Of course in all this I'm reminded of the certain scientific and philosophical skeptics who mistake their lack of visualization or lucid dreaming for those abilities not existing in other people. — Marchesk

I don't doubt this at all, nor any of the neurodiversity you point out. I just don't think it is the norm. From what I have read of people who cannot visualize, they believe it is an all or nothing ability that they lack, they don't seem to conceive of in-between states.

So what exactly is it to be 'aware' of some data? — Isaac

To have a first-person experience of it.

How do we measure awareness? — Isaac

By report, or by measuring at the neural correlates.

Because you're not really seeing a blue circle and a yellow circle, so their combined colour does not occur. I — Isaac

Who is claiming you "really" seeing in your mind? Brain activity will be similar whether you are seeing or imagining. But this doesn't mean the logic of color combination will be implemented faithfully by the brain.

I think the guy is mistaken in assuming that "nearly all of you have a [mental] canvas." — Olivier5

Yes, my experience is the same as yours. I read other posts from people with aphantasia and they make the same mistake. They think we are walking around with HD movies in our heads. some people do, but I guess they are at least as rare as people with aphantasia.

I suspect we are all pretty much the same soul, the same thing, the same mental structure, with better or worse abilities here or there. Like two diesel cars are essentially the same thing, even if one can drive faster than the other. — Olivier5

Your suspicion is understandable but wrong, though the subject has not received nearly the attention it deserves. Here is one blog post by a guy with aphantasia.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/2862324277332876/

There was a better post, that I also read from here, that I can't find right now. It is not just can/can't visualize. There are people who have no inner monologue at all, and think by entirely other means. They were astounded to learn people think like this, and found the idea kind of psychotic. I for one cannot "visualize" tastes and smells, others have no problem with this.

Computing what? If it's not aware of any data, then how can it process it? — Isaac

You are misusing the word "aware". A camera receives light, but it is not aware of it. A camera taking a picture is not an instance of "awareness".

How else would it classify them. — Isaac

Computationally.

This is an obstacle to creating a theory of consciousness: we're not all the same. Cognition can vary radically from one human to the next.

I think it's a real possibility that people who favor Dennett's view really are different somehow. — frank

This is an excellent point. Not only is it different, but everyone presumes that their own cognitive makeup is universal. Which leads to some incredibly frustrating discussions on consciousness.

We just 'classify' those particular states and momentums as 'audio' and 'video'. — Isaac

Your brain classifies all sorts of things. But you are only aware of a few. That is proof that awareness involves something more, or other, than just classification.

You can build a simple neural network that classifies images of glyphs into the symbols they represent. Is such a system aware of the symbols?

It seems you're saying that mechanisms cannot possibly bring about consciousness, — Isaac

I'm not saying that mechanisms can't bring about consciousness. I'm saying that the mere classification of signals is, obviously, not consciousness.

What any DVD means depends on the content, whereas how it works has nothing to do with the content, to press the analogy. The hard problem is not about ’how the brain works’, it’s about the question of meaning. — Wayfarer

It's not just the question of meaning, nor just how it works. It's the question of how these two domains could ever be bridged. "How does it work, so that it gives rise to meaning?" But, I think this asks too much at once. You only need to answer, "How does it work, so that it gives rise to audio and video." And from there, you can answer "How does audio and video give rise to meaning?".

Similarly, "How does the brain give rise to qualia?" And "How do qualia give rise to the full features of the mind?"

Consciousness is encoded as a set of neural signals, which is one enormous dynamic network of continual signals. This flow of data is encoded on the brain as axon potentials and neurotransmitter concentrations, which most of the brain is not involved in most of the time. The working memory of the brain receives some of these signals, and the network of logic gates created by forward and backward acting signal propagation interprets signals as something to pass on. These signals are then translated by our language cortices and conceptual recognition neural clusters as suiting the term 'consciousness'. — Isaac

This is revolutionary!

Machine consciousness has long been a holy grail of AI research. Nobody realized how simple it has been all along! All you have to do is arrange a bunch of signals, filter some of them, then have other modules categorize some of these signals as 'consciousness'. When this happens, we can even have a speaker box pronounce, "I AM CONSCIOUS!" Voila!

Are you seeing the problem here?

What's the answer to "how does a DVD contain audio and video?" — Isaac

My understanding:
The audio and video of a movie is encoded as a set of 0s and 1s, which is one enormous base-2 number. This binary number is encoded on the DVD platter as tiny unreflective pits on a thin mirror, in a spiral pattern, which most of the material of the DVD simply protects. The laser of the DVD player shines on the spinning mirror, and a sensor interprets interruptions of the laser's reflected light as 0s, and their absence as 1s (or the reverse). These 0s and 1s are then translated on the player into a format amenable to the display device, which produces audio and video.

This is a very rough and broad account, but there are no mysteries here, every one of these steps can be explained in arbitrary, excruciating detail. This is a story which unifies two seemingly irreconcilable domains: the gross matter of the dvd, and the ethereal images and sounds coming from the TV. The hard problem asks for a similar account, unifying the seemingly irreconcilable domains of third person neural activity and first person consciousness.

It is not about describing in detail how consciousness works - that is supposed to be the Easy problem (hah!) — SophistiCat

What trips people up is conflating an understanding of consciousness with understanding the NCCs (neural correlates of consciousness). You can imagine in the future that we might have a complete accounting of the NCCs, a complete description of all the relevant brain structures and how they interact with one another. But nonetheless, we still can't conceptually make the leap from this description to the first person features of consciousness: qualia, what-is-it-like, etc. On the one side, in the third person, is the objective description of neural structure and activity. On the other side, in the first person, is the consciousness stuff. Unifying this dualism is the task of the hard problem.

I think we are in basic agreement here?

If consciousness were something in addition to that activity then anaesthetics would not work since they only act on chemical activity, not 'the realm of consciousness'. — Isaac

Just because you aren't a dualist about consciousness doesn't mean the question just disappears.

Consider a DVD. Is the movie "on" the DVD something in addition to the physical layout of the DVD platter? No, the movie is that layout. Nonetheless, one has to ask, how is it that, when some DVDs are inserted into the proper device, video plays. Whereas if other DVDs, blanks say, are inserted, there is no video.

Imagine a technologically naive culture, cut off from the rest of the world, or maybe part of a multi-generational dystopian experiment, where DVDs and DVD players are a given. There would eventually arise a hard problem of DVDs. You can't answer that problem by saying "movies are just a name we give to certain DVD microstructures". You have to explain how it is that the material DVD "contains" audio and video.

We are in a culture where consciousness are a given, and the hard problem of consciousness has arisen. We have to explain how it is that neural activity "contains", "instantiates", "embodies", "is", whatever you prefer, the features of consciousness.

:100: :clap:

because we can say that something is good because it is instrumentally good, not just because it is intrinsically good — Herg

But this then becomes "good for".

The point of "intrinsic" was that the pro-Sally sentiment expressed by "Sally is good" is about Sally, as opposed to my personal preference. Even if Sally is just "good for" something, that usefulness of Sally in this situation arises from her, not from my opinion of her.

You're asking for the cause of a description, not an event or state. — Isaac

Of course consciousness is a state. At any time you may be either conscious or unconscious. The point of general anesthesia is to change your state of consciousness to off. An anesthetic works if it changes your conscious state, and doesn't work if it does not. If consciousness is somehow merely a description, how does an anesthetic have causal efficacy?

The hard problem is just more masturbation.
— neonspectraltoast

That's one way to get rid of a "hard" problem. — Janus

:rofl:

They just do. — Isaac

It baffles me that you think any of these questions are unaskable, that they "just are". What a strange, pre-scientific mindset, like answering a question with "because god willed it". A few simple google searches will disabuse you. Sure, the physical constants may well be beyond our ken, but that doesn't stop us from asking.

We could give an evolutionary account, some natural advantage to consciousness. Random changes in neurological activity one time resulted in proto-consciousness which gave an evolutionary advantage to the creature and so it passed on that genetic mutation. There...is that satisfactory, and if not, why not? — Isaac

It is not satisfactory, because it answers the wrong question. The question is not, "why did consciousness arise in evolutionary history?" Rather, "by what mechanism does specific neurological activity give rise to consciousness?". Similar to how you can ask "By what mechanism does an engine, carburetor, wheels, etc, assembled as a car, drive?" "It just does", "God wills it", does not answer either.

That is, one can consistently conceive of someone approved off what is not good. — Banno

Good is not mere approval, as I point out:

Moreover, they are asserting that this approval springs from something intrinsic to x itself. — hypericin

Can a speaker assert they approve of x, due to an innate quality of x , while at the same time assert that x is not good? I say no.

You can look them all up, but without a basic understanding of the principles they're working from it's unlikely it'll make much sense. — Isaac

Can you link a paper or article?

Is there a question as to why glutamate exists, why bones have the structure they do, why atoms are small, why stars are far away, why the sea is wet... — Isaac

Are you really suggesting that "why not? What's stopping them?" is an adequate answer to any of these?

Consciousness is not information. But consciousness is informational. It is a phenomenon arising from flows of information. That is why the hard problem is so seemingly intractable. It tries to leap directly from matter to consciousness. But the matter of the brain supports flows of information, from which emerges consciousness. How is unclear. But it is far more conceivable that consciousness arises from information than from matter.

Going beyond that is outside the bounds of this discussion. — T Clark

Going beyond your judgement is out of bounds? I see. You argued that values are arational, and so the question does not apply. I say that values can indeed be irrational.

Well, then, how do you know "Sally is good"? By what criterion are you making that judgment? — 180 Proof

Any number of factors, depending on context. Maybe she is moral and kind. Maybe she is a competent guitarist. Whatever it is, it is something innate about her that is laudable.

The question simply makes no sense. What could an answer possibly be? "It feels like...?" What words could possibly fill the blank? — Isaac

You were the one arguing that perceptions were effable. So you would eff whatever their perceptions are like to them.

Dozens of researchers in consciousness think they know exactly what a good theory would look like and they've constructed their experiments closely around those models. The fact that you don't grasp them is not a flaw in the model. — Isaac

Cite one you think is satisfactory.

Why wouldn't they? What's in the way? What compelling physical law prevents biological processes from causing whatever symptoms they so happen to cause? — Isaac

"Why wouldn't they?" possesses exactly zero explanatory power. The question is rather "why would they?". Why would some neurological processes engender consciousness, and not others? What are the relevant mechanisms?

The latter. Otherwise, "prefer" or "like" would be used, not "good".

When a speaker declares x is good, they are marking their approval of x. Moreover, they are asserting that this approval springs from something intrinsic to x itself. If I say "Sally is good", I don't merely like Sally, according to me Sally is so constituted as to be intrinsically liked.

Answering this question depends on a specific evaluative context. — 180 Proof

Good has no fixed referent, but the meaning itself holds constant.

I'd say it's neither rational nor irrational. It's a question of values, which are non-rational. — T Clark

This is debatable. To take a common example, many value money over happiness. This might be irrational, as money might be valued as instrumental towards happiness. Similarly, understanding might be valued as instrumental towards the joy of deeper understanding. What use then is this understanding, if in this case it leads to a state of perpetual joylessness?

Just as bad, suppose these values are not instrumental. Suppose that money was valued absolutely, as an end in itself. Wouldn't this be irrational, a kind of arbitrary idolatry? Especially if it supersedes other values, such as the happiness and well being of yourself and others. Similarly, mightn't understanding as an absolute end in itself, be a kind of irrational idolatry?

The difficulty is not that we lack a theory (we have theories, but none are widely accepted or even compelling, afaik), but that we lack a theory of a theory: not only do we not know how material processes lead to consciousness, but we don't even know what a theory which explains it would look like. In other words, we cannot conceive it.

We have not yet explained irritable bowel syndrome either. I — Isaac

The comparison is not apt. Even if it is not explained, we understand what a theory of IBS would look like: a cascade of biological processes, in one form or another, lead to and explain the observed symptoms. This is readily conceivable.

But we cannot conceive how a cascade of biological processes can lead to the observed symptoms of consciousness, because we cannot conceive how any physical process can lead to consciousness. There is an explanatory gap.

And as I said in the OP,
The problem with claiming that something is ineffable is, of course, the liar-paradox-like consequence that one has thereby said something about it. — Banno

If that's good enough for you why bother with a thread in the first place? "Yggzavil is effable. Hey, I mentioned it, after all. "


You can mention anything. The point is that you can't describe anything.

The use of "the smell of coffee" is no different than the use of the smell of any of the other overtones in your wheel. There are phenolic compounds common to roasted coffee we identify as coffee smelling. Coffee just confuses the issue because it is very complex. What about "the smell of ammonia?"

Instead, the aroma of coffee is a family resemblance, a way in which we talk about a group of things that have nothing specifically in common. — Banno

Nothing specifically in common? Not much of a "family resemblance".

Here's that mad view that we can never see things as they are in themselves, — Banno

Who's claiming we can see things as they are in themselves. Talk about nonsense phrase.

Instead of going off about the red herring stoves gem some more why don't you answer:

If the scent of coffee is describable why is this impossible:

.There is a state of affairs where A's (smell-of-coffee) is the same as B's. There is a state of affairs where A's (smell-of-coffee) is same as B's (smell-of-feces), and vice versa. There exists no verbal exchange between A and B which can tell them which state of affairs holds. because 2 is inexpressible.
— hypericin — hypericin

The contention that the aroma of coffee cannot be described in words is blatantly wrong. — Banno

Coffee is a complex and varied aroma, and can have overtones of other aromas depending on the variety. At the center of the wheel should be the smell of coffee itself. Show me someone who can look at that and know what coffee smells like, without having smelled it before.

If the scent of coffee is describable why is this impossible:

.There is a state of affairs where A's (smell-of-coffee) is the same as B's. There is a state of affairs where A's (smell-of-coffee) is same as B's (smell-of-feces), and vice versa. There exists no verbal exchange between A and B which can tell them which state of affairs holds. because 2 is inexpressible. — hypericin

I'm claiming that the evidence we have thus far points to such a lack of neural criteria for the collection of the various activities at 1 into the grouping of 2 that we must have learned those groups. — Isaac

You keep referring to this trove of evidence without citing it. Your account raises far more questions than it answers.

* How do you account for novel sensations? If you smell something new, it smells like something. How can this be, if we haven't learned how to group it?

* We have immense neural machinery to process sensory data. Did all this come after language use? Then why do other animals have it too?

* Every animal recoils from pain, and manifestly finds it unpleasant. Only humans have to be taught this?

* Animals and babies are deemed to be unaware? In spite of having the behaviors we correlate with awareness?

* How would we learn anything, starting from a point of undifferentiated neural activity? Both auditory words and what they are pointing to would be mere neural noise.

It is far more reasonable to believe that sensations are abstractions of specific neural activities, and that this abstraction is built in.

No reason to have the collection 'smelling coffee' at all, other than for communication. — Isaac

My dog strongly disagrees. Scents carry information on where food is, what is safe to eat and what is not. The purpose of being aware of your environment is not to just communicate, it is to be able to act on it, in a manner more sophisticated than reflexive instinct.

Moreover, even if your account were accurate, which I don't agree with at all, there is still something sensations are like, for us adults. Socially constructed, or no. You can argue that it is an illusion, that is, it is not what it seems, but not that it doesn't exist. I argue that they exist with the same strength of "I think therefore I am". For this something to be communicable, you need to demonstrate how to differentiate between cases where smells are swapped, colors are inverted, etc, and where they are not.

I think, is that there's no one-to-one relationship between the two, such that a small and variable number of 'chemical and physiological reactions of my brain in the presence of coffee' might be described by us as "I smell coffee". There's no one set of neural goings-on which correspond to 'smelling coffee', we estimate, make up, narrate, story-tell... — Isaac

This is confusing to me, maybe in part because the sensation of smelling coffee is not distinguished from the verbal utterance "I smell coffee".

There are really three things:

1/ Neural activity in response to smelling coffee
2. The subjective sense of that neural activity: (smell-of-coffee)
3. The verbalization "I smell coffee"

* No one is claiming a one-to-one relationship between 1 and 3.
* No one is claiming even claiming that between 1 and 2: for all we know many distinct neural activities correspond with 2.
* No one is claiming that the relationship between 2 and 3 is not culturally bound
* No one is claiming that 1 is not expressible with language, at least in principle.

What is claimed is that the contents of 2 are not expressible with language. We can express we are having the sensation with "I smell coffee", but we cannot express what it is like.There is a state of affairs where A's (smell-of-coffee) is the same as B's. There is a state of affairs where A's (smell-of-coffee) is same as B's (smell-of-feces), and vice versa. There exists no verbal exchange between A and B which can tell them which state of affairs holds. because 2 is inexpressible. The can only express the culturally bound mapping from 2 to 3: "I smell coffee".

Because "about" means concerning or referencing, but doesn't mean conveying, which would mean transferring actual content. — Hanover

How is talk of leaf and branch different to talk of smell and touch? — Banno

Of course language can't transmit sensation any more than it can trees. What it could do (but can't, for sensation) is describe.

We don't merely label trees, we have descriptive terms for them. If you only have labels, description is limited to

"What is an oak? It is like an elm, but not like a spruce? What is a spruce? It is like a pine, but not like an alder..."

Instead,

"An oak is a deciduous thick barked tree, growing to 100-200ft at maturity. It has broad, waxy, green, tri-pointed leaves. In autumn it bears conical, edible nuts with a fibrous cap..."

If I had patience and actually knew what I was talking about I could paint a picture in your mind of what an oak was like, without your actually ever seeing one.

But I cannot do the same for sensation terms. We only have labels for them, no descriptors. So while we can trivially use them in sentences "I have a red cup", we cannot describe them. At best we can only use impressionistic associations and metaphors ("Red is fiery", "Oak is majestic"). This lack of descriptive ability makes sense terms ineffable.

If one of the meanings of sensory terms derives from sensation, hasn’t some language been used on it? — Mww

This seems to be a common confusion. Words are labels which are attached to sensation. But this doesn't make sensation any less ineffable. Imagine as a child you were trained to associate buzzes with animal pictures, so that one buzz is associated with a dog, two for a cat, and three for a horse. Do the buzzes then describe the animals? No, they merely symbolize them. But the buzzes are to the animals as sensory terms are to sensations.

And if I read you correctly, it begs the question as to how conceptions, by which all objects are described, arrive at purely physical structures such as sensory devices. — Mww

Please restate, I don't get the question.

I think Merleau-Ponty goes some way to undermine this thought — Moliere

To my (very limited) understanding phenomenology aspires to what the title suggests, an account of the "phenomenon of perception", of what it is like to perceive, in the abstract. Perhaps you can illustrate your point with a quote? I can't see how an abstract accounting like this can bridge the gap I described.

If a language capable of describing perception were achieved, conversations like this would be possible:

"Hi Bob, I was thinking, my subjective experience of my perceptions are like this (...). What about you?"
"Wow Sam, that's crazy! Mine are exactly like yours, except when you smell cinnamon I smell your cardamom, and when you hear the violin I hear your piano!"

Humans have been playing at language for a long time, and afaik such a conversation has never happened. Forgive my skepticism at phenomenology ever achieving some kind of linguistic breakthrough that would allow it. The reason, I believe, is fundamental: internal states cannot be pointed to, so no language can ever develop.

As are feelings, and for much the same reasons. — Mww

I add two to the traditional five senses for feelings: bodily feelings and mental feelings. Feelings are akin to senses but point inward.

what is it about objects that can elicit descriptive terms from sensation — Mww

Objects interact with the world in ways we are attuned to: they emit and reflect light, cause variations in air pressure, sublimate chemicals. Our sense organs and then our brain translate these into sensations. We are trained to bind together the relevant features of objects and their corresponding sensations with symbols, words, and so we have descriptive terms. (this is why sensory terms are a little peculiar, they always have two meanings: the sensation and the feature of the world that produces it).

Sensations are profoundly ineffable, for a simple reason: we lack words for describing them. At the most elemental level, we can describe the physical world in terms of the sensations that it elicits. But that's as far as it goes, we lack the language to describe the sensations themselves. The best we can do is to compare them to other, similar sensations, or to list other sensations that the sensations invoke ("red is like orange and makes me feel warm").But the actual, qualitative sensory experience is indescribable .

If you doubt this, just consider that all of our ways of experiencing the world might be basically identical, or they might be radically different: we each might experience our own private sets of colors, sounds, smells, or our ways of perceiving might be more profoundly different in ways that are difficult to conceive without taking serious drugs. But we will never know, one way or the other, because lacking the words we simply cannot describe our internal state.

There is no possibility of inventing a language to describe sensations. We can have words for sensations because we can point to things that invoke the sensation. But we cannot point to the sensations themselves, as they are internal. Therefore we can never assign words to features that would describe them. And so they will forever remain both immediate and indescribable.

There is no topic — Janus

"The Insufferable?"