Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[polymath257]

@Angrboda

I mean, you can't falsify a correlation. But from a correlation, you can develop a hypothesis: "ice cream trucks cause drownings." Then you arrange an experiment. Create a dozen or so "Truman Show" neighborhoods in which all factors are the same, except some neighborhoods have more ice cream trucks. Then you see which neighborhoods have more drownings. Rinse and repeat.

It might not be practical, but it (in principle) is a way science could detect the strength of the correlation.

That wouldn't work because you can't assume the cause results in a one-to-one correlation.  Once you interpret correlation as causation you're stuck, because anything you try to add to that is basically a refutation of your previous commitment.

No, you have two hypotheses:
1. that ice cream trucks cause drownings
2. that both ice cream trucks and drownings are 'caused by' summer.

The trick is to find situations where those two hypotheses give different predictions and then test those situations. That is exactly what was proposed.

---

Pardon the dummy interjecting. What do you mean by “lower-level phenomena”?

In reduction, you replace an explanation of a phenomenon in certain terms with an explanation consisting of the things which compose and explain those terms.  So in chemistry, one might explain a chemical reaction in terms of the valences of the elements being used in the reaction.  A reduction would be to explain that reaction in terms of the electrons and particles and their bonding in the individual elements because valences represent the practical physics of how electrons and such work to give an element its valence.  Thus explaining the phenomena in terms of electrons and other elementary particles would be a lower-level explanation than explaining it in terms of valences.  Likewise, explaining drownings in terms of the physics of the particles and forces that are involved in ice cream trucks and drownings would be lower level than explaining it in terms of ice cream trucks, drownings, and an unnamed mediating force or mechanism.

And what if there is no 'lower level'. By definition, all you can have at the lowest level is correlation.

[The Grand Nudger]

One key aspect of the alleged zombie isn't just that it says these things - but that it genuinely believes them - just like we do. Otherwise that's yet another way this thing asserted to be identical to us in every respect, save one, isn't like us.

If it says it's experienced X it must have that memory, even if it never really™ experienced that x.

[Spongebob]

No, you have two hypotheses:
1. that ice cream trucks cause drownings
2. that both ice cream trucks and drownings are 'caused by' summer.

The trick is to find situations where those two hypotheses give different predictions and then test those situations. That is exactly what was proposed.

Don't forget about the null hypothesis, that this idea is all wrong and something else altogether causes drownings, like Pokémon Go.

[HappySkeptic]

I just don't see this as being a "hard problem".  Qualia are what the conscious mind experiences - full stop.  The conscious mind must have some experience - it might as well be the qualia we know.  It could be different qualia if we had different brains or different senses, but it has to be something.

Now, identity and a sense of self is a bit of a mystery, but I feel that is an illusion created by our mind.  If we were part of the Borg collective, we wouldn't experience a singular identity.  Our separateness and our memories creates the sense of self.

It's not that easy though. Just examine two competing theories of mind: functionalism and biological naturalism. Both theories are materialistic (ie. physicalist). Both theories posit that conscious experiences are causally dependent on brain functioning. They agree there. But, otherwise, they arrive at two different conclusions concerning what consciousness is.

One theory (functionalism) states that conscious states arise due to the information feedback that happens with brain function. According to this theory, a computer could have conscious experiences if it somehow transmitted the same information your brain does when say, eating a hamburger.

The biological naturalist disagrees. The biological naturalist says you can transmit that information in a computer system and the computer will not experience eating a burger. To the biological naturalist, consciousness is a product of the physical features of neurons. If you wanted to create an artificial consciousness, you'd need to create a physical object that does the same physical thing that a neuron does when it fires. (A whole bunch of them actually.) Then you'd need to get them to fire in one of the myriad ways a neuron can fire when hamburger-eating is being done.

Who of us can say which of these theories is correct? Each has its merits. Each has its problems.

So while, yes, our conscious experience has to be something ... exactly what that something is eludes us. Hence, questions about consciousness are worth exploring. And the problem is indeed hard.

***

As for identity, I tend to agree with you. It's a key assumption of many that "self" is an actual unified thing to begin with. I think Locke put together a fine explanation with continuity. Hume's thoughts are good too (self is illusory). But, at the end of the day, we don't want to dispense with the notion of THIS person or THAT person. I know I don't. And if we want to make such distinctions, we ought to be able to explain ourselves.

Functionalism is the correct view, but it may also be true that one can't create human-like consciousness without hardware that mimics some of the functionality of a real neural network.  That isn't because I'm waffling on functionalism - it is because the function may be highly dependent on neural structure.

I am a fan of the work of Gerald Edelman, who believed that biological intelligence self-evolves from the structures of neuronal groups.  If this is true, the nature of our intelligent conscious experience may be difficult to replicate without building a similar self-evolving AI.

[The Grand Nudger]

I like to think of two hand made rowing dorys. Same basic plans, same wood, same treatment - very skilled craftsman. Tiny differences in the surface of the hull can produce two boats that look and are functionally identical...but behave very differently.

Evolutionary baggage seems like it might make a few dents in a mind.

[Ahriman]

I like to think of two hand made rowing dorys.  Same basic plans, same wood, same treatment - very skilled craftsman.  Tiny differences in the surface of the hull can produce two boats that look and are functionally identical...but behave very differently.

Evolutionary baggage seems like it might make a few dents in a mind.

Evolutionary baggage? You mean like ancestral memories?

[GrandizerII]

Can I hear the argument for that?

Well, let's consider what Chalmers proposed. Imagine a conscious person. Then imagine another being that is physically identical in every way with that conscious person. The question is whether it is coherent to say the construct is not conscious. I don't believe it is.

For example, if the conscious person waxes eloquent about their experience of the color red, so will the zombie. If the conscious person goes into a long discussion about their qualia, so will the zombie. if the conscious person acknowledges Mary might have learned something when she saw red, so would the zombie. In every single physical situation, the two will be *exactly* the same in how they respond.

And no, I don't think it is possible for that to occur without the 'zombie' actually being conscious. At some point in some way, there would be something where a non-conscious being would react differently than a conscious one and *that* would be a physical difference between the two.

The zombie is meant to be a thought experiment, nothing more. Chalmers' point is that, logically speaking, one can have all the "outward appearance" of a conscious person and behave like such, and yet still lack qualia. If it's even logically possible (even if perhaps not metaphysically possible) for a p-zombie to exist, then this lends credence to the hard problem.

I suspect that the desire is for some sort of 'mechanism'. That, I believe, is a deep philosophical mistake. We cannot detect causality. What we can detect is correlation. And certain types of correlation we *call* causality. That is what it *means* to say X causes Y.

Of course, an explanation that invokes a mechanism is desired. If science cannot provide that, then that just means science has its limitations (which is what I said earlier).

Correlations alone can't resolve the hard problem. Even if you were to establish that the correlation was causal, there'd still be a hard problem. Simply because establishing that neuron firings in the CNS cause qualia does nothing to explain how that works. How something that is an electrochemical process leads to something so radically (and qualitatively) different.

[The Grand Nudger]

I like to think of two hand made rowing dorys.  Same basic plans, same wood, same treatment - very skilled craftsman.  Tiny differences in the surface of the hull can produce two boats that look and are functionally identical...but behave very differently.

Evolutionary baggage seems like it might make a few dents in a mind.

Evolutionary baggage? You mean like ancestral memories?

More like the actual structure of the thing, which can effect the behavior of the thing - and ofc that only scratches the surface of how evolutionary pressures shape a mind....as far as we can tell.

-But sure, if a thing had inheritable memory that it could act on - that might suggest that two representatives of that thing would behave differently. Same with regular old non batshit memory.

[polymath257]

We have two hypotheses:

1. Ice cream trucks cause drownings.

2. Both ice cream trucks and drownings occur mostly in summer.

So what we need is an observation that will distinguish between these two hypotheses.

The most obvious one would be to rent a bunch of ice cream trucks in the winter and see if drownings increase then as well. Even better, do this at various different times of the year and in various locations. Then see if the correlation persists.

You are right, the correlation is primarily observational.  But when there is more than one active hypothesis (and there almost always is), the key is to find some setup where the two hypotheses give different predictions and see which one is wrong.

This is yet another reason why a single experiment is not enough to overthrow a theory. The experiment needs to be conducted in a variety of situations to explore when the observed correlation (or lack) is there.

I think the basic problem is the expectation that science will give a 'mechanism' for all 'causes'. And that is simply false. In fact, the whole idea of 'mechanism' assumes a metaphysics that is very likely to be wrong.

This was a very concise explanation, but I would like to expound on the last statement, the idea that explaining a mechanism assumes metaphysics.  I'm not sure how you mean that so I would like to hear more.  What I do know is that providing a mechanism for any theory does not necessarily validate the theory.  What it does do is provide a context from which we can evaluate how likely the theory is valid.  If a theory or hypothesis has a very weakly devised mechanism, then it's reasonable to discard that idea.

An example:  acupuncture therapy.  There are very detailed descriptions of the mechanism for how acupuncture works, so this should work to make the hypothesis sound.  But the mechanism relies heavily on the existence an energy called "chi" and the precise location of important energy pathways, sometimes called meridians.  The existence of both chi and meridians is theoretical itself and cannot be assumed to be valid, so assuming this in a mechanism which is assumed to explain how acupuncture works is not valid.  Also, no scientific experiments conducted to evaluate the flow of energy or release of endorphins due to the insertion of needles (using as many blinds as possible) have failed.  So the mechanism in this case is practically useless.  However, in the case of something like the mechanism of how the covid 19 virus works to invade cells has helped to develop vaccines and other medications that have been successful.  So in this case the mechanism wasn't crucial in validating theories but was helpful in developing treatments that work because the theories are accurate. I also like how most explanations of acupuncture state how the practice is based on "Traditional Chinese Medicine", which intentionally invokes thoughts of ancient and mysterious practices when in fact, TCM is not ancient at all, nor particularly mysterious.  Or something like that.

I think that this is a pretty good example. The mechanism for TCM is fairly detailed. And *if* it was shown to work in multiple controlled trials, then it would be something that we would need to investigate further.

The problem is describing exactly what a 'mechanism' is. Ultimately, it is a description of the situation in terms of more fundamental items interacting. But what if there *is* no 'more fundamental level'? Then there can be no mechanism and *all* we have is correlation.

Hence, mechanisms only apply above the most fundamental level. We can talk about the mechanism of viral attachment in terms of polarity of amino acids in various proteins *because* we have proteins made of amino acids. We can talk about a mechanism for the properties of those amino acids because we know about atoms and bonding and how that affects electron distribution. We can talk about a mechanism for that because we have a descriptive theory, QM that allows us to calculate what those electron distributions will be.

But there *is no* mechanism for why electrons interact with each other the way they do. Electrons, as far as we know, are fundamental particles. The way they interact is simply part of what it means to be an electron. And that includes the fact that they are always associated with an electric field (that is a description of their interactions).

As another example, temperature is 'explained' by the kinetic energy of the molecules in a thing. if we ask for a 'mechanism', we will get into trouble, though. There is no 'mechanism' linking motion of molecules and temperature. Instead, the temperature *is* the motion of those molecules. And, from that description, we can derive the various properties of temperature.

In the case of consciousness, we can describe neural activities in this hierarchical structure, but to 'explain' consciousness may simply mean we say 'whenever the neurons do this, the person experiences that'. In a sense, the 'conscious state' *is* the behavior of those neurons. And, if we can derive all conscious experiences, using a translation table' (just like with temperature), that would *be* the explanation of the conscious states.

Furthermore, there is nothing unusual about consciousness in this. Every new phenomenon is going to be  similar. For example, electric current is described as the motion of electrons. But now, what is the mechanism of electrons being charged? There is no such mechanism. What is the mechanism for an electric field producing a force on electrons? Well, we can describe it in terms of interactions between electrons and photons. But what is the actual mechanism for that interaction? There is none. They simply interact in certain ways and that is the end of it. And we know about that interact by the correlations (not the causes) that we measure.

---

Well, let's consider what Chalmers proposed. Imagine a conscious person. Then imagine another being that is physically identical in every way with that conscious person. The question is whether it is coherent to say the construct is not conscious. I don't believe it is.

For example, if the conscious person waxes eloquent about their experience of the color red, so will the zombie. If the conscious person goes into a long discussion about their qualia, so will the zombie. if the conscious person acknowledges Mary might have learned something when she saw red, so would the zombie. In every single physical situation, the two will be *exactly* the same in how they respond.

And no, I don't think it is possible for that to occur without the 'zombie' actually being conscious. At some point in some way, there would be something where a non-conscious being would react differently than a conscious one and *that* would be a physical difference between the two.

The zombie is meant to be a thought experiment, nothing more. Chalmers' point is that, logically speaking, one can have all the "outward appearance" of a conscious person and behave like such, and yet still lack qualia. If it's even logically possible (even if perhaps not metaphysically possible) for a p-zombie to exist, then this lends credence to the hard problem.

And I don't think it is logically possible in a way that leads to a hard problem.

It is sort of like asking if it is logically possible to have a high temperature without the underlying molecules moving at high speeds.

Sure, it is *logically possible*, but the actual fact  is that it is physically impossible because temperature *is* the motion of those molecules. But that is what we have found out through a lot of investigation.

Our ignorance doesn't mean it is logically possible for it to be otherwise.

I suspect that the desire is for some sort of 'mechanism'. That, I believe, is a deep philosophical mistake. We cannot detect causality. What we can detect is correlation. And certain types of correlation we *call* causality. That is what it *means* to say X causes Y.

Of course, an explanation that invokes a mechanism is desired. If science cannot provide that, then that just means science has its limitations (which is what I said earlier).

And I think that the idea that a mechanism is *required* is a philosophical mistake. There will be things that simply don't have deeper explanations. And that might *be* the explanation.

Correlations alone can't resolve the hard problem. Even if you were to establish that the correlation was causal, there'd still be a hard problem. Simply because establishing that neuron firings in the CNS cause qualia does nothing to explain how that works. How something that is an electrochemical process leads to something so radically (and qualitatively) different.

And what, precisely, is required? If that link between neural activity and conscious states is testable, predictable, and universal, what else is actually required?

If I asked what else is needed to 'explain' what could possibly be required? When I say that mass produces a curvature of spacetime and that *is* gravity, is a mechanism for the production of that curvature required? NO. The explanation *is* the correlation between mass and curvature.

[Spongebob]

I think that this is a pretty good example. The mechanism for TCM is fairly detailed. And *if* it was shown to work in multiple controlled trials, then it would be something that we would need to investigate further.

The problem is describing exactly what a 'mechanism' is. Ultimately, it is a description of the situation in terms of more fundamental items interacting. But what if there *is* no 'more fundamental level'? Then there can be no mechanism and *all* we have is correlation.

Hence, mechanisms only apply above the most fundamental level. We can talk about the mechanism of viral attachment in terms of polarity of amino acids in various proteins *because* we have proteins made of amino acids. We can talk about a mechanism for the properties of those amino acids because we know about atoms and bonding and how that affects electron distribution. We can talk about a mechanism for that because we have a descriptive theory, QM that allows us to calculate what those electron distributions will be.

But there *is no* mechanism for why electrons interact with each other the way they do. Electrons, as far as we know, are fundamental particles. The way they interact is simply part of what it means to be an electron. And that includes the fact that they are always associated with an electric field (that is a description of their interactions).

As another example, temperature is 'explained' by the kinetic energy of the molecules in a thing. if we ask for a 'mechanism', we will get into trouble, though. There is no 'mechanism' linking motion of molecules and temperature. Instead, the temperature *is* the motion of those molecules. And, from that description, we can derive the various properties of temperature.

In the case of consciousness, we can describe neural activities in this hierarchical structure, but to 'explain' consciousness may simply mean we say 'whenever the neurons do this, the person experiences that'. In a sense, the 'conscious state' *is* the behavior of those neurons. And, if we can derive all conscious experiences, using a translation table' (just like with temperature), that would *be* the explanation of the conscious states.

Furthermore, there is nothing unusual about consciousness in this. Every new phenomenon is going to be  similar. For example, electric current is described as the motion of electrons. But now, what is the mechanism of electrons being charged? There is no such mechanism. What is the mechanism for an electric field producing a force on electrons? Well, we can describe it in terms of interactions between electrons and photons. But what is the actual mechanism for that interaction? There is none. They simply interact in certain ways and that is the end of it. And we know about that interact by the correlations (not the causes) that we measure.

---

Yes, I agree there are plenty of theories without workable mechanisms and that's why I said that mechanisms can't validate theories but can be helpful in developing experiments to test theories.  I love the analogy of how the Higgs Boson creates mass, that they group together in the Higgs field and slow it down.  Its not really a mechanism, or is it?  I'm not really sure but it certainly helps me to understand the concept.