When it comes to explaining subjective consciousness, are you a dualist, a physicalist, or something in between?
I'd imagine that on this board, the vast majority of posters believe that the mind can be explained purely in physical terms. But then one would question why we each experience a subjective consciousness. What physical mechanism would explain why you and I perceive color, smell, and feel in a specific manner? Why do inanimate objects not experience consciousness? Is it not arbitrary for a collection of electrical impulses and chemical reactions to create such a subjective, immaterial enigma (consciousness)?
Then one would question, or then you would question? I think you're being too cavalier with the words you're using, instead of trying to describe thee sensations precisely. I also think that you're not approaching the question correctly -- you need a model that describes these sensations. How can you derive predictions from dualism?
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Surlethe wrote:Then one would question, or then you would question? I think you're being too cavalier with the words you're using, instead of trying to describe thee sensations precisely. I also think that you're not approaching the question correctly -- you need a model that describes these sensations. How can you derive predictions from dualism?
I used "one" because I don't want to give the impression that I support dualism, which I do not. But I also do not follow the logic that subjective conscious experience would suddenly appear because a bunch of matter has an arbitrary collection of electrical impulses.
From what I can infer from context about the meanings of 'physicalism' and 'dualism', you're talking about something like a soul. Here's how it goes:
Hypothesis 1: A functioning brain, with certain characteristics, the specifics of which we are not completely aware, implies and is implied by consciousness.
Hypothesis 2: A functioning brain, with certain characteristics, the specifics of which we are not completely aware, implies and is implied by consciousness, and one of those characteristics is called a soul.
Hypothesis 3: A functioning brain, with certain characteristics, the specifics of which we are not completely aware, implies and is implied by consciousness, and one of those characteristics is called magic invisible pancakes.
Hypothesis 4: A functioning brain, with certain characteristics, the specifics of which we are not completely aware, is implied by consciousness; however, another, non-brain-related phenomenon, called a soul, for which there is no evidence, must coexist with the functioning brain, in order for consciousness to arise.
Hypothesis 5: A functioning brain, with certain characteristics, the specifics of which we are not completely aware, is implied by consciousness; however, another, non-brain-related phenomenon, called magic invisible pancakes, for which there is no evidence, must coexist with the functioning brain, in order for consciousness to arise.
As you can see:
1, 2, and 3 are identical except for nomenclature.
4 and 5 are identical except for nomenclature.
All explain the evidence with equal effectiveness: when we find consciousness, we always find a functioning brain with certain characteristics; and where we find no consciousness, we either find a brain with different characteristics or no brain at all.
4 and 5 contain a complication which is unnecessary to explain the evidence, and can be dismissed on the basis of Occam's Razor.
2 and 3, although identical to 1, are silly, since there's no more reason to call the unknowns a soul than there is to call them magic pancakes.
We don't know everything. In fact, we don't know everything about /anything/. There is always, and will always be, a big heaping syrupy stack of unknown under every fact, theory, and hypothesis. One day we might solve the mystery of consciousness, but only by expressing it in terms of other phenomena, which are expressed in terms of other phenomena, which are built upon unknowns.
Imagine that a particularly clever child who has discovered the wonderful word, "Why?" is speaking to a physicist.
"Why is the sun so bright?" the child asks. He explains that it is because hot things emit light, and that the sun is very, very hot.
"Why do hot things emit light?" He explains how electrons emit light when they transition through energy states.
"Why do electrons have energy states?" He explains the basics of quantum atomic theory.
Finally the child asks, "Why do electrons act like waves?" The physicist shrugs and shakes his head.
"They just do. Everything does. Nobody knows why. It's just the way it is."
Nobody would suggest that electrons act like waves because they have immortal souls that impart wave-nature to them from a magical nonphysical energy world. The ancients never inferred the wave nature of the electron, and so there are no myths explaining it, and we are content to say we don't know and leave it at that. The ancients inferred that the world must have had a beginning, so they told creation myths. They inferred that consciousness was caused by something more complex than a body with no damaged organs, so they came up with stories about souls.
Why should the unknowns about consciousness be explained by magical energy worlds instead of magical pancake worlds? Why shouldn't we insist that electrons have souls?
Shouldn't we just accept that we don't know things yet, and look for the answers, instead of saying that ancient myths passed down from people who wouldn't know an atom from an asteroid belt must be true, and leaving it at that?
Just like magnetism, aerodynamics, electricity, tectonics, astronomy, nuclear energy and so on was in the centuries before us -- The function of mind and intelligence is still in a state of scientific chaos. Lot's of people tried to explain these concepts with various magical theories, others held that they were fundamentally impossible to understand -- before science came along and cleared things up.
When science has provided the necessary mathematical and computational framework for us to work with intelligence in a more generalized way I fully expect that to be one of the most significant events in life's history. (Not that I believe it will turn the world into a paradise, it might well be the very last deed of humanity).
I'd imagine that on this board, the vast majority of posters believe that the mind can be explained purely in physical terms. But then one would question why we each experience a subjective consciousness.
The second statement does not follow from the first. Asking questions like "why" we experience consciousness is pointless; consciousness is a PROCESS, not a distinct individual unit. The process is one that we can model by understanding neuroanatomy, electrophysiology, behavior, etc., and, in fact, in science we do have models that describe this process. The way you are phrasing the question isn't profound or intelligent, it's just acting like a 5-year old and saying, "Why?" "Why?" "Why?" to anything.
What physical mechanism would explain why you and I perceive color, smell, and feel in a specific manner?
The physical mechanisms of sensation are pretty well understood, actually.
But I also do not follow the logic that subjective conscious experience would suddenly appear because a bunch of matter has an arbitrary collection of electrical impulses.
Nobody has ever made that claim. And our collection of electrical impulses (as humans) is not arbitrary, it is derived.
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The physicist shrugs and shakes his head.
"They just do. Everything does. Nobody knows why. It's just the way it is."
Or maybe the physicist could explain the various justifications in quantum mechanisms for wave-particle duality.
Science isn't this binary state, where we either know everything about something or know nothing. Science is just a network of overlapping theoretical mechanisms and models that explain why the evidence that there is presents itself in certain ways. All we can do is take the evidence we have and our understanding of how these pieces of evidence interact with each other and propose systems and their dynamics based on this.
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The function of mind and intelligence is still in a state of scientific chaos.
Feil wrote:
Nobody would suggest that electrons act like waves because they have immortal souls that impart wave-nature to them from a magical nonphysical energy world.
Neither am I, but there's a world of difference between certain particles moving differently than others for no discernible reason, and certain combinations of electrical impulses producing subjective experience, entirely and fundamentally different from the rest of the universe.
Consciousness is like a camera inside your mind. Why does this camera exist? Why is it entirely subjective? While I can theoretically observe the inner workings of your brain, I cannot directly observe your thoughts, nor can I directly detect them. Consciousness is intangible and subjective, but almost certainly exists.
I remembering reading an analogy that helps describe this. Let's say (and nobody even consider doing this, as a disclaimer) you raise a child in a brown box and never let her experience any colors, sounds or sensory feelings outside of this prison. But you teach her all that there ever could be to know about physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, etc. Even knowing all of these facts verbatim, she would have no idea what red looks like. She would have no idea what a cheesecake tastes like. And when you release her from the box, she'll certainly be astonished by these things. So consciousness is clearly subjective.
All I can say on the broader discussion is this: Show little trust to those whose posts do not begin with some variation on 'I believe..." (Except this one! )
This isn't a topic where science or logic gives us conclusive answers. Ultimately there's an emotional choice involved that can't come down to any conception of evidence or rational truth.
I believe in a kind of monism, so I'm no dualist, but I'm not strictly a physicalist, either. I think physicalism is inherently imbedded in a kind of dualism where it simply denies the other half of its dualist existence. You cannot have a sustainable monist physicalism. Go ahead and try to define one. I dare you.
Instead, I believe in something that would be recognizable to a neo-Platonist, or a Hindu of the right school. Dualism is an epiphenomenon of the One, our imperfect experience of that One. We have a dualist experience, with this idea of phenomena and mind, or one or the other, because of some limit in our experience of existence. In reality, the two emerge from the One.
In a way this is a cop-out. I certainly don't understand the One as a whole. I cannot. None of us can. I believe it's there but the only "proof" I have available is the exact subjective experience I'm trying to explain. In other words, I have faith.
That's a scary word to a lot of people. Faith. Some people hear the word and they think of insanity, of believing something you know isn't true. Unfortunately, faith is hardwired into our neurology. We believe in things we cannot know to be true according to any rational standard no matter what we choose to believe. The ontological nihilists are the only ones with nothing to prove. Or lose.
Faith isn't a scary word, it's a disappointing one, and a disappointing answer to a serious question.
I think the biggest mess in this entire thread is the nonsense of of what a 'consciousness' is being determined to be. The perception of sensation is well documented, and the fact that it is subjective is not a grand mystery, it's a simple fact of life that the brain isn't created the exact same way each time a new human gets birthed into the world. Why does each brain process the input in a unique way? Well, for the same reason some brains come out of the box with the lobes welded together strangely, or come with malfunctioning hormone suppliers, or cross-wirings that make people link unrelated data like color and sound.
Subjective yes, but arbitrary? Anything but. Is it strange that you're sitting in front of a screen of materials displaying a luminent mixture that is forming itself into a string of shapes you understand as language--and this is being transmitted across the world through waves in the air and tubes in the ground, as electrical input into boxes that spit them out to other boxes before finally reaching you? Strange, certainly, and awesome, but its anything but arbitrary. The network of devices that links me to you is not arbitrary, it is purpose-built for this function, organically grown by the selective pressures of industry and an inefficient and at times unreliable network. But it is anything if arbitrary, and that's how the brain is.
The use of arbitrary here is like calling the formulation of the first amino acids in a sea as "random." It's not one throw of the die here, brains have had a long trial period for organic life like ours to figure out how to do it. You're focusing on the individual packets of data transfer or chemical processes, and not the big picture way these things actually end up forming a coherent whole. Computers aren't just magic toaster-coil circuits that somehow create music and art and movies and my writing, they're highly precise machines. Our brains are the same way--they encode and recall data. It all looks like magic until THAT process breaks down, and then my Grandmother doesn't recognize me anymore. Either the soul only works until you're sick, or the brain is a machine and Alzheimer's is the worst thing ever.
Why is this experience of input/output data collation and independent action subjective? Because interpretation of data is different from perception of data, and the machine we're using to perceive the world was originally designed for a variety of disparate tasks heavily weighted towards predator avoidance and dynamic social structures with an emphasis on mating. We were not being forced by evolution into becoming rational scientists, but working upwards from millions of years of being eaten by something horrible coming out of the dark and beating the shit out of another member of our species so our forebearers could lustily copulate ourselves into being. The amount of terrified predator-averse ratfucking that had to occur for humanity's noble simian ancestors to arise is simply incredible. I think it's amazing that we've been able to shed those bonds as much as we have, but that lineage is still very visible when you know to look for it.
It's also because the brain, while a physical object, the creation method and quality control standards our biology favors are extremely variable. People are certainly more likely to have "normal" color vision and "normal" memory but there's color-blindness and Kim Peeks and all kinds of strange stuff out there. If one thinks this is the result of, ahem, invisible magical pancakes then I'm not upset or terrified but I am terribly disappointed with how easily those ones have given up the intellectual expedition just because the terrain gets the most minorly bumpy. To be a "physicalist" until this point, but no further, is admitting to "A Wizard Did It" levels of reasoning when it comes to harder questions.
If you ask why a stone does not perceive sound and sight, I would tell you its materials do indeed react accordingly, but that there's nothing else the stone can do. As a physical object, the stone is not a mental machine, and so it cannot perceive even if light is falling on it and the materials take in heat and it reacts to sound. Our brains are machines linked to other machines, powered by biological processes, and the fact that one of those processes is perception should not surprise anyone. And if you are going to put forth the oddball question of "why is a sense of self one of those processes" then you need to look to evolution and the stress to survive. Complex brains are extremely valuable tools for a creature that is so stressed to favor them, and highly complex brain function seems to go hand-in-hand with an ability to comprehend the self within social structures and perceive the self within an environment.
But this will go round and round until a concrete definition of "consciousness" is laid out for us to talk about. Any coherent, faith-bare description of what a consciousness is will inevitably lend itself to a physical origin.
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