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I thought we've been over this - since you were saying subjective experience is defined by being unique, it isn't like anything, kind of by of unique.
Here we will need to keep in mind a distinction between "universals" and "particulars." A particular is always unique for the simple logical reason that anything that is "not-X" cannot be "X." This can also be cashed out in terms of "numerical" and "qualitative" identity. Assuming that Y is not X, we would say that X and Y are numerically distinct - i.e., X and Y are two entities, not one entity. But, even though X and Y are numerically distinct, they could have almost all identical properties. (There are debates about whether or not things like spacetime location and "essence" are properties. If spacetime is a property, then X and Y cannot share all properties in common unless X and Y are numerically identical, like "Venus" are "the morning star" are just two labels for the one and same thing.) When I use the term "indexical" I am getting at the particularity of events. (A particular spacetime moment is, for example, this moment, here, now.) Not all particular physical events are subjectively experienced, but when a physical event is a subjective experience, it is a particular event, and the fact that it is a particular event limits epistemological access to the event.
If X and Y are particular subjective events, then X can, in principle, know everything there is to know about Y except for the particular qualitative experience of being Y "here and now." The only way that X can know everything about the subjective experience of Y is for X to be Y, but, per stipulation, X and Y are numerically distinct, so X cannot be Y, and thus there is a limit to what X can know about the particular qualitative experience of being Y.
Universals, on the other hand, can be instantiated in many different particulars. A fire truck and a Corvette, for example, can both instantiate the property of "being red". Each instantiation of a quale is a particular manifestation, but the quale itself is a universal.
[Quick detour about indexicals: In this statement, the indexicals are in red bold: "I am having this experience of red here and now." I could be wrong about applying the label "red" to the qualitative nature of this experience, but I can't be wrong about the fact that I am having some sort of experience that I believe to be "seeing red" here and now. This is the only knowledge that I can have with 100% certainty. (Notice this is an echo of Descartes' famous "I think, therefore I am" but it is even more limited than Descartes' notion, since it does not necessarily imply a substantial "I" that thinks.) The particularity of an experience is one root of its subjectivity; the universal aspects of experience give rise to the possibility for objective knowledge. Without the posited universality of properties, knowledge of anything beyond the particular qualitative nature of "this here now" would be impossible.]
Anyway, there is nothing in the concept of "this experience here and now" that logically prevents this experience from being composed of properties that could be shared by other individuals. In other words, there is no logical reason why this particular experience couldn't be composed of universals. Qualia are conceived of as being universals, and thus there is nothing to logically prevent the one-and-same quale from being instantiated in numerous individuals. There is nothing to logically prevent my experience of red from being qualitatively identical with, or similar to, your experience of red. There are seemingly insurmountable epistemological problems in knowing that your experience and my experience are qualitatively identical, but the concepts themselves do not logically prevent our two experiences from being identical or similar. So, even though my experience is a particular experience here and now, there is nothing to logically prevent this experience from being like some other experiences (even though we have an epistemological problem verifying the "likeness").
Which group do you fall in, and what novel non-monist method are you proposing for me to use to find out?
I am in the group known as "subjects" aka "subjective/qualitative processes" aka "sentient experiencers." If you drop a heavy rock on my foot, I will feel pain. I won't simply behave as if I am in pain; my pain-behavior will be caused by a subjective qualitative experience of pain. (Presumably we could build a robot that acts just like I do when a rock is drop on its foot, but the robot's behavior could be caused by processes that are not subjective/qualitative. Whether or not we technically can build such a machine is still an open question, but I suspect that we can.)
As for how to tell the difference between behavior caused by qualitative pain vs. behavior cause by processes that are not subjective/qualitative: As I've said, we cannot tell with 100% certainty, but - as I've also suggested - a reasonable definition of 'knowledge' should not require 100% certainty. The best we can logically strive for is a theory that "feels right" and makes proper predictions. I've been promoting an enactive/embodied view of consciousness in which a moment of conscious experience is a self-organizing "brain/body/world" process. I posit only one fundamental kind of stuff - namely, physical energy - so I consider this to be a "monist" proposal - a form of "physicalism" even though a lot of people who call themselves physicalists won't grant me membership because I also accept a form of "property dualism" (more correctly: "property pluralism").
Hopefully we will some day have a theory that will allow you to know, with reasonably high confidence, whether or not I am, in fact, a sentient being based on whether or not I am composed of "the right kinds of stuff engaged in the right kinds of processes" to count as subjective/qualitative processes (probably could be called emergent/non-reductive physicalism). We do not currently have this theory, so I can't say exactly which kinds of stuff or which kinds of processes are necessary :-(
My best guess is that the right kind of "stuff" will be something like "fundamentally qualitative" energy. But I'm having trouble cashing out the concept of "fundamentally qualitative" (unconscious or pre-conscious qualitative).
I still have no idea what it is you think is lacking in current scientific approaches to understanding the brain. Sure, they'll be mathematical models and descriptions since that's the best way we've found to explain the workings of physical systems. For some reason, though, you're convinced that there has to be something else hiding under the surface. How do you know that the processes working as described by these mathematical models aren't actually the subjective experience you think they can't describe?
I think that science is doing pretty much exactly what it needs to do, for the moment; we're tracking down the correlations between brain processes and mental states. I suspect that, eventually, "brain" processes won't be sufficient; we will need to look at brain/body/world processes in a more holistic way (due to the enactive/embodied nature of conscious experience), but, for now, brain processes are a practical place to start. My debate is primarily with philosophers who claim that conscious experiences are "nothing but" the third-person accessible properties of brain processes. Scientists are correlating brain processes to mental processes, which is exactly right. The concept of correlation implies mapping one type of thing to another type of thing. This is right. In this case I don't think we are correlating one type of substance to another type of substance (i.e., substance dualism), but rather, we are mapping physical processes to emergent properties of those processes (e.g., brain process B correlates to subjective/qualitative property F, e.g., "feeling sad"). Notice that F is a property of B, not a different sort of "stuff." The challenge is to figure out which kinds of processes correlate with which kinds of subjective/qualitative properties.
In a previous post I said that qualia are universals. I'm going to be more specific, now, and say that qualia are Aristotelian universals (which exist only insofar as they are instantiated in particular physical events) in contrast to Platonic universals (which can, in principle, exist independent of all physical instantiations). So, F is an aspect of B in roughly the way that "having right angles" is an aspect of being a rectangle. Various types of polygons can have various numbers of right angles and, by analogy, various kinds of physical systems can "feel sad." If "feeling sad" is a property, F, of some physical processes in roughly the way that having right angles is a property of some polygons, then all and only those physical processes with the property F are processes that feel sad. There is no sadness in the world unless there are processes manifesting the property F.
The trick is to characterize physical processes in a way that helps us to understand exactly what type of property F is. If you define or describe 'polygon' using concepts that do not allow you to reference right angles in any way, then you are going to have a tough time conceptualizing some key aspects of what it is to be a rectangle (a bit like studying the motions of the planets without anything like a Newtonian concept of gravity). I think we need a new fundamental concept - on par with the concept-organizing power of gravity or natural selection in order to understand exactly how it is that qualitative experiences emerge in some physical systems. I suspect that this theory will need to employ some sort of "unconscious" or "proto-qualitative" concepts at the level of fundamental physics so that there is a logical route by which conscious/qualitative experiences can emerge.
If X and Y are particular subjective events, then X can, in principle, know everything there is to know about Y except for the particular qualitative experience of being Y "here and now." The only way that X can know everything about the subjective experience of Y is for X to be Y
You have no way to know this.
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Universals, on the other hand, can be instantiated in many different particulars. A fire truck and a Corvette, for example, can both instantiate the property of "being red". Each instantiation of a quale is a particular manifestation, but the quale itself is a universal.
Are you sure? How would we test that a red quale is the same between two different observers?
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Anyway, there is nothing in the concept of "this experience here and now" that logically prevents this experience from being composed of properties that could be shared by other individuals. In other words, there is no logical reason why this particular experience couldn't be composed of universals.
Qualia are conceived of as being universals, and thus there is nothing to logically prevent the one-and-same quale from being instantiated in numerous individuals. There is nothing to logically prevent my experience of red from being qualitatively identical with, or similar to, your experience of red. There are seemingly insurmountable epistemological problems in knowing that your experience and my experience are qualitatively identical, but the concepts themselves do not logically prevent our two experiences from being identical or similar. So, even though my experience is a particular experience here and now, there is nothing to logically prevent this experience from being like some other experiences (even though we have an epistemological problem verifying the "likeness").
So let me get this straight - qualia are private, subjective feelings so their access is limited to the person having the experience and they can't be known by anyone else, but that doesn't logically imply that they aren't also shared? These things seem pretty slippery - conveniently private when necessary and then suddenly able to be made public as the needs of the argument change.
Anyway, get back to us when you find a way to test this. Being logically possible or not says very little about how the real world actually works. It is logically possible that I am a successful recording artist - but let's just say I'm not waiting for the royalty checks to roll in.
I am in the group known as "subjects" aka "subjective/qualitative processes" aka "sentient experiencers." If you drop a heavy rock on my foot, I will feel pain. I won't simply behave as if I am in pain; my pain-behavior will be caused by a subjective qualitative experience of pain. (Presumably we could build a robot that acts just like I do when a rock is drop on its foot, but the robot's behavior could be caused by processes that are not subjective/qualitative. Whether or not we technically can build such a machine is still an open question, but I suspect that we can.)
As for how to tell the difference between behavior caused by qualitative pain vs. behavior cause by processes that are not subjective/qualitative: As I've said, we cannot tell with 100% certainty, but - as I've also suggested - a reasonable definition of 'knowledge' should not require 100% certainty. The best we can logically strive for is a theory that "feels right" and makes proper predictions.
Considering we know that our conscious mind created misleading stories about how our brain works, why would you expect a correct theory of brain function to feel right?
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I've been promoting an enactive/embodied view of consciousness in which a moment of conscious experience is a self-organizing "brain/body/world" process. I posit only one fundamental kind of stuff - namely, physical energy - so I consider this to be a "monist" proposal - a form of "physicalism" even though a lot of people who call themselves physicalists won't grant me membership because I also accept a form of "property dualism" (more correctly: "property pluralism").
Hopefully we will some day have a theory that will allow you to know, with reasonably high confidence, whether or not I am, in fact, a sentient being based on whether or not I am composed of "the right kinds of stuff engaged in the right kinds of processes" to count as subjective/qualitative processes (probably could be called emergent/non-reductive physicalism). We do not currently have this theory, so I can't say exactly which kinds of stuff or which kinds of processes are necessary :-(
My best guess is that the right kind of "stuff" will be something like "fundamentally qualitative" energy. But I'm having trouble cashing out the concept of "fundamentally qualitative" (unconscious or pre-conscious qualitative).
Yep, no doubt. The fact that you continue to run into roadblocks when trying to put what you feel should be true into words should be a hint that there's something wrong.
Anyway, I'm at a a loss as to how to continue. You find all sorts of potential logical problems in current approaches (at least depending on which assumptions you feel good about using) but offer nothing better in return. Meanwhile those approaches which you have such a strong visceral reaction against continue to make progress in understanding how the brain works. Obviously in such a situation I have to go with the actual results rather than the objections based on hypothetical we both know are not representative of the world we actually live in.
So let me get this straight - qualia are private, subjective feelings so their access is limited to the person having the experience and they can't be known by anyone else, but that doesn't logically imply that they aren't also shared? These things seem pretty slippery - conveniently private when necessary and then suddenly able to be made public as the needs of the argument change.
This is why I spent some time talking about universals and particulars. A universal can be instantiated in many different particular individuals, but each instantiation is a particular event (every instantiation is this instantiation here and now - notice the indexicals indicated in bold type.) The idea that qualia are universals is, of course, something that cannot be proven with 100% certainty because every time you try to reference any event that is not this moment here and now, some possibilities for error are introduced. Virtually every human being, in everyday life, accepts forms of knowledge that are less than 100% certain. People routinely believe that we know things beyond the particularity of this, here, now experience, and philosophers use the term 'universals' to indicate the idea that individuals and properties can endure through different spatiotemporal locations.
BTW: Most forms of Buddhism reject the concept of enduring egos or souls - they embrace the concept of "impermanence" - the idea that personal identity through time is an illusion because this moment here and now is the only actual moment of a mind's existence. Even Buddhists have a hard time living with this this idea in daily life - most only catch brief hints of it during deep meditation. To truly comprehend impermanence and live with it is "enlightenment."
I admit to having some Buddhist influences in my way of thinking, but for this discussion I'm sticking with the notion that we can, for all practical purposes, talk about knowing that entities and properties exist over time, and we can talk about knowing that the external world exists, etc. Our evidence for this knowledge takes the form of consistent patterns. Of course, to analyze patterns, we need to have faith in our memories, so, once again, we accept knowledge with some margins for error.
But the key point is that if there is anything that can be known with 100% certainty, this is can only be the qualitative feel of this moment here and now. To claim that this does not exist is, as far as I can see, profoundly absurd. If you want to claim that even this feeling here and now is not known with certainty, you are welcome to do so, but I don't buy it. I'd say that the thought "this feeling here and now does not exist" is self-contradictory because the claim that X does not exist is an act of reference, and even if it is true that X does not exist (say X is a "square circle") the intentional act (the act of referring to X) has, nonetheless occurred, and this intentional act is the "this" in "this feeling here and now." So I believe that there is something that we can know with absolute certainty, and this is the qualitative feeling of this moment here and now. All other knowledge is ultimately based on faith in the existence of "universals" - i.e., properties, principles, relations, or aspects of reality that are routinely believed to either transcend spacetime (e.g., numbers, logic, etc.) or they persist through time and/or across space (individual physical entities that endure because their "essential properties" endure - or because their "bare essence" endures - if you want to go that route.).
Bottom line: The "private" aspect of qualia is rooted in the particularity of the moment - specifically: the particularity of beingthis particular process here and now, whereas our notion of the sharable nature of qualia is rooted in our faith in the existence of universals. I cannot prove to you that your own particular qualitative moments of experience exist because, for all I know, you are a "zombie" - only you can know for absolute certain that you are not a zombie. I also cannot prove to you that universals exist - this is something that all of us - even Buddhists - accept on faith ("faith" in the sense of something perceived as being a brute fact that we don't even try to prove because it is taken as "given" for the sake of logical argumentation.)
This is why I spent some time talking about universals and particulars. A universal can be instantiated in many different particular individuals, but each instantiation is a particular event (every instantiation is this instantiation here and now - notice the indexicals indicated in bold type.) The idea that qualia are universals is, of course, something that cannot be proven with 100% certainty because every time you try to reference any event that is not this moment here and now, some possibilities for error are introduced. Virtually every human being, in everyday life, accepts forms of knowledge that are less than 100% certain.
The fact that knowledge doesn't have to be 100% certain doesn't have anything to do with the problem. The problem is that qualia are defined as unsharable private ineffable subjective feelings of what it is like to experience something, and that prevents any additional communication about them. I've been told over and over the only way to learn about them is to have the experience myself, and that's a problem for scientific approaches. And yet we're supposed to follow you as you jump to saying that you know they're universal based on your faith in the matter. Seems a bit suspect to me.
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But the key point is that if there is anything that can be known with 100% certainty, this is can only be the qualitative feel of this moment here and now. To claim that this does not exist is, as far as I can see, profoundly absurd.
Good thing no one is doing that.
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Bottom line: The "private" aspect of qualia is rooted in the particularity of the moment - specifically: the particularity of beingthis particular process here and now, whereas our notion of the sharable nature of qualia is rooted in our [i]faith in the existence of universals.
Now we've gone from feelings being knowledge to faith being knowledge?
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I cannot prove to you that your own particular qualitative moments of experience exist because, for all I know, you are a "zombie" - only you can know for absolute certain that you are not a zombie.
Zombies wouldn't know that they are or aren't zombies. Remember, they're physically identical to normal humans in every way and would respond in the same way that humans would to any possible situation. It's just some sort of unidentifiable magic something that they're assumed to be missing - that's how we can conclude that there's some sort of unidentifiable magic something that they are missing.
You find all sorts of potential logical problems in current approaches (at least depending on which assumptions you feel good about using) but offer nothing better in return.
I have no problem with the current approach of science, other than saying that we need some workable theory of consciousness - which is something that virtually every scientist will agree with me on. My concern for logical problems is aimed specifically at philosophers who are pushing the metaphysical notion of reductive or eliminative materialism. (Scientists often refer to themselves as "materialists," but most of them, so far as I can see, have not delved deeply enough into the philosophical literature to credibly defend the philosophical positions of reductive or eliminative materialism. In all cases that I know of, their ways of expressing themselves always seem to indicate a practical acceptance of non-reductive materialism, which is basically a form of property dualism.)
My proposal - which I admit is a bit radical - is that we will ultimately need to track our qualitative concepts all the way down to the level of fundamental physics. I say this is true even if qualia are emergent (non-reductive) phenomena, because "emergence" is just another word for "magic" unless the emergent phenomena can somehow be tracked back to natural concepts that are built into fundamental physics. There a conceptual bridge currently missing between our qualitative concepts (at the level of psychology and neuroscience) and the quantitative concepts currently constituting our theories of fundamental physics.
I can't offer a full theory (if I could, I be publishing in professional journals, not blabbering here in an internet forum), but I am offering some tentative suggestions about a way to build this bridge. I've suggested that the efforts to find correlations between neural activity and people's subjective reports of qualitative experience are analogous to chemists recording chemical reactions prior to the existence of the Table of Elements, or biologists collecting and categorizing species prior to a theory of natural selection. The collecting and categorizing is an essential step in the process, but we better hope that it is not the end of the process. What "electron shells" did for chemistry and what natural selection did for biology is help us to understand why the patterns are what they are. A theory of conscious will help us to understand why a certain type of brain/body/world process is experienced as painful or red or sour. But in order for the emergence of "qualitative red" to be explained in terms of physical process, our concept of "physical" needs to have the potential for qualitative experience built into its mathematical structure.
Math is quantitative, but mathematical models refer to empirical data, and empirical data is ultimately grounded on qualitative experience (a scientist must, at some point, qualitatively experience the visual sensations of a computer printout, or experience "what it's like" to have the "ah-ha" of understanding that this formula relates in this way to this concept, etc.). In philosophy this is what is called a "phenomenological" approach - associated with such folks as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, etc. My suggestion is that the only way to explanatorily "reduce" a quale to a quantitative mathematical framework is to recognize the phenomenological underpinnings of quantitative/physical concepts. In any case, my main point is that the phenomenological nature of all experience - including the experience of thinking in abstract/mathematical terms - provided a possible path by which the qualitative can be "reduced" to physical processes via mathematical modeling. I put "reduced" in scare quotes because the reduction is, ultimately, from qualitative to qualitative, with "quantitative" serving as a transitory "middleman" that, itself, turns out to be intrinsically linked to qualitative experience.
I say the broad brushstroke structure of investigation (via mathematical models at each step) could go like this:
(1) Identify physical correlates of conscious and unconscious qualitative experiences.
(2) Identify physical correlates of conscious and unconscious aspects of abstract/mathematical thoughts.
(3) Identify the generic components of conceptual emergence, and the generic components of the emergence of conscious experience (presumably from unconscious processes).
(4) Once these models are in place, we would presumably then have the potential to understand the relationship between abstract/mathematical thoughts and the concrete sensory nature of qualitative experience more generally. In effect, we could model the model-making process itself. Since the modeling of qualitative experience already links to the qualitative reports of human subjects, the model of model-making would already include the necessary links to qualitative experience.
(5) Turn our attention the models of fundamental physics. Link the qualitative nature of the model of model-making to the current quantitative models and identify the intrinsically qualitative aspects of the models of physics. This could, in principle, allow us to understand how qualitative conscious experience emerges from the hypothetical fundamental entities and forces of physics.
(6) Presumably we could then look at our model of a robot's brain and determine whether or not the robot is a "zombie" depending on whether or not the necessary qualitative and/or conscious aspects of physical process are in place. As with any theory, there will always be room for potential error, but with a theory of this sort in place, our assessment can at least be based on something other than sheer guesswork.
To test our theory, we would induce a process within the machine that, according to our theory, ought to be "seeing red" then test for behavior consistent with the behavior of "seeing red."
Yeah, its sketchy, but I think it gives the broad outlines of how we could model the emergence of qualitative properties from physical processes, so long as our models of physical process are, themselves, built out of models of neural correlates that implicitly or explicitly draw on qualitative reports offered by living beings.
Zombies wouldn't know that they are or aren't zombies. Remember, they're physically identical to normal humans in every way and would respond in the same way that humans would to any possible situation.
Yes, but you, presumably, are not a zombie, and my point is that you can know, with certainty, that you are not a zombie. A zombie, as you say, could not know one way or the other, but you can know.
Yes, but you, presumably, are not a zombie, and my point is that you can know, with certainty, that you are not a zombie. A zombie, as you say, could not know one way or the other, but you can know.
How do you know? After all, there are no zombies to ask. I have already gone over this - the problem with the zombie is that it is an anlaogy created to prove whatever it is required to prove. a zombie that knew it was a zombie wouldn't be wanted, would it?
Now, about universals and particulars, it strikes me that what may be overlooked is that human consciousness may be both universal in that it is (biologically and genetically) common to others (or the burden of proof is on the philosopher to show that it isn't, since the evidence strongly suggests - like colour - that it ought to be) but it is of course particular to the individual. Thus, we cannot feel another person's pain, in that we do not know what that kind of pain feels like, but we know what pain is like.
Now I know that the case for dualism really seems to rest on the inability of materialistic science (where's Mystic, is he ok? ) to give a 100% explanation of the mechanism by which we perceive sensations, but as I said before I bowed out, convinced that the matter, even if it stood up logically, made no real difference to the logical basis of atheism (on the materialist default), that claim, while true, cannot justify the claim that it can never be explained much less that this means that monism (and you know that I don't even see any distinction in the terms - it is all 'stuff') must be wrong. That is as bad as saying that, because we don't know whether a god exists or not, we must assume that it does.
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