Can Everything be Reduced to Pure Physics?

[loseyourname]

I understood that by reading the previous posts in this monster thread. I have no hard opinion on the issue, but would like to raise a point. If something is to have evolutionary value, is it not more intelligence than conciousness ? Which then links to another question: is conciousness necessary for intelligence ? Personally, I don't think so, but I have no strong arguments. Intelligence is much more "measurable" than conciousness, and I think, in 20-30 years, we will have very intelligent machines, intelligent in the sense that they can do lots of "smart things". But to me, conciousness is that "other" aspect of our being, namely, as I wrote earlier, our "awareness", our "feelings", the fact that "pain hurts". I know this is vague, but that's exactly the problem !

A couple things about this. First, remember that a trait does not necessarily need to be of value to be fit into an evolutionary framework. There are other mechanisms I've spoken of by which relatively superfluous traits may evolve. That said, I do think that consciousness is of value. If you go back to my example of functionally conscious machines - that is, a machine that is capable of performing all of the functions that a conscious human can, but without having any subjective experience, you'll see a point I made about computing power. The ability to strategize holistically seems to still be fairly lost on computers, as evidenced by the fact that we have yet to design a program that can defeat a human skilled at the game of Go. I'm sure there are other examples, but that is the best one I can think of. A program that would be capable of doing this; that is, strategizing holistically about this very complex game at least as well as a human can, would require even more computing power than is currently available - but the most powerful computers already have far more computing power than does the human brain. So it is think it is clear that being conscious gives us the ability to economize - to perform these functions with minimal computing power. Without consciousness, I'd imagine our heads would be much larger and use up far more oxygen and ATP than they already do, which in and of itself is a disadvantage.

There is something ethical about conciousness, because "pain hurts". Once we know that certain machines would be concious, I think ethically they should have fundamental rights, such as the right for not being tortured or so.
On the other hand, I don't think you can do unethical things to your PC. But maybe one day I will stand on trial because I made a big, conscious computer in the basement, which I then tortured during years because I'm a perverted lunatic :-)

You know, I hadn't even thought of that. There is clearly an advantage in having members of a species instilled with a certain sense of ethics, and that cannot be achieved unless individuals of that species are capable of "feeling" subjectively.

 

[vanesch]

I don't think I'm one of these people because, as with molecules and UV rays, we are forced to accept the existence of consciousness because it is the best explanation for human behavior. I think I only disagree that we know for sure it exists because we "experience" it.

My opinion is exactly the opposite. Consciousness (I realize I've been misspelling the word all along ! English is not my mothertongue...) in the way I define it has absolutely no explanatory power, and - as I tried to point out - I think there is no link between consciousness and behaviourism. Probably if we will know the brain functions much better, the behaviour of a human being can be perfectly well explained as a function of these brain processes. So I don't need the concept to explain observations... except for the very observation that *I* am conscious (and by analogy, I assume you are too). It is not because a highly advanced medical science will be able to tell me that when you hit my foot with a hammer, a Sodium-Potassium ion density wave will propagate along the nerves, and then will release receptors in this part of the brain, and so pulses will go in that part of the brain, and that this will activate my voice control, and that I will pronounce the word "Aaah", and that other pulses will go to the muscles of my arm and try to grab the hammer out of your hand, and still other pulses will go to other muscles in my leg and my eyes will look at you and I will try to kick your bottom with my foot etc... that I will stop feeling the pain ! So if there is ONE thing I know for sure is that I am conscious, and I don't need that as an explanatory concept to explain my behaviour, I feel it.
In that view, the certified existence of consciousness is more a problem for the physical sciences if they want to explain it, than it is an explanatory tool, which, in my eyes, it isn't at all. If ever the physical sciences will have to admit that they cannot explain the whole universe, and that there is not only room for religion, but even necessity, then the issue of consciousness will be central to it. But there is still hope, we are far from having discovered everything the physical sciences can explain, no matter what naive string theorists seem to think.

cheers,
Patrick.

 

[vanesch]

If you go back to my example of functionally conscious machines - that is, a machine that is capable of performing all of the functions that a conscious human can, but without having any subjective experience

Ah, at least someone who has about the same conceptual notion of consciousness as me ! I haven't seen your example, but the very fact that you consider (as I do) that you can have a machine that in every aspect behaves "as would behave a conscious being in the same context" and you consider the possibility that that machine might NOT be conscious means that you do not necessarily adhere to behaviourism (which I define as exactly the opposite: namely, if the behaviour is as "would behave a conscious being in the same circumstances", then it is conscious; which reduces "consciousness" to a set of behavioural patterns and denies anything else it might mean).

But if "conscious-like behaviour" and consciousness are not equivalent in meaning, then this also means that things that might not at all act "conscious-like" can be conscious, and vice versa, and we're back to my central problem: except for oneself, of which one KNOWS one is conscious, and except for other human beings, which we can assume they are conscious by analogy, how the hell are we going to find out if an entity is conscious or not.

Now that we've put behaviourism aside (a good thing, in my opinion), there are two possibilities left open:

1) consciousness can influence behaviour. That means that consciousness somehow acts upon the physical world. This is a difficult-to-accept notion if we look into the functioning of a conscious being (the only one we know of for sure is a human, actually, only white, male humans, because I'm not sure that people of aziatic or african origin are conscious, or whether women are conscious, because I'm a white male - no, just kidding :-))) because we might find a complete behavioural description of the conscious being without needing any interference in the physical laws gouverning that behavioural description (except if we accept that a conscious being can only be based upon a quantum phenomenon, in which the fundamental uncertainties of quantum theory give the room of action to a consciousness to intervene in the behaviour ; Roger Penrose takes this very seriously).

2) Consciousness is a passive observer within a conscious being, whose behaviour is entirely determined by physical processes that are happening in the physical construction making up the body of the conscious being. Our consciousness just undergoes, without any influence, what the body does, all by itself. In this case it will be very hard to determine whether something else than a human being is or isn't conscious.

The ability to strategize holistically seems to still be fairly lost on computers, as evidenced by the fact that we have yet to design a program that can defeat a human skilled at the game of Go.

I'm not convinced by that. It is not because we haven't yet found out HOW to build efficiently such a machine, that it cannot be done. The question will then be if the machine is, or isn't, conscious !

but the most powerful computers already have far more computing power than does the human brain.

I would be surprised by this. If some parts of the brain are quantum computers, then the computing power of the brain might be tremendiously higher than by considering that neurons are the equivalent of logic gates, as is usually done in this kind of comparison.

cheers,
Patrick.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Neurons, even without quantum consideration are closer to analog cpus than to logic gates. They can have many inputs with variable and conditional outputs, just as if running a program.

 

[Egmont]

So if there is ONE thing I know for sure is that I am conscious, and I don't need that as an explanatory concept to explain my behaviour, I feel it.

But how exactly do you know that whatever it is that you feel is actually called "consciousness"? Think about it, you learned what the word means from other people, but you never had a chance to observe how they feel when they say they are conscious. Do you think it's possible that you associated the word "consciousness" with the wrong feeling? How can you be sure that you experience what other people describe as "conscious" if you have no way of experiencing what they do?

Those are very valid questions, and they clearly show that no one can be sure they are conscious just because they feel it. The reason we know for sure we are conscious is because we behave the same way as people who claim to be conscious behave. It's not because we feel the same way, for we have no idea how they feel.

If ever the physical sciences will have to admit that they cannot explain the whole universe, and that there is not only room for religion, but even necessity, then the issue of consciousness will be central to it.

Well, anything physical can be explained in purely physical terms. To say that science must incorporate religion is equivalent to saying economics must incorporate chemistry, or that biology must incorporate astronomy. Our knowledge is segmented, and religion provides knowledge about questions which lay completely beyond the domain of science.

But there is still hope, we are far from having discovered everything the physical sciences can explain...

I used to think that witnessing a miracle (supposing they happen) could convince any die-hard skeptic that materialism is a false ideology. I later realized I was wrong: the world is full of miracles, they happen everyday right in front of our eyes. Materialism is simply the mistaken notion that simply because something happens everyday, then there's nothing special about it. If the sky was filled with a different poem everyday, materialists would still claim it is perfectly "natural".

I think it's better just to ignore the materialists; they are a small minority anyway.

 

[Fliption]

It seems I overlooked this sermon I got.

All I am doing is going out on a limb here to propose that p-consciousness is epiphenomenal, and I've also proposed a way to test this hypothesis. The hypothesis proposes that not only is p-consciousness efficacious, but it provides a clear advantage for a human organism. The test is not meant to be proof, which seems to be your quabble.

My quabble is simply that I interpreted your original comments to be one that denies the hard problem. In the quote above you at least admit that you are going out on a limb and making some assumptions. I see nothing wrong with doing this btw. It's the only way to make progress in the real world. If we allow philosophy questions to stop us from acting, we'll never accomplish anything. But this quote above is very different from the original message I got earlier in the thread. Those statements sounded more like statements of fact and anyone who disagrees is just obviously not thinking very hard about it. It seemed to totally ignore the philosophical issues or even deny them altogether.

The reason I tell you to calm down is that you seem to be getting rather exacerbated and you're beginning to be a tad bit insulting.

I suppose I don't respond well to being called obstinate and silly when I can point to many people who agree with my position. Frustration is just a natural response when I perceive someone is being a bit egocentric.

When an answer would further my understanding of another's position, it is not irrelevant, even if that other does not consider it pertinent to the point he is making. A good discussion is facilitated by open lines of communication. Even if you don't see the importance of a particular question or example, it is best to address it. Answering questions will always further a discussion, whereas questioning questions only causes it to go in circles.

There is no hard and fast rule for communication. What you say is sometimes true but other times it is a waste of time. The questions you asked were irrelevant. They still are. If I answer them, it only serves to further lead you down the wrong path by giving you the impression that they are relevant. My point should have been obvious after I posted the other thread. Instead, the posting here still continued seemingly without a clue what I was talking about and with no reference to the other information. So I can understand frustration.

Another thing - please don't bemoan what you find as the deplorable behavior of scientific minded persons on a metaphysics forum. Address my arguments and my examples and my questions. I am the only person you are having this discussion with. There is no need for you to point out that my position may be inconsistent with that of other posters.

I pointed out where other posters disagreed with you to attempt to somehow get across the idea that your views were not without their problems and that one does not need to be obstinate to point them out.

And it is an open forum, with many readers. I try not to forget that. I make observations, including those about behavior, because it just might draw someone else on the sidelines into the discussion. So you won't mind if I don't do what you ask.

Just as we must assume that human sense perception is basically reliable and that there is indeed an external world that we can have knowledge of, we must assume that other humans are indeed conscious.

This is why I still insist your questions were not relevant. You still think I'm talking about whether other humans are conscious. As I've said before, that is merely a byproduct of the real issue, which I was using as an illustration. I couldn't care less about solipsism.

This seems to be where we disagree. You think it is an important question that must be solved, I think it is not.

I hope you see now after this response that this isn't true. I fully understand why certain scientific researchers don't care about such things. But making an assumption so that work can be carried out is very different from totally denying that an assumption was made. Originally, I thought you were doing the latter of the two. Now it seems you are not. So I' don't think we actually disagree.

 

[Fliption]

I think I only disagree that we know for sure it exists because we "experience" it.

How else would you know of it? How else would you know of anything? Experience is your only access to anything.

Also, help me understand your position a little more. Help me reconcile the quote above, which seems to be open to consciousness not existing, with this quote:

It's a lot easier for anyone to determine if a person is conscious, than it is for chemists to determine if a certain liquid contains ethanol. We don't have instruments to measure consciousness simply because we don't need them.

How can you determine that someone has something when you aren't sure it exists? In other words, how is it the word consciousness being used in language is proof that everyone is conscious yet it isn't proof that "something" exists we are referring to as consciousness?

Also, IMO proving solipsism wrong doesn't end the hard problem. That's like taking a boat to work after a major flood and then once you get to work saying "What flood? There is no flood. See, I got to work!"

The issue with the hard problem is that there is no functional explanation for what each of us refer to as consciousness. Whether other people are conscious are not is simply a byproduct of this situation. You may find alternatives around this particular byproduct(like taking a boat) but it doesn't eliminate the source of the problem(the flood).

Also, I will argue that this method of using language to make a claim about consciousness can only be used, at the very least, to argue that at least two people are conscious. That's all that's needed to establish the concept. Everyone else can pick up the word and attach it to whatever they want to and just believe they are referring to the same thing. The issue still stands in that you cannot know whether anyone person or thing is conscious. I may be the only person on the planet that isn't and you would never know because me not being conscious wouldn't impact the language at all.

But how exactly do you know that whatever it is that you feel is actually called "consciousness"? Think about it, you learned what the word means from other people, but you never had a chance to observe how they feel when they say they are conscious. Do you think it's possible that you associated the word "consciousness" with the wrong feeling? How can you be sure that you experience what other people describe as "conscious" if you have no way of experiencing what they do?

This is similar to the inverted spectrum scenario. This is a true situation we find oursleves in and fun to think about. But the only thing this explains is why there is so much confusion when people try to discuss things. It means nothing to the issues of consciosuness. I can, if I were a scientist, understand the materialistic principles by which I explain the nature of things around me. I can also understand that I have an experience of something that I refer to as "consciousness". So I can also see that these two don't connect and this creates a hard problem. I do not need to know what anyone else thinks consciousness is. I do not even need to have a word attached to my experience. I just need to notice it and establish it internally as a concept that needs explaining and then note that I can't explain it using the same materialistic techniques I've used to explain everything else.

 

[vanesch]

But how exactly do you know that whatever it is that you feel is actually called "consciousness"?

Because that's what *I* call it ! But let us not do that, because apparently the word is already "occupied". Let us have instead a thread on the problem of knowing if an entity is "bewust". By "bewust" I mean the fact that an entity has subjective experiences and feelings, and that pain hurts. I know that *I* am bewust, it is the only thing I really know for sure. From analogy, I take it a reasonable assumption that other creatures around me, who look like me, and behave like me, should also be "bewust" ; at least some of them . This I don't know for sure, but I take it as an acceptable hypothesis. And now the question is: what exactly is causing this bewustness, and when can we know that something which DOESN'T look at all like a human being can have bewustness. As I explained above, it has nothing behavioural. Behavioural testing can test intelligence if you want, but not the fact whether or not the entity behaving that way has subjective experiences. So bewustness is not an explanatory concept for behaviour. We actually do not need the concept, if it weren't for the very fact that *I* know that I have subjective experiences and feelings.

And now that we have a new word for what I want to talk about, at least we won't be fighting with linguistic arguments about definitions ! I want to talk about the concept "bewust" as I defined above, not about how we should define an existing word. It's the concept, not the word, I'm interested in discussing.

I was assuming that what I defined above as "bewust" came pretty close to what people accept as the definition of conscious. But in order to be able to start reasoning around the same concept, I introduced a new, "virgin" word that should be free of any preconceptions that might differ from what I thought the word meant and hence bring in confusion in the arguments. The price to pay is that I will have to build up the entire definition of my new word myself.

So in order to add to my definition of "bewust", I can add the following: it is in general considered ethically a bad thing to inflict bad treatment on something that is supposed to have bewustness, much more so than just the consequences of material damage that might follow from this bad treatment, in the following way:
it is sometimes not considered "very nice" to cut down trees, but the reasons for that are that we like the sight of trees, that there are some ecological considerations and so on. But trees are cut down (for the wood and so on) and nobody is going to argue that at least, one should do it in a "quick and clean way".
But it IS strongly ethically disapproved to torture young children in your basement. The reason for that is NOT the loss in investment (it took time and money to make them and raise them) or that fact that if you don't kill them, they might turn into mentally desequilibrated persons or whatever... no, it is the very act of torture that is strongly disapproved. And this comes from the fact that we assume children to have bewustness.


cheers,
Patrick.

 

[vanesch]

I think it's better just to ignore the materialists; they are a small minority anyway.

I think it is better to ignore mathematicians. They are a small minority anyway.

cheers,
Patrick.

 

[vanesch]

I can, if I were a scientist, understand the materialistic principles by which I explain the nature of things around me. I can also understand that I have an experience of something that I refer to as "consciousness". So I can also see that these two don't connect and this creates a hard problem. I do not need to know what anyone else thinks consciousness is. I do not even need to have a word attached to my experience. I just need to notice it and establish it internally as a concept that needs explaining and then note that I can't explain it using the same materialistic techniques I've used to explain everything else.

You come to the essence of the point I was trying to make here. The only difference in opinion I might have is the following: I've not yet given up on scientific inquiry into consciousness. But we haven't even begun! Progress could be made, if one day, we could, say, link together two brains, or a brain and a conscious machine, and your conscious experience "merges" somehow with that of the other entity.

cheers,
Patrick.

 

[Fliption]

You come to the essence of the point I was trying to make here. The only difference in opinion I might have is the following: I've not yet given up on scientific inquiry into consciousness. But we haven't even begun! Progress could be made, if one day, we could, say, link together two brains, or a brain and a conscious machine, and your conscious experience "merges" somehow with that of the other entity.

cheers,
Patrick.

Let me be more clear then, because I agree with this. I don't necessarily believe that we cannot one day find a place for consciousness and gain knowledge of it. I simply doubt that materialism can do it. Simply because it insists on doing it in a functional way and I don't believe that it can be reductively explained functionally. So this doesn't exclude science. It just means that there needs to be some assumption changes about what is fundamental in nature and what is emerging from those fundamental parts.

 

[vanesch]

I simply doubt that materialism can do it.

I'm not well versed in philosophic terminology, so could you give me your definition of "materialism" ? I thought it meant that everything was explainable in physical laws, but probably it is more subtle than this.

cheers,
patrick.

 

[Egmont]

Because that's what *I* call it !

OK, here's how I see it: when you claim you are sure you are conscious, at a minimum I can agree that there is at least one fact about which you have no doubt whatsoever. I can certainly agree with you that for each and every person, at least one fact is true beyond doubt. So for a while let's ignore what it is you are sure about, because it's easier to reach agreement that way.

But let us not do that, because apparently the word is already "occupied". Let us have instead a thread on the problem of knowing if an entity is "bewust".

Good, I like that. However...

By "bewust" I mean the fact that an entity has subjective experiences and feelings, and that pain hurts.

... this is unnecessary complication. You got rid of one problem by introducing a new concept - bewust. Now you introduced the problem back by implying that "bewust" is synonimous with "consciousness". Can we try a different approach?

I know that *I* am bewust, it is the only thing I really know for sure.

Now this is great. If you claim you know you are bewust, and that is the only thing you really know for sure, then no one can possibly have any issue with you. I certainly won't. The problem now is, how do I know what you mean by "bewust"? Well, I have a good starting point: "bewust" is something a person can be really sure they are. I can tell you right away that it doesn't map to my concept of "consciousness", because I don't know for sure if I am conscious, but it does map to something, because there are many things I am really sure I am.

Do you think this works?

From analogy, I take it a reasonable assumption that other creatures around me, who look like me, and behave like me, should also be "bewust" ; at least some of them

Sure, but you're only guessing and you may be wrong. Take me as a test - how can you know if I am "bewust" without guessing? You don't have to guess if it's raining, all you have to do is look outside the window. You don't have to guess if today is Thursday, all you have to do is look up a calendar. So how can you know I am "bewust" with the same level of certainty you know the weather or the day of the week?

This I don't know for sure, but I take it as an acceptable hypothesis.

What if I claim I am also "bewust" because, like you, there is one thing I really know for sure, and I wouldn't mind calling that thing "bewust", since I don't have a name for it. Do you think this works?

And now the question is: what exactly is causing this bewustness, and when can we know that something which DOESN'T look at all like a human being can have bewustness.

This is introducing problems which, at this point, are completely unsolvable. In a single sentence you came up with another concept, "bewustness", assumed it must have a causal relationship with another set of concepts, and started questioning whether things that cannot claim to really know for sure about one fact may be "bewust".

I don't deny your right to proceed that way, but I can guarantee you you will get absolutely nowhere. Trust me, millions of people already tried the same approach and they all failed miserably. Do you honestly think you can succeed?

As I explained above, it has nothing behavioural. Behavioural testing can test intelligence if you want, but not the fact whether or not the entity behaving that way has subjective experiences. So bewustness is not an explanatory concept for behaviour. We actually do not need the concept, if it weren't for the very fact that *I* know that I have subjective experiences and feelings.

Three paragraphs in your post and you completely lost me. This never gets anywhere; never did and never will.

I hope you don't think I'm being cynical or sarcastic - I'm not. What I'm trying to do is draw your attention to a problem that is so widespread, so ubiquitous, that very few people notice it.

And now that we have a new word for what I want to talk about, at least we won't be fighting with linguistic arguments about definitions

That happens to be exactly the ubiquitous problem I just mentioned. Nobody wants to have arguments about definitions, everyone assumes everybody else understands what they mean when they use a word, even as they know it's wrong to assume that.

I want to talk about the concept "bewust" as I defined above, not about how we should define an existing word. It's the concept, not the word, I'm interested in discussing.

You haven't given me a concept, you have given me a word - "bewust". And in order to try and convey the concept you associate with that word, you have given me... more words! How in the world can anyone think language doesn't play any role in this?

I was assuming that what I defined above as "bewust" came pretty close to what people accept as the definition of conscious.

... in which case, why do we need another word?

But in order to be able to start reasoning around the same concept, I introduced a new, "virgin" word that should be free of any preconceptions that might differ from what I thought the word meant and hence bring in confusion in the arguments. The price to pay is that I will have to build up the entire definition of my new word myself.
So in order to add to my definition of "bewust", I can add the following: it is in general considered ethically a bad thing to inflict bad treatment on something that is supposed to have bewustness, much more so than just the consequences of material damage that might follow from this bad treatment, in the following way:
it is sometimes not considered "very nice" to cut down trees, but the reasons for that are that we like the sight of trees, that there are some ecological considerations and so on. But trees are cut down (for the wood and so on) and nobody is going to argue that at least, one should do it in a "quick and clean way".
But it IS strongly ethically disapproved to torture young children in your basement. The reason for that is NOT the loss in investment (it took time and money to make them and raise them) or that fact that if you don't kill them, they might turn into mentally desequilibrated persons or whatever... no, it is the very act of torture that is strongly disapproved. And this comes from the fact that we assume children to have bewustness.

Oh man... do you realize you just can't do that? If defining a new word requires the usage of about a hundred other words, many of them without clear meaning (ethical? ecological? disapproved? mentally desequilibrated?)

I hope you don't hate me for this. I once engaged in a similar endeavour, a few years ago. I tried to build precise definitions out of very clear concepts which everyone could understand, and after years of frustration I eventually concluded that it was possible, but it had already been done and it was called "physics".

Along those lines, I think it's perfectly possible to come up with a clear, precise definition of consciousness, but that is what scientific researchers and analytic philosophers are already doing. Unfortunately their work will necessarily fail to answer most questions we have about consciousness, but that is only because those questions just don't have answers, period.

 

[Egmont]

How else would you know of it? How else would you know of anything? Experience is your only access to anything.

That is plain wrong. I've never experienced the Earth from outerspace, but I know it looks blue.

How can you determine that someone has something when you aren't sure it exists?

Do you have nationality? Does "nationality" exist?

In other words, how is it the word consciousness being used in language is proof that everyone is conscious yet it isn't proof that "something" exists we are referring to as consciousness?

The word "God" being used in language is proof that people understand, to some extent, what God is, but it is not proof that God exists. You don't need a real God to be able to think about God. You don't need consciousness to be able to have beliefs about it - all you need is to know what consciousness is.

Also, IMO proving solipsism wrong doesn't end the hard problem.

What hard problem?

That's like taking a boat to work after a major flood and then once you get to work saying "What flood? There is no flood. See, I got to work!"

No, that is like taking a boat to work after a major flood and then saying, over the phone to a lazy colleague, "what do you mean you can't get here? I did!"

Rest assured nobody will take you where you don't want to go. Certainly not me.

Also, I will argue that this method of using language to make a claim about consciousness can only be used, at the very least, to argue that at least two people are conscious.

You clearly misunderstand the point of analytic philosophy. I suggest you read up on the subject. Russell, Wittgenstein, Frege, are always a good start.

The issue still stands in that you cannot know whether anyone person or thing is conscious. I may be the only person on the planet that isn't and you would never know because me not being conscious wouldn't impact the language at all.

Well, you can say whatever you want. You can claim that the Earth is flat, that the bible provides a literal account of biological history, that the United States is about to be taken over by the UN. You can make arguments out of knowledge, or you can make arguments out of ignorance. The choice is always yours.

Your statement above is just plain wrong.

Cheers

 

[Fliption]

I'm not well versed in philosophic terminology, so could you give me your definition of "materialism" ? I thought it meant that everything was explainable in physical laws, but probably it is more subtle than this.

cheers,
patrick.

Well perhaps materialism isn't the exact word. I think your definition of materialism is probably close (if we can ever decide what physical means) but if we assume that to be physical means to be able to objectively observe and study, then this alone leaves consciousness out. We would just have to accept experience as a fundamental given in the universe. Now if things started happening like you descibe, i.e. consciousness merging, then this to me just confuses the definitions of physical and non-physical and they don't mean a whole lot at that point because would gaining knowledge this way be considered objective? Who knows. So the word materialism likely wouldn't mean much either.

 

[Fliption]

That is plain wrong. I've never experienced the Earth from outerspace, but I know it looks blue.

How did you come to know it is blue? Since you haven't seen it yourself then you probably learned it some other way. 1)Someone told you 2)You read it in a book 3) saw a picture of it on tv. Any will do. But they are all experiences. My statement stands. ALL your knowledge comes through experience.

Do you have nationality? Does "nationality" exist?

If I have it, then it exists as a concept that one can have. This is just word games that are meaningless to me.

You don't need consciousness to be able to have beliefs about it - all you need is to know what consciousness is.

But this directly contradicts what you were saying before. That the fact that everyone using the word consciousness was proof that solipsism was wrong and everyone really IS conscious. This is the contradiction I was attempting to point out.

Your god example is very different because now you seem to have switched your tune and no longer believe that having a conception of it equates to actually having it.

But I don't really think you have switched your tune. I'm just asking for clarification.

What hard problem?

The one that the scientist stranded all alone on an island has noticed while he studies in his laboratory... all alone.

The crux of this seems to be that you claim that the hard problem is created by the semantic traps we fall into when communicating with one another. I'm claiming that the hard problem exists within each individual person and the communication issues are simply a byproduct of the hard problem itself.

No, that is like taking a boat to work after a major flood and then saying, over the phone to a lazy colleague, "what do you mean you can't get here? I did!"

Rest assured nobody will take you where you don't want to go. Certainly not me.

Didn't understand this. A bit cryptic.

You clearly misunderstand the point of analytic philosophy. I suggest you read up on the subject. Russell, Wittgenstein, Frege, are always a good start.

Hmm well whenever someone says things like this I usually will concede the point regardless of how much I have studied it because there's always the possibility that I don't understand. That's really why I'm discussing it. It seems like complete nonsense but part of me knows that there must be some reason why every 3 months some character comes in here swearing by it.

As info, I have read on this topic. I have read Wittgenstein. I will admit to you that from what I read, it's all word games. I've seen papers where people have tried to use Wittgenstein to prove materialism correct. I just think this is another attempt to avoid the issue. That's the way it appears to me. I will gladly consider any points and concede to them if they make sense to me though. I promise you that.

Well, you can say whatever you want. You can claim that the Earth is flat, that the bible provides a literal account of biological history, that the United States is about to be taken over by the UN. You can make arguments out of knowledge, or you can make arguments out of ignorance. The choice is always yours.

Your statement above is just plain wrong.

But why is it wrong? Because it is a piece of knowledge that I cannot objectively justify with everyone else around me? Do you realize how much this sounds like the same argument some of the more extreme materialists in this forum make? Some of them even use this very point to deny that they have subjective experiences just to avoid having to concede that there is something about their existence that they cannot explain.

 

[vanesch]

to be physical means to be able to objectively observe and study, then this alone leaves consciousness out.

To me, "physical" means: has a necessary description in a physical theory, based on mathematical reasoning, allowing to predict outcomes of experiments. Conceptually integrated in physics, if you want to.

cheers,
patrick.

 

[Fliption]

To me, "physical" means: has a necessary description in a physical theory, based on mathematical reasoning, allowing to predict outcomes of experiments. Conceptually integrated in physics, if you want to.

cheers,
patrick.

Probably the same as the one I used. A physical thing is objectively(or is it inter-subjectively) observable.

 

[Egmont]

How did you come to know it is blue? Since you haven't seen it yourself then you probably learned it some other way. 1)Someone told you 2)You read it in a book 3) saw a picture of it on tv. Any will do. But they are all experiences. My statement stands. ALL your knowledge comes through experience.

That is beside the point. The point is that most of our knowledge comes from experiencing verbal descriptions of phenomena rather than direct experience of the phenomena themselves. But if you want to think there's no essential difference between reading Masters & Johnson and experiencing the real thing, please don't let me stand in your way

If I have it, then it exists as a concept that one can have. This is just word games that are meaningless to me.

What is a word game?

But this directly contradicts what you were saying before. That the fact that everyone using the word consciousness was proof that solipsism was wrong and everyone really IS conscious.

You completely misinterpreted my argument. You were born a few decades ago, the word "conscious" existed way before you arrived on this planet. People have been using it quite effectively in their daily communication. If at some point in your life you decided you thought about what the word means and discovered that everyone who uses the word "conscious", except you, is in fact not conscious, you would be a fool. At best it would simply mean you did not understand what people meant when they used the word "conscious".

That is, in a simple presentation, the argument against solipsism. It is a foolish idea. You may well define "conscious" in a way that makes it possible, even if only in principle, that you are the only conscious being in the universe. But if you do that, the rest of us may simply ignore you. People are conscious, period. They say so themselves, and they are the ones who invented the word. If you think they might not be, that only means you don't know what they are talking about.

I don't agree with it but part of me knows that there must be some reason why every 3 months some character comes in here swearing by it.

That doesn't mean anything. I suppose people come here more often than that swearing you must accept Jesus as your personal savior. You should only accept an idea if it makes sense to you, not because a lot of people claim it's true.

I will not tell you analytic philosophy provides you a lot of answers (it does, but saying that would make me sound like a preacher), but I can tell you are very confused. That means there must be something wrong with your approach.

I have read Wittgenstein. I will admit to you that from what I read, it's all word games.

This is a clear sign of your confusion. Wittgenstein is, quite simply, the most influential philosopher of the last century. The man practically reinvented philosophy with his concept of Sprachspiele ("language games", as it's often poorly translated in English). To dismiss his work as "all word games" is akin to dismissing Beethoven's symphonies as "a bunch of noise" or Van Gogh's paintings as "blobs".

I've seen papers where people have tried to use Wittgenstein to prove materialism correct.

You can't prevent people from putting a good idea to not-so-good uses. But a lot of what people like you perceive as proofs for the correctness of materialism are not what you think they are. The problem is not proving that materialism is correct, the problem is explaining why it seems correct. Because, like it or not, materialistic ideas are among the few certainties we have in life. So that's where analysis comes in, to demonstrate how materialistic may seem true in a non-materialistic universe (you knowledgeable ones out there, please allow me a bit of poetic license; I know I'm misrepresenting the position, but that's the best I can do in this context)

Do you realize how much this sounds like the same argument some of the more extreme materialists in this forum make? Some of them even use this very point to deny that they have subjective experiences just to avoid having to concede that there is something about their existence that they cannot explain.

I haven't seen anything like that, on this forum or anywhere else. Of course there are always the fools shouting from their soapboxes, but no one takes them seriously. Do you have a case in point?

 

[Fliption]

That is beside the point. The point is that most of our knowledge comes from experiencing verbal descriptions of phenomena rather than direct experience of the phenomena themselves. But if you want to think there's no essential difference between reading Masters & Johnson and experiencing the real thing, please don't let me stand in your way

I'm not claiming there isn't difference in the quality of knowledge based on how the knowledge is experienced. I'm only claiming that all knowledge comes from experience of some kind. It seems you agree with this now. Experiencing verbal descriptions versus direct experience. So this seems inconsistent with this quote that I was responding to:

I think I only disagree that we know for sure it exists because we "experience" it.

Given that all knowledge comes from experience of some kind, I can make this statement about anything.

What is a word game?

Defining words in whatever way required to make a specific ontological point. Especially when most reasonable people don't have the same definition.

That is, in a simple presentation, the argument against solipsism. It is a foolish idea. You may well define "conscious" in a way that makes it possible, even if only in principle, that you are the only conscious being in the universe. But if you do that, the rest of us may simply ignore you. People are conscious, period. They say so themselves, and they are the ones who invented the word. If you think they might not be, that only means you don't know what they are talking about.

Ok, I understand you and agree. But help me understand how this statement above is consistent with this one below.

You don't need consciousness to be able to have beliefs about it - all you need is to know what consciousness is.

My original question was how can you claim that people are conscious because they are the ones that invented the word and then claim that they don't need consciousness to have beliefs about the concept? I still see inconsistency. Maybe I'm not understanding the point of the latter quote?

You should only accept an idea if it makes sense to you, not because a lot of people claim it's true.

That's exactly what I'm doing. But unlike many, I will attempt an open minded discussion to be sure of my own position. I see that as a good thing.

but I can tell you are very confused. That means there must be something wrong with your approach.

Now if we could only pinpoint what that "something wrong" is.

This is a clear sign of your confusion. Wittgenstein is, quite simply, the most influential philosopher of the last century. The man practically reinvented philosophy with his concept of Sprachspiele ("language games", as it's often poorly translated in English). To dismiss his work as "all word games" is akin to dismissing Beethoven's symphonies as "a bunch of noise" or Van Gogh's paintings as "blobs".

You misunderstood. I'm not talking about Wittgenstein's philosophical contributions in its entirety. I am talking about the specific application of it that I have seen to this specific topic of the hard problem. That is what I say appears to be word games. So now that the clear signs of my confusion are not true, am I still confused?

You can't prevent people from putting a good idea to not-so-good uses. But a lot of what people like you perceive as proofs for the correctness of materialism are not what you think they are.

When the paper itself claims that "therefore materialism is correct", I'm not sure how else to interpret it.

The problem is not proving that materialism is correct, the problem is explaining why it seems correct. Because, like it or not, materialistic ideas are among the few certainties we have in life. So that's where analysis comes in, to demonstrate how materialistic may seem true in a non-materialistic universe

I don't disagree.

(you knowledgeable ones out there, please allow me a bit of poetic license; I know I'm misrepresenting the position, but that's the best I can do in this context)

Ok, I forgive you.

I haven't seen anything like that, on this forum or anywhere else. Of course there are always the fools shouting from their soapboxes, but no one takes them seriously. Do you have a case in point?

Wow, there's a ton of this here. Just do a search on any topic on consciousness here and you'll see it. On my very first search I found this quote from a member named Mentat:

"You are saying that I don't "solve the problem" by denying that "..." exists, right? Yet, as I pointed out in my previous posts, "..." doesn't have any meaning (since it cannot be defined outside of the plainly circular and illogical), so what really is left to be "solved"? I'm not denying the existence of something that has a clear definition, and which obviously plays an important role in the phenomenon at hand; I'm denying the existence of something that has no coherent definition and which needn't play any role the discussion.

To assume the existence of "subjective experience" a priori, and then try to define and understand it, is to create a top-bottom argument (which is inevitably useless...a strawman)."

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=20842&page=1&highlight=subjective

 

[Egmont]

I'm not claiming there isn't difference in the quality of knowledge based on how the knowledge is experienced. I'm only claiming that all knowledge comes from experience of some kind. It seems you agree with this now. Experiencing verbal descriptions versus direct experience.

Perhaps you don't realize, but you are simply playing a game with words here. You are defining "experience" in a way most people would disagree with you. Your proposition may be right, but it is irrelevant to anyone who disagrees with your definition.

Given that all knowledge comes from experience of some kind, I can make this statement about anything.

Well, you have defined "experience" as "acquisition of knowledge", and then made a tautological assertion. Of course you are correct, no point arguing it.

Defining words in whatever way required to make a specific ontological point. Especially when most reasonable people don't have the same definition.

What do you mean by "reasonable people"?

My original question was how can you claim that people are conscious because they are the ones that invented the word and then claim that they don't need consciousness to have beliefs about the concept? I still see inconsistency.

There is no contradiction. I didn't say people are conscious because they invented the word, I said you can't say they are not conscious because you did not invent the word. That is, it's not that solipsism is false, but rather if you lived in a solipsist universe where people describe themselves as conscious, the word "conscious" would have a different meaning. Solipsism is not possible in a solipsist universe. That logical fact has been overlooked for centuries.

You think those are "word games", and that is pretty much what they are. Many philosophical problems arise when people take a word in one context and apply to another where it means a completely different thing. That's why linguistic analysis has become so important to philosophy.

Now if we could only pinpoint what that "something wrong" is.

Simple: it's the fact that you pose questions that can't possibly be answered, not even in principle. It's a habit of thought as old as philosophy itself.

Case in point: you define "consciousness" in a way that makes it impossible to know if other people are conscious, then clain you are absolutely sure you are conscious but you have no way to be sure if other people are conscious too. Of course not, you have introduced an unsolvable problem in your definition, how can you think the fact that you can't solve it has any relevance whatsoever? When other people define "consciousness" in a way that doesn't create unsolvable problems, you say "ha, but this is not the right way to define consciousness, because it doesn't lead to unsolvable problems".

I say, this is confusion, and the reason is simple: if "consciousness" were such an intractable concept, no one would be able to communicate the fact that they are conscious. When we use the word in daily conversation, there's no mystery at all. When you stop to think what the word means is when you get confused. Which is only natural, since we don't know what most of the words we use really mean anyway. Try and figure out what a simple word like "number" means. Or a word like "simple", for that matter. Or a word like "matter". Or a word like "word"...

You misunderstood. I'm not talking about Wittgenstein's philosophical contributions in its entirety. I am talking about the specific application of it that I have seen to this specific topic of the hard problem. That is what I say appears to be word games.

That is because this "hard problem" is but a plays with words. If you don't acknowledge the value of language to solve problems, you should not acknowledge its value to pose them.

At a minimum you should acknowledge that this "hard problem" is nowhere to be seen, except as a result of defining some words in a particular way. I live with my consciousness just fine and see no "hard problems" with it. There are things about my consciousness that I don't understand, but then again there are things about my hair that I don't understand, and I don't think we have a hard problem of hair.

"You are saying that I don't "solve the problem" by denying that "..." exists, right? Yet, as I pointed out in my previous posts, "..." doesn't have any meaning (since it cannot be defined outside of the plainly circular and illogical), so what really is left to be "solved"? I'm not denying the existence of something that has a clear definition, and which obviously plays an important role in the phenomenon at hand; I'm denying the existence of something that has no coherent definition and which needn't play any role the discussion.

To assume the existence of "subjective experience" a priori, and then try to define and understand it, is to create a top-bottom argument (which is inevitably useless...a strawman)."

Exactly where is Mentat claiming that materialism is true? I don't see it anywhere. In my understanding, he's saying he doesn't understand what "subjective experience" is to the point where he can clearly assert it exists. What could possibly be wrong with that?

 

[Fliption]

Perhaps you don't realize, but you are simply playing a game with words here. You are defining "experience" in a way most people would disagree with you. Your proposition may be right, but it is irrelevant to anyone who disagrees with your definition.

Well, you have defined "experience" as "acquisition of knowledge", and then made a tautological assertion. Of course you are correct, no point arguing it.

I don't believe I am doing that at all. I think most everyone who participates in this forum would agree with what I have stated. I suspect this because I've seen this discussed many times before and it was pretty clear that everyone understands this.

I would be glad to hear a definition of experience that would render my statement false. One that isn't a tautology.

What do you mean by "reasonable people"?

Don't worry. I'm not trying to slide anything by you here. I suspect most everyone that contributes here is reasonable. But if I leave that word out, it leaves the door open for a response about some wacko christian nutjob. I'm sure you know what I mean

That logical fact has been overlooked for centuries.

Or perhaps it isn't relevant to the real issue behind solipsism?

You think those are "word games", and that is pretty much what they are. Many philosophical problems arise when people take a word in one context and apply to another where it means a completely different thing. That's why linguistic analysis has become so important to philosophy.

You won't get an argument from me here. I'm always inserting into threads my opinion that semantic confusion is the only thing people are debating rather than the ontology they think they are debating. This whole physical versus non-physical thing is my favorite one.

Simple: it's the fact that you pose questions that can't possibly be answered, not even in principle. It's a habit of thought as old as philosophy itself.

What question have I posed that cannot be answered?

Case in point: you define "consciousness" in a way that makes it impossible to know if other people are conscious, then clain you are absolutely sure you are conscious but you have no way to be sure if other people are conscious too. Of course not, you have introduced an unsolvable problem in your definition, how can you think the fact that you can't solve it has any relevance whatsoever?

I have a particular feature of my existence that I observe. I can then observe that I'm not sure anyone else has this same feature. I can inductively decide they probably do. But the nature of this feature forces me to decide this inductively and it is this nature that results in the inability to reductively understand it. I don't see where definitions change any of this that I've written.

When other people define "consciousness" in a way that doesn't create unsolvable problems, you say "ha, but this is not the right way to define consciousness, because it doesn't lead to unsolvable problems".

Not because they haven't created an unsolvable problem. Because they aren't describing the feature that I observe.

I say, this is confusion, and the reason is simple: if "consciousness" were such an intractable concept, no one would be able to communicate the fact that they are conscious. When we use the word in daily conversation, there's no mystery at all. When you stop to think what the word means is when you get confused. Which is only natural, since we don't know what most of the words we use really mean anyway. Try and figure out what a simple word like "number" means. Or a word like "simple", for that matter. Or a word like "matter". Or a word like "word"...

Words are simply defined or described reductively by using other words. Ultimately it is all circular. This is a fact whether we're talking about swiss cheese or consciousness. So why should I observe a hard problem with consciousness and not with swiss cheese?(I don't see a hard problem with swiss cheese btw.) It is because the hard problem I see has nothing to do with language.

That is because this "hard problem" is but a plays with words. If you don't acknowledge the value of language to solve problems, you should not acknowledge its value to pose them.

Explain what this means, please.

At a minimum you should acknowledge that this "hard problem" is nowhere to be seen, except as a result of defining some words in a particular way. I live with my consciousness just fine and see no "hard problems" with it. There are things about my consciousness that I don't understand, but then again there are things about my hair that I don't understand, and I don't think we have a hard problem of hair.

There are things about my consciousness and my hair that I don't understand. But the difference is that the current paradigm can in principle answer my hair questions. The current paradigm is not equipped to reconcile the issue I see with my consciousness. I do not need to know what your definitions are to observe my own existence and attempt to understand it using the same reductive approach I use to understand everything else.

Exactly where is Mentat claiming that materialism is true? I don't see it anywhere.

That's not what I was trying to find an example of. I was trying to show you someone who denies the existence of subjective experience.

In my understanding, he's saying he doesn't understand what "subjective experience" is to the point where he can clearly assert it exists. What could possibly be wrong with that?

You said you'd never seen anyone do it and so I am showing you someone doing it. I didn't say there was anything wrong with it. This is just an example of a person who denies the existence of something to avoid the hard problem it results in. Chalmers himself said the only way around the hard problem is to deny the existence of subjective experience. The problem with Mentats argument is that he denies it based on the inability to provide a scientific definition of it. What I've tried to point out to him is that a scientific definition would mean that it could be reductively explained, which is exactly what we're saying cannot be done. So he's basically using the hard problem to deny that the hard problem exists because he's still measuring it against the old materialist paradigm which claims that something must be reductively defined in order for it to really exists. This same argument could be made against the existence of all fundamental things. Which is absurd, at least to me.

 

[vanesch]

Case in point: you define "consciousness" in a way that makes it impossible to know if other people are conscious

The whole point is that this impossibility comes not because of a formal definition, but seems to be a property of the subjectively observed phenomenon we are trying to pinpoint with the word. And _that_ property is the contents of the "hard problem".
You seem to think that a concept can only have existence when we have a word for it, and when we have a clear definition of that word. That is at least what you accused me of, when I used a new word "bewustness" for it.
The point is that concepts related to "things in the world" DO have a meaning, even if we cannot pinpoint it with a word which has a formal definition. In fact, it is a necessity that we cannot give a formal definition of the word, because otherwise we would just be doing formal logic, unrelated to the "thing in the world" we wanted to describe in the first place. It is only apprimatively, and in theoretical physics, that you can start to come close to bring into relation a formally defined word with a "thing in the world".

Back to consciousness: I assume that you experience subjective experiences, that you are aware of your existence, that you feel pain etc... I assume that, because I *DO* experience this. This subjectively clearly existing phenomenon and all that goes with it, I indicate it with the word "consciousness". I call the phenomenon of my awareness of existence, of the fact that I do feel pain etc... my consciousness. I am absolutely sure that that phenomenon exists, especially when I put my hand in boiling water.
I assume that other human beings have also similar experiences, and so I assume that they are "conscious".
The vagueness of my description does not indicate that the subjective experiences themselves are vague. It is simply that I don't have a good formal theory of the thing. However, I do know some things about it. Instead of always having to write tens of sentences of what I vaguely mean, in the hope that the other human being reading them starts associating with my vage description HIS subjective experiences that - I assume - have some similarity to mine, I put a word on it: consciousness. And as I am not the very first person to do that, I assume that I don't even have to give this vague definition, but that people instinctively know what is more or less meant.

If you are NOT conscious, of course, those descriptions are incomprehensible.

The point now is, that no matter the vagueness of the "definition" (it isn't a real formal definition - as I pointed out - it is a description with the hope that the reader will have an aha experience), there are some clear properties of the thing I describe with that word: namely that it is NOT an explanatory concept of behaviour. It is not introduced for that. It might, or might not, intervene in certain aspects of behaviour.

The trouble with that "thing" is that 1) I have it (I know that I am conscious) and probably most humans have it and 2) that it seems to be impossible to find out if something ELSE than a human has it because we have no idea at all how it influences the workings of an entity, if it influences it at all.

These two elements, namely knowing that something exists in several copies, and having fundamentally no clue as how to recognise it, it the hard problem I think Fliption talks about.

This hard problem has been "solved" in 2 ways:
saying that the "thing" doesn't exist, or saying that you know how to recognize it on behavioural basis.

Both approaches are wrong: I subjectively know it exists, eliminating the first "solution", and as I pointed out, there is not necessarily a link to behaviourism, which has not been mentioned at all in my vague defining phrases.

cheers,
Patrick.

 

[vanesch]

Probably the same as the one I used. A physical thing is objectively(or is it inter-subjectively) observable.

Well, my hope is that one day, I don't know, 300 years from now, we might know enough of brain functions to interconnect 2 or more brains. Probably it is only in that circumstance that consciousness might become materialistic: if we can share conscious experiences inter-subjectively. It would probably even be more fun if we could do it with machines .
But my fear is that something fundamental might forbid such a linking.
And the fact is that I will be long dead before it could ever happen, so maybe I'm just wasting my time thinking about it

cheers,
Patrick.

 

[Egmont]

I don't believe I am doing that at all. I think most everyone who participates in this forum would agree with what I have stated.

Yes, we do tend to believe everyone agrees with our views, until we find out they don't...

I would be glad to hear a definition of experience that would render my statement false. One that isn't a tautology.

I'm quite sure you would disagree with any definition of experience that would imply your statement is false.

What question have I posed that cannot be answered?

"Are other people conscious?"

You said you can guess but you can't know for sure. Guessing is not answering.

I have a particular feature of my existence that I observe. I can then observe that I'm not sure anyone else has this same feature. I can inductively decide they probably do. But the nature of this feature forces me to decide this inductively and it is this nature that results in the inability to reductively understand it. I don't see where definitions change any of this that I've written.

I'm quite sure you don't see it, which is why I think you need to learn about analytic philosophy. Then you'd see it.

Words are simply defined or described reductively by using other words.

Is that so? What does a word like "thing" reduce to?

Ultimately it is all circular. This is a fact whether we're talking about swiss cheese or consciousness.

You are terribly mistaken about that. Terribly mistaken.

So why should I observe a hard problem with consciousness and not with swiss cheese?(I don't see a hard problem with swiss cheese btw.) It is because the hard problem I see has nothing to do with language.

To start with, the "hard problem" can only be formulated in language. If you're trying to unscrew a light-bulb and it won't come out, then you're having a problem which exists even if you don't talk about it. With this "hard problem" though, as soon as we quit talking about it, it disappears, and that is because... well, I've said it too many times already.

There are things about my consciousness and my hair that I don't understand. But the difference is that the current paradigm can in principle answer my hair questions. The current paradigm is not equipped to reconcile the issue I see with my consciousness.

Exactly how do you know that with so much certainty? If you're following David Chalmers, this is his reasoning in a nutshell: any explanation of consciuosness will fail, because we can always look at it and say it doesn't make intuitive sense. But this is, in essence, no different from rejecting any explanation that the Earth is round because any fool can see it is obviously flat.

It is a sad fact of life that when most people believed the Earth was flat, the ones who knew it had to be round were simply ignored rather than heard. There are quite a few voices talking about how consciousness is not what most people think it is, but they won't be heard for as long as they can still cling to their old, outdated beliefs.

I do not need to know what your definitions are to observe my own existence and attempt to understand it using the same reductive approach I use to understand everything else.

I don't see you "observing your own existence" in that sentence, I only see words, and they do not make much sense. (by the way, I'm sure my words don't make much sense to you either; it's the whole problem with language, once you understand how it works you realize there's very little you can say that makes much sense)

That's not what I was trying to find an example of. I was trying to show you someone who denies the existence of subjective experience. You said you'd never seen anyone do it and so I am showing you someone doing it.

If you pardon my sincerity, you strike me as a very naive person. If you are absolutely sure Mentat has subjective experiences but denies it, then you are simply saying he must be lying to avoid acknowledging the certainty of your position. But at the same time you make the claim that it's impossible for you to know if anyone else (including Mentat!) has subjective experiences, and that necessarily implies he may not be lying after all. To be consistent with your own position, you should interpret Mentat's comments as evidence that some people may not have subjective experiences, but you take it as evidence that he's not intellectually honest.

I doubt you can understand the problem with your argument. If you could, you wouldn't be arguing it in the first place. Yet a problem exists.

Chalmers himself said the only way around the hard problem is to deny the existence of subjective experience.

Chalmers himself also says even zombies would believe they have subjective experience, that even zombies would have a hard problem of consciousness despite the fact that they don't have consciousness.

Methinks Chalmers is extremely confused.

The problem with Mentats argument is that he denies it based on the inability to provide a scientific definition of it. What I've tried to point out to him is that a scientific definition would mean that it could be reductively explained, which is exactly what we're saying cannot be done.

Methinks you are also extremely confused. You claim the hard problem can't be solved because any solution would imply it can be solved. That is like saying you have a nut that can't be cracked, and when someone manages to crack the nut right in front of your eyes you say, "ha, but you didn't really crack it, you just smashed it into pieces, it's not the same thing"

So he's basically using the hard problem to deny that the hard problem exists because he's still measuring it against the old materialist paradigm which claims that something must be reductively defined in order for it to really exists.

That is a gross misrepresentation of the materialist position. What the materialists say is simply this: if you claim something exists then you must prove it. Materialists believe in the existence of many things which cannot be "reductively defined", such as for instance the laws of physics. What materialists don't believe is that things like fairies exist simply because a few people insist they have seen them.

This same argument could be made against the existence of all fundamental things. Which is absurd, at least to me.

It would be absurd indeed, if that is what they were saying. But as I said, you don't really understand what they are saying. You clearly did not understand what Mentat said in that quote.

 

[Egmont]

The whole point is that this impossibility comes not because of a formal definition

You are smart and I think you can understand what I'm trying to say. And you are right, coming up with a formal definition won't help at all.

but seems to be a property of the subjectively observed phenomenon we are trying to pinpoint with the word. And _that_ property is the contents of the "hard problem".

Would you agree with me then, that whatever _that_ property is, it's something that can't be communicated? And would you also agree that Chalmers and his followers think they are successful at communicating what the "hard problem" is about?

You seem to be close to grasping that the world is full of hard problems, but none of them are about things we can talk about. I hope you give the issue some more thought; you would be glad you did.

Now keep this in mind: there is something we can't talk about, but I can't tell you what that something is, you have to figure out by yourself. Anything I can describe to you in words is not something we can't talk about. I have no way to talk about this thing, but there is a way to see it, and it's possible to guide people so they can also see it for themselves.

You seem to think that a concept can only have existence when we have a word for it, and when we have a clear definition of that word. That is at least what you accused me of, when I used a new word "bewustness" for it.

I didn't accuse you of anything. All I said was, if I started talking about bewustness with you without fully understanding what you mean by it, we would end up disagreeing at some point. Which is exactly the situation concerning most philosophical issues.

The point is that concepts related to "things in the world" DO have a meaning, even if we cannot pinpoint it with a word which has a formal definition.

You are absolutely correct, but is "consciousness" one such thing or not? That is, is "consciousness" a concept that is related to "things in the world", or is it not?

In fact, it is a necessity that we cannot give a formal definition of the word, because otherwise we would just be doing formal logic, unrelated to the "thing in the world" we wanted to describe in the first place.

I am really impressed with that statement. Serious. So you see, we need a lot of concepts which lack formal definition in order for our communication to be meaningful, but at the same time concepts without a formal definition cannot be subject to scientific study. Doesn't that make you think? Doesn't it sound like science is only true to the extent that it restricts itself to formal logic?

It is only apprimatively, and in theoretical physics, that you can start to come close to bring into relation a formally defined word with a "thing in the world".

I hope we get a chance, one day, to talk about why I think physics doesn't have as much to do with "things in the world" as we usually think. The truths of physics, from my perspective, seem to come from formal logic, not from the nature of reality. But that's a discussion way ahead.

The vagueness of my description does not indicate that the subjective experiences themselves are vague.

But it does indicate that there's a huge gap between the experience and the description, doesn't it? And the issue is, that gap just can't be closed, period.

If you are NOT conscious, of course, those descriptions are incomprehensible.

So can we take the fact that someone understands our descriptions of consciousness as proof that they are conscious?

The trouble with that "thing" is that 1) I have it (I know that I am conscious) and probably most humans have it and 2) that it seems to be impossible to find out if something ELSE than a human has it because we have no idea at all how it influences the workings of an entity, if it influences it at all.

You are correct about that, but as stated it is a problem like any other. Like any scientific problem, it will take time to be worked on, a final, absolute answer will never be found, but there's nothing preventing us from learning a lot more than we currently know.

This hard problem has been "solved" in 2 ways: saying that the "thing" doesn't exist, or saying that you know how to recognize it on behavioural basis. Both approaches are wrong: I subjectively know it exists, eliminating the first "solution", and as I pointed out, there is not necessarily a link to behaviourism, which has not been mentioned at all in my vague defining phrases.

That really depends on what you mean by behaviourism. Using a computer to send messages to an internet forum on metaphysics sounds like "behaviour" to me. Granted, mention to behaviour is absent in your description, but the description itself is manifested behaviour of a conscious entity (yourself)

This is what many people don't see. Consciousness is related to behaviour, but in a very abstract way. The more abstract a concept, the harder it is to think about it, and the easier it is to get confused and see problems where they don't exist.

 

[Fliption]

Yes, we do tend to believe everyone agrees with our views, until we find out they don't...

I'm quite sure you would disagree with any definition of experience that would imply your statement is false.

Well then let's see if they do. The reason I say that they do is because I can't think of a definition that would render my statement false and still resemble in any way the concept that people refer to when they say 'experience'. Rather than just assume I won't agree with the definition, let's see one. Seriously. I'm curious.

"Are other people conscious?"

You said you can guess but you can't know for sure. Guessing is not answering.

Heh well Vanesch has postulated some pretty wild stuff that may occur some time in the future when we are long gone that could solve this. I think my only point is that you can't know the answer to this question within materialists constraints. It is this paradigm that creates the problem; Not reality. As I said to Vanesch earlier, if his ideas ever did happen, then I think the concepts 'physical', 'non-physical', 'materialism' and therefore 'hard problem' may not really mean much anymore.

I'm quite sure you don't see it, which is why I think you need to learn about analytic philosophy. Then you'd see it.

You can't tell me what's wrong with it?

Is that so? What does a word like "thing" reduce to?

Quote from the dictionary:

"An entity, an idea, or a quality perceived, known, or thought to have its own existence"

That was easy.

And I can look up each word in the definition above and eventually we'd find that all definitions are circular.

You are terribly mistaken about that. Terribly mistaken.

Apparently this is easier to say than it is to prove.

To start with, the "hard problem" can only be formulated in language. If you're trying to unscrew a light-bulb and it won't come out, then you're having a problem which exists even if you don't talk about it. With this "hard problem" though, as soon as we quit talking about it, it disappears, and that is because... well, I've said it too many times already.

Yes I see what you mean. You know, I think we may be having some semantic problems here . I agree that unlike the light bulb, the hard problem is manufactured. But I believe it is manufactured by attempting to place constraints on reality. If we stop placing constraints on it, then these problems go away. I'm not saying that a structure to knowledge shouldn't exists. Just that we should pay more attention to making sure that that structure reflects reality instead of the other way around.

It is a sad fact of life that when most people believed the Earth was flat, the ones who knew it had to be round were simply ignored rather than heard. There are quite a few voices talking about how consciousness is not what most people think it is, but they won't be heard for as long as they can still cling to their old, outdated beliefs.

Point taken. I can agree that Chalmers may be wrong. If I thought there was no possibility of that than I wouldn't be here in this forum discussing it. As I said earlier, I'm here discussing this with you because I do wonder if you have a point. But as you said, I shouldn't accept it until it makes sense to me. But, to your point, I will always concede that I may be wrong. I haven't seen anyone show how Chalmers is wrong but I have no certain argument against the "world is flat" example. The good thing about this lesson is that it applies to everyone .

If you pardon my sincerity, you strike me as a very naive person. If you are absolutely sure Mentat has subjective experiences but denies it, then you are simply saying he must be lying to avoid acknowledging the certainty of your position. But at the same time you make the claim that it's impossible for you to know if anyone else (including Mentat!) has subjective experiences, and that necessarily implies he may not be lying after all. To be consistent with your own position, you should interpret Mentat's comments as evidence that some people may not have subjective experiences, but you take it as evidence that he's not intellectually honest.

Naive? Why would you call someone who's words you admit you don't understand naive? You obviously assume you know my exact position. There is no inconsistency here. I do not assume that Mentat is lying. I have told him himself that his position is the result of one of two things. 1) He has no subjective experience. 2) He does and he is lying to avoid the conclusions. Now, in this thread you and others here have established that we clearly can know that others are conscious through induction. And I'm just saying that if this is true then it means number 2 above is the likely choice for Mentat. But I have never and will never claim he is definitely one or the other.

I doubt you can understand the problem with your argument. If you could, you wouldn't be arguing it in the first place. Yet a problem exists.

Another example of something that is apparently easier to say than to prove. I see a trend.

Chalmers himself also says even zombies would believe they have subjective experience, that even zombies would have a hard problem of consciousness despite the fact that they don't have consciousness.

Yes, this one stumped me too. It doesn't make any sense on the surface. I debated Hypnagogue on this very point in a thread and he eventually was able to get across to me the reason Chalmers makes this statement. You might want to take a look at that. Here's the link.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=20842&page=3&pp=15&highlight=zombie+p-consciousness
It started on page 3 and ended on Page 6. The posts between me and Hypnagogue are the most relevant.

Methinks you are also extremely confused. You claim the hard problem can't be solved because any solution would imply it can be solved. That is like saying you have a nut that can't be cracked, and when someone manages to crack the nut right in front of your eyes you say, "ha, but you didn't really crack it, you just smashed it into pieces, it's not the same thing"

I claim it can be solved. It can go away completely if we change the paradigm. And the nut cracking example is nothing like what my position is. That example just demonstrates someone being petty and unreasonable. My point is exactly the same as what Vanesch is saying. An attempt to solve this problem on the part of materialists that avoids or claims the non-existence of something that I personally know exists is not going to be sufficient. I don't understand why this is considered an unfair position to take.

That is a gross misrepresentation of the materialist position. What the materialists say is simply this: if you claim something exists then you must prove it. Materialists believe in the existence of many things which cannot be "reductively defined", such as for instance the laws of physics. What materialists don't believe is that things like fairies exist simply because a few people insist they have seen them.

OK here's a question for you. IF Materialism is wrong, do you think the evidence of it being wrong should meet the standards of materialism? Why should it?

It's like this dialogue:

Person 1: Your map is wrong because it leaves out a left turn.
Person 2: No, there is no left turn. See look here at the map.

Also, are you insinuating that "fairies" are like subjective experience? Because if you agree that it is natural for a materialists to deny subjective experience, then this is the exact opposite of what you were saying earlier. As a matter of fact, you claiming that you've never seen anyone deny subjective experience is the only reason I posted this example of Mentat.

It would be absurd indeed, if that is what they were saying. But as I said, you don't really understand what they are saying. You clearly did not understand what Mentat said in that quote.

Mentat is not a "they". His views are far more extreme than most of the other professed materialists posting here. As information, I've spent hundreds of posts communicating with Mentat so I have a very clear understanding of what his views are.

 

[drag]

Greetings !

What a huge thread... By my old vurtual acquaintance Flipton.

Anyway, where's the option for "no explanation" ?

Live long and prosper.

 

[Fliption]

Greetings !

What a huge thread... By my old vurtual acquaintance Flipton.

Anyway, where's the option for "no explanation" ?

Live long and prosper.

Wow. Haven't seen you in a while Drag.

 

[selfAdjoint]

We have here a Philip K. Dick situation. We have two beings; both agree they have A-consciousness. Alice says she also has p-consciousness, and asks Bob if he does. He denies it. Which is the zombie? Since according to Chalmers zombies don't have p-consciousness but believe they do, Alice's statement doesn't rule out that she is a Zombie. On the other hand, Dennet, for example is not seriously called a Zombie although he denies the separate existence of p-consciouness. So maybe Bob isn't a Zombie either. Seems to me that the whole concept of Zombie is ill-defined. But it is a simple deduction from the idea of separate p-consciousness, so if it is fails to be well-defined so does separate p-consciousness.

My suggestion: p-consciousness is what an organism experiences while it is performing A-consciousness. And A-consciousness at any level produces a corresponding level of p-consciousness. If you can distinguish red from orange then you can form, and believe that you experience, a concept of redness. But if you can only tell bright from dark, then you feel yourself to be experiencing brightness and darkness.

 

[Fliption]

Seems to me that the whole concept of Zombie is ill-defined. But it is a simple deduction from the idea of separate p-consciousness, so if it is fails to be well-defined so does separate p-consciousness.

I think the situation you have presented is not due to an ill-defined term. It is an illustration showing that A-consciousness does not entail P-consciousness. If we begin our analysis of definitions with the assumption that A-consciousness must entail P-consciousness then of course we will conclude ill defined terms.

Also, I think Chalmers claims that a zombie could claim that it has P-consciousness. But it doesn't necessarily have to. It could very well claim the opposite. This makes sense because we can program any computer to say it has P-consciousness whether it does or does not. So the claim that one has P-consciousness can be completely explained by actions in A-consciousness. P-Consciousness is not required.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Also, I think Chalmers claims that a zombie could claim that it has P-consciousness. But it doesn't necessarily have to. It could very well claim the opposite. This makes sense because we can program any computer to say it has P-consciousness whether it does or does not. So the claim that one has P-consciousness can be completely explained by actions in A-consciousness. P-Consciousness is not required

As it was previously stated here, the Zombie could not only state that it had p-consciousness, but believe it to be so. We are presumed able to read the mind of a Zombie for purposes of discussion, I guess. If that is so, seeing that our only evidence for p-consciousness at all is introspection, we are all in the position of such a Zombie, and thus p-consciousnesss becomes an epiphenomenon, which makes no detectable difference in our inner lives, to say nothing of our behavior.

 

[Fliption]

As it was previously stated here, the Zombie could not only state that it had p-consciousness, but believe it to be so. We are presumed able to read the mind of a Zombie for purposes of discussion, I guess. If that is so, seeing that our only evidence for p-consciousness at all is introspection, we are all in the position of such a Zombie, and thus p-consciousnesss becomes an epiphenomenon, which makes no detectable difference in our inner lives, to say nothing of our behavior.

Much of this was discussed in the thread I referenced above. My conclusion from that thread was that it is possible for a zombie to believe it has P-consciousness, but it need not necessarily be the case. In fact I would argue that it would never be the case, so my inner life is quite detectable. The zombie argument still holds because it illustrates that the behavior of someone claiming P-Consciousness can be completely explained by actions of A-consciousness. In other words, P-consciousness is sufficient to produce this behavior but it isn't necessary. It only makes an epistemic point about our access to explain P-consciousness. It is saying that if you copy all of my A-consciousness and inprint it onto another copy, we have no reason to believe that this copy will not say the same things that I say. But if I were born a zombie, I doubt very seriously I would believe in P-consciousness and say such things. But that point isn't really relevant.

BTW, when we say a zombie "believes", we're talking purely functional behaviour.

 

[loseyourname]

My quabble is simply that I interpreted your original comments to be one that denies the hard problem. In the quote above you at least admit that you are going out on a limb and making some assumptions.

Looks like you made some assumptions yourself. No big deal.

I suppose I don't respond well to being called obstinate and silly when I can point to many people who agree with my position. Frustration is just a natural response when I perceive someone is being a bit egocentric.

Since we do seem to be in agreement, I take back calling you obstinate. The position you seemed to be holding (and yes, I would have been able to tell I was wrong about had you answered my questions) was that no meaningful research could be conducted on the basis of these assumptions that I make. That position is unreasonable, and I could care less how many people might hold it.

The questions you asked were irrelevant. They still are. If I answer them, it only serves to further lead you down the wrong path by giving you the impression that they are relevant. My point should have been obvious after I posted the other thread. Instead, the posting here still continued seemingly without a clue what I was talking about and with no reference to the other information. So I can understand frustration.

They are irrelevant now; they were not before. The issue was never the points you were trying to make. The issue was me attempting to figure out exactly where you stood - you, not the hard problem itself. Now that we have that out of the way, we can move on. We could have a long time ago.

I pointed out where other posters disagreed with you to attempt to somehow get across the idea that your views were not without their problems and that one does not need to be obstinate to point them out.

Any view that claims knowledge of any external reality is subject to problems. I can explain with a fairly simple example why I think p-consciousness is clearly efficacious. This is not a foolproof argument, nor is it proof. It is only a basis for further exploration.

Consider the knee-jerk reflex. The specific nerves and parts of the brain responsible for creating it are well known. When a strike is made just below the kneecap, the leg jerks forward. There is one way (without damaging the nerves) to circumvent this reflex. It is by consciously making the effort not to jerk the leg forward. This effort results in the nervous impulse from the strike being re-routed so that it never reaches the quadriceps muscles, where it would have jerked the leg forward. This can be observed happening in the nerves and the re-route command originates in the brain. It does not result from input to the brain, and so is not the result of a reaction to stimuli. It is an action. If this does not seem to be of any importance, think a little deeper about how this differs from the operation of clearly non-conscious neural process, such as those of a computer. A computer cannot act - it can only react. Only a subjectively conscious being can focus mentally on a bodily process and thereby keep that process from occurring. I bring this up for one primary reason: this is what researchers into the neuronal basis of consciousness look for, and it is also likely to be a pretty good jumping off point from which our views truly do digress. Though I freely admit that I could easily be wrong, my guess is that this phenomenon, and related phenomena, mean nothing to you. Studying the differences between the process by which an eye auto-focuses on a particular object vs. the process by which an eye focuses on an object that is consciously looked for (in technical terms, bottom-up vs. top-down control of visual awareness) probably also means nothing to you. These are, however, what is being studied. Personally, I think it's as good a place as any to start, and more likely to produce meaningful results than sitting around and talking.

This is why I still insist your questions were not relevant. You still think I'm talking about whether other humans are conscious. As I've said before, that is merely a byproduct of the real issue, which I was using as an illustration. I couldn't care less about solipsism.

There is only one thing that could render my proposed experiment (and the questions that go with them) meaningless. That would be for other humans to not be conscious. The possible effectiveness of p-consciousness is what the experiment is designed to investigate. So while I hold that the hypothesis may very well be false, and p-consciousness may not be efficacious, that certainly would not render the experiment meaningless - in fact, that finding would be the result of the experiment. Only solipsism could provide a problem with the setup of the experiment itself. Now it is entirely possible that I'm badly overlooking something and I'm dead wrong. If you think that is the case, however, and you wish to convince me, you'll need to address the experiment itself, not give me generalized statements about the hard problem and issues with effectiveness.

I hope you see now after this response that this isn't true. I fully understand why certain scientific researchers don't care about such things. But making an assumption so that work can be carried out is very different from totally denying that an assumption was made. Originally, I thought you were doing the latter of the two. Now it seems you are not. So I' don't think we actually disagree.

All of science, as well as any other epistemology, is based on assumptions. No foundation can be proven; a given system can only be shown to be internally consistent.

 

[Fliption]

Looks like you made some assumptions yourself. No big deal.

That's the nature of communication I guess. All I can do is interpret what you say and the same for you with me. If that's called making assumptions then so be it.

The position you seemed to be holding (and yes, I would have been able to tell I was wrong about had you answered my questions) was that no meaningful research could be conducted on the basis of these assumptions that I make. That position is unreasonable, and I could care less how many people might hold it.

Correct, I absolutely DO NOT hold this position.

Consider the knee-jerk reflex. The specific nerves and parts of the brain responsible for creating it are well known. When a strike is made just below the kneecap, the leg jerks forward.

Personally, I think it's as good a place as any to start, and more likely to produce meaningful results than sitting around and talking.

I don't disagree these sorts of experiments can and should be done. Not because you're going to find what you think you're going to find, because the philosophical issues are evidence to me that it isn't there to find. But what very well may happen is that you learn something you never anticipated and perhaps this information renders the philosophical issues mute. So of course I agree that doing this research is better than doing nothing. I just originally thought that this statement:

"Do you honestly not see how being conscious of a potential mate's preferences and tastes and being conscious of your own looks and behavior would be helpful here?"

Was a bit presumptuous given the philosophical issues.

I like this atttitude better:

"So while I hold that the hypothesis may very well be false, and p-consciousness may not be efficacious, that certainly would not render the experiment meaningless - in fact, that finding would be the result of the experiment. "