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Meatbird
Social climber
Lindsay, OK
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Sep 14, 2011 - 08:17am PT
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Being a lifelong student of mind, I have also thought that Largo was condescending towards others who may equal or outpace his own understanding of the subject. However, not knowing him or having a good read on his 'style of discussion' I've tried to remain open minded about his comments. One thing is certain, I've enjoyed the topic and appreciate his bringing it up and pushing others to think seriously about how our minds acquire the feel for self that we obviously do. It is not an easy topic to discuss without falling prey to technical jargon that requires more than just a passing familiarity in order to have a reasonable conversation.
Without endorsing any one point of view I'd like to recommend Robert Lanza's book 'Biocentrism' which I have been surprised hasn't been mentioned in this discussion. There are many others on the topic but this is readable for a general audience and appears to me to add to the discussion. Also Antonio Damasio's 'Self Comes to Mind' is a great read for anyone interested in the nuances of how we experience consciousness.
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jstan
climber
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Sep 14, 2011 - 08:24am PT
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http://www.experienceproject.com/dictionary/definition-of/Sophistry
sophistry: n. the controversial method of an opponent, distinguished from one's own by superior insincerity and fooling. this method is that of the later sophists, a grecian sect of philosophers who began by teaching wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in brief, whatever men
ought to know, but lost themselves in a maze of quibbles and a fog of
words.
from Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary
From Socrate’s Apology
'To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know.”
I suspect sophistry was not an invention in ancient Greece so much as it is, right unto the present day, a natural trap for the unwary. We can take the present as a chance to learn. The following seem useful guides for discussion:
1. in argument the first and most difficult task is, sincerely, to convince oneself
2. when unsure of the other’s argument, admit you do not understand
3. argument is impossible if words are not fully defined
Patience is a great virtue. Modern technology presently offers new and powerful insight into neurological processing. But we need the patience to view the effort to understand it as a journey. Not as a prize to be held in the hand.
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ChampionSleeper
Trad climber
Phoenix, AZ
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Sep 14, 2011 - 11:57am PT
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Can another person's consciousness be established by an external observer? Can behavior prove concsiousness? Is another person's declaration of consciousness proof of their consciousness? Or do we think other humans are because we ourselves feel we are.
I think primarily we see other humans as conscious as an empathetic response- because we ourselves feel conscious. But doesn't that mean we have inherently poor judgement about interpreting other instances of consciousness in species or even machines that are not quite like us?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Sep 14, 2011 - 12:57pm PT
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dm, please don't be so gross. Next time, simply use an effective euphemism like the "bat in the cave" or an equivalent. That would at least be more pleasing at breakfast time as I finish my runny eggs.
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ChampionSleeper
Trad climber
Phoenix, AZ
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Sep 14, 2011 - 01:01pm PT
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Yeah, I think you're right on that DMT.
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Paul Martzen
Trad climber
Fresno
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Sep 14, 2011 - 01:05pm PT
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From Jstan
I suspect sophistry was not an invention in ancient Greece so much as it is, right unto the present day, a natural trap for the unwary. We can take the present as a chance to learn. The following seem useful guides for discussion:
1. in argument the first and most difficult task is, sincerely, to convince oneself
2. when unsure of the other’s argument, admit you do not understand
3. argument is impossible if words are not fully defined
1 The most interesting aspect of a discussion for me is the exploration of new viewpoints rather than any convincing that my viewpoint is correct.
2 I do not understand Largo's point of view, but as Meatbird states above, I find much of the conversation fascinating. In that respect I appreciate the continuing troll.
2a It seems very easy to say, "I understand you" while not understanding. I think it is better to try and demonstrate what our understanding is, then let the other person say whether they feel understood. I do sympathize with Largo's statement, I get hosed by most everyone here for not being a physicalist I certainly get frustrated when trying to express an idea that I like but my listeners (or nonlisteners) go off in a completely different direction.
3 Words have to be fully defined? How can we define words or concepts while we are still exploring them and trying to figure out what they are? Seems to me that there are many concepts which have sharp boundaries or distinct points and are easy to define by those features; circles and squares and mountain tops, for instance. Other concepts are very amorphous and fuzzy and hard to define. Maybe they can be accepted as such?
Patience is a great virtue. Modern technology presently offers new and powerful insight into neurological processing. But we need the patience to view the effort to understand it as a journey. Not as a prize to be held in the hand.
I agree with this very much. The journey is what's cool. But it is so easy to get caught up in, "What is the right answer?", "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"
While I find neurology fascinating and encouraging, I do not think it supplants our first person experiences. Our own experiences are the easiest and most satisfying way of understanding the world. Every time we have a new experience we learn something new about ourselves and about the world around us. (In my opinion)
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jstan
climber
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Sep 14, 2011 - 02:04pm PT
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Other concepts are very amorphous and fuzzy and hard to define. Maybe they can be accepted as such?
Going through what the words mean is the first step in the discussion. Once it is resolved or at least made transparent the word can usefully be employed. If I take "car" to mean a hummer and Morris Minors to be "machines", but do not say so, I can argue forever even with a lover of Morris Minors about "Cars being bad."
In an earlier post in this thread I referred to the neurological phenomenon called "feedforward". In order to increase the chance of survival the brain sends ahead the answer to a threat by faster pipelines. When the full set of data arrives later we get a feeling we have been there before. Deja vu.
I bring this up again because Largo is motivated by the feeling he has that there is some nonphysical extension to the mind. He is motivated by a feeling or experience he has difficulty describing.
Suppose for the moment that recurrent processing, as I mentioned earlier, has preconditioned certain neurological states. So that every time there is a query of that state it is always found to be predetermined.
It seems to be entirely outside of our conscious control.
It seems to be set by some external reality.
Would this not tend to give one the feeling there is more here than we know? Where Largo seems to find himself.
Another indication, like deja vu, that processing evolved for survival has interesting side effects? Deja vu is also hard to describe. But that difficulty, in and of itself, is a clue as to where we might look for an explanation.
Paul our first person experiences are formed in the brain and are affected by the processing occurring there. If we specifically exclude the study of that organ it is a little like a person saying I don't need to know about voltmeters to understand voltage.
Said as he uses a voltmeter set on AC while trying to test a battery.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 14, 2011 - 04:46pm PT
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First, Demasio is awesome in presenting a 3rd person approach to the mechanism he believes "explains" consciousness," tying the processes to physical antecedents and providing an evolutionary reason for the emergence of mind in strictly functional terms. That is one way to look at this subject: the 3rd person, bottom-up, forward causal model roughly or rigidly based on the ideas of reductionism, whereby atomic activity "causes" or "produces" consciousness. What I have been calling the "broadcast" model, whereby the evolved meat brain "broadcasts" awareness and self and all the other cool stuff including the self-referential witness who "lives" life.
Then we have J. Stan saying "I bring this up again because Largo is motivated by the feeling he has that there is some nonphysical extension to the mind."
"Feeling" is John's take (emotional?) and by using "extension" he unwittingly believes that I fully trust in the bottom up model that mind extends directly from meat, and that evolved meat is the true and only antecedent. And I believe no such things. This is relevant for several reasons.
The problem some of us have is that while Demasio (a local boy from USC), John S., Ed, Fruity, Marlow, and all the other bottom up physicalists look at "mind" one way, they do not see or acknowledge that while there are spectacular advantages and rewards to studying and objectifying consciousness as a 3rd person phenomenon, mind exists as an objectified "thing" ONLY on on paper and as a convenient scientific model. In reality, mind, or more accurately, self-aware consciousness, exists only in the 1st person. In fact, 1st person self-awareness is the ONLY mode of experience. How could it be otherwise.
Already many physicalists will leave the conversation becuase we are not adding anything to or advancing something to the physicalists model, "so what's the point?" The point is that some people want to try and work with the 1st person reality we actually live, by some other means besides mechanical break downs per "causes." Even the language "causes" or "produces" gives a hint that the mechanical modes and what they "cause" or Produce" are not the selfsame things.
When people make the mistake of insisting that they ARE the same, for instance, that self awareness and content are exactly the same, no possible extrapolation can follow because the nothing is so catagorically off base. We can objectify mind as a 3rd person mechanical function, and have a model of same, but we cannot objectify mind itself - the 1st person experience, NOT the biological explanations - because we only have direct experiential access to our OWN minds, and that access is and always will be by way of direct, 1st person subjective experience.
So that's the first thing. We can postulate mind as a digital process, an emergent "epiphenomenon" or the result of a fantastic, evolved bio machine that goes far in telling us how self awareness is created. But this model, this scientific description is NOT self awareness itself, anymore that everything ever written about football, every last statistic, is a football game itself. So we have the mechanical descriptions of self-awareness, for which folks like Demasio do a great job (his videos are fly though dry as King Tut's tunic) and we have self-awareness itself, the first person experience that is primary to human life.
Now it is exactly here where many loose their way. I do NOT mean that here, people fail to grasp some aspect of physicalism or reductionism or bottom up causation. Here is where we start boring into the differences, so to speak, between the numerical breakdowns of football, and the game itself, from the bio machine MODEL of consciousness - and there are some fine ones - and self awareness itself. Differences" implies we are talking about two different "things." And this is itself a sticking point for many.
Physicalists see self awareness getting away from them, as being something 'beyond" or "a non-physical extention to" the evolved meat machine that "broadcasts" mind, even as they have their direct, 1st person experience which is not in itself a physical thing they can objectify as a 3rd person (fill in the blank). This fear, masquerading as truth, is based on what the qualia people called magical thinking on the part of physicalists. Here's why.
The argument has been made by bioengineers that language betrays us in many regards and leads us to falsely consider many mere functions or descriptions of material processes as things-in-and-of-themselves. For example, there is no such "thing" as jogging. IOWs, jogging is not an object, a real "thing" with it's own physical make up and atomic structure. "Jogging" is only a description of a physical reality - a body moving through time and space.
But the relationship of self awareness to meat brain is not the same as "jogging" is to moving body. I'll let you guys work this one out - or default back to measurements and call me ignorant - but here's a clue.
In science, everything is objectified as a 3rd person thing. We cannot objectify self awarenes in this way - not self awareness itself. We can objectify MODELS of self awareness, but the map is not the territory, the models are NOT self awareness itself, which is not a model but a 1st person experience. In fact with self awareness, the normal 3rd person/1st person rule is flipped. That is, we only know "jogging" by way of a moving physical body, but we only "know" a physical body (including meat brain) by way of self-awareness. Thoughts and objections such as, "But the meat brain PRODUCES self awareness you blockhead," do not exist as physical bodies (atoms are not themselves thoughts), but only as qual passing through self awareness.
That means we can objectify models of mind, but no mind itself. If you are still saying, "So what?" you haven't realized experientially what this means. It's a subtle one, but mind-boggling once you get it.
JL
unfortunately, the metaphor does not stand up because while "jogging" is merely a description,
So here I'm talking about the "production,"
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 14, 2011 - 05:34pm PT
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Better would be an elaboration on your concept of "broadcast".
As it is, based on fMRI detection of experience/qualia and such tidbits as frozen-solid salamanders which regain consciousness, I have no problem whatsoever claiming 'experience' is just an expression of a duality of processing and content interchangeable in the context of 'consciousness'. You can keep pushing an idealistic metaphysical basis for consciousness (and by extension the material world), but again I don't buy it and neither does any recently thawed salamander.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 14, 2011 - 06:36pm PT
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we learn about awareness
and we learn it is something others have
my presumption that Largo is conscious, aware, thinking, possessing of mind are all third person
my perception that mind is something has to do with the observation, and the conjecture, that it is a universal aspect of humans, this too is third person
my various tests to determine what is common and what is unique combines first and third persons, as I use myself to explore the variations, but I still need those other minds presumed to be out there, that exist third person
you can't escape third person experience of mind, it is an important, perhaps the most important aspect of the whole thing....
...it's not just that I am aware, it's that awareness itself is not unique with an individual.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 14, 2011 - 07:32pm PT
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my perception that mind is something has to do with the observation, and the conjecture, that it is a universal aspect of humans, this too is third person--
Nope. This is the most common misconception. Your perception, Ed, is also what we call self-awareness. Perceiving IS self awareness. Processing information from observations and thoughts generated by observations, such as when a scientist observes something, produces qual or thoughts which enter into your field of awareness. You become aware of ideas such as, "mind is a universal aspect of humans." This qual, or thought, passes into awareness and yes, you can quantify and objectify this qual but you cannot experience your own experience from the 3rd person. You can experience your mental processes as 3rd person qual, as content of awareness, but the experience itself will inescapably be 1st person. A camera cannot take a picture of itself, so to speak.
And fruity, referencing a spec scan or qEEG to show electrical activity and saying the read out is "experience itself" is like saying notes on a page is music. You're totally stuck trying to make the map be the territory, or more accurately, the topo being the actual experiencing of climbing, and it can never logically work.
But the biggest myth of them all is that we can have 3rd person experiences.
JL
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Sep 14, 2011 - 07:40pm PT
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I think Largo and the material reductionists are both right. Then again, I live in a place where the unity of opposites is assumed. This philosophy was developed in response to many human beings being packed into very small spaces so that they were forced to accept multiple viewpoints and be aware of subtle differences at the same time they learned to function as an organic whole.
I think the same principle applies to human brains. The cells are so densely packed, the circuits so multilayered, and the chemical injections so numerous and subtle (think crowded multistory tenements in Hong Kong) that it becomes overwhelming to try to understand, and so both sides fall back on simpler models of either material reductionism or qualia and consciousness, neither one of which is adequate to explain the functional whole.
I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't other models that also apply which haven't even been thought of yet. It's way too soon for either of the two sides represented here to declare victory. Meanwhile the dualistic oppositional mode of thinking about these subjects betrays a way of looking at the world which is losing out to the East Asian model of individual systems being subsumed to a common good.
Both scientism and idealism have failed to inspire our own society to cooperate for the common good, and now we take the oppositional model and try to apply it to discussions of the mind/brain. We need a whole new inclusive paradigm.
Personally I prefer the holographic model which includes both physicality and consciousness at a much higher level than what our meat brains have currently perceived. But that's just me and my first person experiences.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 14, 2011 - 08:35pm PT
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Largo: And fruity, referencing a spec scan or qEEG to show electrical activity and saying the read out is "experience itself" is like saying notes on a page is music.
'Fruity' again - ok, I guess. When referencing that scan can correctly state what you are aware of I'd say that makes 'awareness' observable from other than the 1st person.
Largo: You're totally stuck trying to make the map be the territory, or more accurately, the topo being the actual experiencing of climbing, and it can never logically work.
Nope, you're totally stuck unable to grasp the duality of processing/content and how 'awareness' is indistinguishably both. I'd say maybe you still need to thaw a bit more before you get it. Your position is no different than saying the chip and software are not the execution of the program and your ST 'experience' is an 'emergent broadcast' somehow miraculously [and metaphysically] independent of the hardware and software humming away in your computer.
P.S. Maybe your computer only exists when software is actually executing on it...
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Meatbird
Social climber
Lindsay, OK
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Sep 14, 2011 - 09:00pm PT
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From my point of view we are in some respects "bewitched" by our language. Like Largo says we can only experience consciousness in the first person to which I agree. However, we also have the ability to communicate in what appears to be third person personas. Obviously we are always doing this as first person minds but it feels as though we have objectivity and if you adhere to the rules of our language we do. Trouble is we are talking about our language not the pure experience of awareness. Wittgenstein shook up our way of doing things when he described our language as a system of games that worked by accomplishing our goals. For him problems in philosophy occurred when "language went on holiday". While this is all elementary theory for anyone who has studied much philosophy I still think it has some relevance to the discussion.
We open our eyes every morning and a world appears and for a few moments we have close to pure consciousness but soon language starts to take over and we begin to form ideas and attach words to remembered experiences to which we have already described with language. I think we see how at some point the pure experience of consciousness becomes enter twinned with language both present and past and in the process of constructing knowledge bases the third person persona takes on a life of its own. Still we may be talking more about our language than our consciousness.
All this is to say that different points of view on this subject, like many other discussions, may be as much about the particular language game we are using and not some exact experience of
reality. In some strands of objective relational psychotherapy the ability of the therapist to participate in the dialogue while simultaneously observing the interaction of the client and therapist
is a highly prized skill. The two points of view are considered invaluable in forming a "larger" picture of the client. To me this is not some fact about how reality works but simply an anomaly of our language as it takes place in our perceived flow of time.
Hopefully this adds to the discussion but if not I'll just continue to listen to others in my best first person persona.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 14, 2011 - 10:47pm PT
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Healey said:
Nope, you're totally stuck unable to grasp the duality of processing/content and how 'awareness' is indistinguishably both.
When referencing that scan can correctly state what you are aware of I'd say that makes 'awareness' observable from other than the 1st person.
No cigar. You’re vexing yourself from inside a computer chip.
When I used to be involved with Neurofeedback and qEEG and so forth, we always knew that the array on the screen was not consciousness itself, but the electrical activity that co-exists with consciousness. For you to ever see said array from another perspective than the 1st person, you’d have to BE another (3rd) person simultaneously with being you – and I want to see that one. Simply put, you cannot escape your 1st person perspective. There is no objective human perspective separate from “I,” and I is always 1st person.
The first graph is a common misconception, called awareness fusion or identity enmeshment, and in certain cases can cause serious psychological problems. What’s amazing to me is that so many on this thread are very astute so far as left brain processing goes, but psychologically, the same folks are confounded by some pretty basic psychological material, while insisting they have it “right.” I mean no disrespect here, I’m just somewhat dazed by where people are at on this.
Consider the common contention that “mind” IS electrical or atomic activity, that the meant brain IS mind and that content and awareness, as stated by Healey are exactly the same things. It’s all one big ass “thing.”
When your awareness is fused with content like this you have what the Enneagram folks call a “case of mistaken identity.” You literally believe that “you,” the nameless watcher, the agency that is “aware,” IS content.
There is an entire branch of psychology geared to break the enmeshment of awareness with content, which can literally trash peoples lives. This is especially the case with the “shame-based” personality made famous by John Bradshaw in the 1990s. Especially so with victims of incest, battery, ritual torture, all manner of abuse, adult survivors of drunk care takers, bipolar and character disorderd parenting, and so forth.
This can often result in a shame based personality in which shame is the organizing principal for all feeling tones, meaning whenever you feel joy, sadness, courage, love, or whatever, shame attaches to these feelings and you can spiral down in a shame hole from hell. Hence so many shame based folks are alcoholics since booze can often mute ALL feeling. Point is, because shame is such a strong attractor, awareness gets fused with the feeling (content/qual) and people mistake themselves for same.
The therapists job here is to first make the shame a known “thing,” an article of awareness, which is tough duty since there is so much fear, pain and judgement involved. But once the shame is brought to the light of day and it can be seen as content (thoughts, memories, sensations, very strong feelings, projections, fears, etc.), some of the emotional steam can be purged off and the subject can start to slowly detach.
Somewhere in the process – and it might take years – people have the direct, life altering experience that they are NOT their shame based complex. The more detachment they get, the greater they realize that shame is simply bad programming, old audio tapes and memories and somatic slip streams that have a kind of vortex effect on their awareness. When you’re caught in the vortex, fused with shame, your ARE shame, since the psyche can take most any form, as needed. Point is, once the “I am not my content/shame” moment comes, the trance is broken and a new freedom is possible above and beyond the virus of shameful content.
Now the reason we can objectify and evaluate and detach from shame like this – or any content - is because it is divisible and is not “us,” it is NOT the same thing as awareness.
We cannot choose what comes up in our mind but how we respond, where we place the ray gun of attention IS our choice, with practice. But so long as awareness and content are the same thing in your mind, you will be enmeshed with whatever has the most charge and you’ll have little autonomy from inner states and even less self mastery.
Awareness is not divisible like this (given a well rested sober mind), and is more closely related to ‘presence” than it is to a mirror or some quantum field in which conten/qual twinkle through. So being aware of a feeling or thought or a sunset is not so much scrutinizing or evaluating something as it is with BEING with something, someone, etc. In this sense, freedom is not ordering or orchestrating content, chasing after this and trying to get rid of that. Freedom comes from being with everything sans preference, or as Frank Sacharer once said, “Chosing what you have to do.”
Awareness or presence has no edges, is in some way shared by all that IS and is fundamentally indivisible and unborn. Detaching and observing are the focus of meditation but the process is, paradoxically, an intimate, 1st person experience. The more we separate from and objectify content, the more we setting into pure presence which is clear as a ringing bell. But so long as we stay fused with stuff/content/qual, where awareness and content are selfsame, we’ll be FUBARed.
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 14, 2011 - 11:34pm PT
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Largo: When I used to be involved with Neurofeedback and qEEG and so forth, we always knew that the array on the screen was not consciousness itself, but the electrical activity that co-exists with consciousness. For you to ever see said array from another perspective than the 1st person, you’d have to BE another (3rd) person simultaneously with being you – and I want to see that one. Simply put, you cannot escape your 1st person perspective. There is no objective human perspective separate from “I,” and I is always 1st person.
You either missing the chain or are being disingenuous here - I'm saying that by looking at the fMRI output in the 1st person, I can tell what 1st person experience you are having, i.e. your experience is in fact observable outside the context your own 1st person perspective.
Consider the common contention that “mind” IS electrical or atomic activity, that the meant brain IS mind and that content and awareness, as stated by Healey are exactly the same things. It’s all one big ass “thing.”
When your awareness is fused with content like this you have what the Enneagram folks call a “case of mistaken identity.” You literally believe that “you,” the nameless watcher, the agency that is “aware,” IS content.
Exactly the agency IS content - break through that word 'content' and you'll realize that the agency (and content) is just a dual expression of both. But, I'm not positing that the meat, content, and processing are all the same thing anymore than I'm saying the chip (meat), software (content), and execution (awareness) are the same "big ass thing". Rather, I'm saying all forms of cognition (content and awareness) are an expression of processing - no processing, then no awareness and no content - e.g. the salamander is not dreaming while frozen. As I said, your position is absolutely no different than claiming your ST experience is some metaphysically emergent phenomena independent of your computer executing it's OS and browser software. Producing consciousness IS what the brain evolved for and consciousness is an unavoidable attribute of a living [and healthy] human brain.
There is an entire branch of psychology geared to break the enmeshment of awareness with content, which can literally trash peoples lives.
With your use of both 'awareness' and 'content' in this psychological context, you are so many levels of abstraction above what I'm talking about that, while words may be the same, the meanings are completely different and passing each other in the dark. And I think that's part of the issue here; you're coming at all this from emotions and meditation while striving for open 'agency' and then attempting to work your way backwards from that to something (still not sure what or why) that 'fits' your [emotional and meditative] experiences. From what I can see your choices of extrapolations, selective language, and logic can't really lead to anywhere else but an idealistic metaphysical interpretation of the road you've traveled.
I think this goes back to Ed's point that some folks can't handle or deal with the idea there's nothing special about consciousness, particularly human consciousness.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Sep 15, 2011 - 03:27am PT
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Meatbird-
I've been saying all along that language shapes our consciousness and so far we are only dealing with English. I guarantee that when you speak and think in very different languages, such as those in the Sino-Tibetan family, your thought process will be very different. In fact, such discussions can't even take place in those languages. There's a reason that Taoism and Zen as we know it, originated in China and not in Greece or Rome.
Consider one of the first sentences always taught in Manadarin Chinese classes - Ma ma ma ma? This translates as "Why is the woman beating the horse?"
Since languages in the greater Chinese language family are linguistically incapable of the intricate logical reasoning of the sort exhibited on this thread, it's not surprising that the philosophical systems evolved from those languages emphasized pure, nonverbal awareness instead and that they chose to write in pictograms instead of alphabets.
We can not prove that either logic or pure awareness is superior, they are simply different and complimentary methods of using the brain. Both can be described and thus communicated consciously. Both involve a sense of self. Even when describing the experience of no self or union with a universal consciousness, one still has to make reference to the opposite which is a more limited first person experience of self.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 15, 2011 - 03:58am PT
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You either missing the chain or are being disingenuous here - I'm saying that by looking at the fMRI output in the 1st person, I can tell what 1st person experience you are having, i.e. your experience is in fact observable outside the context your own 1st person perspective.
---
Here again you are failing to separate out electro-chem. arrays (qEEGs, PET scans, fMRIs, etc.) from experience, and continue to flounder with thinking the array IS the experience. You've merely noticed the energetic activity that goes on in the evolved meat brain as someone is having their experience.
In a sense it's like going to a concert wearing utterly soundproof headphones. You see the cello player sawing at her instrument, the trumpeter blowing his brains out, the pianist tickling said ivories, the conductor, at once vain and fussy, waving his arms, and you glance at the sheet music here and there for good measure.
Here IS music. It is all right there, being "produced." You see it produced. You feel the vibrations in your bones. You have a 3rd person experience of the production of music. Since what you see here IS music, and identical with it, in the sense that two cans of Coke are both the very same thing, you don't need the other part denied you with the headphones. You already "know" and have seen music. You have everything right there -- all the data, the evidence that the music is being produced right there, and if you had a sound mixer on hand you could ride the levels.
Now if I have to actually tell you what you're missing here - the same thing you're missing when you're studying a measuring aperati - there's very little hope for you. You fall into what professionals call "Cult of the Third Person." Chalmers said this about it.
Reductionism and the cult of the third-person
The term "reductionism" is often a little vague in its application, especially in the philosophy of mind. Dawkins has said that "nobody is a reductionist in any sense worth being against." This may or may not be true in the philosophy of mind. I will divide reductionism into "hard-line" and "soft-line" varieties.
The Hard-Line Reductionist believes that to explain everything that is interesting about the mind, all we have to do is explain what is happening in the physical system that is the brain (and, perhaps, in the body and surrounding environment). Beyond this collection of third-person facts (they believe) there is nothing more to explain. Any claims of "but you've left out the most interesting part!" are not countenanced. These reductionists may allow certain abstractions from the physical base to be made, for the purposes of elegance and explanatory power, but these abstractions are made simply out of convenience, and they are not held to reflect any absolute truth.
Hard-line reductionists believe that questions of "subjective experience" and "qualia" and "phenomenology" are distracting chimeras, at best powerful illusions. A list of hard-line reductionists would include Ryle, Armstrong, and more recently, Dennett, Churchland and Parfit. These are people who take position (2) above, in reaction to first-person issues: they deny that there is any mystery. I believe that this is a sense of reductionism that is untenable at even a superficial level of investigation.
In contrast, Soft-Line Reductionists are much more amenable to first-person questions. The soft-line reductionists believes that the cause of everything which is going on in the mind is the physical system, and this physical system is explainable from the third-person, but there may still be some emergent phenomena which are not captured by a purely physical, third-person description. Most hard-line reductionists probably regard soft-line reductionists as unbearably "wimpy," in rather the same way that an atheist would regard an agnostic, or that a communist would regard a social democrat.
Essentially, a soft-line reductionist is a materialist who nevertheless believes that the first-person is a great mystery; a hard-line reductionist believes there is no mystery at all. While the soft-liner may be dismissed by the hard-liner as "soft, squishy, and mystical," in this paper I intend to show that not only is soft-line reductionism a tenable position, but also that it does not inevitably lead to throwing up ones armss in frustrated wonder at the mystery of it all. I believe that a theory of the first-person can be developed which is coherent with a theory of the third- -person, but which is not subsumed by a theory of the third-person.
Per confusing different things as being the same (i.e., meat brain IS consciousness), Chalmers offers this piece of advice.
This direct correspondence (some might even say isomorphism) between first-person phenomena and (a certain subset of) third-person phenomena seems to be what often leads to confusion when discussing first-person issues. Many commentators, particularly those in the third-person camp, give the illusion of reducing first-person mysteries by appropriating the usual first-person words to refer to the third-person phenomena to which they correspond. It would be a final irony if this was to happen to the word "first-person" itself. I hereby issue a plea that this word be off-limits to the third-personites. If they wish, they may argue that the first-person does not exist; but they may not pretend to 'explain' the first-person by describing only third-person phenomena.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Sep 15, 2011 - 04:10am PT
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There's absolutely no way to prove we're not just dreaming this whole reality.
The only input and experience you've every had is with your own awareness...period
We assume the rest of reality is as it seems even as we know we can only perceive limited dimensions and a limited spectrum within those dimensions (such as a slice of the electromagnetic spectrum)
Not to mention the whole earth is so diffuse it's whole mass could be squashed to the size of a baseball.
For those who believe the mechanistic electrical interplays within the brain are what generate consciousness, why wouldn't it be equally plausible to imagine the interplay of forces between planets and stars in the universe don't do the same?
The world is not as we see it. We're conceited babies
peace
Karl
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 15, 2011 - 04:31am PT
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For those who believe the mechanistic electrical interplays within the brain are what generate consciousness, why wouldn't it be equally plausible to imagine the interplay of forces between planets and stars in the universe don't do the same?
What would make it equally plausible? I'd say this notion suffers as serious a deficit of complexity as Largo's dismissives of "digital" and "machine" when speaking of the brain.
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