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I don't agree that conscious experience is necessarily reducible. When I put a piece of cheesecake in my mouth, certain electrical signals will likely be firing

I don't agree that conscious experience is necessarily reducible. When I put a piece of cheesecake in my mouth, certain electrical signals will likely be firing in my brain, but those signals don't mean what it's like to consciously experience cheesecake in my mouth. That is, the signals themselves aren't indicative of the quality of my experience that only I, myself, can have in my conscious existence. The signals are only a physical correlate to my experience. I don't experience electrical signals in my brain. My experience is different than them. My point is, there is other stuff out there in the universe (mental stuff) that is different than physical stuff, that seems almost impossible to be explained as physical stuff. I believe in the physical sciences, evolution, and mathematics, but I don't think that they fully encapsulate all that there is, nor can they definitively explain things like consciousness (they at least need a little more added to them).

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> My point is, there is other stuff out there in the universe (mental stuff) that is different than physical stuff, that seems almost impossible to be explained as physical stuff. I believe in the physical sciences, evolution, and mathematics, but I don't think that they fully encapsulate all that there is, nor can they definitively explain things like consciousness (they at least need a little more added to them). See, physics has explained the mechanics of what happens when you put cheesecake in your mouth. You do experience electrical signals in your brain. It is reproducible. You're just refusing to correlate that phenomena to what you feel, which is okay, because it's not entirely obvious, feeling is an internal feedback process. But consider this mental experiment: if I blindfold you and stimulate your brain the same way as cheesecake in your mouth by the use of electrodes, would you be able to discern?
- robmclarty 13y ago
  I just think it's not as simple as that. I may very well not be able to distinguish the difference between electrode-stimulation and actual-cake-in-my-mouth. What I'm trying to say is that I don't believe that even an exhaustive list of physical information about my brain includes "what it is like" for me to have the experience qua experience.
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    I see you work with UX. I guess you have an underlying belief that we're unique snowflakes, based on your training/experience, so the idea that experience can be captured by brain states feels too reductionist and has to be explained by an unknown mechanism... but let me suggest that it seems to be quite the contrary. Attributing it entirely to matter actually validates the notion that each individual reacts differently to the same stimuli, because each organism has a unique constitution, neuronal activation levels, brain chemistry, etc., which in turn are all influenced by genetics, environment, study, diet. In other words, we're really the result of accumulated experiences, thus unique, and experience things uniquely. The point is that common physics alone seem enough to validate that intution.
    - robmclarty 13y ago
      First, argumentum ad hominem (if you don't know what that means, you can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem). Second, my background is actually in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence which includes Comp Sci., Psych, Psycholinguistics, Linguistics, and Philosophy. That is to say, I've put some serious thought into these issues and am not making opinions willy nilly. Third, personally, I want to be able to explain the universe in terms of neat physical laws and mathematical formulae. But I don't think (at the moment) that what we have (yet) sufficiently explains what's going on (especially in terms of consciousness). The common "explanation" for what consciousness is (usually put forth by materialist-determinist science) is that it simply emerges from a certain complexity of matter (put enough genes and DNA and neurons together and, bam, consciousness). I just feel like that begs the question. If we're going to explain what consciousness is I think we need to do better than that. That's all.
      - Luc 13y ago
        It's all atoms bumping into each other, designed by Darwinian evolution working over a period of 3.6 billion years to design mechanisms so complex that describing and simulating their complete interaction will be the work of generations. Along the way new physics theories may arise, but that won't change anything about the fact that it's all Quantum Mechanics. Just like you can have thermodynamics without knowing the lowest level of interactions, or in fact like Darwin was right about evolution without knowing about DNA.
- RivieraKid 13y ago
  Let's put it another way. I feel pain when the atoms in my brain are in certain configurations. Why is that? You simply can't explain that with physics. You can explain the physical symptoms of pain - like crying or sweaing. But not the feeling of pain. And the reason for that is that you won't be able to define the feeling of pain. Crying or sweating is definable (or reducible), it's just a complex motion of physical particles. But what's the feeling of pain (not the physical symptoms)?
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    > I feel pain when the atoms in my brain are in certain configurations. Why is that? That's tautological. You feel pain when your brain is in a particular set of states. Your brain is in one of those particular states. You feel pain. There's no underlying "why", it's the definition of pain itself. > You simply can't explain that with physics. You can explain the mechanism with physics. What I think you mean is that you can't describe, subjectively, how you feel with it.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

> My point is, there is other stuff out there in the universe (mental stuff) that is different than physical stuff, that seems almost impossible to be explained as physical stuff. I believe in the physical sciences, evolution, and mathematics, but I don't think that they fully encapsulate all that there is, nor can they definitively explain things like consciousness (they at least need a little more added to them). See, physics has explained the mechanics of what happens when you put cheesecake in your mouth. You do experience electrical signals in your brain. It is reproducible. You're just refusing to correlate that phenomena to what you feel, which is okay, because it's not entirely obvious, feeling is an internal feedback process. But consider this mental experiment: if I blindfold you and stimulate your brain the same way as cheesecake in your mouth by the use of electrodes, would you be able to discern?

robmclarty 13y ago
I just think it's not as simple as that. I may very well not be able to distinguish the difference between electrode-stimulation and actual-cake-in-my-mouth. What I'm trying to say is that I don't believe that even an exhaustive list of physical information about my brain includes "what it is like" for me to have the experience qua experience.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  I see you work with UX. I guess you have an underlying belief that we're unique snowflakes, based on your training/experience, so the idea that experience can be captured by brain states feels too reductionist and has to be explained by an unknown mechanism... but let me suggest that it seems to be quite the contrary. Attributing it entirely to matter actually validates the notion that each individual reacts differently to the same stimuli, because each organism has a unique constitution, neuronal activation levels, brain chemistry, etc., which in turn are all influenced by genetics, environment, study, diet. In other words, we're really the result of accumulated experiences, thus unique, and experience things uniquely. The point is that common physics alone seem enough to validate that intution.
  - robmclarty 13y ago
    First, argumentum ad hominem (if you don't know what that means, you can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem). Second, my background is actually in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence which includes Comp Sci., Psych, Psycholinguistics, Linguistics, and Philosophy. That is to say, I've put some serious thought into these issues and am not making opinions willy nilly. Third, personally, I want to be able to explain the universe in terms of neat physical laws and mathematical formulae. But I don't think (at the moment) that what we have (yet) sufficiently explains what's going on (especially in terms of consciousness). The common "explanation" for what consciousness is (usually put forth by materialist-determinist science) is that it simply emerges from a certain complexity of matter (put enough genes and DNA and neurons together and, bam, consciousness). I just feel like that begs the question. If we're going to explain what consciousness is I think we need to do better than that. That's all.
    - Luc 13y ago
      It's all atoms bumping into each other, designed by Darwinian evolution working over a period of 3.6 billion years to design mechanisms so complex that describing and simulating their complete interaction will be the work of generations. Along the way new physics theories may arise, but that won't change anything about the fact that it's all Quantum Mechanics. Just like you can have thermodynamics without knowing the lowest level of interactions, or in fact like Darwin was right about evolution without knowing about DNA.
RivieraKid 13y ago
Let's put it another way. I feel pain when the atoms in my brain are in certain configurations. Why is that? You simply can't explain that with physics. You can explain the physical symptoms of pain - like crying or sweaing. But not the feeling of pain. And the reason for that is that you won't be able to define the feeling of pain. Crying or sweating is definable (or reducible), it's just a complex motion of physical particles. But what's the feeling of pain (not the physical symptoms)?
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  > I feel pain when the atoms in my brain are in certain configurations. Why is that? That's tautological. You feel pain when your brain is in a particular set of states. Your brain is in one of those particular states. You feel pain. There's no underlying "why", it's the definition of pain itself. > You simply can't explain that with physics. You can explain the mechanism with physics. What I think you mean is that you can't describe, subjectively, how you feel with it.