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> Those who make the Very Large Mistake (of thinking they know enough about the nature of the physical to know that consciousness can’t be physical) tend to spl

by kanzure 10y ago

> Those who make the Very Large Mistake (of thinking they know enough about the nature of the physical to know that consciousness can’t be physical) tend to split into two groups. Members of the first group remain unshaken in their belief that consciousness exists, and conclude that there must be some sort of nonphysical stuff: They tend to become “dualists.” Members of the second group, passionately committed to the idea that everything is physical, make the most extraordinary move that has ever been made in the history of human thought. They deny the existence of consciousness: They become “eliminativists.” What's problematic about the "say no to consciousness" case? It seems to be based on their preference for other descriptions of human brain activity, especially when the alternative description (consciousness) has been so ambiguous, vague and unhelpful. > You cannot describe first-hand facts using only third-hand facts. This is the core philosophical dilemma in the hard problem of consciousness. from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381348 (or more accurately, I think third-hand factual systems could probably posit first-hand facts-- but be unable to assert validity or something. I am not a philosopher.)

tgflynn 10y ago
> What's problematic about the "say no to consciousness" case? It denies the most fundamental fact of human experience, the existence of that experience itself.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  There are problems with our experience of experience. We think consciousness is continuous, but it can be clearly demonstrated that it's fragmentary. Daniel Dennett demonstrates this using alternating images in his TED talks. However, just because our experience of experience doesn't have 100% fidelity, it doesn't follow that our experience doesn't exist. That would be like saying our vision doesn't exist because it doesn't have 100% fidelity. I think Daniel Dennett and many other consciousness deniers make this mistake. https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness?l...
  - breuleux 10y ago
    It means is that our experience isn't what we think it is, but if the discrepancy is large enough, that's more or less the same thing as saying it doesn't exist. Basically, if none of the aspects of consciousness that make it important or special in our eyes turn out to be true, I think that denying its existence is actually a less misleading way to correct the record than trying to completely change our intuitive understanding of whatever it is we actually have.
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      Our vision isn't what we think it is, with some quite large discrepancies, but it's still completely nuts to say it doesn't exist!
      - BraveNewCurency 10y ago
        We can't deny "vision exists". But we can say that vision doesn't work anything like people think it works. (Everyone has a mental model of a camera or webcam.) Your eye is really more like a flashlight in the dark. And it interprets things way to much (see optical illusions.) It's easy to dismiss these problems, because you are rarely are in situations where the difference matters. This is no coincidence, since people rarely construct things that our eyes can't process. For example, fluorescent lights are actually turning ON and OFF constantly, but we just happen to not be able to see that. There really is no color purple, we just think it exists. But it's quite easy to mess people up. See "rotating tunnel illusion", or the experiment where subjects fail to notice they are now giving directions to a different person, or the experiment where people fail to notice a guy in a gorilla suit (!) when given a simple task. So the upshot is "vision is nothing like you think it is". Maybe we should have different words for the way a computers see things (a lot more reality based) vs the way humans see things (with all their foibles.) Ditto for Consciousness.
    - Natsu 10y ago
      If our experience itself isn't what we think it is, that would tend to undermine empiricism itself, because we rely on our senses to inform us about the natural world. This includes our sense of whether or not others agree with us, whether they have the same experiences as us, etc.
- kanzure 10y ago
  > It denies the most fundamental fact of human experience, the existence of that experience itself. How does "saying no to consciousness" deny "the existence of the human experience"? If you were talking about brain denial, then I would have to agree. It seems fully possible for the brain to continue to do interesting things even if "consciousness" turns out to be false. Thankfully it's nonfalsifiable apparently....
  - tgflynn 10y ago
    Because "consciousness" and "subjective experience" are essentially two different words for the same thing. Some people try to define "consciousness" as something other than "subjective experience" but doing so is really just evading the "hard question".
  - jordonwii 10y ago
    It's not clear to me what it would even mean for "consciousness to turn out to be false." The way consciousness is commonly defined (i.e. not with an analytical definition), its existence as a phenomenon can't be false - only our explanations for what it is and how it works. It would be analogous to telling a physicist trying to provide an explanation for why objects fall to the ground that it might simply turn out to be false that objects fall to the ground at all. That doesn't make sense, because the exploration started with an observable phenomenon.
    - kanzure 10y ago
      > It would be analogous to telling a physicist trying to provide an explanation for why objects fall to the ground that it might simply turn out to be false that objects fall to the ground at all. It is false. Gravity is not about "ground" nor does it require that everything fall to the ground, indeed there seem to be forces on objects stronger than the force of gravity. The ability to falsify concepts is critically important in many branches of epistemology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity
goatlover 10y ago
Because the description of brain activity does not capture the experience of being an active brain. The scientific picture of the world is odorless, tasteless, colorless, soundless, etc. It's an abstract, mathematical description. But we don't experience the world that way. There is a massive discrepancy between the two. That's consciousness.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  Consciousness is a discrepancy between our ability to accurately model a brain and our experience of being a brain. I'll settle for that. It's analogous to: What is Artificial Intelligence? AS is what computers can't do yet. Edit red to add: to put it another way, consciousness is that part of brain activity the text books don't have a chapter on. We can only point to what consciousness is not.
- breuleux 10y ago
  I wouldn't say that's really a problem, because there's a perfectly fine scientific explanation of why it doesn't (couldn't) "capture" this. The experience of color or taste is triggered when information is fed to the brain through specific pathways. The pathways that are activated when we read about something are different and don't reach the same places, so any information you acquire through reading and cognition is necessarily going to be "tasteless". Because of that, we can't possibly "connect" our knowledge of the process that causes the qualia of taste to the qualia of taste, but that's just a limitation of the brain's wiring, not a fault in the model itself.
  - RivieraKid 10y ago
    > the experience of color or taste is triggered when information is fed to the brain through specific pathways The question is why the experience is triggered. Why does moving atoms at specific positions trigger the perception of color or pain? Current physics doesn't have an answer for that, even in theory, assuming we can see exactly what happens in the brain.
    - 10y ago
empath75 10y ago
Saying that conciousness isn't real because it's an emergent phenomenon of non-conscious processes is like saying that turbulence isn't real, because it's an emergent property of non-fluid particles. I mean sure, at the level of atoms, it's just particles interacting locally, but that doesn't mean that at certain scales, turbulence isn't a better way of looking at their group behavior.
- whybroke 10y ago
  Technically though describing consciousness as emergent property of neural functioning is a conjecture, though a very credible one. Unlike turbulence, I only have one case where I have ever seen this consciousness which I am trying to explain as an epiphenomenon, namely my own. All others consciousness (if they even exist which I can't prove directly) are not remotely observed in the same way, they are self reported by other people. So you have the question of why I can only directly perceive that emergent property in exactly one brain and not others. Likewise you'd have to explain why the emergent property is apparently continuous through my whole lifetime over which my brain changes enormously. Finally you'd have to deal with the hypothetical case where I am duplicated molecule for molecule and then ask which consciousness would I have direct access to, the duplicate or the original. So while dualism is obviously patently absurd, the idea of consciousness as epiphenomenon, while promising, needs work too.
  - CuriousSkeptic 10y ago
    You have some assumption wrt time in there. To say that your consciousness is continuous relies on you trusting your memory of it being so, which, lacking a time machine, is no more provable or observable than others consciousness. Removing the continuity assumption, perhaps even time, kind resolves the duplicate question: both copies (if conscious) should have a memory of conscious you and experience their consciousness being a continuation of that, while you, now you, are as removed from those future copies, as you are from me. One question, that seems tied to consciousness, is what is "now"? Are there objective reasons to believe in the existence of a canonical "now" existing independent of conscious experience? If not then there really is no point in distinguishing either momental or continuous experiences as special in any way. Perhaps consciousness just emerges as an interpretation of a single state connecting past and future by memory and anticipation, it's simply appears continuous like the series of images at the top of the article appears to be.

by kanzure 10y ago

tgflynn 10y ago

> What's problematic about the "say no to consciousness" case? It denies the most fundamental fact of human experience, the existence of that experience itself.

stcredzero 10y ago
There are problems with our experience of experience. We think consciousness is continuous, but it can be clearly demonstrated that it's fragmentary. Daniel Dennett demonstrates this using alternating images in his TED talks. However, just because our experience of experience doesn't have 100% fidelity, it doesn't follow that our experience doesn't exist. That would be like saying our vision doesn't exist because it doesn't have 100% fidelity. I think Daniel Dennett and many other consciousness deniers make this mistake. https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness?l...
- breuleux 10y ago
  It means is that our experience isn't what we think it is, but if the discrepancy is large enough, that's more or less the same thing as saying it doesn't exist. Basically, if none of the aspects of consciousness that make it important or special in our eyes turn out to be true, I think that denying its existence is actually a less misleading way to correct the record than trying to completely change our intuitive understanding of whatever it is we actually have.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    Our vision isn't what we think it is, with some quite large discrepancies, but it's still completely nuts to say it doesn't exist!
    - BraveNewCurency 10y ago
      We can't deny "vision exists". But we can say that vision doesn't work anything like people think it works. (Everyone has a mental model of a camera or webcam.) Your eye is really more like a flashlight in the dark. And it interprets things way to much (see optical illusions.) It's easy to dismiss these problems, because you are rarely are in situations where the difference matters. This is no coincidence, since people rarely construct things that our eyes can't process. For example, fluorescent lights are actually turning ON and OFF constantly, but we just happen to not be able to see that. There really is no color purple, we just think it exists. But it's quite easy to mess people up. See "rotating tunnel illusion", or the experiment where subjects fail to notice they are now giving directions to a different person, or the experiment where people fail to notice a guy in a gorilla suit (!) when given a simple task. So the upshot is "vision is nothing like you think it is". Maybe we should have different words for the way a computers see things (a lot more reality based) vs the way humans see things (with all their foibles.) Ditto for Consciousness.
  - Natsu 10y ago
    If our experience itself isn't what we think it is, that would tend to undermine empiricism itself, because we rely on our senses to inform us about the natural world. This includes our sense of whether or not others agree with us, whether they have the same experiences as us, etc.
kanzure 10y ago
> It denies the most fundamental fact of human experience, the existence of that experience itself. How does "saying no to consciousness" deny "the existence of the human experience"? If you were talking about brain denial, then I would have to agree. It seems fully possible for the brain to continue to do interesting things even if "consciousness" turns out to be false. Thankfully it's nonfalsifiable apparently....
- tgflynn 10y ago
  Because "consciousness" and "subjective experience" are essentially two different words for the same thing. Some people try to define "consciousness" as something other than "subjective experience" but doing so is really just evading the "hard question".
- jordonwii 10y ago
  It's not clear to me what it would even mean for "consciousness to turn out to be false." The way consciousness is commonly defined (i.e. not with an analytical definition), its existence as a phenomenon can't be false - only our explanations for what it is and how it works. It would be analogous to telling a physicist trying to provide an explanation for why objects fall to the ground that it might simply turn out to be false that objects fall to the ground at all. That doesn't make sense, because the exploration started with an observable phenomenon.
  - kanzure 10y ago
    > It would be analogous to telling a physicist trying to provide an explanation for why objects fall to the ground that it might simply turn out to be false that objects fall to the ground at all. It is false. Gravity is not about "ground" nor does it require that everything fall to the ground, indeed there seem to be forces on objects stronger than the force of gravity. The ability to falsify concepts is critically important in many branches of epistemology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity

goatlover 10y ago

Because the description of brain activity does not capture the experience of being an active brain. The scientific picture of the world is odorless, tasteless, colorless, soundless, etc. It's an abstract, mathematical description. But we don't experience the world that way. There is a massive discrepancy between the two. That's consciousness.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
Consciousness is a discrepancy between our ability to accurately model a brain and our experience of being a brain. I'll settle for that. It's analogous to: What is Artificial Intelligence? AS is what computers can't do yet. Edit red to add: to put it another way, consciousness is that part of brain activity the text books don't have a chapter on. We can only point to what consciousness is not.
breuleux 10y ago
I wouldn't say that's really a problem, because there's a perfectly fine scientific explanation of why it doesn't (couldn't) "capture" this. The experience of color or taste is triggered when information is fed to the brain through specific pathways. The pathways that are activated when we read about something are different and don't reach the same places, so any information you acquire through reading and cognition is necessarily going to be "tasteless". Because of that, we can't possibly "connect" our knowledge of the process that causes the qualia of taste to the qualia of taste, but that's just a limitation of the brain's wiring, not a fault in the model itself.
- RivieraKid 10y ago
  > the experience of color or taste is triggered when information is fed to the brain through specific pathways The question is why the experience is triggered. Why does moving atoms at specific positions trigger the perception of color or pain? Current physics doesn't have an answer for that, even in theory, assuming we can see exactly what happens in the brain.
  - 10y ago

empath75 10y ago

Saying that conciousness isn't real because it's an emergent phenomenon of non-conscious processes is like saying that turbulence isn't real, because it's an emergent property of non-fluid particles. I mean sure, at the level of atoms, it's just particles interacting locally, but that doesn't mean that at certain scales, turbulence isn't a better way of looking at their group behavior.

whybroke 10y ago
Technically though describing consciousness as emergent property of neural functioning is a conjecture, though a very credible one. Unlike turbulence, I only have one case where I have ever seen this consciousness which I am trying to explain as an epiphenomenon, namely my own. All others consciousness (if they even exist which I can't prove directly) are not remotely observed in the same way, they are self reported by other people. So you have the question of why I can only directly perceive that emergent property in exactly one brain and not others. Likewise you'd have to explain why the emergent property is apparently continuous through my whole lifetime over which my brain changes enormously. Finally you'd have to deal with the hypothetical case where I am duplicated molecule for molecule and then ask which consciousness would I have direct access to, the duplicate or the original. So while dualism is obviously patently absurd, the idea of consciousness as epiphenomenon, while promising, needs work too.
- CuriousSkeptic 10y ago
  You have some assumption wrt time in there. To say that your consciousness is continuous relies on you trusting your memory of it being so, which, lacking a time machine, is no more provable or observable than others consciousness. Removing the continuity assumption, perhaps even time, kind resolves the duplicate question: both copies (if conscious) should have a memory of conscious you and experience their consciousness being a continuation of that, while you, now you, are as removed from those future copies, as you are from me. One question, that seems tied to consciousness, is what is "now"? Are there objective reasons to believe in the existence of a canonical "now" existing independent of conscious experience? If not then there really is no point in distinguishing either momental or continuous experiences as special in any way. Perhaps consciousness just emerges as an interpretation of a single state connecting past and future by memory and anticipation, it's simply appears continuous like the series of images at the top of the article appears to be.