Consciousness: freaky shit or nbd

if you allow that memory retrieval is equivalent to experience, why not modeling?

I would distinguish between the subjective experience of memory retrieval and the brain mechanisms of memory retrieval. No different from the visual experience case.

let's try a different angle: if an entity is performing recognizable mechanisms of memory retrieval, would you allow that the entity is having a subjective experience?

Perhaps, perhaps. I'm basically a panpsychist u kno. Would you?

I'd say so, too, but if we accept that, why isn't that enough?

Because I don't know what it is like to be a bat. Or a bloody hard drive. Because Mary doesn't know what it's like to see red. Because phenomenal subjective experience is nothing like anything in physics. Because http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

I'd say you could know what it is like to be a bat insofar that the bat doesn't know what it's like to be a bat either, so you're both on equal bat-ground.

I mean going back to the entity question, if it's performing a recognizable memory retrieval mechanism, the fact that it is recognizable means you are performing an analogous retrieval yourself, so you are more or less experiencing the same thing.

A feedback loop signifying self-awareness?

I dunno. y'all could just be thinking about peanut butter.

I mean going back to the entity question, if it's performing a recognizable memory retrieval mechanism, the fact that it is recognizable means you are performing an analogous retrieval yourself, so you are more or less experiencing the same thing.

So I can only know (questionable even whether this analogically reasoning is enough for knowledge) what it is like to experience something I have already experienced? That's the point of Mary the colourblind neuroscientist. Scientific knowledge alone is insufficient or incomplete.

Feedback, models, complexity, none of these bridge the gap.

You can have false memories so you don't have to have first-hand experience of something.

A false memory is a first-hand experience!

The Mary problem is particularly weird and egregious in that in her scenario, she's probably the only person in the world who actually knows what the experience of "red" is like for anyone else.

The premise is Mary has been gifted with supernatural knowledge (i.e. implanted with false memories)

She knows no such thing! Aargh! WHY CAN'T YOU SEE THE ELEPHANT?!

xp

food writing is generally pretty bad, but a sufficiently gifted food writer could describe a novel food you have never eaten before and you would be able to recognize it upon eating it (because in a sense you have already eaten it)

In what sense?

I mean going back to the entity question, if it's performing a recognizable memory retrieval mechanism, the fact that it is recognizable means you are performing an analogous retrieval yourself, so you are more or less experiencing the same thing.

Wait, you're begging the question here. Whether you are experiencing the same thing when the same recognisable mechanisms are operating is entirely the point in question

If you don't accept that you are both experiencing the same thing, then there's no basis to say that you can experience anything "red" because red is a referent to an experience performed by an entity that is different from you in the present.

No it isn't. Unless you're talking about my prior self as a distinct entity. (Are you?) Otherwise the referent of "red" is my own prior redness experience.

If you're claiming that my experience of red is necessarily the same as, say, yours on pain of meaninglessness then you're again begging the q.

Yes your prior self is a distinct entity that ought not be afforded privilege over a stranger provided the recognition is there

It has inherent privilege over a stranger in that both of us share the same referent for red. The memories of the referent may be unreliable or faulty, but it's possible to hypothesise an instance where they are reliable and accurate.

There is no similar instance than can be posited between us and the other non-us agents that don't have access to that referential experience at any time, even hypothetically.

Why not? you are as much a stranger to yourself as you are to someone else, given sufficient time.

The ship of Theseus might have all new wood, but it still isn't the Titanic

Same shit different boat

293. If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word “pain” means a must I not say that of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?

Well, everyone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! —– Suppose that everyone had a box with something in it which we call a “beetle”. No one can ever look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. a Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have some- thing different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing con- stantly changing. a But what if these people’s word “beetle” had a use nonetheless? a If so, it would not be as the name of a thing. The thing in the box doesn’t belong to the language-game at all; not even as a Something: for the box might even be empty. a No, one can ‘divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

— Uncle Ludwig, PI

whoops, graf continues:

That is to say, if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of ‘object and name’, the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.

Let's all go read PI and then reconvene, I've been meaning to do that for a few years here…

I will if you tell me:

what he means by "drops out of consideration as irrelevant"
his intended level of irony
what we are to take from this passage

Dude it's Wittgenstein, figuring out what he means is the whole game.

hahah ok

i guess what i take from that is: "we all in practice act as if we know what pain is, so stop theorizing about private unsharable experiences"

i think we are entering a realm where we no longer have to theorize because the private unsharable experiences are becoming less private and more sharable, to the point where we can reasonably say lobsters feel pain so we should probably stop cooking them that way.

I was going to say, I think the way we experience pain is highly socialized behavior.

Suppose that everyone had a box with something in it which we call a “beetle”. No one can ever look into anyone else’s box

Terrible analogy. Pain has many visible corrrelates such as wincing and other facial expressions, grunting, swearing or other noises, limping, jerking the affected area away from the cause of the pain. These are largely reflexive actions and they appear to be fairly universal.

The existence of these universally-shared pain-reflex actions does not prove that the underlying experience of the pain that causes them is also constant and universal. But this situation is a very long way from a "thing in a box that no one can see".

That may be Witt's point. In context, the beetle in the box has something to do with addressing the possibility of a private language. To Witt, if pain were a beetle in a box, talking about pain would be meaningless. So pain, in the language game, must be something else. NB I am not a Wittgenstein scholar nor do I play one on TV. I can email one though and see if he can remind me what the private language argument actually means.

From Russell's Problems of Philosophy, chapter 4, "Idealism":

The word 'idealism' is used by different philosophers in somewhat different senses. We shall understand by it the doctrine that whatever exists, or at any rate whatever can be known to exist, must be in some sense mental. This doctrine, which is very widely held among philosophers, has several forms, and is advocated on several different grounds. The doctrine is so widely held, and so interesting in itself, that even the briefest survey of philosophy must give some account of it.

There is no mention of materialism in the index.

i think we can suss out the hard problem of consciousness in a few hours if we just try really really hard

It's signal feedback.

lol crut

the more i read and think about this the harder the hard problem gets

which is comforting, somehow

Sometimes I forget what the actual problem is. Then I try to explain my position...

i think we can suss out the hard problem of consciousness in a few hours if we just try really really hard

Bedtime over here soon but go ahead, I'll check your working in the morning.

here goes: it is a very complex process involving a vast number of physical ingredients.

Ok do these o

Oops

Do these physical ingredients individually have intrinsic phenomenal qualities? Or do such qualities somehow arise when some level of complexity is reached? Or are there no such things as intrinsic phenomenal qualities? Or option d which is...
(Genuine non rhetorical q despite appearances. )

Could you elaborate on what exactly you mean by phenomenal qualities?

i was convinced by at the very least the debunking part of 'consciousness explained.'

Xp you know, good old qualia. The only thing we have direct experience of. I've linked to it before but I can't put my position re: physicalism better than this:
http://guidetoreality.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/quotes-on-key-mindbody-insight.html?m=1

I suppose I should read Dennett in a spirit of know your enemy but I can't get over how willing people are to deny their own direct experience.

dennett is a good read

xp

tbf philosophy has got a long tradition of considering the possibility of being mistaken about direct experience