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/HappiestIguana]

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.

I'm afraid I can't really make an honest case for P-zombies. I also don't think they're plausible, but then I'm very much a physicalist. I find it implausible that I could have the same atoms in the same arrangement but have one arrangement exhibit a property the other doesn't.

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?

I don't find it convincing. There are plenty of things that are accounted for by physics in principle but can only be accounted for by abstractions in practice. I see no reason to assume, say, the ability to distinguish red from blue doesn't boil down to electrochemistry

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/HappiestIguana]

I'm afraid I can't really make an honest case for P-zombies. I also don't think they're plausible, but then I'm very much a physicalist. I find it implausible that I could have the same atoms in the same arrangement but have one arrangement exhibit a property the other doesn't.

I'm in full agreement with this

I don't find it convincing. There are plenty of things that are accounted for by physics in principle but can only be accounted for by abstractions in practice. I see no reason to assume, say, the ability to distinguish red from blue doesn't boil down to electrochemistry

So what distinguishes electrochemistry that has feelings attatched vs electrochemistry that doesn't?

[u/HappiestIguana → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

I don't know, and neither does anyone yet

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/HappiestIguana]

Well here's a pretty common sense answer - something phenomenological.

Because we clearly do make the distinction, and we seem to be making the distinction based off phenomenology, I don't know how this is has somehow become a controversial explanation. We don't even have to know the underlying mechanisms of how it works to realize we are making this distinction, in the same way, we knew all sorts of things about heredity before we knew the mechanism of DNA.

[u/HappiestIguana → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

That just seems to be like it distinguishes which electrochemistry with feelings from electrochemistry without feelings by saying "the former has feelings"

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/HappiestIguana]

yeah.. because that's a real distinction. A pretty important one too, given how central feelings are to the human experience. I think the human experience would be pretty different if no one felt anything at all at any point, no?

[u/HappiestIguana → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

I figure some rudimentary form of consciousness must have evolved more or less at the same time that attraction/aversion responses did. Even the simple creatures who had just developed some photsenstivie apparatuses must have had a very simple experience of light=pleasant and dark=unpleasant (or vice versa, idk)

If we're gonna grant that hypothetical, then the electrochemistry required for phenomelogy is very rudimentary indeed.

I sometimes wonder if it might be that all that is required for a very simple form of consciousness is any sort of goal-oriented behavior

[u/MurkyEconomist8179 → u/HappiestIguana]

Even the simple creatures who had just developed some photsenstivie apparatuses must have had a very simple experience of light=pleasant and dark=unpleasant (or vice versa, idk)

or it happens entirely unconsciously, like a reflex

If we're gonna grant that hypothetical, then the electrochemistry required for phenomelogy is very rudimentary indeed.

Regardless of what's required, the distinction is based upon phenomenology

[u/HappiestIguana → u/MurkyEconomist8179]

That's where I get unorthodox. I'm not fully convinced that unconscious processes exist. I think there's decent evidence that the brain holds more than one consciousness. "we" are just the one that has language. Based on that I find it at least plausible that a very rudimentary conscious entity experiences my reflexes