Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

[Constance]

As I suspected, the Stanford Enclopedia does not present a single article on the hard problem but rather links numerous other articles to this problem. Here is the index at SEP linking all articles in which the hard problem, and consciousness itself, are treated:

Search (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[Constance]

Meant to be a response to ufology's question above:

"I'd be interested in hearing opinions on that question: Are phenomenologists allowed to acknowledge the reality of dualism, must they arbitrarily reject it, or is there some middle ground?"

Phenomenology presents a middle ground concerning subject-object, mind-body, and mind-world relationships, recognizing that consciously lived experience is an entanglement of both sides of the relation and accordingly ambiguous. To that extent phenomenological philosophy 'overcomes dualism' but does not deny that experience of the world is a convergence, or a confluence, or a compresence of subjective and objective 'poles' of what-is. The relation is one of interdependence.

I think this article at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is worth reading for a wider sense of the implications of MP's developed phenomenology:

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

 

[Randall]

okay so im trying really hard to understand what is being said in this tread but i keep seeing this issue of "the hard problem". can someone please clarify what this problem is? i sure hope i didnt just miss something obvious. From what i have gathered, the "hard problem" is the question of "what it is like?" the experience of consciousness rather than the explanation. is that accurate or am i wrong?

There are three essential components to Chalmer's formulation of the Hard Problem of Consciousness:

1. The Easy Part: Behavior arising out of material processes in the brain body system.
2 The Hard Part: The phenomenon of subjective experience.
3a. The Argument: The Easy Part is resolvable by the analysis of the working mechanics of the material structures of the BBS ( the brain body system ), however the Hard Part is not, and therefore the Hard Part requires some other explanation beyond the material.

3b. The Problem: Why does subjective experience exist?

There are some tricky issues in there, like what exactly is meant by material ( as opposed to physical ) and when does the mechanics of the system become non-material but still physical? Depending on the viewpoint, one might end up theorizing along the same lines as Chalmers and myself and others that the phenomenon of subjective consciousness is analogous to an EM field, but instead of a magnetic effect we get the "property" of consciousness, that can be viewed as a new "fundamental" phenomenon of nature. If this is the case then consciousness remains squarely in the realm of the physical ( just like EM fields ). The question of "Why?" is IMO answered by the fact that subjective experiences such as pain and fear are advantageous for survival and therefore have been passed along in the evolutionary process. I don't know of anyplace that Chalmer's recognizes this a solid reason for the "Why?" question. But I submit that it is a rather obvious observation and therefore easy to miss if one is looking for something much more complicated.

But to get it from the horses mouth I suggest you watch the following video:

The Hard Problem of Consciousness (Chalmers, Dennett, & Hoffman)

 

[Randall]

Meant to be a response to ufology's question above:

"I'd be interested in hearing opinions on that question: Are phenomenologists allowed to acknowledge the reality of dualism, must they arbitrarily reject it, or is there some middle ground?"

Phenomenology presents a middle ground concerning subject-object, mind-body, and mind-world relationships, recognizing that consciously lived experience is an entanglement of both sides of the relation and accordingly ambiguous. To that extent phenomenological philosophy 'overcomes dualism' but does not deny that experience of the world is a convergence, or a confluence, or a compresence of subjective and objective 'poles' of what-is. The relation is one of interdependence.

I think this article at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is worth reading for a wider sense of the implications of MP's developed phenomenology:

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Thank you for the link Constance ( if you're no longer ignoring me ). I think you've pointed me to that article before and I can see why you are a fan of Merleau-Ponty ( if it's fair to use that term ). He's was obviously a very deep thinker who wasn't afraid to cross over boundaries in his search. But I'd like to get a little more specific:

With respect to dualism I see a lot of discussion on the mind/body problem, but that gets into issues of personal identity, which we've discussed before, and that's not really where I want to go. I'm speaking more to the nature of existence itself where we speak of duality as the independent existence of mental objects and material objects, so for example a material rock and an imaginary rock. This dualism would accept that material rocks and imaginary rocks can be unambiguously divided into categories of either material or mental.

NOTE: I used rocks as an example because they provide an obvious setup for you should you be inclined to take advantage of it ... LOL.

 

[Pharoah]

okay so im trying really hard to understand what is being said in this tread but i keep seeing this issue of "the hard problem". can someone please clarify what this problem is? i sure hope i didnt just miss something obvious.

From what i have gathered, the "hard problem" is the question of "what it is like?" the experience of consciousness rather than the explanation. is that accurate or am i wrong?

Chalmers tried to articulate with clarity what the hard problem was in his paper 'Facing up to the hard problem of consciousness'. The contributors in this thread do not accept Chalmers' explication and no alternative was agreed or arrived at during discussion... so feel free to interpret it as you will from the literature.
I was ok with your interpretation above, except with the notion that the HP does not stipulate that WIIL cannot be explained. Whether it can be explained or not is not part of the definition of what the HP is.

 

[Soupie]

Depending on the viewpoint, one might end up theorizing along the same lines as Chalmers and myself and others that the phenomenon of subjective consciousness is analogous to an EM field, but instead of a magnetic effect we get the "property" of consciousness, that can be viewed as a new "fundamental" phenomenon of nature. If this is the case then consciousness remains squarely in the realm of the physical ( just like EM fields ).

Do you suppose that someday scientists will invent a consciousness microscope that we can point at people's heads and in this manner directly observe their emotions, sensations, and thoughts?

I propose that one can never directly observe the subjective experience (consciousness) of another. It may be possible one day for two systems to merge, but then their merged consciousnesses would present a new, unified consciousness, and thus we couldn't say we were observing the consciousness of another.

(Interestingly, observation of objective, physical (quantum) processes appear to be changed by observation as well.)

The question of "Why?" is IMO answered by the fact that subjective experiences such as pain and fear are advantageous for survival and therefore have been passed along in the evolutionary process. I don't know of anyplace that Chalmer's recognizes this a solid reason for the "Why?" question. But I submit that it is a rather obvious observation and therefore easy to miss if one is looking for something much more complicated.

So you're suggesting that Chalmers missed this obvious answer? Really?

Think about this, ufology. This might give you a moment of insight. And I mean this sincerely.

You suggest this answer is obvious, and yet when pressed above, you were unable to give anywhere near a complete, satisfactory answer. You even mentioned virtual particles.

It seems so obvious that we just have zero clue how it could be. And this lack of knowing is not an epistemological problem (as you and others seem to think). See my point above. We will never discover a consciousness substance that we can observe and objectively see, measure, observe the subjective experience of another.

All we will ever objectively see is neural processes, particles, or fields. We will never see the thoughts, emotions, or sensations of others.

What's more, again, despite how "obvious" it may seem, there is no coherent, physical model of an objective function of conscious experience.

As Nagel has called for, we need a new, expansionist metaphysics.

 

[Soupie]

@ufology


If we agree that subjective, conscious experiences--such as emotions, sensations, and thoughts--cannot be objectively observed (measured), then consider the following:

1. A stovetop is burning hot
   
   
2. Person touches stovetop
   
   
3. Person feels pain
   
   
4. Person pulls hand away from stove top

Steps 1, 2, and 4 are objective, observable processes (OOP), while step 3 is a subjective, non-observable processes (SNOP).

If you feel that the subjective, conscious experiences of others--emotions, sensations, and thoughts--are objective and observable via 3rd person perspectives, please explain. Otherwise, this is what follows:

1. OOP
   
   
2. OOP
   
   
3. SNOP
   
   
4. OOP

Or written differently:

OOP > OOP > SNOP > OOP

That is, in the causal flow of events, there is an objective, observable process which causes another objective, observable process, which then causes a subjective, non-observable process, which then causes an objective, observable process.

Additionally, you could argue that steps 2, 3, and 4 are simultaneously accompanied by neural, field, or quantum processes. I don’t disagree. However, those processes--unlike subjective, conscious experiences--are objective, observable processes, so they don’t help us understand the objective function or causal power of subjective, conscious experiences.

Furthermore, as @smcder has noted, if we assume that subjective, conscious experiences are instantiated by objective, observable processes--such as neural, field, or quantum processes--then it would be these objective, observable processes which would carry the causal load, not the subjective, non-observable processes.

For example, let’s suppose a scientist were observing the above scenario using an advanced observation machine. They would objectively observe (only) the following:

1. Hot stovetop
   
   
2. Person touching stove (neurons firing)
   
   
3. Neurons firing
   
   
4. Person pulling hand from stove (neurons firing)

This observed scenario is causally complete. No other causes need be called on to explain it.

Note that in the above scenario, under no circumstances would subjective, conscious experiences be observed, nor be necessary to explain the causal chain of events.

 

[sylithan]

I feel like a student in a room of philosophy doctors... this thread is amazing...

Chalmers tried to articulate with clarity what the hard problem was in his paper 'Facing up to the hard problem of consciousness'. The contributors in this thread do not accept Chalmers' explication and no alternative was agreed or arrived at during discussion... so feel free to interpret it as you will from the literature.
I was ok with your interpretation above, except with the notion that the HP does not stipulate that WIIL cannot be explained. Whether it can be explained or not is not part of the definition of what the HP is.

Yes. "What it is like" would be relatively easy to explain. Still trying to grasp this concept here..

Example: the stay at home dad

What is it like to be a mother??
Long days, constantly caring for the child, the birthing process, and so on.

A man would be able to understand what is like and perform the role of a mother based on the explanation of the role he needs to adopt. The hard problem in this scenario would be that even though he plays the role he will never experience motherhood.

I'd if it would make a difference or not but what if you add the element of free will into the equation of the hard problem. See that free will is basically the foundation of out consciousness and decision making abilities. Would it have some 0lace in some of the biggest problems with understanding consciousness as a whole??

 

[Soupie]

Yes. "What it is like" would be relatively easy to explain. Still trying to grasp this concept here..

Example: the stay at home dad

What is it like to be a mother??
Long days, constantly caring for the child, the birthing process, and so on.

A man would be able to understand what is like and perform the role of a mother based on the explanation of the role he needs to adopt.

It's more complex than that.

An individual verbally (or otherwise) describing their own subjective, conscious experience is not the challenge of the hard problem.

The hard problem is:

1) To describe (explain) how subjective experiences relate to objective processes (be they neurological, quantum, or field-like).

2) To objectively describe (explain) subjective experiences.

As we are discussing now, some people do not grok why 1) and 2) are a "problem."

So let's consider #1. Scientists can explain how many objective processes relate to many other objective processes. (However, of course there are many objective processes that we cannot fully explain/describe.)

So for example, scientists can explain how a moving baseball and a moving baseball bat relate/interact to cause the ball to fly through the air. This entire scenario can be fully explained via objective, observable processes.

On the other hand, scientist cannot describe in objective, observable terms how firing neurons, interacting virtual particles, or fields might cause or even relate to subjective, conscious thoughts, emotions, or sensations.

Number #2 is even tougher. Scientists can objectively observe, measure, describe, and document any number of physical processes such as particles, molecules, elements, substances, fields, fabrics, cells, stones, etc.

On the other hand, scientists cannot objectively observe, measure, describe, or document the emotions, sensations, or thoughts of another person.

Scientists can indirectly measure the conscious experiences of others; they can ask people to describe their level of pain, they can measure someones heart rate, or they can observe someone's neurons firing. However, they cannot objectively observe, say, another person's pain.

Our current models of what-is are built on objective, observable processes. Describing conscious experience as an observable, objective process is therefore a hard problem.

 

[Michael Allen]

Look at the recent article about scientific experiments Gene posted and take every thing with a pinch of salt.

Out-of-body experience: Master of illusion

This is where the PSM running in your brain "attaches" itself to another via an illusion created by a camera pointing toward another individual--it is a whole-body version of the fake arm on the table illusion. Other examples are cited in the "Ego Tunnel" regarding the plasticity of the PSM.

The example in the article accomplishes the same only with a shifting of the observer point of view away from the body through a camera linked to VR goggles. As in the rubber hand illlusion, synchrony between the actions and sensations are an essential to cause the PSM to reorient the relations of its own internal components to fit or map the bizarre affordances presented by the experimental setup.

 

[Randall]

@ufology
If we agree that subjective, conscious experiences--such as emotions, sensations, and thoughts--cannot be objectively observed ...

Not sure if we agree or don't agree, so I'll assume the choice of words was rhetorical, as in, "If we propose for the sake of argument that subjective, conscious experiences--such as emotions, sensations, and thoughts--cannot be objectively observed ... ", in which case your illustrative examples appear follow similar logic as my previous post about color blindness, which I used to show how subjective experience can be quantified via experimentation.

"1. Hot stovetop > 2. Person touching stove (neurons firing) > 3. Neurons firing > 4. Person pulling hand from stove (neurons firing) ... This observed scenario is causally complete. No other causes need be called on to explain it."

I'm assuming that your example is to illustrate how a third party unaware of the phenomena of pain might view the behavior of a person touching a hot surface and then pulling back as the result of biomechanics alone, and indeed we could build a robot that performs these exact same actions. A third party observer might even conclude that the whole event was purely accidental. The thing is, we know from our own experience that consciousness in humans includes the phenomenon of pain, and that it plays a causal role in behavior.

So let's continue: If our curious experimenter were to observe the behavior of the same person who had exhibited the behavior above while the subject was unconscious ( like someone under anesthetic ) they would soon discover that contact with a hot surface produces no biomechanical action to pull back. Why not? Suddenly a missing factor becomes apparent. We know from our own experiences and experiments that consciousness is that missing factor, and that it plays a crucial role in behavior. So arbitrarily removing the element of pain from the chain of cause doesn't really do much to advance our understanding of why and how we experience it.

Was there some other point you were trying to make there or did we cover that adequately?

 

[Soupie]

Yes, a completely different point (the hard problem) that you continue to miss, haha. I'll try again when I get a moment.

 

[Randall]

Do you suppose that someday scientists will invent a consciousness microscope that we can point at people's heads and in this manner directly observe their emotions, sensations, and thoughts?

Possibly. We already have some rather powerful tools for detecting what goes on with people's heads, and there is one I posted a while back where that information can be interpolated in such a manner as to produce an image that although very grainy at this stage of development, does bear a resemblance to the image observed by the subject, and if it turns out that the structure of consciousness is some sort of detectable field, it may be possible someday to monitor that field with the same resolution as we monitor an HDTV broadcast.

I propose that one can never directly observe the subjective experience (consciousness) of another. It may be possible one day for two systems to merge, but then their merged consciousnesses would present a new, unified consciousness, and thus we couldn't say we were observing the consciousness of another.

That is one way to look at the situation and I see where you're coming from, but humans are rather clever creatures, and it may very well be the case that a device could be constructed that allows for passive monitoring of identical stimuli without being present as part of the subjects own consciousness. We can already do this to some extent with very simple tools like two dark rooms and a prisim that divides a scene into two identical streams and presents them on two separate screens to two different people who assuming each possess consciousness and an normal BBS will have the same subjective type of experience as each other. We can expand that further with technology that transmits the stimuli from sensory devices on one person to those on another person, and if we add in the possibility immersive VR technology tied into a combination of sensory and interpolated data as directly monitored from another person, well I think you're smart enough to see the possibilities.

I remember having a similar discussion with my band buddies back in the seventies when I was sick of lugging my Space Echo around. I said that someday they'll be able to capture sound in tiny chips like transistors that can store it there and recall it later instead of using this cumbersome tape mechanism, and they just couldn't wrap their heads around that possibility. How could sound be stored on a crystal? Impossible! And some years later I was listening to a show about the challenge of voice recognition and how nobody had developed a reliable system, and came up with the idea of waveform comparative analysis, which some years later Kursweil also came up with and patented and made a fortune off of. If only I had been as business minded as I was inventive ... ... LOL.

(Interestingly, observation of objective, physical (quantum) processes appear to be changed by observation as well.)

Actually that is often misinterpreted ( not to say that you are misinterpreting it. I don't know your view ). Observation by humans on an experiential level has nothing to do with the wave collapse. It's purely an issue of detection and consciousness plays no role in it other than its part in creating the experiment.

So you're suggesting that Chalmers missed this obvious answer? Really?

What I said is what I said. Consciousness as an advantage for survival is one answer to the "Why?" question, and I haven't seen Chalmers mention it or talk about it anyplace yet. Maybe he does. If you find it, please tag me with the reference.

Think about this, ufology. This might give you a moment of insight. And I mean this sincerely. You suggest this answer is obvious, and yet when pressed above, you were unable to give anywhere near a complete, satisfactory answer. You even mentioned virtual particles.

The mechanism or process that explains the existence of consciousness ( virtual particles or whatever else may be involved ) is a separate issue from the "Why?" question. So I'm not sure what you're point is there.

It seems so obvious that we just have zero clue how it could be. And this lack of knowing is not an epistemological problem (as you and others seem to think). See my point above. We will never discover a consciousness substance that we can observe and objectively see, measure, observe the subjective experience of another.

I think we've already covered that. But to reiterate, I agree that we won't find any material substance analogous to rock or water or gas or ectoplasm. But I'm not convinced that consciousness will not turn out to be a physical property analogous to a magnetic field that can be detected and measured.

All we will ever objectively see is neural processes, particles, or fields. We will never see the thoughts, emotions, or sensations of others.

Again, we've already been through that, but to reiterate: I agree that two separate experiencers will always have their own unique experiences, but I can also imagine how via technology ( or a Vulcan mind meld ... LOL ) two separate experiencers might each be able to experience a duplicate set of nearly identical thoughts, emotions, and sensations.

What's more, again, despite how "obvious" it may seem, there is no coherent, physical model of an objective function of conscious experience.

Not sure about all those qualifiers there. They certianly aren't needed to answer the "Why?" question in terms of consciousness being advantageous for survival.

As Nagel has called for, we need a new, expansionist metaphysics.

Personally, I don't like to limit myself by assuming that any one methodology is going to provide all the answers, and I'm coming to appreciate more and more one of @Constance's favorites, Merleau-Ponty, because the more I read about him, although others like to pigeon-hole him, his concern wasn't for the agendas of others, and the labels he used seemed more as just a convenience. His search comes across to me as one for the truth of things and in that regard he had a solid respect for science and the role that the material world plays, and seemed to sincerely want to reconcile the incoherence between that and phenomenological experience.

You might also be interested in this paper:

Metaphysics Between Reductionism and a Non-Reductionist Ontology
D.F.M. Strauss
Faculty of Humanities, University of the Free State,
South Africa

http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/37462.pdf

 

[Randall]

Yes, a completely different point (the hard problem) that you continue to miss, haha. I'll try again when I get a moment.

Please do.

 

[Constance]

On the other hand, scientist cannot describe in objective, observable terms how firing neurons, interacting virtual particles, or fields might cause or even relate to subjective, conscious thoughts, emotions, or sensations.

Well said.

Chalmers tried to articulate with clarity what the hard problem was in his paper 'Facing up to the hard problem of consciousness'. The contributors in this thread do not accept Chalmers' explication and no alternative was agreed or arrived at during discussion... so feel free to interpret it as you will from the literature.

Chalmers's definition of the hard problem was inadequate from the beginning in his vague reduction of the significance of 'qualia' to 'what it feels like'. One can read Chalmers and conclude that humans are essentially zombies with the exception of our capacity to 'feel' some way or other in response to physical effects in our environment.

I was ok with your interpretation [whose interpretation was that Pharoah?] above, except with the notion that the HP does not stipulate that WIIL cannot be explained. Whether it can be explained or not is not part of the definition of what the HP is.

I think that the HP can only be resolved by looking for a comprehensive explanation of how the explanandum it points to [i.e., subjectivity and its complement of consequences in human experience and thought] has evolved in nature. For an understanding of this we need the kind of research that Panksepp has pursued in his affective neuroscience. Chalmers evidently did not think that qualia/WIIL and their consequences in humans could not be explained. But he has done a thoroughly inadequate job of articulating the complexities of consciousness that are engendered by qualia and remain to be recognized, which I think is the result of his lack of investigation of the phenomenological literature in the first place, and in the second place results from his personal interest in neuroscience. The goal of understanding what consciousness is in its full-blown complexity is still the main impetus in interdisciplinary consciousness studies.

What I am trying to express is said eloquently and in detail in the Varela paper I linked last night and link again here:

https://unstable.nl/andreas/ai/langcog/part3/varela_npmrhp.pdf

 

[Constance]

Out-of-body experience: Master of illusion

This is where the PSM running in your brain "attaches" itself to another via an illusion created by a camera pointing toward another individual--it is a whole-body version of the fake arm on the table illusion. Other examples are cited in the "Ego Tunnel" regarding the plasticity of the PSM.

The example in the article accomplishes the same only with a shifting of the observer point of view away from the body through a camera linked to VR goggles. As in the rubber hand illlusion, synchrony between the actions and sensations are an essential to cause the PSM to reorient the relations of its own internal components to fit or map the bizarre affordances presented by the experimental setup.

Those experiments indicate that embodied consciousness can be manipulated (tricked) by feeding into the subject of the experiment misleading (unreal) sensory data. The experiments indicate the extent to which an individual consciousness depends on physical operations in the brain's neural nets and connections for its sense of location and its proprioception. The question is, do these experiments account for spontaneous OBEs in which one's sensory input is not being technologically manipulated?

I received in yesterday's mail the Metzinger book you cited, The Ego Tunnel, and will first read the section(s) concerning OBEs and then respond further.

 

[Pharoah]

Well said.



Chalmers's definition of the hard problem was inadequate from the beginning in his vague reduction of the significance of 'qualia' to 'what it feels like'. One can read Chalmers and conclude that humans are essentially zombies with the exception of our capacity to 'feel' some way or other in response to physical effects in our environment.



I think that the HP can only be resolved by looking for a comprehensive explanation of how the explanandum it points to [i.e., subjectivity and its complement of consequences in human experience and thought] has evolved in nature. For an understanding of this we need the kind of research that Panksepp has pursued in his affective neuroscience. Chalmers evidently did not think that qualia/WIIL and their consequences in humans could not be explained. But he has done a thoroughly inadequate job of articulating the complexities of consciousness that are engendered by qualia and remain to be recognized, which I think is the result of his lack of investigation of the phenomenological literature in the first place, and in the second place results from his personal interest in neuroscience. The goal of understanding what consciousness is in its full-blown complexity is still the main impetus in interdisciplinary consciousness studies.

What I am trying to express is said eloquently and in detail in the Varela paper I linked last night and link again here:

https://unstable.nl/andreas/ai/langcog/part3/varela_npmrhp.pdf

So many comments about Chalmers' HP paper... but I sometimes wonder how many people have actually read it.
And understood what he wanted to achieve by writing it.

 

[Constance]

Ufology recommended the following paper:

Metaphysics Between Reductionism and a Non-Reductionist Ontology
D.F.M. Strauss
Faculty of Humanities, University of the Free State,
South Africa

http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/37462.pdf

It's a very interesting paper. See also the SEP article on Scientific Realism:

Scientific Realism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[Randall]

I saw nothing in your post that I could construe as a 'cheap shot', Steve. Indeed, I find myself continuously noting the efforts you make to avoid confrontation and to express your responses to others' expressed ideas/claims in the most open-handed and tolerant way possible.

I couldn't agree more. The comment was made in the context of how I've seen other people use the phrase, "You're smarter than you think you are." and I made sure I took the time to explain that to @smcder in a follow-up post. I think Steve is an awesome participant here and he would be sorely missed if he were gone.

 

[Randall]

So many comments about Chalmers' HP paper... but I sometimes wonder how many people have actually read it.
And understood what he wanted to achieve by writing it.

After reading so many papers and watching so many videos, a fair number of which involve Chalmers himself, I sure hope I understand it by now, because if I don't then maybe I'm actually a robot. ... LOL.