why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?

[The Grand Nudger]

Honestly...it doesn't take a deep understanding of subjective experience or consciousness to answer the topical deepities that internet randos bandy around.

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The OPQ was a wonderful demonstration of that.  Whatever deeper understanding of consciousness that we may lack...we do know that our brains are junkies, we do know that this is why we enjoy [insert anything here]. Similarly, whatever deeper understanding of consciousness we may lack, we do know that it's tied at the hip to brains and nervous systems. We could waffle around with distributed ns, or artifical consciousness...but we'd only be coming up with brain analogs as though they threatened that basic observation.

[Belacqua]

What you aren't addressing are the important questions:
1)  If science is about observation, what observations do you make to establish whether a given system does/doesn't have a subjective experience of reality?

I already answered: a living body with an operational brain and nervous system.

I agree with you that it is perfectly reasonable to assume that other people have interior worlds, just as I do. It would be silly, impractical, and perhaps sociopathic to deny that. 

The point of asking the question, though, is to emphasize that science absolutely cannot prove that such a thing is true. This is another way of defining the "hard problem" of consciousness. 

Since nobody knows how the electrochemical events of the brain present themselves to the subject as experiences, there is no way for science to prove that in any given case (that is not me) that's what's happening. We can prove that when every normal brain is exposed to a police siren it reacts with activation in the same area. We can prove that the heart rate goes up and the skin gets clammy. We cannot prove that this is the result of personal experience as opposed to automatic programming. 

Again, nobody really believes that it is automatic programming. The point is that science can't prove it, because it can't show how interior experiences arise.

[bennyboy]

The essence of it is this: there is no science of mind. There's a science of neural correlates to mind, and the philosophical position that they can safely be conflated.

This is immediately obvious if I ask you what measurements of mind you are able to make. How, even, do you establish that there even IS such a thing as mind, anywhere in the Universe, based purely on physical observations?

It pretty much amounts to this: you poke something with a stick and it says, "Ouch. Fuck off!" and you take this to be an expression of displeasure, i.e. mind. But what happens when robots say "Ouch. Fuck off!" when poked with a stick? What if, given mechanical tear ducts, highly expressive synthetic musculature in their faces and so on, robots are sufficiently humanoid in appearance and mannerisms to stimulate evolved emotional responses in humans?

I think it's perfectly possible that some people will be so convinced that such machines are sentient that there will be a campaign for "Robby's Law," named for Robby the Robot who was gunned down while picking up a Starbucks Latte for his owner, for the protection of sentient bots or whatever, despite the fact that we cannot establish that Robby was ever really sentient to begin with, and merits this type of protection.

[The Grand Nudger]

It pretty much amounts to this: you poke something with a stick and it says, "Ouch.  Fuck off!" and you take this to be an expression of displeasure, i.e. mind.  But what happens when robots say "Ouch.  Fuck off!" when poked with a stick?  What if, given mechanical tear ducts, highly expressive synthetic musculature in their faces and so on, robots are sufficiently humanoid in appearance and mannerisms to stimulate evolved emotional responses in humans?

In asking this question that way, you show what we take as indicative of a mind in humans...but if these things aren't indicative of a mind, then there's no need to invoke highly advanced robots "faking it" - the criticism, then..is on our mind.

@Bel.

-and if your inner world -is-..itself, "automatic programming"?

[bennyboy]

Well, it's a matter of how far I should take pragmatic assumptions. Maybe someday, I'll be surrounded by nothing but robots, and my life won't make much sense unless I take them as actual existent, sentient beings. That's kind of a creepy thought.

I assume humans feel and think, because I do. And because human behaviors evoke emotional responses in me, and I have an irrational sense that they are "just real," without being able to prove any of it, I act as though they do. I have moments of philosophical crisis when I seriously doubt that anyone exists, myself included, in anything resembling the way in which they seem to. But then I get bored of quivering under the covers with my blanket over my head and I go out and play existential dress-up until I forget that I had doubts at all, if just for a short while. Rinse and repeat, tbh, with pretty heavy moments of either solipsistic confidence or a suicidal sense of cosmic alienation interspersed. I'm deep like that.

[zainab]

OK, here's another one I read at the laundromat just now. This is by Christina Rossetti.



Ten years ago it seemed impossible
That she should ever grow as calm as this,
With self-remembrance in her warmest kiss
And dim dried eyes like an exhausted well.
Slow-speaking when she has some fact to tell,
Silent with long unbroken silences,
Centred in self yet not unpleased to please,
Gravely monotonous like a passing bell.
Mindful of drudging daily common things,
Patient at pastime, patient at her work,
Weary perhaps but strenuous certainly.
Sometimes I fancy that we may one day see
Her head shoot forth seven stars from where they lurk
And her eyes lightnings and her shoulders wings.

Everything we learn about this poet and this poem add to its richness: the woman it was written about; the fact that, from our perspective it seems to describe Rossetti as well; the everyday language of most of the poem, that erupts into quotations from Revelation in the couplet; the fact that it is so British and avoids the influence of Ruskin which had so much effect on her brother and his circle; the seriousness of her religion which set her apart from the Bohemians among whom she lived.

I honestly can't imagine how neuroscience could tell us anything at all about all this.

I dont need to know, Knowledge may spoil all the pleasure I feel during reading this beautiful text
leave me in my Paradise Ignorance ... with NO quistion.

[Belacqua]

I dont need to know, Knowledge may spoil all the pleasure I feel during reading this beautiful text
leave me in my Paradise Ignorance ... with NO quistion.

Thank you for writing this. 

An interesting and provocative reaction! It sort of throws me for a loop. I will look forward to pondering this.

In my own case, beauty has been the main motivation in my life for moving away from whatever position I was in at the moment. Thus when I read Plato's Symposium it seemed instinctively true to me. 

But I can imagine... perhaps better to stay with the beauty as it is......

[Alan V]

I already answered: a living body with an operational brain and nervous system.

And this is based on what?  Your godlike understanding of the nature of consciousness?  A hunch?  What?  Since you are such a huge champion of scientific technique. .  . what particular scientific techniques have you applied in arriving at this deep understanding of the nature of subjective awareness?

Really? You don't think that scientists have now proven, beyond a doubt, that brains generate consciousness? You asked for specific scientific observations. What about studies of how drugs affect consciousness, how brain injuries affect consciousness, how conscious states are correlated with brain states, and so on? When you write dismissive statements like the above, it looks like you have read nothing at all about the subject. I would recommend the works of Dr. J. Allan Hobson to you, if that is the case. I have read most of them, and many of them several times with highlighting. (However, Sleep and Dreaming: Scientific Advances and Reconsideration published by Cambridge University Press was too technical for me.)

On the other hand, you have offered nothing to prove machines could be conscious. You just speculate, so I guess you are only interested in philosophy.

I already answered: because there is nothing external which can assure the survival of complex creatures, so they must be self-motivated -- which also requires subjective states as feedback.

I believe you're making stuff up, and you do not in fact know the nature of consciousness, or what is required for it to exist.  You claim to be big on science, but you've supplied absolutely nothing but statement by fiat, which is the opposite of science.

Again, dismissiveness. Consciousness studies are very complex, and no doubt different aspects of consciousness evolved to solve different problems. For instance, self-consciousness seems likely to be an adaptation for social interations.

But the specific question was about qualia. Why did qualia evolve? I offered a perfectly reasonable explanation: because only internal states could guide a complex creature toward survival. A given creature would have to experience pleasures and pains, and prefer life over death, and so on. You can build an awful lot on those basic components.

But what you are missing is that evolution could not have created such an advanced machine, because there is nothing in hostile or indifferent environments to do so.  Only intelligent humans with their own motivations could, which is also why such a machine would never require consciousness.  Programming imposed from without supplants the functions of evolved awareness.

Eh.  If you are a material monist, then evolution HAS in fact created such an advanced machine, except that this particular advanced machine IS capable of subjective awareness.  What you haven't explained is why you think one advanced machine can experience qualia, while you insist that the other could not.  How, exactly, do you claim to know such a distinction?

And I already answered: because biological creatures evolve in hostile or indifferent environments, they have to be self-motivated at a certain level of complexity. Please notice my qualifier at the end. I believe I used it twice or three times before already. Little machines like viruses can indeed survive without consciousness.

When a biological creature becomes conscious, it is no longer a machine by my definition of the word.

I would like to add that your further question indicates that you are looking for reductionistic answers about consciousness.  I think it is an emergent property, and is therefore not reducible to mechanistic physics.  It depends, instead, on a very complex arrangement of materials -- without which it couldn't exist.  This is why consciousness disappears with death.  It doesn't split up into all the pieces of consciousness.

So basically, you take the brain and say "See. . . this is what's required!"  That's not a particularly compelling explanation.  I suppose rain requires wetness, and the creation of the Cosmos requires matter and time?  Deepity.

There is nothing about what I said which deserves your dismissive responses. I would recommend you actually read a book on the topic of consciousness.

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I agree with you that it is perfectly reasonable to assume that other people have interior worlds, just as I do. It would be silly, impractical, and perhaps sociopathic to deny that. 

The point of asking the question, though, is to emphasize that science absolutely cannot prove that such a thing is true. This is another way of defining the "hard problem" of consciousness. 

Since nobody knows how the electrochemical events of the brain present themselves to the subject as experiences, there is no way for science to prove that in any given case (that is not me) that's what's happening. We can prove that when every normal brain is exposed to a police siren it reacts with activation in the same area. We can prove that the heart rate goes up and the skin gets clammy. We cannot prove that this is the result of personal experience as opposed to automatic programming. 

Again, nobody really believes that it is automatic programming. The point is that science can't prove it, because it can't show how interior experiences arise.

It depends on which science. Physics, no. We will never have any explanation for consciousness on that level, because consciousness is not reducible. It depends on very complex arrangements of matter.

However, the soft sciences like psychology and sociology can study consciousness effectively. Neurophysiology can indeed answer many interesting questions.

This is a paraphrase of something dream researcher Dr. J. Allan Hobson said to me: "Minds are the subjective experiences of having objective brains." I think that says a lot, though perhaps someone like Bennyboy would dismiss it out of hand as another deepity. Dr. Hobson did research at the Harvard Medical School, was very influential in his field, and authored Scientific American books on Consciousness and Sleep among many others.

You can actually ask people to report their subjective experiences. This wouldn't count as data in physics, but it does in the soft sciences, when carefully collected and compared between statistically significant numbers.

So you seem to have the same problem as Bennyboy, since you seem unaware of what consciousness studies have actually studied.

[Belacqua]

So you seem to have the same problem as Bennyboy, since you seem unaware of what consciousness studies have actually studied.

What have I said which indicates to you that I have a problem? 

All I have said so far is that we have no idea how electrochemical activities present themselves to us as experiences. And you seem sort of to agree with this.

I also have asked for cases where neuroscience has told us something interesting about poetry, and so far no one has given me an example.

However, the soft sciences like psychology and sociology can study consciousness effectively.

All right, if you want to open up the field that much, then soft sciences can tell us about poetry. But neither of these sciences is neuroscience, so you've got the goalposts on the other side of the field now.

Adam Phillips, a British psychoanalyst, has many interesting things to say about literature. Most recently, he published a fascinating reading of King Lear. But this is exactly the sort of analysis that people do when they read the Bible, taking an old narrative and using it to explicate how people think. I'm fine with that; I do it too. But it's nothing to do with what we were talking about.

[Alan V]

So you seem to have the same problem as Bennyboy, since you seem unaware of what consciousness studies have actually studied.

What have I said which indicates to you that I have a problem? 

All I have said so far is that we have no idea how electrochemical activities present themselves to us as experiences. And you seem sort of to agree with this.

What indicates to me that you have a problem with scientific consciousness studies is that you seem to be taking a reductionistic approach. This is indicated by the way you frame your questions, like "How do electrochemical activities present themselves to us as experiences?" In other words, you seem to want some simple answer to this question, when the answer must necessarily be very complex and discussed a bit at a time. You guys therefore seem impatient with a point-at-a-time approach. Bennyboy especially keeps saying, "What does that have to do with anything?" in so many words.

Adam Phillips, a British psychoanalyst, has many interesting things to say about literature. Most recently, he published a fascinating reading of King Lear. But this is exactly the sort of analysis that people do when they read the Bible, taking an old narrative and using it to explicate how people think. I'm fine with that; I do it too. But it's nothing to do with what we were talking about.

I agree. I do not consider psychoanalysis based on Freudian assumptions a science, since many of Freud's assumptions were proven incorrect by later research. See, for instance, Dr. Hobson's book 13 Dreams Freud Never Had.

As an emergentist rather than a reductionist, I think all subjects should be studied at their own level of complexity. For me this means that poetry can't be reduced to neurophysiology, just as you say -- though it may indeed have psychological or sociological aspects which can be studied productively.