Dominus Paradoxum

Sorry bill, I don't think your quite famaliar with philosophical terminology. If qualia do exist, they are non-intentional in the representative sense, not as the representationalists suppose. According to the representationalists, what we think of as qualia are really nnthing at all, instead they're represented features rather than representing. The issue is whether or not there exists "mental paint". Just as a painting itself is not nude, but rather represents a nude figure, so the representationalists believe that what we take to be qualia are represented, and not actually a feature of the mental state at all. Those who believe qualia are non intentional believe that qualia are more like mental paint: they're something *intrinsic* to the mental state. Does that make it clearer?

jon1

boneyard bill, for a detailed explanation of representationalism see this essay

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/p...sentation.html

Now, you might think this is a little long as Chalmers tends to talk about everything he can pertaining to the subject matter of any one of his given papers so if that's the case scroll down to the summary he gives at the end.

Adrian Selby

I disagree, subjective experience is the name given to the functioning of certain organisations or matter, not 'matter itself'. LIghtning for example does not have the organisational and relational properties we see as necessary where we have apparent cases of consciousness.

Matter of course has relational 'properties' and it is the relation of the matter that, in the brain as a whole, forms awareness sophisticated enough that it is self aware. We don't seem to find controversial the the sensory feedback loops inherent in the central nervous systems of organisms with simpler structures, the question might then be whether we can allow that in virtue of complexity of structure alone, interaction with the environment reaches a level where conceptualisation occurs and, for me, the problems begin to generate.

I'm glad. It is after all a theory purporting to describe something in a way that offers the most coherent and useful picture of what it is we're addressing here. When one looks at theories such as this, especially ones where the nature of empirical evidence is part of the problem, given its essentially 'third person perspective' nature, we have to look at what the theory sets out to describe and allow, namely, a non reductionist account of experience that nevertheless solves the problems of the Cartesian view. The acceptance of conceptual models, according to the systems theories I'm 'into' is more a matter of what systems are most useful, rather than what systems are 'more right' than other systems.

Nevertheless, the considerable evidence that when brain processes are undergone the person being tested reports mentallings undergone are at a certain level non controversial, this theory merely attempts to avoid the problems of many others in describing why this might be so.

I have to confess I'm not au fait with the full picture of the concept of 'qualia' but regarding the information I have about the world, I would say that I cannot have information about the world without having integrated it into a model, which is of course partly the brain's active co-ordination of different sense data and partly the higher functions of the brain looping back and for whatever goal directedness information with the lower functions is required to achieve goals, which, given our complexity are numerous and compresent at different 'strengths'. In this sense, if qualia are the senses, put simply, I don't see how it is at all possible to have information abou the world without them, and yet I'm saying that we do not get the information directly as it were, it is mediated by the co-ordinating functions in the brain, at least at the level of consciousness.

Not necessarily, matter can of course, in certain relations come to have properties in virtue of those relations, this isn't to say that there is more 'there', more 'stuff' than matter, only that matter when organised in certain ways allows there to be systems that have self awareness and set up these problems where they attribute to their self awareness something that can't be found in the rest of matter, higher primates and other animals aside. I worry that part of the problem is that we're anthropomorphising. We're just physical systems with just about the most complex physical structure for our central nervous systems. Our awareness is the most sophisticated there is. Calling matter a reductive claim is inevitable if you approach the problem from a dualistic perspective, I don't understand what it is we're 'reducing' from, after all, its the question of whether there is a mind to reduce to a body that's at stake, as such, I don't find materialism to be reductive, though I've seen in the past people thinking that the reduction must be one of a certain vocabulary to another, namely that we must somehow only talk of c-fibers rather than utilise the rich natural language vocabulary we've built up for the highly complex and nuanced communication our central nervous systems are capable of in order that we may survive (in a very light darwinian sense) our society and proceed successfully within it.

This latter point seems for me clearly brought out in your following quote:

I would disagree that there is a 'relationship' between sentient experience and c-fibers firing, they're two ways of describing the same referent. The sticky bit turns on the fact that the referent is most easily described by the third person vocabulary of c-fibers, however, to re-iterate, the identity is one of reference, the difference is one of undergoing the fibers firing (undergoing being something that only complex central nervous systems can do in relation to great looking boobs) and describing what's undergone from outside the system itself, or mediately. You mention in the previous section 'mind stuff' and I've said that stuff is precisely what the biperspectival identity theory says isn't helpful in describing the identity, because of the problems you've outlined.

Again, the reductiveness you refer to seems to require that we can or must reduce what is going on when one sees boobs to merely electrons firing. Indeed, that's all it is, in the sense that the referent for the experience/fibers firing is best described in the third person by the latter, but this is not asserting the primacy of the latter for this reason only, rather, I worry that its a confusion about the status of the interpersonal natural language concepts we have, as they describe to us our experience in socially useful ways that we're conflating with the specific and precise scientific vocabulary that is generated to understand what is going on in the brain when there are first person reports of this kind.

What else would they be? NB it is not just the configurations, it is the processes occurring constantly within and as part of the configurations, namely, the configurations working that have parts that, as undergone, are relayed in natural language as 'these boobs are great'.

Which would have been a great last 4 words to a philosphy post had i not included this sentence

sodium

Let me try to explain my view a bit better. Think of the brain as a big machine, and imagine we really could observe and understand it in all its detail from the outside. We would be able to see certain reactions corresponding to pain. This is the third-person perspective.

The brain itself would not normally share this perspective. However, it would still want to have a name for the pain reaction, so that when the brain went through the right process, it would be able to say, "that was pain." This is the first person perspective.

So in the third person perspective, we are giving names to externally observed mental processes. In the first-person perspective, the mental process triggers the name, without observing the process externally.

Of course the first person and third person perspectives are different, and seem to describe quite different things, which is why people have trouble accepting materialism. But they are the same events viewed from a different perspective.

In a sense, the first person view is not accessible, in that the only real way to experience the sensation in the same way that the brain does, is to have the experience happen to you, and even then the experience is best described as being similar. Feeling the sensation, and observing the sensation occur in another brain, are quite different, just as being full, and observing a full stomach are different.

sodium

My contention is that we haven't really explained consciousness, in the sense that we can't yet build our own conscious minds from scratch. But I think the philosophical objections, like qualia, are just errors in reasoning, and can be explained today.

Sometimes people define qualia as being immaterial, in which case I claim they don't exist. The qualia you describe do exist, but are not immaterial. They refer to physical processes.

I think the operation of an intelligent brain is not best described as instinctual. Although it would be best described in terms of mechanical, non-intelligent processes. An explanation of intelligence in terms of a smaller internal thinker, is no explanation at all. I don't know if that's what you're advocating, because you have scrupulously avoided declaring any alternate view to materialism.

If you believe in some kind of immaterial mind, as well as the material brain, then you are a dualist. Then the question is, does the immaterial mind cause events in the brain, or not. If you say yes, you are an interactionist.

Do you have any evidence for that statement?

How do you know? Can you just feel the immateriality of your qualia?

See my last reply to Dominus.

excreationist

boneyard bill:
(I've already directed other posts towards you)
This was in reply to sodium's "When your brain goes through the proper procedure, this is pain."
i.e. there is pain if and only if the brain goes through the proper procedure (or process), otherwise the pain process didn't happen and there is no pain. So with a non-pain type process (improper procedure) there isn't pain.

As I said earlier, I think the pain signal is something that the brain tries to minimize and avoid, depending on other possibly conflicting priorities. I think intensely trying to avoid something is similar to "hurting". The brain is drawing from many years of accumulated experience and learning to analyse the pain signal (to try and avoid it) so it is dealing with it in a very sophisticated way compared to other things that want to avoid things - like mice or bumblebees. (Really unintelligent animals and AI doesn't count since their responses are hard-coded rather then them being able to teach themselves new behaviours and even new generalized problem solving strategies [that can be reapplied to many areas]).

My rough definition is that they are preprogrammed responses to input - e.g. a baby's sucking reflect, etc.

I think it is what motivates us to do anything at all. Our main ones would be to seek the thrill of newness - though this brain stimulation could be fairly mild. It causes people to get bored with repetition and go out and discover and explore, etc. Another drive is what I call connectedness or coherency. When things seem connected together - when things make sense or we feel like we belong or we see something familiar, we can get warm-fuzzy feelings (a kind of pleasure) depending on the strength of the connection. I think this is why people feel good if they feel link they have a relationship with some creator-god, etc. And we need to maintain a lot of connectedness too... otherwise we feel alienated from things, or overwhelmed by chaos and can have a nervous breakdown, etc. (something like that) I think that drive would cause us to be scared of things like ridicule because that would need to a loss of connectedness and familiarity - we'd feel insecure. But it depends how people are raised. They can seek drives in strange ways - through fetishes. And they can have phobias where the avoidance behaviour is motivated by a drive as well - but they learnt to associate the drive with the feared thing to an inappropriate degree.

Well I think the inputs that our intelligence processes is qualia (from the intelligence's point of view). I mean the qualia is the current meaning of the data. e.g. you could be looking at a cat and visual data like its shape plus triggered memories that describe the implications of cat objects are fed to other areas of your brain. Your brain then takes the meaning at face value (i.e. doesn't realise that just some chemicals were involved) and goes about its business - e.g. studies the cat more in an attempt to get some newness pleasure, or whatever it determines is the best course of action (based on problem solving methods being triggered, etc).

boneyard bill

Dominus Paradoxum writes:

Not much. But thanks for the effort. I had understood an intentional object to be a matter of focus. As a rose might focus our attention upon itself. But that is at least partly a matter of our own psychic state. I probably got the idea from gestalt psychology.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

Agreed. My point here is that we cannot separate qualia from information. That leads to epiphenomenalism, and that's a complete dead end. That, in my view, is Chalmer's great error.

Perhaps I should clarify. I take the materialist position to be that all of existence can be explained in terms of material entities and physical laws. When I use the term "matter" I mean anything that can be derived from physical matter and material processes. A tornado is material but, of course, the material alone doesn't make a tornado. A tornado is matter involved in a very specific process acting according to known physical laws.

BB writes:
Selby replies:
Selby again:
I fail to understand how "two ways of describing the same referent" in not a "relationship." I also do not grasp the difference between a "first person" report and a subjective or mental one or between a "third person" report and an objective or material one. I don't think the debate is advanced by substituting mental language with another term that means the same thing.

We seem to agree on this much. There is a correlation between the physical activity in my brain and subjective experience. You are claiming that there are not two events. There is one event and two observers. The subjective observer who has the experience and the objective observer who's looking at an EEG or similar measuring device. But you claim that both are reporting the same event.

My response is to say "prove it." I don't mean prove it with scientific exactitude. I mean show how it is possible that a c-firing is the same as an experience. If you prove it in this way you will have reduced the subjective experience to a physical event. It is nothing but a physical event in the same way that H2O is nothing but water and that the electricity is nothing but the flow of electrons.

Your claim is that it doesn't have to be reduced. I agree. But if you do not reduce it. You are dealing with a fundamental postulate. First person experiences (to use your terminology) and third person brain processes are identical. You simply have a choice. Your claim is supported by evidence that allows this reduction or your claim in unsupported and un-reduced. If it is undreduced it is a fundamental postulate. First person experiences (subjectivity, mind) are inherent in third person (objective, material) processes. You can not leave the claim unreduced and unproven and still claim that it is not a postulate and not a fundamental part of your system. The one follows from the other. If it is not proven, and it is not a postulate, what is it? And if it is postulate, then "mind stuff" is inherent in matter. It doesn't matter whether "materialism" is a reductive position or not. Of course, it is, and that is why I claim your position is not materialist. But the important point is: What follows logically from the identity claim? This discussion isn't about philosophical labels. Those are only used for convenience. My point is that the identity theory is subject to the same burdens as any other theory that cannot reduce sentient experience to physical processes.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

Again, let me re-iterate. I do not say the reductiveness is required. I only say that without it your claim becomes a fundmental postulate of your system. Your postulate then becomes, "c-fiber firings and sentient exerience are the same thing." This is your claim, not mine. I only point out that if c-fiber firings and sentient experience are the same thing, then such sentient experience is an inherent characteristic of matter. So matter is not matter as we have understood it. It is mind/matter. The is the logical implication of the identity theory.

boneyard bill

Sodium writes:

How do you know they refer to physical processes?


First of all, what mechanical, non-intelligent, (and apparently also non-instinctual) processes did you have in mind?

Secondly, my point was that qualia is information, but it is a particular kind of information and the kind of information it is makes a difference. For example, a baby feels hungry so it seeks a tit. It's little zombie twin has no feeling so it doesn't feel hungry. So it won't seek out a tit unless it is programmed to do so. In other words, we have to explain its behavior in terms of some sort of automatism. Now the larger point was that we can multiply these automatisms indefinitely just as the Ptolemaics could add epicycles to their system. In doing so, we can claim to have a complete explanation for human behavior. But it's an explanation that becomes very cumbersome over time. Qualia enables us to simplify our explanations. A baby eats because it is hungry. We seek food because we want to live. We have a will to live because living feels good. We don't need bundles of automatisms to explain these things.

I think my alternate view should be apparent by now. I believe mind is an inherent characteristic of the universe itself. If mind is a fundamental reality, all kinds of problems we're currently puzzling about disappear.