The relationship between science and materialism

[cyborg]

You are now proposing that the qualia, which you have already accepted are inherently subjective (i.e. NOT BRAIN PROCESSES) "are" physical events/processes.

More language abuse again.

That qualia are subjective doesn't mean that they aren't the result physical events or processes. You are failing to understand what the subjective realtionship is - again.

Qualia don't have to be an objective description of how reality actually is - if that is even possible. That would make them subjective by defintion.

As I already explained empiricism is the process of eliminating inconsistencies in these subjective experiences in order to arrive at an objective model. The ability to construct such a model itself is justification for this course of action.

My experience of 'green' doesn't have to relate to what 'green' actually is. That doesn't mean that my experience is disconnected with a mind thingy doing the experiencing separate from what we understand of the physical brain. That is not a conclusion that can be allowed from the premises.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

This time I am going to include my own comment, so it is clear what you are responding to at what point:

Originally Posted by Geoff :

You admitted the existence of things which are inherently subjective in nature. So let's accept your funny definition of mind and just use the word "qualia" since this word was invented for the precisely this purpose.

Paul replied:

I'm becoming suspicious that we will have different definitions for subjective.

You mean you're thinking you may now have to bend your definition of subjective just like you bent your definition of mind. It won't work.

Let's recap. I asked you:

Choice 1) Admit that there are things which are inherently subjective in nature
Choice 2) Deny it.

If you deny it, then you are an eliminativist and the argument is over. But you didn't. You admitted it.

Now, instead of you accept the proof to which it led, you are trying to backtrack and change your choice. If you do that, then you are going to back to being an elminativist. If you redefine "inherently subjective" in such a way as it is going to end up meaning "brain process" then you are contradicting your answer to the above choice. Brain processes aren't inherently subjective. They are inherently objective.

Your "I admit it" was logically equivalent to admitting there is a point in using the word "qualia" to mean "the inherently subjective parts of mind".

I would be willing to define qualia to mean that, sure.

Not only that but you have either admitted they exist, or you are an eliminativist. Which is it, Paul?

You have already admitted they exist, and, by definition, they are not physical processes.

I didn't realize I had done this question begging, so I'd better retract whatever it was that I admitted.

As predicted. Remember why we introduced the word "qualia"? It was so we couldn't mix them up with other aspects of things called "mental" - the ones which are clearly objective physical processes. There is no "question begging" here. All there is is a materialist who keeps changing his definitions. Have you noticed that I'm not having to keep wobbling on my definitions? I'm happy to use yours - all I ask is you stop changing them in mid-argument.

And you CANNOT challenge the definition because then I'm just going to line up yet another word to attach to whatever the "inherently subjective" entities are and we will end up right back here again.

In other words, you are going to beg the question forever.

I did NOT beg any questions, Paul. I do not believe you know what "question begging" means. YOU already admitted that there are things which are inherently subjective in nature. So stop telling me I am question begging when all I am doing is using a word to refer to the very same things YOU HAVE ALREADY ADMITTED EXIST.

Since when does "inherently subjective" imply "not brain processes"? Please remove your foot from my mouth.

"Inherently subjective" means "inherently from the first-person point of view". Like the experience of seeing red. "Qualia" MEANS the inherently subjective parts of mental processes.

What do you think "subjective" means, if it doesn't mean what I am saying it means? Do you think it reallt means "objective"?

It's either a reductio ad absurdum or a proof by contradiction. If you deny the existence of subjective things, it's a reductio. If you admit their existence then you end up contradicting your own definitions. Not proof by armwaving, proof by assertion, proof by "it must be true". Reductio's and contradictions are actual proofs, and that is what this is.

Do you understand the proof?

Nope.

Well, keep looking, because it's still right there in front of you.

It's the reason you keep changing your definitions and backtracking on your decisions.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I have had enough of this tonight.

Perhaps, overnight, you could think very clearly and define for me the following words:

Subjective, Objective, Qualia, Physical, Mental.

Make sure that you are happy with your definitions. When I come back tommorrow I will demonstrate that, provided you stick with one set of definitions, your position leads to either a reductio or a contradiction.

I can prove this is the case, WHATEVER definitions you give. Think carefully before you give them, because tommorrow when the proof is delivered yet another time I am not going to allow any post-proof re-engineering of definitions in order for you to claim the proof didn't work.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

So you're saying that "inherently subjective" means "logically cannot be a product of brain function"?

Would it help if I disallow anything to be defined in such a way that it absolutely cannot be a product of brain function?

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

So you're saying that "inherently subjective" means "logically cannot be a product of brain function"?

Would it help if I disallow anything to be defined in such a way that it absolutely cannot be a product of brain function?

~~ Paul

I do not care what rules you wish to impose on yourself regarding definitions. You give me your definitions, Paul. That way, you can't accuse me of having problems with definitions. Whatever definitions you give me, I can supply the proof you say you can't see. I am imposing NO RULE apart from that having provided a definition, you stick to it.

However, your question speaks volumes. You are basically admitting that you wish to avoid any definition that might lead to the proof going through. Your difficulty is therefore going to be how you define "subjective", "mental" and "qualia". Take your time. You've had four years to think about it.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

You're demanding that subjective mean logically incapable of being brain function, but I'm the one trying to rig the definitions?

subjective: viewed from the first person
objective: perceptible by all observers
qualia: stupid word; let's not use it
physical: observable
mental: I don't know. A term used to circumscribe certain subjective experiences.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You're demanding that subjective mean logically incapable of being brain function, but I'm the one trying to rig the definitions?

Yes, Paul, you are the one trying to rig the definitions. You keep changing yours. Mine stay the same. Not only that, but I'm happy to work with yours if you give me a coherent set and stick to them. So yes - it's you who has a problem with definitions. The only problem with my definitions is that everybody is so hung up defending materialism that they are unable to understand them.

I'll be back in an hour or two with a response to your definitions. Although I'd like you to actually make up your mind regarding what you mean by "mental" or "mind", and be sure that you have decided there is nothing to which the word "qualia" might validly refer. At the moment, you don't seem completely sure about the definitions which are the most important.

 

[69dodge]

The system I proposed can be tweaked very easily to turn it into either materialism or idealism. So it is quite close to idealism, without being idealism. It is also, in its own way, quite close to materialism - because it can be naturalised.

Okay, but I assume you don't want to tweak it one way or the other, but you want the neutral stuff to be neutral. Yes?

There's no "mental stuff" in my system.

I was speaking very loosely. I didn't mean stuff that you could touch or anything like that. I just meant the existence of consciousness.

Your position seems to be, "physical brain processes give rise to consciousness" doesn't count as an explanation, but "neutral stuff gives rise to consciousness" does. I don't see why.

Because it allows a symmetrical reduction instead of a lop-sided one.

That's a nice feature, but only if you can in fact describe the reduction. Otherwise, it's no explanation at all, symmetric or otherwise. And I don't see why you'd be any happier with a reduction of consciousness to one nonmental thing (neutral zero-y stuff) than to any other nonmental thing (brain processes).

I think I have an explanation. Not that it's really mine. I offered it so people might better understand why I wasn't defending certain other positions, but it created more confusion rather than less.

Well, I'm certainly confused, that's for sure.

I don't know what the explanation is. I don't even know what you mean by "explanation" here. I can only repeat what I said in a previous post: If you insist that the mental, by definition, can't be explained in terms of anything else, then you're kind of stuck if you nevertheless want an explanation of the mental in terms of something else.

Are you familiar with Bohm's concept of the implicate order and the explicate order? Have you heard of the analogy of the ink drop in glycerine?

No, to both.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I'll be back in an hour or two with a response to your definitions. Although I'd like you to actually make up your mind regarding what you mean by "mental" or "mind", and be sure that you have decided there is nothing to which the word "qualia" might validly refer. At the moment, you don't seem completely sure about the definitions which are the most important.

I'm sure we could define qualia to refer to something valid, I just have no interest in doing so. You can pick a definition if you like, as long as it doesn't imply that qualia can't be brain function. Same with mental, mind, consciousness, phenomenal, and all the other usual suspects.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I need some clarifications about your definitions:

-------------------------------
subjective: viewed from the first person
objective: perceptible by all observers
qualia: (undefined, has no referent)
physical: observable
mental: (tentative) A term used to circumscribe certain subjective experiences.
----------------------------------

Q1) Given your definition of "subjective", can you define a word which means "viewed from third person"? (would this be another valid definition of "objective", or do we need a new word?)

Q2) Given your definition of "objective", can you give me a word which means "only perceptible by one observer (me)" (would this be another valid definition of "subjective", or do we need a new word?)

Q3) Given your answers to Q2 and Q3 (whatever they are), can you confirm that your definition of physical is still going to "observable". Is that definition enough to distinguish something as "physical", or are you going to need to be more specific?

What I am most interested in is whether you define subjective and objective to be opposites in all cases, and if not I want to know where the assymettry occurs in the definitions. If something is going to qualify as both subjective and objective at the same time then it is going to have to be clear from your definitions what this "thing" is - i.e. what properties it has which qualifies it as both subjective and objective.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I'm sure we could define qualia to refer to something valid, I just have no interest in doing so. You can pick a definition if you like, as long as it doesn't imply that qualia can't be brain function. Same with mental, mind, consciousness, phenomenal, and all the other usual suspects.

~~ Paul

No, I want you to provide the definitions. That way there can be no more FALSE accusations of cheating and "question begging" on my part. Please either define qualia or define it to have no referent.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Q1) Given your definition of "subjective", can you define a word which means "viewed from third person"? (would this be another valid definition of "objective", or do we need a new word?)

I suppose it would.

Q2) Given your definition of "objective", can you give me a word which means "only perceptible by one observer (me)" (would this be another valid definition of "subjective", or do we need a new word?)

I wouldn't use subjective for that, because it has so many annoying connotations. How about "private experience" or something?

Q3) Given your answers to Q2 and Q3 (whatever they are), can you confirm that your definition of physical is still going to "observable". Is that definition enough to distinguish something as "physical", or are you going to need to be more specific?

Well, I don't mean "observable by everyone," so one person will do. And I don't mean "observable now," but observable in principle. I do not know how to apply the word physical to concepts.

What I am most interested in is whether you define subjective and objective to be opposites in all cases, and if not I want to know where the assymettry occurs in the definitions. If something is going to qualify as both subjective and objective at the same time then it is going to have to be clear from your definitions what this "thing" is - i.e. what properties it has which qualifies it as both subjective and objective.

I would say that any subjective experience is objective to some degree. I can describe the experience to a certain level, and other people can understand it objectively to that level. Whether I can describe the entire experience is open to question. In any event, this does not mean that the other people can experience my experience, only that they can understand it intellectually.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

No, I want you to provide the definitions. That way there can be no more FALSE accusations of cheating and "question begging" on my part. Please either define qualia or define it to have no referent.

Okay, don't use the word.

~~ Paul

 

[chriswl]

Geoff

we all know that it is vastly easier in philosophy to knock down theories and ideas than to build up solid defensible ones. As a rest from being on defensive duty for materialism, I want to try and give the foundations of your ideas a bit of a kicking (if you don't mind )

An argument for eliminativism

Descartes was wrong. We don't a have direct, reliable handle on what it is like to be conscious. Far from being the only thing we can truly be sure of, our understanding of subjective experience it is so incomplete, confused and contradictory that we cannot put together any kind of coherent definition of what we mean by the term. Better to just junk the whole notion. Here is an everyday example that shows that we don't actually understand consciousness "from the inside" (in the following example the ticking clock could equally well be a buzzing fridge or an airconditioning fan).

I am in a room, quietly reading, not consciously aware of any sounds. Suddenly the (wind up) clock stops ticking. I am aware that it has stopped ticking even though I was not aware of the ticking itself. What am I actually aware of? What is the content of that conscious experience? There is no "what it is like" to not hear a clock ticking and to then hear it stop ticking. But the notion of consciousness requires that there must be.

At the moment the clock stops, I have a brief memory of hearing the clock ticking, and then stopping. It seems like I was conscious of the clock ticking but only for the last few seconds before it stopped. But my mind could not have anticipated that the clock was going to stop and become conscious of it for a few seconds prior to this. Perhaps I was always conscious of the clock ticking but didn't realise I was conscious of it? But an unconscious consciousness is incoherent. It must be that having a memory of something (the clock's ticking) does not prove that I was consciously aware of that something at the time it was happening. But this is also incoherent - the experience of hearing a clock tick is clearly a conscious experience, if such things exist. If I remember an experience then what I remember is being conscious of the experience. Furthermore if we can't trust that our memories of events are really memories of conscious events then we have no way of knowing whether we were ever conscious in the past.

Now, from a physical perspective there is no paradox and the scenario is quite straightforward. My brain continually makes short duration physical memories (that are stored for only a few seconds before being overwritten). These contain lots of detail (including ticking clocks) some of which is ordinarily filtered out by other parts of the brain as unimportant. It needs some kind of trigger (like the clock stopping, or someone asking me whether I can hear the clock) to make the other parts of the brain pay attention to those details in the memories. It makes no sense to ask whether I was conscious of the ticking clock. Did consciousness happen in the making of short term memory or the accessing of that memory - neither, really, so what are we asking? The data got stored and acted upon and that's all. We only have problems when we try to provide a narrative description of our conscious experience. Perhaps we should simply resist the temptation to do this, perhaps what we are trying to do here is misconceived?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Okay, but I assume you don't want to tweak it one way or the other, but you want the neutral stuff to be neutral. Yes?

The system is more useful to me in an untweaked state. That way it stays neutral and I do not have to jump off the naturalism/non-naturalism fence.

Your position seems to be, "physical brain processes give rise to consciousness" doesn't count as an explanation, but "neutral stuff gives rise to consciousness" does. I don't see why.

There's no "giving rise". That sounds suspiciously like what happened to JC 3 days after he was crucified, and it is about as equally explainable. Let me use a crude analogy. If you have a film projector set up then you have 3 components of a system - the lamp, the film and image on the screen. What is the relationship between the the film and the image? The latter requires the former. Change the film, and the image changes. They are "tightly bound", but they aren't quite "the same thing". My system can be thought of in the same way. The lamp represents the zero. The film represents the brain. The image represents a mind. P-zombies are film but no lamp, hence no image. If there's no film (no brain) then there's no image (no mind). If you damage the film, the image is damaged in a corresponding way, and so on. My neutral system represents all these components of the system already. There is no need for any "arising". Both mind and matter are already defined within the system.

That's a nice feature, but only if you can in fact describe the reduction. Otherwise, it's no explanation at all, symmetric or otherwise. And I don't see why you'd be any happier with a reduction of consciousness to one nonmental thing (neutral zero-y stuff) than to any other nonmental thing (brain processes).

Because if you try to reduce them to brain processes you effectively deny they exist at all. To continue my analogy, it's like trying to reduce the image to the film without refering to the lamp.

No, to both.

Bohm wasn't trying to solve the mind-body problem. He was trying to provide a better explanation of QM than the Copenhagen interpretation, which he didn't like. He produced something which is a form of neutral monism. In his version, you have "the explicate order", which is the phenomenal world of mind and matter. In the explicate order things seem to be dualistic. But in the implicate order these things are seemlessly intertwined. He tries to demonstrate what he means by showing an experiment where two glass cylinders are one inside the other, with glycerine filling the space between. Then you put an ink drop in the glycerine, which just sits there. If you then rotate the outer cylinder, the ink drop starts to get stretched out further and further until eventually it disappears. This is supposed to represent the implicate order where everything is seemlessly intertwined. If you rotate the cylinder backwards, the drop reforms. So the information in the physical world corresponding to the drop was never destroyed.

That's probably made things worse, not better.

 

[hammegk]

That sounds more like another just-so-story assuming materialism true.

...
We don't a have direct, reliable handle on what it is like to be conscious.
...

What do you have a (more certain) direct, reliable, handle on, then?

 

[Q-Source]

To chriswl,

Why don´t you put it straight?. There are no really subjective experiences, if they are called subjective is because when someone has to respond to the question: what it feels like...?, he has to give an account from the first person perspective. His language is incomplete and imperfect, this gives the impression that such an experience is something mysterious and special, something that cannot be explain in mere objective terms.

Consciousness is a myth, qualia do not exist.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Paul

objective: viewed from the third person, perceptible by all observers.
subjective: viewed from the first person
private experience: only perceptible by one observer (me)

I'm happy with these definitions, but I have a question:

Q1) Is there difference between "subjective" and "private experience", and if so what is it?
Q2) In your definition of "Physical" you refer to "subjective experiences". So we have no less than FOUR terms here:

"Subjective", "private experiences", "certain subjective experiences" (from your definition of "mental").

I'm not at all clear whether these are supposed to be four different things, or four different names for the same thing. Could you clarify? For me, all four are the same thing. You have four terms where I only have one. Do you really need four or can some of them be eliminated?

So far we don't have usable definitions for the other things.

qualia: (undefined, presumed has no referent) (NB: Sure it's not one of the four above?)
mental: (tentative) A term used to circumscribe certain subjective experiences.

But the real problem is with "physical". So far you've suggested:

Physical : (tentative) A term used to circumscribe certain subjective experiences.
Does not mean : "observable by everyone"
Does not mean : "observable now"
(tentative) "observable in principle."

This isn't anything like clear enough for me to use it in a proof. Since it is physicalism you are supposed to be defending, surely it should be pretty straightforward to define "physical"?

"I do not know how to apply the word physical to concepts."

This is a startling statement from a person who got really p*ss*d at hammegk for claiming that physicalists didn't understand their own position. You sound like you don't know what "physical" means. This is a claim I have been making for years: physicalists don't understand what "physical" is.

I would say that any subjective experience is objective to some degree. I can describe the experience to a certain level, and other people can understand it objectively to that level. Whether I can describe the entire experience is open to question. In any event, this does not mean that the other people can experience my experience, only that they can understand it intellectually.

I'm not going to analyse this till I have a set of definitions we can both use.

Geoff

 

[chriswl]

That sounds more like another just-so-story assuming materialism true.

Absolutely not. I don't attempt a materialist explanation until the end (just to show that it works). The first few paragraphs make no such assumption.

What do you have a (more certain) direct, reliable, handle on, then?

Well, the physical world, as conceived of by science, has always seemed a pretty certain, non-slippery and stable foundation to me. In fact it's because it is so oppresively solid and fixed that people try to escape from it on these post-modernist flights of fancy. But what do I know, I'm not a philosopher. It's like the old joke about the British Civil Servant which I can't remember, but the punchline is "that's all very well in practice, but will it work in theory."

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Geoff

we all know that it is vastly easier in philosophy to knock down theories and ideas than to build up solid defensible ones.

Oh yes.

As a rest from being on defensive duty for materialism, I want to try and give the foundations of your ideas a bit of a kicking (if you don't mind )

That's why I posted my position.....I'd much rather be talking about neutral monism than materialism. It's the materialists who keep demanding I prove that materialism is false before they'll even look at my system properly.

Your argument for eliminativism tells us something about how the mind/brain works but it doesn't support eliminativism. Descartes was indeed wrong if he was taken to mean that we never make mistakes about the content of our perceptions. However, there is no reason to draw any ontological conclusions about this. The literature on cognitive science is full of examples like this: different ways of fooling our perceptual apparatus. None of this is remotely mysterious when you think what that perceptual apparatus evolved for. We are supposed to be wandering around the wilderness hunting buffalo, not sitting in front of a computer watching tests designed to fool us. Our brains are bombarded continually with far more information than we need, only a tiny part of which is actually of any use to us. Additionally, sometimes there are important bits missing (like our blind spot). But we don't notice the missing bits and we don't get overloaded with information. So there is clearly some sort of "filtering" process going on by which the raw elements of consciousness are turned into the experience we have when we aren't consciously focussing on the experience. Husserl is quite clear about this difference - it's the difference between seeing one face of a 3-D object and seeing a 3-D object. It all depends on how closely you are observing the contents of your own mind. So to apply this to your clock example : whilst the clock is ticking your mind filters it out. It's irrelevant. If you actually concentrate on the contents of your mind (and this exactly what Husserl wants you to do) then you would be instantly aware of the ticking. So it was always available to consciousness, it was just being filtered out with all the other irrelevant junk. However, as soon as the ticking stops, it stops being irrelevant. Our brains are pattern-matchers. When the ticking stops it sends out a sort of mental "alarm" and you become aware that something has changed. For our ancestors, such an ability could mean the difference between life and death. Why have the crickets stopped chirruping? Is it because there's are leopard stalking through the grass?

So, given the above evolutionary explanation for the "gappiness" and unreliability of consciousness when we aren't paying close attention to it, in what way does this support eliminativism?

Perhaps I was always conscious of the clock ticking but didn't realise I was conscious of it?

You were always conscious of it to the extent that had you paid close attention, you would have detected it. It was never missing. You were unconcious of it only to the extent that whilst the ticking was happening, your cognitive apparatus had filtered it out as irrelevant.

But an unconscious consciousness is incoherent.

What's incoherent about my explanation?

I hope you can see how I would answer the rest of your points.

Now, from a physical perspective there is no paradox and the scenario is quite straightforward.

And it is equally straightforward for me.

My brain continually makes short duration physical memories (that are stored for only a few seconds before being overwritten). These contain lots of detail (including ticking clocks) some of which is ordinarily filtered out by other parts of the brain as unimportant. It needs some kind of trigger (like the clock stopping, or someone asking me whether I can hear the clock) to make the other parts of the brain pay attention to those details in the memories.

You don't need eliminativism to explain this. In fact, this explanation works perfectly well for all the other positions.

We only have problems when we try to provide a narrative description of our conscious experience. Perhaps we should simply resist the temptation to do this, perhaps what we are trying to do here is misconceived?

There's no misconception. At no point did the experience of a ticking clock start looking like a brain process. It was just an experience of a ticking clock that was either being paid attention to, or ignored.