What parts of objective knowledge do you think would have to be given up if it were decided that an objective account of consciousness is impossible? — Janus

I think the nature of consciousness is a largely scientific question, one that we're far from answering. If/when we do answer it, it will be in the same terms that any other scientific question is answered, and with the same degree of objectivity, whatever that may be. The fact that the object of our investigation is presented to us as subjectivity itself, shouldn't distract us from its amenability to being understood objectively. Consider dreams -- we wouldn't say that, just because no one but me will ever experience my dreams, all objective investigation of dreaming is at an end, would we?

So, if this entire model is wrong, it will be wrong on much larger and more troubling grounds. It will be the entire "objective" scientific project itself that turns out to be faulty; objective knowledge about consciousness won't be any harder or easier to achieve than knowledge of anything else, but the whole project may prove impossible. That's what I meant about having to give up a great deal of what we believe counts as objective knowledge. In short, consciousness doesn't present a special case of the failures of objectivity. If it fails, it fails tout court.

One last thing: The phenomenology of consciousness -- how we do experience subjectivity -- is an entirely different matter, one that science is powerless to speak about. For that we need philosophy.

One last thing: The phenomenology of consciousness -- how we do experience subjectivity -- is an entirely different matter, one that science is powerless to speak about. For that we need philosophy. — J

I was going to object to your first two paragraphs, but when I read this final one, I realized we are largely in agreement.

Although I will point to a couple of things which presents some difficulties for scientific investigation and understanding of consciousness—that is that with all the fMRI advances in understanding which parts of the brain do what, the investigators still rely on personal reports from the subjects as to what they are experiencing or thinking about and so on—which means we haven't really gotten away from phenomenology in this investigation.

Also, the so-called hard problem of consciousness seems much more intractable, because it attempts to deal with the question of how processes in the brain, which can be understood in causal terms, can give rise to subjective experience, which, if we are to accept that subjective experience is just as it seems to us, and to phenomenological analysis, cannot be strictly understood in causal terms, but is better understood in terms of reasons.

It might be atoms, or quantum fields, or something more fundamental. I was not suggesting we know what substance is, but that the idea of substance is not hard to understand. — Janus

Ah gotcha. Correct.

And it raises an interesting question—can we ever come to know what substance is, and if so, how? Via science? Philosophy? Some other way?

It's a good question. I'd start conservatively and argue, what do we know about substance? Well, for one thing it is a concept, and in this regard is mental.

Beyond that? Well, traditionally, it was argued that it that which binds things (properties) together, so that we don't have a kind of Humean world: just properties all over the place.

If we go down to the microscopic level, I think it's not coherent to say that say, atoms or fields are substances.

I suppose we should refine it a bit more. But there's a possibility it's just our commonsense way of viewing the world, and thus not literally true, that not something in the extra-mental world.

Hard to say.

It's a good question. I'd start conservatively and argue, what do we know about substance? Well, for one thing it is a concept, and in this regard is mental. — Manuel

Yes, 'substance' is an idea—the question is whether the idea refers to something real or is merely an idea. How could we find out?

Beyond that? Well, traditionally, it was argued that it that which binds things (properties) together, so that we don't have a kind of Humean world: just properties all over the place. — Manuel

Yes properties were traditionally thought to inhere in something and that something would be substance. So, Aristotle thought individual entities as the bearers of properties are substances—I'm a substance, you're a substance and your cat is a substance and so on.

If we go down to the microscopic level, I think it's not coherent to say that say, atoms or fields are substances. — Manuel

We have the idea of chemical substances, which have different properties. But then microscopic and subatomic particles are thought to have properties too.

The other idea of substance, as I said earlier, is 'the ultimate constituent of things'. That could be energy, for example, or mind if you're an idealist.

I suppose we should refine it a bit more. But there's a possibility it's just our commonsense way of viewing the world, and thus not literally true, that not something in the extra-mental world. — Manuel

Right, it might just be our way of making sense of things, although it is hard not to think of the extramental world as consisting in something. The problem is how could we ever know we had found the most fundamental constituent of things when it is always possible that there could be something more fundamental that eludes our grasp.

Also, the so-called hard problem of consciousness seems much more intractable, because it attempts to deal with the question of how processes in the brain, which can be understood in causal terms, can give rise to subjective experience, which, if we are to accept that subjective experience is just as it seems to us, and to phenomenological analysis, cannot be strictly understood in causal terms, but is better understood in terms of reasons. — Janus

Yes, good statement of the problem. When we have a scientific way of filling out the phrase "give rise to," we may be a lot closer to understanding all this. I suspect it'll involve supervenience rather than causality, but we just don't know.

One point: The processes of subjectivity are indeed not strictly causal, often involving reasons. That doesn't necessarily mean that whatever "gives rise to" consciousness itself has to be non-causal as well. Part of what makes all this so difficult and, for now, mysterious, is that we don't know how to describe the relations that might obtain between a (causally governed) physical level of description and a (reason-governed, often) mental level of description. Even trying to write that sentence gives me a headache because it's so terminologically awkward. It's like we're groping for a third mode of activity that is neither causal nor rational, that we can call upon as an explanation for how the first two modes relate. Just words, for now, I'm afraid, and I bet none of them will turn out to be good enough. Imagine trying to understand general relativity before Einstein.

That doesn't necessarily mean that whatever "gives rise to" consciousness itself has to be non-causal as well. — J

To say this better: We can talk about what causes consciousness in toto, as a phenomenon, without committing ourselves to the thesis that every individual content of consciousness is caused by some one-for-one physical process. There's plenty of room for reasons.

A huge question, but it boils down to whether there's anything at all that can properly be called "objective." — J

Objectivity is the criterion for natural science and many other disciplines. Philosophy is different in the sense that in this subject, we are what we seek to know. Continental philosophy recognises this in a way that current Anglo philosophy rarely does.

Yes, 'substance' is an idea—the question is whether the idea refers to something real or is merely an idea. How could we find out? — Janus

If no evidence can be provided that makes the concept obsolete, then it could be an indication that is mental only.

Alternatively, if we cannot but help to think of the manifest world as being composed of things that have properties, and even if we break an object apart, we still think in terms of substance that's also a sign.

The question is how can we prove it isn't mental only? We'd have to all agree (as physicists would) one what counts as a substance. But I'm thinking out loud here.

I'm a substance, you're a substance and your cat is a substance and so on. — Janus

This is me asking:

Is the self a substance? If so, then that's a very interesting connection. If we could provide evidence that selves exist (not apart from body), but as facts of the world, then that could be a hint of a substance.

But then microscopic and subatomic particles are thought to have properties too.

The other idea of substance, as I said earlier, is 'the ultimate constituent of things'. That could be energy, for example, or mind if you're an idealist. — Janus

Yes, but does it make sense to think of an atom as a substance? Despite it having other particles fundamental to it?

I do like the "ultimate constituent of things" - probably what Locke had in mind. Yes, maybe energy, maybe motion, maybe mind or I know not what.

it is hard not to think of the extramental world as consisting in something. The problem is how could we ever know we had found the most fundamental constituent of things when it is always possible that there could be something more fundamental that eludes our grasp. — Janus

But is this something remaining a substance or a thing? I'm not sure these terms are the same. Maybe the extra mental is made of X-"stuff", not things. Or maybe events.

As for the final question, my intuition is that we'll never reach it. It's of a different kind of knowledge than what we have. But that would be a very long digression.

There's plenty of room for reasons. — J

Do you think it is plausible that we could entertain reasons without that being correlated with neural processes? Say on reason or reasoning leads to the next and say the first reasoning is correlated with some neural processes and the reasoning that follows is correlated with further neural processes. Do you think it is plausible that there are causal connections between the neural processes, just as there are logical connections between the reasonings?

Perhaps the understandings or lack of understandings of logical entailments are themselves correlated with neural networks. The idea doesn't seem implausible or problematic to me. Like Spinoza's idea that cogitans does not cause extensa and vice versa, it gets around the supposed conundrum that thoughts processes being causally connected neural processes rules out the rational /logical connections between ideas. They are just two different descriptions of the one set of phenomena..

Do you think it is plausible that we could entertain reasons without that being correlated with neural processes? Say one reason or reasoning leads to the next and say the first reasoning is correlated with some neural processes and the reasoning that follows is correlated with further neural processes. Do you think it is plausible that there are causal connections between the neural processes, just as there are logical connections between the reasonings? — Janus

Yes, all this is plausible, because we've allowed ourselves the placeholder term "correlated". But what else can we do? We don't know the right word yet.

The first question, if taken broadly, requires some qualification. I would find it implausible that there is no relation whatsoever between neural processes and reasons (or any other thoughts). But this conceives of a "reason" as a particular event that occurs in my mind at time T1. If the "same reason" occurs to you as well, it isn't actually the same reason, on this understanding, because it's in a different mind at a different time. But the more usual way to think about reasons puts them in a rational world of meanings or propositions, so that you and I do indeed share the "same reason" for X. Taken in that sense, it seems more plausible to me that reasons are not necessarily correlated with neural processes.

Objectivity is the criterion for natural science and many other disciplines. Philosophy is different in the sense that in this subject, we are what we seek to know. Continental philosophy recognises this in a way that current Anglo philosophy rarely does. — Wayfarer

Very true. And part of what I think Continental phil is better at, is recognizing that the objective/subjective pair is not nearly as straightforward as we might like it to be. So I would take issue, slightly, with the assertion that philosophy has to have this self-reflexive character, which would remove us from objectivity as commonly understood. There are many ways of doing philosophy, with more, or less, reachable stopping points. Understood as logical or conceptual analysis (a forte of Anglo phil), we can ask for results that are as objective as anything in the natural sciences, I think. But of course philosophy is unique in that, having said this, we can't leave it alone; we have to go on to ask, But how objective is that? And if you want to say that, ultimately, the grounding questions of philosophy take us back to self-knowledge, I wouldn't disagree.

The idea of the physical is contained within the mental, but it seems obvious that what the idea of the physical is the idea of is not contained within the mental.

Mental" can be understood to be just a word (and a misleading one at that) for a concept that signals that we cannot understand how experience, judgement abstraction and conceptualization, although always of physical things, are themselves physical processes. The only alternative is dualism, or the idea of a mental realm or substance which does not depend on the physical or idealism, which renders the physical as a mere idea.

Well, that's how the physicalist likes to present it at least. It makes "all other options" seem to be, at the very least, at least as unappealing or problematic.

I would rather say though that physicalism is itself a sort of dualism. There are quite different varieties of physicalism, but each of the main forms introduce a sort a sort of metaphysical and epistemic dualism.

Physicalism with "strong emergence" is really not that different from substance dualism except with the added claim that the mental emerges from the physical (whether this solves the interaction problem is another question). With strong emergence, whatever is strongly emergent is in some sense fundamental. Consciousness is in nature fundamentally and potentially from the begining, even if it isn't actual.

Then you have something like property dualism, which normally needs to also posit epiphenomenalism because all the behavior of conscious things must still be explainable in wholly physical terms, without remainder. But property dualism is still a sort of dualism. It says that things can be explained in two different ways that cannot fully explain each other. It also still introduces all the problems of epistemic dualism, the Kantian question of how we can ever truly know this "physical" noumena which is said to cause phenomena. In any case, as noted above, I find epiphenomenalism has plausibility issues, but it also seems to still require panpsychism or some sort strong emergence (each with their own difficulties).

Finally, there is the denial of consciousness tout court, a sort of hyper empiricist behaviorism. This perhaps resolves the dualism problem, but at the cost of denying we exist. Very few among even those who accept the label of "eliminitive materialist" go this far. They tend to instead stay more towards the aforementioned "property dualism + epiphenomenalism" view, with some added caveats about the mental world being "much more impoverished" than we think it is.

Hence, I think it's fair to say that physicalism tends to be a dualism. In its common forms, it goes along with representationalism (and all the Humean and Kantian epistemic problems that brings). Representationalism is a sort of epistemic dualism as well. The mental is essentially a "representation" of the physical. And normally it is said to be an accidental representation of the physical; the representation (and intelligibility/quiddity) is not essential to physical being.

Hence, I would rather draw a distinction instead between monism and dualism. Idealism normally gets presented as the idea that things are somehow "composed of mental substance " or "in the mind." This is fair for some idealisms, not really for others. For instance, Hegel and Plato, often called idealists (or Aristotle, who is occasionally called one as well) in no way deny the reality of "external objects," of "rocks and stars," etc. What they deny instead is the accidental relationship between things and their quiddity, or the epistemic dualism of representationalism. Plato might rightly be called a "dualist" in another sense, but this is in terms of "degrees of reality," i.e., in terms of self-sufficiency (something shared by Aristotle and Hegel). One need not read Plato as a dualist in this sense, but many do, and it doesn't seem wholly unfair (the "two worlds Platonism.") In general though, I think what defines "idealism" tends to be its monism. It is a sort of unfortunate (and perhaps unintended) smear of physicalist to instead associate this "monism" with an "idealism" that is defined by its least palatable varieties (e.g. Berkeley).

So for instance, for Hegel the "truth is the whole," and this cannot leave out the process of Spirit, of being knowing itself as being and as its self, which is not accidental representation, but part of the core of what being must be to be anything at all. But he certainly wasn't anti-scientific or an anti-realist, quite the opposite.

St. Augustine, St. Bonaventure, Duns Scotus Eriugena, St. Maximus the Confessor, or St. Thomas Aquinas all believed in the creation of a corporeal, physical world ex nihilo, and also a sort of idealism in this way as well.

Subject/object dualism is another sort of dualism that tends to dominate physicalism. Whereas in many philosophies the highest form of knowledge is always a sort of reflexive self-knowledge (Gereson's article on Neoplatonist epistemology is a good one here).

Yes, all this is plausible, because we've allowed ourselves the placeholder term "correlated". But what else can we do? We don't know the right word yet. — J

There is a distinction, as is well known, between causation and correlation. If two things are necessarily correlated I don't think it necessarily follows that one is the efficient cause of the other. There are also distinctions between difference kinds of causes. For me the basic distinction is between efficient (local) causation and (environmental or global) conditions.

I think it is implausible that any thought occurs without accompanying physical (neural) process. Spinoza's solution allows the unproblematic idea that the mental does not cause physical processes, and vice versa. The two run in parallel, so to speak. No epiphenomenalism is then required

But this conceives of a "reason" as a particular event that occurs in my mind at time T1. If the "same reason" occurs to you as well, it isn't actually the same reason, on this understanding, because it's in a different mind at a different time. But the more usual way to think about reasons puts them in a rational world of meanings or propositions, so that you and I do indeed share the "same reason" for X. Taken in that sense, it seems more plausible to me that reasons are not necessarily correlated with neural processes. — J

I'd say that 'reason' is a generalization like any other. A particular act of reasoning is an event that occurs in your mind at a particular time. So even if i have the same reason for doing or thinking something that you do, my attendant acts of reasoning will never be exactly the same as yours.

So I agree with you that reasons (as distinct from reasonings) are not necessarily correlated with neural processes.

So I agree with you that reasons (as distinct from reasonings) are not necessarily correlated with neural processes. — Janus

That's a good way of making the distinction -- "reasonings" for the particular mental events, "reasons" for the content of those events. And yeah, "content" is terrible but let's not get into full-Frege mode. I think we both know what we mean.

"Running in parallel" is close to what I mean by supervenience, though the phrase does suggest that there are two separate processes. I think the truth will turn out to be even weirder than that, but I'm just guessing. If we come to understand the hard problem, we will have some new concepts for understanding what we now call "mental" and "physical," concepts that will probably make us laugh at the idea of "dual aspects".

Again, words like "correlated with" or "accompanying" are OK for now, because they help us be clear that this is not a causal model. As I said in a previous post, the phenomenon of consciousness itself, as a biological thing, may well be caused -- in fact, I'd be surprised it if weren't. But that doesn't mean that an individual thought (or "reasoning") is caused by the brain's wetware. Likewise, we don't have to postulate mental causation as somehow closing the loop and making changes in the neurons.

But that doesn't mean that an individual thought (or "reasoning") is caused by the brain's wetware. Likewise, we don't have to postulate mental causation as somehow closing the loop and making changes in the neurons. — J

If by "wetware" you mean neural activity, I'd say individual thoughts just are neural processes, and that the brain provides the conditions under which both neural activity and individual thoughts are possible. So I wouldn't say that mental states cause changes in the neurons. I would say that mental states just are neural processes (taking 'states' here not in a 'static' sense but as signifying process).

We are 'blind' to neural processes in vivo, so of course mental processes don't seem to us to be neural processes. I think this "seeming" is what causes all the difficulties.

" You've written a lot there Timothy and I'll have to some back to try to address it when I have more time.

We are 'blind' to neural processes in vivo, so of course mental processes don't seem to us to be neural processes. I think this "seeming" is what causes all the difficulties. — Janus

Two things which "seem" to be different must be proven to be the same before they can be accepted as being the same. Otherwise you're just making an unsubstantiated assumption.

well I for one am plenty convinced. Affect the chemistry of the brain and you affect mental processes too. Plus, the closest thing we've built to a thinking machine is a machine that simulates a simplified version of a neuron.

Perhaps you're not entirely compelled to agree, that's fine, but we're far far away at this point from it being an entirely unsubstantiated assumption. We have plenty of fantastic reasons to think mental processes might be neural processes.

We are 'blind' to neural processes in vivo, so of course mental processes don't seem to us to be neural processes. I think this "seeming" is what causes all the difficulties. — Janus

I think I know what you're getting at, but . . . if you use a word like "seeming," you're inevitably faced with the question, "Then what is it really?" Do you want to reply, "Neural processes"? Why is the "seeming" of a mental process less actual than the "reality" of a neural process? This sounds like another version of physical reductionism.

Or put it this way: Could we equally well say that mental processes seem to be neural processes when they are examined from the outside, scientifically, but are really mental? If so, then I think we're back on the right track. We need to separate the idea of "seeming" from its cousins such as "illusion" or "appearance." Neither the mental nor the physical is any more actual or fundamental than the other.

By a nice coincidence, I was just reading an essay by Theodore J. Kisiel called "Phenomenology as the Science of Science" and came across this:

This is not to deny that the cognitive acts of representation, judgment, proof, etc. have a psychological origin, but there are more than psychic events involved here. Terms such as "knowledge," "thought," "judgment" etc. are equivocal, referring as they do both to the subjective and objective poles of the process. And the identity of the logical laws of thought with the psychological laws of "thought" serves to perpetuate this confusion. — Kisiel

This is the same distinction we were making between "reasonings" and "reasons" -- between some individual, hence psychological, instance of thinking, and the rational or objective content that it may represent. Kisiel is mainly explicating Husserl here, so we're in good company. (It's also the Fregean difference between "utterance" and "propositional content," I think, translated into thought-talk rather than assertions.)

….when they are examined from the outside, scientifically…. — J

Just a quick fly-by here:

Surely you realize the contradiction. To do anything scientifically is merely to do something in a certain way, but no matter what way it is done, it is still only a human that does it.

If the human never within himself attends to the natural laws he has already mandated as legislating his relation to all material substance, and he is scientifically investigating the machinations of a particular kind of material substance…..how is he ever going to relate what he claims to know, with what is never within his conscious attention?
—————-

Why is the "seeming" of a mental process less actual than the "reality" of a neural process? — J

It isn’t. Each is actual in its own domain; it is the interaction between those domains, that seems to be a problem. Hell…why not just say the problem seems to be that there are two domains.

Let’s not sugar-coat it: the brain is at bottom what allows the intellect to discover natural laws by which it understands its world, and, at the same time, it is the brain that prohibits the application of the very same natural laws, by the intellect attempting to understand how the brain allows the discovery of laws.

Hence AI. We can’t fix the irreconcilable problem of our own intelligence, so we just create a different one, which in fact doesn't fix anything at all, but instead, merely reverses the problem.

Affect the chemistry of the brain and you affect mental processes too. — flannel jesus

Sure, but it's a fallacy to conclude from this premise, that mental processes consist only of brain activity. If a thing is composed of multiple components, affecting one of the components will have an effect on the composite thing, but that does not imply that the composite thing consists only of that one component.

Perhaps you're not entirely compelled to agree, that's fine, but we're far far away at this point from it being an entirely unsubstantiated assumption. We have plenty of fantastic reasons to think mental processes might be neural processes. — flannel jesus

As i said, it is completely unsubstantiated, and your assumption that it is close to being substantiated, and this means that it is not completely unsubstantiated, indicates nothing except that you are lacking in skills of critical thinking.

Do you think it is plausible that we could entertain reasons without that being correlated with neural processes? — Janus

What faculty other than reason might be deployed in pursuit of an answer to that question?

. Affect the chemistry of the brain and you affect mental processes too. — flannel jesus

And vice versa. If I say something that annoys you, it will affect your adrenal glands, even though nothing physical has passed between us. The entire effect is grounded in your interpretation of symbolic meaning.

….when they are examined from the outside, scientifically….
— J


Surely you realize the contradiction. To do anything scientifically is merely to do something in a certain way, but no matter what way it is done, it is still only a human that does it. — Mww

This would only be a contradiction if we accept a very stringent definition of "objective" as meaning something like "untouched by human perception and thought." Which would pretty much rule out the concept. If you're saying that there's no such thing as objectivity, that's certainly discussable. But then we'll need a different word for whatever is the stance that science takes -- for there's a marked and important difference between the methods and discourses of science and those of, say, music criticism. Likewise, when we study neural processes, we're trying to do something very different from phenomenology. I'm not super-concerned about validating a particular use of "objective" or "scientific" -- we can even deny objectivity completely, if you really want to -- but the problem of how science is different from phenomenology will remain. "Doing something in a certain way" is, sorry, not nearly enough of a description, nor is it enough merely to notice that everything we do is done in a certain way by us. That doesn't necessarily make the point of view subjective.

Why is the "seeming" of a mental process less actual than the "reality" of a neural process?
— J

It isn’t. — Mww

Right. As I said, this is just physical reductionism. There's no required way to reduce either the mental or the neural to each other.

I think I know what you're getting at, but . . . if you use a word like "seeming," you're inevitably faced with the question, "Then what is it really?" Do you want to reply, "Neural processes"? Why is the "seeming" of a mental process less actual than the "reality" of a neural process? This sounds like another version of physical reductionism. — J

I'm not denying that what things seem are part of it. As I said earlier in this thread (I think) I count experiences of things as being as real or objective as the things are absent their being experienced. Remember Spinoza's idea that extensa and cogitans are two modes of the one substance or in our modern parlance, two descriptions of or perpsectives on the one thing. So what I'm saying doesn't amount to reductionism.

:up:

Nothing can ever be proved either way. proofs are obtainable only in the domain of math and logic. The best we can do is investigate empirically as much as possible and then provisionally accept what seems most plausible. What seems most plausible to one will not necessarily seem most plausible to another.

The best we can do is investigate empirically as much as possible and then provisionally accept what seems most plausible. — Janus

Uh, no. The best we can do, in such situations is not accept the claims. Why would you think that its good to accept unsubstantiated claims just because they seem plausible? That, as I said, demonstrates a lack of critical thinking.

What do you mean by "substantiated" if not proven? Scientific theories, much less philosophical claims, cannot be proven. Your apparent demand for absolute certainty (proof) leads if the logic is followed consistently to absolute skepticism. In that case just forget about claiming anything at all that is not analytically true or tautologous.