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It's interesting because I'm from a neuroscience training and have traditionally and reflexively and argumentatively sided with the idea that things like consci

It's interesting because I'm from a neuroscience training and have traditionally and reflexively and argumentatively sided with the idea that things like consciousness and free will are emergent illusions. However, I've recently had a crisis of confidence when for some reason I tried to think about the fact that my experience of consciousness and color and etc does actually exist somehow inside the universe and that others seem to experience it similarly. Of course there's a similarity of physical structure that's common to brains that have those experiences. But more from the point of view of if you stumble upon some complex object for example, you could wonder whether it is experiencing the illusion of free will. If that's all purely emergent from known physical laws, we should be able to determine whether a particular object possesses/produces the illusion, right? So, that got me wondering what is the minimal hardware/spatial configuration that could produce this sort of illusion and are illusions actually "something"? It seems like it's presupposing that certain arrangements of matter generate "illusions" and yet we seem to want to insist that at some level these "illusions" don't really exist. How far down do illusions go? Some people are born blind or deaf/have strokes, so the illusion of color vision or sound can be isolated and removed from the illusion of consciousness. Do "and gates" experience some sort of atomic illusion of "and"? Can the presence of illusion be tested? Anyway, not sure I'm making a cogent statement, I'm still not entirely clear on what's bothering me about this, but something "feels" intuitively wrong/missing to me about the purely physical emergent neuroscience approach now.

manicbovine 14y ago
Have you read any of David Chalmers' work? He attempts to provide a framework for thinking analytically about qualia in "The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory." [1] Nearly all of his papers are accessible via his website. [2] [1] http://consc.net/books/tcm/ http://consc.net/books/tcm/ [2] http://consc.net/papers.html http://consc.net/papers.html
- fluidcruft 14y ago
  Thank you for the book recommendation. I have not read David Chalmers' work, but I have seen his name mentioned often. I've been trying to figure out where to get started with learning about the current understanding of the mind-body problem and keep getting recommendations to start back with the Greeks and work forward (which seems both quite daunting but also baroque given lack of influence from modern neuroscience). I think I'll start reading there. Thanks again!
  - momerath 14y ago
    I would also recommend The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger.
- nessus42 14y ago
  I second Chalmers' book. It's an excellent introduction to how contemporary philosophers think about these issues.
gradys 14y ago
You might find The Mind's I [1], co-edited by Dan Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter, to be valuable. In particular, a piece called "Prelude... Ant Fugue" [2], written by Hofstadter, covers some of this territory. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I [2] - http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-fugue.html http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-...
VLM 14y ago
"If that's all purely emergent from known physical laws, we should be able to determine whether a particular object possesses/produces the illusion, right?" Lets talk about if a computer program, given some pretty simple physical and logical rules, halts, and is there any easier way to prove if all programs halt and what it's answer will be, other than pretty much letting it run and see what happens? So if I wrote an AI and asked it if it would end, it would not really have much to say beyond the mundane (when you yank the power cord or whatever). You can probably twist that into a free will argument somehow. Will asking it if it can prove it has free will (or consciousness) ever complete that program? It doesn't look like that program ever halts with biological processors and there seems to be no good answer.
jaibot 14y ago
Could you clarify what you mean by "emergent illusions"? What is it emerging from, what is it emerging into, and who is the subject of the illusion?
- jclos 14y ago
  I believe s/he meant emergent in the sense that it rises from the interactions of multiple smaller components, rather than "by design".
abraininavat 14y ago
Illusion is just what we call a model that we've determined isn't an accurate reflection of reality. It's curious that you're asking your questions about "illusions" in particular -- you should be asking them about "mental models" in general. Your idea of a lightbulb doesn't exist outside your brain any more than your idea of redness or free will does. Your brain is playing a trick on you and correlating your idea of a lightbulb and lightbulbs in the real world. That's a useful trick, of course, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to interact with the world, because obviously our brains can't shuffle real lightbulbs around inside itself like it shuffles idea-of-lightbulbs around. But it leads to confusion when dealing with mental models that may be useful but don't correspond to anything in reality.

manicbovine 14y ago

Have you read any of David Chalmers' work? He attempts to provide a framework for thinking analytically about qualia in "The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory." [1] Nearly all of his papers are accessible via his website. [2] [1] http://consc.net/books/tcm/ http://consc.net/books/tcm/ [2] http://consc.net/papers.html http://consc.net/papers.html

fluidcruft 14y ago
Thank you for the book recommendation. I have not read David Chalmers' work, but I have seen his name mentioned often. I've been trying to figure out where to get started with learning about the current understanding of the mind-body problem and keep getting recommendations to start back with the Greeks and work forward (which seems both quite daunting but also baroque given lack of influence from modern neuroscience). I think I'll start reading there. Thanks again!
- momerath 14y ago
  I would also recommend The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger.
nessus42 14y ago
I second Chalmers' book. It's an excellent introduction to how contemporary philosophers think about these issues.

gradys 14y ago

You might find The Mind's I [1], co-edited by Dan Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter, to be valuable. In particular, a piece called "Prelude... Ant Fugue" [2], written by Hofstadter, covers some of this territory. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I [2] - http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-fugue.html http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-...

VLM 14y ago

"If that's all purely emergent from known physical laws, we should be able to determine whether a particular object possesses/produces the illusion, right?" Lets talk about if a computer program, given some pretty simple physical and logical rules, halts, and is there any easier way to prove if all programs halt and what it's answer will be, other than pretty much letting it run and see what happens? So if I wrote an AI and asked it if it would end, it would not really have much to say beyond the mundane (when you yank the power cord or whatever). You can probably twist that into a free will argument somehow. Will asking it if it can prove it has free will (or consciousness) ever complete that program? It doesn't look like that program ever halts with biological processors and there seems to be no good answer.

jaibot 14y ago

Could you clarify what you mean by "emergent illusions"? What is it emerging from, what is it emerging into, and who is the subject of the illusion?

jclos 14y ago
I believe s/he meant emergent in the sense that it rises from the interactions of multiple smaller components, rather than "by design".

abraininavat 14y ago

Illusion is just what we call a model that we've determined isn't an accurate reflection of reality. It's curious that you're asking your questions about "illusions" in particular -- you should be asking them about "mental models" in general. Your idea of a lightbulb doesn't exist outside your brain any more than your idea of redness or free will does. Your brain is playing a trick on you and correlating your idea of a lightbulb and lightbulbs in the real world. That's a useful trick, of course, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to interact with the world, because obviously our brains can't shuffle real lightbulbs around inside itself like it shuffles idea-of-lightbulbs around. But it leads to confusion when dealing with mental models that may be useful but don't correspond to anything in reality.