Does Consciousness Have Non-Causal Properties?

[moving finger]

If there is no evidence either way then the most we can conclude is that it comes down to beliefs. I believe that my subjective experience of the colour yellow is not necessarily identical to your subjective experience of the colour yellow, whereas you believe it is necessarily identical?

No

Is that “No, I do not believe that your subjective experience of the colour yellow is necessarily identical to my subjective experience of the colour yellow”?

(sorry, but as usual, your brief and incomplete answers are often ambiguous – perhaps intentionally so?)

Not if one believes that there is a neurophysiological basis for consciousness.

"Basis" is not straightforward identity. There is still the 1st person/3rd person differerence.

Yes, there is a difference between 1st/3rd person perspectives of neurophysiological states. I explained the difference in my last post :

Neuroscientists deal with the objective (3rd person) manifestations of neurophysiological states; the subjective (1st person) experience of a neurophysiological state is not accessible to 3rd person objective science.
No neuroscientist has ever seen a “quale” in a scientific experiment, neither has he/she experienced a neurophysiological state in a scientific experiment (except as a 1st person subject). There is no evidence to suggest that anything like qualia, as distinct from neurophysiological states, exist.

"Quale" is just a label for what you call "subjective (1st person) experience of a neurophysiological state".

Ahhh, ok. So now you are saying "the experience of the colour yellow" and the "subjective feel of yellow (the yellow-quale)" are in fact the same thing?

Previously you claimed these were not the same.

Whether and how qulia are distinct from NP states depends on your stance on the HP. It is neither a fact, nor an idea wtih no evidence whatsoever (the evidence of course being the difference between the 1st and 3rd person views).

OK. You claimed that “the experience of the colour yellow” and “the subjective 'feel' of yellow, the yellow-quale” were different. Can you explain how you think they are different?

Hypothesis : The subjective experience, along with the rest of consciousness, is not identical with but is contained within (is part of) the neurophysiological (brain) state. The neurophysiological state contains a lot more information than is accessible to subjective experience. Thus there is indeed not a total identity between subjective experiences and neurophysiological states.

So subjective experience is a mere subset of the total NP state, and if you had a complete description of an NP state, you would be able to find subjective experience within it ? That is not most peoples intuition.

Firstly, you (as a 3rd person objective observer) would never be able to find subjective experience by examining an NP state from the outside. The only route to “finding subjective experience” (as you put it) is through the manifestation of an NP state within a consciousness – ie 1st person subjectively.
Secondly, I am not “most people”. And what makes you think you know most people’s intuition in this respect? And why should most people’s intuition matter anyway in our debate? I am interested in your thoughts, not in “most peoples”.

In other words, the neurophysiological state of “person A seeing green” does not necessarily bear any resemblance to the neurophysiological state of either “person B seeing red” or “person B seeing green”, therefore why should it necessarily follow that they cannot behave in a similar way?

But if consciousness is produced naturally, the NP state of A haviong a green quale must differ from the state of B having a red quale-- otherwise you would have to concede that there is no realtionship between neural activity and experience.

I did not say that the NP of “A having a green quale” does not differ from that of “B having a red quale”; but it does not follow that different NPs must necessarily result in completely different behaviour. Dissimilar NPs may cause dissimilar behaviour, but there can conceivably be similarities in behaviour resulting from dissimilar NPs.

MF

 

[moving finger]

Forgive my brief digress to something that at the moment seems to me to be quite profound: On the nature of ""can consciousness cause"". I''m struck with an immediate ""yes indeed"!. I've been considering the question,""Are we just fixed by destiny( reflecting on the ultimate consciousness), or are we somehow just floating like on a breeze""(doing our own, or someone elses thing). It would appear at this point, that it must be a little of both. We are indeed expeiencing the ""great experience""(as prime mover), but because there are other beings arround us, we are experiencing their reflections as well. Some reflections, we will all agree, are quite harmless, even vivifying. Some though, quite deadly. My point arrives when I considered its natural counterpart in nature, namely, in plants. Plants, as you recall, heliotrophe towards the sun to maximize the full impact of the suns nurishing rays. We too, I propose, do much the same when we, unaware(search) and or on purpose,(meditate): heliotrophe towards the ""great experience"". A kind of turning towards the source of some great ?? inspiration/motivation ?? as it were. The warning potential of such a ""receptive"" state has been afore mentioned. This seems to me, that this is what was being alluded to in ""Eastern"" thought, as the ""net of gems, or the ""net of Indra"". Please comment>...MEDIUM.....>

can all be explained assuming determinism is true
MF

 

[StatusX]

If you mean simply “if someone sees my green as his red and my red as his green” then I would say the question is meaningless, because the neurophysiological state of that person seeing green is unique to that person and does not necessarily bear any resemblance or connection to your neurophysiological state of you seeing either red or green.

I'm not talking about neurophysiological states, I'm talking about experience. They may be different ways of looking at the same thing, but a priori, they are distinct concepts, and it is perfectly coherent to wonder if someone might be able to see green the way I see red. Just to be clear, it is just as logically possible that someone with the exact same physical brain as me could experience red the way I experience green. Experiences are completely different from brain states. They probably are fundamentally tied together, but that is an empirical question, like asking if light and electromagnetic waves are the same thing (although the method of answering this question is likely much different).

The point was that the specific nature of experience does not seem to have a physical effect. There is nothing I can do to influence the physical world so as to make it clear to others what my experiences are like. I know you have experiences, but I don't know if they are anything like mine, and I never will. On the other hand, they do affect the physical world in that we can talk about their existence. I was just trying to show that epiphenomalism isn't as black and white as it seems, and that we can still retain some of its intuitive qualities while diluting the blatant paradox that arises from the fact that we talk about consciousness. The only problem now is how its existence can affect the physical world.

 

[moving finger]

I'm not talking about neurophysiological states, I'm talking about experience. They may be different ways of looking at the same thing, but a priori, they are distinct concepts, and it is perfectly coherent to wonder if someone might be able to see green the way I see red.

IMHO, a particular conscious experience is a consequence of the manifestation of a particular neurophysiological state within a consciousness. But no problem, replace my words “neurophysiological states” with the word “experience” and you get the following :

If you mean simply “if someone sees my green as his red and my red as his green” then I would say the question is meaningless, because the experience of that person seeing green is unique to that person and does not necessarily bear any resemblance or connection to your experience of you seeing either red or green.

Just to be clear, it is just as logically possible that someone with the exact same physical brain as me could experience red the way I experience green.

Just to be clear, what you seem to want is that “two brains can be exactly the same, but not be exactly the same, at the same time”, a clear contradiction.
Two things here. Firstly I challenge that no two people can have the “exact same physical brain”. The exact composition and pattern of each physical brain is determined not only by genetic history but also by total life experience. No two people have the same total life experience, hence there is no reason to expect that any two brains are “exactly the same”.
Secondly, the mere fact that one experiences red where the other experiences green is direct evidence that the two brains are not exactly the same.

Experiences are completely different from brain states. They probably are fundamentally tied together, but that is an empirical question, like asking if light and electromagnetic waves are the same thing (although the method of answering this question is likely much different).

IMHO, a particular conscious experience is a consequence of the manifestation of a particular neurophysiological (brain) state within a consciousness.

The point was that the specific nature of experience does not seem to have a physical effect.

Why on Earth do you say that? My experience of me seeing my daughter about to walk across the road in front of an oncoming car would have a VERY immediate physical effect on me!
What evidence do you have that experience does NOT have a physical effect?

There is nothing I can do to influence the physical world so as to make it clear to others what my experiences are like.

That is because experience is a 1st person subjective phenomenon, whereas “to make it clear to others” you must necessarily translate it into a 3rd person objective description, and the 3rd person objective description can never convey everything about the 1st person objective experience. This is the reason why “Mary can never know all there is to know about the experience of seeing red” if she has never HAD the experience of seeing red, and also why it is meaningless to ask “what is it like to be a bat?”, because the only agent who CAN know what it is like to be a bat …… is a bat!
But NONE of the above is evidence that experience does not have a physical effect.

I know you have experiences, but I don't know if they are anything like mine, and I never will.

Agreed! That is what I was trying to say in “the neurophysiological state of that person seeing green is unique to that person and does not necessarily bear any resemblance or connection to your neurophysiological state of you seeing either red or green”

On the other hand, they do affect the physical world in that we can talk about their existence.

AND they cause us to take certain actions – therefore they are very much part of our decision making and cause-and-effect.

I was just trying to show that epiphenomalism isn't as black and white as it seems, and that we can still retain some of its intuitive qualities while diluting the blatant paradox that arises from the fact that we talk about consciousness.

What paradox? I see no paradox. Can you explain where the paradox is?

The only problem now is how its existence can affect the physical world.

Because eperience is PART OF the physical world! I’m sorry, but its so blindingly obvious. There IS no dualism, there IS no separate “thinking self” which somehow exists out of causal contact with the physical self. This is a philosophical dead-end.

MF

 

[Tournesol]

Is that “No, I do not believe that your subjective experience of the colour yellow is necessarily identical to my subjective experience of the colour yellow”?

yes.

Ahhh, ok. So now you are saying "the experience of the colour yellow" and the "subjective feel of yellow (the yellow-quale)" are in fact the same thing?

yes.

Previously you claimed these were not the same.

Not deliberately. I may have been misled by your strange use of NP.

OK. You claimed that “the experience of the colour yellow” and “the subjective 'feel' of yellow, the yellow-quale” were different. Can you explain how you think they are different?

I didn't.

Firstly, you (as a 3rd person objective observer) would never be able to find subjective experience by examining an NP state from the outside. The only route to “finding subjective experience” (as you put it) is through the manifestation of an NP state within a consciousness – ie 1st person subjectively.

Again, your use of an "NP state" as somehow embracing subjectivity is confusing.

Secondly, I am not “most people”. And what makes you think you know most people’s intuition in this respect? And why should most people’s intuition matter anyway in our debate? I am interested in your thoughts, not in “most peoples”.

I share that intuition.

I did not say that the NP of “A having a green quale” does not differ from that of “B having a red quale”; but it does not follow that different NPs must necessarily result in completely different behaviour. Dissimilar NPs may cause dissimilar behaviour, but there can conceivably be similarities in behaviour resulting from dissimilar NPs.

If qualia are causes, they will always be detectable in principle; that
was the issue the original question was getting at. You seem to have
fallen back on the position that they might not be detectable in practice.

 

[Tournesol]

IMHO, a particular conscious experience is a consequence of the manifestation of a particular neurophysiological state within a consciousness

The consciousness is separate from the NP state ?

If you mean simply “if someone sees my green as his red and my red as his green” then I would say the question is meaningless, because the experience of that person seeing green is unique to that person and does not necessarily bear any resemblance or connection to your experience of you seeing either red or green.

The idea that experiences could be so loosely related to physical brain-states
implies a dualism which you elsewhere reject.

Just to be clear, what you seem to want is that “two brains can be exactly the same, but not be exactly the same, at the same time”, a clear contradiction.

I think he supposes that it is logically conceivable that two
brains could be physically in the same state, but experientially
in different states. And it is logically conceivable, but, like flying pigs, naturalistically impossible.

Two things here. Firstly I challenge that no two people can have the “exact same physical brain”. The exact composition and pattern of each physical brain is determined not only by genetic history but also by total life experience.

Two people in a thought-experiment can. You are addressing naturalistic possibility, not logical conceivability.

No two people have the same total life experience, hence there is no reason to expect that any two brains are “exactly the same”.
Secondly, the mere fact that one experiences red where the other experiences green is direct evidence that the two brains are not exactly the same.

Naturalistically, yes. Logically ?

Why on Earth do you say that? My experience of me seeing my daughter about to walk across the road in front of an oncoming car would have a VERY immediate physical effect on me!
What evidence do you have that experience does NOT have a physical effect?

If it is logically possible for conscious states to vary across identical
brains, then it follows that they make no physical difference. Logically.
Naturalistically, this isn't very plausible.

That is because experience is a 1st person subjective phenomenon, whereas “to make it clear to others” you must necessarily translate it into a 3rd person objective description, and the 3rd person objective description can never convey everything about the 1st person objective experience. This is the reason why “Mary can never know all there is to know about the experience of seeing red” if she has never HAD the experience of seeing red, and also why it is meaningless to ask “what is it like to be a bat?”, because the only agent who CAN know what it is like to be a bat …… is a bat!
But NONE of the above is evidence that experience does not have a physical effect.

But it is very plausible that everyhting in phsyics, as a matter of principle can be explained in 3rd-person language. So the very existence of anything
that is intriniscally 1st-person suggests that there is somehtign non-physical.
Couple that the cuasal closure of the physical , and you get the causal
idleness of the experiential.

It is for you to explain how your commitment to physicalism squares
with your commitment to irreducibly 1st-person experience.

AND they cause us to take certain actions – therefore they are very much part of our decision making and cause-and-effect.

That (call it I) stands up by itself, but how does it square with
II physicalism
III the principle that everyhting physical can be expressed in a 3rd-person way ?

What paradox? I see no paradox. Can you explain where the paradox is?

Between "consciousness doesn't cause anything" (epiphenomenalism) and
"I am talking about consciousness".

Because eperience is PART OF the physical world! I’m sorry, but its so blindingly obvious. There IS no dualism, there IS no separate “thinking self” which somehow exists out of causal contact with the physical self. This is a philosophical dead-end.

For you there is a dualism of 1st-person-understandable and 3rd-peson describable.

 

[StatusX]

IMHO, a particular conscious experience is a consequence of the manifestation of a particular neurophysiological state within a consciousness. But no problem, replace my words “neurophysiological states” with the word “experience” and you get the following :

If you mean simply “if someone sees my green as his red and my red as his green” then I would say the question is meaningless, because the experience of that person seeing green is unique to that person and does not necessarily bear any resemblance or connection to your experience of you seeing either red or green.

Experiences and brain states are not the same thing. It is like something to have an experience, but a brain state is just a certain physical state, defined completely by structure and function. They are surely closely related, and possibly one thing looked at in two different ways, but when I say "experience" I mean something different from when I say "brain state."

Just to be clear, what you seem to want is that “two brains can be exactly the same, but not be exactly the same, at the same time”, a clear contradiction.

Of course, this presupposes the physical is all that is real. But beyond that, I am talking about counterfactual worlds. I don't mean that two physically identical brain states in this universe could correspond to different experiences, and in fact I don't believe that is possible. I am saying that experiences are different from brain states, and it is possible to imagine worlds where someone physically identical to you (ie, you from this world) has different experiences. On the other hand, it is not possible to imagine a physically identical world where your twin behaves differently, because behavior supervenes on the physical.

Why on Earth do you say that? My experience of me seeing my daughter about to walk across the road in front of an oncoming car would have a VERY immediate physical effect on me!
What evidence do you have that experience does NOT have a physical effect?

Again, you are mixing up experiences and brain states. Your reaction is a result of electric signals in your brain, not because of what it was like to see the event. The experience could be different, or not existent (again, in counterfactual worlds), and your brain could have reacted identically.

That is because experience is a 1st person subjective phenomenon, whereas “to make it clear to others” you must necessarily translate it into a 3rd person objective description, and the 3rd person objective description can never convey everything about the 1st person objective experience. This is the reason why “Mary can never know all there is to know about the experience of seeing red” if she has never HAD the experience of seeing red, and also why it is meaningless to ask “what is it like to be a bat?”, because the only agent who CAN know what it is like to be a bat …… is a bat!
But NONE of the above is evidence that experience does not have a physical effect.

So are you saying there is more to explain beyond the third person physical account, just that it is impossible to do it? That is a strong possibility. I'm just saying that there is more, which many people disagree with.

You might find it frivolous to talk about what "might be" in "counterfactual worlds", but that is actually central to scientific investigation. In this case, if it is possible to imagine another universe that is physically identical where experiences are different, there are further laws we don't know about yet that make experiences the way they are here. When god made the physical, he had to do more to make our universe this one and not the other one.

I think most of the rest of your post is addressed by what I've said here, but if you think anything wasn't, please tell me.

 

[moving finger]

Is that “No, I do not believe that your subjective experience of the colour yellow is necessarily identical to my subjective experience of the colour yellow”?

yes.

Thank you. We agree on this.

So now you are saying "the experience of the colour yellow" and the "subjective feel of yellow (the yellow-quale)" are in fact the same thing?

yes.

Thank you. We also agree on this.

OK. You claimed that “the experience of the colour yellow” and “the subjective 'feel' of yellow, the yellow-quale” were different. Can you explain how you think they are different?

I didn't.

See post #29, first 3 lines. (but I don’t want to make a fuss)

Firstly, you (as a 3rd person objective observer) would never be able to find subjective experience by examining an NP state from the outside. The only route to “finding subjective experience” (as you put it) is through the manifestation of an NP state within a consciousness – ie 1st person subjectively.

Again, your use of an "NP state" as somehow embracing subjectivity is confusing.

IMHO perhaps your confusion is caused by the insistence on clinging to the intuition that everything (including subjective experience) must be interpretable (explainable) from a 3rd person objective perspective.

I share that intuition.

Intuition is a wonderful but dangerous thing.

I did not say that the NP of “A having a green quale” does not differ from that of “B having a red quale”; but it does not follow that different NPs must necessarily result in completely different behaviour. Dissimilar NPs may cause dissimilar behaviour, but there can conceivably be similarities in behaviour resulting from dissimilar NPs.

If qualia are causes, they will always be detectable in principle; that was the issue the original question was getting at. You seem to have fallen back on the position that they might not be detectable in practice.

IMHO, qualia are 1st person subjective experiences (which it seems you now agree with, as per the 2nd exchange above). As such, they can be causes (affecting our behaviour). But as 1st person subjective experiences, they are NOT amenable to study by 3rd person objective science, and therefore they are IN PRINCIPLE not “detectable” by 3rd person objective science.

The consciousness is separate from the NP state ?

Look at an NP state from the outside (3rd person objective science) and you see one thing. Look at an NP state from the inside (1st person subjective experience, aka a part of consciousness) and you see another.
One cannot understand the difference by clinging to the intuition that everything (including subjective experience) must be interpretable (explainable) from a 3rd person objective perspective.

If you mean simply “if someone sees my green as his red and my red as his green” then I would say the question is meaningless, because the experience of that person seeing green is unique to that person and does not necessarily bear any resemblance or connection to your experience of you seeing either red or green.

The idea that experiences could be so loosely related to physical brain-states implies a dualism which you elsewhere reject.

Loosely connected?
Look at an NP state from the outside (3rd person objective science) and you see one thing. Look at an NP state from the inside (1st person subjective experience, aka a part of consciousness) and you see another.
Call this “dualism” if you wish, but one cannot understand the difference between “experiences” and “observing brain states” by clinging to the intuition that everything (including subjective experience) must be interpretable (explainable) from a 3rd person objective perspective.

Just to be clear, what you seem to want is that “two brains can be exactly the same, but not be exactly the same, at the same time”, a clear contradiction.

I think he supposes that it is logically conceivable that two brains could be physically in the same state, but experientially in different states. And it is logically conceivable, but, like flying pigs, naturalistically impossible.

I do not consider it even “logically conceivable”.

I challenge that no two people can have the “exact same physical brain”. The exact composition and pattern of each physical brain is determined not only by genetic history but also by total life experience.

Two people in a thought-experiment can. You are addressing naturalistic possibility, not logical conceivability.

Nope. For two people to have “exactly the same physical brain” they would in fact have to be exactly the the same person. I do not accept that two different people could share the “exact same physical brain”, even in principle.

No two people have the same total life experience, hence there is no reason to expect that any two brains are “exactly the same”.
Secondly, the mere fact that one experiences red where the other experiences green is direct evidence that the two brains are not exactly the same.

Naturalistically, yes. Logically ?

Logically also. How can two brains be logically “exactly the same” if one brain interprets a visual scene as “red” and the other interprets the same scene as “green”?

Why on Earth do you say that? My experience of me seeing my daughter about to walk across the road in front of an oncoming car would have a VERY immediate physical effect on me!
What evidence do you have that experience does NOT have a physical effect?

If it is logically possible for conscious states to vary across identical brains, then it follows that they make no physical difference. Logically.
Naturalistically, this isn't very plausible.

Identical brains, as I have said, is (IMHO) a non-starter in principle.
Even if we allow identical (truly identical) brains, that (to my mind) also implies identical conscious experiences.

That is because experience is a 1st person subjective phenomenon, whereas “to make it clear to others” you must necessarily translate it into a 3rd person objective description, and the 3rd person objective description can never convey everything about the 1st person objective experience. This is the reason why “Mary can never know all there is to know about the experience of seeing red” if she has never HAD the experience of seeing red, and also why it is meaningless to ask “what is it like to be a bat?”, because the only agent who CAN know what it is like to be a bat …… is a bat!
But NONE of the above is evidence that experience does not have a physical effect.

But it is very plausible that everyhting in phsyics, as a matter of principle can be explained in 3rd-person language.

Everything contained within 3rd person objective physics can be explained in 3rd-person language. But 1st person subjective experiences are not accessible to 3rd person objective science (how many times have I typed this?). 1st person subjective and 3rd-person objective provide two different perspectives on the world which cannot be totally reconciled with each other. What more needs to be explained?

So the very existence of anything that is intriniscally 1st-person suggests that there is somehtign non-physical.

Nope. It suggests there is something that is not accessible to 3rd person objective science, and that something is 1st person subjective experience. But 1st person subjective experience is nevertheless physical. 1st person subjective and 3rd-person objective provide two different perspectives on the world which cannot be totally reconciled with each other. What more needs to be explained?

Couple that the cuasal closure of the physical , and you get the causal idleness of the experiential.

1st person subjective experiences are physical. But they are not amenable to study using 3rd-person objective science. Thers is no causal idleness, whatever that might be.

It is for you to explain how your commitment to physicalism squares with your commitment to irreducibly 1st-person experience.

1st person subjective experiences are physical. But 1st person subjective experiences are not amenable to study using 3rd-person objective science. 1st person subjective and 3rd-person objective provide two different perspectives on the world which cannot be totally reconciled with each other. What more needs to be explained?

AND they cause us to take certain actions – therefore they are very much part of our decision making and cause-and-effect.

That (call it I) stands up by itself, but how does it square with II physicalism
III the principle that everyhting physical can be expressed in a 3rd-person way ?

I & II = 1st person subjective experiences are physical. But they are not amenable to study using 3rd-person objective science.
III = Where is it written that “everything” can be expressed in a 3rd-person way?

What paradox? I see no paradox. Can you explain where the paradox is?

Between "consciousness doesn't cause anything" (epiphenomenalism) and "I am talking about consciousness".

But consciousness IS physical, it DOES cause, and I can talk about it, and talk about it causing. Where is there a paradox?

Because eperience is PART OF the physical world! I’m sorry, but its so blindingly obvious. There IS no dualism, there IS no separate “thinking self” which somehow exists out of causal contact with the physical self. This is a philosophical dead-end.

For you there is a dualism of 1st-person-understandable and 3rd-peson describable.

If one looks hard enough one can find “examples” of so-called “dualism” everywhere – but there is a world of difference between this emergent observed dualism and the intrinsic but wholly intuitive “physical/spiritual” Dualism (with an upper-case D) that Libertarians espouse and finds its roots in Descartes ideas, postulating that there is some intrinsic yet unexplained “non-physical something” which allegedly causes and controls our consciousness and which also somehow “controls itself” independently of the physical world, and yet still mystically interacts (when it wishes to) with the physical world.
I submit that the Libertarian/Descartes idea of Dualism is in fact an illusion arising from the refusal to give up the intuition that “everything in the world, , including subjective experiences, must be explainable from a 3rd person objective perspective”. This intuition (IMHO) is false.

Unlike Libertarian/Descartes Dualism, The “dualism” that you refer to above in the form of 1st person subjective experience versus 3rd-person objective science is not an intrinsic dualism “of” the world, it is simply an emergent dualism “in” the world caused by looking at the world from two irreconcilable perspectives (one perspective from inside consciousness, one perspective from outside consciousness). This is fully understandable and explainable, but it is certainly NOT the Dualism of Descartes or Libertarianism.

The dualism provided by the different perspectives of 1st person subjective and 3rd-person objective emerge (if you like) as a kind of “epistemic dualism”. It recognises that there are fundamental, in principle, limits to our knowledge which depend on our chosen perspective. With due respect to Nagel, I can never know what it is like to be a bat, for example, and Mary can never know what it is like to experience the sight of red until she actually does experience red, but there is no physical/spiritual Dualism in the sense that parts of the “non-physical essence of a bat” exists in some kind of objective but “causal limbo” separate from the rest of the deterministic and physical universe.

MF

 

[moving finger]

Experiences and brain states are not the same thing.

StatusX, I never said they were “the same thing”. But they are related (as you agree below)

They are surely closely related, and possibly one thing looked at in two different ways, but when I say "experience" I mean something different from when I say "brain state."

I agree. “Experience” is a 1st person subjective phenomenon, whereas when we examine a “brain state” from the outside what we are doing is looking at it in a 3rd person objective way. The two are related but different things.

Just to be clear, what you seem to want is that “two brains can be exactly the same, but not be exactly the same, at the same time”, a clear contradiction.

Of course, this presupposes the physical is all that is real.

See my later comment on axioms.

But beyond that, I am talking about counterfactual worlds. I don't mean that two physically identical brain states in this universe could correspond to different experiences, and in fact I don't believe that is possible.

By definition, “universe” is all that exists.

I am saying that experiences are different from brain states

Yes, we have already agreed this above.

and it is possible to imagine worlds where someone physically identical to you (ie, you from this world) has different experiences.

What do you consider would be “different” about such an identical person in an identical world that could give rise to “different” experiences?

My experience of me seeing my daughter about to walk across the road in front of an oncoming car would have a VERY immediate physical effect on me!
What evidence do you have that experience does NOT have a physical effect?

Again, you are mixing up experiences and brain states. Your reaction is a result of electric signals in your brain, not because of what it was like to see the event.

In saying that “My experience of me seeing my daughter about to walk across the road in front of an oncoming car would have a VERY immediate physical effect on me”, I am saying something about a change in my consciousness which is related to my experiences, I am saying nothing exlicitly about my brain states (my 1st person subjective perspective is not even aware of brain states).
I am not mixing up anything – we both agree that experiences and brain states are not identical, but they are closely related (as you have agreed above).
The electrical signals in my brain are part of my neurophysiological state (NS) at that time. The manifestation of that NS as part of my consciousness = my subjective experience at that time. This does not imply that experiences “are the same things” as brain states, but it does imply there is a close connection.

Can you clarify what you mean by the words “physical effect” in the statement “experience does not seem to have a physical effect”?

The experience could be different, or not existent (again, in counterfactual worlds), and your brain could have reacted identically.

Different NSs would normally be associated with different experiences, I agree. But IMHO an identical world would give rise to an identical person with identical brain states and identical experiences, leading to identical reactions.

So are you saying there is more to explain beyond the third person physical account,

Yes, that is exactly what I am saying

just that it is impossible to do it?

No, I am saying it is impossible to explain it from a 3rd person objective perspective (which is what conventional science tries to do).

That is a strong possibility. I'm just saying that there is more, which many people disagree with.

What “more” do you think there is?

You might find it frivolous to talk about what "might be" in "counterfactual worlds", but that is actually central to scientific investigation.

I do not think it frivolous, but to be meaningful such a discussion must first agree axioms. I think we have not agreed all our axioms.

In this case, if it is possible to imagine another universe that is physically identical where experiences are different,

This is an area where we disagree on axioms. IMHO, one possible axiom is that everything arises from the “physical” – define the physical and everything else is defined. Therefore to suggest that a world can exist which is physically identical with our own but where experiences are not identical is clearly incompatible with this axiom.

there are further laws we don't know about yet that make experiences the way they are here.

This is clearly one of your axioms

When god made the physical, he had to do more to make our universe this one and not the other one.

“God” is therefore another of your axioms (but I’m not sure what relevance this axiom has in the present discussion?)

MF

 

[Tournesol]

]See post #29, first 3 lines. (but I don’t want to make a fuss)

Where you said:

Need to be careful to distinguish between “the colour yellow” and “the experience of the colour yellow”.

And I said:-

and, thirdly, the subjective 'feel' of yellow, the yellow-quale.

Because you went on to say:-

Yes, and this (the experience of the colour yellow) is a particular neurophysiological state within each consciousness. It is also peculiar to that consciousness

Now, just about anybody would take 'NP state' to indicate a 3rd person
description, so it would appear you were leaving the 1st-person aspect
out entirely.

IMHO perhaps your confusion is caused by the insistence on clinging to the intuition that everything (including subjective experience) must be interpretable (explainable) from a 3rd person objective perspective.

If physicalism doesn't mean that, what does it mean ?

IMHO, qualia are 1st person subjective experiences (which it seems you now agree with, as per the 2nd exchange above). As such, they can be causes (affecting our behaviour). But as 1st person subjective experiences, they are NOT amenable to study by 3rd person objective science, and therefore they are IN PRINCIPLE not “detectable” by 3rd person objective science.

Which means there is something going on causally which is not
detectable to the 3rd-person perspective, so physics
is not explanatorily closed. Does that mean
physical closure is false ? If, so , does that mean physicalism
is false ?

Look at an NP state from the outside (3rd person objective science) and you see one thing. Look at an NP state from the inside (1st person subjective experience, aka a part of consciousness) and you see another.
One cannot understand the difference by clinging to the intuition that everything (including subjective experience) must be interpretable (explainable) from a 3rd person objective perspective.

The 3rd-person perspective isn't proposed as a way of understanding
exprience, it is proposed as an implication of physicalism. If physicalism
doesn't mean that, what does it mean ?

I do not consider it even “logically conceivable”.

Which would mean that it is somehow self-contradictory. Where is the
cotradiction ?

Nope. For two people to have “exactly the same physical brain” they would in fact have to be exactly the the same person.

That doesn't follow at all. Indistinguishability does not imply numerical identity.
Every electron is the same as every other, but there are a lot of them!

I do not accept that two different people could share the “exact same physical brain”, even in principle.

There is no law of the universe agasint it. It may be unlikely, but that is hardly an objection un principle.

Logically also. How can two brains be logically “exactly the same” if one brain interprets a visual scene as “red” and the other interprets the same scene as “green”?

The idea is that if they are phsyically identical, but subjectively diffeent, there must be a non-physical element to account for the difference.
You keep confusing physical identity with identity simpliciter.

Identical brains, as I have said, is (IMHO) a non-starter in principle.
Even if we allow identical (truly identical) brains, that (to my mind) also implies identical conscious experiences.

Naturally or logically ?

Everything contained within 3rd person objective physics can be explained in 3rd-person language. But 1st person subjective experiences are not accessible to 3rd person objective science (how many times have I typed this?). 1st person subjective and 3rd-person objective provide two different perspectives on the world which cannot be totally reconciled with each other. What more needs to be explained?

Whether and how the above is compatible with physicalism.

AND they cause us to take certain actions – therefore they are very much part of our decision making and cause-and-effect.

That (call it I) stands up by itself, but how does it square with
II physicalism
III the principle that everyhting physical can be expressed in a 3rd-person

I & II = 1st person subjective experiences are physical. But they are not amenable to study using 3rd-person objective science.
III = Where is it written that “everything” can be expressed in a 3rd-person way?

It is an implication of physicalism.

But consciousness IS physical, it DOES cause, and I can talk about it, and talk about it causing. Where is there a paradox?

The tension is between physicalism as an explanatory position (everything can in principle be explained in physics) and as an ontological position (there are no spirits or ghosts). But if you think The former is false and the latter
is true (and it looks like you do), you would make your self
a lot clearer by using phrases like "consciousness is metaphysically physical"
as Owen Flanagen does.

If one looks hard enough one can find “examples” of so-called “dualism” everywhere – but there is a world of difference between this emergent observed dualism and the intrinsic but wholly intuitive “physical/spiritual” Dualism (with an upper-case D) that Libertarians

aaaagh!

espouse and finds its roots in Descartes ideas, postulating that there is some intrinsic yet unexplained “non-physical something” which allegedly causes and controls our consciousness and which also somehow “controls itself” independently of the physical world, and yet still mystically interacts (when it wishes to) with the physical world.
I submit that the Libertarian/Descartes idea of Dualism is in fact an illusion arising from the refusal to give up the intuition that “everything in the world, , including subjective experiences, must be explainable from a 3rd person objective perspective”. This intuition (IMHO) is false.

What explains the impossibiliy of explaining consc. from a 3rd-peson
perspective ? If that epistemological issue isn't rooted in metaphysics, what is it rooted in ?

Unlike Libertarian/Descartes Dualism, The “dualism” that you refer to above in the form of 1st person subjective experience versus 3rd-person objective science is not an intrinsic dualism “of” the world, it is simply an emergent dualism “in” the world caused by looking at the world from two irreconcilable perspectives (one perspective from inside consciousness, one perspective from outside consciousness). This is fully understandable and explainable, but it is certainly NOT the Dualism of Descartes or Libertarianism.

Explainable in what way ? If the 1st-peson perspective is generated by
the brain using physical processes, shoudn't it be physically explainable ?

The dualism provided by the different perspectives of 1st person subjective and 3rd-person objective emerge (if you like) as a kind of “epistemic dualism”. It recognises that there are fundamental, in principle, limits to our knowledge which depend on our chosen perspective. With due respect to Nagel, I can never know what it is like to be a bat, for example, and Mary can never know what it is like to experience the sight of red until she actually does experience red, but there is no physical/spiritual Dualism in the sense that parts of the “non-physical essence of a bat” exists in some kind of objective but “causal limbo” separate from the rest of the deterministic and physical universe.

But that dualism, and I don't doubt that it exists, must come
about for some reason , and I don't doubnt that the reason in question
must be something to do with the kind of explanatory lanhuage or framework
employed, but I don't see how it can be entirely due to that. There
must be some metaphysical/ontological reason why particular epistemolgical/explanatory problems only arise regarding particular phenomena.

 

[moving finger]

IMHO perhaps your confusion is caused by the insistence on clinging to the intuition that everything (including subjective experience) must be interpretable (explainable) from a 3rd person objective perspective.

If physicalism doesn't mean that, what does it mean ?

A physicalist is one who believes that structure & function is all there is, and that consciousness (and conscious experiences) can be explained as part of the functionalist framework (it is just more structure and function).
Perhaps you can explain what the definition of physicalism has to do with your intuition?

Which means there is something going on causally which is not detectable to the 3rd-person perspective, so physics is not explanatorily closed. Does that mean physical closure is false ? If, so , does that mean physicalism is false ?

No. I was saying nothing about physics or physicalism. A physicalist is one who believes that structure & function is all there is, and that consciousness (and conscious experiences) can be explained as part of the functionalist framework (it is just more structure and function). And I won’t repeat again the difference between 1st and 3rd person perspectives, I’m getting fed up of repeating myself.

The 3rd-person perspective isn't proposed as a way of understanding exprience, it is proposed as an implication of physicalism.

Whose “law” is this?
I see the 3rd person objective perspective as a “description of the way that science traditionally views the world”. Such a perspective is incompatible with 1st person subjective perspectives. Simple as that.
And a physicalist is one who believes that structure & function is all there is, and that consciousness (and conscious experiences) can be explained as part of the functionalist framework (it is just more structure and function). This does not imply that the physicalist must necessarily be limited to the 3rd person perspective.

If physicalism doesn't mean that, what does it mean ?

See above.

Which would mean that it is somehow self-contradictory. Where is the cotradiction ?

The law of logical non-contradiction. Something cannot be both “identical” and “not identical” at the same time.

For two people to have “exactly the same physical brain” they would in fact have to be exactly the the same person.

That doesn't follow at all. Indistinguishability does not imply numerical identity.
Every electron is the same as every other, but there are a lot of them!

We are not talking about indistinguishability (an epistemic property) we are talking about ontic identity. Electrons may be epistemically indistinguishable in some circumstances, but it does not follow from this that every electron is ontically the same as every other. That’s the whole point. Each one has a different wavefunction.

I do not accept that two different people could share the “exact same physical brain”, even in principle.

There is no law of the universe agasint it. It may be unlikely, but that is hardly an objection un principle.

The law of logical non-contradiction. Something cannot be both “identical” and “not identical” at the same time.

The idea is that if they are phsyically identical, but subjectively diffeent, there must be a non-physical element to account for the difference.
You keep confusing physical identity with identity simpliciter.

Nope. I assume that everything is grounded in the physical, thus any two physically identical systems are by definition identical. Period.

Identical brains, as I have said, is (IMHO) a non-starter in principle.
Even if we allow identical (truly identical) brains, that (to my mind) also implies identical conscious experiences.

Naturally or logically ?

I assume that everything is grounded in the physical, thus any two physically identical systems are by definition identical. Period.

What more needs to be explained?

Whether and how the above is compatible with physicalism.

See above.

Where is it written that “everything” can be expressed in a 3rd-person way?

It is an implication of physicalism.

See above.

The tension is between physicalism as an explanatory position (everything can in principle be explained in physics) and as an ontological position (there are no spirits or ghosts). But if you think The former is false and the latter is true (and it looks like you do), you would make your self a lot clearer by using phrases like "consciousness is metaphysically physical" as Owen Flanagen does.

See above. (and I am not Owen Flanagan.)

What explains the impossibiliy of explaining consc. from a 3rd-peson perspective ?

The fact that consciousness is a 1st person subjective experience, and not a 3rd person objective phenomenon. How many times do you want me to repeat this?

If that epistemological issue isn't rooted in metaphysics, what is it rooted in ?

Epistemic perspective. There is nothing metaphysical about it.

If the 1st-peson perspective is generated by the brain using physical processes, shoudn't it be physically explainable ?

It is physically explainable in principle, but there is once again the issue of epistemic perspective. 1st person subjective is not explainable from a 3rd person perspective.
Has it got through to you yet?

But that dualism, and I don't doubt that it exists, must come about for some reason , and I don't doubnt that the reason in question must be something to do with the kind of explanatory lanhuage or framework employed, but I don't see how it can be entirely due to that.

Why not?

There must be some metaphysical/ontological reason why particular epistemolgical/explanatory problems only arise regarding particular phenomena.

Why? Which particular phenomena and which particular problems are you referring to?

MF

 

[Tournesol]

A physicalist is one who believes that structure & function is all there is, and that consciousness (and conscious experiences) can be explained as part of the functionalist framework (it is just more structure and function).

Perhaps you can explain what the definition of physicalism has to do with your intuition?

It is obvious that anything structural and functional can be exhaustively described from a 3rd person perspective. That, and empiricism, is what the objectivity of science and maths is all about.

I see the 3rd person objective perspective as a “description of the way that science traditionally views the world”. Such a perspective is incompatible with 1st person subjective perspectives. Simple as that.
And a physicalist is one who believes that structure & function is all there is, and that consciousness (and conscious experiences) can be explained as part of the functionalist framework (it is just more structure and function). This does not imply that the physicalist must necessarily be limited to the 3rd person perspective.

Yes it does, because the existence of something which is
a) purely structural and functional and
b) incomunicable from a 3rd-person perspective
is contradictory.

The law of logical non-contradiction. Something cannot be both “identical” and “not identical” at the same time.

Two things can be indistiguishable but numerically distinct.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity/

We are not talking about indistinguishability (an epistemic property) we are talking about ontic identity. Electrons may be epistemically indistinguishable in some circumstances, but it does not follow from this that every electron is ontically the same as every other. That’s the whole point. Each one has a different wavefunction.

And two human can be physically indistinguishable but numerically (ontically
as you say) distinct.

Nope. I assume that everything is grounded in the physical, thus any two physically identical systems are by definition identical. Period.

And any physical system is entirely describable in structural and functional
terms and thus entirely describable in 3rd person terms with no 1st-person
residue.

I assume that everything is grounded in the physical, thus any two physically identical systems are by definition identical. Period.

Yet two conscious systems have 1st-person perspectives which cannot be
conveyed in 3rd-person terms, and thus cannot be conveyed in physical terms.

The fact that consciousness is a 1st person subjective experience, and not a 3rd person objective phenomenon. How many times do you want me to repeat this?

When are you going to explain how 1st person-ness can come
about in an entrirely structural and functional universe ?

If that epistemological issue isn't rooted in metaphysics, what is it rooted in ?

Epistemic perspective. There is nothing metaphysical about it

But epistemic perspective is not (for phsycialists) some weird,
miraculous exception to the laws of nature; it is the result
of the activity of the human nervous system. If you have
a complete description of human neurophysiology, how could it fail to
describe how a 1st-person conscious perspective is generated ITFP?

If the 1st-peson perspective is generated by the brain using physical processes, shoudn't it be physically explainable ?

It is physically explainable in principle, but there is once again the issue of epistemic perspective. 1st person subjective is not explainable from a 3rd person perspective.

Has it got through to you yet?

There is indeed the issue of 1st person perspective. If everything is
explainable physically in principle so is the existence of 1st-person perspectives.
If the existence of 1st-person perspectives is inexplicable, everything is
NOT explainable physically in principle.

Since your position is basically contradictory, it is impossible to 'get'.

There must be some metaphysical/ontological reason why particular epistemolgical/explanatory problems only arise regarding particular phenomena.

Why? Which particular phenomena and which particular problems are you referring to?

The (in)explicablity of the 1st person perspective.

 

[moving finger]

It is obvious that anything structural and functional can be exhaustively described from a 3rd person perspective.

I disagree.
Your assertion is the foundation of 3rd person objective science. It is an approximation, but it is not true.
IMHO a (1st person) perspective from “inside the function”, where the 1st person IS part of the function, cannot necessarily be exhaustively described by a (3rd person) perspective from “outside the function”, where the 3rd person is NOT part of the function..

That, and empiricism, is what the objectivity of science and maths is all about.

Agreed. And that is precisely why 3rd person objective science fails to fully describe 1st person subjective phenomena. It seems very obvious to me!

I see the 3rd person objective perspective as a “description of the way that science traditionally views the world”. Such a perspective is incompatible with 1st person subjective perspectives. Simple as that.
And a physicalist is one who believes that structure & function is all there is, and that consciousness (and conscious experiences) can be explained as part of the functionalist framework (it is just more structure and function). This does not imply that the physicalist must necessarily be limited to the 3rd person perspective.

Yes it does, because the existence of something which is
a) purely structural and functional and
b) incomunicable from a 3rd-person perspective
is contradictory.

I disagree. You assume “physically” necessarily implies “3rd person objectively”. For an explanation see my first reply in this post.

The law of logical non-contradiction. Something cannot be both “identical” and “not identical” at the same time.

Two things can be indistiguishable but numerically distinct.

Indistinguishable is not the same as identical.
Indistinguihable refers to epistemic qualities.
Identical refers to ontic qualities.
(I’m sure I said this already)
Thus two indistinguishable things are not necessarily identical, thus they certainly can be distinct.

We are not talking about indistinguishability (an epistemic property) we are talking about ontic identity. Electrons may be epistemically indistinguishable in some circumstances, but it does not follow from this that every electron is ontically the same as every other. That’s the whole point. Each one has a different wavefunction.

And two human can be physically indistinguishable but numerically (ontically as you say) distinct.

Physical indistinguishability does not imply “not identical”.
The original question was whether two “identical brains” could be different to each other, not whether two “indistinguishable brains” could be different to each other.

Nope. I assume that everything is grounded in the physical, thus any two physically identical systems are by definition identical. Period.

And any physical system is entirely describable in structural and functional terms and thus entirely describable in 3rd person terms with no 1st-person residue.

Disagree. You assume “physically” necessarily implies “3rd person objectively”. For an explanation see my first reply in this post.

I assume that everything is grounded in the physical, thus any two physically identical systems are by definition identical. Period.

Yet two conscious systems have 1st-person perspectives which cannot be conveyed in 3rd-person terms, and thus cannot be conveyed in physical terms.

Disagree. You assume “physically” necessarily implies “3rd person objectively”. For an explanation see my first reply in this post.

The fact that consciousness is a 1st person subjective experience, and not a 3rd person objective phenomenon.

When are you going to explain how 1st person-ness can come about in an entrirely structural and functional universe ?

1st person subjective is a perspective. Just as 3rd person objective is a perspective. You assume “physically” necessarily implies “3rd person objectively”. For an explanation see my first reply in this post.

If that epistemological issue isn't rooted in metaphysics, what is it rooted in ?

Epistemic perspective. There is nothing metaphysical about it

But epistemic perspective is not (for phsycialists) some weird, miraculous exception to the laws of nature; it is the result of the activity of the human nervous system. If you have a complete description of human neurophysiology, how could it fail to describe how a 1st-person conscious perspective is generated ITFP?

A 3rd person objective description can describe to some extent a 1st person subjective perspective, but not completely. Any more than I can completely describe to a blind person what the experience of seeing the colour green is like. There is no way to fully KNOW what the experience of seeing the colour green is like, unless you actually experience it – ie 1st person subjective.

If the 1st-peson perspective is generated by the brain using physical processes, shoudn't it be physically explainable ?

It is physically explainable in principle, but there is once again the issue of epistemic perspective. 1st person subjective is not explainable from a 3rd person perspective.

There is indeed the issue of 1st person perspective. If everything is explainable physically in principle so is the existence of 1st-person perspectives.

Yes. But the “existence of” a 1st person perspective is not the issue. The issue is whether that 1st person perspective can be fully explained from a 3rd person perspective.

If the existence of 1st-person perspectives is inexplicable, everything is NOT explainable physically in principle.

Disagree. You assume “physically” necessarily implies “3rd person objectively”. For an explanation see my first reply in this post.

There must be some metaphysical/ontological reason why particular epistemolgical/explanatory problems only arise regarding particular phenomena.

Why? Which particular phenomena and which particular problems are you referring to?

The (in)explicablity of the 1st person perspective.

This is not inexplicable. But it is not totally explainable in 3rd person objective language. For an explanation see my first reply in this post.

MF

 

[Tournesol]

IMHO a (1st person) perspective from “inside the function”, where the 1st person IS part of the function, cannot necessarily be exhaustively described by a (3rd person) perspective from “outside the function”, where the 3rd person is NOT part of the function..

There is no reason why that should be the case. Note that a SF description
does not contain within it any perspective or POV, so why should being
"inside the function" make a difference. Note also that *what* we find
difficult t convey about our conscious experience is not the
SF asepcts thereof. If I see a red square, I have no difficulty conveying he squareness of the square, which is structure, what I have difficulty with is the
redness, which, prima facie, isn't.

<the objectity of 3P descriptions> and empiricism, is what the objectivity of science and maths is all about.

Agreed. And that is precisely why 3rd person objective science fails to fully describe 1st person subjective phenomena. It seems very obvious to me!

The question is what would motivate us to accept that physicalism is true ontologically , if it fails explanatorilly.

Indistinguishable is not the same as identical.
Indistinguihable refers to epistemic qualities.
Identical refers to ontic qualities.
(I’m sure I said this already)
Thus two indistinguishable things are not necessarily identical, thus they certainly can be distinct.

So , contrary to what you were saying before, you can have
two distinct but physically indistinguishable brains.

My paraphrase of statusX's point was:

think he supposes that it is logically conceivable that two brains could be physically in the same state, but experientially in different states.

1st person subjective is a perspective. Just as 3rd person objective is a perspective.

No, 3rd person is not perspective, it is a "view from nowhere"

A 3rd person objective description can describe to some extent a 1st person subjective perspective, but not completely.

Why shouldn't we conclude that the world is physical, but not completely?

more than I can completely describe to a blind person what the experience of seeing the colour green is like. There is no way to fully KNOW what the experience of seeing the colour green is like, unless you actually experience it – ie 1st person subjective.

That is not in dispute. The question is whether that ineffability is compatible
with physicalism.

Yes. But the “existence of” a 1st person perspective is not the issue. The issue is whether that 1st person perspective can be fully explained from a 3rd person perspective.

The latter, epistemic, issue would not even exist without the former, ontic, one. Trying to portray physicalism as false epistemically but true ontologically, as you have been, is going to come undone if the
epistemic situation comes about for ontic reasons (ie there are
subjective perspectives becuase subjects exist).

 

[moving finger]

Note that a SF description does not contain within it any perspective or POV, so why should being "inside the function" make a difference.

What do you mean by SF please?

Note also that *what* we find difficult t convey about our conscious experience is not the SF asepcts thereof. If I see a red square, I have no difficulty conveying he squareness of the square, which is structure, what I have difficulty with is the redness, which, prima facie, isn't.

Because properties such as “squareness” can be explained in 3rd person objective terms, whereas “redness” cannot. It is purely a 1st person subjective property.

The question is what would motivate us to accept that physicalism is true ontologically , if it fails explanatorilly.

It seems no matter how many times I repeat it, you do not take it in.
Physicalism does not necessarily imply 3rd person objectivism.
It is not that physicalism fails explanatorily, it is that the 3rd person objective perspective cannot be used to fully explain 1st person subjective perspective.

Thus two indistinguishable things are not necessarily identical, thus they certainly can be distinct.

I never said they could not. The original assertion was that two IDENTICAL things could at the same time be NOT IDENTICAL, which I disagreed with. Now you are trying to replace identical with indistinguishable. Fine.

3rd person is not perspective, it is a "view from nowhere"

It’s a perspective. It assumes the world can be separated into “observed” and “observer” with no interdependency between the two.

Why shouldn't we conclude that the world is physical, but not completely?

Why should we conclude the world is not completely physical?

The question is whether that ineffability is compatible with physicalism.

Please define what you mean by ineffability.

Trying to portray physicalism as false epistemically but true ontologically, as you have been, is going to come undone if the epistemic situation comes about for ontic reasons (ie there are subjective perspectives becuase subjects exist).

You still do not read my posts properly, do you?
I am not trying to portray physicalism as false epistemically – YOU are the one doing that.
I have said several times that I believe physicalism can account for everything.
You seem to insist that physicalism necessarily implies 3rd person objectivism, and I disagree with this.
3rd person objective and 1st person subjective perspectives are both IMHO compatible with physicalism, but traditional science tends to use exclusively the 3rd person objective approach (for obvious reasons).
Though 1st person subjective phenomena can be explained physically, they cannot be fully explained on the basis of 3rd person objectivism alone.

MF

 

[StatusX]

What do you consider would be “different” about such an identical person in an identical world that could give rise to “different” experiences?

I'm saying it is not logically impossible that a person in a physically identical world could have the same neurological state but different experiences. When you say:

IMHO, one possible axiom is that everything arises from the “physical” – define the physical and everything else is defined. Therefore to suggest that a world can exist which is physically identical with our own but where experiences are not identical is clearly incompatible with this axiom.

That may be a belief, but it is certainly not a logically necessary statement. You can take that as unquestionable, the way many religious people take the existence of God as a fact, but it isn't going to convince a skeptic.

This is all I mean by logically possible: Red looks a certain way, and blue looks a different way. But what if every instance of red and blue were switched. That is, the experience you used to have when you looked at an apple, you would now have when looking at the sky. You would call it blue, say it is a cool, refreshing color, and all the while you would be seeing what you used to call red (of course, your memory would have to be changed as well). Maybe there is a hidden contradiction in here, but no one I know of has pointed out any that are serious enough to damage the argument.

So the question becomes, why does red look the way it does and not the way blue does? I can imagine (physically identical) universes where they are switched, so why are we in this universe and not another? This may or may not be an unanswerable metaphysical question, but what about the question of why they look like anything at all? We can't affect the physical world based on which way red looks (which is why the universes can be physically identical in the first place), but as all these words on the screen show, it seems the fact that experiences are like anything at all can have a physical effect. Then, given that it seems the content of the experiences are something outside the physical, what is the link between the existence of experiences and the physical world? This is the question I was asking when I started this thread.

 

[Tournesol]

What do you mean by SF please?

Structural + Functional.

Because properties such as “squareness” can be explained in 3rd person objective terms, whereas “redness” cannot. It is purely a 1st person subjective property.

I know. The point is, that according to you, 1st person subjectivity is an
outcome of operating "within" a S+F physical system. However, if it
is, it should be all-embracing. But it is not; some aspects of my experience
are explainable in 3P terms and othes are not. Hence, your theory
makes a false prediciton.

It seems no matter how many times I repeat it, you do not take it in.
Physicalism does not necessarily imply 3rd person objectivism.
It is not that physicalism fails explanatorily, it is that the 3rd person objective perspective cannot be used to fully explain 1st person subjective perspective.

Physicalism does imply 3rd person objectivism because it implies
that structure and function are all-embracing, as you concede. The
brute fact that there are 1st peson perspectives does not change
that implication; instead,it is an argument against physicalism.
You need to show that the chain of implication from phsycalism to
the all-embracing sufficientcy of 3rdP accounts does not follow
conceptually. Otherwise the brute fact of 1stP perspectives simply
means physicalism is not entirely correct.

I never said they could not. The original assertion was that two IDENTICAL things could at the same time be NOT IDENTICAL, which I disagreed with.

That was your paraphrase of a different assertion.

A 3rd person objective description can describe to some extent a 1st person subjective perspective, but not completely.

Why shouldn't we conclude that the world is physical, but not completely?

Why should we conclude the world is not completely physical?

It is one way of accounting for the failure of 3rdP descriptions in some cases.

Please define what you mean by ineffability.

eg redness as opposed to squareness

You still do not read my posts properly, do you?
I am not trying to portray physicalism as false epistemically – YOU are the one doing that.
I have said several times that I believe physicalism can account for everything.

You have also said:

A 3rd person objective description can describe to some extent a 1st person subjective perspective, but not completely.

You seem to insist that physicalism necessarily implies 3rd person objectivism, and I disagree with this.
3rd person objective and 1st person subjective perspectives are both IMHO compatible with physicalism, but traditional science tends to use exclusively the 3rd person objective approach (for obvious reasons).
Though 1st person subjective phenomena can be explained physically, they cannot be fully explained on the basis of 3rd person objectivism alone.

Which means they cannot be fully explained physically, since such an
explanation will reduce the biochemistry to physics and express
the physics in mathematical terms , which are 3rd-person objective.

You seem to have got confused between the idea that the existence
of 1st-person perspectives is compatible with ontological
physicalism (does not require ghosts) and the idea that
they are incompatible with explanatory physicalism.

Hoiwever, if ontological physicalism is strictly true, 1st person perspectives
should not even exist; so there is an implication from epistemology
to metaphysics. The existence of 1st person perspectives must have some ontological implications, even if they fall short of Cartesian ghosts.

Yu have suggested that 1stP perspectives come about from operating
"within" a physical system. Eiither this is physically accountable or it
is unaccountable. If it is accountable, the account will have the effect
of reducing the 1stP perspective to a 3rdP perspective. If it is not,
there is *already* somethin 1stP and ineffable going on, before
the ineffability of conscious experience even arises -- ie the
physical explanation is being prevented by the existence
of somethin non-physical, in some sense.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Physicalism does imply 3rd person objectivism because it implies
that structure and function are all-embracing, as you concede. The
brute fact that there are 1st peson perspectives does not change
that implication; instead,it is an argument against physicalism.
You need to show that the chain of implication from phsycalism to
the all-embracing sufficientcy of 3rdP accounts does not follow
conceptually. Otherwise the brute fact of 1stP perspectives simply
means physicalism is not entirely correct.

After following this exchange for some time, and becoming more and more frustrated with the repeated characterizations of "physicalism", I see in this passage a way to respond constructively.

It seems to me that the physicalism here with its reliance on 3rd person tests in both experiment and explanation is actually Behaviorism, the belief of Skinner and others that mental states had no place in scientific explanation because they were radically unavailable to 3rd person investigation. And this is true. Even today the marvelous fMRI studies to not expose mental states but only physical correlates of them - oxygen or glucose uptakes in different regions of the brain.

But psychology, and other sciences, do not limit their EXPLANATIONS to the things they can access or demonstrate in the lab. It is a false understanding of science to suppose that they do, or must. Take as an example the electrical potential. Because its curl is taken in forming the Maxwell Equations, and because the curl of a gradient is identically zero, you can add the gradient of any arbitrary function to the potential and it will still yield the same equations, the same physical observables. So the potential CANNOT BE OBSERVED, any more that 1st person experiences can.

But the potential, along with this gradient property, now called gauge invariance, is included in electromagnetic theory, it is used in explanations of obsevable electrical effects in the lab, because the explanation becomes much more coherent and effective with the potential than withut it. And this is common practice in physics and other branches of science.

So physicalism, if it is to cover the actual practices of experimental psychologists, must include the ability to explain 3rd-person observable behavior by coherent but unobservable 1st person experiences. Since the only way an experimenter has access to such states is by report from the subject, we find the necessity of heterophenomenonology, which has been discussed on another thread.

 

[Tournesol]

It seems to me that the physicalism here with its reliance on 3rd person tests in both experiment and explanation is actually Behaviorism, the belief of Skinner and others that mental states had no place in scientific explanation because they were radically unavailable to 3rd person investigation. And this is true. Even today the marvelous fMRI studies to not expose mental states but only physical correlates of them - oxygen or glucose uptakes in different regions of the brain.

Well, MRI scans aren't behaviourism.
The problem for physicalism is consciousness, and specifically qualia.
The problem -- the ineffability -- of qualia seems to be down to their
non-structureleness, which will inevitably elude physicalism, which
both MF and myself define as being about structure+function.

Note that this is much more about the "language" of science than exprimental technique.

But psychology, and other sciences, do not limit their EXPLANATIONS to the things they can access or demonstrate in the lab. It is a false understanding of science to suppose that they do, or must. Take as an example the electrical potential. Because its curl is taken in forming the Maxwell Equations, and because the curl of a gradient is identically zero, you can add the gradient of any arbitrary function to the potential and it will still yield the same equations, the same physical observables. So the potential CANNOT BE OBSERVED, any more that 1st person experiences can.

There are two different issues here. Whatever behind-the-scenes factors
you have in physics, they can be expressed mathematically, and
therefore *understood* in 3rd person terms, albeit they cannot be directly detected. However, qualia cannot even
be expressed (in mathematical technical language, anyway) -- although they can be (seemingly) directly detected.

So physicalism, if it is to cover the actual practices of experimental psychologists, must include the ability to explain 3rd-person observable behavior by coherent but unobservable 1st person experiences.

1st-person observable, but 3rd person unobservable.

Since the only way an experimenter has access to such states is by report from the subject, we find the necessity of heterophenomenonology, which has been discussed on another thread.

Physicalism has also to account for why there should be such states in the
first place. The problem is to explain why their should be an epistemological divide (between 1st person and 3rd person) without it being brought about by a corresponding metaphysical divide.

 

[Steve Esser]

Interesting debate. Here's a thought experiment:

Future physicists conclude that there exists in nature a property of certain complex natural systems which provides a function which coordinates the evolution of the system. This property is a added irreducible part of nature, which is found to be a necessary supplement to the previous roster of fundamental entities and forces. They also conclude that this property is the actual direct cause of first-person experience for the system in question and is most notable in human beings. And through future advanced diagnostics made possible by tracking this property we can tell what someone is experiencing from the third person without error.

Has the hard problem vanished, despite the fact that I still can't "have" your experiences?

 

[Canute]

I've come into this late so sorry if I raise any issues aleady covered.

And through future advanced diagnostics made possible by tracking this property we can tell what someone is experiencing from the third person without error.

Has the hard problem vanished, despite the fact that I still can't "have" your experiences?

It may not quite have vanished but it would be a lot less hard. However you have assumed that it will one day be possible to tell what someone is experiencing from the third-person, which in reality is impossible. It is easy sometimes to get some idea of what category of experience someone is having, for pain, happiness, excitement etc. show up in behaviour to some extent, but that is not at all the same thing as knowing what they are experiencing. One cannot infer an experience, or even a category of experience, from a particular behaviour with any confidence, and it is impossible to have a third-person experience by definition. Neither can an experience be reported, except from memory and vaguely.

My uncertainty here, and it seeems to be a point of confusion, is whether consciousness can be explained in terms of structure and function while not being observable in the third-person. I'm not sure. Is is coherent to say that consciousness is just structure and function but that we cannot observe that structure and function, nor be able to show when consciousness in present and when it is not? If we cannot tell by observation when C is present and when it is not, then we cannot tell when the necessary structure and function is present and when not. It's all very confusing.

I have problems anyway with the notion of something being no more than structure and function. Structure of what? Function of what? I thought that in physicalism consciousness had no function. If so then physicalism is epiphenomenalism, with all the problems that go with that view. Does structure here mean structure of the brain? If consciousness is no more than brain structure then the problem of neural correlates (or an equivalent) arises. The notion of this kind of supervenience has logical difficulties that have been pointed out many times in the literature. Some argue that the very idea of neural correlates of consciousness is internally inconsistent. In any case what consciousness is cannot be explained by reference to structure and function.

Also, the brain is not a closed system. No biological system is closed. So it seems to me that a complete analysis of the brain's structure and function would lead us from neurophysiology to quantum cosmology and from there straight to metaphysics.

One slightly silly thought. It is not possible to have fun unless one is conscious. So how would one give an explanation of a funfair strictly in terms of structure and function without running into trouble? The cause of the funfair, which is human consciousness, is supposed to be non-causal. (Or would they also have funfairs in a Zombie world, where there is no such thing as fun?)

Anyway, these are just woolly thoughts. I'm pretty confused about physicalism and have never quite made sense of it. Could someone take a moment to give a straightforward example of how something can be explained solely in terms of S + F? It's an idea I've never quite grasped.

 

[moving finger]

The point is, that according to you, 1st person subjectivity is an outcome of operating "within" a S+F physical system. However, if it is, it should be all-embracing. But it is not; some aspects of my experience are explainable in 3P terms and othes are not. Hence, your theory makes a false prediciton.

I never said that the 3rd person objective perspective cannot explain ANY of the 1st person subjective perspective; I said the 3rd person objective perspective cannot explain ALL of the 1st person subjective perspective. ANY is not the same as ALL.

Physicalism does imply 3rd person objectivism because it implies that structure and function are all-embracing, as you concede.

Why does this imply 3rd person subjectivity? Your assertion simply does not follow at all!
With respect, you seem to be making an unjustified assumption.

original assertion was that two IDENTICAL things could at the same time be NOT IDENTICAL, which I disagreed with.

Just to be clear, it is just as logically possible that someone with the exact same physical brain as me could experience red the way I experience green.

Just to be clear, what you seem to want is that “two brains can be exactly the same, but not be exactly the same, at the same time”, a clear contradiction.

Why should we conclude the world is not completely physical? .

It is one way of accounting for the failure of 3rdP descriptions in some cases. .

Another way is to accept that 1st person descriptions cannot be completely accounted in 3rd person terms.

Please define what you mean by ineffability.

eg redness as opposed to squareness.

Is happiness ineffable according to your definition?

I am not trying to portray physicalism as false epistemically – YOU are the one doing that.
I have said several times that I believe physicalism can account for everything. .

You have also said:
A 3rd person objective description can describe to some extent a 1st person subjective perspective, but not completely. .

What does this have to do with physicalism?
Why do you assume physicalism necessarily implies a 3rd person perspective?

You seem to insist that physicalism necessarily implies 3rd person objectivism, and I disagree with this.
3rd person objective and 1st person subjective perspectives are both IMHO compatible with physicalism, but traditional science tends to use exclusively the 3rd person objective approach (for obvious reasons).
Though 1st person subjective phenomena can be explained physically, they cannot be fully explained on the basis of 3rd person objectivism alone.

Which means they cannot be fully explained physically, since such anexplanation will reduce the biochemistry to physics and express the physics in mathematical terms , which are 3rd-person objective.

NO. “1st person phenomena cannot be fully explained from a 3rd person perspective”. You seem to assume that this is the same as “1st person phenomena cannot be fully explained by physicalism” but you are wrong.

You seem to have got confused between the idea that the existence of 1st-person perspectives is compatible with ontological physicalism (does not require ghosts) and the idea that they are incompatible with explanatory physicalism.

Not at all. I simply do not assume that physicalism is the same as 3rd person objectivism. You have given no explanation as to why you think these two things are the same.

Hoiwever, if ontological physicalism is strictly true, 1st person perspectives should not even exist; .

Why not?

so there is an implication from epistemology to metaphysics. .

This does not follow. You have not shown why 1st person perspectives should not exist.

The existence of 1st person perspectives must have some ontological implications, even if they fall short of Cartesian ghosts.

No more than any other perspective has ontological implications. Even 3rd person perspectives may have epistemological implications which are not necessarily consistent with ontological implications.

Yu have suggested that 1stP perspectives come about from operating "within" a physical system. Eiither this is physically accountable or it is unaccountable.

Agreed.

If it is accountable, the account will have the effect of reducing the 1stP perspective to a 3rdP perspective.

Not agreed. Contrary to our intuition, and contrary to contemporary methods of science, not everything can be reduced to a 3rd person perspective. This is the whole point.

If it is not, there is *already* somethin 1stP and ineffable going on, before the ineffability of conscious experience even arises -- ie the physical explanation is being prevented by the existence of somethin non-physical, in some sense.

There is nothing non-physical. There are only two different and incompatible perspectives.

MF

 

[selfAdjoint]

There are two different issues here. Whatever behind-the-scenes factors
you have in physics, they can be expressed mathematically, and
therefore *understood* in 3rd person terms, albeit they cannot be directly detected. However, qualia cannot even
be expressed (in mathematical technical language, anyway) -- although they can be (seemingly) directly detected.

I suppose you mean directly directed by first person experience. That is not classified as "detected" by physical science, at least not without heterophenomenological "brackets".

And I do not concede that first person experience is beyond mathematical representation; I have no reason at all to believe that. Many things that were not representable when I was younger, now are, and perhaps first person experience will fall too.

 

[Steve Esser]

The issue seems to be this:

How much of the problem is that first person experience (FPE) is beyond the reach of "physicalism" vs. the fact that today's physics (and the implied metaphysics of causality behind it) are incomplete but might someday be expanded to include a direct analogue to FPE?

 

[moving finger]

The issue seems to be this:

How much of the problem is that first person experience (FPE) is beyond the reach of "physicalism" vs. the fact that today's physics (and the implied metaphysics of causality behind it) are incomplete but might someday be expanded to include a direct analogue to FPE?

The issue seems to be this:

How much of the problem is due to the fact that some people think physicalism necessarily implies 3rd person experience?

MF

 

[Tournesol]

physics implies maths implies 3rdP

 

[moving finger]

physics implies maths implies 3rdP

Sorry, is this intended to be an explanation of why the doctrine of "physicalism" necessarily implies a "3rd person objective perspective"?

MF

 

[Tournesol]

Yes. typing with 1 hand, hence brevity.

 

[Tournesol]

I never said that the 3rd person objective perspective cannot explain ANY of the 1st person subjective perspective; I said the 3rd person objective perspective cannot explain ALL of the 1st person subjective perspective. ANY is not the same as ALL.

Whatever.
If physicalism is true, the 3rdP perspective should explain everything.

Physicalism does imply 3rd person objectivism because it implies that structure and function are all-embracing, as you concede.

Why does this imply 3rd person subjectivity? Your assertion simply does not follow at all!
With respect, you seem to be making an unjustified assumption.

Physicalism implies everything can be described in S+F terms, which itself implies that everything can be described in 3rdP terms.

The S+F aspects of my experience , such as the squareness of the red square, are the ones I can communicate. The others, eg the redness, are ineffable.

Another way is to accept that 1st person descriptions cannot be completely accounted in 3rd person terms.

I don't see why I should have to accept the existence of irreducably 1stP descriptions in a physical universe.

Is happiness ineffable according to your definition?

maybe.

What does this have to do with physicalism?
Why do you assume physicalism necessarily implies a 3rd person perspective?

it implie that everything can be described in S+F terms.

NO. “1st person phenomena cannot be fully explained from a 3rd person perspective”. You seem to assume that this is the same as “1st person phenomena cannot be fully explained by physicalism” but you are wrong.

physicalism is a 3rdP perspective, so that would follow.

Not at all. I simply do not assume that physicalism is the same as 3rd person objectivism. You have given no explanation as to why you think these two things are the same.

physicalism means physics means maths means S+F means 3rdP.

Hoiwever, if ontological physicalism is strictly true, 1st person perspectives should not even exist; .

Why not?

because they would be explainable in S+F, hence 3rdP, terms, so they would not be irreducably 1stP.