Formless wrote:
wikipedia wrote:Perception (from the Latin perceptio, percipio) is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information.
You don't get to redefine terms to suit your agenda. English makes a distinction between
sensation and
perception. Eg: I
see words on my screen =! I
perceive Eagle1Division to be a dishonest fuckwit. The very definition of the word indicates that cognition and judgement is involved. Go about this however you will, but please do not abuse the English language. This is like having a discussion with a six day Creationist who insists on using his own warped definition of evolution even when told directly by biologists that it is simply
not evolution as they understand it. Even when he is right, he's still wrong.
So which am I? Stupid or dishonest? 'Cause if I'm going purely by dishonesty, I'm doing a pretty good job. If I'm stupid, at least I'm honest.
English-wise, that isn't the correct definition of perception, you are correct. But I wanted to clearly articulate my point by assigning what I meant to a word, much like how we assign a value to a function in math to make writing and articulation more streamlined.
Anyways, reading around I've found I'm not alone. It's called phenomenal consciousness, P-consciousness, and I was correct that it is qualia (The reason I called it perception is because of your insistence that Qualia is non-physical, which implies that Qualia is not what I'm talking about. Wrong. Just because we can't detect it doesn't mean it's non physical. Have some humility, >90% of the universe is missing! There ARE things we can't/haven't detected! *Shock shock*!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousn ... e_thing.3F
Formless wrote:What remains, though, is our perception, which is separate from those 3 things. I may be mistaken, but I believe this is the cause of the debate, that Formless disagrees and believes that perception is somehow within those 3 things.
Yes, that and the absolutely retched ethical solipsism that logically flows from this pointless metaphysics.
Honestly, answer my question. Isn't the truth the only thing that matters? If so, you've got to stop using an ethical argument against my point. If not, then you've lost major ground in your holy crusade against religion, pick a side, bud, answer the question. Is truth the only thing that matters or not?
Formless wrote:
Perception is what would be called Qualia. It's your raw perception of the universe: It's all feeling, sensation, emotion, as you perceive them. It's impossible in any way to communicate information directly from your perception. For example, I may call a strawberry red, and you may call it red, too. But wherever you see red, I may see green instead, and wherever you see green I could see red. But we would never know, because I would spend my entire life calling green red, and red green. There would be no way to ever communicate this difference...
Ergo,
there is no difference. Why must I spell out for you what should be an obvious deduction? Language reflects cognition in the brain, if imperfectly: it is unnecessary from an epistemological point of view to posit that one entity reporting perception is any more or less capable of perception than another regardless of material differences between their brains. You might want to reflect on the implications of the computational concept Turing Completeness, and the fact that as the inventors of computers we humans should also be Turing Complete.
Maybe you thought the big words would confuse me, but honestly the big words aren't the reason that doesn't make any sense. The fact that it bears no weight in this argument is what doesn't make sense. Honestly, they teach you to win arguments by being complicated and not making sense to the opponent. That's morally wrong, and that's just bad communication.
Honestly I don't see how you can arrive to such strange things by any logic. I am quiet sure there is a difference in-between red and green, no matter what kind of big words and twisted logic you use against it. This is what gets me about atheists. You use your own logic and reasoning, your own philosophy, to change the observation. That's bad science. That's changing observation to match your hypothesis. And it leads to these distorted ideas of reality where green and red are the same thing.
Formless wrote:
That is what the inverted spectrum machine thought experiment was supposed to demonstrate: you didn't actually bother to understand it and instead went for the dishonesty of
openly putting words into my mouth.
You claim it requires a specific mechanism of the mind's function, when in fact the machine makes sense regardless of
how the mind manipulates or utilizes sensory data. It could be a neuro-chemical brain made of living cells, silicon and lead circuit board,
clockwork, or metaphysical Qualia, and the experiment would still work. Language allows the user to communicate with the operator that there is a discrepancy between what he now sees and what he usually sees: the operator, having common sense, then puts two and two together and translates the spectrum back to what the user thinks of as "normal". The process of translation is what is important here. If Qualia, which are self reported entities, can be translated into language just as easily as computational processes, the proposal that Qualia exist is
not even wrong.
Openly putting words into your mouth? Unless I misunderstood you, that's a summary of what you said. You created a thought experiment where I'm wrong, and then shouted how I'm wrong because you can think I'm wrong.
When people can sneak off, hiding such blatant dishonesty by confusing the reader with confusing language, it is necessary to summarize so such dishonesty can be shown.
And honestly I really don't recognize how you've distorted the inverted spectrum argument, or how you claim it works against Qualia? Or are you arguing
for Qualia now? Or are you pulling your old thought experiment out again, the one that started with the assumption that I'm wrong?
Because I'm about 99% sure that Inverted Spectrum is an argument
for Qualia, unless I read the wrong article.
Formless wrote:
And that is the problem. All of your arguments and challenges to me simply assume that "Qualia" must be explained when the very necessity of their existence is in question. It is not the philosopher's job to create self serving questions nor to give answers in search of questions. By contrast, magnetism and gravity serve the purpose of explaining real, observed features of the universe and behaviors of matter whose existence is not in question by any but the insane.
Ah, ok. So I'm dishonest, dumb, and insane now. Gotcha.
So, your feeling and perception aren't real then? Haven't we been here before? I feel like our debate-argument is going in circles. I think we've already covered, and affirmed, rather extensively, that Qualia both exists and is necessary. Well, of course, if it's unnecessary you can leave philosophy altogether, since really at times a debate on a somewhat obscure web forum seems a bit unnecessary sometimes, especially when I realize how much time I've spent.
I really don't understand what you mean by "unnecessary". It's as if you can simply ignore the fact that you feel, the
Hard Problem of Consciousness, and ignore the fact of conscious experience. Unless I misunderstood, that's what you're saying. That I should outright ignore the fact that there's an enormous "Hard Problem" of consciousness.
Formless wrote:
But what is sad is that you actually think you can handwave away a perfectly fine holistic explanation for things like sentience and consciousness without so much as a hint of irony:
The second key of my argument is that perception can't be #1, 2, or 3, because perception perceives all of them. In order to perceive them, it cannot be one of them. It must be higher up on a hierarchy in order to perceive them. If it were one of those things, one of two things would happen:
A) It would perceive itself, and because perception would perceives itself, it would create an infinite loop, much like a camera that's pointed at a monitor displaying whatever the camera shows. An infinity shot. Much like how a camera will see nothing but the monitor an infinite number of times because of this, perception would be unable to perceive anything other than itself an infinite number of times if it could perceive itself, and you would be incapable of perceiving anything other than your perception, an infinite number of times.
If you had read the rest of the thread you would know that recursive processes like self awareness can actually change future behavior of a system in staggeringly complex ways, owing to the fact that a process has to, you know, actually be carried out in a finite number of steps and in a finite amount of time.
Self awareness isn't just a sci-fi buzzword, you know, its an actual concept well developed by philosophers such as John Locke and Douglas Hofstadter. On the other hand, Qualia are a static unchaining "thing" and exist in all matter and yet only in humans (...somehow). What exactly makes you think that of that as the superior model of human consciousness?
Amazing! You actually managed to reply to one of my points. Congratulations. Even though you seemed to miss it. The first thing to be perceived would be perception itself, seeing as that's most directly connected to perception and nearest to it. So perception would perceive itself, perceiving itself, perceiving itself, perceiving itself, etc. The only thing it will ever perceive is itself, and it perceives nothing.
This isn't the same as the
Droste Effect. Perception has to finish perceiving itself before it can perceive anything else. So it would have to finish an infinite loop before it can perceive itself.
But, I will give you some credit, if perception perceives everything simultaniously, then it would result in a Droste effect. So you've got the a single point replied to 50/50.
Well, actually, let me return to my first paragraph in this quote-reply. I said it mustn't perceive itself. If this is the case, then instead of perceiving your own Qualia, you would simply perceive what the Qualia perceives. This is actually consistent with observation. We can't put our finger on what Qualia really
is because we can't perceive it, yet we can perceive that we are perceiving something, so it must exist. Another example of how this model better matches observation.
Oh, and that covers your final point. How is it the better model? It better matches observation.
Formless wrote:...exist in all matter and yet only in humans...
Hmm. Magnetic fields are strange, aren't they?
Exist in all matter [in every particle], and yet only in magnets...
May I point out, to my utter pleasure, I am not alone in my argument. It appears David Chalmers had independently reached
a similar conclusion to mine.
Wiki:
...Chalmers argues that a ‘rich inner life’ is not possible as a result of physical processing. He states that consciousness must be described using nonphysical means. This description involves a fundamental ingredient capable of clarifying phenomena that have not been explained using physical means. Use of this fundamental property, Chalmers argues, is necessary to explain certain functions of the world, much like other fundamental features, such as mass and time, explain significant principles in nature.
What bothers me is the "nonphysical". I don't understand why it has to be nonphysical.
When we discovered that some metals exert force on eachother, science made place for a new thing called magnetism, a fundamental property of matter. Why is it that now, all of a sudden, when it seems to make sense to say we've discovered a new property of matter called Qualia, I get met with such fierce resistance which do little more than call me stupid, dishonest, and insane, when I have a valid point?
It's a solution for the
Binding Problem,
Hard Problem of Consciousness, and takes a plausible approach to explaining Qualia.
I'm not the first, not some crazy kid coming forward with this idea. It's an old idea.
Instead, it seems easier to merely say it's some sort of magical process in the brain that we don't know about yet - but you're sure one day we will discover. That's religious.
==========Reply to Spectre==========
Spectre_nz wrote:
Ugh, really?
You're claiming some magical explanation for human perception and consciousness is less of an assumption than that it is a function of brain chemistry yet to be unambiguously mapped out?
What the fuck?
Only as "Magical" as magnetism.
Spectre_nz wrote:
How is this qualia supposed to interact with our mundane, neurochemical driven brain to do what it does if it itself has no physical basis? If it is able to generate a physical effect on the brain, then it too is physical in nature.
A compelling, and correct point. I don't disagree with it. What I disagree with is that Qualia, or Perception itself is a neuorchemical process. To me, anyways, Qualia being a fundamental property of matter is far more likely, and far more streamlined, than some sort of magical process that somehow creates perception through chemical reactions, or "levers flipping".
I'm not arguing for some kind of magical, non-physical
thing, I'm arguing against it. I'm saying that Qualia is a real, physical property.
What I'm arguing against is that it's some kind of magical ghost that arises when you place X number of switches like
so.
I'm the one trying to assign a physical existence to things. Matter is very physical, properties of matter such as spin, mass and charge are very physical. So in this sense, Qualia would be just as physical as any of those things. In fact, interestingly enough, Qualia may very well be a known quantum mechanical property, interacting with the brain in some way we haven't observed yet.
I consider that far more plausible than a certain number of chemical switched arranged correctly magically creates Qualia.
Spectre_nz wrote:Are you aware of '
Blind-sight' and related phenomena?
Brain injury that robs a person of their perception while sensory and more primitive reflex pathways remain intact.
Basically; awareness and perception can be attributed to parts of the brain, exactly in the same way that input an memory can. They even wired up a guy who was perception-blind only on one side for a brain scan and could map out what parts of his brain were active when he was just seeing an object compared to when he was seeing and perceiving the object.
Perception and awareness can be measured and verified. They're just another set of 'neurochemical levers' in the brain.
The complexity of the brain is staggering. It's foolish to assume a concise explanation for perception and consciousness will just pop out of medical literature as soon as they started looking into it. It's a total cop-out to instead resort to supernatural explanations and say it will be forever unknowable.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/218765.php
Rather than dump piles of medical articles on you, a youtube round-up;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuNDkcbq8PY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADchGO-0 ... 2&index=21
I'm quiet comfortable with the idea that the brain is the process behind sensory input.
Blind Sight means one of two things:
A) Visual perception of movement, and visual imagery are two different types of input.
or
B) Philosophical zombies, as Ramachandran noted, are possible. In fact, they even described reptiles as philosophical zombies. Beings that don't have an "awareness", but react to things with blind sight only (and every other sense as "blind").
A) Does not change the argument-debate in any way, sensory input has been classified as something very different from perception a long time ago.
B) Is observational evidence, possibly even proof, that Qualia does, in fact, exist. Qualia would be the thing that philosophical zombies lack. Philosophical zombies are possible, if blind sight is possible and isn't due to (A).
What amazed me was I wrote those down, then the video covered them. That's a confidence booster
.
