Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 12

[stonehart]

Color is the result of evolution and very much tied into the biological imperative that animals need to find food/mate etc, to use this to define specific elements of consciousness I think you would first need to argue that color perception is the opposite to this which it is clearly not from a biological stand point.

Which came first the chicken or the egg? or in this case perception/understanding and or meaning of color or the simple biological need to eat and or mate? For sure meaning can be placed on perception of color be it dreams etc etc but this is post ipso facto, a result if you will and not the root cause, as such recognition and or understanding of color comes from socialization/biological imperitave and not from some deeper external force.

Humans see in color this is correct (well most of us do), then again so do many animals on this planet and then again many more do not or may only see specific bands of color as in the case of some dog breeds... this is all due to evolutionary pressure and not some external process, more to the point is that meaning is not even required for a species to develop color vision for all that is needed is the simple need to survive.

The real issue is that humans have developed large brains as a survival system, the draw back is that we are able to reflect on the notion of internal or external self largely because our brains were developed to problem solve, this is in a nutshell the conceit of consciousness, that we perceive there must be an external self to the the brain/mind when biologically this is not the case and from an evolutionary point of view totally unnecessary.

 

[Soupie]

“In fact, the only epistemology that is consistent with the modern materialistic world view is an identity theory (Feigl 1958; Russell 1927) whereby mind is identically equal to physical patterns of energy in the physical brain. To claim otherwise is to relegate the elaborate structure of conscious experience to a mystical state beyond the bounds of science.

The dimensions of conscious experience, such as phenomenal color and phenomenal space, are a direct manifestation of certain physical states of our physical brain.

The only right answer to Koffka’s question (Koffka 1935) is that things appear as they do because that is the way the world is represented in the neurophysiological mechanism of our physical brain.

In principle, therefore, the world of conscious experience is accessible to scientific scrutiny after all, both internally through introspection and externally through neurophysiological recording. And introspection is as valid a method of investigation as is neurophysiology, just as in the case of color experience.

 

[Soupie]

Re the structural mismatch cont.

“Of course, the mind can be expected to appear quite different from these two per- spectives, just as the data in a computer memory chip appear quite different when examined internally by data access as opposed to externally by electrical probes.

But the one quantity that is preserved across the mind/brain barrier is information content, and therefore that quantity can help to identify the neurophysiological mechanism or principle in the brain whose dimensionality, or information content, matches the observed dimensions of conscious experience.”

 

[Soupie]

Of course, the mind can be expected to appear quite different from these two perspectives...

The nature of perception (indirect realism) anticipates the mind-body problem, aka the structural mismatch.

Ie Due to the way perception works, we should expect the mind and the brain to “appear” structurally different. Not be baffled that they do.

Note: Lehar hasn’t tackled the qualitative nature of the mind yet. Interested to see how he handles that.

 

[Soupie]

“But until a mapping has been established between the conscious experience and the corresponding neurophysiological state, there is no way to verify whether the model has correctly replicated the psychophysical data.

Because these models straddle the mind/brain barrier, they run headlong into the issue that Chalmers (1995) dubbed the “hard problem” of consciousness.

Simply stated, even if we were to discover the exact neurophysiological correlates of conscious experience, there would always remain a final explanatory gap between the physiological and the phenomenal levels of description.

For example, if the activation of a particular cell in the brain were found to correlate with the experience of red at some point in the visual field, there would remain a vivid subjective quality, or quale, to the experience of red that is not in any way identical to any externally observable physical variable such as the electrical activity of a cell.

In other words, there is a subjective experiential component of perception that can never be captured in a model expressed in objective neurophysiological terms.”

 

[Randall]

“But until a mapping has been established between the conscious experience and the corresponding neurophysiological state, there is no way to verify whether the model has correctly replicated the psychophysical data..

And a lot of progress has been made in that regard.

For example, if the activation of a particular cell in the brain were found to correlate with the experience of red at some point in the visual field, there would remain a vivid subjective quality, or quale, to the experience of red that is not in any way identical to any externally observable physical variable such as the electrical activity of a cell.

In other words, there is a subjective experiential component of perception that can never be captured in a model expressed in objective neurophysiological terms.”

And therein is a perfectly good example of how we're dealing with two different concepts when it comes to the MBP, which is why I call it a false problem. All we need to accept is that it's safe to assume that all normal human brains somehow give rise to the human experience we call consciousness.

If we accept that, then we would have no reason not to assume that if we engineered an identical human brain, there would also be consciousness in that system as well. Assuming that is the case, then the next step is to identify the roles of all the constituent parts of the brain that are connected to consciousness. That can be done by enabling and disabling the various modules.

The methodology above is essentially part of the way that neuroscience has been correlating consciousness with brain function, leading to the finding that the thalamocortical loop plays a primary role. Much of the details still need to be established, but from here on in, it would seem to be only a matter of isolating things in greater detail, and at some point, we'll be left with the gold.

 

[stonehart]

And a lot of progress has been made in that regard.

And therein is a perfectly good example of how we're dealing with two different concepts when it comes to the MBP, which is why I call it a false problem. All we need to accept is that it's safe to assume that all normal human brains somehow give rise to the human experience we call consciousness.

If we accept that, then we would have no reason not to assume that if we engineered an identical human brain, there would also be consciousness in that system as well. Assuming that is the case, then the next step is to identify the roles of all the constituent parts of the brain that are connected to consciousness. That can be done by enabling and disabling the various modules.

The methodology above is essentially part of the way that neuroscience has been correlating consciousness with brain function, leading to the finding that the thalamocortical loop plays a primary role. Much of the details still need to be established, but from here on in, it would seem to be only a matter of isolating things in greater detail, and at some point, we'll be left with the gold.

Really good post Randall, I would say that new human brains are indeed made all the time for if you look at the development of a child's brain it is very much a tabula rasa as self awareness comes later as the child develops. Just a thought.

 

[Soupie]

Really good post Randall, I would say that new human brains are indeed made all the time for if you look at the development of a child's brain it is very much a tabula rasa as self awareness comes later as the child develops. Just a thought.

Yes. The isomorphism, if you will, between the development of the brain and the co-development of the mind is another indicator of the brain-mind nexus.

 

[Soupie]

Much of the details still need to be established, but from here on in, it would seem to be only a matter of isolating things in greater detail, and at some point, we'll be left with the gold.

I agree with you that we will continue to map out the isomorphisms between the brain and mind in more and more fine-grained detail. However the following fact still looms:

“In other words, there is a subjective experiential component of perception that can never be captured in a model expressed in objective neurophysiological terms.”

I believe I’ve articulated how to overcome this problem, but it’s time for me to subside when it comes to that haha.

 

[Constance]

The nature of perception (indirect realism) anticipates the mind-body problem, aka the structural mismatch.

Ie Due to the way perception works, we should expect the mind and the brain to “appear” structurally different. Not be baffled that they do.

Note: Lehar hasn’t tackled the qualitative nature of the mind yet. Interested to see how he handles that.

 

[Soupie]

@Constance @scmder

One final salvo. I'll attempt to articulate the two radical ideas for which i have come to have an affinity. I recognize that they are radical and rub against strong intuitions to their contrary. However nature need not be intuitive.

1) All of nature is qualitative, not just certain brain states.

How, Exactly, Does Neuroscience Account for the Way We See Color?

There are no colors out there in the world, Galileo tells us. They only exist in our heads. In the first of our dialogues about the mind, Riccardo Manzotti and I established that by “consciousness”…

lithub.com

"... [T]he current textbook view goes like this. The world is a place where objects reflect light, sunlight being the dominant source and as it were, the default setting as far as the kind of light is concerned. However, each object reflects only a subset of that light. Rays from this subset enter our retina and stimulate a honeycomb of cells, known as cones, because of their conical shape, whose function is to react differently to different portions of the visible spectrum (we remember, of course, that only a small part of the vast electromagnetic spectrum is visible).

Most humans—animals are rather different—possess three kinds of cones, referred to as S, M, and L cones, depending on whether they react more vigorously to short, medium, or long-range light wavelengths. The “output” of these cells is first merged together in the retina, then sent via the optical nerve to various cortical areas—including the famous V4. And that’s as much as we know.

TP: Riccardo, you just gave me the whole explanation without ever using the word color.

RM: I know! Oddly, this is a theory of color that does not need the notion of colors. I suppose the reason is that however carefully you follow neural signals from the retina along the optic nerve and across the brain, you don’t actually come across anything like a color, or anything that explains color perception. You could almost say that the notion of color is useless to color science, unless . . .

... But without our experience of color, science would have no reason to suspect its existence. There would just be 50 shades—or more likely 50,000 shades—of electromagnetic waves. That is why even a Nobel Prize-winning biologist like Gerald Edelman tells us that reality is actually colorless because he takes reality to be what science tells us it is, not what he experiences as an individual.

... If science tells you the world has no color, then you must fight against your perception that in fact it is leaping with color."

I think all of nature is leaping with a plethora of qualities the likes of which we can't even imagine.

2) Our perceptions of the world are akin to hallucinations or dreams mediated by environmental stimuli.

https://www.dartmouth.edu/~peter/pdf/15.pdf

"... if light from this paper is transduced by your retina into a neural signal that is transmitted from your eye to your brain, then the very first aspect of the paper that you can possibly experience is the information at the retinal surface, or the perceptual representation that is downstream of it in your brain.

The physical paper itself lies beyond the sensory surface and therefore must be beyond your direct experience. But the perceptual experience of the page stubbornly appears out in the world itself instead of in your brain, in apparent violation of everything we know about the causal chain of vision.

... the vivid spatial structure of this page that you perceive here in your hands is itself a pattern of activation within your physical brain, and the real paper of which it is a copy is out beyond your direct experience."

Lehar goes on to say, "Many people agree with the statement that everything you perceive is in some sense inside your head, and in fact they often complain that this is so obvious it need hardly be stated." However when taken to its logical conclusion—that the world we perceive around us is a manifestation of brain processes—there is a cognitive dissonance. The thought is just too radical.

When these two admittedly radical ideas are coupled together, we go a long way toward resolving the MBP, and a host of other problems of consciousness such as mental causation, overdetermination, and others.

These ideas certainly challenge our intuitions and may seem like tosh, but they are completely compatible with physics, if not our intuitions.

 

[smcder]

@Constance @scmder

One final salvo. ☺ I'll attempt to articulate the two radical ideas for which i have come to have an affinity. I recognize that they are radical and rub against strong intuitions to their contrary. However nature need not be intuitive.

1) All of nature is qualitative, not just certain brain states.

How, Exactly, Does Neuroscience Account for the Way We See Color?

There are no colors out there in the world, Galileo tells us. They only exist in our heads. In the first of our dialogues about the mind, Riccardo Manzotti and I established that by “consciousness”…

lithub.com

"... [T]he current textbook view goes like this. The world is a place where objects reflect light, sunlight being the dominant source and as it were, the default setting as far as the kind of light is concerned. However, each object reflects only a subset of that light. Rays from this subset enter our retina and stimulate a honeycomb of cells, known as cones, because of their conical shape, whose function is to react differently to different portions of the visible spectrum (we remember, of course, that only a small part of the vast electromagnetic spectrum is visible).

Most humans—animals are rather different—possess three kinds of cones, referred to as S, M, and L cones, depending on whether they react more vigorously to short, medium, or long-range light wavelengths. The “output” of these cells is first merged together in the retina, then sent via the optical nerve to various cortical areas—including the famous V4. And that’s as much as we know.

TP: Riccardo, you just gave me the whole explanation without ever using the word color.

RM: I know! Oddly, this is a theory of color that does not need the notion of colors. I suppose the reason is that however carefully you follow neural signals from the retina along the optic nerve and across the brain, you don’t actually come across anything like a color, or anything that explains color perception. You could almost say that the notion of color is useless to color science, unless . . .

... But without our experience of color, science would have no reason to suspect its existence. There would just be 50 shades—or more likely 50,000 shades—of electromagnetic waves. That is why even a Nobel Prize-winning biologist like Gerald Edelman tells us that reality is actually colorless because he takes reality to be what science tells us it is, not what he experiences as an individual.

... If science tells you the world has no color, then you must fight against your perception that in fact it is leaping with color."

I think all of nature is leaping with a plethora of qualities the likes of which we can't even imagine.

2) Our perceptions of the world are akin to hallucinations or dreams mediated by environmental stimuli.

https://www.dartmouth.edu/~peter/pdf/15.pdf

"... if light from this paper is transduced by your retina into a neural signal that is transmitted from your eye to your brain, then the very first aspect of the paper that you can possibly experience is the information at the retinal surface, or the perceptual representation that is downstream of it in your brain.

The physical paper itself lies beyond the sensory surface and therefore must be beyond your direct experience. But the perceptual experience of the page stubbornly appears out in the world itself instead of in your brain, in apparent violation of everything we know about the causal chain of vision.

... the vivid spatial structure of this page that you perceive here in your hands is itself a pattern of activation within your physical brain, and the real paper of which it is a copy is out beyond your direct experience."

Lehar goes on to say, "Many people agree with the statement that everything you perceive is in some sense inside your head, and in fact they often complain that this is so obvious it need hardly be stated." However when taken to its logical conclusion—that the world we perceive around us is a manifestation of brain processes—there is a cognitive dissonance. The thought is just too radical.

When these two admittedly radical ideas are coupled together, we go a long way toward resolving the MBP, and a host of other problems of consciousness such as mental causation, overdetermination, and others.

These ideas certainly challenge our intuitions and may seem like tosh, but they are completely compatible with physics, if not our intuitions.

Links to the dialogues are laid out here. The commentary is also good.

It’s out there…

Where is consciousness? It’s out there, apparently, not in here. There has been an interesting dialogue series going on between Riccardo Manzotti and Tim Parks in the NYRB (thanks to Tom Clark for …

www.consciousentities.com

It’s out there…

Where is consciousness? It’s out there, apparently, not in here. There has been an interesting dialogue series going on between Riccardo Manzotti and Tim Parks in the NYRB (thanks to Tom Clark for …

www.consciousentities.com

 

[Soupie]

Here's a more philosophical and academic treatment of the perspectival nature of the MBP/HP.

https://www.academia.edu/37116372/Identity_Reconsidered_taking_a_dual_perspective_on_the_Hard_Problem_of_Consciousness?email_work_card=view-paper

I agree that we will never be able to account in physical terms for the phenomenal nature of experience, if this requires that anyone having such an account (Mary, Martians or, simply, omniscient beings) may be expected to therefore have the experience as well. However, as I’ve already made clear above, if this is the reason for dismissing a physical explanation of experience, we should reconsider it.

But I agree that we will never be able to give a causal account of experience, so that we could say that, because of such and such causal event, this is what it’s like to see red. The reason is not, however, that experience is something that is insusceptible to our physical descriptions,

the reason is that the ‘what it is like character’ of an experience is not reducible to, but identical to events that can be described in a physical discourse.

This is why, above, I’ve stressed the crucial, yet easily overlooked difference between identity and reduction.

The identity theory I endorse holds that, whatever we identify as an experiential phenomenon can in principle also be identified as a physical phenomenon because both can be identified with each other. Put differently, what is accessible via subjective experience is also in principle accessible via the (scientific) intersubjective approach.

We can give a physical description/explanation of an experience qua physical event (i.e., qua intersubjectively observable and confirmable) and, vice versa, we can give a phenomenal description/explanation18 of a physical event qua phenomenal event (i.e., qua subjectively experienced). But the idea that the occurrence of one can provide a causal explanation for the occurrence of the other makes no sense because they are strictly identical. There simply is no causal connection between two things that are seemingly different, but actually one and the same entity.

So to the sceptic of physicalism, we should say: experience can be, and actually is being investigated from a physical perspective. And perhaps it is our best way of understanding experience. However, pace the ontological reductionist, the idea that we will one day be able to give a causal story of how physical phenomena cause experience qua experience should be put away as both impossible and unnecessary. ...

To illustrate this crucial point, Myin returns to Merleau-Ponty’s own example20 of one person’s hand touching the other:

One of the hands is exploring the other as object. Though a measure of ambiguity applies to both hands, the one that is touching and exploring exemplifies the lived pole, while the other hand exemplifies the objective pole. ...Crucially, the same hand can’t be fully touching and touched: when it switches to the touched mode, it is no longer touching; it can’t be fully lived and experienced as objective at the same time. (Myin 2016: 84, m.e.)

Ultimately, then, the hard problem of consciousness, or the so-called explanatory gap, or simply, the perennial mind-body problem, all seem to derive from the same source. The felt schism is the seemingly inevitable by-product of this specific capacity of relating to the world from two different perspectives, together with our inability to unite these perspectives.

 

[Soupie]

@Constance the above can be considered a paper addressing the perspectival nature of the mbp. There is at least one other that I know of. I need to track it down.

 

[Farlig Gulstein]

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor comments on why he thinks the evidence he is familiar with points to dualism and contradicts materialism. I personally do not like the term "immaterial" and would prefer something more along the lines of "hypermaterial" or "hypomaterial" depending on how you want to designate it. Regardless, something to think about . . .

 

[Soupie]

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor comments on why he thinks the evidence he is familiar with points to dualism and contradicts materialism. I personally do not like the term "immaterial" and would prefer something more along the lines of "hypermaterial" or "hypomaterial" depending on how you want to designate it. Regardless, something to think about . . .

Thanks for sharing.

Quick note: Most “identity theories” are reductive. They attempt to reduce mind to physical descriptions.

Perspectival identity theories, on the other hand, don’t attempt to reduce consciousness to physical descriptions, nor reduce physical descriptions to consciousness.

instead, they posit that physical descriptions and subjective experience are two perspectives on the identical event.

I have wanted to clarify that bc I’ve been referring to identity, and that has generally been understand as a reductive approach. The perspectival approach to identity is not reductive.

 

[smcder]

Here's a more philosophical and academic treatment of the perspectival nature of the MBP/HP.

https://www.academia.edu/37116372/Identity_Reconsidered_taking_a_dual_perspective_on_the_Hard_Problem_of_Consciousness?email_work_card=view-paper

I agree that we will never be able to account in physical terms for the phenomenal nature of experience, if this requires that anyone having such an account (Mary, Martians or, simply, omniscient beings) may be expected to therefore have the experience as well. However, as I’ve already made clear above, if this is the reason for dismissing a physical explanation of experience, we should reconsider it.

But I agree that we will never be able to give a causal account of experience, so that we could say that, because of such and such causal event, this is what it’s like to see red. The reason is not, however, that experience is something that is insusceptible to our physical descriptions,

the reason is that the ‘what it is like character’ of an experience is not reducible to, but identical to events that can be described in a physical discourse.

This is why, above, I’ve stressed the crucial, yet easily overlooked difference between identity and reduction.

The identity theory I endorse holds that, whatever we identify as an experiential phenomenon can in principle also be identified as a physical phenomenon because both can be identified with each other. Put differently, what is accessible via subjective experience is also in principle accessible via the (scientific) intersubjective approach.

We can give a physical description/explanation of an experience qua physical event (i.e., qua intersubjectively observable and confirmable) and, vice versa, we can give a phenomenal description/explanation18 of a physical event qua phenomenal event (i.e., qua subjectively experienced). But the idea that the occurrence of one can provide a causal explanation for the occurrence of the other makes no sense because they are strictly identical. There simply is no causal connection between two things that are seemingly different, but actually one and the same entity.

So to the sceptic of physicalism, we should say: experience can be, and actually is being investigated from a physical perspective. And perhaps it is our best way of understanding experience. However, pace the ontological reductionist, the idea that we will one day be able to give a causal story of how physical phenomena cause experience qua experience should be put away as both impossible and unnecessary. ...

To illustrate this crucial point, Myin returns to Merleau-Ponty’s own example20 of one person’s hand touching the other:

One of the hands is exploring the other as object. Though a measure of ambiguity applies to both hands, the one that is touching and exploring exemplifies the lived pole, while the other hand exemplifies the objective pole. ...Crucially, the same hand can’t be fully touching and touched: when it switches to the touched mode, it is no longer touching; it can’t be fully lived and experienced as objective at the same time. (Myin 2016: 84, m.e.)

Ultimately, then, the hard problem of consciousness, or the so-called explanatory gap, or simply, the perennial mind-body problem, all seem to derive from the same source. The felt schism is the seemingly inevitable by-product of this specific capacity of relating to the world from two different perspectives, together with our inability to unite these perspectives.

I dunno, for all of that, we end up with the probably just hard problem:

"In other words, from an empirical point of view, we might still want to know which physical event-structures can be identified as phenomenal consciousness, and how this can be determined. Indeed, assuming strict phenomenal-physical identity does not absolve us from these questions (which are questions for probably all mind-body theories). However, compared to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, these questions are probably just hard, and not downright impossible."



It's an argument for the theory on a cost-benefit analysis. Also, there's a good formulation or two of the hard problem in the paper:

'My view on the matter is as follows. I agree that we will never be able to account in physical terms for the phenomenal nature of experience, if this requires that anyone having such an account (Mary, Martians or, simply, omniscient beings) may be expected to therefore have the experience as well."

and

"However, as I’ve already made clear above, if this is the reason for dismissing a physical explanation of experience, we should reconsider it. But I agree that we will never be able to give a causal account of experience, so that we could say that, because of such and such causal event, this is what it’s like to see red."

If you think of the hard problem as rendering the subjective in objective terms (and take literally that objective and subjective as used here are opposites, as the words have been constructed to be) then it does, by definition, seem nonsensical - but look at Nagel's proposed path forward in WILTBAB (which I think of as proto neurophenomenology) and the problem as posed by McGinn and his answer (which we have not discussed). It's intriguing to think, with McGinn, that there might be some mind that exists which can get a grip on the hard problem such that to have the account is to the have the experience. (short story alert!)

 

[Soupie]

I dunno, for all of that, we end up with the probably just hard problem:

"In other words, from an empirical point of view, we might still want to know which physical event-structures can be identified as phenomenal consciousness, and how this can be determined. Indeed, assuming strict phenomenal-physical identity does not absolve us from these questions (which are questions for probably all mind-body theories). However, compared to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, these questions are probably just hard, and not downright impossible."

Yes, he still seems to assume that some events have a qualitative/phenomenal “perspective” but not all.

My approach to this question is to say that all of nature is qualitative, not just some brain states some of the time.

I recognize that many feel that this isn’t an “answer” and moreover runs against intuition.

But so far science has not established any special privilege that quantum fields constituting brains have over quantum fields constituting the rest of nature.

 

[Randall]

“In other words, there is a subjective experiential component of perception that can never be captured in a model expressed in objective neurophysiological terms.”

The question I would ask is: Does that really matter? I would submit that it doesn't. All we really need to know is the physical situation required for consciousness to happen. As we get better and better at identifying and replicating those situations, we can then engineer a variety of conscious systems.

Whether or not we should engineer conscious systems is a whole other question. Personally, I would suggest that perhaps it's better to advance our knowledge in this area so that we know what situations to avoid, rather than what situations to replicate, except perhaps in the case of medicine, where it could be used to repair damaged brains in patients that cannot regain consciousness.

 

[Constance]

I agree with you that we will continue to map out the isomorphisms between the brain and mind in more and more fine-grained detail. However the following fact still looms:

“In other words, there is a subjective experiential component of perception that can never be captured in a model expressed in objective neurophysiological terms.”

I believe I’ve articulated how to overcome this problem, but it’s time for me to subside when it comes to that haha.

Re your underlined statement, I have to say I still agree with it. My gut feeling about the development of neural nets and additional lines of communication among various regions of the brain is that these respond in their development to the needs of both biological species and of individual organisms for improved comprehension of encountered events, things, and others. In other words, the brain responds to felt needs of the organism in providing pathways for shared information and coherent means to respond to that information. I don't know if this suggestion makes sense to anyone here, or to any researchers and theorists in neuroscience and cognitive science, but there it is fwiw.