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How is consciousness even possible?
materialism implies it cannot exist

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How is consciousness even possible?

reincarnated
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Posted 05/12/08 - 04:34 PM:	#176
Why do our brains give rise to phenomenal consciousness? Why aren’t we all philosophical zombies? (A philosophical zombie (p-zombie) is a being that is physically (and hence also functionally) just like a human being, but which has no conscious experiences, possesses no phenomenal consciousness (p-consciousness). In the words of Chalmers, there is “nothing it is like” to be a p-zombie.) The problem is this: If p-zombies are a physical possibility, then why are humans conscious? What benefit accrues to humans from the possession of p-consciousness? Another way of asking this is: Why did evolution bother to give humans p-consciousness if p-zombies are physically possible? If p-zombies are physically possible then p-consciousness is optional. What competitive advantage is endowed by the option of p-consciousness that would have resulted in us acquiring it?
�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 05/13/08 - 08:26 AM:	#177
reincarnated wrote: Why do our brains give rise to phenomenal consciousness? Why aren’t we all philosophical zombies? (A philosophical zombie (p-zombie) is a being that is physically (and hence also functionally) just like a human being, but which has no conscious experiences, possesses no phenomenal consciousness (p-consciousness). In the words of Chalmers, there is “nothing it is like” to be a p-zombie.) The problem is this: If p-zombies are a physical possibility, then why are humans conscious? What benefit accrues to humans from the possession of p-consciousness? Another way of asking this is: Why did evolution bother to give humans p-consciousness if p-zombies are physically possible? If p-zombies are physically possible then p-consciousness is optional. What competitive advantage is endowed by the option of p-consciousness that would have resulted in us acquiring it? My position is that mind and brain are identical, so p-zombies would be impossible. If there is brain, there is mind because mind (the subjective aspect of experience) is there whenever the requisite biological hardware is there. The only way to have my phenomena as an object of knowledge is to BE me. But if I believe that my phenomena are simply the intrinsic qualities of my neurophysiology, I have no reason to believe that another individual member of my biological species would NOT have phenomenal properties, too. Even though it is possible that the qualia are somehow inverted, such that the same frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum produces a brain state that is like green for me but red for you... that there be SOME qualia is necessary, as long as the biology is there. Also, Chalmer's argument is taken to prove that just because we can imagine p-zombies, implies that they exist and, by implication, that their non-existence is impossible (ie, that they are necessary), IF they are imaginable at all. His argument works well as an objection to epiphenomenalism, but not to my proposal. As he says, it's as if God had to come back and tack phenomenal properties onto the hardware of his handiwork. And why would he do that? It points to the absurdity of trying to specify laws of nature that show how biology "causes" consciousness, without creating some kind of mental substance...which epiphenomenalisn denies. But by arguing that phenomenal properties are the intrinsic nature of the hardware, which science completely describes as its extrinsic nature, we can point to qualia as a real part of the world, without committing to an ontological conundrum. There is no survival value to consciousness; and if we didn't have it, we would never suspect it was there. Survival comes from perception and reflection and the ability to guide adaptive behaviors. After all plants evolve so as to survive by adaptations, too. It's not the consciousness that makes us more able to generate this incredible weath of adaptive behaviors known as human culture... it's the LINGUISTIC abilities of our brains, not the conscious aspect of it. We might think (upon reflection) it's the phenomenal property of feeling fear that motivates a flight or fight response. But its actually the detection of threat and the instinct to respond that we EXPERIENCE AS fear and adaptive behavior. "The fear" is just what it is like to be the animal so threatened and responding. Again, this is a THEORY of consciousness, which I offer as a better explanation than any I've ever seen of what consciousness is and how best to think about it. Do you have a better way? IT doesn't really matter "why", in the sense of some purpose, evolution selected consciousness or made it so we are not p-zombies. Like I said, if we were not conscious, we wouldn't have a philosophical problem of mind. we would just BE p-zombies and to be us would not be like anything at all...as it is for, say, a rock. But we would STILL have an intrinsic nature... as the rock does. The extrinsic nature of any material object is how it interacted with other material objects. But in order to have these external relations, it must be something in-itself that HAS just these relations. So, it's the intrinsic nature of a thing that defines WHAT it's extrinsic nature can or will be. It's a carbon atom or a water molecule and, therefore, it will interact in the familiar, predictable ways BECAUSE OF WHAT IT IS INTRINSICALLY. All I'm saying is that, in animals capable of perception and locomotion, consciousness is their intrinsic nature. Exactly WHAT that is like will vary, depending on the particular hardware that evolved. A dog's auditory qualia would likely have a different character than ours. What it's like to be an echo-locating bat versus what it's like to be a seeing human would mark the difference between bat qualia and human qualia. So, I think the p-zombie objection refutes epiphenomenalism but not the theory I propose. I thank you for raising the question, though ... it's a good one. Edited by Simple Occam on 05/13/08 - 09:34 AM

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Posted 05/13/08 - 11:55 AM:	#178
If I am in a room watching an MIR of my current brain state while my hand is on a hot stove,I am experiencing (or know of): 1. Space (of the room) 2. Time (duration of my experience) 3. Matter (MIR reading of my brain state, objects in the room etc) 4. Consciousness (the awareness of what it is to be me in a state of pain) As I am peering at the MIR (or my brain on the operating table (mirrors!)), at that moment it would certainly not seem to me that it was in any way identical to my immediate sensation of PAIN! In fact it would be difficult to imagine two things that would be less similiar. It seems to me that each of the four phenomena is distinct, ontologically different and irreducible. Each may be dependent on all of the others to exist and in some sense all may have emerged during and after the Big Bang. Therefore the simple (or simple minded) answer to the original question is, Consciousness is as real and fundamental as Space, Time and Matter, and equally as mysterious. How or is it even possible to integrate Consciousness (the hard problem) into the Scientific program is yet to be determined. Unsurprisingly, the means/ends discriminations that allowed us to have fun in the forest (reproduction), don't seem to have much utility when thinking about Consciousness (the Hard Problem). This is unsettling since we are unable to give a coherent account about the very core of being, self and identity. But even the materialism/physicalism program at it's most irreducible bottom (if there is a bottom) is giving us inexplicable results such as - collapse of the wave function, quantum entanglement, particle indeterminacy and the significance of the observer.

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Posted 05/13/08 - 02:13 PM:	#179
Simple Occam wrote: My position is that mind and brain are identical, so p-zombies would be impossible. If there is brain, there is mind because mind (the subjective aspect of experience) is there whenever the requisite biological hardware is there. That can't be right can it Occam? I mean, sometimes when I am asleep my mind doesn't seem to be there, but the hardware is still in place. I find it interesting to think about the "lower" animals in this context. Which animals might we say have a mind, which have what we would call a brain? Which have experiences of a subjective nature? An insect has a brain (I had to look that up). When we are asleep we can still respond to painful stimuli. Are we having a subjective experience? If we begin to wake and are aware only of the sensation of pain, that does seem like a sort of minimal subjective experience to me. But you could draw the line somewhere higher if you wanted, the point would be the same. The brain and the mind are not the same thing.
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Posted 05/13/08 - 02:52 PM:	#180
Escapist, Dreams are phenomenal appearances that occur during sleep. I don't see this an an objection at all to what I said. If the neuorphysiology and the phenomenal appearances are simply 2 aspects of the same thing, ie it's extrinsic and intrinsic properties, then if an animal has any sort of perceptual abilities, it has some form of consciousness. I'm not talking about being "conscious" vs. being asleep or in a coma here.

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Posted 05/13/08 - 03:23 PM:	#181
player wrote: As I am peering at the MIR (or my brain on the operating table (mirrors!)), at that moment it would certainly not seem to me that it was in any way identical to my immediate sensation of PAIN! In fact it would be difficult to imagine two things that would be less similiar. That may only be because we don't (yet) have the understanding to "look" at the brain in the right way. Suppose the way the brain works is this: it passes through a succession of states and it has a mechanism for categorising and memorising successions of states. It might be very difficult for us to discover how this works, but it doesn't seem to me to be self-evidently impossible. I think what we are lacking is an understanding of what creates the sensation of the unity of an organism through time. I think that's the difference between ourselves and machines. They do keep track of time, but (presumably) not in the requisite way to achieve consciousness. My own theory is that there is a mechanism, something quite mathematical and "automatic", that evolved in the nervous system of some earlier animal. I imagine some kind of recursive, looping operation, which somehow connects the succession of brain states in a time sequence, and stores elements of the sequence. And that is the start of consciousness. As I say, that's my own vague and fragmentary theory, but I don't think it is outrageous or wildly implausible as a suggestion.
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Posted 05/13/08 - 07:08 PM:	#182
Simple Occam wrote: My position is that mind and brain are identical, so p-zombies would be impossible. I agree with you - but only if by "p-zombie" we mean an unconscious agent which has properties (including behavioural properties) that are in principle indistinguishable in all respects from the properties of a conscious human. In particular, such a zombie would necessarily claim that it experiences phenomenal consciousness (just like its human counterpart), when in fact it does not. However, if we allow that a waek-zombie (a weaker version of the p-zombie) is not so constrained, such that the behaviour, language, character, personality etc of the weak-zombie still renders it in most respects indistinguishable from a conscious human, but unlike its human counterpart such a weak-zombie would not necessarily claim that it experienced phenomenal consciousness. In this case it is not at all clear to me that a weak zombie is a physical impossibility. For more on this, see http://www.moving-finger.com/papers/wwac.pdf Simple Occam wrote: There is no survival value to consciousness; and if we didn't have it, we would never suspect it was there. I believe this premise is false - imho we evolved consciousness precisely because it provides us with a competitive advantage - the reasons why are explained in http://www.moving-finger.com/papers/wwac.pdf Simple Occam wrote: Survival comes from perception and reflection and the ability to guide adaptive behaviors. After all plants evolve so as to survive by adaptations, too. It's not the consciousness that makes us more able to generate this incredible weath of adaptive behaviors known as human culture... it's the LINGUISTIC abilities of our brains, not the conscious aspect of it. Again, I believe this is incorrect. Linguistic abilities are an important factor underlying the emergence of our intelligence, but they are not the whole story. Analytically, any machine equipped with some form of colour-sensitive receptor could “see red”, no phenomenal content, no consciousness, is needed. And from an analytical viewpoint, when a machine registers that it “sees red” all it is doing is producing an output based on simple numerical inputs and comparing these against a pre-determined “colour scale”. There is no higher-order processing, no phenomenal experience, no consciousness, going on. But for humans, there is no pre-determined “colour scale” in our heads that we can use. We must assess all of what we see by brute comparison of our visual field at any one moment with the memories of previous visual experiences. In practice, we must make a massive store of visual memories, which serve as our databank for assessing new visual experiences. There is no micro-analytical reductive processing going on – all the more complex processing within the human brain is necessarily of a higher order. Thus, for us humans we cannot say “oh, that is red because it registers a reading of between 1.7 and 1.85 on my visual receptor” (which is what a machine would presumably do). Instead, we must say “oh that is red because it looks like the stored memories of other types of red images that I already have in my brain”. And here immediately we see the emergence of the phenomenal “it looks like” account. We register what something looks like, what it feels like, what it tastes like, because THAT is exactly how we humans identify, categorise and assess new objects in the world about us. Most of the time we do not indulge in a reductive micro-analysis of these objects – we do not have the time and the wherewithal to do so. Instead we must make short-cuts, quick judgements based not on (what for humans would be) painstakingly slow reductive micro-analysis, but instead on the qualities of a much broader and coarser phenomenal perception. Possessing phenomenal consciousness provides us with one route to making higher order models of reality, and enables us to use these models to form higher-order concepts and ideas. It is not that it would be physically impossible to make such models without phenomenal consciousness, but rather that phenomenal consciousness provides the only accessible route for blind evolution to create such models. It’s a bit like the difference between a chess-playing computer, designed by humans, and a chess-playing human. The chess-playing computer contains no higher-order concepts and ideas, it hasn’t developed its chess-playing abilities in a bootstrap fashion based on those ideas. Instead its ability to play chess is “hardwired” through the intelligent design of its hardware and software. Humans cannot learn how to play chess via such hardwired intelligent design, instead they must acquire their intelligent abilities in a bootstrap fashion, based initially on the internal development of basic models and concepts, and subsequent higher-order models and concepts, of the world around them. Although it is possible in principle to create an intelligent but non-conscious chess-playing agent by design, it is my thesis is that such an agent cannot evolve (ie create itself) in the “bootstrap fashion” required by blind evolution, and that the useful tool of phenomenal consciousness provides the only bootstrap-accessible “short-cut” to achieving such emergent intelligence which is available to blind evolution. Simple Occam wrote: IT doesn't really matter "why", in the sense of some purpose, evolution selected consciousness or made it so we are not p-zombies. The explanation "why" is fundamental to understanding "how". Simple Occam wrote: if we were not conscious, we wouldn't have a philosophical problem of mind. And my thesis is that the probability of creating, via blind evolution, a non-conscious animal with the intelligence of a human being is vanishingly small. The only accessible route for blind evolution to create a highly intelligent species is via the mechanism of consciousness - and that explains why we are conscious, and not zombies.
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Posted 05/14/08 - 04:26 AM:	#183
Simple Occam wrote: Escapist, Dreams are phenomenal appearances that occur during sleep. I don't see this an an objection at all to what I said. If the neuorphysiology and the phenomenal appearances are simply 2 aspects of the same thing, ie it's extrinsic and intrinsic properties, then if an animal has any sort of perceptual abilities, it has some form of consciousness. I'm not talking about being "conscious" vs. being asleep or in a coma here. Yes, dreams may be phenomenal appearances that occur during sleep, but that is just muddying the water. There are also periods of sleep where there are no phenomenal appearances. During those periods there's a brain, but no mind, so this still seems to me to be a valid objection to your position that brain and mind are identical. Can you explain why not?
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Posted 05/14/08 - 07:01 AM:	#184
Sometimes the brain is processing sensory data. Sometimes it's not. I'm saying that whenever it is functioning in that way, there are phenomenal qualities because these are nothing more or less than what it is like to be the animal with the brain that is processing sensory data. You seem to think I'm committed to the claim that the brain is always processing sensory data. If any part of the neurophysiology is damaged, the optic nerve for instance, there is no intrinsic property because there is no extrinsic property such that it's like something to be it. Blind people don't have visual qualia. Sighted people do. I really don't see this as a meaningful objection if I can specify that its not just "having a brain", it's having one in the appropriate state in terms of its extrinsic nature that is identical with consciousness.

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Posted 05/14/08 - 07:57 AM:	#185
reincarnated wrote: And my thesis is that the probability of creating, via blind evolution, a non-conscious animal with the intelligence of a human being is vanishingly small. The only accessible route for blind evolution to create a highly intelligent species is via the mechanism of consciousness - and that explains why we are conscious, and not zombies. OK, now I see where you're coming from on this. Do you think "blind evolution" can create a reptilian brain or that of a cow or a bird? In my view, they are conscious too. Indeed our higher intelligence has nothing at all to do with consciousness. In the view I'm suggesting to you, consciousness is simply what it is like to be a sentient brain processing sensory data. You seem quite willing to give up naturalism and accept an intelligent creator as an explanation of consciousness and intelligence in the world. My position went in a different direction than yours back with the pre-Socratics. Western philosophy begins there with the project of trying to give a naturalistic explanation of everything we experience by the existence of a first principle or 'arche', as opposed to the anthropomorphic gods of Greek mythology or those of other cultures known at the time. An intelligent designer, anthropic principle or emergent cause is no different than Zeus, philosophically. It means giving up naturalistic explanation as a complete account of everythng that exists. If you contend that your God or whatever is needed to explain consciousness then you've stopped doing philosophy and started to witness your faith in something that cannot be demonstrated through rational argumentation. However, I do agree with you to the extent that the Darwinian mechanism, which is the basis of evolutionary theory as it is presently understood, is inadequate to explain the natural selection of functional traits. Unlike you, however, I continue to seek an empirical explanation, rather than running to the God of the Gaps to "solve" it. I understand why you do it but, personally, I find your explanation very unsatisfying. You are either a naturalist or you are not, in my view. Dualism simply does not work philosophically, and that's what you get if you want to claim that nature is only part of the story. The true story for me involves going beyond natural science but not beyond nature to explain everything in our experience, including God and morality, as well as consciousness.

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Posted 05/14/08 - 03:34 PM:	#186
Simple Occam wrote: Sometimes the brain is processing sensory data. Sometimes it's not. I'm saying that whenever it is functioning in that way, there are phenomenal qualities because these are nothing more or less than what it is like to be the animal with the brain that is processing sensory data. You seem to think I'm committed to the claim that the brain is always processing sensory data. If any part of the neurophysiology is damaged, the optic nerve for instance, there is no intrinsic property because there is no extrinsic property such that it's like something to be it. Blind people don't have visual qualia. Sighted people do. I really don't see this as a meaningful objection if I can specify that its not just "having a brain", it's having one in the appropriate state in terms of its extrinsic nature that is identical with consciousness. But we react to painful (and other) stimuli when we are asleep, that is, when we are unconscious. The brain is processing sensory data, but there is no mind. Some insects emerge from a pupal stage and immediately perform incredibly complex actions using all their senses. They can't previously have experienced the relevant phenomenal qualities. But they somehow come equipped to respond appropriately. That equipment is already part of the structure of their brain. It seems very likely to me that for some "lower" animals, all their actions are like our actions when we receive a painful stimulus when we are asleep, they are not conscious, there is nothing that it is like to be that animal, but the brain is still processing sensory data.
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Posted 05/15/08 - 04:11 PM:	#187
When I think of Consciousness I think of self-aware mental activity. At this moment I am aware of my headache, feeling of curiosity, anticipatory pleasure in this human interaction and the possibility of intellectual discovery, of effort in attempting to choose the right words and concepts to express my thoughts, sensation of the keyboard etc. In other words, Consciousness is existing in the subjective soup of feeling, thinking, and perceiving. All of this is generated by the brain (matter) but not identical to it. Not only is it different but it is categorically different. Certainly in nature we have a zillion examples of machines generating things that are not identical to themselves but at least these things while different are some form of matter, but here the machine is generating experiences and feelings. As I write this I am aware that every word, and most concepts that I use were created by some member of our species between yesterday and 30,000 (?) years ago. When that sound was first chosen and accepted to represent some thing, wasn’t that a conscious process? So aren’t all (or most) representations that depend upon language including our mental representation of our own identity (Self) the product of the historical accumulation of those millions of conscious acts of word creation? Escapist. You say that the problem of viewing the sensation and the corresponding brain state as not identical might go away when we have the understanding to “look” at the brain the right way. Do you have any thoughts on what sort of “look” this might be? Would it go beyond matching the exact brain state to the exact sensation? Your description of how the brain might generate the sensation of unity is interesting and may turn out to be true. Do you think this would tell us what sensation is and how it could play a causal role? I agree that we didn’t evolve phenomenal consciousness for nothing and your suggestion of its purpose as a route to higher order models seem exactly right. It even gave us models to construct other models like language and mathematics. The problem is to grasp how Consciousness can affect matter and Naturalism seems to be as non-efficacious as God as far as filling the Gap.

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Posted 05/16/08 - 10:58 AM:	#188
re: player, escapist and reincarnated, When you "think of consciousness" you are reflecting on your experience. That's not "being conscious"; it's "thinking about concsiousness". It's the thinking about it that is "self-aware mental activity". Consciousness, in the sense of having phenomenal properties or qualia, is not a state of self-awareness. I'm conscious now of how my fingers feel when touching the keys, how I want to go eat lunch, the rainfall outside and whatever else I turn my attention to. I can also be conscious of myself thinking about the nature of consciousness, but, in that case, I'm making my own experience an object of reflection and this is different than just having phenomenal properties in the first place. As is quite natural when you begin with reflection, it's easy to confuse consciousness and reflection. The problem of mind for the naturalist and the materialist is to show how consciousness can be part of the natural world. As I have said elsewhere, the way to do that is to speak of consciousness as a state of being... the intrinsic nature of the brain... rather than a kind of knowing, as you do. Perception is knowing about the world through the representations of the sensory organs and reflection is simply a linguistic representation of perception... a representation of a representation. Consciousness is not ANOTHER representation; it is simply what it is like to be an animal having sensory representations. In this way consciousness is identical to the brain which is the processing and control center for the generation of adaptive behaviors that enable the animal's survival in the world. Consciousness doesn't affect matter in any problematic way. That's because it IS matter (ie, the brain) that affects and is affected by other material substances in the natural world. Adaptive traits and the behaviors associated with them evolved. Awareness of changes in the environment detected by sensory organs and the ability to generate a range of adaptive behaviors is what evolved. The non-zombie-like character of those animals, which you and I know about because we, too, are animals, is just a fact about existence and doesn't add any survival value in itself. Nor does the existence of consciousness in any way point to a "higher order", if by that you mean some kind of teleological cause or anthropic principle; it's just good old natural selection, understood reductionistically. Edited by Simple Occam on 05/16/08 - 11:08 AM

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Posted 05/16/08 - 03:25 PM:	#189
Hi Occam, I haven't been talking about us thinking about consciousness, but about consciousness itself. I'd like to press you about this: Sometimes the brain is processing sensory data. Sometimes it's not. I'm saying that whenever it is functioning in that way, there are phenomenal qualities because these are nothing more or less than what it is like to be the animal with the brain that is processing sensory data. In the phenomenon known as blindsight, a person will report that they can see nothing in a particular area of their visual field. But if they are encouraged to guess what is there, they do far better than would happen by chance. Their brains are processing sensory data, but it doesn't seem that it is like anything for them to be seeing what they are seeing. Doesn't this falsify your claim above?
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Posted 05/17/08 - 07:26 AM:	#190
Simple Occam wrote: When you "think of consciousness" you are reflecting on your experience. That's not "being conscious"; it's "thinking about concsiousness". It's the thinking about it that is "self-aware mental activity". Consciousness, in the sense of having phenomenal properties or qualia, is not a state of self-awareness. I'm conscious now of how my fingers feel when touching the keys, how I want to go eat lunch, the rainfall outside and whatever else I turn my attention to. I can also be conscious of myself thinking about the nature of consciousness, but, in that case, I'm making my own experience an object of reflection and this is different than just having phenomenal properties in the first place. As is quite natural when you begin with reflection, it's easy to confuse consciousness and reflection. Agree with almost all of the above, except that both reflection and self-awareness are states of consciousness, thus if one is self-aware, or if one is reflecting on one's experience, then one is conscious. Simple Occam wrote: the way to do that is to speak of consciousness as a state of being... the intrinsic nature of the brain... . In the thread “Why Are We Conscious” I put forward the suggestion that consciousness is not necessarily “intrinsic” as you suggest, but instead consciousness is entirely optional, and it evolved only because it provides survival value since it is a step on the evolutionary road to intelligence. Simple Occam wrote: Consciousness is not ANOTHER representation; it is simply what it is like to be an animal having sensory representations. In this way consciousness is identical to the brain which is the processing and control center for the generation of adaptive behaviors that enable the animal's survival in the world. The question that this does not answer is the following: WHY does it necessarily feel like anything at all to be an animal with sensory perception? All of the processing that goes on as part of sensory perception, including the processing to cause a physical response to the sensory input, we can imagine taking place without any phenomenal consciousness at all – so why is the consciousness present? Claiming that there is no answer, that consciousness is “just intrinsic” and that is it, is imho evading the question. It would be like someone answering the question “why are some things living and some things not?” with the response “well, its just the intrinsic nature of some things to be alive”. Simple Occam wrote: The non-zombie-like character of those animals, which you and I know about because we, too, are animals, is just a fact about existence and doesn't add any survival value in itself. Whereas I believe consciousness is optional, and the reason it evolved is because it is a step on the evolutionary development of intelligence (see thread “Why Are We Conscious” ) Edited by reincarnated on 05/17/08 - 07:20 PM
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Posted 05/19/08 - 12:17 PM:	#191
reincarnated wrote: Agree with almost all of the above, except that both reflection and self-awareness are states of consciousness, thus if one is self-aware, or if one is reflecting on one's experience, then one is conscious. I understand that 'consciousness' is commonly used in the sense of 'self-awareness' or 'reflection' on one's own psychological states. But the philosophical problem of mind does not arise for these usages. "Reflection" as I mean it, is limited to the functioning of the uniquely human part of our brains: i.e., the part that is responsible for the use of language. In this sense, reflection is a representation, in the linguistic part of the brain, of another representation, the activity in another part of the brain, the part responsible for perception. It's the having of perceptual qualia (sights, sounds, tastes, smells, tactile feelings and emotions), specifically, that I mean by "consciousness". We could (conceivably) be self-aware, in the sense of having memories of our past that we take to be co-existent with our present state of mind (what we are now perceiving or thinking about) and with our continued existence into the future... but still have no apparent phenomenal properties. That is to say, it's logically possible that it not be like anything to be an animal like us. That's why the notion of a p-zombie can be talked about at all. The p-zombie could be self-aware, remembering its past and projecting it's future. It could be intelligent and do math, for example. It would even perceive things and generate adaptive behaviors. It just would not be conscious, in the sense of having qualia. One of the big confusions of this issue comes from not making these distinctions clear. Reflection and consciousness are NOT the same thing. Reflection IS a representation (a linguistic one) and consciousness IS NOT a representation. Perception IS a representation of the way our sensory organs interact with the environment. The way our brains process that information to generate adaptive behaviors is what is useful from an evolutionary perspective. Not the consciousness. That is, as I keep saying, what it is like to be the perceiving animal. That's why other animals have qualia, too. Don't forget, the mammalian part of our brain had our pre-human ancestors perceiving and generating adaptive behaviors. They saw sights, heard sounds, experienced pain and pleasure... and the rest of it. They were conscious. But they were not self-aware in the sense that we are. Because the language part of their brains had not yet evolved, they could not represent their internal psychological states as public cultural objects: artifacts of the operation of the neo-cortex.

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Posted 05/19/08 - 12:50 PM:	#192
theescapist wrote: In the phenomenon known as blindsight, a person will report that they can see nothing in a particular area of their visual field. But if they are encouraged to guess what is there, they do far better than would happen by chance. Their brains are processing sensory data, but it doesn't seem that it is like anything for them to be seeing what they are seeing. Doesn't this falsify your claim above? Interesting you mention blindsight. This condition actually serves to validate rather than falisfy the claim that qualia are identical to appropriate brain states. Not EVERY brain state is identical to qualia, of course, so I didn't mean to imply that ANY brain activity is such that it is like something to be it. Whatever brain activity did account for it would have to do so in a way that also explains the unity of consciousness and not just each individual "quale" of blueness or sweetness. If we locate consciousness in nature as the intrinsic nature of the electromagnetic waves generated by the thalamic projection to the neocortex, it's not surprising that subjects with the 'blindsight' report an absence of visual qualia, since this projection (for whatever physical cause) is what is what is observed to be missing in these subjects. Their unlikely success in "guessing" could be explained by the visual processing still going on in different parts of the brain outside the forebrain, ie, in the reptile portion of the brain that uses visual input to guide behavior and projects waves to a different region of the thalamus. So they actually do process visual data, but not in a way that produces qualia. I encourage you to research this independently of what I say and let me know if there's a problem with the neurophysiology of what I wrote. But assuming there's not a problem, I think I showed how blindsight does not falsify and may actually serve to validate this view of consciousness. Edited by Simple Occam on 05/19/08 - 01:08 PM

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Posted 05/20/08 - 02:28 AM:	#193
Simple Occam wrote: It's the having of perceptual qualia (sights, sounds, tastes, smells, tactile feelings and emotions), specifically, that I mean by "consciousness". Since there are different types and degrees of consciousness, such consciousness as you refer to is often referred to as "phenomenal consciousness" (or p-consciousness) to avoid ambiguities. Simple Occam wrote: One of the big confusions of this issue comes from not making these distinctions clear. I agree completely - which is why I suggest we stick to the term "p-consciousness" when specifically referring to phenomenal conscioiusness. Simple Occam wrote: That's why other animals have qualia, too. This is an assumption. Could you demonstrate that other animals have qualia?
�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 05/20/08 - 07:24 AM:	#194
Do you doubt that your puppy has feelings?? Or that the source of your steak dinner felt no pain? Or what about you and me? Can we "demonstrate" that the other one has phenomenal properties? What would such a demonstration consist of? If you are introducing the empiricist's problem of other minds here as it relates to out-of-species consciousness, then fine. But it's pretty much the same problem. The only difference is that human subjects can use language to give reports describing their psychological states. What we observe are the reports, not the psychological states. But humans also provide non-linguistic representations in body-language and other non-verbal cues that are consistent with similar reactions throughout the animal kingdom. We certainly recognize what an animal in pain looks like and draw the same kind of inference we do with humans to their own psychological states. So, yes, we infer to the existence of other minds. It's an important aspect of our survival mechanism to imagine the psychological states of other people. To get inside their heads and try to understand what they were thinking when they did or said something. The metaphysical argument is that if mind and brain are identical, other animals having similar neurophysiology must have a similar consciousness. What it is like to be somthing varies with what that something actually is. Can I "prove" that, by being both me and someone or something else. Can I BE you? No, obviously I can't. So, if that is the only test that will satisfy you, then, no, I can't demonstrate it. But that unreasonable standard is what seems to be required in your question. Of course, it's an assumption. What else could it be? But what, would you say, is a reasonable standard of proof? I'm suggesting that it's reasonable to assume it if, by assuming it, we can explain the most with the simplest set of assumptions. It's certainly more reasonable to assume they have qualia than that they don't. Indeed, if we explain our own consciousness as the intrinsic nature of the functioning brain, and also recognize that our brains evolved from earlier life forms, then it would be metaphysically inconsistant to hold that other animals are not conscious (in their own ways), too. And, yes, we can't address the problem of mind without doing metaphysics. Assume that when I refer to consciousness, I mean p-consciousness. But I want to emphasize that reflection and self-awareness or self-consciousness are NOT instances of having qualia. The referents that we are picking out when we refer, as philosophers, to qualia, are the objects of immediate awareness that appear in perception. These are distinct from the objects of immediate awareness that appear in in reflection, such as appear when doing mathematics or geometry. There is no qualitative aspect to these objects of immediate awareness, as there is for perception.

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Posted 05/20/08 - 10:08 AM:	#195
Simple Occam wrote: different parts of the brain outside the forebrain, ie, in the reptile portion of the brain that uses visual input to guide behavior and projects waves to a different region of the thalamus. So they actually do process visual data, but not in a way that produces qualia. I encourage you to research this independently of what I say and let me know if there's a problem with the neurophysiology of what I wrote. But assuming there's not a problem, I think I showed how blindsight does not falsify and may actually serve to validate this view of consciousness. But you said "Sometimes the brain is processing sensory data. Sometimes it's not. I'm saying that whenever it is functioning in that way, there are phenomenal qualities because these are nothing more or less than what it is like to be the animal with the brain that is processing sensory data." I think you are simply contradicting yourself.
Putting someone else's smart arsed quote into your signature does not make you any smarter. - D.K

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Posted 05/20/08 - 11:36 AM:	#196
Escapist, I understand why you say that. But you can't think my claim was that any or all brain actvity was identical with having qualia. It's only the part responsible for THAT kind of processing that has the kind of intrinsic nature that appears as phenomenal consciousness to the animal. The language-processing faculty, for instance, does not have a qualititive aspect. So using the word 'green' does not result in having green qualia, whereas, seeing a groomed baseball field does. The word my suggest the image of something green and THAT may generate a memory of opening day at the ballpark and the imagining of green. But that image would be gererated elsewhere in the brain from where the language is processed. In the case of blindsight, the processing of visual data is going on in a more primative brain function than the one in the mammalian brain which processes information related to color, but can give a vague notion of shape or position. I would be contradicting myself only if I said that the SAME part of the brain, functioning in the same way both did AND did not have the intrinsic aspect identical to qualia. I hope this clarifies it for you.

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Posted 05/20/08 - 02:49 PM:	#197
Simple Occam wrote: I hope this clarifies it for you. No, it doesn't really, I think you are just shifting your ground. What is the "vague notion" you claim is present when blindsighted people are shown objects? They deny having any such notion. The language-processing faculty, for instance, does not have a qualititive aspect. So using the word 'green' does not result in having green qualia, whereas, seeing a groomed baseball field does. Thinking and using words does have a qualitative aspect; in your terms there is something it is like to be thinking the word "green". You've said: If an animal has any sort of perceptual abilities, it has some form of consciousness. and It's the having of perceptual qualia (sights, sounds, tastes, smells, tactile feelings and emotions), specifically, that I mean by "consciousness". When we are dreamlessly asleep we can perceive a pin prick in our foot. We do have perceptual abilities. We do not have consciousness, in your terms. We are not having a tactile feeling, there is nothing it is like for us.
Putting someone else's smart arsed quote into your signature does not make you any smarter. - D.K

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Posted 05/20/08 - 06:14 PM:	#198
To those who claim Mind exists (i.e. Mind as a substance) I would ask the following. Specify a procedure that can objectively find a Mind in a body that is not one's own. Bob Kolker

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Posted 05/20/08 - 10:26 PM:	#199
Hmm. I may be a bit rusty. Now this is paranormal, you don't need to take it seriously, it's an old practice that was mentioned to me by a practicing psychic medium years ago. First of all, find someone's name, and spell it out word by word in your mind, visually or otherwise. Say you wanted to understand that fine old skeptic (not) James Randi. You would break his name into number of words, then have a complete comprehension of his name. Them, literally assume their position in first person. You are them, in a class somewhere, and don't assume any details about the class. The teacher says your name, last name first and first name second and you look up at them as that person. Supposedly she used this to litreally put herself in someone's body and understand their perception of life. Is it a subconcious thing? I have always wondered that myself because of the subconcious ability to assume a personality and creatively fill in the gaps. One time I tried to trick her about four years ago. I said, please can you tell me about the acting personality of Joan Meli because I wanted to know more about her. She said it was like she hit a "null", something that didn't exist. She was probably the least fraudulent or most authentic practicing psychic I have ever personally met...

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Posted 05/20/08 - 10:28 PM:	#200
Hmm. I may be a bit rusty. Now this is paranormal, you don't need to take it seriously, it's an old practice that was mentioned to me by a practicing psychic medium years ago. First of all, find someone's name, and spell it out word by word in your mind, visually or otherwise. Say you wanted to understand that fine old skeptic (not) James Randi. You would break his name into number of words, then have a complete comprehension of his name. Them, literally assume their position in first person. You are them, in a class somewhere, and don't assume any details about the class. The teacher says your name, last name first and first name second and you look up at them as that person. Supposedly she used this to litreally put herself in someone's body and understand their perception of life. Is it a subconcious thing? I have always wondered that myself because of the subconcious ability to assume a personality and creatively fill in the gaps. One time I tried to trick her about four years ago. I said, please can you tell me about the acting personality of Joan Meli because I wanted to know more about her. She said it was like she hit a "null", something that didn't exist. She was probably the least fraudulent or most authentic practicing psychic I have ever personally met...

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