Happy Atheist Forum

Firstly, let me confess that I'm relatively new here.  But, inspired by thoughts posted in another thread, I've decided to begin one of my own (this won't be my first thread, but one of my first - please be gentle  ).  Perhaps this will be very old hat for some of you.  I hope, for others, that it will be, if not exactly new, at least interesting.  What is your position on the structure and properties of the mind - of consciousness in particular?

I should also perhaps confess at the outset that I am a convinced physicalist (I eschew the term materialist - it makes me itcy, due mostly to its pop culture connotations).  So I don't really credit that there is such a thing as a mind/body problem - except as it exists in the (material) minds of dualist philosophers.  The more I learn about Neuroscience, the more I become convinced that the brain is the mind is the brain.  Selective damage produces very selective, and predictable, respective deficits.  And while scientists' investigations into the workings of the brain are far from completed, they are making progress, even into that "holy grail" of consciousness.

Nor do I see the sense (notwithstanding that I understand the allure) in positing an extra, non-physical, "mind-stuff" substance, property or attribute, that interacts with the physical brain, in order to account for phenomenological properties, for the "something-it-is-like-ness."  But many do.  What do you think?  What are your arguments in favor of your vision of consciousness?  Are you a dualist (and if so, what flavor are you)?  Are you an elimanitive materialist?  Or any of the innumerable other stances philosophers have argued?  Or your own brand?  Do you even care?

As a physicalist (like the term) I don't see the need for dualism. To me dualism came about because in ages ago people had knowledge (I can perceive the world around me) but no understanding (How do I perceive the world around me?) of the way we as an organism interact with our surroundings. And just as God was invoked to fill the knowledge/understanding gap in why the Sun comes up, the 'Mind' was invoked to explain our feeling of the separation of our physical perception from our conscious perception.

Quote from: "Tank"As a physicalist (like the term) I don't see the need for dualism. To me dualism came about because in ages ago people had knowledge (I can perceive the world around me) but no understanding (How do I perceive the world around me?) of the way we as an organism interact with our surroundings. And just as God was invoked to fill the knowledge/understanding gap in why the Sun comes up, the 'Mind' was invoked to explain our feeling of the separation of our physical perception from our conscious perception.

Thoroughly agree.  And dualistic and religious thinking seem to (obviously) reinforce one another.  I consider them slightly different flavors of superstition.  I just wonder why the qualia 'problem' has remained so convincing to some.

This is an example for you I promised you from the other thread.. Also I think it would be a good idea to link to the other thread first :)

Source

Moral Evolution: scientific explanation (http://thinkingaloudforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=14323)


Abstract 1:

Quote from: "TheJackel"All morality is, is the description of behavioral adaptations of living organisms in accordance to self and environmental conditions.. Existence is actually completely neutral when it comes to morality and only really plays a major role on a conscious level in regards to human behavior.. Hence, it's a LEARNED behavior from an observable source..

This means that morality is no more than an abstract phenomenal pattern resulting from the physical processing of information, or physical execution of informational patterns that are observable.. It's the monkey see monkey do because the monkey can do and repeat what it see's and apply abstract meaning to it. This is where the probability of a positive or negative abstract reaction can occur. And since said monkey's brain corresponds to quantum mechanics, quantum physics, and quantum computation, it can in fact result in abstract behaviors such as morality, feeling, thought, intent, cognitive interaction, and so on. And this is why morality is subjective to perceptual processed points of view. Meaning that morality only follows the probability of positive vs negative just like anything else does.. And this can mean that even a negative to one individual species can be a positive to another.. And this is why theists can't use morality as an argument because it's so vaguely abstract and dependent on POV. Hence, would the Universe give a crap if our planet exploded today?

Abstract 2:

Quote from: "TheJackel"You can also look at Morality in terms of mental addiction:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction)

QuoteA positive addiction is a beneficial habit--where the benefits outweigh the costs. A negative addiction is a detrimental habitâ€"where the benefits are not worth the negative financial, physical, spiritual and mental costs. A neutral addiction is a habit in which it is not clear if the organism (or species) benefits from the activity.

In biology and energy, behavioral positives and negatives are always present... So when you see them asking how does evolution support morality, we can address it in terms of Chaos Theory, or positive, negative, or neutral actions, reactions, responses or results. Because evolution is a positive and negative behavior itself! active matter exhibits these traits unconsciously. Thus, Evolution doesn't think about morality, it just selects from positives and negatives based on pattern interaction with other patterns that influence or exert pressure on any given pattern or set of patterns to swing one way or another. Hence, a species will either adapt in a positive or go extinct in a negative because it fails to apply a positive adaptation or behavior..

Basically evolution is a prime example of neutral moral behavior to where it can swing from a positive or a negative just like a neutral behavioral addiction can swing to a negative addiction or to a positive addiction..  So human brains evolve to satisfy the above into a positive and beneficial mental addiction that can equate to the source purpose of "morality" within the human species... It's a positive and negative flow or balance to where one tends to usually be in a state somewhere near a neutral addiction..

--

Things either don't change and stay neutral, or they take a positive or negative route!

Quote from: "Tank"As a physicalist (like the term) I don't see the need for dualism. To me dualism came about because in ages ago people had knowledge (I can perceive the world around me) but no understanding (How do I perceive the world around me?) of the way we as an organism interact with our surroundings. And just as God was invoked to fill the knowledge/understanding gap in why the Sun comes up, the 'Mind' was invoked to explain our feeling of the separation of our physical perception from our conscious perception.

I agree with Tank.  I think that dualism is a supernatural concept that filled a gap in understanding, much in the same manner that a deity did.

I've seen the consciousness described as an "emergent property" of the brain, but I'm still not really sure what it means.  I think that it means that the capacity of "mind" is a function of the physical brain in the way that "vision" is a function of the eye.  If so, then I agree with it; cognition results from the complex chemical and electrical interactions of our gray matter.  There is just something about the sound of "emergent property" that sounds fishy to me, but it's likely because I do not fully understand it.

TheJackel:

Once again, thank you for investing so much time in expaining and defending your position, and in providing resource materials for the benefit of this discussion.  I have now read the arguments embedded in the links you have provided, and watched the videos you have appended.  I do not have the background in either quantum mechanics or chaos theory to comment on the details of these elements of your arguments, other than to note that they are intriguing.  But the point is taken that science has made amazing strides in describing the processes by which matter and energy can, under certain conditions, self-organize and evolve into more and more complex forms.  Such understanding provides a breathtaking vista from which to view the panorama of life in the universe, and seems to further reinforce the arguments for, and the understanding of, biological evolution in particular, as well as the evolution of the cosmos.

However, I'm not quite sure I see precisely how you answer the question of the subjective nature of consciousness.  I readily admit this may be a failure of my understanding, and not of your powers of explanation.  Ultimately, I'm personally looking to strengthen my arguments against the dualists, but I'm not satisfied that I have a definitive refutation myself, although I'm admittedly at the beginning of my own investigations of the existing arguments on all sides, so it (once again) very likely is a failure produced by my current level of ignorance rather than a failure of the current state of the argument.  

The key point of contention, as I understand it, and as I'm sure you're aware, is summarized by Chalmer's phrase, "The Hard Problem" of consciousness.  How subjective experience, the taste of a potato chip, the quality of the red tomato on the vine, the sensation of the wind on one's face, can arise from what objectively is observed as nothing more than the electrochemical activity of a rather squishy, cauliflower shaped organ.  

Even though, as you have argued, all is energy and energy is information, for information to be useful to an organism, or comprehensible by an organism, it must be interpretable by that organism - the organism must have the faculty to translate that information into a form on which it can operate.  There is a vast amount of information in a star, for example, but without training and scientific instruments, much of it is incomprehensible to me.  How is the brain able to translate electrochemical pulses, which, if I observe them, I do not immediately understand, into a subjective experience that I do immediately comprehend?  And why do some neuronal networks give rise to conscious experience while others do not?

All of the sensations previously mentioned are translated directly into electrochemical pulses transmitted to respective networks of the trillions of neuronal connections within the brain.  What we observe and can measure scientifically are those electrochemical pulses, but, to folks like Chalmers, those objective phenomena are entirely  different in kind from what we actually experience in consciousness. Our experiences don't feel, to us, like a series of electrical jolts, they feel like the experiences mentioned above. So, the argument goes, the brain is somehow translating those objectively observable physical processes into something that is subjectively phenomenal in nature, or else the mind is not the brain.  Keep in mind that I think this is total bunk.

To some, like Chalmers, and Thomas Nagel (in his famous essay, "What is it like to be a bat?" and elsewhere), it is simply incomprehensible to say that we can observe said elctrochemical processes and know from these know what it is like to be the organism undergoing the experience giving rise to those processes, for example.  They use other fun little thought experiments like "Mary the color scientist" and Philosophical Zombies to further (in my humble opinion) confuse the issues.  Dennett, Churchland and many others think Chalmers and Nagel are fatally confused.  

I agree with Dennett and Churchland, but I would like to be able to hear what others think on this matter in particular. It is obvious to me that our electrochemical processes can represent external and internal realities in the same way that a collection of pixels on a screen can represent a word.  And further that our experiences, as we experience them, are precisely what neuronal firings feel like from the point of view of the brian undergoing them.  I always thought Spinoza came somewhat near the mark (though this is admittedly out of context):

"...consequently thinking substance and extended substance are one and the same thing, which is now comprehended through this and that attribute."

Again, if I have missed something in your argument, I apologize.

Quote from: "Shine"There is just something about the sound of "emergent property" that sounds fishy to me, but it's likely because I do not fully understand it.

You are right to be suspicious.  It can mean what you say, that it is a property that "emerges" when the organizational complexity is of a sufficient kind and degree.  But it can also mean something more insidious (to the physicalist)...I quote Paul Churchland's explanation of emergence from the point of view of the 'property dualist':

"As before, mental properties are here said to be emergent properties, properties that do not appear at all until ordinary physical matter has managed to organize itself, through the evolutionary process, into a system of sufficient complexity.  Examples of properties that are emergent in this sense would be the property of being solid, the property of being colored, and the property of being alive.  All of these require matter to be suitably organized before they can be displayed.  With this much, any materialist will agree.  But any property dualist makes the further claim that mental states and properties are irreducible, in the sense that they are not just organizational features of physical matter, as are the examples cited.  They are said to be novel properties beyond prediction or explanation by physical science."  

The claim of both emergence and irreducibility is, to put it mildly, puzzling.  I would claim it's an outright contradiction.  Be suspicious of such claims.

Quote from: "Shine"

Quote from: "Tank"As a physicalist (like the term) I don't see the need for dualism. To me dualism came about because in ages ago people had knowledge (I can perceive the world around me) but no understanding (How do I perceive the world around me?) of the way we as an organism interact with our surroundings. And just as God was invoked to fill the knowledge/understanding gap in why the Sun comes up, the 'Mind' was invoked to explain our feeling of the separation of our physical perception from our conscious perception.

I agree with Tank.  I think that dualism is a supernatural concept that filled a gap in understanding, much in the same manner that a deity did.

I've seen the consciousness described as an "emergent property" of the brain, but I'm still not really sure what it means.  I think that it means that the capacity of "mind" is a function of the physical brain in the way that "vision" is a function of the eye.  If so, then I agree with it; cognition results from the complex chemical and electrical interactions of our gray matter.  There is just something about the sound of "emergent property" that sounds fishy to me, but it's likely because I do not fully understand it.

Video: Emergence
[youtube:3bmo6b2c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HVRniR3GrQ[/youtube:3bmo6b2c]
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Video: The Butterfly Effect - The secret Life of Chaos.
[youtube:3bmo6b2c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHGifWhoJ_M[/youtube:3bmo6b2c]

Emergent property in essence is the emerging end product, or result. For example,  information being processed through your computers CPU and Graphics card is an emerging property to which results as the displayed image before you on your computer screen. It is like that, a material physical process to where our thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas, or images in our heads are all material physical end products, patterns, or behaviors.. This deals with emergence of pattern, and behaviors according to chaos theory, or sublime order from a chaotic abstract system.  

What many people don't realize is that we are not aware of the emerging property until it has become the observable end product, or phenomenon we can call pain, emotion, feelings, morality, action, reaction, or behavioral pattern.  So we are not aware of which neuron fired first to create a 2D image in our head, nor are we consciously aware of the entire process. We can only be consciously aware of the end result.. Only when we study the human brain do we begin to understand the material physical processes at play, and that can be incredibly complicated.. To give you perspective I will give you an example. And you will be amazed at how repetitively fractal these things are in each and everyone of us.

Example:

The brain is comprised of roughly 100 billion cells interconnected in a network of neurons. The interesting thing about this fact is that no single neuron or brain cell is capable of consciousness or self-awareness. This means there is no "I" in team here, and that it takes a massive collective effort to support consciousness. If we were to cut away some brain cells from your brain, we could cultivate them and even teach them new tricks, or even program them.. So here are some very interesting video when considering brain activity, material physical phenomenon, and consciousness.

Computer Chips Fused with Brain Cells (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12037941/)

[youtube:3bmo6b2c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Ci3QCgPxg[/youtube:3bmo6b2c]

Robot controlled by braincells
[youtube:3bmo6b2c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-0eZytv6Qk[/youtube:3bmo6b2c]

The very fact that we can even communicate, teach, or program cultivations of brain cells is amazing enough without even going that step further into cybernetics, and robotics. :)

Quote from: "TheJackel"Emergent property in essence is the emerging end product, or result.

Emergence is also a technical philosophical term, as discussed by Mr. Churchland in my post above.  But, as I indicated, the property dualist variety has innumerable difficulties.

Quote from: "TheJackel"The very fact that we can even communicate, teach, or program cultivations of brain cells is amazing enough without even going that step further into cybernetics, and robotics.

Last week I attended a talk on Brain/Machine interactions as part of the World Science Festival here in NYC.  Fascinating discussion that included video of patients, with implanted chips, communicating with prosthetic, robotic machines via thought.  Wonderful stuff.

Quote from: "TheJackel"Much about consciousness is understanding Emergence, and how positive and negative feed back loops to which are electromagnetically driven function within a Neuron network.

This is a much more promising sense of the term "emergence," and likely key in understanding consciousness.  For example, how certain neuronal networks are able to observe other neuronal networks and thereby create a sense of internal awareness.

QuoteEmergence is also a technical philosophical term, as discussed by Mr. Churchland in my post above.  But, as I indicated, the property dualist variety has innumerable difficulties.

Heya Black Jester, thanks for the reply :)

QuoteWiki:
Property dualism describes a category of positions in the philosophy of mind which hold that, although the world is constituted of just one kind of substance - the physical kind - there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties. In other words, it is the view that non-physical, mental properties (such as beliefs, desires and emotions) inhere in some physical substances (namely brains).

I like to cut out the philosophical aspect and focus on what we actually know to be true to the nature of consciousness.. For instance we know that consciousness is indeed a material physical process and phenomenon, so this fact has already been long since validated, and can in fact physically be demonstrated through simple examples such as G-Lock, sedation, deep-water blackout, and how consciousness is directly reliant of oxygen..  This of course is including the fact that a consciousness can't actually be non-materialistic or comprised of nothing for obvious reasons. The dualist property is then false in that it is still of material physicality and phenomenon. And since a dualist property attempts to state that it has no physical properties, it would thus lack observable and functional  attributes to where consciousness can have no observable or functional property if it were not comprised of something with properties, or substance. Here dualist property is then irrelevant, and only a philosophical concept. There is a reason why we physically feel our emotions or pain, and why we can neither think, do, or even much less communicate without material physicality, or without matter and energy.

And the other misconception of dualist property is that it tends to view energy as non-physical, or non-material where as Physicalist, or materialist correctly views it as material and physical.. The other major problem with dualist property is it's inability to solve infinite regress, or be a universal set..So it takes more cause to support consciousness than it does to support unconsciousness, and thus is reliant on structure capable of processing information, thoughts, feelings, or emotion. Now without the processor we call the brain, there is no process-ability to process and execute consciousness, or cognitive dynamical patterns.  The other key problem with dualist property is that the fact that the conscious mind is temporally bound, to which in turn shows that it is in fact a materially and physically bound phenomenon. Thus without substance, or material physicality there can be no ability to have consciousness.  :cool:

Quote from: "TheJackel"I like to cut out the philosophical aspect and focus on what we actually know to be true to the nature of consciousness.. For instance we know that consciousness is indeed a material physical process and phenomenon. This fact has already been long since validated, and can in fact physically be demonstrated through simple examples such as G-Lock, sedation, deep-water blackout, and how consciousness is directly reliant of oxygen.. And this of course is including the fact that a consciousness can't actually be non-materialistic or comprised of nothing for obvious reasons. Thus the dualist property is false in that it is still that of material physicality and phenomenon. And since a dualist property attempts to state that it has no physical properties, it would thus lack observable and functional attributes. Thus consciousness can have no observable or functional property if not comprised of something with properties, or substance. Here dualist property is then thus irrelevant, and only a philosophical concept. There is a reason why we physically feel our emotions or pain, and why we can neither think, do, or even much less communicate without material physicality, or without matter and energy.

And the other misconception of dualist property is that it tends to view energy as non-physical, or non-material where as Physicalist, or materialist correctly views it as material and physical.. The other major problem with dualist property is it's inability to solve infinite regress, or be a universal set.. Hence, it takes more cause to support consciousness than it does to support unconsciousness, and thus is reliant on structure capable of processing information, thoughts, feelings, or emotion. Hence, without the processor we call the brain there is no process-ability to process and execute consciousness, or cognitive dynamical patterns. The other key problem with dualist property is that the fact that the conscious mind is temporally bound, to which in turn shows that it is in fact a materially and physically bound phenomenon. Thus without substance, or material physicality there can be no ability to have consciousness.

This seems a promising rebuttal.  I wonder if there are any dualists here that would care to take up the challenge of your reply?  The dualists, for example, would fiercely disagree with:

Quote from: "TheJackel"For instance we know that consciousness is indeed a material physical process and phenomenon.

And:

Quote from: "TheJackel"Here dualist property is then thus irrelevant, and only a philosophical concept.

But, at the same time, they have great difficulty in explaining:

Quote from: "TheJackel"This fact has already been long since validated, and can in fact physically be demonstrated through simple examples such as G-Lock, sedation, deep-water blackout, and how consciousness is directly reliant of oxygen.. And this of course is including the fact that a consciousness can't actually be non-materialistic or comprised of nothing for obvious reasons.

Or this:

Quote from: "TheJackel"And since a dualist property attempts to state that it has no physical properties, it would thus lack observable and functional attributes. Thus consciousness can have no observable or functional property if not comprised of something with properties, or substance.

They like to claim that advances in research on the brain do not score the physicalists points, because the mind may still be dependant upon the brain, while somehow different from it.  Just from the point of view of Occam's razor, I rebel against this counter-assertion.  Why on earth would you posit an extra 'substance," what is thereby gained?

Quote from: "TheJackel"and it's something I have been keeping an interested eye on

Me too!  It's a bit of an obsession of mine.  Aside from the many promising books on the subject, there's a great podcast for the interested lay person - "The Brain Science Podcast."  Look it up, if you haven't already!

Hey there Black Jester :)

QuoteThis seems a promising rebuttal.  I wonder if there are any dualists here that would care to take up the challenge of your reply?  The dualists, for example, would fiercely disagree with:

Not likely to ever happen without trying to pass off fantasy, or nonsensical arguments that don't address non-material, and non-physicality via tangible example. It would be like trying to imagine a -1 dimensional object. Hence, they can't do that without trying to claim nothing as a substance, object, or thing ;)

THE MUTE ARGUMENT:

A child is born unable to feel, see, hear, or smell and would result In the fact that this child would be completely unable to respond to any outside source of stimuli, or  sense and observe it. This child would be in a solipsistic state of mind to where this child's universe could never consciously perceive that of our own universe even though this child is equally apart of it.. This in a sense is an example of Occam's Razor, and a Sollipsist reality.. This child would not know that itself is a living biological being born from the whom of his mother... And it gets better, we being the outside observers could never peer into this child's mind, or this child's universe to understand what kind of reality this child is experiencing. Hence, we could never establish if this child is even conscious, self-aware, or has imagined a whole different universe of existence.. Hence, can a world be created within the mind based off what little information the locked in mind may have gathered during it's development in the whom?

So what happens if this child wakes up and discovers that itself is apart of another universe much grander than the one he was locked into? And what does that say about our own universe?.. Are we locked in? Is there an ever ingress in reality? So if we die and wake up in another universe, what kind of understanding would we have of reality or of existence?. So if this child wakes up and tells us, or explains to us what his reality was like, He nor we could ever really know if we are in a similar Lock-in, or explain our entire existence and universe. However, what we do know is that no matter what the case may be, the mind will always require containment, a place to exist, and material physicality.  This argument was originally posted here:

Reality minus the real (http://thinkingaloudforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=130&t=14006&start=60)

As you can see here, I am not arguing against spirituality, or life after death. What I am arguing is that one needs to be at the very least realistic in their philosophical point of view, and a dualist property is inherently improbable and impossible. We, or our minds can not possibly be made of nothing, and it's really that simple. :) Thanks for the Podcast tip

I'm not quite sure I see precisely how you answer the question of the subjective nature of consciousness. :)  




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Quote from: "winli"I'm not quite sure I see precisely how you answer the question of the subjective nature of consciousness. :)  :D

Quote from: "winli"I'm not quite sure I see precisely how you answer the question of the subjective nature of consciousness. :)  :D . But, I would say that my arguments are incredibly accurate in many respects to consciousness. Now I am curious as to what you mean by "subjective nature" because any nature, or behavior is accurately dependent on the 3 basic laws that govern everything.. Those 3 laws are very simple and are the very basic natural attributes and properties of energy itself, or the entirety of existence.

1) Positive
2) Neutral
3) Negative

Everything you can possibly think of ride on these 3 laws.. That's everything such as electromagnetism, thoughts, feelings, action, reaction, response, choice, decision, momentum, oscillation, calculation, process, inertia, time, evolution, morality, mental addiction, computation, mechanics, Feed back loops, order, chaos, and so on.. It's the very essence  that drives emergence of order, patterns, and behavior. And all minds require being bound to these very material physical laws..  

Quote from: "TheJackel"

Quote from: "winli"I'm not quite sure I see precisely how you answer the question of the subjective nature of consciousness. :)  :D . But, I would say that my arguments are incredibly accurate in many respects to consciousness. Now I am curious as to what you mean by "subjective nature" because any nature, or behavior is accurately dependent on the 3 basic laws that govern everything.. Those 3 laws are very simple and are the very basic natural attributes and properties of energy itself, or the entirety of existence.

1) Positive
2) Neutral
3) Negative

Everything you can possibly think of ride on these 3 laws.. That's everything such as electromagnetism, thoughts, feelings, action, reaction, response, choice, decision, momentum, oscillation, calculation, process, inertia, time, evolution, morality, mental addiction, computation, mechanics, Feed back loops, order, chaos, and so on.. It's the very essence  that drives emergence of order, patterns, and behavior. And all minds require being bound to these very material physical laws..  

I don't think your explanations regarding the material explicability of what we scientifically observe as the behavior of brains is being called into question.  The question is how to answer folks like Chalmers and his friends who claim that there is such a thing as a "hard" problem of consciousness.  The separation between 'what it is like' to be something and a material description of that something.  We can describe the operation of a thing entirely in 3rd person physical laws, as you say.  But we cannot observe 1st person "Qualia" - the experience of what it is like to have a certain experience.  Your reduction of "feelings" to the laws you state is really only the reduction of the 3rd person brain states that correlate with subjective feelings to laws.  You are not reducing (says Chalmers) the subjective experiences themselves to those laws.

Has none of you noticed that winli is a stealth spammer?

Quote from: "The Black Jester"

Quote from: "TheJackel"

Quote from: "winli"I'm not quite sure I see precisely how you answer the question of the subjective nature of consciousness. :)  :D . But, I would say that my arguments are incredibly accurate in many respects to consciousness. Now I am curious as to what you mean by "subjective nature" because any nature, or behavior is accurately dependent on the 3 basic laws that govern everything.. Those 3 laws are very simple and are the very basic natural attributes and properties of energy itself, or the entirety of existence.

1) Positive
2) Neutral
3) Negative

Everything you can possibly think of ride on these 3 laws.. That's everything such as electromagnetism, thoughts, feelings, action, reaction, response, choice, decision, momentum, oscillation, calculation, process, inertia, time, evolution, morality, mental addiction, computation, mechanics, Feed back loops, order, chaos, and so on.. It's the very essence  that drives emergence of order, patterns, and behavior. And all minds require being bound to these very material physical laws..  :) I physically feel when I am sad, happy, or mad, and without that I could be neither of them, I just can't observe or feel those emerging properties to which are in process of becoming an emotion, thought, feeling ect.  I can experience the patterns materially and physically in the first person POV. 100% what you feel is all physical reactions to negative, positive, or neutral stimuli. All subjective experiences can only be a positive, negative, or neutral experiences. Experiences are only the act of observation and application of positive, negative, or neutral abstract meaning. A plant can unconsciously experience touch and react to it, or even react defensively to it. Human emotions are nothing more than highly evolved patterns of behavior, actions, or responses to which you can find in other living organisms. And what most people don't realize is that these things are not unique to humans, but are subject to anything with a brain..It's just depends on how primitive you go with each of them.  Dolphins and Killer Whales for example are considered self conscious, but not as intelligent as you or I.. They too can feel, taste ectra that is associated with Quaila.

For example:

I can overcome taste with pain by biting my tongue.. These kinds of tests show how consciousness is indeed a material physical thing.. This includes headaches, dreams, thoughts, ideas, ectra.. Much of this is pretty Fractal in all of us and shows common material physical patterns.. Hence, why does chicken taste like chicken to everyone?  So if we can't make up our own flavors without needing material physicality to have them, arguments like Qualia just show their lack of understanding in regards to material physicality..

So here  are some questions for you...

1) Can you have an emotion without physically feeling it?
2) What physical patterns make up an emotion or feeling? Hence, what do you physically feel
3) What causes the positive, negative of neutral reaction, response, or action?
4) How do we apply meaning, or interpret these physical patterns or feelings?
5) Is Qualia just a means to describe the material physical patterns of feelings and emotions in abstract 3rd person interpretation of processes by people like Chalmer?
6) Can we have an entity, consciousness that has no inertia, substance, dimension, or physicality? Hence, how can nothing be of substance or of entity?
7) Can we do anything or be anything without energy?

Quote from: "Tank"Has none of you noticed that winli is a stealth spammer?

I only responded to her the first time, in this thread, because it was my first time seeing her responses period.  I noticed the links after I saw her second post, and yes, it became obvious when several posts had the same one line catch-phrase.  So yes, after this, I did notice.

Quote from: "TheJackel"That's interesting, however that would be false because Chalmers is then suggesting consciousness is made of nothing...

Completely agree...this is my main problem with Chalmers and his ilk.

Quote from: "TheJackel"I had already gone over why we can't observe the entirety of these processes within 1st person because it is not possible to do so when you are the end product. We can not in first person observe the emerging property of conscious ourselves, thoughts, ideas, feelings, or emotions.

Yes you did go over this, and it is a great point, but you did not refute the fact that we cannot observe 1st person processes via 3rd person observations - which is the actual point of contention, not what you stated about how the 1st person end product of a 3rd person processes cannot observe that 3rd person process.  The stated "problem" is different.  

What you say is really only an argument to show how a 1st person perspective could be mistaken about what process gave rise to it, not what the content of that process actually is.  But anyway, I don't want to lose sight of the fact that I agree with you - mostly because material neuroscience has made more progress in explaining the correlates of conscious experience, and has developed more sound and testable theories in the last hundred years than Philosophy of Mind has in the last several hundred.

Quote from: "TheJackel"And no, my laws are entirely applicable to feelings in the first person  I physically feel when I am sad, happy, or mad, and without that I could be neither of them, I just can't observe or feel those emerging properties to which are in process of becoming an emotion, thought, feeling ect. I can experience the patterns materially and physically in the first person POV.

This is only relevant if you already accept that physical sensation is a necessary condition of emotion and is more relevant than cognitive, evaluative content, which might be causing the secondary, accidental physical reactions we experience as a component of emotion (and if you also already accept, in any case, that cognitive content is material in nature, and must be so to interact with a physical body) - but that hasn't been decided, that is actually (amazingly) disputed.  Again, I agree with you, but your arguments seem to proceed somewhat from the conclusions you set out to demonstrate.  I think any common sense analysis of what we mean when we talk about emotion has to involve a physical sensation as a necessary component, but, at least in philosophic circles, that is a point of contention.

Quote from: "TheJackel"So if we can't make up our own flavors without needing material physicality to have them, arguments like Qualia just show their lack of understanding in regards to material physicality..

Dan Dennett, whom I'm beginning to delve more into now, argues that "qualia" are a hopelessly confused and problematic construct - and in fact don't exist as such.  I'm looking forward to getting more into his arguments as to why that might be the case.

Quote from: "TheJackel"So here are some questions for you...

1) Can you have an emotion without physically feeling it?
2) What physical patterns make up an emotion or feeling? Hence, what do you physically feel
3) What causes the positive, negative of neutral reaction, response, or action?
4) How do we apply meaning, or interpret these physical patterns or feelings?
5) Is Qualia just a means to describe the material physical patterns of feelings and emotions in abstract 3rd person interpretation of processes by people like Chalmer?
6) Can we have an entity, consciousness that has no inertia, substance, dimension, or physicality? Hence, how can nothing be of substance or of entity?
7) Can we do anything or be anything without energy?

1) As far as I'm concerned?  No.  The philosopher Jesse Prinz has a great book on this - The Emotional Construction of Morals.
2) Again, as far as I'm concerned?  Neurobiological and physiological reactions to stimuli, internal or external.
3) Conscious or unconscious evaluations of #2 coupled with environmental context.
4) See #3
5) Yes, I think so.  Again, the concept of "Qualia" may be fatally flawed.
6) Not as far as I know.  Never seen it...
7) See # 6.

Quinn

I agree with Nicholas Humphrey that consciousness arose from the need to process sensation, and that consciousness is merely the concatenation of different sections of the brain minding the others, and being processed in parallel with each other.

It is in this sense that I hold it to be an emergent property -- it emerges from the material substrate only as a result of those material transactions themselves.

Sorry if that's cloudy, but telescopes rarely look at themselves.

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Sorry if that's cloudy, but telescopes rarely look at themselves.

Good point...

Quote from: "The Black Jester"

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Sorry if that's cloudy, but telescopes rarely look at themselves.

Good point...

Basically I could sum up a Qualia in the physical changes of patterns via interaction with other patterns.. Qualia to me is just the representation of applying descriptions to observable physical phenomenon while itself is a physical phenomenon reliant on the observational processing of the observable phenomenon to be an emerging property itself.. Hence the description is a pattern too, or material physical phenomenon.. it's like asking yourself if a 2D image in your head is really a 2D material physical phenomenon or object.. The answer is yes it is, and so is any other thought, or idea concerning this 2D object. Consciousness to me is a very complex chaotic system of material physical relationships and patterns to where consciousness itself is the emergent property and end product..

However I am really, really tired..So I don't know if anything I said above here makes any sense to you .

Quote from: "The Black Jester"

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Sorry if that's cloudy, but telescopes rarely look at themselves.

Good point...

Basically I could sum up a Qualia in the physical changes of patterns via interaction with other patterns.. Qualia to me is just the representation of applying descriptions to observable physical phenomenon while itself is a physical phenomenon reliant on the observational processing of the observable phenomenon to be an emerging property itself.. Hence the description is a pattern too, or material physical phenomenon.. it's like asking yourself if a 2D image in your head is really a 2D material physical phenomenon or object.. The answer is yes it is, and so is any other thought, or idea concerning this 2D object. Consciousness to me is a very complex chaotic system of material physical relationships and patterns to where consciousness itself is the emergent property and end product..

However I am really, really tired..So I don't know if anything I said above here makes any sense . I'm trying to find a link on a new thing in science or medicine that can actually translate images from the mind, or memories.

Quote from: "TheJackel"

Quote from: "The Black Jester"

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Sorry if that's cloudy, but telescopes rarely look at themselves.

Good point...

Basically I could sum up a Qualia in the physical changes of patterns via interaction with other patterns.. Qualia to me is just the representation of applying descriptions to observable physical phenomenon while itself is a physical phenomenon reliant on the observational processing of the observable phenomenon to be an emerging property itself.. Hence the description is a pattern too, or material physical phenomenon.. it's like asking yourself if a 2D image in your head is really a 2D material physical phenomenon or object.. The answer is yes it is, and so is any other thought, or idea concerning this 2D object. Consciousness to me is a very complex chaotic system of material physical relationships and patterns to where consciousness itself is the emergent property and end product..

However I am really, really tired..So I don't know if anything I said above here makes any sense to you :D

But again, it is a description that is a Just So Story (one that I can buy into, but one nonetheless).  

For a summary of the actual claim regarding the "explanatory gap," here is this from Conceptual Analysis, Dualism, and the Explanatory Gap by Ned Block and Robert Stalnaker:

QuoteThe explanatory gap. Consciousness is a mystery.  No one has ever given an account, even a highly speculative, hypothetical, and incomplete account of how a physical thing could have phenomenal states (Nagel 1974, Levine 1983).  Suppose that consciousness is identical to a property of the brain-say, activity in the pyramidal cells of layer 5 of the cortex involving reverberatory circuits form cortical layer 6 to the thalamus and back to layers 4 and 6-as Crick and Koch have suggested for visual consciousness (Crick 1994).  Still, that identity itself calls out for explanation!

Nagel, Chalmers, et al, suggest that materialists are essentially begging the question by assuming an identity and not explaining that identity in terms that truly explicate the origin of subjective experience.  Particularly since the flow of inner life, of phenomenal feels, of thoughts, experiences, sensations themselves are not experienced as anything like pulsations of electrical activity, but as those sensations.  The red of an apple cannot properly be said to belong to the external world of the apple.  Instead, certain properties of the apple's skin reflect visible light in such a way as to stimulate the cones of your retina in a particular manner, and this information is relayed to the various layers of the cortex.  That information is solely electrochemical activity.  But where is the redness itself?  Where does it exist?  If we look in the brain, we do not see "redness" or your experience of "redness," which is only accessible to you, but the electrical activity of the brain.

To me, this is an enormous and stupid confusion, but I am not now sophistocated enough, or developed enough, to refute the philosophers on their own terms.

Red = name give or informational pattern give to give red a description to a particular wave length of light

They are just pattern we assign to other patterns as descriptions said observed pattern or phenomenon. If our eyes were any different we could see red as some other color. The rest is just trying to understand how we even see red, but this is like trying to argue how does a video camera record and play back video in color.. Our ability and asign abstract meaning to things allows us to develop a language to give order and definition to what we observe... Hence was Red to a cave man UHH UHH EERRRR UHH? So how do we define red? Well seemingly things that were red were hot . It's like he's begging the question himself in the sense that his argument is like asking if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, did the tree make a sound?. Red isn't exactly bound to need our interpretation to exist, or to be of wave length. Hence, existence doesn't require consciousness to exist, it's the other way around to where consciousness requires existence to exist and be of process.. So we don't create complexity because that would be impossible, thus logically complexity creates us beginning at the lowest possible level of complexity.

hence, you need a language to even explain to start with.. Much of his argument sadly relates to the evolution of language and our ability to assign meanings to observations.. It does get complicated though and I can often see why theists would have a hard time understanding that every has material physicality..

It is possible that I am mischaracterizing the dualists' arguments against materialist reduction, but I don't think so.  In any case, I'm taking a formal class in Philosophy of Mind (also one in Epistemology) in the coming fall, so I may be able to present the ideas on all sides more clearly after that time.  At present, I am relying on my own, unguided readings on the subject matter that I've done for pleasure, so my philosophical education may have gaps.

There's also a fairly interesting (and long) discussion of this topic here:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/philosophy/another-consciousness-topic-t1487.html