These properties, if we talk about them as objects, are better classified as imaginary, fictional objects, because we cannot seem to be able to give them proper independent existence in practise.

I'd suggest "proper independent existence" is itself a fiction.

I agree(?) that the way our perceptual systems are apt to chunk stuff, and even sequences of events, into things tends to lead to misconceptions, but in many cases I would be more inclined to call 'things' being discussed "simplistic but epistemically pragmatic abstractions" rather than fictions.

Thoughts?

Yes, I would add to that, they probably originally started from the equally false notion that they themselves were entirely to blame for their failure... and then, to feel better about themselves, invented other stories that shifts the blame from themselves to women or society at large maybe. Blaming the physical world, or acknowledging it as a cause, doesn't quite seem to cut it in our psychology, or maybe that's just the way we are taught to think as a result of being raised in a moralizing culture.

Right. Undoubtedly, for at least some percentage of incels, blaming the physical world would amount to blaming God, and they aren't able to go there.

Yeah I mostly agree with this, I do wonder (in light of you question about determinism) how relevant the distinction is that we seem to be making between unfairness caused by non-human factors and unfairness cause by human actors.

Good wondering. :wink:

Perhaps it makes sense to see incels as people whose recognition that there is unfairness is valid, but who fail to see the unfairness as being the result of the nature and nurture that resulted in them being an incel, and mistakenly attribute the unfairness to women?

I think a small majority maybe theoretically is some kind of compatibilist determinist, but in practice, in their moral views, most are more on the side of libertarian free will it seems. I mean, I would also call it a useful or even necessary illusion probably, if I was pushed on it.

Yeah. I'm a determinist, but that doesn't mean I can prevent my brain's tendency to view people simplistically as free willed agents, or that there isn't a socially pragmatic necessity for viewing ourselves and others as free willed agent to at least some extent.

Why not play into this? Because we have set up this Manichean distinction, wherein they are purely victimizers, i.e. the enemy we should fight at all cost, VS the victims we should protect at all cost? Can't they be both victims and victimizers, as they appear to be?

I agree that the Manichean distinction is counter productive, but I don't think supporting incels in seeing themselves as victims as likely to be more productive. In fact seeing oneself as a 'victim' and commiseration with other 'victims' seems to me to be at the core of incelism.

Life isn't fair, but life being unfair doesn't equate to there being a victimizer. To "play into this" notion that incels are victims doesn't seem likely to get incels out of the victim mentality that is a big part of the problem they have. Acknowledging to an incel that life isn't fair and perhaps they did get the short stick in some regards I'd go along with. However, what seems likely to me to be most beneficial for the incel (and society at large) is for the incel to stop obsessing about being a victim, and start learning whatever they need to learn to improve their social competence.

As an aside, does anyone want to venture a guess as to what percentage of members of this forum believe in libertarian free will, determinism, and anything in between?

Good to see you GRW.

Luke,

Since it seems like you are much more interested in point scoring than in understanding, I'm inclined to drop the discussion. However, if you want to present, what you believe to be a sound argument for your interpretation, I might be enticed to discuss it further.

Maybe this is because most philosophy is bad philosophy.


Sturgeon's law does seem applicable.

So, is a persons claim that they are a religious philosopher, the inevitable beginning of losing/rationalising away, their [own] religion?
— universeness

Maybe. I think it's more likely, however, that a "religious philosopher" is an apologetic critic of naturalism, irreligion and/or religions (or sects) other than her own.


I've spent the past 15 years as a regular atheist poster on William Lane Craig's "Reasonable Faith" forum. (17k posts)

In my experience theists are more apt to use philosophy to maintain their own religious beliefs and the religious beliefs of others than they are to get themselves out of the psychological trap of their religion via philosophy. (Although it can be hard to gauge, since I don't know how many might have deconverted after they stopped participating on that forum and I know of a couple who stopped posting on the forum for a long time, and when they returned they were agnostics or atheists.)

In any case, while I would say philosophy played a significant role in me personally losing my religion, I'm skeptical towards the idea that philosophy plays more of a role in undermining religious belief than it does in sustaining religious beliefs.

Metaphysical questions are raised in the philosophy of mind, but if your metaphysics excludes scientific inquiry then it is a dead end. It is embodied minds that we must deal with, and so science is not merely a "supplement". It is fundamental to the inquiry. We do not have to take a stand on physicalism. We do not have to decide whether or not mental states are physical states, but we should not exclude the physical organism out of some metaphysical conviction.


:up:

If you haven't read the full article, then how are you in a position to question my reading of it?

I wish you would have saved me the time by dismissing my claim of "mutant super powers" and just moving on, but...

I've been following neuroscience for 36 years while having a background in electrical engineering and having studied the behavior of artificial neural nets. Thirty-six years ago, while contemplating what seemed like a weirdness to my cognitive processing (despite my scoring highly on various standardized tests) I had an epiphany about how variations in low level neural interconnection might explain my relative weirdness. Although I had myself tested for learning disabilities soon after (and was diagnosed as having one) it wasn't until 14 years ago that my wife recognized that it was likely that I was on the autism spectrum. This past year I happened on empirical evidence supporting my epiphanic hypothesis.

https://autismsciencefoundation.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/minicolumns-autism-and-age-what-it-means-for-people-with-autism/

Anyway, over the past 36 years, that insight I had into the functioning of human brains has been the basis for a lot of prescience. For example, I foreshadowed the two system view presented by Kahneman in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, though I was coming at things from a neuroscience perspective whereas (to the best of my knowledge) Kahneman came to the two systems view on the basis of psychological findings.

You think that your ability to guess about the parts that you didn't even bother to read is better than my actual reading of the article?

I would put it more like, I thought the probability was high that I was bringing a much more relevantly informed perspective to reading the article than you did. Furthermore, my understanding of the sort of information processing that neural networks are good at, leads me to understand the importance of testing my intuitions. So I saw questioning your interpretation of the article as a good test of my intuitions which were based on merely skimming the article.

If you think it's unlikely for the authors to suggest that "qualia constitute the self" then read the bloody article and find out. Have you read it all yet?

Yeah, I've read the article now, and I still don't have the foggiest idea why you think Humphrey was suggesting what you think he was. Anyway, I've reached out to Humprey. So maybe we will learn from him what his view is.

Whether I subconsciously picked up on it during my initial skim I have no idea, but when I read it through today I noted that Humphrey puts scare quotes around self when he first uses the phrase the self. That leads me to believe that Humphrey was only using the word self as a matter of convenience in conveying his idea to a lay audience, and also seems to me like a point against your interpretation.

Explain why you think "qualia constitute the self" is not implied by the article:

I think that what most people mean by "the self" includes not just qualia, but that which acts on the basis of qualia as well, and at the very least. That which acts on the basis of qualia is not itself qualia.

I think the authors would likely agree with the statement that, "If there were no qualia there likely would be no self.", but that is a different statement.
— wonderer1

Firstly, that isn't a quote from the article. Secondly, how does your statement "if there were no qualia there likely would be no self" not imply that "qualia constitute the self"? I might be wrong about it, but it seems to me to be strongly implied by the article.

1. I didn't suggest it was a quote from the article.
2. I've explained that I think the 'self' is more than qualia, and I think the functionality of the self would be likely to break down without qualia to sustain its functionality. Not immediately, but given time.

If you haven't read the full article, then how are you in a position to question my reading of it?


I don't suppose you'd accept, "Through the use of mutant superpowers."?

Anyway, I'm at work now and undoubtedly my brain will be contemplating in the background, whether and how to respond further in light of you having gotten so riled up over me questioning you. So we'll see what the results of those background processes are later.

In the meantime, some things for you to contemplate...

Aren't qualia transient events?
What would it mean to say that something is composed of transient events?

Have you read the article? It's not long.

I just skimmed through parts of it. It was interesting, but to be honest, I asked my question because based on what I did read I thought it unlikely that the authors suggested the notion that "qualia constitute the self".

Thank you for quoting the specific excerpt. However, I'm still not seeing why you think the author suggested that "qualia constitute the self". I think the authors would likely agree with the statement that, "If there were no qualia there likely would be no self.", but that is a different statement.

I don't see why it would be unreasonable to answer Chalmers with, "That's just the way evolution went."
— wonderer1

"That's just the way evolution went" does not explain the "adaptive end", the evolutionary purpose, or the biological advantage of the development of phenomenal consciousness. In other words, it does not answer the hard problem of why we have phenomenal consciousness. "Evolution did it" is about as explanatory as "God did it".

First off, I made that statement with the following sentence immediately after, "Unfortunately succinct perhaps, and I could suggest reasons to think that's the case, but I think this post is long enough."

Yes, I know I did not support my answer to Chalmer's question. I thought I made it obvious that I recognized that. I only have so much time to participate in these discussions, so I suggested an 'in a nutshell' answer.

Suppose miraculously I was able to produce an accurate account of every detail of the evolutionary path leading to humans. Would it then be unreasonable to conclude with, "So that's just the way evolution went?"

BTW, Do you think Chalmers is an evolution skeptic?

The physical processes would work fine without being aware of themselves. They do so in many other life forms.

It is a hasty generalization to go from, "The behavior of many lifeforms occurs without consciousness." to, "All of the behavior of humans could occur without consciousness."

The fact is, we expect the behavior of humans who are unconscious to be different from the behavior of humans who are conscious. So what reason do we have to think human behavior in general could be as it is without consciousness?

Damage is being done, the sensory system detects the damage, and it pulls away. How many other species even learn from the experience, and avoid the thing that caused the damage whenever they sense it?

You have selected a pattern of behavior that is relatively trivial and can be explained relatively trivially. How about if we decide the behavior of interest is composing sonnets? How many species are doing it? Why don't we expect a poet to be as apt to produce a sonnet while under anesthesia, as she was before she was under anesthesia?

If all off our mental activity is entirely physical, how is it we are not like those other life forms and machines? We aren't like them.

We have a different evolutionary history that resulted in us having different brains than other species do.

How is what makes us different accomplished?

I need clarification as to how to take your question. Are you asking how evolution resulted in human brains being as they are? Are you asking, given the way human brains are, how is consciousness a consequence of that brain structure? Something else?

I might answer your question by saying, "With lots of neurons which have lots of connections to other neurons." I don't suppose that is very satisfying though. However, it is not as if we have a complete schematic diagram of a human brain that scientists can study, so it doesn't seem surprising to me that neuroscientists don't have the thorough explanation we might like.

Do you think that if physicalism is the case, it is reasonable to expect neuroscientists to be able to answer your question in a comprehensive way at this point in human history, and if so why?

Thanks.

So the short answer is that in the levels close to God, the beings move faster, or time moves slower. These angel beings are sort of like computers then, what takes a human years to do, they can do in a nano second. Therefore they are always one step (or a billion steps) ahead of us. As soon as we start to decide, as time passes, they've already seen the whole decision. And God is even at a higher level, so fast (or time so slow), that time doesn't even pass for God. Then God sees all time, all at once.

I'm not seeing how that provides an answer to how free will is compatible with such a scenario.

[quoting from the OP]

However, what I found most fascinating is the idea that qualia constitute the self, rather than being something perceived by the self.

I haven't read through the full thread, so forgive me if you have already done so, but could you point out a specific passage from the article that you interpreted as promoting such a view?

In his article Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995), David Chalmers posed the (hard) question: "Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel?"


I think Dennett suggested that it was an evolutionary "neat trick". In other (anthropomorphising of evolution) words, it is a means evolution stumbled upon which achieved an adaptive end. Perhaps a more adaptive end could have been reached by neurological processes evolving differently with no consciousness evolved, and perhaps not.

I see consciousness as a function of our brain's innate tendency to develop a model of physical reality based on our sensory and motor interactions with reality. Qualia might be seen as the symbols various parts of our brain present to 'modeling central' to represent the state of things in reality - the marks on the map, so to speak. Consciousness may simply be, what happens when some parts of the brain are outputting symbols in the form we associate with qualia. while simultaneously other parts of our massively parallel processing brains are monitoring the cloud of symbols being presented.

I don't see why it would be unreasonable to answer Chalmers with, "That's just the way evolution went." Unfortunately succinct perhaps, and I could suggest reasons to think that's the case, but I think this post is long enough.

↪RogueAI
Ah. I'm sure it will happen.


I agree that machine consciousness is metaphysically possible, but I'm far from sure it will happen. Evolution has had around 500 million adapting neuron 'design' and the way neurons interconnect, to result in us. It's not obvious to me that human ingenuity can achieve a sufficiently similar result. (More likely seeming to me, is that humans could develop a nonconscious AI that then proceeds to design a conscious AI, but that is scary^2 and I tend to doubt that humanity is that stupid.)

I'm also inclined to raise an ethical objection to an attempt to create a conscious AI, in that I think it is almost a certainty that initial attempts at a conscious AI which did result in consciousness, would result in an 'insane' consciousness.

The hard problem has nothing to do with whether consciousness resides in the brain. Its about creating an objective measurement for subjective experience.

Ok, I would say that from my physicalist perspective I would expect reaching such a goal to be impossible. However, I don't see such a goal being unreachable as posing a logical problem for my perspective.

Anyway, I am undoubtedly most accustomed to encountering "the hard problem" being brought up, as an attempt to disprove reductive physicalism (often accompanied by suggestions that panpsychism is more reasonable), and I haven't been reading here long enough to have good intuitions* about where individual people are coming from. So I hope you will forgive me projecting my biases while I get to know you all.

My neural networks are insufficiently trained. ;-)

Its not that conscious experience can't be explained in terms of physical interactions, its the qualitative experience itself. Qualitative experience is subjective. Therefore it cannot be objectively captured in a physical model.


Right. Knowing all the details of what is physically going on in a system (brain) is a different matter from having the experiences resulting from the processes which are occurring in that system.

But why should we find that even surprising on physicalism, let alone a hard problem? We don't say to ourselves, "I have full knowledge of how that car works, so why don't I find myself running down the road at 55 MPH from time to time?"

They can say that, but if a loved one dies, we can ask them why they are crying over chemicals, and we'll see how much they really believe in this stuff.


My answer to you asking the question* would be that it is not the chemicals, but the loss of the chemicals being arranged grandma-ishly that I am mourning, because I really liked the effect of the chemicals being arranged grandma-ishly.

Neurons being interconnected as they are in a living brain, and the interactive processes occurring as they do between the neurons of a living brain, results in events that don't happen when those interactive processes within that network of neurons is no longer occurring.

It isn't surprising that you don't get physicalism, if you haven't considered the subject charitably. However, I suspect you will have difficulty providing objections that would be found perplexing by people who have held a physicalist perspective for a long time, unless or until you do extend more charity on the matter.

*Given that I am posting on a philosophy forum and not currently deeply mourning someone recently deceased. In the actual case where I was asked in the midst of crying about the loss of a loved one, my answer would undoubtedly be more like, "Jeesh, why are you being such an asshole?"

"The hard problem is that we cannot ourselves know what it is like for another being to experience that qualitative experience."


I wasn't under the impression that the hard problem was specifically about our inability to experience the experiences of another, but rather a question of how can conscious experience be explained in terms of physical interactions at all.

Anyway, I don't see the inability to experience the experiences of another as providing any difficulty for physicalism. Supposing my experiences arise from the physical operation of my brain, it seems unsurprising to me that the only experiences available to me to have are those that arise from the physical operation of my brain, and not those of another brain.

So could you elaborate on why you think that an inability to experience the experiences of another would pose a hard problem for physicalism?

If you take an airtight bag - or, rather, a hydrogentight bag - fill it with hydrogen and oxygen, and shake the hell out of it, will you maker water?


I don't know about shaking the hell *out* of it. But shaking the hell *into* it makes water.

I just applied a chunk of burning sulfur to my big bag of hydrogen and oxygen... ...and hell!!!

Isn't that like being a bit pregnant? Sorry - couldn't help it... :wink:
2 minutes ago


Well... There have been many times when it has been a bit like there was something big inside me that I wanted to push out, but the linear structure of language provided a painfully narrow orifice through which to do so. So maybe so. ;)

Perhaps the babbling you’re hearing is a result of your tone deafness to unfamiliar paths of thinking.


Nope that wouldn't be it. I'm autistic, and a bit savantish, and quite familiar with unfamiliar paths of thinking. Paths of thinking that don't involve words among them. ;-)

"In order to go beyond a way of thinking, you first have to demonstrate a proper understanding of it."


This seems to me a prima facie false statement. Do you have an argument for it?

Do I need a "proper understanding" of ancient Greek cosmology in order to go beyond it? What does "proper understanding" even mean in such a case? Or to ask it another way, did Einstein need a proper understanding of luminiferous aether to go beyond it?

No offense intended, but your statement strikes me as something a member of a priesthood might say, in an attempt to cow anyone who might suggest it might be reasonable to dismiss the priesthood's theobabble.


"An interesting article thanks! I wonder how long protections such as:

The researchers addressed questions about the potential misuse of the technology. Decoding worked only with cooperative participants who had participated willingly in training the decoder. If the decoder had not been trained, results were unintelligible, and if participants on whom the decoder had been trained later resisted or thought other thoughts, results were also unusable.

will last!"

Speaking as an electrical engineer, with a long time interest in the uniqueness of brains, I'm quite confident that without the AI having been trained on a specific individual's brain, the AI would not be able to decode that individual's linguistic thought.

However, in cases where a more advanced AI:
1) had been trained to decode a specific individual's thoughts
2) had the ability to provide input to the individual (spoken word, images, video, etc.) in an attempt to 'interrogate' the individual's thinking
...I wouldn't be too confident that the individual would be able to thoroughly prevent the AI from learning something that the individual didn't want known.

Recent AI testing has been done...


Even more recent...

https://www.eedesignit.com/oh-no-ai-now-reads-minds/

I think consciousness is casual. But I'm hoping someone who agrees that it is, indeed, nothing but physics, but also thinks it is causal, can explain how they believe both things, since they appear to contradict each other. Because, otherwise, I'm looking at panprotopsychism. Which is an awkward ideas. Even if true, it doesn't seem to be anything about which we can do more than speculate.


I highly recommend Peter Tse's The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation.

https://www.amazon.com/Neural-Basis-Free-Will-Criterial/dp/0262528312

Confession: I've read the sciency first half of the book and haven't finished the more philosophical second half. So I can't say whether I agree with Tse on libertarian free will or not. However I do agree with him that what he calls criterial causation is what should be under consideration in order to have a scientifically informed discussion of the subject.

Exactly, because Hume's method is to portray reason as infallible, then demonstrate the fallibility of our assumptions about causation, and induction in general, and conclude therefore that these types of reasoning are not properly called "reason". That is a problem, because it leaves these processes without any category, no means to understand them, therefore no means to address and rectify their problems. Instead, we ought to class them as forms of reasoning which are more fallible than some others, therefore these forms of reasoning have issues which need to be addressed.

Ah, wonderfully insightful I think.

I'm not well informed enough about Hume's argument to assess the accuracy of your interpretation of Hume's thinking. But having put a fair bit of consideration into how minds might emerge from brains with the benefits of modern scientific findings, I think Hume having an overly simplistic view of reasoning was unavoidable. If only we had a time machine and could go back and talk to him.

"What goes on in a computer doing a calculation is, no doubt, entirely governed by physics. But it is also governed by mathematics - that's why we call it a calculation. Of course, humans have organized the computer to ensure that's the case. So the basis of the physical processes in a computer is mathematics and the basis of that situation is that humans have arranged it..."


Perhaps I am interpreting you overly literally, but as an electrical engineer I would put it differently.

I would say that a computer is constructed such that, in a (weakly) emergent sense, the computer behaves as if it were governed by mathematics/software. However, it would be suggesting overdetermination to claim that the behavior of the computer is governed by mathematics as well as physics. (I'm not sure what "governed by mathematics" would mean.)

I can't speak for what others are thinking when they say that "a computer is performing a calculation", but what I am doing in that case is taking pragmatic advantage of speaking simplistically in terms of the emergent properties a computer was designed to have.

"...Yet the basis of human activity is physics. But physics left to itself does not produce computers."


I'd say physics left to itself produced stars, which produced the elements of which the Earth is composed. Physics occurring on the Earth through evolution produced brains, and brains can reasonably be considered computers. (Though not digital computers.) The operation of brains is still physics and resulted in the production of digital computers. So in a roundabout way physics left to itself did produce digital computers. We just don't tend to think of ourselves as being aspects of "physics left to itself".

Thoughts?

If consciousness does not arise from the physical properties we know, and it does not arise from something like panprotopsychism (and I'm sure many here do not believe it does), then what?


I'm virtually certain consciousness arises from the sort of information processing which neural networks are good at. Though I'm not going to go into detail about why I am so certain.

Not to say there aren't a lot of unknown details to how consciousness arises, but doesn't information processing seem likely to be the substrate on which consciousness is built?

I've never understood why so many philosophers seem credulous towards panpsychism.

FYI, your counterargument commits the fallacy of denying the antecedent.