Silas says that the experience of color is how it feels for this to happen. But I still do not see where the color is. Either I am to look for it in the motions of the ions themselves, in which case I do not see it; or I am to look for it in the “feel” of those motions, but I do not know what that means, in terms of the physical theory with which we began.
I don’t think you understand the nature of the exercise. Let me return to the example of temperature.
Temperature exists. I say this without qualm—I am an engineer working on thermal issues in electronic packaging, dealing with temperature is my profession. However, temperature is nowhere described in the most current theories of particle physics. Instead, we find that in certain special cases, we can relate certain properties of the distribution of particles to a summarizing parameter in different locations in space, and that if we analyze the behavior of the particles in time this implies certain patterns in the development of the field corresponding to our parameter. These patterns are identical to those observed regarding temperature distributions, and indeed predict in great detail the physics of temperature—even explaining when these physics ‘break down’. We therefore conclude that we have discovered a reductive explanation of temperature.
The exact same story may be told about semiconductors, about conductors, about electricity and magnetism, about weather, about chemistry, about sound, and about light. We find a phenomenon associated with certain conditions, and we can relate the nature of that phenomenon to the underlying physics. We further prove this relation constitutes the innate nature of the phenomenon by examining edge cases—very thin conductors, chemistry in extreme conditions, light passing through a fine grating—and observing that the higher-level physics (of electrical conduction, of chemistry, of optics) break down just in the way which the lower level physics predicts.
We haven’t finished the job of reducing subjective phenomena to their fundamental physics, but what we’ve accomplished so far looks like what we observed in all the previous cases: the normal patterns break down in edge cases (e.g. brain damage) and the science of the underlying phenomenon predicts certain aspects of the phenomenon in very, very special cases (e.g. autonomic nervous reflexes? I’m not a neuroscientist).
This is strong evidence that the entire thing is reducible, and therefore that the phenomenon of color perception can be found in a physics with no explicit color.
I had thought you were someone else, thus the wrongly gendered pronouns, but I know who you are now.
The world can be divided into what goes on in the consciousness of some individual (e.g. yourself), and everything else, some very small part of which will play a role in causing the experience of that individual. Until this point, all naturalistic reductions have consisted of replacing one theory about everything-else with another theory about everything-else, or in otherwise adjusting the overall theory. Since everything-else is known (if you can call it that) only indirectly, by means of its effects on the consciousness of that individual, we have been free to suppose anything about it (that it consists of atoms in the void, that it consists of pure space-time geometry, that it consists of registers in the universal Turing machine), so long as its predicted causal outputs match up with appearances.
But when the time comes to account for appearances themselves, this absolute freedom to hypothesize no longer applies. There must be some fidelity to the appearance of appearances (to use an awkward phrase) in your theory of what they are.
I am quite happy to assert that there is no color in a colorless physics because the range of things you can get out of such a physics is so straightforward to describe. Everything reduces to causal interactions among localized quantitative properties, and so the possible higher-order entities are those you can build out of quantity, space, and causality. It’s thoroughly unmysterious. What is mysterious is to suggest that you will get colored objects spontaneously showing up as well, like the ghost of Mickey Mouse hovering above the equations.
None of this is meant to suggest that neuroscience will cease to make progress in producing a causal, analytical and physical account of human consciousness. On the contrary, that progress is going to highlight ever more strongly the ontological mismatch between appearance and physical theory, and will ultimately show us what the correct physical ontology is, if we can avoid clinging to a particular reification or visualization of what the formalism is about. Celia Green writes (Chapter 7 here) that
as the scientific description of the external world (including the human brain) has become more complete and complex, the discrepancy between the world of physical science and the world of phenomenology has been thrown into sharper relief.
The step after that is to reinsert the phenomenological ontology into the physical ontology, which is what this article is about.
I had thought you were someone else, thus the wrongly gendered pronouns, but I know who you are now.
Don’t sweat it—I honestly don’t care in the slightest.
I am quite happy to assert that there is no color in a colorless physics because the range of things you can get out of such a physics is so straightforward to describe. Everything reduces to causal interactions among localized quantitative properties, and so the possible higher-order entities are those you can build out of quantity, space, and causality. It’s thoroughly unmysterious. What is mysterious is to suggest that you will get colored objects spontaneously showing up as well, like the ghost of Mickey Mouse hovering above the equations.
I will have to agree with rhollerith_dot_com here—you are treating as absurd a thesis we consider ordinary. And I think it’s actually worse than that: you are treating as absurd a theory which you explicitly state you would not treat as absurd in any other context. That’s not just strange—that’s downright reckless.
Now, you would be justified in being this reckless if you had a substantial amount of evidence to support your idea. We accept quantum mechanics, which is downright strange relative to the Middle-World of our day-to-day experience, but we accept it because it’s been proven sixteen ways to next Sunday. But in support of your thesis that human consciousness must be analyzed differently to every other phenomenon in the universe, you have … the naive sensation of indivisibility in the subjective experience of color.
That’s not evidence. That’s the phenomenon that needs explaining. And given all the myriad ways in which consciousness fails—all the errors it makes in analyzing the physical world—there is no sense in which subjective sensation can ever be a fitting element in a fundamental Theory Of Everything the way you seem to be proposing.
you are treating as absurd a theory which you explicitly state you would not treat as absurd in any other context
But I did explain why. We have some direct knowledge of consciousness. We have no direct knowledge of what’s outside it. Therefore we are not as free to theorize about what consciousness really is; we must at least acknowledge what is there. That includes color, and so theories of nature which don’t include color are ultimately untenable, even if they can have interim value as heuristic partial theories.
And by the way, indivisibility of color is not the problem. It is the failure to actually produce color by piling up lots of noncolor.
So far as I can determine, you have not understood anything I or any other physicalist has said. I cannot see any value in spending any further time on this discussion.
I don’t think you understand the nature of the exercise. Let me return to the example of temperature.
Temperature exists. I say this without qualm—I am an engineer working on thermal issues in electronic packaging, dealing with temperature is my profession. However, temperature is nowhere described in the most current theories of particle physics. Instead, we find that in certain special cases, we can relate certain properties of the distribution of particles to a summarizing parameter in different locations in space, and that if we analyze the behavior of the particles in time this implies certain patterns in the development of the field corresponding to our parameter. These patterns are identical to those observed regarding temperature distributions, and indeed predict in great detail the physics of temperature—even explaining when these physics ‘break down’. We therefore conclude that we have discovered a reductive explanation of temperature.
The exact same story may be told about semiconductors, about conductors, about electricity and magnetism, about weather, about chemistry, about sound, and about light. We find a phenomenon associated with certain conditions, and we can relate the nature of that phenomenon to the underlying physics. We further prove this relation constitutes the innate nature of the phenomenon by examining edge cases—very thin conductors, chemistry in extreme conditions, light passing through a fine grating—and observing that the higher-level physics (of electrical conduction, of chemistry, of optics) break down just in the way which the lower level physics predicts.
We haven’t finished the job of reducing subjective phenomena to their fundamental physics, but what we’ve accomplished so far looks like what we observed in all the previous cases: the normal patterns break down in edge cases (e.g. brain damage) and the science of the underlying phenomenon predicts certain aspects of the phenomenon in very, very special cases (e.g. autonomic nervous reflexes? I’m not a neuroscientist).
This is strong evidence that the entire thing is reducible, and therefore that the phenomenon of color perception can be found in a physics with no explicit color.
I had thought you were someone else, thus the wrongly gendered pronouns, but I know who you are now.
The world can be divided into what goes on in the consciousness of some individual (e.g. yourself), and everything else, some very small part of which will play a role in causing the experience of that individual. Until this point, all naturalistic reductions have consisted of replacing one theory about everything-else with another theory about everything-else, or in otherwise adjusting the overall theory. Since everything-else is known (if you can call it that) only indirectly, by means of its effects on the consciousness of that individual, we have been free to suppose anything about it (that it consists of atoms in the void, that it consists of pure space-time geometry, that it consists of registers in the universal Turing machine), so long as its predicted causal outputs match up with appearances.
But when the time comes to account for appearances themselves, this absolute freedom to hypothesize no longer applies. There must be some fidelity to the appearance of appearances (to use an awkward phrase) in your theory of what they are.
I am quite happy to assert that there is no color in a colorless physics because the range of things you can get out of such a physics is so straightforward to describe. Everything reduces to causal interactions among localized quantitative properties, and so the possible higher-order entities are those you can build out of quantity, space, and causality. It’s thoroughly unmysterious. What is mysterious is to suggest that you will get colored objects spontaneously showing up as well, like the ghost of Mickey Mouse hovering above the equations.
None of this is meant to suggest that neuroscience will cease to make progress in producing a causal, analytical and physical account of human consciousness. On the contrary, that progress is going to highlight ever more strongly the ontological mismatch between appearance and physical theory, and will ultimately show us what the correct physical ontology is, if we can avoid clinging to a particular reification or visualization of what the formalism is about. Celia Green writes (Chapter 7 here) that
The step after that is to reinsert the phenomenological ontology into the physical ontology, which is what this article is about.
Don’t sweat it—I honestly don’t care in the slightest.
I will have to agree with rhollerith_dot_com here—you are treating as absurd a thesis we consider ordinary. And I think it’s actually worse than that: you are treating as absurd a theory which you explicitly state you would not treat as absurd in any other context. That’s not just strange—that’s downright reckless.
Now, you would be justified in being this reckless if you had a substantial amount of evidence to support your idea. We accept quantum mechanics, which is downright strange relative to the Middle-World of our day-to-day experience, but we accept it because it’s been proven sixteen ways to next Sunday. But in support of your thesis that human consciousness must be analyzed differently to every other phenomenon in the universe, you have … the naive sensation of indivisibility in the subjective experience of color.
That’s not evidence. That’s the phenomenon that needs explaining. And given all the myriad ways in which consciousness fails—all the errors it makes in analyzing the physical world—there is no sense in which subjective sensation can ever be a fitting element in a fundamental Theory Of Everything the way you seem to be proposing.
Heh, I was kind of scratching my head at it though. “Wait, did I miss something about Robin Z?”
Only the degree of my indifference to pronouns!
But I did explain why. We have some direct knowledge of consciousness. We have no direct knowledge of what’s outside it. Therefore we are not as free to theorize about what consciousness really is; we must at least acknowledge what is there. That includes color, and so theories of nature which don’t include color are ultimately untenable, even if they can have interim value as heuristic partial theories.
And by the way, indivisibility of color is not the problem. It is the failure to actually produce color by piling up lots of noncolor.
So far as I can determine, you have not understood anything I or any other physicalist has said. I cannot see any value in spending any further time on this discussion.