Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

That "what if feels like" meme below which is so popular in PoM doesn't hit the bull's eye well enough. The choice of words should emphasize manifestation or materialization itself -- with regard to anything at all being present in sensations, perceptions and thoughts. In stark contrast to the usual "absence of everything" attributed to non-conscious matter in general.

https://iai.tv/articles/consciousness-ca...-auid-1302

EXCERPT (Bernardo Kastrup]): . . . One problem with this is that, under the premises of materialism, phenomenal consciousness cannot—by definition—have a function. According to materialism, all entities are defined and exhaustively characterised in purely quantitative terms. [...] Particles and fields, in and of themselves, have quantitative properties but no intrinsic qualities, such as colour or flavour. Only our perceptions of them—or so the materialist argument goes—are accompanied by qualities somehow generated by our brain.

Materialism posits that the quantities that characterise physical entities are what allow them to be causally efficacious; that is, to produce effects. [...] All chains of cause and effect in nature must be describable purely in terms of quantities. Whatever isn’t a quantity cannot be part of our physical models and therefore—insofar as such models are presumed to be causally-closed—cannot produce effects.

[...] However, our phenomenal consciousness is eminently qualitative, not quantitative. There is something it feels like to see the colour red ... If we were to tell Helen Keller that red is an oscillation of approximately 4.3*1014 cycles per second, she would still not know what it feels like to see red. Analogously, what it feels like to listen to a Vivaldi sonata cannot be conveyed to a person born deaf, even if we show to the person the sonata’s complete power spectrum. Experiences are felt qualities—which philosophers and neuroscientists call ‘qualia’—not fully describable by abstract quantities.

But as discussed above, qualities have no function under materialism [...] As such, it must make no difference to the survival fitness of an organism whether the data processing taking place in its brain is accompanied by experience or not: whatever the case, the processing will produce the same effects; the organism will behave in exactly the same way and stand exactly the same chance to survive and reproduce. Qualia are, at best, superfluous extras.

Therefore, under materialist premises, phenomenal consciousness cannot have been favoured by natural selection. Indeed, it shouldn’t exist at all; we should all be unconscious zombies, going about our business in exactly the same way we actually do, but without an accompanying inner life. If evolution is true—which we have every reason to believe is the case—our very sentience contradicts materialism.

This conclusion is often overlooked by materialists, who regularly try to attribute functions to phenomenal consciousness. Here are three illustrative examples:

(1) consciousness enables attention.

(2) consciousness discriminates episodic memory (past) from live perceptions (present) by making them feel different.

(3) consciousness motivates behaviour conducive to survival.

Computer scientists know that none of this requires experience, for we routinely implement all three functions in presumably unconscious silicon computers.

Regarding point 1, under materialism attention is simply a mechanism for focusing an organism’s limited cognitive resources on priority tasks. [...] in a purely algorithmic, quantitatively-defined manner.

Regarding point 2, there are countless ways to discriminate data streams without need for accompanying experience. [...]

Finally regarding point 3, within the logic of materialism motivation is simply a calculation - the output of a quantitative algorithm [...] without accompanying qualia.

The impossibility of attributing functional, causative efficacy to qualia constitutes a fundamental internal contradiction in the mainstream materialist worldview. Just as these three examples illustrate, all conceivable cognitive functions can, under materialist premises, be performed without accompanying experience. [...]

The impossibility of attributing functional, causative efficacy to qualia constitutes a fundamental internal contradiction in the mainstream materialist worldview. There are two main reasons why this contradiction has been accepted thus far: first, there seems to be a surprising lack of understanding, even amongst materialists, of what materialism actually entails and implies. Second, deceptive word games—such as that discussed above [see article] —seem to perpetuate the illusion that we have plausible hypotheses for the ostensive survival function of consciousness.

Phenomenal consciousness cannot have evolved. It can only have been there from the beginning as an intrinsic, irreducible fact of nature... (MORE - details)

Not only is phenomenal consciousness superfluous, but it is actually detrimental to our survival. Why would our brains evolve the ability to see the color red as red when unconsciously responding to that wavelength serves our purpose just as well? Why would our brains take the time of generating the sensation of red in our minds when it would be alot quicker and more efficient to simply react to red like an unconscious zombie would? Phenomenal consciousness takes time, and might even be seen as distracting from the immediate business of survival, where microseconds of delay could make the difference between a species' future evolution or its extinction.

(Feb 9, 2020 05:44 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [ -> ]Not only is phenomenal consciousness superfluous, but it is actually detrimental to our survival. Why would our brains evolve the ability to see the color red as red when unconsciously responding to that wavelength serves our purpose just as well? Why would our brains take the time of generating the sensation of red in our minds when it would be alot quicker and more efficient to simply react to red like an unconscious zombie would? Phenomenal consciousness takes time, and might even be seen as distracting from the immediate business of survival, where microseconds of delay could make the difference between a species' future evolution or its extinction.

The very idea that biological cells could conjure up any ability they wanted to, for the sake of function or survival -- such as from teleportation to being able to burn through mountainsides with heat vision -- is crazy in league with Marvel superheroes to begin with. In the natural narrative, any feature of an organism is dependent upon what can fall out of the precursor properties and principles that the physical mapping of Nature is supposedly limited to (which are entities and relationships of measurement and magnitude, not qualitative essences).

An authority can claim that _X_ "emerges", but the supposed novelty is still constituted of prior agencies and will be a member of a broader category already in circulation. The phantasmal furniture of our perceptions, sensations, and private imagination is apparently the exception to this (apart from arguably some fundamental aspects of physics, which are below our everyday, non-aided threshold of access).

It is amusing how various scientists and philosophers purely indulge in the "why" of phenomenal experience (as in a reason for evolving) and evade the "how". That's not something they would normally do with other items in the natural narrative, especially since structural organizations and complex activities are indeed so vulnerable to being explained by their analysis into pre-exisiting affairs (including simpler building blocks and actions).

That said, however, the umbrella concept of "consciousness" embraces a lot more than just its phantasmal furniture -- most of it is the computer-ish processing, the zombie stuff. So our running around referring to the problem as "consciousness", instead of something arguably more precise like "sensory and thought materializations", is kind of like talking about a whole car when one actually just means the wheels. That's why panpsychism is ridiculed, because the "psyche" part is similarly general and subsumes "understanding" attributes, not just "devoid of intellectual apprehension" manifestations.

Because of its blurry focus, panpsychism doesn't clarify enough that the only non-magical conjuring or non-dualism "explanation" of experience that's possible in the limited physicalism narrative is apprehension of the fact that the latter doesn't deal with how matter exists intrisically, only its extrinsic representation as technical descriptions (outputted by reasoning and experiment). Problem is, nobody seems to have introduced a popular and more accurate parlance for that -- only the semantic sloppiness of panpsychism, or at best panexperientialism. So it keeps being misunderstood.

Structural Realism entry, SEP: [Frank] Jackson argues that science only reveals the causal / relational properties of physical objects, and that “we know next to nothing about the intrinsic nature of the world. We know only its causal cum relational nature”. [Rae] Langton argues that science only reveals the extrinsic properties of physical objects, and both then argue that their intrinsic natures, and hence the intrinsic nature of the world, are epistemically inaccessible. Jackson points out that this inference can be blocked if the natures of objects and their intrinsic properties are identified with their relational or extrinsic properties, but argues that this makes a mystery of what it is that stands in the causal relations.

Charles Peirce: Viewing a thing from the outside, considering its relations of action and reaction with other things, it appears as matter. Viewing it from the inside, looking at its immediate character as feeling, it appears as consciousness. --Man's Glassy Essence

Quote:[Frank] Jackson argues that science only reveals the causal / relational properties of physical objects, and that “we know next to nothing about the intrinsic nature of the world. We know only its causal cum relational nature”. [Rae] Langton argues that science only reveals the extrinsic properties of physical objects, and both then argue that their intrinsic natures, and hence the intrinsic nature of the world, are epistemically inaccessible.

“The senses do not enable us to cognize any entity in its Being; they merely serve to announce the ways in which 'external' Things within-the-world are useful or harmful for human creatures encumbered with bodies....they tell us nothing about entities in their Being.”
― Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

Since theories about consciousness tend to stem from philosophy, cognitive science and/or spirituality/religion, I don't think evolutionary biology can explain it, or...explain it well.

Yah, we evolved to pick up scraps of consciousness that were laying around undisturbed for a few billion years. That consciousness stuff is very particular as to what animal is entitled to it. Maybe just compatibility issue, don't know. Lot of space out there, lots of consciousness to go around, don't be greedy.

Metaphysical spin doctors at work. Again...... we are not special.

I just partially wrote a long involved line-by-line response to the O.P., but lost it. Well fuck it, I don't care enough about the philosophy of mind to put the work in again.

Moving on to MR's post...

(Feb 9, 2020 05:44 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [ -> ]Not only is phenomenal consciousness

What is "phenomenal consciousness"? People talk about it a lot, but never explain what they are talking about. It's always (quite literally) "you know it when you see it". So it's basically just an appeal to intuition.

I don't have a lot of objection to that, but I do object to turning it into an implicit metaphysics. 'Phenomenal consciousness' becomes a kind of fundamental ontological stuff that seems to have no place in a physicalistic metaphysics, hence physicalism is false, so the argument goes.

Quote:superfluous but it is actually detrimental to our survival. Why would our brains evolve the ability to see the color red

The ability to react differentially to the different light wavelengths that things reflect would obviously seem to have survival value. If not, why do animals have senses at all? (My own view is that 'consciousness' arises directly out of causality.)

Quote:as red when unconsciously responding to that wavelength serves our purpose just as well?

The ability to process information about what we sense, to think about it in other words, would seem to have survival value in excess of simple reflex responses. 'Fruit of this color are good, while fruit of that color make me sick'. How could we ever entertain such a thought if we couldn't process ' - of this color'? (I doubt most other animals can.)

Quote:Why would our brains take the time of generating the sensation of red in our minds when it would be alot quicker and more efficient to simply react to red like an unconscious zombie would?

What does "generating the sensation of red" mean? Creating a new sort of epiphenominal ontological stuff?

Or merely our having the ability to not only respond to light wavelengths, but also to the fact that our visual apparatus is detecting and discriminating them? So that we can frame an idea 'When something looks red (produces that visual response in us) then...'?

Kastrup's argument seems to me to essentially be a restatement of the old argument against the causal efficacy of epiphenomena.

I think that the argument that epiphenomena of the "qualia"-sort arguably seem to play no role in biological evolution might better be conceived as an argument against thinking of experience and "qualia" as a fundamental sort of epiphenomenal metaphysical stuff at all. The alternative, which one would think would have occurred to a computer scientist, is to think of experience as information processed by the neural system and encoded in its states.

So when we are 'conscious' of X instead of just reacting reflexively to it, the information being processed isn't just X, but 'I am aware of X'. We are processing the information not only that X is out there, but also that we are registering it (along with anything else that we happen to think about it). So we get a sense of self, all without having to adopt a metaphysics that includes mysterious 'qualia', even more mysterious inner mental eyes that look at and register 'qualia', homunculus theories, substantial selves or human souls.

That's my own preference. I perceive it as throwing out a whole lot of bad metaphysics. I can't prove I'm right, but I like my version a lot more than the spiritualistic, idealist or 'panpsychist' alternatives. Others are welcome to disagree.

Quote:What is "phenomenal consciousness"? People talk about it a lot, but never explain what they are talking about. It's always (quite literally) "you know it when you see it". So it's basically just an appeal to intuition.

"Here is how Ned Block introduces the notion of phenomenal consciousness:

P-consciousness [phenomenal consciousness] is experience. P-conscious properties are experiential properties. P-conscious states are experiential, that is, a state is P-conscious if it has experiential properties. The totality of the experiential properties of a state are “what it is like” to have it. Moving from synonyms to examples, we have P-conscious states when we see, hear, smell, taste and have pains. (Block 1995: 230)"

http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/what_phen_..._like.html

(Feb 11, 2020 04:37 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:What is "phenomenal consciousness"? People talk about it a lot, but never explain what they are talking about. It's always (quite literally) "you know it when you see it". So it's basically just an appeal to intuition.

"Here is how Ned Block introduces the notion of phenomenal consciousness:

P-consciousness [phenomenal consciousness] is experience. P-conscious properties are experiential properties. P-conscious states are experiential, that is, a state is P-conscious if it has experiential properties. The totality of the experiential properties of a state are “what it is like” to have it. Moving from synonyms to examples, we have P-conscious states when we see, hear, smell, taste and have pains. (Block 1995: 230)"

http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/what_phen_..._like.html

One of the secondary definitions of experience: "The content of direct observation or participation in an event." Which is to say, common dictionaries barely nail it.

Etymologically, the ancestral roots of the "phenomeno-" word unit mean "to show or to appear". It just signifies something present -- anything at all, including a bodily sensation.

In materialist/extinctionist worldview, dead people are non-conscious in every respect (both phenomenal and in terms of zombie processes without content occurring). They don't even encounter an expanse of nothingness or a void of missing sensations. So flip what non-consciousness is and voila -- there is what is indicated by phenomenal consciousness (if not consciousness in general, since it can again be an umbrella concept also subsuming non-experienced body behavior and cognitive neural patterns).

With their terminology and expressions of the 20th-century, analytical philosophers clobbered-up what was arguably pretty simple beforehand, to the point that now they often can only clumsily articulate what they mean. In his own philosophical departures from physics, an old schooler like Erwin Schrodinger still pierced through that growing new haze as late as 1944. Via his bluntly referring to such as "manifestation" rather than today's qualia, feels like, subjective properties, etc.

Part of the confusion also stems from most of us (including many inconsistent materialists) being implicit panexperientialists. We don't consciously accept panex or are even aware of that thought orientation and would ridicule it if we were (thus the implicit adjective), but it is a raw background condition of our thought patterns about the world. When we conceive what we believe are objects and actions in a mind-independent context, we don't portray them as blank or even often as technical descriptions falling out of reasoning, but just as they are in sensory experiences. Presenting themselves existing as corporeal appearances from perspectives outside themselves, whether that's in a visual (deaf), felt and heard (blind), or odor and felt context (blind & deaf).

Accordingly, this instinctive, "not entirely verbalized as to all it implies" commonsense realism of ours thereby can have difficulty in understanding why there would be a problem with p-consciousness in physicalism, or difficulty explaining it. Since "showing itself" is apparently a natural property of matter -- everything is exhibiting at our macroscopic level regardless of whether there is a producer of representations around or not. Never mind the limitation to quantitative description and ensuing conflict-- we modern folk aren't really concerned about overall consistency (how things hang together properly) and consequences in our chosen ontological conceptions.

For instance, if I'm in the middle of a springtime woodland observing the trees and listening to the birds and feeling the breezes and smelling the blooming... And then a huge boulder falls down from the sky and obliterates me... Those qualitative versions of images, sounds, skin sensations, and odors are still there as the way that the woodland mind-independently exists afterwards. Oh, and that abstract description of things at the micro-level, too, if necessary... clearly that's not an artificial or invented representation, either.

I’m just amazed that chunks of matter can philosophize. With all that has happened since the universe came into being how can anyone be surprised that consciousness developed along with everything else. If anything we represent the universe’s consciousness, allowing it to be aware of itself.