John Page

Interesting misunderstanding! Now *I* know what *you* mean!

I guess it was my *is* projecting my *I* onto your "I", the one that *is*, as opposed to the one that your *is* thinks is *I*!!

Cheers, John

Neilium

I believe that robots are our future:

http://www.theonion.com/onion3522/ro...he_future.html

Frotiw

I disagree. I am a materialist and strong supporter of naturalism but I am also what might be called phenomological realist. This problem is of a completly different character than other scientific problems including vitalism/mechanism debate. I would never support a stance like vitalism but phenomenalism is something different. First of all vitalism/mechanism debate is principally POSSIBLE to solve in naturalistic terms where consciosness/NCC-debate is fundamentally and principally IMPOSSIBLE to solve by current natualistic terms. This make a big difference. Also Vitalism depends of all sort of odd metaphysical/theological claims such as living spiritual components while phenomenology(in this sense atleast) has nothing to do with metaphysics or theology. Phenomenological realism(again in this context) is simply the acceptance of phenomenons of consciusness. After a little "reflection" I believe many might concider the denial of consciosness to be less plausible than e.g. most naturlistic clams. That is the denial of phenomenons like e.g. pain and colours seem completly strange and unthinkable. It would be quite amazing to imagine without the experience of colours, tastes, smells, feelings, "inner voice", and thoughts. I mean you can not even IMAGINE without the use phenomenons. What reductionists(current naturalism) ask us to do is to imagine or theorize with being imaginative and theorizing. The seems strange at best. I might hypothetically doubt "quatum mechanic" and the "theories of relativity" but not (even hypothetically) doubt that that I am consciousness. This does indeed seems like an unsovlable problem that according to Wittgenstein characterize philosofical problems. Having said all this and stressed the opinion that this is indeed a real/relevant philosophical problem not(with current terminology atleast) solveable by contemporary naturalism the following must be said. the problem is unsovled but naturalistic oriented scientist should not let themselves hindered by philosophical quarrel. Though the fundamentals in a field of science are not acounted for(satisfactory) science can still progess. This goes for quantum mechanics where the sub quantum level isn't fully explored still physics at higher level can progress. The same goes for cognitive science. I have defended the notion that the problem as unsovleable by natualism but I am not out to bash and attack natualism. Natualistic oriented cognitive science(and sister sciences obviosly) should continue the important and valuable empirical and theoretical work with great and unhindered enthusiasm though the philosophical problem might be unaccounted for.

For those who might be new to this thread and interested in a philosophical introduction to this topic I recommend the works pf Chalmers and Searle. I don't remember the titles but I recommend articles concerning "the hard problem" vs. "the easy problems". That is concerning what might and might not(potentially) be solved by current natualistic framework.

MyKell

Frotiw,
Thank you for the insight. However, I still cannot see what natural sciences cannot solve. I'm not talking about the usual "greedy" reductionist approach, but I'm talking more about the hierarchial reductionism, where you go down one or two hierarchial levels to explain a phenomenon.
Consciousness is, thus, not explained by the quantum levels of the brain but more by the global molecular and by the cellular behaviour of the brain.
Now, I'm making the assumption that other people are conscious in similar ways to how I am conscious. This is because we perceptually categorize the world similarly. (we have similar genes, protein complexes, synapses, brains, etc...). But for a bat, I just assume it is conscious in completely different ways. I (might?) never know what the bat is seeing however, I hope to describe the molecular and cellular mechanisms that give rise to its mental scenary. Now, that doesn't mean that bats do not have qualia for color. Color is by no means a property of electromagnetic spectrum in my humble opinion (do you agree?).
What I'm trying to say, is although, at the moment we don't know what a bat is seeing, in the future, and by understanding our own qualia, we might be able to predict other qualia arising in different species and ultimately in machines.
Further critique is appreciated

MyKell

P.S. Of course, this doesn't mean that consciousness becomes a shared experience. At least not at the stage I'm discussing. It all depends on the correlation between the 1st person experienece and the 3rd person observations. If we can correlate the qualia with their physical basis (conditions), we can assume that if the conditions are met in other systems, they probably give rise to similar qualia.

Frotiw

Mykell,
First off I would like say that it is a great joy to discuss with intelligent people like Mykell. We might agree or not agree it is a great pleasure in any case.
I am not very proficient trained in all the arguemts in "philosophy of the mind" but I do know of some remarks that can be made against the naturalistic oriented side. I agree with you that between humans it is very reasonable to asume consciuosness in other humans. Some will properly keep one empahsizing that we can only know personal inner-experience and have no right to speak of others phenomenons. This is not a stance I will submit myself to. I agree on your view that we share since humans basicly same material components there is no reason not to asume that we are(as humans) conscious. There are problems though. I am not sure how intersting it is but it must be explained how(apparently) one phenomenon(e.g. pain) can be realized by many different ways. Personally I feel pretty convinced by the(congitive/mathematical/biological) theories of neural networks, I think you know what I mean. The synaptic "weights" doesn't have to me identical configured to achieve an aproximate result. Our feeling of pain may differ a little but not substantially.
What is more intersting is the problems of mental causality. This is something I intend to read more about and I don't really think I can justify bringing this discussion aboard with knowing more about. As far as I know the problems is about confusion on the mental and physical level. Apparantly one mental event can be the course of one another. At least mental events seems to follow in sucsession. According to physicalism(which we assume true) physical events are the course of mental events. Apparently this course some confusion. Does this mean that the mental events are "overdetermined"?
1. Both mental and physical course the mental effect, how can this be? To courses for one effect?
2. Mental to Mental only is obviosly problematic and completly against naturalism.
3. Physical to mental only. (This my view, I am a determinist) .To be honest I am not sure what the problem is despite the odness that my wish to scrath my head is an illusion. I can't cause my hand to scratch my head since this would apparently would be mental to physical causation.

As said this not something I know a lot about, definatly not enough. I have some reading stuff if somebody should be interested however:

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/f...usalPowers.htm

http://artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/Mind...tionalism.html

Nuturalism(in some form) is support several places in the above writtings. Atually the main reason why I am not very good at bringing opinions of contrast from these articles is because I tend to agree. Actually I think at core Mykell and I do not disagree that much especially after reading Mykells last replay(as said I do lean against naturalism). However I think that traditionel natualistic "set up" of the question might not be completly profittable and fit when solving the mind/brain problem. I agree in the part that fundamentally what "IS" is physical and it is rewarding to investigate the physical by naturalism. Where I disagree is in the area(epistemological actually) concerned what we can explain and what we cannot explain by naturalism. I think what characterize this question(apart from others) is that the question has not been asked "the right way". That is I wholly agree in naturalisms metaphysical claim(materialism) but not the epistemological that everything can be "satisfactory" explained by naturalism. Obviosly the results of an investigation depends on the method of investigation. For naturalism it is a requirement that everything is explained objectivly(in more than one way this concept is confused). In this question the subject of investigation is Subjectivity. Natualism can't explain this question without either removing what makes subjectivity subjective* or remove the requirement of objectivity. The way this is outlined we are going bad from the very start. I believe this is stance that both supporters of kant, Husserl and some analytic philosophers could agree on. In kantian terms: The possiblties of settling such a question depends on the conditions of the way we see the world(antimetaphysics, transendental categories). In analytic philosophical terms: The language and framework is inappropiate for solving this question. Conceptual strichtness must be uphold while searchig for a better way of asking the question. Hopefully each philosophical "tradition" will handle different objetions to natualism and materialism.


*Subjectivity seems to be intentional(Husserl). That is mental events seems to be intending(pointing at) some content. You rarely just(alone) exercise a thought. What you do is to exercise a thought About something. The intentionallity is the pointing components of mental act. It is this which in make the subjective differ from the objective. The Objective is always "the end/goal of an intention". That is(trivially) that you cannot imagine an elephant without it being the content of a thought. The intentionallity is not the content of a mental act and hence should not be confused with idealism. The intentionallity is the mode of presentation. This explanetory force is that materialism is compatible with the non-reduction of mental phenomenon. The naturalist stance fails in by lacking the realization of the difference between intentionallity/subjectivity/pointingness and objectivity. Naturalism seems to believe that there is no intentionallity that the: Things are visible and accesable but as pure objective not presented though the mode of mind.
That is seeing the elephant while forgetting that the elephant is seen by the means of something or in mode of something. Or as Kant himself formulated it: Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer, Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind. ... Nur daraus, dass sie sich vereinigen, kann Erkenntnis entspringen.*"
The point of this rambling is that naturalism following it's own dictate of objectivity will alway fail to capture the essence of subjectivity(consciousness). It can only be explain as object where it has lost the supstantitiating qualia of subjevtivity(intentionallity). The point of this is that this last notion of intentionallity is what makes the hard problem hard. This why I say naturalism will always fail. Following Kykell's terminology we only capture the "easy" problem. This part is rougly equivalent of explaining chemistry as physics, e.g. temperature as molecular momentum. There is an explanatory level between e.g. chemistry and physics but the same framework will do and there will be no(to knowledge) surplus in chemistry. This is what makes phenomenogly contrary to chemistry, biology, etc. problematic to reduce. Phenomenology cannot currently(ever I say) be explaing "lossless" in physical terms. Even if there is a "loss" in e.g. the reduction of chemistry to physics I would claim that is would not be as substantial as in the reduction from phenomonoly to physics. What nescessarily(as previosly explained) is reduced is The substantiating quality(intentionallity). The quality that really matter for consciosness.

*I attempted to translate to english but failed to find a propper word for "anshauungen" hence it lost it's point

Color is by no means a property of electromagnetic spectrum in my humble opinion (do you agree?).

Yup. I agree. Following the above notion of intentionality and modes of presentation I, most humbly, believe that corlours are a mode of (visual)presentation. That is the colours as mental phenomenon are un captuable to contemporary physics. The explanation stops where colours suddenly appear emergent from neural correlates. Following the above the colours are not a a member of causal of events but a condition for certain causal events. What I mean is that the colours are the mode of presentation of visual phenomenon. There is a dependancy relationship. There will be no visible visual phenomens without colour still the colours do not participate the causal events(in naturalistic terms). What do participate in causality is the reflection of light at certain wavelenghts, activity in the central nerviuos system etc.. Will there be colours if there are noone to seem them? No there will be no colours only physical phenomenon. Colours are part consciuos transcendental conditions for visual phenomenon. But all this proberly makes no sense I it getting very late here in Denmark.
Congratulations and Thanks if you have endured to actually read all this rambling.

Cheers.

MyKell

Thank you, I really appreciate that. The pleasure is mine

I totally agree. Free will is an illusion IMHO




I'm not well trained in the philosophy of the mind either. I'm not sure how much "losses" we can cut down on by our attempt to reduce phenomenology to biology. You are probably right, we do not yet have the framework to ask the "right question". In fact this is what I was asking for in my initial post. The framework to ask the right question.
Thomas Nagel talks about something similar in his article What it is to be a bat
What I am trying to say is that I do agree with the core of what you are discussing. But again, we might differ on the details. How much we can cut down on the losses from biology to phenomenology depends on how hard both philosophers and natural scientists work on the both ends of the issue. Namely, relating the 1st person (subjectivity) to the 3rd person (objectivity). We might be able to do the both simulatenously one day. For instance, try to metamorphose mentally into bats (by some undiscovered technology) and relate our experiences to the physical basis of the technology. That is such a crude idea, I know. But I'm sure the intellectual work will dramatically change as the progress in Natural Sciences and Technology reveals more to us.

P.S. Check your private messages on the user cp above

More to come

MyKell

An awesome link for a philosophical defence for materialism. Check this out Frotiw. I thought Paul Raymore did a pretty good job on writing such an article . Chalmers and Block have very interesting ideas, however, I lean much more towards materialism

Frotiw

I will read it and check back here when I have the time.

see ya.

MyKell

Do you know any books written by Philosophers who are reductionist materialists?? I've been doing an online search but haven't been very successful