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We CAN understand the subjective/qualitative aspects of physical processes, but we cannot fully understand them UNLESS, somehow, we ourselves can somehow experience the qualia in a first-person/subjective way.
Which has little to do with the point I was making / questioning. But I have no issue with what you are saying per se. In fact one could go further with the "A blind person will never know what it is really like to experience "red"" by suggesting that _none of us_ know what it is like per se. We only know what it is like for ourselves to experience "red". But who knows if my experience of it matches yours at all really. You might be seeing what I think of as "green".
Certainly however the more we understand about the brain the more we will be able to answer those questions. And if we can understand exactly what is going on in the brain when we experience red - we will be able to stimulate those parts of the brain in a blind person and have exactly the same thing happen in their brain as happens in ours - without the stimulation of the optic nerves in the process.
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Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
And I think that I have consistently agreed with you on this
Then take it up with Mystic - not me. It is him that suggests that a machine can not be conscious because it is not alive or some such. I called him on it - and he ran. So perhaps he will be less scared of you.
Quote: "Qualia basically ARE acts of pushing (i.e., acts of more or less goal-directed behavior in light of the agent/world combination)."
This would imply that we can observe qualia in action using naturalistic observations the physical behavior of other people ... which kind of contradicts the whole point of the knowledge argument.
The qualia of Gaylen's experience can be seen by KC as a physical process, just as KC can see a cat as a cat, but KC's perception of Gaylen's qualia requires that KC objectify Gaylen as a process that is "not-KC." This process of objectification removes KC from the immediacy of Gaylen's qualitative experience. KC doesn't perceive "Gaylen's experience" directly, rather, KC experiences his own brain's model of Gaylen. This is where we need to keep in mind a distinction between "X" as such, and a "model of X." Even if the model just happens to be perfect, the fact that the model of X is not ontologically identical to X forces us to admit the possibility that our model is not perfect (even if, by chance, it does happen to be a perfect model).
From KC's perspective, Gaylen's qualia looks something like neural activity. Unless Gaylen has an "autocerebroscope", Gaylen can't see his own qualia as "neural activity" - his perspective on his own neural activity is very different from what KC sees. Given the physical nature of qualia, KC can discover a great deal of information about Gaylen's qualia that Gaylen himself does not know (unless Gaylen gets the equipment that let's him see his own brain activity from the external perspective). But what's important to notice is the "internal" vs "external" perspective. Ontologically speak, this is still a form of physicalism and I am a physicalist. I am saying that qualia are physical processes. I'm simply adding that some aspects of physical processes require a unique perspective.
Perspective matters. It is no big secret that physical objects can look very different from different perspectives, and what we are able to know about X depends on the perspectives we are able to take upon X. If there is some perspective that I can take on X that you cannot, then there might be something that I can know about X that you cannot. Why are there multiple perspectives on physical objects? Answer: Because perspectives are based on the epistemological limitations of agents, and there are multiple agents (i.e., multiple "horizons" created by the limitations of agency).
If the "enactive" theory of consciousness is correct - if the qualitative "feel" of reality basically just is the "pushing" of an agent against the world, then KC is logically prevented from completely "filling in" for Gaylen. KC can simulate Gaylen's acts with more or less accuracy, but he can't do Gaylen's actions for him. If the knowing is in the doing, then KC's knowing about Gaylen's acts might be limited by the fact that KC can't do Gaylen's acts.
The difference between what KC knows about Gaylen's actions and what Gaylen knows about Gaylen's actions could be a mere formality. If KC can, in fact, succeed in perfectly modeling Gaylen's qualia, then the difference in knowledge could be a mere technicality - KC could, in fact, know, but epistemologically he can't "know that he knows" because he can always doubt the accuracy of his model. But this brings us back to what I see as the central point: Gaylen does not need to have a model of his qualia in order to understand some of the most significant properties of his experience. Gaylen would need a model of his own qualia in order to understand everything that KC knows about this qualia (i.e., to get the "external perspective" on it), but Gaylen can know some highly significant stuff about his qualia, even without studying any abstract model, and even without having any external perspective on it at all. This is something highly significant about being an agent.
Gaylen knows what "pain" is by simply being in pain. If KC knows what pain is because he himself has been in pain (he has personally "lived through" the pain process), then perhaps he can extrapolate and roughly imagine Gaylen's experience. But if KC himself has never experienced pain, and if KC's model of Gaylen's pain does not trigger his own experience of pain, then the model falls short of full knowledge of pain. The abstract "conception of pain" will always fall short of the concrete particular experience of pain, so long as the knowledge remains an abstract model of pain. KC must enact, for himself, the neural processes of "being in pain" in order to fully understand the qualitative aspects of pain. A good abstract model could, conceivably, trigger an agent to enact a particular instance of being in pain, but the model is still not the pain as such - the model is just a trigger for what is really important, namely, the act of being a process that we call "feeling pain."
A good model of pain would allow us to know more about pain than just the feeling of being in pain. (This is "physicalism" at work - the pain is a physical process, so it can be known from multiple perspectives.) But the model can't provide full knowledge of pain unless it triggers a certain highly significant aspect of the pain process, namely, the actualized feeling of a particular pain process. This is the central point of the knowledge argument. There is no "short-cut" or "abstract alternative" to understanding the feeling of pain that avoids the first-person perspective of feeling pain. An adequate understanding of pain requires a particular instance of "living through" an instantiation of an agent-based process - specifically, a process of the type that we call "being an agent in pain." The agent has to enact the pain in order to understand some of the most significant properties of pain.
Then take it up with Mystic - not me. It is him that suggests that a machine can not be conscious because it is not alive or some such. I called him on it - and he ran. So perhaps he will be less scared of you.
I pretty much always see you and me as being essentially in tune with each other. When I respond to your posts, I generally don't see myself as arguing against you. Rather, I'm just using your statements as a "seed crystal" for me to clarify my own thinking. I'm not really seeking to convince anyone of anything - it's not my ultimate priority. I'm really self-centered in this way. I'm looking for better ways to express what I'm thinking, and I'm looking for holes that I cannot plug to my own satisfaction. KC is excellent at pushing me on this. I can never seem to satisfy him and I keep responding and trying new approaches because he keeps uncovering ways in which I am not fully satisfied with my own efforts. I suck at just writing for myself (keeping a diary, etc.) - I need criticism and general feedback to keep me on task, and that is where you folks help me out.
As for Mystic, he keeps pushing me from the other direction. He drags me over the coals for talking about "self-organization" and he keeps pointing out ways in which I have not yet plugged every leak in my solution to the hard problem. I think I'm basically a physicalist, but the "explanatory gap" still irks me in ways that most other physicalists don't seem to be irked (or, at least, they don't admit to it).
From KC's perspective, Gaylen's qualia looks something like neural activity.
Is neural activity, to the best of our understanding.
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Unless Gaylen has an "autocerebroscope", Gaylen can't see his own qualia as "neural activity" - his perspective on his own neural activity is very different from what KC sees.
I'm not sure - there is research showing that much of the same theory of mind processing used to look at others is also used to guess at what our own minds are doing. Sure, there's a feeling that we have some sort of privileged view of our own mental states but that feeling doesn't always hold up to serious scrutiny. That's one reason I'm so hesitant to call having a feeling about something knowledge.
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I'm simply adding that some aspects of physical processes require a unique perspective.
This is a long winded way of saying people have feelings. I imagine that most theories of consciousness take this into account.
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If there is some perspective that I can take on X that you cannot, then there might be something that I can know about X that you cannot.
Maybe, maybe not. So far there doesn't seem much other than "I have some sort of a feeling that's inherently indescribable". That is interesting in the sense that a theory of consciousness should explain where those feelings come from and why some people find them so overwhelmingly vital, but I'd be hesitant to use those random feelings as facts about how brain function actually works.
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If the "enactive" theory of consciousness is correct - if the qualitative "feel" of reality basically just is the "pushing" of an agent against the world, then KC is logically prevented from completely "filling in" for Gaylen. KC can simulate Gaylen's acts with more or less accuracy, but he can't do Gaylen's actions for him.
Can you name a theory of consciousness which would predict that one person can become another? If not, then this doesn't seem like that interesting a prediction. Sounds more like fighting against a strawman to me.
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The difference between what KC knows about Gaylen's actions and what Gaylen knows about Gaylen's actions could be a mere formality.
You still haven't established there is a difference. Remember all the "ifs" and "mights" in your quote above.
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If KC can, in fact, succeed in perfectly modeling Gaylen's qualia, then the difference in knowledge could be a mere technicality - KC could, in fact, know, but epistemologically he can't "know that he knows" because he can always doubt the accuracy of his model.
If you're looking for 100% certainity in any scientific model, you're doing it wrong. Objecting to a scientific approach that might not always give absolute certainty means rejecting all of science, if you're going to be consistent in that metric of success of failure.
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But this brings us back to what I see as the central point: Gaylen does not need to have a model of his qualia in order to understand some of the most significant properties of his experience.
Significant feeling, or significant in providing insight into how brain function actually works? Seems like you're conflating the two meanings here.
This would be more convincing if having qualia correlated with improved objective knowledge of one's own brain function. There's absolutely no evidence that this is the case.
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Gaylen would need a model of his own qualia in order to understand everything that KC knows about this qualia (i.e., to get the "external perspective" on it), but Gaylen can know some highly significant stuff about his qualia,
I'd need examples here. So far, all that having qualia shows is that you had a feeling. That's not knowledge in the way we typically use the word - there no way to show it correlates to anything else, no way to justify it, no way to know it is true or not. It is just a feeling which on its own gives no real information about brain function.
Is neural activity, to the best of our understanding.
Indeed - and that is the part I do not get at all. The approach of Mystic and to some degree others on the thread is to few the experience and experienceR as being entirely separate. As if the experience is somehow separate to the neural activity. And that is the bit I do not get. Why does this have to be so? On what basis are we separating them?
With Mystic the answer is clear. He constitutionally NEEDS there to be a separation to justify what he wants to be true about human consciousness. And he wants it so bad that there simply is no option open to him other than to simply assume a disconnect between the two. It simply _has_ to be so to make his baseless meanderings to be within a forest of at least some sense.
With anyone else however I am not sure where the disconnect is coming from - on what basis - or to what motivation.
Indeed - and that is the part I do not get at all. The approach of Mystic and to some degree others on the thread is to few the experience and experienceR as being entirely separate. As if the experience is somehow separate to the neural activity. And that is the bit I do not get. Why does this have to be so? On what basis are we separating them?
With Mystic the answer is clear. He constitutionally NEEDS there to be a separation to justify what he wants to be true about human consciousness. And he wants it so bad that there simply is no option open to him other than to simply assume a disconnect between the two. It simply _has_ to be so to make his baseless meanderings to be within a forest of at least some sense.
With anyone else however I am not sure where the disconnect is coming from - on what basis - or to what motivation.
I think there's a pretty strong predisposition to believe our conscious mind provides an accurate reflection of how our brain really works. It does a really good job of lying to us about all sorts of things on the subject, and if you haven't looked at some of the research it might be easy to pretend that it is always a perfect source of intimate knowledge about exactly what is going on in your brain. Going from there to "wow, it is so perfect there must be something unique about it that makes it different from the rest of our fallible senses" isn't that big a stretch.
Of course the underlying assumption is false, but it is a compelling feeling regardless.
Quote: Gaylen would need a model of his own qualia in order to understand everything that KC knows about this qualia (i.e., to get the "external perspective" on it), but Gaylen can know some highly significant stuff about his qualia,
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I'd need examples here. So far, all that having qualia shows is that you had a feeling. That's not knowledge in the way we typically use the word - there no way to show it correlates to anything else, no way to justify it, no way to know it is true or not. It is just a feeling which on its own gives no real information about brain function.
I'm kinda stuck here because I can't see why feelings shouldn't be counted as a type of knowledge. In fact, when I think about boiling down the concept of "knowledge" to its essential components, I end up with feelings. As I see it, "knowledge" basically IS feelings - or, at the very least, it depends on feelings. I suppose this will take some explanation.
Whatever else knowledge might be, I think it is, at the very least, a type of belief (more specifically: a justified true belief, unless you want to suggest a better definition of knowledge). How do I know whether or not I believe something?
I believe that 2+2=4. I could go the extra step and claim that I know that 2+2=4. What does this extra step entail? I'd say it entails more beliefs, e.g., the belief that this belief in 2+2=4 is justified; the believe that this belief is true. And probably a host of other beliefs as well. But what are these beliefs?
Since I consider myself to be a physicalist, my claim is that a belief is, basically, a type of neural activity, or perhaps a relationship between neural activity and other world processes. (Technically I always think of mental states in terms of "brain/body/world" processes, but I'll keep things simple and just refer to "neural processes" unless I really need to include the body/world part - which, in the case of beliefs, we might eventually need to.) Where you and I part company is that I am not comfortable saying that all physical processes can be completely understood JUST in terms of objective statements or abstract models, etc. I keep claiming that some physical processes are subjectively experienced in terms of feelings. In some of your recent statements, you seem to accept this, but you also claim that these subjective feelings do not count as "knowledge" of any significant sort. Since you seem to accept the "feeling" that feelings exist, but you reject the idea that these feelings count as knowledge, I guess you see these feelings as illusory insofar as they seem to tell us something about reality, but they don't actually tell us anything. (I think this is basically what Dan Dennett would say, and you seem to be in step with him.) They seem to be real, but they are not real? Is that what you'd say?
My claim is that the phenomenological feeling of belief grounds our ability to distinguish beliefs from each other. My belief that 2+2=4 is different than my belief that 2+3=5. Without the qualitative differences in the experiences of believing this verses that, how would I distinguish one belief from the other? To put it another way: Suppose the qualitative experience of believing that 2+2=4 were qualitatively identical to the experience of believing that 2+3=5. Presumably these beliefs are not, in fact, identical because the neural processing in each case is different. But, if I don't have a bunch of equipment hooked up to my brain showing the difference in neural processing, how do I know that there is any difference in the neural processing? People were believing the differences between beliefs long before they had any clue about neural processing. So how did they distinguish one belief from another? I say that the qualitative differences in their experiences were their only clue. It feels different to believe X compared to believing Y, and these qualitative differences in our experience are the basis for our ability to know things, or believe things at all.
You could argue that before neuroscience we were just living in illusion. We thought that these differences in feeling were real, and we took the qualitative experiences of our believing this or that at face value. Now we supposedly know better. Now we know (so you seem to be saying) that these feelings don't really tell us anything significant about reality. Perhaps you want to say that the qualitative differences in the feelings associated with "believing X" vs. "believing Y" is a difference that makes no difference. But I disagree. As I see it, our beliefs about neural activity are, themselves, STILL ultimately grounded on the qualitative differences in our experience. "X" in this case might be some complex story about activity in the cortex and "Y" might be a complicated story about activity in the hippocampus, etc. but, to distinguish X from Y, I still depend on the qualitative differences in my experience.
If (as things were prior to neuroscience) there is no ability to distinguish a model of neural process X (say X is a pain in my foot) from a model of neural process Y (the taste of honey), it is still possible for me to distinguish the two processes because process X feels qualitatively different than process Y. I can KNOW the difference between X and Y BECAUSE I comprehend the qualitative difference. Prior to introspection, I might experience various feelings without any explicit awareness of the feelings as feelings (because I have not yet categorized various differences in the qualitative nature of the feelings), so in some sense I suppose you could say that I don't "know" the qualitative differences, even though I experience them. But introspection turns my focus toward the feelings as such, and I start to categorize, say, one kind of pain from a qualitatively different kind of pain. I'd say that this categorization creates the necessary conditions for belief (feeling the qualitative difference between X and Y implies an implicit belief that X is not the same as Y, etc.), which also supplies the necessary conditions for knowledge (my belief that X is different that Y can be correct or incorrect).
So, overall, I still don't see why my feelings cannot count as knowledge - or, at the very least, as the fundamental basis of knowledge. Indeed, I'd be inclined to say that feelings are the most basic form of knowledge. Feelings are the forms of knowledge upon which all other forms of knowledge are built. What is knowledge without some feeling of confidence (or, at least, a relative lack of feeling of doubt)? What is confidence without the fundamental "know-how" involved in qualitatively distinguishing various degrees of confidence from the highest (a feeling of certainty) to the lowest (a feeling of strong doubt)? Psychological counseling generally involves learning to introspectively distinguish subtle differences in feelings. I think that feelings are the dynamics of thought, including the most abstract, rational modes of thought.
I'm kinda stuck here because I can't see why feelings shouldn't be counted as a type of knowledge.
What new facts can you tell me after you had a feeling compared to before you had one?
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I believe that 2+2=4. I could go the extra step and claim that I know that 2+2=4. What does this extra step entail?
It means correlating it with some external reality - in this case, the rules people have made up about math.
How do you correlate the feeling of an experience in the same way?
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Where you and I part company is that I am not comfortable saying that all physical processes can be completely understood JUST in terms of objective statements or abstract models, etc.
I'll be happy to jump over to your side just as soon as you use something else to generate a useful model of brain function that isn't explained using traditional science. Until then, I'm kind of stuck with the feeling of "so what" after reading through your posts. Yeah, there are lots of mysteries in how brains work, and we can make up all sorts of clever riddles and word games based on this lack of knowledge, but what does it actually get us?
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I guess you see these feelings as illusory insofar as they seem to tell us something about reality, but they don't actually tell us anything. (I think this is basically what Dan Dennett would say, and you seem to be in step with him.) They seem to be real, but they are not real? Is that what you'd say?
No, I'd say they happen but haven't been shown to provide some sort of special insight into how the brain works.
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My claim is that the phenomenological feeling of belief grounds our ability to distinguish beliefs from each other. My belief that 2+2=4 is different than my belief that 2+3=5. Without the qualitative differences in the experiences of believing this verses that, how would I distinguish one belief from the other?
Well, there is a quantitative difference between 4 and 5, at least in many systems of math.
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To put it another way: Suppose the qualitative experience of believing that 2+2=4 were qualitatively identical to the experience of believing that 2+3=5. Presumably these beliefs are not, in fact, identical because the neural processing in each case is different. But, if I don't have a bunch of equipment hooked up to my brain showing the difference in neural processing, how do I know that there is any difference in the neural processing? People were believing the differences between beliefs long before they had any clue about neural processing. So how did they distinguish one belief from another? I say that the qualitative differences in their experiences were their only clue.
Great. Now your job is to produce a model of brain function based on your idea of adding subjectivity to science which specifically predicts the outcome.
Meanwhile, I'm going to remain unconvinced that the feeling that language processing such as this is based on feelings rather than some other function not directly visible to our conscious mind.
I have been entertained by Gaylen's attempts to elucidate the main philosophical problem with believing that we are simply neural activity (like the hard problem of consciousness) to his compatriots. It is amusing because all the while everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room . . . WHO is doing all this rumination??? IMO it is beyond ridiculous to assume that simple neural activity is the actor here. The composite nature of the perspective of an actor (ruminator) would seem to require a consolidation beyond the individual neural activity that comprises it. Unfortunately because each individual IS the composite doing the ruminating . . . it is relegated to the penumbra of factors being considered without really considering its role in the phenomenon being dissected. That is why I keep trying to get you to answer the question . . . WHO is doing the ruminating??? It seems all your efforts are bent toward eliminating the existence and reality of the WHO. I find that amusing . . . and rather foolish.
Which has little to do with the point I was making / questioning. But I have no issue with what you are saying per se. In fact one could go further with the "A blind person will never know what it is really like to experience "red"" by suggesting that _none of us_ know what it is like per se. We only know what it is like for ourselves to experience "red". But who knows if my experience of it matches yours at all really. You might be seeing what I think of as "green".
Certainly however the more we understand about the brain the more we will be able to answer those questions. And if we can understand exactly what is going on in the brain when we experience red - we will be able to stimulate those parts of the brain in a blind person and have exactly the same thing happen in their brain as happens in ours - without the stimulation of the optic nerves in the process.
Then take it up with Mystic - not me. It is him that suggests that a machine can not be conscious because it is not alive or some such. I called him on it - and he ran. So perhaps he will be less scared of you.
Oh really ? how is your idea not suggesting people are color blind ?
Iow how did the word get formed in the first place ?
Don't forget your suggesting to consider 'none of us > know what it is like because the experience may not match.
What I'd be interested in knowing is how this could be known, iow it assumes red cannot even be identified for the stupid test.
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Consciousness in a robot?
