Consciousness Trilemma

[The Grand Nudger]

"crap" or not... the fact we are experiencing something is the most certainly known fact in the universe to anyone.

The whole of science depends on our observations that presuppose that.

For fuck's sake.

Whether he chooses to label that "consciousness" or not is as irrelevant as the fact that he likes to label ordinary human willpower we already know we have as "free will". He needs to stop pissing about with labels... but he's not going to do that because he's made a career out of his obfuscating.

With or without that "crap" defintiion... what that "crap" definition refers to does exist, must exist and is not an illusion.

He has literally said that the illusions of after images, for example, are still experienced but they do not exist. That makes zero fucking sense. Illusons obviously exist as illusions. It's him that conflates nonexistence and illustriousness not Strawson. This is the mistake the elimativists make... they decide that the existence of something in particular isn't of the same nature as most things so they say it doesn't exist altogether. That's basically the No True Scotsman fallacy.

How many times do you have to be told that Dennet is studying qualia, and thinks that qualia is a thing that exists?

[pocaracas]

God exists as a concept.
Does a god exist in the real world as described in that concept?

2 levels of existing that need to be separated, ideally by two different words... but which words?

[Edwardo Piet]

How many times do you have to be told that Dennet is studying qualia, and thinks that qualia is a thing that exists?

How many times do you need to be told that he completely redefines what these words mean to avoid addressing the problem?

For example:

However, John Searle argues that Dennett, who insists that discussing subjectivity is nonsense because it is unscientific and science presupposes objectivity, is making a category error. Searle argues that the goal of science is to establish and validate statements which are epistemically objective, (i.e., whose truth can be discovered and evaluated by any interested party), but are not necessarily ontologically objective. Searle calls any value judgment epistemically subjective. Thus, "McKinley is prettier than Everest" is epistemically subjective, whereas "McKinley is higher than Everest" is epistemically objective. In other words, the latter statement is evaluable (in fact, falsifiable) by an understood ('background') criterion for mountain height, like 'the summit is so many meters above sea level'. No such criteria exist for prettiness. Searle says that in Dennett's view, there is no consciousness in addition to the computational features, because that is all that consciousness amounts to for him: mere effects of a von Neumann(esque) virtual machine implemented in a parallel architecture and therefore implies that conscious states are illusory, but Searle asserts: "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality."

To put it as clearly as I can: in his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. For him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have. For Dennett there is no difference between us humans and complex zombies who lack any inner feelings, because we are all just complex zombies. ...I regard his view as self-refuting because it denies the existence of the data which a theory of consciousness is supposed to explain...Here is the paradox of this exchange: I am a conscious reviewer consciously answering the objections of an author who gives every indication of being consciously and puzzlingly angry. I do this for a readership that I assume is conscious. How then can I take seriously his claim that consciousness does not really exist?"

My bold.

You're the one who needs to be educated here but I really should give up because you're clearly beyond correction.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and we're back, in both instances, to an appeal to tradition, and dennets wonderful preemptive quote about the desperate intellectual dishonesty required to quote his assertion out of context. 

Dennet is specifically referring to the cartesian theater and epiphenomenalist position, in that assertion.  If that is what is meant by consciousness, in his estimation, it does not exist. It seems, though, that he still thinks that there is some x we call consciousness, doesn't it, what with all the attempting to explain it.

You and I, on free will advocating hard determinism, might find an easy example of the sorts of qualia that eliminative materialists can be skeptical of. How it feels to freely will a decision. No one, if hard determinism is true, actually feels that. That qualia will not map to any such freely willing system or process or organ..because there isn;t one.

They might think they do....but whatever they feel is not only not as described..but could not be as described. They couldn't have a feeling of what it's like to freely will a decision, though it's possible that post narrative construction can present itself as-such. Now, we could rinse and repeat with any mental state.

Does that make it easier to understand?

[Edwardo Piet]

It's not an appeal to tradition. It's acknowledging the fact that if it seems we are conscious then we are conscious.

It's akin to an appeal to the fact that squares have four sides.

You are completely ignoring the category error that Dennett and the rest of the elimitavists are making in their conflating ontological subjectivity with epistemic subjectivity. You are completely ignoring the fact that our being mistaken about the nature of consciousness does not and cannot make consciousness itself an illusion.

You're a fuckwit. I'm done explaining to you the logical equivalent of squares necessarily having four sides.

And as for epiphenomenalism... science supports it. There have been multiple experiments that we act as much as 7 seconds before we become consciously aware of our actions... that is clear evidence supporting the hypothesis that consciousness has no evolutionary utility because it is is a mere side effect of unconscious processing that does have evolutionary utility. Just like when moths kill themselves on flames... that act has zero evolutionary utility... it's just a side effect of their flight mechanism that does have evolutionary utility.

A large body of neurophysiological data seems to support epiphenomenalism. Some of the oldest such data is the Bereitschaftspotential or "readiness potential" in which electrical activity related to voluntary actions can be recorded up to two seconds before the subject is aware of making a decision to perform the action. More recently Benjamin Libet et al. (1979) have shown that it can take 0.5 seconds before a stimulus becomes part of conscious experience even though subjects can respond to the stimulus in reaction time tests within 200 milliseconds. Recent research on the Event Related Potential also shows that conscious experience does not occur until the late phase of the potential (P3 or later) that occurs 300 milliseconds or more after the event. In Bregman's Auditory Continuity Illusion, where a pure tone is followed by broadband noise and the noise is followed by the same pure tone it seems as if the tone occurs throughout the period of noise. This also suggests a delay for processing data before conscious experience occurs. Popular science author Tor Nørretranders has called the delay "The User Illusion" implying that we only have the illusion of conscious control, most actions being controlled automatically by non-conscious parts of the brain with the conscious mind relegated to the role of spectator.

The scientific data seem to support the idea that conscious experience is created by non-conscious processes in the brain (i.e., there is subliminal processing that becomes conscious experience). These results have been interpreted to suggest that people are capable of action before conscious experience of the decision to act occurs. Some argue that this supports epiphenomenalism, since it shows that the feeling of making a decision to act is actually an epiphenomenon; the action happens before the decision, so the decision did not cause the action to occur.

[The Grand Nudger]

Dennet makes an explicit specification as to what type of consciousness he doesn't think exists......and also advocates for a type of consciousness that he -does- think exists.

[bennyboy]

I know, I know, it sounds so radical.....that we might have to rethink the notions of mind a bunch of primitives came up with in the absence of nueroscience.  Perish the thought.  Next thing you know cats will marry dogs, the justice system will collapse, people will become amoral monsters, and it will be armageddon..and then, by god, then.....we'll really wish we'd believed in ghosts.

The sarcasm. It burns!

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You and I, on free will advocating hard determinism, might find an easy example of the sorts of qualia that eliminative materialists can be skeptical of.  How it feels to freely will a decision.  No one, if hard determinism is true, actually feels that.  That qualia will not map to any such freely willing system or process or organ..because there isn;t one.

Did someone say my name?

I don't think your semantics on this issue are quite right.  Free will is the capacity of the self to express itself in action without undue external influence or impediment.  If the self is arrived at by deterministic processes, and collects information by deterministic processes, then it would be strange indeed if the self could act variably: essentially, free will would be the capacity of the self NOT to act according to its nature, which is obviously a paradox.

When I'm standing in the aisle choosing my candy bar, it doesn't matter to me whether the universe is material, or whether it's deterministic.  For what I am,  that situation is perfectly describable as an act of free will. "Free will," in fact, is a label for that category of experience, in distinction of other categories wherein I'm unduly influenced in my decision.

[Edwardo Piet]

I know, I know, it sounds so radical.....that we might have to rethink the notions of mind a bunch of primitives came up with in the absence of nueroscience.  Perish the thought.  Next thing you know cats will marry dogs, the justice system will collapse, people will become amoral monsters, and it will be armageddon..and then, by god, then.....we'll really wish we'd believed in ghosts.

You fail to realize that with consciousness it's a really really shitty false analogy because it's utterly delusional to think there's any sense in which consciousness itself is an illusion.

"Oh I seem to be conscious but I'm not really".

That's utterly retarded. With consciousness you can't make the illusory/real distinction. With consciousness the appearance is the reality. The very "I seem to be conscious" is what is meant by being really conscious in the first place.

It's retarded to say it's a crap definition just because people are mistaken a lot about the details of their consciousness.

To jump from that to the conclusion that consciousness itself is an illusion is just retarded. It's the one thing that can't be an illusion.

Literally the entire material world could be an illusion. We could all be in a dreamworld or in the matrix... or we could be in a dream within a dream within a dream that stretches back for an infinite regress. It's absurd but it's not impossible in principle.

But one thing we do know and can't be an illusion is the fact we are conscious whether the material world exists or not. Our own consciousness itself to be an illusion is possible in principle.

Consciousness is the one thing that can't be an illusion, for fuck's sake.

The idea of eliminative materialism eliminating the reality of consciousness and calling it an illusion when it's the reality of their consciousness to even know truths about the material world in the first place just shows how retarded eliminative materialism is when it's directed at consciousness. To say "Oh I seem to be conscious but I'm not really. It's an illusion" is just meaningless contradictory bullshit. The fact that it's true by definition that if we seem to be conscious and consciousness depends on seeming then we're consciousness... is not folk psychology it's the logical equivalent of "a square has 4 sides." By eliminating that aspect consciousness isn't even being addressed.

The whole concept of an illusion depends on a distinction between real/not real. You can't make that distinction with consciousness because literally the distinction we make between real/not real itself depends on our own consciousness. For. Fuck's. Sake.

So much retarded fail on your side.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't think your semantics on this issue are quite right.  Free will is the capacity of the self to express itself in action without undue external influence or impediment.  If the self is arrived at by deterministic processes, and collects information by deterministic processes, then it would be strange indeed if the self could act variably: essentially, free will would be the capacity of the self NOT to act according to its nature, which is obviously a paradox.

When I'm standing in the aisle choosing my candy bar, it doesn't matter to me whether the universe is material, or whether it's deterministic.  For what I am,  that situation is perfectly describable as an act of free will.  "Free will," in fact, is a label for that category of experience, in distinction of other categories wherein I'm unduly influenced in my decision.

OFC you can describe it as such, eliminative materialists take issue with those descriptions, not that you have a feeling.  

In any case, that subtle sort of compatibilist free will isn't really the sort of free will I was touching on.  I'm simply presenting the feeling we have of a classical free will as something that, under specific circumstances (in that case a hard determinist universe), would not only be in error, but be non-existent.  It would be something else that we were experiencing, and then attributing whatever that was to our free will.  As such, we'd never find the "free will" mental state, or the free will neuron, or the free will bundle, or the free will region, because it didn't (and couldn't) exist.  It didn't map to a specific, discrete process or structure.  

It's just an easy example., for someone whop doesn't believe in that sort of free will (like Ham) to understand what elimininativists mean we they call some specific mental state illusory.  They're not saying that you don't see a rabbit being pulled from a hat, they're saying that no rabbit actually -is- being pulled from a hat, and if we look, in our brains, for the rabbit being pulled from a hat, we won't find it.   

The idea of eliminative materialism eliminating the reality of consciousness and calling it an illusion when it's the reality of their consciousness to even know truths about the material world in the first place just shows how retarded eliminative  materialism is when it's directed at consciousness. To say "Oh I seem to be conscious but I'm not really. It's an illusion" is just meaningless contradictory bullshit. The fact that it's true by definition that if we seem to be conscious and consciousness depends on seeming then we're consciousness... is not folk psychology it's the logical equivalent of "a square has 4 sides." By eliminating that aspect consciousness isn't even being addressed.

If I, Ham, defined human consciousness as "the stuff that souls do", would you grant that this type of consciousness exists, or argue against any suggestion that it doesn;t by saying "squares have 4 sides!"?

OFC not.  

Similarly, when an eliminative materialists suggests that people believe in, and believe that they experience particular mental states or advocate for particular descriptions of consciousness, they are describing something that doesn't exist, despite how compellingly it might present itself to us.  Something oes, something that presents itself as such, or presents itself in such a way as to be compellingly in error to us.  It the former, and not the latter, that reductionists are adenying, and none of your criticism of reductionism will really land until you can incorporate that into your understanding.  Eliminitavists don;t think that "nothing" is happening.  They think that some description x is wrong, they think that some mental state x is an artifact (of culture, of language, of cognitive process) and not a legitimate mental state. That no amount of us feeling as though we freely willed some decision is going to translate into us finding a free willing region of the brain.

Similarly, if we experience and describe our consciousness in the context of the cartesian theater, where some humonculus is doing something, They're skeptical that we will actually find that little physical humonculus in the brain. That experience is not only innaccurate, in their view, it is an illusion describing a non-existent thing or process. There is no humonculus for you to experience, for you to feel...so what else could such a feeling -be- but illusory? Is there some other way, other than an actual humonculus, that such a feeling could be produced? They think so. What do you think? Do you require there to be a discrete mental state of "feeling like a humunculus", or even more specifically, do you require there to be a discrete mental state -of- the humonculus itself?

Yes, we experience ourselves as a humonculus, but from what we know, at the moment, of nuerology, that simply is not the case. There is no singular unit, no monolithic location, no central processor, no discrete specific mental state that maps to that feeling of being such. So maybe, just maybe, our description of that feeling, and indeed "how it feels to be" so is in error. In many em views, it's actually a post narrative conglomeration of pieces of -other- legitimate mental states cobbled together and mistaken for some other whole.

So tell me why, Ham, in your view, that can't be illusory, and try to be a little more subject specific than "squares have 4 sides", eh? I think you can understand this, if you want to, and that when you do you'd be able to offer a better criticism, if you were still inclined to do so. I honestly doubt that you -would- still offer criticism, since your disagreement with their position arises, in it's entirety, from a continued insistence on a misunderstanding of the position.

[Edwardo Piet]

If I, Ham, defined human consciousness as "the stuff that souls do", would you grant that this type of consciousness exists, or argue against any suggestion that it doesn;t by saying "squares have 4 sides!"?

No but that's an absurdly false analogy. I'm DEFINITELY not going to bother with you if that's the best you've got. The fact that you can't seem to be conscious unless you have a consciousness to experience that seeming is a tautology like "squares have 4 sides". Comparing it to "the stuff that souls do" is a pathetic strawman.

You are not remotely addressing the category errors the elimativists are making when they conflate ontological subjectivity and epistemic subjectivity.

The whole starting point of science requires conscious observers in the first place.

I've already explained that it's logically possible for the whole material world to be an illusion but consciousness itself cannot be an illusion.

You're a fucking idiot sticking to your elimativist guns because you dismiss something that can't be logically wrong as akin to "folk psychology".

Terrible analogy, terrible logic.

No wonder you argue against things that are true by definition when you're the same fucking idiot who thinks there can be alternative universes where 2+2=5

You're a dumb cunt.

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Similarly, when an eliminative materialists suggests that people believe in, and believe that they experience particular mental states or advocate for particular descriptions of consciousness, they are describing something that doesn't exist, despite how compellingly it might present itself to us.

OH MY GOD YOUR ANALOGY IS SO TERRIBLE.

For FUCK'S SAKE. We're mistaken about the details of our consciousness but we are not mistaken about the fact we are conscious because that's not even fucking possible.

For fuck's sake. The whole of science depends on conscious observers, the whole of the material world may be an illusion but consciousness itself cannot be.. We can be completely mistaken about what we are conscious of because we could be a brain in a vat for example, and indeed the whole of the material world could be an illusion, but the fact we are conscious of something cannot possibly be mistaken!

Literally... arguing against the very existence of consciousness or calling consciousness itself an illusion is literally the most irrational thing a human being can do. It's fucking hilarious that elimativie materialists are trying to use science to call the very thing they need to test their own claims illusory.

Their logical skills are pathetic. You're not dealing with my arguments at all. I already explained that you can't make a distinction between real/illusory with regards to consciousness itself because making such a distinction requires our own consciousness in the first place. If all that existed was our consciousness then the distinction between real/illusory wouldn't even make sense. You can't say that consciousness is an illusion when its very reality is more fundamental than anything else and if it is an illusion then everything is an illusion making your own claim completely meaningless and self-defeating nonsense.

I'll spell it out for you real simple: Something is an illusion if the way something appears to be doesn't correspond with the way something actually is. With consciousness you can't make that distinction because something cannot seem to be a certain way to you without you being conscious of that seeming it to be a certain way.

Why am I bothering explaining all this stuff to you when you are going to continue to think that because the details are illusory then the fact that even illusions are present to us must also be an illusion? RECOGNIZE THAT THAT IS 100% A COMPLETE AND TOTAL NON-SEQUITUR! ONTOLOGICALLY SUBJECTIVE DOES NOT EQUATE TO EPISTEMICALLY SUBJECTIVE! FOR. FUCK'S. SAKE. YOU ARE NOT ADDRESSING THE CATEGORY ERROR THAT DENNETT IS MAKING THAT SEARLE POINTED OUT!

Do you not realize that an illusion of an illusion=not an illusion? Do you not fucking realize that if something seems to be ANYTHING to you then you MUST be conscious of something.


STOP IGNORING THE LOGICAL ARGUMENTS I AM MAKING AND FALLING BACK ON "Neener neener, folk psychology, blah blah blah tradition and common sense are often mistaken, you may as well believe in souls". I'm not interested in arguments from authority, and appeals to anti-traditionalism, nor am I interested in strawmen and bad logic. Fuck knows why I have been interested in you dealing with the actual logical arguments I am making when you have time and time again displayed that your logical skills are too poor to debate with me.
I'm sorry but science can't trump logic with definitions as much as you'd like it to, you equivocating fuckwit. You're doing the equivalent of saying that because a universe came from empty space teeming quantum activity that means a universe came from 'nothing' as in absolutely nothing at all.

You can't on the one hand realize you're not addressing a definition but changing the definition and then on the other hand pretend like you're eliminated the original definition by failing to address it.

You can define consciousness as an illusion of subjectivity all you want but under the normal definitions that makes as little sense as saying a universe came from literally "nothing".

TL;DR: Your subjective experience can be illusory in that what you think you are experiencing you aren't experiencing and you're really experiencing something else... but the fact you are experiencing SOMETHING. The fact that subjective experience exists CANNOT be an illusion. That is LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

Why am I bothering arguing with a fuckwit who thinks 2+2 can=5 provided that you change the universe? Why am I bothering with a fuckwit who thinks that if an extra thing popped into existence that would mean that two things and two things weren't identical to four things and not five things by definition? Why am I wasting my time with a moron who doesn't understand modal logic? Why am I bothering trying to explain the fact that we seem to be conscious means that our consciousness isn't an illusion? Why am I bothering explaining that being mistaken about the details of our consciousness doesn't mean we are mistaken about the fact we are conscious? Why am I wasting my time explaining that if you change the definition then you're failing to make any argument at all against the original definition meaning that our consciousness is NOT an illusion in the sense we normally mean it? (If you're going to redefine consciousness to not mean "subjective experience", you're a moron who may as well redefine God to mean "the universe" and then say "the original definition was crap because God doesn't exist so I decided to redefine "God" to mean "the universe" which does exist." )

Recognize that by redefining the problem you ignore the problem altogether. Whatever elimativist materialists are talking about, it's not consciousness. Because consciousness isn't an illusion by definition. SEEMING requires a CONSCIOUS SUBJECT. Something cannot SEEM to be real without the SEEMING ITSELF AT LEAST BEING REAL.

What something appears to be may be mistaken, but the fact that something appears to be something cannot be mistaken.

Holy crap saying consciousness is an illusion is more illogical than calling the material world an illusion, you need to realize that. You could be a brain in a vat and the whole world you are experiencing is illusory, you could be dreaming and what you seem to be conscious of doesn't really exist. You can be wrong about what you're conscious of. But you can't be wrong about being conscious of SOMETHING. That's FUCKING LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

Such a dimwit.

If I don't respond at your further attempts to pathetically fail to rebut me it's not because I don't have a rebuttal it's because I've already rebutted you repeatedly and you still don't understand basic logic so I'm tired of wasting my time on you. I get so pissed off because not only do you suggest I'm thick when you're the stupid fucker here but you continue to poorly educate people throughout this thread that their consciousness may be an illusion when I've already spent time explaining how impossible that is. I don't want you to miseducate people with your equivocating wankery. If you change the definition then you are by definition talking about something else and thereby cannot eliminate the original definition! Stop being a fallacious fuckface!