Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4

[Constance]

@Soupie, have you read this paper? If not, would you do so and give us your estimations of Mark Bishop's analysis?

http://www.doc.gold.ac.uk/~mas02mb/Selected Papers/2009 Cognitive Computing.pdf

Re: Consciousness being more than feeling.

Hm, yes and no. Philosophers of mind often use the phrase "what it's like" to stand in for consciousness. What they mean is "what it feels like." So, what ive done is just use the word "feel."

At its most fundamental, consciousness is the "what it feels like," that is, feeling.

As I've argued before in this thread, Chalmers's reductive definition of 'qualia' and Nagel's vague formulation 'what it's like' have not improved philosophy of mind approaches to consciousness (except in those philosophers who have critiqued these reductions). The Tallis paper I linked is a detailed response to that reductiveness. So is the Lowe paper I linked in Part 3 of this thread:

http://anti-matters.org/articles/46/public/46-41-1-PB.pdf


We could make progress in this thread on the issue of the relevance of the computational theory of mind to the understanding of consciousness by considering together the Bishop paper, the Tallis paper, and the Lowe paper. I don't think we can make progress without recognizing the weight of these detailed analyses and critiques of the CTM (computational theory of mind). Are @smcder, @Pharoah, and you agreeable to absorbing and discussing these three papers in the days ahead? Perhaps @ufology is also willing to read these papers and join the discussion.

The core question needing answered is: what is the ontological nature of "feeling."

You've asked that question before. Our discussions over the last 300 pages have demonstrated, I think, that such a question cannot be answered before we are able to achieve a comprehensive ontology of being, which requires in the first place an understanding of how we are able to 'think' being. That will require an understanding of both the subjective and objective aspects of being and their interactions, demonstrable in the evolution of consciousness within the evolution of species. For this we require biological investigations and neurophenomenological research.

On the other hand, things such as specific thoughts, emotions, and perceptions—which are differentiated forms of consciousness/feeling, constitute our minds.

I think (but am not sure) that @Pharoah and @smcder would agree with me that when we speak of 'mind' we are speaking of consciousness at a highly reflective level involving concepts [including ontological concepts] formed in our efforts to account for the way in which we think and that which we are able to think about. Affectivity arising with living organizations is involved not only in what we and other species come to feel but that which we reflect on and conceptualize. What you characterize as "specific thoughts, emotions, and perceptions" and conceive of as "differentiated forms of consciousness/feeling" are all continually integrated and somehow unified in consciousness and mind. How this happens is the vast mystery we've set ourselves to attempt to understand here, following the full range of hypotheses set forth in the various disciplines contributing to consciousness studies. Presuppositional thinking of various kinds stands in the way of our progress.

Going back to my sculptor/clay analagy: the formless, undifferentiated clay is fundamental consciousness/feeling/what-its-like. The clay that has been shaped/molded into various forms would be various thoughts, emotions, and perceptions, i.e., mental contents. A stream of mental contents is a stream of consciousness, a mind.

I recognize and respect your long effort to incorporate panpsychism {or perhaps you would now say 'pan-affectivity'?} into your informational/computational conception of consciousness. Your clay metaphor raises two questions. First, what is the evidence for panpsychism (or pan-affectivity) in nature outside of living organisms? The second is: 'what is it that shapes or molds the undifferentiated clay of feeling' -- free-floating and ubiquitous in nature -- to distinguish one consciousness/mind from another? For we know that human consciousnesses and minds are individual, personal, different from one another in their applications of intentionality to experiences had in the world.

 

[Constance]

There is no convincing evidence IMO of anyone or anything without a brain possessing consciousness., yet every normal person possessing consciousness has a brain ( duh ) ... this is so obvious I find it amazing that anyone ( with a brain ) has a hard time with it.

No one here is arguing that consciousness as we humans and many other animals experience it is unrelated to {is not facilitated by} the functional operations of neurons or brains. That does not mean that all of us can accept the notion that brains generate/produce consciousness. If you think you can prove that thesis, go ahead, or cite the evidence for it assembled by someone else.

 

[Randall]

No one here is arguing that consciousness as we humans and many other animals experience it is unrelated to {is not facilitated by} the functional operations of neurons or brains. That does not mean that all of us can accept the notion that brains generate/produce consciousness. If you think you can prove that thesis, go ahead, or cite the evidence for it assembled by someone else.

The key word in your quote above is the word "prove". What exactly do we mean by that? Proof in purely logical terms can be obtained for certain abstract ideas e.g. the Pythagorean Theorem, but the experiential isn't something that can be proven via purely logical means. The best we can do is create an internally coherent theory that appears to correlate to information gained indirectly. For some people the results of this effort will be sufficient proof for them, for others it won't be, and perhaps will never be.

So for claims of an experiential nature, proof can be defined as: "Sufficient evidence to justify an individual's belief in a claim." Given that definition, there is not only sufficient evidence, but overwhelming evidence ( for me ). I don't need any more evidence to consider the hypothesis proven. For you there may never be sufficient evidence, and if someday you should run across evidence that is sufficient enough to change my present position, by all means please post it up. I am a reasonable person and will consider it and see how it stacks up.

 

[Constance]

proof can be defined as: "Sufficient evidence to justify an individual's belief in a claim." Given that definition, there is not only sufficient evidence, but overwhelming evidence ( for me ). I don't need any more evidence to consider the hypothesis proven.

Perhaps you'll enumerate the classifications of the evidence that works for you?

For you there may never be sufficient evidence, and if someday you should run across evidence that is sufficient enough to change my present position, by all means please post it up. I am a reasonable person and will consider it and see how it stacks up.

You would have acquired it by now had you been reading this thread, including the material linked.

 

[Soupie]

Second point: The before and after effects of poking around in the brain have revealed a lot of information about what areas of the brain are responsible for what, and therefore even if we don't know exactly why consciousness arises from it ( any more than we know why an EM field emerges ) it doesn't mean it's safe to conclude that the brain isn't the cause. Quite the opposite. There is no convincing evidence IMO of anyone or anything without a brain possessing consciousness., yet every normal person possessing consciousness has a brain ( duh ) ... this is so obvious I find it amazing that anyone ( with a brain ) has a hard time with it.

While I'm partial to this view myself—that consciousness and mind arise from the activity of the brain—I still think your position is too strong.

Because we don't know exactly how the activity of the brain gives rise to feeling, we can't therefore say definitively that subjectivity does not arise in nature via other, non-neural processes. For instance, IIT hypothesizes that subjectivity arises from the integrated action of any neuron-like mechanisms. Could subjectivity arise from an artificial, integrated neural net? How about the physical substrate of the world wide web? The earth's biosphere? A galaxy? The universe itself?

Now, one could argue all these things are brain-like, and I don't disagree. My point is that since we don't know how/why subjectivity is associated with brain waves, it's premature to say subjectivity is only associated with brain waves.

 

[Soupie]

What you characterize as "specific thoughts, emotions, and perceptions" and conceive of as "differentiated forms of consciousness/feeling" are all continually integrated and somehow unified in consciousness and mind. How this happens is the vast mystery we've set ourselves to attempt to understand here, following the full range of hypotheses set forth in the various disciplines contributing to consciousness studies. Presuppositional thinking of various kinds stands in the way of our progress.

(1) I agree that the "stream of consciousness," or "phenomenal field" cannot be reduced to various, lego brick-like qualia. The terms "mental contents" and "qualia" are mostly a useful language convention for discussing consciousness and mind.

(2) I think consciousness (feeling) and mind are two, separate problems.

Before there can be individual minds, there must be consciousness/feeling.

Question 1: What is the ontological nature of feeling and how is it related to neural network occilations? (Where does the "clay" come from?)

Question 2: How do individual minds/streams of consciousness—filled with various temporal mental contents (love, hate, red, green, pain, pleasure, itch, sour, sweet, etc.) arise from the coupling of the environment and the sensorimotor system? (How is the "clay" formed into shapes?)

First, what is the evidence for panpsychism (or pan-affectivity) in nature outside of living organisms?

I don't know of evidence per se, but again, because we don't know how/why feeling is associated with occilating neural networks, it's premature to say that it's only associated with occilating neural networks.

Said another way: If we aren't prepared to say that brains generate feeling, then we can't very well say that only brains have feeling.

The second is: 'what is it that shapes or molds the undifferentiated clay of feeling' -- free-floating and ubiquitous in nature -- to distinguish one consciousness/mind from another? For we know that human consciousnesses and minds are individual, personal, different from one another in their applications of intentionality to experiences had in the world.

In the Sculptor/Clay metaphor, the organism/brain would be the sculptor/molder of the undifferentiated consciousness (clay).

Thus, even though all sculptors (brains) access the same formless clay (consciousness), they each shape it into unique forms (minds).

 

[Randall]

Perhaps you'll enumerate the classifications of the evidence that works for you?

1. Subtracting 20% for serious physical health/mental health/brain damage issues from the current population leaves us with about 5.6 billion people, the majority of whom beyond any reasonable doubt can pass whatever recognized medical/scientific/psychological tests we have to determine if they possess consciousness. Contrast that with 0 ( zero ) people who can pass such tests who are brain dead or missing a brain. Even if you want to quibble about how many billion normal healthy functioning human brains there are, the evidence is still overwhelming.

So to sum up this argument, there are billions of verifiable cases where brains appear to give rise to consciousness and zero verifiable cases where someone who is brain dead ( not merely clinically dead and later revived ) or without a brain exhibits signs of consciousness. Therefore, just like it's safe to say that every time we wrap a conducting wire around an iron core and apply electricity, we're going to get a magnetic field, or every time we freeze water it will turn to ice, it is entirely safe to say that every time we have a normally functioning human brain, we're going to get consciousness, and therefore given the overwhelming correlation between the presence of a normally functioning human brain and the presence of consciousness, I personally consider it proven that normally functioning human brains give rise to consciousness.

Sam Harris Clip - Reposted

​

You would have acquired it by now had you been reading this thread, including the material linked.

Wrong assumption. You have posted information that is sufficient for you to believe your position, but insufficient to change mine. But as a final note, and this is where we might find some common ground. I don't think that consciousness is necessarily exclusive to normally functioning human brains. It may be possible that other types of systems can possess consciousness. Until we are able to clearly identify the mechanism that gives rise to consciousness as clearly as we can with the magnetic field example, we have no means of measuring consciousness other than by using ourselves as a baseline, hence the Turing Test: Turing test - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Randall]

... Now, one could argue all these things are brain-like, and I don't disagree. My point is that since we don't know how/why subjectivity is associated with brain waves, it's premature to say subjectivity is only associated with brain waves.

Right. I'm not disputing the possibility that consciousness might emerge from systems other than human brains. I only assert that every time we have a normally functioning human brain, we'll also get consciousness. Would non-human systems need to be of a functional capability that is similar to that of a human brain before consciousness could arise? I tend to think so, and by that I mean such systems would not only need to possess comparable ( or better )information/sensory processing capability, but also be configured in such a manner that it produces the required conditions ( hitherto unknown or uncertain ) that gives rise to consciousness.

 

[Pharoah]

@Soupie
Cameras as sensors cannot be equated to eyes as sensors. These kinds of comparisons are unjustifiable

I have indicated where in my paper I address your question concerning phenomenal cs. It would help for u to critique this aspect of my paper or tell me in what way it fails.

What is ur point about mental causation?...

 

[Constance]

Wrong assumption. You have posted information that is sufficient for you to believe your position, but insufficient to change mine.

?? What information about what subject are you referring to, Ufology? I'd been referring to aspects of consciousness that cannot be explained in terms of brain function (citing three papers for discussion, which as usual you seem to refuse to consult). I'd also said that if you'd been following this thread over the last year or more you would be aware of the problems concerning the mind-brain identity theory that you want to defend. In this last post you seem to have changed the subject to NDEs and the evidence they provide that consciousness can function when the brain is shut down. We haven't discussed NDEs here for a very long time. You seem to be stuck on that subject from discussions going back way before this thread began, and to be thinking that I base my theory of consciousness on NDEs. It's apparent that you really do need to acquaint yourself with the development of this thread if you want to engage in the discussion going on now.

 

[Constance]

In the Sculptor/Clay metaphor, the organism/brain would be the sculptor/molder of the undifferentiated consciousness (clay).

Thus, even though all sculptors (brains) access the same formless clay (consciousness), they each shape it into unique forms (minds).

How and why do individual brains do that?

 

[Randall]

?? What information about what subject are you referring to, Ufology? I'd been referring to aspects of consciousness that cannot be explained in terms of brain function (citing three papers for discussion, which as usual you seem to refuse to consult).

Not refusing to consult your papers. Although I haven't been actively participating, I've been checking in from time to time to see if there's anything new, and there's just nothing in this thread that I'm aware of that is sufficient to change my current position. But If you want me to review and address specific issues in specific papers then please be specific. Cite the papers and the relevant paragraphs and I'll be glad to review them respond as I have the time.

I'd also said that if you'd been following this thread over the last year or more you would be aware of the problems concerning the mind-brain identity theory that you want to defend.

Wrong assumption ( again ). Although I haven't been actively participating, I've been checking in from time to time to see if there's anything new, and there's just nothing in this thread that I'm aware of that is sufficient to change my current position. But If you want me to review and address specific issues in specific papers then please be specific. Cite the papers and the relevant paragraphs and I'll be glad to review them respond as I have the time.

In this last post you seem to have changed the subject to NDEs and the evidence they provide that consciousness can function when the brain is shut down. We haven't discussed NDEs here for a very long time. You seem to be stuck on that subject from discussions going back way before this thread began, and to be thinking that I base my theory of consciousness on NDEs. It's apparent that you really do need to acquaint yourself with the development of this thread if you want to engage in the discussion going on now.

You asked for my reasoning and I provided it. Simply because we haven't touched on the issues of NDEs in a long time doesn't mean that it's no longer relevant. It was alluded to in order to stress the point that the only evidence anyone can point to that consciousness is possible in brain dead patients are alleged cases of NDE, and in virtually all those cases we are dealing with unconscious, or clinically dead patients, which is entirely different than brain dead, and that in either case, no patients while in that state exhibit signs of consciousness.

NOTE: You have not addressed the reasoning I gave in a direct manner, choosing instead to hand-wave it as though it's irrelevant ( the issue of NDEs and the video clip by Harris ) or ignored it altogether ( the billions of living examples of brains that appear to provide a direct correlation between the brain and consciousness ), and though that evidence or reasoning may not be convincing to you, your seeming reluctance to grant it even a shred of weight appears to make your position seem rather biased. Lastly, when making citations to support your position, please also indicate what position that is. This thread tends to bounce around from one issue to another, and the differences, although seemingly inconsequential, can be anything but.

​

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie
Cameras as sensors cannot be equated to eyes as sensors. These kinds of comparisons are unjustifiable

Considering the fact that humans are now using bionic eyes, we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

https://www.dukemedicine.org/blog/ncs-first-bionic-eye-recipient-sees-first-time-33-years

I have indicated where in my paper I address your question concerning phenomenal cs. It would help for u to critique this aspect of my paper or tell me in what way it fails.

Yes, you have "indicated," but you have not answered the question. In other words, you've wonderfully described how the "sculptor" shapes the "clay," but you have failed to explain why and how the "clay" exists in the first place.
What is the nature/origin of feeling (phenomenal consciousness)? Does the brain produce/generate it? If so, how does it produce/generate it? And if so, why does it produce/generate it?

What is ur point about mental causation?...

I said there is no objective, adaptive, evolutionary function for feeling/phenomenal consciousness. You seemed to disagree.

An objective, adaptive, evolutionary function = causation

In other words, without mental causation of physical effects, there can simply be no objective, adaptive, evolutionary function for phenomenal consciousness. (@smcder and I have discussed this ad nauseam.)

I'll post commentary on your paper asap.

-----

For what it's worth, I don't currently think feeling reduces to the physical. Consciousness is real. Subjectivity is real, and as such, is not objective, and therefore will not be explained via tools used to explain objective processes.

I'm with Nagel in calling for an expantionist approach; we need a new (meta)physics that incorporates both the objective and subjective poles of nature in a richer understanding of what-is.

Is the practice of science coming round to such an approach? It may have to in order to answer some of the most difficult "problems." (The following paper is a must read.)

Mazviita Chirimuuta Tells Us How We Should Be Defining Color (The Reality of Color is Perception.)

"Philosophers have a bad reputation for casting unwarranted doubt on established facts. Little could be more certain than your belief that the cloudless sky, on a summer afternoon, is blue. Yet we may wonder in earnest, is it also blue for the birds who fly up there, who have different eyes from ours? And if you take an object that shares that color—like the flag of the United Nations—and place half in shadow and half in the full sun, one side will be a darker blue. You might ask, what is the real color of the flag? The appearances of colors are frequently changing with the light, and as we move the objects surrounding them. Does that mean that the actual colors change?

All these questions point us to the idea that colors are, despite first appearances, subjective and transitory. Color is one of the longstanding puzzles in philosophy, raising doubts about the truthfulness of our sensory grasp on things, and provoking concerns as to the metaphysical compatibility of scientific, perceptual, and common sense representations of the world. Most philosophers have argued that colors are either real or not real, physical or psychological. The greater challenge is to theorize the subtle way that color stands between our understanding of the physical and the psychological.

My response is to say that colors are not properties of objects (like the U.N. flag) or atmospheres (like the sky) but of perceptual processes—interactions which involve psychological subjects and physical objects. In my view, colors are not properties of things, they are ways that objects appear to us, and at the same time, ways that we perceive certain kinds of objects. This account of color opens up a perspective on the nature of consciousness itself. ...

Modern science, as inherited from the 17th century, gives us a perspective on material objects that is radically different from our ordinary sensory one. Galileo tells us that the world contains “bodies” which have properties like size, shape, and movement, regardless of anyone perceiving them. By measuring and describing things in terms of those “primary” properties, science promises to give us knowledge of the objective world, the world as it is independently of the distortions of human perception. Science can explain how it is that the molecules released into the air by a sage plant could stimulate my nose, or how its petals could reflect light and appear blue-violet to my eye. But the scent and the color itself—the conscious, sensory experience of them—make no showing in that explanation. (@Pharoah re your paper) ...

The problem of color as we know it today is an ontological issue, a question about what there is in the universe. With the scientific worldview it becomes commonplace to say that the only properties of objects that are unquestionably real are the ones described in physical science. For Galileo they were sizes, shapes, quantities, and motions; for physicists today there are more intangible properties like electric charge. This excludes from fundamental ontology any qualitative properties, such as color, that are known to us only through our perceptual faculties. But once colors are excluded, how do we account for their manifest appearance as properties belonging to everyday objects? Either we say that our senses trick us into believing that external objects are colored, when colors do not in fact exist, or we try to find some account of colors that is compatible with a scientific ontology, locating them among material objects. ...

Vision scientists Rainer Mausfeld, Reinhard Niederée, and K. Dieter Heyer write that, “the concept of human color vision involves both a subjective component, as it refers to a perceptual phenomenon and an objective one ... We take this subtle tension to be the essential ingredient of research on color perception.”

Woohoo! Real expantionism in the wild!? What do you make of this @smcder?

 

[Soupie]

How and why do individual brains do that?

How would the activity of individual brains (specifically occilating neural nets) access/perturb an undifferentiated, global field of pure consciousness? I haven't the slightest idea haha.

Why would brains does this I don't know either. Currently our best model for explaining the behavior and morphology of organisms is evolution via adaptation.

However, the problem of mental causation means we can't appeal to adaptation to explain consciousness. Thus, according to our current models, consciousness is epiphenomenal.

This is why I agree with Nagel that we need a new, richer model of "physics" to explain why we—and presumably many other organisms—are conscious.

 

[Constance]

NOTE: You have not addressed the reasoning I gave in a direct manner, choosing instead to hand-wave it as though it's irrelevant ( the issue of NDEs and the video clip by Harris ) or ignored it altogether ( the billions of living examples of brains that appear to provide a direct correlation between the brain and consciousness ), . . .

No one here or in contemporary consciousness studies as a whole questions the existence of "neural correlates of consciousness." But as you know, or ought to know, in science and philosophy correlation is not -- does not equate to -- causation.

. . . and though that evidence or reasoning may not be convincing to you, your seeming reluctance to grant it even a shred of weight appears to make your position seem rather biased.

What evidence or reasoning? Your belief that the brain produces consciousness is, unfortunately, both philosophically and scientifically naive. One way to remedy that would be to follow the discussions we've had here based on hundreds of philosophical and scientific studies of aspects of consciousness linked and quoted in the thread. Another would be to crack a list of major books concerning consciousness published in the last several decades, since the inception of consciousness studies as an interdisciplinary effort.

Lastly, when making citations to support your position, please also indicate what position that is. This thread tends to bounce around from one issue to another, and the differences, although seemingly inconsequential, can be anything but.

'My position' has developed and become more complex through the 300+ pages of this thread, a discussion produced for the most part by four minds coming from different positions with all of us evolving our positions as a result of what we've read, contemplated, and posted here together. All of us are still doing that. If you want to catch up with where we're coming from, you'll need to read the thread. Unless one of the other three members of this online seminar wants to provide you with an outline and summary of all that has been developed here.

It seems clear to me that you want a limited debate based on limited understanding of the subject of consciousness rather than an extended colloquium on the developing insights achieved in interdisciplinaryconsciousness studies that reveal the complexity of consciousness and our distance from an understanding of what it is. You want to simplify what is one of the most complex subjects being pursued in our time. I'm not interested in what comes of that.

 

[Constance]

Thus, according to our current models, consciousness is epiphenomenal.

Not according to all of our current models.

 

[Constance]

@Soupie, the Chirimuuta paper looks promising. I'll read it today, hoping that it delivers on the phenomenological insight expressed in this extract you included in your post:

"My response is to say that colors are not properties of objects (like the U.N. flag) or atmospheres (like the sky) but of perceptual processes—interactions which involve psychological subjects and physical objects. In my view, colors are not properties of things, they are ways that objects appear to us, and at the same time, ways that we perceive certain kinds of objects. This account of color opens up a perspective on the nature of consciousness itself."

 

[Constance]

This paper by Shaun Dorrance Kelly extends/elaborates beyond Chirimuuta's focus on what is phenomenologically grounded in color perception to Merleau-Ponty's development of an insight not yet fully expressed in Husserl -- that "the indeterminate is a positive presence." I'm fairly sure I posted a link to this paper about a half-year ago, but this would be an appropriate moment in this thread to read it again (or for the first time) for an understanding of the phenomenology of perception.

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/representation/papers/Kelly.pdf

 

[Constance]

In reading the Kelly paper, take special note of his note 7: ". . . seeing something as a façade or seeing it as a full three-dimensional entity is not just consciously giving a particular interpretation to otherwise neutral sense data. We have already seen that nothing I know about the scene guarantees that I will experience it one way or another. But more generally it is important to point out that gestalt shifts between object and façade, like gestalt shifts generally, are not under the conscious control of the subject at all. The subject is given an already formulated take on the world; he does not impose it. It is this fact that Merleau-Ponty hopes to explain by claiming that I experience objects as seeing one another."

I think that the "already formulated take on the world" to which MP refers is a matter of our (and other animals') implicit recognition of the 'depth' of the three-dimensional world in which we find ourselves existing, an understanding already available to us in prereflective consciousness (thus known first by the subconscious mind). That is, before reflection and analysis, we understand that we and the things we encounter in the world stand spatially in relation to one another, at distances from one another, in varying positions relative to one another as we move about in the world.

Phenomenological philosophy also recognizes the temporal dimension in which we have our existence, our experience and consciousness in the present within the temporal horizons of the continuum of our past and future experiences {the past known in memory, the future implicit and made explicit in the perpending of our existence beyond the present moment, as long as we experience embodied existence in the world}. Husserl's Phenomenology of Time Consciousness is the primary work to consult regarding the temporality of consciousness.

 

[Pharoah]

Considering the fact that humans are now using bionic eyes, we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

https://www.dukemedicine.org/blog/ncs-first-bionic-eye-recipient-sees-first-time-33-years


Yes, you have "indicated," but you have not answered the question. In other words, you've wonderfully described how the "sculptor" shapes the "clay," but you have failed to explain why and how the "clay" exists in the first place.
What is the nature/origin of feeling (phenomenal consciousness)? Does the brain produce/generate it? If so, how does it produce/generate it? And if so, why does it produce/generate it?


I said there is no objective, adaptive, evolutionary function for feeling/phenomenal consciousness. You seemed to disagree.

An objective, adaptive, evolutionary function = causation

In other words, without mental causation of physical effects, there can simply be no objective, adaptive, evolutionary function for phenomenal consciousness. (@smcder and I have discussed this ad nauseam.)

I'll post commentary on your paper asap.

-----

For what it's worth, I don't currently think feeling reduces to the physical. Consciousness is real. Subjectivity is real, and as such, is not objective, and therefore will not be explained via tools used to explain objective processes.

I'm with Nagel in calling for an expantionist approach; we need a new (meta)physics that incorporates both the objective and subjective poles of nature in a richer understanding of what-is.

Is the practice of science coming round to such an approach? It may have to in order to answer some of the most difficult "problems." (The following paper is a must read.)

Mazviita Chirimuuta Tells Us How We Should Be Defining Color (The Reality of Color is Perception.)

"Philosophers have a bad reputation for casting unwarranted doubt on established facts. Little could be more certain than your belief that the cloudless sky, on a summer afternoon, is blue. Yet we may wonder in earnest, is it also blue for the birds who fly up there, who have different eyes from ours? And if you take an object that shares that color—like the flag of the United Nations—and place half in shadow and half in the full sun, one side will be a darker blue. You might ask, what is the real color of the flag? The appearances of colors are frequently changing with the light, and as we move the objects surrounding them. Does that mean that the actual colors change?

All these questions point us to the idea that colors are, despite first appearances, subjective and transitory. Color is one of the longstanding puzzles in philosophy, raising doubts about the truthfulness of our sensory grasp on things, and provoking concerns as to the metaphysical compatibility of scientific, perceptual, and common sense representations of the world. Most philosophers have argued that colors are either real or not real, physical or psychological. The greater challenge is to theorize the subtle way that color stands between our understanding of the physical and the psychological.

My response is to say that colors are not properties of objects (like the U.N. flag) or atmospheres (like the sky) but of perceptual processes—interactions which involve psychological subjects and physical objects. In my view, colors are not properties of things, they are ways that objects appear to us, and at the same time, ways that we perceive certain kinds of objects. This account of color opens up a perspective on the nature of consciousness itself. ...

Modern science, as inherited from the 17th century, gives us a perspective on material objects that is radically different from our ordinary sensory one. Galileo tells us that the world contains “bodies” which have properties like size, shape, and movement, regardless of anyone perceiving them. By measuring and describing things in terms of those “primary” properties, science promises to give us knowledge of the objective world, the world as it is independently of the distortions of human perception. Science can explain how it is that the molecules released into the air by a sage plant could stimulate my nose, or how its petals could reflect light and appear blue-violet to my eye. But the scent and the color itself—the conscious, sensory experience of them—make no showing in that explanation. (@Pharoah re your paper) ...

The problem of color as we know it today is an ontological issue, a question about what there is in the universe. With the scientific worldview it becomes commonplace to say that the only properties of objects that are unquestionably real are the ones described in physical science. For Galileo they were sizes, shapes, quantities, and motions; for physicists today there are more intangible properties like electric charge. This excludes from fundamental ontology any qualitative properties, such as color, that are known to us only through our perceptual faculties. But once colors are excluded, how do we account for their manifest appearance as properties belonging to everyday objects? Either we say that our senses trick us into believing that external objects are colored, when colors do not in fact exist, or we try to find some account of colors that is compatible with a scientific ontology, locating them among material objects. ...

Vision scientists Rainer Mausfeld, Reinhard Niederée, and K. Dieter Heyer write that, “the concept of human color vision involves both a subjective component, as it refers to a perceptual phenomenon and an objective one ... We take this subtle tension to be the essential ingredient of research on color perception.”

Woohoo! Real expantionism in the wild!? What do you make of this @smcder?

re Chirimuuts... HCT explains why colours are not properties of worldy objects and is consistent with Chirimuuts view. Will read the paper in due course.

re bionic eyes. lol. Think sgain.

The questions I haven't answered... I look at your questions and think, 'answered them' so... I don't know what to say...

@Soupie
if (as you say)
"there is no objective, adaptive, evolutionary function for feeling/phenomenal consciousness."
and
"An objective, adaptive, evolutionary function = causation"
therefore (on yur account)
there is no cause to feeling/phenomenal consc...
or
there is no causal function to feeling/phen consc
Which is correct?

And how does this lead to
"In other words...
...without mental causation of physical effects, there can simply be no objective, adaptive, evolutionary function for phenomenal consciousness. "?

I think your logic flawed.
What if mental causes lead to physical effects that do not directly impact on those same mental causes? eg many of my behaviours do not have a direct impact on the evolution of humans, but, as a member of the human race, individual human behaviours (like mine) do have an impact on the evolution of the species. So there is an apparent causal gap between my behaviour and the evolution of the human species.
Similarly, I might feel something specific but the effects of those feelings might not have a direct, but rather an indirect bearing on physical effects. Once again, there is an apparent causal gap but phen conscious creates a non-specific modal effect that is reflected in an individuals behavioural responses to the world as felt... maybe...