Philosophy 101

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« Reply #15 on: April 24, 2013, 06:36:49 pm »
Quote from: TWNF
Quote from: sologdin
It's neuro-chemical activity all the way down.

certainly the mental arithmetic.  but the causality of the ideology: neuro-chemical?

Ideology like any pattern in the brain is the product of the continuous evolution of brain patterning. No one is born with an ideology. It evolves bit by bit as experiences are integrated into existing neural associations. An ideology is an assembled brain pattern of associations. The continuing cause of the formation of an ideology is the interaction of present experiences with stored neural associative patterns.

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« Reply #16 on: April 24, 2013, 06:36:58 pm »
Quote from: sologdin
no doubt.  the question for me is distinguishing the functionality of the machine from the causality of its contents.  only the immaterialist will deny the neurochemical functionality, insisting on a soul or some other magickes as the mechanism.  what i'm wondering: is it so simple as the neurochemical functionality supplies the incoming triggers as well as the outgoing abstractions?  if so, are these sources of supply subject to the necessity of neurochemical science?  to identify the chemical is to exhaust the inquiry?

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« Reply #17 on: April 24, 2013, 06:37:04 pm »
Quote from: Jorge
TWNF:
You did not understand neural chauvism, probably because I didn't explain it well.

A neural chauvinist believes that ONLY neurons and organic chemical reactions of the kind we have in our brains are capable of producing mental experiences. This contrasts with the view that, if properly programmed, a computer of some kind could have mental phenomenology. This is important, because computers can be made out of anything... not just vacuum tubes or semi-conducting microchips, but paper, DNA, or even people (see Schwitzgebel's "Is the United States Conscious?")

I assure you, most neuroscientists I have spoke to are not neural chauvinists. Indeed, several preeminent neuroscientists advocate emulating parts of the brain in silico to better understand how information is processed.

Quote from: TWNF
When you do this you are trying to understand how a mental state arises from within a mental state. It can't be done. It's just spinning intellectual wheels.

And yet, we "experience" things, and this forces our mind to the question. How do operations performed at the cellular level lead to phenomenology? If it cannot be understood, within science, then it effectively proves that science is flawed or fundamentally limited in a metaphysical way. And I do not currently see a way that science can account for private first-person perspectives.

Scott's Blind Brain Theory is similar to your statement, it explains in one fell swoop WHY we can't get to the answer and WHY we can't help but constantly ask it. It's due to the way we're wired. And yet, as Scott has pointed out, there's a huge problem. If you accept BBT, then you accept, on some fundamental level, that your phenomenology doesn't exist at least as far as science is concerned.

Understand that I am not advocating a position either way (I generally consider myself a materialist: I don't buy into supernatural nonsense). I don't know the answers to these questions any more than anyone else does. But I hate it when people try to dismiss the Hard Problem as though it wasn't there.

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« Reply #18 on: April 24, 2013, 06:37:10 pm »
Quote from: Jorge
Click for a classic paper on qualia: Epiphenomenal Qualia

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« Reply #19 on: April 24, 2013, 06:37:16 pm »
Quote from: TWNF
Quote from: Jorge
TWNF:
You did not understand neural chauvism, probably because I didn't explain it well.

A neural chauvinist believes that ONLY neurons and organic chemical reactions of the kind we have in our brains are capable of producing mental experiences. This contrasts with the view that, if properly programmed, a computer of some kind could have mental phenomenology. This is important, because computers can be made out of anything... not just vacuum tubes or semi-conducting microchips, but paper, DNA, or even people (see Schwitzgebel's "Is the United States Conscious?")

I assure you, most neuroscientists I have spoke to are not neural chauvinists. Indeed, several preeminent neuroscientists advocate emulating parts of the brain in silico to better understand how information is processed.
Thanks Jorge, I see what you mean now and I would agree that most neuroscientist would not subscribe to the neural chauvinist doctrine.

Quote from: TWNF
When you do this you are trying to understand how a mental state arises from within a mental state. It can't be done. It's just spinning intellectual wheels.

Quote from: Jorge
And yet, we "experience" things, and this forces our mind to the question. How do operations performed at the cellular level lead to phenomenology? If it cannot be understood, within science, then it effectively proves that science is flawed or fundamentally limited in a metaphysical way. And I do not currently see a way that science can account for private first-person perspectives.
It is exactly the source of our experience that needs to be addressed. However, in my mind, discussions of phenomenology only serve to obscure the issue. Science is no doubt flawed and limited but it is continually pushing its limits. Just because science cannot provide a complete detailed picture of how mental phenomena arise does not mean it never will. My opinion is that there has to be a material explanation for what we experience and that science will eventually reveal that all experience is neuro-chemically based.

Quote from: Jorge
Scott's Blind Brain Theory is similar to your statement, it explains in one fell swoop WHY we can't get to the answer and WHY we can't help but constantly ask it. It's due to the way we're wired. And yet, as Scott has pointed out, there's a huge problem. If you accept BBT, then you accept, on some fundamental level, that your phenomenology doesn't exist at least as far as science is concerned.
I'm not sure that Scott would go that far. BBT says that we can't directly know from the inside what is going on in our brains. We have no access to the brain's processes. I do not see that this makes phenomenology non-existent. I just makes the source mechanisms of mental phenomena invisible. Introspection cannot penetrate the blind box.

Quote from: Jorge
Understand that I am not advocating a position either way (I generally consider myself a materialist: I don't buy into supernatural nonsense). I don't know the answers to these questions any more than anyone else does. But I hate it when people try to dismiss the Hard Problem as though it wasn't there.
I'm afraid you will hate me then. I think the hard problem is only there because people are loath to admit the increasingly likely possibility that all we experience (including mental phenomena) is generated mechanistically. The belief that the sources of  mental phenomena are somehow exempt from the laws of physics and chemistry is perhaps the last bastion of dualism.

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« Reply #20 on: April 24, 2013, 06:37:22 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote from: sologdin
the recognitions might reasonably be triggers for certain neurochemicals.  considering that i am capable of reacting to those recognitions in different ways at different times, and considering that wife also reacts differently at different times--inconsistent between her reactions viewed diachronically, and inconsistent with my own contemporaneous reactions at times--it might well be that the triggers are context sensitive, vary across human persons, but do not necessarily partake of either randomness or individuated determination:

I think it's funny how modern medicine still works within the idea of organs - they hardly try and work at the level of individual cells - yet when people try to figure conciousness, they try and break it down to the most tiny component bits. Rather than seeing organs, intermingled.

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« Reply #21 on: April 24, 2013, 06:37:33 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote from: Jorge
This is important, because computers can be made out of anything... not just vacuum tubes or semi-conducting microchips, but paper, DNA,

, dominoes...

Sometimes I think of a carbon based life form in symbiosis with a logic based life form. Or even a carbon based life form parasitic on a logic based life form.

But then I also wonder if logic actually exists.

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« Reply #22 on: April 24, 2013, 06:37:37 pm »
Quote from: Jorge
Quote
I think the hard problem is only there because people are loath to admit the increasingly likely possibility that all we experience (including mental phenomena) is generated mechanistically. The belief that the sources of mental phenomena are somehow exempt from the laws of physics and chemistry is perhaps the last bastion of dualism.

And again, this shows to me that we're talking past each other.

I'm a strong believer that my thoughts and feelings are determined by physical forces. If you use an electrode in the right way in my brain, you can make me believe I'm a pink elephant, you can make me swear that water tastes like wine, and you can make me murder my loved ones while cackling gleefully. All you would need is a sufficiently comprehensive understanding of the wiring inside my head and you could hack me, completely, and I would be your willing puppet. (ie Cants of Compulsion from PoN, or Neal's Marionette from Neuropath)

I am not a dualist insofar as it pertains to the CAUSES of mental phenomena.

What IS the problem is why 'mental phenomena' exist at all. Why are we not just a bunch of 'philosophical zombies', INSISTING that we have conscious experience, but with no actual 1st person frame?

Phrased differently: why does pain include the qualia of 'hurt'?

You could imagine a universe, just like this one, where people do the exact same things we do, and talk and type about the exact same things, but have absolutely no phenomenology. Behind the eyes, there is nothing but darkness. If these people hurt each other, there would be no pain. If you showed them a rose, they'd exclaim "what a wondrous shade of red!" but would not actually experience the associated qualia.

Science has absolutely NOTHING to say on this issue. Qualia exist because for some reason, that isn't immediately comprehensible under a scientific purview, information integrated and processed in a certain way results in phenomenological experience.

BBT is actually saying: you ARE a philosophical zombie silly! You just trick yourself into believing you're not. That's why, if you look with science, the intentional agent, and the first-person frame... just vanishes.

(While I think BBT makes some very interesting predictions, and accounts marvelously for the way conscious experience always seem sufficient and encompassing, I do not think it even comes close to solving the Hard Problem.)

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« Reply #23 on: April 24, 2013, 06:37:47 pm »
Quote from: dietl
Quote from: Jorge
(While I think BBT makes some very interesting predictions, and accounts marvelously for the way conscious experience always seem sufficient and encompassing, I do not think it even comes close to solving the Hard Problem.)

If BBT says that there is no Hard Problem at all, doesn't that mean that it is solved if BBT is true?

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« Reply #24 on: April 24, 2013, 06:37:53 pm »
Quote from: TWNF
Quote from: Jorge
What IS the problem is why 'mental phenomena' exist at all. Why are we not just a bunch of 'philosophical zombies', INSISTING that we have conscious experience, but with no actual 1st person frame?

Phrased differently: why does pain include the qualia of 'hurt'?
Isn't 'hurt' just a description, a verbal representation of the sensation of pain? The word is associated with the sensation so it makes sense that even just the word can invoke to some degree physically felt sensations of pain. The brain triggers chemical responses to both sensations and images or words associated painful sensations. We feel what we feel because everything is laden with associations (both positive and negative). What you refer to as mental phenomena are thoughts and their associated physical sensations, subtle though they may be. A subjective experience of a rose is created by sensory data (visual information, olfactory information, tactile information, etc.) triggering in the brain associations with past encounters with similar data. And this stored data is not in any way neutral. It carries with it information about the positive and negative aspects of the previous encounters. Your experience of a rose is the felt physical responses and associated thoughts precipitated by neuro-computations/associations that the rose's appearance, smell, feel, etc. trigger in your brain.

Quote from: Jorge
Qualia exist because for some reason, that isn't immediately comprehensible under a scientific purview, information integrated and processed in a certain way results in phenomenological experience.
Exactly! The only question is what that 'certain way' is. Give science time and we will one day know how it occurs. Call it experience or phenomenology its not beyond the purview of scientific enquiry simply because there is nothing non-physical going on. Experience exists because the brain produces it.

Quote from: Jorge
BBT is actually saying: you ARE a philosophical zombie silly! You just trick yourself into believing you're not. That's why, if you look with science, the intentional agent, and the first-person frame... just vanishes.
True. What actually vanishes is the belief in the independent agency of an autonomous self. What does this say about a belief in  'qualia'?

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« Reply #25 on: April 24, 2013, 06:37:59 pm »
Quote from: dietl
Quote from: Jorge

What IS the problem is why 'mental phenomena' exist at all. Why are we not just a bunch of 'philosophical zombies', INSISTING that we have conscious experience, but with no actual 1st person frame?

You could imagine a universe, just like this one, where people do the exact same things we do, and talk and type about the exact same things, but have absolutely no phenomenology. Behind the eyes, there is nothing but darkness. If these people hurt each other, there would be no pain. If you showed them a rose, they'd exclaim "what a wondrous shade of red!" but would not actually experience the associated qualia.

I can't imagine that. I think you are naturallx driven to a kind of dualism here. On the one hand there is your brain ect. and on the other hand the person/consciousness that experiences all the qualia. In the universe you mention, the person has no input.
But why assume that these two things are not the same. Think about showing them the rose? Who/what are you showing it to?

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« Reply #26 on: April 24, 2013, 06:38:05 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote
You could imagine a universe, just like this one, where people do the exact same things we do, and talk and type about the exact same things, but have absolutely no phenomenology. Behind the eyes, there is nothing but darkness. If these people hurt each other, there would be no pain. If you showed them a rose, they'd exclaim "what a wondrous shade of red!" but would not actually experience the associated qualia.

I'm not sure I'm addressing the idea this is trying to get at, but I can't imagine this. When I was young I was trying to figure how you'd make an AI. I figured, you'd need positive input (or atleast, I determined to copy what existed, which is eaier to do).

And it struck me, how do you make 'positive input'?

And after a brief inside out kind of feeling, I realised it'd just be a signal on a wire. From the 'inside' it'd feel positive, in as much as it actuated a series of pursuits.

But as aweful as that might sound, I just can't imagine some universe where behind the eyes there is nothing but darkness. No, there would be signals on the wire. Even if you want to call them waves, like at the shore, rather signals so as to be non intentional, there are waves behind the eyes. There is a storm.

I think it's something about the BBT (ps, whatever happened to BBH? or BBQ?) I just can't get what's being tried to get at, since it seems to need to refer to something as just darkness/blankness...actually more than that, it seems to be pitched in a 'well, if it's not X, it's fuckin' nuffin/darkness!' way. Almost like some kind of wilful angry rejection. I don't know if I'm not getting it, or if it's something kind of rejection.

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« Reply #27 on: April 24, 2013, 06:38:10 pm »
Quote from: Jorge
Quote from: dietl
If BBT says that there is no Hard Problem at all, doesn't that mean that it is solved if BBT is true?

Damn it. It appears I contradicted myself here:

Quote from: Jorge
BBT is actually saying: you ARE a philosophical zombie silly! You just trick yourself into believing you're not. That's why, if you look with science, the intentional agent, and the first-person frame... just vanishes.

(While I think BBT makes some very interesting predictions, and accounts marvelously for the way conscious experience always seem sufficient and encompassing, I do not think it even comes close to solving the Hard Problem.)

If BBT is true, then what is explained is why consciousness seems all encompassing. It certainly paves the way for a materialistic elimination of intentionality (the true causes of our actions are occluded from conscious experience), but leaves phenomenology intact. It explains why our phenomenology takes on some of the characteristics it has, but leaves open the question of why we have phenomenology in the first place. Why do information horizons cause experiences and 1st person frames to 'exist'?

So, I guess I would have to disagree with Bakker that using BBT makes the 'coin trick' of consciousness vanish. At least if I'm taking the position that it does not solve the hard problem by 'explaining it away'.

I will need to think more about this.

Quote from: TWNF
Exactly! The only question is what that 'certain way' is. Give science time and we will one day know how it occurs. Call it experience or phenomenology its not beyond the purview of scientific enquiry simply because there is nothing non-physical going on. Experience exists because the brain produces it.

I do not disagree with the bolded sentence.

I am trying to understand a deeper problem: why.

Also, ontologically, as much we don't want to be dualistic, it seems like 'experience' falls under a different category than brain matter.

I will admit there may no answer to this question anymore than there is an answer to the question "why does anything exist at all?"

Quote from: Callan
I'm not sure I'm addressing the idea this is trying to get at, but I can't imagine this.

Yeah, the zombie argument has always suffered from the conceivability problem. It's like a square-circle: you can't picture it. Well, maybe I'm tricking myself somehow, but I have absolutely no problem conceiving of 'zombie earth'.

Consciousness seems utterly redundant to me. You could have people that do the exact things we do (even argue about consciousness!) without consciousness itself. Although how it is possible for beings to talk about something without a physical referent is a glaring problem with my position. I generally don't like using this line of argumentation, but I find it helps get across what I'm talking about, more or less.

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« Reply #28 on: April 24, 2013, 06:38:18 pm »
Quote from: dietl
Quote from: Jorge
Consciousness seems utterly redundant to me. You could have people that do the exact things we do (even argue about consciousness!) without consciousness itself. Although how it is possible for beings to talk about something without a physical referent is a glaring problem with my position. I generally don't like using this line of argumentation, but I find it helps get across what I'm talking about, more or less.

That means to me, that they must also believe that they have consciousness. So how can you know that you are not on zombie earth?

Hm, I just don't think that a being without consciousness is able to reflect, think, argue ect. When I try to imagine zombie earth, the beings there don't act like we do but more like insects.

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« Reply #29 on: April 24, 2013, 06:38:23 pm »
Quote from: TWNF
Quote from: Jorge
I am trying to understand a deeper problem: why.
Why does the brain generate experience? Because there is survival value in it for the species. This is the answer to all "why" questions when it comes to biology. The more interesting question is "how". How does brain activity produce the sense of subjectivity? Experiencing is something that the brain is doing but what exactly is going on in the brain as it does this?

Quote from: Jorge
Also, ontologically, as much we don't want to be dualistic, it seems like 'experience' falls under a different category than brain matter.
The phrase "it seems like" should be a red flag. If neuroscience is teaching us anything it's that things are rarely what they seem to us.