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*Note: I put "perspective" in scare quotes because, technically, "being" is not a "perspective" in the ordinary sense of the word (as I tried to explain in a previous post), but as far as I can see, there is no better word for what is going on here. In the case of being, there is no "object", as such - there is no "that thing there" (unless we introspectively "make it into" an object); there is just the direct qualitative nature of the experience. Period.
I think I get what you are driving at, but I'm having trouble understanding why anyone would want to drive at it. Yes, when we intuitively reflect upon the nature of our own experience of qualia, this is, as you say, one part of the brain directing attention to other internal brain/body processes. Ontologically speaking, we are both physicalists, so we are in agreement here. But the question is not just ontological (i.e., about what exists). It is also epistemological (i.e., about what we can know), and the epistemological part is constrained by logic.
One part of your brain (let's call it "S" for the "self" part) experiences the other part (let's call it Q, for the "qualia" part). That's rather sketchy, but let's fly with it. If I want to look at your brain and isolate the red, where do I look? At S, or at Q, or at the total system S+Q? But, most importantly, notice that, in a sense, it doesn't matter. Why? Because the experience I'm looking for is one part of your brain "experiencing" another part of your brain.
If red just is the experience of one part of a brain while focusing on another part of the brain, then that is a relationship that is internal to that brain. It is logically impossible for my brain to stand in the same relationship to the parts of your brain because my brain is not your brain. My brain simply cannot be a part of your brain looking at another part of your brain. There are logical limits to the types of relationships that can occur between X and Not-X. My brain simply cannot be a part of your brain focusing on another part of your brain.
Something similar applies to "...experience which is created and presented by the mind out of particles, based on the input sensory information." Your experiences are data processed by your brain based on your sensory organs. I can look at this processing from the outside, but if red is your brain processing the sensory data gather by your body, then I cannot see the red that you are experiencing because I can't be your brain processing your data. Ontologically we are talking about the same processes (i.e., your brain processing your data), but epistemologically I can only observe those processes in your brain from the "as other"/"not me" perspective, whereas you experience them from your own brain's perspective.
Thus, when I study your brain processes, I don't see your experience of red. I just see brain processes.
So you can "doubt the idea of the subjective" all you want, but it is logically unavoidable.
I get that; because I am a distinct entity from you, so I can't experience your experiences. But if it's (as I thought the argument was) that I can't experience what I experience, that doesn't sound logical. The question of whether your experiences are the same information as mine is (I suggest) a logical one and the paradox of whether my red experience is the same as yours ought to be answered logically, not as what we can know, but what we can surmise, because, like Mary, we are locked in a room. But if her radar -screen shows an aircraft and you say yours does too, logically that's what we'd expect your radar, made according to the same technology, should show rather than a flying pig which you happen to call an aircraft. The incidental descriptions of what the image is like (tailplane and engines) should dispel any question that it's a pig with wings. Colours are trickier, but red being 'hot', and blue, 'cold' should shift the burden of proof onto those claiming it isn't the same red or blue. Mechanically it ought to be and descriptively, it sounds like it is.
The same of course applies to a robot that has had a human brain engram put into it and appears to be perceiving red, or having a nervous system (and a copy of human instincts) put into it and designed to experience pain, says it does, and doesn't like it.
To protest that this is cheating by making it exactly like a human, shows why the zombie analogy is flawed, because the only way it is not going to be able to do this is if it isn't a atom for atom or even a biologically complete replica of the human. If it is, it cannot logically not experience what a human experiences, because even the genetics are there.
This is about what we can surmise, rather than what we can know, and is the validity of the materialist default and the burden of proof on those to prove that what does seem the better argument is not.
But apart from this which is I think a red -herring, the question is rather the experience I have and which you have apart from the logically sound assumption that the experience I talk about as pain or red is mechanically the same as yours and thus the same kind of experience if not the same pain.
If we were telepaths, it would logically be, though the naysayers would argue we can't Know, but like the 'we can't know anything for sure' types, it doesn't matter. What seems the logically and evidentially the probable conclusion is the best one. That's why logic and evidence beats Faith -claims, every time.
No, what I thought you were going to say - and I have trouble with this aspect of my "theory" (and a well merited here) never mind you having trouble with ..it is the nature of the experience within my own brain and the question of me (my brain) looking at it. To get closest, a bit of brain is connecting with another bit - or it might be in the same bit of brain - and is reading the experience presented as a complex of particle reactions that manifest as as the sight of red, or the feeling of pain. There is an intuitive mis-match between the reading and the experience which seems to demand Something that is experiencing the experience, so to speak.
I'm having to postulate that it isn't 'Other' but rather like practical telepathy, is having the experience (particle complex mechanism) by being within or part of the experience -mechanism. And since we are in the same brain, telepathy isn't the right term; it is consciousness; which isn't thought (which is a reasoning process, volitional or instinctive) but the information -processing of experience, and new information, like a new taste (there was a time I never knew what a pecan @ maple -syrup pastry tasted like) is not new experience, but new information (i.e presented by) within a particular experience - delivering bio -mechanism.
Now this may not be what the Hard Question is, but it's the only related question I can think of that is Hard, never mind being relevant. If it's like labelling abstracts (like angles), then it is irrelevant. If it is about whether physicalism can ever explain it, it isn't hard (if my idea was correct) to suppose it could be.
If it is about Something More, or some unknown force or qualia particle (you may recall that was what I was thinking about during our first discussions or rather your unpaid master classes in Qualia and the Hard Question) then that is indeed the problem, and a tricky one to answer in terms of physicalism.
But even then, to claim that physicalism can never identify and explain that mysterious force or particle, smacks of mystical woo and the Supernatural which is not just what science doesn't yet understand but never can because it is pretty much magical, and there is Mystic phd wetting himself with excitement at the thought of having something in evidential terms let alone philosophical to slap the "God" -label onto.
That was the challenge of Dualism, as it appeared to me, and if I argued against it (and still do) it is not because of the ad hominem accusation of "God -phobia", but because the claim seems practically and logically unjustified.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
What you seem unable to understand is that there has to be someone to BE the experiencer. That process of "experiencing" cannot be done by mere particles "magically" somehow possessing a cumulative, composite essence capable of BEING an experiencer instead of mere particles processing inputs.
Thank you; yes, that is the nub of the Hard Question as I understand it. To make it crudely simple, if the experiencer has to be something other than the biochemicals, then Dualism has a case. If the experiencer CAN be (in theory if not in a hypothesis) then Monism works fine. And to toss in the word 'magically' there is rather projecting your own God -philiac preferences onto the materialists.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 04-13-2018 at 09:56 PM..
I am replacing red with how Trans feels when he listens to whatever piece of music makes him feel enraptured. Give us a title Trans, and give us a link, something evocative with violin preferred.
this example also points out the "problem" with the standard response that "feelings are just chemicals in the brain" because science can record and measure and graph with spikes on chart showing the brain's response to Trans listening to the music that makes him feel enraptured, while he is hooked up to the device that captures that data.
But it isn't an unresolvable problem. lt is instinct and I know that because educated and even incorrect instinct can be impressed onto the music. In my early days of getting to know music, I cheated; I did, by impressing 'programmes' that were nothing to do with the music, and even today, I get an inculated (I think that's the word - if it Is a word) emotion and memory or what I was doing at the time :-
New world symphony (Lascaux cave -paintings
Sibelius 5 (Roman- - British archaeology)
Bruckner 3 (Bagan temples)
Thus I know that this is within me, and not from outside, or it would not be such a personal dog's breakfast of emotional responses.
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the data and the charts and the graphs and the chemicals in the brain no matter how extensively they are detailed and listed and named and described and analysed and written about in science journals (purely quantitative, purely external), are NEVER going to allow another person to feel and see and know and experience in all its exquisite entirety what Trans is feeling and experiencing when he is listening to that piece of music and feeling enraptured (purely qualitative, purely internal).
Correct. This is obvious, though the 'is your interpretation the same as mine?' question is valid, but unrelated, and best seen as logical rather that epistemological.
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is that consistent with what you are saying Gaylen?
and let's hear from Trans. if someone injected you with chemicals or gave you a pill with chemicals, or zapped your brain with electrodes, would it be the same for you as actually listening to that particular piece of music? which would you pick and why....the pills or listening to those old men on strings?
As you will gather, I can screw up my emotional responses quite well enough without the assistance of puggle or stash. This is of course just another reason why all this looks increasingly like stuff the brain does, like I am the pilot and the subconscious or unconscious, or rather instinctive reactions, is the autopilot, since we couldn't function if we had to work everything by intent.
(1) which, if I may become a music bore for a while is the problem with people of other cultures playing "English music". They do not get 'understatement'. They feel they have to Interpret the music to make it have feeling when the calmness of Not being pulled about with rubato and the like IS the feeling (2).
p.s It sounds like a cowboy whistling in the Arizona desert. It's not bad, but...different..
(2) same problem with Casals I think doing an excellent job of making Elgar's 'cello concerto better known, but he felt he had to Interpret the opening tune.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 04-13-2018 at 10:21 PM..
... and I have trouble with this aspect of my "theory" (and a well merited here) never mind you having trouble with ..it is the nature of the experience within my own brain and the question of me (my brain) looking at it. To get closest, a bit of brain is connecting with another bit - or it might be in the same bit of brain - and is reading the experience presented as a complex of particle reactions that manifest as as the sight of red, or the feeling of pain. There is an intuitive mis-match between the reading and the experience which seems to demand Something that is experiencing the experience, so to speak.
I'm having to postulate that it isn't 'Other' but rather like practical telepathy, is having the experience (particle complex mechanism) by being within or part of the experience -mechanism. And since we are in the same brain, telepathy isn't the right term; it is consciousness; which isn't thought (which is a reasoning process, volitional or instinctive) but the information -processing of experience, and new information, like a new taste (there was a time I never knew what a pecan @ maple -syrup pastry tasted like) is not new experience, but new information (i.e presented by) within a particular experience - delivering bio -mechanism.
I don't really understand what you are getting at in most of this post, but these two paragraphs sound like you might be moving closer toward the core issue that I've been trying to get at. Are you pointing toward a problem of infinite regress here? (Sometimes referred to as the homunculus - the "little man" in the brain who experiences, but then the question is how the little man experiences, so he needs a little man in his brain...?) Are you trying to pin down the point where "the rubber hits the road" such that the neural mechanisms "feel like" color or a pain or a taste?
Yes. I think so though 'infinite regress' is used more with the problem of origin of the cosmos of matter. But I get the idea that whenever you solve the problem of the experiencer experiencing the experience, you still have an apparent similar problem to solve - rather like the objection to transitional forms.
You produce a transitional form and the argument is made that you now have two gaps and need two more transitional forms. This is of course a crap objection as Theist apologetics argue from 'joining the dots' all the time. You don't need all the information/evidence, but just some direction -signs along the path.
I am postulating a way out of this by a concept that the experience (qualia) and the experiencer is the same. It might be helpful conceptually if I suggest that the mechanism for perceiving the experience and the mechanism for constructing the experience in a perceptible form is the same. Or if not the same atoms, within the same complex of atoms. Perhaps or effectively the same part of the brain.
The problem of transfer of the experience from A to B would in theory be removed if they were all aprt of the same process.
You can see what i mean by inkling and groping, but if I could get you to ink and grope to the same glimmer of a solution, even if you don't agree with it, I think we would both be talking about the same thing.
If red just is the experience of one part of a brain while focusing on another part of the brain, then that is a relationship that is internal to that brain. It is logically impossible for my brain to stand in the same relationship to the parts of your brain because my brain is not your brain. My brain simply cannot be a part of your brain looking at another part of your brain. There are logical limits to the types of relationships that can occur between X and Not-X. My brain simply cannot be a part of your brain focusing on another part of your brain.
Something similar applies to "...experience which is created and presented by the mind out of particles, based on the input sensory information." Your experiences are data processed by your brain based on your sensory organs. I can look at this processing from the outside, but if red is your brain processing the sensory data gather by your body, then I cannot see the red that you are experiencing because I can't be your brain processing your data. Ontologically we are talking about the same processes (i.e., your brain processing your data), but epistemologically I can only observe those processes in your brain from the "as other"/"not me" perspective, whereas you experience them from your own brain's perspective.
Thus, when I study your brain processes, I don't see your experience of red. I just see brain processes.
So you can "doubt the idea of the subjective" all you want, but it is logically unavoidable.
why do you not answer me when i say.
we don't know "brain langue". We know machine language but we don't "molecule langue". machine language is binary and molecule language is something else. "when we know what information is being exchanged via molecule state changes we may know what you experiencing red as; within a probability set that is."
when we can follow the pathways and understand the parts in that pathway we will knid of know how you process information and thus how you feel.
One is life, the other is a collection of life. If cells change genetically, they either die or become a new species. The biosphere just changes.
I am not sure if this got buried, this thread burry's things ... fast.
You alluded you have some training so I am not explaining the small stuff. lets look at "one is life" and one is a "collection of life".
what is going on in a cell? its a collection of proteins doing so many things that we classify that volume as the smallest unit of life. Like we classify the smallest unit of matter as an atom. we know the smallest units aren't atoms now. We know there is not one thing alive in a cell. but we classify it as alive.
Hydrogen and oxygen do not act like water. But water acts exactly like two hydrogens and one oxygen bonded together. I do not act like a cell at first glance either. The biosphere does not act 'like me". At first glance.
The biosphere did grow, it spread over the entire planet. Each mass extinction it had to grow again. Not all that dissimilar to how you grew and parts of you grow. Its still trying to grow but we are making it sick, but it will grow back.
It evolved to match the conditions on the planet. "changed' is "evolved". The biosphere is not the same as it was 350,000,000 years ago. Like life evolved. yes, it was a feedback loop. Like cells in you and you are a feedback loop. You're right, it did change, like you changed through your life. And all through chemistry as described by physics, as you pointed out.
and, if it (life) came from somewhere else in space, then the biosphere most certainly grew, and we can say it reproduced using the universe's own mechanisms, just like a cell and just like us. or a seeding plant.
when we can follow the pathways and understand the parts in that pathway we will knid of know how you process information and thus how you feel.
No, you won't. Or, at least, not without some bridge laws relating objective mechanical processes to subjective qualitative feelings (i.e., a paradigm shift in physics) and, even then, we'd have to count on a mysterious brute fact "leap of enlightenment" for the abstract knowledge of pathways to somehow transform into the concrete, direct "ah-ha!" of "Oh! That's what it's like to actually see red!" I see no reason why reading about the abstract 3rd-person-accessible facts of red should trigger an "ah-ha!" subjective qualitative feeling of "That is what it is like to see red" but, such a brute fact "that's the way it is" is logically possible so, for moment, I can't rule it out. In the future we might develop a theory that either implies the natural impossibility (such as the way Relativity ruled out the acceleration of matter to fast than light), or explains the natural possibility (such as the way that dynamical systems theories explain the self-organization of highly complex systems).
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 04-14-2018 at 08:52 AM..
I agree with that. Reading about Red won't tell you what it is like to experience red, just as describing the taste of a mangosteen ("Like strawberries having sex") will not actually let you experience what the taste is.
But I hope you fit in the idea that the mechanics of the experience and the experiencing of it are the same mechanism and experiencing as for tastes that you know. The new taste is just new information.
The question is not an unfamiliar kind of sensation but the way the the information (new or familiar) becomes to be presented for experiencing and what experiences it and how it does.
I agree with that. Reading about Red won't tell you what it is like to experience red, just as describing the taste of a mangosteen ("Like strawberries having sex") will not actually let you experience what the taste is.
In which case, I don't know why there is any disagreement between us. If you accept that "Reading about Red won't tell you what it is like to experience red", then - by logical implication - you ought to accept that "current physics cannot fully explain the subjective qualitative experience of "red" because all that current physics can do is, in effect, allow you to "read about" red. Give the totality of all current information in physics, chemistry, biology, sociology..., all Mary can do is "read about" red. And the reason for this is simple: Current science is founded on the idea of factoring out subjective qualia via processes of abstraction so that data can be objectively tested. So long as this is the central paradigm of science, scientific data will fail to convey the concrete meaning of red.
Current science can, in principle, read your mind well enough to say whether or not you are experiencing red (even if you lie and try to pretend that you are not experiencing red) and it could, in principle, stimulate your brain in such a way so that you experience red whenever the scientist wants you to experience red (e.g., technology in "The Matrix"). Such abilities would imply an amazingly deep, powerful, and practical understanding of the qualia constituting conscious experience. But it would still fall short of understanding what is ultimately the most profound and philosophically/spiritually amazing and mysterious aspect of qualia, namely, the concrete feeling itself - that aspect of experience that Mary cannot grasp by just reading about red. When all is said and done, that "raw" subjective/concrete qualitative aspect of experience has to be taken as brute-fact given for science - i.e., it has to be taken as fundamental - not the sort of thing that you explain in terms of other things.
Something on the scale of physical brain-like complexity of processing is almost certainly naturally necessary for the experience of qualia (hence you won't have non-physical souls or gods floating around having conscious experiences), but such complexity is not logically necessary (i.e., there nothing logically self-contradictory in most definitions of "god" or "soul"), thus it is still logically possible for ontological dualism to be true, and thus it is logically possible for gods, souls, and "zombies" to exist.
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But I hope you fit in the idea that the mechanics of the experience and the experiencing of it are the same mechanism and experiencing as for tastes that you know. The new taste is just new information.
Not only do I "fit in the idea" - my dual-aspect theory demands it. According to my theory: Ontologically, qualia are the physical mechanisms. The "dual-aspect" is epistemological. It basically just points to the brute-fact that being a physical system (specifically a brain-like complex sort of system) consists of some subjective qualitative knowledge that is not - as such - accessible via 3rd-person ("reading about stuff") approaches (such as current science requires).
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 04-14-2018 at 12:47 PM..
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well merited here) never mind you having trouble with ..it is the nature of the experience within my own brain and the question of me (my brain) looking at it. To get closest, a bit of brain is connecting with another bit - or it might be in the same bit of brain - and is reading the experience presented as a complex of particle reactions that manifest as as the sight of red, or the feeling of pain. There is an intuitive mis-match between the reading and the experience which seems to demand Something that is experiencing the experience, so to speak. 
No Contest 