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Emergentism doesn’t explain qualia. You won’t be able to explain the difference between green and magenta to a blind person.

by pygy_ 7y ago

alansammarone 7y ago
I've been researching and thinking about consciousness (and specifically the hard problem) for a while now, and while the whole discussion is interesting, it seems to me that invoking qualia as evidence for the existence of the hard problem (or for there being something "to explain") doesn't really make much sense. Its perfectly plausible, if not likelly, that qualia is also part of the emergent phenomenon . I'm saying this more so to hear what your (or anybody else's) thoughts here are - why would qualia lie "above" or be "unexplainable" by materialism alone?
- shrimpx 7y ago
  The crazy thing is that qualia is materialism. This computer you're typing on is a real thing that's also your qualia. The real failure is to say that qualia is a separate thing that doesn't matter in "materialism".
  - monktastic1 7y ago
    Under materialism, there's a hypothetical "real computer" that is the cause of your computer-qualia, but they are not identical.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  I don't see how it's perfectly plausible. In fact I see no reason to think it's plausible at all. What does qualia (plural, btw) "are part of the emergent phenomenon" mean in practice? That just seems to be begging the question. If you want to explain qualia, you have to do two things. The first is explain the nature of the experiencing entity. This means defining the precise mechanism by which subjective states are experienced by the entity instead of simply existing as objective state correlates. This in turn means explaining the nature of all of subjective experience. The second is to explain the precise mechanism by which external inputs and internal states generate the experiences the entity has. Most of the "Well it's obvious and there's no problem here" positions rely on the fallacy that defining a complicated-enough objective correlate - such as the detailed state of a computer with some form of introspection - solves the problem. It doesn't. In fact it doesn't even begin to understand the problem. It's simply a statement of hope and faith with no empirical support that a complicated-enough state with enough introspection will somehow cross the border from automatic operation to sentient experience, just because it will, obviously.
  - kruasan 7y ago
    > mechanism by which subjective states are experienced by the entity Why are you implying some kind of mental entity that "does the experiencing"?
steeveblack 7y ago
Isn't it that, for a blind person, qualia such as green or magenta doesn't emerge?
roenxi 7y ago
From an emergentist perspective there is nothing to explain - qualia are an illusion created by having a certain level of complexity in the stimuli fed into a brain. Emergentism has a lot of easy outs once the initial assumption - that it is possible for the self to be an illusion of complexity - is made. If that is palatable then any niggle can be explained away as just part of the illusion. And that initial assumption is a profoundly personal one, the only consciousness anyone has experience with is their own. Even if we share some initial spark of consciousness across humans there is pretty solid evidence that everyone has a different experience of reality (eg, synesthesia) that make arguing from qualia very hard. It is difficult to see how it isn't just a leap of faith either way. If it is possible, then it is basically certain. If it is impossible, then that is the end of it. Either way we can perfectly account for our experiences. A humourous interpretation is maybe I'm a philosophical zombie where my consciousness is an emergent soup and you are a genuine consciousness with all sorts of special experiences. That really muddles the water over what the argument is even about; I would reasonably and rationally never be convinced that consciousness existed. All the evidence for the argument would be inaccessible to me but you couldn't exactly dismiss me as not being equal to yourself because you don't have evidence either way either.
- pygy_ 7y ago
  That sounds plausible. Another issue I have with emergentism and other functionalist theories is that they don’t seem to account for the persistence of identity across consciousness discontinuities. Your consciousness sometimes vanishes the re-emerges as yourself. Where (or when) is your mind during the leap? Does it perform discrete time travel?
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    Why does it have to be somewhere?
    - pygy_ 7y ago
      It doesn’t (it could do a discrete leap forward in time). Still, why do I wake up as myself every morning? One of the papers linked in this thread discusses (lack of) object permanence from a QM perspective, I’d like to understand how subject permanence works as well, and functionalism does’t handle that well.

Emergentism doesn’t explain qualia. You won’t be able to explain the difference between green and magenta to a blind person.

by pygy_ 7y ago

Emergentism doesn’t explain qualia. You won’t be able to explain the difference between green and magenta to a blind person.

alansammarone 7y ago

I've been researching and thinking about consciousness (and specifically the hard problem) for a while now, and while the whole discussion is interesting, it seems to me that invoking qualia as evidence for the existence of the hard problem (or for there being something "to explain") doesn't really make much sense. Its perfectly plausible, if not likelly, that qualia is also part of the emergent phenomenon . I'm saying this more so to hear what your (or anybody else's) thoughts here are - why would qualia lie "above" or be "unexplainable" by materialism alone?

shrimpx 7y ago
The crazy thing is that qualia is materialism. This computer you're typing on is a real thing that's also your qualia. The real failure is to say that qualia is a separate thing that doesn't matter in "materialism".
- monktastic1 7y ago
  Under materialism, there's a hypothetical "real computer" that is the cause of your computer-qualia, but they are not identical.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
I don't see how it's perfectly plausible. In fact I see no reason to think it's plausible at all. What does qualia (plural, btw) "are part of the emergent phenomenon" mean in practice? That just seems to be begging the question. If you want to explain qualia, you have to do two things. The first is explain the nature of the experiencing entity. This means defining the precise mechanism by which subjective states are experienced by the entity instead of simply existing as objective state correlates. This in turn means explaining the nature of all of subjective experience. The second is to explain the precise mechanism by which external inputs and internal states generate the experiences the entity has. Most of the "Well it's obvious and there's no problem here" positions rely on the fallacy that defining a complicated-enough objective correlate - such as the detailed state of a computer with some form of introspection - solves the problem. It doesn't. In fact it doesn't even begin to understand the problem. It's simply a statement of hope and faith with no empirical support that a complicated-enough state with enough introspection will somehow cross the border from automatic operation to sentient experience, just because it will, obviously.
- kruasan 7y ago
  > mechanism by which subjective states are experienced by the entity Why are you implying some kind of mental entity that "does the experiencing"?

steeveblack 7y ago

Isn't it that, for a blind person, qualia such as green or magenta doesn't emerge?

roenxi 7y ago

From an emergentist perspective there is nothing to explain - qualia are an illusion created by having a certain level of complexity in the stimuli fed into a brain. Emergentism has a lot of easy outs once the initial assumption - that it is possible for the self to be an illusion of complexity - is made. If that is palatable then any niggle can be explained away as just part of the illusion. And that initial assumption is a profoundly personal one, the only consciousness anyone has experience with is their own. Even if we share some initial spark of consciousness across humans there is pretty solid evidence that everyone has a different experience of reality (eg, synesthesia) that make arguing from qualia very hard. It is difficult to see how it isn't just a leap of faith either way. If it is possible, then it is basically certain. If it is impossible, then that is the end of it. Either way we can perfectly account for our experiences. A humourous interpretation is maybe I'm a philosophical zombie where my consciousness is an emergent soup and you are a genuine consciousness with all sorts of special experiences. That really muddles the water over what the argument is even about; I would reasonably and rationally never be convinced that consciousness existed. All the evidence for the argument would be inaccessible to me but you couldn't exactly dismiss me as not being equal to yourself because you don't have evidence either way either.

pygy_ 7y ago
That sounds plausible. Another issue I have with emergentism and other functionalist theories is that they don’t seem to account for the persistence of identity across consciousness discontinuities. Your consciousness sometimes vanishes the re-emerges as yourself. Where (or when) is your mind during the leap? Does it perform discrete time travel?
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  Why does it have to be somewhere?
  - pygy_ 7y ago
    It doesn’t (it could do a discrete leap forward in time). Still, why do I wake up as myself every morning? One of the papers linked in this thread discusses (lack of) object permanence from a QM perspective, I’d like to understand how subject permanence works as well, and functionalism does’t handle that well.