Will a zombie wonder whether it was a zombie?
And is a zombie expected to discern the truth? Actually, I should stop right here. Although I am disappointed at the level of discourse, I go on for the sake of records.
Well, since zombies are physically *identical* to conscious people, they would certainly *speak the words* expressing curiosity as to whether they are zombies or not.
Where is 'discernment' in brain information? Where is information of experience and where is information of gaps in experience? Where is information of self hood? Where is information about how it feels to be in pain etc.?
Literally all over the place. Discernment is just an aspect of information processing--making a judgement. Information is what the neurons convey--that is sort of their role here. Information about how it feels to be in pain is located, as mentioned in those articles, in the brain stem with projections to the frontal cortex.
(BTW, the example of blind spot actually shows the executive unitive consciousness that self is. )
It shows how the brain 'papers over discontinuities'. Which is why the consciousness *seems* unitive, just like our visual field.
Is this supposed to be a joke? Hard problem of consciousness is well known in scientific and philosophical circles.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/
Yes, I know there is a flurry of discussion about it, but I have never really seen the problem pinpointed. And part of the problem is figuring out a decent definition of the term 'consiousness'. There seems to be a range of opinion about what it even means. So, is a thermostat conscious? If so, then consciousness is just another aspect of physical existence and it is no problem to say that our consciousness originates in the brain or that machines can be conscious.
Your whole world is a world of experience and discernment. You experience yourself as an "I" awareness, you experience your thoughts in mind, and your body-brain. You experience the objects of the mind and of the world. But then inexplicably you ascribe this very power of discernment and experiencing to theses experienced (external) objects.
No, I attribute them to the *internal* objects: like my brain (which is internal to me). Again, I fail to see how having correlates to every conscious state and some brain state along with, say, the ability to stimulate the brain to give that conscious state *isn't* a solution to the problem.
The problem stems from dualism inherent in the materialistic worldview. According to mainstream physicalism, qualities may exist only in the phenomenal field of the experiencer and not in phyla ultimates. It is the specific arrangement of ultimates in a nervous system that, somehow constitutes or generates its phenomenal properties.
Well, I have *never* claimed that 'qualities may exist only in the phenomenal field of the experiencer'. In fact, I specifically deny that. I'll go further and say that seems to be directly *counter* to what physicalism means: that everything can ultimately be understood in terms of physical events.
Now, the problem relates to how our subjective experience of qualities — the warmth of fire, the redness of an apple, the bitterness of disappointment, etc. — can arise from arrangements of ultimates. These ultimates do possess abstract relational properties such as mass, spin, momentum, and charge, but there is nothing about mass, spin, momentum, or charge, or the relative positions and interactions across ultimates, in terms of which one could deduce what the warmth of fire, the redness of an apple, or the bitterness of disappointment feel like, subjectively.
Sorry, but your metaphysics is getting int he way. 'Ultimates' seems like a nonsense term to me. Do you mean fundamental particles? If so, then these 'ultimates' interact with each other and those interactions carry information. And consciousness (awareness?) is ultimately a matter of information processing. as far as I can see.
I had earlier shown an example of pain. The verbal report of your pain and your shrieks of pain may well be correlated to some brain state. But there is no way that the feeling of pain can be expressed in terms of language or in terms of brain states.
Even if true, so what? If we can cause that pain solely by stimulating some area of the brain (that would be stimulated by pain receptors otherwise) and the person reports feeling pain, how have we *not* given a causal explanation of the feeling of pain?
Let me, for benefit of other readers repeat that example:
Quale does not differ from sensation but it differs from the observable behaviours. For example, suppose xyz is in pain and I see him wincing and groaning. But I do not have any idea of his subjective sensation of pain. Two aspects of consciousness elude functalisation and they are "the self (consciousness itself) and its subjective experiences and mental causations. Let me illustrate this with an example.
To use correlation data of ‘partly visible and partly subjective first party experience’ versus ‘measurable brain state’ (suppose correlation of ‘pain’ to stimulation of ‘x centre’ in brain), we have to functionalise ‘Pain’. An example is given below:
- Observation: xyz has his x-centre in brain stimulated at t.
- Established Correlation data: x-centre stimulation (in humans) is caused by tissue damage and it in turn causes winces and groans.
- Functional definition of pain: To be in pain, by definition, is to be in a state which is caused by tissue damage and which in turn causes winces and groans.
- Prediction: Therefore, xyz must be wincing and groaning due to pain at t.
The third line, a functional definition of pain, does not represent empirical/factual information about pain; it gives us the meaning of “pain”. This way we can predict xyz's pain from physical/behavioural information alone. This also answers as to why sensations accompany the brain’s workings. Here, I assume that we are able to functionalise the behavioural aspects in a foolproof manner, incorporating all aspects that matter. Yetsensations, or qualia, resist functional reduction and there still is no glimmer of an explanation in above. Groans and winces are observable effects. But the inner sense of pain and its intensity are not functionally definable.
Now, let's add to this that when we stimulate that area of the brain even without tissue damage the person winces and reports having pain. Isn't that a causal link between the brain state and the sensation? What else do you require?
Let me give a physical analogy. In electromagnetism there is the concept of an electric charge. There is also a concept of an electric field. We have a 'law' that says that charges produce/cause magnetic fields.
There is no 'mechanism' for this. There is simply the consistent correlation between the existence of a change and the existence of an electric field. But that connection is considered to be an explanation of the properties of charges and electric fields.
I don't see how getting a consistent, testable, correlation between brain states and conscious states *isn't* an explanation of the two, especially when we can actually stimulate the brain and produce those conscious states reliably.
What else do you want? And would you not consider the charge/electric field connection to be 'explained' even though there isn't a mechanism?
We know that in brain ions move across membranes and cause electrical activity which can be measured. That in turn causes the neuron to turn on its metabolic interface and cause release of different kinds of neurotransmitters that move across synaptic cleft and activate other neurone/s. So where in all of this does the thought occur? Where is our thought? Where is our experience of the world? When we say we see something, we feel something, we think something where in all of that is that really happening? And so if you give a person a drug or if a person meditates, how do you ultimately link that back to what’s going on in the brain itself and how reductionistic can we ultimately be
Where does a calculation that a computer does occur? Where is it that the computer 'decides' to do one job and not a different one? Where is it that the computer 'recognizes' an image as being a face?
These seem to me to be precisely equivalent to what you just asked.
Unfortunately @polymath does not answer the questions raised but simply asserts again and again that here is no qualitative experience other than the neuronal interactions. But how? How the physical ultimates characterised by mass, spin, momentum etc., give rise to phenomenal experience? There has been no explanation of the linkage. But there has been repeated eliminative assertions.
Well, information is carried in those physical interactions. We know this to be the case in computers, for example, but it is common to essentially *all* physical interactions that information is produced and carried.
What is an experience except the information about what is 'sensed'?
Yes. I think you need to be clear that the awareness of an object (material or mental) is an effect of power of consciousness, which is competence to discern and experience.
You may wish to read this to understand what I mean by the term 'consciousness'.
Consciousness and Mind according to Vedanta
Note to @Polymath257 :
After three months you will very likely again act confounded about my use of the term consciousness. You will again come from the premise as if consciousness is only what the mind is aware of. It is irritative and painful to repeat explanations and see the same refuted arguments thrown back again and again.
Till date I have not seen a demonstration from you or anyone that the intense qualitative 'what it feels like to be in orgasm' is equal to the corresponding state data of the brain of the orgasmic person. I repeatedly fail to make you comprehend that the state data is 'third party' data. Whereas the 'orgasm' is first person datum.
Suppose I am in deep sleep and see no self and no world. It is the first party experiential datum. The corresponding brain wave data is the waking state POV of the scientist who records the data. The first party qualitative experience of deep sleep is not same as the wave patterns recorded in waking state by a waking person.
But I know that in next post you will again claim that the qualitative experience of orgasm is same as the brain state record.
...
Again, I see those brain activities (not just the brain waves) as being a different look at exactly the same phenomenon. I see the first person/third person as being rather irrelevant and trivial. It happens in my brain so I am the one that feels it. If it happens in your brain, you are the one that feels it. If it happens in mine, it is first person for me and third person for you. If it happens in your brain it is first person for you and third person for me. So what?
You seem to discount the idea that first and third person data are just different sides of the exact same coin. It is a bit 'irritating and painful' for you to keep missing this simple point.
