What could it even mean for something that seems so obvious to most people to be a delusion? — Janus

I'm not seeing the problem you're seeing here. History is littered with understandings and entities which seemed 'so obvious' to people at the time, but later societies consider them nothing but misunderstandings or superstition. I can't see how "everyone thinks it's obvious" presents any major barrier to neurological theories.

Exactly. What we're being asked to believe is that..

a) the US despite funding, arming, and training Ukraine, despite providing intelligence, despite a propaganda and media censorship campaign the likes of which hasn't been seen for decades... are in fact barely involved in this war

b) Lula, mentions something which Putin also mentioned in one of his speeches...and thus is now an ally of one of parties in this war.

I'm just trying to pin down what this thing 'awareness' is that neuroscience has apparently failed to explain.

People seem absolutely concrete about what it isn't (neurons firing), but somewhat evasive about what it is.

You seem to be suggesting here some kind of temporal identity (comes before neural activity), but then suggest it has something to do with spontenity, and then pleasure? I'm not following I'm afraid.

That just says exactly what I argued. 'Allied with Putin' is being defined as 'anything which disagrees with US policy'

Lula is not 'allied with Putin' in any way shape or form. He disagrees with US foreign policy and thinks it resulted in the war. He disagrees with the US narrative.

It is one of the more disgusting aspects of the Facebook generation that there can be no room for disagreement any more. If you're not pro-US, you must be pro-Putin. It's pathetic.

So. I look at my tea cup, and the claim is that in addition to the circuits processing the sensations I get from it, I also have this other thing called 'being aware' of it, which isn't simply the word we give to those circuits doing their job, but something else (which correlates with them). We assume bats have it (what 'it's like' to be a bat) even though they don't insist they do, but cameras don't have it (there's nothing it's like to be a camera)...because bats would be... offended?

Who is claiming you "really" seeing in your mind? — hypericin

Then in what sense are we 'aware' of a yellow disk and a blue disk? We clearly are not experiencing their actual properties.

How do we measure awareness? — Isaac


By report, or by measuring at the neural correlates. — hypericin

What neural correlates? And how do we know they are the neural correlates? If "by report" then how do we know the camera's circuits aren't 'aware' of the light?

there is no way of objectively measuring awareness, — Janus

Then how do we know the machine isn't?

You want to be careful, many of those studies have been called into question. — Wayfarer

Seriously? You've never cited a study that's been 'called into question'? Sheldrake's work, for example... ever 'called into question'?

Imagine a blue circle next to yellow circle.

Move the two circles closer an closer until they overlap.

What colour is the overlapping region?

...

You've no idea have you? Because you're not really seeing a blue circle and a yellow circle, so their combined colour does not occur. In fact you could make their combined colour anything you like. I'm currently imagining a blue circle and a yellow circle combining to make a deep burgundy, which is impossible.

You are misusing the word "aware". — hypericin

Ah, I see. So what exactly is it to be 'aware' of some data? How do we measure awareness?

Computationally. — hypericin

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

Free high quality education for all from cradle to grave. Is it only the human invention of money that is stopping that from happening? — universeness

Quite the opposite. It's the 'human invention of money' which promotes free education for all. From where else are they going to get their ready-to-go workers? Where else are they going to put the kids whilst they expand production employing both parents? How else are they going to make sure everyone is so beaten down and indoctrinated all day, every day, that they'll buy any old shite just to numb the pain?

The last thing 'money' wants is kids who are free to play, get muddy, make up their own day, think for themselves... They make crap consumers.

Don't let me disrupt your flow, you're on a roll.

So far we've got "anything Chalmers says is true by default unless it can be proven otherwise", and "anyone who disagrees with Chalmers probably has some form of brain damage".

Some suggestions...

"people who disagree with Chalmers are more likely to be fascists"

"Chalmers has nice hair"

"Chalmers is an anagram for 'les charm' which is French for 'The Charms' an American garage rock band who produced a song called 'I believe', which is instructive"

"Chalmers.com pay me £50 each time I promote his stuff"

Care to justify that statement? — frank

Why? You didn't bother.

Chalmers is the source of several well known thought experiments that show that phenomenal consciousness and functionality are not identical, so proponents of aforementioned "function equals phenomenal" carry a burden of justifying that. — frank

But...

Dennett is the source of several well known thought experiments that show that phenomenal consciousness and functionality are identical, so proponents of aforementioned "function doesn't equal phenomenal" carry a burden of justifying that.

Have you got anything more to offer than Burden-of-proof tennis?

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? — hypericin

Yes. If it classifies them, it has to be aware of them at some level. How else would it classify them.



You're right. I hadn't considered the possibility that people who believe in this phenomena are just mentally different in some way. Something akin to schizophrenic delusion could be a possibility, where you become convinced of the presence of something which isn't there.

Suppose you create a machine that you believe is conscious. You can learn all the physical facts there are to know about the machine, and still not be any closer to answering the question of whether it's conscious or not. Since there are no new physical facts to learn about the machine, physicalism fails to provide any answer to the "is it conscious?" question. — RogueAI

So, let me get this straight. The phenomena you're proposing we investigate is one which is undetectable and has no impact on anything (objects with it are indistinguishable in their action from objects without it). Why exactly would we investigate that?

Thanks for the response. As you're busy I'll pick up only what I think is the most salient point for any time you want to re-look at this.

Memories do not form in real time, we can recall events in milliseconds which feel to us as if they took minutes (we have recall of recall - you can test the experience by trying to recall a dream). We also make narratives from very fragmented sensory data by simply substituting reasonable priors for missing information. Putting these two things together, it's possible that memories are rapidly formed in the first few milliseconds of being revived using the fragmented sensory data still entering the primary cortices of the brain during anoxia.

Although I'd say that if you're still confused about the difference the only explanation I can think of is that you have some damage to your posterior medial frontal cortex, which has been shown to regulate the degree to which we take opposing viewpoints seriously.

It's either agree with me, or pop off to your nearest quack, I'm afraid.

there's no agreement about what his view is. — frank

....is not the same as...

If you actually read his stuff and you're still this confused about what he's talking about ... You may have something akin to aphantasia — frank

I've heard some pretty sycophantic stuff on this thread, but this one takes the biscuit.

"If you disagree with Chalmers you must have brain damage"

I've just read the full article. Perhaps you can clear up what seems, for me, the major stumbling block. Brain cells take hours to die from anoxia. Since NDEs are only recorded in those who've been resuscitated, by definition, their brain cells still had some capacity, they were dead according to cardiopulmonary measures, but there's no reason to assume their neurological system had no function.

Have NDEs been recorded in people inside fMRI, or with EEG?

The notion that we always have to appeal to some scientific investigation to tell us what's true or false is just false on its face. — Sam26

True, but death/coma is, in these cases, scientifically measured. If we relieve ourselves of the truth of such an assessment, then it's just as easy to say the survivors weren't dead (or near dead). In other words, nothing remotely unusual is happening here at all absent of a scientific expectation of mental activity in anoxic conditions.

All the reports seem to show (I haven't read a lot) is some people report weird experiences in traumatic circumstances. It only becomes noteworthy if we learn these traumatic experiences were all 'near death'. But we only know they were 'near death' using a scientific investigation of their biology.

It seems a little cherry-picking to accept a scientific definition of 'near death' to categorise these events, but then reject it when categorising what counts as neurological activity.

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

In your DVD example you ended...

These 0s and 1s are then translated on the player into a format amenable to the display device, which produces audio and video. — hypericin

It doesn't. It produces changes in the state and momentum of fundamental particles. We just 'classify' those particular states and momentums as 'audio' and 'video'.

No I can't. A machine is not bucket of water, or a fruit-bearing plant, or an animal. I'm not going to engage in pointless arguments. — Wayfarer

I meant within reason, obviously. The definition (using the one you provided) does not specify whether such an object has intentions, must be created by humans, must be non-organic,... All these nuances are what's meant by the colloquial expression 'you can define X however you want', as well you know.

When was the last time you responded to someone who says "you can be whatever you want" with "no I can't, I can't be a zebra"?

Deliberately uncharitable readings are a poor substitute for actual argument.

So, within the range of possible definitions of 'machine' (if that's clearer) it remains the case that you've chosen to define it in such a way as to self-immunise any response against your argument.

If you define 'machine' as something made by humans and as such containing human intention, then every example given meeting your definition will, by definition, contain human intention. It's therefore not evidence that we haven't yet found any 'machines' with intents of their own. By your own definition, any such object would automatically cease to qualify as a 'machine'.

You can define 'machine' however you like. The point was that you can't, in the same breath, say that machines have no intention empirically (we haven't found any which do yet) and say that machines can't have their own intention by definition.

If you're defining 'machine' such that it cannot, by definition, have its own intention, then the failure to find any such machine in the real world carries no epistemic weight. Of course there aren't any, you just defined 'machine' as being those things without intention of their own.

Its like me saying that Jabberwockies are monsters with red fangs and then saying "if you think I'm wrong, find me a Jabberwocky without red fangs" whatever you find, I'll just say "that's not a Jabberwocky, I said Jabberwockies were monsters with red fangs"

when you can demonstrate a self-creating machine that follows goals... — Wayfarer

machines are human artefacts, produced intentionally to deliver a result. They embody the intention of the agent who builds them. — Wayfarer

Then your challenge is self-immunised. If you define a 'machine' as human-made and then declare that anything human-made, by definition, has in it the intention of the human manufacturer, you couldn't possibly identify such a machine.

If I built a machine which genuinely had intention, there'd be no way to tell since, by your definition, it would always have my intention too.

Do I have my parent's intention? Or does the 'building' have to take place in a workshop?

That’s minuscule. What did the Russians get for that money? One plane? A hundred rockets? — Olivier5

So? The point was only countering the notion that extreme left wing groups are notably allied with Putin. so unless you can find some extreme left wing group which gave €153 million to promote Putin's military capabilities, then you've no argument.

The simple fact is that centrist, mainstream political groups support Putin more than the extremes on either side, and within those extremes no one has provided any evidence at all of any left-wing support whatsoever. So the claim that...

in Europe and America both the far-right and the far-left are Putin's closest allies. — SophistiCat

...is just plain false. Financially, he's gained more from mainstream centrists. Politically, his support is only far-right. By no metric of 'closest' or 'ally' do the European extreme left even figure.

Are you seeing the problem here? — hypericin

No. It seems you're saying that mechanisms cannot possibly bring about consciousness, but without giving any reason why not.

I think essentially the conversation here cannot really progress without addressing the issue of negative pressure and positive ideology in the medical service provision. As I cited earlier, the evidence for both efficacy and safety of all medical interventions is sketchy at best, as is evidence of the harms suffered without those interventions.

Obviously, in such an environment, campaign groups are not going to just throw their hands up and say "oh well, we can't resolve this yet, more research need", they're going to cherry-pick the best sounding results from the weak collection and stick them front-and-centre. This goes for both side, clearly. So I don't see much room for progress on medical grounds alone. the most comprehensive meta-analysis I've managed to find (NICE and the review of GIDS in the UK) concluded the evidence was weak. As far as I'm concerned, that shifts the discussion to that about sensible default positions, not correct medical approach, which, in my view, simply cannot be established using the quality of evidence we currently have.

I think there are still issues of philosophical interest, but if any argument hinges on the medical question of efficacy, it needs to do so from a position that the question is, as yet, unresolved. It cannot do so from a position that the medical treatments are safe and efficacious, and the processes best practice. Not only is this questionable on epistemological grounds, but the premise of any 'campaign' is that current practice is flawed. Such a premise must have, as a fundamental axiom, the notion that existing knowledge and practices can be flawed. It cannot then use, as a basis for it's argument, the unquestioned accuracy of any current knowledge and practice.

I agree that the pathologising of the issue is the problem, but where I think I struggle is with what happens once that's been removed. If we no loner require the 'clinical distress', then the harm being resolved by the medical intervention is not clinical any more, it becomes, if not societal, then... ecological? We'd be claiming that there exists, naturally, a cohort of humans who identify as some other sexual phenotype than the one they were born as, but without this being a medical issue (not a defect), nor a societal one (we haven't fucked up and made a whole cohort of people unable to fit in). Just a naturally occurring feature of a population that some of them desperately (but not clinically desperate) need a different body (but not just any different body, they don't need a tail or broader shoulders, or a third arm, they need the body of the other sex).

On its face I find this implausible, but to dig a little deeper for some more flesh on those bones...

1. Why sex? Why not skin colour, hair type, height? If this phenomenon naturally occurs and isn't socially constructed, then is it just coincidence that it hinges on the most socially relevant phenotypical traits and not the socially irrelevant ones?

2. Where's the precedent? Tribes famously have long-accepted cross-gender roles. Some consider there to be a third gender, some simply accept that some women do men's things and vice versa. Suicide rates in tribes are famously low (with some not even having a word for the act). So where are the distraught Nádleehi, for example?

3. Why would this particular form of dissatisfaction deserve attention? We have famously limited resources (NHS on it's knees etc), if we remove the clinical need, then what differentiates this form of bodily dissatisfaction from any other? On what grounds do we deny steroids to the unhappily puny? On what grounds would we deny hair straighteners to those dissatisfied with their afros? I don't want this to be taken as a slippery slope argument, more a question of where (if) we'd draw a line.

4. How do we frame such a state of affairs without invoking a 'female/male brain'? At best there's what appears to me to be a very thin line to tread here. We want to say that it's the sex of the body that matters (not just any bodily dissatisfaction will do). We want to fix that using endocrinological interventions (about as close to the brain as you can get without actual lobotomy). But we want to stop short of saying that the brain is sexualised in any way. Do you think that needle can be threaded? How are we to explain how GnRH therapy works to bring about the chosen identity, but at the same time not say that such an identity is created by natural gonadotrophin? I struggle to see how we can leave open to those who have naturally occurring gonadotrophins of one functional sort, any identity they choose, but at the same time say with confidence that artificial GnRH therapy brings about a certain identity with efficacy?

There's many other questions, but I'll leave it there for now. The issue is a large and varied one.

I would go further, and say that Putin has no impactful allies anywhere in the western world. — Tzeentch

Politically, you might be right, economically it's business as usual.

Famously, Germany's Gerhard Schröder was until only recently on the board of two Russian state owned energy companies. And according to Robert Horvath (specialist in Russian politics at LaTrobe University)

He's far from the only prominent European political figure who's found an opportunity to convert connections into very well-paid positions working for the Kremlin and helping the Kremlin to exert influence in Europe,

Several US Congress have shares in Russian state owned companies.

According the UK intelligence committee report..

it is notable that a number of members of the House of Lords have business interests linked to Russia, or work directly for major Russian countries linked to the Russian state

according to data from the official Working Party of the Council on Conventional Arms Exports (COARM)

between 2015 and 2020 A third of the European Union’s member states exported arms to the Russian Federation,

...with Disclose (French NGO) reporting

France has sold €152 million worth of military equipment to Russia. A figure confirmed by Investigate Europe’s analysis, and places France far ahead of its neighbours, exporting 44% of European arms to Russia.

...but, hey, all small-fry compared to the absolutely massive support Putin gets from some bikers and the as yet unidentified left wing radicals...

So none 'allied' with Putin then?

The point I was making, which no one seems to be able to counter, is that this idea that both the far left and the far right support Putin is just a transparent attempt to smear opposition (particularly left-wing opposition) to US policy.

There simply are no 'allies' of Putin on the left outside of Russia that have any significant impact, and financially, the centrist mainstream have supported his regime with vastly greater effect than any 'radical' group could.

But none of that matters, of course, because @SophistiCat's aim is simply to make support for US policy sound all reasonable and worldly-wise, and opposition to it sound radical and driven by a negative ideology. It's about controlling the narrative. The facts don't really matter.

The claim was about the extreme left and the extreme right, not about the left. — Olivier5

Go on then... The extreme left organisations in America and Europe which are 'allied' with Putin to a greater extent than centrists are...?

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. — hypericin

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'.

Every party in that chart is right wing. And all money gained by them from Putin is outweighed a thousand fold by financial ties with normal centrist institutions like gas purchases and real estate.

So...

the evidence, other than merely a failure to support mainstream policy, of "allies" of Putin from the American and European left sufficient to constitute the claimed trend...?

It's really simple. Just name the left wing groups in America and Europe who are allied with Putin. A simple list will do, no need for a chart.

leftist and right-wing populism enjoy a common ground if actual policy implications are left out. — ssu

The claim was...

Putin's closest allies. — SophistiCat

Not "share some common ground with each other".

So the evidence, other than merely a failure to support mainstream policy, of "allies" of Putin from the American and European left sufficient to constitute the claimed trend...?

A true Putinista is obviously someone or a movement/group who supports and works for Putin's objectives and agenda. — ssu

So where are these people in sufficiently represented in America and Europe to make the quoted claim?

In the US we could really use better sex education. Correct information could decrease marital problems and perhaps increase our ability to accept people's sexual differences. — Athena

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. — Lady Bracknell

Cool.

How does the brain work?

Job done then. Thread closed.

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. — hypericin

Great. So given that we know the answer to this one, in your own words, what type of answer would this yield? What's the answer to "how does a DVD contain audio and video?"

I suggest we focus on one or two subdiscussions. I don't know how to do that though, any guidance? — fdrake

Good idea. No guidance, though, beyond just mentioning the areas that most interest me.

As I said above, I'm most interested in the environment within which this debate takes place. I've not personally been affected, but I know people who have. It's an issue in certain circles of the academic world . So that's one avenue - are alternatives to the mainstream trans position actually viable, or are the detractors right and they're nothing but bigotry dressed up? To address this we only need see if the models reach the much lower bar of being reasonable, rather than preferable. Is it at least reasonable to hold that there's no such thing as an internal, pathological, need to modify one's body (such that one might suffer more than everyday frustration at being unable to), or does existing evidence preclude such a view?

The other, possibly related, issue that interested me was this...

assumes that the phenomenon can be explained with existing models. Think that's be problematised enough nowadays where it can no longer safely be assumed as the reference position. — fdrake

I'd be interested to hear your thinking on what problems the account I've given runs into (different from merely the plausibility of alternative models), such that it might fail to account for some aspect of the phenomena. That might also serve to focus the discussion - what aspects of the phenomena do we see which stand out as requiring certain types of explanation?

Some brief notes nevertheless...

do you think someone who's had a single breast mastectomy is similarly obliged not to get a suitable breast implant because to do so would reinforce stereotypes on women's appearances? Those two things could be consistently asserted (both ought not for the same reason, permissible to do it for both) but I don't find moral preferences in this situation consistent at all. — fdrake

I think there's a meaningful difference (in the context we're talking about here - societal expectations) in replacing a body part you once had and altering or creating a body part you never had. The difference being that parts you once had are selected, not from an image given by society, but an image given by you. To replace a lost breast is not to say "society expects someone like me {typical woman gender role} to have two breasts so I'm going to conform to that expectation". It doesn't require society at all. One could, as a complete hermit, say "damn, I want to look how I looked yesterday, I feel different". This isn't even possible with transitioning, let alone likely. The objective body-image is given by society, it cannot be given by the individual because the individual, without society, has no way of even knowing what that image is. The difference is between "I want to look like me (but me yesterday)" and "I want to look like them".

Another interesting issue you touch on here is that of how we treat medical and experimental data in this debate. We know from Tavistock (and a number of other sources now) that medical professionals and academics are feeling pressured to conform to a narrative (good or bad - I'll answer your question on that later), but knowing this, and knowing as you do, perhaps more sharply than most, how data can be, shall we say, 'encouraged' into whatever answer is being sought, what weight do we put on data here?

NICE did a meta-study recently and the results were distinctly under whelming, they concluded...

The results of the studies that reported impact on the critical outcomes of gender dysphoria and mental health (depression, anger and anxiety), and the important outcomes of body image and psychosocial impact (global and psychosocial functioning) in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria are of very low certainty

...and for gender-affirming drugs...

This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty.

The largest suicide rate study I know of was done through Tavistock and based it's findings (5.5 times more likely than controls) on just four suicides out of the 15,000 or so patients. Other studies are generally smaller. One I read (cited by Mermaids) turns out to have had a cohort of just 27, a positive group of 13 and all were self-referred into the study cohort (they actively wanted to take part). The data here is manifestly inaccurate and if clinicians can be persuaded by social influence to actually medicate where they later think they oughtn't have, then it seems impossible to believe that active researchers aren't submitting to the equivalent pressures. Add to that the ever present and entirely malign influence of the lobby groups selling the drugs being advocated for and you have an environment that is distinctly not conducive to evidence-based decision making.

So - to your question. Is it judgement neutral? I doubt it. I don't know anyone's capable of that, but here I'm small-c conservative. If we're to accept that clinicians are pressured into conformity (and assuming they can be persuaded out of it eventually) then I'd far rather they conform to existing societal pressures (which at the least are well known, if not all that healthy) than conform to what essentially can be indistinguishable from the latest fad. We have an obligation to do no harm, and I don't think that's met by rushing into treatments with low quality evidence when the evidence of the harm being mitigated is only of similarly low quality.

Arguments based upon authority are the weakest kind. — Paine

Go on. So If I argued that Ukraine was overrun by Nazis and you retorted that experts within Ukraine have shown that to be false, I would have the stronger argument?