Thank you for producing a perfect example of what I called the “incomplete chain of thought”! What I called “subjective space” and “physical space”, you have called “map” and “territory”. This thing you call a “map”, conscious experience, is part of the “territory”—part of reality—which itself is supposed to be coextensive with physics. So locating colors on the map doesn’t get them off the territory. If everything real is made of physics, you still must either explain how certain patterns of neuronal excitations are actually green, or you must assert that nothing is actually green at any level of reality.
If everything real is made of physics, you still must either explain how certain patterns of neuronal excitations are actually green, or you must assert that nothing is actually green at any level of reality.
Certain patterns of neuronal excitations feel like green from the inside. I don’t understand this well enough to write a conscious computer program, but neither does anyone else (thank Bayes). I do believe that such a computer program can be written, and if that can be shown to be impossible, I will reconsider my position here (conversely, it seems that you must hold that no such computer program can be written).
It may happen that “nothing is actually green at any level of reality”, and in that case, I still say that certain patterns of neuronal excitations feel like green from the inside, even if it’s an illusion.
“Certain patterns of neuronal excitations feel like green from the inside.”
If patterns are not a fundamental part of reality, but merely the mind’s mapping of an uncaring territory, why should patterns feel anything from the inside, as opposed to being felt merely from the outside?
By saying that patterns feels something from the inside, you seem to claim that patterns are a part of reality that isn’t merely the sum of their parts.
The patterns are an organization of reality that has higher-level meaning to our minds. The meaning, as with everything, is in the interpretation, not the physical atoms.
you still must either explain how certain patterns of neuronal excitations are actually green
But that’s just saying that lavalamp has a unique responsibility to solve the hard problem—everyone already knows it needs to be solved, and nobody knows how to do it. It doesn’t undermine functionalism in particular. It’s an open problem; we could just as well say that you must explain how [your preferred explanation of consciousness] is actually green.
“And yet there are these regular causal connections. These are causal connections (in both directions) between kinds of brain event and kinds of mental event, so detailed and specific that it is most improbable that they would occur without an explanation; yet it is immensely improbable that there could be a scientific explanation of the connections. Mind–brain connections are too ‘odd’ for science to explain; they cannot be consequences of a more fundamental scientific theory, and there are simply too many diverse connections to constitute laws. But once again there is available a personal explanation: God being omnipotent, is able to join souls to bodies. He can cause there to be the particular brain-event–mental-event connections that there are. He can do this by causing molecules when formed into brains to have powers to produce mental events in souls to which they are connected, and the liabilities to execute the intentions of such connected souls (new powers and liabilities not deriving from the ordinary ones, which chemistry analyses). And he can make the souls in the first place and choose to which brain (and so body) each soul is to be connected when foetal brain events require a soul to be connected to the brain. God has good reason to cause the existence of souls and join them to bodies, in the goodness (on which I commented in Chapter 6) of the existence of humanly free agents who would need to have bodies through which to have enjoyable sensations, form largely true beliefs about the world, and form their own purposes in the light of these beliefs, which would make a difference to the world. I argued that there was a significant probability that God would make such creatures. Their existence involves the existence of regular causal connections between mental events and events in their bodies. Given that humans are humanly free agents, it involves regular causal connections between mental events and events in human brains. We cannot make a difference to the world if, each time we try to move our leg, some different effect is caused in the brain and thereby in the body—one time the arm moves, one time we find ourselves sneezing, and so on. Likewise, if we are to discriminate between one object and another, they have to look (feel, etc.) different, and so there has to be a regular causal connection between the brain events caused by objects of each kind and the mental visual impressions of them. And, if we are to have the awesome power of reproduction, there have to be regular connections between our sexual acts, the foetus to which they give rise, and some soul or other linked to that foetus. God has reason to set up all these connections. He may have a reason to make this brain state cause a red sensation and that one to cause a blue sensation rather than the other way round, but, if there is no particular reason why one connection is better than a rival one, God has a reason by a ‘mental toss-up’ to produce one-or-other connection. He may have a reason to join this soul to this particular body, but again, if there is no reason for joining one soul to one body rather than to a different body, he has reason by a ‘mental toss-up’ to produce one-or-other connection—that is, to make it a chance matter which connection holds. So then, because we have every reason to believe that there can be no scientific theory and so scientific laws correlating brain states with souls and their states, we have every reason to believe that the causal connections that exist between them do not have a scientific explanation in terms of the properties of brain states; they are additional causal connections independent of the set of scientific laws governing the physical world. Nothing about the physical world makes it in the very least probable that there would be these connections. Let e be the existence of souls with mental states connected to brain states in the ways in which we have been analysing; k be the premisses of the arguments of the previous chapter—that there is a law-governed physical world of the type analysed in Chapter 8 with laws and boundary conditions tuned so as to allow the existence of human bodies; and let h as before be the hypothesis of theism. Then P(e | ~h) is very low. But, for all the reasons analysed in Chapter 6, a God has very good reason for creating humans (and good reason to create animals); hence P(e | h) has a moderate value. Hence the argument from consciousness is a good [inductive] argument for the existence of God.”
R. Swinburne, The Existence of God, Second Edition, ch. 9, pp. 209-211.
This thing you call a “map”, conscious experience, is part of the “territory”—part of reality—which itself is supposed to be coextensive with physics.
This is interesting, true, and really complicates any quest to maintain an accurate map.
Upvoted (the OP too). I think some of your interlocutors may be thinking past you here, in the sense that they have dismissed your central point as a triviality. But there are fundamental differences between interactions of particles in the open universe, the state changes that particle interactions cause in our sensory machinery, and what it feels like to be a brain having an experience. The suggestion that the experience of green might be illusory fails to consider that it is something occurring in a physical brain. In this sense, the most dismissive thing we might say about any quale is that it doesn’t have the meaning we readily assign to it, but that’s different from a claim of nonexistence.
I’m not philosophically sophisticated enough to judge whether this observation implies dualism. I think perhaps we’d find a lot more common ground if we discussed our expectations rather than our definitions (especially given the theological baggage that the term dualism carries).
I agree that this “map” is part of the “territory”, and that’s because the map that we’re trying to construct in philosophy—an ontology—is a map claiming to cover everything in the universe including maps.
“If everything real is made of physics, you still must either explain how certain patterns of neuronal excitations are actually green, or you must assert that nothing is actually green at any level of reality.”
This is a ‘why’ question, not a ‘how’ question, and though some ‘why’ questions may not be amenable to deeper explanations, ‘how’ questions are always solvable by science. Explaining how neuronal patterns generate systems with subjective experiences of green is a straightforward, though complex, scientific problem. One day we may understand this so well that we could engineer quales on demand, or create new types of never before seen quales according to some transformation rules. However, explaining ‘why’ such arrangements of matter should possess such interiority or subjectivity is, I think at least based on everything we currently know, unanswerable.
Thank you for producing a perfect example of what I called the “incomplete chain of thought”! What I called “subjective space” and “physical space”, you have called “map” and “territory”. This thing you call a “map”, conscious experience, is part of the “territory”—part of reality—which itself is supposed to be coextensive with physics. So locating colors on the map doesn’t get them off the territory. If everything real is made of physics, you still must either explain how certain patterns of neuronal excitations are actually green, or you must assert that nothing is actually green at any level of reality.
Certain patterns of neuronal excitations feel like green from the inside. I don’t understand this well enough to write a conscious computer program, but neither does anyone else (thank Bayes). I do believe that such a computer program can be written, and if that can be shown to be impossible, I will reconsider my position here (conversely, it seems that you must hold that no such computer program can be written).
It may happen that “nothing is actually green at any level of reality”, and in that case, I still say that certain patterns of neuronal excitations feel like green from the inside, even if it’s an illusion.
“Certain patterns of neuronal excitations feel like green from the inside.”
If patterns are not a fundamental part of reality, but merely the mind’s mapping of an uncaring territory, why should patterns feel anything from the inside, as opposed to being felt merely from the outside?
By saying that patterns feels something from the inside, you seem to claim that patterns are a part of reality that isn’t merely the sum of their parts.
The patterns are an organization of reality that has higher-level meaning to our minds. The meaning, as with everything, is in the interpretation, not the physical atoms.
But that’s just saying that lavalamp has a unique responsibility to solve the hard problem—everyone already knows it needs to be solved, and nobody knows how to do it. It doesn’t undermine functionalism in particular. It’s an open problem; we could just as well say that you must explain how [your preferred explanation of consciousness] is actually green.
Thank you. I’ve been typing and retyping trying to say that. I just gave up and refreshed and you’d done it already!
I guess I’m a little too tired.
Upvoted for stroking my ego.
“And yet there are these regular causal connections. These are causal connections (in both directions) between kinds of brain event and kinds of mental event, so detailed and specific that it is most improbable that they would occur without an explanation; yet it is immensely improbable that there could be a scientific explanation of the connections. Mind–brain connections are too ‘odd’ for science to explain; they cannot be consequences of a more fundamental scientific theory, and there are simply too many diverse connections to constitute laws. But once again there is available a personal explanation: God being omnipotent, is able to join souls to bodies. He can cause there to be the particular brain-event–mental-event connections that there are. He can do this by causing molecules when formed into brains to have powers to produce mental events in souls to which they are connected, and the liabilities to execute the intentions of such connected souls (new powers and liabilities not deriving from the ordinary ones, which chemistry analyses). And he can make the souls in the first place and choose to which brain (and so body) each soul is to be connected when foetal brain events require a soul to be connected to the brain. God has good reason to cause the existence of souls and join them to bodies, in the goodness (on which I commented in Chapter 6) of the existence of humanly free agents who would need to have bodies through which to have enjoyable sensations, form largely true beliefs about the world, and form their own purposes in the light of these beliefs, which would make a difference to the world. I argued that there was a significant probability that God would make such creatures. Their existence involves the existence of regular causal connections between mental events and events in their bodies. Given that humans are humanly free agents, it involves regular causal connections between mental events and events in human brains. We cannot make a difference to the world if, each time we try to move our leg, some different effect is caused in the brain and thereby in the body—one time the arm moves, one time we find ourselves sneezing, and so on. Likewise, if we are to discriminate between one object and another, they have to look (feel, etc.) different, and so there has to be a regular causal connection between the brain events caused by objects of each kind and the mental visual impressions of them. And, if we are to have the awesome power of reproduction, there have to be regular connections between our sexual acts, the foetus to which they give rise, and some soul or other linked to that foetus. God has reason to set up all these connections. He may have a reason to make this brain state cause a red sensation and that one to cause a blue sensation rather than the other way round, but, if there is no particular reason why one connection is better than a rival one, God has a reason by a ‘mental toss-up’ to produce one-or-other connection. He may have a reason to join this soul to this particular body, but again, if there is no reason for joining one soul to one body rather than to a different body, he has reason by a ‘mental toss-up’ to produce one-or-other connection—that is, to make it a chance matter which connection holds. So then, because we have every reason to believe that there can be no scientific theory and so scientific laws correlating brain states with souls and their states, we have every reason to believe that the causal connections that exist between them do not have a scientific explanation in terms of the properties of brain states; they are additional causal connections independent of the set of scientific laws governing the physical world. Nothing about the physical world makes it in the very least probable that there would be these connections. Let e be the existence of souls with mental states connected to brain states in the ways in which we have been analysing; k be the premisses of the arguments of the previous chapter—that there is a law-governed physical world of the type analysed in Chapter 8 with laws and boundary conditions tuned so as to allow the existence of human bodies; and let h as before be the hypothesis of theism. Then P(e | ~h) is very low. But, for all the reasons analysed in Chapter 6, a God has very good reason for creating humans (and good reason to create animals); hence P(e | h) has a moderate value. Hence the argument from consciousness is a good [inductive] argument for the existence of God.”
R. Swinburne, The Existence of God, Second Edition, ch. 9, pp. 209-211.
This is interesting, true, and really complicates any quest to maintain an accurate map.
Upvoted (the OP too). I think some of your interlocutors may be thinking past you here, in the sense that they have dismissed your central point as a triviality. But there are fundamental differences between interactions of particles in the open universe, the state changes that particle interactions cause in our sensory machinery, and what it feels like to be a brain having an experience. The suggestion that the experience of green might be illusory fails to consider that it is something occurring in a physical brain. In this sense, the most dismissive thing we might say about any quale is that it doesn’t have the meaning we readily assign to it, but that’s different from a claim of nonexistence.
I’m not philosophically sophisticated enough to judge whether this observation implies dualism. I think perhaps we’d find a lot more common ground if we discussed our expectations rather than our definitions (especially given the theological baggage that the term dualism carries).
I agree that this “map” is part of the “territory”, and that’s because the map that we’re trying to construct in philosophy—an ontology—is a map claiming to cover everything in the universe including maps.
This is a ‘why’ question, not a ‘how’ question, and though some ‘why’ questions may not be amenable to deeper explanations, ‘how’ questions are always solvable by science. Explaining how neuronal patterns generate systems with subjective experiences of green is a straightforward, though complex, scientific problem. One day we may understand this so well that we could engineer quales on demand, or create new types of never before seen quales according to some transformation rules. However, explaining ‘why’ such arrangements of matter should possess such interiority or subjectivity is, I think at least based on everything we currently know, unanswerable.