Callaway

Surely to admit consciousness as scientifically ineffable is to join the “Mysterians” such as Colin McGinn, and just give up?

Personally, I think of consciousness as related in some way to “mental models”, neural structures of some sort that embody representations homomorphic to correlated sensory inputs (“correlated” so as to represent perceived entities as distinct wholes).

From an evolutionary perspective: I imagine that consciousness arose at some stage in the evolution of biological  sensori-motor systems, by providing a survival advantage. Although one might describe chemotaxis in single-celled organisms as the most primitive form of sensori-motor system, I am not a believer in consciousness at that level, so I believe it must have developed in multicellular creatures.

It seems entirely plausible to me that developing an ability to correlate sensory inputs in such a way that a creature can resolve them to obtain maximum information (recognize the contents of its environment and the associated dynamics) confers a survival advantage, as long as that recognition links to motor-activity (i.e. not “merely subjective” or “purely passive” in your terms).  The more comprehensive such an ability becomes, the clearer a creature can recognise opportunities and threats to its existence.

Consciousness, I therefore believe, developed as the simultaneous awareness of multiple representations of a creature’s sensory inputs (including those of its own structure) subject to an integrative ‘binding’ process.  

While I cannot see how to relate that speculative neurological evolution to phenomenological experience (i.e. how to solve “the hard problem”) I am convinced that this is what preceded the development of consciousness.

How does that differ from what you write as “Specified by content”? Is this not “determinable by reference to its content.”?

Regards

PGE

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ellis, 

Thanks for your note, comments and question. 

I share your perspective on the nervous system as functioning to correlate sensory inputs with behavioral outputs--though the story be ever so complicated; and I am glad to see that you are inclined to resist the prevalent "consciousness as mystery" theme of contemporary thought. Still, we do not know the precise conditions under which consciousness arises. I'm also doubtful on the single-celled organisms, and it appears to be a kind of empirical question to ask which organisms are conscious and in what ways they are conscious. 

On the other hand it is a rather "heroic" behaviorism, indeed, which would attempt to maintain that consciousness does not exist. In consequence, that approach does not seem very appealing. Behaviorism mistakes the evidence of mind for a replacement of the concept of mind.

What I suggest in this question is a preliminary way of understanding what consciousness amounts to; and this goes in the direction of rejecting the prevalent notion of the "hard problem" of consciousness --to the degree, at least, of arguing that consciousness, as we may best best understand it, is nothing distinct from its contents. There are not two things here to concern ourselves with 1) a particular content, as in seeing the window, thinking that Socrates is mortal or imagining the color orange, as contrasted with 2) the consciousness of these contents. Particular contents are ways of being conscious. I use the term "determinable" to indicate that the relationship between consciousness and particular contents is like the relationship between the concept of color and particular colors. There are no instances of color apart from instances of particular colors. Likewise, there are no instances of consciousness apart from some particular content or other.

This is actually a theme from my dissertation, Intentionality and consciousness, and I am wondering if we might find some perspectives on it or criticism. Might you fill us in on the "consciousness as mystery" theme, Colin McGinn or others who take such a view? I have read some of McGinn, but it was quite some time back. What's the argument?  

The emergence of consciousness surely has to do with some level or kind of neurological complexity in the system bridging sensory inputs and behavioral outputs, but in some contrast with your note, conscious experience can be pretty simple or vague in terms of content--say, the simple image of a bright redness, or imagining the sound of high C.

H.G. Callaway  

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ellis,

I found a popular piece on line, from the New Statesman, where McGinn attempts to explain his "mysterian" position.

The following paragraph seemed to me to indicate the limitations of his position:

We can distinguish five positions on consciousness: eliminativist, dualist, idealist, pan­psychist and mysterianist. The eliminativist position attempts to dissolve the problem of explaining consciousness simply by declaring that there isn't any: there is no such thing - no seeing, hearing, thinking, and so on. There is just blank matter; the impression that we are conscious is an illusion. This view is clearly absurd, a form of madness even, and anyway refutes itself since even an illusion is the presence of an experience (it certainly seems to me that I am conscious). There are some who purport to hold this view but they are a tiny (and tinny) minority: they are sentient beings loudly claiming to be mindless zombies.

---End quotation

See:

http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2012/02/consciousness-mind-brain

The argument suggested is to demonstrate the "mysterian" position --which seems to amount to the idea of the scientific ineffability of consciousness, by simply eliminating the other possible position: "eliminativist, dualist, idealist, pan­psychist." But none of these positions seem to me to have much scientific plausibility. Moreover, I do not believe they exhaust the possibilities. I don't see the idea of scientific pluralism in McGinn's thinking. 

Perhaps the "mysterian" is inclined to believe that no one really knows what he may be thinking or doing? That would seem to be a pretty doubtful idea --on Wittgensteinian grounds --and especially given the lack of confidentiality on the internet. (Put something on the internet, and you might as well broadcast it around the world.) 

H.G. Callaway

There is a difficulty in trying to define consciousness as an "atomistic" or "binary" thing (that is, one either has it or not). What might happen if we try to explain/understand consciousness as a linear/scalar variable/thing? What has more/less of it? An important aspect to this kind of understanding is that it calls for "causal"  connections. So, leaving consciousness as a "black box" for just a moment, we ask, "what causes there to be more consciousness" (or less). Also, when there is more consciousness, what are the resulting effects?

Dear Callaway

As you may recall from earlier conversations, I’m wary of the limits of natural language, and here I sense you might agree that what the term refers to is likely to vary widely, both between  species and also between individuals within species having “more consciousness”. [I see now that Steven Wallis makes a comparable point.]

Now that consciousness is again accepted as a subject of study, I agree that Behaviorism is as little use as the Mysterians are for the consideration of consciousness, and in reference to your second reply, Panpsychism in effect explains nothing by seeing consciousness in everything.  

I almost agree with you that “consciousness, as we may best understand it, is nothing distinct from its contents” in the sense that it is the awareness of the contents, but I still find myself recognising a distinction between objectively observable neurological activity and subjective awareness.

From another direction on this latter point, are the contents of a computer’s memory sufficient for the computer to be conscious?

It’s most likely that you’ve read more of McGinn than I have, so I don’t feel qualified to “fill you in” on his ideas, especially as you’ve effectively dealt with the mysterian approach in your 2nd answer.

You finish on the simplicity of some conscious experience. The experience may seem simple, but the fact that some stroke-victims can’t complete a sketch of a circle says to me that even simple experiences depend on complex functioning.

PGE

I explore some of the consequences of a deflationary, reductionist metaphysics of human brains in this (just published) paper:

Article Demonic Geographies

I believe consciousness is the lens (of different qualities) through which we see the Principle. In the sense that Kant says that we are transforming the noumenon into the phenomenon, by passing it through our categories, and in the sense that C. G. Jung says that any experience of meeting with God is happening in our psyche.

Dear Sorea,

So how, in your view, does phenomenal consciousness relate to the neurological operation of the physical brain? 

Regards - PGE

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ellis & readers,

Regarding relatively simple conscious states, say, imagining the color red, you wrote:

You finish on the simplicity of some conscious experience. The experience may seem simple, but the fact that some stroke-victims can’t complete a sketch of a circle says to me that even simple experiences depend on complex functioning.

---End quotation

That the experience "seems simple" is of interest, from the point of view of a kind of initial catalog. That it may depend on some elaborate processing is quite another matter. Again, this seems to be a kind of empirical question which we wouldn't want to try to definitively answer merely on the basis of an initial or intuitive classification. The point is perhaps that ordinary language encodes initial plausibilities, and points of departure. 

On the other hand, that a simple experience may involve complex processing does not alone imply any doubts; even if complex processing were discovered and confirmed, this would not show, as far as I can see, that there are no comparatively simple conscious states --emerging from complex processing. Surely, something may be simple in one way and complicated in another. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Sorli & readers, 

I believe you have put your finger on an issue that concerns many people. 

You wrote:

Consciousness is not an object, it is subjective. You cannot make bijective model of it. But you can experience it.

---End quotation

I take it you have coined a term here "bijective," --implying that if something is not objective, then it cannot be "bijective." 

What is true, I take it, is that consciousness is a subjective experience. But what does this mean? Well, in the first place, I take it that it means that no one else can have or know about our inner experience in quite they way we do ourselves.  But, for example, if someone else has a pain, then I surely can know, more or less, what this is like in particular cases. This possibility arises because of the inter-subjective character of the language we learn and use to describe our inner experience. In consequence, it seems that I can describe someone else's pain --more or less accurately --while I still can't have someone else's pain, I can know what it is like. 

It would seem to follow that subjective experience can become the object of knowledge. I can know that someone else is in pain, and even the character of the pain, without having someone else's pain. Right? 

H.G. Callaway

since you cannot be scientific (or maybe even philosophical) and consciousless at the same time, does it imply that 'the content' is objective or at least scientific? e.g. pain is an appearance of an objective phenomenon although it cannot always be felt. also, what if consciousness is fundamental (David Chalmers)? 

Awareness and understanding are the basis of self-knowledge

The knowledge of the self is through consciousness and introspection that man knows himself in himself without resorting to others, it is the consciousness that determines the self-knowledge and expresses the truth and the thesis of many advocates such as: Sophistianism, Descartes, Henry Bergson, Dobran Sartre, Husserl and others Of the philosophers.

Where she goes, where sophistication says that "man is the standard of everything" and therefore he who is aware of his existence and knows itself in itself because it is the standard of everything.

This is also what the French philosopher Descartes says that the human self perceives itself in its own right. This is what he confirms in saying, "I think therefore I am." I am self-conscious and aware of its existence on its own, so I do not need the mediation of others to confirm their existence and consciousness themselves The fact of the certainty of the obvious can not be doubt and does not need the mediation of others to prove which makes the ego at Descartes a certainty and independent and separate independent and closed, while others are a virtual probability.

And the same view in the French philosopher Henry Bergson, which emphasizes that the human feel itself through intuition or direct knowledge and the sense of existence of the conscious living being of existence in the world, man is not a mass of instincts as is the thing in the animal, but is a conscious being of his actions, and on his way He feels that he has a past and a future, that the world around him exists, and that the ego is founded as being by him. Hence, consciousness does not emerge from being aware of oneself or being aware of the subject, The conscious being is realized as being in the world by intuition.

This is what the other French philosopher Dobran says: "Before feeling any thing, there must be self-existence." A person can recognize himself by introspection or self-reflection, an inner observation of what is going on in the soul, turning to a witness to himself to know that He has a real self that appears to people who are physically, psychologically and morally opposed to others. Language is self-feeling. He also says that "feeling is based on the distinction between the poet and the subject." For example, For others to feel it or feel the same degree of feeling it is.

This is confirmed by the leader of the school of existentialism, Pangol Sarterman, during his famous saying "The other is hell", which does not limit my freedom and self-assertion. Since man is a rational animal, he alone recognizes himself and proves his existence without the need for others.

This is what the other existential philosopher Husserl, who believes that the self-conscious poet must be self-aware, should also be aware of things and the outside world: "Every feeling is a feeling of something."

"I put myself in a circle that I made myself for myself, but I do not treat him like you do not like me or that makes me more unique, independent of others, and alone in their own building, not with others," says Gabrielle Marcel, who now recognizes herself when she separates and isolates herself from others.

Cash:

The supporters of the first stop in their response to self-knowledge to consciousness only, the method of deductive approach is subjective and non-objective and therefore is a knowledge of a scientifically deficient because it is biased and free of scientific integrity The measure of honesty here is the same person is observed and observed at the same time it is said that the self that You want to see itself as the eye you want to see itself,

Add to this all that man is a social being by nature, he can not live in isolation from society, and psychological life is a combination of feeling and unconsciousness and this is sure modern psychology by Sigmund Freud.

The second position: the other is the basis of self-knowledge:

The knowledge of the self is through the other, that is, the feeling of the individual itself depends on the knowledge of others and this thesis many advocates such as: Barclay, Hegel, Max Schiller, Watson, and other philosophers.

The English philosopher Berkley goes on to say that self-recognition is through others because it is the others who help me to develop myself and my knowledge of self-truth. This is by comparing our actions and the meanings that accompany them in our minds and between the actions of others. We derive from the similar experience in these acts And between the other and the difference from it, the self recognizes itself as a distinct individual when you meet the other, that knowledge requires the existence of the other and the awareness and recognition of, because others is one of the components of existence and I am part of this presence which means that others share us presence, He meets us and contradicts us.

This is also what the German philosopher Hegel, who emphasizes that self-knowledge is through others and based on the dialectical relationship between the ego and the other, can explain this meaning more than through the famous dialect of Hegel, which expresses the relationship of contradiction that brings the master to the slave. And the work and makes the slave to do these acts to express the sovereignty and high status, but the employee engaged in the work and harnesses his abilities to influence the things and form and his will and thus prove his presence through his service to his master, and thus prove each one of themselves, and with time becomes Mr. Abda because he can not live Without him, and hence each of them becomes aware of the truth of himself and the value of himself.

Max Schiller considered that empathy with others is what builds social and human relations and thus can now identify themselves, by means of others, sharing their joys and their self-assertions with self-communication and self-recognition. Empathy and love are the way to communicate Because empathy or emotional involvement is an intentional act directed at others, such as: the pain shared by the father and the mother at the death of their son, and as the participation of the other joys and joys.

This is confirmed by most sociologists, among them the French philosopher Watson, who emphasizes that man is a social animal by nature, he can not live in isolation from society,

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Klatchko & readers, 

That content is objective we might term "intentional realism," for want of a better term. This would imply that descriptions of intentional states of conscious beings may figure in explanations --common sense explanations or scientific explanation. If intentional states are real, then they have their effects in the world. 

This seems to be disputed from at least two directions: 1) By the claim that consciousness (and its contents?) are merely subjective, illusory or mere appearances, concerning which no objective approach is possible. Strict behaviorism would be one form of this claim, I take it. All genuine explanations must be conducted in, say, the language of physics or perhaps the language of physiology or stimulus-response behaviorism in psychology. 

On the other hand, 2) it may be maintained that consciousness is real enough but not open to scientific investigation, being intrinsically subjective. In this case, the view implied is that "subjective"and "objective" are mutually exclusive alternatives. I wonder, on such a view, what one would make of ordinary psychological explanations conducted in terms of beliefs and desires. 

That consciousness is fundamental might be taken as a hypothesis. I take it to be plausible that though the conditions under which conscious experience emerges are discoverable, this may not explain the correlations --or not in any pre-existing terms. Obviously, if research were to turn up an account of when consciousness emerges, then we would have a better position to judge of the idea that consciousness is fundamental? Do you have a quotation from Chalmers? 

H.G. Callaway

@Callaway, unless you want to read The Conscious Mind you'll have to persevere with this interview https://youtu.be/zqUM1o1x8CM?t=6m39s -- 6:30 minutes into the tape.

p.s. it isn't tackier than anything else including Descartes and Husserl :)  

i would add to Chalmer's expressed views the Conway and Kochen Free Will Theorem, which in my mind places consciousness and physical reality in the same plane 

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Klatchko, 

I'd recommend Chalmers' The Conscious Mind. 

https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-conscious-mind-9780195117899?cc=us&lang=en&

Here's the publisher's description:

What is consciousness? How do physical processes in the brain give rise to the self-aware mind and to feelings as profoundly varied as love or hate, aesthetic pleasure or spiritual yearning? These questions today are among the most hotly debated issues among scientists and philosophers, and we have seen in recent years superb volumes by such eminent figures as Francis Crick, Daniel C. Dennett, Gerald Edelman, and Roger Penrose, all firing volleys in what has come to be called the consciousness wars. Now, in The Conscious Mind, philosopher David J. Chalmers offers a cogent analysis of this heated debate as he unveils a major new theory of consciousness, one that rejects the prevailing reductionist trend of science, while offering provocative insights into the relationship between mind and brain.

Writing in a rigorous, thought-provoking style, the author takes us on a far-reaching tour through the philosophical ramifications of consciousness. Chalmers convincingly reveals how contemporary cognitive science and neurobiology have failed to explain how and why mental events emerge from physiological occurrences in the brain. He proposes instead that conscious experience must be understood in an entirely new light--as an irreducible entity (similar to such physical properties as time, mass, and space) that exists at a fundamental level and cannot be understood as the sum of its parts. And after suggesting some intriguing possibilities about the structure and laws of conscious experience, he details how his unique reinterpretation of the mind could be the focus of a new science. Throughout the book, Chalmers provides fascinating thought experiments that trenchantly illustrate his ideas. For example, in exploring the notion that consciousness could be experienced by machines as well as humans, Chalmers asks us to imagine a thinking brain in which neurons are slowly replaced by silicon chips that precisely duplicate their functions--as the neurons are replaced, will consciousness gradually fade away? The book also features thoughtful discussions of how the author's theories might be practically applied to subjects as diverse as artificial intelligence and the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

All of us have pondered the nature and meaning of consciousness. Engaging and penetrating, The Conscious Mind adds a fresh new perspective to the subject that is sure to spark debate about our understanding of the mind for years to come.

---End quotation

Something or other has to be "fundamental" in the sense that explanations are conducted in those terms, and there is no way to get under it--on pain of infinite regress of explanations. Whether one has in fact reached such a level of explanation will, however, always remain, in degree, an open question.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

Those following this question and thread may find the following review of Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, of interest:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/243838284_The_conscious_mind_In_search_of_a_fundamental_theory

The review was written by Frederick Gregory of the University of Florida and appeared in The International Journal of Quantum Chemistry. 

H.G. Callaway

Article The conscious mind: In search of a fundamental theory

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

I've come across a review of Chalmers' more recent book, The Character of Consciousness, which is a collection of his essays: 

Leuenberger, S. (2012) Review of David Chalmers, The Character of

Consciousness. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 90 (4). pp. 803-806. ISSN

0004-8402

See:

http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/84340/1/84340.pdf

Have a look.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Dr  Callaway ,

I have least understanding of it other than my own :)

It is a muscle that is in the state of awareness  only when presented with stimulation. Consciousness is a judgement of right or wrong and the extent of subjectivity is a factor of learning and relearning process (that is eternal !!!) 

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

I notice that there is as yet no comment on my mention of Brentano's thesis of intentionality, in connection with this questions and thread of discussion. You will perhaps recall that I suggested that the claim that consciousness is determinable by references to content could be understood as an interpretation of Brentano's thesis.

Here is a short description of the thesis from the Blackwell's Dictionary of Philosophy:

Brentano's thesis of intentionality

Philosophy of mind, modern European philosophy A thesis ascribed to the German philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano on the basis of his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874). Brentano revived the medieval notion of intentionality as the fundamental feature of mental phenomena, in contrast to physical phenomena. An intentional state has contents by being directed upon an object or a state of affairs. The contents of intentional states are characterized by inexistence, that is, they need not exist or be true. On this basis, Brentano claims that all and only mental phenomena are intentional. They are peculiar and cannot be reduced to physical properties or states. As a result, psychology should be autonomous from physical science. This thesis has exerted a great influence upon modern and contemporary philosophy of mind and epistemology, although it has been challenged by the identity theory of mind and its physicalist successors. Intentionality is also central to Husserl 's phenomenology. “A consequence of this [Brentano's] thesis (or another way of putting it) is that intentional concepts such as belief, which might relate to the ‘inexistence’, cannot be defined except in other terms of psychology, that is to say, in other intentional terms.” Nelson, The Logic of Mind ...

---End quotation

There is a good suggestion here, I believe of a conception of the autonomy (or perhaps partial autonomy?) of psychology as a science --of the mental or of mental phenomena. As you see from the quotation, this has traditionally been viewed as a challenge to, or dissent from varieties of physicalism, (or materialism). To say that psychology is autonomous simply means that it has its own distinctive concepts and recognized laws or regularities, and the validity of psychological generalization does not depend on its reduction to the terms of some other science or field.

I have always found the concept of the "inexistent" doubtful or unhelpful; and in analogy with the distinction between meaning and reference, I am inclined to distinguish between intentional content and their reference --or purported reference. As some of you may know, the American philosopher W.V. Quine had a criticism of Brentano's thesis. On the other hand, Brentano's writings were long promoted by the Brown University philosopher Roderick Chisholm. 

Brentano was himself quite Aristotelian in his outlook on philosophy, and that it part of the reason that I first became interested in his writings. He has had a very large influence in philosophy. This includes an early influence on Husserl, but also an influence on the Polish school of logic --culminating, perhaps, in the work of Alfred Tarski. I think of Brentano's work as an important part of the late 19th-century revival of interest in Aristotle. 

Here is a link to the article on Brentano from the Stanford Encyclopedia, which includes a bibliography:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brentano/

Any interest in Brentano on intentionality? 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Kausel & readers,

Thanks for your comments which provide some opportunity for clarifications. 

As I read your comment, you do not think that consciousness is ineffable, but you express some doubts on the relationship of consciousness to content --in contrast with the idea that consciousness is determinable in terms of content. 

This seems to be based on a contrast in usage--concerning the word behavior in particular. The present question and discussion arose from an earlier discussion and consideration of Wittgenstein's private language argument where stress was placed on the importance of publicly observable behavior. 

You start by saying "Consciousness is more a cognitive behavior than content." and "...consciousness is nothing but the behavior that makes us recognize what's happening." This seems not to be a matter of publicly observable behavior but instead something like mental activity. At the least, if I substitute "mental activity" for your "cognitive behavior" I get some clarification. But I am simply wondering how to interpret what you say. 

Your emphasis on the importance of subconscious processes is well taken; though the focus here is on the clarification and understanding of the term consciousness.

Saying that "consciousness is more cognitive behavior than content," you seem to have in mind some sort of higher process --almost something methodological. But notice that methodological reflections also have their own specific contents. 

I'm somewhat inclined to read your talk of "cognitive behavior" as meaning something like mentality, as in an ethnographic (or as I say a methodological) sense. But in any case, I am not inclined to the view that consciousness is instantiated apart from some specific content or other--however vague or precise.

Would you care to say a bit more on the points you were getting at?

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Kausel, 

I can agree with most everything you say in your expanded comments, however, I expect that going into that in any detail would distract from the theme and purpose of this thread. Regarding Wittgenstein, though, I would emphasize that there are very significant differences between early and later Wittgenstein. What is relevant here, or more to the point, is later Wittgenstein. This is the Wittgenstein of "ordinary language philosophy," as contrasted with the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, and the "mirror (or "picture") theory of logic. It is in later Wittgenstein that we find the argument against the possibility of a private language. 

I think it important to see that later Wittgenstein is a critic of his own earlier work, and the language which particularly "bewitches" is that of abstract philosophical work which ignores the guidance of ordinary language --this is a later-day version of common sense philosophy. It makes good sense that it should have been so prominent in the 2nd half of the 20th century, as the western world attempted to recover from the trauma of 2 world wars. (Only to be caught up in decades of traumatic Cold War!)

The word ineffable is stronger than your usage suggests. It implies more than a lack of adequate definition and suggests something that cannot even be described. Regarding the sense of interest for the present question, Webster's says:

Definition of ineffable: 

incapable of being expressed in words : indescribable.

---End quotation

I notice, in contrast, that you volunteer some description:

Our conscious awareness (consciousness? Conscious behavior?) is the process of knowing, but compared to our subconscious it is like a small tip of an iceberg ...

---End quotation

On the other hand, it is important to recognize, I think that our consciousness extends beyond the more purely conceptual: e.g., if I have a pain, or imagine the color red, or see a bright light in the distance. When we make observations, then we are surely conscious of what we observe, etc. 

I appreciate that you feel yourself taking some risk by entering into somewhat unfamiliar terrain of an academic field not your own. But I suspect that a little bit of later Wittgenstein is better than none, for the purposes of this thread. Have a look at the following short video, if you want to follow up this reply. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgnkokFzjEI

This runs about 4 Min. and I judge it pretty good as such things go. 

A last point concerns your expression of a generalized conceptual skepticism--in a very polite and humble form. I think the precise question in that respect, is whether and how some conceptual system are better or worse than others. However, it is important to recognize, that any such judgement can only reasonably be made by reference to accumulated evidence. This, as it happens, often eventuates in long and complex discussion and debate. But without these complexities, we will not be in a position to reasonably decide when language illuminates and when it beguiles and bewitches. 

It may also be of interest, in considering the possibility of language which "bewitches," to look to whom it may be that is paying the piper of such distracting tunes. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Méndez-Esteban,

I think you may need to make an important distinction between content and reference of psychological states or processes. Someone may, for instance be thinking about the morning star on one day and thinking about the evening star on another. As psychological phenomena, these do not seem to be the same. (In spite of that, the morning star = the evening star, as was likely first figured out by some observant ancient Babylonian.) In order for someone to think about the morning star, they do not have to know (or believe) that the morning star is the evening star. That is reason to distinguish between the intentional content of thought, on the one hand, and (external) reference on the other.

It follows, on the basis of any similar distinction, that one would not think of contents of thought as a matter of the environment or the physical. Psychology is to have a distinctive field of phenomena. If we cannot understand these psychological phenomena in reductive (say, purely biological or physical) terms, then that is reason to think of psychology as having a certain autonomy: its own distinctive vocabulary and generalizations. 

H.G. Callaway 

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Méndez-Esteban,

You are correct, of course, that there "should exist a relation between 'external reference' and 'content'."  

My point was that they don't always line up quite as we might hope or expect. Much the same kind of point could be made by reference to optical illusions, say. I think that in general terms if the contents of particular minds don't line up, on a larger scale, then we say that there is a "loss of contact with reality." This is part of the traditional definition of insanity, which is marked by both hallucinations and systematic delusions --as when someone believes he is Napoleon or Jesus Christ returned to earth. 

It is not that there is anything wrong with reality in such cases. It is the mental states which have gone wrong. But if we allow that the contents and objects of reference can fail to line up, then they must be different in any case. (We need some such distinction.) The contents, we might say, can be better or worse in relation to their representational functions. But it is not simply deviant contents which are distinct from external reference. Lacking some appropriate internal representation, including appropriate contents, we would be unable to act appropriately. There must be internal (causal) conditions mediating fruitful relations between environment and appropriate activities in a given environment. 

To say that psychology as a science will be in some degree autonomous simply means that it operates (more or less successfully) with its own distinctive subject-matter and generalizations --in its own particular vocabulary. For example, human psychology is concerned with the distinctive modes of human cognition--if it aims to explain human behavior and the nature of the mind. But saying this does not tell us the degree of divergence between contents and object of reference. To say that psychology is autonomous is just to say it can't effectively be replaced by some other science using different concepts and generalizations --say, sociology or biology or physics. 

I think there is reason to believe that different people and peoples do have different conceptions of the world, though it is perhaps dysfunctional if they diverge too greatly. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Miller & readers, 

Many thanks for your question regarding the scientific status of consciousness. 

A chief or central question about consciousness is whether it is open to a scientific account. If consciousness is ineffable, then I think that clearly implies that it is not open to a scientific account. To ask whether consciousness is scientifically ineffable, then, is to ask more specifically whether it is capable of scientific description.

The question we find implicit in Brentano is a question of how we might best conceive of psychology and of the mental. The intentional, or as I've put it intentional content, is the mark of the mental for Brentano. The idea has Aristotelian roots and was elaborated in various ways in the Aristotelian scholastic tradition. Brentano wanted to put it to work in empirical psychology. 

Interestingly, his book, where the "thesis of intentionality" was proposed, is still in print in its English translation:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0415106613/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

See also, the Worldcat page:

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/885313304

In some sympathy with intentional psychology, as contrasted, say, with behaviorist psychology, I have been proposing a related conception of consciousness: the idea that consciousness is determinable in terms of intentional content. It can be described in terms of the relevant content; and there is no consciousness apart from some specific content or other. To understand this point, it is important to distinguish between intentional content and external objects of reference. 

Explanations in terms of beliefs and desires would be an example of explanation in intentional psychology, and this is not unknown on a common-sense basis.

Why did Jones take the train? He took the train because he wanted to go to town and he believed that the train would take him to town. 

This, in fact is pretty much how we understand ourselves and others. It therefore makes sense to ask whether and how this could be developed on a more systematic basis. 

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway,

I have read here and there about Brentano, understood pieces but frankly I do not really get the significance of his contribution.  Nothing surprising here since I did not read him.  Maybe it explain why I do not also get what you mean by ''the idea that consciousness is determinable in terms of intentional content.''  I am familiar with a lot of experiemental psychology in vision and particularly to colour vision.  This kind of science have discovered a lot of relations in consciousness content.  But what is extracted from consciousness cotent by experiemental psychology is alway the relation of certain conscious content relative to other conscious contentt.  Is this colour similar to this one?  A blind person from birth would certainly learn a lot form all this but would have no clue of what is like to experience the red colour and many other non-relational information in visual consciousness.  

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brassard & readers, 

I seem to recall one philosopher (Hume perhaps? or a reply to Hume?) saying that the color red is like the sound of a trumpet. But even in Hume, dedicated as he was to the proposition "no idea without a corresponding impression," there is the famous puzzle about the ability to imagine a particular shade of blue, which a person might, by chance never have seen. The reasoning is that if you had seen all or many other shades of blue, one might succeed in imagining the missing shade. 

Consider, too, what it means to imagine something never perceived. There is a clue to this in the partly imagistic character of hieroglyphics and pictographic systems of written language. The point is that the imagistic runs off into the conceptual. Again, can we imagine a four-dimensional hyper-cube? Do we know what it would be like to see one, although we never have seen one? Images do exist, but they are of course somewhat imperfect images, projecting the four-dimension figure into three-dimensional (or two-dimensional) images. See the following:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract

(If you click on the image in the upper-right corner, then you will get an enlargement of the image.)

My point is that such images are quasi-conceptual. The blind man's ability to imagine the color red is somewhat similar. What counts for understanding is that we have similar concepts of the color red --fitting into publicly available language. What the blind man cannot do is identify and distinguish colors by looking; it is not that he can have no understanding of color. 

One way to think of the idea that consciousness is determinable in terms of content, might be to say, well, there is no transcendental inner "eye" viewing the contents of consciousness. (No "I" which sees but it never seen, perhaps.) Instead, the specification of the content is a specification of the particular way in which the organism is conscious on a particular occasion. 

Let me recommend again the article on Brentano from the Stanford Encyclopedia:

The following passage quotes Brentano directly:

Brentano is probably best known for having introduced the notion of intentionality to contemporary philosophy. He first characterizes this notion with the following words, which have become the classical, albeit not completely unambiguous formulation of the intentionality thesis:

Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself... (Brentano, Psychology, 88)

[Jedes psychische Phänomen ist durch das charakterisiert, was die Scholastiker des Mittelalters die intentionale (auch wohl mentale) Inexistenz eines Gegenstandes genannt haben, und was wir, obwohl mit nicht ganz unzweideutigen Ausdrücken, die Beziehung auf einen Inhalt, die Richtung auf ein Objekt (worunter hier nicht eine Realität zu verstehen ist), oder die immanente Gegenständlichkeit nennen würden. Jedes enthält etwas als Objekt in sich… (Brentano, Psychologie, 124f)]

---End quotation

See:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brentano/#Intentionality

I would stress again the need of the distinction between content and objects of external reference. Generally, "intentionality" may be paraphrased as "aboutness." Conscious states and processes are always about something or purport to be. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Miller, 

It seems to me that you first read in a reductionism to what I say, along with an unpromising reductionistic exactness, and then make your criticism of the straw-man you construct. Generally, as intentional, my approach is anti-reductivist and I hold that we should never expect more precision from a given subject-matter than that of which it proves itself capable. 

In particular, I want to draw attention to the following passage in your note:

Continuing with a semantic analysis I will deconstruct that passage.  I argue "intentional psychology" is not anomalous but shares the same general characteristic of all inexact sciences - that they are inexact.  It is however by its nature and its methods an incomplete approach to describing, explaining, theorising about and predicting psychological phenomena [and always will be].

---End quotation

There is, in fact, nothing in this passage which I am intent to dispute, though you present it as a matter of your different perspective. Intentional psychology would only be anomalous, if it failed to capture the phenomenon of consciousness. But I have been arguing, quite obviously, to show how this can be accomplished. The degree of exactness which is possible in my non-reductive approach, is an open and potentially an experimental question. 

Yours seems a very poor argumentative practice, so far as I can see. If you want to criticize what I have actually said, Then I think your comments may prove more interesting. I suspect that the questions here are somewhat beyond the scope of your particular competencies? 

H,G, Callaway

Dear Callaway,

Thank you for your response.

Here is the testimony of Tommy Edison, a born blind, about colours.

http://gizmodo.com/5966451/what-color-means-to-blind-people

For short: He does’nt get it.  It is like trying to explain words particular scent to somone that does not have this sense of smell.   But because the sense of vision provides us with a huge amount of spatial information that are common with the sense of touch and the sense of movement of the body, then it is not difficult for them to imagine spatial scene.  Because vision is a lot about surface shape and touch is about the same thing.  So a blind person can imagine a lot about vision but not about the colour of surface which has no equivalent in touch or body movement. 

So born blind people do not have the experience of colour and so cannot imagine it. There Is maybe one exception: the white light experience associated with phosphenes, a tiny stars of light that may appears if there is a blow to the head.

Sound are fast and rhythmic movement and this can to a certain point be sensed by the body through other means than the ears.

Someone born deaf can experience music.  If they lay on solid contact of their skin and skull on the floor where a symphonic orchestra is playing, they enjoy music.  The vibration enter through the skin and bone and get somehow and they enjoy music.  We do not know when they perceive but their emotions are affected by the music.

http://gapersblock.com/transmission/2010/07/22/beyond_vibrations_the_deaf_musical_experience/

All conceptual content, all what language convey is sensed information. The intellectual realm is in continuity with the senses. We think with our imagination/senses. A very good book on this topic is: Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim.  

‘’  the specification of the content is a specification of the particular way in which the organism is conscious on a particular occasion. ‘’

The content of consciousness is specific to particular occasion but some aspect of content can be communicate to other but in the case of the colour red, the specification here ‘’colour red’’ is a reference to the experience itself.  So it has meaning only for those for which such experience exist.

I have some reading to do on Brentano.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brassard & readers,

You seem very close to Hume: "No idea without corresponding impression." The meaning of our ideas is the private experience of sense. Not so far from Descartes, I think; and then the problem of proving the existence of the external world on the basis of private experience arises.

My point of course, was that the blind man can understand color, not that everyone blind does understand it properly. That is a much stronger claim. That one person "doesn't get it" does not prove that no one does.

I notice that you do not address my argument based on imagining a four-dimensional object and the continuity of imagistic and conceptual imagination.

You do not respond to the case of Hume and imagining the missing shade of blue. Yet you seem to think you have written an adequate reply. 

You wrote:

So born blind people do not have the experience of colour and so cannot imagine it.

---End quotation

You certainly have not demonstrated this. Your argument doesn't hold up. Compare the concept of "tone color" in music, and the experience of timbre, such as the distinctive sound of the cello vs. the violins or the oboe. It is not difficult to imagine tone color as distributed on a surface each quite distinct. Anyone who understands just a bit about color understands that colors may cover surfaces. So, we seem to have a strong analogy, distinctive qualities covering surfaces. How much does someone need to understand to have a concept of color and colors? You seem to boil it all down to a distinctive inner experience. 

The meanings of color words are available in publicly accessible language, and it does not consist of private experience that some people have and others may lack.

H.G. Callaway 

Is consciousness scientifically ineffable? For your question the answer is Yes. I say we can only feel or perceive it. While coming to specification I do not know whether we can use figure of speech Metaphor or not.

Philosophically we can speak a lot.

What is consciousness?

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir8XITVmeY4)

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ramadevi, 

Thank you for your contribution. As you may know, if you have been reading along, I'm somewhat skeptical of the "mysterian" conceptions of consciousness. I take, it though, that you express such a view. You claim that consciousness is scientifically ineffable, though we seem to have come across some scientific or quasi-scientific description of it. 

I noticed the following passage in the text you liked to on the Vedantic view:

The central tenet of Vedanta (also known as Vedanta-sutra) is that everything is dependent upon an original sentient/conscious foundation or self knowing absolute truth. The first aphorism of Vedanta-sutra states that under the guidance of a spiritually realized being, we must inquire into our true nature as spirit (athato brahma jijna~ sa). The second aphorism of Vedanta-sutra provides the initial indication of how to begin this inquiry (janmady asya yatah). Janma means birth, asya refers to everything (entire cosmos which includes both matter and life) and yatah means ‘from whom’. Therefore, to begin the inquiry into our true nature, we must first inquire into the original source of everything. Srı mad-Bhagavatam is considered as a natural supplementary commentary on the Vedanta-sutra. The first verse of Srı mad-Bhagavatam elaborated the commentary of the second aphorism of Vedanta-sutra (janmady yato nvaya ditaratas carthesv abhijnah svara ~ t). “Janmady asya yatah” – the origin of everything is “abhijnah svara ~ t” – the unitary Supreme Cognizant Being.

---End quotation

I take it that this is a religious and theological conception of consciousness--or of terms translated by means of the English word consciousness. The proposal is that in order to come to understand ourselves, we must first, under spiritual and scriptural guidance, "inquire into the original source of everything," which is supposed to be "the unitary Supreme Cognizant Being." 

The ideas are not completely unfamiliar, and there are Western versions, or similar Western ideas and ideals. Everyone is entitled to their own religion. But the present question does not aim at religious inquiry. 

It is clear in historical context that religious ideas and ideals have their influence on conceptions of the self and mind. But, on the other hand, it is alien to the present question and discussion to adopt scriptural authority or theological doctrine as the basis of scientific theory or doctrine. It is also contrary to the purpose of this question and discussion to adopt any particular scriptural guide in answering our question. Whatever the valid roles of religious authority in personal life, they do not have the same value for scientific and philosophical inquiry.

I notice in the video you linked to that Chalmers returns with the talk of the "hard problem."  That I think is more to the point of the present question. If you read through the contributions above, you will find that we have been searching for a suitable quotation on exactly what this "hard problem" amounts to. 

The opposition of Chalmers and Dennett in the video seems to cover the territory. I am sure that their writings will return here. Other interesting people also put in some appearance. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all, 

Here follows a short contemporary definition of empirical psychology:

The approach to study and explanation of psychological phenomena emphasizing objective observation and experimental methods. See experimental psychology.

What is EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY? definition of EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY (Psychology Dictionary)

---End quotation

See:

http://psychologydictionary.org/empirical-psychology/

Websters defines psychology as follows:

Definition of psychology

plural psychologies

1:  the science of mind and behavior

2a :  the mental or behavioral characteristics of an individual or group b :  the study of mind and behavior in relation to a particular field of knowledge or activity

3:  a theory or system of psychology Freudian psychology the psychology of Jung.

---End quotation

Reflecting generalities of usage, these definitions may prove of some use to recall at this point. 

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway,

I did not read Hume, only accounts of several of his ideas.  I am sympathetic to his sentimentalism and I find his sceptical arguments intellectually stimulating but I am not sympatic to scepticism, it goes against common sense.  I am guided by common sense and I am intellectually sympathic to Thomas Reid (I did not read him, only accounts).  I find the extreme sceptism thesis of doubting the reality of the world as so much against common sense, and intellectually so weak, that I consider it ridiculous and would not even bother to debate about it.    That being said about my philosophical sympathies, I am surprised that you had wrongly perceive some sympathy on my part towards this kind of scepticism.  You also wrongly perceive that I am in a debating mode.  I am presently in a dialoguing mode, a mode of thinking collaboratly together for the purpose of clarification of each other position. I hope these comments will help clarify your theory of Mind relative to me.

In the old student days and computer vision days I was almost on a daily basis solving high dimensional up to infinite problem by projecting them in my mind onto 3D space and it work very well. I look at the Tesseract and found it very interesting.   And yes I agree with you that it is possible to imagine 3D analogue to realities taking place in higher dimension.  But notice that we are not really imagining directly the higher dimensional situations, we are intelligently projecting them into the type of spaces we can visually perceived: 3D.  And we remain in space going for total space to sub-space of it.  In the case of colour for people that have never experience it, there is no analogue.  Like there is no spatial (visual or touch, ) analogue of scent.    I can easily imaging mixing colour in my mind , but that is well within the possibility of imagination in that domain of colour for those having it this domain but not for those lacking it totally.

I am certain that a born blind person can understand that colour cover surface but it does not give them a clue of the nature of this covering or the what it is like to see this covering.  It is not a point like property of surface, colour is perceptually assigned to whole surface and this is not based on only what is perceive on this surface but it is relative to the surrounding surfaces.

I hope this is a more adequate reply.

‘’ The meanings of color words are available in publicly accessible language, and it does not consist of private experience that some people have and others may lack. ‘’

I think that some people lack totally the experience of colour, they are people that see the world in shades of grey and most born blinds do not make much of the colour aspects in conversation or in books. Since the meaning of colour is self-evident for all people with normal vision, public speech just need to mention ‘’red’’ and there is no need to say more.  Once a toddler learned to associated this word to this experience and realize with conversation with other that its use of the word ‘’red’’ is correct then it is all he/she need for the remaining of his life to understand public speech and nothing in that public speech is available for those that never experience ‘’red’’.

I hope this is a more adequate reply.

Regards

P.S. The central thrust of my theory of images is that vision is not about inversing the imaging process which we know to be an impossible computational task but it is  to determine the structures of images.  This is all that is available.   But the world out there may be 3D but it is mostly constructed as surfaces in 3D which are 2D or images.  Not only vision can be limited to the analysis of 2D image but these can be fully analysed as temporal 1 D growth sequence of these structures and so decomposed into the 1D growth narrative of their construction and this one can be further reduced to just a few symmetry breaking event points.   Look at a tree and you will understand the whole idea.  The symmetry breaking event point are the branching points of the growth pattern.  This is fine for the actual tree but take the terminal points of the branching patterns as a complex image and take the path of growth from the main trunc to be its formation path, and the branching point are the symmetry breaking event of its formation.  The recovery algorithm mirror the tree and this tree mirror the tree of life from unicellular.  This approach not only reduce 3D to a few events but it also reduce 3D + time to a few events.  The specious present is totally into the image.  Reading James's comments on the specious present was an important for me.  Totally out of topic, I know.

@Callaway you are right. Because of time factor I just read the question in bold letters. Honestly did not even read replies in detail, just posted views may be religious rather scientific including the video. My apologies.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all, 

I would suggest putting the topics of Brentano and intentionality on the back burner for the time being. I am pretty confident they will come back.

I've taken a look at the Wikipedia article on the "hard problem" of consciousness, and I think it is useful and well done. I want to invite readers of this thread to take a look.

Near that start of the article, there is a useful quotation:

Chalmers' formulation

In "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" (1995), Chalmers wrote:

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

In the same paper, he also wrote:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive there is a whir of information processing, but there is also a subjective aspect.

---End quotation

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

This ought to be a sufficient quotation to (start to) try to come to terms with the issue. It is worth noting that the skeptics hold that there really is no problem of this sort: in effect, if we work at the supposed "easy problems"then the hard problem will be seen to be illusory. "Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing,"Chalmers asks, "we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion?"

One way to reply is simply to hold that the information processing or neurological goings on are not something distinct from our manner of our experiencing while going through them. Or, more generally, perhaps, consciousness is not something distinct from the ways in which we are conscious. 

Among the resources of the Wikipedia article is its listing of supporting references, including the following:

http://consc.net/papers/facing.html

This is the classic text from Chalmers, "Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness," published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies 2(3):200-19, 1995. 

H.G.Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Miller,

I have read through your note several times, and it strikes me still as somewhat opaque. It may be that you neglect the point that many people do tend toward the view that consciousness is something ineffable and mysterious, indescribable and therefore beyond the reach of science. My question is party oriented to that species of opinion. 

The question poses a conflict of opinions, though, by also suggesting various approaches to consciousness as a scientific topic. In this way, we have come by various suggestions of appropriate (scientific or proposed scientific) descriptions. It is typical in philosophy to address a topic in terms of conflicting opinions or views, each of which has a broad plausibility for some people. 

You seem to conflate statements of the alternatives considered --into a single view, concerning which you find internal conflicts. But the question depends, precisely, on posing conflicting alternatives. It seems to me that you do not understand the question. 

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway,

Here are a few comments on the Chalmers’s quote.  A lot of my comments are influenced by my current reflection of the myth of machines.

‘’It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. ‘’

YES

‘’But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. ‘’

By the age of 6 months all of us are making the Animate – Inanimate distinction (A-I distinction);there is an extended literature on this topic.  Our common use of language  reflect this A-I distinction.  In the above sentence , the word ‘’systems’’ belong to the inanimate realm of discourse and the words ‘’subjects’’ and ‘’experience’’ belong to the animate realm of discourse.  Here Chalmers mixed the two realms (like all modern scientists and engineers) automatically upsetting our common sense use of language and creating a ‘’perplexing’’ discourse.  Systems are machines and machines do not have experiences (it Is not an argument but common sense, I would need to elaborate a lot this but at the end of the day a machine is a gear box and nothing else, all that happen in this gear boxes is additions or substraction of gears, nothing else ) and so it is perplexing that if we are machines that we have experience and this false reasoning, or bad language used, lead to the false conclusion that there is something special in these machines making them experiencing. 

‘’Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion?’’

IF animals (and us) were cognitive systems we would not have any experiences.  The hardliner of cognitive science draw the correct conclusions.  The difference between Chalmers and the Hardliners (you called them the skeptics but I like this expression coined by Merlin Donald in ‘’Mind so Rare : The evolution of Human Consciousness because its sugestive power), is that Chalmers refuses to follow the hard logic that if we were machines would would not have consciousness.  I totally agree with the Hardliner logic but I disagree with Chalmers and the Hardliner that we are machines.  Chalmers accepts that we are machines but refuse to accept the logically conclusion of such premice.  The real hard problem of consciousness is to see why the premice that we are machines is not justify.  It is the founding scientific myth of modern time at the core of modernity and that pervade all our culture. It is at the core of modern cosmology, here the word taken in a cultural sense, as a cosmogony. It is why it is so hard to even point our attention to it.  It is why an argument that machines cannot in principle be conscious is so important.

‘’ It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis,’’

This is an unquestioned act of faith of the foundational myth of modernity: the myth of machines.   

‘’  but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. ‘’

Yes there are no good explanation but this explanation gap typically do not disturb the faithfull of the myth machine.  They used the theological strategy of the MACHINE  of the GAPs.  Science will grow, machines will grow and no gap can resist to this unrently trend. I am just stating the transformed common sense of those getting used to the abolition of the A-I distinction , the faithfull in the Myth of Machine.  The expansion of machistic explanations, the extension of the machine world is illimited and it is potentionally covering ''ALL THAT EXIST'' (quote from the Book of Machines).  It is a second major element in the machine myth: its unfolding to the whole cosmos that the progress of science so far has to lead us to believe.  No limits on the horizon.Peoples in flatland do not see any limits in flatland in spite of the fact that seen from 3D world, flatland has a limit.  In old days, The A-I distinction was weaker and the Animate was dominating and so people were Animists and we are today rapidly weakening, as language use reflect, the distinction in favor of the Inanimate we people are becoming Inanimists.

''Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.''

Again a restatement of the apparent contradiction.  It is unreasonable indeed but Chalmers won't accept it.  The machistic religion has many sects, it is not a unified faith.  The hardliner are logical all the way and so deems consciousness as illusion.  Chalmers solve the paradox in illogically extending the machinistic language, trying illogically to enter some subjectivity into the realm of machinistic explanation.  No it does not work. I am a strong believer into science, the realm of machinistic explanation and the kind of crazy ideas to reform it, won't do it.  But I am not a machistic fundamentalist/monotheist such as the hard liner, but a pluralist.  The machinistic has its place.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brassard & readers,

Bravo! Many thanks for your detailed analysis and criticism of the quotation from Chalmers on the "hard problem of consciousness." Very thoughtful, I think. Let's see if we get any replies or counter arguments from others following this question and thread of discussion.

I am pleased to see an advocate of pluralism. 

H.G. Callaway

Dear H.G.,

If science is the positing and testing of hypotheses then presumably scientific ineffability would be the impossibility of such positing and testing. I think we can dismiss that since people have large research grants to do just that. People sometimes suggest that consciousness is unknowable because we do not know 'what stuff it is made of'. However, physicists do not know 'what stuff electrons are made of'. Science is about causal relations and all causal chains are studied by their involvement of a final conscious observation so there is no sense that consciousness is somehow left out in the cold. 

But my impression is that your concern lies more with the suggestion that consciousness is 'subjective' or private and so unavailable to scientific discussion other than through some 'intersubjective' bridge. As I have indicated before, all physical relations are subjective and private in exactly the same way as our experiences. I have yet to discover what 'intersubjective' means. I do not think it has any place in science.

Consider my PhD student and I looking down a twin headed fluorescence microscope at molecules tagged with fluorescent dyes in preparations of human cells. We are looking for evidence of activation of certain electrons by the UV light beam falling on the cells, indicating the molecules of fluorochrome dye are present. Neither of us can ever witness the effect of the light on the electrons. Only each electron can witness the influence of a photon on itself. However, the excitation of the electron that results will be followed by the emission of another photon of fixed wavelength (green range for fluorescein) and my student and I can detect these photons with our retinae. 

However, note that my student and I will never ever both witness the photon emission from any given electron. Only one photon is emitted from each electron so that has to go either into my eyes or hers. There is no 'intersubjectivity' or 'public observation' going on. This applies to all forms of sensory input and observation, if in a more subtle way. We seem to observe the same events but never do. The reason for this is that when our sensory pathways receive signals they extract inferences from many many signals that indicate persisting dispositional properties of domains of outside world. When I see a blue vase I am 'seeing' an inferred stable disposition of the vase. In fact much of the vase may be glinting or in shade and the selective blue reflectance may be only apparent from a few intervening strips - yet I will happily state the whole vase 'is blue'.

So 'intersubjectivity', if there is such a thing, is nothing to do with 'public observation' of individual events. It is a reflection of the fact that our brains have similar powers of inference when faced with similar stable patterns of dispositional properties. Brains create signs for these dispositions like 'blue' and as children we learn to correlate word usage with our internal brain signs.

You might reasonably say that there are special ascertainment problems for inferring what is going on when a subject is conscious and certainly there are. So although there is no hard problem of the sort Chalmers misconceived, there is the very difficult problem of working out exactly which events in the brain give rise directly to human experience. But throughout science we have ascertainment problems just as bad. It turns out to be impossible to identify the steric interactions involved in antibody binding to a microbe in a given individual because it involves tens of thousands of different molecular species each of which would take a year to isolate, and determine its structure. Techniques progress, but just as the antibody problem may be soluble in twenty years time, so may the qualia code problem. The irony is that at present most neuroscientists are looking for the code in the wrong place. But equally we have the irony in immunology that people are looking for the mechanisms of disease in the wrong places. Not much different!!

Dear Clifford,

You seem to make a distinction between reductive method science and complex system science.  

I am aware of complex system approaches but for me it is a class of modeling approaches.  Science is modeling and a model is a conceptual machine and in my book is a reduction of an aspect of the world.  Science is intrinsically reductive.  If there is a possibility of reduction of an aspect of reality to a model (whatever its form) it is reductive.  So all I said about the hard problem applies to all forms of scientific modeling. 

I do agree that complexity science may succeeded where traditional mathematical approach fail.  The mathematical modeling tool kit is expanding.  Modern quantum theory and General Relativity could not have been conceived without the prior expansion of the geometrical modeling tool kit in the 19th century.

Complexity science falls in the category of the normal science.  It is totally normal in science to use mathematical modeling tools.  Complex life forms are colonies of billion of cells organized hierarchically in all kind of networks.  A lot of network modeling tools are certainly welcome to model such systems.  But this is science as usual and none of that is even remotely relevant for addressing the so-called ‘’hard problem of consciousness’’.  The problem is an artefact of a false premice: living organisms are machines.  I do not put in question any of the actually existing science about living organisms.  I do not doubt one minute of the reality of consciousness in humans and animals.  I just doubt the assumption that these can be model in a way that if we implemented this model into a machine operating along the specification of the model, the machine is conscious.   I have no doubt that life has evolved and that there is no supernatural involve.  But I do not take that nature is machine-like all the way down.  We have theory of the electron, of particles, etc but non of these models really tell what these thing are all the way down.  These models are interface of interaction, nothing more, nothing less.  Beyond these interface of interaction, the model is silent.   And life is the evolution of stable/reliable interaction interfaces.  It seems that we would need to model all the way down in order to get to this consciousness which is not only an interface of interaction but what it is like to act through them. 

Regards

It is clear that our lack of definition of consciousness depends just on our ignorance of the subtending physical equations (that probably will not involve quantum dynamics, because we are in front of the macro-level of cells).  When such mathematical treatment will be available, consciousness will exit from the realm of metaphysics and will take its proper role of a physical observable entity (in the sense of Cartwright  and Hacking).  The same that occurred with the Zeus' thunder.   Linking consciousness to content (or to emotions as Gazzaniga does, or whatsoever) is something that will come later, when the physical framework will be clear.  By now, I suggest to possible philosophical approaches to nervous issues: 1) to keep the Quine's approach of naturalized epistemology, 2) or to use a rationalism, but a rationalism that might be scientifically testable, otherwise it is useless.        

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brassard & contributors,

I want to look in some detail at the opening argument you gave yesterday in criticism of Chalmers on the "hard problem." I want to take this a bit at a time.

You wrote, in reply to the Chalmers quotation in bold type:

‘’But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. ‘’

By the age of 6 months all of us are making the Animate – Inanimate distinction (A-I distinction); there is an extended literature on this topic.  Our common use of language  reflect this A-I distinction.  In the above sentence , the word ‘’systems’’ belong to the inanimate realm of discourse and the words ‘’subjects’’ and ‘’experience’’ belong to the animate realm of discourse.  Here Chalmers mixed the two realms (like all modern scientists and engineers) automatically upsetting our common sense use of language and creating a ‘’perplexing’’ discourse.  Systems are machines and machines do not have experiences ...

---End quotation

I think this has some value in understanding your idea of a "perplexing discourse." There can be little doubt that the animate-inanimate distinction is deeply rooted in common sense and human experience. I take it, for instance that we all have an inbuilt facility for face recognition (which presumably functions to link the infant to the mother and to the family by the ease of learning to recognize faces). "The family," Santayana once wrote, "is nature's greatest greatest creation" (or words to that effect).

On the other hand, it seems less clear that a word such as "system" clearly fits into the inanimate category in a completely satisfying fashion. We easily speak of political systems or even biological systems, etc. It is more that the concept of a system exceeds the boundaries of the common-sense categories; and moreover this is something that we come to expect in scientific discourse. The last quasi-science deriving from the child's animate-inanimate distinction is likely the concept of vitalism: the idea that there is some mysterious life-force or unique essential property which all and only living things possess and which is incapable of scientific elucidation.

At Dictionary.com, we get the following definition of vitalism:

Biology. a doctrine that ascribes the functions of a living organism to a vital principle distinct from chemical and physical forces. 

---End quotation

The scientific discourse on the topic of consciousness is somewhat perplexing, and I think we should expect that it is. In consequence, we can hardly hold this against Chalmers' approach in particular. Its perplexing simply by exceeding common sense, or one might also say, by attempting to exceed common sense. But this is characteristic of science generally. 

I would say, too, that it is less than clear, that, as you claim, "systems are machines," and we perhaps see this point by simply considering that the phrase "organic system" is no contradiction in terms. Likewise, "system of human relations" is no contradiction in terms. What seems to be going on is that Chalmers is borrowing the language of computer science in attempting to describe or approach the topic of consciousness. This can no doubt be perplexing, but it seems parallel to many other developments in scientific discourse, as say, when the physicists borrow mathematical vocabulary in describing physical systems. I don't think we can rule out this sort of thing simply by consulting common sense distinctions. The appropriate question to ask is whether the scientific proposals lead on to fruitful empirical testing, results and developments. 

I remain skeptical of the cogency of the "hard problem," and this is partly because I tend to a view, according to which consciousness emerges in suitable complex systems. The question of what these "suitable complex systems" may be, I regard as an empirical question. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Miller, 

It appears you have suddenly bloomed beyond the limits of former obscurities! Good for you. Welcome to the open discussion. 

Could it be that you reserve obscurity for your serious opponents? (Could be be a form of flattery?) Want to set up enmities external to the actual subject-matter and issues? 

I have long noticed that Brassard can speak for himself. 

I suggest we keep our eyes on the actual issues. O.k.? 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Edwards,

Many thanks for your interesting discussion of intersubjectivity. I think this is surely much to the point. However, I suspect you place the bar of intersubjectivity a bit too high. 

You wrote:

But my impression is that your concern lies more with the suggestion that consciousness is 'subjective' or private and so unavailable to scientific discussion other than through some 'intersubjective' bridge. As I have indicated before, all physical relations are subjective and private in exactly the same way as our experiences. I have yet to discover what 'intersubjective' means. I do not think it has any place in science.

---End quotation

Actually, there is a long history of related discussions. The theme is central to science in the form of the demand for replication of results. What one scientist claims to establish by means of experiment, say, must be capable of standing the test of colleagues who attempt to replicate the results. That is one clear meaning of the term "intersubjectivity." Of course, this does not and cannot mean that the experiment must be literally duplicated. Two experimenters in different locations cannot perform the identical experiment; but they can do the same experiment in the sense that it is similar in all relevant respects. What are the relevant respects? Well, that depends on the details of the field and of the experiment. 

Of particular interest for the field of psychology and the topic of consciousness is the theme of introspection and reports of introspection. The rise of behaviorism in psychology had much to do with criticism of psychologists reliance on reports of introspection. Even reports of introspection, it seems, must be subject to some sort of possible control and replication of results. 

The Britannica article on introspection opens with the following passage:

Introspection, (from Latin introspicere, “to look within”), the process of observing the operations of one’s own mind with a view to discovering the laws that govern the mind. In a dualistic philosophy, which divides the natural world (matter, including the human body) from the contents of consciousness, introspection is the chief method of psychology. Thus, it was the method of primary importance to many philosophers—including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Alexander Bain—as it was to the 19th-century pioneers of experimental psychology, especially Wilhelm Wundt, Oswald Külpe, and Edward Bradford Titchener.

---End quotation

See:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/introspection

Perhaps the point to be taken from this is that contemporary psychology is concerned to avoid the traditional, problematic conceptions of introspection; and we may understand this, in part, by reference to Wittgenstein and the private language argument. We require "public criteria," and reference to publicly accessible language in describing our inner experience. 

See my recent related question and the discussion:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_significance_of_Wittgensteins_private_language_argument

Wittgenstein can be understood as claiming that reports of inner experience require an intersubjective language and public criteria for their cogency. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear James,

Sorry you don't care for my formulation of the present question. I have explained that Brentano on intentionality was a topic in my Ph.D. dissertation--way back when. On the other hand, we have been considering a variety of approaches to the topic of consciousness. The idea that consciousness is ineffable, is one I'm very doubtful of. But it is not unknown. 

BTW: I have, personally, no particular interest for quantum theories of consciousness.

If my Socratic question has an "agenda" then, as we've seen, that agenda is open to alternatives--clearly stated. You can always launch your own question, suited to the subject-matter as you may see it. Right? 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear James, 

I am well aware of Brentano's religious background and also of his relation to the Polish school of logic. He was, after all much, interested in both Aristotle and the Scholastic tradition.  

However, I did not bring up my dissertation in order to introduce that work here, but merely to explain my interest in Brentano and intentionality. I think I may have learned a thing or two since then. 

As concerns Lukasiewicz and various forms of formal logic, I think that would be pretty clearly off topic.

What we are working on is the nature of consciousness and its relationship to empirical science, cognitive science and related fields. Any formalization of psychological idiom presupposes a basic familiarity with and evaluation of the prevalent concepts. 

More to the point, I think, would be to relate the common-sense language of intentional psychological description to the functional description of physiological psychology, neuroscience, etc. Both are plausibly regarded as varieties of functional description.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Clifford,

I read your posts and I agree with most of what you said.  I am familiar to a certain point with this so-called complexity science.  These titles are always propagandist and claim more than they can deliver.

We construct many machines which have built-in ways to modify itself along its operating conditions.  One way this is done is to put some neural net and to initially train the machine onto a typical data set.  These machines have learning capacities but they are generally very limited.  Most of the architecture is fixed and the learning consist in the fine tuning of certain parameters to optimize the operation of the machine for its specific operating environment. 

If we take the concept of chaotic attractor.  This concept is about a new form of regularity that is exhibiting in many natural phenomena.  The used of probability have also allowed to find new type of regularity exhibited not by single event but by large number of them.  Science is necessarily focus on order and so on regularities.  The mathematical toolkit expand in order to provide us new type of concept which correspond to new type of regularity.  The world is more than what is regular and unchanging but the focus of science is exclusively about this regular part.  That part, I call the machine-like and science is the conceptual machine interface to these machine-like aspects of reality.  Even a living organism need to be focus on the regular in its interaction interface.  The structure of the organism is itself a regular interface to regularities. Look at the structure of your hand.  It is about grabbing, manipulating and corresponds to a lot of grabbing and manipulating possibilities in our type of forest and savana Umwelt.  We do not care about what is unpredictable given it is exactly that unpredictable. We care about getting our goals and for that we have to rely on what is reliable, so on the regular whatever is the situation. We are about making possible futures out of possible futures that the present can as reliably as possible give birth.  This is the focus of a living agent and each type of living agent does that withing the limits of its type of bodies.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brassard & readers,

I'm thinking about your concept of science related to the machine like. This strikes me as a bit of a priori philosophy of science which stands in tension with the Aristotelian and empirical inclination to allow the particular subject-matter and field of study to inform us about how much precision or regularity we will find.

You wrote:

Science is necessarily focus on order and so on regularities.  The mathematical toolkit expand in order to provide us new type of concept which correspond to new type of regularity.  The world is more than what is regular and unchanging but the focus of science is exclusively about this regular part.  That part, I call the machine-like and science is the conceptual machine interface to these machine-like aspects of reality.  Even a living organism need to be focus on the regular in its interaction interface.

---End quotation

I submit, on the contrary, that even a scientific psychology is not going to find more order or regularity or precision in the subject-matter than there is there to find. The proper expectation accords with the Aristotelian dictum: We should not seek more precision than a given field is capable of providing. Consider, say ethics or political science in contrast with mathematics or physics. 

Going from physics to chemistry and from chemistry to biology and psychology, we find ever less of the absolutely regular. In consequence, your characterization of science in terms of seeking for the machine-like seems overdone. It is not, I think that no one entertains such reductive conceptions of science. The question is why we should buy into them--given the contrary evidence. 

What is true is that the strong expectation of finding more order or precision than is actually present tends toward imposing order that it does not find. That's the genuine moral to be drawn from reasonable anti-reductionism in the sciences. 

H.G. Callaway 

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Miller & readers,

Thanks for the interesting suggestion of the paper and video by Chalmers. 

I would say that on first impression, I am somewhat skeptical of the distinction on offer between strong and weak emergence. This depends, specifically on the prospect of explanation and understanding of higher-order phenomena on the basis of lower-order phenomena. My inclination is to see both explanation and understanding as very highly contextual matters --so that it makes little sense to project into the distant future questions about what can be explained and what cannot be explained. We need the details --as they emerge, if I may risk the phrase in this context. 

I would say, for example that the regularities of chemistry emerge from those of physics --below certain temperatures, since at very high energies (as in the early universe, as we are told) the chemical elements do not even form. Who would attempt to predict the properties and regularities of combinations of the chemical elements only knowing the properties of sub-atomic particles? We would not even know which properties of sub-atomic particles would be relevant. How might we find out which properties are relevant to understanding the chemical elements and their regularities of combinations? Well, we would naturally turn to some comparison between the two domains. But while physics may provide explanations of some simple systems--such as the chemistry of the hydrogen atom, it becomes increasing difficult to apply similar methods to more complex chemical systems. Partly in consequence, chemistry retains its status as a (partly) autonomous science, making use of its own distinctive vocabulary, methods and generalizations. More generally, we observe the pluralism of the sciences. 

If we do not know the basic correlations between conscious phenomena and those of physiology or neuroscience, then, of course, we have no way of judging what is relevant to explanation of consciousness. Still, we do know some things, say, that certain differences in the eye, an inherited trait, have the consequence that people are born color-blind. But I think we have no plausible way of judging, in the present state of knowledge, whether or how explanations of consciousness might arise, and whether and how intentional psychology may retain its autonomy as a science.

These are just some preliminary thoughts, and I hope we will see some detailed discussions of the Chalmers paper.  

I think there is one other paper by Chalmers which might be of interest at this point.

"The Representational Character of Experience"

Here is an opening quotation: 

1 Introduction

Consciousness and intentionality are perhaps the two central phenomena in the philosophy of mind. Human beings are conscious beings: there is something it is like to be us. Human beings are intentional beings: we represent what is going on in the world. Correspondingly, our specific mental states, such as perceptions and thoughts, very often have a phenomenal character: there is something it is like to be in them. And these mental states very often have intentional content: they serve to represent the world.On the face of it, consciousness and intentionality are intimately connected. Our most important conscious mental states are intentional states: conscious experiences often inform us about the state of the world. And our most important intentional mental states are conscious states: there is often something it is like to represent the external world. It is natural to think that a satisfactory account of consciousness must respect its intentional structure, and that a satisfactory account of intentionality must respect its phenomenological character.

---End quotation

See:

http://consc.net/papers/representation.html

The interest of this paper is that it aims to related consciousness and intentionality.

BTW: The title of my Ph.D. dissertation was Intentionality and Consciousness. This point helps explain my interest for the present question and thread of discussion. 

H.G. Callaway

Dear readers,

The following short letter is relevant to the current discussion on the emergence of the chemical relative to the physical.  It is written by a first class physical chemist, Michael Polanyi.  One of my favorite philosopher.

http://polanyisociety.org/Ltr-Vlu-Inexact-18-3.pdf

The Value of the Inexact

''Sir,

The subject of chemical concepts as opposed to physical ones has always been fascinating to me because it shows the great value of inexact ideas. It is easy to prove that no completely exact statement can be of any value in natural science, but when applied to physics the argument always appears to be a combination of far-fetched trivialities and sophistry. Of course, the mere fact that there is no absolute security for the validity of what we consider exact natural laws should lead to the conclusion that these laws are only valuable in combination with the element of uncertainty in them, which is compensated by the supreme sanction of validity, which is faith.

This, however, shows itself in a much more matter-of-fact fashion when we consider chemical concepts. Chemistry is a world of ideas expressed by such terms as “relative stability,” “affinity,” “tendency,” “inclination,” “general expectation,” as descriptions of behavior. There is not a single rule in chemistry which is not qualified by important exceptions. The character of a substance or class of substances is as complex as the features of physiognomy and the art of chemistry appears to be the power of being aware of these complex attitudes of matter, and in a thousand delicate attempts to add further evidence to, and enlarge the field of this awareness; thus, were a million compounds synthesized it would be an achievement which could never have been attained by exact methods. It is indeed obvious, that if at any time chemists would have been so ill-advised as to let themselves be frightened by physicists into abandoning all vague methods, and to restrict themselves to the field where exact laws (or what are supposed to be such by the physicists) pertain, the development of chemistry, would, at that moment have stopped dead, and its most valuable parts would have melted away in the rays of such foolish criticism.

I think it is good to contemplate how useless, or even harmful exactitude becomes at so close quarters to physics. Just link up two of three of the atoms of physics, and their behavior becomes so complex as to be beyond the range of exactitude. How supremely unreasonable it appears then, to claim that, by precise measurements and mathematical treatment, i.e. physical exactitude, a vital knowledge and command of such objects as living organisms and social bodies should be found. All these fields of high complexity gain real profit only from the discovery of specific tendencies of behavior incorporated in their functional outlines.

Chemistry, indeed, leads us so far away from physics, (or let us say, that physics appears, when we look at chemistry, so far remote from everything else in the world) that the description of chemical substances and the art of dealing with them lies quite near, by comparison, to the types of human behavior and the art of commanding human behavior. The mythological language of the alchemists persists in chemistry and is still characteristic of its most vitalelement.''

M. Polanyi

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all, 

Here is a further little backgrounder video, which was done by philosopher Paul Humphreys:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_IuG3kJY_g

This runs only about 5 Min. and covers basic ideas of reduction in contrast to two concepts of emergence. Its an elementary exposition, but I think it is useful and may interest readers of this thread. Humphrey distinguishes between "epistemological" and "ontological" emergence, and gives some examples. 

Also of related interest is the book of readings, Emergence, Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science, edited by Mark A. Bedau and Paul Humphreys, MIT Press, 2008.

See the short review at the following address, which includes the table of contents:

http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/11/4/reviews/squazzoni.html

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brassard & readers, 

I thought that a very interesting passage from Polanyi on chemistry, and I am wondering how you may think it stands up to a listing of some basic laws of chemistry. I have in mind the following passage from your quotation in particular:

This, however, shows itself in a much more matter-of-fact fashion when we consider chemical concepts. Chemistry is a world of ideas expressed by such terms as “relative stability,” “affinity,” “tendency,” “inclination,” “general expectation,” as descriptions of behavior. There is not a single rule in chemistry which is not qualified by important exceptions. The character of a substance or class of substances is as complex as the features of physiognomy and the art of chemistry appears to be the power of being aware of these complex attitudes of matter, and in a thousand delicate attempts to add further evidence to, and enlarge the field of this awareness; thus, were a million compounds synthesized it would be an achievement which could never have been attained by exact methods.

---End quotation

I think it would be interesting, for understanding the relationship between chemistry and physics (and something of the contrast between emergence and reduction) to compare this passage with what the chemists have to say about basic laws of chemistry. Even the biologists will tell you that there are laws of biology, though the laws of biology or of chemistry may be thought to break down under extreme circumstances. "There is not a single rule in chemistry, " says Polanyi, "which is not qualified by important exceptions." So, how does this go?

Compare the following:

Fundamental laws of chemical reactions and chemical equations

1.

The law of conservation of mass (Lavoisier, 18th century): Lavoisier was one of the first to carry out quantitatively accurate chemical measurements. He demonstrated that combustion required oxygen, and he demonstrated oxygen's role in the rusting of metals. His observations led him to deduce the following general law known as the law of conservation of mass:

In every chemical transformation, an equal quantity of matter exists before and after the reaction.

2.

law of definite proportions (Joseph Proust, shortly after Lavoisier): Proust studied metal compounds, including metal oxides, carbonates and sulfides. From the work of Robert Boyle in the 17th century, it was understood that substances that could be broken down into more fundamental components were mixtures or compounds. Substances that could not be further broken down were referred to as elements. Thus, Proust deduced the so-called law of definite proportions:

In a given chemical compound, the proportion by mass of the elements that compose it are fixed, independent of the origin of the compound or its mode of preparation.

This is basically saying that sodium chloride, for example, is always NaCl, no matter how it is obtained, made, or prepared. There are no ``intermediate'' compounds.

---End quotation

There are several other fundamental laws listed in the same source, some a bit more complicated.

See: (Tuckerman's advanced chemistry lectures) 

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/tuckerman/adv.chem/lectures/lecture_2/node2.html

What are the exceptions to the "fundamental laws" of chemistry, and given that the chemical elements and compounds are all included in the domain of physics--they are also surely physical objects--what is the relation of chemistry to physics? Here, I am asking that we get into the details to understand what is involved in claiming the autonomy of chemistry as a science. Has Polanyi overstated the matter? If not, why not? 

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway,

Polanyi had in 1933 flee Nazi germany and at the time of writing this letter (1936) in Manchester University. He had not yet begin his philosophical work.  But the germ of all this work at perceptible in this letter.  His work gave a clear expression on how does it go for the chemist and for all scientists. Polanyi called that in his mature work: tacit knowledge.  It is a theory of the scientific creative process.  How tacit knowledge built up through the scientist extensive experience of manipulation of the phenomena of its domain can later be made explicit in the language of science.  One of the aphorism is: We know more than we can tell.  I have discovered Polany about eight years ago and we have a lot in common.  I walk in his footsteps for a while and can now connect him with a lot of other. 

Polanyi knew at the time 1936, all of the theory of chemistry that you are mentioning.  He was on the cutting edge and pioneered different sub-fields.  What made him successfull compared to those that did not pionnered anything is not the difference in the basic knowledge of chemistry of the time and following the rules these knowledge prescribed.  No it is his sensitivity in the observations, selecting the importants facts versus those irrelevants.  Polanyi in later writing describe this kind of instinct, tacit knowing as a kind of perception.  He got interested in gestalt psychology and came out with the concept of focus of attention versus proximal stimulus by mean of which the focus of perception is created.  In the case of the blind with the cane, the focus of attention is about what is the surface ahead and the proximal stimulus is the pressure on the hand of the cane.  If the focus goes on the hand, the surface disapears.  He saw the process of scientific discovery in similar way, the data are the pressure of the cane on the hand and gradually experience built-up and a perception of surface is created: explicit scientific knowledge.  Polanyi was a critic of the philosophy of science such as those of Popper where the discovery phase is neglected and the emphasis is on the later critic phase.  Polanyi argued that the emphasis on critics is detrimental to the phase of discovery which is intuitive and sensitive to the phenoma. 

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Miller, 

Thanks for the quotation from Chalmers. 

As I say, my initial inclination is to be skeptical about the proposed distinction between strong and weak emergence. For suppose that the higher-level phenomena of conscious experience, say, perception in colors, arises from the lower level domain of physiological and neurological goings on, of some description or other (activation of cells in the retina). If we do not know the correlations in some detail, then we are not in a position to judge whether in the case where we did obtain the details, then given those details and the correlations, we would then be able to deduce the presence of the high-level phenomena. 

What can be deduced is partly a matter of the premises one has to work with. So, it seems implausible to insist on a distinction between what could be deduced and what could not be deduced, given that we do not know what premises we may eventually have to work with. 

This idea of what is, or is not "deducible in principle" tends to hide matters of great complexity. But in general terms, I would say that the stronger (or more extensive) the set of premises we have to work with --regarding the lower-order phenomena and its correlation with the high order phenomena--, then the more we may be able to deduce. Consider a very simple example, if we know that the absence of certain kinds of receptor cells in the retina implies the lack of full color vision, then on the basis of that correlation, and detailed knowledge resting on the examination of the eyes of certain patients, then we could explain and predict their lack of full color vision. On the other hand, if we have detailed knowledge of the full set of receptors cells in the eyes of a number of other people, then we will confidently predict (and perhaps explain) the presence of full color vision--the conscious states.

You put the Chalmers' distinction in the following terms:

[The distinction] seems to suggest the prospect of explanation and understanding of higher-order phenomena is not dependent on the basis of lower-order phenomena but that understanding or explication of those phenomena is independent of the lower-order.

---End quotation

It is just this which seems doubtful. The more we know about the lower-level phenomena including its relation to the high-level phenomena, the more we will be able to predict. So, independent of the details, we can't say what is deducible and what is not. This should be left open, as dependent on the results of future research. So, it seems to me.

But take a slightly different perspective on the complexities involved: Could we expect to deduce the Chemists' law of the conservation of mass, from our physics which tells us that mass is not conserved, but instead it is only mass-energy which is conserved? What complications are involved here? Is it "deducible in principle"?

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Miller & readers, 

Though I am doubtful of the offered distinction of kind between strong vs. weak emergence, this is not to say I am doubtful on the emergence of consciousness.

Likewise, I do not doubt of the emergence of chemical phenomena out of physical phenomena--or of the specifically biological out of the chemical.

We find the pluralism of the sciences as it stands, each with a more or less distinctive vocabulary and set of generalizations. Insofar as these sciences are well supported by evidence, research and experiment, we have good reason to hold to them. They tell us of distinctive subject-matters. Still, there is some interpenetration and overlap, as in bio-chemistry, for example. We can wonder and examine questions about the relations of the sciences to each other. But I suppose that lacking full and effective reduction, none of them is about to disappear in favor of another. 

H.G. Callaway

Clifford,

When Newton presented his theory of gravitation, everyone at first were shocked by the spooky action at a distance.  How does the two masses knows the other is there?  GR removed that spooky aspect but introduce a spooky curbed emptines.   But these theories allowed to understand many things that we could not before although they bring also their lot of new questions.  

P...S I think that the spooky action at a distance of Quantum Mechanic is not part of all interpretations.  I think in particular that the interpretation of Michel Bitbol do not have such action at a distance.  But again, there is always a price to pay for any gain. The spooky just change location. 

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all, 

Wanting to focus on specifically psycho-physiological matters, I have been looking around at materials related to the psychology of face recognition. This is a very specific field which includes some fascinating materials. The basic question concerns how it is that we so easily recognize and identify faces. Normally, we do this so quickly and easily that we do not pause to consider how it is done. But there is evidence of very specific neurological mechanisms and dedicated perceptual means. 

Also of some interest in this are various magnetic resonance studies of disassociation between initial reception and neural processing of face-specific information and the conscious recognition of faces. Some people, apparently fail at ordinary face recognition and cannot distinguish people well known to them from strangers, though there is an initial neurological response to faces of familiar people. Conscious recognition, apparently, takes place in higher areas of the brain. More on this later, perhaps, if there is some interest.

Here is a more general paper, freely available on line, which will provide some background and context on recent studies. What we want to get at, I think, is scientific evidence of the correlation of conscious states, as in the recognition of a familiar face, and the underlying neurological mechanisms. Analogies to work in A.I. also have some apparent importance in this. 

See:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2629401/pdf/nihms-86904.pdf

Mechanisms of face perception

by Doris Y. Tsao and Margaret S. Livingstone

Abstract

Faces are among the most informative stimuli we ever perceive: Even a split-second glimpse of a person's face tells us their identity, sex, mood, age, race, and direction of attention. The specialness of face processing is acknowledged in the artificial vision community, where contests for face recognition algorithms abound. Neurological evidence strongly implicates a dedicated machinery for face processing in the human brain, to explain the double dissociability of face and object recognition deficits. Furthermore, it has recently become clear that macaques too have specialized neural machinery for processing faces. Here we propose a unifying hypothesis, deduced from computational, neurological, fMRI, and single-unit experiments: that what makes face processing special is that it is gated by an obligatory detection process. We will clarify this idea in concrete algorithmic terms, and show how it can explain a variety of phenomena associated with face processing.

---End quotation

The special status of face recognition seems to have much to do, as I've remarked before, with the (very dependent) infants'need to recognize the face of its own mother. Of course, it may also play a role in the immediacy of kinship recognition. But in any case, it is apparently a highly specific and highly evolved system, which, however, exactly it functions, allows human beings to learn, recognize and re-identify faces at a glance. It results in a conscious state of recognition, and just because the related abilities are so highly selected in evolutionary terms, there appears to be a distinctive neurological facility which is more easily distinguished and studied. 

Focusing on faces, we are also facilitated in our recognition of the gaze of others; and this would seem to play an important role in language acquisition, where we come to associate particular words with objects of attention of those from whom we learn. More generally, we should expect those aspects of consciousness closely associated with perception to be more easily available for study. 

H.G. Callaway

why you ask the question? you are not pressed to give an answer because without a resolution, part of your well being is going to diminished... that differs from a true inquiry from a fake one. 

Dear all,

I assume that the phenomena of consciousness is complex and simple at the same time. The simplicity is from the fact that every animal has a finite number of sense organs and a finite number of neurons, and we can know which parts of our sense organs create a particular awareness or consciousnesses. For instance our sense of smell or touch is due to finite number of our body parts, which we can identify them by studying what causes to lose our sense of smell or touch. The complexity is from the fact that we can not limit or finitely restrict the space and number of  every phenomena what we are conscious of, due to the complexity of our brain and the way it functions. Consciousness therefore is like light bulbs where the bulbs give lights due to few number of connections of wires or nodes,  but what we do not know, after the light is on, is the direction in which the the light rays travel( in infinitely many directions) and how far the rays go, which is indefinite as well. It is this phase of consciousness which is  complex and almost impossible to put mathematical theories and modelling to study it like other natural phenomena.

Regards,

Dejenie Alemayehu Lakew

Whatching the Chalmers's video, I do not find the weak-strong emergence distinction convincing especially that Chalmers says that the later only exist for consciousness.  His examples of waves on water as weak emergence is wrong.  ’’ This is not emergence but a bunch of source of disturbances and simple fluid mecanics.  I agree with the  interviewer who pointed out that 100 years ago some people thought that life was fundamentally different than non living and that we need a fundamental vital force but now we rather think that we do not need such a force in order to explain the emergence of life and at some point what happen to vitalism will happen to consciousness.  

I give credits to Chalmers for clearly expressing the disturbing ''fact'' that any functional explanation that explain some aspect of consciousness such as colour discrimination, face perception, episodic memory, etc does not explain the most basic fact of why there is a what is like to make these discrimination.  THese explanation/mecanisms are just mecanism and if we equip a robot with these, the robot does not experience anything while doing the discriminations.   

That he made it very clear but he is very weak at finding any solution to the puzzle he is pointing out. Statement such as ''you put 100 billion of neurons in the brain and somehow something emerged and it is called consciousness.'' are laughfable.  It make me think of science fiction for kids where the computer get a glitch, an electrical overload and boom it starts to think and become their friend.  Or the way Dr. Frankeinstein put life in his re-composed body and injected life/imagination by harnesting/stealing the electricity of the Sky (Zeus) like Prometheus did.  Humans have a propensity to think that they can solve one mystery by adding two mysteries.  Mystery of life = Mystery of electricity  or Mystery of consciousness = Mystery of relation of gravity to quantum physics or Mystery of pyramid construction = Mystery of Aliens

In my opinion , the mystery stems from assuming that organisms are machines. s I totally agree with all the natural science which discover the machine-like aspect of organisms. And psychological experimental research which has show many correlations/parallels between these mecanisms and relational aspects of consciousness.  There is a very close relatation-ship between our body and our experience , nobody can deny this. I will elaborate later my way out of the conundrum.   

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brassard & readers,

Thanks for your recent reply. I thought several of your points of interest, but I would like to focus on one in particular, where you agreed with Chalmers.

You wrote:

I give credits to Chalmers for clearly expressing the disturbing ''fact'' that any functional explanation that explain some aspect of consciousness such as colour discrimination, face perception, episodic memory, etc does not explain the most basic fact of why there is a what is like to make these discrimination.  These explanation/mechanisms are just mechanism and if we equip a robot with these, the robot does not experience anything while doing the discriminations.

---End quotation

I agree that it is interesting that Chalmers insists that there is "a what is like," to have certain conscious experiences. But is it equally important to have an explanation of Why there is "a something it is like" to have conscious experiences? Does this have to be the first step? Why is is it not sufficient if we can sometimes get explanations of the fact that someone has experiences or perhaps when they have experiences. I do not doubt that there is something it is like to have the experience of a red image, say. But insisting on this is usually enlisted in arguments against physical reduction. But so far as I can tell, no one involved in this discussion is arguing for a reductive account of consciousness, not you, not me, not Chalmers --or anyone at all so far. 

We have already seen a sketch of an explanation of the absence of color discriminations in the color blind --which is the absence of certain qualia or specific color-related contents of consciousness. Again, we have seen a sketch of an explanation of why it is that other people (with the full range of color receptor cells in the retina) do have a full range of color discrimination and the corresponding conscious experiences. Nor, I think, need anyone be color-sighted in order to understand such explanations and predictions --or even make them. While no one, clearly can have the experiences of someone else, it does not follow, in the least, that we cannot understand what it is to have experiences; and such understanding seems to be involved in the science of psychology.  

To separate the specific character of the conscious experience from any functional role seems to me to be clearly the mistake at hand. It strikes me as a merely hypothetical supposition that full functional adequacy (human or higher animal) might be instantiated without consciousness. Why should we suppose any such thing? We have no satisfactory evidence for or against the supposition. It seems to be a mere speculation which we can safely disregard until and unless we have some sufficient evidence relevant to the abstract claim. I realize that you want to mount an argument against the possibility of machine consciousness. Good for you. But what shall the evidence be for or against the idea? Again, how are we to conceive of our intersubjective discourse (and science) of conscious states? A conception of conscious states the character of which is totally separate from any functional role seems the perfect target for Wittgenstein's private language argument. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Miller, 

Thanks for the quotation from Chalmers. 

As I say, my initial inclination is to be skeptical about the proposed distinction between strong and weak emergence. For suppose that the higher-level phenomena of conscious experience, say, perception in colors, arises from the lower level domain of physiological and neurological goings on, of some description or other (activation of cells in the retina). If we do not know the correlations in some detail, then we are not in a position to judge whether in the case where we did obtain the details, then given those details and the correlations, we would then be able to deduce the presence of the high-level phenomena. 

What can be deduced is partly a matter of the premises one has to work with. So, it seems implausible to insist on a distinction between what could be deduced and what could not be deduced, given that we do not know what premises we may eventually have to work with. 

This idea of what is, or is not "deducible in principle" tends to hide matters of great complexity. But in general terms, I would say that the stronger (or more extensive) the set of premises we have to work with --regarding the lower-order phenomena and its correlation with the high order phenomena--, then the more we may be able to deduce. Consider a very simple example, if we know that the absence of certain kinds of receptor cells in the retina implies the lack of full color vision, then on the basis of that correlation, and detailed knowledge resting on the examination of the eyes of certain patients, then we could explain and predict their lack of full color vision. On the other hand, if we have detailed knowledge of the full set of receptors cells in the eyes of a number of other people, then we will confidently predict (and perhaps explain) the presence of full color vision--the conscious states.

You put the Chalmers' distinction in the following terms:

[The distinction] seems to suggest the prospect of explanation and understanding of higher-order phenomena is not dependent on the basis of lower-order phenomena but that understanding or explication of those phenomena is independent of the lower-order.

---End quotation

It is just this which seems doubtful. The more we know about the lower-level phenomena including its relation to the high-level phenomena, the more we will be able to predict. So, independent of the details, we can't say what is deducible and what is not. This should be left open, as dependent on the results of future research. So, it seems to me.

But take a slightly different perspective on the complexities involved: Could we expect to deduce the Chemists' law of the conservation of mass, from our physics which tells us that mass is not conserved, but instead it is only mass-energy which is conserved? What complications are involved here? Is it "deducible in principle"?

H.G. Callaway

Is consciousness scientifically ineffable or instead specified by content?. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_consciousness_scientifically_ineffable_or_instead_specified_by_content/8 [accessed Apr 30, 2017].

Scientific research has usually to do with the "what" and the "how", not the "why". But here - in face recognition vs. consciousness - the "why" is also an important scientific issue. More precisely the "why" in the sense of "what makes that". There are different mechanisms (chemical, electrical interactions between neurones) in our brain that make that we recognize at once the color, shape, traits, race, sex, .....  of a face. For instance of our face in a mirror. But what makes that we recognize ourselves, "OUR OWN SELF" ? Why there is a what is like me ? This is one of the things at core of consciousness.       

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Crevecoeur & readers,

I agree that the why of conscious experience may be of interest. But I don't think it a presupposition of any prior inquiry into psychological matters. 

We may also be interested in why it is that a collection of water molecules is liquid and wet, though individual water molecules are  not so in any clear sense. Why, suddenly does liquidity and wetness emerge in the collection, we may ask? It may seem a mystery. But surely, if it does seem a mystery, then this may also suggest that a step by step investigation of the subject-matter may eventually solve this mystery. To presuppose that it must first be solved, without any prior detailed research would seem to be a  mistake. 

That there are many things not understood does not show that we understand nothing or they cannot eventually be understood. It may be first needful to assemble the relevant details. This is the general character of empirical problems. 

H.G. Callaway

Consciousness cannot be subjective or passive. When a person says, I am conscious, what is subjective and passive is "I". Consciousness and unconsciousness are two states of the mind of the person. It is this "I" that imparts consciousness to the mind. When the mind detach from this "I" it becomes unconscious. This "I" is everywhere in the universe. It is all pervasive.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Miller and readers, 

You ask: "How does the electron know what it is?"

I would say that the electron doesn't know what it is. The suppose that it does seems to be a version of anthropomorphism: the attribution to inanimate nature of characters of human beings. If we were to accept this question, it would apparently open the door to a mass of similar questions, say, "How does my computer know what it is?" Again, the first and most plausible answer is that it doesn't know what it is. Why in the world would anyone suppose otherwise? 

According to what the physicists tell us, an electron has a collection of physical properties including charge, mass and spin. It interacts with the rest of nature on the basis of physical laws as a function its properties and the environment it encounters. If there are any laws of nature without exception, then these would presumably include physical laws, since there is no more basic science to which we might appeal in explaining physical laws; this contrasts with other sciences such as chemistry or biology, where, if we encounter exceptions or anomalies then we can appeal to something else, say, biochemistry in the case of anomalies of biology. 

Some laws of nature need to be basic in this sense, on pain of imposing an infinite regress of explanations; and the physicists don't need the assumption that the electron "knows what it is." In accordance with its mass, it is governed by laws governing gravitation; in accordance with its charge, it is governed by laws of electromagnetism, etc. 

Any theory of consciousness which attributes consciousness as a universal in nature imposes a very large and prima facie implausible assumption and theoretical burden on itself. The more modest assumption is that psychological phenomena arise within the domain of the biological. It is living things which are conscious or sometimes not conscious. One reason for thinking this true is that consciousness seems to be adaptive: it facilitates the organisms' successful interaction with the environment; and the normal restriction of psychology to a subclass of biological entities is thereby congruent with the biological theory of adaption and natural selection. 

H.G. Callaway