about it.
— frank

Which renders the 'hard problem' meaningless. — Isaac

Does it? Remember that when gravity was first introduced into physics as a thing to be explained, no one imagined that it's a matter of curved space. The worldview of the time wouldn't allow that.

So as we go to explain phenomenal consciousness, couldn't the same problem exist? That we don't have a worldview that allows the explanation to appear yet? Why not?

we're not 'discovering' facts about it, were determining them. — Isaac

I was just saying this same thing. Worldview comes into play in the assumptions people make about it.