RE: The Philosophy of Mind: Zombies, "radical emergence" and evidence of non-experiential
April 22, 2018 at 8:25 pm
I'm afraid to upset the balance of this thread, since there are two main participants. But anyway, this is my kind of discussion, so forgive me for wading in.
Does consciousness improve evolutionary fitness? It depends on what you mean by "consciousness." If you mean that a system is capable of responding to the environment, then obviously, yes. If you mean that the system is capable of experiencing qualia, then yes IF qualia represents information beyond anything which could be represented physically, or no IF qualia is a mirroring of state.
We can take a speculative look at all the things the body does in arriving at a behavior, and ask-- do ANY of these require us to experience them?
-Trigger neurons in response to physical stimulus. No.
-Cascade a huge number of neurons due to dendrite-cell mappings, release of neurotransmitters, etc? No.
-Affect the likelihood of behaviors based on hormones. No.
It should be immediately obvious that we can go through the whole list of electro-chemical and mechanical processes going on in the body, and determine that none of them require subjective experience.
Nor can simply conflating subjective experience to brain function solve this problem. Can we study the brain directly? Yes. Brain systems? Yes. Neurons? Yes. Specific neural firing patterns? Yes (at least in theory). Obviously, none of these things can be called qualia-- because if we can interact with A directly, and not B, then A is not B.
I'd also say that the use of evolution to justify a view on consciousness is malformed. I could say the existence of a man-loving God would benefit our evolutionary fitness. Then I could, without any justification, conflate any physical properties I observed as correlates of the presence of God. Sun comes up? God! Spooky feeling in church when I'm half asleep from a long sermon? God!
Unless you can show that there's something intrinsically different about a qualia-experiencing system and a non-qualia-experiencing system which can affect behavior, then you are talking about magic, not material.
Does consciousness improve evolutionary fitness? It depends on what you mean by "consciousness." If you mean that a system is capable of responding to the environment, then obviously, yes. If you mean that the system is capable of experiencing qualia, then yes IF qualia represents information beyond anything which could be represented physically, or no IF qualia is a mirroring of state.
We can take a speculative look at all the things the body does in arriving at a behavior, and ask-- do ANY of these require us to experience them?
-Trigger neurons in response to physical stimulus. No.
-Cascade a huge number of neurons due to dendrite-cell mappings, release of neurotransmitters, etc? No.
-Affect the likelihood of behaviors based on hormones. No.
It should be immediately obvious that we can go through the whole list of electro-chemical and mechanical processes going on in the body, and determine that none of them require subjective experience.
Nor can simply conflating subjective experience to brain function solve this problem. Can we study the brain directly? Yes. Brain systems? Yes. Neurons? Yes. Specific neural firing patterns? Yes (at least in theory). Obviously, none of these things can be called qualia-- because if we can interact with A directly, and not B, then A is not B.
I'd also say that the use of evolution to justify a view on consciousness is malformed. I could say the existence of a man-loving God would benefit our evolutionary fitness. Then I could, without any justification, conflate any physical properties I observed as correlates of the presence of God. Sun comes up? God! Spooky feeling in church when I'm half asleep from a long sermon? God!
Unless you can show that there's something intrinsically different about a qualia-experiencing system and a non-qualia-experiencing system which can affect behavior, then you are talking about magic, not material.
