Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[polymath257]

I don't see what needs to be explained: I have a first person experience because it is my rain that processes the information. it seems trivial to me.

In your view, first-person perspective is fundamental then?

This question has been bothering me. It just seems, well, strange.

The first person perspective is no more or less 'fundamental' than the third-person perspective is. It is simply a matter of who or what is collecting the data and about what.

But guessing about the meaning here, no, I don't see consciousness as fundamental. I see it as a derived property.

What I *do* see as fundamental is interaction. Things interact and, in fact, are defined by the types of interaction they can enter into.

Interactions change those things that are interacting, sometimes in simple properties (momentum, energy) and sometimes it changes the *type* of objects involved (say, changing a quark to a lepton). Such changes are information that the interaction happened.

So, in a sense, I do consider information to be basic: it is created in every interaction.

Living things, by their interaction with their environment, obtain information from their environment and modify behavior based upon that information. This is as true of plants and bacteria as it is true of animals.

Some animals have developed brains that are devoted to the processing of information collected by their senses (a type of interaction). When those brains get complicated enough in the right way, they have an internal representation of the organism itself (we can actually map out the regions in the brain that correspond to touch from different areas of the body).

When that happens, that internal representation of 'self' is the first person perspective. The way that other aspects of brain processing interact with that internal representation is the 'feely' aspect of consciousness.

I think dualism, whether substance dualism or property dualism, is based on flawed metaphysics (what is a substance?) and so misses the point. Consciousness is a type of interaction based on information about the 'self'.

[The Grand Nudger]

The worst that could be said about property dualism, I think, is that it's an arbitrary designation with no explanatory value. Sure, there are material properties and mental properties. Also material properties and wind properties. Material properties and burger properties. Material properties and tuesday properties. Material properties and cultural properties. etc.

Ultimately, it allows us to posit that it's not a difference of substance, but a difference of effect or subject - but we already knew that, didn't we, we want to know how the substance produces the effects, no matter how many categories of genuinely distinguishable effects there are. The idea that one substance can produce many disparate effects is true, but trivially so.

[LadyForCamus]

@GrandizerII and @Belacqua, thank you for taking the time with me. Grand, I know you’re feeling frustrated, and I really do appreciate it. Bel said something:

“The point is that for property dualists, these two things, while apparently occurring somehow in correlation, are very different properties and the one can't be reduced to the other.”

If 2. cannot be reduced to 1. (electrochemical firings between neuron synapses), and if we already have a generally decent understanding of 1., then what, exactly, is 2.? Just “something different”? If we assume there is a hard problem of consciousness (neurological versus phenomenological) for the sake of the argument, it seems to me that property dualism doesn’t offer a satisfying explanation that solves it any more effectively than physicalist/reductionist positions. It strikes me as the same mystery, just framed differently.

[GrandizerII]

@GrandizerII and @Belacqua, thank you for taking the time with me. Grand, I know you’re feeling frustrated, and I really do appreciate it. Bel said something:

Nah, it's good. I just don't have the energy atm for prolonged debates, that's all.

I have nothing against polymath or Ferro or anyone else I interacted with in this thread. In fact, I appreciate the challenge and inputs from them.

[emjay]

The worst that could be said about property dualism, I think, is that it's an arbitrary designation with no explanatory value.  Sure, there are material properties and mental properties.  Also material properties and wind properties.  Material properties and burger properties.  Material properties and tuesday properties.   Material properties and cultural properties.  etc.

Ultimately, it allows us to posit that it's not a difference of substance, but a difference of effect or subject - but we already knew that, didn't we, we want to know how the substance produces the effects, no matter how many categories of genuinely distinguishable effects there are.  The idea that one substance can produce many disparate effects is true, but trivially so.

This is the first time I'm actually starting to understand this argument you've made all along (hopefully ;-)). But if I am understanding it correctly, I think I have responded to it already, in a sense, in my thoughts given so far on this subject. I think it's fair to say I'm also a property dualist, but as Grandizer mentioned earlier, of a different flavour to him, Epiphenomenalism. In fact I think I'm probably the only one in the room with that position, lonely as it is ;-).

Anyway, what I mean by saying I thinking I've responded to this criticism already, is that though I recognise the hard problem, I think it's something that science can't address if viewed from the Epiphenomenalist POV, and doesn't address if viewed from the physicalist position (as I understand it) as described by you and polymath, that sees it as incoherent on account of the stated goals of physics; that consistent, universal, reliable etc correlation *is* causation from a physics point of view, with nothing further to explain, something I didn't know until polymath brought it up here, and also the observation, as you're also alluding to here I think, that physicalism is non-discriminating in its approach to causally 'correlatable' properties, that there is no difference from that point of view between 'internal' (ie subjective experience) and external properties (as opposed to the contention of property dualism that the internal and the external are categorically different in some sense and not reducible in this way)... again something I hadn't really seen explicitly stated by the physicalist position until polymath in this thread. My point being that either way, I see the hard problem as something that won't be addressed by science, either because it can't, under an Epiphenomenalist POV, or is incoherent under a physicalist POV... so either way leaving it as a question for philosophical speculation only, and thus likely unresolvable in any univerally accepted or definitive sense, and thus nothing to pin all our hopes for progress on, putting all our eggs in that basket so to speak.

That leads on to another way my position differs from Grandizer's, and presumably Belacqua's; in my characterisation of the value of scientific... ie physicalist... study into the brain and consciousness... the study of the neural correlates of consciousness. In this respect my Epiphenomenalist perspective is much more similar to yours or polymath's perspective than Grandizer's or Belacqua's, in that under Epiphenomenalism since there is a one-way causal relation between the physical properties (ie the neural correlates of consciousness) and the mental properties (ie phenomenal consciousness), then to map the one that we can map with science, means indirectly to map the other. It doesn't address the 'how' it arises, which I accept as already stated, but it does address, fully, the 'what' of what arises... and the value of that I'd say is most evident say in an example I saw on youtube of the look of absolute and pure joy on a woman's face who had suffered from chronic pain for a long time, and allowed neuroscientists to use an experimental treatment on her, stimulating a certain part of her brain... going into it I remember she looked hopeful but non-expectant, I think the look of someone who'd probably tried many treatments before without success, but as soon as the electrical stimulation took effect, the look of absolute joy and gratitude that spread across her face was incredibly moving. I'm afraid I don't remember what video it was but the point is that without the study of the neural correlates of consciousness, and in this case, the neural correlates of pain, that wouldn't have been possible.

Now I'm certainly not saying that I think Grandizer and Belacqua don't see the value of neuroscience in its own right, but just don't see it as a satisfactory explanation of consciousness itself... which is where we part ways; I think it is at the very least part of the full explanation of consciousness - a full catalogue or mental and physical events, fully mapped with one to one correspondence, would be a massive part - and at the most, the full explanation (if accepting the physicalist POV), but either way, as either Epiphenomenalist or physicalist, I think it's the only part that can be addressed with science, and as such we should do so to the utmost of our ability, and not allow getting bogged down in the hard problem, if one is accepted, to get in the way, since that looks to be an unresolvable philosophical problem whatever perspective you have (unresolvable in the sense of an agreed upon consensus, as is the case with most of philosophy).

As for the question of Epiphenomenalist or physicalist, that's not actually as huge a conceptual leap from one to the other for me as it would appear... and I've actually been playing with the idea in my head for a bit, and to look at the world from that physicalist POV, if only for a while, has been surprisingly mentally freeing/insightful in a lot of deeply personal/philosophical ways. Doesn't mean I can accept it, but it is certainly food for thought and opens up new perspectives for me, and at least as described in this thread by you and polymath, does not appear evasive in the main sense that would put me off such an idea, ie it explicitly accepts 'internal' subjective experience as a property, rather than outright ignoring it or trying to redefine it out of existence... though I think Grandizer and Belacqua might disagree with my accessment there; but that's how I take it - I've had much more frustrating discussions with physicalists, than here in this thread, on account of that - this feels like a breath of fresh air. A much bigger conceptual leap for me would be that from Epiphenomenalism, to, well, anything else. Especially how it relates to physical determinism. Which is perhaps not an issue for physicalism - because in that sense there does not seem to be much practical difference between Epiphenomenalism and physicalism in the way that matter, which is governed deterministically by physics in both views, directly or indirectly corresponds, on a direct one-to-one mapping basis between neural correlates and phenomena; either as in some Epiphenomenal sense caused by as some sort of emergent property, or in some physicalist sense inextricable from/absolutely identical the underlying physical states. But outside of physicalism, I don't have much conception of what a non-Epiphenomenalist POV entails... if the mental side for instance is deemed to be subject to any form of determinism, or somehow causally independent from all that, despite their being an admitted shared connection of substance. For instance I don't believe we have free will, I believe phenomenally we have the illusion of it (and that is a separate illusion from one that would deny consciousness itself exists - an illusion within consciousness), but that ultimately everything is governed by the underlying deterministic physics. So if the non-Epiphenomenalist view aims to argue that sort of free will into existence, it would be a much harder sell and much bigger conceptual leap for me.

Anyway, rambling aside, back to the original question... does it look like I've understood what you were meaning in your post, and did this address that criticism?

[The Grand Nudger]

In property dualism, everything is made of just one substance, reducible to just one substance. If a person thinks that there is more than one substance required, that there are things that don't reduce to substance a alone, that's not property dualism - it's substance dualism. Physicalism is or could be consistent with property dualism. That's the reason I don't see property dualism as a competing explanation to physicalism. It's not so much criticism, as a "yes, but".

The hard problem, imo, fits better with substance dualism - since it's supposed to be something no explanation of the physical mechanism(s), however complete, however predictive, however accurate - is contended to be able to answer. It's difficult to see how or why that would be the case if there is just the one type of substance, and "science substance"..no less.

That science or physicalism doesn't or can't address the hard problem - is a contention..not a fact of physicalism. I don't personally think it's incoherent - it certainly could have been the case that some other stuff, or some irreducible other property x, lead to our mind. That there was no way to produce a 1st person experience physically, for example. It just doesn't appear to be the case in actuality.

Epiphenomenalism, I think, could also be true - though I'd wonder in what sense mental events were incapable of having physical effects on other mental events - at least- which are themselves contended to be physical in at least some sense. Here, I think we're out of our depth. To what extent (if any) does the mind have control or effect on itself, let alone the rest of the physical world. I don't personally think it evolved to control itself, rather, as a model to control the system. It's capable of producing 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person views. This is no different fundamentally from one camera looking out from a subject, one camera looking at the same subject, and many cameras internal and external to the subject looking in all directions and creating a map from their combined input. Try playing a video game in 2nd at an odd angle - you'll see why living creatures might not favor that view for their normal operation. 3rd is better (mmo view) - but much more difficult to create purely from a hardware perspective, let alone the processing.

If I pay attention, and close my eyes, I can put together a rudimentary 3rd. I had a prolonged experience of the 2nd, very compelling, but, for the most part, I waddle around in 1st - the natural arrangement of my sensory organs.

(I always think you've got a handle on the convo, emjay, always )

[Belacqua]

It strikes me as the same mystery, just framed differently.

That's exactly right. That's why it's a really really hard problem.

[The Grand Nudger]

Is there a hard problem of biology? Why or why not? We could do it for anything - even materialism itself. Could it be that a full material description still leaves something about materiality unexplained, that aspect not reducible to material interactions?

[LadyForCamus]

It strikes me as the same mystery, just framed differently.

That's exactly right. That's why it's a really really hard problem.

I mean, I don’t know if I’d call it a problem, per say. More like, ‘we just don’t know everything to know about it yet.’ We can say that about a great many things. That’s part of the joy and excitement of scientific inquiry.

[The Grand Nudger]

The hard problem isn't the contention that we don't know everything about something yet - but that we literally can't know about it in some particular way - usually scientific investigation.

If there was everything that science could ever help us learn already learnt about consciousness, every single material observation made, every single material fact established....the hard problem suggests that it would still be completely and fundamentally unexplained.

I'll give it this - it's a bold claim.