Monist vs. Dualist Experiment?

[Neo-Scholastic]

What would be true of a brain that is a receiver of soul signals that would not be true of a brain that generates its mind?

That is indeed the question I am asking.

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Lookie what we have here!??

So what?

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For philosophical reasons, I consider physical matter incapable of producing qualia and see the need for some other vehicle capable of supporting phenomena qualities (dualism).

And what philosophical reasons would that be?

Overdetermination, epiphenominalism, and evolutionary impotence for a start.

Your analogy is more appropriate than you might think...

I'm not looking to debate the adequacy of my analogy. I'm looking for an experiement.

[bennyboy]

Let's assume, since we're talking about dualism, that the existence of a physical universe is taken as given, and we're trying to decide if there's also a mental component to the universe independent of the physical. Now, let's look at the supposed timing of qualia as they are experienced, and the brain functions that "cause" them.

If the qualia precede the brain functions, the qualia may cause them but not vice versa.
If the brain functions precede the qualia, the brain functions may cause them but not vice versa.
If they are simultaneous, then there's no causal relationship: they are different properties of the same thing, or are caused by different properties of the same thing.

To a certain degree, it's a chicken-and-egg game. Clearly, some qualia are preceded by some brain function and vice versa. Due to brain function, I wake up and begin sensing my environment. Due to my experience of stressed feelings, I make a choice to meditate, and my brain function is modified. But the one issue that breaks that causal chain is sleep. Since brain function continues during sleep, but the experience of qualia does not, then it seems probably that it is the brain function which allows qualia, rather than the qualia which establish brain function.

HOWEVER there's a problem: by definition, if brain function always precedes qualia, then they are not the same. At the exact moment of experience, at least part of the brain function must be identical to the experience. To do an experiment to establish this, you'd have to prove that my experience of a red apple and the brain function of my experience of a red apple are EXACTLY simultaneous. However, in science, you only have precise access to brain function-- so you cannot establish simultaneity without begging the question (i.e. just saying that one is the other, without actually proving it)

Perhaps some kind of interference technique, like that used to determine the speed of light, might one day be used: use electricity to directly stimulate specific nerve systems, while also showing light to a person's eyes, etc. and precisely measuring the rate at which signals propagate through the brain. For example, if you know the exact time it takes the brain to process "blue," and then you artificially stimulate a neural system that makes the subject experience "red," the subject may be able to subjectively report something about their color perception that is useful: "The last color I saw was definitely red" or "the red seemed to fade more quickly than the blue" or whatever.

Right now, that's so far out of the possible that it's basically sci-fi speculation, but I can imagine experiments that would provide useful results while maintaining the need to study qualia (i.e. by interfacing directly with the subjective reports of the subject rather than making assumptions about measurements taken of the brain alone) independently of brain function.

[pocaracas]

So what?

So the brain is way too complex.
We don't have the ability to track every single nerve impulse and build a clear map between brain activity and "consciousness".

So, we're left with wild speculation... maybe not that wild...

It seems that brain damage leads to mental incapacitation.
Imbalanced brain chemistry leads to altered states of consciousness.
Child brain physiology leads to... well... child-like behavior... The same applies for the teenage brain and the teenage behavior (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/...dobbs-text).
Death is permanent and no consciousness has ever been found to go from one brain to another.

These findings, in turn, hint towards the fact that the brain is the processor of consciousness. And consciousness is nothing more than an "emergent quality" of the functioning brain. As I like to say, consciousness is a high abstraction layer, far removed from the basic neuron firings, but they are what fuels and determines the conscious mind.

Nothing hints towards the dual-nature so present in the body-soul paradigm.... except a lot of wishful thinking. No one wants their consciousness, their acquired experience, their knowledge, their compassion, their love.... no one wants those things to just disappear forever in a flash, aka, death. So we hang on to them and refuse to acknowledge the thought that they are as ephemeral as our own life.

[Angrboda]

I'm going to be brief without going into requisite detail because it's been a long day and for that and other reasons, I'm not up to a complete response at the moment.

It is probably accurate to say that it is impossible to prove monism or dualism to the satisfaction of most dualists, perhaps ever, but definitely for now. This has to do with a number of issues, one of which has to do with what is meant by proof, it's relationship to whatever truth is, and other epistemo-ontological questions. That being said, I don't think it's necessary to handle those questions at the moment. To my mind, at present, it is safe to say that the proposition that the mind is a product of the brain is a scientific fact, yet you need to be precise in your understanding of what the term 'scientific fact' means technically. A scientific fact is often misunderstood or rather ambiguously defined by most non-specialists. It does not mean that science has demonstrated what the truth is nor that what science says is the way reality is. A scientific fact is a hypothesis about the behavior of reality which, in conjunction with all necessaey auxiliary theories such as the theory of measurement and so on, is corroborated to a sufficiently high level that the possibility of the null or alternate hypothesis being true in spite of the corroboration meets a specific statistical improbability. This refers to type I and type II errors (type I in this case). There are a number of caveats to bear in mind. First, the hypothesis can be well corroborated and still be wrong, due to any number of things from an error in an auxiliary theory to ignorance of alternate explanations or the appropriate null hypothesis. Different sciences and different situations also call for different strength of statistical improbability, known as significance, and afaik, there is no hard and fast rule as to what is appropriate when. Moreover, from what I understand, if the exact mechanism by which the phenomenon occurs is unknown or implausible, it is considered appropriate to require greater significance in the result to consider the hypothesis to have been demonstrated. (E.g. As far as I know, the mechanism underlying the analgesic effect of acupuncture is not understood, but the effect is sufficiently strongly demonstrated that it is considered a scientific fact that acupuncture has these analgesic effects.)

Now, back to monism and dualism. There are legitimate philosophical questions still at large. At one of my philosophy groups, we spent a year or more in monthly meetings discussing topics in philosophy of mind, and many of the questions are subtle, deep, and dumbfounding, more so than at first blush it appears. The depth of the subject only truly revealed itself to me thanks to the stimulation of debate with people with different views, and I would not claim in any sense to have come close to mastering the subject. (If one wants to hit the ground running on the subject, I can't recommend Patricia Churchland's book Neurophilosophy highly enough. It doesn't solve all the issues, but rather furnishes a helpful untangling of some of the more fundamental philosophical questions. It's the best primer on the subject that I know.)

Again, back to the question, a friend at a philosophy discussion once said to me that neuroscience is "awash in a sea of data." By this he meant that there is a lot of detail known about mind and brain, but no overarching model or explanation which ties all the data together, makes sense of it, and explains the subject in question, the nature of mind and consciousness. (IMO) As noted, I don't think this is as big a scientific issue as it is essentially a scientific fact that the brain is the cause of the mind in the technical sense given above, but that certainly doesn't put either the scientific or philosophical questions to rest, especially in the absence of an actual mechaistic model of how the brain and mind are explicitly related, causally. The lack of an established model or complete theory is a problem for both science and philosophy. This is just my personal opinion, but I'm not a fan of the way the concept of 'emergence' is used, both by professionals and non-professionals, and imo, saying that consciousness is 'an emergent property of the brain' is little more than hand-waving the problem aside; that answer doesn't explain anything. It just replaces a puzzle with a vague, official sounding word. That being said, I still think physicalism as an explanation has virtues over dualism, but I'm not going to go into specifics here. (Read Curchland.) The key point is that dualism itself doesn't actually explain anything either; it's just kicking the can down the road. "A seperate substance is responsible for consciousness." "Well, how does that second substance give rise to consciousness?" "I dunno; it just does." Dualism is similar in that respect to a lot of arguments that seek to justify belief in a creator, but then fail to explain where the creator came from or how, or how he created everything, and by what process or means. It's the philosophy of mind equivalent of "goddidit," to my understanding. (Correct me if I'm wrong. How does this other substance give rise to mind, qualia, and consciousness?)

So my understanding in summation is, it is a scientific fact that the brain gives rise to the mind; however that doesn't really imply that we understand how, why, or in what sense yet. There are legitimate scientific and philosophical issues to be explored and answered. Monism doesn't have it completely in the bag, but it has many virtues over dualism, dualism has vices and problems that themselves are as daunting as those facing monism, and to my view dualism's problems are insurmountable; moreover, dualism itself doesn't really answer the question which motivates the positing of dualism in the first place. It just defers it, and tucks it safely inside some commonly accepted but likely vacuous metaphysical and ontological notions.

IMHO.

[bennyboy]

@pocaras

I don't think your argument really addresses the fundamental issue. Consciousness (and by this, I mean the ability to actually experience qualia) cannot be seen, directly observed, or measured. All you can do is identify brain functions and correlate them with behaviors (like speech) which SEEM typical of consciousness. All the things you mentioned can be said equally of a philosophical zombie (i.e. an entity that behaves as though conscious but has no actual experience): the child-zombie's behavior can change as it becomes a teenage-zombie, and again as it matures into an adult-zombie. Death leads to the cessation of the zombie-behaviors. Imbalanced brain chemistry leads to altered functiong of the zombie brain, and altered behavior exhibited by the zombie.

None of these physical observations explain why there is consciousness in the universe rather than not. Nor can they (or any other method) prove that any behavior means a biological system is actually experiencing.

As for the awareness of self: it is not my own behaviors that allow me to know that I experience qualia: it is rather my experience of qualia which through the course of my life has allowed me to form ideas about people, about behaviors, about brains, etc. My entire existence depends on qualia-- that is a brute fact. Interpretations about where those qualia come from are secondary.

Remember that the observation upon which science depends is an observation not of physical obects, but of qualia: your sight and sound impressions. Those are indisputably true. The physical monist model is an interpretation.

[Neo-Scholastic]

It seems that brain damage leads to mental incapacitation...Imbalanced brain chemistry leads to altered states of consciousness...Child brain physiology leads to... well... child-like behavior...

I agree and stated as much in the OP. None of these facts point definitively in one direction or the other.

Death is permanent…

Unless you’re a Jewish carpenter from ancient Nazareth ;-) As for the rest of us, physical death is a permanent and bringing it up is a non-sequitor. It says nothing about mind-body interaction in the living.

…consciousness is nothing more than an "emergent quality" of the functioning brain. As I like to say, consciousness is a high abstraction layer, far removed from the basic neuron firings, but they are what fuels and determines the conscious mind.

Define emergent quality and I might take your unsupported assertion seriously.

…Nothing hints towards the dual-nature so present in the body-soul paradigm.... except a lot of wishful thinking.

Nothing? Your own conscious experience isn’t a good enough hint? It’s not proof, but it is a hint.

[genkaus]

Overdetermination, epiphenominalism, and evolutionary impotence for a start.

Post-hoc rationalizations do not count as philosophical reasons. Given that the causation of qualia has not been determined yet, your determination that it is over-determined has no basis other than presumption of dualism. Similarly, epiphenomenalism is not a position uniquely representative of monism - therefore cannot be regarded as a reason for its rejection, even if you had valid reasons to reject epiphenomenalism itself. And what does "evolutionary impotence" even mean?

I'm not looking to debate the adequacy of my analogy. I'm looking for an experiement.

You were given one. Read the rest.

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Let's assume, since we're talking about dualism, that the existence of a physical universe is taken as given, and we're trying to decide if there's also a mental component to the universe independent of the physical. Now, let's look at the supposed timing of qualia as they are experienced, and the brain functions that "cause" them.

If the qualia precede the brain functions, the qualia may cause them but not vice versa.
If the brain functions precede the qualia, the brain functions may cause them but not vice versa.
If they are simultaneous, then there's no causal relationship: they are different properties of the same thing, or are caused by different properties of the same thing.

To a certain degree, it's a chicken-and-egg game. Clearly, some qualia are preceded by some brain function and vice versa. Due to brain function, I wake up and begin sensing my environment. Due to my experience of stressed feelings, I make a choice to meditate, and my brain function is modified. But the one issue that breaks that causal chain is sleep. Since brain function continues during sleep, but the experience of qualia does not, then it seems probably that it is the brain function which allows qualia, rather than the qualia which establish brain function.

HOWEVER there's a problem: by definition, if brain function always precedes qualia, then they are not the same. At the exact moment of experience, at least part of the brain function must be identical to the experience. To do an experiment to establish this, you'd have to prove that my experience of a red apple and the brain function of my experience of a red apple are EXACTLY simultaneous. However, in science, you only have precise access to brain function-- so you cannot establish simultaneity without begging the question (i.e. just saying that one is the other, without actually proving it)

Perhaps some kind of interference technique, like that used to determine the speed of light, might one day be used: use electricity to directly stimulate specific nerve systems, while also showing light to a person's eyes, etc. and precisely measuring the rate at which signals propagate through the brain. For example, if you know the exact time it takes the brain to process "blue," and then you artificially stimulate a neural system that makes the subject experience "red," the subject may be able to subjectively report something about their color perception that is useful: "The last color I saw was definitely red" or "the red seemed to fade more quickly than the blue" or whatever.

Right now, that's so far out of the possible that it's basically sci-fi speculation, but I can imagine experiments that would provide useful results while maintaining the need to study qualia (i.e. by interfacing directly with the subjective reports of the subject rather than making assumptions about measurements taken of the brain alone) independently of brain function.

A few points you might want to be careful about:

1. Given your three possibilities - brain function precedes qualia, qualia, precedes brain function or they are simultaneous - you've, at the outset, defined them as distinct entities with different natures. Given that, your statement "At the exact moment of experience, at least part of the brain function must be identical to the experience" becomes nonsensical.

2. Don't confuse causal precedence with temporal precedence. For example, the speed of my car is caused by how fast the wheels are spinning. But both events are temporally simultaneous, even though causally, one precedes the other. Which is why, qualia and brain functions being temporally simultaneous does not imply anything regarding their causal relation.

[genkaus]

I don't think your argument really addresses the fundamental issue. Consciousness (and by this, I mean the ability to actually experience qualia) cannot be seen, directly observed, or measured. All you can do is identify brain functions and correlate them with behaviors (like speech) which SEEM typical of consciousness. All the things you mentioned can be said equally of a philosophical zombie (i.e. an entity that behaves as though conscious but has no actual experience): the child-zombie's behavior can change as it becomes a teenage-zombie, and again as it matures into an adult-zombie. Death leads to the cessation of the zombie-behaviors. Imbalanced brain chemistry leads to altered functiong of the zombie brain, and altered behavior exhibited by the zombie.

None of these physical observations explain why there is consciousness in the universe rather than not. Nor can they (or any other method) prove that any behavior means a biological system is actually experiencing.

As for the awareness of self: it is not my own behaviors that allow me to know that I experience qualia: it is rather my experience of qualia which through the course of my life has allowed me to form ideas about people, about behaviors, about brains, etc. My entire existence depends on qualia-- that is a brute fact. Interpretations about where those qualia come from are secondary.

Remember that the observation upon which science depends is an observation not of physical obects, but of qualia: your sight and sound impressions. Those are indisputably true. The physical monist model is an interpretation.

I think this has been discussed before - but all the things mentioned cannot be said of a philosophical zombie. Certain behaviors - specifically, self-referential ones - are not possible without the ability to experience.

[bennyboy]

I think this has been discussed before - but all the things mentioned cannot be said of a philosophical zombie. Certain behaviors - specifically, self-referential ones - are not possible without the ability to experience.

Yes, but the zombie's collected data meet the criteria for your definition of experience. We are talking about qualia.

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A few points you might want to be careful about:

1. Given your three possibilities - brain function precedes qualia, qualia, precedes brain function or they are simultaneous - you've, at the outset, defined them as distinct entities with different natures. Given that, your statement "At the exact moment of experience, at least part of the brain function must be identical to the experience" becomes nonsensical.

Subjective qualia and objective measures of brain function clearly are different, because subjective and objective are different. The question is whether they are different processes, or just different properties of the same process.

2. Don't confuse causal precedence with temporal precedence. For example, the speed of my car is caused by how fast the wheels are spinning. But both events are temporally simultaneous, even though causally, one precedes the other. Which is why, qualia and brain functions being temporally simultaneous does not imply anything regarding their causal relation.

Actually, there IS a slight lag in time, at least during acceleration, as all the materials involved distort slightly under the stress of the force coming from the drive-train: the axle twists, the rubber wheel twists, the knobs on the tires bend over a little, etc.

But actually what I'm really saying is if the qualia are experienced exactly at the same time that the brain functions are observed externally, this would be good evidence for the idea that qualia are a property only of the brain.

My ideas about interference, etc. are a try at introducing objective control over neural systems precise enough to allow verbal comments, the only "reliable" way to interact with qualia, to give comments on the more easily-observed property: brain function. You could never measure the speed of light with a stop-watch: you need interference to do it, AFAIK. It occured to me that a similar approach might aid in brain/consciousness studies.

[pocaracas]

@pocaras

I don't think your argument really addresses the fundamental issue. Consciousness (and by this, I mean the ability to actually experience qualia) cannot be seen, directly observed, or measured. All you can do is identify brain functions and correlate them with behaviors (like speech) which SEEM typical of consciousness. All the things you mentioned can be said equally of a philosophical zombie (i.e. an entity that behaves as though conscious but has no actual experience): the child-zombie's behavior can change as it becomes a teenage-zombie, and again as it matures into an adult-zombie. Death leads to the cessation of the zombie-behaviors. Imbalanced brain chemistry leads to altered functiong of the zombie brain, and altered behavior exhibited by the zombie.

And how do we have behavior without awareness of the self and its surroundings? without experience of these things?
There are no zombies, except in Sci-fi and horror movies.

None of these physical observations explain why there is consciousness in the universe rather than not. Nor can they (or any other method) prove that any behavior means a biological system is actually experiencing.

No amount of physics will ever explain "why" there is a Universe, rather than not...
"Why" is the wrong question.

As for the awareness of self: it is not my own behaviors that allow me to know that I experience qualia: it is rather my experience of qualia which through the course of my life has allowed me to form ideas about people, about behaviors, about brains, etc. My entire existence depends on qualia-- that is a brute fact. Interpretations about where those qualia come from are secondary.

Are you saying that one person can only be sure about qualia from himself? Everyone else's qualia is impossible to determine and they may as well be holodeck people?

Remember that the observation upon which science depends is an observation not of physical obects, but of qualia: your sight and sound impressions. Those are indisputably true. The physical monist model is an interpretation.

Sight.... nice example...
The eye sees light intensity at different wavelengths.
The brain recognizes shapes and adjusts the focus of the eye to hone in on a particular subject.
The brain then recognizes a more exact shape of the subject and may recognize it as a person, a car, a window, whatever... and then, which car, person, window, etc..., based on prior stored information... information which arrived through the same mechanism of a light intensity pattern as a series of representations of a 3D object.
The brain performs these functions of sight, storage, recall, repeat. Qualia seems to be somewhere in there.
Now, harmony, beauty, ugliness... those probably sprout from some innate preconception of the shapes of things, that have been endowed by eons of evolution. On people's faces, we find beauty in symmetry, in a sunset, we find beauty in a clear sky, in a multitude of hues which trigger extra processing from our vision....

I'm not an expert or anything but my first post on this thread pointed to Artificial Intelligence... and I think that's where this qualia will first meet it's first big challenge.
It seems AI is close to a sort of qualia...
If an artificial intelligence can display qualia, would that mean that it IS an emergent property of a sufficiently complex neural network? or am I to think that some consciousness descended upon those machines and made them aware of them selves?

What do you think of a robot that has learned enough to say this
" “I’m not human!” she confesses. “I’ll never be exactly like you. That isn’t so bad. Actually, I like being an android.” "?
And no, this was not Mr Data, this was Yume: http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/actroid/wordpress/

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It seems that brain damage leads to mental incapacitation...Imbalanced brain chemistry leads to altered states of consciousness...Child brain physiology leads to... well... child-like behavior...

I agree and stated as much in the OP. None of these facts point definitively in one direction or the other.

yes they do...

Death is permanent…

Unless you’re a Jewish carpenter from ancient Nazareth ;-) As for the rest of us, physical death is a permanent and bringing it up is a non-sequitor. It says nothing about mind-body interaction in the living.

Oh, we're going for fictional characters?
Well, then, you have Harry Potter, Gandalf, Superman...Freddy Krueger (sort of)...

And it says there's nothing, apart from the living brain, working within it.

…consciousness is nothing more than an "emergent quality" of the functioning brain. As I like to say, consciousness is a high abstraction layer, far removed from the basic neuron firings, but they are what fuels and determines the conscious mind.

Define emergent quality and I might take your unsupported assertion seriously.

I did, with the higher abstraction layer...
Perhaps that's too much of a programmer's talk...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction_layer

…Nothing hints towards the dual-nature so present in the body-soul paradigm.... except a lot of wishful thinking.

Nothing? Your own conscious experience isn’t a good enough hint? It’s not proof, but it is a hint.

My own conscious experience? It looks built up by all the inputs from my senses, throughout my whole life... it looks physically derived from my body. To me, that's a hint in the opposite direction.