Subjective experience is an interesting one. This is all speculation, but sometimes that's what you need to do to figure out what to test.

As others have said, I believe that the ability to 'redirect' mental output back in via feedback loops is a critical component of subjective experience. The ability to talk to oneself in the mind, or to hear a song that isn't playing, visualize a picture, remember a smell, or tactile sensation, pain ... I think if you lack the ability to do any of these things, you probably have no subjective experience, and the more of these things you can do, the richer your subjective experience is. That's just my guess.

Some people seem to think it's an entirely unscientific matter, but I'm not so sure. Mostly we are limited by technology that can tell us what is going on with sufficient resolution, EEGs are incredibly coarse grained, and even the fMRI only measures increased blood flow. And then of course there is the matter of interfacing, which we've gotten better at in recent years.

If we had the ability to link up the audio cortex of 2 people, for example, I think we'd start to see that the manner in which information is allowed to flow between different processing areas (in this case people) actually has a lot to do with shaping subjective experience. If everything I said to myself was audible in your mind's ear, and vice versa, and same for visual experience, and for the other sensory modalities, and even memory and emotional state, would it not be fair to say that maybe we are having the same subjective experience at that point? After a month or two of being connected like this, would the subjects continue to have any sense of separate identity still?

We can do the opposite, and we know a few things about how the subjective experience of a person with severe epilepsy changes when the connection between the 2 hemispheres is severed. A non-epileptic can experience something similar by having 1 hemisphere of the brain temporarily anesthetized.

Similarly, let's say my primary visual cortex starts to go on the fritz. My subjective experience will probably start to degrade in some way. Let's say I then get a chip hooked up that does basically the same thing, feeds the same signals up to V1, V2, MT, MST, so on and so forth, and of course responds to the same downward feedbacks. Further say that my subjective experience is then restored to what I remember it being. Is this not evidence that subjective experience is a result of information processing/flow?

As for the why? Why have subjective experience? What evolutionary advantage might it confer, if any? I don't know. Perhaps our ability to do higher-level reasoning -- take math for example -- requires it. If somebody shut off your inner monologue completely, and prevented you from just talking out loud and hearing yourself, how many different tasks would you no longer be capable of doing the same way? Obviously we have machines that can do things like calculate and solve equations, but maybe subjective experience is integral to the particular way that biology has chosen to solve the same problems. Perhaps nature found a way in which reflexive information processing could give rise to symbols, and that this was more generally useful than a dedicated area of the brain capable of carrying out rote calculation. I don't know.

I think what's reality limiting us is the ability to image and the ability to rearrange and test. Once we get those nailed down I think we'll make a lot of progress on what exactly subjective experience is.

There are a lot of good posts to answer, but let me just say this-- it's weird that we're trying to "fit in" consciousness into various models, or waiting for new data to come back before we can say what consciousness is. This is a reversal of the role of observation. The reality is that you wake up and open your eyes, and that's consciousness. All the rest is stuff that you've made up based on the experiences you've had-- and that even includes models of the universe in which consciousness is nothing more than an accidental byproduct of brain chemistry.

(June 1, 2013 at 1:30 am)bennyboy Wrote: There are a lot of good posts to answer, but let me just say this-- it's weird that we're trying to "fit in" consciousness into various models, or waiting for new data to come back before we can say what consciousness is. This is a reversal of the role of observation. The reality is that you wake up and open your eyes, and that's consciousness. All the rest is stuff that you've made up based on the experiences you've had-- and that even includes models of the universe in which consciousness is nothing more than an accidental byproduct of brain chemistry.

As an aside, my intuitive answer to the mind/body split is that there is no mind or consciousness. There is nothing hiding behind the physical. And I say "intuitive" because the notion that there is no mind is an experience of existential relief for me.

(June 1, 2013 at 1:43 am)whatever76 Wrote:

(June 1, 2013 at 1:30 am)bennyboy Wrote: There are a lot of good posts to answer, but let me just say this-- it's weird that we're trying to "fit in" consciousness into various models, or waiting for new data to come back before we can say what consciousness is. This is a reversal of the role of observation. The reality is that you wake up and open your eyes, and that's consciousness. All the rest is stuff that you've made up based on the experiences you've had-- and that even includes models of the universe in which consciousness is nothing more than an accidental byproduct of brain chemistry.

As an aside, my intuitive answer to the mind/body split is that there is no mind or consciousness. There is nothing hiding behind the physical. And I say "intuitive" because the notion that there is no mind is an experience of existential relief for me.

This is the extreme position of physical monism-- there is no mind at all, and therefore no apparent duality to solve.

The other extreme position is to say there's no physical universe at all-- that it's all idealism. If you want to choose a complete monism, this one is better, because it's much less difficult philsophically. If you say that all the physical universe is in the Matrix or the Mind of God or whatever, then there's little contradiction in saying that everything we take as objective reality can be a subset of an idealistic universe, which also allows for the existence of mind. It also makes sense of some of the issues with QM and the effect of observers (monkey is going to disagree with that for sure though).

However, if you want to go with a physical monism absent consciousness, then you come up pretty fast against the idea of consciousness as a brute fact. I'm conscious because I am conscious-- no further conjecture or understanding is really required, and until you can get people to ascribe to a Buddhist or hindu meditation of "not self," very few people are going to say, "Hmmmm. . . I think there's no mind. Wait. . . where did that idea come from?"

I'd also like to throw in the emergence theory of mind. The way we understand how neurons work, there's very little wriggle-room for QM effects to say how neurons work and process information both chemically and electrically from what little I know. It's mostly electric & chemical. But how the mind works is not reducible in the emergence theory of mind, because it is dependent on the structure of the brain and all the functions of the neurons and how those work together in this system.

We already are on a road-map to test how the brain works with the BRAIN project.

(June 1, 2013 at 7:50 am)Sal Wrote: I'd also like to throw in the emergence theory of mind. The way we understand how neurons work, there's very little wriggle-room for QM effects to say how neurons work and process information both chemically and electrically from what little I know. It's mostly electric & chemical. But how the mind works is not reducible in the emergence theory of mind, because it is dependent on the structure of the brain and all the functions of the neurons and how those work together in this system.

We already are on a road-map to test how the brain works with the BRAIN project.

I'm not an expert in emergentism, but it seems to me there's a duality here, too. If you look at particles in the brain in information from the point of a subjective closed system (i.e. an individual brain treated as separate from objects outside it), then it seems that the brain must be more than the sum of its parts-- the information in the brain consists of the information intrinsic to all the particles it contains, as well as extra information in the form of the now-established relationships BETWEEN all those particles. That's one of the arguments I've made in the past in support of a mind which is supervenient on, but "magically" greater than the mechanism on which it rests.

However, from the point of the universe (i.e. an objective perspective), you could say that all particles are linked with all others right from the start, through gravity, and that the "added" information is more a byproduct of how we label groups of particles with entity-words (like "brain") than of any physically real division. In that sense, the countless particles of the brain are just doing their individual little dances in spacetime, and the unity of that singular object is purely symbolic.

The problem is, that since we have both a subjective mind and an objective model of what it perceives, both of those contradictory views seem valid. Looks light particle/wave, space/time might have a friend: singular/plural. As far as the OP, I really think you can arbitrarily look at either mind or physicalism as the top of the food chain, so to speak, and that as soon as you change your perspective, what is "true" automatically changes with it.

(June 1, 2013 at 8:38 am)bennyboy Wrote: As far as the OP, I really think you can arbitrarily look at either mind or physicalism as the top of the food chain, so to speak, and that as soon as you change your perspective, what is "true" automatically changes with it.

I agree with this. To me it's no different than looking at a song as vibrations in air or as scales/rhythm/harmony/melody/etc. Both are valid, both have meaning, and knowledge can be gained by asking questions from either point of view. To me, saying that the mind is "nothing more" than neural activity is untrue, just as untrue as it would be to say that music is "nothing more" than vibrations. As to why this entails an entity that experiences it, I'll get back to you.

(June 1, 2013 at 5:29 pm)Zarith Wrote:

(June 1, 2013 at 8:38 am)bennyboy Wrote: As far as the OP, I really think you can arbitrarily look at either mind or physicalism as the top of the food chain, so to speak, and that as soon as you change your perspective, what is "true" automatically changes with it.

I agree with this. To me it's no different than looking at a song as vibrations in air or as scales/rhythm/harmony/melody/etc. Both are valid, both have meaning, and knowledge can be gained by asking questions from either point of view. To me, saying that the mind is "nothing more" than neural activity is untrue, just as untrue as it would be to say that music is "nothing more" than vibrations. As to why this entails an entity that experiences it, I'll get back to you.

My problem is with the idea that there must be a CORRECT-- i.e. an absolutely true, position. Physicalists think that the physical monist model is "true," and that idealist models are "false," and any suggestion otherwise leads to inevitable mockery.

The problem is that there's no non-arbitrary way to arrive at physical monism (i.e. without making assumptions that serve also to beg the question).

I think the universe is itself ambiguous. If anything, that's the "secret" formula that keeps it going.

(June 3, 2013 at 8:27 am)bennyboy Wrote: I think the universe is itself ambiguous. If anything, that's the "secret" formula that keeps it going.

I believe what you have left out what is the most important element, Darwin's theory of evolution: the fact that we've evolved from lower species. Evolution has no specific goal other than for a species to survive not only against the natural elements but also against other species. In that struggle, nothing was ever written in cement that we, homo sapiens, would have the brains completely wired to understand every aspects of the universe. But as the dominant species on this planet, we have accomplished quite an extraordinary feat in understanding a good part of this universe with two simple tools: the alphabet and a number system. Just 100 years ago we began to understand why atoms bond to form molecules. Just 50 years ago, we've discovered DNA, the basic stuff of life. I don't think our journey has ended, rather it has just begun. The reality that we can even understand the nature of our limitations, through math (Godel Incomplete Theorem) and physics (Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle), is extraordinary in itself.


Joe

(June 3, 2013 at 8:55 am)little_monkey Wrote:

(June 3, 2013 at 8:27 am)bennyboy Wrote: I think the universe is itself ambiguous. If anything, that's the "secret" formula that keeps it going.

I believe what you have left out what is the most important element, Darwin's theory of evolution: the fact that we've evolved from lower species. Evolution has no specific goal other than for a species to survive not only against the natural elements but also against other species. In that struggle, nothing was ever written in cement that we, homo sapiens, would have the brains completely wired to understand every aspects of the universe. But as the dominant species on this planet, we have accomplished quite an extraordinary feat in understanding a good part of this universe with two simple tools: the alphabet and a number system. Just 100 years ago we began to understand why atoms bond to form molecules. Just 50 years ago, we've discovered DNA, the basic stuff of life. I don't think our journey has ended, rather it has just begun. The reality that we can even understand the nature of our limitations, through math (Godel Incomplete Theorem) and physics (Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle), is extraordinary in itself.


Joe

No doubt. My belief is that as we push against new boundaries, we're going to come up against more and more ambiguities that seem unsolvable. We may solve some of them through cycles of experimentation and theoretical physics, but we'll also realize that others are necessarily unsolveable.

I also believe (and this is speculative) that many of the apparent ambiguities will get fought over, and eventually shrugged off as brute fact, like particle/wave. I highly suspect in the end that matter and mind may end up being indistinguishable-- not because mind is just a byproduct of matter or vice versa, but because they may end up being different manifestations (or perspectives) of the same thing: mind/matter/energy/stuff.

I can imagine sitting in a spaceship some day, strapping in, and having the space ship become an extension of my body. Then I will destroy everyone who's ever accused me of woo!