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How is consciousness even possible?
materialism implies it cannot exist

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How is consciousness even possible?

Mike H
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Posted 04/23/08 - 10:14 PM:	#76
rakis wrote: My critique to you both starts from reminding you that our best contemporary physics argues that there are no particles .Instead, everything is quantum fields. But quantum fields are processes, and processes are inherently organized. Organization, then, is a legitimate locus of causal power. Thus, different organization, including at higher levels of organization, can have different, novel, emergent causal power. The possibility of emergence is ubiquitous in new organizations of process. I have to admit, I don't really understand quantum mechanics...but on a level right above the quantum level, everything is just particles and natural forces, right? Quantum weirdness cancels out at a certain point. So I wouldn't expect it to be relevant for the formation of consciousness, but I'm no physicist. wosret wrote: Lastly, I should add that if you define something as impossible by natural or physical means and then you find such a thing in the natural or physical world, clearly you were wrong. When such a thing happens, then your assumption was falsified, reality isn't wrong. There clearly is something wrong with your definition, not reality. That isn't even remotely evidence that it therefore isn't natural or physical. Even if we don't know how it occures. I could just as easily say that rivers can't come about through natural or physical means, and then when I find rivers claim that this is evidence of a non-natural or non-physical force at play. I don't even remotely understand how that even begins to make sense to anyone. You're talking about my argument that material objects cannot create new entities right? But that isn't by definition, its an observation that has been confirmed over and over again. If it holds true everywhere else in the universe, why would we make an exception and say that its possible for material objects to create minds? (assuming its true that minds are new entities) Well technically its possible, but it should be so unlikely that we can treat it as impossible. We should only be willing to say the laws of nature have been violated if we have very good evidence that the violation has in fact occurred.

reincarnated
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Posted 04/23/08 - 11:23 PM:	#77
rakis wrote: Do you mean supervenience ? (in a non-reductive physicalism, physicalism is compatible with our ordinary way of explaining bodily movements by citing wants and wishes, beliefs and fears, hopes and dreams. It is just that these psychological states can be re-described in physical terms. The tricky part was to explain how it is that mental properties and events are not reducible to physical properties and events, but are nevertheless dependent upon them. The property of “being a conscious agent” is a property of a particular dynamic physical system; if a physical system operates in a particular way then consciousness is an emergent property of that system. In a similar way, the property of “being a pump” is a property of a particular dynamic physical system; if a physical system operates in a particular way then “being a pump” is an emergent property of that system. We are able to reduce the property of “being a pump” to physical properties and events simply because we know and understand the necessary & sufficient conditions for the property of “being a pump”. We will only be able to reduce the property of “being a conscious agent” (ie mental properties and events) to physical properties and events if and when we also understand the necessary and sufficient physical conditions for “being a conscious agent”. We do not know; perhaps we never will know. rakis wrote: Here the idea of supervenience suddenly seemed attractive. Mental concepts may not be able to be defined in terms of physical concepts, but what might look like an emergent, causally efficacious property at the mental level actually ‘supervenes’ on a person’s physical properties and powers. The central idea of supervenience seems disarmingly simple: “no mental change without accompanying physical changes”.) If yes, then I assume you accept something like this: "mental properties supervene on physical properties in the sense that if something instantiates any mental property M at time t, there is a physical base property P such that the thing has P at t, and anything with P at some time necessarily has M at that time." Then, if we understand mental properties and powers to be functional properties, you can maintain that the only potential occupants, or ‘realizers’, of these causal roles are physical properties. is that right for you? Yes, we could say that the property of “being a pump” supervenes on the physical, and the property of “being a conscious agent” also supervenes on the physical.
_____________________ �If one pays attention to the concepts being employed, rather than the words being used, the resolution of this problem is simple.� (Stuart Burns)

Mike H
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Posted 04/23/08 - 11:54 PM:	#78
reincarnated wrote: Mike H wrote: I see philosophical discussion more as getting the other person to see things how you see them, and coming up with reasons for the other person to change their mind. With respect, what reason can you come up with for me to change my mind, apart from saying “I think it is absurd”? Such an “argument” is hardly likely to convince anyone. three things: First, who says it is only arguments that can or should convince people? If I'm right that perspectives cannot be rationally argued for, then convincing is more of a matter of articulating your perspective, and others may or may not be drawn to it. You seem to view philosophical discussion as nothing but a Socratic dialectic, but that idea has been challenged since Nietzsche (and even going back as far as the Greek Sophists). Emotion, not reason, is at the bottom of everything. Second, I think you're representing my billiard ball posts inaccurately if you think they just reduce to "I think its absurd." I did more - I explained why I think the idea that matter can create new entities is absurd: it either violates physical laws (if new matter is created out of nothing) or it involves some kind of mystical process whereby non-matter emerges from matter. And I constructed a thought experiment designed to illustrate its absurdity. You haven't responded with happened when you went through that thought experiment. Third, do you agree or not that material objects cannot create new entities? This is all the billiard ball argument is supposed to show. Its supposed to defend premise 3, but it seems that your real problem is with premise 4. If you agree that new entities cannot emerge from matter, then we don't need to discuss the billiard ball argument, or my argument from absurdity. reincarnated wrote: Philosophical discussion is more than simply stating “it is absurd, and that is all there is to it” – it is about giving rational and coherent substantiation behind a claim of absurdity, in order to defend the conclusion that something is absurd. ... I did not say that arguments should be based solely on “pure logic”. I said logical and rational argument. Which is very different to simply stating “I think its absurd”. How can you give rational and coherent substantiation to a claim of absurdity, when absurdity only exists relative to a perspective, and perspectives cannot be rationally argued for? reincarnated wrote: Mike H wrote: Neither has anyone observed and scientifically confirmed matter creating non-matter out of nothing - thats called magic. Why make an exception for consciousness? You seem to think that consciousness is some kind of “entity”, am I correct? However I believe that consciousness is simply a property of a particular dynamic arrangement of a suitably complex system. Consciousness can therefore emerge as a property of a particular system, without the need to “create” anything (apart from creating the suitably complex dynamic arrangement of the system). (I'm going to switch to talking about minds, because it fits in with my argument more). Yes, I think mind is a kind of entity - its not just a label we place on an arrangement of matter, however dynamic or complex. If you've just got a collection of matter in front of you - like a living brain - where are the thoughts? Where is the consciousness? You can't see, touch, feel, hear, or smell them, even with the aid of the most advanced scientific instruments. How then, can thoughts and consciousness, be properties? How can mind itself be a property? Mind is indetectable, except to the mind itself. Sure, you can call the brain in front of you a "mind," if you wish, but that misses the subjectivity inherent in minds. What other properties are only properties to themselves? Wouldn't it be strange to speak of a green thing that actually is orange according to every person able to see colors, but its green to itself, (whatever that would mean). If mind is a property, it is certainly an extremely strange property. Isn't is more plausible to suppose it is an entity separate from matter? How do you define "property" anyway? As I wrote earlier, a property is "a tendency to produce certain effects - effects that we experience in our minds. A thing with the property of being green will tend to produce the sensation of green-ness in our minds. A thing with the property of weighing 5 kg will, if we put it on a metric scale, result in us seeing that the needle points to 5." If my definition is correct, how can my mind be a tendency to produce certain effects in my mind? That seems nonsensical to me. How can mind even be a tendency at all? Thats certainly counterintuitive enough to warrant an explanation. We usually think of mind as the "playing field" for thoughts and emotions and such, not as a tendency. reincarnated wrote: Mike H wrote: material objects cannot create things beyond themselves. They can only arrange themselves in different ways. If what we subjectively experience as a thought is not equivalent in every way to just an arrangement of atoms, it counts as something beyond mere arrangments of matter. But this is precisely what I am saying consciousness IS – a particular dynamic arrangement of a suitably complex system. No need to suggest that “new beings spring forth”. How is a thought equivalent in every way to an arrangement of matter? How do you differentiate between some neurons firing and what you subjectively experience as a thought? Suppose two people are eating breakfast and they have the same thought: "this cereal is crunchy." Must we then be able to identify some pattern of neuron activity that is exactly identical in both people? If not, then how, according to your conceptual scheme, can they be having the same thought? reincarnated wrote: p Mike H wrote: But the fact that we define a thought subjectively shows that it is not equivalent to an arrangement of matter. I don’t see how this follows at all. Why does it follow that because a thought is defined subjectively, it therefore cannot be equivalent to a (dynamical) arrangement of matter? Because if a thought is nothing but an arrangement of matter, that misses the subjective element entirely. You experience thoughts subjectively. "I am looking at the computer screen," you think. Now where can such a thing be in an arrangement of matter? How could you detect anything but an arrangement of matter in an arrangement of matter? Where could "I am looking at a computer screen" possibly be? reincarnated wrote: Mike H wrote: The difference is that daffodils are just collections of matter, while minds are not. In your opinion maybe – but not in mine. To me, both daffodils and minds are “just collections of matter”. Somehow I just don't think you've got the same conception of materialism as me. When I envision a materialistic universe, I envision it from a god's eye perspective, outside of minds. From there, I see nothing but atoms and energy. There are no thoughts, feelings, etc as we subjectively experience them. They are not detectable from this perspective. A disembodied god could place labels on any arrangement of matter he likes, but he would have no reason to differentiate between that dynamic arrangement called "brain activity" on one hand, and "mind" on the other hand. He would have no reason to label anything as "mind" at all, actually. The only reason we differentiate them is because we have subjective experiences, and it is impossible to understand what those are by just pointing to different arrangements of matter. That is because they are essentially different entities. Edited by Mike H on 04/24/08 - 12:05 AM

reincarnated
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Posted 04/24/08 - 02:25 AM:	#79
Mike H wrote: do you agree or not that material objects cannot create new entities? This is all the billiard ball argument is supposed to show. Its supposed to defend premise 3, but it seems that your real problem is with premise 4. If you agree that new entities cannot emerge from matter, then we don't need to discuss the billiard ball argument, or my argument from absurdity. I cannot say whether I agree or not until you explain what you mean by a “new entity” in this context Mike H wrote: How can you give rational and coherent substantiation to a claim of absurdity, when absurdity only exists relative to a perspective, and perspectives cannot be rationally argued for? With respect, there seem to be contradictions here. In your last post you claimed that you “explained why I think the idea that matter can create new entities is absurd: it either violates physical laws (if new matter is created out of nothing) or it involves some kind of mystical process whereby non-matter emerges from matter. And I constructed a thought experiment designed to illustrate its absurdity.” (which to me seems a very good attempt at a rational and coherent substantiation to your claim of absurdity) – and yet in the same post you seem to claim that a rational and coherent substantiation to a claim of absurdity is not possible? Mike H wrote: Yes, I think mind is a kind of entity - its not just a label we place on an arrangement of matter, however dynamic or complex. That is one area where you and I differ. Mike H wrote: If you've just got a collection of matter in front of you - like a living brain - where are the thoughts? Where is the consciousness? You can't see, touch, feel, hear, or smell them, even with the aid of the most advanced scientific instruments. The thoughts and consciousness are simply properties of particular physical processes occurring in the brain. Mike H wrote: How then, can thoughts and consciousness, be properties? How can mind itself be a property? Mind is indetectable, except to the mind itself. I disagree. There are subjective properties of mind and there are objective properties of mind. The subjective properties can be experienced by definition only from “within” the mind. Mike H wrote: Sure, you can call the brain in front of you a "mind," if you wish, but that misses the subjectivity inherent in minds. What other properties are only properties to themselves? Wouldn't it be strange to speak of a green thing that actually is orange according to every person able to see colors, but its green to itself, (whatever that would mean). If mind is a property, it is certainly an extremely strange property. Yes, it is a very strange property – but the mere fact that it is strange does not rule it out as a property. Mike H wrote: How is a thought equivalent in every way to an arrangement of matter? How do you differentiate between some neurons firing and what you subjectively experience as a thought? Suppose two people are eating breakfast and they have the same thought: "this cereal is crunchy." Must we then be able to identify some pattern of neuron activity that is exactly identical in both people? If not, then how, according to your conceptual scheme, can they be having the same thought? It does not follow from the premise “thoughts supervene on the physical” that “same thoughts entails same physical substrate”. (the reverse would be true however – “same physical substrate entails same thoughts” ) Mike H wrote: You experience thoughts subjectively. "I am looking at the computer screen," you think. Now where can such a thing be in an arrangement of matter? How could you detect anything but an arrangement of matter in an arrangement of matter? Where could "I am looking at a computer screen" possibly be? Where? In the properties a particular dynamical arrangement of matter of course. I don’t see the problem. I think what you are maybe trying to say is “how can I view the contents of a subjective thought, these properties, objectively?” – the answer is that you cannot – by definition. But that does not lead to the conclusion that subjective thoughts cannot simply be properties of particular dynamical arrangements of matter. Mike H wrote: Somehow I just don't think you've got the same conception of materialism as me. When I envision a materialistic universe, I envision it from a god's eye perspective, outside of minds. From there, I see nothing but atoms and energy. There are no thoughts, feelings, etc as we subjectively experience them. They are not detectable from this perspective. No subjective thought is detectable from an objective perspective. By definition. Mike H wrote: A disembodied god could place labels on any arrangement of matter he likes, but he would have no reason to differentiate between that dynamic arrangement called "brain activity" on one hand, and "mind" on the other hand. He would have no reason to label anything as "mind" at all, actually. The only reason we differentiate them is because we have subjective experiences, and it is impossible to understand what those are by just pointing to different arrangements of matter. That is because they are essentially different entities. Just because we cannot understand them, it does not follow that they must therefore be separate mystical entities and thus part of some non-physical world. Where is it written that every property of the physical world must be completely understandable from an objective or 3^rd-person perspective?
_____________________ �If one pays attention to the concepts being employed, rather than the words being used, the resolution of this problem is simple.� (Stuart Burns)

rakis
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Posted 04/24/08 - 07:04 AM:	#80
reincarnated wrote: [quote=rakis] In a similar way, the property of “being a pump” is a property of a particular dynamic physical system; if a physical system operates in a particular way then “being a pump” is an emergent property of that system. We are able to reduce the property of “being a pump” to physical properties and events simply because we know and understand the necessary & sufficient conditions for the property of “being a pump”. We will only be able to reduce the property of “being a conscious agent” (ie mental properties and events) to physical properties and events if and when we also understand the necessary and sufficient physical conditions for “being a conscious agent”. We do not know; perhaps we never will know. ... Yes, we could say that the property of “being a pump” supervenes on the physical, and the property of “being a conscious agent” also supervenes on the physical. Ok. I want to go step by step, because the jargon of philosophy of mind could make us be enmeshed in hermeneutical difficulties. Then, you may find it correct that higher states inherit their causal powers from the physical states that realize them, or upon which they are supervenient, or from which they are supposed to emerge. It is their ‘realization base’, or ‘supervenience base’, or emergence base’ that does the work. But, if every event that can be given a mental description can also be given a physical description, and the physical domain is closed, there is no significant causal work for mental events to do that is not already effected by those same events under their physical descriptions. Accordingly, citing events under their ‘mental’ description in causal explanations is misleading. Now, I can think of two ways in which psycho-physical causation can be denied: one is to deny that there are mental events; the other is to keep faith with mental events but concede that they never enter into causal transactions with physical processes. So either a physicalist has to espouse so-called ‘eliminative materialism’, or else to move further in the direction of dualism, a dualism that posits a realm of the mental in total causal isolation from the physical domain. I think that you are left with an invidious choice: either there is no emergence of causally efficacious properties above the base level, or the physical domain is not closed. For any serious physicalist, the latter is not an option. So, if one wants to be a physicalist, one cannot be a non-reductive physicalist; one has to embrace some kind of ‘eliminative materialism’ or ‘reductionist’ program. What your choice would be ? (unless you have an alternative, which I didn't think of)

rakis
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Posted 04/24/08 - 07:21 AM:	#81
Mike H wrote: I have to admit, I don't really understand quantum mechanics...but on a level right above the quantum level, everything is just particles and natural forces, right? Quantum weirdness cancels out at a certain point. So I wouldn't expect it to be relevant for the formation of consciousness, but I'm no physicist. Some physicalists believe that it does not matter, that the notion of a physical particular might be defined as an object, a concrete event, or whatever. Howbeit, the key commitment of physicalism is to some kind of basic particulars, which are the fundamental constituents out of which everything in the world is composed. Even those who argue for a wide sense of the ‘physical’ erect their definitions of that term upon basic physical constituents. That is, however generous the definition, physicalists take as fundamental elementary particles, in the loose sense of the word “particle” commonly encountered in descriptions of quantum mechanical phenomena. But physics tell against that presupposition. physics reveals that there are no elementary ‘particles’,fundamental events, or some such particulars. There are only processes of various scales and complexity. That this is so has not been easy to see, since the behaviour of phenomena at the sub-atomic level has seemed to defy description in coherent and intelligible terms. a strict particle view is not only factually false, but conceptually incoherent as well. so you are wrong when you say that Quantum weirdness cancels out at a certain point, but you are right when you say "I wouldn't expect it to be relevant for the formation of consciousness", with regard to the irreducible character of mental events, which I also support.

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Posted 04/24/08 - 10:55 AM:	#82
rakis wrote: What your choice would be ? (unless you have an alternative, which I didn't think of) You seem to want to distinguish between mental events on the one hand and physical events on the other. In my philosophy, there are only events, and all events have a physical basis. Now it so happens that some of these physical events have properties which we label “mental” properties – this does not make these mental properties a different type or class of event, they are simply special properties of particular physical events. Why should a particular property necessarily be causally efficacious? Some machines have the property of “being a pump”, but we can argue that this property of “being a pump” is not what actually “causes” water to be transferred from one point to another – this is caused rather by the physical action of the piston or blades or impeller or whatever is the mechanical component within the pump which acts on the water to transfer it from one point to another. Similarly, some biological machines apparently have the property of “being conscious”, but it does not follow from this that such a property must necessarily have any causal effect on the physical. This does not make consciousness “non-physical”, any more than the property of “being a pump” is “non-physical”. If you wish to argue that this view makes the property of "consciousness" epiphenomenal, then my reply is that consciousness is no more nor less epiphenomenal than the property of "being a pump".
_____________________ �If one pays attention to the concepts being employed, rather than the words being used, the resolution of this problem is simple.� (Stuart Burns)

Simple Occam
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Posted 04/24/08 - 01:40 PM:	#83
The Escapist wrote: Simple Occam wrote: Science will never "discover" consciousness through more advancements in understanding efficient causation. Hi Occam, Might it not be that if we understood the physical state of the whole brain (and body) well enough, we might identify the factor that makes it be like something to be us? Knowing about the separate components isn't good enough, but perhaps knowing what the "state" of a whole nervous system is like might provide us with an unexpected insight into the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness. I speculate that it might be something to do with the way the nervous system delivers the experience we call time. In some special way a connection is made between the succeeding states of the nervous system. I think that might be the crucial difference between ourselves and machines and the simpler animals. I speculate that information from the environment is recorded by the nervous system in such a way as to generate that experience. So I would challenge the idea that science can't possibly discover such a mechanism. Maybe it could happen through looking at the successive states of a minimally conscious animal, or noticing a crucial distinction between the physiologies of conscious and non-conscious animals. You seem to be missing my point, which is that understanding what consciousness is requires an ontological explanation, not an efficient-cause explanation. No doubt there are many things left to be discovered by science about how the brain and other things work. But none of the discoveries of science are a substitute for an ontology that can explain not just "how things work" but "what exists". Ontology can contribute a much broader and more profound insight into the nature of things that provides an understanding of the foundations of culture, morality and religion. The contrast is not between consciousness and unconsciousness (eg "awake" vs "dreaming or "in a coma") but between consciousness and a non-perceiving state of existence. Consciousness is not "self-awareness" or reflecting on one's perceptions or memories. It is simply the having of phenomenal qualities (ie qualia). It refers to a kind of existence, such that it is like something to be that thing. We are not going to discover the special "consciousness gene" or "consciousness synapse" that somehow "causes" consciousness. We can already distinguish between varieties of neurophysiological evolution that do and do not process sensory information. We already know what kind of brain you need to have for that. What I'm trying to get past is the notion that consciousness is some additional physical property, beyond the processing of sensory information, or some additional representation of the brain state that "knows" it somehowe and this awareness is what we mean by consciousness. Again, it's not some additional kind of knowledge or awareness. Perception itself is knowledge and awareness; consciousness is simply what it is like to be a perceiver.

rakis
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Posted 04/24/08 - 02:17 PM:	#84
Reincarnated I’ll take the candle flame as an example to prove that a “candle flame”, just like a “pump” or a “daffodil” or “consciousness” are irreducible autonomous entities : The flame makes contributions to its own maintenance through time. It maintains above combustion threshold temperatures; in a standard gravitational field and atmosphere, it induces convection, which both brings in oxygen and eliminates combustion products; and it vaporizes wax into fuel. A candle flame is dependent for its continued existence on the maintenance of particular properties and processes that support its conditions. The flame is self-maintenant . Flames, pumps, daffodils none are supervenient on underlying constituents. They are more like knots or twists in an underlying flow — nothing remains persistent other than the organization of the knot itself. They are topological entities, not substantive entities The candle flame, however, can do nothing if it is running out of candle. A living being however can. A paramecium, is capable of swimming, and continuing to swim, so long as it is swimming up a sugar gradient, but will tumble for a moment if it “finds itself” swimming down the sugar gradient. Such systems can alter their methods of selfmaintenance in ways appropriate to their current environments. They tend to maintain their own property of being self-maintenant: they are recursively self-maintenant. “Living”, then, is not a supervenient property: it is externally relational, and it requires a continuous flow of constituents. Self-maintenant and recursively self-maintenant systems are the key emergent forms in which normative function and representation emerge. Simply put, the candle flame’s heat serves a function for the flame insofar as it contributes to the flame’s maintenance. Function, in this view, is contribution, or tendency to contribute, to the maintenance of a system, and is thereby always relative to some such system. The heart of a parasite, for example, would likely serve a function for the parasite, but would be dysfunctional for the parasitized host. The normativity of function will be similarly contextualized. Note that serving a function contributes to the stability of a process, which has distinct causal consequences in the world: But this is not a model of an epiphenomenal function.

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Posted 04/24/08 - 02:45 PM:	#85
Does water "emerge" from hydrogen and oxygen molecules? Or does it "reduce" to them?

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Posted 04/24/08 - 03:01 PM:	#86
Simple Occam wrote: understanding what consciousness is requires an ontological explanation, not an efficient-cause explanation. No doubt there are many things left to be discovered by science about how the brain and other things work. But none of the discoveries of science are a substitute for an ontology that can explain not just "how things work" but "what exists". Ontology can contribute a much broader and more profound insight into the nature of things that provides an understanding of the foundations of culture, morality and religion. Simple Occam: This describes the 'mystery' of consciousness better than anything else I have read. There are naturalistic events we describe through causation, these describe physics. But physics says nothing about the intrinsic character of things that are naturalistic also. By this I mean not just consciousness, but things we normally associate to be physical such as matter, space and time. In this view physical v mental is possibly the wrong distinction, it is causal v ontological. So when we refer to the physical working of the brain we refer to causal effects whilst when we refer to qualia these are ontological in nature. Hence the distinction is epistemological. However, how can we learn anything about the true intrinsic nature of something other than what we sense? It is difficult to learn anything other than the obvious, how can we build up something analogous to what science has done for the physical. We seem to rapidly reach an impasse. If all there is, is the computer, we can never 'see' the silicon chips from which it is made.
_____________________ The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw

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Posted 04/24/08 - 07:02 PM:	#87
rakis wrote: I’ll take the candle flame as an example to prove that a “candle flame”, just like a “pump” or a “daffodil” or “consciousness” are irreducible autonomous entities : The flame makes contributions to its own maintenance through time. It maintains above combustion threshold temperatures; in a standard gravitational field and atmosphere, it induces convection, which both brings in oxygen and eliminates combustion products; and it vaporizes wax into fuel. A candle flame is dependent for its continued existence on the maintenance of particular properties and processes that support its conditions. The flame is self-maintenant . Flames, pumps, daffodils none are supervenient on underlying constituents. They are more like knots or twists in an underlying flow �" nothing remains persistent other than the organization of the knot itself. They are topological entities, not substantive entities What you call an entity, I call a property. And at the macroscopic level of our world, I believe ther are very few, if any, such things as "irreducible autonomous entities" - at the macro level most things are interconnected or interdependent to a greater or lesser extent. I do not see "candle flame" as an entity in itself - "candle flame" is simply a label that is attached to a physical system which has particular properties. Take away the candle, and there is no candle flame. Take away the oxygen, and there is no candle flame. Take away the high temperatures, and there is no candle flame. The property of "being a candle flame" is simply a property which is supervenient on the physical system which gives rise to that property. Consciousness also requires a particular physical system in order to emerge as a property of that system. Take away the necessary physical components of that system, and the property of consciousness disappears, just as the property of "being a candle flame" disappears when all the wax is burned up. Consciousness is supervenient on the physical substrate of which it is a property, just as a candle flame is supervenient on the physical substrate of which it is a property. Edited by reincarnated on 04/24/08 - 07:10 PM
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Posted 04/25/08 - 02:15 AM:	#88
Consciousness is consciousness-of-something. I think, because of the inseperability of consciousness-of-something, we cannot examine consciousness-in-itself. We are consistently conscious of something, so all we can talk about are things that we are conscious of. We cannot talk about consciousness-in-itself unless we throw induction into the dustbin and entertain our ontological musings. We can only talk about things. How is talking about things going to help us understand consciousness-of-something? Consciousness-in-itself doesn't exist. This conversation will just turn into an epistemological discussion wherein, upon close examination, we will find that consiousness-of-consciousness is an infinite regress of a map of a map of a map etc. There is no ultimate map of consiousness-of-consciousness, whereby one could conclude what the territory (ontology) "looks like" or is. In order to find out what the territory is, we must violate the law of induction and engage in ontological speculation. There is no possible way to logically verify what consciousness-in-itself is. We can only speculate... At least, these are my thoughts at four in the morning.
_____________________ "We stand before the world, not in it." - Rilke "MAD, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual." - Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary) If you have a small child, gently pull the mask over them first, and pull at the ends to tighten the straps.

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Posted 04/25/08 - 03:36 AM:	#89
One missing factor to this thread, which admittedly I haven't fully read yet, feels to be the aspect of what everyone's definition of consciousness is. If you define consciousness as any environmental awareness, then a grapefruit is conscious as it is reactively aware of it's surroundings. If you define consciousness as a full understanding of a being's surroundings, than consciousness does not exist as we can yet comprehend, and noone here is truly conscious nor can they even comprehend what it means to be so. I think anywhere in the middle needs to be specifically defined and set to boundary before dealt with or any topic concerning it will fall to continually arguing to define what each person feels to be the said definition of it.

reincarnated
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Posted 04/25/08 - 03:51 AM:	#90
jnuzzo wrote: If you define consciousness as any environmental awareness, then a grapefruit is conscious as it is reactively aware of it's surroundings. A grapefruit is aware of it's surroundings? How do you know this? Did the grapefruit tell you? Yes we need to agree what we mean by consciousness - but it seems we also need to agree what we mean by awareness.
_____________________ �If one pays attention to the concepts being employed, rather than the words being used, the resolution of this problem is simple.� (Stuart Burns)

rakis
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Posted 04/25/08 - 05:05 AM:	#91
Reincarnated, You look like an Odysseus between dualist Scylla and eliminative Charybdis … I think you opt for the second, and I’ll explain why For a reductionist to deny some sort of emergence seems foolhardy – even for a philosopher! Emergence appears to be ubiquitous throughout the world. Just about everything that exists now, which is at least a potential topic of scientific interest, has emerged since the Big Bang. So, any purported scientific model of any phenomenon must be able, at least in principle, to account for the ontological and historical emergence of that phenomenon since the Big Bang. Any model that does not provide such an account has to be reckoned as thereby incomplete. In the light of this, we can turn around physicalism’s exclusion of the very possibility of novel emergence and use such exclusions as a powerful negative criterion for assessing scientific theories. That is, any purported model of X that makes the emergence of X impossible is thereby self-refuting. On the other hand, accepting emergence, in the sense of higher-level, causally efficacious powers that are not explicable in terms of the lower-level powers of physical constituents, is to give up physicalism. Unless there is some way of explaining how higher-level causal powers are derived from lower-level powers, a physicalist is at a loss to explain how mental events can cause physical changes. It would seem that mental events can be causally efficacious in themselves. For a physicalist, that amounts to embracing dreaded dualism. On all sides, the presumption has been that the fundamental level of the natural world consists of micro-physical entities of some sort, with their primary properties. These physical entities are clearly some sort of particular. the particle view is deeply related to the micro-reductivist position. Particles do not have a configuration. They are points. But they do participate in configurations relative to each other. Particles are the purported locus of causal power, and the configurations in which they participate are ‘merely’ the stage setting for the working out of the particle causal interactions. That is, causal power is resident in entities that are not configurational, and configuration or organization is merely a stage setting, with no causal power of its own. In this view, organization is factored out as a legitimate locus for causal power – it’s just stage setting – and such delegitimation succeeds because there is a non-configurational candidate available to be such a causal locus: particles. The particle view supports the reductionist view by motivating the elimination of configurations as legitimate loci of causal power. So, abandoning a particle physics in favour of a quantum field physics, a process metaphysics, is not an innocent choice with respect to the issues at hand. The critical point is that quantum field processes have no existence that is independent of their configurations: quantum fields are processes, and can only exist in various patterns. Those patterns come in many sizes, of many different physical and temporal scales, some as large as a human person, or a social institution – but they are all equally patterns of processes. There is no ‘bottoming out’ level in quantum field theory – it is patterns of process all the way down, and all the way up. That is the rub. To be a reductive physicalist (or an ‘eliminative materialist’) at all, is to believe that ‘higher-level’ entities are nothing other than complex configurations of lower-level entities, in such a way that the higher-level properties and powers are explicable in principle in terms of the properties and powers of the lower-level entities (or at least, determined by them). Consequently, some entity is reducible just in case it is a configuration of lower-level entities. But now the supposed base-level entities are nothing but configurations of process as well! If there is no ‘bottoming out’, there are no bases to which all other phenomena can, even in principle, be reduced. A reductive physicalist has lost the ground on which he wants to stand. If being configurational makes a property or power epiphenomenal, then everything is an epiphenomenon. That is the reductio ad absurdum of this position. The physicalist issue simply is: Are all the truths determined at that level sufficient, in principle, to determine all the truths in the world? If so, that is all the physicalist needs. This riposte is deeply ambiguous; the answer to the question depends upon whether those truths determined at the level of finest resolution include all the relational truths. The physicalist is committed to this being so. But not all the relevant relational truths are discernible at the ‘finest level of resolution’; some, probably most, of the patterns that are causally significant are of a larger scale than that. If we are restricted to just those that are of a small enough scale to be discernible at such a fine grain, then the answer to the question must be negative. Any metaphysics that respects contemporary physics has to accommodate genuine emergence, and not treat it as merely ‘apparent’. I believe you have to work harder on your “philosophy”, or else, repeating the same thing without bringing it under scrutiny, it’ll become a dogma

rakis
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Posted 04/25/08 - 05:21 AM:	#92
jnuzzo wrote: One missing factor to this thread, which admittedly I haven't fully read yet, feels to be the aspect of what everyone's definition of consciousness is. If you define consciousness as any environmental awareness, then a grapefruit is conscious as it is reactively aware of it's surroundings. If you define consciousness as a full understanding of a being's surroundings, than consciousness does not exist as we can yet comprehend, and noone here is truly conscious nor can they even comprehend what it means to be so. I think anywhere in the middle needs to be specifically defined and set to boundary before dealt with or any topic concerning it will fall to continually arguing to define what each person feels to be the said definition of it. I think I've made a beginning writing about mental events http://forums.philosophyforums.com/comments.php?i...

reincarnated
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Posted 04/25/08 - 07:46 AM:	#93
rakis wrote: For a reductionist to deny some sort of emergence seems foolhardy..... .......at a loss to explain how mental events can cause physical changes…… …. It would seem that mental events can be causally efficacious in themselves. I’m most definitely not a reductionist. I most certainly do NOT believe that consciousness can be accounted for in entirety by reducing it to the accounts of it’s individual physical constituents. I believe there is a subjective aspect to consciousness which cannot, by definition, be accounted for from any 3^rd person perspective. Everything supervenes on the physical, but some properties of the world (whilst still supervening on the physical) entail a uniquely 1^st person subjective perspective, which cannot in principle be understood or explained from any 3^rd person perspective. You persist in calling mental properties “mental events” – as if they are somehow different from physical events? I look at it quite differently – mental properties are simply particular properties of a very special type of physical event. Why need all properties be efficacious, and why should the existence of non-efficacious properties imply dualism? The property of “being a pump” or “being a candleflame” is not causally efficacious, and the existence of pumps and candleflames does not imply dualism. rakis wrote: The physicalist issue simply is: Are all the truths determined at that level sufficient, in principle, to determine all the truths in the world? If so, that is all the physicalist needs. This riposte is deeply ambiguous; the answer to the question depends upon whether those truths determined at the level of finest resolution include all the relational truths. The physicalist is committed to this being so. But not all the relevant relational truths are discernible at the ‘finest level of resolution’; some, probably most, of the patterns that are causally significant are of a larger scale than that. If we are restricted to just those that are of a small enough scale to be discernible at such a fine grain, then the answer to the question must be negative. Some care is needed here - the above paragraph seems to confuse ontology (determined) and epistemology (discernible) within the same argument (my emphasis in the above). Whilst subjective mental properties are ontologically reducible to physical states, these properties are (imho) epistemologically irreducible.
_____________________ �If one pays attention to the concepts being employed, rather than the words being used, the resolution of this problem is simple.� (Stuart Burns)

rakis
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Posted 04/25/08 - 02:03 PM:	#94
Reincarnated, A more analytic approach of the candleflame paradigm will answer your aporias. Systems like a candle-flame can maintain their stability only by dint of their interactions with their surroundings. Their very existence, and their persistence, are dependent upon their relations with external factors in that environment, from which they keep drawing sustenance. Consider once more the candle flame. What is its ‘lower-level emergence base’? Your answer is this: the molecules of vaporized candle wax and of oxygen. But those molecules that are present at any one time within the visible area of the flame are soon consumed, and the products of that combustion – mainly heat, light, carbon dioxide, and water – are largely either radiated or carried away by convection. All that persists within the flame is the wick, but it is not, in any relevant sense, a basal constituent of the flame, and it too is progressively consumed. It is true that some of the energy released by the burning at any one time is used to cause the combustion of succeeding molecules of molten wax and oxygen. But if this argument were sound, the molecules of wax and oxygen within the area of the flame at any one time would be nomologically sufficient for (i.e., be causes of) the combustion of other molecules within the flame, at a later time. My thesis is that this is nonsense. It is the flame, the process of burning, that causes the molecules even to be present within its own area for a brief period, before they are in turn burnt. The flame has no stable set of constituents that could sensibly be called its emergence base (not even the wick). There is just an inflow of waxen and oxygen molecules, which are consumed, and an outflow of carbon dioxide and water molecules (ignoring other trace by-products, which do not affect the argument), together with a release of energy. At bottom, the problem with the argument we are considering is its being framed in terms of entities and their properties, at both higher and lower levels. Its terminology of emergence bases and higher-level properties necessarily envisages only internal structures, not open processes. This is necessarily so, because an emergence base could not include any relations external to the system. To see this, consider the property of being the longest pencil in the box. The pencil’s having this property has nothing to do with the molecules and internal relations that make up that pencil. It is a relational property of that pencil, which it would lose if an even longer pencil were added to the box. Now, adding another pencil to the box would not alter in any way the molecules and internal relations of the former pencil. The property of being the longest pencil seems trivial, but the logic of the case would apply equally to any extrinsic, relational property. So, while any distinction between relational and non-relational properties seems contextdependent, and not purely formal, on any account extrinsic, relational properties such as these could not be part of any ‘emergence base’ of the type presumed by the argument. On the other hand, we cannot say what a candle flame is without mentioning its relations with external elements in its ambient situation. The very being of the flame, then, is a function of these external relations. These physically external relations are logically internal to any flame; they are constitutive of its being. If, say, the temperature of the atmosphere around the candle were gradually raised (independently) towards that of the flame itself, the convection currents required to suck in new oxygen and remove carbon dioxide would progressively become less effective. Either the flame would go out, smothered by the carbon dioxide it had been producing, or the entire candle would first melt and then vaporise. A reply could be “that is just a matter of the boundary conditions; no-one would seriously suggest that the temperature of the ambient atmosphere is a constituent!” But a significantly lower temperature of the ambient atmosphere is a necessary part of the nomologically sufficient conditions for the existence of the candle flame; fail to take those conditions into account, and the argument we are assessing collapses. A candle flame is necessarily open, lest it be snuffed out. Physically external relations are essential to the flame’s ability to maintain itself, an ability that is a genuinely emergent causal power.

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Posted 04/25/08 - 02:14 PM:	#95
A comment on method and the epistemic/ontology dichotomy If we want to understand observers themselves, we cannot validly do so only by adversion to still further observers. What I propose is a functional model of representation. That is, it presents a functional explication of representation (or representing), rather than a characterization of representations. Any representation, in fact, is a representation for any epistemic system only insofar as it functions appropriately for that system — whatever such appropriate functioning might be. According to you an encoding(e.g. an atom, a particle) serves as a representation for a system insofar as the system makes use of it as a representation — makes use of it as carrying representational content. But, the ability of the system to make use of it as carrying representational content constitutes its having that representational content. In other words, an encoding’s having representational content is a property of the functional usage of the encoding by the system — it is a property of the system knowing what the encoding is supposed to represent — and not a property of the encoding element itself.

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Posted 04/25/08 - 02:39 PM:	#96
perseus wrote: Simple Occam: This describes the 'mystery' of consciousness better than anything else I have read. There are naturalistic events we describe through causation, these describe physics. But physics says nothing about the intrinsic character of things that are naturalistic also. By this I mean not just consciousness, but things we normally associate to be physical such as matter, space and time. In this view physical v mental is possibly the wrong distinction, it is causal v ontological. So when we refer to the physical working of the brain we refer to causal effects whilst when we refer to qualia these are ontological in nature. Thanks for your thoughtful response. I'm glad you put "mystery" in quotes becaue my purpose in writing about consciousness was to de-mystify it somewhat. I refer to qualia when I say my tummy hurts or the light in this room is dim. Each of the brain-states associate with the reports can be fully described by reference to the chain of causes and effects which explain how they occured. But to explain what consciousness is to someone who is conscious himself is to be able to refer not only to the neural firings and whatnot but also to the phenomenal properties associated with the brain states in consciousness. This dichotomy in the explanation creates the illusion that the phenomenal properties must be some other kind of thing caused by the brain. This, of course, is where we start to fall hopelessly into the abyss of the mind-body problem. The solution to that problem is the empirical ontological theory that the brain has the intrinsic property of consciousness, such that to BE the animal with the brain is like something. This avoids mind-body dualism because the qualia are identical to the brain part. And it avoids eliminative materialism because it can explain how the qualia are both real and material. The brain state and the qualia are just 2 different aspects of the same physical thing. The scientific descriptions of the relevant neurophysiology are about the extrinsic nature of the brain... as it is observed by others. The phenomenal properties of the animal's consciousness require no entities other than those in the brain and nervous system to exist and the qualia-reports given by the animal about it's experiences are references to the intrinsic properties of the animal's brain. The extrinsic properties are described in terms of efficient causation, while the intrinsic properties are postulated as an ontological assumption. The assumption becomes validated when it can be shown that it provides the BEST explanation of what consciousness is. Hence the distinction is epistemological. However, how can we learn anything about the true intrinsic nature of something other than what we sense? It is difficult to learn anything other than the obvious, how can we build up something analogous to what science has done for the physical. We seem to rapidly reach an impasse. If all there is, is the computer, we can never 'see' the silicon chips from which it is made. Here you get farther away from what I am saying. We don't learn about the intrinsic nature of something by sensing or perceiving it. Perception is one way we learn about the world we live in. It can lead to the efficient cause explanations I mentioned. But the intrinsic nature...what it is in itself... of a thing is what it is like to BE it. I have access to my intrinsic nature as you do to your because you ARE you and I AM me. Finally, it's not like anything to be a silicon chip any more than it's like something to be a potato chip.

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Posted 04/25/08 - 06:59 PM:	#97
rakis wrote: It is the flame, the process of burning, that causes the molecules even to be present within its own area for a brief period, before they are in turn burnt. I think we have a fundamental difference of opinion here. A process is simply a property of a particular dynamical system - processes have themselves no causal power over and above the causal powers of the component parts of the system which gives rise to that process. We can (in principle) understand the chemistry and fluid dynamics and interactions of all of the component parts of this system (if we wish) without once mentioning or thinking of a "candleflame". The higher-level property of candleflame is thus in principle superfluous in terms of our understanding of what is going on. The “process of burning” is simply that – a process. It does not “cause” anything – rather as a process it is itself the dynamical higher-level result of interactions between the individual component parts of the wax, wick and air. These interactions give rise, under certain high temperature conditions, to the process that we label “the property of being a candle flame”. Another analogy - think of the legal process of trial by jury in the case of a murderer who is subsequently sentenced to death by the court. Is the legal process the "cause" of the defendant's death? Based on your analysis of the candleflame I guess that you will say yes. However in my philosophy the cause of the defendant's death can be found in the interactions of the system components at a much lower level - what we call the process is simply a higher-level property of that system as viewed from a particular perspective.
_____________________ �If one pays attention to the concepts being employed, rather than the words being used, the resolution of this problem is simple.� (Stuart Burns)

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Posted 04/25/08 - 07:09 PM:	#98
rakis wrote: If we want to understand observers.... .......and not a property of the encoding element itself. Sorry, I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
_____________________ �If one pays attention to the concepts being employed, rather than the words being used, the resolution of this problem is simple.� (Stuart Burns)

rakis
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Posted 04/26/08 - 06:23 AM:	#99
Encodingism is built exactly on an assumption of basic representational atoms — correspondence atoms — out of which other representations are to be constructed. But encodingism cannot account for the origin of those atoms. Encodingism presupposes such atoms rather than explaining them that is its basic circularity. That is why you are trapped in a first and second person’s perspective. Such a start cannot overcome solipsism or engage the so-called inputs and outputs of a learning system(including humans) In the inreractivist model I propose, such a dichotomy is been transcended, because it sees representations as results of an open functional system which uses representations in a meaning of usefulness and does not uses them as an inherent teleological design. So I can explain the content of a representation, because I’m able to see if it functions appropriately for that system. Representational content is no longer a property of the encoding element itself, is not a Kantian noumenal, but rather it becomes a knowable content as a property of the functional usage of the encoding by the system.

reincarnated
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Posted 04/26/08 - 07:24 AM:	#100
rakis wrote: Encodingism is built exactly ...... Each person’s conscious experience is unique. There is no way that agent A can know exactly what agent B’s conscious experience is like, because “being agent B” is part and parcel of the conscious experience of agent B. There is no way that agent A can “be” agent B, there is no way that agent A can get inside agent B’s head without thereby changing agent B, hence it is impossible in principle to get an accurate perspective on someone else’s consciousness which is identical with their own subjective perspective. Another way of saying this is that it is impossible to get an accurate 3^rd person perspective understanding of a 1^st person subjective state. Thus ontologically everything is reducible, but epistemologically some things are irreducible. This gives rise to a form of epistemic dualism, but a dualism which is emergent and supervenient on the physical, hence we preserve ontological monism.
_____________________ �If one pays attention to the concepts being employed, rather than the words being used, the resolution of this problem is simple.� (Stuart Burns)

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