Why "rather"? Sound events and illumination events are clearly external and public. — bongo fury

As physical waves, not experiences of color or sound.

It's not about you telling if someone else is afraid. It's about them deciding that they themselves are afraid. — Isaac

Thinking about this some more, how would the words "afraid", "red" or "pain" have become part of language if there wasn't fear, color, or uncomfortable sensations to begin with? What exactly is the public model that we learn based on?

We don't have any words for sonar experiences. Could we make one up and get people to have sonar experiences by teaching them the model?

How does that work for animals? Fear and aggression are important for survival, and they're not exactly querying themselves for reports on conscious experiences.

Also in the moment when someone punches me, I'm probably reacting in anger, not stopping to do some reflection. That comes after the reaction.

Same can be said of colour, tastes, memories... the more we look, the more useful an explanation this model provides. — Isaac

So does this mean other animals do not have experiences of colors, tastes, memories, because they lack the language to ask themselves about how other animals typically react?

And I can't make sense of that for color at all. So you're saying seeing a red apple is the result of learning the public model for using the term "red"? And that generates an experience in the reporting?

Does this mean Helen Keller had no conscious experiences until she learned the word water by the feel of it from her tutor writing the word on her hand? That seems exactly backwards.

One of the possible mappings of brain activities to phenomenological experience is via public models like 'fear'. Why would you rule that out? — Isaac

I don't know wha it means to say fear is a public model. I can't always tell when someone is afraid. Particularly if they wish to hide it, or are one of those people with good poker faces who don't wear their emotions on their sleeves. In fact, I don't know to a large extent what everyone else is thinking or feeling. Only some of it is apparent, to the extent I'm reading them accurately. Which is always a guessing game that can be wrong. And even when they tell me, I don't know if it's the truth. People often omit things or tell white lies.

It's like saying lying is a public model. Which would mean we could accurately detect liars, right? Something that would stand up in court.

Because brains are just lumps of biological matter with electrical and chemical activity. Just looking at it isn't going to tell us what any of it's doing any more than looking at a microprocessor is going to tell us what software is on it. — Isaac

And there you go again. I thought for a moment you were backing off the eliminativism.

Since we've absolutely no reason to presume phenomenological reports are always accurate — Isaac

Nothing is always accurate. Certainly not our perception of the world. What matters is that phenomenological experiences exist and need to be accounted for. We see colors. We feel emotions, pains, taste food. We dream. We visualize. Many of us have inner dialog. We relive memories at times.

The problem is those sounds and colors don't exist in external objects. It's rather sound waves and photons. The sounds and colors we experience are shivered into existence. But that shivering is explained in the same language as the external objects. Just more stuff doing functional things.

In psychology there's very little choice but to start out with self-reports and ask "what's going on to cause this?" We can't just look at brains and expect to 'see' what's going on without any phenomenological data. — Isaac

I wonder why that is. :chin:

So you agree with Anil Seth that the goal is to map brain processes to phenomenal consciousness as a way forward to building bridges between the two?

Because it sure as hell seemed like you were arguing along eliminativist lines to me and others in this thread. In fact, in the very post before your reply to me you're doing it again. Replacing the experience of fear with talk of a model and public convention.

Okay, but if i'm brain shivering color and pain, that still needs to be explained.

I'm glad you find that obvious. But you digress. — bongo fury

I don't actually think that. I'm okay with my dualism. Physicalism doesn't have to be true.

It's just if consciousness can be an illusion, why not the external world?

Thereby getting nowhere, but perpetuating the myth of an internal world. — bongo fury

Our an external one? That sword can cut either way.

This neuroscientist is going somewhere:

The real problem of consciousness, it's in distinction from Chalmers hard and easy problems that we talked about before. The basic idea of the real problem is to accept that consciousness exists, it's part of the universe, we have conscious experiences. And brains exist. One thing we know about consciousness is that it depends on the brain in quite close ways. And the idea is to describe as richly as we can the phenomenology of conscious experience. And to try to build explanatory bridges, as best we can, from brain mechanisms to this phenomenology. This has been called the mapping problem by Chalmers himself.

https://philosophybites.com/2017/07/anil-seth-on-the-real-problem-of-consciousness.html — Anil Seith

No, I don't want to call consciousness an illusion. In fact, to me I don't see the point: it's essentially saying that we don't have feelings, we just feel we do. — Mijin

Indeed. Even the illusion is itself being conscious of something.

I'm just a bit touchy when it comes to consciousness, because Dennett and his adherents don't just put the hard problem to one side; they handwave it. — Mijin

Indeed. It's like some of the more staunch behaviorists in the earlier part of the 20th century. They didn't just want to put mental content to the side, they wanted to handwave it away in favor of stimulus and response, as if that alone could explain everything humans do.

Your critique being that every experience is unique? "What it's like" doesn't need to pick out the same exact experience. It just means there's something it's like to have a visual experience versus an auditory one versus being in pain versus whatever a sonar one is, which we don't know.

And that's different from what it's like for Siri to feel cold when she tells me, "Burrr, it's 20 degrees outside". Because she doesn't feel anything.

Perception involves the minimisation of prediction error simultaneously across many levels of processing within the brain’s sensory systems, by continuously updating the brain’s predictions. In this view, which is often called ‘predictive coding’ or ‘predictive processing’, perception is a controlled hallucination, in which the brain’s hypotheses are continually reined in by sensory signals arriving from the world and the body. ‘A fantasy that coincides with reality,’ as the psychologist Chris Frith eloquently put it in Making Up the Mind (2007) — https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one

Hoo-boy! That will drive some of direct realists on here battty.

Back to the quining shivering. Anil does mention qualia on the podcast. He doesn't dismiss it. Just says that it's the philosophical term for the contents of consciousness. Then goes on to talk about building bridges and mapping brain processes to those wonderful sensations we all know intimately.

It's like you have blinders on. From the podcast around 7:24.

The real problem of consciousness, it's in distinction from Chalmers hard and easy problems that we talked about before. The basic idea of the real problem is to accept that consciousness exists, it's part of the universe, we have conscious experiences. And brains exist. One thing we know about consciousness is that it depends on the brain in quite close ways. And the idea is to describe as richly as we can the phenomenology of conscious experience. And to try to build explanatory bridges, as best we can, from brain mechanisms to this phenomenology. This has been called the mapping problem by Chalmers himself. — Anil Seth

He's not denying phenomenology. He isn't reifying the hard problem, but he's also not dismissing it. Rather, he's proposing a way forward for investigating consciousness. And it might turn out that the hard problem isn't so impossible after all.

While you have been arguing from an eliminativist view in this thread, dismissing phenomenology as irrelevant or replaceable by non-phenomenological terms. That is not what Anil is doing. He is talking about mapping brain processes to consciousness, and see where that takes us.

From the article:

Armed with this theory of perception, we can return to consciousness. Now, instead of asking which brain regions correlate with conscious (versus unconscious) perception, we can ask: which aspects of predictive perception go along with consciousness? A number of experiments are now indicating that consciousness depends more on perceptual predictions, than on prediction errors. — Anil Seth

You missed the quote where Anil talks about how identifying consciousness with something like integrated information is a form of panpsychism. And it's something Chalmers himself has endorsed, although from a property dualist view. Notice how Anil does not replace consciousness with a predictive model, rather it's a mapping from one to the other as part of the ongoing investigation.

I fully endorse what Dr. Seth is doing. If the hard problem or explanatory gap is every to be resolved, it's along these lines. It's not along the lines of pretending it's just an invention by philosophers.

On a separate note we probably agree on, I do like the talk of perception being an indirect and predictive process. Very interesting stuff.

@Isaac

This last quote from the paper is exactly what the anti-Dennett side has been arguing this entire thread.

But as powerful as these experiments are, they do not really address the ‘real’ problem of consciousness. To say that a posterior cortical ‘hot-spot’ (for instance) is reliably activated during conscious perception does not explain why activity in that region should be associated with consciousness.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one — Anil K Seth

@Isaac I'll add this from the article.

Some researchers take these ideas much further, to grapple with the hard problem itself. Tononi, who pioneered this approach, argues that consciousness simply is integrated information. This is an intriguing and powerful proposal, but it comes at the cost of admitting that consciousness could be present everywhere and in everything, a philosophical view known as panpsychism. — Anil K Seth

It's readily apparent that Seth is talking about phenomenal consciousness, and he understands the issues, such as when you make it identical to something like "integrated information".

And then there's this that further drives the point home:

When we are conscious, we are conscious of something. What in the brain determines the contents of consciousness? The standard approach to this question has been to look for so-called ‘neural correlates of consciousness’ (NCCs). In the 1990s, Francis Crick and Christof Koch defined an NCC as ‘the minimal set of neuronal events and mechanisms jointly sufficient for a specific conscious percept’. This definition has served very well over the past quarter century because it leads directly to experiments. We can compare conscious perception with unconscious perception and look for the difference in brain activity, using (for example) EEG and functional MRI. — Anil K Seth

Neural correlates of consciousness wouldn't make sense unless Seth (along with Crick and Koch) didn't take phenomenal consciousness seriously as something in need of explanation.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one

I'll start by quoting from from an article Anil wrote. It covers much the same ground.

In the same way, tackling the real problem of consciousness depends on distinguishing different aspects of consciousness, and mapping their phenomenological properties (subjective first-person descriptions of what conscious experiences are like) onto underlying biological mechanisms (objective third-person descriptions). A good starting point is to distinguish between conscious level, conscious content, and conscious self. Conscious level has to do with being conscious at all – the difference between being in a dreamless sleep (or under general anaesthesia) and being vividly awake and aware. Conscious contents are what populate your conscious experiences when you are conscious – the sights, sounds, smells, emotions, thoughts and beliefs that make up your inner universe. And among these conscious contents is the specific experience of being you. This is conscious self, and is probably the aspect of consciousness that we cling to most tightly. — Anil K Seth

And:

But there is an alternative, which I like to call the real problem: how to account for the various properties of consciousness in terms of biological mechanisms; without pretending it doesn’t exist (easy problem) and without worrying too much about explaining its existence in the first place (hard problem). (People familiar with ‘neurophenomenology’ will see some similarities with this way of putting things – but there are differences too, as we will see.) — Anil K Seth

And this, since it mentions dreaming:

What are the fundamental brain mechanisms that underlie our ability to be conscious at all? Importantly, conscious level is not the same as wakefulness. When you dream, you have conscious experiences even though you’re asleep. And in some pathological cases, such as the vegetative state (sometimes called ‘wakeful unawareness’), you can be altogether without consciousness, but still go through cycles of sleep and waking. — Anil K Seth

I've bolded the salient points.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one

I'll go grab some quotes from the podcast in my next reply.

(See this review.) — Wayfarer

As has already been mentioned, Sean is a Humean about causation. So there are just regularities. Those might be in logical relation to one another, like a mathematical system. That's the only way I can think to make sense of causeless patterns. Otherwise, why would we expect the universe to remain uniform? Why would the patterns have obtained all this time?

You mean supporting both String Theory and MWI is a contradiction? I realize they are different kinds of multiple worlds, with MWI just being based on taking the Schrödinger equation equation at face value, no ten dimensional vibrating strings of energy needed.

Sabine Hossenfelder would not approve:



The title is a bit provocative. She has strong opinions. I think metaphysics is a better term than "religion".

o; Fermi doesn't assert anything. The point of the paradox is to point out what we don't know, and let us try to figure out through discussion and investigation why we don't see evidence of ETs. — Mijin

Also, Fermi wasn't thinking in terms of radio astronomy. He was wondering why the aliens weren't already here (and everywhere else), given the age of the universe and how it would only take millions of years to colonize a galaxy.

That's where Barbieri claims that the emergence of codes - RNA and DNA in particular - is genuinely novel, and can't be predicted on the basis of physical or chemical laws alone. — Wayfarer

That's interesting. My question is what to make of strong emergence. Something completely unpredictable and novel comes into existence when the right conditions obtain for the fist time?

I agree that modern physics has rendered traditional materialism obsolete. And John Wheeler is one physicist who's proposed an It from Bit view. But I don't know what it means for information to be fundamental, as opposed to fields or particles or spacetime.

Information seems to me to have something to do with repeatable patterns that emerge from the fundamental physics.

Let's get back to brass tacks: I'm in agonizing pain. Is this pain an illusion, and if so, what's the difference if the illusion is also painful? — Mijin

Imagine being burned at the stake as you keep telling yourself the pain is an illusion.

At least when he's finally out of office on Jan 20th, everyone can stop talking about him non-stop. The NY Times should send him flowers and thank card for all the business Trump gained them the past four years.

I can't believe a philosophy forum spent 483 pages talking about Donald Trump.

Is there a kind of life that wouldn't be pessimistic and was worth living? Can you define that? Some of the stuff you listed can feel worth it at times, and make life seem enjoyable. Whether it adds up to a meaningful life worth living depends on the individual. Antinatalists seem to think people are fooling themselves.

I see it both ways, just depending on my mood.

So I went back and listened to Anil Seth's podcast on Philosphy Bites. He contrasts the real problem of consciousness with the hard problem. He explains that the real problem is one of mapping all the correlations between brain processes and phenomenology as a way forward to possibly explaining consciousness someday. And when they do cover the statistical inference of perception, conscious experience is still the end result of that which needs to be explained.

So although Anil is not pessimistic like Chalmers or McGinn about the problem being truly hard, he does not dismiss phenomonlogy by replacing with with neurological or statistical terms, as you do. Instead, he says we are conscious and it is strongly correlated with brain activity, so let's continue investigating the link between the two and see where that leads.

No, I'm saying warp drives and wormholes are not ruled out. It might be possible to construct them for use in travel.

In the Sara podcast at 57:36, Sean says we know that Standard Model of particle physics and asks whether that isn't enough. He says he thinks that's where they're going to diverge in their opinions, and expresses surprise that she thinks the Standard Model wouldn't be enough to explain life.

Do your really think the core theory, the Standard Model of physics is not up to the task of explaining life? — Sean Carol"

Sounds pretty reductionist. At 59:00 he mentions the Mark Bedau paper on weak versus strong emergence based on being able in principle to simulate higher level properties in advance. Sean Carol is the one who brings that up. And then he said he was a big believer in weak emergence. So he's using Mark Bedau's criteria for emergence in contrast to Sara's view.

It's not really any different from logical supervenience where the microphysics necessarily entails any emergent pheneomena. There are no surprises given perfect knowledge in advance.

Anything that comports with the laws of physics - that is not pure fantasy? — tim wood

No. A perpetual motion machine is, as would time travel to the past where you kill your grandfather. But wormholes or warp drives might be possible. An advanced civilization that sticks around long enough is going to be able tot explore the possibility space of what physics allows.

It's speculative, but not pure fantasy. It would be weird to think we're close to the pinnacle of technological advancement, given how much has occurred in the last several centuries. Surely a thousand more years would yield far more advances. Of course it might not happen for humans, but it could have happened for some aliens.

he's a strong proponent of Hume, — ChatteringMonkey

Yeah, I just listened to his podcast with Ned Hall on laws of nature and possible worlds. Sean identified as a Humean in challenging the anti-humean position Hall was explaining. But more to elicit a clear understanding of causation. It was an interesting discussion. However, it raised more questions than it answered. It does seem like Carol prefers the simpler explanation, which is physics is describing regularities and patterns in nature, not some additional causal force.

I think when he agreed with Tegmark on our universe being mathematical, he meant it could be fully described by math without leaving anything out. Which means it can be simulated in principle by a full understanding of the microphysics.

You underestimate Siri. — TheMadFool

What human has been tricked by Siri into thinking it was a person? I find Siri to be a useful assistant for certain things, but a lousy conversationalist in general.

The point is it's not the character of the awareness that's important, it's awareness, by itself, alone, that's the key to consciousness. — TheMadFool

Awareness of colored objects which make sounds and have smells/tastes. But also can be painful when you mishandle them. Those objects don't have those properties. That's just how our biology interacts with the world in order to survive.

Desktops don't feel pain, and the data computers store about images is encoded. The encoding only has meaning as an image, because that's how we've programmed computers to handle such bit patterns, and output them for us in a form we see as an image.

So #3 it is.

ook, the fundamental issue, the basic problem, whatever, is that all modern science - big statement! - relies on objectification. Newton, Galileo, Descartes, et al, perfected the method for mathematisation of statements about objective phenomena. It is the universal science, in that it can cope with any kind of object. But mind is not an object. I — Wayfarer

Makes me wonder how Tegmark thinks the mind fits into math. He's fond of arguing that everything that exist is mathematical, and all mathematical objects exist.

The notion of consciousness is, at its heart, claiming there's a difference between mental images and camera-images but we know there's none. Ergo, consciousness - the purported difference in identicals - can't be real. Consciousness is an illusion. — TheMadFool

Even if we say this is the case for vision, it doesn't work for pain and other conscious sensations. The massive focus on vision in these discussions can be misleading. Consciousness is more than seeing a red apple.

Tegmark was on Carroll's podcast, but I don't think Carroll has endorsed his idea. Carroll is a good interviewer, in that he is receptive to all ideas and tries to get his interviewees to make their strongest case. But that doesn't mean that he agrees with everything they say. — SophistiCat

Not everything, but he agreed with Tegmark on our universe being mathematical. Agreed that he's a good host.

Anyway, I don't see much of a connection between mathematical universe and weak emergence. — SophistiCat

In Sara's podcast, Carol mentioned Bedau's paper on emergence, where weark emergence is anything that could in principle be simulated before it emerges. A mathematical universe would be computable, so that would make any phenomena weakly emergent. Sara says she doesn't think life can be simulated.

But I've looked at her publications; she has a number of papers on top-down causation in biology, some with Paul Davies, who has also been interested in this topic. That would probably speak to "strong emergence." — SophistiCat

She does mention that a little bit in the podcast about how our gaining knowledge of physics allows us to develop technologies that would not have otherwise come into existence. Downward causation would be the other part of strong emergence. Causation though is it's own controversial subject.

She explored this theme here: The Descent of Math. — SophistiCat

Thanks for the link.

But panspermia would just mean abiogeniss happened somewhere else. Maybe under different conditions than early Earth. Would make discovering the origins of life harder.

Makes sense to me, but strong emergence is still spooky. However, her explanation sounded like it was an epistemological problem, not a metaphysical one. In that it's our understandiing of the natural world which is incomplete. But I could be wrong and Dr. Walker thinks it's a new ontological addition to the universe once there is chemistry.

I'll have to read the Barbeiri paper and see what he says about it.

What problem?

Neurology is a discipline that tells us much about how conscious experience happens. — creativesoul

Yeah, but as Luke in this thread (and Chalmers elsewhere) have pointed out, it doesn't explain why any physical system would be conscious. Our understanding of physics would not predict this if we weren't already conscious. A nervous system wouldn't fundamentally be different than a computer with input devices, in that regard.

Why do we see colors and feel pain when no other physical system does this, far as we can tell? What would it take for a robot to do so? Did Noonien Soong sliip a qualia chip into Data's positronic brain?