boneyard bill

Metaxy writes:

It doesn't "logic out" for you because it isn't logical. The only way you can come to believe it is accept materialism as a dogma. In that case it has to be explained in materialist terms and any materialist explanation is preferred over any other. That is why, to hold the materialist you have to believe that the sight of two luscious, well-formed, naked boobs and the firing of a c-fiber in your brain are the same thing. One event, not two.

boneyard bill

Comestible Venom writes:

And why would you want to suppose that. Even for a moment.

excreationist

The c-fiber would be the medium for the message. And pleasure or vision or whatever would be the meaning of the message. Other parts of the brain would be used to decode the message.

It is a bit like how a computer file just holds some binary data - and this can be decoded using programs into different formats - e.g. sound information, or video, or 3D data, etc. Of course, the computer doesn't appreciate what that data type is all about, like a human does. But on the other hand, humans use a 100 billion neuron brain to interpret the world with, and it takes them about 2 years to learn how to talk to some degree (and abstractly access memories) then many more years to be able to think the sophisticated philosophical thoughts we're having now. The key thing is that they *learnt* to do it - so the intelligence is theirs - it wasn't programmed in, like classical AI is. (Newer AI can sometimes learn to a degree, but the high cost of neural networks has slowed things down)

Adrian Selby

To undergo the c-fiber firing is to undergo the experience of being excited by boobs. The mental process is the undergoing of a brain process, according to biperspectival identity theory, the difference is phenomenological, dependent entirely on the nature of the access to the c-fiber firing. "Your" access is immediate, you are partly that c-fiber firing coextensively with many other systems in the brain all working in the way they do. Describing the event can be done in first or third person modes of access, and in third person modes of access we observe the brain. We cannot observe the first person mode of access, i.e. the 'undergoing' merely, 'the undergone'. Because we cannot be your brain perceiving. Only you can.

Biperspectival identity theory, as I understand it, also supposes that there are no 'mental objects' that are identified with physical objects, rather there are 'mentallings' and 'processes' in this sense it purports to escape the difficulties associated with 'things' because this can distort the expression of the identity. As such, talk of hardware and software doesn't strike me as a helpful metaphor because of the attendant difficulties Searle outlined regarding his Chinese Room. Equally, the adverbial view sidesteps this 'qualia' problem, due to denying there are 'qualia' via denying there are 'things' that mind events are. So, to say that a biological process is not identical to a 'qualia' suggests either that the qualia is a thing, having an distinct ontological status, which makes it a full Cartesian position, or, a qualia is just a name for the undergoing of a brain process. I don't see that undergoing a brain process should 'feel like undergoing a brain process' we have common and natural language categories that have been borne of a dualistic understanding of a separate mind and brain that now form a net of most efficacious vocabularies for describing the our 'undergoings of brain processes' in interpersonally meaningful terms. I wonder whether this has created in part the sense of a distinction in the light of recent neuropsychological progress with regard to the relationship of brain processes to the 'minds' that supposedly undergo them.

I would say here Bill that you are contingently unaware of the identity, i.e. you confuse the lack of an identity of sense with the lack of an identity of reference.

excreationist

Well I think that pain is just a message that tells our brain that some element of its input should be avoided (e.g. what you're eating might taste rotten, or you might have stepped on some glass, etc). The message can have varying intensities and the brain calculates if that pain (the continued presence of the pain message) should be endured (to prevent an even greater pain or seek a greater pleasure) or if it should be avoided somehow. It can be associated with areas of the body so that the message appears to come from those areas. It can also be associated with literal or suppressed screaming, grunting, etc. On the other hand, I think pleasure involves a message telling the brain that some element of its input should be seeked/repeated. e.g. to encourage eating of sweet foods... until negative factors outweigh the positive feelings. Note that most pleasures/pains that would be involved in rational thought would be very slight compared to other pleasures/pains we can feel (or process, in order to determine an optimal course of action [which may be flawed due to fetishes and phobias, etc]).
I think that a baby's perception of pain would be similar to maybe a dog's...and that through learning about how the world works to a sophisticated level, it develops a more sophisticated level of consciousness - like that of a chimp and then a human child. I think the sophistication or level of our consciousness depends on the level of our self-learnt intelligence which we autonomously use to analyse everything... I think if people analyse things less (especially regarding their own experiences) their sense of self can begin to evaporate... anyway, part of our experience of pain would involve us analysing it in a sophisticated way than just the raw experience of the pain. If only the raw experience of pain is involved, then babies and foetuses would feel that too... they just wouldn't be analysing it to the extent that we do. They wouldn't question it.... they simply try and avoid things when the pain signal was too great (or cry, etc), we do that too, but we like to think we're really in control of our choices (that they are determined by the pleasure and pain we experience or expect). Hopefully some of that answered your question.
As far as "It is quite unnecessary from a materialist point of view" goes... it is essential so that we know what to do (things that are desirable - linked to pleasure) and not what to do (things that are desirable - linked to pain). Without that, we wouldn't have any reason to do things. Pain *forces* us to avoid things, while pleasure *forces* us to seek/repeat things. Though their intensity can be subtle, and we can feel many pleasures and pains simultaneously but choose the optimal (possibly skewed) path based on weighing up the perceived outcomes of possible actions and what pleasure/pain we can have in the present...
Intense pain (assuming it isn't outweigh by higher priorities like the threat of even greater pain or the threat of a loss of greater pleasures) demands a fast response from us. That would help us cope in ancient times. e.g. if we ate some rotten food, we'd spit it out straight away, rather than a minute later... or if we got a thorn in our foot we'd pull it out quick.
In the modern world, we might have a bad feeling (e.g. a hurting chest) and that would cause us to try and fix it - like going to see the doctor. Without pain, we'd either not feel anything bad, or we'd have an automatic reflex to try and deal with it - e.g. go into spasms or make the immune system go on overdrive. Perhaps there would be a feeling in our chest - that isn't displeasurable - but we can detect it and so tell the doctor about it... but say a little kid is involved... they might tell their parents that their chest feels funny - but it wouldn't feel bad, so they mightn't even bother. And people would get confused with funny feelings in their chest and things like ticklish feelings, or pins and needles, etc. But pain is hardwired in the brain as something we're supposed to avoid. (i.e. it is bad)

ComestibleVenom

Because that is what an intrinisc, ineffable and private qualia involves. If qualia does not involve those problematic and frankly silly properties, then there is no particular problem for science and hence materialism.

We do in fact recognize that ideas associated with qualia (like time-sensitive degeneration of awareness, limited spotlight content, difficulty in describing consciousness in natural language) are built into modern theories of mind. Yes, they require that we abandon qualia per-se but not all that makes qualia compelling and to an extent true.

jon1

"Qualia are sensations. The five senses. Sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Is this question controversial?"

Well actually it is, there is debate on exactly what properties qualia has such as whether it is intrinsic, private, ineffable, or non-intentional. These are the common properties ascribed to qualia.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

That is the theory, and it would be nice if some evidence could be provided to support it. But I won't hang my critique on that particular thread.

Such a view, even if correct, radically alters our understanding of what matter is. In fact, this position seems much closer to the property dualist position than it does to materialism.

The firing of a c-fiber is an electrical charge. According to this theory an electrical charge has another side to it - a subjective side. Therefore, lightning, which is also an electrical charge, might also have a subjective side to it. In fact, the theory suggests that it would have some sort of proto-subjectivity that we are unable to access. The difference between a c-fiber firing and lightning is that we can communicate with a subject, an individual in the case of a c-fiber firing and we can't with lightning.

However you want to look at it, it is claiming that subjective experience is an inherent property of matter itself. That is not the materialist position. That is property dualism.

Why is there such an argument over materialism in the first place? Because materialism is a reductive claim and therefore requires a reductive explanation of sentient experience. It requires it because it claims that everything can be explained with reference to matter and physical laws and nothing else.

If I claim that matter "causes" sentience or that sentience "arises" from matter, I am making a claim about the nature of matter. I am saying that matter is something different from what we have assumed it to be. It contains, as a fundamental aspect of its nature, "mind-stuff." So I must either produce a reductive explanation of sentience i.e. it is "nothing but" the firing of a c-fiber in the same way that electricity is nothing but the flow of electrons. Or I must accept that "mind-stuff" is fundamental to matter itself which is the property dualist position. The supposed identity theory that you have outlined does not show that sentient experience and the firing of a c-fiber are the same thing. It asserts it. I have no argument with such an assertion. I would only insist that the logical follow-up to this assertion is to state that it is a fundamental relationship of nature and therefore that sentient experience is a fundamental characteristic of matter. Without a reductive explanation, we must posit that the relationship is fundamental i.e. a scientific law that cannot be reduced to anything more fundamental.

What this theory is really saying is that, given the right configurations of matter and material processes, subjective experience will arise. But it doesn't show that these configurations are the subjective experience itself. If subjective experience cannot be reduced to these configurations then they are inherent is such configurations i.e. mind is inherent in matter. This is property dualism masquarading as materialism.

boneyard bill

comestible venom writes:

Why do you find such properties to either problematic or silly? I experience the world as qualia. Without qualia I might know about the world but I would have no experience of it just as I know the color of the White House even though I'm not looking at it.

It is theoretically possible to have information about the world without having qualia. But, in fact, the only information I actually have about the world all came to me through qualia. I only people I know of who claim otherwise also claim to psychics. So I don't see why qualia should be regarded as problematic. Only a dogmatic materialist can see in that way. Nor do I see why qualia shouldn't be regarded as intrinsic. I will concede that they might not be. But since qualia constitute the source of all my knowledge, it seems more probable that they would be intrinsic than any other factor.

I don't see what is particularly ineffable about qualia except they are private. My qualia are ineffable to anyone else but not necessarily to me. If qualia are ineffable in some other way, so is everything we know.

Indeed, qualia are the one thing we know for certain. How problematic can that be?

boneyard bill

Jon 1 writes:

Non-intentional? Who says that? Chalmers? I've dealt with the other properties in my previous post. But I see no reason to assume that qualia are non-intentional. Their non-intentionality would depend on your wider theoretical approach. I don't think we can ascribe such a property to qualia per se.