Consciousness, A Discussion

I like the idea of epiphenomenal qualia, as proposed by Jackson.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/

The argument contained in this passage may be put like this:
(1) Mary has all the physical information concerning human color vision before her release.
(2) But there is some information about human color vision that she does not have before her release.
Therefore
(3) Not all information is physical information.

 

I emiigrated from another site because our discussions of consciousness are more pertinent here. I'lll import the discussion from that site to this one, so that Guerillabedlam or others can respond.

Consciousness is awareness of experience--our most immediate apprehension of reality. The problem that it poses for evolution is what survival value does it have? The theory of natural selection posits that our basic purpose is to survive and reproduce. How is this better served by conscious humans than by zombies? On the other hand, the fact that we have such a faculty is important theologically, because if we didn't, we wouldn't be aware of our existence or of the "great big wonderful world we live in". Atheist and neuroscientist Sam Harris acknowledges that scientists don't understand consciousness. "The idea that brains produce consciousness is little more than an article of faith among scientists at present and there are many reasons to believe that the methods of science will be insufficient to either prove or disprove it." The End of Faith, p. 208). Harris is also impressed by research showing that much of our behavior is autonomic and that our decisions are often made before we're aware of them. So what is consciousness good for? As neuroscientists Crick and Koch asked "Why does our brain not consist simply of a series of specialized zombie systems?" Neuroscientist David Eggerman speculates that consciousness is the "CEO" of the neural network , making higher-level decisions and setting new tasks. But why would even that require subjective awareness? Philosopher-mathematican Alfred North Whitehead speculated that "proto-consciousness" exists in all matter. It might be that consciousness is simply a fortuitous by-product that just happened to emerge as our brains became bigger and more complicated. If so, the development of consciousness must be viewed as a rather fortuitous outcome of the "blind" process of evolution. Without it, no one would know that it even happened!

 

Quote: GurrillaBedlam
Several answers seem blatantly obvious in relation to why consciousness would be preferable over being zombies in regards to evolution. Some that come to mind are Having more developed consciousness can benefit a species in allowing it to better be aware of predators/prey. In regards to reproduction, consciousness can help mates select traits or qualities that they are seeking to make fit offspring. But these responses only consider survival value in how you have posed the question and only this aspect of consciousness you mentioned.


I really don't think that is the significant obstacle in regards to evolution addressing consciousness that McKenna is speaking to. I don't know the surrounding context of the McKenna quote but I assume he is perhaps addressing this from at least 1 of 2 different angles.

1) that there has not been a consciousness 'control center' found in the brain. So unlike, say the eye, which has thought to be a series of gradual steps to reach it's level of 'perfection' that we view it as today by evolutionary biologists, which suggests theoretically we could find all the graduated intermediates of the evolution of the eye, there is no parallel location of consciousness. I attempted to correlate, what I'll call second tier variables, such as brain size and quantity of neurons to consciousness in my previous post, but admittedly it is a bit presumptuous and a grasping effort by scientific standards.

2) The other is that When many people are talking about consciousness, they often are meaning something more complex than that definition you offered for us. I get the impression that when many people speak of consciousness, particularly coming from a mystical or religious angle, McKenna most likely the former, they often treat consciousness as having this aspect of wholly other. That there is a feeling that some if not all that constitutes their consciousness resides somewhere else besides between their ears and head to toe. I think this aspect is the true riddle of consciousness, I can't really relate to some claims people make in regards to it but I understand the sensation that my thinking mind often will seem disparate, from the rest of my cohesive person. That voice of 'I' as if some region of mind is controlling the rest of my being through some sort of interface or something.

 

Thanks!

 

Okiefreak, on 04 Oct 2015 - 09:50 AM, said:
Joshua Tree: I think these are important points, and basic for a meaningful discussion of consciousness. In earlier discussion (supra), I defined consciousness initially a "awareness of experience--our most immediate apprehension of reality. Guerrillabedlam ( whom I'll nickname GB) said that this was simplistic, and I agree. I then gave a more complete definition:"I think the kind of consciousness that is involved when neuroscientists like Chalmers speak of it being a "hard problem of consciousness" is phenomenal awareness, subjective experience or sentience--the ability to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. Consciousness, in this sense, refers to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal side of our mental lives--what is it like to experience a sunset or a symphony,or to contemplate the nature of consciousness. By this definition, qualia are central to the discussion. GB asked me if qualia and consciousness were the same. I think they're almost the same. phenomenal consciousness is made up of qualia-- qualia being the subjective experience of consciousness that's unique in relation to a given stimuls. It's important to note that some writers deny or dismiss the importance of qualia. The philosopher Daniel Dennett, one of the "Four Horsemen" who has written a 511 page book entitled Consciousness Explained, is one of those. Dennett seems to be influenced by the postivist tradition in philosophy and behaviorism in psychology, which regard such concepts as too messy and untestable to bother with. So his book is full of interesting information pertinent to consciousness, but it's very much like that lady Jackson talks about who spend her life in a black and white world studying the color red--measuring light frequencies etc., but missing the subjective experience that I consider central and Chalmers describes as the hard problem. Here are some articles that I think are good background to these issues. http://enlightenedworldview.com/blog/?title=phenomenal-consciousness-and-the-cause&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
1http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Qualia; http://psychology.wi...com/wiki/Qualia

 

The point is that there's more to color than the physical properties, and that missing dimension is what most of us would consider to be the most important. This doesn't mean that we should blame Mary for making the most of what she has, and she can make important contributions to out understanding of color by telling us about the physical information. But we wouldn't have a complete understanding of color by relying on the accounts of a color blind person. And that is precisely what we get from some writers on consciousness who dismiss qualia as irrelevant because it's fuzzy and unmeasurable by standard empirical techniques. Daniel Dennet is like a color blind person trying to make sense of color. His effort to understand Consciousness is commendable and contains valuable information, but he is fundamentally inadequate, and worst of all advances his way as the only valid approach and implies that those who don't see it that way are fuzzy minded. As I said before, consciousness is awareness of experience--our most immediate apprehension of reality. It's what makes me aware that I exist--essentially what Descartes was saying by "I think, therefore I am". I'd modify that a bit to say "I experience, therefore I am." No amount of studies by well-credentialed experts based on mountains of peer reviewed research could convince me that this phenomenon doesn't exist or is irrelevant, and Dennett's attempt to do just that considerably lowered my estimation of him.

 

I was about to be quick to respond to MeAgain's post in a similar vein but as I was writing, I realized there was a subtlety in his post that struck me in a borderline profound way. (Perhaps it was the qualia )

The color blind person is dealing with a physical deficit, apparently this is not the case with Mary and she is a color scientist. The absurdity of electing a color scientist who has been trapped in a black and white room her whole life aside, where along the lines is it that Mary gains this new information to complete her knowledge of color that is not physical? Presumably this occurs due to her stepping outside the room to let's say be greeted by a red light, but this is an interaction of light hitting her retina being translated by her visual cortex, so where does the non-physical interaction come into play?

 

Spoken like a true reductionist. Mary is a color scientist and is capable of "seeing" red, but lives in a world of black and white Yes situation is absurd, but that's the case with analogies and metaphors (e.g., the Bible). To add to the absurdity, let's suppose she also has a Ph.D. in human reproductive physiology, a virgin, and deaf. She leaves her shelter and enters the world of color, music and sex. What are her experiences? Would she find that anything much is added to her understanding by it? Those paintings by Botticelli, Rembrandt and Picasso resemble the black and whites she's been studying in her lab: same shapes, same frequencies, somewhat different, so what? Did they have the same emotional impact for her in the lab that they have now? Did she come more alive to the real world and the geniuses that created these works, or are they just irrelvant to the underlying realities of shapes, paint on canvas? She hears Bach and Mozart for the first time. Just notes? And she has her first sexual encounter. Pretty much the same as I expected from those physiology books? This seems to be Dennett's mindset. Unless he's a highly functioning zombie, he's obviously experienced the kind of consciousness that includes qualia. And yet he thinks its irrelevant to our understanding of consciousness, which he studies in much the same way as Mary studied art, music and sex. Worse than Mary, he maintains that's the only valid way to study it. In other words, he makes what Chalmers calls the "hard problem" of consciousness easy by eliminating qualia and producing a 500 page book entitled Consciousness Explained.

Taken on its face, this seems curious to say the least. To understand it, I think we need to take a look at the ideological overlay that "consciousness" has taken on over the centuries. First, there is the metaphysical overlay from associations with Soul Hindus and people influenced by Hinduism think that consciousness is all there is, and that when we realize this, we'' know we're all part of the One. I debated a guy on these forums who was arguing that physical reality doesn't exist. I told him he could test his theory by jumping off the top of a tall building. That was cruel, and I've felt guilty about it. He hasn't been on this site since, and I hope he didn't follow my advice! Then there are the Christians and Muslims who think are inhabited temporarily by a kind of Casper the Friendly Ghost who is the real "us" and will take his flight when our body dies. And finally the followers of Descartes who inflicted on us Mind-Body Dualism. This led to a strong reaction in modern philosophy, including such thinkers as Gilbert Ryle who challenged the "Ghost in the Machine" . Ryle was Dennett's teacher and mentor. I think that's why Dennet can ignore the reality of his own experience and exclude it from his studies of consciousness.

You mention that "this is an interaction of light hitting her retina being translated by her visual cortex, so where does the non-physical interaction come into play?" That's exactly the issue, and the honest answer is we don't know. Pinker thinks we my never know, because it's simply beyond our human capabilities. I like to think he's wrong, because that would be boring, and the phenomenon is so fascinating. I, for one, think there is a non-physical interface. Qualia themselves seem to be non-physical, but there seems to be a large range of interface between the physical (matter) and the non-physical (energy). One can even be converted to the other, and we know that electrical activity goes on in our material brains. At present, we don't know how, if at all, this applies to qualia, but there are models of consciousness that have given it a try. The best one I know of is David Searle in The Mystery of Consciousness, acknowledging the reality or qualia as the essence of consciousness but advocating “biological naturalism”, in which consciousness entirely the result of neurobiological processes.

 

EEEK! I don't know about those definitions of consciousness, some of those which you are suggesting consciousness is not seem inextricably linked to consciousness, perhaps one of the aspects why the topic is so elusive.

For instance in regards to quaila and reactivity, what would it mean to experience a beautiful piece of music yet not be reactive to it?

 

Are these emotional impacts somehow residing outside of her physical experience though?

I mean I can sit here and think about a 1, 4, 5 chord progression of 12 bar blues and write it down in what key I want to be in and approximate the sound in my head. If when I go to play the composition on the guitar and have the direct experience of it, I'm obviously going to have a different experience compared to what my mind and paper envisioned prior but is there any aspect of non-physicality involved in this?

Clearly we are introducing new types of cerebral processing going from thinking about and writing the piece of music to playing it, such as having my hands strum the guitar and fret the correct notes, as well as picking up the sound that is coming out of the amplifier. So I don't think that I could say in this instance for certain some non-physical component has magically appeared from these 2 different experiences of writing the composition to performing it, they both rely on fairly different components of the mental/physical realm, even if they are set out to be directed towards the same experience.

 

I'd say probably not. We know that lots of interactions go on between the physical realm, (aka matter) and the non-physical realm (aka, energy), which we know are even interchangeable. Important examples are found in the brain, where electrical currents seem to be generated by physical material. One of the most intriguing efforts to integrate qualia with neurobiolgy is Professor John Searle of UCLA who proposes in The Mystery of Consciousness “biological naturalism”, in which qualia exist as the essence of consciousness but are caused by lower level neurobiological processes. Unfortunately, he's only a philosopher, so it will take the scientists to confirm this. This would require them to take qualia seriously enough not to dismiss it at the gate.

 

But some of us recognize it, so it would be presumptuous for her to deny its existence or to claim it isn't important.