Isn't it possible that a small unnoticeable change to a region of the brain could result in her condition? Or it could be a psychological condition that a brain scan will never pick up? — RogueAI

I guess so.

Sorry, I don't understand the purpose of these questions in the context of this discussion.

Let's go back to my earlier question about Mary: Suppose Mary falls and hits her head and says she can't feel any emotions anymore. Her body still displays all the physical signs of emotions, but Mary claims to never actually feel any emotion anymore. How would neuroscience verify this claim? Suppose her brain is studied and everything is normal. Do we not believe her? — RogueAI

Sounds like Mary is either delusional or lying. Brain trauma can interfere with the emotional response, but that would manifest in physical symptoms, like monotone speaking, no change in facial expression, avoidance of eye contact and neutral body language (i.e. relaxed and staying still in a situation where they should be tense)

Also - if she really "felt no emotions" the injury to one of these structures would be detected: hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus

OK, how does the brain produce consciousness? — RogueAI

If you read the entirety of my post, you'll better understand my position.

Besides, I'm not a neurobiologist

I would like to hear about the measurements of emotion, from any one of the "whole battery of tests." — Patterner

Well, here is a link to the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale DASS-42 test to see how you're feeling

https://www.healthfocuspsychology.com.au/tools/dass-42/

Levine’s point is that even if we possessed a complete and correct physical account of the brain—covering all neural mechanisms, causal roles, and functional organization—it would still be unclear why those physical facts give rise to particular qualitative experiences. The gap appears when we move from physical or functional descriptions to phenomenal character: nothing in the physical story seems to explain why pain feels the way it does, — Wayfarer

Levine opens Chapter Four, The Explanatory Gap, in Consciousness with this -

“We want to know not only that such-and-such is the case, but also why it is the case. If nature is one large, lawful, orderly system, as the materialist (or the naturalist) insists, then it should be possible to explain the occurrence of any part of that system in terms of basic principles that govern nature as a whole.”

Well, give it time. There are plenty of scientists and philosophers who believe that science is on track to one day discover how perception associating with memories and feelings give rise to qualia.

And there are those who believe qualia is not a problem that materialism needs to address.

I’d also like to mention that it is not an objective of neurobiology to ask “why?” but to ask “how?” – and by the end of that chapter, Levine changes his scope –

I think the explanation of gappiness is a very deep problem, and … the problem of explaining how the physical gives rise to the phenomenal and the problem of explaining the peculiar features of phenomenal concepts are intimately connected…

We’ve already mentioned the understanding of the word “problem” in science as a direction for further research, and perhaps this is how Levine means it here, too.

Anyway, there is a biological explanation for why pain feels the way it does – our brains evolved a system of specialized nerve endings that detect harmful stimuli and then send electrical signals via the nervous system to the brain (thalamus, cortex) where the signals are interpreted as pain, and then we respond to those signals.

It wouldn’t have worked if detecting harmful stimuli felt good! No evolutionary advantage in that.

An understanding of why we are the way we are must involve our evolutionary history.

I am left with this question - If not the brain producing consciousness, and qualia, then what?

All evidence points to it being the brain, and that is the direction in which future research should go.

he argues that current forms of physical explanation leave an unresolved conceptual gap between objective accounts and subjective experience, a gap that cannot be closed simply by adding more neuroscientific detail.' — Wayfarer

Well, many would disagree with him, and some would say it does not matter.

Anyway, yes, we might say that there is only one person inside any one head, but we have our ways of communicating our existence – how it impacts on us - in a multitude of ways. Both science and philosophy rely on it.

What does a smile tell you about the person smiling? We are even able to discriminate between different kinds of smiles. Do you have to have epistemic knowledge about what the smiler is feeling – experience the specific activity of their amygdala - in order to understand the message of the smile? That would be like saying I cannot study the gravity on the moon unless I feel it.

Perception of emotional expressions (fundamental to social development) has been the focus of much research in infants –

Facial and vocal expressions of emotion convey communicative intent, provide a basis for fostering shared experience, are central to the development of emotion regulation, and guide infant exploratory behavior (Gross, 1998; Saarni, Campos, Camras, & Witherington, 2006; Walker-Andrews, 1997). Within the first half year of life, infants are sensitive to emotional information in facial and vocal expressions, (Field, Woodson, Greenberg, & Cohen, 1982; Flom & Bahrick, 2007; Walker-Andrews, 1997), and in the prosodic contours of speech (Fernald, 1985, 1989; Papousek, Bornstein, Nuzzo, Papousek, & Symmes, 1990). Much research has focused on infant discrimination of adult emotional expressions (see Walker-Andrews, 1997; Witherington, Campos, Harriger, Bryan, Margett, 2010 for reviews), particularly for static faces. By 4 months of age infants can discriminate among static faces depicting happy, sad, and fearful expressions (Barrera & Mauer, 1981; Field, Woodson, Greenberg & Cohen, 1982; Field, Woodson, Cohen, Greenberg, Garcia, & Collins, 1983; La Barbera, Izard, Vietze, & Parisi, 1976). For example, La Barbera and colleagues (1976) found that 4- to 6-month-olds discriminated pictures of joyful, angry, and neutral facial expressions and preferred to look at joyful expressions. Between 5 and 7 months of age, infants discriminate between a wider range of static facial expressions including happiness, fear, anger, surprise, and sadness, and can generalize across expressions of varying intensity and across different examples of an expression performed by either the same or different individuals (Bornstein & Arterberry, 2003; Caron, Caron, & MacLean, 1988; Ludman & Nelson, 1988; Nelson & Dolgin, 1985; Nelson, Morse, & Leavitt, 1979; Serrano, Iglesias, & Loeches, 1992).
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3843965/

Shall this research be disregarded because the researcher did not feel what the baby was feeling?

As for the “how do we measure?” question – here’s an example – in a study entitled Infants' facial electromyographic responses to the sight of emotional interpersonal touch – which investigated infants' sensitivity to the emotional valence of observed touches -

To investigate this issue, we measured facial electromyographic (EMG) activity in response to positive (caress) and negative (scratches) observed touches in a sample of 11-month-old infants. Facial EMG activity was measured over the zygomaticus major (ZM) and corrugator supercilii muscles, respectively involved in positive (i.e., smiling) and negative (i.e., frowning) facial expressions. Results have shown distinct activations of the ZM during the observation of scratches and caresses. In particular, significantly greater activation of the ZM (smiling muscle) emerged specifically in response to the observation of caresses compared to scratches. Our finding suggests that, in infancy, observed affective touches can evoke emotional facial reactions.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38873865/

Here’s an interesting perspective from Hannah Arendt – explored in a section of The Life of the Mind – that the interplay of “being” and “appearing” frames our very existence, that we are no less object than subject. She writes:

Nothing could appear, the word “appearance” would make no sense, if recipients of appearances did not exist — living creatures able to acknowledge, recognize, and react to — in flight or desire, approval or disapproval, blame or praise — what is not merely there but appears to them and is meant for their perception. In this world which we enter, appearing from a nowhere, and from which we disappear into a nowhere, Being and Appearing coincide… Nothing and nobody exist in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator. In other words, nothing that is, insofar as it appears, exists in the singular; everything that is is meant to be perceived by somebody… Plurality is the law of the earth.

Since sentient beings — [humans] and animals, to whom things appear and who as recipients guarantee their reality — are themselves also appearances, meant and able both to see and be seen, hear and be heard, touch and be touched, they are never mere subjects and can never be understood as such; they are no less “objective” than stone and bridge. The worldliness of living things means that there is no subject that is not also an object and appears as such to somebody else, who guarantees its “objective” reality. What we usually call “consciousness,” the fact that I am aware of myself and therefore in a sense can appear to myself, would never suffice to guarantee reality… Seen from the perspective of the world, every creature born into it arrives well equipped to deal with a world in which Being and Appearing coincide; they are fit for worldly existence.

This calls to mind something I posted previously, that consciousness is intimately interconnected to the environment -

Information in > consciousness happens > information out

This represents a part of the causal cycle involved in the formation of consciousness – part of a continual loop of lived experience –

… world > body + brain > world > body + brain > world > body + brain …. and so on….

How does this happen? Short answer: By the electrochemical functioning of neurons.

I want to end this post by saying thank you for giving me so much to think about.

“metaphysics of presence” — Mikie

(1) What does the phrase mean? — Mikie

From what I have read, one important aspect of Derrida’s position was to question the traditional view that speech has presence over writing. He termed it logocentrism – the idea that speech is primary, more connected to thoughts – and writing is secondary – just a copy of speech, and therefore prone to incompleteness and misunderstanding.

That view goes back to Plato’s argument against writing, expressed in dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus:

You know, Phaedrus, that is the strange thing about writing, which makes it truly correspond to painting. The painter’s products stand before us as though they were alive. But if you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence. It is the same with written words. They seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say from a desire to be instructed they go on telling just the same thing forever.

Derrida did not agree. He did not think that only speech was pure presence. He redefines writing as foundational, alongside speech. Both have access to meaning.

As he writes in Of Grammatology:

“the operation that substitutes writing for speech also replaces presence by value: to the I am or to the I am present thus sacrificed, a what I am or a what I am worth is preferred. “If I were present, one would never know what I was worth.” I renounce my present life, my present and concrete existence in order to make myself known in the ideality of truth and value. A well known schema. The battle by which I wish to raise myself above my life even while I retain it, in order to enjoy recognition, is in this case within myself, and writing is indeed the phenomenon of this battle.”

As a writer of short stories, this quote really resonates with me. I am very much present in my writing. I imbue my writing with meaning, which is taken up by the reader, and often they put their own spin on it, find meaning in it I did not even intend. But above all, it brings writer and reader together.

It calls to mind Tolstoy’s definition of art (Chapter 5, What is Art?):

If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which the author has felt, it is art.

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself then, by means of movements, lines, colours, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling—this is the activity of art.

Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and also experience them.

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious Idea of beauty, or God; it is not, as the æsthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress towards well-being of individuals and of humanity.

What's a unit of emotion? — Patterner

Are you suggesting there are not ways to determine how a person feels?

I went to watch the video and got this message:

Video unavailable
This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.

Is there a new link?

Sometimes I think about the millions of years of happenstance that led to my being born here and now. My existence depends on uncountable events that came before, from a supernova that exploded in this part of the universe around 5 billion years ago, to the formation of the Sun and planets, and photosynthesis evolving on the third planet and oxygen filling the air and fins evolving into limbs …. Fast forward … to my ancient ancestors surviving the passage out of Africa, and thousands of generations successfully passing on their genes … right up to my mother meeting my father.

I am a child of the universe. I am a child of chance. And this poem makes me think of the long, precarious voyage from then to now, and that there is still time, while I am alive, to grow.

HOMO SAPIENS: CREATING THEMSELVES
by Pattiann Rogers

I.
Formed in the black-light center of a star-circling
galaxy; formed in whirlpool images of froth
and flume and fulcrum; in the center image of herring
circling like pieces of silver swirling fast, a shoaling
circle of deception; in the whirlpool perfume of sex
in the deepest curve of a lily’s soft corolla. Created
within the images of the creator’s creation.

Born with the same grimacing wrench of a tree-covered
cliff split wide suddenly by lightning and opened
to thundering clouds of hail and rain.

Cured in the summer sun as if in a potter’s oven,
polished like a stone rolled by a river, emboldened
by the image of the expanse beyond earth’s horizon,
inside and outside a circumference in the image
of freedom.

Given the image of starlight clusters steadily silent
above a hillside-silence of fallen snow… let there be sleep.

II.
Inheriting from the earth’s scrambling minions,
images of thorn and bur, fang and claw, stealth,
deceit, poison, camouflage, blade, and blood…
let there be suffering, let there be survival.

Shaped by the image of the onset and unstoppable
devouring eclipse of the sun, the tempestuous, ecliptic
eating of the moon, the volcanic explosions of burning
rocks and fiery hail of ashes to death… let there be
terror and tears. Let there be pity.

Created in the image of fear inside a crawfish
skittering backward through a freshwater stream
with all eight appendages in perfect coordination,
both pincers held high, backing into safety beneath
a fallen leaf refuge… let there be home.

III.
Made in the image of the moon, where else
would the name of ivory rock craters shine
except in our eyes… let there be language.
Displayed in the image of the rotting seed
on the same stem with the swelling blossom…
let there be hope.

Homo sapiens creating themselves after the manner
and image of the creator’s ongoing creation — slowly,
eventual, alert and imagined, composing, dissembling,
until the right chord sounds from one brave strum
of the right strings reverberating, fading away
like evening… let there be pathos, let there be
compassion, forbearance, forgiveness. Let there be
weightless beauty.

Of earth and sky, Homo sapiens creating themselves,
following the mode and model of the creator’s creation,
particle by particle, quest by quest, witness by witness,
even though the unknown far away and the unknown
nearby be seen and not seen… let there be goodwill
and accounting, let there be praise resounding.


You can listen to the poem recited on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1tvk0NJ4fM

All true in the case of pre-1900 science, I would have thought. — Tom Storm

Yes, for sure - and in fact true of all of science still today ... from the systemic inquiry of the ancient Greeks, to the introduction of controlled experiments in the Islamic Golden Age, and then to Roger Bacon’s championing of empirical evidence over pure logic, culminating in the scientific revolution of the 17th century – notably with the first formal explanation of the scientific method (inductive reasoning – specific observations > generalization) by Francis Bacon

So, one “presupposition” underlying all science – still today - is that it is a way to accumulate knowledge – that science is a process, conducted according to the rigor of the scientific method – which begins with observation and questioning, then in any one experiment narrowing the scope to hypothesize about and then test the cause-and-effect relationship between two variables – the independent variable (manipulated by the experimenter) and the dependent variable (dependent on changes in the independent variable) – (all other variables that might affect the outcome are controlled) – then collecting measurements/observations and then making a conclusion that either accepts or rejects the original hypothesis based on the evidence collected.

It was not clear if the OP was looking for “presuppositions” that only applied to pre-1900 physics

I disagree that it matters in this discussion. — T Clark

If you are going to talk science, a basic respect for its terminology is warranted.

What does it have to do with the issues on the table? What does it change in the discussion going on? What does it add? — T Clark

Your posts have been ambiguous. The OP asks for the “presuppositions of classical physics” – and when asked if you meant science or the scientists, you answered, “Yes, science, not scientists” – even though presuppositions can only exist in the scientists, and not in a body of substantiated knowledge.

Anyway, I tried to help by giving you some of the substantiated knowledge of physics in 1900 - the framework within which the physicists at the time were working

Isn't it the case that all epistemic frameworks rest on metaphysical commitments? — Tom Storm

Yes, we are all human.

Science provides a particularly clear illustration. Scientific inquiry presupposes a mind-independent, law-governed reality and the reliability of our cognitive and instrumental access to it, — Tom Storm

I'm trying to think of one human endeavor that does not ... you can be describing fishing.

The OP made specific reference the state of physics in 1900

I disagree. Beyond that, you are talking about semantics not substance. — T Clark

You disagree with the generally accepted use of the words "phase" and 'form" in science?

How is that relevant to this discussion? — T Clark

It describes the state of physics knowledge in 1900.

If you believe science is not based on presuppositions, then you are one of those people who think there’s no value in metaphysics. — T Clark

Metaphysics is not a science.

The scientist needs to actually verify the emotion is really there, before investigating the cause. — RogueAI

Neuroscientific investigation has a whole battery of tests to measure emotion.

alien emotions? What about machine consciousness? Will we ever be sure a machine is feeling the emotion it says it is? How on Earth could we verify that? — RogueAI

That's outside the purview of this discussion.

The presuppositions of classical physics. — T Clark

Yes, science, — T Clark

I don't think you can talk about "presuppositions" when enquiring into the state of scientific knowledge, which is necessarily based on evidence collected in scientific experimentation. You might talk about the state of scientific knowledge, but science is not based on "suppositions."

Suppositions would only apply to the scientists, and whatever their personal worldview was. And I am sure their worldviews were varied.

The amount of energy is a number, but so is the amount of matter. Energy and matter are just two phases of the same substance like ice, steam, and water. — T Clark

"Numbers" related to science are expressed in units, and measure some quantitative property of the object under investigation. It is not correct to refer to "phases" of energy. When we are talking about energy, we talk about "the form of the energy."

These problems with your phraseology notwithstanding -

It's significant you chose the year 1900. Physics was on the verge of a couple of great leaps forward -

in late 1900 - Planck introduced the concept of "quanta" - that energy could be emitted in discrete packages

in 1905 - Einstein's Theory of Relativity merged space and time to spacetime - and measurements of them became relative to an observer's motion and gravity

So, in 1900, Newtonian physics still prevailed. Determinism was the prevailing belief. They lived in a deterministic universe, where the future behavior of systems could be predicted if their initial conditions were known with sufficient accuracy. Energy was viewed as a continuous wave-like phenomenon. Maxwell's electromagnetism provided a nearly complete description of the universe. And they held to the existence of a ubiquitous, rigid, massless medium they called “aether” – and light and electromagnetic waves propagated through it.

It acknowledges the hard problem of consciousness, saying that 'enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience'. — Wayfarer

So far.

I want to reiterate - that when science speaks of a "problem" they are referring to something that needs further research.

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.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state.

Good quote. Thanks for sharing it. I enjoyed reading it.

And no, neuroscience hasn't solved the hard problem yet.

I should note, I think 'the hard problem' is a polemical or rhetorical construct. — Wayfarer

I want to note that the way the word "problem" is used in science means something yet to be discovered. (Science doesn't consider any problems unsolvable, lol) So "the hard problem" is not a construct at all, hard consciousness really does exist, but it is a matter of future research. What may be said, though, is that the different understandings of how - or if - the hard problem may be solved has become a polemic and rhetorical matter.

It's purpose is only to point out that the first-person, experiential quality of experience can never be properly captured from a third-person perspective. — Wayfarer

But does the scientist need to feel the actual sadness, or the love, or the anger, that the subject of the research feels in order to discover how that emotion is generated? I would say no. The subject can communicate how they feel, and the brain activity mapping it (or whatever methods are used) will point to its source.

the first-person nature of subjective experience is insignificant or secondary to the objective description. — Wayfarer

I think this represents a misunderstanding of how the science is done.

but are based on reasoned inference from the apodictic nature of first-person experience. — Wayfarer

Science does not put the apodictic nature of first-person experience aside, but rather includes it in its methodology, which relies on more than subjective inference.

As a side note - I went down a bit of an internet rabbit hole today, starting by Googling "Schrodinger's Cat." It led me to an excerpt from a short story written by Ursula Le Guin in 1974 - entitled "Schrodinger's Cat."

Here it is - a dialogue between the nameless narrator and a dog called Rover -

‘… We cannot predict the behaviour of the photon, and thus, once it has behaved, we cannot predict the state of the system it has determined. We cannot predict it! God plays dice with the world! So it is beautifully demonstrated that if you desire certainty, any certainty, you must create it yourself!’

‘How?’

‘By lifting the lid of the box, of course,’ Rover said …

Oh, there are so many "what if?" questions to be asked!

But first we need to open the box!

Because it's not true, — Wayfarer

To the extent that you’ll not see the word “true” in a scientific paper, this is accurate. The most that a scientific paper will claim is that “this is the best explanation for the evidence collected.”

Are you claiming that what Bitbol is saying is “true?”

yet a very large number of intelligent people seem to accept that it is. — Wayfarer

Thus raising questions about their intelligence?

Would you question the intelligence of the MIT Consciousness Club, whose members aim to build a bridge between philosophy and cognitive neuroscience? They do this by exploring how “neurological activity gives rise to human experience.”

Maybe we can look at one aspect of neurological research into consciousness, and determine how it would appear through the lens of Bitbol’s analysis.

Consider the perceptual reality monitoring theory of consciousness (PRM). PRM is a higher-order theory of consciousness, meaning it associates the emergence of consciousness with the emergence of the reality monitoring function - i.e. perception (sensory input) > signal evaluation > reality tagging (signal reliable?) > consciousness/cognition/thoughts.

Philosopher Matthias Michel, (co-leader of the MIT Consciousness Club and the Old Dominion Career Development Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy), takes a science-based approach to his work, and investigates PRM. This past year, he published Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision – which explored distribution of conscious (vs. unconscious) vision in aquatic and terrestrial animals.

In the last section of the paper, he writes:

“… we offer an argument that seeks to explain, rather than merely describe, this co-evolution of model-based planning and consciousness.”

His conclusions suggest:

“… by selecting a coherent set of representations among the myriad representational activities the mind is engaged in, a reality monitoring mechanism grants those representations the epistemic profile that is typical of our conscious representations. Through this lens, reality monitoring and the capacity for model-based planning are deeply intertwined, offering a new perspective on the functions of conscious vision.”

So – what would be Bitbol’s critique of this investigation? What step in reality monitoring is made invalid by the measurement question of quantum mechanics?

And because ideas have consequences. — Wayfarer

Scientific knowledge is not “ideas” but the only substantiated knowledge we have, based on the best evidence. It can be examined and tested – for example in function-based theories of consciousness. Can Bitbol’s claims be tested?

Which is why strict scientific realists, like Sir Roger Penrose, say that quantum theory must be wrong or incomplete. — Wayfarer

Well, if the physical evidence contradicts the mathematical model, I would say it is the mathematical model that must be adjusted, because it is impossible to adjust the physical evidence.

Rubber bands and rocks — bert1

Not in all of us. ;)

A side note - something I read in the Aeon article linked by Wayfarer -

‘I refute it thus,’ said the 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson kicking a large rock as refutation to arguments against materialism he’d just endured.

Here’s a poem by Richard Wilbur:

Epistemology
I.
Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones:
But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.

II.
We milk the cow of the world, and as we do
We whisper in her ear, ‘You are not true.’

generally, as common-sense realism. — Wayfarer

I don't think the scientific consensus can be reduced to common sense, but anyway....

Reductive materialism is the view that the mind is 'nothing but' the activities of neural matter and that as knowledge of neuroscience develops, so too will the grasp of this correlation. That neural reductionist view is propounded by a group of influential scholars and academics and is also associated with the 'new atheist' writings of popular intellectuals such as Richard Dawkins. By this means, it is hoped to reduce the understanding of consciousness or mind, to the network of physical causation by which other natural phenomena are explained. — Wayfarer

I wonder why this is so threatening to some people?

Perhaps a good starting point would be this essay Minding Matter, Adam Frank, who is a professor of astronomy. It actually discusses in some detail, but in a reader-friendly way, the philosophical challenges that 'wavelength collapse' pose for reductionist materialism. — Wayfarer

A very interesting article. Thanks so much for sharing it.

I didn’t see that the article spoke of philosophical challenges, but rather the problem of reconciling the materialist view of consciousness with quantum mechanics – which was not touched on at all in the OP.

And whereas the OP specifically is written as an argument for “the primacy of consciousness” – that was not the gist of the article I just read. (I suppose Bitbol made his own conclusion about that.)

The main thrust of the article seems to be:

How can there be one mathematical rule for the external objective world before a measurement is made, and another that jumps in after the measurement occurs?

And

The measurement problem highlights this barrier between epistemology and ontology by making explicit the role of the observer (that is: us) in gaining knowledge.

So, two opposing strategies for explaining subjective consciousness have taken shape:

Psi-ontologists – who see consciousness as a fundamental feature of reality, like mass or charge

Psi-epistemologists – who say that subjective experience arises from how information is processed and made available, not from a new ontological ingredient

(Bitbol is a psi-ontologist, I am a psi-epistomologist)

But then the article makes an illogical conclusion -

This arbitrariness of deciding which interpretation to hold completely undermines the strict materialist position.

Science is awash with contradictory positions, but somehow it marches forward. (I was a little surprised to read at the beginning of the article that the author was shocked to find uncertainty in science. Science runs on uncertainty.)

Consider the controversies surrounding dark matter and dark energy. One theory is formed, it shows cracks, and a new theory comes along, based on new evidence. This is the way science works. Pieces of the puzzle are put together.

No, science has not yet put together the entire puzzle that will answer the question of consciousness, but all the pieces of the puzzle so far point to consciousness being a function of neurological processes. Any other theory is just a matter of wishful thinking.

The article goes on to say that physics from the psi-epistemologist is no longer a description of the world in-and-of itself. Instead, it’s a description of the rules for our interaction with the world.

Rules? What rules?

Yeah, consciousness is built on interaction with the world. But it is built in a functioning brain.

Brains also do things that don't involve thinking, like making the heart beat. — Patterner

That my brain controls my heartbeat is not an argument against it producing my consciousness. My brain does many things.

The descriptions of the physical events that explain thinking and autonomic functions are not describing subjective experiences. — Patterner

Right. One is structure, one is function.

For example, you can list any and all steps that begin with photons hitting the retina, including molecules of retinal changing shape, ion channels, sodium ions, axons and dendrites and neurotransmitters, and everything else, and you will never tell us where red is found. We'll understand how the system can discriminate different wavelengths of the spectrum, which some mechanical/electronic devices can do. But how our experience of colors also happens will not be revealed. — Patterner

Good example of structure and function.

Also, if there is consciousness in things without brains, then, obviously, it doesn't come about from the action of the brain. — Patterner

Where else is consciousness found?

@Wayfarer

but you need to grasp the argument before dismissing it. — bert1

I took this as an invitation to go back and read the OP once again (there was no mention of the time dimension) – and I thank you for that. And so, I will reply to some of the specific claims made in the OP (quotes from the OP are in bolded italics)

… the reality of first-person consciousness is ineliminable, and any account of the world must ultimately be grounded in the structures of experience as they appear to the subject.

Of course, consciousness is subjective. All neuroscientists understand this. But this statement makes an erroneous assumption – that any one neurological investigation tries to solve the problem of hard consciousness all at once. That’s not how science works. It’s one bit of information at a time. Specific functions of the brain can be investigated without access to the entirety of the subject’s consciousness.

As Earl Miller, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT says, “You can’t study the complexities of executive [brain] function and not get to consciousness.”

https://bcs.mit.edu/news/science-consciousness

If we know what consciousness is, it is because we ourselves are conscious beings

Science does not dispute this.

Pure experience is beyond the level of being and has no essence… It permeates the show without showing itself— Michel Bitbol

Well, it has essence as far as we would consider that the function of a structure has essence. But in all cases, and especially with consciousness, “existence precedes essence.”

Bitbol considers consciousness to be “self-evidentially absolute”: the one domain of existence that is given fully and indubitably whenever it is present. By contrast, natural objects are always incompletely present, appearing only as partial profiles or “adumbrations,” forever subject to correction by further experience.

Bitbol’s “consideration” is not a substantiated claim. I can just as easily say that – "no, consciousness is not absolute – it depends on the functions of the brain" – and my claim would be backed up by scientific investigation.

Bitbol’s central claim: the attempt to derive consciousness from material processes reverses the real order of priority. Whatever is presumed to exist in the physical world already presupposes consciousness as the field in which such ascriptions occur.

Is he saying the world can’t exist unless it is being detected?

the materialist project of locating consciousness in the brain or in neural processes is not just incomplete; it is conceptually incoherent. Like any empirical analysis, it rests on the presumption that what is real is what can be objectively measured and assessed.

No such claim is made by neuroscience investigating into the source of consciousness. Bitbol is conflating “locating consciousness” with “determining what is real” – two wholly different aims – and different branches of investigation.

Also - while science may measure certain structural features associated with consciousness (brain scanning, blood flow, etc) – this is often done in conjunction with self-reporting of the subjective experience. Scientists not only measure the system, but investigate the effects of the system.

However, the very notion of the objective world described by the empirical sciences is itself a product of selective abstraction — what Bitbol calls the end-product of the procedure of objectification. Why? Because science methodically brackets out the subjective pole of observation so as to arrive at an intersubjective consensus about the observer-independent attributes of the object. But when this methodology is applied to the question of the nature of consciousness, it turns around and tries to explain conscious experience in terms of that consensus.

Okay, trying to parse this – he’s saying that science can never explain the conscious experience because it focuses on the object rather than the subject? But scientists are subjects themselves?

Someone help me out here. What’s he saying?

(I am reminded of Einstein’s famous quote - “If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you don't understand it yourself.”)

The result is not only circular but, he says, will always culminate in the notorious “hard problem”: consciousness treated as if it were something that emerges from structural relations in objectively–existing matter, when in reality it is the precondition for identifying those relations in the first place. In that sense, it is prior to the emergence of both objective and subjective, which themselves rely on distinctions that arise within consciousness.

So, he’s saying, consciousness can’t know consciousness because consciousness came before consciousness.

On the one hand, consciousness cannot be treated as an object — something manipulable, measurable, or existing independently of the subject. This is because objects are by definition other to us, and are given only through the sense-data profiles which, as we have seen, are open to correction by further experience.

Neuroscientists do not treat consciousness as an “object” – but rather as a function of the brain.

Bitbol seems entirely lacking in the “structure-function” concept.

And no, scientists do not treat consciousness as something existing independent of the subject.

Yes, consciousness may change depending on further experience.

… consciousness … is neither a useful fiction, nor a byproduct of neural processes, nor a ghostly residue awaiting physical explanation. Instead, says Bitbol, it is the self-evidential medium within which all knowledge about objects, laws, and physical reality arise … Any attempt to treat consciousness as derivative — as some thing that “comes from” matter — therefore reverses the real order of dependence. The world of objects may be doubted, corrected, or revised; but the presence of experience itself, here and now, cannot be disconfirmed. In this sense, consciousness is “absolute,” not as a metaphysical substance (which phenomenology rejects) but as the unavoidable ground of meaning, evidence, and world-hood.

He recognizes what consciousness is, but errs in thinking that neuroscience does not. He goes to pains to explain what, in his view, it is not, but his argument seems more like pronouncements – like wishes – than a rebuttal.

Who’s disconfirming the presence of experience? If that is the criterion for determining that consciousness is absolute, then he has made an error in his understanding of the present state of neuroscience, thus nullifying his conclusion.

Indeed, he makes no attempt to refute any of the large body of scientific evidence supporting the idea that consciousness is a function of brain electrochemistry.

Physics, biology, and neuroscience describe the structural, relational, and functional aspects of the world-as-object; they do not, and need not, account for the presence of the world-as-experienced. As such, consciousness is not something over and above the world, nor something inside it. It is the condition for there being a world at all.

Neuroscience does not substitute the “world-as-experienced” for the “world-as-object.”

That we can only experience the world through our consciousness is not an argument that opposes the idea that consciousness arises from the neurological functioning in our brains.

I hate Trump, aka Ill Douchey, aka Fail Shitler. I despise the subhuman turd. Seeing that asinine face, those plump, pursed lips, those cruel, piggy, dead eyes, makes me sick to my stomach. He is a petty, noxious, malignant buffoon, not fit to run a used car shop, let alone a super power. I wish him the absolute worst, I hope he does us all a favor, strokes out, and dies in the most humiliating, demeaning, and painful fashion possible. — hypericin

I understand. But, if my reaction to Trump is to hate him, then I have allowed Trump to change me. I don't want to give him that kind of power over me. I don't want hate in my constitution. And so I prefer to think of him as one example of the variation we find in the human species (albeit at the malignant end of the spectrum) - and then study both him and the outsize influence he's had socially and politically.

Should people who know better than him check him on his worst instincts? Absolutely. A strong political opposition is vital. But rather than coming from a position of hate, it must come from the position of "doing what is right." It must come from a position of love for those who have been wronged.

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr -

"Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."

It is an emotion, and is too vulnerable to manipulation. Those we should hate, instead use hate, nurture it, to their own advantage. — hypericin

Yes, this is what we have seen as part of the pattern with all autocrats.

Perhaps in small scale society, hatred was ironically a force for good. — hypericin

It wouldn't be the only instinct that works better in small groups. There's much research showing that our "fight-or-flight" response gone haywire is a cause of much illness.

But today, in mass, hierarchical, multicultural society, the exploiters who should be checked by hatred, instead are able to hack the hatred instinct, twist it toward their own benefit, and compel us to hate the innocent instead. — hypericin

Very much so.

"Those who don't know history, are condemned to repeat it."

although interestingly your view is compatible with the kind of mind-primacy that Wayfarer has been talking about in this thread. — bert1

I don’t think so. The primacy of consciousness claims that consciousness has metaphysical primacy over existence. I take the opposite point-of-view, that existence comes first. A brain must structurally develop before any consciousness can arise from it.

And there’s extensive clinical and experimental data to support the correlation of structure (brain) and function (mind/consciousness). We may not understand exactly how consciousness is generated, but it’s an “incontrovertible premise that consciousness comes about from the action of the brain.”

And -

Therefore, the question “What is it that we are ‘being’?” has an answer in the standard model: “We are ‘being’ EM fields from the atomic level up.”

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8907974/

Knowing what we are still leaves lots of room for philosophical questions, especially centered on “How should we be?”

And – knowing the foundation of consciousness does not subtract from its grandeur and wonder – its ability to be both provocative and evocative - no more than knowing the Mona Lisa is paint on canvas subtracts from the infectiousness of art.

I'm in the No camp. — Patterner

Do you mean just with humans? Or does that include your dog?

You’re taking the derived abstraction ( the empirical third-person account) and making it the basis for the actual phenomenological experience which constructed the abstraction in the first place. — Joshs

Wow, that’s pretty philosophically dense. I think I understand, but I want to reiterate that my original point was to separate the subjective from the objective. Also, calling something an “abstraction” does not mean that it is false. In the case of objective reality, I think our “derived abstractions” better capture it, than do our perceptions.

treat our experience as somehow less real than the models.

of course, subjective reality - and subjective truths - are real. Indeed, they are the only things that have personal consequence.

Science’s "blind spot" is ignoring lived human experience as the foundation of all knowledge,

I suspect this is not really a concern for most scientists. I don't think they give up their humanity.

It would not be the same rendition, but it would be the same piece. Claire de Lune retains its identity whether played on piano, guitar, or a singing birthday card. — Wayfarer

I'm sorry, you have missed my point.

Are we not all individual renditions of consciousness? And does not that consciousness emerge as the function of neurological processes?

I interact with a rock. My subjective knowledge of the rock as object is the result of patterns of correlation that emerge from the responses of the rock to my movements in relation to it. — Joshs

But what is that rock, really? Objectively, it does not appear as you see it. In reality, it, and all of reality, outside of human perception, it is a conglomeration of colourless particles and waves, a haze and maze of uncertainty that turns into certainty only when you observe it. (I have heard it described as wavelength collapse, but I don't know enough about it to comment.)

The grass is not really green. That's only the light that particular conglomeration of chemistry reflects to your eyes. Outside of perception, objective reality might be "there," but it has no definition or meaning.

seen differently for each of us as individual subjects, as an empirically objective entity which is ‘identical’ for all. — Joshs

because we have the same senses, and in a manner of speaking, the same consciousness

It's a model you use to make sense of what you're experiencing. If you find the model is wrong, you update it. Davidson said it's like a web of inter-related beliefs, and possessing such a web is the hallmark of rationality.

Empiricism only gets you so far. You run into the problem of induction. — frank

I agree. We need to think about what we find out by way of empiricism. Problems arise when rationalists ignore scientific knowledge. Rationalism without the benefit of empiricism is ignorant.

A physics book expresses a 3rd person account. That doesn't mean it's not derived from 1st person data, or that it's necessarily true. We're just talking about what kind of voice the account is in. — frank

A physics book is not written as a 1st person account, but by the results of scientific investigation.

A voice that gives an account without the benefit of empiricism is no authority on the subject.

An objective account is in 3rd person. It's like a novel written in 3rd person, a God's eye view. — frank

But that can be no more than fiction. Surely, there is a place for rationalism, but rationalism has got a worse record than empiricism, starting with Thales saying everything is sourced from water.

If you're describing the way the world is, you're giving an objective account. — frank

This sentence is contradictory. If it's your account, it's not objective.

What does an objective state of affairs look like? — Joshs

We have no access to it. Everything constructed in the mind of the subject is by definition subjective. We have no choice but to believe our senses.

Well, matter needs energy to exist.

Knowledge doesn't banish fear; it increases it. — Ecurb

Not in all cases. Sometimes we are afraid of things we don't need to be afraid of. For example - fear of the stranger often subsides once we get to know the stranger

Evil doesn't "lie inside (people)". It is nourished and festers. — Ecurb

Unless it is replaced by love?

Of course it can. It can be played on another instrument, recorded, or transcribed into notation. In every case the music stays the same while the material form is different. — Wayfarer

But it would not be that particular music - those particular vibrations propagating those particular acoustic waves through that particular air - played by that particular piano at that particular point in space and time.

That would be like saying my brain could produce your consciousness

ETA - besides, you did not refute my main point - that you cannot have piano music without a piano

I'm saying that a perfect judge could judge them. — Ecurb

Where do we find this perfect judge in this existence, here and now?

I'm also saying that evil is a human quality. We all must fear and avoid it. — Ecurb

I am reminded of a quote from Marie Curie:

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

We don't banish the evil in our own hearts only by avoiding bad acts, but by seeing ourselves as loving, decent and honorable; by yearning for the good instead of the evil. — Ecurb

This gets to the heart of why people do bad things. It always leads me to wonder what went wrong in their lives. What kind of childhood did they have? How were they shown love?

Also, what's wrong with judging people? — Ecurb

There are always reasons for people doing what they do. I want to make it plain that I am in no way condoning or excusing hateful behavior. I just think the answer lies in something more complicated than there is evil inside of them. Maybe we can help them, but that really requires that we don't judge them.

Still, the idea that we shouldn't "judge" seems silly. How are we to decide whom to befriend? Whom to avoid? Whom to love? — Ecurb

I meant judge as evil.

What I'm saying is that this is the false dilemma of Cartesian dualism, which divides the world into 'the physical' (res extensa) and the mental (res cogitans). But this is much larger that 'the philosophy of Descartes', as it is woven into the cultural grammar of modernity - we naturally tend to 'carve up' reality along those lines. So the implication is, if something is not physical, then it must be res cogitans - hence 'the immaterial mind'. — Wayfarer

Understanding that the mind/consciousness is the function of the structure (the brain) dispels any notion of Cartesian dualism. Function cannot be separated from operating structure, no more than the music played by a piano can be separated from the piano.

Hate and love are not opposites — BC

How about if we think of them in terms of the action/reaction they might cause?

Neither are rational. — BC

mentioned earlier in the thread - hate and love reactions are produced in the same regions of the brain, but only the hate circuit is connected to the the cerebral cortex – associated with judgement and reasoning – which become de-activated during love, whereas only a small area is deactivated in hate. So, hate retains rationality.

because hate can be harnessed to focus on individuals or groups with whom we have no personal connection. — BC

What would it take to harness love in the same way? Is it even possible?

Discomfort with outsiders can slide into hate, or be pushed into that unfriendly state, by excessive social friction or deliberate manipulation. — BC

Agreed.

according to religious preaching, supposed to welcome the stranger in our midst. That such action requires a command suggests that it doesn't just happen spontaneously. — BC

Good observation.

I think political leadership has a role to play in how a society reacts to the strangers.

Perhaps this is a pessimistic assessment. Humans have been manifesting love and hate for a long timed I don't expect any change. We are what we are. — BC

No, I thought it realistic more than pessimistic.

Why can't we be more like Finland, ranked the happiest country in the world in 2025?

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world

Evil can refer to acts or to a state of being. — Ecurb

How is a state of being made evil? What is the mechanism?

God can judge. — Ecurb

But if you say someone is inherently evil, you are judging them.

Evil is a state of immorality which may or may not lead to wicked acts. Evil is a personal quality; a defect. When we say behaviors are "evil" we mean they result from this quality. — Ecurb

How does the evil enter a person born as a newborn baby?

I always like to say the only perfect thing in this existence is a newborn baby :)

Hate is the reaction of our narratively constructed world view having an immune system, rejection towards that which threaten it. Some of it is logical, much of it isn't. — Christoffer

Good analogy, and I think it is fear that cranks up the psychological “immune system” – fear of the stranger, fear of the unknown, fear of loss – sometimes to the point of an "autoimmune disease” harming the psyche – whether in an individual or in an entire group of people.

Autocrats know this and fearmonger, often with lies - propaganda

You hate a person who killed someone you love because the act of doing so needs to be stopped in order to preserve the being of your group. Naturally, it becomes a way to defend against what could destroy you and your loved ones. — Christoffer

The instinct to belong to the group, and protect the group, cannot be underestimated as a motivator of human behavior. Goes way back. But in this day and age, we hope we are more enlightened and able to go beyond the “He hates me, so I hate him” reaction. For example, posted earlier in this thread was the story of a mother who forgave the person who murdered her son, and it led to healing for all involved. The more we are able to rise above our base instincts, the more just the outcome will be.

The same fictional narratives exists everywhere; we construct narratives that define our entire sense of being and world view.

Why we see an increase of hate in the world is because social media's research found out that conflict gains more attention and interactions, so the algorithms pits two opposing views together to produce that drama, increasing hate. Two fictional narratives which collides into hateful behavior. — Christoffer

Yes, those “constructed narratives” are often fictional. This observation in fact played a part in my posting this thread. I am highly disturbed by the way hate is winning in the USA. It’s caused me to question my previously held (naïve?) belief that love always wins out. With my own eyes, I see every malignant behavior of the autocrat excused, so long as he “gets” the people his supporters hate – like the “left” and immigrants. In many instances, it seems like cruelty is the point. The power of hate has somewhat shocked me.

While shutting off these algorithms would generate a good neutralization of much of today's hate, the solution to hate in general is to find out which narratives are fictional and which are based in actual facts. — Christoffer

But in many people, fear of the stranger/unknown has taken control of their consciousness. Hate rules them and it would take massive redirection of their neural connections for them to admit they have been lied to. Hate can completely occupy a brain.

I think the hope lies in the future, but this will entirely depend on what kind of leadership the USA has in the next decade.

The narrative based on facts should be strived towards as the way of life, being and world view to dominate and we should abolish narratives based on nothing else by constructions through arbitrary experiences. — Christoffer

But what if there is a market for comforting and/or hateful lies?

And - who should abolish the offending narratives?

It is mostly through these arbitrary narratives clashing with truth that we get irrational hate. — Christoffer

Exactly.

But I see no problem with those fighting for narratives which are based on facts to hate those who operate on arbitrary ones or outright lies for the purpose of power. That form of hate is the "immune system" fighting against a destructive social construct. — Christoffer

I can’t agree with this. I don’t think hate is ever a factor in the solution to a problem.

I think the better idea is to take the infectious agent away.

Actions are never evil. They can be bad. — Ecurb

yes, this is a better use of the terminology. I was using the word evil as a substitute for bad, but without any supernatural connotations to it, just as it might be commonly used.

If the conviction was merely an honest mistake, the action is bad but there was no evil involved. — Ecurb

But we all do have some notion of what we mean, when we say, that was an evil thing to do. If it is morally reprehensible, we might say it is "evil behavior." No cosmic force involved, though.