Re: “For some reason, a lot of very bright people cannot see that consciousness is a big, strange problem.”
A dubious assertion, which you apparently don’t bother backing up. If consciousness is just perception that can be reflected on, it does not seem like a very big or a very strange problem.
The problem is how matter can have self-awareness. It’s hard to describe in words, because all of the words to describe this (consciousness, feeling, awareness) have also been (ab)used to describe the non-mysterious processes that enable an organism to act in the same way as one that we believe has consciousness, feeling, awareness.
You can say you’re a functionalist, and you believe that a system that accurately reproduces all the same observable behavior of consciousness necessarily will also reproduce consciousness. Supposing that were so; it wouldn’t explain consciousness.
I think functionalism is the claim that consciousness is not epiphenomenal. Suppose functionalism is false, and something that behaves like a conscious system is not necessarily conscious. This would mean that a conscious system possessed some extra quality, “consciousness” which was not a behavior and is not observable. Hence, epiphenomenal.
Alternately, people could mean by functionalism that anything that reproduces all the behavior of a conscious system that we are currently capable of observing (or at least theorizing about, having the necessary concepts in our physics), is necessarily conscious. But that would be silly; it would be equivalent to the assertion that today’s physics is complete.
Epiphenomenalism and functionalism are conceptually independent—at least, there is no obvious relation between them such that one would imply the other. I’ve also never heard functionalism as the claim that “consciousness is not epiphenomenal”, despite having heard at least 25 different authors use the term.
A standard formulation, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is:
Functionalism is the doctrine that what makes something a thought, desire, pain (or any other type of mental state) depends not on its internal constitution, but solely on its function, or the role it plays, in the cognitive system of which it is a part. More precisely, functionalist theories take the identity of a mental state to be determined by its causal relations to sensory stimulations, other mental states, and behavior.
Your usage of epiphenomenal is also too imprecise. It means not that some system has some extra quality, but that there are two systems operating in parallel or in something analogous to a parallel manner, such that there is a base phenomenon that causes the epiphenomenon but that is never in turn influenced by the epiphenomenon.
A good example of an epiphenomenon would be Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: the people on the walkway, and the light, are the causes (i.e., base phenomenon) of the parallel system of shadows on the wall (i.e., epiphenomenon) that the prisoners see and take as real agents, but the shadow system has no influence at all on the underlying real system of the people on the walkway (assume they are unaware and have never actually seen the shadows behind them).
If consciousness is just perception that can be reflected on, it does not seem like a very big or a very strange problem.
Consciousness is (purportedly) the property of being able to perceive anything (not just itself). The property of having subjective experience. Most people claim to have such themselves, and that opens the question of what this property actually is and what other things may have it. Which is indeed a “big and strange” question, if you define this property as being extra-phenomenal—which is inherent in most discussions of subjective experience.
To deny consciousness as a problem, you need to deny the existence of your own subjective experience. Not just your objectively existing self-reporting of it, but the actual subjective experience that you feel and that I can’t even in principle check if you feel.
On the other hand, this consciousness must be logically necessary (otherwise we get p-zombies) and cannot causally influence the objective universe (otherwise we get dualism and our physical theories are all wrong).
They’re using the word “conscious” to mean “awake”. People experience dreams; that’s consciousness. They even remember them; though that’s not necessary for consciousness. If no one remembered having dreams, we wouldn’t be talking about them now.
It might be possible that dreams are never conscious: It would be possible to have a dream, not experience it at the time because you’re not conscious, but have all the memories of it created, “remember” it later when you wake up, and experience it for the first time retrospectively, along with the illusion that you had been conscious at the time it happened.
That may be the normal usage, but it just assumes without evidence that sleepwalkers are not conscious. The explanation that they’re conscious but do not form long-term memories is just as good.
Since sleepwalking is an actual phenomenon, it doesn’t matter what the “conventional usage” is, only what the real thing’s like.
Perception is even less of a problem than consciousness. Anything with an input device that is not being ignored perceives things. Keyboards, mice, cameras, microphones, all sources of data capture from the environment qualify. If you define consciousness as perception, that just trivialises it further.
Edit: we ought to have a rigorous definition of consciousness before discussing whether such marginal cases are or are not conscious (or to what degree they are conscious). Since many books, like Consciousness Explained, tried to give a clear definition & explanation and still aren’t accepted by everyone, perhaps there’s no point in arguing about whether sleepwalkers are “conscious” or not as it will come down to different definitions.
As far as facts are concerned, and avoiding the c-word: brain activity during sleepwalking can apparently be quite high, since it includes whole subsystems working and reacting to the environment (walking around, using objects, dressing, driving...) This may be more than during (some? most?) dreams. But I am certainly not an expert.
It’s true that “consciousness” or awareness or what have you is much lower than during full wakefulness. In addition to not forming memories, sleepwalkers can’t pass for an awake person or hold a conversation, AFAIK.
Keeping in mind that I’m explaining a view with which I don’t fully agree (but I don’t hold to an alternative view either, I just don’t fully understand the matter) - I’ll try to reformulate.
We have subjective experience. It does not seem to be describe-able in ordinary physical terms, or to arise from theories of the physical world, because these theories don’t have any place for “experience” or “feeling” as seen from the inside—only as seen from the outside.
What the experience is about, the events and information we experience, is part of the physical world. Aboutness is fully explained as part of the physical world. What’s not explained is why we feel at all. Why does an algorithm feel like something from the inside? Why does it have an “inside”?
I have feelings, experiences, etc. The question being asked isn’t even why I have them. It’s more like, what are they? What ontological kind do they have?
Re: “We have subjective experience. It does not seem to be describe-able in ordinary physical terms”
...but it must be—everything in the universe is.
Re: “or to arise from theories of the physical world, because these theories don’t have any place for “experience” or “feeling” as seen from the inside”
So what? They don’t have the notion of “fractal drainage patterns” or “screw dislocations” either. Complex systems have emergent properties, not obviously related to physical laws—but still ultimately the product of those laws.
Feelings are patterns—and like all patterns, are made of information.
Is that an observed fact, or a definition of “everything in the universe”?
If a fact, a rule that has held so far, then (some people claim that) consciousness is an observation that contradicts this rule.
If a definition, then perhaps consciousness can also be said to be “in” the universe, but that doesn’t help us understand it...
Anyway, I don’t think I have any more to contribute to this discussion. I fully understand your position. I think I also understand the position of at least some people who claim that consciousness is a real, but extra-physical, thing to be explained (like MItchell_Porter?). So I’ve tried to explain the latter viewpoint.
But I ended up going in circles because this idea rests on everyone agreeing that their subjective experiences indicate that such a “extra-physical consciousness” exists, and the moment someone doesn’t accept this premise—like you—the discussion is pretty much over.
I’m ambivalent myself: I can understand what the “pro-consciousness” people mean, and I might accept their claims if they could answer all the resulting questions, which they don’t. So I see a possible unresolved problem. On the other hand, it’s likely that if I hadn’t encountered this idea of consciousness I would never have come up with it myself, all talk of “immediate subjective knowledge” nonwithstanding. That’s why I’m not sure there is a problem.
Re: “If a fact, a rule that has held so far, then (some people claim that) consciousness is an observation that contradicts this rule.”
Right—but those people have no convincing evidence. If there was some mysterious meta-physical do-dah out there, we should expect to see some evidence. Until there is evidence, the hypothesis is not favoured by Occam’s razor.
The advocates can look for evidence, and the sceptics can think they are crazy—but until some actual evidence is found, there’s not much for people like me to discuss. The hypothesis is about as near to dead as it can get.
As I said: the hypothesis relies entirely on everyone agreeing that they, too, sense this mysterious thing inside them (or identical with them, or whatever).
Until new evidence or argument is brought forward, I’ll continue treating it as a cultural mental artifact. But I do feel somewhat sympathetic towards attempts at creating such new arguments without using new evidence.
Why would a subjective experience cause people to think they know more about physics than physicists do? Subjective experiences are an especially poor quality form of evidence.
Subjective experience is immediate. You can’t ignore or deny its existence (although you may think there’s nothing unexplained or mysterious about it).
When people consider that physics doesn’t explain their subjective experience (whether or not these people fully understand physics), they therefore feel they have no choice but to conclude that the physics, or the physical ontology, is incomplete.
In an computable universe, you can make agents experience literally anything. No amount of zen moments would add up to reasonable evidence.
What would be more convincing is that if brains demonstrably did something that violated the known laws of physics. Much like Penrose thought they did, IOW. Then we would have to poke around in search of what was going on. However, there seems to be no hint of that.
Subjective experience is immediate. You can’t ignore or deny its existence.
Sure you can, if you’re an epiphenomenalist. (Am I right that you’ve been advocating that position, though you may not hold it?) A conscious being could sincerely deny experiencing consciousness. Such a being wouldn’t be a normal human, though possibly a brain-damaged human. At any rate, they surely exist in mind-space. Likewise, an unconscious being could claim to experience consciousness (i.e. a p-zombie).
It would seem that heterophenomenology as ciphergoth has been advocating is incompatible with ephiphenomenalism.
I suspect that there might be some sort of personality disposition to be more or less willing to claim to experience experience, to feel the immediacy of consciousness. Something analogous to the conservative/liberal divide. If that’s true, then making claims like the quoted one is just the mind projection fallacy.
Sure you can, if you’re an epiphenomenalist. (Am I right that you’ve been advocating that position, though you may not hold it?)
Yes, that’s more or less what I’ve been advocating. (The funny thing is that I don’t even have a clear position of my own...)
Regarding consciousness without experience, in what sense is it consciousness then? I’d call it an unconscious but highly intelligent agent—perhaps the AIs we’ll build will be such.
I suspect that there might be some sort of personality disposition to be more or less willing to claim to experience experience, to feel the immediacy of consciousness. Something analogous to the conservative/liberal divide. If that’s true, then making claims like the quoted one is just the mind projection fallacy.
A very good idea, and a possible explanation for many disagreements. It’d be just like the known cases of people disagreeing about whether thinking necessarily involved visual mental images, or whether human thinking necessarily involves “talking to oneself” using sound processing circuitry.
The “experience experience” of those who do report it still has to be explained to their satisfaction. Those who don’t experience it as vividly just tend to shrug it off as not important or not real or a cultural delusion of some sort.
Re: “For some reason, a lot of very bright people cannot see that consciousness is a big, strange problem.”
A dubious assertion, which you apparently don’t bother backing up. If consciousness is just perception that can be reflected on, it does not seem like a very big or a very strange problem.
So: what exactly is the purported problem?
The problem is how matter can have self-awareness. It’s hard to describe in words, because all of the words to describe this (consciousness, feeling, awareness) have also been (ab)used to describe the non-mysterious processes that enable an organism to act in the same way as one that we believe has consciousness, feeling, awareness.
You can say you’re a functionalist, and you believe that a system that accurately reproduces all the same observable behavior of consciousness necessarily will also reproduce consciousness. Supposing that were so; it wouldn’t explain consciousness.
I think functionalism is the claim that consciousness is not epiphenomenal. Suppose functionalism is false, and something that behaves like a conscious system is not necessarily conscious. This would mean that a conscious system possessed some extra quality, “consciousness” which was not a behavior and is not observable. Hence, epiphenomenal.
Alternately, people could mean by functionalism that anything that reproduces all the behavior of a conscious system that we are currently capable of observing (or at least theorizing about, having the necessary concepts in our physics), is necessarily conscious. But that would be silly; it would be equivalent to the assertion that today’s physics is complete.
It’s very reasonable to claim that epiphenomenalism is not just false but incoherent.
Is that assuming that you don’t believe in free will?
Epiphenomenalism and functionalism are conceptually independent—at least, there is no obvious relation between them such that one would imply the other. I’ve also never heard functionalism as the claim that “consciousness is not epiphenomenal”, despite having heard at least 25 different authors use the term.
A standard formulation, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is:
Your usage of epiphenomenal is also too imprecise. It means not that some system has some extra quality, but that there are two systems operating in parallel or in something analogous to a parallel manner, such that there is a base phenomenon that causes the epiphenomenon but that is never in turn influenced by the epiphenomenon.
A good example of an epiphenomenon would be Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: the people on the walkway, and the light, are the causes (i.e., base phenomenon) of the parallel system of shadows on the wall (i.e., epiphenomenon) that the prisoners see and take as real agents, but the shadow system has no influence at all on the underlying real system of the people on the walkway (assume they are unaware and have never actually seen the shadows behind them).
Consciousness is (purportedly) the property of being able to perceive anything (not just itself). The property of having subjective experience. Most people claim to have such themselves, and that opens the question of what this property actually is and what other things may have it. Which is indeed a “big and strange” question, if you define this property as being extra-phenomenal—which is inherent in most discussions of subjective experience.
To deny consciousness as a problem, you need to deny the existence of your own subjective experience. Not just your objectively existing self-reporting of it, but the actual subjective experience that you feel and that I can’t even in principle check if you feel.
On the other hand, this consciousness must be logically necessary (otherwise we get p-zombies) and cannot causally influence the objective universe (otherwise we get dualism and our physical theories are all wrong).
Re: “Consciousness is (purportedly) the property of being able to perceive anything (not just itself).”
Sleepwalkers perceive things (they must to be able to walk and balance). However, they are not conscious. Also, there is “Unconscious Perception”.
...and we already have a word for perception. It’s “perception”.
So: consciousness is best not being defined that way.
How do you know? Maybe they (and dreamers) are conscious, to a degree, they just don’t form memories.
And don’t forget lucid dreamers can remember and carry out actions with their eyes.
A good point. That certainly looks like a central component of consciousness (whatever that is) that’s absent from sleepwalking.
Conventionally, sleepwalkers are not conscious—because they are unconscious.
What’s the point of assuming they’re unconscious if you can’t give evidence for it?
This is just the conventional usage of the term:
“Sleepwalkers often have little or no memory of the incident, as they are not truly conscious.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepwalking
They’re using the word “conscious” to mean “awake”. People experience dreams; that’s consciousness. They even remember them; though that’s not necessary for consciousness. If no one remembered having dreams, we wouldn’t be talking about them now.
It might be possible that dreams are never conscious: It would be possible to have a dream, not experience it at the time because you’re not conscious, but have all the memories of it created, “remember” it later when you wake up, and experience it for the first time retrospectively, along with the illusion that you had been conscious at the time it happened.
That may be the normal usage, but it just assumes without evidence that sleepwalkers are not conscious. The explanation that they’re conscious but do not form long-term memories is just as good.
Since sleepwalking is an actual phenomenon, it doesn’t matter what the “conventional usage” is, only what the real thing’s like.
Perception is even less of a problem than consciousness.
Perception is even less of a problem than consciousness. Anything with an input device that is not being ignored perceives things. Keyboards, mice, cameras, microphones, all sources of data capture from the environment qualify. If you define consciousness as perception, that just trivialises it further.
Edit: we ought to have a rigorous definition of consciousness before discussing whether such marginal cases are or are not conscious (or to what degree they are conscious). Since many books, like Consciousness Explained, tried to give a clear definition & explanation and still aren’t accepted by everyone, perhaps there’s no point in arguing about whether sleepwalkers are “conscious” or not as it will come down to different definitions.
As far as facts are concerned, and avoiding the c-word: brain activity during sleepwalking can apparently be quite high, since it includes whole subsystems working and reacting to the environment (walking around, using objects, dressing, driving...) This may be more than during (some? most?) dreams. But I am certainly not an expert.
It’s true that “consciousness” or awareness or what have you is much lower than during full wakefulness. In addition to not forming memories, sleepwalkers can’t pass for an awake person or hold a conversation, AFAIK.
Re: “To deny consciousness as a problem, you need to deny the existence of your own subjective experience.”
That just sounds like nonsense to me :-(
Keeping in mind that I’m explaining a view with which I don’t fully agree (but I don’t hold to an alternative view either, I just don’t fully understand the matter) - I’ll try to reformulate.
We have subjective experience. It does not seem to be describe-able in ordinary physical terms, or to arise from theories of the physical world, because these theories don’t have any place for “experience” or “feeling” as seen from the inside—only as seen from the outside.
What the experience is about, the events and information we experience, is part of the physical world. Aboutness is fully explained as part of the physical world. What’s not explained is why we feel at all. Why does an algorithm feel like something from the inside? Why does it have an “inside”?
I have feelings, experiences, etc. The question being asked isn’t even why I have them. It’s more like, what are they? What ontological kind do they have?
Re: “We have subjective experience. It does not seem to be describe-able in ordinary physical terms”
...but it must be—everything in the universe is.
Re: “or to arise from theories of the physical world, because these theories don’t have any place for “experience” or “feeling” as seen from the inside”
So what? They don’t have the notion of “fractal drainage patterns” or “screw dislocations” either. Complex systems have emergent properties, not obviously related to physical laws—but still ultimately the product of those laws.
Feelings are patterns—and like all patterns, are made of information.
Is that an observed fact, or a definition of “everything in the universe”?
If a fact, a rule that has held so far, then (some people claim that) consciousness is an observation that contradicts this rule.
If a definition, then perhaps consciousness can also be said to be “in” the universe, but that doesn’t help us understand it...
Anyway, I don’t think I have any more to contribute to this discussion. I fully understand your position. I think I also understand the position of at least some people who claim that consciousness is a real, but extra-physical, thing to be explained (like MItchell_Porter?). So I’ve tried to explain the latter viewpoint.
But I ended up going in circles because this idea rests on everyone agreeing that their subjective experiences indicate that such a “extra-physical consciousness” exists, and the moment someone doesn’t accept this premise—like you—the discussion is pretty much over.
I’m ambivalent myself: I can understand what the “pro-consciousness” people mean, and I might accept their claims if they could answer all the resulting questions, which they don’t. So I see a possible unresolved problem. On the other hand, it’s likely that if I hadn’t encountered this idea of consciousness I would never have come up with it myself, all talk of “immediate subjective knowledge” nonwithstanding. That’s why I’m not sure there is a problem.
Re: “If a fact, a rule that has held so far, then (some people claim that) consciousness is an observation that contradicts this rule.”
Right—but those people have no convincing evidence. If there was some mysterious meta-physical do-dah out there, we should expect to see some evidence. Until there is evidence, the hypothesis is not favoured by Occam’s razor.
The advocates can look for evidence, and the sceptics can think they are crazy—but until some actual evidence is found, there’s not much for people like me to discuss. The hypothesis is about as near to dead as it can get.
As I said: the hypothesis relies entirely on everyone agreeing that they, too, sense this mysterious thing inside them (or identical with them, or whatever).
Until new evidence or argument is brought forward, I’ll continue treating it as a cultural mental artifact. But I do feel somewhat sympathetic towards attempts at creating such new arguments without using new evidence.
Why would a subjective experience cause people to think they know more about physics than physicists do? Subjective experiences are an especially poor quality form of evidence.
Subjective experience is immediate. You can’t ignore or deny its existence (although you may think there’s nothing unexplained or mysterious about it).
When people consider that physics doesn’t explain their subjective experience (whether or not these people fully understand physics), they therefore feel they have no choice but to conclude that the physics, or the physical ontology, is incomplete.
In an computable universe, you can make agents experience literally anything. No amount of zen moments would add up to reasonable evidence.
What would be more convincing is that if brains demonstrably did something that violated the known laws of physics. Much like Penrose thought they did, IOW. Then we would have to poke around in search of what was going on. However, there seems to be no hint of that.
Sure you can, if you’re an epiphenomenalist. (Am I right that you’ve been advocating that position, though you may not hold it?) A conscious being could sincerely deny experiencing consciousness. Such a being wouldn’t be a normal human, though possibly a brain-damaged human. At any rate, they surely exist in mind-space. Likewise, an unconscious being could claim to experience consciousness (i.e. a p-zombie).
It would seem that heterophenomenology as ciphergoth has been advocating is incompatible with ephiphenomenalism.
I suspect that there might be some sort of personality disposition to be more or less willing to claim to experience experience, to feel the immediacy of consciousness. Something analogous to the conservative/liberal divide. If that’s true, then making claims like the quoted one is just the mind projection fallacy.
Yes, that’s more or less what I’ve been advocating. (The funny thing is that I don’t even have a clear position of my own...)
Regarding consciousness without experience, in what sense is it consciousness then? I’d call it an unconscious but highly intelligent agent—perhaps the AIs we’ll build will be such.
A very good idea, and a possible explanation for many disagreements. It’d be just like the known cases of people disagreeing about whether thinking necessarily involved visual mental images, or whether human thinking necessarily involves “talking to oneself” using sound processing circuitry.
The “experience experience” of those who do report it still has to be explained to their satisfaction. Those who don’t experience it as vividly just tend to shrug it off as not important or not real or a cultural delusion of some sort.
Perhaps you are a zombie.
This is not the first time that the qualiaphiles have used that put-down on me.
It seems to me that zombie is tongue-in-cheek, while qualiaphile is a calculated rhetorical put-down.