We can talk about sweet and sound being “out there” in the world but in reality it is a useful fiction of sorts that we are “projecting” out into the world.
I hate to put on my Bishop Berkeley hat. Sweet and sound are things we can directly perceive. The very notion of something being “out there” independent of us is itself a mental model we use to explain our perceptions. We say that our sensation of sweetness is caused by a thing we call glucose. We can talk of glucose in terms of molecules, but as we can’t actually see a molecule, we have to speak of it in terms of the effect it produces on a measurement apparatus.
The same holds for any scientific experiment. We come up with a theory that predicts that some phenomenon is to occur. To test it, we devise an apparatus and say that the phenomenon occurred if we observe the apparatus behave one way, and that it did not occur if we observe the apparatus to behave another way.
There’s a bit of circular reasoning. We can come up with a scientific explanation of our perception of taste or color, but the very science we use depends upon the perceptions it tries to explain. The very notion of a world outside of ourselves is a theory used to explain certain regularities in our perceptions.
This is part of what makes consciousness a hard problem. Since consciousness is responsible for our perception of the world, it’s very hard to take an outside view and define it in terms of other concepts.
The very notion of something being “out there” independent of us is itself a mental model we use to explain our perceptions.
Yes, I think that’s right, the conviction that something exists in the world is also a (unconscious) judgement made by the mind that could be mistaken. However, when we what to explain why we have the perceptual data, and it’s regularities, it makes sense to attribute it to external causes, but this conviction could perhaps too be mistaken. The underpinnings of rational reasoning seems to bottom out to in unconsciously formed convictions as well, basic arithmetic is obviously true but can I trust these convictions? Justifying logic with logic is indeed circular. At some point we just have to accept them in order to function in the world. The signs that these convictions are ofter useful suggest to me that we have some access to objective reality. But for everything I know, we could be Boltzmann brains floating around in high entropy with false convictions. Despite this, I think the assessment that objective reality exists and that our access and knowledge of it is limited but expandable is a sensible working hypothesis.
Solipsism is not really workable due to changes in perceptual data that you cannot predict. Even if you’re hallucinating, the data factory is external to the conscious self. So assuming an “objective reality” (whether generated by physics or by DMT) is nothing to apologize for.
This is part of what makes consciousness a hard problem. Since consciousness is responsible for our perception of the world, it’s very hard to take an outside view and define it in terms of other concepts.
Really? What’s the quale of a number? I think we can investigate consciousness scientifically precisely because science is one of our very few investigation methods that doesn’t amount to introspecting on intuitions and qualia. It keeps working, where previous introspective philosophy kept failing.
If you’re arguing that the scientific method is our best known way of investigating consciousness, I don’t think anyone disputes that. If we assume the existence of an external world (as common sense would dictate), we have a great deal of confidence in science. My concern is that it’s hard to investigate consciousness without a good definition.
Any definition ultimately depends on undefined concepts. Let’s take numbers. For example, “three” is a property shared by all sets that can be put in one-to-one correspondence with the set { {}, {{}}, { {{}}, {} } } (to use Peano’s construction). A one-to-one correspondence between two sets A and B is simply a subset of the Cartesian product A x B that satisfies certain properties. So numbers can be thought of in terms of sets. But what is a set? Well, it’s a collection of objects. We can then ask what collections are and what objects are, etc. At some point we have to decide upon primitive elements that remain undefined and build everything up around those. It all rests on intuitions in the end. We decide which intuitions are the most trustworthy and go from there.
So, if we want to define “consciousness”, we are going to have to found it upon some elementary concepts. The trouble is that, since our consciousness forms an important part of all our perceptions and even our very thoughts, it’s difficult to get a good outside perspective and see how the edifice is built.
Want to register agreement with your post, though it seems incongruous to say, one the one hand, that consciousness seems to escape definition and on the other the scientific method is the best known tool for explaining it.
I hate to put on my Bishop Berkeley hat. Sweet and sound are things we can directly perceive. The very notion of something being “out there” independent of us is itself a mental model we use to explain our perceptions. We say that our sensation of sweetness is caused by a thing we call glucose. We can talk of glucose in terms of molecules, but as we can’t actually see a molecule, we have to speak of it in terms of the effect it produces on a measurement apparatus.
The same holds for any scientific experiment. We come up with a theory that predicts that some phenomenon is to occur. To test it, we devise an apparatus and say that the phenomenon occurred if we observe the apparatus behave one way, and that it did not occur if we observe the apparatus to behave another way.
There’s a bit of circular reasoning. We can come up with a scientific explanation of our perception of taste or color, but the very science we use depends upon the perceptions it tries to explain. The very notion of a world outside of ourselves is a theory used to explain certain regularities in our perceptions.
This is part of what makes consciousness a hard problem. Since consciousness is responsible for our perception of the world, it’s very hard to take an outside view and define it in terms of other concepts.
Yes, I think that’s right, the conviction that something exists in the world is also a (unconscious) judgement made by the mind that could be mistaken. However, when we what to explain why we have the perceptual data, and it’s regularities, it makes sense to attribute it to external causes, but this conviction could perhaps too be mistaken. The underpinnings of rational reasoning seems to bottom out to in unconsciously formed convictions as well, basic arithmetic is obviously true but can I trust these convictions? Justifying logic with logic is indeed circular. At some point we just have to accept them in order to function in the world. The signs that these convictions are ofter useful suggest to me that we have some access to objective reality. But for everything I know, we could be Boltzmann brains floating around in high entropy with false convictions. Despite this, I think the assessment that objective reality exists and that our access and knowledge of it is limited but expandable is a sensible working hypothesis.
Solipsism is not really workable due to changes in perceptual data that you cannot predict. Even if you’re hallucinating, the data factory is external to the conscious self. So assuming an “objective reality” (whether generated by physics or by DMT) is nothing to apologize for.
Really? What’s the quale of a number? I think we can investigate consciousness scientifically precisely because science is one of our very few investigation methods that doesn’t amount to introspecting on intuitions and qualia. It keeps working, where previous introspective philosophy kept failing.
If you’re arguing that the scientific method is our best known way of investigating consciousness, I don’t think anyone disputes that. If we assume the existence of an external world (as common sense would dictate), we have a great deal of confidence in science. My concern is that it’s hard to investigate consciousness without a good definition.
Any definition ultimately depends on undefined concepts. Let’s take numbers. For example, “three” is a property shared by all sets that can be put in one-to-one correspondence with the set { {}, {{}}, { {{}}, {} } } (to use Peano’s construction). A one-to-one correspondence between two sets A and B is simply a subset of the Cartesian product A x B that satisfies certain properties. So numbers can be thought of in terms of sets. But what is a set? Well, it’s a collection of objects. We can then ask what collections are and what objects are, etc. At some point we have to decide upon primitive elements that remain undefined and build everything up around those. It all rests on intuitions in the end. We decide which intuitions are the most trustworthy and go from there.
So, if we want to define “consciousness”, we are going to have to found it upon some elementary concepts. The trouble is that, since our consciousness forms an important part of all our perceptions and even our very thoughts, it’s difficult to get a good outside perspective and see how the edifice is built.
These are Von Neumann’s ordinals!
Want to register agreement with your post, though it seems incongruous to say, one the one hand, that consciousness seems to escape definition and on the other the scientific method is the best known tool for explaining it.