X is the set of experiences that are similar enough to be called "red" by me. Y is the set of experiences that are similar enough to be called "red" by you. When I say "You had X" (or Y) I mean you had an experience that belongs to that set. Better? — khaled

Similar in what way?

No, it's not because that neurological process would not occur if I didn't want to rake the leaves. — Janus

So why bring up efficient mechanical causes then. You keep changing the criteria for what constitutes a 'cause', it's like grasping an eel. So now you're saying that the efficient mechanical cause is not the cause after all, it's your decision (an entirely mental event with no mechanical component at all). Why the distraction about...

Put simply it is understood to consist in a transfer of energy. Something applies a force to something else causing it to it change in some way; it's that simple. — Janus

Where is the energy transfer in you making a decision?

To put science above ordinary human understanding is scientism; a baseless diminishment of the human. It's just another unwarranted ideological dogma we don't need. — Janus

So when science determined that the earth was not flat as it seemed we should have ignored it?

I doubt we'll agree that scientific theories constitute any reason to reject our ordinary understandings of human freedom and responsibility. To say they do is nothing more than an act of faith; — Janus

No, this is a weak line levied against scientific explanations all the time. It's not 'faith' it's biology. You will accept scientific explanation when you understand them, we're hard-wired to expect such a causal relationship in the world. We don't believe the various scientific approaches explain things better out of faith, we do so because it's the way our brains work already. From birth we experiment with the world, make predictive models and test them. It's not faith, it's the overwhelming success of the approach at helping us navigate the world from the moment we're born.

As for your keypad, the code opens the door because it is programmed to do so, and is able to do so through mechanical forces and means. It certainly doesn’t open the door because 654 is more powerful than 456. — NOS4A2

It literally does. 654 exerts a power on the system which unlocks the door, 456 loses all the mechanical power in waste heat. It's basic physics. If 654 physically switches a switch but 456 doesn't then 654 has more power (within that system) than 456 (whose power is lost to that system as waste heat). You can't make things happen without power - basic laws of thermodynamics.

then your example of reaction YYY is absolutely impossible. Everyone's structure is going to be ABC, or DEF, or GHI because no-one is going to respond in the exact same way to three separate instances of anything. — Isaac


Sure but I was simplifying by only talking about color. — khaled

I don't see how that gets around the problem. In positing the possibility of XXY you're implying that the first two experiences are identical, when they're not. They have some broad similarity, but the degree of similarity will be context dependant which means we're already bringing in our culturally mediated linguistic categories to group them.

The difference between AAB and GGR, constricting it only to color, could be the difference in toe shape of the participants for all we know. Even narrowing it down to color, we have no evidence that the difference is in the V4 region. — khaled

No it couldn't, because you've 'narrowed it down to colour'. How have you done so without some relation to light waves or something? Once we have light waves, we know that their reception does not go via the toes. Without talking about light waves, we've no reason at all to say XXY and GGR have anything to do with colour. All we can say, absent of this grouping is that person 1 had epiphenomena ABC in response to the entire environment they found themselves in at the time, and person 2 had the epiphenomena DEF in response to the similar (but obviously slightly different) environment in which they found themselves.

The moment you start saying that person 1's A and B are basically the same (XX) because they're about the same colour, you've decided on an arbitrary grouping based on some artefact of the real world (colour). That means you're talking about light and wavelengths etc, so the physical cause of the epiphenomena has to be triggered by those external stimuli in some way. One's toe is not.

That's not a property of the feelings. — Isaac


Then what is it a property of? — Luke

As I said earlier

You. The things you possess are a property of you (and the law of the country you live in, when it comes to stuff not part of your body). The feeling 'pain' doesn't have the property {belongs to Luke}. How could it? — Isaac

If I have red hair, then red hair is a property of me, but a property of 'red hair' is not {belongs to Isaac}. Red hair is a public concept. Same with pain. Pain (or any specific type of pain) does not belong to you, it doesn't have the property {belongs to Luke} any more than red hair does. You may have the (hopefully transient) property {in a certain specific type of pain}.

We haven't "shared" the feeling in that we both partake of the same feeling. I have my feeling and you have yours, even when they occur at roughly the same place and time. — Luke

I'm still lacking an explanation as to what 'yours' and 'mine' has to do with the ontology of the feeling. Unless you're going for an extreme rejection of universals, even in a figurative sense. No two things are exactly alike, ever. Pain's not unique in this respect. No two phones are exactly alike either, but we still refer to them as 'the same' phone - "Oh look, you've got the same phone as me". We seem to be constructing this arbitrary wall around feelings when their intrinsic differences between people are no more than the particular scratches on your phone that are not on mine. If we share the same make and model we happily say we have 'the same' phone.

As @Banno is right to point out, I think, this is context dependant, the degree of specificity we require might change with circumstance, and at times even the history of one object (used to be my nose) might become a relevant distinction from another otherwise similar one. But no context has primacy over another, things are not really one way.

So It's perfectly reasonable to use language like "you have the same phone as me" despite the fact that the two phones have minor differences, different histories, different legal statuses (with regards to possession). and, more importantly, this talk is not a facon de parler, overlying the real status of the phones as two separate distinct objects. If that were the case, then the phone itself is a facon de parler too - really it's just a collection of parts which just happen for a short time to be next to one another, which are really just a bunch of atom fleetingly brought together, which are really...

So what is it about feelings which prevents us from using this same language?

The ‘how’ of finding oneself in the world that enactivists talk about depends on their viewing a cognitive-environmental system as normative in character, that is, as functioning as an autonomous whole in a certain reciprocal causal exchange with its world. — Joshs

autonomy for the enactivist isnt the property of a brain box hidden behind a markov blanket, distinguishable not only from the world but from its own body, but the autonomy of a brain-body system, whose elements cannot be separated out and for whom interaction with a world is direct rather than. indirect. — Joshs

An autonomous system produces and sustains its own identity in precarious conditions and thereby establishes a perspective from which interactions with the world acquire a normative status. Certain interactions facilitate autonomy and other interactions degrade it. — Joshs

As a result, they do not explain how certain processes actively generate and sustain an identity that also constitutes an intrinsically normative way of being in the world. — Joshs

From my current knowledge of cognitive science, all this sounds like nothing more than wishful thinking. I've not read (nor here been presented) with any actual empirical evidence of this holistic normative actually taking place in cognitive functions. The work for Feldman Barrett, Seth and Friston is based on what they see happening inside the brain, It's not an overarching philosophical model, it's a theory posited to explain the neurological phenomena they have observed. I'm left, after multiple pages, still unclear as to what neurological phenomena the approaches you're describing are trying to model.

Noses are private on the inside. — Olivier5

Rhinoscopy.

That's not a property of the feelings. — Isaac


Then what is it a property of? — Luke

You. The things you possess are a property fo you (and the law of the country you live in, when it comes to stuff not part of your body). The feeling 'pain' doesn't have the property {belongs to Luke}. How could it?

There's a feeling 'pain' in your body when you stub your toe, there's one in my body when I stub mine. The feeling 'pain' hasn't been changed in any way by whose body it's in, it's just a conceptual collection of worldly events (nociceptor activity, yelling, cringing, defence reflex etc...). When those events are centred on your body, it's your pain, when they're centred on my body it's my pain, but the collection of events that constitute 'pain' is a cultural, linguistic fact, it's not yours or mine. What 'pain' is is determined by the loose collection of events we're collectively prepared to accept to qualify for a use of the term. The props. They belong the the language community, not any individual.

We haven't "shared" the feeling in that we both partake of the same feeling. I have my feeling and you have yours, even when they occur at roughly the same place and time.

Perhaps it should be clarified that what is private is having the feeling and what is shareable is expressing the feeling, and that these are not the same thing. — Luke

Right. Same with noses. Having a nose is not the same as talking about a nose. But noses are not private as a consequence. Your nose is not the same as my nose. But noses are still not private as a consequence.

I hadn't realized you didn't understand the notion of efficient or mechanical causation. Put simply it is understood to consist in a transfer of energy. Something applies a force to something else causing it to it change in some way; it's that simple. — Janus

I was asking about the idiosyncratic way you were using the terms. It's obviously not the definition you've given above. The thing applying force to your arms and legs to cause you to rake the leaves is the ion gradient across the membranes of your muscle cells. Yet for you, that's not the cause.

I feel the sun on my skin causing me to feel hotter, or the wind pushing me, the stone crushing my finger etc, etc: the examples are endless. Also I can do things with my body; I can lift things, smash things, start fires, etc, etc.; again the examples are endless. This experience of natural forces acting on me, and my ability to act on things is the basis of the notion of efficient causation. — Janus

This just seems like a bizarre raising of 'folk science' to a level above actual science. Just because you personally can feel the sun's heat causing you to get hotter, it's OK to call that a cause, but when a neurologists sees exactly the same level of connection between neurons we're not allowed to call that a cause?

They didn't go to the shop because they were determined to do so by neurological activity which is beyond their control. What possible evidence could there be for such a conclusion? — Janus

Newton's first law of thermodynamics, for a start. Plus most of physics, all of neuroscience, everything we know about cells...what more do you need by way of evidence?

Here’s a thought experiment. Take two pieces of paper and two inkwells with a small but exact amount of ink in them. On one piece of paper, scribble gibberish and random symbols until all the ink is applied to the page. On the other, write something, maybe a letter to a loved one, a song or whatever, until all the ink is applied to the page. There should now be the same amount of paper, same amount of ink, same mass, same velocity, same potential energy, same forces acting on each. So how is the power of one different than the power of the other? — NOS4A2

Because the ink is in a different arrangement and so fires different neurons. We scan images (like paper with writing on it) in saccades looking for salient information and building up the image that way. The location of the first and second ink marks we see determines where we look for the next and so on until we build up the picture. The relevant part (in terms of effect) is the very first dot of ink, which in one case is present and the other not.

To see how ridiculous your argument here is, transfer the unit to a keypad security lock. you press 4,5,6, nothing happens. You press 6,5,4 the door opens. How do you explain that when exactly the same mass velocity and energy is involved in the system (the pressing of three keys)?

All you're saying is that the sum of the energy within the arbitrary boundary you've chosen (the paper and ink) is the same, so the sum of the energy in that which it causes will be the same. Yes. You're absolutely right about that. So?

Feelings are intrinsically private and unshareable only in the sense that I can't have yours and you can't have mine. — Luke

But as I said earlier. That's not a property of the feelings. It's the same with noses, I can only have my nose, because, even if it were transplanted onto you, it would become your nose in the process.

But feelings are also non-intrinsically private and shareable in the sense that they can be expressed via language, body language, or otherwise. Intersubjectivity deals only with the latter. — Luke

Still not sure how it 'deals with'. Say I have a feeling X. I show you, using body-language, speech etc. You now know I have feeling X, you may even have feeling X too by the action of your mirror neurons. We've shared feeling X. So is feeling X inter-subjective now? That seems to leave the distinction between subjective and inter-subjective one of arbitrary historical record.

Because we can picture having different Xs and Ys. I can imagine having different "flavors" of experience (same structure different content). Idk why I would choose a model that suggests that that cannot be done. — khaled

I don't believe you can. I think what you're imagining has properties, on analysis, which render it non-epiphenomenonological. The thing you're imagining is actual experience (by which I mean the particular chain of responses and recall that's set in motion by whatever feature of perception we're talking about. The reason experience feels so unique is not because it's intrinsically so, but because the individual response is so complex and (to an extent) unending. When do you finish responding to things? The red carpet you crawled on as a baby - there's still neural firing going on today that was set in motion by the photons from that carpet hitting your eyes. The thing is, if you remove the distinguishable sub-types (colour, texture, whatever...) then your example of reaction YYY is absolutely impossible. Everyone's structure is going to be ABC, or DEF, or GHI because no-one is going to respond in the exact same way to three separate instances of anything. The only reason why we can say the colourblind have AAA, whist the normal sighted have AAB is if we've already but arbitrary boundaries on 'experience'. We arbitrarily say we're only interested in the activity of the V4 visual cortex, or we're only interested in the language of colour. Otherwise there's no reason to say our first two (the AA bit) were, in fact the same. They weren't the same experience, without a shadow of a doubt they were different, just not different in terms of the name we'd give to the colour component.

If we're to postulate an epiphenonena associated with physical neural activity, then everyone's epiphenimenal experience is going to be ABC, and DEF and so on. The only way round that is to constrain the type of difference in these epiphenomena we're focussing on, but in doing that we no longer can claim to be unaware of what constitute the physical difference, we're constraining that to colour, so the physical difference is going to be somewhere in the V4 region.

I seek expression for its own sake. I also find it healthy and beneficial to hold my ideas to the grindstone of criticism and disputation. It get’s me thinking. — NOS4A2

But that's not going to happen if you simply ignore people who disagree with you. All that's going to happen is you'll re-affirm the ideas thus presented. So either you ought to care what I think or your stated objective is going to fail.

There is undoubtedly a direct interaction between the body and the environment. But that’s where your chain ends for me. — NOS4A2

So denying all the evidence from every single neurological study demonstrating the opposite then?

After that the events are generated by ... the human being — NOS4A2

So defying Newton's first law of thermodynamics then.

The same with words. We seek them out, focussing on them, reading them, listening to them, speaking them, understanding them, ascribing meaning to them, becoming aroused or anxious or offended by them, venerating some and banning others. Again, in my admittedly common sense understanding, these are the activities of a human being. At each step we control what we do with these sights, sounds, or whatever form words may take in our environment. And I believe these actions are not just the immanent reactions to word themselves, but of the entire organism as it exists a long process of language development and acquisition. — NOS4A2

All true. As I said words coming in are one element, our reaction to them is another.

Basically, I believe people overestimate the power of words while underestimating their own power over words. Words are beautiful, useful, important, valuable—but they are not powerful. — NOS4A2

I agree. So what's the problem with banning certain words? They're basically useless and have no effect anyway.

Edit - just to be absolutely clear - this is the grounds on which I don't believe your false virtue signalling about 'free speech'. If you really believed words were powerless, then banning all of them would be a trivial matter, like banning hats. Stupid, pointless, but ultimately harmless. We'd all just get used to wet heads and have done with it. No. The reason why you don't want certain words banned is because (despite your phoney nonsense to the contrary) you know perfectly well that words have the power to influence people and you don't want influence in your chosen direction to be taken away from you.

In normal parlance causes for actual events are generally thought in efficient, mechanical terms. — Janus

What do you mean by 'efficient' and 'mechanical' because the explanations given so far have been flawed.

To be 'mechanical' something must cause the decision and so render the decision itself just an arbitrary point in the chain.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'efficient' cause. I thought you might be referring to Aristotle's four causes, but you rejected material, formal and final causes are being 'causes', so that's not quite where you're at. If you mean to say that only efficient causes are what we call 'causes' of actual events, then that's plain wrong as the example I gave earlier show.

If what you mean to say is that when humans are involved, the only causes we're willing to allow is the efficient cause, then I entirely agree - that's the point I'm trying to make. Such an assumption is entirely ideological and has no ground in either logic or science. Conversationally, I wouldn't care. I understand what people mean perfectly well so it doesn't matter. Policy-wise it matters a great deal. We absolutely should not be making policy decisions which will affect the lives of millions of people on the basis of a religious leftover concept, just because it's seeped into our language.

I said we should listen to people if we want to understand them, not believe everything they say. — Janus

You said...

Science is not the best way to understand human behavior in my view. If you want to understand why people do things you need to ask them — Janus

So if you're not going to believe everything they say, but science is not the best tool, then what tool is the overarching judge? It's not science, it's not what people actually say... what is it?

Sound and words are not the same thing. You used “sounds” in your argument and then changed it to “words” in your conclusion. Verbal sleight of hand which I’ll assume was an error and not intentional. Just fyi, enjoying following the discussion. — DingoJones

Thanks - edited for clarity.

That seems to be within task, like within "eating a sandwich" — fdrake

Yes, I agree, but I'm not sure how relevant the salient features of the task are by the time it's just one of many signals competing for attention - we're never just eating a sandwich. In fact the task we think we're engaged in is more often than not a trivial distraction as far as the rest of the brain is concerned - which is far more engaged with standing up, digesting, checking we're not under any threat etc...

do you think previous task information is blocked from influencing the current task? — fdrake

No. That's a good point. Basically goes back to what I said above. We're never doing one thing at once, there's never 'a task' for our brain to be holistically oriented toward. Any sense that there is is post hoc narrative creation, not a live modification. When I'm 'eating a sandwich' not only am I also engaged in the things I mentioned above, but I'm engaged in filtering and processing the memories form the previous task or set of events, I may be still creating that narrative and some of the salience-related filtering in perception will result from narratives of previous tasks being 'replayed' for the sake of memory creation, rather than the actual task at hand.

I get that you can partition off the regulatory signals once you've fixed a task you're describing, and it becomes somewhat post hoc, but can you partition of the regulatory signals in the agent's history from informing them what the current task is? — fdrake

You can, but only to the same extent. In that tasks are always legion. Rescheduling is a case in point here, I think. when you turn on the light switch, you actually see the light before you fell the switch click (light, and the signals from your occipital nerves travel faster than the feedback from your pressure-sensitive nerve endings), but the signals from your occipital nerves are 'held back' from their pathways to scene-construction until the signals from the pressure-sensitive nerve endings get to the brain (which, on it's modelling assumption, is expecting them). The signals then get sent to to areas like scene construction and event narratives in the right order "I switched the switch and then the light came on". Various optical illusion like the violet chaser mess with this feature. The point is, it works because I reached out to switch the switch (previous task). Knowing I did that, has rearranged the events of the current task (checking the status of the lighting/room etc).

Heidegger, however, believes all new experiences are bound up so directly in holistically organized pragmatic aims and significances that trying to ground Being in perception produces an artificial abstraction. Instead, he founds all experiencing on what he calls the ‘as’ structure. We see something ‘as’ something , that is, as the contextual, pragmatic way it matters to us in relation to our ongoing concerns. — Joshs

See above. How does this square with the multiplicity of tasks and saliencies we have? We don't see something 'as' something, we see something 'as' many somethings, relevant to many different tasks, we only unite them later when creating the unifying narrative. I'm sure I don't, with you, need to go through the acres of evidence for post hoc narratives as unifying memory initiators out of dissonant sensory or interoceptive interpretations do I.

It seems to me the relevant dispute regarding perception is whether, when you functionally split off those low level things from the upper level things, do you render the account which uses that functional distinction inaccurate, since "upstream", higher in model's hierarchy, the two are actually integrated interactive processes? — fdrake

I think this depends on the influence the upstream priors have on the accounts rendered by the lower level models. The answer, at the moment, seems to be fairly little - tinkering at the edges stuff.

Basics like foreground/background, container/contained are distinctions made very early on in visual processing and are powerful (by which I mean higher models are more likely to re-interpret to match these outputs than suppress those outputs to match their priors). There's even some speculation that the container/contained distinction suffuses much of our higher conceptual thought...bu that's another thing. Point is there's very little the higher models can do to switch a background/foreground decision, or a container/contained decision. There's a paper by Seth exploring some of the hoops the higher models will jump through when he uses virtual reality headsets to switch these basics.

I think a good analogy of the relationship between models in the hierarchy is a well-managed company. The CEO might not even know how the accountants are working out how much tax the company owes, but he'll definitely asset his influence in hiring and firing them, in showing displeasure at a high bill and pleasure at a low one, the accountants will be well aware what their aim is, but nonetheless, the CEO hasn't the faintest idea what they're actually doing, and certainly wouldn't personally re-arrange a few columns.

Let me suggest the way that Husserl and Merlea-Ponty would answer the question of whether there can be any such thing as a non task-relative sensation. But first, I’m wondering whether such a concept would fall under Sellars’s myth of the given. — Joshs

I think you've read 'task-independent' where I'm talking about 'not the task you think you're focussed on'. All signals have to be interpreted according to priors and those prior will be influenced by the current state (which, given the nature of the dynamic environment to which we must respond, will always be some task or other). The point I'm making is that we can't (as the phenomenologists would have us do) reverse-engineer this effect, because the 'task' that's relevant to the priors is not necessarily one we're even aware of, and certainly one on many going on at the same time.

The point isn’t simply to question the primordiality in nature of perfect lines and surfaces but to question the very concept of a line or surface as a sensory given rather than a relative constructive hypothesis. — Joshs

Again, I think you're misconstruing the active inference approach as implying objective properties when it's doing the exact opposite. It's using the exact same constructive hypothesis of 'edge' are you're describing here. The difference is the modelling assumption it's using is not a 'higher order' one accessible to introspection, It's a very basic one (probably at least partly hard-wired).

Maybe intersubjectivity also requires an element of understanding rather than mere expression (or sharing). — Luke

Then wouldn't that be problematic for the idea that such feelings are intrinsically private?

So let's split up physical differences into two types, structural, and content-determining. — khaled

I'm pretty sure I understand what you're saying now, thanks. It seems an odd theory, but valid. I just disagree about one point, but I think it's more a matter of personal judgement than logic or empirical fact

There is just as much reason to assume they are the same as to assume they are different. The model doesn't become any more or any less complex by assuming either. — khaled

I maintain that creating subdivision where there need be none, creating alternate options where one would suffice - that is making a model more complex. We could say that we each have X and nothing about the world we experience would be less well explained by that. You add that it could be X or Y you create an unnecessary bifurcation. Additional bifurcations is pretty much the definition of complexity, I'd be interested in how you're defining model complexity in such a way as neither decision points nor number of variables contribute to complexity.

We have no evidence of that. As I've shown, you can have radically different epiphenomena and still be able to do all of: — khaled

I don't disagree with that. It's about parsimony. Why introduce something for which there's no evidence?

no reason to assume they're the same. — khaled

That's the default position. We don't subdivide without cause because it is less parsimonious to do so. We don't add unnecessary complexity to our models, why would we?

So the difference the fMRI detected is not necessarily a difference in the Xs and Ys but again, a difference in their structure. — khaled

No, because we just established that epiphenomena are caused by physical phenomena. So if there's a difference of any sort whatsoever in the epiphenomena, it must result from an equivalent difference in the the causing physical phenomena. Otherwise we've invoked some other non- physical causal factor.

In the relevant Wittgensteinian sense, there could be something publicly shareable, in principle, which is entirely subjective. There are such things, such as thoughts one has which are not yet shared, unexpressed pain hiding behind a stoic disposition, a poker face, and the like. — Luke

Yeah, I can agree with that. So is that what you mean by subjective but not intrinsically private? Something which requires a mind but has not yet been shared despite being shareable?

even if it becomes shared, there remains an intrinsically private aspect - how it feels to the subject. What cannot be shared is for me to have your pains and vice versa. — Luke

So you seem back to intrinsically private again. If subjectivity is not the cause of a thing being intrinsically private, then what is?

would say that that we have experiences is a bit more than an assumption no? It precedes the neurology even.

Epiphenomenon X does pre-exist. The experience you get when looking at red things precedes your knowledge of whatever brainstate is behind that experience. — khaled

That's proof that we have epiphenomenon, not that we have unique epiphenomenon X or Y in response to the same external inputs. Alk the evidence you have so far is that our epiphenomena are the same in response to the same stimuli. We reach for the same words, we understand the same implications, we even notice those who don't respond the same and single them out as being in need of help.

The only justification for thinking your epiphenomena are unisex would be if we...

a) had a modelling assumption that unique brain states resulted in unique epiphenomena, and

b) noticed unique brain states in response to identical stimuli.

Other than that we've no reason at all to assume our epiphenomena are different, in fact the evidence seems to point to them being the same in most cases.

Realised I'd missed replying to this.

Clark likes to build machines , and I think it would be a lot more difficult to simulate psychological processes vi an A.I. system at present without invoking computations and representations. I think if Clark were a personality theorist, psychotherapist, researcher in psychopathology or social psychologist he might look at matters differently. — Joshs

Yes. I think perhaps Clark is not such a good envoy for active inference. Friston is the Messiah of active inference, although some if his stuff can be a little impenetrable, it's worth persevering with, it'll give you a more solid foundation without what may be some idiosyncrasies of Clark's approach.

enactivist approaches like that of Matthew Ratcliffe and Varela, the emphasis is not on WHAT is taking place when one has the sort of experience Barrett
describes, but on HOW one has it, in the sense of how one is finding oneself in the world, one’s comportment toward events. — Joshs

I'm not sure I follow. 'How' in what sense? (I'm afraid 'finding oneself in the world' hasn't made it any clearer).

think it is that the various forms of input into affect , the hormonal , physiological-kinesthetic, behavior and social, are so tightly integrated through reciprocal causality that the question of WHAT one is feeling ( angina vs anxiety) is usually much less pertinent than the issue of how the world as a whole is altered for us when we are anxious or sad or elated. — Joshs

I think that question is subsumed under subsequent models of inference. Afterall, the world is not altered for us in any one unique way when we're anxious, any more than our physiological states are in any one unique set up. What Barrett is trying to say is that the way the world appears to change is one of the factors involved in the model.

Representational models just seem to me to be clunky when it comes to handling full-fledged ongoing , real-time reciprocal causality. — Joshs

Yes, I grant that. The models themselves would be way too complex, and using them in our conscious thought would be pointless repetition (we're already doing so subconsciously), but understanding that we process things this way as a 'big picture' can be helpful therapeutically, I think.

But we don't know if brainstate1 causes X or Y or Z or U or G. — khaled

There's no knowledge there to be gained. Epiphenomenon X doesn't pre-exist. We've got no reason at all to assume it. The only justification for labelling epiphenomenon X would be if we had a modelling assumption that a unique epiphenomenon existed for each unique brain state. Under such an assumption we would, on noticing brain state X, invoke the theoretical existence of epiphenomenon X. We'd just have no reason at all to do it the other way around - invoke epiphenomenon X (for no reason at all) and then search for the brain state which might match it, if it even exists. Why would we do that?

the experience that causes you to reach for the word "Red" (X) is precisely the experience that would cause me to reach for the word "Green". — khaled

Now you're leaving the realm of epiphenomenon. The epiphenomenon X can't 'cause' anything.

You can do an fMRI scan on both of our brains, and you wouldn't be able to extract this piece of information. We will show very similar activity. — khaled

Similar, but different. If fMRI isn't fine-grained enough, we could use nanotube probes.

However this set of variables is undiscoverable. Since whether or not you have XXY or LLE makes no difference as long as structure is preserved. — khaled

But it is discoverable because it's associated with different brain states, which we can detect.

we have no "outside perspective" from which we can say "Ah, yes, it seems that people with this type of nose have Ls instead of Xs when looking at blood". We have no access to whether or not we are having the same Xs and Ys or how they're related. — khaled

Brain states. We can ask why some people's brains look like X when being shown a red square and others look like Y. We can correlate the results with variables we suspect might be involved, test the significance...you know, normal scientific practice.

I don't care if you believe me or not. — NOS4A2

Then why post? If it's irrelevant what people take away from your doing so?

I have never believed nor stated that sound and light doesn’t have an effect on the body, so there is no need to pretend I did. I am merely opposing the idea that words, whether spoken or written, have a different, more powerful effect on the body than gibberish or arbitrary marks on paper. — NOS4A2

Then how does sound and light affect the body, if different sounds and lights don't have a different effect?

I am willing to defend this belief if you care to argue the point. — NOS4A2

I just have. You ignored it, in favour of your magic. For clarity, I'll repeat.

1. Neurons firing are the proximate cause of all action and speech.

2. Sound patterns (which might be spoken words) and light patterns (which might be written words) cause different neurons to fire depending on very fine details of the exact sound pattern and the exact light pattern.

3. Nothing we know of causes neurons to fire apart from sensory or interocepted signals, or other neurons. Our current best physics determines that it is impossible for a chain of neurons to fire without having been physically stimulated to do so.

So. Words (as either sound patterns or light patterns) trigger specific neurons to fire, which form part of a chain of reactions, the end of which is some speech or action in response. Of course other factors also contribute to that chain, but to deny that the specific sounds are one of those factors is to deny everything we know about neurology and physical causation.

If you want to deny that, be my guest. People deny the earth is round, stupidity exists. Just don't expect to be taken seriously if you do.

I wouldn't talk in terms of "sufficient" cause but rather sufficient conditions, which are multifarious, even arguably up to everything else that exists. — Janus

Yes, I'm gathering that. What's not clear is what the difference is between a cause and a conditions, which you thought so 'obvious' at the start. So far, the differences you've offered don't stack up to normal use.

If you want to understand why people do things you need to ask them — Janus

I think all human-based sciences rely on asking people. We just correlate that with other facts. Are you suggesting that we should ignore supplementary data? If a defendant says they had no intention of murdering the victim we should just take them at their word, despite the earlier gun purchase?

What makes you believe they're not task oriented? Or in other words - what makes the sensible default hypotheses non-task relativeness for edge recognition and contrast detection; or whatever broader category they lay in; when the rest of the procedure is task-relative? — fdrake

Only that tasks (in the sense I think the phenomenologists meant it - 'doing the shopping', eating a sandwich'...) are modelled by areas of the brain several steps removed from the primary visual cortices. They'll have an influence by virtue of several stages of signal suppression, but it will be so watered down by that point that I wouldn't necessarily see it as a pragmatic influence.

I suppose one could take a much broader view of 'task', where a task might be to determine shape, or distinguish background from foreground - in which case I'd agree these can be task oriented, but From the quotes I've been given, that doesn't seem to be what the phenomenologists are on about. You'll know much better than I though, I may have gotten the wrong impression.

The type of semantic information being that perceptual features are foraged under some model of hypothetical cause; the hypothetical causal structure ascribes an explanatory space of meanings/reasons consistent with the act. EG, when someone's perceptually exploring a face, they look at the bits of the face which are most informative regarding its global structure assuming it were a face, you can see the general model of faces at work when looking at someone's scan paths over faces. As for why it maybe counts as semantic, it's like like instructional information. — fdrake

That's really interesting. I'd not thought of it that way, but I can definitely see the link. I suppose one concern I'd have is whether we lose something in lumping meaning as post hoc story-telling and meaning as sub-conscious purpose in the same boat. I think they're radically different in normal use, even though I can see the similarities here.

Yeah, that seems like a valid criticism. Perhaps it reflects the limits of a scientific approach. I can see the problems, but not necessarily the solutions in the lab. It may be time to let us wishy-washy psychologists loose on the subject, something more like Feldman Barrett is doing with emotion? — Isaac


I dunno how to evaluate this! — fdrake

Ha! Self-deprecation comes off sounding weird, I obviously think psychologists are brilliant (or am I being self-deprecatingly honest about my flawed egotism?)...sorry, I'll stop now.

The point was that I think neuroscience can only ever to categorised work. It's so fiendishly complicated that any attempt to draw wider, more holistic conclusions on the basis of it's results alone will fail (currently). Seth's lab at Sussex, for example, is getting more and more into the fine detail of perceptive processing (and now including interception too) and the papers coming out are really cool, but he'll never be able to work that back up again to integrate higher cortices using the methods he does. It's a huge computational task just to deal with the data in that very specific region. He'd need a new method. Maybe psychology, maybe something else.

My point wasn't to define subjectivity, only to point out that it is not identical to privacy. — Luke

Odd. So there could be something publicly shared yet which is entirely subjective? I'm not following you.

The dictionary offers this relevant definition: "dependent on the mind or on an individual's perception for its existence." — Luke

That seems a reasonable definition, but then it would make my phones example not so terrible after alll. You said

I cannot experience anybody else's pain and nobody else can experience my pain. — Luke

But not, it seems, because your pain is intrinsically private and so inaccessible to be, but simply because your pain takes place in your mind (the mind you own), and if (via @Banno's arm-wiring experiment) it actually took place in someone else's mind, it simply wouldn't be your pain anymore, buy virtue entirely of whose brain it was in. Like phones. My phone is 'my' phone entirely by virtue of whose legal possession it is in, no property of the actual phone. Your pain is 'your' pain entirely by virtue of whose mind it is in, not any property of the actual pain.

So what on earth would 'intersubjective' mean? Something which takes place in multiple minds at once? Not sure where that model leaves intersubjectivity.

Problem is, we have no way of quantifying the impact of brainstates on Xs and Ys. — khaled

I don't see how that's at all relevant. You're positing that there's some epiphenomenal effect (X or Y) which is a physical consequence of some particular brain state, but the phenomenological associate of which is identical in each case (otherwise we'd be able to access it by introspection). So Xs and Ys don't have properties, they are properties - properties of brainstates X1 and Y1. If X and Y had properties, then you'd be positing either epi-epiphenomenon, or you'd be arguing that X and Y are, in fact, physical.

we have no way of detecting whether you're having XXY, ZZR or KKU — khaled

We do. We can detect brain states and XXY, ZZR and KKU are directly, inseparably linked to different brain states, so we know exactly which you're having.

there is no practical difference between you having XXY or ZZR or KKU. — khaled

There's the difference in fMRI scan.

someone having XXY and someone having GGR will act the exact same way. — khaled

But will show a different fMRI image. So we do know. It's just that XXY and ZZR become highly technical terms in neuroscience. Which, having no impact on ordinary life whatsoever, is where they should stay.

Then again, you never have identical brain states. Or identical brains. — khaled

Yeah. Did you happen to read my edit in my third to last statement? I agree with you that we have different brain states in virtually every case. The brain states which (variously) cause me to reach for the word 'red' will, almost without doubt, be different from the range which cause you to reach for the word 'red'. All of which is what I take you to mean with your X,X,Y vs X,Y,Y example.

The point at which I disagree is that these are intrinsically private. They're different brain states. They may be accessible to introspection, in which case we can (and probably have) come up with words for them that way, or they may be accessible only to neuroscience or cognitive psychology, in which case we can come up with technical terms for them.

Either way, there's no need to assume a necessary and intrinsic privacy to these constituent elements.

Maybe a pragmatic one?

Sure — khaled

So then, if there are differences in the epiphenomena, those differences must have been caused by differences in the preceding physical cause, otherwise how do you explain them, causally?

No I don't agree there. What makes you think that?

I would agree that identical brain activity will produce experiences that occupy the same structure. But I don't see a reason to believe they're the same. — khaled

Do you believe epiphenomenon are caused entirely by physical factors?

We have taken no measures to examine X and Y directly. — khaled

What makes you think that?

Every measure we have taken would produce the same result were they different. Because every measure we have taken can only say things about the positions, not contents of our experiences. If you think otherwise give an example. — khaled

You agree our experiences are generated by our brains right? And identical brain activity cannot produce different experiences (otherwise there would need to be some other physical source for the epiphenomenon)?

Edit - I ought to clarify, because people seem to consistently get the wrong impression from my posts - I don't actually believe that there is no difference. I believe there is and it's detectable. I believe in your Xs and Ys, I just believe they're identifiable and nameable. What I'm doing here is interrogating your argument, nit stating my own position.

I am pointing out that we have just as much reason to believe they are the same as to believe they are different. — khaled

We really don't. If absolutely every measure we can detect shows no difference, that is excellent grounds for assuming they are the same.

It's the same ground for believing there are no unicorns

So "red" cannot be referring to X (as you were having Y) and "green" cannot be referring to Y (as you were having X) — khaled

What I'm asking is why postulate that I'm having X and you Y, unless you've got some reason (my response or my subsequent words) to believe our experiences are different? If they seem the same in every conceivable way, why fabricate a possible way in which they might, nonetheless, be different?

No. It was X,X, Y and Y,Y, X. Point is it's the same structure. As in, the first two objects are the same color and the last one is different.

If you were seeing X, X, Y and I was seeing X, Y, Z when looking at 3 objects one of us is color blind. Portably you. As for you, the first and second object seem the same color. While for me all 3 are different colors. — khaled

Ah yes, I made a mistake there I should have written Y,Y and X for the second person. The point still stands though.

We've just established that we do, in fact, have words for X, Y and Z — Isaac


We don't. — khaled

Why not? They're different components of experience, epiphenomenologically arisen, just like 'decision'. But we have a word for 'decision' because the feeling is a part of our lives. Why no words for X and Y. If they're identifiable feeling we have, parts of our experience of 'red', the why would there be no words for them?

So they're not private then. We talk about them and have words for them. — Isaac


No. As my example showed, you can have radically different experiences and still talk. A public language about private experiences. — khaled

But your example of radically different experiences consisted of saying that experiences of red for one person might be constituted of X,X, and Y, yet for another X, Y and Z, yes?

We've just established that we do, in fact, have words for X, Y and Z (they're just placeholders here). So the differences are not private after all, we can talk about them in terms of Xs, Ys and Zs, all of which have public meanings (like the meaning of the word 'decision').

Correct. That's precisely the Xs and Ys. I just use them as placeholders. — khaled

So they're not private then. We talk about them and have words for them.

We talk to other people about them. — Isaac


So if you never learned a language you couldn't be angry? — khaled

You didn't say anything about being, you said 'knowing'.

Xs and Ys are experiences. They're that "feeling of deciding something" in epiphenomenalism. — khaled

Right. But we have a word for 'feeling of deciding something'. We call it a 'decision' and we talk about it to each other. there's something there to be referred to so we came up with a word for it and we talk about it. If X and Y were like that, why (after a few million years) do we not have words for them?

You ask how we know our own experiences exist? You also have to answer that question then. — khaled

We talk to other people about them?

No. Different physical effects produce Xs and Ys. We just came back from an epiphenomenalism thread. — khaled

Yes, I meant that we'd have to know them somehow, in order to implicate their existence. Like with epiphenomenalism. We have a word 'decision' because we all have some feeling about having 'decided' something, even though physically no action-initiation actually took place.

I'm saying without the equivalent for X and Y, why are we postulating their existence?

Yours seems to be a plausible theory without a phenomena to explain.