why might not the property of bearing qualia be one that can vary from entirely absent, to just barely present, to intensely present?
There are two problems here. First, you need to make the idea of “barely having qualia” meaningful. Second, you need to explain how that can solve the arbitrariness problem for a microphysically exact psychophysical correspondence.
Are weak qualia a bridge across the gap between having qualia and not having qualia? Or is the axis intense-vs-weak, orthogonal to the axis there-vs-not-there-at-all? In the latter case, even though you only have weak qualia, you still have them 100%.
The classic phenomenological proposition regarding the nature of consciousness, is that it is essentially about intentionality. According to this, even perception has an intentional structure, and you never find sense-qualia existing outside of intentionality. I guess that according to the later Husserl, all possible states of consciousness would be different forms of a fundamental ontological structure called “transcendental intentionality”; and the fundamental difference between a conscious entity and a non-conscious entity is the existence of that structure “in” the entity.
There are mathematical precedents for qualitative discontinuity. If you consider a circle versus a line interval, there’s no topological property such as “almost closed”. In the context of physics, you can’t have entanglement in a Hilbert space with less than four dimensions. So it’s conceivable that there is a discontinuity in nature, between states of consciousness and states of non-consciousness.
Twisty distinctions may need to be made. At least verbally, I can distinguish between (1) an entity whose state just is a red quale (2) an entity whose state is one of awareness of the red quale (3) an entity which is aware that it is aware of the red quale. The ontological position I described previously would say that (3) is what we call self-awareness; (2) is what we might just call awareness; there’s no such thing as (1), and intentionality is present in (2) as well as in (3). I’m agnostic about the existence of something like (1), as a bridge between having-qualia and not-having-qualia. Also, even looking for opportunities for continuity, it’s hard not to think that there’s another discontinuity between awareness and self-awareness.
If I was a real phenomenologist, I would presumably have a reasoned position on such questions. Or at least I could state the options with much more rigor. I’ll excuse the informality of my exposition by saying that one has to start somewhere.
On the arbitrariness problem: I think this is most apparent when it’s arbitrariness of the physical boundary of the conscious entity. Consider a single specific microphysical state that has an observer in it. I don’t see how you could have an exact principle determining the presence and nature of an observer from such a state, if you thought that observers don’t have exact and unique physical boundaries, as you were suggesting in another comment. It seems to involve a one-to-many-to-one mapping, where you go from one exact physical state, to many possible observer-boundaries, to just one exact conscious state. I don’t see how the existence of a conscious-to-nonconscious continuum of states deals with that.
There are two problems here. First, you need to make the idea of “barely having qualia” meaningful. Second, you need to explain how that can solve the arbitrariness problem for a microphysically exact psychophysical correspondence.
I’m still not sure where this arbitrariness problem comes from. I’m supposing that the bearing of qualia is an objective structural property of certain physical systems. Another mathematical analogy might be the property of connectivity in graphs. A given graph is either connected or not, though connectivity is also something that exists in degrees, so that there is a difference between being highly connected and just barely connected.
On this view, how does arbitrariness get in?
Are weak qualia a bridge across the gap between having qualia and not having qualia? Or is the axis intense-vs-weak, orthogonal to the axis there-vs-not-there-at-all? In the latter case, even though you only have weak qualia, you still have them 100%.
I’m suggesting something more like your “bridge across the gap” option. Analogously, one might say that the barely connected graphs are a bridge between disconnected graphs and highly connected graphs. Or, to repeat my analogy from the grandparent, the geometrical property of “being barely longer than a given unit” is a bridge across the gap between “being shorter that the given unit” and “being much longer than the given unit”.
On the arbitrariness problem: I think this is most apparent when it’s arbitrariness of the physical boundary of the conscious entity. Consider a single specific microphysical state that has an observer in it. I don’t see how you could have an exact principle determining the presence and nature of an observer from such a state, if you thought that observers don’t have exact and unique physical boundaries, as you were suggesting in another comment. It seems to involve a one-to-many-to-one mapping, where you go from one exact physical state, to many possible observer-boundaries, to just one exact conscious state. I don’t see how the existence of a conscious-to-nonconscious continuum of states deals with that.
I’m afraid that I’m not seeing the difficulty. I am suggesting that the possession of a given qualia state is a certain structure property of physical systems. I am suggesting that this structure property is of the sort that can be possessed by a variety of different physical systems in a variety of different states. Why couldn’t various parts be added or removed from the system while leaving intact the structure property corresponding to the given qualia state?
I’m not sure that I understand the question. Would you agree with the following? A given physical system in a given state satisfies certain structural properties, in virtue of which the system is in that state and not some other state.
I just want a specific example, first. You’re “supposing that the bearing of qualia is an objective structural property of certain physical systems”. So please give me one entirely concrete example of “an objective structural property”.
A sentence giving such a property would have to be in the context of a true and complete theory of physics, which I do not possess.
I expect that such a theory will provide a language for describing many such structural properties. I have this expectation because every theory that has been offered in the past, had it been literally true, would have provided such a language. For example, suppose that the universe were in fact a collection of indivisible particles in Euclidean 3-space governed by Newtonian mechanics. Then the distances separating the centers of mass of the various particles would have determinate ratios, triples of particles would determine line segments meeting at determinate angles, etc.
Since Newtonian mechanics isn’t an accurate description of physical reality, the properties that I can describe within the framework of Newtonian mechanics don’t make sense for actual physical systems. A similar problem bedevils any physical theory that is not literally true. Nonetheless, all of the false theories so far describe structural properties for physical systems. I see no reason to expect that the true theory of physics differs from its predecessors in this regard.
suppose that the universe were in fact a collection of indivisible particles in Euclidean 3-space governed by Newtonian mechanics. Then the distances separating the centers of mass of the various particles would have determinate ratios, triples of particles would determine line segments meeting at determinate angles, etc.
Let’s use this as an example (and let’s suppose that the main force in this universe is like Newtonian gravitation). It’s certainly relevant to functionalist theories of consciousness, because it ought to be possible to make universal Turing machines in such a universe. A bit might consist in the presence or absence of a medium-sized mass orbiting a massive body at a standard distance, something which is tested for by the passage of very light probe-bodies and which can be rewritten by the insertion of an object into an unoccupied orbit, or by the perturbation of an object out of an occupied orbit.
I claim that any mapping of these physical states onto computational states is going to be vague at the edges, that it can only be made exact by the delineation of arbitrary exact boundaries in physical state space with no functional consequence, and that this already exemplifies all the problems involved in positing an exact mapping between qualia-states and physics as we know it.
Let’s say that functionally, the difference between whether a given planetary system encodes 0 or 1 is whether the light probe-mass returns to its sender or not. We’re supposing that all the trajectories are synchronized such that, if the orbit is occupied, the probe will swing around the massive body, do a 180-degree turn, and go back from whence it came—that’s a “1”; but otherwise it will just sail straight through.
If we allow ourselves to be concerned with the full continuum of possible physical configurations, we will run into edge cases. If the probe does a 90-degree turn, probably that’s not “return to sender” and so can’t count as a successful “read-out” that the orbit is occupied. What about a 179.999999-degree turn? That’s so close to 180 degrees, that if our orrery-computer has any robustness-against-perturbation in its dynamics, at all, it still ought to get the job done. But somewhere in between that almost-perfect turn and the 90-degree turn, there’s a transition between a functional “1” and a functional “0″.
Now the problem is, if we are trying to say that computational properties are objectively possessed by this physical system, there has to be an exact boundary. (Or else we simply don’t consider a specific range of intermediate states; but then we are saying that the exact boundary does exist, in the form of a discontinuity between one continuum of physically realizable states, and another continuum of physically realizable states.) There is some exact angle-of-return for the probe-particle which marks the objective difference between “this gravitating system is in a 1-state” and “this gravitating system is in a 0-state”.
To specify such an angle is to “delineate an arbitrary exact boundary in physical state space with no functional consequence”. Consider what it means, functionally, for a gravitating system in this toy universe to be in a 1-state. It means that a probe-mass sent into the system at the appropriate time will return to sender, indicating that the orbit is occupied. But since we are talking about a computational mechanism made out of many systems, “return to sender” can’t mean that the returning probe-particle just heads off to infinity in the right direction. The probe must have an appropriate causal impact on some other system, so that the information it conveys enters into the next stage of the computation.
But because we are dealing with a physics in which, by hypothesis, distances and angles vary on a continuum, the configuration of the system to which the probe returns can also be counterfactually varied, and once again there are edge cases. Some specific rearrangement of masses and orbits has to happen in that system for the probe’s return to count as having registered, and whether a specific angle-of-return leads to the required rearrangement depends on the system’s configuration. Some configurations will capture returning probes on a broad range of angles, others will only capture it for a narrow range.
I hope this is beginning to make sense. The ascription of computational states as an objective property of a physical system requires that the mapping from physics to computation must be specific and exact for all possible physical states, even the edge cases, but in a physics based on continua, it’s just not possible to specify an exact mapping in a way that isn’t arbitrary in its details.
There are two problems here. First, you need to make the idea of “barely having qualia” meaningful. Second, you need to explain how that can solve the arbitrariness problem for a microphysically exact psychophysical correspondence.
Are weak qualia a bridge across the gap between having qualia and not having qualia? Or is the axis intense-vs-weak, orthogonal to the axis there-vs-not-there-at-all? In the latter case, even though you only have weak qualia, you still have them 100%.
The classic phenomenological proposition regarding the nature of consciousness, is that it is essentially about intentionality. According to this, even perception has an intentional structure, and you never find sense-qualia existing outside of intentionality. I guess that according to the later Husserl, all possible states of consciousness would be different forms of a fundamental ontological structure called “transcendental intentionality”; and the fundamental difference between a conscious entity and a non-conscious entity is the existence of that structure “in” the entity.
There are mathematical precedents for qualitative discontinuity. If you consider a circle versus a line interval, there’s no topological property such as “almost closed”. In the context of physics, you can’t have entanglement in a Hilbert space with less than four dimensions. So it’s conceivable that there is a discontinuity in nature, between states of consciousness and states of non-consciousness.
Twisty distinctions may need to be made. At least verbally, I can distinguish between (1) an entity whose state just is a red quale (2) an entity whose state is one of awareness of the red quale (3) an entity which is aware that it is aware of the red quale. The ontological position I described previously would say that (3) is what we call self-awareness; (2) is what we might just call awareness; there’s no such thing as (1), and intentionality is present in (2) as well as in (3). I’m agnostic about the existence of something like (1), as a bridge between having-qualia and not-having-qualia. Also, even looking for opportunities for continuity, it’s hard not to think that there’s another discontinuity between awareness and self-awareness.
If I was a real phenomenologist, I would presumably have a reasoned position on such questions. Or at least I could state the options with much more rigor. I’ll excuse the informality of my exposition by saying that one has to start somewhere.
On the arbitrariness problem: I think this is most apparent when it’s arbitrariness of the physical boundary of the conscious entity. Consider a single specific microphysical state that has an observer in it. I don’t see how you could have an exact principle determining the presence and nature of an observer from such a state, if you thought that observers don’t have exact and unique physical boundaries, as you were suggesting in another comment. It seems to involve a one-to-many-to-one mapping, where you go from one exact physical state, to many possible observer-boundaries, to just one exact conscious state. I don’t see how the existence of a conscious-to-nonconscious continuum of states deals with that.
I’m still not sure where this arbitrariness problem comes from. I’m supposing that the bearing of qualia is an objective structural property of certain physical systems. Another mathematical analogy might be the property of connectivity in graphs. A given graph is either connected or not, though connectivity is also something that exists in degrees, so that there is a difference between being highly connected and just barely connected.
On this view, how does arbitrariness get in?
I’m suggesting something more like your “bridge across the gap” option. Analogously, one might say that the barely connected graphs are a bridge between disconnected graphs and highly connected graphs. Or, to repeat my analogy from the grandparent, the geometrical property of “being barely longer than a given unit” is a bridge across the gap between “being shorter that the given unit” and “being much longer than the given unit”.
I’m afraid that I’m not seeing the difficulty. I am suggesting that the possession of a given qualia state is a certain structure property of physical systems. I am suggesting that this structure property is of the sort that can be possessed by a variety of different physical systems in a variety of different states. Why couldn’t various parts be added or removed from the system while leaving intact the structure property corresponding to the given qualia state?
Give me an example of an “objective structural property” of a physical system. I expect that it will either be “vague” or “arbitrary”…
I’m not sure that I understand the question. Would you agree with the following? A given physical system in a given state satisfies certain structural properties, in virtue of which the system is in that state and not some other state.
I just want a specific example, first. You’re “supposing that the bearing of qualia is an objective structural property of certain physical systems”. So please give me one entirely concrete example of “an objective structural property”.
A sentence giving such a property would have to be in the context of a true and complete theory of physics, which I do not possess.
I expect that such a theory will provide a language for describing many such structural properties. I have this expectation because every theory that has been offered in the past, had it been literally true, would have provided such a language. For example, suppose that the universe were in fact a collection of indivisible particles in Euclidean 3-space governed by Newtonian mechanics. Then the distances separating the centers of mass of the various particles would have determinate ratios, triples of particles would determine line segments meeting at determinate angles, etc.
Since Newtonian mechanics isn’t an accurate description of physical reality, the properties that I can describe within the framework of Newtonian mechanics don’t make sense for actual physical systems. A similar problem bedevils any physical theory that is not literally true. Nonetheless, all of the false theories so far describe structural properties for physical systems. I see no reason to expect that the true theory of physics differs from its predecessors in this regard.
Let’s use this as an example (and let’s suppose that the main force in this universe is like Newtonian gravitation). It’s certainly relevant to functionalist theories of consciousness, because it ought to be possible to make universal Turing machines in such a universe. A bit might consist in the presence or absence of a medium-sized mass orbiting a massive body at a standard distance, something which is tested for by the passage of very light probe-bodies and which can be rewritten by the insertion of an object into an unoccupied orbit, or by the perturbation of an object out of an occupied orbit.
I claim that any mapping of these physical states onto computational states is going to be vague at the edges, that it can only be made exact by the delineation of arbitrary exact boundaries in physical state space with no functional consequence, and that this already exemplifies all the problems involved in positing an exact mapping between qualia-states and physics as we know it.
Let’s say that functionally, the difference between whether a given planetary system encodes 0 or 1 is whether the light probe-mass returns to its sender or not. We’re supposing that all the trajectories are synchronized such that, if the orbit is occupied, the probe will swing around the massive body, do a 180-degree turn, and go back from whence it came—that’s a “1”; but otherwise it will just sail straight through.
If we allow ourselves to be concerned with the full continuum of possible physical configurations, we will run into edge cases. If the probe does a 90-degree turn, probably that’s not “return to sender” and so can’t count as a successful “read-out” that the orbit is occupied. What about a 179.999999-degree turn? That’s so close to 180 degrees, that if our orrery-computer has any robustness-against-perturbation in its dynamics, at all, it still ought to get the job done. But somewhere in between that almost-perfect turn and the 90-degree turn, there’s a transition between a functional “1” and a functional “0″.
Now the problem is, if we are trying to say that computational properties are objectively possessed by this physical system, there has to be an exact boundary. (Or else we simply don’t consider a specific range of intermediate states; but then we are saying that the exact boundary does exist, in the form of a discontinuity between one continuum of physically realizable states, and another continuum of physically realizable states.) There is some exact angle-of-return for the probe-particle which marks the objective difference between “this gravitating system is in a 1-state” and “this gravitating system is in a 0-state”.
To specify such an angle is to “delineate an arbitrary exact boundary in physical state space with no functional consequence”. Consider what it means, functionally, for a gravitating system in this toy universe to be in a 1-state. It means that a probe-mass sent into the system at the appropriate time will return to sender, indicating that the orbit is occupied. But since we are talking about a computational mechanism made out of many systems, “return to sender” can’t mean that the returning probe-particle just heads off to infinity in the right direction. The probe must have an appropriate causal impact on some other system, so that the information it conveys enters into the next stage of the computation.
But because we are dealing with a physics in which, by hypothesis, distances and angles vary on a continuum, the configuration of the system to which the probe returns can also be counterfactually varied, and once again there are edge cases. Some specific rearrangement of masses and orbits has to happen in that system for the probe’s return to count as having registered, and whether a specific angle-of-return leads to the required rearrangement depends on the system’s configuration. Some configurations will capture returning probes on a broad range of angles, others will only capture it for a narrow range.
I hope this is beginning to make sense. The ascription of computational states as an objective property of a physical system requires that the mapping from physics to computation must be specific and exact for all possible physical states, even the edge cases, but in a physics based on continua, it’s just not possible to specify an exact mapping in a way that isn’t arbitrary in its details.