the easy problem of consciousness

[SteveKlinko]

There is a science of neurology, (now renamed "neuroscience,") which is the study of the physiological system of the brain and nervous systems. There is no such science as psychology, or the bastard pseudoscience neuropsychology, because consciousnes cannot be studied scientifically.

One cannot take a fresh consciousness and lay it on a dissecting table to examine it. In fact, there is no way to examine consciousness at all. Whenever someone tells the lie, "there are correlations between neurons firing and conscious experience," no such correlation has ever been observed.

All one ever has is the testimony of someone who claims to have a certain conscious experience while some obscure brain activity is observed occurring. The problem is, there is no way to determine if the testimony is true or not, and so long as what is claimed to be, "science," just depends on what someone claims, IT IS NOT SCIENCE!

Scientists have been poking around in live Brains for a Hundred years now and there is in fact Correlation between certain Neurons being stimulated and the Conscious Experiences that subjects report. Science can work in a statistical way.

That belief has just about destroyed the field of science. No scientific principle can be established on statistics.

If enough people say they Experience Red when particular Neurons are stimulated then it would be quite Scientific to conclude that there is a Correlation between those Firing Neurons and those Conscious Experiences.

There is no observable correlation between neurological activity and consciousness, because consciousness cannot be observed. There is only a correlation between neurological activity and what people say they consciously experience. It does not matter how many people say the same thing, science is not determined by consensus. It was once the scientific consensus that heavier-than-air flight was not possible and that the earth was the center of the universe.

One of the hallmarks of good Science is when Scientists can come to a Consensus on the results, so you are just wrong about that. Science is always progressing and if someday it can be shown that Neural Activity does not produce Conscious Experiences then that will be another advance toward understanding. That day is not here yet.

[RCSaunders]

One of the hallmarks of good Science is when Scientists can come to a Consensus on the results, so you are just wrong about that. Science is always progressing and if someday it can be shown that Neural Activity does not produce Conscious Experiences then that will be another advance toward understanding. That day is not here yet.

There is no point in further discussion. You believe truth can be established on the basis of how many people agree with an idea. Almost every wrong idea that there has ever been was originally one most people agreed to. All progress in all fields has been made by those who disagreed with the consensus in every field. All progress in every field is made by, Only Individuals.

[SteveKlinko]

One of the hallmarks of good Science is when Scientists can come to a Consensus on the results, so you are just wrong about that. Science is always progressing and if someday it can be shown that Neural Activity does not produce Conscious Experiences then that will be another advance toward understanding. That day is not here yet.

There is no point in further discussion. You believe truth can be established on the basis of how many people agree with an idea. Almost every wrong idea that there has ever been was originally one most people agreed to. All progress in all fields has been made by those who disagreed with the consensus in every field. All progress in every field is made by, Only Individuals.

Your logic is that, when everybody agrees on an Idea, the Idea must be wrong. The Idea does not always have to be right, but it has a high probability of being right when everybody agrees.

[Immanuel Can]

Your logic is that, when everybody agrees on an Idea, the Idea must be wrong. The Idea does not always have to be right, but it has a high probability of being right when everybody agrees.

That's almost correct. But the number of people who believe in a thing can be a delusory indicator. Consider that at one time, 100% of the people living on the Earth believed fervently that it was flat.

The danger with the "bandwagon fallacy," or "argumentum ad populum" fallacy, is that the sheer number of people who believe a stupid, dangerous or wrong thing will reassure us to believe that it's got to be at least somewhat right, somewhat safe to believe...

But not necessarily.

[RCSaunders]

One of the hallmarks of good Science is when Scientists can come to a Consensus on the results, so you are just wrong about that. Science is always progressing and if someday it can be shown that Neural Activity does not produce Conscious Experiences then that will be another advance toward understanding. That day is not here yet.

There is no point in further discussion. You believe truth can be established on the basis of how many people agree with an idea. Almost every wrong idea that there has ever been was originally one most people agreed to. All progress in all fields has been made by those who disagreed with the consensus in every field. All progress in every field is made by, Only Individuals.

Your logic is that, when everybody agrees on an Idea, the Idea must be wrong.

Your just being silly. Of course that is not my idea. When a scientific fact is established (such as in the case of the properties of all the chemical elements) there will be total agreement, but it's not the agreement that makes them true. I only mean, no matter how many agree to something, in any field, that agreement alone never can establish that it is true.

The Idea does not always have to be right, but it has a high probability of being right when everybody agrees.

In some cases that is true, but in my eighty years, my experience has been, what most people believe and agree on is usually not true. Every religion, superstition, political view, latest food, health, and diet fad are examples. Popular ideas are popular because they are pleasant and easy to believe and do not require much really difficult thinking to understand; which is why they are popular.

[SteveKlinko]

despite others turnin' their nose up at it, the followin' seems germane...
https://mindmatters.ai/2020/02/why-pion ... the-brain/

I have given some more thought to this link. Yes, it is difficult to understand how Intellectual Pursuits can be in the Neural Activity. But at a more fundamental level it is also difficult to understand how something like the Experience of Redness is in the Neurons. We can Correlate that Neurons fire and Redness happens, but the Redness itself seems to be such a Categorically different Phenomenon from Neural Activity that it must happen in some kind of Conscious Space. It is inconceivable how it could occur in the normal Physical Space that Science knows. If Redness is in Physical Space then I ask all Physicalists: How can this be possible? What is the basic Principle that makes it so? I already know they don't have the answer. The point is that something as fundamental as the Experience of Redness does not seem to be in the Physical World. Think about Redness itself. It is a thing in and of itself. What is Redness? Where is Redness?

[Advocate]

[quote=SteveKlinko post_id=478590 time=1604504614 user_id=14793]
[quote="henry quirk" post_id=475478 time=1602687313 user_id=472]
despite others turnin' their nose up at it, the followin' seems germane...
https://mindmatters.ai/2020/02/why-pion ... the-brain/
[/quote]

I have given some more thought to this link. Yes, it is difficult to understand how Intellectual Pursuits can be in the Neural Activity. But at a more fundamental level it is also difficult to understand how something like the Experience of Redness is in the Neurons. We can Correlate that Neurons fire and Redness happens, but the Redness itself seems to be such a Categorically different Phenomenon from Neural Activity that it must happen in some kind of Conscious Space. It is inconceivable how it could occur in the normal Physical Space that Science knows. If Redness is in Physical Space then I ask all Physicalists: How can this be possible? What is the basic Principle that makes it so? I already know they don't have the answer. The point is that something as fundamental as the Experience of Redness does not seem to be in the Physical World. Think about Redness itself. It is a thing in and of itself. What is Redness? Where is Redness?
[/quote]

It's simply a different metaphorical understanding of the same physical stuff. They're not different things in any sense. I challenge anyone to show in what sense they are even possibly different. Positing that they are inherently different based on nothing, as you've done here, leaves you the burden of proof because we already have a sufficient answer.

To illustrate, a "walker" in the "game of life" is not a separate thing, it's just a pattern we recognize as an entity because that pattern corresponds to a formula we already understand. If you choose the right (wrong) level of understanding, things can seem more intentional than they are.

[SteveKlinko]

despite others turnin' their nose up at it, the followin' seems germane...
https://mindmatters.ai/2020/02/why-pion ... the-brain/

I have given some more thought to this link. Yes, it is difficult to understand how Intellectual Pursuits can be in the Neural Activity. But at a more fundamental level it is also difficult to understand how something like the Experience of Redness is in the Neurons. We can Correlate that Neurons fire and Redness happens, but the Redness itself seems to be such a Categorically different Phenomenon from Neural Activity that it must happen in some kind of Conscious Space. It is inconceivable how it could occur in the normal Physical Space that Science knows. If Redness is in Physical Space then I ask all Physicalists: How can this be possible? What is the basic Principle that makes it so? I already know they don't have the answer. The point is that something as fundamental as the Experience of Redness does not seem to be in the Physical World. Think about Redness itself. It is a thing in and of itself. What is Redness? Where is Redness?

It's simply a different metaphorical understanding of the same physical stuff. They're not different things in any sense. I challenge anyone to show in what sense they are even possibly different. Positing that they are inherently different based on nothing, as you've done here, leaves you the burden of proof because we already have a sufficient answer.

To illustrate, a "walker" in the "game of life" is not a separate thing, it's just a pattern we recognize as an entity because that pattern corresponds to a formula we already understand. If you choose the right (wrong) level of understanding, things can seem more intentional than they are.

Of the things I posted, what two things are obviously not different, where I say they are different?

I'm editing this to be more specific:
Is a Thermometer not different from the Temperature?
Is a Scale not different from the Weight?

[Immanuel Can]

I have given some more thought to this link. Yes, it is difficult to understand how Intellectual Pursuits can be in the Neural Activity. But at a more fundamental level it is also difficult to understand how something like the Experience of Redness is in the Neurons. We can Correlate that Neurons fire and Redness happens, but the Redness itself seems to be such a Categorically different Phenomenon from Neural Activity that it must happen in some kind of Conscious Space. It is inconceivable how it could occur in the normal Physical Space that Science knows. If Redness is in Physical Space then I ask all Physicalists: How can this be possible? What is the basic Principle that makes it so? I already know they don't have the answer. The point is that something as fundamental as the Experience of Redness does not seem to be in the Physical World. Think about Redness itself. It is a thing in and of itself. What is Redness? Where is Redness?

It's simply a different metaphorical understanding of the same physical stuff. They're not different things in any sense. I challenge anyone to show in what sense they are even possibly different. Positing that they are inherently different based on nothing, as you've done here, leaves you the burden of proof because we already have a sufficient answer.

To illustrate, a "walker" in the "game of life" is not a separate thing, it's just a pattern we recognize as an entity because that pattern corresponds to a formula we already understand. If you choose the right (wrong) level of understanding, things can seem more intentional than they are.

Of the things I posted, what two things are obviously not different, where I say they are different?

I'm editing this to be more specific:
Is a Thermometer not different from the Temperature?
Is a Scale not different from the Weight?

You've actually got a point, Steve. And it's one that philosophers of mind generally recognize. One of the characteristics of consciousness events that make them very different from physical events is that physical events are not "about" something. A rock falling off a cliff is just an event. A neuron firing is just an event. But a rock falling off a cliff is not "about" anything -- it has no inherent meaning, and anything assigned to it by way of alleged meaning has to be assigned by a conscious entity from without. Rocks can be part of events, but have no "aboutness."

In contrast, a thought is always "about" something.

[Belinda]

It also doesn't imply that they ARE.

It could just as well be that the mathematical insights are producing the neural activity, or that the consciousness is generating the insights AND the neural activity.

That's the point of the analogy: we can't straightforwardly deduce cause from correspondence.

No, but we do try to do because evidence of probable connection is the only way we can learn anything. If we don't learn from experience we perish.

[Advocate]

[quote="Immanuel Can" post_id=478628 time=1604517781 user_id=9431]
[quote=SteveKlinko post_id=478617 time=1604512844 user_id=14793]
[quote=Advocate post_id=478603 time=1604509821 user_id=15238]


It's simply a different metaphorical understanding of the same physical stuff. They're not different things in any sense. I challenge anyone to show in what sense they are even possibly different. Positing that they are inherently different based on nothing, as you've done here, leaves you the burden of proof because we already have a sufficient answer.

To illustrate, a "walker" in the "game of life" is not a separate thing, it's just a pattern we recognize as an entity because that pattern corresponds to a formula we already understand. If you choose the right (wrong) level of understanding, things can seem more intentional than they are.
[/quote]

Of the things I posted, what two things are obviously not different, where I say they are different?

I'm editing this to be more specific:
Is a Thermometer not different from the Temperature?
Is a Scale not different from the Weight?
[/quote]
You've actually got a point, Steve. And it's one that philosophers of mind generally recognize. One of the characteristics of consciousness events that make them very different from physical events is that physical events are not "about" something. A rock falling off a cliff is just an event. A neuron firing is just an event. But a rock falling off a cliff is not "about" anything -- it has no inherent meaning, and anything assigned to it by way of alleged meaning has to be assigned by a conscious entity from without. Rocks can be part of events, but have no "aboutness."

In contrast, a thought is always "about" something.
[/quote]

Meaning is merely a complex version of the avoid/approach mechanism all living beings possess. You cannot imagine an esoteric "other" into it. There is no soul.

[Immanuel Can]

It also doesn't imply that they ARE.

It could just as well be that the mathematical insights are producing the neural activity, or that the consciousness is generating the insights AND the neural activity.

That's the point of the analogy: we can't straightforwardly deduce cause from correspondence.

No, but we do try to do because evidence of probable connection is the only way we can learn anything.

You're missing the point, B. You can't even get a "probable" connection from the observation that two things seem to happen at the same time. A could cause B, B could cause A, or C (a different factor) could cause both A and B...or it could be that the coincidence of the two is not a causal relation at all.

So no, we don't just assume probability either. We have to investigate and SHOW causality.

[Immanuel Can]

Meaning is merely a complex version of the avoid/approach mechanism all living beings possess. You cannot imagine an esoteric "other" into it. There is no soul.

I have a great deal of difficulty imagining a more irrelevant response than that one. Firstly, you couldn't possibly have any good reason to think you know what you're saying is true; and secondly, to call it a "mechanism" is to beg the whole question. Who made the "mechanism," and what is it a "mechanism" for? Because "mechanisms" are never merely random. They are engineered. What intelligence do you posit as the "engineer" of consciousness, if it's a "mechanism"?

[Dimebag]

I have given some more thought to this link. Yes, it is difficult to understand how Intellectual Pursuits can be in the Neural Activity. But at a more fundamental level it is also difficult to understand how something like the Experience of Redness is in the Neurons. We can Correlate that Neurons fire and Redness happens, but the Redness itself seems to be such a Categorically different Phenomenon from Neural Activity that it must happen in some kind of Conscious Space. It is inconceivable how it could occur in the normal Physical Space that Science knows. If Redness is in Physical Space then I ask all Physicalists: How can this be possible? What is the basic Principle that makes it so? I already know they don't have the answer. The point is that something as fundamental as the Experience of Redness does not seem to be in the Physical World. Think about Redness itself. It is a thing in and of itself. What is Redness? Where is Redness?

It's simply a different metaphorical understanding of the same physical stuff. They're not different things in any sense. I challenge anyone to show in what sense they are even possibly different. Positing that they are inherently different based on nothing, as you've done here, leaves you the burden of proof because we already have a sufficient answer.

To illustrate, a "walker" in the "game of life" is not a separate thing, it's just a pattern we recognize as an entity because that pattern corresponds to a formula we already understand. If you choose the right (wrong) level of understanding, things can seem more intentional than they are.

Of the things I posted, what two things are obviously not different, where I say they are different?

I'm editing this to be more specific:
Is a Thermometer not different from the Temperature?
Is a Scale not different from the Weight?

Why is it seemingly impossible to bridge the understanding between our internal experience and the “external” view of brain functioning.

We are the experience, and we are wanting something to explain this internal feel of experience, from the outside going ons of the brain. Why does this redness have this particular look, compared to say, blueness?

All that can be said from our perspective as experience, is, there is redness, or there is blueness.

From the outside, no redness or blueness can be found. The redness is an expression of the differences of materials, reflecting different wavelengths of photons into our eyes, whose differences are identified by our retina’s as different energetic activations of the three separate detectors which correspond and activate fully when a specific frequency of photon hits that trio of cone cells. The cone cells don’t work separately, they are a combined detection system. As such, any signal from each trio of cone cells already contains information regarding colour detection as “this” colour and not “those other colours”.

Imagine the signal coming from each trio of cone cells corresponds to a particular Morse code (just an example). Each Morse code corresponds to a particular colour in the light spectrum, which cannot be separate from this trio cone system.

That colour signal travels to the visual perception networks and is interpreted, and “decoded” into the particular colour which we become conscious of. The colour information is now contained in the code which is sent to the perceptual network, yet only exists as some agreement between sender and receiver. The perceptual network then interprets that colour, and a colour is seen corresponding to the specific activation signal from that trio of cone cells back in the retina.

The colour is the specific pattern of information interacting with the perceptual system. That’s all we can say at this point. It doesn’t explain why red is red, but, it does explain why red is not like blue, or green. The difference comes from the difference in signal from the three interacting cone cells in the retina (simplified, we are talking essentially about a pixel in our vision). It doesn’t explain the character of that particular colour, just that there is a difference between colours, due to the difference in signal, due to the difference in wavelength interacting with the cone cells.

We are asking for an explanation of the internal, from the external. If we agree that there is an internal, and an external then must we agree that these two worlds must talk to each other conceptually?

They are two different worlds. But the internal world exists imbedded within the external world. Yet there is a boundary between the two worlds, and the internal world can only be known from the internal world. So to try to go outside the internal world and explain it from the external is seemingly impossible.

But remember, the external is only known by the internal. The external world is a conceptual understanding from within the internal subjective. It is a shared conceptual subjective agreement of what lies outside of our subjective experience. The blobs of colour and shape are actually conceptualised as matter, comprised of particles, and subatomic particles.

But we don’t have access to that layer of existence, only to this subjective ground of our existence. We can indirectly infer its existence. Yet only know it through this subjective construct which is experience.


Imagine you were a simulated being inside a computer (just imagine that was possible to create consciousness within a computer). Our subjective world is similarly a construct. You don’t “see” the actual world as it is, only as it seems from this construct. Could this simulated being ever understand the basis of the construct or its experience, or the computer, from its perspective inside as a simulated consciousness?

That’s like the situation of trying to understand consciousness, in relation to the brain, from the point of view of consciousness itself.

We don’t stand outside of consciousness. We are consciousness itself. Can consciousness ever know itself from within itself? I don’t know.

[Advocate]

[quote=Dimebag post_id=478643 time=1604529764 user_id=5396]
[quote=SteveKlinko post_id=478617 time=1604512844 user_id=14793]
[quote=Advocate post_id=478603 time=1604509821 user_id=15238]


It's simply a different metaphorical understanding of the same physical stuff. They're not different things in any sense. I challenge anyone to show in what sense they are even possibly different. Positing that they are inherently different based on nothing, as you've done here, leaves you the burden of proof because we already have a sufficient answer.

To illustrate, a "walker" in the "game of life" is not a separate thing, it's just a pattern we recognize as an entity because that pattern corresponds to a formula we already understand. If you choose the right (wrong) level of understanding, things can seem more intentional than they are.
[/quote]

Of the things I posted, what two things are obviously not different, where I say they are different?

I'm editing this to be more specific:
Is a Thermometer not different from the Temperature?
Is a Scale not different from the Weight?
[/quote]
Why is it seemingly impossible to bridge the understanding between our internal experience and the “external” view of brain functioning.

We are the experience, and we are wanting something to explain this internal feel of experience, from the outside going ons of the brain. Why does this redness have this particular look, compared to say, blueness?

All that can be said from our perspective as experience, is, there is redness, or there is blueness.

From the outside, no redness or blueness can be found. The redness is an expression of the differences of materials, reflecting different wavelengths of photons into our eyes, whose differences are identified by our retina’s as different energetic activations of the three separate detectors which correspond and activate fully when a specific frequency of photon hits that trio of cone cells. The cone cells don’t work separately, they are a combined detection system. As such, any signal from each trio of cone cells already contains information regarding colour detection as “this” colour and not “those other colours”.

Imagine the signal coming from each trio of cone cells corresponds to a particular Morse code (just an example). Each Morse code corresponds to a particular colour in the light spectrum, which cannot be separate from this trio cone system.

That colour signal travels to the visual perception networks and is interpreted, and “decoded” into the particular colour which we become conscious of. The colour information is now contained in the code which is sent to the perceptual network, yet only exists as some agreement between sender and receiver. The perceptual network then interprets that colour, and a colour is seen corresponding to the specific activation signal from that trio of cone cells back in the retina.

The colour is the specific pattern of information interacting with the perceptual system. That’s all we can say at this point. It doesn’t explain why red is red, but, it does explain why red is not like blue, or green. The difference comes from the difference in signal from the three interacting cone cells in the retina (simplified, we are talking essentially about a pixel in our vision). It doesn’t explain the character of that particular colour, just that there is a difference between colours, due to the difference in signal, due to the difference in wavelength interacting with the cone cells.

We are asking for an explanation of the internal, from the external. If we agree that there is an internal, and an external then must we agree that these two worlds must talk to each other conceptually?

They are two different worlds. But the internal world exists imbedded within the external world. Yet there is a boundary between the two worlds, and the internal world can only be known from the internal world. So to try to go outside the internal world and explain it from the external is seemingly impossible.

But remember, the external is only known by the internal. The external world is a conceptual understanding from within the internal subjective. It is a shared conceptual subjective agreement of what lies outside of our subjective experience. The blobs of colour and shape are actually conceptualised as matter, comprised of particles, and subatomic particles.

But we don’t have access to that layer of existence, only to this subjective ground of our existence. We can indirectly infer its existence. Yet only know it through this subjective construct which is experience.


Imagine you were a simulated being inside a computer (just imagine that was possible to create consciousness within a computer). Our subjective world is similarly a construct. You don’t “see” the actual world as it is, only as it seems from this construct. Could this simulated being ever understand the basis of the construct or its experience, or the computer, from its perspective inside as a simulated consciousness?

That’s like the situation of trying to understand consciousness, in relation to the brain, from the point of view of consciousness itself.

We don’t stand outside of consciousness. We are consciousness itself. Can consciousness ever know itself from within itself? I don’t know.
[/quote]

In short, we'd still sense redness even if we didn't think of it that way and the tree falling in the forest would still cause the air to ripple even if nobody heard it. Also, the internal is always subsumed by the external.