In fairness, he's decently educated compared to the median.  His education might actually be a complicating factor in this quasi dualist confusion.  Language, lol.

(January 20, 2019 at 11:50 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: In fairness, he's decently educated compared to the median.  His education might actually be a complicating factor in this quasi dualist confusion.  Language, lol.

If he was fair, he wouldn't be arguing against what science tells us.  In other words, he may be educated in philosophy, but not in brain science -- which I guess is what you said.

I was speaking to something else, consider a statement earlier in thread, that subjective and objective were wholly disparate and, therefore (at least in Bennys mind) unresolvable to each other.  Linguistically, literally, that's true, they are irreconcilably disparate - but that hasn't stopped science from investigating things with both components..because, while the meanings of the words may be night and day, the fundamental process by which both are achieved has, thusfar..been the same across both cases.  

Questions such as "how can subjective reports supply objective conclusions" display a lack of creativity and an adherence to linguistic stricture, not reality, or the reality of scientific inquiry.  Subjective reports are just fine, obviously.  If I made a feel good drug, the best way to know how well it worked would be to give a bunch of people the pills and ask them how they felt. I don't even have to understand the underlying (objective) chemistry in order to understand the effect of the (subjective) response or experience.

The same is true of thought, at present. We don;t actually understand the process...but we can see that there is one, literally see it happening before our eyes, at least as well as a voltimeter can see electricity. OFC we could always posit that theres "something else"..what I like to call the special sauce..but we don't actually have any reason to do so at present. Lending credence to the notion that these objections are more special pleading than a special case..and in that, suggesting that Bennys objections are literary or linguistic (broadly, semantic) rather than philosophic, objective, or scientific. He's a smart guy, he knows what words mean...but words get funky in a scientific setting. We say, for example, that things which aren't even moving have a "spin", lol.

So along comes Benny. "Spin you say, my good man, why, that thing isn't spinning at all. Since spinning and non spinning are different, how could spinning science ever answer non spinning questions? Balderdash!"

(January 20, 2019 at 11:58 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: I was speaking to something else, consider a statement earlier in thread, that subjective and objective were wholly disparate and, therefore (at least in Bennys mind) unresolvable to each other.  Linguistically, literally, that's true, they are irreconcilably disparate - but that hasn't stopped science from investigating things with both components..because, while the meanings of the words may be night and day, the fundamental process by which both are achieved has, thusfar..been the same across both cases.  

If I understand you correctly, you are saying Benny objects to the idea of studying subjective states because they don't accurately reflect objective realities.  But that is one very big motivation to study subjective states -- so we know their limitations and how to compensate for them.  In the case I mentioned to him, the invisible gorilla experiments, a large number of people literally didn't see the man in the gorilla suit because they were paying attention to something else.  Thus inattentional blindness became a proven weakness in human consciousness.  That is an objective, measurable fact about a subjective state, regardless of the semantics.

When it comes to conscious states, an experience of pain is an experience of pain, whether it is caused by a real wound or a phantom limb.  Similarly, the lack of experience of something which is really there is also a fact in itself.

(January 20, 2019 at 11:43 pm)Thoreauvian Wrote: I have already offered you information that explains why brains allow for consciousness when other systems do not.  You simply don't agree with it.

I must have missed this information. What was it again? 

If by "consciousness" bennyboy means qualia -- the experience given to us by the senses as perceived by a subject -- then he's right that this hasn't been explained yet. Gazzaniga, as you recall, said that this question hasn't been answered yet. I haven't followed all the posts, but earlier this is what bennyboy and I were talking about.

Quote:So you simply are not arguing in good faith, apparently because you feel your pet theory is threatened by real science.

What gives you the impression that bennyboy is being disingenuous? In what way is science threatening something he likes? Since science has no competing theories for how qualia appear to us, he is not arguing against any science. 

The three ideas he's suggesting -- idealism, panpsychism, and physical supervenience -- are current speculations offering tentative explanations to things science has not explained and, as of yet, has no testable theories about. They may or may not be true, but I don't see bennyboy declaring that they must be true.

(January 20, 2019 at 11:24 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: Does it matter to you if your experience is (as it certainly is, lol) a simulation......?  Why..and if so, is that caring itself part of the simulation?  

Let me clarify. It matters very little to me if I'm in the Matrix-- I am what I am, and that's my arena of exploration.

What matters is whether some or all of apparently conscious agents are simulations. With people, it's not that important since I've mainly decided just to pretend everyone's real in the same way I am, in an effort to keep myself from spending my life masturbating on buses and throwing poop at American presidents just because it's fun. But a good science of mind really needs some way to go beyond the assumptions implicit in that-- I'd very much like to see a good theory of mind, and to see how it establishes criteria for sentience in non-Earth physical systems, organic or otherwise.

And yes, my agnosticism about sense-source and therefore inferences drawn is very much part of whatever framework I'm in. QM makes me pretty seriously paranoid. It's not hard to go from "AFTER the photon has passed through a double-slit apparatus, if you check the detector, it turns out to have been a particle, and if you don't, it turns out to have been a wave" to "Holy fuck. . . the Universe is watching me watch it, and under the hood, everything I think is real is squirrely bullshit. Who's fucking with me?"

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(January 20, 2019 at 11:50 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: In fairness, he's decently educated compared to the median.  His education might actually be a complicating factor in this quasi dualist confusion.  Language, lol.

Maybe.  The complicating factor is that the more I learn about reality, the less real it seems.  I feel that anyone who is confidently on solid footing with a sense of reality may not actually be following up on the science, and be stuck on billiard balls and molecules.

(January 21, 2019 at 2:52 am)bennyboy Wrote: Let me clarify.  It matters very little to me if I'm in the Matrix-- I am what I am, and that's my arena of exploration.

You -are- the matrix. 

Quote:What matters is whether some or all of apparently conscious agents are simulations.  With people, it's not that important since I've mainly decided just to pretend everyone's real in the same way I am, in an effort to keep myself from spending my life masturbating on buses and throwing poop at American presidents just because it's fun.  But a good science of mind really needs some way to go beyond the assumptions implicit in that-- I'd very much like to see a good theory of mind, and to see how it establishes criteria for sentience in non-Earth physical systems, organic or otherwise.

Is there a difference between "simulators" and real people.  That question needs to be answered before we demand that science be able to distinguish between the two.  As far as the latter, that's going to be a long way off.  Which theories of mind have you seen?  

Quote:And yes, my agnosticism about sense-source and therefore inferences drawn is very much part of whatever framework I'm in.  QM makes me pretty seriously paranoid.  It's not hard to go from "AFTER the photon has passed through a double-slit apparatus, if you check the detector, it turns out to have been a particle, and if you don't, it turns out to have been a wave" to "Holy fuck. . . the Universe is watching me watch it, and under the hood, everything I think is real is squirrely bullshit.  Who's fucking with me?"

LOL, the quantum woosters gotya back when it was all the rage.  

Quote:Maybe.  The complicating factor is that the more I learn about reality, the less real it seems.  I feel that anyone who is confidently on solid footing with a sense of reality may not actually be following up on the science, and be stuck on billiard balls and molecules.

That seems peculiar to you, and in no way a means to infer things about others.

(January 21, 2019 at 1:55 am)Belaqua Wrote:

(January 20, 2019 at 11:43 pm)Thoreauvian Wrote: I have already offered you information that explains why brains allow for consciousness when other systems do not.  You simply don't agree with it.

I must have missed this information. What was it again? 

If by "consciousness" bennyboy means qualia -- the experience given to us by the senses as perceived by a subject -- then he's right that this hasn't been explained yet. Gazzaniga, as you recall, said that this question hasn't been answered yet. I haven't followed all the posts, but earlier this is what bennyboy and I were talking about.

What gives you the impression that bennyboy is being disingenuous? In what way is science threatening something he likes? Since science has no competing theories for how qualia appear to us, he is not arguing against any science.

The three ideas he's suggesting -- idealism, panpsychism, and physical supervenience -- are current speculations offering tentative explanations to things science has not explained and, as of yet, has no testable theories about. They may or may not be true, but I don't see bennyboy declaring that they must be true.

I think he's being disingenuous because he keeps denying I am offering explanations and information when I am. He seems to think science has done nothing to address the questions he keeps repeating, when he doesn't grasp the answers provided. Science does offer a theory about qualia, so while his "alternatives" may be philosophical speculations, I don't see them as scientific at all. On what observations are they based? He offers nothing but criticisms of ideas he doesn't think answer what are just philosophical questions. He has no warrant for anything in science.

In simple form: We are our bodies. Sensory information happens to us. It literally impacts upon us: light, temperature, pressure. Brain science has shown how the brain abstracts and interprets such information and presents it to our bodies, to us, in our brains. If you doubt this, study the brain science. Therefore the real question is why we are selves to begin with, not why we have qualia. THAT is the question science hasn't answered yet (along with some of the details of the mechanics). THAT is the question about which the book I mentioned speculates: how did life differentiate from non-life and how did that lead to selves?

IMO there is no "hard problem of consciousness" dealing with qualia for people like me who think we are our bodies. It's a purely philosophical question.

Perhaps the real problem is that philosophers think scientists are accountable to them, and must explain things to them in their own terms. That is based on the assumption that science is just a branch of philosophy, when it's really a spinoff. Philosophers can speculate however they want, but they are not the final judges on the importance of scientific research.

(January 21, 2019 at 7:51 am)Thoreauvian Wrote: Brain science has shown how the brain abstracts and interprets such information and presents it to our bodies, to us, in our brains.  If you doubt this, study the brain science.  

See, you've slipped into dualistic language here. The brain abstracts such information and presents it to us in our brains. Those of us who think that we are our bodies don't want to use language that shows the brain as somehow not-us. If the brain is a part of us (which I'm pretty sure it is) then we're just saying that we present the sensory information to ourselves, and it somehow presents itself to us as qualia. 

Quote:Therefore the real question is why we are selves to begin with, not why we have qualia.  THAT is the question science hasn't answered yet (along with some of the details of the mechanics).  THAT is the question about which the book I mentioned speculates: how did life differentiate from non-life and how did that lead to selves?

Yes, that's a difficult question. I don't think there is any good answer to that yet. 

Quote:IMO there is no "hard problem of consciousness" dealing with qualia for people like me who think we are our bodies.  It's a purely philosophical question.

I think we are our bodies. I think that science has not explained how the electrochemical events in our brains present themselves to something we think of as the self as qualia, which do not look like electrochemical events. If it's a purely philosophical question, that's because science has no idea at present how to answer it. 

Quote:Perhaps the real problem is that philosophers think scientists are accountable to them, and must explain things to them in their own terms.  That is based on the assumption that science is just a branch of philosophy, when it's really a spinoff.  Philosophers can speculate however they want, but they are not the final judges on the importance of scientific research.

You can call it a subset or a spinoff or whatever. The label isn't so important to me. Science has a particular way of approaching questions, which philosophy doesn't necessarily have. Nor would any sane philosopher assert that he should be the "final judge" on a scientific question. Nor have I ever heard a philosopher say that scientists are "accountable" to them. It may be that you're inventing some kind psychological resistance that you imagine philosophers have. 

As soon as science has a good explanation for how qualia arise, I'm sure the philosophers will be pleased to accept it. In the meantime, a lot of us think it is worthwhile pondering why no such explanation seems forthcoming. 

In the Chomsky speech that I linked to earlier in the thread, he points out how scientists have "lowered the bar" in terms of what they expect to explain. Newton, for example, acknowledged that he couldn't explain what gravity is, only what it does. (Earlier natural philosophers would not have been satisfied with this.) So far brain science is working in a similar way about qualia. We have no idea how they arise, but we continue to get more detailed information about the electrochemical events which somehow mysteriously give rise to them. It may be that science will answer that question soon, or it may be that we'll continue to do without it, as we get along fine without knowing what gravity is.

(January 21, 2019 at 8:25 am)Belaqua Wrote:

(January 21, 2019 at 7:51 am)Thoreauvian Wrote: Brain science has shown how the brain abstracts and interprets such information and presents it to our bodies, to us, in our brains.  If you doubt this, study the brain science.  

See, you've slipped into dualistic language here. The brain abstracts such information and presents it to us in our brains. Those of us who think that we are our bodies don't want to use language that shows the brain as somehow not-us. If the brain is a part of us (which I'm pretty sure it is) then we're just saying that we present the sensory information to ourselves, and it somehow presents itself to us as qualia. 

I think we are our bodies. I think that science has not explained how the electrochemical events in our brains present themselves to something we think of as the self as qualia, which do not look like electrochemical events. If it's a purely philosophical question, that's because science has no idea at present how to answer it. 

I was trying to delineate the distinction between the unconscious processing of information and what we finally perceive consciously, using our ill-adapted language. Can you see the distinction and why it is important to the discussion? Qualia are abstractions, so of course they look different. The mystery is not in why we experience qualia, since they happen to us. Nor is the mystery in why they look different, since we already know the brain automatically processes information into abstractions to present to consciousness. Again, knowing the brain science is important.

When you read a book, you stop paying attention to the words as words. You don't see little black squiggles on white pages of paper beyond a point. You engage with the abstractions they represent. This is no doubt the same way the electro-chemical events in our brains work. They have assigned meanings, perhaps based on the unique ways they were coded into each of our brains, and we engage with the meanings, the abstractions.

We may not know all the details, but they are likely technical anyway. Nothing about this is difficult in principle as far as I can see.