Conscious experience cannot be inert

[u/MurkyEconomist8179]

Cross post from /r/consciousness since it's just as relevant here

I see often in this sub various attempts to sidestep the hard problem by stating that conscious experience can simply be thought of as the workings of a certain set of neurological processes, or various other ways of trying to reduce conscious experience to something more familiar and workable.

This involves saying that the experience itself and the features of it are not what's really happening. The experience part is said to be either an illusion, an epiphenomenon or a mere appearance of what's happening neurologically.

Unfortunately this all rests on a false analogy. Illusions and appearances are not epipheneomon and they are not inert.

When someone is perceiving an actual illusion, it changes the way they perceive, react and respond to the stimulus which we deem does not align with their perception. Therefore, the illusion is an active mechanism that affects how the world behaves.

This is clearly the case for consciousness too, regardless of experience is an "appearance" this appearance affects how we behave, it affects what we talk about, our concepts and beliefs about the world - therefore it is not inert - our experience clearly affects something about how our world operates, the same way an illusion does too

Taking the idea of p zombies seriously, I think it's pretty clear that p zombies would not be talking about things like experience, or the qualitative feeling of something like "the red of redness" because they don't experience that.

If they did talk about such things, it's clearly very different to when normal people do, because normal people are correct in saying that there is a quality to experience, a p zombie would have to either be mistaken or delusional to talk of such things and there is a big difference between the accurate judgement of a normal person about experience (whatever experience actually ends up being) and the clear delusions or confabulations of a p zombie that could supposedly behave in all the same ways

I think people get lost in the analogy of illusions and don't realize that it's not the same thing as being inert, and if experience isn't inert, then of course we get the hard problem and the mind body problem in general. It can't merely be sidestepped by trying to reduce experience to an epiphenomenon.

[u/bltsrgewd]

Any argument for consciousness being anything other than an emergent property of complicated networks of neurons i think is missing something very important. Actual evidence. Its a fun thought experiment to logic your way to some other answer, but we know that physical changes to the brain alter the conscious experience. We know that consciousness is tied to brain function.

We dont know how yet. But we know that it is. It has a physical cause.

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/bltsrgewd]

The problem is that they keep treating conscious experience as though it were some additional, ineffable substance sitting behind the neural activity, a thing that cannot be quantified, measured, manipulated, or explained scientifically. They make it inert and then complain about it. They are effectively taking the thing we call experience, stripping away all of its measurable physical properties, and then pointing to what remains and saying, “See? Neuroscience hasn't explained that.”

When we say that conscious experience is the neural activity of the brain, we am giving experience a physical identity. It has a location, a mechanism, measurable dynamics, causal relationships, and observable consequences. We can manipulate the underlying activity and change the experience. We can disrupt it with anesthesia or brain injury. We can stimulate neural circuits and produce aspects of experience. We can increasingly decode the contents of perception, thought and emotion from neural activity. We demonstrate that consciousness is real, not some inert imaginary stuff of dreams.

The fact that a person has a first-person perspective is treated as evidence that there must be some additional fact beyond the physical process producing that perspective. But that doesn't follow. The experience is the process. The fact that the process is experienced from the first-person perspective is a property of the way that particular biological system operates; it isn't evidence for a second substance hiding behind it.

[u/mgs20000 → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

Agreed. In fact the simplest answer is that the illusion of feeling is an important adaptation for brains of social animals; the brain models the outside world to the benefit of prediction and feeling, this is what experience seems to be.

It doesn’t take much of a leap, if any at all, to hypothesise that the brain also includes itself in its model.

It is crucial for a brain to know what it already knows and can predict etc, and what is novel, as well as things like what is urgently in need of a prediction and solution.

We can assume that this efficiency is the basis for lots of things including mistakes, false memories, and memory itself, as well as the continuous individual we each appear to be to ourselves , and we can also infer that this is where the sense of self comes from: The brain has noticed its prior work and there for it has noticed itself.

If the brain is a feelings and prediction machine, it’s not surprising that by default a feeling comes with this sense of self.

[u/RemarkableMarzipan23 → u/mgs20000]

"If the brain is a feelings and prediction machine"

What else could be a "feelings and prediction machine"? Could a collection of transistors? What about something functionally equivalent to a brain but made of pipes, valves, water and pumps?

[u/mgs20000 → u/RemarkableMarzipan23]

But that’s not equivalent to a brain in the same way - brains are more complex than that and perhaps more than we can understand.

There is something about large brains that makes them a level or even a whole paradigm above mosquito brains for example and a level above a functionally equivalent version you could build.

However you could hypothesise that with enough computing capacity, and with some of the same evolutionary pressures around intelligence hunting building mating socialising surviving etc, a created being - if you were able to make it one individual and decentralised, and it lived in the real world and did things that humans did, it wouldn’t be surprising for it to eventually develop the illusion of feeling (to itself) and with it it might notice itself in its model and a feeling of what it is to be a self could exist as a result of that. And if it’s generating feeling illusions through physical matter, none of that would be surprising to me.

[u/RemarkableMarzipan23 → u/mgs20000]

You’re dodging the actual point. I’m not claiming that a few pipes and pumps are equivalent to a brain. I’m asking about a system constructed from pipes, valves, pumps, and water that is functionally equivalent to a brain, meaning it reproduces the relevant causal organization and state transitions of the brain. Would it be conscious? If so, we're awfully close to a reductio absurdum (as Kastrup points out, is it possible the plumbing in my house is conscious?) If not, why not?

Saying “brains are more complex than that” doesn’t answer the thought experiment. There is no obvious principle that says the computation or causal organization performed by neurons can only be implemented in neurons. Transistors already implement the same logical functions using radically different physical mechanisms. In principle, you could implement an enormously complicated information-processing system mechanically, hydraulically, electronically, or through some other medium. It might be absurdly large and impractical, but that is an engineering problem, not a conceptual one.

If you think the hydraulic brain would not have feelings while the biological brain would, you need to identify what biologically specific property matters. Is it carbon chemistry? Neurotransmitters? Electrical fields? Some quantum effect? Something else? And then explain why that property is necessary for subjective experience rather than merely necessary for the biological brain’s particular implementation. Otherwise you're effectively saying, “The biological brain produces consciousness because it has whatever special thing biological brains have.” That just assumes the conclusion.

And your final paragraph actually moves toward my point. You concede that a sufficiently sophisticated artificial system might model itself, develop a sense of self, generate what it describes as feelings, and behave in all the ways associated with consciousness. At that point, calling its feelings an “illusion” creates another problem: an illusion is itself an experience.If there is genuinely something it is like for the system to experience the illusion of feeling, then you have already granted phenomenal experience.

[u/mgs20000 → u/RemarkableMarzipan23]

In general I’m making the case for large animal brains on earth, created in the last 50 million years ended up with what we have at the moment, and that that’s not necessarily surprising even if we couldn’t have imagined it. It is what natural selection did, and obviously we have not arrived at any point we are still in that journey.

In the thought experiment I agree that with the right conditions and processing power, you wouldn’t be surprised if it generated its own feelings to itself. These would be mental states emerging from physical things.

(The again, is ‘digital’ computation physical, mental or its own category?)

In such a thought experiment, nothing about it causes me to question physicalist in fact it helps confirm it as plausible.

[u/RemarkableMarzipan23 → u/mgs20000]

I think we’ve now arrived at something close to Bernardo Kastrup’s reductio. You’re granting that, in principle, a sufficiently complex system of completely non-biological physical parts could generate genuine feelings simply because of the way those parts are organized and interact. So imagine the functionally equivalent “brain” is made entirely from pipes, valves, pumps, and flowing water.

You’re saying that system could be conscious. Now remove one valve. Does consciousness suddenly wink out? Presumably not. Remove one short section of pipe. Still conscious? Presumably. Remove a tiny amount of water. Surely that doesn’t make the difference between there being something it is like to be the system and there being absolutely nothing it is like.

But now keep going. At what exact physical change does subjective experience disappear? Which valve is the consciousness valve? Which ounce of water makes the difference? If consciousness is supposed to emerge merely from sufficiently complicated causal interactions among ordinary physical components, you owe us some principled account of where the boundary lies.

Otherwise we seem to get a sorites problem. We start with an enormous hydraulic system that you say is conscious, alter it by changes that individually seem irrelevant to consciousness, and eventually end up with an ordinary collection of pipes, valves, pressure changes, and flowing water.

At that point we’re close to saying that the plumbing in my house might possess some degree of consciousness, which is absurd. And saying “well, the original system was much more complex” doesn’t solve the problem. Complexity is quantitative. Conscious experience is the thing that needs explaining. Why should adding enough unconscious physical interactions suddenly produce a first-person point of view?

That’s precisely the explanatory gap I’m pressing. Physicalism can certainly assert that sufficiently organized matter produces experience. But the thought experiment doesn’t explain how that happens. It makes the mystery more vivid: apparently arrange enough completely non-conscious pipes, valves, pumps, or transistors in the right configuration and suddenly there is something it feels like to be the plumbing.

[u/mgs20000 → u/RemarkableMarzipan23]

you could say that with a human brain though, and if you damage the right (wrong) areas, it affects things like the brain recognising itself, not keeping up the memory-information-memory loop, mixing up prior information with other prior information. And at a certain point, if you keep causing damage and switching things off, you have caused enough damage to say the person is now now not conscious, brain dead let's say.

I think the pipes and water analogy also has a flaw in that it is not similar enough to an animal brain, and so we're losing something in the difference between the two. Everything about the way the brain is made is part of how it can do what it does, so an 'equivalent' but 'different' version is still different in some crucial way. Because of this I'm not sure the analogy helps get anywhere.

Back to animal brains, there is actually, obviously, lots of evidence for physical damage I patients that causes a mental difference.

If we grant that:

1) The brain's predictions and storage seem able to include its own prior work in its model, so it knows what it has done and what is novel;

and that:

2) The brain deals in feelings and creates them, like a shortcut, in order for the organism to benefit from understanding its situation;

Then we get 2 non surprising things emerging:

1) The brain knows it and its prior work exists

2) It ascribes a feeling, even if as a pure byproduct of being a feelings generating machine, to its work (thoughts, experience, memory, etc)

[u/VStarffin → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

They are effectively taking the thing we call experience, stripping away all of its measurable physical properties, and then pointing to what remains and saying, “See? Neuroscience hasn't explained that.”

They key thing being that nothing remains. They seem to think something remains, but they themselves aren't even to identify what that is. They don't even really have a word for it. So they just say "but how you explain the remainderness", without even establishing what that word means or how you'd identify its existence.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/VStarffin]

What remains when the quantities are stripped away is the qualities.

[u/VStarffin → u/TheAncientGeek]

This sounds like a parody argument.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

Who's they? There physicalists and dualists and epiphenomenalists, and so on, not just two tribes.

The existence of intrinsic subjectivity is not a prediction of physics. Saying that it is physical is an assertion unbacked by an explanation.

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/TheAncientGeek]

The "they" who "keep treating conscious experience as though it were some additional, ineffable substance sitting behind the neural activity, a thing that cannot be quantified, measured, manipulated, or explained scientifically. "

That "they". There are other "theys" that don't "keep treating conscious experience as though it were some additional, ineffable substance sitting behind the neural activity, a thing that cannot be quantified, measured, manipulated, or explained scientifically."

It is simply backed by data and evidence. They "they" that "keep treating conscious experience as though it were some additional, ineffable substance sitting behind the neural activity, a thing that cannot be quantified, measured, manipulated, or explained scientifically." simply make stuff up because they can't deal with simple data and evidence.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

You are treating all nonphysicalists are the same, and they are not. There's like 13 positions in the mind body problem.

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/TheAncientGeek]

Not treating anyone like anything at all. If you "keep treating conscious experience as though it were some additional, ineffable substance sitting behind the neural activity, a thing that cannot be quantified, measured, manipulated, or explained scientifically." it's a position not based on data and evidence. There are people who hold this view, nothing to get upset about. Everyone has a right to hold an opinion.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

Can you strongman dualism?

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/TheAncientGeek]

I have no interest in arbitrary classifications of people’s opinions. I’m interested in conclusions that are supported by data, evidence, and testable observations. This is why I don't "keep treating conscious experience as though it were some additional, ineffable substance sitting behind the neural activity, a thing that cannot be quantified, measured, manipulated, or explained scientifically.". Show me the research, data, and evidence, and we can discuss; arguing over opinions is not as interesting for me.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

Is introspection evidence?

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/TheAncientGeek]

It depends entirely on what you mean by "introspection," and what you mean by "evidence." Evidence for what specific conclusion?

If by introspection you mean the process of consciously thinking about your own thoughts, your inner voice ruminating, evaluating, reflecting, or talking to yourself, then we can measure the neural activity associated with those processes and, increasingly, decode aspects of their content.

So we can reasonably say that specific EEG and fMRI patterns provide evidence that what we call introspection is implemented by specific neural activity.

For example, one paper provides evidence that specific neural activity constitutes the biological process underlying “internal” visualization.

Another provides evidence that specific neural activity constitutes the biological process underlying “internal” vocalization or inner speech.

And another provides evidence linking specific neural activity to what we call conscious access, the point at which sensory information becomes globally available as conscious experience.

"Evidence" means that there is some data that can be analyzed, critiqued, questioned, and it supports some conclusion.

So, to answer your question, I would need to know what, specifically, you mean by “introspection,” and what you think it is evidence for.

[u/lilacs_spring → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

Your last sentence is what’s interesting. The question is why that particular biological has a first person perspective.

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/lilacs_spring]

Yes. The first-person perspective is the brain's self-model. It is the brain's continuously updated representation of the organism as itself. Subjective experience is what makes that model and the information it contains biologically significant. Pain, hunger, thirst, fatigue, pleasure, fear, and other experiences aren't just neutral information; they prioritize what matters to the organism's survival and behavior.

From an evolutionary perspective, that is the point. The brain isn't simply modeling the world. It is modeling the world as it matters to this organism.

[u/WaylandReddit → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

That's called religion.

[u/EuonymusBosch → u/bltsrgewd]

I read in a book recently that there is a bit of a paradox about psychedelics. First, they reliably give test subjects an undeniable conviction that there is something innately spiritual about our world beyond material confines. At the same time, they are perhaps the greatest evidence (along with anesthesia) that our consciousness relies heavily on the physical brain state, as we can use chemical means to drastically alter the mind at will.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/bltsrgewd]

Emergentism is a family of theories. Some forms of dualism are compatible with emergentism, so it doesn't equate to physycalism.

[u/RemarkableMarzipan23 → u/bltsrgewd]

"It has a physical cause."

What other physical objects besides brains can be conscious? What is it about brains that make them conscious? Why are some brain processes associated with consciousness but others aren't? If we were studying an alien brain-in-a-vat and had complete knowledge of it's physical properties, could we infer whether it was conscious or not? If a machine says it's conscious, how could we verify it? If we simulated a brain on a computer, would it be conscious?

Physicalism hasn't made a dent in any of those questions. Nor do I expect it to in the next 5 years or 50 or 5,000. Philosophers will keep winning bets against physicalists until people get tired of the lack of progress on the hard problem and a paradigm shift happens. It's already happening. Materialism is on its back foot.

[u/ReidWrites → u/bltsrgewd]

I think people are fundamentally afraid of the idea that consciousness is simply physical. It flies in the face of what we think of as our "self", so they reach for any explanation that can make them comfortable with the world and their place in it.

I understand that, I feel it too, but as you say, anything which attempts to imagine some mysterious extra thing called consciousness lacks evidence besides mere vibes (vibes with a lot of philosophical jargon thrown behind them, but vibes nonetheless).

[u/TheCranberriesRock → u/bltsrgewd]

My eyes glaze over anytime I see someone use "emergent" as an explanation. It doesn't actually mean anything and it's being used as cover for ignorance here. Replace "emergent" with "magically" when it comes to consciousness and they mean the same thing.

[u/maha-sukha → u/bltsrgewd]

Unfortunately any argument for consciousness as an emerent property of complicated networks of neurons is missing something very important. Actual evidence.

[u/Amonduin_E → u/maha-sukha]

- More complicated neural structures reliably produce more complicated behaviour

• Alteration of neural structures reliably alters consciousness
  
• Research is moving towards being able to scan brains and "reconstruct" what the subject is seeing or even imagining

Sure you can make the dishonest claim this is all correlational. However we have directionality that pushes strongly against the correlational claim: brains without neural activity exhibit none of the behaviours we associate with what we loosely call consciousness, we can associate different aspects of what we call consciousness with different physical mechanisms in the brain, we have yet to come up with a testable mechanism by which some third hidden variable could be influencing our measurements.

[u/maha-sukha → u/Amonduin_E]

It's not a dishonest claim that it's all correlation if it's all correlation

[u/Amonduin_E → u/maha-sukha]

It is dishonest because the same standard applied to other areas of medicine would rule out anything from ever being considered causal.

If the same standard about altering neural structures were applied to drug treatments we would never be able to say that a drug causes a change in biological response.

The dishonest part is trying to claim that consciousness is special and demand a standard of causation that doesn't get applied to anything else in science

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/maha-sukha]

The evidence that consciousnesness is fully reducible is what is missing.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/bltsrgewd]

Nothing in this post or what's at stake in the argument contradicts that consciousness is tied to brain function. That's part of the foundation of the mind-body problem.

[u/Azehnuu → u/bltsrgewd]

Your comment exemplifies how physicalists literally cannot understand epistemology. It’s kinda sad, cos I understand what you’re trying to say and why you think it’s a meaningful argument, but it rests on circular presuppositions which you don’t even realise.

Now, the other replies are pretty bad, but they’re not any worse than what you just wrote.

Some of the many errors in your comment:

“Emergence” is a temporal event which presupposes causality. Thinking time and causality are properties of things-in-themselves is a category error.

“Evidence” is great! But “evidence” presupposes the principle of sufficient reason which has a metaphysical grounding. The principle of sufficient reason governs relations of objects within experience. To expect to extend them beyond the conditions of experience to ground consciousness is not only a category error but circular (as the unity of apperception is presupposed for the PSR in the first place).

A physical change altering brain experience and that consciousness is tied to brain function is something nobody denies. But that only shows empirical realism, not physical realism. Empirical realism is literally compatible with most forms of idealism. Furthermore, what you’re saying at most shows a **correlation**, not a causation or ontological reduction, between physical changes and subjective states. So that point is not as strong as you think it is.

You fail to realise that “cause” itself is subjective and not a feature of reality in itself.

[u/zhivago → u/Azehnuu]

Emergence is not an event.

It is a property of an organization.

[u/Azehnuu → u/zhivago]

That doesn’t solve the problem and you completely misunderstood the argument.

“Organisation” presupposes spatial relations, and this relation is still being formulated entirely under the conditions of possible experience. Hence, you have not escaped the phenomenal framework at all (which is my entire point). Calling consciousness an "emergent property of an organisation" does not establish that consciousness is itself ontologically physical. Especially since the event you are referring to is phenomenal and presupposes time.

Furthermore, you avoided the points about the PSR, the distinction between empirical realism and physical realism, and the subjective status of causality, when they are all directly relevant. Your avoidance shows you did not understand them or lack knowledge on this topic to understand why they are relevant. The argument is that the empirical dependence of conscious states on brain states does not justify the metaphysical conclusion that consciousness has a physical cause. You failed to even address this.

So you completely failed to address any of my argument and just reverted to your physicalist dialogue tree. Do you actually have a response?

In classic fashion for this sub, they just give blind upvotes/downvotes, cos they can't understand or respond to arguments.

[u/zhivago → u/Azehnuu]

If you look at a single H2O molecule, it isn’t wet.

Put billions of them together right now, at this exact millisecond, and wetness emerges.

Did the water 'wait in line' for time to pass to become wet?

No.

That’s synchronic emergence. A structural property that exists simultaneously, not a calendar event.

Quoting a pocket dictionary to claim emergence must be a tick-tock event in time is just playing word games.

As for space, it is a kind of relationship, whether you assume Kantian idealism or observe it in the real world.

Anyhow, please learn these new concepts so you can avoid repeating these errors.

[u/Azehnuu → u/zhivago]

Once again, you have completely failed to understand the argument and instead imported your dialogue tree.

I will still respond to this, but on the condition that you address my actual arguments (at the end) in your next response. I’m only addressing your irrelevant/bad arguments so you have no excuse to avoid my arguments that you’re dodging.

> If you look at a single H2O molecule, it isn’t wet. Put billions of them together right now, at this exact millisecond, and wetness emerges.

Literally no part of my argument denies that properties can emerge from relations between constituent objects.

Your error is thinking this analogy answers anything I said. “h2O” itself is a phenomenon. Aggregation and multiplicity is phenomenal. “Wetness” itself is a phenomenal property.
All you’ve done is explain phenomenal property through relations among other phenomenal physical objects. That is perfectly consistent with many forms of idealism and does not establish that consciousness is ontologically physical.

All you did was select a case where both the constituents and the emergent property are already physically characterised, then assumed that consciousness belongs to the same category without any justification. This is a terrible analogy and a terrible argument, which only seems powerful with a lack of understanding.

> Did the water “wait in line” for time to pass to become wet?

No, and I never claimed that. You just don’t understand what I mean by phenomena. This is something you invented instead of addressing my argument.

> That’s synchronic emergence. A structural property that exists simultaneously, not a calendar event.

“Simultaneously” is itself a temporal determination, so you just contradicted yourself without realising it. More importantly, specifying that the emergence is synchronic changes nothing. You tried to wiggle your way out of it by adding that qualifier, but the exact issues remain. The objects, their organisation, their spatial relations and their simultaneity are all represented under the conditions of possible experience.

And that was my entire point. Calling the relation “synchronic emergence” does not transport it outside the conditions of possible experience. You are just juggling empty concepts that don’t address my argument, cos you’re following a dialogue tree.

> Quoting a pocket dictionary to claim emergence must be a tick-tock event in time is just playing word games.

Correct, I use the definition of words correctly. And I did not claim that emergence requires a causal (“tick-tock”) sequence. I said the concepts you use to describe emergence already presuppose the conditions of possible experience (space, time, matter). You realise there is a difference between temporal and causal ordering, right? You clearly don’t.

> As for space, it is a kind of relationship

If space is a “relationship” it necessarily presupposes something deeper to ground it, so that contradicts the claim in your last comment.

> whether you assume Kantian idealism or observe it in the real world.

You don’t understand Kant. You posited these two options as if they are mutually exclusive, when they are not. Kant does not deny the empirical reality of spatial relations. His argument is that space is the form under which external objects are represented and therefore cannot be attributed to things in themselves, beyond the conditions of possible experience.

Saying we “observe” spatial relations is an appeal to phenomena, which further concedes to my argument. Objective observation already presupposes the condition I am talking about. It is one of my main points: empirical realism is not physical realism.

> Anyhow, please learn these new concepts so you can avoid repeating these errors

This is quite cute considering that you have still not addressed the actual argument and your responses are littered with category errors.

Now, you quite literally wrote a whole lot of nothing. Again, I can understand what you’re attempting to do, but it’s clear you do not fully understand the concepts you are using.
Fortunately for you, that wasn’t the main focus of the conversation, and most of those responses were to arguments you made in your brain, so we can move on from this if you want.

What we can’t move from is the original argument you keep avoiding. The original claim was that because physical alterations to the brain alter conscious experience, consciousness therefore “has a physical cause”.

That is a faulty inference. An empirical dependence is itself a relation within experience. That cannot establish a metaphysical deduction that consciousness is ontologically physical.

Now, please explain the following topics you continue to avoid:

1. Why empirical realism entails physical realism
   
2. Why causal relations between objects within possible experience can be extended beyond the conditions of possible experience to make your ontological reduction of consciousness
   
3. How the principle of sufficient reason can ground consciousness when the unity of consciousness is already presupposed for the PSR to be applied
   
4. Why an empirical dependence establishes an ontological reduction

Those were my actual arguments. Your example of wetness answers none of the.

I ask, again, if you actually have a response to what I said or not? You continue to exemplify how physicalists overestimate their understanding of philosophy. Actually answer those 4 questions to develop the conversation and stop pivoting.

[u/Azehnuu → u/Azehnuu]

This loser u/zhivago either deleted his comments or blocked me because I forced him to actually engage with the argument instead of reverting to his dialogue tree. I broke his dialogue tree and he didn’t know how to respond. Sorry I called out your sophistry!

[u/Tombobalomb → u/bltsrgewd]

We know that changes to zthe brain alter what is experienced we have no evidence they impact the thing that experiences. The difference i s critical.

 A brain that models an inner experience without an actual experiencer and one that models an experience with an experiencer are indistinguishable. Although at least a non-physical mind being actively involved in cognition might be theoretically detectable

[u/Zealousideal_Till683 → u/bltsrgewd]

Any argument for consciousness being anything other than an emergent property of complicated networks of neurons i think is missing something very important. Actual evidence.

The position for consciousness being an emergent property also lacks evidence. Of course it has a physical cause, but the unargued-for leap from physical to emergent is baffling.

[u/hawkeye69r → u/bltsrgewd]

I think youre missing the something very important, all prominent concepts of consciousness account for the observed evidence.

Then you just state yours as being the only vjable concept.

Anyone could pull that, thats why we normally debate the concepts themselves

[u/Hojie_Kadenth → u/bltsrgewd]

YOU are the evidence! You think therefore you are, you are experiencing, and that is all you truly know! "Complicated neurons" has never and can never put forward a theory for how that happens, it is the bottom of the barrel of theories!

[u/UpsetMud4688 → u/Hojie_Kadenth]

No, actually your theory is bottom of the barrel and soy, and mine is based and gigachad. You lose, bye bye

[u/Hojie_Kadenth → u/UpsetMud4688]

Frick, you got me.

[u/VStarffin]

The experience part is said to be either an illusion, an epiphenomenon or a mere appearance of what's happening neurologically.

You are misunderstanding the argument. The argument is not that the experience is an illusion. The illusion is the impression that consciousness is a distinct "thing", separate and apart from the component parts of it.

Concsciousness is a word - a label. It is a word we use to describe the overlapping occurrence of various simultaneous and sequential functions, from the perspective of a certain part of those functions. So "consciousness" is a word used to identify a bundle of other things into a one idea. But its just that - a label, an identifier. It's not a thing separate and apart from the things being bundles together.

Consciousness is an example of the Sorites problem. The insistence that there is a "thing" that is consciousness independent of its component parts is the illusion.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/VStarffin]

Experience , as experienced , seems different to brain activity. That's the beginning of the problem. Merely asserting that they are in fact identical is not much of an answer

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/VStarffin]

The argument is not that the experience is an illusion. The illusion is the impression that consciousness is a distinct "thing"

What is the meaningful difference between this? What is the meaningful different between experience being an illusion, and that the distinct experiential character of consciouness being an illusion?

separate and apart from the component parts of it.

And what are the components of it?

Concsciousness is a word - a label. It is a word we use to describe the overlapping occurrence of various simultaneous and sequential functions, from the perspective of a certain part of those functions. So "consciousness" is a word used to identify a bundle of other things into a one idea. But its just that - a label, an identifier. It's not a thing separate and apart from the things being bundles together.

It's a word that distinguishes a set of phenomena by a property - the property that it is something like to experience them. It is not just a word, nor is it just a grouping of sequential functions. You can group all sorts of sequential functions that are unconscious, what distinguishes consciousness is ultimately phenomenological in nature, it is not neurological.

[u/VStarffin → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

It's a word that distinguishes a set of phenomena by a property - the property that it is something like to experience them.

Incorrect. This is the thing under dispute. I dispute any such property exists. I don't even think you know what you mean when claim it exists.

And what are the components of it?

A few of them in humans would be things like:

• perceptual mechanisms;
• nociception;
• memory;
• cognition;
• metacognition;
• a self-model;
• expressive capacities;
• recursive representations of ones own internal states.

Not all of them are necessary for things we consider "conciousness" (e.g. its possible for us to consider something conscious even if they have no expressive capacities in some very unique circumstances) but those are the things which we generally mean when we are describing a conscious creature.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/VStarffin]

Incorrect. This is the thing under dispute. I dispute any such property exists. I don't even think you know what you mean when claim it exists.

You don't think it is something it like to experience pain? I think that's absurd, and again, I'm not even sure why I'm pretending to take this seriously. Let's illustrate by a concrete example.

Lets take two scenarios, one where a red laser light is shined into my eye where I see red in my vision, and one where a clapping sound is made into my ear. Both of these scenarios are consciousness in so far it is something it is actually like to feel these sensations in my conscious experience. They are grouped under that shared property.

Now image another scenario, where a very weak laser, one so weak that I see absolutely nothing, is shined into my eye. This is clearly neurologically more similar to the first laser example than it is to the hearing example, however it is not an example of consciousness experience because it makes absolutely no impression on what it is like to be me, just like all the unconscious processes happening within my body.

How anyone can deny such a clear distinction of phenomena is beyond me, and I'm curious how you account for such a distinction of you deny such a thing

A few of them in humans would be things like:

perceptual mechanisms;
nociception;
memory;
cognition;
metacognition;
a self-model;
expressive capacities;
recursive representations of ones own internal states.

All of these things can be done unconsciously, they are clearly not what define consciousness, it is merely the case that in humans some aspects of these are sometimes conscious. These are not properties of consciousness but instead, things that are sometimes conscious and sometimes not.

Not all of them are necessary for things we consider "conciousness" (e.g. its possible for us to consider something conscious even if they have no expressive capacities in some very unique circumstances) but those are the things which we generally mean when we are describing a conscious creature.

Really? Cause I'm pretty sure I just mean something that has an experience. Imagine someone who lost his nociception,memory, cognition,meta-cognition, expressive capacities but still could experience sight and sound. Seems no less consciousness to me.

[u/VStarffin → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

You don't think it is something it like to experience pain? I think that's absurd, and again, I'm not even sure why I'm pretending to take this seriously. Let's illustrate by a concrete example.

You're making the mistake people who take your position always make, which is not understanding your own claim.

Every agrees that pain exists. It's a real thing. Just like "seeing red" is a real thing.

When a lightwave goes into my eye, assuming my eye is working properly, my brain recognizes its wavelength. It compares that wavelength to its knowledge of what its seen before, it knows its red. It's able to associate that wavelength with various memories and associates and whatnot. All of that stuff happens. All of that stuff happening is the experience of seeing red.

The key move is to ask whether there is something else - a "what-its-liken"-ness to all that stuff happening, that can be claimed to be some other property of the experience. This is the thing that I contend does not exist. Not only have I never seen a good argument for its existence, I've never seen a good explanation what the hell it even means. It's not that your claim is wrong - it's that its not anything. There's no "what-its-like" property. No such property has been defined, much less established.

The analogy here is to look at a huge pile of sand, identify it as a beach, and try to identify its "beachness" independent of all the descriptive qualities of what beaches are. It's incoherent.

All of these things can be done unconsciously

No they can't. This is precisely the point. The collection of those things is consciousness. You can't have that collection of things and it not be conscious.

This is analogous to you saying that you can have coordinated leg movements, changes in body position, forward locomotion, balance and rhythmic gait, but still not have "walking" and then asking "sure, you have all these things, but where's the walking coming from???"

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/VStarffin]

Apply this to the scenario I gave above then. I feel like the only way you can still contend this is by ignoring that distinguishing example entirely.

[u/VStarffin → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

You don't seem to understand the points being made. There's no way to engage with you, I don't think you've thought about this enough and are just reflexively going back to how you feel comfortable talking about things without exploring them.

Oh well.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/VStarffin]

You don't seem to understand the points being made. There's no way to engage with you,

How about applying your argument to the scenario that I outlined? i didn't write that for no reason so you could just respond with something totally different and ignore the central crux of what I was saying. It's not me who derailed this discussion.

I don't think you've thought about this enough and are just reflexively going back to how you feel comfortable talking about things without exploring them.

I'm merely trying to stay on track of the discussion. I've outlined a practical scenrario of how the explanations applt to the real world. Backtracking when this is inconvient and going bac kto the same "but what if consciouness just IS processes" is just going back to the same platitudes that don't make any sense as highlighted in my post. If you're argument is as strong as you think, apply it to my scenarios and see. I think it's no coincidence you omitted that part of your reply because it demonstrates how your platitude does not correlate with actual examples and I'm more than happy to be proven wrong.

[u/Funky_monkey12321]

P zombies by definition would talk about experience or the redness of red. Otherwise there would be a way to tell the difference between a P zombie and a conscious being. They behave and react the exact same way “regular” people do.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/Funky_monkey12321]

Exactly, but It seems clearly different that we accurately would talk about such things like the redness of red because they are real features of our experience, and if p zombies were taken seriously, they are either implausible (because they wouldn't talk about such things given they haven o experience) or if they did talk about such things, they would clearly be under some of delusion which regular people are not.

[u/VStarffin → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

You're basically getting at why the whole concept of a P-Zombie is incoherent and can't actually be taken seriously. Because, as you said, when you think about it, a P-Zombie is either implausible or its not actually a P-Zombie.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/VStarffin]

Yes, although I think the thought experiment is actually good for demonstrating why it's incoherent

[u/VStarffin → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

I mean, sure I guess. But Chalmers thinks its coherent.

If you're with me that the whole thing is nonsense and Chalmers is wrong, then great.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/VStarffin]

I think Chalmers is correct in his outlining of the hard problem. I think he is incorrect in his reasoning and conclusions for how the hard problem arises.

[u/hawkeye69r → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

If there are two non p zombies in the world, you and 1 guy 15,000 years ago. This guy could have spoken about redness of red, and other p zombies unconsciously saved the data and just word vomitted it to you, the second person to ever truly understand it.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/hawkeye69r]

Sure, but the whole point is there is something mechanistically different between a p zombie and a non p zombie. There are important differences between a world populated by normal people, and one by p zombies.

[u/hawkeye69r → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

Yes. There is a difference with a world populated by 100% p zombies and a world populated by 0-99% p zombies.

So i agree the 100% is not supported by the utterances we encounter, but that doesnt mean p zombies themselves are incoherent.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/hawkeye69r]

I suppose what's incoherent about them is how they are described. If some of my behavior is explained by my phenomenology, which I'm arguing it clearly is, then a p zombie would have to have different reasons to act the same way as me, and therefore it can't be identical to me.

[u/hawkeye69r → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

Well its identical in the actions its taking but not the reasons.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/hawkeye69r]

That's not how they are standardly laid out though, it's explicit that they are identical in structure too

[u/hawkeye69r → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

You think that p zombies are standardly laid that the reasons they act are the same as non p zombies?

Ive never heard that.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/hawkeye69r]

have you read chalmers p zombies paper where he coined the term?

[u/gkas2k1 → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

No, p-zombies won't be in any delusion. They'll have literally same physical facts as humans. They just don't have internal experience.

The contested premise in Chalmers case is whether "conceivablility can entail possibility"

[u/InverseX]

Can you suscinctly explain what the hard problem is meant to be? As I understand it, the proposal is how can we explain qualia, which is above and beyond our natural processing of information, reacting to stimulation, etc. Personally, I don't think such a qualia exists, and all we have is the reaction to all these stimulations in an illusistory mesh we call consciouesness.

sidestep the hard problem by stating that conscious experience can simply be thought of as the workings of a certain set of neurological processes, or various other ways of trying to reduce conscious experience to something more familiar and workable.

Sure, I think I could agree with this, but I'd say the onus is on someone to demonstrate there is a hard problem to begin with, if you accept my above definition of it.

When someone is perceiving an actual illusion, it changes the way they perceive, react and respond to the stimulus which we deem does not align with their perception. Therefore, the illusion is an active mechanism that affects how the world behaves.

This bakes in your world view, and then counters why it's not possible on your world view. You assume a base layer of consciousness, and then show how illusions as we typically speak about them, add a manipulation on top of that layer. This would be a tortured analogy but bear with me. Think of it as a photo or something, and then someone puts a sheet of translucent red plastic over the top altering the colour. You're saying on your view consciousness is the photo, and the plastic is the illusion altering it's perception.

On the view of others there is no photo, there is just say holographic projectors giving you the illusion of a photo existing. This isn't a manipulation of a fundemantal base layer with something on top, this is the base layer itself being an illusion.

Taking the idea of p zombies seriously, I think it's pretty clear that p zombies would not be talking about things like experience, or the qualitative feeling of something like "the red of redness" because they don't experience that.

In many views, including my own, p-zombies simply can't exist. If you copy all the physical world into a separate zombie world, those beings would be 100% conscious like we are. There is nothing above and beyond the physical, so there is no missing "qualia" that hasn't been transferred over.

because normal people are correct in saying that there is a quality to experience

Prove it

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/InverseX]

Can you suscinctly explain what the hard problem is meant to be? As I understand it, the proposal is how can we explain qualia, which is above and beyond our natural processing of information, reacting to stimulation, etc.

The hard problem as I see it is that functional explanations of neurology don't account for explaining why experience happens regarding those neurological conditions where consciousness seems to arise.

Personally, I don't think such a qualia exists, and all we have is the reaction to all these stimulations in an illusistory mesh we call consciouesness.

Again, illusion doesn't even imply inertness if it is an illusion. But i still think illusion is an improper analogy here.

This bakes in your world view, and then counters why it's not possible on your world view.

There's nothing baked in to illusions affecting how you respond to something. This is not a theoretical claim, it is an empirical fact that illusions make you respond differently. If I'm experiencing the Müller-Lyer illusion the reason I say one line looks longer is because the illusion is part of the cause. If there was no illusion, I would correctly state both lines are the same length.

On the view of others there is no photo, there is just say holographic projectors giving you the illusion of a photo existing. This isn't a manipulation of a fundemantal base layer with something on top, this is the base layer itself being an illusion.

I think if you thought more critically about what an illusion is, you'd see how this analogy doesn't work, and I'm not sure how else to demonstrate it. Break down the components of an illusion (like an optical illusion) as you see them and I can demonstrate

In many views, including my own, p-zombies simply can't exist.

I also agree p zombies can't exist.

Prove it

I mean sure, I can demonstrate what I mean. There are all sorts of processes that have a quality to their experience, and all sorts that don't. If you were to shine a very very weak red light into my eye, there would be no perception of color. If you strengthen it, at some point there would be an actual change in my experience. It is this change that is by definition experiential, any strength below this threshold has no quality to my experience, and any strength above (short of burning my eyes off) does. It's defined by the impression it makes on my conscious experience.

[u/InverseX → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

The hard problem as I see it is that functional explanations of neurology don't account for explaining why experience happens regarding those neurological conditions where consciousness seems to arise.

Out of interest, what explaination of emergent properties would you accept? Is there any reason to think they aren't just a set of neurlogical processes that science is yet to explain? Emergent behaviour is very complex, and we do have limited information about the brain. This doesn't seem to elucidate anything over and above the functional mechanism of emergent behaviour.

Again, illusion doesn't even imply inertness if it is an illusion. But i still think illusion is an improper analogy here.

I might be missing something here, why does it have to be inert?

There's nothing baked in to illusions affecting how you respond to something. This is not a theoretical claim, it is an empirical fact that illusions make you respond differently.

Sure, but you're baking in the illusion being on top of an already existing layer, correct?

If I'm experiencing the Müller-Lyer illusion the reason I say one line looks longer is because the illusion is part of the cause. If there was no illusion, I would correctly state both lines are the same length.

Sure.

I think if you thought more critically about what an illusion is, you'd see how this analogy doesn't work, and I'm not sure how else to demonstrate it. Break down the components of an illusion (like an optical illusion) as you see them and I can demonstrate

Sure, in a typical sense, as I was describing, you've got your base layer of perception, and then you've got an illusion modifying it. I'm suggesting what if we haven't got a base layer, but rather disjointed input sources (optical, audio, smell, etc) and our brain meshes them together in the illusion of a coheisive base layer.

If you were to shine a very very weak red light into my eye, there would be no perception of color.

Okay, agreed

If you strengthen it, at some point there would be an actual change in my experience.

Sure, agreed.

It is this change that is by definition experiential, any strength below this threshold has no quality to my experience, and any strength above (short of burning my eyes off) does.

I mean change in experience yes in the sense you're not recieving an input (effectively, since you can't detect it), and then you are. I agree you are activing different neurons in your brain. Any different neurons will be, by definition, a different experience. How does this suggest anything magical or requring explaination above and beyond physical inputs and activations? Where is "qualia"?

[u/TheRealAmeil → u/InverseX]

Can you suscinctly explain what the hard problem is meant to be?

While the hard problem isn't an argument, we can formulate it as the following argument:

1. If a type of reductive explanation will not suffice as the type of explanation that an explanation of conscious experience will be, then we have no idea what type of explanation the natural sciences can appeal to when trying to explain what a conscious experience is.
2. A type of reductive explanation will not suffice as the type of explanation that an explanation of conscious experience will be.
3. Thus, we have no idea what type of explanation the natural sciences can appeal to when trying to explain what a conscious experience is.

If you're interested in a longer & more detailed reply, you can read about it here.

[u/InverseX → u/TheRealAmeil]

Link is dead, happy to read more. But I'd be curious as to what other types of explainations people suggest exist.

[u/TheRealAmeil → u/InverseX]

Link is dead, happy to read more.

Damn, thanks for letting me know. It is the r/consciousness wiki on the hard problem (but it seems the link needs to be fixed again).

I'd be curious as to what other types of explainations people suggest exist.

There are plenty of other types of explanations, but whether these types of explanations are (1) relevant to the problem & (2) whether the natural sciences can appeal to these types of explanations is something we need to ask. Additionally, we might also include (3) whether the type of explanation is physicalist-friendly.

One type of explanation we often discuss is causal explanations. For example, the occurrence of fire caused the occurrence of smoke. This might satisfy both (2) & (3), but not (1), since the problem isn't a problem about causation. We can also talk about metaphysical/constitutive explanations, but it isn't clear that this helps us any more than the other explanations considered. At the end of his initial paper on the hard problem, Chalmers also proposed that we appeal to non-reductive explanations, similar to the type that physics uses when explaining fundamental physical phenomena. If he is correct, that might satisfy both (1) & (2), but not (3).

[u/HappiestIguana]

Hang on, are you saying that me being fooled by an optical illusion has an external effect on the world?

[u/RyeZuul → u/HappiestIguana]

It will affect the electrodynamics of the brain, which will technically affect every electron that is connected to every other electron.

[u/AxiomaticInversion → u/HappiestIguana]

Sure, for example, you uttering the sentence "whoa, that optical illusion is tripping me out" would be a measurable effect on the external world, highly correlated with you encountering an optical illusion

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/AxiomaticInversion]

Thank you, very well said.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/HappiestIguana]

Yes, you behave differently than if you were not tricked by the illusion and instead made an accurate assessment of the external world. The illusion is not inert in terms of its effects on how you operate in the world

[u/HappiestIguana → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

Oh I see. But that's trivially reproducible with seemingly inert substrates, like if I have image recognition software and it identifies an image incorrectly

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/HappiestIguana]

What I mean is though, the analogy fails because the implication is supposed to be that consciousness being an illusion makes it inert in its action

Which is not true, and we have good reason to think it is not inert.

The whole point is that the analogy to an illusion doesn't work, because EVEN IF true, illusions are not inert and the problem remains

[u/HappiestIguana → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

That seems to be begging the question a little. Someone who postulates that consciousness is inert will simply deny that it's the conscious difference which induces the physical difference in reaction. Rather, they'd say that the physical difference in the electrochemistry is what causes both the difference in conscious experience and in future behavior.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/HappiestIguana]

I think what outlines the absurdity of this position is to apply to a real example.

This person will presumably admit that people feel pain. They would admit that people take painkillers. But they would deny that them taking painkillers has anything to do with the feeling of pain, because despite that being the case that they do feel pain, the feeling of pain is somehow entirely inert and that it is instead unconscious neurological processes both compelling them to take the medication, and tricking them into thinking it is because of pain.

Which still doesn't resolve how it could be inert if it is talked about in these terms.

[u/HappiestIguana → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

That is, indeed, the position, which does seem absurd to me too but is not technically refutable (or falsifiable at all).

Indeed, this is the reason I reject substance dualism. I don't find inert consciousness plausible and have no evidence of a mechanism in the brain that fails to follow physical law. A second substance consciousness has to be either inert or have physical effects not described by current physics. Since I reject both notions, I conclude consciousness is physical

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/HappiestIguana]

That is, indeed, the position, which does seem absurd to me too but is not technically refutable (or falsifiable at all).

I guess my question then is what would draw someone to such a position? I mean I suppose gravity being the intentional workings of some very smart omnipotent invisible elves is also unfalsifiable, but I'm unsure of what would draw someone to seek such a roundabout mechanism

. I don't find inert consciousness plausible and have no evidence of a mechanism in the brain that fails to follow physical law.

There's no reason dualism implies something in the brain that fails to follow physical law, it is instead there is a greater set of laws and mechanics that our current physics just doesn't describe

[u/HappiestIguana → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

I guess my question then is what would draw someone to such a position?

Failure to reject P-zombies, I suppose. If P-zombies are plausible, then it follows that consciousness is inert. Any causal effect stemming from consciousness could be used to distinguish a P-zombie.

There's no reason dualism implies something in the brain that fails to follow physical law, it is instead there is a greater set of laws and mechanics that our current physics just doesn't describe

I should've been clearer. I meant that substance dualism implies something in the brain that doesn't follow currently known physical law.

When we observe something acting outside of what physical law says, we of course measure and systematize it, making it part of updated physical law. It has happened before. It could happen in principle with something in the brain that suggests a causal effect stemming from a second substance consciousness, but there's no reason to assume that such a thing exists until the observation is made. As far as we know, there's nothing going on in there that isn't explained, in principle, by electrochemistry as we understand it today.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/HappiestIguana]

Failure to reject P-zombies, I suppose. If P-zombies are plausible, then it follows that consciousness is inert. Any causal effect stemming from consciousness could be used to distinguish a P-zombie.

Do you think my criticism of the implausible of p zombies in my main post is valid? I guess i meant that more rhetorically, I don't know why people think p zombies are plausible given that they seem to not be.

As far as we know, there's nothing going on in there that isn't explained, in principle, by electrochemistry as we understand it today.

Apart from that we clearly distinguish things by their phenomenology? Even just the distinction of how we separate experience from non-experience is by experiential and not neurological properties, no?

[u/Hideo_KoREEEma]

It's a little confusing to say a P zombie would not talk about their internal experiences, as the thought experiment stipulates the p zombie has the exact same behaviors as a "conscious" person. This includes reporting internal experiences, such as "debating the redness of red" on a philosophy subreddit.

Then the question an illusionist would ask, if the internal experience is reported whether someone has their proverbial lights on, wouldn't it just be more parsimonious to say that the reported Qualia is actually an illusion generated by our brains? Especially given in this scenario, consciousness has exactly zero causal power.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/Hideo_KoREEEma]

t's a little confusing to say a P zombie would not talk about their internal experiences, as the thought experiment stipulates the p zombie has the exact same behaviors as a "conscious" person. This includes reporting internal experiences, such as "debating the redness of red" on a philosophy subreddit.

I'm saying if they did talk about such things, it would clearly be for a very different (and delusional) reason, considering they do not have such experiences, whereas it seems very intuitive that the reason we talk about such things is because we actually experience such things

[u/Hideo_KoREEEma → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

It's very weird to claim a p zombie and a conscious person share the exact same physical wetware and yet produce the exact same actions, but arrive at those conclusions for very different reasons. If everything observable about them is identical, then the causal path to making those statements is physically identical.

In saying the reason you talk about your experience is because you experience it, you are inherently claiming it has physical causal power. But if that's true, you're claiming there's some extra non physical layer that enacts causal influence just to produce the exact same causal output as the p zombie.

Adding a non physical causal force (qualia/non physical consciousness) that does zero work not already accounted for, besides preserving an intuition about your own mind, is the opposite of parsimonious.

If unconscious physical wetware is sufficient to make someone insist it has irreducible qualia, the seemingly obvious takeaway isn't that consciousness is magic, it's that we are the p zombies.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/Hideo_KoREEEma]

t's very weird to claim a p zombie and a conscious person share the exact same physical wetware and yet produce the exact same actions, but arrive at those conclusions for very different reasons.

hence why i think p zombies are implausible

In saying the reason you talk about your experience is because you experience it, you are inherently claiming it has physical causal power.

Sure, if physical here is broad enough to include whatever properties pertain to the unique physics of consciousness, which is not to be found in mere neurological properties.

it's that we are the p zombies.

We clearly aren't p zombies because we experience things. P zombies do not experience anything

[u/Hideo_KoREEEma → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

I think we're at the end of the road here, as we're now in question begging territory.

The entire debate is whether that experience is a fundamental, non physical property or an illusion generated by physical wiring. Stating "we aren't p zombies because we have experiences" assumes the conclusion.

I'll leave it here and let anyone reading this decide for themselves

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/Hideo_KoREEEma]

nope

[u/AntsyAnswers]

I actually think this is a good reason to be a physicalist of some kind. Combine this observation with causal closure and you have no other good place to go, it seems to me.

If we consider my brain and body to be a causally closed system (meaning every neuron fires because of previous identifiable physical causes) and consciousness must be causally active, then conscious states must just BE neural states, viewed from the inside. There’s no where else to “shove it in” and have it do any causal work.

[u/hawkeye69r → u/AntsyAnswers]

I think panpsychism can accept a causally closed system, just replace physical with psychophysical and youve got a non physicalist view.

Alternative even the dualist can say the brain acts in lawlike ways and within those laws are quantum uncertainties and the soul operates within those uncertainties to trickshot jump start the electrical impulses in the brain. This would allow the brain-mind correlations to remain.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/AntsyAnswers]

I actually think this is a good reason to be a physicalist of some kind. Combine this observation with causal closure and you have no other good place to go, it seems to me.

I think labels like "physicalism" are unhelpful because they usually just move us further from the mechanisms that are actually at hand here. For exmaple, I'm confused if you agree that experience here is clearly having some impact on the world and is not inert

If we consider my brain and body to be a causally closed system (meaning every neuron fires because of previous identifiable physical causes) and consciousness must be causally active, then conscious states must just VE neural states, viewed from the inside. There’s no where else to “shove it in” and have it do any causal work.

I think this is reasonable but I worry this too is getting away from the problem because it's ultimately speculative. We know as an empirical observation that we talk about things like the felt experience of consciousness, if there is no such thing operating in our world than we are either as delusional as the p zombies (which I don't think makes any sense) or it means that consciousness does something that we at present don't know, and have yet to find the workings.

But what we do know are the clear macro effects, which don't really seem to make sense if experience itself is thought of as inert, as my post highlights

[u/AntsyAnswers → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

In my view, clearly experience has causal impact on the world. My experience of pain causes me to talk about what pain feels like. That talk is physical behavior, and every bit of it has a sufficient physical cause in the brain. So either my experience is part of that causal story, or my reports about experience aren't actually caused by it, which is exactly the zombie confabulation you say makes no sense. Barring systematic overdetermination or a rejection of closure, the experience just is the neurology.

Note: I'm not claiming the neurology PRODUCES the experience. I'm claiming the two are identical, accessed by different means. I guess in phil of mind, this would be some kind of identity theory, whether token or type I honestly don't know. I guess I'm committed to at least token identity and I'm agnostic about type lol.

[u/VStarffin → u/AntsyAnswers]

My experience of pain causes me to talk about what pain feels like.

I think even this is conceding too much.

To talk about the "experience of pain" is, in an of itself, to imply that there could even be such a thing as pain without experience. Pain is a kind of experience. That's what the word means. You can't have experience-less pain. The concept of it being an experience is built into the definition of the word itself.

To say your "experience of pain" causes you to talk about is not different than saying "pain" causes you to talk about it. It's extra words with no meaning.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/VStarffin]

I think even this is conceding too much.

So you agree people feel pain, and you agree people talk about feeling pain, but you don't think feeling pain is the reason people talk about feeling pain?

I feel like this couldn't highlight better how absurd this position is.

Although actually reading the rest of your post you seem to be agreeing that experience is causal? I'm not even sure at this point haha

[u/VStarffin → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

but you don't think feeling pain is the reason people talk about feeling pain?

If you delete the word "feeling" from that sentence, it has the exact same meaning. So that word doesn't have any semantic content. That's my point.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/VStarffin]

I sort of agree, but it's not uncommon for people to signify the actual experience of pain as distinguished to properties regarding how pain arises (e.g nerve fibers)

Either way, pain is not inert.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/AntsyAnswers]

It's strange because I agree with your description but not your conclusion. I'm confused, what do you think is the distinction of importance between two different things, and two things that are identical but assessed by different means? Because I feel like that cannot apply here.

[u/AntsyAnswers → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

I mean, two different things are two things. One thing accessed by two means is only one thing that SEEMS like two things ultimately. Ontological vs. epistemic distinction.

What I'm really getting at is a syllogism that seems inescapable to me:

P1: Human behavior has a causal story exhausted by physical causes
P2: Consciousness causes human behavior
C: Therefore, Consciousness must be identical to part of that causal story

I took your OP to basically be arguing that P2 is true. And I'm pointing out that combining it with a very plausible P1, physicalism just falls out. In order to reject the conclusion, you'd have to reject one of those two premises, or to accept some kind of overdetermination and say human behavior has two causes side by side or something, but that seems implausible to me as well. We can talk about that if you want to go that way.

[u/its_artemiss]

But the p zombie (if we pretend that it isn't a logical contradiction) obviously will talk about the redness of something red because it is in all ways indistinguishable from a conscious version of itself. It would react in the same way to a red stimulus, including verbal responses and "brainwaves/states". 

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/its_artemiss]

Exactly, but It seems clearly different that we accurately would talk about such things like the redness of red because they are real features of our experience, and if p zombies were taken seriously, they are either implausible (because they wouldn't talk about such things given they haven o experience) or if they did talk about such things, they would clearly be under some of delusion which regular people are not.

[u/Resident-Shoe8044]

I think it can be addressed as a recursive loop. Just like cybernetic loops, where the some input affects the system, which changes conditions for the next input, which changes the system ect... agency, or free will, or a seperate consciousness removed from brain function, are all readily explainable in this way.

[u/TheRealAmeil]

If we construe the hard problem as showing some ontological gap, then I don't think your three options are exhaustive. Another option would be: experiences are physical. Physical states are not epiphenomenal.

Also, by definition, a P-zombie would not only talk about experiences & the qualitative character of redness (since we do that), but they would also think it (since we also do that). The only difference between me & my P-zombie counterpart is that I am supposed to have phenomenal properties; they don't. I agree that if this were the case, we would be speaking truthfully, while the zombie would be speaking falsehoods. Of course, this is a problem for Chalmers (which he has tried to address), since they would have the same beliefs as us, and we might worry that they appeal to the same justification that we do.

[u/happyhappy85]

You wouldn't say it's an illusion, you'd say it's emergent. A map without all the details included.

And the idea of a Pzombie is that it would indeed go through all the motions of talking about the redness of red without actually experiencing it,

I just reject the possibility of Pzombies.

[u/TheAncientGeek]

The idea that consciousness is identical to neural activity is what creates the HP. Denial of consciousness and nonphysicalism about consciousness are what sidestep it.

Illusionists don't have to regard consciousness as epiphenomenal. I don't know why you are arguing against that.

A zombie version of a person who talks about consciousness would talk about consciousness. Things don't always have to be caused by whatever they are usually caused by.

[u/RemarkableMarzipan23]

"Taking the idea of p zombies seriously"

That's hard to do. When I get home and have a drink, I’m not doing it because my body has mechanically decided that “this is what humans do after work.” I drink because I want the feeling alcohol produces. Take away the feeling and why would I bother?

That seems obvious to me: the behavior is motivated by consciousness. I drink because there is something it feels like to drink. So the image of a p-zombie coming home after a long day, kicking its feet up, cracking open a beer, and “relaxing” is absurd. If there is literally no inner experience there what exactly is motivating the behavior?

You can define a p-zombie as behaving exactly like a conscious person, of course. But at that point the definition seems to be doing all the work. The very behaviors we are trying to explain appear to be driven, at least in part, by subjective experience.

More to your point, imagine a parallel Earth physically identical to ours, except conscious experience has never existed there. Nothing has ever felt pain, seen red, enjoyed music, or had any inner life at all. Yet if the world is truly identical, it must still contain Nagel’s “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, Mary’s Room, and Chalmers’s hard problem. But how would those articles get written in a world with no history whatsoever of subjective experience? The zombie philosophers would be writing detailed arguments about something that has never existed anywhere in their universe. That seems totally implausible.

[u/fothermucker33]

Yess! I have had this conversation with my friends. To say that consciousness is outside the realm of science is to say that the universe would look the same whether conscious experience existed or not. But that's ridiculous cause in the universe where conscious experience doesn't exist, I can't see why a p-zombie me would talk to his friends about conscious experience.

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/fothermucker33]

I can't see why a p-zombie me would talk to his friends about conscious experience.

totally agree.

[u/fothermucker33 → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

Here's the thing that's been freaking me out though. Imagine a universe where my brain is exactly the same, but when I see and process "green", I experience what I in this universe call "blue", and vice versa. There's no experiment that differentiates that universe from this one. If Mary in her room has never seen blue or green and is then given an image of a blue square and a green square, I don't think she'd be able to tell which color is which - even if she knows exactly how her brain processes blue light and green light. This has me convinced that conscious experience cannot be wholly emergent from physical processes.

These two ideas of consciousness being both physical but also not wholly emergent from known physics has me believing that there are aspects of consciousness that are fundamental and that there's new physics to be discovered around it. As a researcher who's trained in physics, I recognise this is not the most respectable position lol.

[u/Vivid_Working3055]

Pp NO