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@smcder @Constance
As you should know, I don't think there is a casual relationship between the body and the mind; I think there is a perceptual/perspectival relationship. Thus, I believe that any neuroscientist seeking to explain how the body causes consciousness and mind will fail.
(As noted several posts back, my notions of consciousness and mind seem best captured by the terms protoconsciousness [the ocean] and consciousness [waves within the ocean].)
Constance, your position as clarified above is that consciousness/mind strongly emerges from life processes as an ontologically new and distinct entity. And that once emerged, evolves and unfolds presumably along side the physical but according to its own, non-physical processes. Though he may deny it, I think Smcder has an affinity for this non-local approach as well. However, please don't project this view onto my approach as that will create confusion for you.)
Where I do agree with the neuroscientists is in the notion that the mind is essentially brain-based. (IE, the waves in the ocean of protoconsciousness are very likely, er, brain waves.) Again, I'm not saying that the mind emerges strongly from the brain. I'm saying the brain (or more specifically brain processes) and the mind are the same thing!
Again, the brain doesn't cause the mind, and the mind doesn't emerge strongly from the brain. Brain processes and the stream of consciousness are one and the same.
The structural mismatch question then needs to be answered. If brain processes and the stream of consciousness are one and the same, why do they seem to be structurally mismatched? My answer is 1) there has been some successful albeit primitive matching between brain processes and the stream of consciousness (see color perception), and 2) the perspectival approach to the Mindy-Body Problem logically leads to a Direct Scientific Realism (also known as Critical Realism) approach to perception--and knowledge itself?--therefore we shouldn't be surprised that brain processes and the stream of consciousness have a structural mismatch.
This means--on this view--that the stream of consciousness (the mind) will in principle never be fully explain via brain mechanics. At the most, we will continue to map brain processes and properties of the mind onto one another, but there will never be a 1:1 match. And there will never be a hard causal relationship established, only correlational relationships bidirectionally between brain processes and mind processes.
@Constance @smcder
Okay, my use of nonlocal seems to have created confusion. I'm not finding a definitive definition on the interwebs.
What I meant to capture with the term was the idea that the mind and body where only loosely related; that the mind can and does exist in the absence of the body; that the mind is not located (non local) at the body.
If this is not how the term is usually meant, then the confusion is on my part.
To clarify my approach: I do think that consciousness (feeling) is non local, but creature minds are "located" at the body. The mind and body are ontologically identical on my approach, only seeming to be distinct due to the nature of perception.
@Constance @smcder
Okay, my use of nonlocal seems to have created confusion. I'm not finding a definitive definition on the interwebs.
What I meant to capture with the term was the idea that the mind and body where only loosely related; that the mind can and does exist in the absence of the body; that the mind is not located (non local) at the body.
If this is not how the term is usually meant, then the confusion is on my part.
To clarify my approach: I do think that consciousness (feeling) is non local, but creature minds are "located" at the body. The mind and body are ontologically identical on my approach, only seeming to be distinct due to the nature of perception.
The whole "there must be a subject of experience" argument is admittedly lost on me (so, I need to read/think more about it) but on Itay Shani's model, the ocean of consciousness itself is the ultimate subject of experience.From the above, you still seem to have the problem of "subjectless experience".
The whole "there must be a subject of experience" argument is admittedly lost on me (so, I need to read/think more about it) but on Itay Shani's model, the ocean of consciousness itself is the ultimate subject of experience.
To me, it seems conceivable for there to be qualitative feels sans a subject. Calling such subjectless qualitative feels "experiences" then would make little sense.The whole "there must be a subject of experience" argument is admittedly lost on me.
That admission is helpful. (Set aside the ocean of consciousness for now.)
If you say that "there must be a subject of experience" is lost on you - do you mean that there can be, that it is possible to have experience without a subject?
To me, it seems conceivable for there to be qualitative feels sans a subject. Calling such subjectless qualitative feels "experiences" then would make little sense.
It is only when a qualitative feel is experienced by a subject that we refer to it as an experience.
If one is arguing that there cannot be qualitative feels without a subject when one says that there cannot be subjectless experience, then I don't follow. However, if one is merely saying that qualitative feels should not be called experiences in the absence of a subject, then I agree.
My current view is that the sense of being a subject is a qualitative feel itself.
Soupie If one is arguing that there cannot be qualitative feels without a subject when one says that there cannot be subjectless experience, then I don't follow.
I understand Strawson, as I posted above, to be making that argument:
What is the relation between an experience, its subject, and its content
Soupie to me, it seems conceivable for there to be qualitative feels sans a subject.
First, to make sure we have a common vocabulary:
1. how do you define "qualitative feels"? examples?
2. how do you define "subject"?
3. (depending on how you answer 1) are all qualitative feels possible without a subject?
1. The contents of consciousness. Qualia.1. how do you define "qualitative feels"? examples?
2. how do you define "subject"?
3. (depending on how you answer 1) are all qualitative feels possible without a subject?
1. The contents of consciousness. Qualia.
2. A subject is a phenomenal POV in space and time.
3. No. It seems that many—but arguably not all—human conscious experiences include the phenomenal sense of being a subject.
I'll try to convey how I conceive of a stream of consciousness sans the sense of being a subject.
Imagine some ancient, primitive ocean creature (perhaps a cellular organism) floating in an ocean current. Imagine that when it is floating in a current that provides it with what it needs to maintain homeostasis this creature is in a state of phenomenal satiation, however, there is no sense of being located in a particular space or time. It just is. It just is satiated. There is no sense of "I am satisfied." It is satiation.
However, imagine that the ocean current changes temperature and this primitive creature is no longer in homeostasis. It is uncomfortable. Again there is no qualitative sense of self/other, past/future, here/there. It simply is [in] a state of phenomenal uncomfortableness.
Another thought experiment is to simply consider a fetus and even days old new borns. I think it's obvious that they are phenomenally conscious, but—especially in the womb—whether they possess a sense of self/other, past/present, here/there is questionable.
I imagine life begins with a chaotic swirl of phenomenal feeling that rapidly develops into a sense of self, a subject of experience.
No, again, I think that the phenomenal sense of being a self/subject is a content of consciousness; a rather advanced one at that. Furthermore, I think that contents of (the ocean of) consciousness can exist in the absence of a sense of being a subject as I tried to illustrate with my example of a simple organism.So 1 does not exist without 2? There is not a "what it is like to be" prior to creatures?
I think it's critical to @Soupie's view that phenomenal consciousness, qualitative feel be fundamental - otherwise you get some form of the hard problem or combination problem.