Explain consciousness to the layman. - Page 3

AlBell · 17th January 2012, 02:27 PM

Originally Posted by Matt the Poet

...

Metzinger illustrates this with the phenomenon of ‘blindsight’ – where neural damage causes someone to lose the (c) element of ‘vision’ without there being any actual damage to the sensory equipment. The patient is absolutely insistent that they can’t see what’s in front of them even as they successfully identify it (they tend to claim they’re making ‘lucky guesses’). If seeing was a matter of there being fundamental ‘qualia’ of vision this shouldn’t be possible.

As an fyi, blind-sight is also interesting in that at times an apparent sixth-sense appears; emotional images seen only by the blind eye get a larger than expected emotional response (e.g. a smile at a smiling picture), and even larger response, apparently pre-cognitive, if the image is erotic. These effects do not involve consciousness and visual cortex.

This was presented yesterday in a Through The Wormhole segment, but I've found no cites of the studies that were mentioned.

PixyMisa · 17th January 2012, 03:43 PM

Originally Posted by yy2bggggs

Could you tell me what that reason is explicitly?

The definition assumes that consciousness is non-physical.

Quote:

In post #61 you referred to what the term means according to the original definition. But your response is just confusing.

Which definition did you mean to refer to in post #61 when you said this?:

As originally defined, it meant the subjective experience as distinct from any physical process. Since subjective experiences are physical processes, that definition doesn't work terribly well.

...are you referring to Lewis's definition or Jackson's?

Both. Jackson's is shorter and clearer, so the logical fallacy of begging the question is more stark, but both have the problem.

PixyMisa · 17th January 2012, 03:45 PM

Originally Posted by Minoosh

That "because" looks suspect.

Both statements are false and you don't understand quantum mechanics.

PixyMisa · 17th January 2012, 03:54 PM

Originally Posted by !Kaggen

Yeah good points yy2bggggs

It is called "Poisoning the well"

No, I leave that kind of thing to you.

Look at Jackson's definition for a moment:

Originally Posted by Frank Jackson

Frank Jackson (1982) later defined qualia as "...certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical information includes" (p. 273).

A clearer case of begging the question I've never seen.

As defined, qualia would falsify materialist explanations for consciousness.... If they could be shown to exist.

Subjective experiences exist, sure - but you need to actually show that they match that definition for there to be any problem for materialism. That's the step that everyone trips over.

Minoosh · 17th January 2012, 07:09 PM

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

Both statements are false and you don't understand quantum mechanics.

Thank you!

PixyMisa · 17th January 2012, 07:35 PM

MuDPhuD · 18th January 2012, 05:12 AM

Originally Posted by westprog

That subjective experience is entirely dependent on the nervous system is a fact about subjective experience. It's not an explanation of subjective experience.

We know that we understand respiration, say, because we can duplicate all the physical processes involved and produce identical effects. We don't know what physical processes produce subjective experience, beyond the fact that it happens in the human nervous system.

It's an area where unproveable, contradictory but absolutely confident assertions are made. Do we have any way to test the truth of these assertions?

As to the term - well, should we differentiate between subjective experience, and the physical processes which give rise to subjective experience? Since we do know, approximately, and in a personal sense, what subjective experience is, and we don't know, in any precise way, exactly what physical processes produce the subjective experience, it makes sense to differentiate between the two.

If we are to discover, by means of scientific investigation, how subjective experience arises, then we have to start by isolating the phenomenon as much as possible.

Our experience's limitation by and dependence on its neural substrate is an indication of their unity. The correlation is so complete and detailed that I find no other explanation possible.

You are correct that we don't know "precisely" or "exactly" which neural substrates underly the synthesized product of the complex neural systems which are our experience, however, multiple teams of quite competent neuroscientists are addressing the problem. For example:
http://papers.klab.caltech.edu/349/1/Tononi-Koch-08.pdf

The phenomenon of blindsight (cortical blindness) gives us a clue as to where our experience of the visual world occurs. It's somewhere in the visual pathways at or beyond the visual neocortex. That's why the neuroscientists focus on the "higher" neocortical centers in their investigations.

Brain=mind=consciousness....

SusanB-M1 · 18th January 2012, 05:14 AM

Minoosh #31

Philosaur · 18th January 2012, 05:45 AM

Originally Posted by Minoosh

Consciousness is a "hard problem" invented by theorists to drum up generalized support for international conferences on the nature of consciousness.

Consciousness is caused by the collapse of the quantum wave function. Or maybe the collapse of the quantum wave function is caused by consciousness. Maybe both statements are true, because quantum mechanics is strange. Whatever happens it's at the Planck scale, which is so teeny-tiny that current consciousness theorists are probably safe from rigorous disproof of their hypotheses, which are continually being refined at international conferences.

But then, what the bleep do I know?

Roger Penrose, is that you?

Aepervius · 18th January 2012, 05:54 AM

Originally Posted by tsig

How would you suggest we talk about something can't be defined?

We name it an unspeakable chtonien horror ?

The way I see it defined, consciousness is jsut the assembly of multiple parallel process running in the network of neuron and their overal effect. it is nothing magic, jsut horribly complicated parallel processing. Qualia or whatever are not needed to know what consciousness is on a rough level. Now when you want to reproduce it , in say, software or hardware, to simulate it, that is not enough.N the problem is to get more detail when we have only very rough instrument which give us a very myopic view. We can#t really measure all the network, and all the neuron state. We have only instrument which either measure specific neuron, or big clump activities.

westprog · 18th January 2012, 07:50 AM

Originally Posted by MuDPhuD

Our experience's limitation by and dependence on its neural substrate is an indication of their unity. The correlation is so complete and detailed that I find no other explanation possible.

You are correct that we don't know "precisely" or "exactly" which neural substrates underly the synthesized product of the complex neural systems which are our experience, however, multiple teams of quite competent neuroscientists are addressing the problem. For example:
http://papers.klab.caltech.edu/349/1/Tononi-Koch-08.pdf

The phenomenon of blindsight (cortical blindness) gives us a clue as to where our experience of the visual world occurs. It's somewhere in the visual pathways at or beyond the visual neocortex. That's why the neuroscientists focus on the "higher" neocortical centers in their investigations.

Brain=mind=consciousness....

It's not just a matter of what particular pieces of the brain produce consciousness. Even if every neurological element and its operations could be isolated, that would still leave an enormous gap until the actual physical processes which produce the phenomenon are understood.

It's been known for many, many years that the physical functioning of the brain produces subjective experience. That subjective experience has been identified with a particular part of the brain, carrying out particular functions, is interesting, but to be expected. Understanding precisely why such functions give rise to subjective experience is another matter.

It's an area from which the physicists stand aloof, while philosophers and computer scientists assert and define. Neurologists tend to be reasonable and restrained, though their advances tend to be claimed as explaining things they do not explain.

tsig · 18th January 2012, 08:08 AM

Originally Posted by westprog

It's not just a matter of what particular pieces of the brain produce consciousness. Even if every neurological element and its operations could be isolated, that would still leave an enormous gap until the actual physical processes which produce the phenomenon are understood.

It's been known for many, many years that the physical functioning of the brain produces subjective experience. That subjective experience has been identified with a particular part of the brain, carrying out particular functions, is interesting, but to be expected. Understanding precisely why such functions give rise to subjective experience is another matter.

It's an area from which the physicists stand aloof, while philosophers and computer scientists assert and define. Neurologists tend to be reasonable and restrained, though their advances tend to be claimed as explaining things they do not explain.

IOW, no matter what facts scientists discover you're going to claim that consciousness is unexplained.

PixyMisa · 18th January 2012, 09:05 AM

Originally Posted by westprog

It's not just a matter of what particular pieces of the brain produce consciousness. Even if every neurological element and its operations could be isolated, that would still leave an enormous gap until the actual physical processes which produce the phenomenon are understood.

If every mechanical element and its operations could be isolated from an automobile, that would still leave an enormous gap until the actual physical processes which produce the car are understood.

That gap is how those elements interact.

Quote:

It's an area from which the physicists stand aloof

Well, yes. Physicists stand aloof from epidemiology and horticulture as well, since they're not physics.

When physicists do propound upon the topic, they have an unfortunate tendency to beclown themselves. (Prof. Penrose, I'm looking at you.)

westprog · 18th January 2012, 09:14 AM

Originally Posted by Westprog

And how quickly the agenda will be detected, the hidden motivation

Originally Posted by tsig

You might at least let us write the posts before you respond.

And how long did it take to start analysing the person, not the arguments?

Originally Posted by tsig

IOW, no matter what facts scientists discover you're going to claim that consciousness is unexplained.

I'm starting to see why your pseudonym is "gist" backwards. You make such flexible use of IOW that I'm guessing you live on the Isle Of Wight.

In a sense, all physical phenomena are unexplained, in that we don't have an ultimate, final understanding of how they work. However, while we don't have a full understanding of gravity, say, we do have a set of laws which show how it works. The current set of laws replaced the earlier understanding of how gravity worked. Prior to Newton and Hooke, gravity was discussed in terms of the philosophical musings of Aristotle. At the moment, that's the situation in terms of consciousness. It's so far from having a scientific theory that it's still available for the philosophers to play around with. When the theory arrives, it will pass from the realms of philosophy and into science.

I note that a willingness to settle for any half-baked supposition based on unfounded assertion is considered a positive good. I'll try to remember that.

Belz... · 18th January 2012, 09:25 AM

Originally Posted by Minoosh

That "because" looks suspect.

The statements are made because of a misunderstanding.

Minoosh · 18th January 2012, 03:17 PM

Originally Posted by Belz...

The statements are made because of a misunderstanding.

I don't even know how humans came to believe that thinking was something that happened in one's head. It seems I can feel my thoughts stirring between my ears, but if I didn't know that's where my brain was, would thinking still feel localized?

westprog · 18th January 2012, 03:26 PM

Originally Posted by Minoosh

I don't even know how humans came to believe that thinking was something that happened in one's head. It seems I can feel my thoughts stirring between my ears, but if I didn't know that's where my brain was, would thinking still feel localized?

Your eyes and ears focus onto a spot in the middle of your head, which makes it seem like that's where you are. However, IIRC, some people considered the heart as the centre of personhood.

ynot · 18th January 2012, 03:33 PM

Originally Posted by westprog

Your eyes and ears focus onto a spot in the middle of your head, which makes it seem like that's where you are. However, IIRC, some people considered the heart as the centre of personhood.

And I though it was merely a blood pump (silly me).

Matt the Poet · 19th January 2012, 02:22 AM

Originally Posted by westprog

Your eyes and ears focus onto a spot in the middle of your head, which makes it seem like that's where you are.

Homunculus fallacy. Your eyes and ears don’t focus on anything. They, like the other sensory organs, respond passively to stimuli in the external world, allowing the brain to make a more-or-less informed guess about what that world might contain. The brain integrates this guess into the representation of a ‘you’ standing at the centre of a ‘field of vision/hearing’. Where the physics of the situation means there is likely to be more physical input, the guess may well be more accurate (but may not be – ever seen the ‘gorilla suit’ illusion?).

Leumas · 19th January 2012, 02:50 AM

This video might shed some light on the matter.

I wish I could follow the advice given in minutes 52:30 to 55:49...... But I guess I would need a lobotomy to achieve that.

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the JREF. The JREF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

Leumas · 19th January 2012, 03:52 AM

Originally Posted by JM85

So, the elements formed together to form the first living organism. This much I understand, but what about consciousness? This is never really explained, besides "neurons firing together in the brain" to form it, but this explanation never goes further than that when I hear it.

I know this question has probably already been asked in a more eloquent and intelligent way, but that's why the title has the word layman in it. I also ask, because theists or people in the new age mind set usually put a lot of emphases on consciousness as proof of their beliefs. I want to know how it can be explained by physical laws.

This lecture by Daniel Dennett might be of interest.

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the JREF. The JREF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

This lecture too is interesting

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the JREF. The JREF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

westprog · 19th January 2012, 06:00 AM

Originally Posted by Matt the Poet

Homunculus fallacy. Your eyes and ears don’t focus on anything. They, like the other sensory organs, respond passively to stimuli in the external world, allowing the brain to make a more-or-less informed guess about what that world might contain. The brain integrates this guess into the representation of a ‘you’ standing at the centre of a ‘field of vision/hearing’. Where the physics of the situation means there is likely to be more physical input, the guess may well be more accurate (but may not be – ever seen the ‘gorilla suit’ illusion?).

Clearly, the eyes and ears do focus on a spot inside your head. In the case of eyes, quite literally. You see something from a particular point of view, and that is from your head. You want to see from a different position, you move your head. This is fairly obvious. I don't know if there are animals where the brain isn't located at the focus of the sensory organs. If that were the case, it might be that the perceived location of the self was somewhere different.

Matt the Poet · 19th January 2012, 06:34 AM

Originally Posted by westprog

Clearly, the eyes and ears do focus on a spot inside your head.

There is no ‘your head’. ‘Your head’ is a construct that a brain has evolved to generate so that the organism of which it’s a part can respond adaptively to external stimuli. It ‘imagines you’ as the central point of a field and generates the unshakeable sense that this wholly internal, simulated reality ‘is’ a physical body situated in an external world to which it has unmediated sensory access.

But it isn’t, and we know it isn’t because a) it can’t be – there is nothing in your brain that is directly feeding sensory input to the parts of the brain that generate ‘awareness’ in real time and b) we know the ways in which it can go wrong, or be fooled so that the simulation it generates doesn’t correspond to key and obvious elements of the outside world (the gorilla suit ‘illusion’) or integrates all the input successfully but ‘forgets; to generate the illusion (blindsight).

Belz... · 19th January 2012, 07:17 AM

Originally Posted by Minoosh

I don't even know how humans came to believe that thinking was something that happened in one's head. It seems I can feel my thoughts stirring between my ears, but if I didn't know that's where my brain was, would thinking still feel localized?

I have no idea what you're on about.

Wowbagger · 19th January 2012, 08:17 AM

It seems to me that most of you dismissing the term "qualia" are sweeping the "problem" of private experiences under a rug, without explaining either: Where they come from and how they emerge; or if qualia isn't really real: then how the delusion of qualia comes about.

We want to understand the phenomena of private experiences. Not wave them off as a waste of time.

Belz... · 19th January 2012, 08:49 AM

"Qualia" is not an understanding or an explanation for those subjective experiences.

Matt the Poet · 19th January 2012, 08:53 AM

Originally Posted by Belz...

"Qualia" is not an understanding or an explanation for those subjective experiences.

Indeed, it may hinder understanding as there's no guarantee it 'cleaves nature at the joints' in terms of identifying an actual, measurable phenomenon.

Leumas · 19th January 2012, 09:08 AM

Originally Posted by Wowbagger

It seems to me that most of you dismissing the term "qualia" are sweeping the "problem" of private experiences under a rug, without explaining either: Where they come from and how they emerge; or if qualia isn't really real: then how the delusion of qualia comes about.

We want to understand the phenomena of private experiences. Not wave them off as a waste of time.

Watch the videos in this post for one explanation that does not need the term qualia in any way.

westprog · 19th January 2012, 09:58 AM

Originally Posted by Matt the Poet

There is no ‘your head’.

Are you really saying that we don't have heads? That seems very poetic.

To clarify - when I say that eyes focus inside the head, I mean that very literally, just like saying a camera lens focuses onto the film or sensor.

Quote:

‘Your head’ is a construct that a brain has evolved to generate so that the organism of which it’s a part can respond adaptively to external stimuli. It ‘imagines you’ as the central point of a field and generates the unshakeable sense that this wholly internal, simulated reality ‘is’ a physical body situated in an external world to which it has unmediated sensory access.

But it isn’t, and we know it isn’t because a) it can’t be – there is nothing in your brain that is directly feeding sensory input to the parts of the brain that generate ‘awareness’ in real time and b) we know the ways in which it can go wrong, or be fooled so that the simulation it generates doesn’t correspond to key and obvious elements of the outside world (the gorilla suit ‘illusion’) or integrates all the input successfully but ‘forgets; to generate the illusion (blindsight).

I'm not sure if you are claiming here that there is no external reality, in which case I am not necessarily disagreeing, but that's quite another topic.

rocketdodger · 19th January 2012, 10:25 AM

Originally Posted by Aepervius

We name it an unspeakable chtonien horror ?

The way I see it defined, consciousness is jsut the assembly of multiple parallel process running in the network of neuron and their overal effect. it is nothing magic, jsut horribly complicated parallel processing. Qualia or whatever are not needed to know what consciousness is on a rough level. Now when you want to reproduce it , in say, software or hardware, to simulate it, that is not enough.N the problem is to get more detail when we have only very rough instrument which give us a very myopic view. We can#t really measure all the network, and all the neuron state. We have only instrument which either measure specific neuron, or big clump activities.

Yep.

Unfortunately, this stuff is simply impossible to grasp if you aren't at least moderately familiar with certain aspects of computing.

On the flip side, if you have any imagination at all, and just read up a bit on things like methods of logical inference in AI and certain artificial neural network topologies and their analogs in actual biological brains, you should start to see glimpses of where human consciousness *probably* comes from, at least in a fuzzy intuitive way.

some places to start:
general logic and how "thinking" can be spoken of in mathematical terms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference_rules
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_chaining

neural network stuff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopfield_net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_machine

By the time you read how associative memory works ( Hopfield network ) in a neural network context you should be saying to yourself "wow, that sounds eerily similar to how our minds seem to work ... maybe this isn't so supernatural after all." At least, that's what I said to myself.

In my view, it isn't that far of a stretch to imagine how a series of perceptron like input filters could feed into networks similar to boltzmann machines that are connected in ways that allow them to approximate inference rules. In fact it sounds a ton like what my perception of my own thoughts is -- I see, hear, feel something, it starts a chain of thoughts that reference each other by simple inference, and the thoughts are based on memory. From there everything is just details.

Matt the Poet · 19th January 2012, 11:11 AM

Originally Posted by westprog

Are you really saying that we don't have heads? That seems very poetic.

I think that your and my sensation of having a head is a strong indication that we do, in fact, have one, but it’s not something we can be sure about.

Originally Posted by westprog

To clarify - when I say that eyes focus inside the head, I mean that very literally, just like saying a camera lens focuses onto the film or sensor.

Which, as I say, is the ‘homunculus fallacy’. It isn’t true, and unless you’ve never, ever seen an optical illusion or had a sensory hallucination of any sort in your life you know perfectly well that it isn’t true.

Originally Posted by westprog

I'm not sure if you are claiming here that there is no external reality, in which case I am not necessarily disagreeing, but that's quite another topic.

There is an external reality. And somewhere in that external reality there’s an organism, descended from generations of organisms who have lived long enough to reproduce, and therefore must have mechanisms that allow them to relate to other objects in the world in a way that facilitates this.

The random exigencies of evolution have equipped this organism with a specific mechanism for doing this, by means of which it integrates the data it’s getting from itself and the data it’s getting from the external environment into a best-guess simulation, tuned to the key tasks of survival and reproduction, of where it is in relation to everything else. To represent ‘where it is’, it has to differentiate between those bits of the world that belong to it and those that don’t

So it generates ‘you’ – or at least those bits of you about which it’s got reliable neural data (how does your spleen feel right now?) so that it can have something to which it can represent its rather less reliable data on anything that isn’t itself but which it might need to do something about.* In its simulation it gives ‘you’ a ‘head’ with eyes and ears etc. because that’s what it needs to do to make the whole thing work. It seems logical that this corresponds with whatever’s ‘actually happening’ because if your physical boundaries in relation to the world weren’t being represented as at least roughly what they actually are you’d bump into things a lot more than you do. But equally (if less plausibly), you could ‘actually’ be some kind of, say, vast, bubbling algal mat flopping through the atmosphere of a gas giant, and the whole thing could be a convenient fiction that just happens to be the best way to make sure ‘you’ get soft fruit and gazelle (or whatever ‘soft fruit and gazelle’ actually are in the objective world).

*IIRC, there’s some sketchy neurological evidence that what it actually does, bizarrely, is make a whole series of up-front guesses about what might be ‘in here’ and ‘out there’ and then does a ‘plausibility check’ against the incoming sensory data to select the one it’s going to run. Which sounds like exactly the sort of crazy, topsy-turvy result of evolution one would expect. And also provides a neat explanation for dreams as what happens when this guessing carries on without the checking step.

westprog · 19th January 2012, 11:24 AM

Originally Posted by Matt the Poet

I think that your and my sensation of having a head is a strong indication that we do, in fact, have one, but it’s not something we can be sure about.

Then let's say that this hypothetical but "real" world exists. It needn't bind either of us to final commitment to the hypothesis, but it will allow discussion as if it exists.

Quote:

Which, as I say, is the ‘homunculus fallacy’. It isn’t true, and unless you’ve never, ever seen an optical illusion or had a sensory hallucination of any sort in your life you know perfectly well that it isn’t true.

Since I know perfectly well that it is true, I am sure that we are at cross purposes in some way.

There is a physical object - an eye - which has physical properties. One of these is that it focuses light - just as in the simple diagrams in an optics textbook. The focal point of the lens in the eye is onto the retina in the back of the eye, which is physically located inside the head.

This has nothing to do with the homunculus. The same applies to a dead person with the eyes open.

Quote:

There is an external reality. And somewhere in that external reality there’s an organism, descended from generations of organisms who have lived long enough to reproduce, and therefore must have mechanisms that allow them to relate to other objects in the world in a way that facilitates this.

The random exigencies of evolution have equipped this organism with a specific mechanism for doing this, by means of which it integrates the data it’s getting from itself and the data it’s getting from the external environment into a best-guess simulation, tuned to the key tasks of survival and reproduction, of where it is in relation to everything else. To represent ‘where it is’, it has to differentiate between those bits of the world that belong to it and those that don’t

So it generates ‘you’ – or at least those bits of you about which it’s got reliable neural data (how does your spleen feel right now?) so that it can have something to which it can represent its rather less reliable data on anything that isn’t itself but which it might need to do something about.* In its simulation it gives ‘you’ a ‘head’ with eyes and ears etc. because that’s what it needs to do to make the whole thing work. It seems logical that this corresponds with whatever’s ‘actually happening’ because if your physical boundaries in relation to the world weren’t being represented as at least roughly what they actually are you’d bump into things a lot more than you do. But equally (if less plausibly), you could ‘actually’ be some kind of, say, vast, bubbling algal mat flopping through the atmosphere of a gas giant, and the whole thing could be a convenient fiction that just happens to be the best way to make sure ‘you’ get soft fruit and gazelle (or whatever ‘soft fruit and gazelle’ actually are in the objective world).

*IIRC, there’s some sketchy neurological evidence that what it actually does, bizarrely, is make a whole series of up-front guesses about what might be ‘in here’ and ‘out there’ and then does a ‘plausibility check’ against the incoming sensory data to select the one it’s going to run. Which sounds like exactly the sort of crazy, topsy-turvy result of evolution one would expect. And also provides a neat explanation for dreams as what happens when this guessing carries on without the checking step.

Minoosh · 19th January 2012, 01:40 PM

Originally Posted by Wowbagger

We want to understand the phenomena of private experiences. Not wave them off as a waste of time.

The quest to understand consciousness strikes me as a pursuit in which we are especially trapped in our own frames of reference. "I wonder why I wonder why I wonder why I wonder," etc.

My quantum babble was a parody. Not of Penrose, but of others who have latched onto his theories because they aren't satisfied with the notion that consciousness arises in a formulaic way from the brain's complexity.

In the time I've spent reading "for the layman" accounts of quantum mechanics perhaps I could have acquired some real understanding. I certainly don't have it now. And, my point, neither do a lot of people who seem attracted to quantum theories of consciousness. I can just about put together a sentence or two describing the weird world of subatomic particles and how observation forces them to "choose" certain properties. But why that would explain anything about consciousness is beyond me.

Minoosh · 19th January 2012, 01:46 PM

AND I've never read "The Emperor's New Mind," but just snipped this bit from a review on Amazon:

"Penrose claims that there is an intimate, perhaps unknowable relation between quantum effects and our thinking, "

And it's the "perhaps unknowable" part that sets alarm bells ringing. It just seems too dang convenient for people who want to hold forth without really understanding what they're talking about.

Complexity · 19th January 2012, 04:08 PM

Originally Posted by Wowbagger

It seems to me that most of you dismissing the term "qualia" are sweeping the "problem" of private experiences under a rug, without explaining either: Where they come from and how they emerge; or if qualia isn't really real: then how the delusion of qualia comes about.

We want to understand the phenomena of private experiences. Not wave them off as a waste of time.

'Qualia' is a dead end. Find a much better path to understanding than that.

Complexity · 19th January 2012, 04:11 PM

Originally Posted by Minoosh

AND I've never read "The Emperor's New Mind," but just snipped this bit from a review on Amazon:

"Penrose claims that there is an intimate, perhaps unknowable relation between quantum effects and our thinking, "

And it's the "perhaps unknowable" part that sets alarm bells ringing. It just seems too dang convenient for people who want to hold forth without really understanding what they're talking about.

Penrose has a definite woo streak. I find him to be not worth reading because of that - his better ideas simply aren't good enough to overcome his woo nonsense.

Wowbagger · 19th January 2012, 05:26 PM

Originally Posted by Belz...

"Qualia" is not an understanding or an explanation for those subjective experiences.

I know that. 'Qualia' is a word we can us describe what needs to be explained. As long as we leave out the "it's unexplainable!" part.

It might be a synonymn of "subjective experience", but I think it is more likely an emergent property of various aspects of the brain that generate different types subjective experiences.

Originally Posted by Matt the Poet

Indeed, it may hinder understanding as there's no guarantee it 'cleaves nature at the joints' in terms of identifying an actual, measurable phenomenon.

I suppose if the word has sooooo much baggage associated with it, perhaps usage of this word would barely be worth pursuing.

But, I still think the word could be used in an entirely measurable manner.

Originally Posted by Leumas

Watch the videos in this post for one explanation that does not need the term qualia in any way.

I didn't watch those in their entirety, but I am familiar with the arguments.

I would argue that what Daniel Dennett is describing IS qualia. Even if he hates using that word to describe it.

Originally Posted by Minoosh

My quantum babble was a parody.

That does explain a few things.

Originally Posted by Complexity

'Qualia' is a dead end. Find a much better path to understanding than that.

The 'better path' you are referring to is actually an explanation for what 'qualia' is. Even if you don't like that word.

Imagine if some said: "Every time we examine a single bird in a flock, the flock itself disappears from our observation. Therefore, studying flocking behavior is a dead end! Flocking can't really exist, and we should only continue to study the individual birds."

PixyMisa · 19th January 2012, 05:44 PM

We'd tell them to get flocked.

Matt the Poet · 20th January 2012, 02:03 AM

Originally Posted by westprog

Then let's say that this hypothetical but "real" world exists. It needn't bind either of us to final commitment to the hypothesis, but it will allow discussion as if it exists.

OK, fair enough. I will go as far as admitting arguendo that a real world exists which has some kind of relationship to what our brains simulate. Let’s forget about the idea of algal mats evolved to percieve their world via an elaborate visual metaphor for now.

Originally Posted by westprog

Since I know perfectly well that it is true, I am sure that we are at cross purposes in some way.

There is a physical object - an eye - which has physical properties. One of these is that it focuses light - just as in the simple diagrams in an optics textbook. The focal point of the lens in the eye is onto the retina in the back of the eye, which is physically located inside the head.

This has nothing to do with the homunculus. The same applies to a dead person with the eyes open.

Ah, but your original quote was this:

Originally Posted by westprog

Your eyes and ears focus onto a spot in the middle of your head, which makes it seem like that's where you are.

It’s the part I’ve bolded that shows the homunculus fallacy. What things ‘seem’ like has nothing to do with where light happens to be falling on a retina, except to the extent that the simulation is likely to be sharper and better where the organism’s brain has the most data to integrate, and it would seem logical that the organism would be better adapted for its environment if the ‘you’ it generates was correctly apprised of where it’s primary sensors are so that it can avoid them being damaged. Eyes aren’t windows on the world.

westprog · 20th January 2012, 08:14 AM

Originally Posted by Matt the Poet

It’s the part I’ve bolded that shows the homunculus fallacy. What things ‘seem’ like has nothing to do with where light happens to be falling on a retina, except to the extent that the simulation is likely to be sharper and better where the organism’s brain has the most data to integrate, and it would seem logical that the organism would be better adapted for its environment if the ‘you’ it generates was correctly apprised of where it’s primary sensors are so that it can avoid them being damaged. Eyes aren’t windows on the world.

OK, let me clarify. We do create a model of the world, based on sensory data. That model is three dimensional. In that model, we have a privileged position which it appears to ourselves that we occupy. The position of the "self" in the model appears to correspond with the "real" position of the brain in the "real" world. The point I was making was not that this is not an artificial model - it's that the location of the "self" is based on the focus of the eyes and ears, rather than where the thinking is going on.

Because we are so aware that the brain is what does the thinking, it's easy to imagine that the position of the "self" in the model is due to where the brain is. In fact, the position of the "self" is almost certainly due to the position of the eyes and ears. One wonders what the position of self would be for, say, a deaf/blind person - or even if such a person would have a spatial model at all in which to have a position of self.

17th January 2012, 02:27 PM	#81
AlBell Philosopher Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 5,483	Originally Posted by Matt the Poet ... Metzinger illustrates this with the phenomenon of ‘blindsight’ – where neural damage causes someone to lose the (c) element of ‘vision’ without there being any actual damage to the sensory equipment. The patient is absolutely insistent that they can’t see what’s in front of them even as they successfully identify it (they tend to claim they’re making ‘lucky guesses’). If seeing was a matter of there being fundamental ‘qualia’ of vision this shouldn’t be possible. As an fyi, blind-sight is also interesting in that at times an apparent sixth-sense appears; emotional images seen only by the blind eye get a larger than expected emotional response (e.g. a smile at a smiling picture), and even larger response, apparently pre-cognitive, if the image is erotic. These effects do not involve consciousness and visual cortex. This was presented yesterday in a Through The Wormhole segment, but I've found no cites of the studies that were mentioned.
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17th January 2012, 03:43 PM	#82
PixyMisa Persnickety Insect Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Sunny Munuvia Posts: 14,904	Originally Posted by yy2bggggs Could you tell me what that reason is explicitly? The definition assumes that consciousness is non-physical. Quote: In post #61 you referred to what the term means according to the original definition. But your response is just confusing. Which definition did you mean to refer to in post #61 when you said this?: As originally defined, it meant the subjective experience as distinct from any physical process. Since subjective experiences are physical processes, that definition doesn't work terribly well. ...are you referring to Lewis's definition or Jackson's? Both. Jackson's is shorter and clearer, so the logical fallacy of begging the question is more stark, but both have the problem.
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17th January 2012, 03:45 PM	#83
PixyMisa Persnickety Insect Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Sunny Munuvia Posts: 14,904	Originally Posted by Minoosh That "because" looks suspect. Both statements are false and you don't understand quantum mechanics.
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17th January 2012, 03:54 PM	#84
PixyMisa Persnickety Insect Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Sunny Munuvia Posts: 14,904	Originally Posted by !Kaggen Yeah good points yy2bggggs It is called "Poisoning the well" No, I leave that kind of thing to you. Look at Jackson's definition for a moment: Originally Posted by Frank Jackson Frank Jackson (1982) later defined qualia as "...certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical information includes" (p. 273). A clearer case of begging the question I've never seen. As defined, qualia would falsify materialist explanations for consciousness.... If they could be shown to exist. Subjective experiences exist, sure - but you need to actually show that they match that definition for there to be any problem for materialism. That's the step that everyone trips over.
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17th January 2012, 07:09 PM	#85
Minoosh Graduate Poster Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 1,490	Originally Posted by PixyMisa Both statements are false and you don't understand quantum mechanics. Thank you!
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17th January 2012, 07:35 PM	#86
PixyMisa Persnickety Insect Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Sunny Munuvia Posts: 14,904
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18th January 2012, 05:12 AM	#87
MuDPhuD Thinker Join Date: Feb 2011 Posts: 182	Originally Posted by westprog That subjective experience is entirely dependent on the nervous system is a fact about subjective experience. It's not an explanation of subjective experience. We know that we understand respiration, say, because we can duplicate all the physical processes involved and produce identical effects. We don't know what physical processes produce subjective experience, beyond the fact that it happens in the human nervous system. It's an area where unproveable, contradictory but absolutely confident assertions are made. Do we have any way to test the truth of these assertions? As to the term - well, should we differentiate between subjective experience, and the physical processes which give rise to subjective experience? Since we do know, approximately, and in a personal sense, what subjective experience is, and we don't know, in any precise way, exactly what physical processes produce the subjective experience, it makes sense to differentiate between the two. If we are to discover, by means of scientific investigation, how subjective experience arises, then we have to start by isolating the phenomenon as much as possible. Our experience's limitation by and dependence on its neural substrate is an indication of their unity. The correlation is so complete and detailed that I find no other explanation possible. You are correct that we don't know "precisely" or "exactly" which neural substrates underly the synthesized product of the complex neural systems which are our experience, however, multiple teams of quite competent neuroscientists are addressing the problem. For example: http://papers.klab.caltech.edu/349/1/Tononi-Koch-08.pdf The phenomenon of blindsight (cortical blindness) gives us a clue as to where our experience of the visual world occurs. It's somewhere in the visual pathways at or beyond the visual neocortex. That's why the neuroscientists focus on the "higher" neocortical centers in their investigations. Brain=mind=consciousness....
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18th January 2012, 05:14 AM	#88
SusanB-M1 Incurable Optimist Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Almost in the New Forest, Hampshire, UK Posts: 2,863	Minoosh #31
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18th January 2012, 05:45 AM	#89
Philosaur Muse Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 971	Originally Posted by Minoosh Consciousness is a "hard problem" invented by theorists to drum up generalized support for international conferences on the nature of consciousness. Consciousness is caused by the collapse of the quantum wave function. Or maybe the collapse of the quantum wave function is caused by consciousness. Maybe both statements are true, because quantum mechanics is strange. Whatever happens it's at the Planck scale, which is so teeny-tiny that current consciousness theorists are probably safe from rigorous disproof of their hypotheses, which are continually being refined at international conferences. But then, what the bleep do I know? Roger Penrose, is that you?
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18th January 2012, 05:54 AM	#90
Aepervius Philosopher Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Bierland. I mean , germany. Posts: 7,730	Originally Posted by tsig How would you suggest we talk about something can't be defined? We name it an unspeakable chtonien horror ? The way I see it defined, consciousness is jsut the assembly of multiple parallel process running in the network of neuron and their overal effect. it is nothing magic, jsut horribly complicated parallel processing. Qualia or whatever are not needed to know what consciousness is on a rough level. Now when you want to reproduce it , in say, software or hardware, to simulate it, that is not enough.N the problem is to get more detail when we have only very rough instrument which give us a very myopic view. We can#t really measure all the network, and all the neuron state. We have only instrument which either measure specific neuron, or big clump activities.
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18th January 2012, 07:50 AM	#91
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	Originally Posted by MuDPhuD Our experience's limitation by and dependence on its neural substrate is an indication of their unity. The correlation is so complete and detailed that I find no other explanation possible. You are correct that we don't know "precisely" or "exactly" which neural substrates underly the synthesized product of the complex neural systems which are our experience, however, multiple teams of quite competent neuroscientists are addressing the problem. For example: http://papers.klab.caltech.edu/349/1/Tononi-Koch-08.pdf The phenomenon of blindsight (cortical blindness) gives us a clue as to where our experience of the visual world occurs. It's somewhere in the visual pathways at or beyond the visual neocortex. That's why the neuroscientists focus on the "higher" neocortical centers in their investigations. Brain=mind=consciousness.... It's not just a matter of what particular pieces of the brain produce consciousness. Even if every neurological element and its operations could be isolated, that would still leave an enormous gap until the actual physical processes which produce the phenomenon are understood. It's been known for many, many years that the physical functioning of the brain produces subjective experience. That subjective experience has been identified with a particular part of the brain, carrying out particular functions, is interesting, but to be expected. Understanding precisely why such functions give rise to subjective experience is another matter. It's an area from which the physicists stand aloof, while philosophers and computer scientists assert and define. Neurologists tend to be reasonable and restrained, though their advances tend to be claimed as explaining things they do not explain.
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18th January 2012, 08:08 AM	#92
tsig a carbon based life-form Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 26,642	Originally Posted by westprog It's not just a matter of what particular pieces of the brain produce consciousness. Even if every neurological element and its operations could be isolated, that would still leave an enormous gap until the actual physical processes which produce the phenomenon are understood. It's been known for many, many years that the physical functioning of the brain produces subjective experience. That subjective experience has been identified with a particular part of the brain, carrying out particular functions, is interesting, but to be expected. Understanding precisely why such functions give rise to subjective experience is another matter. It's an area from which the physicists stand aloof, while philosophers and computer scientists assert and define. Neurologists tend to be reasonable and restrained, though their advances tend to be claimed as explaining things they do not explain. IOW, no matter what facts scientists discover you're going to claim that consciousness is unexplained.

18th January 2012, 09:05 AM	#93
PixyMisa Persnickety Insect Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Sunny Munuvia Posts: 14,904	Originally Posted by westprog It's not just a matter of what particular pieces of the brain produce consciousness. Even if every neurological element and its operations could be isolated, that would still leave an enormous gap until the actual physical processes which produce the phenomenon are understood. If every mechanical element and its operations could be isolated from an automobile, that would still leave an enormous gap until the actual physical processes which produce the car are understood. That gap is how those elements interact. Quote: It's an area from which the physicists stand aloof Well, yes. Physicists stand aloof from epidemiology and horticulture as well, since they're not physics. When physicists do propound upon the topic, they have an unfortunate tendency to beclown themselves. (Prof. Penrose, I'm looking at you.)
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18th January 2012, 09:14 AM	#94
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	Originally Posted by Westprog And how quickly the agenda will be detected, the hidden motivation Originally Posted by tsig You might at least let us write the posts before you respond. And how long did it take to start analysing the person, not the arguments? Originally Posted by tsig IOW, no matter what facts scientists discover you're going to claim that consciousness is unexplained. I'm starting to see why your pseudonym is "gist" backwards. You make such flexible use of IOW that I'm guessing you live on the Isle Of Wight. In a sense, all physical phenomena are unexplained, in that we don't have an ultimate, final understanding of how they work. However, while we don't have a full understanding of gravity, say, we do have a set of laws which show how it works. The current set of laws replaced the earlier understanding of how gravity worked. Prior to Newton and Hooke, gravity was discussed in terms of the philosophical musings of Aristotle. At the moment, that's the situation in terms of consciousness. It's so far from having a scientific theory that it's still available for the philosophers to play around with. When the theory arrives, it will pass from the realms of philosophy and into science. I note that a willingness to settle for any half-baked supposition based on unfounded assertion is considered a positive good. I'll try to remember that.
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18th January 2012, 09:25 AM	#95
Belz... Fiend God Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: In the details... Posts: 28,421	Originally Posted by Minoosh That "because" looks suspect. The statements are made because of a misunderstanding.
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18th January 2012, 03:17 PM	#96
Minoosh Graduate Poster Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 1,490	Originally Posted by Belz... The statements are made because of a misunderstanding. I don't even know how humans came to believe that thinking was something that happened in one's head. It seems I can feel my thoughts stirring between my ears, but if I didn't know that's where my brain was, would thinking still feel localized?
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18th January 2012, 03:26 PM	#97
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	Originally Posted by Minoosh I don't even know how humans came to believe that thinking was something that happened in one's head. It seems I can feel my thoughts stirring between my ears, but if I didn't know that's where my brain was, would thinking still feel localized? Your eyes and ears focus onto a spot in the middle of your head, which makes it seem like that's where you are. However, IIRC, some people considered the heart as the centre of personhood.
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18th January 2012, 03:33 PM	#98
ynot Illuminator Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: New Zealand Posts: 4,640	Originally Posted by westprog Your eyes and ears focus onto a spot in the middle of your head, which makes it seem like that's where you are. However, IIRC, some people considered the heart as the centre of personhood. And I though it was merely a blood pump (silly me).
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19th January 2012, 02:22 AM	#99
Matt the Poet Critical Thinker Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 436	Originally Posted by westprog Your eyes and ears focus onto a spot in the middle of your head, which makes it seem like that's where you are. Homunculus fallacy. Your eyes and ears don’t focus on anything. They, like the other sensory organs, respond passively to stimuli in the external world, allowing the brain to make a more-or-less informed guess about what that world might contain. The brain integrates this guess into the representation of a ‘you’ standing at the centre of a ‘field of vision/hearing’. Where the physics of the situation means there is likely to be more physical input, the guess may well be more accurate (but may not be – ever seen the ‘gorilla suit’ illusion?).

19th January 2012, 06:00 AM	#102
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	Originally Posted by Matt the Poet Homunculus fallacy. Your eyes and ears don’t focus on anything. They, like the other sensory organs, respond passively to stimuli in the external world, allowing the brain to make a more-or-less informed guess about what that world might contain. The brain integrates this guess into the representation of a ‘you’ standing at the centre of a ‘field of vision/hearing’. Where the physics of the situation means there is likely to be more physical input, the guess may well be more accurate (but may not be – ever seen the ‘gorilla suit’ illusion?). Clearly, the eyes and ears do focus on a spot inside your head. In the case of eyes, quite literally. You see something from a particular point of view, and that is from your head. You want to see from a different position, you move your head. This is fairly obvious. I don't know if there are animals where the brain isn't located at the focus of the sensory organs. If that were the case, it might be that the perceived location of the self was somewhere different.
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19th January 2012, 06:34 AM	#103
Matt the Poet Critical Thinker Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 436	Originally Posted by westprog Clearly, the eyes and ears do focus on a spot inside your head. There is no ‘your head’. ‘Your head’ is a construct that a brain has evolved to generate so that the organism of which it’s a part can respond adaptively to external stimuli. It ‘imagines you’ as the central point of a field and generates the unshakeable sense that this wholly internal, simulated reality ‘is’ a physical body situated in an external world to which it has unmediated sensory access. But it isn’t, and we know it isn’t because a) it can’t be – there is nothing in your brain that is directly feeding sensory input to the parts of the brain that generate ‘awareness’ in real time and b) we know the ways in which it can go wrong, or be fooled so that the simulation it generates doesn’t correspond to key and obvious elements of the outside world (the gorilla suit ‘illusion’) or integrates all the input successfully but ‘forgets; to generate the illusion (blindsight).

19th January 2012, 07:17 AM	#104
Belz... Fiend God Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: In the details... Posts: 28,421	Originally Posted by Minoosh I don't even know how humans came to believe that thinking was something that happened in one's head. It seems I can feel my thoughts stirring between my ears, but if I didn't know that's where my brain was, would thinking still feel localized? I have no idea what you're on about.
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19th January 2012, 08:17 AM	#105
Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Westchester County, NY (when not in space) Posts: 13,503	It seems to me that most of you dismissing the term "qualia" are sweeping the "problem" of private experiences under a rug, without explaining either: Where they come from and how they emerge; or if qualia isn't really real: then how the delusion of qualia comes about. We want to understand the phenomena of private experiences. Not wave them off as a waste of time.
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19th January 2012, 08:49 AM	#106
Belz... Fiend God Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: In the details... Posts: 28,421	"Qualia" is not an understanding or an explanation for those subjective experiences.
	__________________ The Onmyouza Theatre, An unofficial international fanclub forum dedicated to the Japanese heavy metal band Onmyo-Za: "In the interests of time and space, it is not unreasonable to cite one point at a time. Citing 30 is the equivalent of citing none. Obviously." - Robert Prey "Physical evidence must be observed and interpreted by witnesses which makes it subjective and subject to mistakes and to fraud." - Robert Prey

19th January 2012, 08:53 AM	#107
Matt the Poet Critical Thinker Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 436	Originally Posted by Belz... "Qualia" is not an understanding or an explanation for those subjective experiences. Indeed, it may hinder understanding as there's no guarantee it 'cleaves nature at the joints' in terms of identifying an actual, measurable phenomenon.

19th January 2012, 09:08 AM	#108
Leumas Master Poster Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 2,493	Originally Posted by Wowbagger It seems to me that most of you dismissing the term "qualia" are sweeping the "problem" of private experiences under a rug, without explaining either: Where they come from and how they emerge; or if qualia isn't really real: then how the delusion of qualia comes about. We want to understand the phenomena of private experiences. Not wave them off as a waste of time. Watch the videos in *this post* for one explanation that does not need the term qualia in any way.
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19th January 2012, 09:58 AM	#109
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	Originally Posted by Matt the Poet There is no ‘your head’. Are you really saying that we don't have heads? That seems very poetic. To clarify - when I say that eyes focus inside the head, I mean that very literally, just like saying a camera lens focuses onto the film or sensor. Quote: ‘Your head’ is a construct that a brain has evolved to generate so that the organism of which it’s a part can respond adaptively to external stimuli. It ‘imagines you’ as the central point of a field and generates the unshakeable sense that this wholly internal, simulated reality ‘is’ a physical body situated in an external world to which it has unmediated sensory access. But it isn’t, and we know it isn’t because a) it can’t be – there is nothing in your brain that is directly feeding sensory input to the parts of the brain that generate ‘awareness’ in real time and b) we know the ways in which it can go wrong, or be fooled so that the simulation it generates doesn’t correspond to key and obvious elements of the outside world (the gorilla suit ‘illusion’) or integrates all the input successfully but ‘forgets; to generate the illusion (blindsight). I'm not sure if you are claiming here that there is no external reality, in which case I am not necessarily disagreeing, but that's quite another topic.
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19th January 2012, 10:25 AM	#110
rocketdodger Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hyperion Posts: 6,668	Originally Posted by Aepervius We name it an unspeakable chtonien horror ? The way I see it defined, consciousness is jsut the assembly of multiple parallel process running in the network of neuron and their overal effect. it is nothing magic, jsut horribly complicated parallel processing. Qualia or whatever are not needed to know what consciousness is on a rough level. Now when you want to reproduce it , in say, software or hardware, to simulate it, that is not enough.N the problem is to get more detail when we have only very rough instrument which give us a very myopic view. We can#t really measure all the network, and all the neuron state. We have only instrument which either measure specific neuron, or big clump activities. Yep. Unfortunately, this stuff is simply impossible to grasp if you aren't at least moderately familiar with certain aspects of computing. On the flip side, if you have any imagination at all, and just read up a bit on things like methods of logical inference in AI and certain artificial neural network topologies and their analogs in actual biological brains, you should start to see glimpses of where human consciousness probably comes from, at least in a fuzzy intuitive way. some places to start: general logic and how "thinking" can be spoken of in mathematical terms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference_rules http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_chaining neural network stuff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopfield_net http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_machine By the time you read how associative memory works ( Hopfield network ) in a neural network context you should be saying to yourself "wow, that sounds eerily similar to how our minds seem to work ... maybe this isn't so supernatural after all." At least, that's what I said to myself. In my view, it isn't that far of a stretch to imagine how a series of perceptron like input filters could feed into networks similar to boltzmann machines that are connected in ways that allow them to approximate inference rules. In fact it sounds a ton like what my perception of my own thoughts is -- I see, hear, feel something, it starts a chain of thoughts that reference each other by simple inference, and the thoughts are based on memory. From there everything is just details.

19th January 2012, 11:11 AM	#111
Matt the Poet Critical Thinker Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 436	Originally Posted by westprog Are you really saying that we don't have heads? That seems very poetic. I think that your and my sensation of having a head is a strong indication that we do, in fact, have one, but it’s not something we can be sure about. Originally Posted by westprog To clarify - when I say that eyes focus inside the head, I mean that very literally, just like saying a camera lens focuses onto the film or sensor. Which, as I say, is the ‘homunculus fallacy’. It isn’t true, and unless you’ve never, ever seen an optical illusion or had a sensory hallucination of any sort in your life you know perfectly well that it isn’t true. Originally Posted by westprog I'm not sure if you are claiming here that there is no external reality, in which case I am not necessarily disagreeing, but that's quite another topic. There is an external reality. And somewhere in that external reality there’s an organism, descended from generations of organisms who have lived long enough to reproduce, and therefore must have mechanisms that allow them to relate to other objects in the world in a way that facilitates this. The random exigencies of evolution have equipped this organism with a specific mechanism for doing this, by means of which it integrates the data it’s getting from itself and the data it’s getting from the external environment into a best-guess simulation, tuned to the key tasks of survival and reproduction, of where it is in relation to everything else. To represent ‘where it is’, it has to differentiate between those bits of the world that belong to it and those that don’t So it generates ‘you’ – or at least those bits of you about which it’s got reliable neural data (how does your spleen feel right now?) so that it can have something to which it can represent its rather less reliable data on anything that isn’t itself but which it might need to do something about.* In its simulation it gives ‘you’ a ‘head’ with eyes and ears etc. because that’s what it needs to do to make the whole thing work. It seems logical that this corresponds with whatever’s ‘actually happening’ because if your physical boundaries in relation to the world weren’t being represented as at least roughly what they actually are you’d bump into things a lot more than you do. But equally (if less plausibly), you could ‘actually’ be some kind of, say, vast, bubbling algal mat flopping through the atmosphere of a gas giant, and the whole thing could be a convenient fiction that just happens to be the best way to make sure ‘you’ get soft fruit and gazelle (or whatever ‘soft fruit and gazelle’ actually are in the objective world). IIRC, there’s some sketchy neurological evidence that what it actually does, bizarrely, is make a whole series of up-front guesses about what might be ‘in here’ and ‘out there’ and then* does a ‘plausibility check’ against the incoming sensory data to select the one it’s going to run. Which sounds like exactly the sort of crazy, topsy-turvy result of evolution one would expect. And also provides a neat explanation for dreams as what happens when this guessing carries on without the checking step.

19th January 2012, 11:24 AM	#112
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	Originally Posted by Matt the Poet I think that your and my sensation of having a head is a strong indication that we do, in fact, have one, but it’s not something we can be sure about. Then let's say that this hypothetical but "real" world exists. It needn't bind either of us to final commitment to the hypothesis, but it will allow discussion as if it exists. Quote: Which, as I say, is the ‘homunculus fallacy’. It isn’t true, and unless you’ve never, ever seen an optical illusion or had a sensory hallucination of any sort in your life you know perfectly well that it isn’t true. Since I know perfectly well that it is true, I am sure that we are at cross purposes in some way. There is a physical object - an eye - which has physical properties. One of these is that it focuses light - just as in the simple diagrams in an optics textbook. The focal point of the lens in the eye is onto the retina in the back of the eye, which is physically located inside the head. This has nothing to do with the homunculus. The same applies to a dead person with the eyes open. Quote: There is an external reality. And somewhere in that external reality there’s an organism, descended from generations of organisms who have lived long enough to reproduce, and therefore must have mechanisms that allow them to relate to other objects in the world in a way that facilitates this. The random exigencies of evolution have equipped this organism with a specific mechanism for doing this, by means of which it integrates the data it’s getting from itself and the data it’s getting from the external environment into a best-guess simulation, tuned to the key tasks of survival and reproduction, of where it is in relation to everything else. To represent ‘where it is’, it has to differentiate between those bits of the world that belong to it and those that don’t So it generates ‘you’ – or at least those bits of you about which it’s got reliable neural data (how does your spleen feel right now?) so that it can have something to which it can represent its rather less reliable data on anything that isn’t itself but which it might need to do something about.* In its simulation it gives ‘you’ a ‘head’ with eyes and ears etc. because that’s what it needs to do to make the whole thing work. It seems logical that this corresponds with whatever’s ‘actually happening’ because if your physical boundaries in relation to the world weren’t being represented as at least roughly what they actually are you’d bump into things a lot more than you do. But equally (if less plausibly), you could ‘actually’ be some kind of, say, vast, bubbling algal mat flopping through the atmosphere of a gas giant, and the whole thing could be a convenient fiction that just happens to be the best way to make sure ‘you’ get soft fruit and gazelle (or whatever ‘soft fruit and gazelle’ actually are in the objective world). IIRC, there’s some sketchy neurological evidence that what it actually does, bizarrely, is make a whole series of up-front guesses about what might be ‘in here’ and ‘out there’ and then* does a ‘plausibility check’ against the incoming sensory data to select the one it’s going to run. Which sounds like exactly the sort of crazy, topsy-turvy result of evolution one would expect. And also provides a neat explanation for dreams as what happens when this guessing carries on without the checking step.
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	__________________ Dreary whiner, who gradually outwore his welcome, before blowing it entirely.

19th January 2012, 01:40 PM	#113
Minoosh Graduate Poster Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 1,490	Originally Posted by Wowbagger We want to understand the phenomena of private experiences. Not wave them off as a waste of time. The quest to understand consciousness strikes me as a pursuit in which we are especially trapped in our own frames of reference. "I wonder why I wonder why I wonder why I wonder," etc. My quantum babble was a parody. Not of Penrose, but of others who have latched onto his theories because they aren't satisfied with the notion that consciousness arises in a formulaic way from the brain's complexity. In the time I've spent reading "for the layman" accounts of quantum mechanics perhaps I could have acquired some real understanding. I certainly don't have it now. And, my point, neither do a lot of people who seem attracted to quantum theories of consciousness. I can just about put together a sentence or two describing the weird world of subatomic particles and how observation forces them to "choose" certain properties. But why that would explain anything about consciousness is beyond me.
Minoosh Graduate Poster Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 1,490

19th January 2012, 01:46 PM	#114
Minoosh Graduate Poster Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 1,490	AND I've never read "The Emperor's New Mind," but just snipped this bit from a review on Amazon: "Penrose claims that there is an intimate, perhaps unknowable relation between quantum effects and our thinking, " And it's the "perhaps unknowable" part that sets alarm bells ringing. It just seems too dang convenient for people who want to hold forth without really understanding what they're talking about.
Minoosh Graduate Poster Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 1,490

19th January 2012, 04:08 PM	#115
Complexity The Woo Whisperer Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Minnesota, USA Posts: 9,263	Originally Posted by Wowbagger It seems to me that most of you dismissing the term "qualia" are sweeping the "problem" of private experiences under a rug, without explaining either: Where they come from and how they emerge; or if qualia isn't really real: then how the delusion of qualia comes about. We want to understand the phenomena of private experiences. Not wave them off as a waste of time. 'Qualia' is a dead end. Find a much better path to understanding than that.
	__________________ "It is a great nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work." - W. Somerset Maugham "Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established intuititions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man." - Bertrand Russell

19th January 2012, 04:11 PM	#116
Complexity The Woo Whisperer Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Minnesota, USA Posts: 9,263	Originally Posted by Minoosh AND I've never read "The Emperor's New Mind," but just snipped this bit from a review on Amazon: "Penrose claims that there is an intimate, perhaps unknowable relation between quantum effects and our thinking, " And it's the "perhaps unknowable" part that sets alarm bells ringing. It just seems too dang convenient for people who want to hold forth without really understanding what they're talking about. Penrose has a definite woo streak. I find him to be not worth reading because of that - his better ideas simply aren't good enough to overcome his woo nonsense.
	__________________ "It is a great nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work." - W. Somerset Maugham "Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established intuititions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man." - Bertrand Russell

19th January 2012, 05:26 PM	#117
Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Westchester County, NY (when not in space) Posts: 13,503	Originally Posted by Belz... "Qualia" is not an understanding or an explanation for those subjective experiences. I know that. 'Qualia' is a word we can us describe what needs to be explained. As long as we leave out the "it's unexplainable!" part. It might be a synonymn of "subjective experience", but I think it is more likely an emergent property of various aspects of the brain that generate different types subjective experiences. Originally Posted by Matt the Poet Indeed, it may hinder understanding as there's no guarantee it 'cleaves nature at the joints' in terms of identifying an actual, measurable phenomenon. I suppose if the word has sooooo much baggage associated with it, perhaps usage of this word would barely be worth pursuing. But, I still think the word could be used in an entirely measurable manner. Originally Posted by Leumas Watch the videos in *this post* for one explanation that does not need the term qualia in any way. I didn't watch those in their entirety, but I am familiar with the arguments. I would argue that what Daniel Dennett is describing IS qualia. Even if he hates using that word to describe it. Originally Posted by Minoosh My quantum babble was a parody. That does explain a few things. Originally Posted by Complexity 'Qualia' is a dead end. Find a much better path to understanding than that. The 'better path' you are referring to is actually an explanation for what 'qualia' is. Even if you don't like that word. Imagine if some said: "Every time we examine a single bird in a flock, the flock itself disappears from our observation. Therefore, studying flocking behavior is a dead end! Flocking can't really exist, and we should only continue to study the individual birds."
	__________________ WARNING: Phrases in this post may sound meaner than they were intended to be. SkeptiCamp NYC: http://www.skepticampnyc.org/ An open conference on science and skepticism, where *you* could be a presenter! By the way, my first name is NOT Bowerick!!!!